You let them get away with it because your mind was elsewhere. Up in the rarified air of higher physics. And down and dirty with Stella.
Of course I knew. I knew straight away. Men are such chumps – even men with Double Firsts. Especially men with Double Firsts. You became more attentive and yet more distracted. You started giving me too much information about where you were going, and I hadn’t even asked. The coins jangling in your pocket when you went for a ‘walk’ to the telephone box round the corner. All the tell-tale signs. It was so corny, so demeaning, for you as well as for me. We’d given our hearts to each other, we had something so rare and wonderful, and suddenly you were simply a furtive adulterer with lipstick on your collar. You, my darling James, of all people.
At first I was angry. How could you do this to me when I was at my lowest ebb? Run ragged with two children and elbow-deep in dirty dishes? Trying to cope in a draughty house with a leaking roof and all those rooms to clean? But I kept quiet, coward that I was, because I was terrified of losing you. If I put it into words it would all come out into the open and you’d have to make a choice. So I shut up and hoped the whole thing would blow over.
When we bought Hafod I really thought it had. For over a year while you’d been leading a shadowy parallel life, I’d felt it like the rumblings of the Underground beneath our feet and in a strange way I’d got used to its rhythms – your periods of exhilaration and tristesse, your sudden impulsive hugs, as if thanking me for my ignorance. I really thought it had run its course and you wanted to make a fresh start.
How stupid I was. How very stupid. Keats fled to Italy to escape his TB. Can you imagine how he felt when he still coughed up blood in his handkerchief? That’s how I felt when your symptoms continued in Wales. Still I kept quiet, and you suspected nothing. We each had our secret and in a strange way I felt complicit in your clumsy excuses and alibis.
I still had no idea who the woman was. I didn’t demean myself by searching your pockets. But I knew she was giving you something that I never could.
But I don’t need to spell this out. Believe me, your tenderness and consideration over the years is something for which I’ve always been grateful. In every other way we have been so marvellously compatible, haven’t we? I do believe we’ve had a marriage of true minds. We’ve never stopped talking, we find each other endlessly interesting, we respect each other’s opinions even when violently disagreeing. Living with you has been the most exhilarating experience, and my heart has always been yours.
So I let you get away with it. As time passed I watched you grow more confident. If it wasn’t so painful it would have been funny; remember when the children were young and they played hide-and-seek by hiding in FRONT of a tree? You thought you were being so careful but you kept slipping up. I remember Tim phoning, from your department, when you’d told me that the two of you were at a symposium in Norwich. What rankled was that I found myself lying on YOUR behalf. Which was a touch ironic, wasn’t it?
Another annoying thing was the way you took the car at Hafod, and left us alone there. Have you any idea what it was like to be stuck with the children all day, and then find we’d run out of bread? I did put my foot down about that, so you started taking taxis.
By then I knew where you were going. Do you remember that ‘lecture in Leeds’ you were supposedly giving? You told me in some detail about taking the car to Abergavenny station and the train from there. When you returned, the next day, I found a receipt in the back seat, from an off-licence in Crickhowell.
For a while I did nothing. The thought of nosing around our local town made ME feel like the transgressor, rather than you. But something cracked when you broke your promise to take the children to that llama farm, do you remember? They’d looked forward to that outing for days. Their reaction broke my heart, for this time they’d grown so used to it they didn’t even cry.
Our poor children. I tried to be a good mother but it didn’t come naturally. It was you they loved with a passion. How jealously they fought for your attention! Because you were indeed a marvellous father, I’ve already told you that – warm and funny and never patronising, treating them as equals, interested in what they were doing, suddenly gathering them into your arms with great bellows of joy. My only consolation is that they’ve never had their illusions shattered. For they’ve never known, and never will know, about you and Stella.
Oh, yes, I found out her name. Stella Gatterson. It was soon after the llama incident. I went to the taxi firm in Crickhowell and said you’d left your wallet in one of the cabs. That’s how I discovered where you’d been going for your little trysts. They found the driver who’d taken you to a place called the Palisades Holiday Park, out on the Brecon road. He even took me there, as he was going that way, and pointed out your particular caravan.
Do you know, I burst out laughing? I’d imagined a discreet little hotel. I simply couldn’t picture you there in that shabby tin box, parked between the toilets and the sandpit. It was out of season and the place was deserted. God knows why it was called the Palisades when it was smack up against a row of garages and an electrical substation. I thought of our large, comfortable home in Oxford with its beautiful garden. I thought of our seventeenth-century farmhouse with its inglenook fireplace and barn owls and view of the Black Mountains.
I wasn’t laughing now. My God, you must have loved that woman.
I found out her name from a boy in the office. He was lying on the floor reading the Beano. His dad ran the caravan site but he was apparently out, which was fortunate, because my enquiry might have seemed odd. The boy liked Stella because she played clock golf with him and let him win.
I drove home to Oxford, numb with shock. My insides had turned to water. At one point I pulled off the road and plunged into some bushes where I had violent diarrhoea. I wished to God I hadn’t seen that caravan. It made it all so horribly real.
You were away in Singapore at the time. When you returned you suspected nothing. I behaved as usual and the weeks passed. But now I had a location my brain was poisoned with images. You were hurrying down the cinder path, looking around furtively, tapping on the caravan door and disappearing inside. I glimpsed Stella in the window, her face blurred. I saw you pulling down the blind. I saw children playing innocently outside – did you hear their voices and feel a stab of guilt? I saw the caravan vibrating, like some ghastly cartoon.
I’m sure you met in other places, but that holiday park stuck in my mind. Obsessively, I made up scenarios. Some were so lurid they make me blush, even now, but funnily enough it was the humdrum ones which affected me the most. The two of you playing at clock golf, and washing up in a little plastic bowl. Bringing back bottles from the off-licence – Guinness for you, but what for Stella? She altered all the time, you see. Sometimes I pictured her blonde and blowsy, a Benny Hill kind of girl – she’d drink Babycham. Sometimes she was coltish, with auburn curls and a mini-skirt, swigging Coca-Cola. Then there was a Juliette Gréco-type, black eyeliner and polo-neck, and she’d be drinking absinthe and smoking a Sobranie. This last Stella was the least convincing but then she could be a middle-class girl who was slumming it. After all, YOU were slumming it. And what’s infuriating is that you’d always sneered at caravans, you thought them suburban and swore at them when they hogged the road.
Both our children liked making up stories, didn’t they? Robert’s in particular were pretty creative, which is unusual in a boy. But strong imaginations can be a curse. Over those weeks I could feel it eating away at me, like the cancer is consuming me now.
I lost weight, I couldn’t eat. It was so long ago I’m sure you don’t remember. I wished to God I hadn’t made that trip. Of course I knew something was going on but the proof took on a life of its own. Stella was growing so vivid in my imagination, so poisonously vivid, that for my own survival I had to lance the boil. I had to meet her.
So I did.
Ha! That’s stopped you in your tracks, hasn’t it? I wonder where you’re r
eading this? I’m picturing you at Rose Cottage, sitting on our love-seat, which celebrated our long and happy marriage. Which it has been, my darling. Happy beyond words. We talked about everything in our long conversation – everything but this. And we were so young that it feels a lifetime away; that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead. Indeed, Stella could be, by now. But even today I can remember my heart hammering as I dialled her number.
The boy had told me she lived in Cardiff, you see. With that surname it was easy. I rang Directory Enquiries who told me there was only one Gatterson and gave me the information.
In those quaint days we only had that one phone, in the living room, so I waited until you were at work and the children at school. It was a dank day in November, the day after Guy Fawkes. Outside the window a spent rocket lay on the lawn. Do you remember how Robert liked to collect empty fireworks and sniff the gunpowder in their cardboard tubes?
A man answered the phone. That gave me a jolt; for some reason I hadn’t thought that Stella was married. He didn’t seem curious and said that his wife was at work and would be back at three.
By mid-afternoon I was in a dither of nerves and nearly flunked it. As you know, I’m not much of a drinker, but I poured myself a whisky and dialled her number.
I’d prepared a little speech but when I heard Stella’s voice I simply blurted out: ‘I’m Mrs Wentworth, can we meet?’
There was a long pause. I wondered if her husband was in the room. She suggested the Wimpy bar next to Cardiff station and we agreed on the next Tuesday lunchtime.
The day arrived and I hadn’t felt so nervous since my Finals. Over breakfast you asked me my plans. For the first time, it was ME who lied. I wondered if you, too, had felt the same sense of utter desolation, and yet a tiny, illicit frisson.
I wore that grey dress that you said made me look like a registrar. On the train I thought about my dreams of a career and what I’d given up to look after you and the children. I thought, for the hundredth time, how unsuited I was to be a housewife. And this was how you repaid me! As the train clackety-clacked I repeated this to myself, to keep my anger at boiling point. And-this-is-how-you-repay-me. It was the only way I was going to be able to face that woman.
She was a dumpy little thing, wasn’t she? You must have been desperate. That was my first thought when she came through the door. Mousy hair, coat buttoned up tight, nose reddened by the Arctic wind outside. But then she saw me and know what? Her face broke into a smile and she was transformed.
And she rallied. No doubt she realised that this was inappropriate. But I could see that she was normally a friendly sort of person, and even more nervous than me. She perched opposite, handbag on lap, ready to flee at a moment’s notice, and asked me politely about my journey.
She kept her eyes on the menu. ‘I’m ever so sorry, Mrs Wentworth.’
‘So you should be.’
She looked up. ‘You’re different to what I expected.’
‘So he talks about me?’
‘No. Not a lot. But I think about you.’
‘You do, do you? And my children?’
She nodded.
‘Maybe you should have thought about them before you started all this,’ said Anna.
‘I’m so sorry—’
‘Stop saying sorry!’
Stella jumped. The waitress came and they ordered Wimpys, hers with cheese.
It was warm in there and Stella unbuttoned her coat. Anna glimpsed a frilly cream blouse and large breasts. James once called hers Norfolk and Suffolk. It didn’t seem cruel; he said it with such love that she’d burst out laughing. They were lying in bed in Green Street, their little room an everywhere, sunshine flooding in and their landlady’s vacuum cleaner droning downstairs. ‘My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,’ he said, leaning on his elbow and gazing at her, ‘And true plain hearts do in the faces rest.’
‘Would you like this?’
Anna jerked to attention. Stella was offering her a handkerchief.
‘No thank you.’ Anna wiped her eyes and pulled herself together. ‘Does your husband know what’s been happening?’
‘No!’ Stella stared at her. ‘Don’t tell him, it would break his heart.’
‘Oh, yes, as opposed to you not breaking mine?’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘Do shut up! If you were sorry, you’d stop.’
Stella bent down and rummaged in her handbag. Anna gazed at the top of her head. She imagined James’s fingers stroking her hair. Stroking the Alps of her breasts.
‘Do you smoke?’
Stella was holding out a packet of cigarettes. Players No. 6.
Anna took one. ‘I don’t in front of James. He disapproves.’
‘Yes, same with me.’
‘It’s a bit rich, considering he puffs away on cigars at college dinners. Talk about double standards.’
Anna stopped. What on earth was she doing, confiding in the woman?
Stella leaned forward, flicked her lighter and lit Anna’s cigarette. Anna inhaled and felt her very bones relax.
‘You ever smoked Sobranies?’ she asked.
‘What’s Sobranies?’
‘Never mind.’
The food arrived. As the waitress put it down they chatted away as if they’d just met up for shopping. Stella told Anna that her husband was a postman but he’d ricked his back, double-digging their allotment. She said that she’d been working in the university canteen. She said she’d liked it there, she liked being surrounded by students.
‘They were so young, bless them, and trying to act so grown-up.’ She blew out smoke from the corner of her mouth. ‘They made me come over all motherly. You see, Ken and I haven’t been blessed.’
Had James ever seen his mistress cry? Anna suspected not. With those two, no doubt, it was all fun and frolics.
It was a startling sight. For suddenly the tears erupted and literally spilled down Stella’s face, streaking her cheeks with mascara. She said: ‘Oh, Mrs Wentworth, I want a baby so much.’
Have one of mine! Anna wanted to shout. Robert and Phoebe had been running her ragged – Robert goading Phoebe, Phoebe bursting into hysterical tears, the usual torment.
‘For Ken, too,’ Stella said. ‘It would make him so happy. He can’t have children, you see.’ She paused. ‘We don’t tell people that.’
‘Why have you told me, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
She couldn’t offer Stella a handkerchief because she didn’t have one. Besides, the woman seemed oblivious, sitting there with her streaming, striped face. Some Teddy boys got up and jostled their way out like a herd of bullocks.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Anna said, stubbing out her cigarette. Players No. 6 were disgusting, she’d forgotten that. ‘But we have to realise that life’s not fair.’
‘Maybe your husband will give me one.’
For a moment, Anna thought she had misheard her.
Stella wiped her eyes, leaving smears of mascara on her cheeks. ‘I shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s been at the back of my mind.’
‘Does he know this?’
‘No. But if something happens, well, I’d be on Cloud Nine.’ She ground out her cigarette. ‘I told him I’m wearing a coil.’
‘Are you?’
She shook her head.
Anna glared at her. ‘So you’ve been cheating on him.’ Ridiculously, she felt a tiny flare of loyalty to James. Only for a second. ‘So, what’s your husband going to say if you suddenly get pregnant?’
‘He’s a Christian,’ Stella said blandly. ‘He’ll forgive me.’
‘Just because he’s a Christian? Haven’t you read your history books?’
‘You don’t know my Ken. He loves me so much he’ll forgive me anything. And he’d do anything for a baby, too.’
There was something annoying about her cocky self-assurance. Anna’s fleeting sympathy for her vanished.
‘So you’re using two men,’ she
snapped. ‘Congratulations.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like, Mrs Wentworth.’ Stella leaned forward, her voice urgent. ‘It’s like an ache in my belly, all the time. It’s like this big hollow inside, it’s making me ill and it’s getting worse. It’s so bad that if I do get pregnant and Ken does kick me out I won’t mind because at least I’ll have a baby. Do you understand?’
This meeting wasn’t going as Anna had expected. But then, what had she expected?
‘So you’re using my husband as a sperm donor,’ she said. ‘That’s why you chose him?’
‘No! I fell for him, Mrs Wentworth, hook, line and sinker. He’s such a great guy—’
‘Yes, I do know that.’
‘He makes me feel so clever—’
‘He does that with everybody—’
‘– it’s like, I love my Ken but he’s not got a clue what’s going on in my head and, to be perfectly frank, I don’t think he’s that interested. Same with most of them. Then along comes this brilliant man – I knew it the moment I met him. He was in the canteen—’
‘Shut up! I don’t want to hear the details.’ She did, of course, but they would make her throw up.
Stella gazed at her glass of Pepsi. ‘I don’t know what he saw in me – I’m being quite honest here. I mean, you’re such a beautiful lady, much more beautiful than me, and much cleverer. You’ve got such class, why would he want me?’
‘For sex, silly.’
Stella looked up. ‘Pardon?’
‘To service his carnal needs. Isn’t it obvious?’
Stella stared at her.
Anna, too, was taken aback. But something strange was happening in that hot, steamy café in a foreign city. Two cups of coffee had made her light-headed. She wasn’t normally reckless, but she was in a heightened state, sitting opposite a woman with whom she had nothing and everything in common. Who she would never see again. Stella had confided in her and now she confided in Stella.
And out it came, in a rush.
‘We love each other dearly, James and I,’ she said. ‘But that side of things has never been the heart of our marriage and it’s now more or less over. Not hugs, not closeness, we’ll always have those and they mean the world to me. But I’ve never told him why I’ve had such difficulty with that – I’ve never told a living soul – but I’m telling you because you love him and I’m giving you permission to give him what he needs. In fact, it’s a huge relief, because you and I are sort of in this together, though I suspect we’ll never meet again, after today.’
The Carer Page 18