by Terry Tyler
Even though he was working in Norwich, he still wasn’t home very much.
We got married in June 2011 and I planned to discard my pills on our second wedding anniversary celebration; I thought our lives would be running so smoothly with the house, marriage and then children at just the right time. But then in summer 2012 Erin moved to Norwich, to run Lanchester Homes.
The girl Robert had wanted to marry would be just a short drive away from him, every day, while I sat at home.
My happy marriage felt suddenly under threat. Why couldn’t she find her own life, away from us?
Our two year anniversary. June 2013. The day we were to start trying for a baby.
To celebrate the occasion Robbie took me out for what I hoped would be a perfect romantic dinner, to Morston Hall—my choice. It’s critically acclaimed, and I’ve been there for some fabulous half day cookery demonstrations. We used Daddy’s driver so we could both drink lots of wine; I thought it would do us good to relax and get a bit tiddly together. Robbie said the food was no different from what we have at home, which was a lovely compliment, but he left half of his long shore cod with warm egg yolk dressing and Calvados jus, and took the mickey out of the girolles, asking if they would give him hallucinations (they’re mushrooms), which I don’t think the waiter thought was very funny. It was a good evening, but—oh, I don’t know. I just kept feeling that it was more important to me than it was to Robbie, and I wanted it to mean so much to both of us. It was meant to be one of those key dates in our lives, a night we would remember when we were old and our children were grown-up.
When we got home I lit the oil lamps on the terrace and we sat on the lounger; it was a beautiful, warm evening. Robbie opened the champagne, we toasted each other, and I actually forgot about Erin Lanchester. Then I did what I’d been planning all day—well, I’d been planning it for two years, really.
I took the little card of contraceptive pills out of my bag and held it up to him.
“Well,” I said, “it’s our second anniversary. Do you remember what we agreed?”
Robbie reached over and kissed me and said, “Of course I do. As long as you feel the time is right, let’s go for it!”
Nice words, but not quite the joyful ones I’d hoped for, and I saw the look on his face for the split second before he kissed me. It was one of blind panic. I told myself not to take this too much to heart, though. I do know that having a baby is not quite such an event for a man as it is for a woman, and that many men fear the responsibility. I’ve talked it over with my friend, Simone; she said her boyfriend actually said, “Oh, shit, no!” when she first told him she was pregnant. Can you imagine that? I felt so sorry for her. So I told myself, you’ve got it all. You married the man of your dreams. He’s here with you, he loves you. I drank more champagne, and made a big show of burning the pill card in the flame of one of the lamps, as I’d planned, and he just laughed. He didn’t raise his glass to clink with mine, or put his arm around me and so we could watch it burning together, like he had every time I imagined the evening. The whole celebration seemed a bit forced.
I felt silly doing it, to be truthful. He was probably wondering why I didn’t just throw them in the bin, or why I’d brought them out with me in the first place. They’re usually in the bathroom cabinet.
Stupid me for making it all up in my head before it happened.
I’d pictured us sitting under the stars and talking about our future family, in a lovely, dreamy, a little bit drunk way. He’d have his arm around me and I’d lean my head back on his shoulder as we gazed up at the moon. We’d discuss our children, their names, what they would be like. We’d have funny, playful arguments about them, I thought (“Little James will captain the England cricket team!” “No he most certainly won’t, I want him to do good for humanity, be a doctor, or discover a cure for cancer!”), but instead Robbie chose that night, our special evening, to get a bit too drunk and tell me about a meeting he’d arranged between his father and some ex-mistress of his, several months before. I just sat there and listened, gobsmacked, not just because Robbie knew about his dad having an affair and hadn’t told his mother, but also because he hadn’t told me before, about any of it. That really hurt.
“I do understand why you did it, sort of,” I said, “but didn’t you feel any remote loyalty to your mother?”
“It wasn’t an issue, really. Mum didn’t come into it. It was important to Dad, so I said yes.”
“Not an issue? She’s only his wife! And I don’t like the sound of this Raine. Apart from being someone who’d have an affair with a married man in the first place, she’s now married herself, but she still slept with him again—that’s awful! Her poor husband! Did you know they were going to do it when you arranged the meeting?”
He laughed at me. “Don’t be stupid, of course I didn’t. It’s not my business, not the sort of thing you discuss; he’s my father, not my school chum.”
“But you took them to somewhere where they’d be alone for hours, you should have known what would happen.”
Robbie smiled in that irritating way he does sometimes, as if to say you wouldn’t understand. “It’s irrelevant, really, what happened once I’d driven away; they just wanted to see each other one last time. It’s one of those things that looks bad on paper but isn’t if you know the people concerned.” He gave a little chuckle, to himself. “He told me she said that she and her husband get on so well she could almost tell him, but not quite!”
“I should think not.” I couldn’t help it, I was shocked. And disgusted. Jim’s more than twice her age, Robbie said. I suppose he’s still quite good-looking in a rough sort of way, but still. Ugh. And he’s going loopy. If they were common people, it would be like something off Jeremy Kyle.
“Extenuating circumstances, as I said; having a last day with Dad won’t affect her marriage, which I got the impression is a happy one.”
“I’m sure her husband wouldn’t see it like that.” Or Mrs Dudley. I’ve always thought my father-in-law seemed like a bit of a rogue, to be honest, and this proved it. Daddy says he’s a jumped-up yob who married into money. “Has your dad had lots of affairs?” I was nervous about the answer. Like father, like son, you know?
“I wouldn’t know for sure, but I don’t think so,” Robbie said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “He was always there when I was growing up, not off out somewhere. He fell in love with someone else, that’s all.”
“Well, he can’t have loved her that much, or he would have left your mum.”
“It’s not always that simple.”
“Yes it is. You either love someone or you don’t, and if you do then you have to be with them.” What I was really doing, of course, was demonstrating that Erin didn’t love him. I thought that was quite clever, but he might have been too drunk to understand what I was getting at.
He looked a bit impatient. “I know things are black and white in your world, but that’s because nothing’s ever tested it,” he said.
I bristled at that. “You mean I’m naïve?”
“Well, yes, a bit. It’s not your fault, honey; I’m not insulting you. It’s rather sweet, actually.” He ran a hand through his hair and I felt a sudden and painful gush of love for him. “People aren’t good or bad, with nothing in between. Dad was a good father and I think he’s been a good husband to Mum, on the whole.”
That really did make me angry. I knew I ought to change the subject but I couldn’t stop. “So you think having a year-long affair makes you a good husband, do you?”
“Raine was his big love, and he was hers. If they’d denied themselves that, they’d both have been unhappy. Mum was none the wiser, it didn’t hurt her.”
“That’s not the point. Your mum’s his wife.”
He gave a big sigh, and said, “Yeah, yeah, but we don’t live in an ideal world and sometimes husbands and wives fall out of love, whatever vows they might have made in some church thirty years before. You can’t just have duty in your lif
e. There’s got to be passion, too.”
“Yes. For your wife.”
That made him shout with laughter. “I can’t imagine anyone ever feeling very passionate towards Mum!”
I felt sick. I took his hand. “Robbie—we’re all right, aren’t we?”
He did that bewildered thing again, like when I found out about him wanting to marry Erin. Like he hadn’t just been telling me that marriage vows meant nothing. “What? Of course we are!” He kissed my hand. “Come on, I’ve got to be up early, let’s get to bed.”
I been hoping he’d say ‘let’s go and start making a baby,’ but I suppose I’d spoiled that mood by not understanding about people having affairs. So shoot me. But I had my lovely new lacy pale blue undies on, so I undressed in a sexy way and tried to be as raunchy as possible so that he wouldn’t go and find his own passion somewhere else, like his revolting dad did.
When he left for work the next day I felt so uneasy and wished I had a job to go to, people to talk to and something to do, instead of just the house to take care of. I went to see my mum, who told me not to worry.
“I know he does neglect you a bit, darling, but he chose you to be his wife, didn’t he? Just keep being a good one,” she reassured me. “That’s what busy, successful men need. Your father always tells me I’m his rock, doesn’t he? Be Robbie’s rock, too; he’ll come to appreciate it soon enough.”
I didn’t know if Robbie wanted a rock, though. Rocks didn’t sound very passionate.
He didn’t talk to me about people having affairs any more.
I felt very down in the dumps for a good few weeks after that. It was summer, but we weren’t having a very good time. He kept wanting to go down to Hertfordshire at the weekends because of his family situation, but I didn’t like going because his dad made me feel sick now that I knew what he’d been up to. I found it embarrassing when he said strange things, and Robbie kept arguing with his mum and Giles about the way they got impatient with him. It was horrible. Then I’d stick up for them, and we’d end up arguing too. So sometimes Robbie went on his own, and I couldn’t complain about it, could I? That would have made me selfish and not a rock. Trouble was, he wasn’t around much for me to be passionate to, either.
Then one day at the beginning of September everything started to go right again. Erin’s sister Isabella, who ran Lanchester Estates, had a nervous breakdown, which meant that Erin would take over as managing director, at Head Office. She was leaving Norwich! From now on, she would be over two hours’ drive away from us.
Of course, she had to summon my husband to talk about it, on a Sunday evening, too, when it all happened; I was furious, but I managed not to say too much.
The next day everything felt better. Robbie phoned me from work to say that yes, it was to be made official at a meeting that Friday. He seemed pleased about it too, so I thought, well, he can’t be that mad about her after all if he doesn’t mind her moving away. I felt happier than I had in ages, and planned a special celebration dinner: confit loin of Norfolk horn lamb with an Armagnac jus, like I’d had at Marston Hall on our wedding anniversary; it was one of the recipes I learned when I went on a half day demo. Afterwards we had lemongrass panna cotta. Robbie toasted my culinary expertise and said he thought that better days might be ahead, and I thought so too!
I didn’t wish Isabella Lanchester any harm, but this news could only be good for me—and my marriage.
Robert
Autumn 2013
When husbands don’t spend enough time at home, they’re always the ones who get the blame, aren’t they? For not being supportive, a good husband, etc. The onus is never on the wife to be less bloody boring so he might want to spend more time with her. It’s like, because she keeps the house nice and irons his shirts he should give up the rest of his life to making her happy.
I know Amy goes whining to my in-laws about how I neglect her. Little digs are made when we’re at their house for Sunday lunch. I can’t even give the argument that I’m working hard for our future, because Darling Daddy will always look after her. Like father, like son—except that I don’t sit back and enjoy it, like Dad did for most of his life. I actively hate it. I don’t want Sir John Fucking Robsart buying my sodding house for me, I’d rather live in a two-bed terrace in Norwich with a mortgage and the knowledge that I’m paying for it myself, but I don’t get any say in it.
Yes, yes, I know, I know, I shouldn’t have married her in the first place, and by the time she started going on about getting pregnant I wished to God I hadn’t. I can’t even offer any convincing argument for leaving the children thing for another year, because all she does is float around the house embroidering curtain tie-backs and reducing sauces; she needs a baby to fill her useless life.
I looked up a website about menstrual cycles so I could find out about, and make sure we don’t have, sex during the dangerous times. I’ve started to resent her so much that I don’t want to do it often, anyway. She gets herself tarted up in sexy undies, but it’s all too contrived. Yes, it’s enough to get me going, but that’s all. I reckon she studies articles about ‘keeping your man happy’, when she isn’t having orgasms over cookery websites—and they’re the only ones she does have, because she fakes it with me. She thinks I don’t know, and I can’t be bothered to tell her the lack of vaginal spasms kind of give it away. She’s such a child, she doesn’t even know about stuff like that. On our wedding anniversary—the wedding anniversary, the pill-throwing-away one—she walked around the bedroom in nothing but little blue lacy knickers and high heels—okay, guys, you’re salivating now, right? Well, you’re welcome. She didn’t look confident doing it, so it was only about a quarter as alluring as it should have been.
I think of Erin, years ago, lying on the bed absorbed in a book, wearing M&S white cotton briefs and nothing else, and I could come in a second, because it was real, and she didn’t give a monkey’s about trying to be sexy for her man because she just was. Is. God, I love that woman!
Amy doesn’t really love me, anyway, although she thinks she does. She loves her fantasy of me as one of the heroes from her stupid romantic novels, not me, the real me, how I really am.
You’re probably wondering why I don’t just leave her. I’ll tell you why not. It’s because she needs me so much. I feel guilty about the fact that I married her when I didn’t love her enough, and it would break her heart. I do owe her something. When she’s not boring me witless and making me eat fricasseed bats ears in a beetroot parfait, I still feel affection for her, but it’s (mostly) the affection you feel for a little sister, not a wife. I feel it’s my duty to look after her, in the same way as I do Kirsty, except that Kirsty would tell me to piss off because she can look after herself. Oh, I’ll sort it out some time. Just not now.
Right, on to more important things, i.e. the fall of Isabella Lanchester.
Philip Castillo was absent more than he was present during the summer, and Erin stopped joking about it and started getting seriously worried. I asked why Isabella’s mother wasn’t charging down to give her a bit of support, but due to her having been booted out of Lanchester Hall when Harry fell in love with Erin’s mum, about twenty-five years before, she wouldn’t set foot in there. Erin had never met her. Cathy attended Harry’s funeral but there were hundreds of people there and she hadn’t introduced herself; Erin was too distraught to notice anyone, that day. However, it was soon agreed that Isabella’s emotional state had become too bad to be kept from her mother, so the old nanny, Hannah, got in touch with her.
I couldn’t believe her reaction. Erin told me all about it.
“She just said, ‘I shall pray for her’. Can you believe it? Her own daughter is having a complete breakdown and she’s offering prayers? Fuck! I mean, fair enough, if that’s your thing, but you’d think she’d be big enough to put aside her old resentments and come down to see her, wouldn’t you?”
I couldn’t help laughing, she was so irate. “Perhaps if she enters the doom-ridden port
als of Lanchester Hall she’ll have a nervous breakdown, and then you’ll have the pair of them on your hands.”
That amused her, at least. “Lanchester Hall isn’t doom-ridden, it’s lovely,” she said, with one of her delicious giggles that made it worth me saying daft things. “Jane and Hannah have been marvellous,” she said, “but apart from them there’s only Pat and the Brandons, and it’s not their responsibility. Well, it isn’t Jane and Hannah’s either, not really. It’s bloody Phil’s.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“Oh, she’s got her anti-mad pills and sleeping tablets, but she won’t go to see the psychotherapist unless Phil comes back, and he’s only been here for the odd week since Easter. When he does come back she cries and rails at him for leaving her, they argue, he goes to the pub, they argue again and he shoots off back to Rotterdam when he can’t take it anymore. Says he’s ‘giving her some space’ or something equally ridiculous.”
“Which is the root of the problem in the first place,” I said.
“Precisely, and in the meantime she stays in bed most of the time, drinking wine and crying. When the pills kick in she turns up at work and stalks about harassing people. I think she’s forgotten about the redundancy plan, thank goodness. As it is, since she gave Phil the freedom to sign off on anything he likes, he’s made so many errors of judgement that, despite all her petty money-saving schemes, the bank accounts aren’t looking too healthy at all. I was talking to Ruth the other day; she said that some areas of the company are actually in trouble. Never mind the amount that’s filtered out for their personal use. Last time he came back he said he needed a ‘little run-around’ for weekends, and she bought him a Lamborghini. Now he wants a boat, too; she’ll probably buy him a fucking armada.”