Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  I nipped back to the car and drove off via Regent Street, down Conduit Street to Burlington Street. Alex had heard about this place, kept telling me we ought to go and check it—ah, here it was, Romano’s.

  I approached it slowly, no traffic behind me, and paused for a second, double-parked but engine still running, to look. I peered in. Through a brightly lit plate-glass window, a bustling bar was getting up a nice head of steam; a man in a tail coat was tinkling away at a grand piano at the back of the room, and some really rather beautiful people were reclining on white sofas, or perched on stools at the bar, chatting and sipping champagne. Lovely. I shivered. I’d buy an evening paper, I determined, excitement fizzing in my veins now, find a quiet corner and wait for him with my cocktail; nab one of those white sofas. Might even get picked up! God, that would be funny, seeing his face when he walked in. I imagined his amused, quizzical look as I frantically rolled my eyes over some professional lounge lizard’s head. I grinned and shunted the car into first, about to drive past and find a parking space, when suddenly, the door opened, and out into the street, came my husband, Alex. He was laughing, and throwing back his head, and then turning to smile delightedly at a beautiful girl in a pink sheath dress, with long blond hair. On an impulse, he took her in his arms on the pavement and pulled her in towards him, kissing her thoroughly on the lips. It was Kate.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  There are moments, often brutal, invariably tragic, when one becomes aware that life as we know it is never going to be the same again. In a film, such a moment would be accompanied by a rising crescendo of stirring music, by violins screeching; in life, it’s usually by a silent stopping heart. This was my moment. Glimpsed in a second, yet destined to change years. The catalyst for unravelling aeons of time that had gone before, and aeons to come. And I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I sat there, transfixed by my moment, a spectator on my destiny, caught in that mixture of billowing blond hair and tailored grey flannel as it came down the street, frozen like a wild animal in headlights, by the horror that was unfolding before me.

  They crossed the street, yards from my car, and came down towards me on the opposite side of the road, holding hands, laughing into each other’s face. As they got closer, I felt a sharp stab of panic, as if I was the one that shouldn’t be seen; as if I were the interloper. I hit the accelerator. I remember not being able to breathe, or at least, only shallowly, as if through a straw, and as if my lungs were deflating fast, like a burst balloon. Somehow, I steered the car through the traffic, through lights, through a cacophony of beeping horns, which seemed to follow inexorably in my wake, across London. No coherent thoughts formed in my head, just crazy white ones—Alex and Kate, Alex and Kate—chasing around in nightmarish circles, with the rhythm of a train, like a poem I’d learned as a child—faster than fairies, faster than witches, Alex and Kate, Alex and Kate. The only thing I knew with any certainty was that I had to get away.

  I drove around the streets, anywhere, round and round in circles like the ones whirling in my head, but eventually found myself at Hyde Park Corner. Then I was in Knightsbridge, and then, in the blink of an eye, it seemed, driving much too fast through Chelsea going towards Putney, towards home. I drove mechanically, hypnotically, over the bridge, as if being pulled by a force I was unequal to, down familiar streets, taking familiar short cuts. Eventually I turned the corner into Hastoe Avenue. I skidded to a halt outside Kate’s house, and opposite mine: I turned off the engine, and sat there in the darkness staring straight ahead, like someone who knows they’ve reached their journey’s end in so many senses, my heart pounding.

  I glanced down. My hands were sweaty, clenched tightly in my lap. Alex and Kate. Alex and Kate. At one point, a car swept past, illuminating the interior of my car, and as I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw my face, chalk white and ethereal, my eyes huge. I realised there was blood in my mouth. I must have bitten the inside of my cheek. I swallowed it, and looked at Kate’s house. There were a couple of downstairs lights on, the curtains were drawn, but otherwise, it was in darkness. The children would be in bed by now, and perhaps Sebastian too, if he was at home. Did he know, I wondered? Or suspect that Alex and Kate—oh, Alex and Kate. The bile rose in my throat and I opened the door just in time, bending low to vomit in the gutter. I stared as it dripped away down the street. Flowed down a drain. Then I found a tissue, wiped my mouth, and shut the door. In the glove compartment was an old bottle of Evian water. I took a slug, gulping it down.

  The water, fresh and cool in my mouth, rushing down my throat, seemed to clear my thought processes. How long? I wondered suddenly. And where? And how often? My mind, up until then a shocked, blank canvas, was suddenly ambushed by questions, which jostled feverishly for position, like protesters at a rally, shooting up their hands. Lots of times? Once? We must be told! I shut them out, all of them, squeezing my eyes tight, slamming the door in an heroic effort at self-preservation.

  My eyes snapped open as I heard a taxi trundle up. It stopped in the middle of the road. Kate got out, her long tanned legs flashing, blonde hair getting stuck on her lipstick as it blew into her face in the breeze. She unstuck it and turned to pay the driver. I saw her face, radiant and smiling in the moonlight. My stomach gave a sickening lurch. Kate. Dear Kate. I watched as she said a cheery good night to the driver, turned away, and walked quickly to the pavement, skirting the bonnet of my car as I shrank down, feeling like the guilty party again, the shadowy figure in the dirty mac. She went up her path, ducking under the magnolia tree, a spring in her step, and I heard her call out, “Hi Maria!” as she turned the key and went inside. I sat there, trembling, watching, as more lights went on in the house. Then Maria came out of the front door: I recognised the elderly Spanish lady who lived down the road and baby-sat occasionally, the collar of her old camel coat turned up against the night air, her head bowed as she shuffled off down the road. So Sebastian was away.

  A few minutes later, as I knew it would, another taxi drew up. Out got Alex. Like Kate, he looked buoyant, cheerful, excited even. He joked with the driver as he paid him. My heart began to pound. Suddenly I remembered other evenings, long ago, when I was in that house across the street, in bed, or painting, long into the night, and the same thing would happen. A taxi would rumble up, bearing Kate—and, I’d assumed, Sebastian—and then another would arrive, a few minutes later, with Alex. I used to smile to myself and think how uncanny it was that everyone unerringly arrived back just before midnight, before the witching hour, everyone doggedly aware of the working week ahead. I never put two and two together. Why would I? Alex would come up the stairs and crawl into bed, too tired after a bellyful of the Cronin brothers to make love to me, and I’d go back to sleep. And on more than one occasion I’d known that Sebastian was abroad, so I’d known that Kate was alone in that taxi, coming back from her play rehearsals…every Wednesday, which was usually the night Alex entertained clients.

  Breathe, breathe, I told myself fiercely, realising I was hunched up over the wheel, fists clenched, no neck. I straightened up and watched Alex go—not into the main house as I’d expected, but down into the basement flat. I stared. For a moment I wondered if I’d been seeing things in Burlington Street, hallucinating, rather as I thought I had at Eleanor’s house when I’d caught him embracing her in the mirror, but then—no. Clever. Very clever. Always separate taxis, and always, even if Sebastian was away, separate entrances: for the neighbours’ benefit. Always scrupulously careful in their movements, which, of course, was why they’d never been caught.

  As a light went on in the basement, I got out of the car and walked up the path to the front door of the main house. I rang the bell, thinking how often I would have bent down and called through the letter box, “Only me!”

  Kate’s quick, light footsteps came down the hallway. There was a pause as she looked through the spy hole, and when she opened the door, I saw she was still in her pink dress, but barefoot. She looked startled to see me.

&n
bsp; “Imogen!”

  “Hi.” I smiled.

  “Good heavens. What on earth are you doing here?”

  She had the grace to flush. I laughed. A shrill, unnatural sound ringing out in the still night. “Oh, it’s a long story. Can I come in?”

  Normally I’d be in already, right in, but she was still standing, sledgehammered by my presence, squarely in the doorway.

  “Oh! Of course you can.” She collected herself, gave me a quick kiss, the same one Judas gave, and stood aside to let me through. I went on down the hallway to the long creamy kitchen. I knew that room intimately: every willow-pattern plate on the oak dresser, every cup, every pan hanging over the wooden island, the National Trust calendar hanging on the wall, which Kate would flip through impatiently when the phone rang—I knew every inch. Tears threatened. Don’t think, no, don’t think. Kate was behind me.

  “Actually,” I turned, “I came up to see your play.”

  “My play?” She looked rattled.

  I smiled and sat down on a stool at the granite breakfast bar. “Yes, you know. As You Like It.”

  “Oh!” Her eyes were wide. Scared. “Oh, the play! Oh no, I dropped out of that ages ago. Haven’t done that for a while.”

  She fluttered around the kitchen, folding a dishcloth over the taps at the sink, putting a glass away on the draining board, her hands, it seemed, unable to stay still.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, it all became too much. The rehearsals, you know, every week. And Orlando always seemed to have loads of homework on a Wednesday and—well, you know how it is.”

  “Yes. I do,” I said softly.

  Tears scuttled up like a ball in my throat as I watched her fidget around her kitchen. Kate. Watched her open the huge, pale blue American fridge that I’d envied and opened and shut so many times, to get the milk out, to grab something to make the children sandwiches as she made us a pot of tea after school—“Ham, shall I make, Kate? Or cheese?” Calling out to make myself heard over the noise the boys were making in the conservatory. I knew the exact, soft, expensive click of that fridge door shutting, as it did now. Kate had a bottle of white wine in her hand.

  “Drink?” She attempted a smile.

  “No, thanks, I’m driving.”

  She looked surprised and poured herself a large one.

  “So…you just stopped going?” I watched her, as a cat would a mouse.

  “What? Oh. Yes. I felt terrible about letting them all down, but the juggling just became too much.”

  I nodded. “Yes. Casper said.”

  “Casper?”

  “Yes, well, I went, you see. And he was there. You remember Casper, Kate, the art dealer. The one I had lunch with, who jumped me.”

  “Oh. Yes, I—” Her eyes were big with fear.

  “We had a drink together in the interval. He was there because his wife was in the play. Charlotte. They’re back together again, which is nice, but we were recalling our disastrous lunch, which of course you instigated, but not with a view to selling my paintings. I gather you thought I was lonely! Thought I might like a companion. Anyone would think I didn’t have a husband of my own!” I didn’t recognise my voice, didn’t know how it could carry on. Kate was in trouble now.

  “Well, I—I thought you could use a friend, you know…” Her voice was almost a whisper, her face grey, lowered to the counter.

  “But I’ve got loads of friends! I’ve got you for a start. Tell you what, I might have a cup of coffee before I drive home. Instant will do.”

  She turned, very shaken, but gladly went to the sink to fill the kettle. I’d seen her seize that kettle so many times, cheerfully, confidently, in irritation, cursing her tap, which splashed, setting it down on the Aga, the pale blue one, which matched the fridge, the one she’d fought Sebastian for as her nod to a farmhouse kitchen, and which we’d sit either side of on a cold winter’s afternoon, while Rufus and Orlando played, the lids thrown up for warmth, Kate laughing that her mother, a country woman, would be horrified at the heat loss from the oven. But then she’d laugh, “It’s not as if I’ve got jugged hare in there—all this ironmongery for a solitary baked potato for Sebastian when he finally gets home!” And we’d gossip about Carrington House, about the mothers, about how Ursula Moncreif had the hots for Mr. Pritchard, wondering if Miss Tulliver, the school secretary, was a lesbian, and whether the odd German chap two doors down who shuffled around with a coat over his pyjamas was actually a mass murderer with bodies under his floorboards, and—oh, all manner of silly, silly things as we picked at bars of chocolate, whiling away the hours until it was time to get the boys into their baths, time for our husbands to come home. I sucked in my breath. Oh God, please tell me this started last week. Not then. Not way back then. But in my heart, I knew.

  “I’d forgotten Casper,” Kate was saying as she shakily measured out the Nescafé. Her face was wretched. She looked about ten years older.

  “So had I, until today. Good heavens, there’s someone at the back door, Kate.”

  Alex, fresh from the basement steps at the back of the house, and fresh from a shower too, by the look of his wet hair, had half opened the French windows, got his foot inside, before he saw me. His face went from delicious excitement to dismay in a trice.

  “Imogen!”

  “Hello, darling.”

  “Wh-what on earth…?”

  “I came up to see Kate’s play. Did you run out of sugar, or something?”

  His eyes darted to Kate. She met them briefly, in fright, then hid her face in the sink.

  “Yes, um, coffee. I fancied a coffee. Hadn’t got any. I just wondered, Kate—”

  “Of course.” Her voice was only barely audible as she passed him the jar of Nescafé, not looking at him.

  “Oh, well, have it here, now we’re all here!” I smiled. “Very jolly.”

  I reached up to where the mugs were kept and got one down, taking the Nescafé from him and spooning some in. Thought processes visibly whirring, he gingerly came into the kitchen and perched on a stool at the breakfast bar opposite me, as Kate tried to pour boiling water from the kettle. She kept missing the mugs on the granite surface.

  “Here.” I took the kettle from her, so tempted to feel sorry for her, dear, dear Kate, her face crumpled with shock and pain, and so, so tempted to pour it on my husband’s groin. I nearly did. Nearly moved my hand just six inches to the left of his mug. Would it drop off, I wondered? His penis? If I poured for long enough? I was pretty sure he’d never be able to use it again. No, he’d probably have to have it amputated.

  “Milk?”

  “No, thanks,” he muttered.

  No, of course, he took it black at night, but then I’d forgotten. Hadn’t shared a coffee with him at night for so long.

  “So, you came up for the play, then straight here?” he said lightly, conversationally, much better than Kate, who was mute, sunk in misery, but then he’d had more practice, hadn’t he? With Eleanor, when he was married to Tilly.

  “No, I watched the first half, then realised Kate wasn’t in it and left. Then I went to Simpson’s to see if you wanted to have a drink after your dinner with the Cronins. I left a note with the maître d’.”

  He frowned. “That’s odd. I didn’t get it.”

  Because you weren’t fucking there.

  “Then I drove on to where I thought we could meet, that new wine bar you’d read about in the Standard. You know, the one in Burlington Street? Romano’s?”

  There was a highly charged silence. Alex glanced at Kate, who, for the first time, raised terrified, beautiful blue eyes from the counter. Both pairs then swivelled to me. They knew.

  “Imo…” began Alex.

  “And what should I see,” I went on, my voice trembling with emotion, “as I sat there in my car, thinking how fun and happening it looked, this bar, this night spot, but two fun, happening people emerging, their bodies entwined, high on excitement, high on the promise of what was to come, kissing in the street.
My husband and my best friend.”

  Kate sank down on to a stool, shoulders sagging, arms limp, holed below the misery line. Her face buckled and tears streamed down her cheeks unchecked, as Alex struggled to exact damage limitation.

  “Now look, Imo, this is all my fault—” he began softly, but my eyes were on Kate.

  “Too right it’s your fault. You’re a serial womaniser, Alex. You can’t stay faithful to one woman for any length of time. You couldn’t to Tilly and you couldn’t to me. You have no moral compass, no notion of honour or duty, you’re like a little boy in a sweet shop. You see something glittering and pretty and you’ve got to have it. I knew you were having an affair, I’ve known it in my heart for a long time, but Kate…”

  My voice broke. It was odd. I felt more grief at her betrayal. Much more. Kate was sobbing.

  “I’m so sorry,” her hands covered her face now. “Imo, you have no idea—”

  “Of course I had no idea. I had no idea when I asked you if Alex could live in your basement, had no idea how perfect that would be for the pair of you, how joyfully you would receive that request, how neatly I’d played into your hands.”

  “No!” she shrieked, jerking her wet face up. “It wasn’t like that! I tried so hard! I was the one who tried to put an end to it, who kept telling Alex it had to stop. I even wanted to move out of London to get away from him, and when Sebastian wouldn’t, it was me who persuaded Alex to move instead. I thought that putting distance between us would help us to stop.”

  “You orchestrated my move to the country?” I boggled at the ramifications. A tiny cottage. My son changing schools…

  “Yes, and I told him it was over when you left, finished, but I was so so miserable without him, and when you rang and asked about the basement, initially of course I recoiled, but the more I lived with the idea, and the more I missed him, the more I knew I couldn’t resist it.”

  Alex was over by the French windows now, his back to us, hands in his pockets, looking out into the dark night. It was almost as if he were peripheral, almost as if we weren’t talking about him at all, as if he were incidental to proceedings.