The Brimstone Wedding

by Barbara Vine

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I'll have a Perrier with ice and lemon.’

  It beats me why people go into pubs to drink water. Len was behind the bar, telling everyone that Mum had gone down with the bug, and making a silly joke about how he'd opened the window and in-flew-Enza. I got a white wine for myself and a half of bitter for Mike and Jane's fizzy water. Mike looked at his drink as if it was a bottle of champagne I'd put in front of him, blinking his eyes and staggering back. He winked at Ken Foster and said the wife must be flush and to make the most of it for it wouldn't last. I asked Jane how Hannah was.

  Her eyebrows went up. ‘She's not so bad.’

  I remembered, too late, that my sole knowledge of Hannah's condition was supposed to be based on snatches of overheard conversation. I tried to cover myself, but even then I was thinking that this is what deceit does, these are the humiliations in which it involves you and the innocent one.

  ‘I hoped,’ I said, ‘she was getting better,’ though I knew she wasn't.

  She spoke in a hard voice. ‘It's pollution that causes it.’ My guilt I suppose it was that made me hear an undertone of accusation, even a double meaning. ‘She's best in the country air.’ Jane is one of those who can smile with her lips while her eyes stay dull as stones. ‘I'd like us to get a place in France, where you can be sure of the weather, somewhere in the south maybe. In any case, we're giving up the cottage next month. The lease runs out and we're not renewing.’

  Ned hadn't told me. I remembered, suddenly and quite vividly, his whistling in the dark, his refusal to perform the antidote. Were these the effects of it?

  Weakness took hold of me, I wanted to sit down, but there was nowhere to sit. It was pathetic, but I needed her to comfort me, her reassurance. A look of deep boredom had taken over where that cool smile had been. Then suddenly I understood. He was tidying up, he was setting things in order, because he had sensed the change in me, the gradual coming round to his point of view, that we should leave and be together.

  ‘I think I see the people I'm meeting,’ she said, indicating the pair from the University Ned had said were her friends. She put her glass down on someone else's table. ‘Thanks for the drink.’

  When she'd gone I started wondering if he'd tell me. Perhaps he wouldn't. Perhaps he was waiting to see what I'd do next, and meanwhile he was ridding himself of encumbrances like the cottage, even buying somewhere in France for Jane to use with Hannah. And Hannah was getting better. She'd need her father but not the way an ill child would. Over my shoulder I kept glancing at Jane. She was talking and laughing with the UEA man the way I'd never seen her talk and laugh with anyone before. The woman sat by, silent and placid. It wasn't too far-fetched, was it, to think Jane might be having an affair with this man? After all, that wasn't necessarily his wife or partner with him. It could be his sister or just a friend.

  Mum says a woman who's having an affair with a married man always does that, tries to convince herself his wife is unfaithful. It makes her feel less guilty, you see, if what's sauce for the gander is also sauce for the goose.

  ‘Have I said too much to you, Genevieve?’ Stella said.

  It was the following week and we were sitting in the lounge. I looked up at her and asked why she said that. She could trust me. I wouldn't tell anyone. She shook her head and smiled faintly. The day was wild, the windows rattled as a west wind blew, and we watched it tear the yellow leaves from the chestnut trees. The lawns were ankle-deep in fallen leaves. The gardener Stella complained about because he called her by her christian name was cutting back plants in the flower beds that the first frost of the winter had turned black.

  ‘I've had a few bad moments, thinking I'd told you too much. You must have been – well, not shocked but… Astounded, Genevieve?’

  ‘I'm married,’ I said. ‘I'm having an affair with a married man. I thought I'd told you too much.’

  It didn't interest her. Perhaps she had forgotten. ‘If it's any consolation, telling you has been a relief to my mind. There's no one else I can tell, you see. You're a very good listener, did you know that?’

  I told her I'd seen The End of Edith Thompson on television, or seen part of it, and she gave me an intense look. Then she reached for my hand and held it.

  ‘I think it's quite common,’ she said, ‘a couple plotting together to kill the man's wife or the woman's husband. There are always cases in the newspapers.’

  ‘Are there?’ I said.

  She sighed. ‘Perhaps no more than any other – dreadful cases. We notice things that are close to what preys on our own minds, don't you think?’

  I nodded. I could agree with that. Tales of love attracted my attention now I had a love affair of my own, just as engagement rings had when I got engaged, and estate agents' ads when we were moving into our house. But did that mean Edith Thompson preyed on Stella's mind?

  She changed the subject swiftly.

  ‘My father died when Richard was nine months old,’ she said, ‘and when you were nine months old too, Genevieve.’ She smiled, proud of her memory. ‘You've just lost your father and I'm sure it's gone deep with you. You used to see him even though he didn't live with you. But once I'd left my parents' home I never saw my father – well, not more than once or twice. He'd never seen my baby. He hardly knew Rex. He'd only once been to our house, that was five years before and he didn't even stay the night. But he left me his house.

  ‘I was married to a lawyer and I knew a bit about wills but do you know it never occurred to me that my father might have done that. A letter came from a solicitor in London. It was a piece of luck for me that it was a Saturday when it came and Rex was still in bed. Of course I was always up hours before the post came. Richard was such a bright lively baby, he never let me sleep after six in the morning. Oh, Genevieve, I don't know to this day what came over me, but I thought to myself, why should I ever tell Rex anything about this? He won't ask, it won't occur to him to ask, and I'll keep it to myself. And I did.’

  ‘You didn't tell him?’ I said. ‘You didn't tell your husband your dad had left you his house?’

  ‘I didn't. I never did.’

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘What was the point?’

  She gave me a sidelong glance. For a moment she looked less old, less ill. ‘It was a place of my own, wasn't it? I'd nothing of my own. It was my independence.’

  I just nodded, though it seemed very strange to me.

  ‘You couldn't do it nowadays,’ she said, ‘not with the amount people use phones. I mean, those solicitors and then the estate agents would have been bound to phone and if Rex was at home he'd have answered and it would have all come out. But phoning from London to Bury was a trunk call, it was something you might do in an emergency. Everyone wrote letters.’

  ‘So you managed to keep it a secret?’

  ‘I kept it from everyone but Alan,’ she said, ‘I told Alan. He loved secrets.’

  Her love affair with Alan Tyzark had stopped while she was pregnant and for a long time after Richard was born. But he was always there, a presence in her life, and they often met for just an hour or two. He would call for her and take her for a drive with the children. They dared not even kiss for fear of Marianne's watchful eyes. Then, one day when Richard was about a year old and Stella was in secret negotiations to sell the house she'd been left, Rex said it was time she had some permanent help in the house. She should have an au pair and he had found her one. She was Danish, adored children, wanted to perfect her English. Au pairs were coming into fashion then, in Stella's world they were the answer to what you did when you couldn't get servants. But at first she was suspicious of the idea of Maret.

  It must be a scheme of Rex's to get himself a young girl to sleep with. That was what she thought. That was how she thought of him, a man who lusted after women and was always hunting them. And the fact that Maret turned out to be the reverse of Stella's idea of a nineteen-year-old Danish girl, being squat and dark and not at all good-looking, for a while didn't
alter that conviction.

  ‘But it was his guilt over me that made him engage Maret, it was compensation for his infidelity. And then I realized something I'd never quite understood before, Genevieve. He wasn't a womanizer. He was quite monogamous, only his fidelity wasn't to his wife, it was to Charmian. There was no one else in the world for Rex but Charmian. He'd gone back to her and they'd started off again before Maret even came. And somehow that hardened my heart. Do you know what I mean? I could have endured a succession of young girls who meant nothing, but not this old woman who meant everything. I think I lost all feeling for Rex then.’

  ‘Why did you stay?’

  She repeated what she'd said before. ‘It wasn't like it is nowadays. If I'd tried to divorce him I'd have had to prove adultery and I don't think I could have done. I'd have had to employ private detectives and even then a man of sixty-two calling on a woman of fifty-eight, an old friend, wouldn't have been evidence. Then there was my own adultery. That wouldn't have helped me, that would have made it worse. And I had the children. It wasn't like it is nowadays. Rex might have turned on me, divorced me and got custody of my children. I was afraid to try, Genevieve. I just wanted a little independence and the chance to be with Alan. Having Maret was a great help, but we still had nowhere to be alone together.’

  Her father's house was sold by the end of that summer and the sum of money it realized was just under £5,000 after the legal fees and the estate agent had been paid. She opened a bank account. She had her own cheque book and it made her feel rich. At first she had no ideas of what to do with the money. Why do anything with it? The time would come when a purpose would suggest itself.

  With Maret in the house and Richard too young even for nursery school, Stella couldn't allow Alan to come there. Once or twice he took her to a hotel. But this was awkward and difficult, deeply embarrassing for Stella. They had to pretend to be married, pretend to stay the night yet pay in advance. And Alan couldn't afford hotels. They were in love, they were as close as two lovers could be, but she wouldn't have dared offer to pay a hotel bill.

  One day, driving back to Bury from a roadside motel, she saw a cottage with a For Sale sign outside. It was on a main road, ugly, exposed to the winds that swept the Breckland, but it gave her an idea.

  She said to Alan, ‘I shall buy us a house.’

  ‘Just like that?’ he said, and then he said, ‘When?’

  ‘Before winter comes. When we find one we like.’

  ‘Whichever is the sooner,’ he said.

  The house must be halfway between Bury and Tivetshall St Michael, within easy reach of both, in rather a remote place, standing alone, oldish but not ancient, not too big and at the right price. They discussed endlessly their requirements: a garage to hide a car in from passers-by, a little garden, a tiled roof, not thatch, no neighbours, a big bedroom with a view.

  By a small miracle, Gilda was off to spend two weeks with a friend in the south of France. Stella and Alan went house-hunting and before Gilda came back they had found the flint-walled house with the red roof called Molucca.

  I walked Stella back to her room. It might have been easier to have carried her. I'm sure I could, she's so light. She sat in her chair and put her feet up on a stool.

  ‘I was so happy at that time, Genevieve.’ Her voice was soft and rather sleepy. ‘For the first time in my life everything was going right for me. I'd been in love with Alan for four years but I seemed to fall in love with him again. This time it was deeper, it was more intense. I was forty, and it wasn't like it is nowadays, forty was middle-aged. But Alan made me feel young. I'd never had any real pleasure – I don't quite know how to say this…’

  ‘From sex, d'you mean?’

  ‘Yes, from sex.’ Stella closed her eyes. She didn't want to meet my eyes. ‘I'd never had pleasure with Rex and I couldn't even imagine what it would be like. I mean, if you don't like doing something you can't imagine doing the same thing but liking it, can you?’

  ‘Like ironing with the latest thing in steam irons,’ I said. I hate ironing.

  She smiled a feeble smile. ‘So you could say, why did I ever want to – to make love with Alan if I didn't like love-making? I don't know the answer to that, Genevieve. But I'm sure I'm not the first woman who didn't have any pleasure but thought she could have if she was with someone she really loved. And the first time – the first time with Alan – well, it was quite different.’ She looked at me. ‘I'm sorry, it's rather embarrassing talking about these things. I was just trying to make you see that I loved him, I loved him in every possible way. And when we had the house to go to, it was wonderful. It was romantic.

  ‘I would go over there in the late afternoon. Maret was at home with the children. As for Rex, he and I were leading quite separate lives by then. He never asked where I was if I wasn't at home and I knew where he was so I didn't have to ask. He probably knew about Alan, or he knew there was someone, but he didn't care any more.

  ‘I was proud of my house. It was mine, you see. You saw the deeds, in my name. That meant a great deal to me. I had such fun furnishing it. Alan and I had very little money but you could find amazing bargains in the antique shops and at sales in those days. He had the originals of the drawings he'd done for his children's books and we had them framed and put up on the walls. I always kept the house full of flowers. I cleaned it myself, I had to. It was the only place I'd ever enjoyed cleaning.

  ‘Waiting for Alan I'd dress up. I'd put on a beautiful dress and jewellery and do my hair carefully. I'd take an hour doing my face and my nails.’ She looked away. ‘All to be untidied and spoilt when he came and we – we kissed and embraced and made love.’ A little light laugh and one of her changes of subject. ‘People didn't drink wine the way they do nowadays, they only drank it at meals, but I kept gin and tonic and angostura and vermouth and sherry there. I often cooked us a meal. I used to watch for Alan's car from the bedroom window and long and long for him and be sick with fear if he was five minutes late. Oh, Genevieve, can you imagine?’

  Only too well. Apart from the fact that it was warmer then and the drink was different, there didn't seem much to choose between us.

  ‘It was wonderful having a place to go to and a – a bed of our own. I suppose you'd say we played house. We played at being a couple, at being husband and wife. One evening, when we were having a drink and I was in an evening gown and for some reason he'd put on a suit, we were sitting there with the table laid and food cooking, and it was just as if we were waiting for friends to come to dinner. He said, “This is our dress rehearsal for being married.”’

  ‘You meant to get married, then?’ I asked her.

  She didn't answer but only reached for my hand. Since that first time she put her arms up to me, we've been giving each other a kiss when I come in the morning and when I go in the afternoon. Every time, the body I hug seems more brittle and birdlike and the heart to flutter more rapidly. I used to wait for Stella to make the first move but now I kiss her as a matter of course and when she's in my arms give her a squeeze that I hope she knows is loving. I kissed her then and her cheek felt hot as if she was still blushing for what she'd said.

  Ned phoned soon after I got home. He was very casual about the move from the cottage, it didn't seem important to him, they'd never meant to take the place on for more than a year. Did it matter? I said no, it didn't matter, in a way it was better for us not to run into each other in the pub or the shop.

  He was impatient with all that. ‘When shall I see you?’

  ‘Tomorrow if you like.’

  ‘Of course I like. It's the one thing I like in an unlikeable world.’

  A lover can't say better than that.

  That night, while Mike was putting in the glazing bars, his meal on a tray on the crate they'd come in, I sat down with a glass of red wine and the encyclopedia to try and learn something about modern art. But I didn't get very far. I had a talk with myself instead. It was like two people talking in my head, one arguin
g for and one against. I was so young when I married I'd never thought about marriage, I'd never considered whether marriage should be something permanent, something sacred if you like, or if you ought to dissolve it when you'd nothing more to say to each other. One of my voices told me I should try to keep the marriage going and the other said what was the point when we'd nothing in common and there were no children.

  And then the two of us inside me discussed Ned and Jane and Hannah. One said a woman with a conscience would never forgive herself for splitting up a family and taking a man from his child but the other said that people did it all the time, it was commonplace. Even out here in a country village people did it all the time. My father had done it and my mother had done it twice. Times had changed since Rex Newland and Stella had to behave the way they did, keeping empty marriages going at all costs, sneaking off for secret meetings until love itself at last wore out. Philippa had told me that of all the kids in Katie's class at school less than half lived with their own mother and their own father who were married to each other. And then I thought of having Ned's child. It might be that by this time next year I could have a baby that was Ned's and mine.

  The first voice said, Hannah is only five, she's too young to understand, she'll want her father and Jane won't be able to explain. But she'll come and visit us, the counter voice said, she'll spend weekends with us, and maybe she'll come to love me. Or maybe she'll hate me and turn her father against me. I poured myself a second glass of wine and thought of living with Ned, of sleeping all night with him, of waking up beside him.

  All the time I was sitting there, thinking and arguing with myself, a steady hammering came from the back room. I'd closed the door because now the window had gone there was nothing between the dining room and the garden but a sort of skeleton of a conservatory. It was a mild, damp night, and there was something dismal about the misty, still darkness and that regular rhythmic banging. When he's finished, if there isn't any work in Norwich or London, he'll start on something else. Maybe he'll re-fit the kitchen, it's only been done twice since we got married, or turn the two downstairs rooms into one big room or build a garage at the bottom of the garden. There's plenty for him to do for the next thirty years. And when he's sixty-five and gets his pension he'll turn to me (if I'm still here) and say we're moving to a bungalow at Cromer, preferably a dilapidated one, so that he can take it to bits and put it all together again.