A Rather English Marriage (23 page)

He leaned across the table and clapped his father on the shoulder. That's the first time my son has touched me in years, Roy thought, and his flesh tingled from the contact. First time anyone's touched me, except by mistake, since – the funeral? No, can't be as long ago as that. Since New Year's Eve, when the Squadron Leader danced with me. He must've been lonely that night, poor bloke, and so was I. I'm lonely now. I'll always be lonely with Gracie gone.

Recognizing his own loneliness, he acknowledged that Alan was suffering the same pain. He too, in prison, surrounded by men, was lonely for a woman: not any woman, but one particular one, the wrong one. Not the mother of his sons, but the woman he had married against the laws of the land and of God and nature. But nothing I can say will change his mind, thought Roy. He stretched his hand across the table and laid it beside Alan's, but Alan looked away.

‘I'll go and see June,' said Roy.

Reginald Decided that while Liz was away he'd take some soundings; test the water. Trip to London to talk to his lawyer and accountant; maybe see how the girls were getting along. Might even tell them about Liz; fix up for them to meet her, perhaps, to see how she looked in their company, whether she could hold her own. No: bit soon for all that. Better to bide his time. Mary hadn't been dead a year yet: spot of respect would be in order. While Southgate and Mrs Big Black Mammy were jabbering away in the kitchen one morning, she ironing and he fiddling about at the stove, Reggie sat down at Mary's desk in the study, consulted her address book and his own, almost empty 1991 dairy, and began dialling.

Tucked away in the pigeonholes of the desk were several leather pocket dairies that had belonged to Mary over the years, and, as he waited for a secretary to connect him, Reginald pulled one out and began to flick through it. It held no secrets; Mary's life was just what it had seemed. ‘Coffee, Sue & Betty, 11' or ‘Penny, Primrose and J, Tea here, 4' were the social highlights of her week.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Conynghame-Jervis, I'm afraid he's in a meeting,' sang the brisk female voice down the telephone. ‘Can I ask him to call you back, or will you try again later?'

‘Get him to ring me as soon as he's free, there's a good girl.' ordered Reggie.

‘Has he got your number?' she said icily.

‘Of course he's got my sodding number,' muttered Reggie, but when she called out, ‘Sorry …?' he answered audibly, ‘Yes.'

He returned to his scrutiny of Mary's diaries, jabbed by the blameless life they revealed, and by the sight of her rounded schoolgirl handwriting. Gradually it dawned upon him that
she had seen the girls regularly, nearly always on the first Thursday of every month, but at other times as well. ‘Usual lunch, C & F' would be followed by ‘Meet Harrods 12.30' or ‘Meet Liberty's, 12.30,' and then, as often as not, ‘Matinée, 2.15' or ‘Film starts 2.55'. She had always made arrangements that would enable her to be back home by the time he arrived, even if sometimes – Reginald thought – she must have caught one commuter train ahead of his own. Why had she not talked about these meetings? he wondered, and knew the answer for himself. She had never told him 'because he had never asked; and if he
had
asked, he would not have waited for or listened to her reply.

Yet his wife was much loved, if her circle of friends was anything to go by. Penny, Primrose, Madge, Lisa, Penelope (who was different from Penny: Penny being fussy and henlike while Penelope was grand and contralto), Rosemary and Beth … women whose husbands he had glimpsed on his commuter train, back in the days when he still commuted, and towards whom he used to sketch a gesture of recognition. Women were better at friendships than men, he reflected; but then, women had the
time
.

Each diary had a list of birthdays carefully copied in from year to year; of which, Reggie noticed with a foolish surge of emotion, only his own merited capital letters. Against 2 March she wrote every year ‘REGGIE!!' while in the 1989 dairy – he checked – yes, she had written ‘REGGIE 70!' She had insisted on paying for dinner that night, up in London, at Luigi's (an old favourite and handy for the station afterwards). That evening, before they settled down to choose from the menu, she had taken from her bag a small gift-wrapped box and offered it to him tentatively, imploringly.

‘What's this, then?' Reginald had trumpeted. ‘What is all this nonsense, eh?'

A waiter had approached and popped a champagne bottle open just as Reggie snapped the spring of the jeweller's box. Inside lay a pair of heavy gold cufflinks engraved with his monogram, a baroque RCJ. Hadn't it occurred to him
then
to
wonder how she could pay for all this? He was about to stand up and go to his bedroom to look at them – had he ever
worn
them? he wondered guiltily. Surely she had had something engraved on the back: what the hell was it?

At that moment Southgate entered the room with a tray of coffee and biscuits, while at the same instant the telephone rang. Reginald waved the tray down and lifted the receiver.

‘Yes, yes, yes of course I'm here now … Well, put him through, then. Hello – MacNamee? Pat? … Excellent … Oh, tootling along, and you? Good, good. Thought I should look in for a chat. No, nothing's wrong. Lunch? Yes, suit me very well. Thursday? Friday? RAF Club as usual? Jolly good. Be there at half-twelve. Cheer-oh.'

Cufflinks forgotten, he turned to the back of the diary, where he was sure he would find an alphabetical list giving the girls' telephone numbers. He would arrange to meet them for tea at Fortnum's or the Ritz on the same day as his lunch with Patrick. The pages headed ‘Cash' and ‘Accounts' were meticulously filled in with dates and amounts – ‘3.01.89 sold 600 RB&K … £4,675' was a typical entry – and on the last page she had calculated the profit and loss for the whole year. He was staggered by the amounts she had been dealing with. Tens of thousands of pounds had passed through his wife's hands, unknown to him, right up until the last year of her life.

Reginald lit a cigarette and drank his cooling coffee. Resentment and guilt in equal parts disturbed his racing heart. (Shouldn't drink coffee, doctor says; shouldn't smoke; shouldn't do sweet FA: bloody doctors.) He knew she couldn't be accused of keeping secrets from him, yet he could not help feeling that at some point – when her dealings reached five thousand a year, say, or ten – she should have come clean. Yet… she had never asked him for money; had, on the contrary, willingly lent him quite large sums of her own. Perhaps she felt it was up to him to have noticed that her parents' initial twenty-five thousand pounds seemed to be stretching an awful long way. The diaries had always been here – not that he would have looked into them, of course, Reggie told himself virtuously.

The truth was, his wife had lived out her days unnoticed beside him. He had taken for granted her presence and her services, had dispensed with her sexually when she no longer welcomed him (the curtain had fallen sometime in the late forties or early fifties), but continued to find her useful domestically and socially. Mary had been responsible for every aspect of his life except his barber, his
Telegraph
crossword and his other women – such as they were: he always confessed eventually, and she used to blush when he told her and hang her head, as though the fault were hers. He found these episodes healing. He felt better afterwards and, feeling better, felt new desire for his wife. He would embrace her, and she would seem to nestle against him. Yet he was never sure that she really wanted his touch.

In due course they had stopped touching altogether, except the formal gestures – his hand under her elbow when they crossed the road or into church, a palm cupped ready to hand her out of a car or up from a sofa. I do not know, he thought, when I last kissed my wife. Was it months before she died, or years? He had not touched her, kissed her, listened to her, worn her gifts, met her eyes … and, by ignoring her, had diminished her to a creature who asked nothing of him. She had continued to give what she could – food and shirts appeared in the expected times and places – but their provider was a cipher, might as well have been a robot. Yet … isn't that what we all secretly want, Reggie wondered, once the first fine frenzy is over? He had more or less assumed that all husbands were like him, all wives like Mary, all marriages like theirs: a smooth-running service arrangement, give and take – men giving women status and taking home and comfort, organization,
order
. He had given Mary his name, made her his wife and helped her surpass the expectations of her parents and schoolfriends (‘Mary
Bagnal?
Marrying an RAF pilot? How
very
unexpected!'). Thinking of Southgate, he knew there should have been more to his marriage than that.

Mrs Odejayi stuck her head round the door and waved at him energetically. A strong female odour filled the room.

‘I'll be off, then!' she bellowed. Reginald looked up at her with swimming eyes.

‘Now now now, what's going on here?' she asked. ‘What's up? You been blubbing? Wash it all out of your heart, don't be shamed. God's good tears wash all man's sorrows away.'

She crouched down beside him and laid a huge arm across his shoulders. Her shiny black face was very close to his own and the smell of her hot, hard-working body was overwhelming. She smelled like Nanny, of starch and sweat. Her voice was tender.

‘There, there, poor soul,' she cooed. ‘Is it your dear missus as has passed away? You and Roy should get together. He's the same. Many's the weep he's had down in the kitchen with me. Sorrows should be shared, Squadron Leader, and then they're halved. Not hidden away in secret. Crying's a fine thing when you've got good cause.'

‘I was so horrible to her,' Reginald said indistinctly.

‘Horrible? Well there you are. All the same. Men treats their wives like dirt when they're alive and regrets them when they're dead. It's the law of nature and the way of the world. Women should live with women, and men stick to men. There'd be less trouble and no babies.'

She laughed, and stood up. ‘And what do you want for your other two wishes?' she said.

Reginald smiled glassily at her. ‘Have I paid you?' he asked.

‘Bless my soul, if that ain't the first time he's ever suggested it!' she said, throwing her arms wide as if appealing to an audience of thousands to witness. ‘No, you haven't – but this is Monday and it ain't due till Friday. But if you've got it, I'll take it, in case it ain't here the next time!'

‘If it's not due yet, I ain't payin' it!' said Reginald in imitation, and she grinned at him.

‘There you are – that's better now! Like I was saying, I'm off, or my poor old men up at the hospital won't get their lunch.'

She patted his shoulder. ‘You be all right now? Safe to leave you? God bless and keep you, then.'

Reginald would not have been surprised if she'd concluded
by saying, ‘And you promise to stay Nanny's good boy now.' He was almost more surprised that she did not, so vividly had her brisk, God-fearing kindness evoked the tears and consolations of the nursery. He watched her leave through the study window, squared his shoulders and walked through to the drawing room to pour himself a stiff whisky.

He swirled its jewel-clear liquid round the glass, thinking, If I marry again I won't neglect her. It won't be like poor Mary. I'll – imperceptibly the hypothetical became the definite – I'll be good to Liz. I'll look after her and pay attention to her. I won't visit Sabrina. Treacherously, the big boy twitched. Reggie scratched his balls crossly through his trouser pocket. The pocket had a hole in it. He poked his fingers through, and scratched again. I'll
try
not to visit Sabrina any more, he amended.

Later that week Reginald sat in the theatrical, ivory-and-gold foyer of the Ritz, awaiting his nieces with a mixture of apprehension and pleasure. Pleasure because they were good-looking girls and it would do him credit to be seen with them in such a place. Apprehension because he had come from an excellent lunch at the RAF Club, after which Pat, his accountant, had urged him to pay a surprise call on his father, Reggie's wartime flying contemporary.

‘He's always at the Reform in the afternoons,' Pat told him, ‘fast asleep in an armchair. Do him good to see you.'

Reggie had caught a cab to Pall Mall, and there he and Douglas MacNamee had reminisced happily over more than one balloon of the club's excellent brandy. Both slipped unconsciously into the tones and attitudes of their youth. Dangerous days; simpler times; a world of grey-blue uniforms and black-and-white certainties.

‘You heard Emily's boy got shot of his wife?' Douglas asked him.

‘Yes, Chaggers mentioned something, but not the pukka gen.'

‘Well, he married this model girl. Very odd type, always
dressed like a Swiss milkmaid. Mind you, she was a terrific looker. Great pair of lungs on her. Been a bit younger, wouldn't have minded taking down her particulars and filling in her little pink form myself.'

‘I say,' said Reggie, alarmed as Duggie's high colour deepened to choleric purple, ‘I say, steady down old chap.'

‘Sorry. Anyway, I wasn't the only one who took a shine to her, it seems. Boy got back early one day and found her being rogered by the farm manager's son. Turned out they'd been at it like knives for months. What's more, this lad wasn't the only one. She'd been doing bumps and circuits with the local gentry for ages.'

‘Station bike, in fact.'

‘Absolutely. Poor show, very. Don't suppose it would have mattered so much if it had been the farm manager. Sort of a perk, really. Boy was such a twerp.'

They roared with laughter and summoned a hovering club servant to bring another brandy. It was after half past three by the time Reggie tottered unsteadily down the Reform Club's marble steps, clinging to the railing for dear life. A walk to the Ritz would sober him up. Poor show to meet the girls in this state. It was a warm, late spring day and garish purple and yellow bulbs billowed from window boxes on the pompous Piccadilly façades. Gradually Reggie's step grew steadier, and by the time he rounded the corner of St James's Street he flattered himself no one could tell he'd had a noggin or two.