Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  I dragged my eyes away from the picture to stare at him. Tiny fragments of sense were flying round my head like so many particles of dust in space, trying to cohere, to adhere, to find a home. Three pictures. Molly’s party.

  “You’re Molly’s brother,” I breathed.

  He looked surprised. “Yes, of course I’m Molly’s brother. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Well…no, I…” I licked my lips. Swallowed. “I knew she was living here.”

  “Because she’s decorating her flat above the bar. And I must say it’s been great having her. We’ve had a blast, but she’s bloody messy. About time she moved on,” he grumbled. Then he grinned. “And she will, next week.”

  “But I…I never knew…” I was still staring at him, gaping openly. “I mean—she’s not even Irish!”

  He threw back his head and hooted at the ceiling. “She bloody is! But she did come to boarding school in England when she was twelve,” he admitted. “Ironed out the accent a bit. My brothers did too. I, on the other hand, was expelled from Ampleforth for driving the headmaster’s car on to the cricket pitch.”

  “Oh!”

  “Went to All Saints in Dublin instead, and got the brogue. We were laughing about it just the other night in fact, with Mum and Dad, at Molly’s bar—they all came over from Cork for the party. About how Molly sounds like the Duchess of Devonshire, and Tom and Michael like Prince Phillip, and I still sound like Paddy O’Reilly.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m rather proud of it.”

  “Yes. I like it. The lilt.”

  “Thank you.” He gave a mock bow. Then looked at me with those dark, sparkling eyes. “And I like you too.”

  I held his gaze for a moment, then cracked. I moved away, twisting my hands about.

  “You…bought all my latest pictures, I notice,” I said, for something to say. “Not any of my London ones. That’s interesting.”

  “Well, they’re not as good.”

  I blinked. Swung round. “I’m sorry?”

  “They’re not. They look as if they’ve been painted from photographs.”

  “They were,” I spluttered.

  “And there’s no passion in them. These look like you’ve really been swept away by something. Or someone.”

  I was silenced. He seemed to know more about me than I did.

  “This one in particular,” he opened a door into an en suite bathroom and there, hanging on the wall facing the end of the bath, was the very first one I’d sold in the bar, the cornfield flecked with poppies.

  “Oh! That’s the first one I sold! Molly said she didn’t know who bought it, said Pierre sold it on a Sunday, but—he’d have known you, surely?”

  “Ah, yes, but I bribed him with a bottle of Merlot. Bought his silence,” he grinned.

  “Why?” I asked. Couldn’t help it.

  “Didn’t want you to think I was too keen, I suppose.”

  A silence hung between us. The room seemed very still. Very quiet. Poised on a knife edge.

  “All…those girlfriends,” I stuttered.

  He frowned. “Which girlfriends?”

  “Well, Piers said,” I mumbled, feeling stupid, because of course one of them had obviously been his sister, “well—you know, Pink Jeans.”

  “Who?”

  “The receptionist at the surgery.”

  “Oh, Samantha.” He nodded. “Yes, you’re quite right, I did have a quick ding-dong with her when I first came here. She flung herself at me and I was feeling raw and angry so I flung back. Why, should I be celibate? Were you expecting a virgin?”

  “N-no! Of course not.” And I felt nosy and intrusive asking about his girlfriends, but what I really wanted to get back to was the raw and angry bit.

  “Was it…were you feeling that way, because—because you’d left your wife?” I ploughed on clumsily.

  His face changed. A shadow crossed it and the light went from his eyes. He turned, went back into the bedroom, crossed to the book shelves, and picked up a china ornament from a shelf.

  “I left my wife? Is that what people say?”

  “Well, I think Eleanor, or maybe Piers said it.” I’d followed him through. He didn’t speak for a moment, his back still to me.

  “Yes, I suppose I did leave her. I could have stayed.” He looked down at the china object in his hand. It was a small pink rabbit, incongruous in this no-nonsense masculine bedroom.

  “You…have a child, too? A little girl?”

  He turned and smiled. But it was an odd sort of smile.

  “She’s not mine.”

  “Not yours? But I thought—”

  “Yes, I did too. Well, who wouldn’t?” He laughed quietly. “You marry the girl you love, have a child, assume it’s yours. But it wasn’t.”

  “Oh!” I sat down hard on the bed. My legs seemed to insist upon it.

  “She—Marina, had been having an affair. With our best man.”

  “Your best man. Your best friend!”

  “It’s not unheard of.”

  “No. I…know.”

  He sat down beside me. “It started after the wedding, apparently. She hadn’t met him before. He’s an Aussie. I met him when I was out in Melbourne, just after university for my year off, ranching cattle. We ended up touring New Zealand together. He was a laugh. A good mate. He was also tall, blond and very attractive. Anyway, when I got married, he came across to be my best man. He liked England, found a job in a bar, and found my wife.”

  “Crikey.” That sounded rather inadequate. “How did you find out about the child?”

  “Isobel? Marina told me. When the baby was three months old. Couldn’t keep it in any more, I guess. And she wanted to be with him, Pete, the father. So she told me one dark November night, just as she was coming downstairs after putting Isobel to bed, washing the empty bottle at the sink, sterilising it with shaking hands.”

  I gulped. “Did you believe her?”

  “I did, actually. I think…you can pretend you don’t know your other half is having an affair, but in your heart you know.”

  I nodded. Lowered my eyes to the carpet. “Yes. You do.”

  “I did insist on DNA, though. I wanted to be sure. But she was his all right. Pete’s.”

  “So…you left?”

  “Yes. I left.” He turned his face to mine. His eyes were raw with pain. “I just couldn’t do it, Imo. Bring up another man’s child. A better man might have done, but I couldn’t. But it was hard, because I loved Isobel. Loved her very much.” He gave a cracked laugh. “As if she was mine.” He sighed. “But I couldn’t even look at Marina. So I left Ireland. Came over here.”

  “And they’re still together?”

  “No, they split up. Marina chucked him out. I don’t know why, but I know Pete’s always had a wandering eye. Perhaps that was the trouble. Anyway, he’s gone back to Melbourne.”

  “Right.”

  I considered this tall, wise-cracking man who’d been through so much pain. So much anguish. To lose a child like that.

  “That’s why I couldn’t face the maternity ward when Hannah had her baby. The last time I’d been in one of those it was under very different circumstances. My darling wife had just given birth to my darling daughter. It was the happiest day of my life. Or so I thought.”

  I paused. “You still think of her as your darling wife?”

  He looked surprised. “Oh, no. I use that term in the heavily ironic, historical sense. I got over Marina long ago. Getting over Isobel was harder.”

  “Will you…still see her?”

  He put the china rabbit down on the bed beside him and narrowed his eyes at the wall. “I don’t know. Let’s see how her life pans out. Marina has a boyfriend now, I gather from my brothers. A nice chap, a local GP. I wouldn’t want to complicate things if he became Isobel’s stepfather. It wouldn’t be right.”

  No. No, it wouldn’t. And at the end of the day, we have to do what’s right. My own heart lurched f
or Rufus. I’d make sure he saw as much of his father as he wanted. And actually, I realised with surprise, seeing Alex wouldn’t bother me. I wouldn’t feel the need to glam up on the Sundays he came to pick Rufus up, slick on the old lippy and blast the perfume behind my ears. No, I could be feeding the cows in mudsplattered jeans as his car rocked up. The sound of the engine coming down the track wouldn’t twist my heart, wouldn’t screw me tight. I’d just feel rather cross and exasperated.

  “I heard about your own sadness, Imo. I’m sorry.”

  “You did?” I glanced at him, surprised. “Who told you?”

  “Rufus.”

  “Oh!”

  “We were tending the puppies, and I, rather casually, but with sheer, scheming self-interest, asked if Daddy was coming back this weekend. He said, no, Daddy’s not coming back at all. He’s gone off with Mum’s best friend. I think she’s going to divorce him.”

  I gulped. Blimey. Tell it like it is, son.

  “There’s obviously a lot of it about,” I muttered.

  “The best-friend scenario? Oh, I believe it’s a well-worn theme. And it’s no real surprise, is it? If we like someone a lot, chances are our husband or wife will too. After all, we’ve got similar tastes.”

  “I suppose. And…” I struggled, “Rufus’s reaction. Cold and matter-of-fact. It makes him sound like a tough, hard-nosed kid, but he’s not. It’s just that he’s known about it for a while. Two years, in fact.”

  “Ah. So his heart’s been hardening gradually.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you? Did you know?”

  I looked at him. “Like you say. You always know in your heart. Just depends on whether you want to hide from it, ignore it. Yes, I knew.”

  We were side by side on the bed. Our elbows were touching. Our legs. Just.

  “It—won’t do the paint any good, you know,” I breathed, looking through the open doorway to my picture in the bathroom. “The condensation.”

  He followed my eyes. “No, I know. Needs glass. But I like to lie and look at it, you see. When I’m in the bath.”

  I caught my breath, imagining that, then frantically tried not to imagine. Tanned knees sticking up through the bubbles. A bucketful of adrenalin shot through me.

  “Glass might steam up too,” I managed, in a squeak.

  “No more than I do.”

  We turned to look at each other. He raised a hand and tucked a bit of hair behind my ear. I almost stopped breathing. Almost passed out. I could hear Rufus in the next room.

  “Oh, KitKat, don’t sit on Dodger!”

  Pat leaned forward and kissed me, very gently, twice, on the lips. I shut my eyes and felt my pulse race.

  “Rufus,” I breathed.

  “I know.” He kissed me again.

  “Oh, hi!”

  We sprang apart. Leaped up from the bed like two deflecting magnets. Molly was wheeling her bicycle past the window.

  “Oh!” She got the picture. Her face broke into a broad grin. “Oh, good. How marvellous. Just what I had in mind.”

  “Thank you, Molly,” said Pat evenly, “for that vote of confidence, and since you’ve clearly masterminded this whole thing, perhaps you’d like to baby-sit a nine-year-old boy and some puppies. They’re in the next room. Imo and I are going for a walk.”

  “With pleasure!” She parked her bike against the wall, smiling widely, and slipped inside through the front door. Pat and I, hand in hand, left by the back.

  We walked out of the tiny garden via a little wooden gate and on towards the water meadow, through the long grass dotted with cornflowers and buttercups, their nodding heads brushing our knees.

  “I thought you were going to ravage me on the bed back there, in front of my son.”

  “Would you have let me?”

  “Certainly not!”

  He grinned. Squeezed my hand. I felt weak with longing.

  “Anyway, what would be the point? I’ve seen it all before.”

  I stopped. “What?”

  “Sure I have. First time I met you you fell out of your dress at a dinner party, then you took your knickers off and threw them in a flowerbed, then you ran after a herd of cows stark naked. You’ve never stopped revealing yourself to me.”

  I cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. He laughed, caught my hand, kissed it hard, his eyes dancing into mine. As they did, I remembered what it was like to look at someone who looked at you the same way back. Who liked me back. Something very close to heaven was happening to me. A dark, lonely place hidden deep inside that had been sad and dormant for a long time was opening its doors, letting its captive go free, and this man, this lovely, kind, caring, funny man was doing the opening; not with a creak, but with a flourish. I had a very certain feeling, one I was almost too scared to identify, but was equally sure I was right about. We turned and walked on, towards the water meadow, the sun getting lower in the sky, sinking into a rosy glow over the horizon.

  “Pat, we appear to be walking off into the sunset.”

  “Relax. Thousands have done it before us, and thousands more will do it after us. Just keep smiling and don’t look at the camera. As I told you before, there’s no new material. Nothing ground-breaking here. It’s a well-worn theme, love.”

  Love. Ah, yes, that was it.

  As he slipped his arm around my shoulders, I smiled up at him, and then we moved on together, as one, into the pink light.

  About the Author

  Catherine Alliott worked in London as a copywriter in advertising. She now lives in Hertfordshire with her husband, a barrister, and their three children.

  Catherine’s first novel, The Old-Girl Network, was chosen by WHSmith for their fresh talent promotion in 1994 and became an instant bestseller across the UK, as did her subsequent novels, Going Too Far, The Real Thing, Rosie Meadows Regrets…, Olivia’s Luck, and A Married Man.