Highly Unsuitable Girl

by Carolyn McCrae

  When Peter had first taken her to his home she had opened the kitchen cupboards and drawers wondering how old the stained wooden spoons and assorted plates and dishes were. It was an old person’s house, the wallpaper, the furniture, the pictures, the smell were all of old people.

  “How long have you lived here?” She asked as gently as she could.

  “Pretty much all my life.”

  “And on your own?”

  “Since my mother died, that’d be about five years ago. Jack moved out when he got married but I stayed with my parents until they’d both gone.”

  “So this is still really your parents’ home?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “Any objections to a re-vamp?”

  “It’s going to be your home too, so go ahead. Perhaps it is about time things were changed a bit.”

  As she lay under him as he made his version of love to her in what seemed still to be his parent’s bedroom she was thinking that all the furniture had to go as well as the wallpaper, the curtains and the dreadful fringed green lampshade.

  Saturday 8th October 1977

  I’m in what used to be a spare room but is now my study. P said I should have somewhere where I can write and manage my own affairs away from the Agency. It’s nice to have lots to do.

  I’ve spent the week since the wedding buying curtains and better furniture and getting rid of the old stuff. Most importantly the new bed comes next week. P hasn’t had much practice so he’s very tentative. I’m not rushing him but it would be nice to enjoy that side of things again. It seems like a long time since G but it can’t be more than 18 months.

  P asked why I pick up a Courier from the newsagents every week. I’m not sure he believed that it was for the property pages.

  For Anya her work took precedence over every other demand on her time, including writing in her diary which was again neglected. The conveyor belt of achievement and success that characterised so much of the 1980s swept her up and along and she did not think about slowing down. It seemed important to keep working because the work was there to be done and money was there to be made and there seemed to be no risk of failure.

  Almost as soon as she had joined March and March the agency had become busier but she always told Peter that their success through the 1980s was nothing to do with her, simply the coincidence of the exploding property market in South East London. She and Peter worked hard and reaped the rewards of their efforts. Days began early, office hours were long, they ate out most nights and when they did get home, rarely in the light even in the longest days of June, Peter seemed happy enough to relax in front of the television while Anya would head to her study to manage her expanding personal property portfolio.

  The terraced house by the station had been turned round quickly and, through a series of well-judged sales and purchases, had in ten years become an empire of twelve high value properties. Peter had advised her well in the early days but it hadn’t been long before she was finding her own properties. She specialised in houses that needed work doing on them ‘to make the most of my money’ and to that end she employed a small firm of builders run by two brothers, one, improbably, confined to a wheelchair. They worked for her almost full time doing one property up then moving on to the next. It seemed that property values would never stop increasing and demand would never stop rising.

  Peter admired his wife’s energy, her skill at getting properties at less than the right price and selling them for more than they should really be worth but while his wife was getting more and more involved in the property world he was becoming less and less interested.

  In the days when she was new to being a landlord she had gone out of her way to be fair because her mind was never far from Tennyson Street and she didn’t want to be thought of by her tenants as she had thought of the Hodges. But as the years passed she began to see rents as returns on capital, something to be maximised. If the money were in a bank account it would be earning no more than 15%, she aimed to get far more than that from the properties. Her houses were there to give her the highest income possible and if people fell behind and couldn’t pay they had to go elsewhere and be replaced by people for whom the rent was not a problem.

  There was only one time in her week when she slowed down from her relentless chasing of success. Every Thursday she would pick up the Courier from the newsagent and take more time than was strictly necessary to read it.

  In May 1979 she had seen the announcement of the birth of a son to Geoffrey and Fiona Philips. They had called the boy, she thought unimaginatively but inevitably, Geoffrey. She noted that it had taken them long enough, it was three years since they had married, and Kathleen must have been getting very twitchy. But once started they moved quickly and just over a year later, in July 1980 there was the announcement of the birth of a daughter, Rosemary and in March 1982 another son, James. ‘Kathleen’s got what she wanted.’ She thought wryly. ‘She’s got the Philips grandsons she wanted. Well I hope Geoff’s happy.’ She was surprised when she realised she meant it. Over the years she cut out all the announcements and stuck them in her diary, which was becoming more of a scrapbook than the record of her personal thoughts and feelings.

  Through the summers she often found references to Tim in the sports pages. He had always been proud of his cricketing ability and that had obviously not changed. In the winters his exploits on the golf course merited an occasional mention, though, she realised he seemed to have given up rugby. In early 1983 Anya realised that references to Tim Cross began to occur more frequently. He featured on the letters page almost every week, writing about the state of the roads and pavements or the behaviour of children as they left the local school. He was leading up to that political career he had always planned on.

  At the end of January 1985 she found no letter from Tim and carefully checked other pages. She realised why when she read the short article on page five.

  Tim Cross Denies Affair

  Information has been received by this newspaper relating to the behaviour of well-known local businessman Timothy Cross. We have received documents and photographs supporting allegations that Mr Cross has had a long standing relationship with his Personal Assistant, Mrs Gillian White. Mrs White has acknowledged the truth of the allegations. This newspaper understands that Tim Cross, who strenuously denies an affair, has been asked to consider his position on the various committees of which he is a member.

  Anya smiled as she read the report. This was the end of Tim’s marriage. It had lasted nearly ten years, at least seven longer than she had expected.

  She had a feeling that Gillian White was not going to be put aside easily. What had led her to go to the papers? A lover’s tiff? Blackmail to make him leave Margaret and marry her? Whatever had been her motive she would undoubtedly be successful. She remembered Dave and John at the engagement party telling her how Tim’s father had been thrown out of the Golf Club and the Rugby Club when he had been found out being unfaithful to Esme. She understood now, far better than she had then, what disgrace that would be.

  She picked up the phone and dialled the number that had been at the bottom of all his articles.

  “Tim Cross.”

  “You sound it Tim.”

  “What?”

  “Cross.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Anya.”

  “Ah.” His voice didn’t soften. “I suppose you’ve called to gloat.”

  “No, not really.” She had hoped he would be pleased to hear from her but he didn’t sound it. “I called to say hello, how are you, are you coping? We used to be friends Tim. Friends talk to each other at times like this, they give each other support and friendship, at least that’s what I had always thought.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything you could say or do that would help.” And the phone went dead.

  As she looked at the receiver where Tim’s voice had been just a few seconds earlier, she realised that she was as lonely and unhappy as it sounded Tim
was now.

  She and Peter never argued, that would require passion and involvement, but they bickered about the slightest thing at home or in the office. They slept in the same bed but hadn’t touched each other, even accidentally, for a very long time. Whereas she had killed her first marriage with her inability to compromise she knew she was killing her second with neglect.

  She had wanted Tim to suggest they meet somewhere and have meaningless but imaginative sex. Anya had sometimes wondered what would have happened if she and Tim got together. Children weren’t important to him, he wouldn’t have minded her forging her own career, he might even have encouraged her, and the sex would have been good. But she dismissed the idea, they would have tired of each other sooner rather than later. But there was, Anya thought as she stared at the silent telephone, something of unfinished business between them.

  Four months later Anya read the notice of Tim’s divorce and three weeks after that she cut out the short paragraph that noted his remarriage to Mrs Gillian White, who, the newspaper related, had been his secretary for more than five years. There was no photograph of the wedding. ‘Out of the frying pan into the fire old chap,’ Anya said to herself as she gummed the cutting into her diary.

  Chapter 11: Reconciliations

  Suburban London, 1987-1992

  Tuesday 22nd September 1987

  I only asked him if I could go with him to see a property. Maybe it was my tone of voice, P always seems to hear an edge in it even when there isn’t meant to be one, but he got all aggressive and accused me of thinking I didn’t trust him to do it right on his own. I explained I’d been looking at a property round the corner and would like to see a comparison and he just yelled “You and your bloody empire.” It was a horrible argument. I didn’t think we cared enough to argue.

  Anya stopped writing and remembered breakfast that morning.

  “You and your bloody empire.” He was shocked at the unfamiliar anger in his voice.

  “You’ve always encouraged me with my properties.” She tried to sound reasonable.

  “My mistake.” Peter said under his breath.

  “What did you say?”

  He hadn’t meant the morning to go this way, but once the floodgates of his built up frustrations were opened the flow was relentless. “You have to do everything don’t you? I can’t do anything right.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You do all the paperwork because you don’t trust me. There’s nothing I do that you don’t do better.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is Anya.” She had been surprised at the change of tone, now there was just sadness in his voice. “Ever since you walked into my office so confident and alluring you’ve made me feel pretty useless. It’s you that’s made the business a success. I would have sold out long ago if it had been only me. I’ve never been particularly interested in it, selling houses is such a parasitic way to make a living.”

  She hadn’t answered immediately, there was just enough truth in what he had said about her not trusting him to do things well enough to make it difficult to reply. She hadn’t had to because he continued relentlessly.

  “I was ready to give it all up when you walked through that bloody door. I really wish you hadn’t, my life would have been so much better.”

  She had tried to hide her surprise. “Your life would have been better?”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “A mistake?”

  “Yes, a mistake. I should have realised I only got involved with you because I didn’t know what to do after Jack died.”

  “You married me on the rebound from the death of your brother?” Anya had difficulty believing that Peter had bottled up so much resentment for years.

  “I was alone. My parents were dead, then Jack. I had no family. No-one.”

  “So that’s it. Why can’t you be honest? You want a family, you want children. You want more little Marches to carry on the family name.”

  “Of course I want a son, every man wants a son. Why has it never happened?

  After Jack …”

  “Ah Jack of revered memory. From all accounts he was an arrogant, drunken womanising shit.”

  “You never knew him.”

  “Thank goodness for small mercies.”

  “You should listen to yourself sometimes. You’re so tied up in your life and making more bloody money you don’t have a clue what’s going on around you.”

  I knew we had never really loved each other, not the first-flush-of-youth-in-love kind of love but I thought we might have a fighting chance of making it work. I suppose we just worked too hard at the wrong thing. Perhaps sometime in the past ten years we should have realised that our marriage was more important than making more money. Or was it?

  “What do you mean ‘I don’t have a clue’?”

  “Has is ever occurred to you that I might be attractive to another woman?”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “What would you do if I said I had a mistress?”

  “I’d ask when you get the time to screw her.”

  “Mostly we meet at her house, when her children are at school.”

  “She’s got children? You’ve got a mistress and she’s got children? Yours?” Anya had begun to take what Peter was saying seriously.

  “No, not mine, unfortunately, though I’d be proud to have been their father, we’ve been together…”

  “Together?”

  “We’ve been together for five years.”

  “How long?” Anya wasn’t sure she could take any more of Peter’s confessions.

  “Just over five years. Her name is Jenny and she’s a widow. She’s got three children who call me Peter.”

  “You’ve met her children?”

  “Of course, three boys. They’re very nice. The eldest is…”

  “I don’t want to hear about your bloody mistress’s bloody children.”

  “You were always too busy to have children weren’t you? You never asked me you just made sure you wouldn’t get pregnant.”

  I really, honestly, thought I’d told him when we first got together but I can’t have done. He must have spent month after month waiting for me to give him good news, and month after month been disappointed. The man wanted a son and he never said a word.

  “It wasn’t like that…”

  “Sit down and bloody listen because I want a divorce. Jenny and I want to get married. I can’t imagine why I left it so long to tell you.”

  “You want a divorce? What about the business?”

  “Bugger the business. We’ll sell out to Wolfson’s they’ve made me a very good offer.”

  “You’ve talked to them about it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Without a word to me?”

  “Why would I have to talk to you? It’s my family’s business.”

  “You condescending, smug, unfaithful bastard.”

  “Well I wouldn’t have had to if we’d had children, if you’d had anything on your mind other than making more and more money from your wretched property developments and…”

  “… and your family business which I carried on my shoulders for years…”

  “Which I wanted to sell, and would have sold, years ago if I’d had any sense.”

  They sat in silence for a long time, each planning their next move. Peter swallowed hard before eventually asking “Will you give me a divorce?”

  Anya knew exactly what she would do.

  “No. I will not. Carry on fucking your bit on the side just don’t expect me to give you a divorce. Ever. Sell the business by all means. I could do with the money. I reckon I’d get at least 30% and there’s a nice row of cottages I’ve got my eye on.”

  She would have no objections to the sale of March and March to Wolfson’s, it was a good idea as the boom in the property market couldn’t last much longer. But she would not end the marriage.

  “You have absolutely no grounds to divorce me and I will
make damn sure you never have any. I will not leave you, I will not take a lover, I will be the perfect partner as far as anyone who is interested is concerned. You will have no grounds to divorce me and I don’t consider your unfaithfulness sufficient to make me think our marriage has irretrievably broken down.” Anya was aware that she had been in this situation before, though then the boot had been on the other foot.

  “I’ll leave you then.”

  “What and go and live with Jenny? What will that do for her reputation? And what about the children? How do you think they’d get on with their mother living in sin with a married man?”

  “If I did I’ll be able to divorce you after two years.”

  “I think you’ll find it’s five years if I don’t agree. And I won’t.”

  “You really are a selfish bitch.”

  “I am aren’t I?”

  Friday 15th January 1988

  Three things to record

  Firstly M & M now trades as ‘Wolfson’s Estate Agency incorporating March and March’ and I am half a million pounds richer.

  Second thing. A couple of weeks ago there was a letter in the Courier signed Tim Cross. There was an article about him, to go with his letter, and they described him as ‘local businessman’. Perhaps he’s trying to get back into public life. Two years were probably enough to get fed up with the secretary, perhaps even for the electorate and the golf club committee to forgive his indiscretions (they’d never forget). Why do I care?

  Third thing. Nearly four months now of the non-marriage. I’m completely friendly, I do as much in the house as I’ve always done. I sleep in our bed but if he chooses not to join me that’s up to him. Peter spends a lot of time out of the house, but comes back every night. I suppose they’ve come to some arrangement whereby they keep the children cocooned from reality and wait for me to change my mind. Well I’m not going to.