Elizabeth Buchan - The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

My mouth and throat were dry, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask her for a drink. ‘I want to know about you and Nathan.’

‘Nathan and I were married. We had two children. I had a good job. Then I hired you and brought you home to meet him over spaghetti. You know the rest.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s not what I am asking.’

Rose was keeping something back. The light played on her honey hair and creamy skin. In the past, Nathan had touched that hair and skin. They had belonged to him.

Thirsty, and burning with humiliation, I asked the question that had to be asked: ‘Rose, did you take Nathan back as a lover?’

Rose shifted in the chair. Slender but not too slender, toned and groomed, she was a world away from the frazzled working mother I had first encountered in the Vistemax office. Yet she was vulnerable too. It’s difficult at my age . And vulnerability had its own eroticism. Of course Nathan would have wanted her back.

She placed her hand on her chest in the region of the heart. ‘It feels like a stone sitting on my chest, mourning Nathan. Like a gigantic attack of indigestion.’

‘I know,’ I said.

We could ask each other, Do you weep for him, like I do?

‘Do you?’

You’re not answering the question.’

‘That’s because I’m not going to.’

I bit my lip. ‘ Tell me, Rose. What was it you and Nathan decided?’

‘He said you were ambitious.’

‘So was he at my age. So were you. You had a fight with him about going back to work.’

The hand on her chest curled into a ball. ‘It’s irrelevant now. Old, old ground and I don’t wish to go over it.’

‘Old ground for you, perhaps.’ I closed my eyes for a second. ‘But Nathan didn’t like it, and it was a source of friction.’

‘For God’s sake, Minty, what do you want?’

‘I suppose…’ I said miserably ‘… I want to tell you that he wasn’t really happy with me. And that he regretted leaving you.’ I hesitated, and then I forced out the words through gritted teeth. ‘Did he come back into your bed?’ Rose made a noise between a laugh and gasp, but I ploughed on: ‘Nathan had been there so many times before…’ Yes, he had shared the everyday language of small noises and touch with Rose. He had listened to her breathing in the night, heard her clean her teeth, fill the kettle… ‘It wouldn’t have been such a big step.’ Rose held up a hand to stop me, but I ignored it. ‘I could never share the long history you had with him. I could never compete. You were always there, ahead of me. Always.’

‘Stop it, Minty.’

I had wit enough left to obey her.

Rose flashed a wry smile. ‘I want never gets.’ It was a saying we’d used often in the office. Once. Years ago. Timon, the editor, had always wanted more books, fewer books, different ones. I want never gets . Except, in that case, ‘I want’ usually did get. She continued, ‘When Nathan first told me he was having an affair with you, I asked him why he’d told me. If someone’s having an affair, they should be very clever and very secret. I still believe that.’

‘Nevertheless I need to know.’

Rose’s smile had vanished. She leant towards me to emphasize her point, and I smelt her jasmine scent. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything, Minty.’ She spoke without malice, almost gently. ‘You lost the right to my confidences long ago. I don’t have to discuss anything with you and I certainly don’t feel I have to help you sort things out.’

She got up and disappeared through the door, then returned with a bottle and glasses on a tray. ‘You’d better have some of this. Hal brought it from Italy.’

As I accepted a glass, my blouse dug into the flesh under my arm. ‘The boys ask after you quite a lot.’

Quick as lightning, I picked up the flash of delight that lit her face. ‘The boys…’ Her voice was soft, almost possessive. ‘They are sweet.’

My instinct was to hiss, ‘Keep off my sons.’ Unreasonable, I knew. I looked down at my hands and struggled for mastery of myself. ‘Old friendships and old loyalties. Do you remember? You talked about them at that supper when I first met Nathan. How hard it is to shake them off.’

She smiled grimly. ‘Believe me, I could shake you off, Minty, with no trouble at all. It wouldn’t take much.’

She meant it, and I flushed – not with anger but despair. As the woman who had pinched her husband, I was culpable, pitiable and all the other things that Rose cared to name. And yet all those years ago, I had witnessed her rush into the office, too-pink lipstick smudged, sweater ill-fitting, swearing that Nathan/the children had been difficult/demanding/cross, and I’d thought it was the other way round.

I drank my wine, and looked around the room. In its calm, ordered magnolia and cream, with the blue touches here and there, it reflected what Rose had become. And it was a room that had been arranged entirely to the satisfaction of its occupant. ‘There are advantages to living alone,’ I remarked.

She understood what I meant. ‘Actually, yes.’

We exchanged a glance. Funnily enough, we do understand each other Rose put down her glass and said, ‘Nathan and I were married for a long time. We knew each other well. Just as… just as… you and I do. It was easy to pick up conversations.’ She got up and walked over to the window ‘My life with Nathan was private until you came along. If our marriage had bad patches, and areas of blindness, it was ours and it worked, until you prised it apart. Then everyone took a good look, and it was open house.’ She turned and stared at me, calm and steady. ‘You’ll admit that I don’t owe you anything, Minty. No explanations. No loyalty.’

‘Nathan came here because he wanted comfort, and conversation,’ I cried. ‘He didn’t find them with me. Your bed would have been a natural progression.’

She leant her forehead against the curtain. ‘Could be.’ She sighed. ‘Why don’t you stop now and go away?’

‘Because I’m angry with myself, Rose, but I’m also angry with Nathan.’

She swung round sharply on her heel. ‘Didn’t you once say to me that Nathan is dead – dead ? Didn’t you? In your so-matter-of-fact way?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Then leave him alone. Give him some peace.’

‘You’re right. I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Quite,’ she said coldly. She poured a second glass of wine and hugged it to her chest. I made no move, and she said, ‘Aren’t you going? Go.’

What did the self-help manuals have to say on the subject of the second wife apologizing to the first? Those books that encouraged people to believe they could take a grip on their lives and make changes, that concocted dazzling fantasies of resolution, forgiveness and other castles in the air?

‘I want to say sorry to you,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t realize what I’d done until I’d married Nathan and had the boys. Then it all seemed different, particularly when I grasped how disappointed Nathan was… at times. He used to look at me sometimes, and I could see how he hated what he’d done. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for me, but that he’d realized how much he cared for the things he’d discarded.’

Nathan had used Rose badly. I had used Rose badly. I already knew that the full import of one’s transgressions don’t really hit home until years after the event. The manuals don’t mention that one. It was probably too complicated a subject for them to tackle.

‘Poor Minty,’ said Rose, and her irony cut me to the quick. She remained hunched over her wine, neither drinking it nor looking in my direction. ‘You were welcome to him,’ she admitted. ‘He had hurt me so much. Sometimes I thought I’d die of the hurt. But you know the aphorism “This, too, will pass”? It’s true, it does. Thank God. When he turned up here on the day he died, I didn’t make him particularly welcome. Actually, I didn’t want him here. I was busy. He could see that, and he was disappointed. But I didn’t feel I had any reason to put myself out. I had spent so long shaking free, and Nathan’s problems were not mine… I could no longer engage with him, not in the way he wanted… Actually, I blame myself for that.’