‘Who?’
I jerked my head. ‘Isn’t that their car?’
He stared, then clicked. ‘Oh no, that’s your mother-in-law. I let her in. She wanted to wait for you. She’s inside.’
‘My –’
‘Livvy? Is that you, darling?’
The front door opened and Angie stood there framed, peering out into what was now just a light drizzle, shading her eyes in the gathering gloom.
‘Good God, does she know anything about all this?’ I hissed, appalled.
‘Of course not,’ he hissed back. ‘What d’you take me for? No, by all accounts she just came round to discuss the state of your marriage.’
‘Oh terrific,’ I groaned.
‘Livvy, is that you?’ she called again.
‘Go on.’ Lance gave me a little shove. ‘Go in and act naturally, for heaven’s sake. I’ll let you know when Spiro gets back.’
He slunk back to his position behind the hedge, pulling up the collar of his leather jacket and lighting a cigarette, shading the match with his hands and looking for all the world like Orson Welles in The Third Man. I raked a despairing hand through my wet hair. God, Angie. She was all I needed right now, but then again I reasoned wearily, she was, admittedly, somewhat preferable to the police. I trudged dismally up the path and kissed her damply on the doorstep.
‘Angie, I didn’t recognise your car.’
‘It’s a hire car, darling. Remember I pranged the last one? And the bloody door leaks like a sieve so I have to put it under some shelter when I park. Good gracious, you look all in! Come in and I’ll make you a stiff gin and tonic. Are you feeling all right?’
‘Period pains,’ I said weakly, and not untruthfully. ‘But I’ll take you up on that gin,’ I said following her in and collapsing into the nearest armchair. ‘It’s the best offer I’ve had all day.’
She bustled off to the kitchen and I rested my head back and gazed blankly at the ceiling. So, Spiro was, at this very moment, being grilled rotten in some cold grey interview room, was he? Poor boy. Heavens, he’d be terrified, and probably in floods too, wringing torrents out of his hat. I wondered when they’d be back for me. I shut my eyes and rubbed my forehead wearily. I could hear Angie rummaging about in the kitchen, no doubt looking for ice and lemon, which could be a very fruitless search in this house. How long had she been here, I wondered? And what was so important that she had to come over, rather than telephone? And then wait? I twisted uncomfortably in my chair, rubbing my aching tummy, as Angie reappeared with two large gins, predictably, sans ice. She handed me one and I took a large gulp as she settled herself opposite. She was looking lovely, as usual, in a pale suede jacket and biscuit skirt which went beautifully with her copper hair, but her face wore an anxious look. She went to take a sip of her drink, then thinking better of it, put it aside and leant forward urgently.
‘Livvy, I’ve got to talk to you.’
‘So I gather,’ I murmured. I took another gulp. God, it was strong.
She leant back for a second and massaged the corners of her mouth with thumb and forefinger, gazing at a spot somewhere above my head as if for inspiration. Then her eyes came back to me. They were wide and frank.
‘Livvy darling, I know what you’re up to.’
‘Oh?’ I blinked. Crikey, I wish I did.
‘With Johnny. I know the game you’re playing.’
‘I’m not playing any game.’
‘Yes you are, and you’ve played it brilliantly, quite brilliantly. But listen, darling – he’s desperate. You’ve brought him comprehensively to heel now, brought him right back into line, so don’t make him suffer any more, eh? He so badly needs to come home.’
‘Needs?’ I muttered.
‘Wants,’ she corrected quickly.
I frowned. ‘So – he’s with you?’
‘Of course he’s with me, where did you think he’d be? He’s been with me since you threw him out!’
‘Well, funnily enough, Angie,’ I said slowly, ‘I had a sneaking suspicion he might be with another woman. The woman who, actually, was the initial cause of my throwing him out.’
‘Oh her,’ she said dismissively. ‘No, no, that’s all finished. He’s over her now, and that’s all thanks to you, my dear. Golly, you’ve made him sit up. By showing him the door, just when he thought he’d got his feet under the table again and all was forgiven – oh, that was inspired, Livvy, and I told him so too. Told him he jolly well deserved all he got from you, and that it was up to him to win you back now. You’ve really brought him to his senses, my love, and it was absolutely what he needed – a good kick up the chauvinistic pants. But … I’m worried now.’ Her well-preserved forehead puckered with anxiety and she clasped her hands tight. ‘I’m worried that if you leave him in the wilderness any longer your plan might backfire, that he may get used to being out there on his own, find some other form of distraction. Now’s the time, Livvy,’ she said urgently. ‘He’s learnt his lesson, bring him in from the cold. He’d crawl back now if you said the word, and with everything out of his system! You’ve won hands down, darling, but – just be careful. A man like Johnny won’t stay on hold for ever.’
I swirled my drink thoughtfully in my glass. Frowned into it. ‘But … I just told you, Angie. It’s not a game. I don’t want him back. Ever.’
I looked up and met her hazel eyes. Saw a wave of hurt pass over them. I steeled myself.
‘D’you have any idea what he’s done?’
She nodded quickly, swept her hair back nervously. ‘I – I know how long it went on for.’
‘And?’
‘And – I know about the child,’ she admitted quickly.
‘And you’d forgive him?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded, before her eyes darted out of the window. ‘Yes, I know I’d find it in my heart.’
‘Would you? Really? So – where d’you draw the line then, Angie? What is forgivable and what’s unforgivable?’
She didn’t answer. Glanced down at her hands. I put my drink aside.
‘Come on, Angie,’ I urged, ‘let’s see. What exactly would you forgive? How about – a quick snog on the dance floor with a girl at a party? Well, one would be furious, naturally, but it’s hardly grounds for divorce, is it? Well, what about a quick one-night stand then? In a hotel? Or a brief affair? Ghastly, of course, humiliating in the extreme, terribly degrading and the marriage would never be quite the same, et cetera, et cetera, but still, yes, one probably would forgive, wouldn’t one? Because frankly, what’s the alternative? A bleak, single life and a solitary, uphill struggle to bring up one’s child?’ I shrugged. ‘And so one staggers on, bravely, as I staggered on, and I forgave him all that, Angie. But what about a long, long, love affair? A year? Two years? And what if there’s a child?’
Angie continued to inspect her nails. ‘I still think,’ she murmured levelly, ‘the home, the breaking up of the family –’
‘OK, so what about ten years of infidelity then? Twenty, no – thirty? And what about –’ I cast about wildly – ‘what about if you knew, for instance, that the moment your betrothed had shaken the confetti from his hair, the moment his honeymoon tan had begun to fade, he was off, dropping his trousers at every conceivable opportunity, and spreading himself about as thinly as possible? With – ooh, let’s see now – half a dozen bastard children knocking about the place?’ She stayed silent. ‘Of course not!’ I exclaimed. ‘Of course one wouldn’t forgive that, but don’t you see, Angie, it’s all subjective. It all comes down to what one’s prepared to stomach, and call me old-fashioned, but knowing what I know now, I’d advise any woman to gag after that first snog at a party!’ I angrily knocked back a swig of gin.
‘No, not old-fashioned,’ she said slowly, her hazel eyes coming up to meet mine. ‘Very modern. You girls want everything now, don’t you?’
‘Well, if fidelity’s having everything –’ I exploded.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Livvy, grow up!’ she snapped. ‘Women have put up with this
for centuries! Johnny’s not exactly the first oversexed man who went off to relieve himself elsewhere!’
There was a pause. I stared into her hazel eyes. Slowly it dawned. ‘You mean …?’
‘Oh yes.’ She smiled thinly. ‘Yes, for years. Scarcely had Oliver’s feet hit the tarmac at Heathrow airport after our honeymoon in India – you see, I fit very neatly into that little analogy of yours – than the extracurricular activity started. Complete with bastard children too. Clearly in your book I shouldn’t have stomached it.’
I stared, incredulous. ‘But – you and Oliver. You were so happy!’
‘Exactly.’
‘But –’
‘Happiness doesn’t necessarily conform to the story-books, Olivia,’ she said impatiently. ‘We were happy, genuinely happy, but we’d ironed out our own modus vivendi, not one decreed to us, laid down by society.’
‘But didn’t you care? About the affairs?’
‘Of course! Desperately, at first, of course I did. And he didn’t know I knew, but privately I cried myself silly over them, particularly as a young bride. I thought it was the end of us.’
‘So why didn’t you confront him!’
‘Because it would have been counterproductive,’ she said patiently. ‘I loved him, you see, and I didn’t want to leave him. Telling him would have forced my hand, forced me to make an issue of it, make a decision. And in time, I also began to realise that actually, his affairs had no bearing on me, were no reflection on our marriage at all. He loved me, you see, adored me, probably even more so at the height of each adulterous liaison than at any other time. Physically, too, that side of our marriage never died. If anything it just got stronger.’
‘So – then why did he need them? Why did he need those women!’
She shrugged. ‘Different, I suppose, so therefore exciting. Different women – different sort of sex too, if you know what I mean.’ She eyed me beadily.
I blinked. ‘No, I –’
‘Well, I do,’ she interrupted firmly. ‘I know. And I tried it once, let me tell you, tried to be novel and imaginative and outrageous, tried to give him the sort of dirty sex he sought elsewhere, and he was appalled. I was his wife, you see, his shining madonna, mother of his children; he didn’t expect that from me.’ She passed her hand wearily through her hair. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Olivia. Why have men always gone to brothels?’
‘But how could he face you? Wasn’t he mortified? Ashamed?’
‘Oh, totally, but that was his problem, not mine. I could rise above it all, look after the children, the house, the garden, and all the time he walked around tormented. He was riddled with guilt.’
‘Jesus, I’m not surprised! But you’re not saying you liked that? That you enjoyed occupying the high moral ground? You surely would have preferred it otherwise?’
‘Of course I would, but that wasn’t my particular marriage bed. Mine was the one I’ve just described, and I had to lie in it or go elsewhere. Every marriage is different, Livvy.’
‘But it’s outrageous that you should have been forced to compromise like that!’
She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t forced. I loved him, and he loved me. Really, like we’d never loved before. You saw how he was with me, he adored me, worshipped me, and that’s why I stayed.’
‘But … were there always other women?’
‘Oh no, not necessarily, but I always knew when one was about, because he prayed incessantly. He was deeply religious, as you know, but the minute he was involved with someone else, there he’d be, kneeling at the foot of the bed, rosary beads winging frantically through his fingers, muttering endless Hail Marys, eyes shut, mouth taut with concentration, and then off he’d rush to confession the next day to absolve himself.’ She smiled wryly. ‘And maybe you’re right. Maybe I did take some perverse kind of pleasure from it as I sat up in bed reading Barbara Pym, with half an eye on my husband kneeling at the foot of the bed trying to save his soul. I certainly felt in a stronger position than he was. He was in torment.’
She gazed up at the spot above my head and I realised her eyes were filling up.
‘And … is that why …?’ I asked softly.
She swallowed. Shook her head. ‘No. Well, yes. Yes and no, really. It wasn’t why he did it, but shooting himself was a direct result of his infidelity. There was a baby, you see.’
‘Oh!’
‘Only one. Oliver prided himself on being so bloody careful, and that, to him, would be the ultimate sin, to bring an unwanted child, born out of holy wedlock, into the world. When I found out that this particular woman was pregnant, suddenly it all made sense. I realised why Oliver had only been sleeping for two hours a night recently, why he was walking endlessly round his paddocks in the early hours, why I’d find him weeping on the bathroom floor, why, on one occasion, he even tried to tell me, grabbing me round the knees as I found him sobbing, hunched by the bath.’ Her face buckled briefly. ‘Perhaps I should have let him. Perhaps that was cowardly of me, perhaps I could have saved him, but I didn’t want to know. I shook him off. I couldn’t, you see. Couldn’t let him know I knew his secret. And I knew he wouldn’t just tell me about this one woman, I knew the whole lot would come spewing out. And it would change the entire fabric of our marriage. From being a shining innocent, serene and above it all as he believed, I’d suddenly become a downtrodden doormat who knew the whole grimy truth and had to put up with her lot. Put up, or get out.’ She took a large swig of gin; stared into space.
‘So,’ I cleared my throat, ‘so when the child was born, is that what pushed him over the edge?’
‘No. When the child was born,’ she said carefully, ‘Oliver was all right. Oh sure, for a day or two he was desperately distracted, but then, he began to calm down. It was as if the inevitable had finally happened and the pressure was off. He didn’t know I knew, of course, but I watched him carefully as the days went by, very carefully, and I was relieved. It seemed to me that we could ride this storm, as we’d ridden all the others. But then the terrible news came. The news that all was not well. That the baby was severely disabled. Blind as well as crippled. That evening Oliver went out into the field and blew his brains out. He blamed himself, you see, thought that God’s finger was pointing right at him, that his sins had been singled out for retribution, and been manifested in his son. My God, you’ve gone so pale, Livvy. I’ve shocked you.’
I was on my feet now. ‘No, no …’ I crossed to the window, my hand clutching the sill, trembling. Disabled. My God. Like Johnny’s child. I swallowed.
‘Have – have you seen Johnny’s baby?’ I whispered, staring at the wet lawn.
‘Of course not, and neither shall I,’ she said staunchly.
‘And –’ I cleared my throat – ‘and, Angie, does Johnny know all this? About his father? About how the baby was?’ I turned.
She shook her head. ‘No one knows. I prided myself on that, although …’ she hesitated, ‘recently I’ve wondered if I shouldn’t tell Johnny. Let him know that his father wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, all that Johnny thought he was. Part of Johnny’s problem, I’ve always believed, was living up to Oliver. He idealised him and thought he himself never quite came up to the mark.’
I remembered how Johnny had stopped going to church when his own affair had been going on, wouldn’t accompany me and Claudia, how he hadn’t used religion to absolve himself, and how he had at least tried to look after the child when it was ill, and hadn’t blown his brains out.
‘Knowing what I now know about Oliver,’ I said slowly, ‘I don’t think Johnny’s got anything to worry about. He more than surpasses Oliver’s mark.’ Suddenly Oliver’s words came back to me, that night, that last party at the McFarllens’, Tara’s birthday party, as he and I stood by the pool, watching Johnny and his sisters swim. ‘Perfect, aren’t they?’ he’d said. I shivered. Just before he’d found out, no doubt. Before he’d discovered the condition of his illegitimate son. I cleared my throat. ‘And I wouldn’t te
ll Johnny about his father either, Angie, wouldn’t disillusion him. To him, Oliver was a god. Let him at least hang on to that memory unscathed.’
If anything could completely destroy Johnny, I thought, this surely would. Like dysfunctional father, like dysfunctional son. And I didn’t hate him enough to want him to know himself and his father for what they really were.
We were silent for a while, Angie and I. I thought of little Peter and his struggle through life. Perhaps Johnny would go back to them? How odd that I didn’t care; quite wished he would.
‘What happened to the child?’ I asked suddenly, breaking the silence.
Angie was staring out of the window, blankly. ‘Hmm?’ She came back to me.
‘Oliver’s child, what became of him?’
‘Oh, he lived, but other than that, I don’t know. His mother was one of the few women I ever actually met though, although Oliver didn’t know it.’
‘She was a friend?’
‘No no, not a friend.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Oliver was not susceptible to our own class. Only the lower orders brought out the beast in him. No, her husband was a mechanic, he mended Oliver’s cars. They had a vintage car place in Finchley, and I had to take one of Oliver’s Lagondas in for him once. I saw her there.’ She frowned. ‘Livvy, what is it?’
I’d crossed to the French windows, shot back the bolts and flung them wide despite the rain. I stood there, letting the cool breeze gust into my face, blowing back my hair. ‘Nothing.’ I shook my head. ‘Nothing, Angie.’
Oh God. Oh God. I remembered the faded blonde prettiness of Nina’s mother. The kindly, no doubt unsuspecting father who’d believed he’d fathered the crippled, unseeing lad whose chair I’d seen. Nina’s brother. Martin. Oliver’s child. Tummy churning and feeling quite faint now, I gulped down great gusts of air. Angie was behind me, her hand on my shoulder.
‘What is it, darling, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I murmured, ‘nothing at all. It’s all in the past.’
And if it remained Angie’s intention to have nothing to do with Johnny’s child, then that’s where it would stay, I thought as I shut the doors again and bolted them. She’d never know, and let it remain that way. Let it all stay buried under a mountain of years; years of rich, privileged people playing carelessly with other, less privileged people’s lives. Let the little family of the ‘lower orders’ beside the garage in Finchley, who now had two disabled children to their name, just get on with it, just cope, whilst those who’d created the carnage, those carefree, rich, amorous, glamorous men like Oliver and Johnny, who lay either dead and buried, unable to bear it, or at home with Mummy, unable to bear it, absconded themselves. Whilst Nina and her mother had no choice but to soldier on. Day after exhausting day, bearing the horror and the brunt of living with disability. Of coping with a sick child.
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