Marrying the Mistress (24 page)

‘I’ve got to do something—’

‘Could you do it in a minute? After you’ve cleared the plates?’

Jack hesitated. He stood up. Grando was looking at him with an expression that oddly gave him courage.

‘In a sec,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got to make a phone call.’

‘Is Jack all right?’ Guy said.

He and Simon were standing in the garden, their hands in their pockets. The garden was remarkably untidy. Neither he nor Simon had commented on it for the simple reason that neither of them had really noticed it and if they had, their noticing might have led rapidly and dangerously to the subject of Laura.

‘Never better,’ Simon said.

‘Really?’

Simon looked up to watch a passing aeroplane.

‘He’s got a girlfriend. The first serious one. He’s really star-struck.’

Guy looked at the grass. He jabbed at a dandelion with the toe of his shoe.

‘He didn’t look star-struck at lunch,’ Guy said. ‘He looked miserable. He hardly said a word.’

‘He seldom does. Not in front of grown-ups anyway.’

‘Everything else going all right? School and so on?’

‘I think so,’ Simon said. ‘You’d better ask Carrie.’

‘Why can’t I ask you?’ Guy said. ‘You’re the boy’s parent, too, aren’t you?’

‘She’s the one—’

‘Well, she shouldn’t be.’

‘Look,’ Simon said with some heat. ‘Look, don’t get at
me
. Anyway, who are you to talk? Who knew anything much about my schooldays but Mum?’

‘Exactly,’ Guy said. ‘And I regret it.’

‘So you’ll salve your conscience by tearing me off a strip?’

Guy kicked at the dandelion again.

‘Carrie’s not happy,’ he said. ‘You’re not happy. Jack’s not happy. And don’t tell me it’s all my fault because that’s neither fair nor accurate.’

‘Did you come here to give me a lecture?’

‘I’m not giving you a lecture.’

‘Dad,’ Simon said, ‘it was Carrie’s idea to ask you both here, and up to now we’ve got through it all right. Don’t start on me now.’

Guy said, ‘I tried to see your mother.’

‘I know.’

‘I am advised,’ Guy said, ‘by my own experience and instincts,
and
by Susan Dewar, to beg you both to find your mother an independent legal adviser.’

Simon looked at the sky again.

‘We’ve been through all that.’

Guy put a hand on Simon’s arm.

‘But you’re
suffering
, Simon. And you’re making Carrie suffer.’

Simon lowered his arm so that Guy’s hand slipped from it.

‘I can only do what I think is right.’

‘Oh Lord,’ Guy said and briefly closed his eyes.

‘We’re talking conscience here,’ Simon said. ‘Not just emotion. It’s dictates of conscience, a sense of what is
right
to do.’

‘By everybody?’

‘I can’t possibly do right by everybody.’

‘So you are choosing to do right by just one person at the expense of everybody else?’

‘Dad,’ Simon said. ‘Dad. That’s the whole point. I’m not choosing. I haven’t
got
a choice.’

Guy was silent. He had dislodged the dandelion by now and bent to pull it and its long white root out of the lawn. The root broke off halfway.

‘Damn.’

‘I shouldn’t be here with you,’ Simon said. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you. I should only be talking to you through Susan Dewar.’

Guy said crossly, ‘Don’t be so
idiotic.’

Simon shrugged.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Guy said.

Simon looked at him.

‘Legally, I suppose Susan should tell you but I’m still your father, whatever you say, so I’d prefer to tell you this myself.’

‘Merrion’s pregnant,’ Simon said.

‘No. Merrion is not pregnant.’

‘Well then?’

‘We have fixed a date to be married.’

‘You can’t.’

‘We have done it.’

‘Dad,’ Simon said, ‘we haven’t even got full statements of assets yet. It’ll take weeks, months even. We have to get Mum’s consent on
everything.’

‘Your job,’ Guy said.

‘What?’

‘I intend to marry Merrion on October the twentieth. I intend to be divorced and thus free to marry her well in advance of that date.’

‘But you can’t, it isn’t practical, we haven’t agreed completion on the house even—’

Guy took a step away.

‘That’s up to you.’

‘Dad—’

‘You insist that you have no choice,’ Guy said. ‘These are the consequences. We can all be amazingly unreasonable if pushed hard enough. I don’t go back on anything I said about generosity to your mother, but I’m not waiting forever while she plays games with me. It’s your job, Simon, to get this divorce as fast as you can. You say you have no choice about your mother. In this instance you have no choice with me, either.’ He looked at the broken dandelion in his hand and then hurled it into the bushes that fringed the lawn. ‘And now I’m going to find the girls.’

Merrion lay in the dark, eyes wide open. Beside her, Guy was asleep, on his side in a characteristic pose with his left cheek resting on the back of his right hand. If she thought he looked uncomfortable, she had discovered, and gently took his hand away, he would murmur
politely in his sleep and put it back again. He looked very contented. He had made love to her an hour ago and was sleeping in the comfortably completed way men seemed to, after sex. She put a hand out and ran a finger over his uppermost cheek, and then she turned her head and looked up at the ceiling.

She was happy, too, happier than she had been for weeks now. She had been so apprehensive about lunch at Simon and Carrie’s house but when it happened, it was fine. Not easy exactly, except when she was alone with Carrie washing up, but fine. The children were a help, of course, not saying much, but there, and definitely not hostile, not making her feel that her presence was unwanted, improper. She was an object of curiosity to them, plainly, but not a threat, not an intruder. When she took her shoes off, in the kitchen, so that Rachel could try them on, she’d had a sudden extraordinary sense of what family life might be like, had been like in fact all those years ago in Cowbridge, when schoolfriends took her home and she saw their brothers and the crammed contents of their store cupboards and the number of toothbrushes in their bathrooms.

‘They suit you,’ she’d said to Rachel.

Rachel hooked her hair behind her ears. She peered down at her feet below the black lace dress and the jeans.

‘They’re great,’ she said.

On the way back to Bayswater, Guy told her he had informed Simon of their wedding date. Merrion had learned not to say, ‘Was he angry?’ Instead she said,

‘Oh good.’

‘I told him that it was his problem. He may be fool enough to tell his mother, but I can’t help that.’

Privately, Merrion thought, Guy had been a slight fool to tell Simon, but then Guy felt so keenly his separation from Simon, was so pained by Laura’s effective and relentless divisiveness between father and son that small lapses of self-indulgence were understandable. She sighed. She put her hands up in the dusky air and held the finger that would be the married one. Perhaps she’d have a ring, after all. Perhaps she’d want to show that she was married, show everyone. She thought of herself in Carrie’s kitchen, showing her ring to Rachel and Emma, sliding it off so that they could try it on, like her shoes, and see what it looked like, how they felt wearing a wedding ring. She found she was smiling. It had been a good day, an unexpectedly good day. Even Simon hadn’t been that difficult; poor Simon, with the ghost of his mother stalking him at every turn. He couldn’t look at her, of course, but he talked to her; he’d even talked to her as if he’d quite liked it, as if she interested him. Perhaps, by the time she had a wedding ring, he’d be so used to the idea that he could look at her, too. She liked the idea of that. She liked Simon. Just tonight, just for the moment, she liked almost everything.

‘OK, mate?’ Adam said.

It was the third time he’d said it that morning. The first time he’d said it, he’d put an arm across Jack’s shoulders. Jack had shrugged it off.

‘Get off me—’

‘Sorry,’ Adam said. He didn’t seem offended. He kept looking at Jack, as if he was waiting for something. Rich did, too, although he didn’t say anything, but then Rich never did say anything much. He came from a family of seven, with a mother who talked all the time, like a tap left running, and a completely silent father. Rich took after his father.

‘I’m fine,’ Jack said. He broke off a piece of the hot dog he was eating and pulled a strand of limp fried onion out of it with his teeth. ‘I’m
fine.’

‘Good weekend?’ Adam said.

Jack stopped chewing and stared at him.

‘You what?’

Adam grinned. He was eating corn chips out of a bag.

‘I said did you have a good weekend—’

‘I heard you.’

‘Well?’

‘What kind of a question is that?’ Jack said. ‘You suddenly turned into my mother or something?’

He looked at the rest of his hot dog. It suddenly seemed gross; greasy and rubbery and fake. He wanted a cigarette, not a hot dog. He got up from the bench where they were sitting and dropped the remainder of his hot dog into a wire litter bin.

‘Hey,’ Rich said, ‘I’d have had that.’

Jack didn’t turn round.

‘Too late,’ he said.

He pulled his cigarettes out of his trouser pocket, the first cigarettes he’d bought since that incredible moment he and Moll had thrown his last packet away together and they’d been laughing and she’d kissed him for the first time, not a heavy kiss, not like the kisses they’d graduated to, but full on the mouth all the same, full on. He felt seized by a sudden yearning, thinking about that kiss, all three seconds of it, by the litter bin on the edge of the netball court where the little kids hung out at break times. He took a cigarette out of his new packet and lit it. Then he drew a deep mouthful of smoke. It tasted great, but not as great as he’d hoped it would. He turned back to the others.

‘Ought to make a move.’

Adam was tipping the last crumbs out of the corn chip bag down his throat.

‘Hey! What’s the hurry—’

‘Double physics.’

‘And when did you ever give a toss about double physics?’

Jack dropped his cigarette on the ground and screwed the heel of his shoe into it.

‘It was your idea to come out,’ Adam said.

‘I wanted some fags—’

‘And you got them. And we came with you—’

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘We did,’ Rich said.

Jack looked at him.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why did you have to come with me?’

‘See if you were OK,’ Adam said.

‘Why shouldn’t I be OK?’

Adam screwed his chip bag into a ball and chucked it in the direction of the litter bin. It hit the rim and fell on the ground.

‘You – just didn’t seem OK,’ Adam said.

‘There was a lot of stuff at the weekend,’ Jack said. ‘Family stuff. I got tired.’

Adam said, ‘The weekend’s three days ago.’

Jack gave Adam’s chip bag a flying kick.

‘I know.’

Adam stood up.

‘C’mon, then.’

Jack eyed him.

‘What do you know that I don’t know?’

‘Nothing much—’

‘I’m not asking for much,’ Jack said. ‘I’m just asking for anything.’

Rich stood, too.

‘Race you,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I said I’ll race you.’

‘Why?’ Jack said. ‘Why’d I want to race you?’

Rich shrugged.

‘Rich,’ Jack said. ‘Just tell me.’

Rich looked at Adam. He put his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders.

Adam said, ‘It’s probably not anything—’

‘Rich, tell me,’ Jack said. He took a step forward and put his hands on Rich’s shoulders.

‘Moll?’ he said.

Rich nodded. Jack gave him a little shake.

‘What? What?’

‘Saturday,’ Rich muttered.

‘Saturday? What about Saturday?’

Rich ducked his head. He stared at the mid-point of Jack’s school tie.

‘Marco,’ he said.

Jack took his hands off Rich’s shoulders. He looked at Adam.

‘Moll went out with Marco? On Saturday?’

Adam nodded.

‘Sunday?’ Jack said.

‘Dunno—’

‘Monday and Tuesday? Wednesday? Never there to
answer the phone because she’s out with fucking
Marco?
Not in school, faking a period so she doesn’t have to
see
me?’

‘Dunno,’ Adam said.

‘You knew.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You knew on Saturday?’

‘Sort of,’ Rich said.

Jack shook his head. He said dully, ‘She said she was with her mum.’

‘Yeah. Well—’

‘She said she’d ring.’

Adam put a hand out and tried to take Jack’s arm.

‘C’mon, mate. Double physics.’

‘Fuck off!’ Jack shouted.

He pulled his arm free.

‘Cool it, mate—’

He glared at them.

‘Fuck off, I said.’

‘OK, OK—’

They took a step away from him. Rich’s eyes looked odd, as if he were squinting or something.

‘You
knew—
‘

They said nothing. Jack wanted to rush at them, hurl himself at them and shove them back against the wall behind the bench and really give their heads a banging, skull against brick, thud, thud, thud. He put his hands in his pockets. They weren’t worth it. Nothing was worth it. Nothing.

‘Fuck you,’ Jack said. His voice was hoarse. ‘Fuck you
both,’ and then he pushed past them and began to tear up the pavement among the Thursday-lunchtime shoppers.

Emma was in her bedroom. She had a headache. She’d had a headache for two days now but when she told Carrie about it, Carrie had given her a paracetamol tablet and told her to drink lots of water.

‘I had a headache yesterday,’ Emma said.

Carrie said, ‘So did I.’

‘Since
yesterday,’ Emma said. She looked at the paracetamol. ‘I hate these.’

‘Swallow it,’ Carrie said. She had her work suit on. ‘Swallow it and go to school. You’ll be late.’

The paracetamol blunted Emma’s headache but didn’t take it away. She felt herself watching it come back, creeping back, until her whole skull seemed to be full of black tendrils, all pressing on something until they hurt it. Emma endured the black tendrils through maths and French and religious studies and then in break, she made Sonia come with her to find the school nurse.