My Husband Next Door

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Hi, Hamish.’ I grinned up at him.

  ‘You can both do it,’ she told us. ‘One of you with a blank bullet, like in a firing squad, so neither of you knows who’s the executioner.’ She beamed, clearly immensely pleased with this. ‘And, anyway, if I lose my job down at the centre, there’ll be an altogether different sort of firing going on.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Hamish snorted. ‘You’ve just got that job. You’re not going to lose it.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure. I had a pig of a day yesterday, as you know. No one rang, did they?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Only a Mrs Harper. I said you’d ring back later.’

  ‘Mrs Harper?’ She froze. ‘Oh, God – that’s her!’ she hissed in sepulchral tones.

  He blanched. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes! That’s the one!’ She clutched at the front of her dress with both hands, terrified.

  ‘Who?’ I asked, mystified.

  ‘This enormous woman,’ she turned wide blue eyes on me, ‘who I did yesterday and lost the needle.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Down her buttocks.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ I gasped.

  ‘She makes me so nervous, Ella, because she’s so big. I’m never quite sure I’ve got the needle in the right place. There are so many places I could get it in, if you get my drift. So many rolls. So my paws are shaky anyway. I dropped it right down her crack.’

  ‘Lordy,’ I said inadequately. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Tried to pick it out, but it slipped further. And the thing is, her bottom is so big, I had to kind of … open it.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I know!’ she wailed, shaking her hands in the air. ‘I had to use tweezers in the end. Thought I’d have to ask her to get up and shake – but, no, I got it out. Thank God. And she was sweet about it. Said it didn’t matter a bit. But, oh – now she’s rung.’ She looked wretched. ‘Perhaps she’s talked to her husband? Decided to sue? I have a feeling he’s a lawyer.’ She gripped the table top with both hands. ‘Tighten your belt, Hamish. I see another age of austerity coming on. Another winter of gruel and discontent.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said cheerfully. ‘She sounded quite delightful on the phone. I asked if she was ringing about the baby bonnets, because you know I put an ad in the local shop, and she said no, but she was terribly interested. Her daughter’s about to have her second. You might want to run some up in white, as well as pink and blue, hon. I said we would. Some people like the choice.’

  ‘Oh! Really? Oh, yes, good idea. I’d better. Oh, I’m so glad she wasn’t cross. You’re sure she wasn’t cross, Hamish? I’ll ring her back later. Talk baby bonnets with her. Distract her. I’d better get cracking.’

  And so saying she got hurriedly to her feet, stashing what remained of the biscuits away in the cupboard – cramming a last one into her mouth – before brushing crumbs from her front and sliding the mountain of wool with both arms back to this end of the table. Then the knitting machine. It was my cue to leave and I was going anyway. I bid them both farewell. Hamish gave me a cheery salute and sauntered back outside to the reception desk, which, he told us, had had its first coat, and needed to dry, something he clearly thought best achieved by settling down next to it with the newspaper. His wife, meanwhile, settled herself at the knitting machine at the kitchen table.

  It was interesting, I thought, as I made my way back through the quiet, slumbering village, crossing the little stream by the footbridge which divided the cottages, how it was always assumed that Lottie should be the worker bee in that family. Why hadn’t Hamish trained to be the acupuncturist? With Lottie on reception? Surely he’d be just as adept with a needle? More so, probably. After all, he was a cricketer. Had a good eye. I’d voiced it once, lightly, and Lottie had laughed and said, ‘What a waste! With Hamish being so gorgeous!’ And it was true in a way. Imagine what a hit he’d be, reading the paper, glancing up to flash lovely smiles at lonely housewives as they came in. Why shouldn’t he play to his strengths? And not being quite so gorgeous, perhaps Lottie saw it as her role to play to hers? To be industrious?

  Interesting how neither of them found that emasculating, I thought, as I followed the lane home to the farm, the sun warming my cheeks. In my marriage, both of us would have done. Did. Was that because Sebastian had once been so successful? Or because he was older? He’d always looked after me, and I’d assumed he always would. Not now, of course. Now I was doing whatever I could – illustrating books, changing sheets, unblocking loos – but was it all too late? I wasn’t sure. It did occur to me, though, as I brushed the graceful crocosmia heads in the hedgerow with my hand, that had our marriage been more like Lottie and Hamish’s from the very beginning, with no preconceptions, no codes of conduct – albeit unwritten – it might have been happier. I looked up to the glittering heavens. Might even have been the happiest under the sun.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sebastian’s final exhibition had opened on a hot summer’s night back in his glory days of feverishly penned previews in all the major broadsheets, interviews in Sunday colour supplements, and a glossy catalogue to stop doors with. It had been another acclaimed success and he’d made a great deal of money. Collectors and dealers from all over the world – New York, Paris and even China – had come across to snap up his work: it had been a sell-out. Naturally he deserved a break. Exhibiting a staggering forty-six paintings had been no mean feat and Sebastian worked slowly, anyway: it was a gigantic effort. Also, we didn’t need another exhibition. We were in a sweet little house in Chelsea, Joshua was in a private school, Tabitha at a Montessori down the road; money was no object. Sebastian had a floor to himself at the top of the house, a huge studio with a domed glass ceiling designed especially, which flooded with light, and although I still painted a bit, two young children were hard work and took up most of my time. I was happy just being a mum and, of course, a wife to my famous husband. And Sebastian was famous, and feted for being so. We were asked to all the right parties, first nights, glittering events at the Royal Academy or the Tate Modern. Society hostesses loved to throw us into the mix at their dinner parties, amongst the boring bankers and bellowing barristers.

  ‘Do you know the Montclairs? No? Oh, Sebastian’s frightfully successful, exhibiting in Paris next year. Oh, not next year. But you’ve got a picture in the Pompidou Centre, am I right? And the Musée d’Orsay?’ She’d glance ostentatiously at one of his canvases on her wall, above the fireplace.

  Mum, as you can imagine, was in heaven, claiming she knew all along what a star he’d be, what an overnight success. She bored all her friends rigid with her gloating. Even Dad was deeply affected and at the end of one of his book-club meetings, when everyone was deciding what to read next, one of the more amusing members, Peggy, I believe, had drawled: ‘Why don’t we read the Jardines’ son-in-law’s reviews?’

  The critics loved him, the public loved him – chiefly because he was good-looking and accessible, not weird – and Javier, his agent, naturally worshipped him, but Sebastian, it seemed, could not love himself. He’d become increasingly quiet and withdrawn. I came back from shopping one day to find he’d slashed a hole in one of his more recent canvases: a difficult picture he’d been working on for some months, a nude, which he usually found so relaxing, but couldn’t finish, and, in his frustration, had ripped. He hadn’t meant to. Had meant to scrape paint off with a palate knife, but it had gone right through, which had shocked him, I think, for Sebastian was the gentlest of men. But there were a lot of canvases he couldn’t finish. They stared at him, like unfinished taunting testaments, stacked around his studio walls. Years later, when I finally told Lottie this bit of our story, she’d said: ‘Of course. Because it’s all about confidence. On a much smaller scale, and much less creatively, it’s me with my needles.’

  This had made me go cold: the thought of Sebastian losing so much confidence so quickly. Back then, I just thought privately that he needed to get a bit of perspective, look at how much
he had achieved, not dwell on what he wasn’t doing. And maybe not start the next painting, I’d say, looking on in alarm as he abandoned a perfectly lovely, half-executed landscape, until he’d finished the last?

  His eyes would travel round to me in despair, and if I hadn’t been so knee-deep in young children and all that went with it, I might have given it more thought; persuaded him not to paint for a while, not to pick up his brush so quickly. Hindsight, of course, is a tremendous thing. As it was he continued to paint furiously, just as we continued the relentless round of parties, with Sebastian being told how marvellous he was and him thinking – he’d say knowing – he wasn’t, and then coming home to a babysitter and a dark house with an even darker studio upstairs, where he’d always go before bed, turning on the light, to be surrounded by the mockery of his unfinished creations. ‘Mockery?’ I’d say. ‘That’s what it feels like,’ he’d answer. Of course, the demons are always much worse at night. Later, when I hadn’t slept either, I’d creep upstairs to find him sitting slumped and dejected on the floor in the corner, his handsome face hollow and sad, an empty bottle beside him, quite drunk.

  In those early married days I’d cradle him and cajole him to bed, and we’d make love, even though he was in no fit state: talking for hours, making plans, bolstering his pride. But even then, looking back, I think we both knew he was in trouble.

  By the time Joshua had started at a pre-prep school and Tabitha was at an adorable little establishment down the road – complete with Mary Jane shoes, a cape and a straw boater – the rot had really set in. By now he hadn’t exhibited for years and although he painted all day every day, he achieved very little. The parties had stopped – the invitations dried up – but that wasn’t the problem. Money was. Although I was illustrating madly now – as much as I could, making something of a name for myself in the children’s fiction market, Puffin in particular, and in a completely different medium to the oils I was used to – it wasn’t enough. The mortgage on a house in Flood Street doesn’t pay itself and the children were in the sort of schools which were mortgages in themselves. Admittedly Sebastian’s pictures had sold for a great deal, but he’d been thoroughly ripped off by Javier and the galleries and our reserves were drying up. Although we’d kept a certain number of beautiful paintings for ourselves, one or two of which I still own and will never sell, we knew we’d have to sell a few, if something didn’t happen fast.

  Happily it did, in the shape of Ottoline. She still lived at Netherby, but had decided it was too big for her. Had she? Or had she seen what was happening – she adored Sebastian – and swooped to the rescue? Either way, she offered it to us at a knock-down price, on the understanding that she’d live in a cottage in the grounds. The Dairy, to be precise. To say we snatched at it like a drowning man being tossed a lifeline would be an understatement. Or at least, I did. Sebastian was compliant in those days, I thought, looking back guiltily now. Happy to take a lead from me, who ran the show like … no, not like my mother. I dug my nails fiercely into my hand. Anyway, he agreed. And I felt it was definitely the way forward. To take him out of the unforgiving spotlight of London, away from the probing journalists asking when Montclair’s next exhibition would be, wondering aloud – and in print – if he was a busted flush. Away from the queries from friends, the genuine concern, but also the gloating Schadenfreude of other artists – oh, it’s a bitchy world, the art scene – who were secretly pleased the enfant terrible was no longer painting them off the canvas.

  Later, Sebastian said our swift exit from London looked and felt like running away: that maybe we should have stayed. I was horrified when he voiced this some years after we moved, thinking: Why didn’t you mention it at the time? But he just said: Oh, you were so sure of yourself, Ella. As you always are. It wasn’t said with any malice, just a statement of fact. But I shrivelled. I’d wanted to protect him, had felt like a tigress with her cub. But he’d felt I was embarrassed, ashamed of what he’d become. Never. Never. Then, he was still my beloved Sebastian, art or no art. As far as he was concerned, though, he’d been a failure for a long time.

  And failures, or people who see themselves as such, are hard to live with. Where once he couldn’t bear not to be solely in my company, would hustle me away from a glittering Belgravia party saying, ‘I just want to be with you, Ella. Don’t want all this razzmatazz. Let’s get back to Josh, just be the three of us’, now, it seemed, he couldn’t bear to be with me.

  The minute we got to the farm he adopted his studio. Not the one I’d envisaged and designed as a surprise, at the top of the house, with the only money we’d salvaged from selling London, but in the dark little Granary across the way. That hurt.

  ‘But I had it specially done for you, got an architect and everything. It’s got a north light. I thought you’d love it!’

  ‘You have it,’ he said, slurring his words very slightly even then. ‘Have your desk under the window and scribble away for your precious editor. Which I’m sure you’ve imagined yourself doing, but then felt even better for giving it up for me: for Sebastian to work in. Doing the right thing, as usual.’ He surely knew how to wound. ‘I’m not going to be on the receiving end of your charity, Ella. I’ll be the disreputable, discredited drunken has-been across the yard if you don’t mind. Tell your friends I’m a tramp or something, if you wish.’

  My eyes flooded with tears. I watched him go: his once-tall, athletic frame stooping slightly, his dark head flecked with grey. As he turned to shut the door to the Granary, the handsome face was craggy, the eyes, latterly so deep and soft, fuzzy with disappointment and red wine.

  The children were more knowing, by then. At a state school now, of course, in the next village, they’d come running back from school, it being literally across the fields, and race to say hello to Daddy in the Granary. Then, suddenly, they’d check themselves. Glance back at me quizzically as if to say: Is it a good day? Can we go? And I’d nod if he was on form, watching from the kitchen window as he enveloped them in bear hugs when they ran into his studio, dropping everything he might be doing – or not, as the case would more probably be – asking them about their day, looking at the paintings they were clutching. Sometimes, though, I’d shake my head and say: ‘I think Daddy’s tired, darlings. See him later.’ By this I meant tomorrow, not wanting them to see him lurch towards them from some dark corner of the studio, head low and swinging like a bear’s, giving incoherent answers to their prattling.

  Surprisingly, though, he wasn’t an alcoholic. I’d thought he was, and had begged him to see someone. A doctor, then AA or the equivalent, and he’d done both. Returned triumphant.

  ‘The fact that I can go for long dry periods and don’t drink steadily through the day means I’m just a heavy drinker, Ella,’ he told me on one of his completely sober days. ‘I hope that doesn’t come as a great disappointment to you? That we have nothing to hide behind?’

  I’m telling you the worst bits, the very darkest times, the roughest side of my marriage and his tongue, because, oddly, although people say you remember only the good times, I disagree. I remember the imperfections and the lows. The terrible rows. Me, tearful and often horribly shrill, him silent and brooding. But if I’m honest, and really give it some thought, there were many happy times too. Times when we’d lock the studio door, say: Forget it! And take the children to the river, with a picnic, to paddle. Holding up shorts and dresses, they’d catch tiny fish and tadpoles with Sebastian beside them, trousers rolled, their delighted smiles catching mine and saying: This is lovely, why can’t we always be like this? And when they’d run off to find Diblet, who escaped constantly now, loving the freedom to chase as many rabbits as he could, Sebastian and I would lie back on the grassy bank, the sun on our faces. We’d talk in hushed voices about how much better it was going to be. How we’d work through this muddy patch, how our love would see us through and how everyone had their peaks and troughs.

  ‘I love you, Ella,’ he’d say, tracing a fingertip down my chee
k as I turned my head towards him. ‘And you know what your tragedy is? You love me too much.’

  ‘No such thing,’ I’d whisper, knowing it was true. ‘Ah, but there is such a thing. If you subjugate your own self. If you’re forever the supporting act and never the player. You can’t dedicate your life to saving someone.’

  ‘I’m not saving anyone. I’m loving someone. And, anyway, you’re not just anyone, you’re my husband.’

  He’d smile: that lovely, slow, creasing smile that started at his eyes, led to his mouth, then enveloped his whole face. ‘You should have married someone your own age, Ella,’ he’d say, as the children ran back with Diblet on a lead. ‘Someone you could have set out on a journey with. Not someone who was ahead of you already, and who’s supposed to be at the peak of his career, but is actually sliding down the other side.’

  I did sometimes wonder if this was the problem. If, in marrying, we’d placed too much responsibility on his hitherto carefree shoulders. If that sudden need to provide for a very young family had sapped his creativity. But surely that was the same for any man? Except, not many men marry nineteen-year-old girls. I wondered if he felt he had three children.

  We’d go back to the house happy and buoyed up after a day like that in the fresh air. When the children were in bed, we’d fall contentedly into ours, always our balm, our salvation, the place where we could make everything better, where we could find peace.

  One particular morning, though, after a river trip, flicking through the fashion pages of the Daily Mail, I’d seen Celeste modelling Chloé’s latest collection in Paris. It had given me a start. Not that I hadn’t seen her in the papers before, I had, but I wondered … if I’d let them be, hadn’t intruded, might that have worked? If he’d married someone more his own age, who was pursuing her own career on the catwalks of Milan or Paris, someone who didn’t make him aim so high because he didn’t love her quite so ardently, might he have relaxed more? Not set himself such high standards to fulfil her happiness? That, I sometimes felt, was the problem. That he felt too responsible for my life: that his own expectations of himself, to satisfy mine, were too exalted.