Nest of Sorrows (17 page)

She practised smiling as she ascended the blue-carpeted stairs to wash, change her frock and apply her evening face. Nothing must show. Whatever had happened these past days, she must keep it to herself for as long as possible. Geoff would be angry if and when he found out that she had been making decisions for herself. Poor Geoff, she thought again. There were worse people than him, she had to admit grudgingly. There were the Dereks of this world. Living with Geoff and Dora was almost impossible, but the man next door would surely have been worse. Lugubrious Derek Halls was probably the most tedious creature ever to have crawled, no, slow-pedalled from a mother’s womb. He was an amateur racing cyclist. That, thought Kate as she pulled on the white and gold trouser suit, very likely said it all. Why, oh why was she suddenly so vitriolic? She’d always been sharp, but this was getting beyond a joke now.

With her new face on, she suddenly indulged the irresistible urge to grip the handle of her husband’s wardrobe, flinging back the door to reveal the expensive and obsessively ordered contents. Unused to such rough handling, the teak panel groaned against a dry hinge.

She stepped back, one hand supporting the opposite elbow, a finger and thumb stroking her newly painted mouth. Brown items were hung to the left, grey in the centre, blue on the right. Her fingers itched with the unreasoning need to take the whole lot and dump it in the brook. But they’d warned her, hadn’t they? ‘Stay calm’ and ‘keep your blood pressure steady’, it was like a litany now. But the damned man annoyed her! He even folded his dirty socks! What man in his right mind folded dirty socks? Was she really the crazy one? Every night, before placing soiled linen in the wicker basket, he carefully examined, studied, assessed and folded each item. It was enough to drive the sanest person crackers. Shoes were all on trees in the bottom of the cupboard, rich leathers gleaming with many applications of polish, laces removed, ironed, then hung on the tie rack, everything sorted again according to colour. She had drawn the line at ironing laces; he had had to learn to do his own. Till the granny flat had neared completion and Dotty Dora’s frequent appearances had started up again. Oh Jesus!

She didn’t need to open her own wardrobe, she knew about the mess. The mess was her mess, her special and private disorder, a mess she had created and nurtured lovingly over the years, the only chaos she was allowed to own. And the hidden things were there too, things she could talk about only to her best friend.

‘Darling?’ This enquiry floated up the stairs. He had a nice voice, dark brown like his eyes. Though, beneath the velvet, there echoed a faintly disgruntled tone on this particular occasion.

‘Coming,’ she responded obediently. Yes, she would be good. Right to the end, whatever the end might be, she would be an outwardly perfect wife, if she could keep her temper. The image in the glass stared back at her. Who the hell are you? asked a frightened inner voice. And how the dickens are you going to get out of this one? Talk about another fine mess, Stanley, this is ridiculous! Katherine Saunders, nee Murray, would it be right for you to get out? Right for you, for him, for them? Oh, stop conjugating. Was it conjugating? Where was the verb? And, of course, there was Melanie to consider. Awful name, Melanie. It made her think of shelving and kitchen surfaces.

Melanie. Oh, Melanie! Over at the stables with her friends, all those up-market brats with silly un-Bolton, high-pitched voices and hard hats. Hearts to match the hats too, no doubt. Melanie. Doing all the nice girly things that Kate herself had never got to do.

She pursed her lips tightly. Kate Saunders. You really are the lowest of the low. Do you resent your own daughter?

‘Kate?’ Imperious now. ‘I need to talk to you.’ Managing director tone, bring your notebook and sit pretty, sit on my knee, what lovely limbs you have, my dear. Oh shit! ‘You’re not pretty,’ she mouthed at the mirror. ‘You’re quite ordinary, really. Without the paint, there’d be nothing much to write home about.’ Reddish hair, freckled skin, unremarkable green eyes.

‘Kate! Do you hear me?’

‘I hear,’ she spat silently. ‘I always bloody hear.’

She walked into the living room, a large and beautiful area that ran the full depth of the house. He was seated in a chair by the fireplace, briefcase placed correctly on the bureau, a dry martini poured and standing to adequate attention on an occasional table, his ankles crossed in what was supposed to be a friendly and conversational fashion.

‘One for you, dear?’ he asked predictably.

‘No. No thanks.’

‘Given up?’

She ground her teeth noiselessly. No, I’m thinking of taking it up full time actually, darling. Aloud, ‘Yes. Probably.’ She must be good. If ever she needed wits about her, then this was the time!

‘So.’ He sipped his drink slowly. ‘I saw Phil Carter today.’

This promised to be rivetingly interesting. ‘Did you now?’

‘Yes.’ The glass was twisting round in his fingers, a sure sign of inner agitation. ‘Bit confusing for both of us, actually.’

‘Why? Has one of you had plastic surgery?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I just wondered why you should be so confused – we’ve known Maureen and Phil Carter for years.’

He coughed in that irritating way, the way he had developed of signalling that something of importance was about to be pronounced. ‘You were the cause of our confusion, Kate.’

‘Oh.’ A warning bell sounded clearly in her head.

‘He was on business last week, up in Scotland?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice seemed to come from far away.

‘And you stayed with Maureen because she’s been nervous about all the burglaries on Higher Lane?’

‘That’s right.’ Bump, bump, lurch. Her heart was all over the place. Not now! Surely she’d covered her tracks.

‘That’s not right and you know it! Phil’s sister arrived unexpectedly, she’s still staying with them. And you were never at the Carters’, not at all! I felt such a damn fool about the whole thing, had to make an elaborate excuse about dates and names being mixed. What the hell are you up to?’

She paused for a frantic think. She wasn’t going to be good, was she? It would be impossible to be good now. ‘I was . . . having a break.’

‘Having a break? Having a bloody break? From what?’

Her temper teetered on the brink of being lost. She must hang on, she had to. ‘From school, from the house, you, Melanie . . .’ She managed, just, not to mention his mother on this occasion.

‘I see.’ His foot tapped silently against the carpet. ‘With whom?’

She ran her eyes over him. So bloody smarmy, he was, so correct. So . . . so . . . yes, there was that familiar adjective again, predictable. And dull and uninteresting and all the things she’d married him for not being. How blind she had been! Though he hadn’t changed, oh, no, he was still the same. The difference was in herself, she had mislaid the rose-tinted glasses somewhere along the road.

Everything he did annoyed her, every last damned thing. The way he spooned his soup away from himself, the sniffs of disapproval when she dipped in her spoon and simply scooped up the liquid. The way he touched the end of his nose after shifting into fifth gear in that bloody precious Rover – the item she privately called his penis extension. He got on her nerves, ruined her nerves, reduced her to wreckage at times. It was as if he were shouting to the world, ‘Look at me, I’m a big boy now with five gears’. Dora Saunders had a lot to answer for.

Kate turned her head and stared into the grate. He might have five gears, but his wife had never had an orgasm. Not from him, never from him. This was 1968! She was thirty-four and entitled to some pleasure.

‘Where were you?’ So controlled, that voice. He might have been chiding a secretary, or even the office lad.

There was no point in trying any longer, because there was no place where she might hide. The truth had to come out. Where had she been? Yes, she would tell him where she had been. ‘I . . . I was in a Rodney Street clinic.’ She knew her shoulders were sagging.

‘Rodney Street? Liverpool? Whatever for?’

‘I don’t need to tell you,’ she said quietly. ‘Matters medical are private, even my doctor can’t talk about why I was there. In fact, he especially can’t say anything. I needed treatment. Isn’t that enough for you to know? And I paid for it myself.’

He began to tap rhythmically on the chair arm, his fingers beating out a fast and furious pattern that he knew she would not tolerate for long. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘I shall have no rest until you do. Are you ill?’

She laughed mirthlessly. ‘Of course I’m ill. You’re always telling me I’m ill. Aren’t I crazy? Isn’t this mad lady second in command in one of the biggest schools in Bolton? Aren’t you and your mother the ones who diagnosed me as manic? I am sick, sick of . . . of you!’

‘Don’t start that again. It’s all my fault or my mother’s fault, though God knows we have set out to make your life as easy as possible. If you are ill, then I have a right to know about it.’

‘You don’t own me!’ she yelled. Her patience, never her strongest point, suddenly snapped. ‘I was having an abortion,’ she screamed now. ‘A termination, a good clear-out with a vacuum cleaner attachment. Is that plain enough for you or shall I draw a picture?’

His glass bounced on the fireside rug. For the first time within memory, be made no immediate move towards the kitchen for cleaning materials. ‘Why?’ The jaw, hanging low and loose, looked weaker than ever. ‘What the hell for? And why wasn’t I . . . ? I mean, I didn’t even know you were . . . Was there something wrong with it?’ The tone was accusatory now. Anything wrong with ‘it’ would have been her fault; from his loins, there could have been nothing short of perfection.

She breathed deeply. ‘As far as I knew, there was nothing wrong. Nothing specific, anyway. It was a bit early to tell, though, I was only weeks pregnant when I went to the clinic.’

He glanced down at the pool of fluid that was slowly soaking into the long-piled rug. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll get a cloth,’ he muttered quietly, though she could tell by the set of his spine as he left the room that he was angry. Not to say furious. Fury might be a bit strong for Geoff, but perhaps this time he might at last show some real feeling about something other than himself.

He mopped up the mess. ‘Does Maureen know? Was she in on the secret?’

‘Yes. We were hoping . . .’

‘That I’d never find out. Of course, it’s fine for your best friend to know our business. I, of course, am the last to come out of the dark. If it hadn’t been for Phil’s sister . . .’

‘Exactly.’

‘Why?’ he asked as he straightened from his task. ‘Just tell me why.’

Kate pondered for a second. ‘I’m . . . not ready for a baby, not right for one.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He placed the cloth on his neatly folded copy of the
Guardian
. ‘It goes without saying that you would never consider consulting me. Have you not thought that I might have wanted the child?’

‘No. You don’t seem terribly interested in children.’ He didn’t seem terribly interested in much, come to that. Himself, his mother, bridge, golf, Melanie when she came up to scratch. But his interest in people was minimal.

His thick lower lip quivered slightly. ‘That’s a fine attitude, I must say! You flush my son down the toilet and it doesn’t even dawn on you that . . .’

‘Might have been a daughter!’ she snapped. ‘Another Melanie for your mother to ruin.’

‘Leave Mother out of this!’ His cheeks, always florid, were purplish now. ‘At least she’s normal. You’re not. Do you hear me? You’re not normal, Kate. No maternal instinct, no need for anyone, no feelings for what you have done to this family.’

‘What I’ve done?’ she yelled. ‘And what have you done? You’ve ignored me, you’ve had women all over the place, you’ve allowed your mother to rule in my kitchen. It’s a good job Mel has a bit of sense, otherwise she’d be as bad as you are.’

‘Stop it! Stop this now!’

‘No! It’s my body. I’m the one who gets the swollen ankles and morning sickness. I’m the one who blows up like a wretched barrage balloon!’ Kate stood feet apart, hands on hips, her eyes bravely meeting his at last. Why should she apologize to a man who had worn her away over the years, someone who had dripped like water on to a rock that had finally cracked? ‘Would you have carried it for nine months, then worked for several terrible hours to push the little darling into an unfit world? Would you? Or how about a spell of two a.m. feeds? That would soon put a stop to your caperings in Amsterdam and Brussels.’

He took a step back, obviously unprepared for the force of her anger. ‘What am I supposed to say? That I’m sorry for not thinking? Look, you should have mentioned it, informed me at least. Bloody high-handed. This is not a decision for you to take alone.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because you’re my wife! You should . . .’

‘You should, you should,’ she mimicked viciously. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that you don’t own me? No-one owns me. And stop saying what I should have done. The doctor decided that I was unfit.’

‘Ah. An unfit mother.’ There was a hint of triumph in his narrowed eyes.

‘Yes.’ She paused fractionally. ‘But not unfit because I can’t cope mentally. You’re the one who wants me to believe that. It gives you a feeling of superiority, doesn’t it? But I’m sorry to disappoint you, Geoff. I was declared unfit because I am diabetic.’

This silenced him, but only momentarily. ‘Diabetic?’ he roared. ‘Bloody diabetic? How the hell long have you been a diabetic?’

She took a slow, deep breath. ‘I was diagnosed last year.’ Her tone was quiet, almost mournful. ‘I became tired and extremely thirsty and . . . well . . . there we have it. There is no way I would have had an abortion for a frivolous reason. It would have to be for physical problems. Although in one sense, I . . .’ She shrugged inpatiently. ‘If you don’t believe me, you’ll find my equipment in the top of my wardrobe and most of the insulin in Maureen Carter’s fridge behind the butter. I inject myself at her house each morning before she drives me to school. That’s why I visit Maureen every day, including weekends and holidays. Until your mother began to live here off and on, I used to hide it in my own fridge.’ But there was no hiding anything from Eagle Eye, was there?