The Would-Be Wife

by Annie Wilkinson

  He put the light out, and got into bed beside her. ‘It’s Sunday tomorrow. He won’t be open. He’ll ring when she’s ready to be collected.’

  They turned their backs to each other. Making friends was not on the agenda that night, for either party.

  Chapter 52

  Lynn took Simon down to Margaret’s the following day. After the boys had gone out to play she handed her their mother’s letter, and waited until she had read it.

  ‘I’m seeing Janet on Wednesday, but I’m going to Scarborough on Thursday, if I can scrape the money together,’ she said. ‘Do you fancy coming?’

  ‘I can’t. I’m working, and anyway, that’s the day my dad’s home. He’ll have nobody else to do his washing or make him a meal, and he likes to see the lads, so no. Just give her all our love.’

  ‘How’s George? Has he had any more nightmares?’

  ‘One or two. He soon gets over them.’

  ‘Do you fancy inviting us to dinner? Graham’s decided he’s spending the day at the golf club, for a change.’

  ‘Seems to be his home from home,’ Margaret said. ‘When do you ever get a look in?’

  They stood together at the kitchen sink after dinner with Margaret washing the pots, and Lynn drying them and putting them away. A song began gently playing on the radio, called Sailor. Margaret stopped her washing up, and listened to the singer declaring undying love for her sailor and pleading with to him to leave the sea and return to the ‘harbour of her heart’. Silent tears began to trickle down Margaret’s face. At repetition of the words ‘. . . come home safe to me . . .’ the trickle became a flood, streaming from eyes and nose, down cheeks and chin and into the washing-up water. Lynn dropped the tea towel and led her to a chair, then found her a handkerchief, which was drenched at the first blow. Margaret’s tears flowed on and on, silent and terrible, and so copiously that Lynn handed her a threadbare but clean tea towel, and sat with her until she’d cried it out.

  ‘I lost two beautiful babies, the only daughter I’ll ever have, but what would I have done – how could I have managed, on my own?’ Margaret choked, twisting the towel in her hands and gazing at Lynn with reddened, puffy eyes. ‘And I feel so awful for thinking we’re better off without them, with him gone.’

  Guilt, Lynn thought. ‘Oh, Margaret, it wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘None of it’s your fault.’

  ‘My poor babies, they never had a chance. He took their father, and then He took them. That’s what God’s done for us.’

  Lynn had no answer for her; no solution to offer except the traditional and hopelessly inadequate: ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  *

  Janet picked up two lunchtime glasses of beer and lime from the bar and handed one to Lynn. ‘He’s been doing a lot more than sampling a few different ales in a few different pubs,’ she said, following Lynn to one of the empty tables. ‘He’s been sampling one of my friends from work – correction: somebody I thought was a friend.’

  ‘How did you find out?’ Lynn asked as they sat down together.

  ‘He got that fussy about the inside of the van being clean – it was just before you said I ought to get out with him more. I started thinking after you’d gone, and I thought: why’s he putting himself to all that trouble, just for his mates? It could be a pig sty, and they wouldn’t even notice. And he wasn’t as frisky as usual, either – in bed, I mean.

  ‘Well, we’d gone to break together, me and this lass, and I started telling her all about it, as you do, when you think you’re talking to a friend – and she blushed, absolutely bright red, and she looked as guilty as hell. She’d been to our house a few times, and Dave had run her home in the van. I was stunned, but I didn’t say anything. I thought: I know the pubs he goes to – I’ll get a taxi round the lot of ’em next time he’s out, and I’ll walk in and catch ’em together. So the other night he told me he was going to the Old Grey Mare, so that’s where I started, and I was spoiling for a fight.’

  ‘I’ve never been in that one,’ Lynn said.

  ‘Maybe you should have been. Anyway, Dave and his new friend weren’t there, but somebody else was. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I spotted Graham sitting in the corner in a cosy little twosome with some bint with long blonde hair. I walked through to the ladies’, to take particular notice, and when I came out, he was standing at the bar on his own waiting to be served. So I walked up to him and I said: “Does Lynn know you’re out with another bird?” “What do you think?” he says. So I said: “I think she doesn’t.” So he turned round and he says: “You’re right. Lynn’s my little mushroom. I keep her in the dark and I feed her on shit” – with a sort of “screw you” smirk on his face.

  ‘Well, I soon wiped that off. I gave him the back-hander I’d been keeping for Dave, and I split his lip with my engagement ring.’ She held her left hand out to display the large solitaire diamond Lynn had often seen before. ‘It’s quite a big stone,’ she added, with grim satisfaction. ‘I was politely asked to leave by the management after that, so I did.’

  Lynn grinned, in awe and admiration. ‘Action Woman! Well, at least it proves I’m not imagining things. It’s not Mrs Orme, though. She’s dark-haired. So did you find them, Dave and his woman?’

  ‘No, and it’s a bloody good job I didn’t, the way I was feeling. I was livid. I’d probably have ended up in clink.’ There was a gleam in her eye when she added: ‘He had to come home in the end, though, and he copped the lot.’

  ‘Poor Dave!’

  Janet’s face hardened. ‘Never mind poor Dave. He’ll toe the line, or else. I’m not going to be a martyr to him like you are to Graham.’

  ‘I’m not a martyr, Janet. I knew what he was before I married him, and you weren’t the only one who warned me. But I was so full of myself I thought: oh, he won’t be like that with me! I’m the one – the one perfect woman he’s been looking for all his life, the one woman in the world who can change him. That’s what he told me, and that’s what I believed – and it really did look as if I’d succeeded, up until Mandy made her appearance. I still half believed it when I let myself be conned into going back to him.’

  ‘You’re not the first to make that sort of mistake, and you won’t be the last,’ said Janet.

  ‘So now I’m devastated because the penny’s finally dropped, and I know he never will change. Why should he? He’s found a complete idiot who’ll put up with him screwing around.’

  ‘Well, if you’ll put up with him screwing around you are a martyr!’ Janet repeated. ‘What else are you? And now he’s kicking your dog, too. You’re lucky she’s only badly bruised. It might be you next, or Simon.’

  Martyr! Lynn felt the accusation like a slap in the face. Everything in her recoiled against the idea. ‘If I’m a martyr it’s not to Graham,’ she protested, ‘it’s to Simon and the ideal of solid families, and making your marriage work, like all good wives and mothers should. And I’ve certainly put plenty of effort into that.’

  ‘It needs more than the wife putting some effort into it,’ Janet said. ‘What about the husband? We haven’t seen much effort coming from him.’

  ‘He works hard,’ Lynn said. ‘I can’t take that away from him.’

  ‘He works hard,’ Janet repeated, ‘and he gets a good salary. So how much of that do you and Simon see? How much of his spare time, even? And is there any sign of it changing? No. Because you’ll take as much shit as he doles out for the sake of solid families and doing what you ought to do. And how solid is the family, with somebody like that in it?’

  Lynn was silent for a minute. ‘He’s never going to kick me around, or Simon – I’ve got no fear of that. He wouldn’t dare. My dad really would go for him then. He’d soon know what a good kicking was all about. But I’ll have to get a job,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to have some independence or I’ll turn into Connie. I can feel it starting to happen. And what’s worse is, I’m afraid Simon might turn into another Graham. I really worry about that.
I don’t want him taken around and about to be shown his father’s sordid games, and how to be a deceitful, treacherous little—’

  ‘Don’t let it happen, then,’ Janet said.

  Lynn was silent. Good advice, she thought, but the question was how to stop it happening. That was the bogey.

  ‘You will let it happen,’ said Janet. ‘He’s got you exactly where he wants you.’

  ‘The feeling I’ve had off him lately is that he doesn’t want me at all.’

  ‘He’s got his sights on the blonde bit, then,’ Janet said. ‘Haven’t you got any idea who she is?’

  ‘No,’ said Lynn.

  By the time she left to collect Simon and Lassie from Margaret, Lynn was feeling pretty bruised. Janet had given her a different sort of smack in the mouth to the one she’d given Graham, but she’d only said what Lynn had started to think. She certainly shot from the hip, that woman – but when it came to friends, better a straight talker than a sweet talker any day, Lynn thought.

  Chapter 53

  A very glamorous blonde receptionist sat behind the desk in the Grand Hotel in Scarborough, her face carefully made up, her shoulder-length hair beautifully cut and her nails polished. Simon gripped Lynn’s hand and shrank back, suddenly shy of the Nanna he hadn’t seen for weeks.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ Lynn said. ‘We were beginning to think you’d dropped off the face of the earth.’

  ‘We had a nice holiday, until Piers was fit to be seen, and then got into hotel work again, that’s all.’

  ‘Not a chambermaid any more then?’

  ‘Not if I can help it, but I do a bit of waitressing, if I’m pushed,’ her mother said, handing her a room key. ‘You’ve got a room with a nice view. You could have a cup of tea, and then take Simon on one of the cliff lifts, down onto the beach. I’d come with you if I could, but I don’t get off until after tea. We can have something to eat then, and have a walk on the seafront or something.’

  ‘Margaret sends her love,’ Lynn said, ‘and the lads’ love. She’s working, so they couldn’t come.’

  Her mother nodded, with a wistful expression on her face. ‘How’s your dad?’

  ‘All right. He landed this morning, but we were on our way here, so we didn’t see him.’

  ‘Well . . . can you manage your luggage, then? I see you haven’t brought much.’

  ‘No, we can only stay one night,’ Lynn said, and felt a twinge of sympathy at the disappointment on her mother’s face.

  She looked at Simon, her expression even more wistful. ‘Oh, well, we’ll get together at tea-time, anyhow.’

  After a day of travelling, paddling, sandcastle building and riding up and down the cliff lifts, Simon was weary, and went to sleep soon after their evening meal. Lynn sat in her very plush hotel room with her mother, looking out over South Bay to the castle.

  ‘I used to get fed up of being on my own, especially after you’d all gone,’ Nina said, ‘but I really wish I’d never started going out with Piers. The novelty soon wears off, and then you’ve lost everything. I wish I’d never started any of it. I’m sorry I’m not there to help our Margaret with the lads, and Simon – he was like my own child, and he treats me like a stranger now.’

  ‘I suppose a few weeks is a long time at his age,’ Lynn said.

  ‘It’s a pity Margaret couldn’t come, and bring the lads. I miss my own family.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Lynn said. ‘We’ll talk to my dad. We’ll talk him round.’

  ‘You’ve no chance. He slept in your bedroom all the time he was home, and then he cleared off to Margaret’s. He wanted me to grovel, and I wouldn’t bloody grovel, so he got nastier and nastier. You’ll have heard what happened just before I left. I’m better off where I am now than living like that. I’ll be all right. I could do a lot worse. Piers is pretty well off. I keep everything I earn for pin money, and he pays all our expenses. We might be able to get a place of our own, before long.’ She laughed. ‘He thinks the sun shines out of my rear end.’

  ‘Like my dad used to do.’

  ‘Used to, and never will again. That’s gone,’ Nina said, ‘and I don’t want to live with what’s left. And I’m going to sue for maintenance, if I can get it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah! He condoned what I’d done, and then he more or less chucked me out of my own home and told me to bugger off with Piers,’ Nina said, with a face like a sulky child.

  ‘He didn’t condone it!’ Lynn protested. ‘You just told me you slept in separate bedrooms. And he didn’t chuck you out. He only told you to make your mind up. You can’t do that, Mother.’

  ‘He made me scared to stay; that’s the same as chucking me out. You weren’t there, so you don’t know. And I ought to have told him about your slimy husband coming round with his propositions, as well, before I went.’

  ‘What!’ Lynn exclaimed, her eyes widening.

  ‘Aye. I was in two minds whether to tell you or not, it’s so sordid. He came while your dad was at Margaret’s. Well, I asked him in, and put the kettle on, like you do, like I did for months when he used to call while I was looking after Simon – and he starts by asking where Tom is and I said at Margaret’s, and not likely to be back till she’s out of hospital. So he stands there giving me this sympathetic look, and then he puts his arm round me and he says, “You know, he doesn’t deserve you, Nina. He should look after you a lot better than he does,” and all the time his hand’s groping round my backside. Because I’d gone off the rails once, I think he thought I’d go with anybody. “Oh, remind me who you are,” I said. “Don’t I recognise you? Aren’t you my daughter’s husband?”

  ‘I never told your dad. I wish I had now; because Graham’s the one that really deserves punching round the head, preferably till his eyes fall out of the sockets. So now you know what you’re up against.’

  Lynn was at a loss for words for a moment, unsure whether to believe it. She’d known for some time that Graham had no sense of decency, but this revelation was in a class of its own. Her stomach heaved. ‘I feel sick,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ Nina said, ‘it’s God’s honest truth.’

  Lynn nodded. Disgusting though it was, she believed her mother. ‘Slimy’s right,’ she said. ‘He’s a slime-ball, isn’t he? An absolute ball of slime. I wish I’d never gone back to him, and I probably wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t had all this “Simon needs a father” crap coming at me from all directions.’

  ‘Well, that was before I knew what a depraved little swine he really is. I wouldn’t be saying it now. He’s even worse than Janet said he was.’

  ‘She saw him in a pub when he was out with his latest.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, he’s at it again. Well, he never really stopped, did he? I suspected, but I had no proof, until she told me she’d seen him out with a blonde. So she clouted him. He came home with a fat lip.’

  Nina’s face lit up, and she laughed. ‘Oh, I’d have loved to have seen that. Good for her. I like her even better than I did before, now.’ Glancing at Simon she said, ‘It’s a pity he’s asleep. We could have gone for a walk on the promenade.’

  ‘Don’t you miss him, Mam – my dad?’

  ‘Yeah, I miss him, but I’m used to missing him. I missed him for the best part of our married life. We hardly knew each other, really,’ Nina said. ‘If I’m being honest, what I miss most is my own home and having my own family nearby. You’re what I miss, my own bairns and grandbairns, but you’ve all got your own lives, now.’

  ‘What about Piers’ wife?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Don’t you have any qualms about pinching her husband? Doesn’t he miss her?’

  ‘She’s a lot older than him – by about sixteen years, I think.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘If you’re silly enough to marry a man young enough to be your bairn, you can expect him to grow up and leave you,’ Nina shrugged.

&nb
sp; ‘That’s pretty brutal, Mother,’ Lynn said.

  ‘It’s the way it is,’ said Nina.

  The death of love – you grieve for that as much as for any other death, Lynn thought, on the train back home the following day. Graham’s betrayal would separate them more effectively than death could have done. Jim was gone, but in his heart he never left Margaret, nor ever would have done. He was still hers in that sense, as he had been hers in life. He had died loving Margaret and his boys, and Graham lived not loving Lynn, and not loving Simon all that much, either. Not really loving anybody, she suspected. The kind of worthless, shallow charmer that women ruin their lives for.

  Chapter 54

  The phone rang shortly after they got home. Graham was out, as usual.

  ‘Hello,’ Brenda said. ‘You remember that conversation we had in Schofields, about the code that’s like the omertà, and what you said about people leaving you in the dark?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ Lynn said.

  Brenda went on with her news, and Lynn’s eyes widened as she listened to another straight talker. When Brenda had finished Lynn finally understood how utterly futile it had all been, all that sacrifice on the altar of ‘making your marriage work’. She hung up, and turned to Simon.

  ‘Your grandad’s at home. I think we’ll pack a few things and stay at his house for a day or two.’

  ‘Hurray! I can play with Auntie Margaret’s lads’ he said.

  While they were waiting to be shown to a table at the Continental Restaurant on Princes Dock in the Old Town, Lynn spotted Graham. He was gazing at a young blonde, with that rapturous expression of total attention that Lynn used to bask in, but that hadn’t been directed at her for a long time. The expressions he kept for his wife these days ranged from indifference to contempt. Lynn watched the young woman who glowed under the lamp of Graham’s admiration – and felt a curious detachment. No grief, no bitterness, no jealousy, nothing. Graham evidently felt nothing for her, and in return she was happy to feel nothing for him.