Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  I knew I should leave. My painting was suffering—let’s face it, I hardly painted at all these days—but every time I tried, I couldn’t go through with it. The thought of not seeing him every day, not taking in his post, not typing up his letters and taking them in for him to sign, his blue eyes glancing up as I came through the door, his face creasing into a smile—or what was worse, imagining it creasing up for someone else—brought me out in a muck sweat and sent me scurrying back to my desk again.

  And then, a little over a year down the line—yes, I know, a whole year—something, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, something changed. Alex seemed distracted and upset, and Tilly, when she rang and asked to be put through to him, sounded tense. Curt, even. She rang less and less, and one day, came in solely, it seemed, to have a blazing row with him. I couldn’t hear what was said, but her voice was shrill and quivering. When she’d gone I turned to Jenny, a fellow secretary who worked for a senior partner. She’d looked at me in amazement.

  “Oh, yes, didn’t you know? He’s been having an affair. Tilly caught him out and she’s livid. I think they might be splitting up.”

  I sat there staring at her, speechless. Alex? My Alex? Having an affair? No, it was too preposterous. I felt the blood drain from my face. Felt sick. My insides shrinking. How? It was outrageous. Why, I was so close to him, kept his diary, knew his every move, I’d have noticed. I made my lips move, unaware of what they were saying. Surely no one at work?

  “No, no one here,” Jenny assured me. “And I only know because I know someone who knows her. It’s an old family friend, Tilly’s friend too, in fact. Eleanor Latimer.”

  “Eleanor Latimer!” I shrieked.

  Eleanor Latimer was indeed a good friend, a great friend, who’d grown up with Alex in the country, and whose husband was a friend of Alex’s, and whose children got on well with Alex’s, and whom they went skiing with every Easter, and to Tuscany in the summer. I knew. I booked the tickets. Organised the villas, the hotel rooms. I was the indispensable personal secretary about whom Eleanor raved, apparently—“Lucky you, Alex, having someone like Imogen as your right-hand girl!” Why, I’d even met her when she’d come in with her husband once, some frightfully grand titled chap, tall, lean and consumptive-looking in a covert coat, and met her again when she’d popped in on her own to have lunch with Alex…Lunch with Alex. Why didn’t I think? But I hadn’t, because, well, she was an old family friend, so why shouldn’t they have lunch together? And she was so jolly and nice, so chatty—not shy like Tilly, but matey, with her curly brown hair and merry eyes and laughing mouth. She’d perched on the edge of my desk and confided that it was Tilly’s birthday soon, and that Alex wanted to buy her some stuffy Georgian decanter, but she’d come in to persuade him to go to Cassandra Goad in Sloane Street.

  “Tilly doesn’t want a ship’s decanter for heaven’s sake,” she’d chortled. “She wants something sparkling in her ears!”

  “Are you ganging up on me?” Alex had come out of his office, smiling.

  “Imogen was just agreeing with me,” she laughed, winking at me. “You need to get your wife something she can wear, not pour the port with.”

  I gaped at Jenny. Eleanor Latimer. Eleanor Latimer!

  “How long?” I whispered.

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. Not my business. Doesn’t surprise me, though. Obviously got his brains between his legs, like most men.” Jenny’s Pete had been caught recently with his trousers down and her views on men were uncompromising and trenchant. She sniffed and stalked off to the photocopier.

  I’d walked home that night; all the way to Clapham. It took two hours in the pouring rain. That he could do such a thing. That he could transfer his affections, have an affair with another woman, and for it not to be me! The sense of betrayal was almost too much to bear. My heart felt like a shrivelled leaf fluttering in my chest, as if someone had reached in and squeezed it dry. I’d leave, I thought as I trudged up the steps to my front door, soaked to the skin: leave now. I’d hand in my notice in the morning. Yes, first thing.

  And I’d really meant to do it, but the following morning, as I arrived, Alex called me into his office and shut the door behind him. His face was ashen as he paced about the room; he was distraught. He wanted to talk to me as a friend, he said, as someone he could trust; someone he knew wouldn’t blab to the senior partners, who, it being an American bank, took a very dim view of anything immoral, anything untoward: he wanted my counsel. Tilly had thrown him out. He was staying in a hotel in Bayswater. It was all over between him and Tilly, had been for a long time, oh—he sat down on the sofa beside me and sighed—a long time, Imogen. After the second baby was born, she’d…well, you know. Lost interest. Become so wrapped up in the children, he’d felt excluded. And Eleanor—well, of course he adored Eleanor, always had done, he’d grown up with her. Should have married her really, but she’d married Piers, with his title, and his house in Tite Street and one day, his inheritance, Stockley. But he, Alex, had always loved her, and when Tilly had been so cold and remote and they, he and Eleanor, were together so often on holidays, or shooting weekends, well, they just couldn’t help themselves, do you see? His blue eyes had appealed to me.

  I’d swallowed hard. Had it been going on a while?

  No, not very long, and it didn’t happen often, because they hated themselves so terribly afterwards.

  “And will she leave Piers for you? Is that what’s going to happen?” I asked, half of me hating him for loving her and not me, and half of me ridiculously thrilled to be sitting here beside him on his sofa, listening to his confidences, our hands almost touching, hearing such intimate secrets. I was so close I could have reached a hand inside his jacket and felt his heart beating.

  “No,” he said in despair, looking down at his hands. Those hands I knew so well, had scrutinised so minutely. “No, that won’t happen. She’s too devoted to her children, her family. She won’t break up the home. She won’t leave Piers.”

  “But, you and Tilly…?”

  “I can’t go back to Tilly now.” He raised anguished eyes to me. “I don’t love her, Imogen. Not properly, and how could anything be the same after this?”

  “Would she have you?” I ventured.

  “I think…she would. Yes, she would. But…” He shook his head. Gazed bleakly into space. “It’s no good. I can’t pretend to patch something up if there’s nothing there any more. Can’t live a lie.”

  “Not even for the girls?”

  He shook his head sadly. “Not even for the girls.”

  He got up and walked to the window, his hands in his trouser pockets, his back to me; broad shoulders hunched in his pale blue shirt as he looked out at the cold grey morning. Which was where he was, of course: out in the cold. Out in a hotel in Bayswater, without Tilly and his children, and without Eleanor, who was distraught, according to Alex; torn between him and Piers, in turmoil; but had sensibly, in Alex’s opinion—and how he wished he could emulate her—gone back to her family. And Piers had been none the wiser. He’d been oblivious to what was going on, away on business a lot, tied up in his work.

  “But what will you do?” I’d asked.

  “Me?” Alex turned back from the window. “Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ve said I’ll let Tilly stay on in the house for as long as she wants. I’ll find a flat somewhere. Putney, maybe, near the Common. I’ve always liked it round there.”

  And he did. He took out a mortgage on a tiny groundfloor flat in Putney, and in time, Eleanor and her family moved out of London to the big house in Buckinghamshire—Piers’s widowed mother evidently deciding this was the moment to get round inheritance tax and move into the Dower House, enabling Eleanor, Piers and their children to move into Stockley and breathe new life into it. She was a shrewd old bird, by all accounts, and I secretly wondered if she knew the lie of the land and was putting a sensible distance between her daughter-in-law and Alex. Getting her out of London. (Sensible was a word that cropped up a lot in t
hose days, as if the two families had just been sorting out furniture and chattels, not broken hearts.)

  So Eleanor had a project, something to focus on, to get her teeth into. Stockley needed completely revamping, Alex would tell me on the odd occasion we had a drink together after work, it hadn’t been touched since the seventies, and the wiring was a deathtrap. Eleanor had quite a job on her hands, he said; just what she needed. “Drink up, Imogen. If we’re quick we’ll get another one in.”

  And I did drink up, and ate up too, when Alex and I shared the odd wine-bar supper together. Well, he was lonely—only that gloomy little flat to go back to, and rather less money to spend with his wealthy friends now that he was supporting two households—and he seemed to enjoy my company. Positively sought me out at the end of the day.

  Time passed, and eventually, of course, the inevitable happened. It was one of those evenings when we’d had a quick supper after work, and then I’d gone back to advise him on the décor of his flat in Putney, which, I’d assured him, didn’t have to be all white and minimalist just because it was a bachelor pad. A nice bank of book shelves across that blank wall in the sitting room, for example, wouldn’t go amiss—books always warmed a room up—and in the bedroom, why, that huge expanse of magnolia just cried out for a set of Beardsley prints. Here, I demonstrated, with a sweep of my hand; over the bed…

  Did I think about getting pregnant? Did I deliberately not mention the fact that I wasn’t on the pill, or neglect to ask him to use a condom? No. Not deliberately, but then, it was the last thing on my mind. The only thing on my mind, right then, was that finally, finally, this heavenly man was here in my arms, all mine, where, after all the to-ing and fro-ing, he rightly belonged. I was ecstatic. Incredibly, indescribably, heart-soaringly ecstatic. And so was he. If a little surprised. It felt so natural, so right, he told me afterwards with wide astonished eyes as we lay there, naked together in bed. He’d been so blind, he hadn’t seen what was so manifestly right in front of him all along, and was amazed that I had.

  “You knew?” He propped himself up on one elbow in the dark, the better to look down at me. “You knew this might happen one day?”

  “I’ve loved you pretty much from the word go.” I admitted in an extremely uncool manner. But why not, I reasoned. Better to frighten him off now, if frightened he was going to be, than have it all come out later on. No more games, no more pretending: this was me; upfront, honest. Take it or leave it.

  And he took it. He was flabbergasted, staggered, but also, I think, incredibly touched and flattered, and rather humbled that I’d kept it so quiet, never let him see I was besotted, never got pissed at an office party and propositioned him.

  “So you never knew?” I asked him, lying there in the dark, looking up at his face, stroking the crook of his arm. “Never suspected?”

  “Had no idea,” he admitted. “And why would I? I mean, it occurred to me often to wonder why you were working for me, this beautiful girl with her flowing blond hair, who everyone assures me paints like a dream and speaks fluent Italian. And of course I loved having you sitting outside my office—what man wouldn’t? A pearl amongst all those Southend secretaries who pour into Ludgate Circus every day, all those Sharons, and there I was, with this stunning, talented, highly educated girl; but it never occurred to me that…well, I’m fifteen years older than you, and you’re so…” He hesitated. “I always thought I was out of your league.”

  “And I thought I was out of yours.”

  We’d gazed at each other in the darkness. The realisation of what could have been, had I known more about his personal life, known that the physical side of his marriage was over years ago, and had he known about my feelings for him, crept up on us. We exchanged bemused smiles.

  “And Eleanor?” I asked hesitantly.

  He sighed, stroked my hair. “Eleanor was there at the time. She filled a gap. I’ll always be very fond of her, but…well, we’re just friends. Always will be.”

  I smiled into the handsome open face beside me as he lay back on the pillow, and conveniently forgot how he’d said, almost in tears in his office, not so long ago, how much he loved her. How, if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want Tilly either. I stretched out my hand and stroked his cheek. He took hold of my finger and kissed the tip of it.

  “Stay with me, Imogen?” he said softly.

  And I did. I moved into his flat and brought all my ramshackle worldly goods with me: a vanload of paintings and books and folksy cushions and a terrible exploding wicker chair. But when I discovered I was pregnant, I moved out again.

  I’d done the test with shaking hands, sitting there on the side of the bath, watching in horror as the thin blue line appeared. I did it again in disbelief, but it came back even stronger than ever. I packed my bags and hastened them down the path to the car. I’d taken the day off work, pleading sickness, so I left Alex a note on the table saying that he was right, the age gap was too great, too insurmountable, and that I was going back to Italy, to Florence, to paint.

  Instead I went to Clapham, where my friends welcomed me back with wonderment, but with open arms. At ten o’clock that evening, however, he appeared on the doorstep, eyes hollow and dark, arms hanging limply at his sides. Clarissa and Philippe, covered in paint, melted into their bedrooms.

  “What’s going on?” he whispered brokenly, raising his arms and letting them fall. “What are you doing to me?”

  I’d gazed at him, and had almost managed to go through with it. Then I said: “I’m pregnant.”

  He didn’t flinch for a second. “And your point is?”

  “M-my point is,” I stammered, “that I’m going to keep it. But I don’t want to trap you. Don’t want you to feel that you have to in any way be with us, or help bring the child up, or—” Whatever other selfless, magnanimous utterances were going to gush from my lips were halted, however, as he crossed the room, took me in his arms, and stopped my mouth with his kisses.

  “Marry me,” he whispered urgently, his eyes scanning my face. “Marry me, Imo, and have the baby and let’s be together for ever.”

  I’d like to tell you I gave it some thought, took time to consider, weighed it up a bit, but who am I trying to kid? My heart didn’t even miss a beat; in fact it fairly somersaulted.

  “Yes,” I whispered, equally urgently back as his eyes shone into mine. “Yes, let’s do that.”

  And so my happiness was complete. Mum, Dad, and even Hannah came round to the fact once they’d realised it was a fait accompli, and Alex and I moved from the tiny flat in Brunswick Gardens—stretching our finances to the limit now that half went to his other family—to the semi round the corner in Hastoe Avenue, where we live now. I had a heavenly time doing it up, getting a friend in architectural salvage to knock the sitting-room wall down, splashing lots of creamy paint about and stencilling boldly, and positively breezed through my pregnancy.

  One Monday morning, when I’d returned from visiting my mother in France, Alex took me up to the attic. Gone was the dusty, cavernous loft space filled with piles of suitcases and cobwebby old furniture, and instead, I found myself walking into an empty white room, floorboards painted pale grey, exposed beams likewise, with a sheet shrouding what appeared be a cross in the middle of it.

  “My God, what’s this?”

  I stared around in wonder, marvelling at the steep sloping ceiling, the pine table set just so under the window; under the north light.

  “It’s a studio,” Alex told me. He whipped the sheet off the cross with a flourish like a magician, and revealed my easel, a blank canvas already screwed into it. His eyes burned into mine, full of love.

  “Paint,” he urged me. “Paint.”

  And I did. All through my pregnancy: great splashes of colour, huge billowing skies, windswept cornfields with poppies—joyful, instinctive paintings, which seemed to flow out of me, sitting on a stool in the final months when standing became too much for me. I’d never been so happy.

  And then
, one day, about two weeks before I was due, I was strolling around Peter Jones, looking at the changing mats, wondering which Moses basket to get, fingering the tiny soft vests and wondering if it would be tempting fate to get a few of those now, when I walked from the baby department into the lift—and straight into Tilly.

  We were both shocked to see each other. But the door had slid shut, and there we were, the two of us, alone. She looked at my huge stomach, my Moses basket, then up at my eyes. If she knew, which she probably did, it was still, clearly, a terrible shock. I was appalled. Couldn’t speak. And all credit to her that she did. She licked her lips and managed a faint smile.

  “Imogen.”

  “Tilly!” I gasped.

  I felt my face burn, felt my whole body flush, and desperately looked away: at the buttons of the lift, at the floor. We travelled down to the ground in silence. As I got out and made to hurry away, eyes down, she put a hand on my arm.

  “Good luck. You’ll need it.”

  I looked up, startled, and saw, not bitterness in her eyes, but pity, almost. I was about to hasten away, when I turned back, defiantly.

  “What d’you mean?”

  She seemed about to shrug and move on, but then gave an odd little smile.

  “In all my married life, Imogen, only one person made me want to behave like a victim. Only one person made me want to reach for the kohl pencil, outline my eyes in black, raise them theatrically to camera and whisper, ‘There are three of us in this marriage.’ I think you know who I mean. So good luck. As I say, you’ll need it.”

  And then she went on her way; weaving through the shelves of china and glass, skirting the spiral staircase, and out of the main doors into the square.

  Chapter Five