Marrying the Mistress

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘It wasn’t Carrie,’ Simon said. ‘I mean, I know she’d like to see you, but it’s me asking. Me asking you.’

  Guy suddenly felt rather unsteady. He held the receiver, hard, gripping it.

  ‘Thank you—’

  ‘Think about it—’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And Merrion, too, of course.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Give me a call,’ Simon said. ‘A bit later in the week?’

  Guy nodded.

  ‘I will. Thank you. Thank you for ringing. And telling me—’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Simon said. There was a small pause, and then he said awkwardly, ‘Take care, Dad,’ and put the telephone down.

  Jack could see her, all the way down the main corridor. She was standing by the notice-board, with a group of other girls, reading the end-of-term arrangements. She had pulled the long side-pieces of her hair back tightly and secured them with a band at the back of her head. Jack had never seen her hair like that before. He didn’t like it. It made her look hard.

  Adam thought Jack should just ignore her.

  ‘Make like you can’t see her. Like you’ve never heard of her.’

  ‘That won’t finish it,’ Jack said.

  ‘But it is finished,’ Adam said. ‘She’s even going to Italy this summer with Marco’s family—’

  ‘It isn’t finished for me,’ Jack said. ‘I never said anything. I just got dumped.’

  ‘Well, you don’t want it to happen twice—’

  ‘It can’t happen twice. It’s happened.’

  He looked now down the length of the corridor, considering. She had her back to him now. Her school-uniform skirt fitted sleekly over her bottom and her legs looked as he remembered them, smooth and pale brown. She shook her head a little every so often, and the curtain of her hair shivered with the movement. Jack took a breath. He shifted his bag to his right shoulder and set off down the corridor.

  The girls round her saw him coming before she did. He saw their eyes widen. One of them, a heavy girl with thick black curls who had always hung round Moll, put a hand out and touched Moll’s arm. Jack saw her say something, too. Moll turned and saw him coming. He wondered if she would just toss her hair and walk away. She had done that already, three times, when Marco was around. But Marco wasn’t here now, only the group of girls.

  Jack stopped in front of her.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  She gave the heavy girl a sideways glance, then Jack an even more fleeting one.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Got a minute?’ Jack said.

  She put her chin up.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say—’

  ‘I have,’ Jack said.

  ‘I don’t want to hear anything you’ve got to say.’

  The girls giggled faintly.

  ‘I’ll tell everyone else then,’ Jack said. ‘I’m not fussy.’

  Moll gave a small, private smile. She glanced down at herself and brushed an imaginary piece of lint off her skirt.

  ‘It wasn’t being dumped I minded,’ Jack said.

  The girls stared at him. He hitched his bag a bit higher.

  ‘I mean,’ Jack said, ‘nobody wants to be dumped, but it happens. You go off people like you go on them. It happens.’

  Moll shrugged. She looked at Jack’s feet.

  ‘What got me,’ Jack said, ‘was not being told. You couldn’t even tell me, could you? You just did it.’

  ‘Nothing to tell,’ Moll said. She looked for support at the heavy girl. The heavy girl was looking at Jack.

  ‘Oh really?’

  She shook her head. Jack leaned forward a little.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘when you dump Marco, try and remember to tell him, will you? Try just to have enough guts for that, OK?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Moll said.

  Jack took a step back.

  ‘Oh, I’m going,’ he said. ‘I’ve said what I came to say.’

  They watched him go. He went down the corridor, the way he had come, with long, loping strides.

  ‘He looks like Steve,’ one of the girls said. ‘Doesn’t he?’

  ‘Steve who?’

  ‘Steve from Boyzone,’ the girl said. ‘You know.’

  Moll turned back to the notice-board. She lifted her hair with both hands and dropped it smoothly down her back again.

  ‘Dream on,’ she said.

  Alan had made a curry, a careful, hot, Bengali curry. He’d read an article in one of the Sunday papers which said that the British had become so used to eating Indian food in Indian restaurants that they didn’t bother to cook it at home any more. Alan had bought a copy of one of Madhur Jaifrey’s Indian cookery books, and decided to do it properly: shop at an Indian grocer, grind his own spices, everything. It looked wonderful when he’d done it, shining and exotic. It had taken all afternoon to make, what with trying to do everything absolutely authentically, but that was a good thing because it had taken his mind off Laura. She had left four messages on his mobile, and now she had written. She had written a letter to his old address and he’d picked it up there and brought it to read in Charlie’s flat out of an instinct that it would be better to read it in supportive surroundings.

  It lay where he had left it, on the couch in Charlie’s sitting room. Every so often, as he moved across the kitchen in the course of his chopping and pounding and grinding, he lifted his eyes from all the red and brown and yellow in the bowls and saw the white square of letter lying there, on the squashed cushions. In the letter, she said that Alan was the only ally she had left in the world. Alan didn’t want her to say things like that. He wouldn’t, if he were honest, even want Charlie to say things like that. In Alan’s book, human beings shouldn’t put that kind of pressure on one another, shouldn’t try and hand the burden of themselves to someone else to carry. It distorted things, ruined things. You couldn’t make progress with someone who tried to surrender themselves completely to you.

  The letter had made Alan think a good deal about Simon. Splitting the stiff little grey-green pods of cardamom seed with a sharp knife, Alan had wondered if this was the kind of thing Simon had had, one way or another, all his life, with Laura. When he was little, maybe the surrender had naturally been his, and then there’d been a tricky time as he grew up and found Carrie and gradually tried to withdraw his submission, and then, bit by bit over the years, Laura had taken the dependency over, as if she were calling in the dues of the past, the dues of Simon’s childhood. Was that how it worked? Was that how the pattern was? Alan could see how, in any relationship, each day brought negotiation of some kind, but could these unspoken bargains also be struck, insidiously, over the years? And could they be struck unilaterally, so that even if you didn’t think you’d agreed to anything, you found you were involved and compromised by what had been done to you? The thought made Alan shiver. He’d had moments over the years, admittedly, of feeling jealous of Simon and Laura, but jealousy was quite eclipsed, and in a flash, by the apprehension of an imposed obligation, a duty which resulted from something other than choice. And that apprehension was followed by a sudden and blinding sympathy for Simon, a pang of knowing, in his guts, of the emotional marsh Simon had waded through all his life, a marsh of obligations owed and demanded and expected, rather than of anything given out of the sheer desire to give.

  And then there was Carrie. Alan didn’t feel very comfortable about Carrie, either. They’d always talked about Laura, sure, they’d talked about most things, but it had been easier – for Alan anyway – to keep Carrie and Laura’s relationship as a joke: a tired joke, a typical, conventional, clichéd joke, but a joke all the same and therefore manageable. But perhaps it had all gone deeper for Carrie, really deep, to a level where an irritant became a threat, a menace, and you couldn’t think how to fight it, you seemed to have no weapons. Of course he’d listened to Carrie, he’d listened to her recently when she got quite vehement about Laura, quite specific, but he seemed to remember that his reactio
n had been along the noncommittal lines of, ‘There, there.’ It was patronizing, he thought now, unsympathetic. He was ashamed of himself. But it was only now, only today, with this new situation of being exposed to Laura without the shield of Simon, that he could see for himself. He could see what that letter lying on the sofa might lead to. He could see where Laura might try to take him from here, and if she succeeded – she wouldn’t, he told himself, he wouldn’t let her – where would that leave Charlie? It was thinking of what a clamorous commitment to Laura might do to Charlie, to himself and Charlie, that made him think of Carrie. And when he thought of Carrie, he told himself that he’d been no support to her at all.

  ‘Hey there!’ Charlie shouted from the front door.

  ‘Kitchen,’ Alan called.

  ‘I can smell,’ Charlie said. ‘Boy, can I smell. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Curry,’ Alan said. He didn’t look up.

  Charlie put an arm round Alan’s neck. He still held his car keys. He put his face into Alan’s neck and bit him gently.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I had a letter,’ Alan said. ‘It just got to me a bit—’

  Charlie looked at him.

  ‘What’s the yellow on your face?’

  Alan put a hand up and brushed at his cheek.

  ‘Turmeric—’

  ‘Where’s the letter?’

  ‘Over there,’ Alan said. ‘On the sofa.’

  Charlie let go of Alan’s neck. He went through into the sitting room, dropping his keys on the coffee table, and picked up the letter. He stood reading it, his back to Alan, legs apart. Alan watched him.

  ‘Well,’ Charlie said, finishing the letter. ‘Who’s a poor wee me then?’

  ‘My brother’s had it for years,’ Alan said. ‘All his life.’

  ‘The favourite?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I was never anyone’s favourite,’ Charlie said, coming back to the kitchen, still holding the letter. He gave Alan a quick kiss. ‘Until now.’

  ‘You’re too awkward,’ Alan said. ‘And criminally untidy.’

  ‘I know.’ Charlie looked at him. He said, ‘Do I gather your brother has thrown her over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oops. So you’re next in line.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alan said. ‘But I can’t. I can’t do it.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Charlie said. He dipped a forefinger into a bowl and licked it. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Lassi.’

  ‘As in dog?’

  ‘As in yoghurt. I just don’t want to be pursued. I don’t even want to be asked.’

  ‘She’s on her own,’ Charlie said. ‘She doesn’t know how to cope, she doesn’t know how to run life. Lots of women her age don’t. Men, too.’

  ‘Whose side are you on? You can’t want me to take her on, can you?’

  ‘No,’ Charlie said. He peered into another bowl. ‘We’ll take her on together.’

  ‘You can’t mean it—’

  ‘I do,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m good at mothers. Ask mine.’

  ‘But you don’t know her—’

  ‘All the better.’

  ‘And,’ Alan said, ‘she doesn’t know about you.’

  Charlie came round the kitchen table. He put his arms around Alan.

  ‘She soon will.’

  ‘Charlie,’ Alan said into Charlie’s shoulder, ‘I don’t want you dragged into this. I don’t want you mixed up in it.’

  ‘If it gets nasty, I’ll get out. Taking you with me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Course I am.’

  ‘You haven’t got time—’

  ‘If it helps you, I have,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Oh God—’

  ‘We do everything together. No exploitation permissable or indeed possible.’ He gave Alan’s back a thump and shifted his arms to hold him by the shoulders. ‘Right?’

  Alan grinned.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Now then,’ Charlie said, ‘why don’t you make a phone call?’

  ‘Shall I?’ Alan said.

  ‘Sure you shall. You ring your mother and tell her that you’ll see her on Sunday. And that you’re bringing a friend.’

  ‘I think we should go for a walk,’ Guy said.

  Merrion moved slightly under the crackling mound of Sunday newspapers.

  ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘that you were going to see Simon and co.’

  ‘That’s later.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I do wish,’ Guy said, ‘that you’d come with me.’ She shut her eyes. She said, ‘I’m not being unfriendly, I like them all, I really do, but I sort of can’t.’

  ‘What sort of can’t?’

  ‘I can’t get my head round it,’ Merrion said.

  He reached for the nearest section of newspaper and folded it up.

  ‘It isn’t a big deal, dearest. It’s just supper.’

  ‘It’s a big deal for you,’ Merrion said. ‘Simon asked you.’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘So you go. I’ll come another time.’

  Guy stood up.

  ‘Come on. Walk.’

  She stretched.

  ‘Can’t.’

  He bent and took her hands and pulled her up.

  ‘Got to.’

  ‘Bully,’ she said. She took her hands out of his and moved towards the bedroom. ‘I’ll just get some shoes.’

  Guy bent and picked the newspapers up, section by section, smoothing them and folding them. He made a pile of them on the table. Then he shook the cushions out.

  Merrion appeared in the bedroom doorway. She had put trainers on.

  ‘Ready,’ she said.

  He smiled and held his hand out to her.

  ‘Got the key?’ she said.

  They went down the long flights of stairs in silence. In the entrance hall, someone had left a double baby buggy chained to the bottom of the banisters with a plastic-covered cycle chain. There was a green plush frog in one seat of the buggy. Merrion glanced at it when she went past. It had huge yellow plastic eyes and a wide red felt mouth. Why give a child anything so gratuitously ugly to play with?

  ‘Hideous,’ Guy said, glancing at it, too.

  She nodded. He went past her and opened the huge front door to the street and held it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  They went down the pavement together, towards the park. He took her hand, as he always did, and held it with their fingers interlaced. It was warm and clear and there were bright soft leaves on the trees and drifts of spent blossom in the gutters and up against the railings. People were out, everywhere, couples and families, and people with dogs, and people lying on the grass and sitting on the benches. All through the park, along the paths and across the grassy spaces and in and out of the shadows cast by the trees, you could see these little figures, running and cycling and walking and sitting and lying. The sight made Merrion feel intensely lonely. She thought of her hand lying in Guy’s hand and it felt as if it didn’t belong to her.

  They took a meandering route through the park, past the Reformer’s Tree and round the Tea House and back towards the Serpentine, where the crowds were, moving along the paths with weekend aimlessness. There were ducks on the Serpentine, and three huge swans and little gabbling dark groups of moorhen. Guy led Merrion away from the water and the people and the darting children, towards the nearest trees.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  She looked at the grass.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘I think here will do.’

  She released her hand and sat down on the grass, holding her knees. He sat beside her, turned towards her. Even without looking, she could see how he looked, how he had arranged himself.

  He said, ‘I didn’t plan to have this conversation this afternoon. I didn’t plan to say what I’m going to say. I just knew I had to say it sometime.’ He put a hand out and laid it on her clasped ones. ‘I think – oh, my dearest, I know,
that I shouldn’t marry you.’

  She stared straight ahead. She said softly, ‘Here it comes.’

  ‘It’s not your age,’ Guy said. ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘And suppose I not only don’t mind your age, but I like it?’

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘now you do. But not later. In eight years I shall be seventy and you won’t even be forty still.’

  She unclasped her hands and swung her knees to the grass so that she was facing him. Her hands were shaking terribly. She tucked them under her thighs.

  ‘Are you—’ She stopped.

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Are you going back to Laura?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Have you thought about it?’

  ‘Only in the sense of knowing I never could.’

  She said, her eyes on the grass beside her bent knees, ‘I always knew it would be hard. I always knew it would get complicated and painful, but – but I never knew it would get like this.’

  ‘How could you?’ he said. ‘How could you? You’d never done anything like this before. Nor had I.’

  She inched forward and laid her head against him.

  ‘I’m not – sure if I can bear it.’

  He put a hand round her head, round her thick, strong hair.

  ‘Nor me.’

  ‘Guy—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please—’

  He said desperately, ‘My darling, if there was a way to do our future, don’t you think we’d have thought of it by now?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Imagine it,’ he said, ‘you going deservedly up the scale, me retiring soon, all those impossible checks and balances, all those things you might not say or do because of me, all the things I might feel but could not say because of you. We’ve seen what it’s like confronting all the elements we couldn’t allow for, already. There’ll be more. It will get harder. You’ll still love me, I’ve no doubt of that, but that love will change as time goes on. It’s bound to. It’ll change with being secure, being socially accepted. It’ll change because we’ll become orthodox, not forbidden.’ He moved his hand so that it lay lightly over her eyes and mouth. ‘I could not bear it if your love for me turned motherly.’

  She said faintly, from behind his hand, ‘I’m not sure I’ve got much mother love in me—’