A Rather English Marriage (33 page)

Southgate cleared the plates quietly and efficiently, swept the table with a tiny dustpan and brush that he hadn't seen since Mary's day, and set out the pudding and cheese plates on the sideboard.

‘Will that be all, sir?' he asked.

‘Very good, Southgate. Well done. Yes, you may go now.'

‘Delicious dinner,' said Liz, to no one in particular.

‘Not mine, Madam,' said Roy. ‘Mrs Simpson cooked.'

‘Well, tell her from me it was excellent,' said Liz graciously.

‘That's all, Southgate,' said Reggie, hurriedly. ‘You may go now.'

‘Goodbye, sir,' said Roy. ‘I'll look in tomorrow. Glad you enjoyed your dinner, Madam.'

For an instant Liz frowned, but before she could ask, what does he mean, he'll ‘look in' tomorrow? Reggie took charge.

‘Right!' he said decisively. ‘Now then! What do you fancy? Cheese first in the nasty French way, or pudding?'

‘Haven't much choice, have I? Pudding would be lovely. Please.'

They had been talking, earlier, about their marriages. He described Mary: docile, unworldly, long-suffering, but with an unexpected talent for making money. ‘Sounds the very opposite of my husband!' Liz had said, laughing. She told him briefly about David – impulsive, amoral, extravagant, but the sexiest man that she, at twenty-one, had ever seen. Reggie wanted to know about her children. She avoided telling him their ages. Hugo, she said, was still on his travels. Sort of Grand Tour, Reggie had offered. Yes, she had agreed (why confuse him with the facts?). He had urged her to bring Alicia down to meet him soon and Liz, thinking the sooner the better, had promised to do so.

They moved into a new phase, a sort of intimacy, a truthfulness. It was the end of games-playing, time for a mutually understood laying down of cards. Reggie lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly.

Liz felt emboldened to ask, ‘Why – you don't have to answer – why did you never have children?'

‘Just one of those things,' said Reginald, gruffly, swerving away. Male pride made him add, ‘Not that there was anything wrong with us. Not a matter of couldn't.'

‘You must have wanted them, surely? A son to carry on the family name. A daughter. I thought all men wanted a daughter. A pretty girl to wind you round her little finger.'

‘Do they?' asked Reggie. His colour, thought Liz, was
dangerously high. His blood pressure must be appalling. She'd have him checked out.

‘Or was it your wife?' she persisted.

‘No … no … Mary was very keen to have kids. That's why we bought this big house in the first place.'

‘Forgive me, Reggie dear. Tell me to mind my own business if you like. It just seems, you know, odd. Unlikely.'

‘Another glass of wine?' he asked. ‘Or would you rather have port with your cheese?'

Fluffed it, she thought. Clumsy ass. I've lost the moment.

‘Port, please,' she said demurely. She sipped it in silence.

I haven't talked about this, except a few times with Mary, for forty years, thought Reginald. People must have forgotten it ever happened. Nothing was said at Mary's funeral. Vivian might remember, although why should he? Just a boy at the time. Wouldn't have meant much to him. Changed my life. Changed my marriage. Changed everything.

Mary wouldn't let me make love to her for a year afterwards and when finally she allowed me back in her bed, I couldn't do it. We lived as a non-playing couple from then on. Might have looked pukka from the outside. Never can tell what happens inside a marriage. I dare say thousands are like us. Don't tell me Chaggers still rogers his wife – or Harry, let alone Pongo and Betty. It's a very English sort of marriage, isn't it? All best behaviour and no action. From then on I could only do it with tarts. Never managed to get it up for a decent girl, not unless she acted like a whore. The surprise was the number of decent girls who liked it that way, too: who could only cope with sex as a dirty little secret. It had to be expensive and grubby and furtive for me and the bad boy. Guilty and ashamed, your Honour.

Liz was watching him, her eyes shadowy in the evening light. If I'm thinking of marrying this woman, she'll have to know. I must tell her. Now. How do I begin? His heart thundered in his chest, beat after heavy beat resounding against his ribs.

‘'Fifty-one,' said Reginald. ‘Nineteen-fifty-one was the year
she died. Might as well tell you. Might as well come clean.' He snorted and almost choked. Liz was alarmed. Glory be, she said to herself, what have I started?

‘She was three,' Reginald began. ‘Her name was Cecily. We called her Tush, or Tushy, for some reason. She was three years old, three and a bit, just old enough to be out of the harness things children wore in those days. Know what I mean? You'd have them on the end of long straps, like a bridle, and there would be little animals on the front, the piece that went across the chest. Teddy bears or rabbits or something. Tushy's used to have a white rabbit on it.'

‘I know what you mean,' Liz told him.

‘Anyway, she was out of the harness by then. Very proud of herself.'

He paused again. Liz kept silent as Reginald called up his past.

‘We'd gone shopping one Saturday morning, all three of us: me and Cecily and Mary. We lived in Tunbridge Wells by then. We moved here just after Tush was born. Ideal house for bringing up children. Big garden. Away from the traffic.'

He drained his port, and Liz sipped from her glass. Its deep, peppery flavour tickled her tongue delightfully. Reggie poured himself another glass.

‘We were going along Mount Pleasant. Didn't have supermarkets in those days; couldn't get everything under one roof like you do now. Had to go to the greengrocer for fruit and vegetables, baker for bread, fishmonger for fish …'

‘I know,' said Liz gently, keeping her eyes steadily on his face.

‘Mary and I were queuing in the butcher, each holding one of Cecily's hands, had her between us. Mary said something like, “I'll just nip into the baker and pick up a fresh Hovis,” and I said, “Fine, you do that,” and she let go of Cecily and went out.'

‘Yes?' prompted Liz.

‘Moment later – few seconds, no more – Tush said, “Can I go with Mummy?” and I said, “Course, darling,” and off she
went. Not fifteen seconds had passed. Baker was one or two shops back. Mary was hardly out of the door. No distance at all.'

There was another silence, so prolonged that Liz picked up his silver lighter and lit the candles in the centre of the table. The mahogany table glowed with the reflection of their wavering, strengthening flame.

‘And then,' said Reginald, in a harsh, resonant voice that came not from his throat nor his lungs but from deep in his guts, ‘then I heard the squeal of a big lorry braking. I knew immediately.'

It was true. He had known. He was trained for moments like that. Only this time there was no lever to pull, no joystick, no gunsights, nothing. Just his legs, rooted to the spot, paralysed.

‘After I don't know how long I ran to the door. She was in the road. Under its wheels. Dead already. You could see there was no point in calling an ambulance, though someone did. She had died instantly.'

Liz reached over the table and put her cool hand over his. His flesh was puffy and hot.

‘My darling,' she breathed, hardly audible. ‘I am so sorry. I am so dreadfully sorry. Darling Reggie. Poor Reggie.'

‘Not poor Reggie,' he said. ‘
It was my fault!
No good telling me different. It was
all my fault
. I killed my daughter.'

‘Reggie. You didn't. It was an accident. How could you have known?'

‘I did,' he insisted. ‘Yes I did. Cecily Mary, died aged three years and five months. Beloved only child. Killed by her father's carelessness.'

He Had never admitted it before. In the past, to Mary, he had always blustered and evaded and denied. He had never put the truth into words before. The guilt for her death lay at his door.

Several hours later, Liz dozed upstairs in Reggie's large bedroom, dimly lit in the moonless summer night. He had wept the long-suppressed tears of four decades, wept for the aircrews whose names he could no longer remember, wept for his dead wife, wept above all for his child. Liz had held him, patted his hand, stroked his hair, kissed his flushed face, murmured and comforted him.

‘Liz,' he had said through his tears, ‘Marry me, Liz? You will marry me, won't you? You won't leave me?'

‘My darling, don't be silly,' she answered. ‘Of course I'll marry you.'

‘I've got a ring for you. Bought it ages ago. Find it for you in the morning. Liz, you don't know how awful I've been. I was awful to Mary. It'll be different with you, I promise,' he assured her.

‘You're not awful at all,' she told him. ‘You're a very dear old heffalump.'

He smiled glassily at that, and repeated that he loved her, loved her and needed her, wanted her very much. At last, like a child who has cried itself out, he shuddered to a halt. Finally he had said, ‘I'm so terribly tired. Forgive me, my darling – it's not at all what I had in mind. But I must sleep.'

It was not, thought Liz, exactly the seduction scene she had envisaged, either. Yet she was moved by his helplessness and honesty, by the way in which, with his long-delayed tears, the crusty old Reggie had cracked open to reveal the tender, soft Reggie within. Is it possible, she wondered, that I could come to love this man?

She sat by his bed watching over him, as she had not watched anyone since the days when her children were small and suffered from feverish childhood illnesses that kept them
awake and fretful and in constant need of her reassuring presence. Whatever happened to the tender, soft Liz? she asked herself. I've developed a pretty hard shell over the years, too. Eventually she arranged herself on the little settee at the end of his bed, pushed off her sandals and let them drop on to the thick turquoise carpet, curled her feet underneath her, pillowed her head on a couple of tapestry cushions, and slept. The clock in the hall chimed three.

Some time later Reginald woke to a thumping swine of a headache and an urgently full bladder. He got up and began to grope his way to the bathroom. In the faint light he saw Liz, curled up fully dressed at the end of his bed. The sight of her stirred him to recollection, tenderness and desire. In the bathroom he dropped his dirty clothes in the laundry basket as Mrs Owsyerfather had taught him and washed his face and teeth and private parts. Wrapping the striped dressing-gown around himself, he scrutinized his face in the mirror. It was swollen and his eyes looked bloodshot, but what the hell, he thought, it was dark anyway. He tossed down a couple of aspirin for the headache, chased them with two paracetamol, patted some Trumper's cologne on to his jowls, and tiptoed back into the bedroom.

‘Liz?' he whispered.

She stirred, murmured, and curled more closely into herself.

‘Liz? Darling …'

She grumbled under her breath, rearranged her head on the cushions, and slept on. Reginald stood looking down on her. The white dress had ridden up to reveal her long thighs and the curve of her buttocks.

‘Liz,' he said more loudly and, bending down, he ran his hand along the undulating lift of her thigh, as far as the line of her pants.

At this she shifted, murmured, ‘Don't, please … no …' and awoke. ‘Reggie!' she said. ‘What time is it?'

‘No idea. Does it matter?'

He bent and ruffled her hair. She lifted her head. He cupped her chin and kissed her.

‘My darling,' said Liz. ‘Dearest heffalump. Are you all right?'

‘Mmm,' said Reggie meaningfully. ‘Are you going to come to bed?'

‘Get in and keep it warm for me,' said Liz. ‘Is that the bathroom?'

She reappeared moments later, still dressed, as he had hoped. In the pale light preceding dawn he could see her quite clearly.

‘Take your clothes off for me,' he begged.

Slowly she turned round, so that her back was to him, and lifted the dress up and over her head, dropping it to the floor in an encircling white drift. A white strapless bra bisected her back, a tiny pair of pants curved between her buttocks. She looked over her shoulder at him.

‘Undo me,' she ordered.

She sat on the side of the bed and Reggie reached up with trembling fingers to unhook her bra. It fell forward on to her lap. She stood up, kicked the bra aside and took a few paces forward, still with her back turned to him.

Reggie could hardly breathe. She understands! he thought. I didn't have to tell her. She knows, she knows! Her body gleamed in the darkness, very long and slender, and he felt the bad boy becoming great and glad at the sight of her. Finally Liz hooked her thumbs in to her pants and rolled them down her legs. When she was completely naked, she turned round.

‘Here I am!' she said.

She jiggled playfully to and fro and sang, in a breathy little Marilyn Monroe voice, ‘I wanna be
fucked
by you … doo-bi-doo-doo.'

‘Show me … show me …' whispered Reggie hoarsely.

Liz cupped her breasts in her hands and came towards him proffering them like a gift. But despite the aerobics classes, her body was long past its best. Her confidence was only a pretence. She could not help her voice trembling as she asked uncertainly, ‘Are they all right? Am I all right? Is this what you want?'

The bad boy wavered, on the verge of subsiding, and then, as Reginald called out urgently, ‘Quick! Give them to me! Liz … hurry … hurry,' rose up again as she thrust her breasts into his face.

When she awoke in the morning she insisted on leaving at once. ‘I don't want the servants to find me here,' she said, and Reggie, whose head was now filled with an agonizing, thundering roar, had not the energy to explain.

‘You've got a dreadful hangover,' she told him. ‘And so have I. It's the port. Nothing like it for hangovers.'