The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  ‘How can I if I don’t have any confidence?’

  ‘Confidence is not something you get. It’s something you learn to live without.’

  ‘Then don’t try to protect me, Max. Don’t keep me in the dark. Tell me what was wrong with it,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Wrong with what?’

  ‘Tell me what was wrong with the review.’

  ‘I’ve already told you, there was nothing wrong with it.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you ring me?’

  ‘Because I was busy, God damn it. Because I was busy! For God’s sake, I have more important things to do when I’m at work than pander to your vanities.’

  ‘It’s not a question of vanity,’ I said. ‘It’s a question of whether you thought the review was good or bad.’

  ‘It was neither good nor bad,’ he said.

  ‘Do you want me to rewrite it?’

  ‘If I had wanted you to rewrite it, I would have asked you to rewrite it.’ He sighed. ‘I really don’t have much of an opinion on it. If you want the truth.’

  ‘Then what’s bothering you?’

  ‘Nothing’s bothering me.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Let me put it this way. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing beyond the fact that I am universally hated for something I didn’t do and am about to have to drag my entire family through a court case in order to clear my name, but will not be able to clear my name fully even if I win, on account of being universally hated. Is that enough for you?’

  I gave up. I was tired. I went to bed early. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I found him in the sitting room, still drinking as if it were his duty. He was reading his own books. Next to him was a pile of Rebecca’s books. This pattern repeated itself every night for a week. When I opened the paper on Sunday and found that my review was not in, I concluded that the focus of my concern had been too narrow. It was not the mediocrity of my review that had concerned him, it was my overall mediocrity. Once he had been married to the real thing; now he was encumbered with the pale imitation. And already the last easy exit was blocked. Because I was not just tired now. I was bloated and queasy and had missed my period.

  It was on the Monday after he did not run my review that I went to the chemists and bought a pregnancy test. I was meant to wait until the next morning to get an accurate result. But I did it right away. It came out positive.

  I remember not believing it was positive. I remember telling myself that this was nevertheless the opportunity I needed to find out how Max really felt. So I rang him at the office and told him the news. His first response was dead silence. ‘It’s not necessarily accurate,’ I blundered on. ‘I didn’t follow the directions to the letter, so I should probably take another test before we decide what to do. If you’ve changed your mind, you know, we can still talk about it.’

  He met this with a sigh. ‘I’m getting tired of telling you that I haven’t changed my mind.’

  Before I could think, I blurted out, ‘Then why do you act like you’ve changed your mind?’

  He sighed again. In the background, I could hear Mimi, his deputy, asking him a question. ‘I’ll be right over,’ he said to her. And then to me, ‘I’ll be home a bit later than usual this evening. Perhaps we can discuss it then.’

  He didn’t come home until four in the morning. And even then, he didn’t come to me in the bedroom. He went upstairs to Rebecca’s study. I could hear him opening up cabinets and drawers, swearing to himself, knocking down bottles. I tried to go up and talk to him. But the door was locked, and he wouldn’t answer my knock.

  He stayed up there throughout the next morning. When the children came home from Saturday school, he rang me using Rebecca’s private line and asked me to send the children up. When I tried to go up with them, he sent me away. He spent the afternoon downstairs on the sofa, watching television with both children on his lap. He managed to pull himself together to perform up to standard at Bea’s dinner party that evening. The guest this time was a German publisher who wanted specific information on the current British attitude to Freud. I was unable to tell whether Max was really the expert he made himself out to be, or whether he was making it all up. The effort cheered him up, but only for the duration of the party; when we got home, he went upstairs to say goodnight to the children and never came down again.

  I spent Sunday filling his silence with theories. Horrible, horrible theories. He didn’t love me any more. He had lost interest in me, and so had changed his mind about a baby. Or even worse, he wanted a baby but not me. I was not the woman he had imagined I was because I had never been that woman. He had lost interest in me but he still felt responsible for me and that was why he was so depressed. He no longer loved me but he still had to protect me, the same way he had to protect everyone else in his family – and that was why he hadn’t run the review, because it was so bad. He hadn’t run the review, in order to protect me from ridicule.

  And now where was he seeking comfort? Whose arms was he in? What excess had I propelled him to? Why was I persisting? What right did I have?

  Why should I sit here if all I could do was make him feel guilty about not loving me enough? There was no reason to continue being a millstone. If I had become a millstone to him, I was prepared to leave. The baby and I could make a life elsewhere. If he wanted, he could keep in touch. After I came back from taking the children to school on Monday morning, I decided to go upstairs and tell him.

  This time I found him in his own study. He was on the floor, going through papers he had pulled out of his filing cabinet. There was a glass and an overfull ashtray balanced precariously on his desk chair. The room was filled with smoke and stank of ouzo. I had rehearsed a long speech but now that I was face to face with him the words evaporated. Instead I said, ‘Did you spend the night with a prostitute?’

  He looked up at me, incredulous. ‘Did I hear you correctly?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t have any right to ask.’

  He gave me a long, strained look, as if my very presence gave him a headache. His face was chilled with grey, as if he had emerged from a meat freezer. ‘That’s the very last thing you need to be worrying about. If you don’t mind my telling you.’

  ‘Have you ever been to a prostitute?’

  ‘If I had, would it matter?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Have you changed your mind about the baby?’

  ‘No, I have not changed my mind about the baby. Or you,’ he said in a flat and weary voice. ‘But for the moment I’m afraid this is the best I can offer.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  If you find yourself trapped in a marriage with a man who is slowly but deliberately killing himself, and if nothing like this has ever happened to you before, you can rage about the injustice of it all. You can blame him instead of blaming yourself. You can ask, Why me? You can call it bad luck. You can convince yourself not only that you deserve better but that you’re capable of finding better. The second time you hear the sigh and the clink of the glass on the other side of the ceiling, you can no longer hide inside these comforts. Instead you ask, Why am I repeating myself? Why, when I repeat myself, am I the last to know? You wonder why you chose the same trap even when you knew it was a trap. Why life remains the same for you whether you keep your eyes open or closed. Instead of wondering why you can’t make this man happy, you wonder why you can’t make any man happy. Why you choose men who are heading for the exit. Why they choose you.

  At the same time you can’t bring yourself to admit failure. Something in you still says that this is happening because of a mistake you made. That if you can find this mistake and put it right, everything else will turn out right, too. And there is always the hope that the nightmare will be over in the morning and never recur. So you pretend that the sigh and the clink of the glass on the other side of the ceiling are normal. You encourage everyone else to pretend with you, until you crack.

  I woke up the next morning to find two p
airs of clammy, restless legs draped over mine. The children had been woken up by the noise during the night. I had tried to take them back up but they had never settled. It is hard being physically close to children who are not yours and whom you have not yet grown to love. I wanted to kick them off me but my better nature prevailed. I extricated myself carefully, covered them up again, and tiptoed out of the room. I managed to get down a cup of tea and a piece of dry toast before they noticed my defection and bounded into the sitting room to drag me through the morning routine.

  My morning sickness was still not too bad that week, but even the smallest effort exhausted me. It was all I could do to think where they might have thrown the consent form the night before, and which child has to take which instrument, and where it was I had noticed a balled-up navy-blue sock … As I struggled up and down the stairs, I promised Hermione more than once that I would do my best to get Max to open the door to Rebecca’s study and retrieve the blue clay bowl that Hermione had made in her mother’s memory and left on her desk. She was worried Max would use it as an ashtray and ruin it.

  I understood why it was important to Hermione, but I should never have promised to help her, just as I should never have said to Mimi, Max’s deputy, when she rang at ten, that I would get him to ring her back within the hour. Just as I should not have implied to Bea, and later in the morning, to Crawley, that Max was en route to London for an important lunch. If you’re going to lie, it’s better not to tell separate lies to different people. And it’s pointless to lie at all if you share a cleaner.

  Not that Janet didn’t want to play along. ‘Would you like me to say you’re resting next time the phone rings?’ she enquired. ‘You look like you need a rest, dear, actually. You look like you had a bit of a bumpy night.’ She nodded up at the ceiling, then smiled. ‘But never fear, dear. Some men just need time. He was the same, I don’t mind telling you, with the other two. The former Mrs M had a terrible time of it! Not that she had your stiff upper lip, dear. She was much younger then than you are now, of course. She didn’t have your wider experience. And she could never stand back, you see, not like you can. I tried to explain to her, but she was never a one to listen to my claptrap – that was her word for it – my claptrap about a woman’s lot. Of course you have the advantage of seeing how devoted Mrs M is now to those two out there, even if he kicked and screamed at the beginning.’

  ‘He may think he loves them,’ I said without thinking. ‘But if he considered their feelings at all, he wouldn’t be locking himself away from them.’

  ‘If he stopped to consider their feelings,’ Janet said with a chuckle, ‘then he wouldn’t be a man.’

  This meek attempt at a joke made me burst into tears. It was out of the best of motives that she rang Bea to tell her what was happening.

  Bea came right over. ‘You should have told me as soon as this began,’ she said, too sternly. ‘We can’t have you exhausting yourself. We don’t want you losing the baby.’ First she tried to speak to Max through the door. When his only response was to throw a book at it, she came downstairs and got me to tell the story of his decline step by step. ‘It sounds as if your publication date was the last straw,’ she said. ‘Not to say that has anything to do with you, my dear, but it is rather unfortunate, coming as it does on the same week as this trial. I wonder if it wouldn’t be an idea to get it moved.’

  I told her that I had suggested this already and been told that such a retreat would only attract more negative attention.

  ‘Max said that, did he? Well, he’s probably right. But it does all seem to be too much for him. We shall have to take that into account as well. This is all very, very tricky. If Danny finds out he’s taken over Rebecca’s study, there will be hell to pay.’ In order to get help figuring out how to keep Danny in the dark, she called in Crawley.

  Crawley arrived with a storm-cloud face. ‘You should have told me sooner,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t help to hide these things. I might have been able to head the crisis off.’ He insisted on my telling him the story from the beginning. Every few minutes he would shake his head and turn to Bea and say, ‘This all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I think it’s the publication date that pushed him over the edge,’ Bea said to him when I had finished.

  Crawley seemed perplexed by her suggestion. ‘It must bring unpleasant memories back about publication dates of the past, but I don’t quite catch the significance of what you’re saying.’

  ‘Max knows what a drubbing she’s going to get, and that concerns him. It’s harder to have a wife in the limelight than some people imagine.’

  Crawley was not impressed. ‘If anyone is used to that, Max is. No, I think it’s something else that’s got to him, and that thing is called alcohol. This is a very, very disturbing development. I really thought he had pulled himself together, but now it’s as if we’ve turned the clock back two or even three years.’

  He turned back to me. ‘How much has he told you about his problems with alcohol?’

  ‘He feels bad afterwards,’ I said. ‘He always apologises.’

  ‘It’s what he does that counts, dearie, not what he says. How many times since last summer have you seen this happen?’

  ‘There was only one other episode, after the unpleasantness in St John the Baptist. The worst part of that one was that the children treated it as routine.’

  ‘As well they might,’ Crawley said. ‘So. How much do you want to know?’ He spoke in a brutal voice that sent me into tears again.

  ‘Crawley, you mustn’t upset her unnecessarily,’ Bea said to him. ‘We must remember the baby. We must take care not to tire her.’

  Crawley said, ‘There is nothing more tiring than trying to deny the truth.’

  ‘I know the truth,’ I cried. ‘I just don’t understand it.’

  ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear,’ Crawley said, taking my hand. ‘Don’t even try to understand it. Just try to understand it isn’t your fault. I wasn’t trying to—’

  ‘I’ll just fetch some tissues,’ Bea said, and then things happened very quickly.

  When she threw open the door, it was to reveal Danny and the two children. It was clear from their stunned faces that they had been eavesdropping. ‘I just happened to drop by at the school to leave Hermione’s rugby boots,’ Danny said brightly. ‘And I found them both in sick bay. So I thought they’d be better off here, but perhaps I’m wrong! Is there anything wrong?’

  ‘Nothing that can’t be fixed, my dear,’ Bea said firmly.

  ‘It’s not the baby, is it? You’re not having a miscarriage, are you?’

  ‘No, darling, it’s not anything as bad as that, but I’m glad you brought the baby up because there is always a risk, isn’t there? It is important not to overtax women at this stage, don’t you agree?’

  Danny didn’t take the hint.

  ‘What I’m trying to say, darling, is that it would be very helpful if you left us alone for the time being. I shall come over afterwards and give you a bulletin, but for now, if you wouldn’t mind awfully … I hope I’m not sounding rude.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ said Danny. ‘Why don’t I make us a fresh pot of tea?’

  ‘Actually, darling, it would be better if you just left us to it. But you know what would be helpful. Before you run off to your little cottage, would you mind awfully sitting Hermione and William in front of a video?’

  ‘Goodness!’ Bea said when she came back with the tissues. ‘I thought we’d never get rid of her. We must think up a reason right away to keep her from coming back.’ But already Hermione was behind her, whingeing about her blue clay bowl.

  ‘All this time,’ she said, ‘and still it’s in Mummy’s study. How many times do I have to tell you it’s not safe in there?’

  I tried to apologise for not having retrieved it yet. But when Hermione said, ‘So let’s do it now!’, Bea brushed her aside.

  ‘Don’t be daft, my dear. If we could save your bowl, we could save everything else
in the room.’

  And so it was Hermione who went to Danny and told her that Max was in the midst of wrecking and ransacking Rebecca’s study.

  ‘Why didn’t any of you think to tell me?’ Danny wanted to know when she rushed back into the room. ‘How much has he destroyed already? Why hasn’t anyone considered breaking down the door? Oh, how can you people just sit here and let this atrocity happen?’

  Just after Danny had streaked upstairs to shout at Max through the door, Mimi rang from the newspaper for the second time. ‘Can I ring you back in a few minutes?’ I asked. But a few minutes later, Danny was sitting on my bedroom floor, legs crossed, body swaying and reciting her mantra.

  The next time Mimi rang, it was Bea who answered. In an excessively slow and polite voice, she said, ‘Mimi, darling, could this urgent logistical problem wait until tomorrow?’

  It was Crawley who finally got Max to open the door. We listened in silence to their grim mumbling coming through the ceiling. Max got to his feet, then stumbled and had to be dragged back to his chair. There was another crash, more keening from Danny, more grim mumbling on the other side of the ceiling. Suddenly Danny jumped to her feet, saying she couldn’t bear it any more. She went upstairs and started pounding on the door.

  ‘I’ll never forgive you for this, Max. Never ever!’ she shrieked when they wouldn’t let her in. ‘Now finally you show yourself in your true colours! Don’t you realise how very much I’ve had to swallow over the past five years? I did it because I thought you cared. I thought you loved her as I love her. And now you’re in there, laughing at me and spitting on her memory! And I think, why did I ever cover for you? Why did I believe you when you told me it was for the best? It was only for the best for you, I now see! You couldn’t care less about the rest of us! All you care about is saving your own skin. Which is what Rebecca always told me. Why, oh, why did I forget to heed her? I’ll never forgive myself for falling for your putrid lies!’

  This had been going on for at least twenty minutes when Crawley rang us from Rebecca’s private line. ‘I’m taking him out to the pub in Islip,’ he told me. ‘It’s better for us all that we have it out there. I’d be grateful if you organised a distraction for Miss Twinkle-Toes out there.’