My Husband Next Door

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘I don’t really feel like a party. I’m too exhausted.’ He was watching me closely. He didn’t look exhausted. He looked exhilarated.

  ‘Well, what about Celeste?’

  ‘Celeste’s gone. She went a while ago.’

  I knew. I’d seen her go. I was being disingenuous. Again, hopefully not like me.

  ‘I asked her to come tonight because I felt it would be unfair and humiliating not to have her here, but she knew on what basis. We’re not together.’

  Suddenly I felt very sorry for Celeste. She’d looked beautiful tonight, and had no doubt spent hours at the hairdresser’s and a lot of money on a dress, but her heart must have been breaking. Supporting her handsome, talented man who was no longer her man. Smiling hard. Making it until about nine o’clock, when I’d seen her slip away, supported by a girlfriend. I’d spent a lot of the last few months wishing Celeste wasn’t so beautiful, so thin; that she could have a modelling assignment in New York, be vaporized by a passing UFO. But now I hoped she’d find a kind and wealthy investment banker to marry and have many children with, and live in a tall Chelsea townhouse, which somehow, I felt, would be a fitting end, and one that, until I’d met Sebastian, I wouldn’t have minded for myself. It was certainly what my parents had in mind. Now I’d be very happy in a one-bedroom studio flat, which, after supper at the usual Italian and after we’d held hands across the table and gazed at each other and not eaten anything at all, was where we repaired to.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ he’d said later that night, leaning over me, propped on one elbow and gazing down, his dark eyes full.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I’d said, hastily pulling up the sheet, knowing I was slightly overweight and that although my face was often deemed pretty, it was rather full at the moment. I sucked in my cheeks. Celeste had serious bone structure.

  ‘Yes, you are.’ He’d grinned. ‘If I was a poet I’d say something cheesy about a rose that’s about to bloom, just waiting for the right drop of sunlight to fall on it.’

  It was poetic enough for me. Fall? I tumbled, knowing he was that drop of sunlight. And I knew too that, in part, it was my youth he was falling for, as perhaps I was falling for his maturity, but I also knew it to be love.

  We spent the next few months in a tremendously blissful state, mostly in bed, but also finding the time to walk in parks, eat in cosy restaurants – we regained our appetites after so much horizontal activity – and during that time I think both of us produced some of the best pictures of our careers. I even sold some of mine. We painted feverishly, quite often late into the night, before tumbling into bed exhausted, laughing that in the morning we’d hate what we saw on our easels, but we never did. And Sebastian would marvel at mine as much as I did at his. ‘That’s bloody good, Ella!’ He’d stand back, close one eye. Cock his head. ‘Bloody good.’ And I’d lie in bed and smile contentedly, looking as much at his naked back as at my easel. Life was perfect, in so very many ways, but not according to my parents.

  In their view there was absolutely nothing to recommend the situation. In fact, they were vociferous and shrill on the subject. Particularly my mother, and particularly when I went to see them in leafy Buckinghamshire three months later, parking in the carriage driveway, hearing the electric gates shut softly but firmly behind me, then walking under the Georgian archway and across the flagstone hall, to tell them we were getting married.

  ‘You’re nineteen years old!’ Mummy shrieked, in the drawing room of the Old Rectory. She was perched on one of her white sofas and I was opposite her on the matching one. They resembled tombstones, so shiny and cold were they, just as she was: fresh from the hairdresser, hair stiffly set in waves, taupe cashmere cardigan draped over thin shoulders, one hand gripping a large gin and tonic. ‘And he’s thirty years old, for crying out loud! A dirty old man, practically. What’s he doing? Can’t he get someone his own age?’

  You’ll be pleased to hear Sebastian wasn’t with me, although that’s not to say she’d have tempered her language if he had been. Perhaps she didn’t realize how insulting she was being to both of us. My father came in from the garden through the French windows, secateurs in hand, hovering behind me in his old Husky jacket. Truffle, our Labrador, came too and put her nose in my hand.

  ‘She says she’s getting married to the painter chappie, Angus, the one who lives above. And don’t think we don’t know that you’ve dropped out of art school. You think St Martin’s wouldn’t write to tell us? And all because of this – this Lothario, who’s seduced you! Obviously using every cad’s trick in the book. Oh, I knew you were too young to have that flat on your own. You should have gone into the hall of residence like everyone else, but your father let you have your own way – as usual!’ Always ‘your father’ when he was in the wrong. A distancing technique. Never ‘Daddy’.

  ‘Ginnie had it,’ I argued, glad to get off the subject of Sebastian.

  ‘Yes, but Ginnie was sensible,’ she spat. ‘Had nice little dinner parties, entertained properly, met Richard and his friends from the regiment. She wasn’t lolling around with a bohemian set in some drug-fuelled haze.’

  I blinked hard. ‘I don’t take drugs, Mummy.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t put it past you! Smoking marijuana in an artistic huddle. I always knew art school was wrong.’ She shuddered. ‘All those drop-out types, and living the life of Riley in Knightsbridge, too!’

  ‘You wanted the girls to have the flat,’ Daddy pointed out mildly. ‘Said it would give them an edge.’

  She had. Had thought it would set me apart from the arty types on the Euston Road, whom she had no intention of having as prospective sons-in-law, with their earrings and joss sticks and long hair. Had thought plonking me in the middle of Belgravia would mean I might paint by day, but, on my return, would be sure to meet an estate agent called Justin on his way to Peter Jones in tasselled loafers and a pristine Barbour. She had no idea she’d planted me under a ticking time-bomb of a fully grown drop-out, who, despite me telling her he was famous, she’d never heard of, of course.

  ‘I suppose you have great sex or something seedy,’ she hissed alarmingly, clutching her pearls, clearly hugely upset.

  Daddy and I flinched. Sex was never mentioned in our house.

  ‘Sylvia,’ he muttered.

  ‘Oh, that’s what it’s all about,’ she said, turning fiercely to him. ‘Make no mistake about it. Her head’s been turned because she’s only ever been with fumbling nineteen-year-olds, but now she’s met a man who knows his way around the block and her eyes have been opened – not just her eyes, either!’

  ‘Christ, what are you on?’ I stood up, horrified.

  ‘Oh, don’t get all prissy with me, young lady. I know the lie of the land.’ She was shaking now. Dad stood by, helplessly. ‘You young people think you invented it. Well, great. Marvellous. Have your steaming affair with your older man. You can even mistake it for love, for all I care, but you don’t have to marry him, for Christ’s sake! You don’t have to have his –’

  She broke off as if hit by a falling branch. I was still standing before her, still red with anger and humiliation, in a prime position to watch the penny drop. You could almost hear its descent, echoing around the eau de Nil walls of my childhood. Mummy’s eyes changed from sparkling fury to glazed horror. Her hand went to her throat. There was a ghastly silence.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ she breathed.

  ‘Yes.’ I swallowed, letting it sink in. Letting Dad take it in, feeling him go rigid behind me. Giving us all a moment. ‘Yes, but that’s not why I’m marrying him,’ I said, in a low, quivering voice. ‘I love him, and he loves me, and I’m not getting rid of it.’

  She stared at me for a long moment. And then her face crumpled. I couldn’t even turn to look at Dad’s. And surprisingly, or perhaps not to me, because I’m her daughter and know her to be human and not a cartoon monster, she didn’t rant and rave. She didn’t spit about what a hussy I was; she just looked devastated. Crushed. And I fe
lt dreadful. For giving her a nasty shock like that. I went to sit beside her. Dad sat down opposite, where I’d been sitting. After a long while, he spoke.

  ‘But it was an accident, love? You obviously didn’t plan to get pregnant?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes, it was an accident. But we both –’ I struggled to explain the gamut of emotions Sebastian and I had gone through when we’d found out. When I’d told him, very fearfully. How the shock in his eyes in moments had turned to joy, how his joy had instantly transmitted itself to me, and how, as he took my hand and looked at me with untrammelled delight, we’d both known this had to be, was meant to be: was the happiest thing that had ever happened to either of us. How to convey this to my parents? Who just saw their slightly headstrong, nineteen-year-old daughter, knocked up by an older man. Some ghastly predator.

  ‘I love him,’ I said simply, not knowing how else to put it. ‘And he loves me. Why else would he want to marry me? He hasn’t even suggested I get rid of it.’

  Silence. My parents digested this, and when I eventually met my mother’s eyes, and saw her shattered face, I felt only sorrow. My mother hadn’t had a career. Her career had been her husband and her children and she’d poured her considerable talents and formidable strength into both. With Ginnie it had been easy, because Ginnie believed in everything Mummy believed in: a good marriage, children (I was with them so far), money, prestige, a large house, dinner parties with the right people (this was where I strayed), and the unspoken knowledge that none of this could be achieved properly without some sort of submission of self. She’d always known she might fail with me, that it would be a challenge, but to fail so soon, and so drastically, without me even limping through a few hoops – a few dinner parties arranged by Ginnie, perhaps, one or two suitable young men – this was a crushing blow. But for all her disappointment about that, and for all her snobbery and pretension, I firmly believe her sorrow was primarily, and genuinely, for me. I was, after all, her darling daughter, and I was pregnant. My life was going to be very different. My youth was over. And somehow, because she was Captain Sylvia, and in sole command of this ship, she felt she’d failed me.

  I took her hand and she let me. It looked older, and more fragile, than I remembered. It’s huge diamond ring a little looser than it had been. I sensed defeat in her tractability; she knew that, like my father, occasionally, when I said something, I meant it.

  After a bit she straightened her back. Looked my father right in the eye.

  ‘There are worse things than a tiny baby,’ she told him firmly.

  Dad met his wife’s gaze and nodded briefly. Taking her lead, as usual. But sadly.

  She turned to me. ‘What did you say his name was?’

  ‘Sebastian Montclair.’

  ‘And he’s famous?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look him up, Angus,’ she snapped.

  And with that she got stiffly to her feet and left the room.

  After a bit, Daddy went to the book case in the corner, bending down to the bottom shelf where, aside from cookery books in the kitchen, Mummy kept the very few books she owned (all the others were my father’s): Dr Spock, The Good School Guide, Who’s Who and Debrett’s. These were the manuals of her trade. Daddy put aside his gardening gloves, tucked his secateurs in his Husky pocket and drew out Who’s Who. I had no idea if Sebastian would be in it, but as he pulled up a low, tapestry stool, found his reading glasses in the top pocket of his shirt and put them on to see more clearly, and as I listened to Mummy, slowly ascending the stairs to her room and making her way across the landing to lie down on her bed, it occurred to me that courage took many forms. This was their form, and as I sat quietly by, on the tomb-like sofa, I silently applauded it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The following morning, however, my mother was not so submissive. Not so shattered. In fact, she was downright punchy. Eight hours’ sleep, courtesy of a couple of Mogadons and an eye mask, had enabled her to gather her strength, retrench and condense her arguments.

  ‘None of your friends will have babies. You’ll be lonely and isolated. This is not a decision to be taken quickly or lightly, Eleanor. Please think about it. Just for a week. Just for me.’

  She knew I had a week or two to make my decision. Knew she had some leeway with the dates.

  ‘My decision is made,’ I told her firmly over the gingham tablecloth, the Cooper’s Oxford and the boiled eggs.

  ‘This isn’t the nineteen-fifties, Ella,’ Ginnie said quietly. ‘You’re not in the L-shaped room.’ Oh, yes, Ginnie had been drafted in, like the 7th Cavalry. She’d arrived from London early, falling into line seamlessly. ‘One or two people I know – friends of mine, even – have had abortions. You don’t have to have it.’

  ‘I know,’ I told her coldly. ‘Melody Pitt-Andrews, for one.’ Mummy flinched, shocked. ‘But I want to keep it.’

  ‘To keep him?’ Ginnie said gently. ‘Sebastian?’

  I looked at her in horror. ‘That’s about the most unkind thing a sister could say!’

  ‘I know. But it has to be said. Are you worried that if you don’t have the baby and marry him, in a few years’ time he’ll be off? Seeing you as a minor diversion?’

  I stood up. Realized I was shaking.

  ‘Sit down, Ella,’ Dad said gruffly, his hand on my arm. ‘These things have to be said. Mummy and I just haven’t the heart for it.’

  I sat, trembling. Gave some thought to what Ginnie had said. Knew that, for all our differences, she’d be on my side. I tried to work out if it was the truth.

  ‘OK,’ I said eventually to my assembled family. ‘OK. I hear what you’re saying. And maybe a tiny part of me agrees that I love him so much I’m actually very happy I’m getting married so quickly and having his child. But as for trapping him …’ I shook my head. ‘A couple of days ago he said that if anything happened to the baby, if for any reason I miscarried or whatever, he’d want to marry me anyway.’

  This silenced my family. They looked at me in silent awe, rather as I had looked at Sebastian, when he’d said it in bed that night, his hand on my stomach.

  ‘Why?’ I’d said in wonder. ‘Why do you want me so much?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he’d admitted. ‘Maybe I see something in you I wish I had myself. It’s not your youth, it’s not that simplistic. It’s more indefinable. We don’t have a word for it – rather tellingly have to borrow joie de vivre from the French – and even that’s not quite right. Sounds like you’re skipping around Paris waving flowers. It’s more … more to do with your acceptance of the world as it is. With no desire to change it. Just to live in it, paint it, and be happy in it.’

  I’d thought about this. I did paint life as I saw it, and Sebastian, I knew, painted as he idealized it, as he wanted it to be. The passion many critics had seen in his work was often anger at the way the world was, whereas my work was more optimistic: more jubilant.

  ‘You like the way I paint?’ I’d joked.

  ‘I like you. I like your lack of cynicism and your ability to take everything and everybody at face value. You’re like Diblet. A tail-wagger rather than a bottom-sniffer.’

  I’d giggled. Diblet was our puppy. A mongrel we’d rescued from Battersea Dogs’ Home. A tiny brown rat of a pup that Sebastian had given to me after I’d stretched luxuriously in bed one night and declared myself as happy as a girl could ever be. Without, that is, owning a dog.

  ‘Owning a dog?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’d blinked up at him in surprise. ‘Don’t you like dogs?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do, but it’s not something I think about. Not something I’m pining for, the lack of which renders me incomplete.’

  ‘Really? Oh, it does me. It was the only reason I hesitated about leaving home. Leaving Truffle.’

  I had gone on to tell him the legion of other names I had for Truffle: Truffly-wuffly, Truffy-woo, big-bad-Truff, and then the song I’d made up in her honour, howling during the chorus. I’d been at that sublime
stage of in-loveness with Sebastian, the stage of no-holds-barred, silly voices, crazy names – Mr Bear in his case, Miss Prissy in mine for reasons too embarrassing to go into – when anything went.

  The following evening, Sebastian had bounded up five flights of steps and burst through the door as I stood at my easel – and there he was. Peeking out from behind the lapel of his overcoat. Two huge, anxious brown eyes in a little pointed face. My heart had melted instantly – as much at the gesture as at the adorable bundle – and Diblet had become part of our lives, sleeping in a basket in a corner of the studio; playing with old paint tubes and brushes; being taken for walks by Mrs Elgar, who, saddened at the loss of Putchkin but too old to take on another dog, had adopted Diblet with delight; then, when Sebastian and I needed a break and took him out ourselves, striding up to the round pond in Kensington Gardens, the wind in our faces. Amongst the Pekes and Chihuahuas of the mink-swathed gentlefolk of our mansion block he struck a comical chord. Most were haughtily suspicious of him, for, as Sebastian said, Diblet was a bit of rough, with a metaphorical cigarette butt sticking to his lower lip.

  ‘ ’Ello, darlin’, fancy a shag?’ he’d say in a low undertone as we passed the Peke belonging to Mrs Sharp, the dentist’s wife.

  The baby, we’d decided, would complete this happy band.

  A few weeks later I passed the point of no return, and my parents, realizing it was a fait accompli, naturally also came around to the idea of marriage. In fact, they embraced it really rather enthusiastically. For imagine the alternative?

  My mother, who, given her head, can go from nought to sixty in seconds, roared into action. Literally the morning after all bets were off she called a meeting at the Old Rectory, which we meekly attended. It would be the first time she met Sebastian and I was dreading it, but Mum surprised me, as she often can; never one for sulking, once beaten she takes it gracefully. We arrived at the house to find not only Ginnie and Richard – with Hugo toddling around by now – but assorted uncles and aunts, a proper lunch laid in the dining room, the table groaning with silver and crystal, flowers everywhere, classical music playing softly, champagne chilling in the fridge.