We had several more rows and Richard reassured me each time. A pattern emerged: I would feel better for a few days, then, as if I had used up all the reassurance I had been given, I became frantic again. I was like a junkie needing a fix more and more often.
‘You’ve got to stop it, Alison,’ Ian said. ‘You’re going to drive him mad. I told you he was used to getting his own way. He won’t put up with you behaving like this.’
But Richard did put up with it. He was patient and loving. I should have got better; instead I got worse. One day he even said, ‘Look, d’you want me to stop seeing Nicky?’
I longed to say yes. ‘No,’ I said, ‘because you’d resent it. You said you’d never give her up.’
He looked very tired. ‘Maybe I’ve changed my mind.’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t believe you anyway.’
So – I’m packing. I’ve taken a day off work and when Richard comes home I’ll be gone. I love him so much it hurts, but I can’t cope any more. Perhaps he’ll come after me. More likely he’ll be relieved I’ve gone. Perhaps we stand a chance if we’re not living together. Or we might meet other people. I don’t know, I’m too tired to think. I’m giving up. I’m beaten. I haven’t even got the energy to despise myself for running away.
I’m going away to stay with Kathy. She’ll give me a hug and a large drink and say I told you so. ‘I knew he was too good to be true.’ That’s what she’ll say.
Secrets
After she met Sean Reilly, Lynn spent a lot of time trying to work out when her marriage had started to go wrong. She puzzled over it, while she was ironing Matthew’s shirts or getting the children’s supper or weeding the garden. Not that she supposed it would help her if she knew the exact moment, but it seemed important to pin it down, rather like trying to remember where you had last seen a beloved object, now lost for ever.
They had been totally happy when they got married, that much was certain, despite the fact that she was pregnant and Matthew hadn’t taken his final architectural exams. ‘Getting off to a bad start,’ her aunt called it, but they knew she was wrong and pitied her for being single. They couldn’t understand how anyone could be nervous on their wedding day. Nerves surely implied doubts, whereas they were radiantly sure of themselves and each other. Most of their favourite pop songs at that time said something about being two against the world. Looking back now, she sometimes wondered if they had needed the illusion of a hostile world to make themselves feel invincible.
She couldn’t recall a single argument during her healthy, interminable pregnancy in the cramped cold-water flat where they could hardly afford to run the metered gas fire and studied instead with blankets round their legs and overcoats blocking the draught under the door. In those days they went to bed early as much for warmth as to make love before they were too tired to enjoy it. Coming home from work or night-school, she used to pause on the landing to catch her breath before attempting the two final flights of stairs, or wedge herself into the loo, which was designed to be so space-saving that in the final month of pregnancy you could not actually close the door. Matthew, who said the designer should be bricked up inside it, was meanwhile standing guard outside or making occasional forays into the shared bathroom to light the geyser. He was justly proud of his expertise: the geyser was famous throughout the house. If provoked, or approached by an alien hand, it was known to retaliate by blasting the intruder across the room, and there were other tenants with singed eyebrows to prove it.
The slow painful hospital labour and forceps delivery were a shock. Previously convinced of her own health and vigour, positively smug about the ease with which all physical activities came to her, she felt her body had let her down for the first time. She was appalled to find herself repeatedly dissolving into tears, despite the euphoria she felt at the sight of her daughter. Post-natal depression was something which blighted other less fortunate women, something she had read about, pitied and forgotten, like plague in a distant country.
So was that the beginning, the first crack in the dream? Should they perhaps have stitched up her mind in hospital along with her body? But she recovered so quickly that she couldn’t really believe it had happened to her. Matthew was understanding and supportive, changing nappies, sharing bottle feeds, getting up in the night. Through a mixture of saving and borrowing, they managed to move to an unfurnished ground-floor flat with garden, where she could hang washing on the line and leave Emma outside to breathe fresh air. Her friends said how lucky she was, and she agreed with them. Only – there was a difference. They were parents now, she and Matthew. Responsible people. Not lovers or newlyweds any more. She fancied he looked different in some subtle way: older, more careworn. She worried, and peered in the mirror to see if the same thing had happened to her. Then she remembered when last she had done that, after making love for the first time, and laughed at herself for being so foolish. What was there to fear, after all? It was all perfectly natural, a part of growing up. She was on a par with her parents now, a fully-fledged adult. But she missed the carefree romantic days – and then she felt guilty for missing them. She felt a part of herself and Matthew had died and she wept for the loss, then blamed herself for weeping. In between all these bouts of guilt and tears she was extremely happy, busy and tired.
They decided to have a second baby two years later because that seemed a sensible gap and both of them had hated being only children. Lynn’s friend Angie, also an only child, said they were crazy because it was a great thing to be. All that love and attention and a room of your own. No problems about sharing your toys. A fine preparation for life, she said, which was really about grabbing as much as you could for yourself, although nobody liked to admit it. Lynn privately thought Angie might indeed be right, but it was more complicated than that: she wanted an intentional baby this time instead of an accident, however welcome. She wanted the experience of deliberately choosing something as important as a child, but she preferred to disguise this craving and present it as a socially acceptable desire to make sure Emma wasn’t lonely.
Tom was surprisingly difficult to conceive: he took them a year of what amounted in the end almost to hard work. It was a strange sensation to be neither pregnant nor afraid of pregnancy nor avoiding pregnancy. She had imagined that trying to have a baby would be pure delight: instead it soon became an anxiety. They were not making love for fun any more: they had a serious purpose in view. The longer it took to achieve that purpose, the less enjoyable and the more dutiful it became. The joyous freedom she had imagined turned into a nagging worry. ‘Have we managed it this time?’ she thought, and each month was disappointed. ‘Is there something wrong?’ was the next thought, rapidly pushed away but constantly recurring. The more Matthew tried to reassure her, the more angry she became. She was amazed and disconcerted by her own sense of failure: it was savage and destructive. Then suddenly she was pregnant and all was well. The worries belonged to another life, another person.
This time she was very sick during the pregnancy but the birth was easy. Jokingly, she had promised Matthew a son, so she was triumphant. They had long ago agreed they could only afford two children, and everyone congratulated her on producing one of each sex. Life should have been idyllic, yet looking back now, she saw a great sense of unease and dismay. Matthew was less helpful with Tom than he had been with Emma.
‘The novelty’s worn off,’ Lynn teased him, determined not to nag, but he didn’t smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know I’m not pulling my weight but I’m so worried.’
It took ages to get him to tell her what he was worried about. They sat up talking for hours, Lynn glazed with exhaustion from coping with Tom, a cheerful but frenetic baby who hardly seemed to need any sleep at all, and Emma, whose whole personality had changed under the weight of that terrible new experience jealousy, making her fretful and clinging, babyish and destructive by turns. Lynn felt (and tried to say)
that she had never needed Matthew’s help more, but here he was telling her that all he could think about was being passed over for promotion, not getting Greg’s job, which had been almost promised to him before Greg left, and instead having to watch it being given to Peter, who had no original ideas, who was totally unimaginative, who had hardly been with the firm any time at all.
She agreed it was unfair but tried to suggest it also didn’t matter as much as he thought because another chance of promotion was bound to come along; it was only a matter of being patient.
That apparently was the wrong thing to say. Matthew became very angry, telling her she didn’t understand. If they thought so little of him, maybe it was time he looked for a job elsewhere. Unless, of course, his qualifications simply weren’t good enough. He sounded very bitter when he said that.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, ‘of course they are.’
He looked at her as if it was all her fault and said grimly, ‘How do you know? They’d better be, that’s all, or we’ll never be able to afford a house.’
She argued there was no urgent need for a house: it would be nice, of course, lovely, wonderful (when she saw from his face that nice was the wrong word) but it could wait, it was something to look forward to, and meanwhile the flat was perfectly all right.
No, it wasn’t, he said furiously, it was too small, it was positively squalid, it was no place to bring up two children, and the people upstairs drove him mad with their heavy feet and loud music.
‘I expect we drive them mad having rows and crying babies,’ she said because she was so tired, before she realised he was in fact showing her the anger he dared not show his boss. ‘You wanted Tom as much as I did,’ she said, ‘and the flat hasn’t shrunk.’
At which point he yelled at her, ‘God, you’re so stupid, can’t you understand how I feel if I can’t even look after my own family properly?’ Both children woke up and started to cry and the people upstairs banged on the floor.
For a long time after that, Lynn felt she had three children to look after instead of two. It was her task to boost Matthew’s confidence so that he could keep on applying for jobs, going to interviews and tolerating rejection. It was uphill work because the more he lost faith in himself, the more she lost faith in him. She had never doubted his ability before and now he had put doubts in her mind. She was terrified. Suppose he was right to be unsure? Here they all were, all three of them, depending on him. What would happen if he really couldn’t cope? They would have to stay in the flat for ever and it was too small and it was shabby and she couldn’t imagine why she had ever defended it so staunchly because she did want a house. In fact there were times when she wanted a house more than anything else in the world. Matthew, by telling her it was important, had somehow made it become an obsession.
When Matthew wasn’t behaving like a dependent child in constant need of reassurance, she felt he switched disconcertingly to the other extreme, becoming a critical parent, forever turning off lights, exclaiming over the phone bill and deploring the way she spent money. She didn’t like Matthew as child or parent; she wanted her lover/friend/husband back again, but that person seemed gone for ever or at best glimpsed briefly and tantalisingly, like someone disappearing round a corner before you have time to attract their attention.
Her mother told her she should be glad Matthew was so responsible. Her friends told her that all marriages went through long dull patches and some never came out of them. Everyone seemed to think she had unreasonable expectations and it served her right if she was disappointed. Everyone except Angie, that is. Angie was getting divorced and going to live in the country. ‘I’m bored,’ Angie said, ‘and boredom is bad for my health. I’m going to be a mistress again because that’s what I’m good at.’ Friends said Angie was only being flippant to cover up how deeply hurt she was. Others said bitterly it was all right for Angie, she didn’t have any children. Lynn’s mother said she had always known Angie was a bad influence. Lynn thought how much she was going to miss her.
Lynn and Matthew saved money. They stayed in and watched television instead of hiring babysitters and going to the pictures. They got Chinese or Indian takeaways instead of going out to dinner. They didn’t talk very much or make love very often because they were always so tired, and when they did make the effort (though she resented thinking of it like that) it was such a half-hearted performance she often felt they might as well not have bothered. Then she felt guilty. That was the one thing she still seemed to be good at. ‘You’re not guilty, you’re angry,’ said Angie, getting on the train to Somerset. ‘Tell him.’ Lynn agreed with her but she didn’t tell him.
Matthew eventually got the job he wanted. They moved to Hounslow to be near his work. They bought a rather nasty little semi-detached house which was going cheap because it was near the motorway. She thought it was strange that he cared so much about good design for other people, yet didn’t seem to mind living in a house like that. Or perhaps he did mind but was being brave about it. She felt she hardly knew what went on in his head any more and was afraid to ask in case he told her. If their marriage was in serious trouble, she thought, in a cold sweat of terror when she woke, as she regularly did, at two or four in the morning after dreaming of missed trains and lost suitcases, then she really didn’t want to know.
They had been married eight years, both children were at school and Lynn had just managed to get a part-time job as an interviewer when she found she was pregnant again. At first she was incredulous; then she wept savage tears. She wanted to kill her doctor, who had insisted she came off the Pill for a rest and assured her that other methods of contraception were just as reliable if you were highly motivated. She told Matthew, who was equally appalled. They did not want another child, now or ever, much as they loved the two they had. It would mean going right back to the beginning again. They only had three bedrooms. She would have to give up her job, which had been so hard to find, before she had even started it. They had never been in such total agreement about anything: a new baby would be a disaster. Yet part of her resented the fact that he did not say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll manage somehow. It’ll be all right.’
They discussed abortion and found they could not do it. They had no religious beliefs, they advocated abortion on demand as a matter of right for other people, but when it came to the point they found they were incapable of choosing it for themselves. Nightmare closed in. They were trapped.
Lynn tramped round houses and flats and high-rise blocks asking people questions about things they bought and the money they spent and the journeys they made. She filled in the answers on the questionnaires the agency had given her. Some of the answers were pre-coded and she only had to put a circle round a number, but if she got an unusual answer there was a space for ‘Other: please specify’. There were not many unusual answers, but a lot of the people she interviewed wanted to tell her their troubles and if she stayed too long, being polite and sympathetic, she found that she ended up working for almost nothing. All the time she was praying to the God she did not believe in, to be merciful and let her have a miscarriage. And at three months He answered her prayers.
The shock and the relief were overwhelming, but instantly swamped by the sense of guilt. She and Matthew both felt like murderers. They had willed the baby to go and it had gone. Lynn was sure she felt worse than if she had actually had an abortion. Several of her friends had had abortions and seemed quite cheerful afterwards. She felt like a witch in a fairytale, who had put an evil spell on the unborn. She was certain she would be punished for it.
She couldn’t discuss it with Matthew because they were fellow conspirators, driven apart by their shared guilt, like Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, whom she had once played in a school production. They didn’t discuss it and they didn’t make love. She wanted to talk to her friends but feared they would think she was going mad. Only Angie understood. Flippant Angie, the bad influence, now earning a precarious living as a market gardener near Taunton and revel
ling in her role as mistress to no less than three men, who all claimed she was saving their marriages. Angie took it in her stride. ‘This is a crisis,’ she said firmly. ‘You must see your doctor, talk to Matthew, go to marriage guidance. Anything. You’re not like me, you take things to heart and you won’t bounce back without help. Please. I’m serious.’ Lynn loved her for saying it, but she didn’t or couldn’t take her advice.
So she was absolutely ready (although in no sense prepared) for Sean Reilly when she met him a few weeks later at London Airport. She was asking people a lot of tedious questions about how often they flew and whether it was business or pleasure and how they rated the facilities on different airlines. Some of the passengers were only too pleased to be interviewed; others were tired and cross and jet-lagged. Sean Reilly impressed her at once with his air of brisk efficiency blended with just enough charm not to seem abrasive. He was darker than Matthew and a few inches shorter, although heavier in build, and he had the startling green eyes that sometimes go with Irish colouring. She found herself thinking what an attractive man he was, and that in itself gave her a shock, as if she had just woken up after long hibernation. He carried hand luggage only and described himself as a frequent traveller, working for a merchant bank. He answered all the questions she had to ask him as if they were of real interest (which was clearly impossible) then when she had finished he gave her a quite unnecessary smile and said, ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I do hope we meet again.’ To her own amazement she heard herself say ‘So do I.’
Triangles Page 3
