Elizabeth Buchan - The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

‘It was a shame,’ I managed. To be unwanted when you are dying must be terribly hard…

She gave a choking sound. ‘For God’s sake, he left me for you. Remember?’ She turned an anguished face towards me. ‘ Remember?’

‘I think of it most of the time. Never more so than now.’

Rose made a visible effort. ‘You have the twins to consider. Sam and Poppy suffered. You may think that they were too old, but they weren’t and they did. I blame you and Nathan for that. There was nothing I could do to help them. You can’t inflict your anger and mistakes on your children.’ She twirled her glass between her fingers. ‘I won’t let you.’

A tiny pulse beat in Rose’s temple and, no doubt, one did in mine. I fixed on the blank television screen in the corner of the room. ‘I’m truly sorry about Poppy and Sam.’ For good measure, I threw in, ‘Poppy’s taken it out on me. She’s a fighter.’

Rose bent down and picked up a tiny mother-of-pearl button. ‘That’s Poppy for you. Sam’s struggling a bit at the moment. I’m a little worried about him and Jilly… The job in America has thrown them both. They seemed so good for each other, but you never know. I want to be around to help, but I’m busy earning a living and getting on with my life and they have to sort themselves out.’ Her voice was tender. ‘Much… much as I love them.’

The tenderness excluded me. ‘They’re growing older, as I am, Rose, and more invisible.’

‘Just as I felt, then.’ She added, in a kinder voice, ‘Grief saps the confidence, Minty. I can tell you that. But it can be fine in the end. Believe me.’ She gestured at the room. ‘When Nathan left, I felt I’d failed myself and the children, but I survived. It took blood and tears, but I did it.’ She balanced the button on the palm of her hand. ‘Nathan did what he wanted to do. I failed to see that he was changing. And why shouldn’t he change? It was his right. But I didn’t see it then. So, it wasn’t all your fault, you know.’ She was letting me off the hook, a little.

The wine had loosened my tongue. ‘Roger and Gisela Gard came to dinner once. Believe it or not, I was playing office politics. One of the twins was naughty and Nathan dealt with it. I saw Roger watching him and I could almost hear him thinking, This is a man who’s lost his stuffing and brimstone, and the thought flashed through my mind that it was better to be dead than a failure.’ I put down my wine glass. ‘The question is, did I wish Nathan’s death on him, Rose? Did I?’

Rose swirled her wine round her glass. ‘When Nathan left, I thought how much easier it would have been as a widow rather than a dumped wife. For a start, no one could have said it was my fault, unless I’d fed him hamburger and chips every night. If he’d died, the situation would have been easier to handle.’

‘Yes.’

She put down her glass, and the gold ring gleamed. ‘I still would have lost my job to you, wouldn’t I?’

‘Probably,’ I conceded. Τ wanted it and I reckoned loyalty in the office was an old-fashioned concept.’

‘And now?’

I thought of Chris Sharp. ‘Much the same.’ I looked down at the carpet. ‘Was Nathan trying to humiliate me when he asked that you be made the boys’ guardian?’

‘Perhaps he was thinking of what was best for them.’

‘Perhaps.’

Rose took my hand. The touch of her flesh on mine was unexpected. ‘Minty, what you don’t understand is… I had got away. Finally. At last. I had stopped dreaming about Nathan. I wasn’t about to involve myself in his life again. I had cut him off.’

I allowed my hand to rest in hers and told her what festered in my mind. ‘I never loved him, Rose, not truly. Not really truly. Not heart, soul, body and mind. He knew he was getting older and wanted different things, and I wasn’t going to make it easy. If I’d loved him, I would have let him… oh, go to Cornwall, a million things.’ My fingers pressed Rose’s. ‘I think he felt desperately alone.’

Rose took away her hand. ‘I’m going to show you a letter, Minty.’ She went to the desk in the corner, picked up a small Jiffy-bag, pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.

I spread out two closely written sheets of paper. ‘My dearest Rose…’ Didn’t ‘ Dearest’ mean closest to my heart?

I have no right to ask what I am going to ask, but I have an idea it might be necessary. If you receive this letter, which I am lodging with Theo, then I will have judged correctly .

I am writing to ask you to remember that you were once good friends with Minty. If you are reading this, it means she is on her own with the twins. Of course, I have no idea how long that might be for. When I came over to see you in the flat, I asked you if you would be a guardian if anything should happen to me and to her, and the boys were still under age, and you said you would consider it. I can’t think of anyone better to ask. It is a huge thing to lay on you, especially given our history, but I know you through and through, Rose, and there is no one I trust more…

For a moment, I could not continue. ‘Oh, Nathan…’

‘Are you OK?’ asked Rose.

I nodded.

All I can say in mitigation for my actions towards you is that the complications of feelings and impulse take us to strange places. They certainly took me away from you, whom I loved, to Minty. But I loved Minty, too, and I want to say the following. There is so much in her to admire (you spotted it first when you became friends) and that still holds true. It has been difficult for her, and not as she expected. Thus, I ask you again, if she ever needs it and asks you for help with the boys, or even if she doesn’t ask you, please will you do it?

I put down the letter, picked up my bag and got to my feet. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this? I know I hurt you beyond words, but you should have told me.’

Rose’s response was short and simple. ‘Yes.’

‘It would have made everything easier to bear.’

‘Yes, I suppose it would. But I wasn’t thinking about you, Minty.’

So Rose had taken her revenge on me with her silence, and I could have expected no better and no less.

My head swam, and I wanted very badly to go home. I managed to say, ‘He knew I never loved him properly. Truly, properly.’ I was weeping openly. ‘It’s in the letter.’

Rose folded it and put it on the desk. ‘When he left me, I stopped loving Nathan the way he wanted. It was inevitable. There was no other way of surviving.’

We looked at each other. In that exchange lay the past we had shared, mourned and regretted. She picked up the Jiffy-bag. ‘One more thing. He asked Theo to send this to me. I think it’s a diary of sorts. I haven’t read it, Minty. Or only a little bit. I couldn’t. You should take it.’ She placed the envelope in my hands and I peered inside. It was the missing notebook.

That, too, had gone to Rose.

The hardest thing of all to govern is the heart and I had finally understood that I couldn’t blame Nathan for the struggle with his. If one’s own nature and impulses are unfathomable, then to reach into other minds to make sense of the rage, passion and loyalties that lie within them is impossible. In our separate ways, Rose, Nathan and I had cheated each other and, in doing so, cheated ourselves.

‘We must try harder, Rose, to make something out of this,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, we must.’

On my return to the house the boys, who had been watching for me at the window, ran out to greet me. I scooped them up, and hustled them inside. Then I closed the front door, leant against it and breathed deeply.