I looked up, fully expecting to hear Nathan’s tread on the stairs, the hand on my shoulder, his voice in my ear. Then I heard myself murmur aloud, ‘Nathan will never have really grey hair.’
But all that lay in the past.
Go away, Mumy.
At Claire Manor, I resorted to a sleeping pill and woke in an unfamiliar bed artfully draped in muslin à la Polonaise. Across the room, the curtains fell expensively to the floor and the cushion on the chair sported antique-style tassels.
It was the kind of room that was featured in magazines. It exuded discreet affluence and comfort, an exemplar of the bargain struck between fantasy and reality. No one could, or would, ever live in it.
Luxuriously and beautifully run as it was, Claire Manor was not an innocent place. In fact, its raison d’être was knowingness. In the bathrooms there was a battery of potions and creams, which guests were invited to secrete in their luggage. If we used them, they wooed enticingly, dewy skin and renewed collagen were ours. They posed an interesting dilemma. There was no chance that they could deliver what they promised, but if the situation was left to Nature there was absolutely no chance of achieving them either. A selection of books ranged on a shelf – The Insightful Soul, Ten Steps to a Beautiful Body, Yoga for the Spirit and Managing Ourselves - added to the cool, considered conspiracy.
Across the corridor, which was covered with deep-pile carpet, Gisela occupied a room identical to mine – except that it was larger, had a complimentary fruit bowl and the bathroom was draped with more towels.
No child ever set foot in Claire Manor. None would be permitted to invade its pink, scented, draped and hushed interiors.
I stretched out to experiment with toe aerobics, and tried to recapture the uplift of spirits I had experienced when Gisela and I arrived in Reception. ‘I can run amok,’ I confided to Gisela. ‘Eat pickled onions and order a BLT on Room Service at four in the morning.’
She had looked at me oddly. ‘Minty, this is a health farm. May I remind you that your body is a temple?’
In the cold light of morning, groggy with the sleeping pill, an all-too-vivid mental picture took shape. I knew that Lucas and Felix would be sitting up in bed and saying to Eve, ‘Mummy’s gone too.’
As we ate dinner (mung beans and onion ragoût), Roger phoned Gisela twice for no good reason. Gisela listened, soothed, then apologized for the intrusion. ‘Roger gets agitated when I go away. He hates it.’ She poked at a bean. ‘This is a man who has run a couple of large companies and made millions…’
‘And?’ I prompted when she fell silent.
Gisela grasped her water glass. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. But not tonight.’
The threat of the conversation-to-come loomed over me as the last vestiges of sleep fell away. There was a knock at the door and a girl in shell-pink uniform came in carrying a tray. She had thick fair hair pulled up into a ponytail and a stern expression. ‘Your breakfast.’ She placed a single cup of hot water with a slice of lemon beside the bed. ‘It’s a beautiful day,’ she commented, as she pulled back the curtains and warm sunlight flooded in. ‘You’ve had your programme explained to you.’ She picked up the printout on the table and checked it. ‘Do you know where to go for your first appointment?’ She pressed a hand on my foot under the bedclothes. It was a professional touch, designed to reassure and give the illusion of expertise. ‘Enjoy your day.’
‘My body is a temple,’ I muttered, and sipped the hot water. On the breakfast-satisfaction index, it had a long way to go.
At home, Felix would be staring glumly into his cereal bowl as he did every morning. Breakfast was not Felix’s thing. ‘Not hungry.’ Lucas would have eaten his already, quickly and efficiently. They had grown cunning and wily, accomplices in deception. When he thought I wasn’t looking, Felix slid his bowl to his brother. I watched for that. Nathan and I had discussed the prospect of Lucas becoming all-powerful over Felix. Nathan had scratched his head and said, without a trace of irony, ‘It’s the law of the jungle. They’ll have to learn.’
‘That’s strange,’ I had said. ‘Usually I’m the toughie, and you’re the softie.’
‘Times change,’ said Nathan.
They had. They had. Times had changed out of all recognition.
I picked up the phone and called Eve. ‘Everything all right?’
She sounded hoarse and tired. ‘I think.’ ‘Yοu think?’
She coughed, a nasty sound. ‘It is all right.’
Nine o’clock. Fitness class. I went through the motions. Squeeze pelvic floor (now they tell you). Control breathing. Contract sitting bones and concentrate on hip flexors. The language and the commands issuing from the lips of a slender instructor in grey sweats were familiar. Their aim was that unreachable perfection. That was how she made her living.
‘Stretch.’ ‘Flex.’ ‘Bend.’ Along the way to this moment, I had picked up another language, now more familiar than this one, which was full of commands like ‘Wash behind your ears’ and ‘Just you get into the bath’ and ‘I’ll have no more nonsense’. Its aim? To get me through the day intact, and to end up with a pair of fed and washed boys.
Ten thirty. I climbed naked into a contraption that resembled an iron boot, and was encased in mud to my neck. It was not an entirely pleasurable sensation. An hour later, I was hosed down by another honey-blonde in a white uniform. She directed a stream of water on to my torso. I yelped. It was ice cold. The girl smiled encouragingly. ‘You’re doing very well, Mrs Lloyd.’ Her gaze slid over my stomach and hips.
I grabbed a towel and wrapped it round me. Used as I was to nakedness at the gym, I had not until this moment appreciated how delightful and desirable modesty was.
After each procedure, the girls in charge – the white uniforms – wrote a report and slid it into the plastic folder that every client carried around.
One o’clock. Wearing dazzling white towelling dressing-gowns, Gisela and I met for lunch: French beans and walnuts in a lemon dressing. The dining room was sunny, with a view of an immaculate English garden in which delphiniums and poppies mingled with exotically shaped foliage.
‘My report card?’ Gisela seemed distracted. ‘Oh, it’s fine. Except they think my diet’s unbalanced, which I assured them it was not.’ She pulled herself together. ‘Have you rung home? All under control?’
‘Eve sounded a bit strange, but so far so good.’
The dressing on the beans had been made extra, extra tart and the inside of my mouth puckered at the first mouthful. I had never cared for lemons. A tall, tanned man at the adjacent table was gazing with unabashed horror at the plate of mung beans and tofu that had been placed in front of him. He looked across to me, and I found myself smiling in sympathy. He shook his head, and smiled back.
Gisela was not enjoying her meal. Unusually, she was jumpy and unsettled. I forced down a mouthful. ‘I guess Marcus has issued an ultimatum.’
She leant back in her chair.
‘He’s called your bluff,’ I went on. ‘It’s either Roger or him?’
Gisela picked up a spoon and attacked the small slice of paw-paw balanced on a piece of melon. ‘It’s very inconvenient of him to make a fuss at the moment.’
‘Poor Marcus.’
The corners of Gisela’s mouth went down. ‘He knew the situation.’
That was irrefutable, and I pondered the rules of Gisela’s life. Was Marcus a permanent lover or was he only permitted to be so between husbands? Was there a code of practice for this sort of thing? The melon on my plate was unripe and frigidly cold, and my teeth jumped as I bit into it. ‘What are you going to do?’
She tensed. ‘That’s what I want to talk about.’
‘I’m touched that you feel you can confide in me… and this is wonderful,’ I gestured to the room, ‘but I don’t know that I can help.’
‘I’m surprised.’ Gisela was taken aback. ‘You’ve been there. In your time you’ve been ruthless, and I wanted your clear head.’
<
br /> I absorbed this in silence. After a moment, I said, ‘But you knew that, one fine day, you’d arrive at this point.’
She sighed. ‘I tried not to think about it because I knew that if I did I’d lose my nerve. Even I thought how peculiar and far-fetched the set-up was. Marcus accepted that I wasn’t going to marry him until he began to make some money. He had other women too, and whenever I was free he wasn’t, and vice versa. The timing was hopeless. But I always told him he was free to go, and he could have abandoned me years ago. It’s only now that he’s put his foot down. I never quite meant not to marry him. Things didn’t work out quite right.’
‘I don’t hold any brief for Roger,’ I said, ‘but I suspect it would hurt him a lot if you left.’
Gisela bit her lip. ‘Normally I don’t have this problem. My husbands usually die, and that’s quite different.’
‘Quite different.’ The conversation wasn’t leaving a good taste in my mouth and I applied myself to the frozen melon.
Gisela had abandoned hers. ‘I’ve realized something rather dispiriting. I’m no longer a risk-taker.’ I was about to say that I considered her to be quite the reverse when she added, ‘Marcus has been my life. If I say no to him I’m cutting him off for ever, and I can’t bear to think of that. Being married to Roger is more complicated than it ever was with Nicholas or Richmond. They left me alone in a way that Roger doesn’t.’
‘Are you sure he has no idea about Marcus?’
Gisela dropped her eyes to the table. ‘No.’
The big hand of the clock over the buffet table had inched on to the hour. ‘Gisela, I’ve got an appointment with hot stones. We’ll have to continue this conversation later.’
Gisela consulted her file. ‘And I’m for the mud.’
She hurried off, and as I threaded my way through the tables, the tanned man said as I passed, ‘I ate the tofu.’
‘And lived?’ I murmured.
‘just.’
Whoever dreamt up the hot-stones treatment had known a thing or two about the human psyche. The girl in the white coat explained that, during the Middle Ages, patients were cupped with heated glasses to draw out their bad humours and this was not a dissimilar process. Such a neat idea, and so suggestive. Bad temper, ill grace and melancholy could be dispersed with a hot glass or stone. So, too, could grief and regret – if you believed it.
I emerged with red patches imprinted on my skin and a pounding head – the toxins making their exit felt – and fell on to a massage couch.
An angel in white pressed confidently on my spine, a light, detached touch.
Behind my closed eyelids, the twins ran downstairs on a Saturday morning and into the kitchen. ‘Daddy, what are we going to do today?’
And Nathan, biting into his toast, would say something along the lines of ‘Well, I think I’ll test you on your spelling.’ Then, when the cry of outrage went up, ‘No? what a surprise. I thought you boys loved spelling. I’d better think of something else. Let me see, what about doing some dusting for Mummy? No?’ Five minutes or so later, the twins having unaccountably rejected homework, housework and gardening, Nathan pulled in his fish. ‘Wait for it, yes, one of you is sending me a message. It says… I’m getting it… What does it say? Adventure playground and pizza? Am I right?’
Very often I had said, ‘Oh, Nathan, just tell them.’
The masseur’s fingers sought out the area of my sciatic nerve. That particular game had been played for the last time, and I was shaken by its loss. I would miss its absurdities, the crackle it imparted to a Saturday morning.
‘You’re very tense, Mrs Lloyd,’ the girl remarked.
How many times a day did she repeat this mantra – so soothing in its understated sympathy? She was implying that those lying on her couch had the troubles of the world locked into their muscles and only she, the professional, could help.
She cupped my head and manipulated my neck. ‘I think you’re especially stressed. I can tell from the way the muscles have clenched.’ The fingers dug and probed. ‘They are very…’ she paused for effect ‘… tight.’
It was like being given a medal. My fatigue was proof that I mattered in the outside world – all those burnt-out movers and shakers – and I merited a place on this couch. I needed her, and she required my depleted state as a reason for working. It was a tidy arrangement.
At the end of the session, she fussed over the removal of the towels. ‘I’ll leave you now.’ She stood in the doorway. ‘You must take care of yourself, Mrs Lloyd.’ She meant every word, yet none of them.
‘Thank you.’
I had just arranged myself satisfactorily beside the pool, which was a deep turquoise flanked by fake marble pillars, when I felt a presence. It was the man from the dining room.
‘Hello.’
My response was polite, if not enthusiastic. ‘Hi.’
‘I could do with some company.’ He smiled invitingly. ‘I’m here on my own, and finding it tough.’
‘Food killing you?’
He dropped into the seat beside me. ‘Whoever invented tofu deserves to be taken to the vet and put down.’
I laughed. ‘You can order the non-diet diet, you know.’
‘I shall. Name’s Alan Millett. I’m here because my family have thrown me out while they organize my birthday surprise. They don’t know that I know.’
‘But you went along with it?’
‘Why not? It’s giving Sally, Joey and Ben enormous pleasure. I agreed that I needed a bit of a break and allowed them to pack me off.’
The plastic envelope fell to the ground and I bent over to pick it up. I found myself looking up at Alan Millett in the way I’d looked at Nathan when Rose had taken me home to meet him. Alan Millett looked back at me. He had an open, honest face. It said, ‘I am a family man, and I love my family but… hey, you know what?’
‘You have interesting eyes,’ he said. ‘Has anyone ever told you so?’
Had my Pavlovian responses been blunted? Why did I not feel, This might be worth a punt? Why did I not instinctively arrange my features into invitation? I sat up straight. ‘Yes. My husband.’
A woman at the other end of the pool stood up and peeled off her dressing-gown to reveal a bright red swimsuit. She stepped lightly, confidently down the pool steps and launched herself, with a muffled gasp, towards the centre.
Alan Millett tried again: ‘Would you like a drink? I think there’s pounded wheat-grass juice or something equally unspeakable.’
‘You haven’t taken to the culture.’
‘Not in the slightest,’ he said cheerfully.
‘I’m with you, but please don’t say anything. My friend has given me this as a present.’
‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘I’d have thought you’d be all for it.’
I watched the swimmer for a moment, then asked, ‘What’s your birthday surprise?’
‘A party with a marquee and all the works. They must have thought I was blind. Strange markings on the lawn. A stash of candles. And, most telling of all, my wife bought a pair of bathroom scales. That means she’s trying to squeeze into a new dress.’ He spoke affectionately.
‘You’ll enjoy it?’
‘Sure. It’s not every day you turn fifty. Why not celebrate?’ He inclined slightly in my direction and raised an eyebrow. I knew that I had only to respond and opportunity would fall into my lap. Light, amusing and with no strings. ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ he added.
‘I didn’t say, but it’s Minty.’
‘Unusual. And why are you here?’
‘For all sorts of reasons.’ I got to my feet and tied my dressing-gown cord tightly round my middle. ‘Your family sounds very nice, and I hope your party’s a success.’
I left him staring thoughtfully into the pool’s blue depths.
As I dressed for dinner in the luxurious room, I found myself talking to Nathan. ‘I was the target of a pickup today.’
‘And?’
‘Not interes
ted, Nathan. He was very nice, but it isn’t the same.’
The answer to that was indistinct.
I was frightened that I was beginning not to remember Nathan with any precision. My memories of him were already blurring and changing shape. Was that true? Was it really like that? Did he really say that to me?
20
‘Minty, you worried me last night.’ Gisela was blunt. ‘You looked terrible.’
Rule Five: apart from life or death situations, a friend’s duty is to lie.
‘It’s the toxins,’ I said. ‘They won’t be told.’
It was early on Sunday morning and we had escaped into the manicured manor grounds – ha-ha and borders, stone steps and an expanse of lawn – for fresh air before the day’s work. It was going to be hot, but we had caught the moment when the air and plants were fresh. It felt good to be alive.
Gisela pressed the case: ‘For obvious reasons, you’re not at your best,’ she lowered her voice sympathetically, ‘but is anything in particular worrying you? You can tell me, you know.’
‘It comes and goes,’ I admitted. ‘I panic’ Even to articulate the word caused the ever more efficient black feelings to take up residence in my chest. ‘I panic that I can’t carry what I’ve got to carry.’
Gisela, the adventurer and realist, understood perfectly. ‘You’ve got enough money, I take it? The pay-out?’ The insider who would be privy to the exact sum of the Vistemax severance package, courtesy of pillow talk, but could not admit it, she spoke with extreme delicacy.
‘Let’s put it this way, I need my job for the time being.’
She regarded me shrewdly. ‘Sometimes we get what we want.’
‘I didn’t want Nathan dead.’
‘I meant, you wanted a serious job. And at least you know what you have to do. There’s a lot to be said for that.’ She kidnapped my arm. ‘No feeling sorry for yourself. Understand? It’s the resort of the stupid. And don’t think, Minty.’
Between not thinking and not feeling sorry for myself, there wouldn’t be much space. But Gisela had a point: setting stern standards to curb internal wails was sensible and life-preserving.
The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly Page 22
