A Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  “Oh no, you—”

  “Oh yes, I do!”

  We drove in silence for a minute, my mind racing, but my heart so light.

  “We’ll go here,” she said eventually, pointing her finger as we approached the edge of the village, with Molly’s wine bar on the corner. She plucked her handbag from the floor where I’d stowed it.

  “Yes, well, obviously there’s Piers to consider,” I said as soberly as I could as I parked outside, “and—and that’s terribly difficult, obviously, but honestly, none of my business, Eleanor.” It was no good, I was euphoric, and I couldn’t care less who she was cuckolding, particularly Piers, actually. Stuck up git, serve him jolly well right. “But I dare say he’ll get over it,” I said cheerily as I got out and slammed the door.

  She shot me a startled look as we hastened into the wine bar.

  “He doesn’t know. No one knows!”

  She sat down heavily at a table just inside the door by the window, almost as if her legs wouldn’t take her any further. I slid in opposite her.

  “And listen, Imogen, it’s really important he doesn’t find out, OK?” She leaned across the table. “At least, not from anyone but me. Can I count on you?”

  Her face was pale in the gloom, and she looked at me beseechingly, her fists clenched. I thought how ghastly she looked, so drawn, haunted almost.

  “Of course you can!” I assured her, waving jauntily at a waiter. Molly didn’t seem to be around. “Golly, you can always count on me, I’m the soul of discretion. What shall we have—a bottle?” I felt like celebrating.

  “Just a Perrier for me, but, Imogen, please say you won’t breathe a word.”

  “I won’t,” I assured her, beaming. I ordered the drinks, feeling sorry for her as she sat back, slumped and defeated in her chair. She looked all in. I watched as she nervously twisted a beer mat in her hands, just managing myself to resist doing a little jig under the table. Eleanor and Daniel. Who would have thought?

  “God, I didn’t even think you liked each other,” I blurted out when the waiter had gone. “In fact, when I rang him from London about Rufus coming to his school and mentioned your name, he was positively rude about you. Said your dogs were a menace!”

  “I know,” she gave a twisted smile. “We…slightly planned that. I told him to be off hand about me. Didn’t want you smelling a rat when you came down here. We have to be so careful.” She glanced about furtively as if someone might be listening, spies everywhere, lurking behind newspapers in raincoats.

  “Has it been going on long?” I asked. It seemed as if she wanted to talk about it.

  She nodded. “Three years.”

  “Three years!” That brought me up short. I was shocked. And quite impressed too. That was a pretty long extra-marital relationship to have managed to have kept from the rest of the world.

  “But—what about the neighbours in his road? Surely they see you going in and out?” Well, they would now, I thought guiltily, now I’d spread it loud and clear throughout the village.

  “Oh, that’s not his house. It belongs to a friend of mine in London, Milly Tempest. She uses it at weekends but she’s in Spain at the moment so she asked if I’d keep on eye on things, although she probably has no idea what I’m actually doing there.” She blushed. “No, that was a rather daring first, for us, to be so close to home. We usually meet at the flat in London, but obviously, with the school to run, that’s tricky for Daniel. Sometimes we go to his house but it’s all a bit risky, being close by, so it’s really just snatched, occasional moments. Precious moments.” She looked up from her beer mat. “I love him,” she said simply, and her eyes filled.

  I nodded. “Yes. I can see that.”

  We were silent a moment as the waiter arrived with our drinks. I wondered about the mechanics of it all; how it had started. How she and Daniel, people with very different lives, let’s face it, had come across one another. He wasn’t exactly in her social milieu…

  “I met him when he first took over the primary school,” she said when the waiter had departed, reading my thoughts. “I wanted Theo to go there, thought he’d thrive in a cosy village school. I also thought it would integrate us into the community a bit more, make it a bit less Us and Them. Piers wouldn’t hear of it, of course. He wanted Theo to go to Shelgrove like the others, but I went to see it, anyway. Daniel showed me round. After I’d spent an hour or so with him, strolling round the playground, peering into fish tanks, I went home and found I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He had such soft kind eyes…”

  I nodded. Yes, I remembered feeling much the same. Those eyes were a killer. I blushed as I remembered the flowers. Hoped he hadn’t mentioned it to her.

  “Anyway, I made some pathetic excuse about wanting to go back for a second look and he showed me round again, but…looking back, I think we both knew it was strange to be wanting to see the science block again, fondling Bunsen burners for the second time…” She smiled. “Anyway, he walked me back to my car, and by some lucky chance one of the tyres was flat. He changed it for me and I passed him the tools in the sunshine and we chatted, and by then, it was well into the lunch hour and he suggested a sandwich in the pub. I’m afraid I leaped at it.” She looked sideways out of the window. “I felt…very isolated, at the time.” She glanced back at me. “Marriage can be like that, you know.”

  I nodded, remembering that I’d thought that too. But not now. Oh God, no, not now.

  “He is…very different to Piers,” I ventured.

  She smiled sadly. “Yes. And I know what you’re thinking. How can I have fallen for two such different people? How come I was ever with Piers in the first place?” She dredged up a sigh that seemed to come right from the soles of her expensive loafers.

  “Where shall I begin, with Piers? By citing mitigating circumstances, and saying I’d just broken up with a serious boyfriend when I met him? That I was feeling raw and unloved and very definitely on the rebound? That I bumped into someone I thought was strong and protective but turned out to be dull and arrogant? Or shall I tell you that when he drove me out from London in his convertible Aston Martin and we cruised up the long drive to Stockley I fell for his beautiful house, the rolling acres, the whole lady of the manor bit?”

  She met my eye. “Partly true. I don’t believe Jane Austen’s heroines are so very different to us, actually. And if I’m honest, I think it was a little of both. Added to which, all my friends were getting married, I was twenty-eight years old, and suddenly, had gone from being quite a catch—a girl lots of men would like to be seen with—to being horribly available. Suddenly, all those men were with younger girls.” She took a slug of her drink. “I met and married Piers within three months.”

  I nodded, eyes narrowed. “And was one of those men Alex?”

  She sighed. “Yes, Alex had been a boyfriend. He asked me to marry him once, actually, but I said no.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he married Tilly.”

  I caught my breath. Right. I hadn’t known that. That he’d asked her to marry him.

  “So…when did you realise you’d made a mistake?”

  “With Piers? Oh, very early on. But I was too proud to admit it. Too proud to do anything about it.” She struggled with the truth. “There’s nothing terribly wrong with Piers, Imogen. He’s just…a bit dull, that’s all.” She made a despairing gesture with her hands. “Naïvely, I thought children would help—who doesn’t in an unhappy marriage? So I had four. Safety in numbers, I thought.” She smiled ruefully. “After Theo was born I realised there was no point having five. It wasn’t diluting my husband.” She looked up. “That’s when I had an affair with Alex.”

  I nodded, wondering when she’d get to that. “Tilly’s husband,” I said firmly.

  “Yes.” She sighed. “And I’m not proud of it. Not proud at all. And I know it doesn’t redeem me to tell you that he was unhappy too, and that we just
sort of fell into it, two old friends with problems who got together in his lunch hour to chat, in bars, in restaurants…which led to hotels…” She trailed off. “It was pain relief for me, and,” she puckered her brow, in an effort to remember, “sort of an exorcism for him, I think. Getting me out of his system. The one who’d turned him down. But the moment he knew of your feelings for him, it dwindled between the two of us. You were too much for me. Far too much competition.”

  I caught my breath at this. And I’d always thought that of her. That she was too much. My mind scuttled back to the days when I’d sat behind a desk outside his office in the city and she, Eleanor, had swept in to take him out to lunch, in jewels, scent, cashmere; older than me, but terribly glamorous, and I’d felt like orphan Annie. Had she been thinking, I can’t compete with her youth, her freshness?

  “He was captivated by you,” she said softly. “Talked about you all the time—Imogen this, Imogen that—real mentionitis. But I think he never believed he stood a chance.”

  “But he was in love with you,” I said firmly. I wasn’t having that, entirely. I remembered Alex’s distress when she refused to leave Piers. He’d even cried in the office. I’d comforted him.

  She nodded. “He was, but more so, I think, because he couldn’t have me. I’d finished with him before we were both married, remember, so there was a bit of pride involved. And when I decided to make a go of it with Piers, he fell so head over heels in love with you that…well. I’d never seen him like that. Ever. And I’ve seen Alex with many girls.”

  She eyed me sharply. Yes. No doubt she had.

  “That was no rebound, Imo. He adored you. Still does. You must know that. I can’t believe you don’t know that!”

  She looked at me incredulously and I saw that her eyes were both honest and astonished. How awful. I hadn’t always known it.

  “I…suppose I have, sometimes, doubted it,” I twisted a napkin in my lap. “Often felt insecure…”

  “You mustn’t!” She insisted, leaning forwards across the table. “It’s only ever been you, Imo, for years now, believe me, and I would know,” she said with feeling.

  Yes. Yes, she would. I screwed the paper napkin on my lap into a ball. My heart began to pound. I felt as though it were swelling, might burst even, with joy and relief.

  “I…don’t really know why I’ve doubted him,” I whispered, almost not daring to speak I felt so happy. “He—he has these moods, though, you see, Eleanor, these real ups and downs. One minute he’s a proper family man, loving towards me, adorable with Rufus, and the next—well the next he’s distant, irritable, late coming home, and I thought—”

  “It’s his job,” she said, putting her hand over mine. “Don’t you know that? Don’t you know he’s terrified of losing his job, of being a failure?”

  “But I wouldn’t think he was a failure—”

  “He would, though. And he’d feel it for you too. Stress does funny things to men, Imo, in the bedroom, at home, it’s all about being the alpha male, and he was such a big shot in the city, and now…well, now there are younger, brighter men coming up behind him and he feels threatened.”

  I looked at her directly. “Does he tell you this?” I felt a pang of jealousy. A familiar twinge.

  “Yes, because he’s too proud to tell you, and also because…” she struggled. Looked away.

  “What?”

  “Well, he says you say it doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t!” I cried. “I couldn’t care less if he lost his job, couldn’t care if he was a bloody dustman!”

  “It matters to him,” she said fiercely. “Maybe you should talk to him about it,” she urged, “not just say, ‘Who cares?’ Say, ‘I care.’ Maybe he’d like that.”

  I flushed as it dawned. I sat back. Rocked back, in fact, in my chair. I hadn’t been a very good wife. Hadn’t listened to him, hadn’t sympathised, hadn’t let him talk about it. I’d forced him to bottle it up because I’d thought he was bottling something else up and I’d been afraid of uncorking that, of spilling the beans, the Eleanor beans. And all the time…his job was the beans.

  “I’ve been so stupid,” I whispered. “So blind.” She stretched across and squeezed my hand. “No, you’ve just been barking up the wrong tree. It happens. He loves you very much, Imo. Take it from an old mate who knows. His world would fall apart without you.”

  I looked at her across the little wooden table, and, for the first time, saw her for what she really was. A good friend; an old friend who, by dint of longevity, was bound to be privy to more information about Alex than I was. But not privy to the beat of his heart, which was mine, all mine. And that was all that mattered. I felt as if a film were sliding off me; a murky slick of grime that had clung to me for years, but which now I was shedding like dead skin, as I emerged from it, all gleaming and shiny and new. I reached for my wine glass and took a gulp. I’d make it up to him, I determined. I’d be a better wife. A good wife, not a jealous, resentful suspicious wife, but an understanding supportive one. And—and maybe I’d encourage him to do something else, if work was making him so miserable? I gazed out of the window, at the traffic flashing by. Maybe we could—I don’t know—salmon farm in Scotland or something, I thought wildly. Farm sheep in Wales. But whatever it was, we’d talk about it. We’d sit down with a bottle of wine between us and talk, something I’d been so afraid to do in case something else came out. Yes, maybe he could retrain? Teach, perhaps, like Daniel. Daniel.

  I glanced back across the table. Eleanor had drifted away and was gazing out of the window too: away from Alex and me and our relatively minor problems, and back to her own misery.

  “I’ve made it so much worse for you,” I said suddenly. “Shouting in the street like that. In a village this size it’ll get around in minutes.”

  I went hot with horror. Why hadn’t I gone the whole hog? Painted “slut” or “harlot” on the front door, demand that she be tarred and feathered, dipped in the village pond?

  “Let it,” she said quietly, gripping the stem of her glass. “Let it get around. It’s what I want now. And I’d already decided that, Imogen. Decided I was going to tell Piers. I just didn’t want anyone to tell him first.”

  “Really?” I was startled.

  “Really.” She gave a funny, sad smile. “One of the reasons I wanted you and Alex to come here, Imo, to take the cottage in the first place, was because in my heart I knew I was going to tell him and I wanted friends around. Wanted moral support, somewhere to run to. I was scared. Oh, I have friends round here of course, masses of them, but they’re all Piers’s, really. They’ve known him since he was born. They’re not my mates. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes. Yes, I can.”

  “And I count you and Alex as two of my best.”

  I bent my head and nodded shamefully, realising how stupid I’d been, how I’d maligned her. She’d always tried so hard, and I’d always been so suspicious, questioned her motives, thought the worst. Yet…there had been moments when my scepticism hadn’t been based on mere suspicion; moments when I’d been convinced…

  “The other day, when I saw you two together in the drawing room,” I said suddenly, “and you sprang apart when I came in. I’m sure you did, I’m sure I saw you in his arms, in the mirror.”

  “I was telling him,” she nodded, “about Daniel. And he hugged me, was comforting me, and then I saw you get up from the terrace and come towards us and I leaped for the phone. I thought you might get the wrong idea, I just hoped you wouldn’t think it was odd to be ordering silk flowers on a Sunday. And then later, when I pretended to show him the spare room upstairs, I was telling him the rest of it, because you’d interrupted us. I just wanted to tell someone,” she said desperately, “so that someone other than me or Daniel knew. I wanted to make it more real, but I was so afraid of being overheard by Piers. And then Hannah had her baby and distracted
everyone, and—”

  “And I thought I was going mad,” I cut in. “Thought I was imagining the two of you together because I was so paranoid, thought my mind was playing tricks on me.”

  “I asked Alex not to tell you immediately. I knew he would eventually—he said he would—but just not yet. And not because I don’t trust you or anything,” she said quickly, “but because I didn’t think it was fair on Piers if everyone knew before him. But I had to tell someone. I was going crazy with it.”

  “But why now? Why are you telling Piers now, after three years of keeping it a secret?”

  I saw the fear in her eyes as she looked up. And suddenly I knew.

  “Because I’m pregnant,” she breathed.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Oh Lord.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. Oh Lord.”

  We sat in silence for a moment as the ramifications sank in. I gazed at her.

  “That’s…actually what I was telling Alex,” she said. “When he was holding me.”

  “Right,” I whispered. “And…I suppose I don’t have to ask if—”

  “Yes. I’m keeping it.” She held my eye. “I don’t blame any young girl who’s never had a baby for having an abortion, but when you’ve had four like I have, the idea of getting rid of it is—”

  “No, I know,” I said quickly, looking down at my hands. Unthinkable. I wouldn’t be able to do it either. Not now I’d had Rufus. But for the baby’s brothers and sisters…oh God. There was real terror in her eyes as I looked up.

  “I know,” she said, going pale. “The others.”

  I licked my lips. For them it would be so ghastly. And much as I hadn’t always warmed to Piers, my heart went out to him too.

  “So you’ll leave him? Piers?”

  “Yes, I’ll leave him. Hopefully he’ll give me a quick divorce and I’ll move in with Daniel. The children are all at boarding school now anyway, apart from Theo, and he goes off in September.”