Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  “I could feel him drifting away, you see, which was what I’d wanted, of course; could feel him going back to you, so our plan was working, the distance was working, but it was horrible. I—wasn’t strong enough. And I was so unhappy. So unhappy,” she said fiercely. “I panicked. Said yes.”

  I remembered how short-tempered and snappy she’d been on the phone when we’d first moved out. I’d thought she was jealous of me being in the country. And I remembered a brief, happy time for Alex and me, when he’d made love to me more frequently. I remembered counting the times. Then the tiredness returning.

  Alex had opened the French windows now and walked out into the garden, head bowed, gazing down at the damp grass. Literally absenting himself, like a small child who knows the adults need to talk.

  “I couldn’t do it!” Her eyes were bright with pain. “I missed him so much, you have no idea how much I love him, Imo,” she hissed fiercely, shocking me. As if she were entitled to love him. “No idea.” She clenched her fists. “It eats at me all day. It’s all I think about, care about.” If he could hear her in the garden she clearly didn’t care about that, either. “I would do anything to keep him, it’s all-consuming.”

  Her pain was raw, tangible. It brought me up short. Oh, she loved him all right. She was in real trouble. She was in the sort of trouble I’d been in when I’d worked for him, when he was married to Tilly; when I’d sat outside his office dreaming about him, giving up two years of my life, two years of my painting career to be a secretary; stroking his diary, the chair he sat in, his Anglepoise lamp…she was in that sort of trouble and it came to me, as a great wave of relief, that I was not. I didn’t feel that horrible obsession any more, didn’t feel my whole personality ebbing away, evaporating, as I forgot everything and everyone I’d ever cared about, my whole existence focusing on him. Didn’t feel myself disappearing without him. No. Because I didn’t love him as much as she did. It made me catch my breath. Made me almost feel sorry for her, my best friend, her face crumpled with anguish, shoulders hunched, hands clenched.

  “Does Sebastian know? Or suspect?”

  “No. He’s away so much, he hardly notices anything.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  She glanced up, fearful. “Why would I do that?”

  I shrugged. “Well, I don’t want him. Alex, I mean. You have him, Kate. Tell Sebastian, and go and live with him. Take your children with you. Tilly and I would naturally advise against it, but feel free, he’s all yours.”

  She stared at me, shocked. She was trying to work out if I was mocking her, or telling the truth. I was surprised to discover the latter.

  “Go on, do it. I’ve suffered for years, wondering where he is, what he’s up to—you have a go. See if you make a better fist of it.”

  Yes, OK, I was mocking her now. But I didn’t feel bitter. Or angry. I felt pity. Pity for everything she’d go through. Pity for how it would wreck her life, her pretty, enviable life: this gorgeous house, this surgeon husband, these well-adjusted children, these friends they’d shared, but I knew too that Alex’s gravitational pull was greater than any of these, and that she would do it. She would go down that route. I saw the flash of hope in her eyes that she tried to mask, but couldn’t, as she entertained the possibility. I looked out to Alex in the garden. One man. That one man could do all this—and such an insubstantial man, at that, I thought in surprise. Not a man like Sebastian, a clever, serious, talented man, a man who did great things, who healed people. No, a man, who was not clever, but cunning. Not a nice word. A man the wrong side of forty, with a mediocre job, precious few assets, slightly on the lanky side, and whose teeth, if we’re being picky and I was right now, were not great lately, either. I saw him with brand-new eyes.

  Kate followed my gaze. She was looking at him too. And I saw in her eyes what my mother and sister and flatmates must have seen in mine all those years ago, and despaired. They were ablaze; full of an almost messianic light, a zeal, that nothing and nobody was going to get in the way of. Not a husband, not three children, and certainly not a best friend. I swallowed. Felt something approaching awe. I got up from my stool.

  “Take him,” I said softly. “Really, he’s all yours. Marry him, Kate, if you like. I’ll give him a quick divorce. Become Mrs. Alex Cameron. Here.” I took off my wedding ring and tossed it at her. It bounced on the work surface. She looked at me, astonished.

  “But never forget, Kate, that from his point of view, marrying the mistress only starts another chapter.”

  She gazed at me, uncomprehending.

  “It creates a vacancy,” I said quietly.

  This time our eyes communed, silently and for the last time. I picked up my car keys, cast a final look at my husband’s silhouette in the garden, and then I turned and walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I drove back to the country in a trance. Well, clearly in a trance because the tears were not coursing down my cheeks and I wasn’t hyperventilating or gripping the wheel, struggling to keep the car on the road. I felt calm, controlled even. Shock, I decided as I listened to the windscreen wipers swish away a light drizzle then thud quietly as they hit horizontal; that was it, I must be in shock. Or denial. The tears would come later. Well, they were bound to, weren’t they? I’d lost my husband, lost him to my best friend, two strikes in one. I held my breath, waited for the floodgates to open. They didn’t. They would, though. And after the tears would come the depression as my empty life yawned before me like a chasm: I’d hide away like a recluse, pulling up the drawbridge; a gaunt, grief-stricken figure in a headscarf and dark glasses, who emerged from her cottage only to take her son to school, everyone talking about her, worrying about her—how thin she looks, how pale—well she’s distraught, poor thing, distraught. But somehow…I gazed beyond the wipers to the Catseyes shining in the wet road, listened to the hypnotic swish—thud, swish—thud…somehow, I didn’t think that would happen.

  I ransacked my feelings. Why? Why didn’t I think that would happen? I did feel grief, but it was for Kate, not Alex, I realised with a jolt. I felt her betrayal much more keenly. After all, men did cheat on their wives, we all knew that—brains in their trousers, can’t help themselves, poor buggers—and I’d been waiting for Alex to do it for years, been rehearsing this moment in my head for God knows how long, but that Kate should cheat on me…It was unnatural, against all the rules; she was my friend. Suddenly I experienced that thin air feeling again as my lungs appeared to shrink. Yes, my best friend, who’d not only taken my husband, but made a farce of my life too—that was the shaker, I decided. That a great slab of my life was completely different from how I’d imagined it to be. Like a movie shot on two different rolls of film, from two different angles. I was living one version, and all the time another was showing at a different cinema. You could watch both and find them similar—same characters, same houses in the same street in Putney, same children playing in the gardens—but spot the difference. There’s Kate in her kitchen making a cup of tea for her friend, but—no, on the other screen, she’s making a cup of tea for her lover’s wife. Offering her lover’s wife a piece of chocolate as they sit by the Aga together. The deceit was breathtaking. It made me so sad I almost stopped the car. Kate. My best friend. But…was I hers? Kate had lots of friends, I knew that—Lucinda, Betsy, Amanda—and I was her friend across the road. She used to say that: “This is Imo, my friend from across the road.” Close, geographically, but…I swallowed. Anyway, all that was academic. Beside the point. Because, of course, all along she’d been Alex’s friend, not mine.

  This did make me breathe through my teeth, make my nostrils flare, as I wondered how on earth they’d managed it? Obviously Kate’s play rehearsals and Alex’s late nights at work had been their cover, but—what, had they met for supper? In town? No, no, of course not, they’d have gone straight to a hotel. Wouldn’t have been brazen enough to sit in bars like Romano’s until I was safely in the country. Which one, I wondered. Which
hotel?

  I pictured Kate, getting ready across the road from me while I bathed Rufus, and Sandra bathed her children, a-flutter with excitement as she put on her make-up, tied a scarf around her neck—the pink one? No, this turquoise one, shows off the blue eyes better—slipped her feet into pretty jewelled mules. Once, I remember, I was at the window as she ran across the road to get a taxi—yes, always a taxi, and yet one didn’t really drink at play rehearsals, did one? Anyway, I’d stuck my head out and called, “Break a leg!” and she’d called back, “I’ll break Ferdinand’s if he still doesn’t know his lines!” I was awestruck by that, now. That took some doing, didn’t it? To lie, so comprehensively. Not just to laugh and look embarrassed. And then, trying to fix me up with Casper, trying to get me laid, in order to have a clear run at Alex. Did he know about that? Yes, of course he did. They’d cooked it up together—“Let’s see if she takes the bait.” The wickedness threatened to overwhelm me as I hunched over the wheel, my head down in my neck, because—yes, my overriding emotion now was fury. I could feel it surging up inside me, oozing over the deep gashes in my heart, flooding me to the core.

  And yet, still I hadn’t thought about Alex. Hadn’t considered his part in this treachery. Well, I’d dismissed him, I realised with a start. Dismissed my husband. What he’d done was so irredeemably dishonest, so disgusting, I’d mentally washed my hands of him. He hadn’t been a teensy bit naughty with Old Lover Eleanor—let’s face it, I’ve bonked her before so perhaps I’ll get it past the wife—no, he’d picked Kate. Taken Kate to bed, caressed Kate’s—no, don’t go there, Imo. I exhaled shakily. There was no decision to be made, no—should I forgive him? Keep the family together? It was a clear, unequivocal no. Our relationship had been hanging by a thread, and now that it had snapped, now that I’d finally plummeted to the dark waters below, the ones I’d dreaded, I was finding them surprisingly buoyant. I wasn’t drowning. My head was above water.

  But my guts wrenched when I thought of Rufus. When I thought of him not having a mummy and a daddy who lived together, of just having me. And Alex—well, when he could fit Rufus in, I supposed. Around all his other commitments. His other children. Oh, he’d be pleased to see him when he was older, I’m sure, when Rufus was tall and good-looking, take him to his club and say, “Have you met my son?” Put an arm round his shoulders as he introduced him, as if he’d played a major part in his moulding, his shaping. I changed lanes to let a Porsche go past. And, after all, he didn’t see much of Lucy and Miranda, did he? That didn’t appear to break his heart. And he and Rufus had never been particularly close…I caught my breath. Not particularly close? A man who wasn’t close to his children? Was this really who I’d married? How could I? Where was my judgement? Why, against all the evidence, had I done it?

  But I knew why. Because, in a secret, shameful corner of my heart, I’d believed it must be her fault. Tilly’s. Believed she’d gone wrong somewhere. Handled it badly. But I’d do it differently. Better. Be a better wife. He loved me differently too. Loved me more. He’d said he did. I filled my lungs shakily. Let it out huskily. Oh, Imogen. The scales were falling from my eyes with such a resounding clatter I was in danger of being deafened as they hit the dashboard. What had I seen in him? This wicked man? No, I struggled with the truth, not a wicked man, a weak man; a man who was easily swayed, who couldn’t help himself, who wafted this way and that, as if blown by the scarves of beautiful women, like the one around Kate’s neck. I realised I hadn’t even formally ended it with him—he hadn’t exactly begged me to stay—that I’d walked out on Kate, not Alex; thrown the ring at her, not him; told her it was over. But there was no need. In my bones I’d known it was over long ago. I’d known his heart didn’t belong to me, that it belonged to someone else. I’d just got the wrong girl. Details.

  When I got back to the cottage I went to the sideboard and swallowed two mouthfuls of whisky straight from the bottle, tipping my head right back. I’d never done that before and I’ve never done it since. As I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, I realised the answer machine was flashing. It was Hannah.

  “I presume you’d like us to keep Rufus for the night. You left in such a rush you didn’t quite clarify that. Anyway, he’s asleep now, and Eddie will take him to school in the morning. Hope the play was fun! Lots of love.”

  I mounted the stairs, alone in the quiet house. I stopped, halfway up. And he’d never come back here—Alex, I mean. I’d never live in this house, or any other house for that matter, with him, my husband, ever again. Never hear his key in the door, his footsteps in the hallway. I waited for this to devastate me, for my heart to plummet, sobs to rack me. But…it was an oddly liberating feeling. I went on up to the landing. It meant Rufus and I could live where we liked. We could even go back to London if we wanted, although, “No, Mummy, here,” was what I knew Rufus would say firmly. He loved it so, we both did, I thought in surprise. We’d made it our home. So, if not in this cottage, then around here somewhere.

  I undressed and got into bed thinking, now, now I’ll cry. Now it’ll hit me and the tears will fall, soaking my pillow, but I just lay there, listening to the quiet outside, the night owls calling to each other. I hoped they called to each other like that all night, because I certainly wouldn’t sleep. I needed some company on what was bound to be a very dark night of the soul. Morpheus combined with the Scotch, though, had other ideas, and before long I was being easily led down the long dark passages of sleep, to oblivion.

  The next few days passed in something of a blur. I kept waiting to be shattered. I felt as if I were holding my breath, that any minute now I’d drop the scoop of chicken feed, or my paintbrush, and raise shaking hands to the heavens, wail with anguish like Middle Eastern women do, and fall prostrate to the ground. It’s true I didn’t walk so tall; tottered, rather than strode around our smallholding, and it’s true too, that eventually, I did weep. But quietly. Silent tears slipping unexpectedly down my face as I washed up, or read the paper. Nothing violent. Nothing prostrate. I felt the cold a lot too; lit a fire in the evenings and sat by it, staring into it, no television, wrapped in huge cardigans. By day I painted, but my paintings were darker, I noticed, more sombre, less vibrant. But quite good too. Yes, I painted, I looked after my child, I even ate, albeit erratically. The world, I discovered, had an extraordinary habit of turning, irrespective of personal fortunes, and I turned with it.

  A weekend slipped by. On the Monday, Rufus went to school as usual and I went to pick him up as usual, chatting to the mothers at the school gates—no headscarf, although I did keep my sunglasses on. As I drove him home that afternoon, it occurred to me that since he hadn’t mentioned his father, hadn’t asked where he’d been this last weekend, I could just never mention it. Just carry on as usual, and then, one day when he did say, “Where’s Daddy?” I could say, “Daddy? Oh, Daddy. Well, we’ve sort of decided it’s better if he lives in London for a bit. Because of his work. See how it goes.” Yes, I could just let it drift. But that would be cowardly, and actually, there were enough cowards in this family.

  That afternoon, I made him a Nutella sandwich and sat down with him at the kitchen table. I started my preamble with the usual claptrap about not all mummies and daddies being able to get on well for ever because people grew apart and sometimes stopped loving each other and blah blah blah and just as I’d got to the bit about it being better, sometimes, for mummies and daddies to split up, even get a divorce, he said, “Is it because of Kate?”

  The saliva dried in my mouth. “What?”

  “Is that why you’re splitting up, because of Daddy and Kate?”

  I stared. “What do you know about that?”

  “I saw them kissing in Orlando’s back garden.”

  “You did?” I gasped. “When?”

  “At Orlando’s birthday. You know, the one he had in the conservatory with the funny man. Magic Malcolm.”

  I thought back feverishly. Yes, and I’d come across the road with Alex to help Kate and the na
nny deal with twenty overexcited children, pour orange squash, hand out sandwiches. But that hadn’t been Orlando’s last birthday party, because last year he’d gone to the Planetarium. That had been his birthday two years ago.

  “I needed a pee,” Rufus said, “and someone was in the downstairs loo, so I ran outside to the bushes. They were kissing down by the rabbit hutch in the orchard, but they didn’t see me.”

  Whilst Magic Malcolm was entertaining the children. Entertaining me too. I remembered laughing with Sandra at the back of the room, as he pulled hankies from his trouser legs, did his tricks. Meanwhile, Alex and Kate were turning theirs…

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Because I thought you’d be upset,” he said simply, brown eyes large.

  I gulped. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I would.”

  “And then I thought, maybe it was nothing. But I kept seeing little things after that. The way they looked at each other, and the way Daddy kept his hand on Kate’s waist when he kissed her hello.”

  I stood up quickly. My son had known. My nine-year-old son. Seven, at the time.

  “And you didn’t say anything to Daddy?”

  He frowned. “Like what?”

  Yes, like what? Watch out or I’m telling Mummy? But he’d been cool towards him, towards his father, hadn’t he? I’d seen it. Alex, I was sure, had noticed it, and at the time, I’d been cross with Rufus. “Daddy would so love you to enjoy rugby, to watch it with him on the telly.” A shrug. “So? I just don’t.” “Daddy’s coming to see your nativity play!” “He doesn’t have to, I’m only a shepherd.”

  And I’d been upset for Alex. But all the time, my poor boy had been suffering, and I hadn’t known. I bent to hug him. He didn’t burst into tears, but he did lay his head on my shoulder.