Marrying the Mistress (15 page)

‘Sorry about the sugar,’ Guy said. ‘Shall I leave you to pour out for yourself?’

She nodded. He went round the table to a low chair opposite and sat down. He said uncertainly, ‘I am – pleased to meet you.’

Gwen poured her tea. She added milk and one sugar lump. He had forgotten a teaspoon. She gave the teacup a little shake, to help the sugar dissolve. She was here, she told herself. She had come to London and found Merrion’s flat and rung the bell and got herself up here. With him. She mustn’t waste it.

‘I want to say something to you,’ she said.

He waited. He had leaned forward a little, his elbows on his knees. He was watching her.

‘You are ruining my daughter’s life,’ Gwen said.

He bowed his head. She picked up her teacup – her hand wasn’t at all steady – and took a sip.

‘It’s not that I think you don’t love her. I know she loves you. But what’s a man your age doing with a girl of thirty-one?’

Guy looked up at her. His eyes were veiled. Sad-looking.

‘It’s greedy,’ Gwen said. She put her teacup down. ‘I didn’t mean to say this. I didn’t intend to see you, after all. But now we’re here, I’ve got to. I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t. You’ve got everything she’ll never
have because you’re too old to let her have it. Suppose she wants a baby?’

He put his hands briefly over his eyes.

‘If she has a baby,’ Gwen said, ‘you’ll be dead before it’s grown-up. Have you thought of that?’

‘Yes,’ Guy said.

‘And she’ll be on her own for years and years. All that proper family life you’ve had, children and grandchildren, she’ll never have that. Or not in the way you’ve had it.’

He said, steadily, ‘I’ve said this to her.’

‘Have you?’

‘And her reply is that she knows and she would still prefer to have the unorthodoxy of her relationship with me than – than any alternative.’

Gwen took another sip of tea.

‘But she’s never known anything but you. There was that boy when she first came to London but he didn’t count. There’s never been anyone but you. You haven’t given her a chance.’

‘I haven’t kept her against her will—’

‘But you haven’t taken yourself off, either, have you? You didn’t say to her, sorry, Merrion, I have a wife and family responsibilities and they are my first priority, did you? You didn’t take yourself back to where you belonged, did you?’

‘No—’

‘You might have broken her heart,’ Gwen said, amazed at the words lining up in her head all ready to march out of her mouth just as they did during those silent,
one-sided conversations with Merrion ‘at the beginning. You might have broken it then, for a while, if you’d walked away. Just for a while. But you’ll break it anyway, now, won’t you, sooner or later?’

Guy stood up. He looked very tall, in that small, light room, tall and imposing.

‘Don’t think you’re saying anything I haven’t already thought or said. I know. I know all this. Anything I say—’ He stopped.

‘Well?’

‘Anything I say to you about the human heart will sound so feeble, so self-indulgent, so unrealistic … But she is my ideal companion. And I am hers. There’s a feeling of – of
belonging
together. No – no, not a feeling. A knowledge. A recognition. It was there from the beginning. I wasn’t looking for it. Nor was she.’

Gwen said sharply, ‘Anybody can do that.’

He gave a little sigh. She looked up at him.

‘I know,’ he said. He went across to a tray of bottles Gwen hadn’t noticed before and poured himself some whisky. He said, his back still turned, ‘We may be a living cliché, but that doesn’t make us any less
true.’

Gwen drained her teacup.

‘You’re a stubborn man.’

He said, his voice suddenly much louder, ‘That’s the
last
thing I am!’

Gwen looked at the floor.

‘I am trying to be patient,’ Guy said. He came back to his chair, holding his whisky glass. ‘I acknowledge the justice, for you at least, of what you say. Don’t forget, I
have children of the sort of age Merrion is, children – sons – of whom I still feel very protective. I know why you’re saying what you’re saying. I’ve let you call me greedy and selfish and unfeeling. But I will not be labelled stubborn, too. I will
not
have it implied that I’m not changing my mind for reasons of simple, stupid obstinacy.’

Gwen began to tremble slightly. The feeling of strange exhilaration that had buoyed her up so far was beginning to leak away, leaving her feeling – as she had so often felt, all her life – that she had bitten off more than she could chew. Her mother had always warned her, ‘Don’t start something, Gwen, if you can’t finish it.’ Ed had been different. Ed had egged her on. It was one of the things that had made her fall in love with him – he’d seemed to see capacities in her she couldn’t see in herself.

She said, with a tremulousness she much regretted, ‘You shouldn’t shout at me. I’m Merrion’s mother.’

He put his whisky glass down.

‘I hope I wasn’t shouting—’

‘You raised your voice—’

‘I shouldn’t have done,’ Guy said. ‘I’m sorry.’

She said, still looking at the floor, ‘I ought to go.’

‘Mrs Palmer—’

She waited.

‘Mrs Palmer, we ought to be on the same side. We both love Merrion better than anyone else.’

‘Better?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘even me. I love her more than I love my children. I didn’t know it was possible to love anyone this much.’

Gwen stood up. She was suddenly extremely tired and longing, childishly, for the train to take her westwards, back to everything that was unremarkable and familiar.

‘If you love her—’ She paused.

He stood, too. He looked enormous suddenly, formal, authoritative. Gwen took a breath.

‘If you love her that much,’ she said clearly, ‘if you love her as much as you say, then you know what you ought to do for her. Don’t you?’

When Merrion put her key in the door, she knew immediately that something was wrong. The smell of it came out of the flat like a vapour, cold and raw. Guy usually put all the lights on, pulled the curtains, had music playing, supper started, sometimes even a bath run for her full of bubbles with a glass of wine sitting on one of the broad corners beside the taps. But tonight it was silent. And almost dark. Merrion stepped into the gloom and anxiety in a single stride.

‘Guy?’

‘I’m here,’ he said. His voice sounded strained, as if it were difficult to speak, as if he’d been crying.

She moved into the sitting room. It was almost in darkness, except for a single lamp glowing in a corner. Guy was lying along the sofa, his jacket off, his arm flung across his face.

‘Darling,’ Merrion said, rushing forward. ‘Darling, are you OK?’

He took his arm away, and held it out to her.

‘Physically, fine.’

She took his hand. It felt the same as ever, big and warm and certain. She glanced down at the table beside him. There was a tea tray on it, a proper tea tray laid for one with a pot and a milk jug and a cup and saucer.

‘Guy?’

He let her hand go abruptly and swung himself upright.

‘I made it for your mother—’

‘My
mother?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your mother’s been.’

Jack and Moll spent the afternoon locked in the bathroom. At least, Carrie had supposed that the door was locked, but when she went up to shout that, whatever they were doing could they please stop because other people might need the shower, Moll called – disconcertingly pleasantly – ‘Oh, come in!’

Jack was sitting in the middle of the room on a chair taken from Carrie’s bedroom, draped in one of the hideous fish-patterned swimming towels Carrie had bought in a street market on the principle that they were so unattractive that nobody would ever nick them. His hair – or at least the front of it – was intersected with neat little aluminium foil packets. Moll was wearing latex surgical gloves and her hair was tied back smoothly behind her head with a red bandana. The bathroom smelled crudely of bleach.

‘Hi,’ Moll said. She had a poise that made her at once very easy and very discomposing to deal with. ‘I’m putting highlights in Jack’s hair.’

‘Highlights—’

‘Greyish blond,’ Moll said. ‘Ashy.’

Jack, under his frill of little silver packets, looked smug. He said, ‘It’d cost forty quid at a hairdresser—’

‘Perhaps you’d do mine,’ Carrie said. Her tone of voice was somehow not quite what she’d intended.

Moll flicked her a glance.

‘Sure. Any time.’

Carrie looked at her deftly moving hands. She had a proper hairdressing colourist’s comb, with fine teeth and a spiked metal handle.

‘I was thinking of having a shower—’

‘We can move,’ Moll said. ‘Any time.’

Jack looked briefly at his mother.

‘Why now?’

‘Because I’ve had a long day at work, I’m having a drink with your uncle Alan and then I’m collecting Emma from drama club and I wish to do the latter activities showered.’

There was a tiny pause. Jack and Moll caught each other’s eyes, for a fraction of a second, in the bathroom mirror. Jack said, ‘Where’s Rach?’

‘Gone to the movies with Trudy. Then she’s staying the night.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He sounded nonchalant.

‘And Dad’s working late,’ Carrie said. ‘What’s new. So such supper as there is won’t be until about nine. I may even pick up a pizza.’

‘We’ll get supper,’ Moll said.

Carrie stared at her.

‘Will
you?’

‘Of course. Tell us what and we’ll have it ready by nine.’

Carrie leaned against the doorframe.

‘Nobody in this house has ever, ever offered to get a meal—’

Moll smiled. She folded another foil packet neatly around a strand of Jack’s hair with the tail of her comb.

‘We’ll finish this off in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘And then you can shower. Just tell us what you want us to cook before you go.’

‘Yes,’ Carrie said weakly. ‘Thank you. Heavens.’

Jack stood up, his silver frill glittering, the fish towel swinging round him like a cloak. He looked entirely unselfconscious; in fact, almost the reverse: pleased and proud. He picked up the chair he had been sitting on and went out on to the landing with it. Moll gathered up her bowls and brushes and comb and followed him. She still wore her small, pleasant smile but she didn’t look at Carrie. Carrie watched them, in something approaching a daze, as they went along the landing with their burdens and then down the stairs together. When they got to the bottom, Jack leaned sideways across his chair – why was he still carrying her bedroom chair for heaven’s sake? – and gave Moll a quick kiss.

‘Bingo,’ he said.

Moll giggled. The kitchen door shut behind them. Carrie looked at the bathroom. It suddenly seemed too much effort to take a shower, too much effort to take all her clothes off and think what to put on instead. Alan wouldn’t mind anyway. Alan never expected
anyone to go the extra mile if they hadn’t the energy. She tugged at the jacket of her work suit. What did the world look like before everybody, all the time, everywhere, wore black?

Alan had already ordered for her. He was sitting with a glass of white wine in front of him and another glass, untouched, sat in front of the chair beside him. He was wearing a collarless white linen shirt under a black leather waistcoat. Carrie sketched a little gesture of approval towards him as she sat down.

‘Nice—’

He grinned.

‘I’ve got a date.’

‘You haven’t!’

‘A doctor. Nice car.’

‘Alan,’ Carrie said, sitting down, ‘his car is the
last
thing that matters.’

Alan made a face. He looked very happy, almost mischievous.

Carrie said, ‘There’s a lot of love about at the moment, isn’t there? Even Jack—’

‘Jack?’

‘At this precise moment Jack is sitting in my kitchen having highlights put in his hair by a very sleek little number called Moll.’

‘Good for Jack.’

‘I suppose so—’

‘Carrie,’ Alan said warningly.

‘What?’

‘Don’t use that tone of voice about Jack’s girlfriend.’

‘What tone?’

‘That nobody’s-good-enough-for-my-boy tone.’

‘Was I?’

‘Yes,’ Alan said, ‘you were.’ He raised his glass.

‘Cheers.’

‘You, too. I hope you have a lovely evening.’

‘I’d rather have a wild one—’

‘I don’t want to know about that,’ Carrie said.

He grinned again.

‘I wouldn’t tell you anyway.’

She looked at him.

‘You
are
cheerful.’

‘I know. Isn’t it a relief?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it really is. I’m getting so used to gloom and doom I’m in danger of forgetting there’s an alternative.’ She took a mouthful of wine. She said, looking at the tabletop, ‘I met Merrion.’

‘And?’

‘As you said.’

‘Nice?’

‘So far so good. And certainly determined to fight her corner.’

‘Shouldn’t she?’

‘Of course she should,’ Carrie said crossly. ‘It’s just that if she does I get torn in two.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I — ‘

‘Carrie,’ Alan said, leaning forward, ‘you have more sympathy for my father and Merrion than you do for my mother. You know you do.’

Carrie looked at him.

‘That’s why I wanted to see you.’

‘What now?’

‘Your mother,’ Carrie said, her gaze back on the tabletop, ‘has decided that although she wants what she sees as her fair share of your parents’ assets, she is not going to soil her hands securing them. She has decided she is going to have nothing further to do with your father. Nothing. Ever. So—’

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘You can guess the rest.’

‘Oh God,’ Alan said. ‘And Simon agreed?’

‘He doesn’t seem to think he has any option. You can’t
force
a person of sixty-one in their right mind to go to a lawyer, can you?’

Alan took a gulp of wine.

‘When did this happen?’

‘This week. He didn’t mean to tell me about it, but when he got back from Hill Cottage in such a state, I could see she’d asked for several pounds of flesh.’

Alan said, between his teeth, into his wineglass, ‘I told him.’