Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  “Good-bye, Eleanor.” Even as I said it, I felt it had a note of finality to it.

  She smiled but her eyes were already somewhere else, darting up to the bedroom window. Daniel was up there, by the curtains, waiting.

  “Bye,” she said distractedly, before shutting the door and nipping away. No, correction, before striding away, up the path, golden-brown curls blowing in the breeze, head held high, not caring now who saw her.

  I drove thoughtfully to Sheila’s and picked up Rufus, who bounced out of the trailer with round eyes and vertical hair; full of E numbers and artificial colouring, no doubt. I thanked Sheila who was busy hosing down the Alsatian and drove away with him pinging off the seat beside me.

  “Can we go and see the baby now? You said we could, and I’m the only one who hasn’t seen him!”

  “Oh Rufus…” I raked a hand through my hair, “I think we might do that another day. I’m shattered, actually.” I was. Although I felt about two stone lighter for knowing that Alex wasn’t part of the Latimer family drama, I still felt emotionally drained by all that I’d heard just now and my head was aching. What I really wanted was to lay it on a crisp white pillow in a darkened room, preferably in the Swiss Alps, prior to sipping beef tea on the veranda. I certainly wanted to be alone.

  “Oh come on, we practically go past their house!”

  “Yes, but I don’t know if Hannah’s back from hospital yet,” I lied.

  “She is! I heard you talking to Eddie on the mobile earlier!”

  I sighed and swung the car into their road. Sharp lad, this. Too sharp for me. But actually, maybe this was a good idea, I thought as we drew up and saw Eddie, pushing a brand-new pram around the front garden. Maybe a dash of old-fashioned family values was just what I needed right now, after Eleanor’s sledge-hammering of them so very recently.

  “Well, how lovely!” Eddie hailed us, leaving the pram and coming to meet us as we picked our way across the wet grass and soggy remains of daffodils, through low shafts of evening sunshine. He scooped Rufus up and swung him round in an arc in the air. Rufus squealed with delight.

  “Just practising,” Eddie wheezed as he set him down, “for when the babe’s a bit bigger. Older father, you know, got to keep young. Ooh, me back.” He hobbled off to the pram, rubbing the base of his spine. “Shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Still ‘the babe’ then, is it? No name yet?” I followed and peered in the pram.

  “Tobias,” said Eddie, straightening up proudly. “Means gift of God. Tobias Martin Sidebottom, after his grandfather.”

  “Oh! Dad will love that.”

  “He does,” Eddie assured me. “Ask him. He’s round the back putting the finishing touches to his work of art. Have you seen it yet?”

  “No, but I’ve heard about it, Hannah told me on the phone.” Dad was a bit of a whiz at carpentry and was apparently making a cradle for the baby.

  “Can we wake him up?” asked Rufus, peering at the little orange face in the pram.

  Eddie looked shocked. “Good Lord, no. It’s taken me twenty minutes to get him off!”

  “Maybe he’ll wake up later,” I said, seeing Rufus’s disappointed face. “And if he doesn’t, we’ll come again tomorrow, but Rufus, it’ll be a while before he’s playing conkers with you.” I could see that Rufus had envisaged something a little more entertaining than this blob of pond life.

  “At least he’s a boy,” he said at length. “At least he’ll want to do the same things as me.”

  “Course he will!” agreed Eddie. “Golly, before you know it the pair of you will be running round the garden kicking a football together!”

  “Really?” Rufus brightened, Pond Life already morphing, in his suggestible mind, into a little tyke in Man U strip.

  “Yes, well, let him get out of nappies first,” I advised. “Is Hannah around?”

  “In the house. Tell you what, Rufus. You can push, and we’ll take him to the corner shop for an ice cream. It’ll still be open if we hurry.”

  “Cool! How fast can I push?”

  “Fast as you like, as long as you don’t actually catapult him out of it. Hannah’s inside, by the way,” he directed this at me as he shadowed Rufus, who was already off with the pram, anxiously across the grass, out of the gate and on up the road.

  I watched as they went, shading my eyes with my hand into the evening sun. For all his big talk, Rufus was actually pushing very carefully, taking this new responsibility very seriously, handling his cousin with care. His cousin. Lovely. Another member of the family, making Rufus not such an only, cherished child. And if only there were more. If only I could have more. For a moment I felt a pang of jealousy for Eleanor. Why wasn’t I like that, pregnant at the drop of a pair of trousers?

  I sighed and went in to find Hannah. She was on the top of a stepladder, cleaning the windows. “Should you be doing that?” I asked in alarm.

  She looked down. “Why not?”

  “Well, you’ve just had a baby and—good God, look at this place! You’ve had a tidy up, and—blimey, the flowers!”

  I gazed round in wonder. The piles of dusty books, bundles of newspapers, chairs with broken legs stacked in a pagoda awaiting mending had all gone, and instead, space prevailed: glorious, glorious space, with freshly hoovered blue carpet, gleaming skirting boards revealed for the first time in years, and all around the room, vases and vases of flowers. She came down her ladder, looking slightly sheepish. “I know, aren’t they lovely?”

  “Who are they from?”

  “Oh, all sorts. Locals in the village, teachers, kids at school.” She fingered some delicate wild flowers in a bowl.

  “Oh, how sweet—sweet of everyone! You see?” I rounded on her accusingly.

  “I know,” she agreed ruefully. “Everyone’s been so kind. And of course I had to have a tidy-up. I can’t have a baby in all this clutter and dust, and anyway, most of the so-called projects I had on the go were never going to be finished.”

  I eyed her beadily. Ah, so she knew that too, did she?

  “Yes, all right,” she muttered, folding her arms. “Too much talk and not enough action, and too much running round being bossy. Too many committees. I’m staying on at Sea Scouts, but I’ve resigned from the Brownies.”

  “Have you?” Hannah had battled her way furiously to the top of that particular little empire. “Who’s going to be Brown Owl, then?”

  “Tawny Owl, no doubt. She’s frightfully ambitious, been snapping at my heels for years. Or pecking at them, should I say.” She grinned.

  “Well, quite,” I blinked, stunned that she’d made a pecking order joke. The rest of the family had for years, but secretly of course, never in front of her. Quite a lot of giggling about ruffled feathers. “But you’re still going to teach?”

  “Oh, yes, but part time,” she said happily, balling her J cloth and aiming it at the bucket. “The school’s agreed to me doing four mornings a week, and I get all my maternity leave too, since I obviously didn’t take any while I was pregnant!” She grinned and I marvelled at how well she looked. Shiny hair, rosy cheeks and slimmer. Well, obviously slimmer, since Tobias had come out, but still, she was in better shape than I’d expected. She saw me looking her up and down.

  “Breast-feeding,” she said proudly. “Tobias sucks for England, and after every feed I reckon I lose a couple of pounds. I promise you, it’s the best diet ever.”

  “But you’re eating?” I said, concerned. “You’ve got to eat properly, to feed.”

  She laughed. “You sound like Eddie. Yes, I’m eating, but instead of a couple of rounds of sandwiches and a whole chocolate cake, it’s one round of sandwiches and a piece of chocolate cake. I don’t need all that food any more.”

  “Because you’re happy.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Because I’m happy. You’re right, I was misery eating before. Pretending everything was fine, but feeling hollow inside. I know it’s unfashionable to admit it, Imo, but all I ever wanted was to get ma
rried and have children. To have the roses round the door, the baking, the babies. I never wanted to be a success.”

  “Who says that’s not a success?” I said softly. “And now you are. Now you’ve got it.”

  “Now I’ve got it!” she echoed, and a big beam spread across her face as she opened her arms to me.

  I walked into them, my eyes like saucers. Hannah and I never hugged, never. Tears sprang to my eyes too. For her, for her hard-won, unexpected happiness, but, I suspect, for myself also. For my peace at last, my own family’s sanity and security, free from the tyranny of Eleanor. Never again would my heart flip with fear when she rang and asked to speak to Alex; never again would I hold my breath when he mentioned he’d had lunch with her. I wished I could tell Hannah, but I’d promised to stay silent until Eleanor had broken it to Piers, and I would.

  “You look well too,” she commented, linking my arm—linking my arm!—as she led me towards the back door and the garden.

  “I am well,” I agreed, trying not to wonder who’d unlink first. As it happened it was me. My hands shot to my mouth in surprise as I stepped out on to the back steps. “Oh golly—look at this!”

  “I know,” Hannah agreed, leaning against the door frame, folding her arms. “Didn’t know your father was a master craftsman, did you? He was up all night making that.”

  Dad, looking tired but unbowed, straightened up from his carpentry in the middle of the lawn, and stood back to admire his handiwork. I blinked.

  “That’s amazing.”

  I drifted down the steps and across the lawn. An immaculate wooden cradle, complete with curved wooden hood and a pair of rocking feet, stood proudly on the grass.

  “Dad, I can’t believe you made that. It’s fantastic!”

  “Well, the bottom’s a bit of a cheat—it’s an old drawer—but the hood I’m pleased with.”

  “I’m not surprised!”

  “Isn’t it great?” yelled Hannah, before turning and going back to her windows. Dad beamed. “Only the best for the Marmalade Bishop.”

  “The what?” I frowned.

  “Tobias. Haven’t you noticed his hair?” he said gleefully. “Definite touch of ginger, and that profile: noble yet pious. Made for the ministry.”

  I giggled. “If you say so.”

  “And hopefully it’s built to last.” He patted the hood. “Can accommodate any number of grandchildren that might come along.” He winked at me, and although my tummy twisted, I smiled gamely.

  “Well, you never know.”

  It occurred to me that Dad was looking very unlike his usual self today. Instead of the lurid shirts and tight jeans, he had on a pair of ancient beige trousers and a blue sweater. Even the white Gucci shoes had been replaced by comfortable old deck shoes covered in glue and putty, and his hair was a bit mussed, not slicked back as usual. He looked like a regular grandpa, putting the finishing touches to his grandson’s cradle. I smelled a rat.

  “Dawn gone to Newcastle, yet?” I asked lightly.

  “Yes, luv. Went Monday.”

  “I thought you said she was in the car, outside the hospital?”

  He grinned. “Poetic licence. Didn’t want you all thinking I’d been deserted, did I?” He crouched down to avoid my eye, packing away his tools in a tin box. “And she’s staying put. We’ve called it a day, as you probably know.”

  “I didn’t actually, not for sure, but…well. There was talk you might not go the distance, as it were.”

  He glanced up. “It’s not just the travelling, luv. She’s too young for me. Needs someone her own age.”

  I gaped. Too young? For my dad? He straightened up and whipped off his jumper, chucking it on the grass. Then he dropped his trousers. I didn’t flinch, since my father had been taking his clothes off at a moment’s notice for as long as I could remember, claiming that as an actor he was used to people wandering in and out of his dressing room and seeing him in the buff—although privately I thought it had more to do with the fact that he was keen to show off his small but perfectly formed physique, his muscular chest and toned stomach. But I did wonder why he was doing it here, now, on Hannah’s lawn. He reached into a rucksack on the grass and buttoned himself into a crisp, pinstripe shirt; then he pulled on a pair of mustard cords and some brown leather loafers, looking for all the world like a country squire.

  “Where the hell are you going?” I asked in wonder.

  He looked at me with round, innocent eyes as he shrugged on a tweed jacket, shooting out his shirt cuffs complete with gold crested cufflinks. “Out to dinner with Helena Parker. Why?”

  “Helena Parker? Helena Parker! Why?”

  Helena was one of Mum and Dad’s oldest friends; a lovely, elegant lady, widowed tragically early and now in her late fifties.

  “I met up with her at that dinner party Tessa Stanley gave at The Hurlingham a while back. Tessa was all over me,” he grinned, “tried to snog me in the rose bushes, a real gay divorcee on the prowl, but Helena’s much more my type. She’s a lovely woman.”

  Yes. She was.

  “Does Mum know?” I asked anxiously, following him up the garden path and back through the house as he searched in his natty little leather pouch for his car keys. He shrugged. Frowned back at me.

  “No idea, why?”

  “Well, I…just wondered.”

  “I don’t see what it’s got to do with your mother,” he said as we went down the hall. “And anyway, she likes Helena. It’s Tessa she can’t bear.”

  “Yes. No, you’re right.” I chewed my thumbnail.

  “I thought I’d take her to that new Marco Polo restaurant in Chelsea. It’s got a garden, apparently. Had fantastic reviews in the paper. Blimey,” he glanced at his watch, “better get a wiggle on.”

  “Marco Pierre. Yes. Yes, it has.” Cost an arm and a leg too. I swallowed. “Helena Parker’s not your usual type, Dad. Isn’t she a bit—you know—old for you?”

  “Oh, but have you seen her recently?” He turned in the narrow hallway, eyes wide. “She looks about thirty-five! Fantastically toned body, gorgeous long legs, honey-coloured hair and she’s got terrific bone structure too. Honestly, she knocks a lot of young girls for six. And anyway, fifty’s the new thirty, didn’t you know?” He flashed me a grin.

  “But what about discoing, clubbing, all that sort of thing?” I went on doggedly. “You’d miss all that, wouldn’t you? You love that!”

  “Oh, so does Helena. We thought we might go to Raffles afterwards. She’s a member. How do I look?” He turned to me at the front door and stood to attention, beaming.

  “Terrific.” I swallowed.

  “Wish me luck?” He looked a bit anxious, for Dad. A nervous man on a first date. I smiled.

  “And good luck.”

  “Bye, darling!” he called to Hannah, who was back up her ladder in the front room.

  “Bye, Dad, and thanks!” she shouted back. As he went down the front path, Rufus and Eddie were coming back up it.

  “Bye, Bishop!” he sang, giving them a jaunty wave as he strutted past, shoulders back, to his BMW at the kerb. Rufus and Eddie laughed.

  “Got a date, Grandpa?” Rufus called.

  “That’s it, laddie. Onwards and upwards. Onwards and upwards!”

  I turned and walked thoughtfully back inside, still chewing my thumbnail. Stopped at the foot of Hannah’s ladder.

  “Helena Parker!”

  “I know, isn’t it lovely?” She paused in her wiping to glance down. “They’ve always got on so well. Remember when they used to go out as a foursome, when Geoffrey was alive? Oh, I think it would be marvellous. He’s terribly keen, you know. Says she’s got the best legs in London, which she probably has. And so intelligent too. Imagine, Dad acting his age for a change, with a suitable girlfriend. Wouldn’t it be great?”

  “Great,” I agreed shortly.

  As she resumed her scrubbing, I gazed out of the window, past Rufus and Eddie, who were manoeuvring the pram back under the tree, watching,
as Dad’s shiny blue convertible purred expensively off down the road in the evening sun, en route to London.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Later that evening, when Rufus had gone to bed, I rang Alex. His mobile was off, so I tried the office.

  “North American Desk?”

  “Alex?”

  “Oh, hi, darling.” He sounded tired. “How’s tricks?”

  “Alex, it’s half-past nine. You’re not still working, are you?”

  “’Fraid so,” he yawned. “But nearly finished. Christ, is it half-past nine? I had no idea.”

  “Darling, pack up and go home. You’ll be exhausted.”

  “Yeah, I’m about to, actually. Just putting the finishing touches to this wretched pitch for the Cable and Wireless account that Baxter has been bellyaching about. It’s not bad actually, d’you want to hear my closing para?”

  “Go on then.”

  He cleared his throat and put on a pompous voice. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion, is why the corporate finance team at Weinberg and Parsons is so uniquely placed, with Charles Baxter at the helm, to lead Cable and Wireless’s fortunes further into the twenty-first century. Infinity and beyond.” He gave a snort of laughter. “Baxter will love that. Massages his ego and plays to his hubris too. Wanker.”

  I laughed, and felt a sudden rush of love for him; working away late into the night for his family, for me and Rufus, but I felt indignation, too. Why should he be kowtowing to Charles Baxter, a man ten years younger and infinitely less experienced than he? Alex had been brokering deals when Baxter was still puking into loos at teenage parties, still picking his spots. As I heard him turn off his computer and scrape back his chair, I resolved once again that I’d persuade him to chuck it in; tell Baxter and his ego to take a running jump. We’d sell up in London and use the money to start our own business, a joint venture—not salmon farming perhaps; that had been a bit far-fetched—but, well, ordinary farming maybe, I thought wildly, looking out of the window at the cows. Golly, there was nothing to it, was there? I knew that now. A few bales of hay and a bit of chicken feed—yes, it was a doddle. And anything to get Alex out of this loop of misery. I felt a fierce wave of protectiveness towards him, something I’d never felt before, always believing him to be so strong, so inviolable, which, I realised with a jolt, was what he’d wanted. He hadn’t wanted me to see this soft, vulnerable underbelly, but actually, he was all the more lovable for it.