Other People's Husbands

by Judy Astley

  Charlie was too young to care about the ducks or admire the view across to Petersham Meadows, but walking by the river was what you did with babies and Sara liked the continuation of tradition. She’d wheeled her own daughters along this path, thrown bread to the ancestors of these same mallards. Any hour of any weather-bearable day, parents and grandparents were out here with infants, enjoying this time-honoured way of entertaining them. Sara, leaving Cass at the house to do whatever she wanted in precious, uninterrupted peace – whether it was unpacking and sorting her room, washing her limp hair or simply lying on her old bed staring at the glow stars on the ceiling – pushed the buggy along the towpath and talked to Charlie as he waved his hands excitedly whenever the patterns of shadows from overhanging trees fell across his face. They seemed to delight him, these swift-changing moments of light and dark. He smiled, sometimes breaking into a giggle, startling himself with new noises and reactions. How wonderful, she thought, this constant discovery that babies had. How innocent and delightful to be thrilled by the pattern of shadows, the fall of a twig.

  She thought of Marie, whose discovery of new love was giving her that giggly all-is-bliss look that Charlie had in his sweet baby way. She too was like someone who was looking at everything around her as if for the first time. Where, Sara wondered, did that leave her husband? Relegated to the unwanted pile like so much jumble? Marie said the Angus thing was ‘separate’ – but how could that work? She felt curious about it, really trying hard to think inside Marie’s head. Mike was almost as much her friend as Marie was. She often met up with him in the park, dog-walking. How was she ever going to face him, knowing what she knew? And what a mad waste of time it all seemed. Sara knew she was lucky: how, she thought as she watched the swans chasing the mallards across the Thames, could sex with someone who wasn’t Conrad be better than what she already got (if a tad rarely, just now)? It had always been top of the range with him. No wonder she had trouble imagining casual adultery – what, exactly, would be to gain?

  At the slipway outside the White Swan pub, she pushed the buggy a little way down the slope so Charlie could get close to the ducks and geese that had already sensed the presence of a bag of stale bread and were whizzing across the water towards them.

  ‘Hey, look at the ducks, Charlie!’ Sara knelt beside him and threw a handful of bread into the water. Charlie was solemn, staring eye to eye at a bold Canada goose that had come out of the river and was fast approaching, too close for comfort in Sara’s opinion. On land it was a huge thing, way bigger than Charlie, standing almost to her own waist and in too-easy pecking range of the baby’s fuzzy-haired oversized head. She shooed it away, throwing bread for it to chase, and it ambled off, back to the river, to fight it out with ducks and swans.

  ‘Funny how no one ever says that break-your-arm thing about the geese, isn’t it, even though there’s not much in it in size between them and swans?’ Sara turned to see if she was the one the voice (male) was addressing. There was no one else around, so it had to be her. The man who’d spoken was sitting with the last inch of a pint of something at one of the pub’s picnic tables, out on the raised terrace alongside the slipway. Coming up to high tide, the water lapped at the edges of the paving. It would soon be flooding right across, as it did at every spring tide. He was about her age; more actor than accountant, she’d say at first glance. An early summer tan, longish dark hair that was greying here and there, crumpled loose blue linen shirt that had surely never seen an iron and was all the better for it.

  She smiled at him. ‘Maybe geese are known to be a bit weak in the wing. Maybe it really is only swans that could break your arm! There have probably been tests. Any minute now we’ll read about it in the papers, one of those scientific reports where you wonder why anyone would waste their time trying to find out what they’ve learned.’

  He laughed. It was a warm, soft laugh – no sarcasm in it, just enjoyment of the moment. ‘Definitely. Like the one where women walk differently when they’re fertile! I don’t know – I wouldn’t like to be on the wrong end of either a goose or swan in an arm-breaking contest. But . . . er . . . if your baby wouldn’t object, can I offer you a drink?’

  Sara hesitated, then thought about what Marie had said that morning about time out just for herself. What was to race back for? A daughter full of post-natal bad-boyfriend gloom, Pandora arriving any minute and certain to crow ‘told you so’ at her poor sister, Conrad childishly negative about any possible plans regarding his forthcoming birthday (just as he would be if there weren’t any plans), dinner to finish cooking . . . She felt the warm, lazy, spring sun on her hair . . . it was no contest.

  ‘OK, thanks, yes, that would be good. A spritzer would be lovely and I’m sure Charlie won’t mind staying here for a bit longer. And he’s not my baby, by the way, he’s my daughter’s!’

  She wheeled the buggy away from the river and went to sit on the bench across from this casually friendly man.

  He laughed. ‘You’re a grandmother? Good God, they’d better redefine the term. You look about eighteen!’

  She did look young, Sara was well aware of it. Unsurprisingly, given the age difference, when they first got together it had often been assumed that Conrad was her father, not her lover. But then she’d gone on looking like a teenager well into her late twenties, and had learned not to mind the uncontrollable looks of mild horror when people realized the truth. The first had been a barman in a pub in Henley – she recalled it well. He’d said to her, ‘OK, so that’s a pint for your dad, and what can I get you?’

  ‘He’s my lover, actually.’ Sara, defensive, had gone for the bravado option. The barman had looked as if he would like to throw the two of them out on grounds of all-out perversity. She’d been that close to finding her driving licence, to show him she was actually heading for twenty-one.

  ‘None of his business. Don’t take it personally – the world’s full of pillocks,’ Conrad had calmly murmured to her, leading her to a seat outside in the sun. That was by the river too, swans, ducks, geese again.

  What on earth am I doing here? Sara asked herself as she watched this stranger take the steps to the bar two at a time. It was five o’clock on a spring afternoon, and one way of interpreting this was that she was being picked up. Did the presence of the baby render the situation one of unarguable innocence, or was she being dull and suburban for giving a thought to whether she was being reckless or not?

  ‘So . . .’ he said, putting her drink on the table.

  ‘So . . .’ she echoed.

  There was laughter and a pause in which they looked at each other with mutually surprised intensity.

  ‘I don’t usually do this, you know,’ he said. ‘Only . . . well I had one of those moments of thinking, hell why not? I don’t just mean about asking you if you fancied a drink, I mean the whole coming down to the pub on a whim thing. I moved in round the corner back there a few weeks ago. The cottage with the pink bench outside it; do you know it?’

  ‘Ah . . . Alma’s old place. I did wonder who’d moved in. It’s a very pretty house, though I haven’t been inside it for a while.’ Did that sound as if she expected him to invite her there? Not that it mattered, but she did seem to have all the family caution genes, unlike her sister; if she was anything like Lizzie, she’d not only go and check out his home’s decor but would almost certainly be in his bed within the hour, airily dismissing any scruples as bourgeois.

  ‘And I don’t usually do this either, by the way,’ Sara continued, before he could interpret her comment on his cottage one way or another. ‘When you were getting the drinks I thought, is this sensible? Or would I have even had that thought if you’d been a woman?’ She laughed, feeling that she was gabbling nervously. ‘Not that women tend to sit around in pub gardens by themselves in the afternoons drinking on their own and inviting strangers to join them.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘They sit around in coffee shops with overpriced lattes having a sneaky look at the tab
loids, so why not a pub?’

  ‘Hmm . . . why not a pub . . . ?’ She laughed. ‘A woman drinking alone brings to mind someone mildly mad, wearing a hat covered in wilting wild flowers.. .’

  ‘A crazy hat and scarlet shoes,’ he added. ‘That whole bunch of old prejudices, as if a woman out drinking alone must be either an alcoholic or furiously drowning personal trauma.’

  ‘One of life’s big unfairnesses, and I’ll remember that next time I wear my own red shoes and I notice people looking at me sideways,’ Sara said, watching Charlie chewing his cloth rabbit. ‘Of course, way down the list would be that she could be simply enjoying wine in the sunshine,’ she added.

  ‘As we are,’ he said. ‘No hidden agenda, perfectly simple.’

  ‘Perfectly simple,’ she agreed. Their glasses clinked together and a sparkle of sunlight set a prism of coloured lights dancing on the table. Charlie waved his baby fists and smiled.

  ‘Will she be paying rent?’

  Pandora stalked round the kitchen table, slamming cutlery down on it almost at random, not caring that it ended up pointing in all directions as if arranged by a five-year-old trying to be helpful. Sara took a deep, calming breath and stopped herself from commenting. These items were only knives and forks and spoons. This was not earth-shattering stuff and not worth getting cross about. Several years ago, when Pandora had been a fourteen-year-old pick-and-mix of erratic, furious hormones, Sara’s sister Lizzie had given her a book on surviving teendom. Rule no. 1 had been:’Only pick fights with teenagers over issues of essential personal safety (theirs and yours), otherwise all conversation for the next five years will be combative.’ Five years? Ten now and counting. If sixty was the new thirty, did that mean twenty-four was the new thirteen? It seemed horribly likely.

  ‘If you mean Cassie, no of course she won’t be paying rent. Why would she?’ Sara went to the fridge in search of the Dijon mustard. The jar, when she dug it out from behind the redcurrant jelly, was virtually empty – only the thinnest smears of the stuff remained around the sides. Conrad again. A horrible little flash of mortality recognition crossed her brain as she accepted that he was way past changing. By this stage in his life he was never, ever going to stop putting empty jars back in the fridge or cupboards, however often she reminded him not to.

  There had also been a couple of cold sausages in the fridge. Their fat-smeared plate, lightly crumbed with meaty shards, was still there. He liked to dunk sausages in the mustard, scooping up huge dollops of it. He dismissed all consideration of germs and hygiene as namby-pamby garbage. Another connection he refused to make was to link the idea of a used, empty plate with the dishwasher. This was something else that wasn’t going to change. As with surviving life with a teenager, she would have to keep quiet. These things, these little ant nests of annoyance, they weren’t worth picking fights over. Or at least individually they weren’t . . . there would surely come a time when the sheer number of gripes built up to explosion point. What then? Wait and see, she told herself, deal with it in the if-and-when.

  ‘So Cass’ll be living here and she won’t have to pay any living expenses. Is that right?’ Pandora stood with her hands on her narrow little hips. She was wearing a long skinny sleeveless purple top and her arms were twiggish like a child’s. Her usual row of silver bangles hung loose over her right wrist, and the watch on the other one dangled over her hand. She was scowling, challenging. She was like her work, Sara thought suddenly – all Pandora’s paintings were furiously executed, great slashes of anger. Where had this come from? Her childhood had been as happy as Cassandra’s, surely? She had a first in fine art, growing interest from galleries, early success and . . . OK, a job in a restaurant, just a bill-payer, a fill-in. But didn’t every painter have to do such jobs, starting out? And many at the finish as well?

  Sara managed to scrape a spoonful of mustard out of the jar and into a bowl, adding salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar. As she stirred in the balsamic vinegar she began a calm, slow explanation for Pandora.

  ‘Look, Panda. It’s what you do as a parent. You accommodate your children when they need it. Cass is finding it all a bit hard to cope with just now and she’s asked to stay for a while, that’s all. It could even be a touch of post-natal depression, who knows? You know that you can come back and live here too if you ever need to, don’t you? But Conrad and I don’t need to take money off you or Cass, so why should we? What would be the point?’

  ‘OK.’ Pandora picked a sliver of plum varnish off her thumbnail. ‘It’s just some of us are out there in the real world working for a pittance and having to pay rent and always thinking can I afford it about almost every tiny little thing, including a pint of milk and a pizza . . . and, well, everything. And Cass chose to have a baby – she must have known what she was getting into. Some of us are more . . .’

  ‘More what?’ Cassandra stood in the doorway, tendrils of her wet hair escaping from a loosely wrapped towel. She was carrying Charlie, whose baby head snuggled against her shoulder. ‘More careful, were you going to say? Go on Panda, don’t hold back will you?’ Her voice was rising with her anger. ‘Cos I wouldn’t want to think you’d gone all kind and sweet and sympathetic and were completely different from the sister I’d always known and loved!’

  ‘What’s to sympathize about?’ Pandora shouted back. ‘You’ve always . . .’

  ‘You girls, please . . . will you for once just shut up!’

  Sara let fly, hard, with the mustard jar. It was an anger-

  backed, powerful throw. The sound of the window breaking was bliss. It took a luxuriously long time for the glass shards to tumble, to settle into the leaves of the herb plants along the ledge, and as the last silvery slivers tinkled into the sink Sara let go of a long-held breath, feeling the air cool across her overheated lips. Strangely, in the milliseconds before sense kicked back in and she realized what a crazy moment she’d had, a vision came to her of Marie trussed up tightly in her pink basque, tangled with a man on a starchy white hotel bed. But it wasn’t Marie’s secret lover Angus whom Sara had never met that appeared in the scene, but the friendly man from the pub. She didn’t even know his name.

  ‘Mum!’ Both girls shrieked at the same time. Sara looked at the broken glass as if she didn’t quite recognize what it was, and then at Cassandra, who was wide-eyed and frightened, clutching Charlie tightly to her and with her hand across his head. For a moment, none of them moved; all three frozen in the shock of the moment. After the crash of the glass, the silence was heavy.

  ‘Stay there,’ Pandora quietly ordered her sister. ‘You and Charlie stay right away from the glass.’ She approached Sara silently, took her arm and led her to the table. ‘Mum, sit here, just keep still and quiet and don’t move. Cass, go and get Dad, will you? I’ll clear this lot up.’

  ‘OK. Is he in the studio?’ Cassandra quickly strapped Charlie into his bouncy chair and opened the door.

  ‘No,’ Sara told her, feeling flat and miserable. ‘He’s out by the pool smoking one cigarette after another. He walked the dog, then came home in a funny mood and suddenly decided he was a smoker again.’

  ‘But it’s been years . . . Oh never mind.’ Pandora went to the fridge and took out a bottle of wine, poured a large glass for her mother and then pulled a dustpan and brush out from under the sink. ‘Most of the glass is outside in the garden,’ she said. ‘That can wait till the morning.’

  Sara sipped her wine cautiously. Maybe she shouldn’t have any more, she thought. How much more crazy would she get if she drank too much of it? Pandora was being gentle, treating her as if she was suddenly ill. Perhaps she was. She felt stiff, tired and disgruntled.

  ‘Sara?’ Conrad raced in through the door, followed by Cassandra.

  ‘Dad, mind the glass!’

  He took no notice, crunching across it to get to Sara. ‘What’s wrong? What happened?’ He sat beside her and pulled her close against him.

  Sara shrugged. ‘I broke a window.’

  ‘
You broke a window? What, on purpose?’ He looked amazed, delighted.

  ‘Dad, you sound, like, proud of her?’ Cass looked confused.

  ‘Leave it, Cass.’ Pandora abandoned the dustpan and hauled her sister through to the sitting room. ‘You know what they’re like,’ she said quietly. ‘Mum just totally lost it. He is proud of her. Look at them.’

  ‘Yuck,’ Cassandra murmured, turning away from the sight of her parents wrapped around each other, apparently oblivious to anyone else and to the damage. Pandora sighed. Were neither of those two going to clear up the glass? And what about dinner?

  ‘And before you say anything, Sara my love, I know what this family gathering is all about, so I’ll let you off the hook right now, even at the risk that you’ll start hurling plates round the room. I really, truly don’t want a birthday party,’ Conrad announced as he poured cream on the lemon tart. ‘I know you’ve been revving up all through dinner to talk about it and it’s very sweet of you all, but really, let’s just not bother, shall we? I’d feel like a small child. And as my second childhood’s rapidly approaching I really don’t want to tempt fate by trying the feeling on for size.’

  Conrad leaned back in his chair and smiled across the table at her. So good-looking he was still, craggy and arresting. Women still turned in the street to look at him. Unfair that, Sara thought. Why is it that men can be so beautiful in their later years with faces eroded like ancient cliffs, yet women, however copiously they religiously smother themselves with cosmetic protection, just look worn? Cheekbones – that was part of it. He’d got cheek-bones like Peter O’Toole’s, whereas she, with her round face that had always been thought cute, would simply end up with her skin drooping off her like a bloodhound.

  Sara’s mind had been a total blank as they’d eaten, and she’d completely forgotten about Conrad’s birthday. She’d been vaguely aware that he was twitchy and had a weird ‘elsewhere’ sparkle in his eyes, but that wasn’t particularly unusual. He’d been like that so often over the years. Sooner or later he’d come out with it, maybe an announcement that he’d been asked to paint Keira Knightley floating Ophelia-style beneath Hammersmith Bridge among urban-river flotsam. Or that he’d been offered a knighthood and was going to turn it down. She could wait.