of the train crash, she’d have been the first to hear of his death and not ten days afterward. Not in a phony letter that cried out to be disbelieved, but from the police. They’d very likely have wanted her (or someone she named) to go and identify the remains. There’d have been a funeral. So after the first five minutes she hadn’t believed the letter. But she’d wondered who’d written it and what Jerry was up to. Certain things seemed clear. He’d arranged for the letter to be sent to her and this must mean that he wanted her not necessarily to think he was dead, but to act as if he were dead. What he was really saying was: “This is to show you I’m off, I won’t be troubling you again. Just act as if I was dead. Shack up with someone, get married if you like. I won’t interfere or put a spoke in your wheel.” Was he saying that? She couldn’t think what he’d meant if he hadn’t meant that.
Of course, he was always a joker. And his jokes weren’t even clever or particularly funny. Zillah, Zillah, the rick-stick Stillah, round tail, bobtail, well done, Zillah. Pinch, punch, first of the month, no returns. If he happened to be sleeping with her on the night of the last of the month-it didn’t happen that often-he’d always awakened her with those words and the corresponding gestures. “No returns” meant the rules of the game stopped her pinching and punching him back. There was another one about going into the garden and meeting a great she-bear who said, “What, no soap?” She couldn’t remember the rest of it. Once, long ago, she must have found him funny. And his country singing and his minteating.
They’d not really lived together since Jordan was born and not much before that, and she’d never been such a fool as to think she was the only one. But she had thought she was the preferred one. “All other girls apart, first always in my heart,” as he’d once told her and she, being young, had taken it seriously. It was probably a line from Hank Williams or Boxcar Willie. Disillusionment set in when he was always somewhere else and about as bad a provider as could be. What was the good of setting the Child Support Agency on his track when he never earned anything?
Because they thought he and she were divorced, everyone believed that when Jerry came visiting it was to see his kids and that Jordan bunked in with Eugenie and he slept in Jordan’s room or downstairs on the couch. The truth was, however, and there was never any question about it, that he shared Zillah’s bed. Sex with Jerry was really the only thing about him she still liked as much as she ever had and there had been plenty of it that last weekend he’d spent at Willow Cottage. For a moment, running the children’s bath, she wondered about that remark of Jims’s. Something about he didn’t mind what she did about sex but he drew the line at “that ex-husband of yours.” She’d been too struck with surprise at his proposal to think much about it at the time, but did that mean he wasn’t among those who believed Jerry had been visiting just as the children’s father? Probably. It didn’t matter. Jims, as she very well knew, was no fool.
It showed her something else as well. That Jims took it for granted she and Jerry were divorced. Did her parents? They no longer lived on Jims’s father’s estate but had retired to a bungalow in Bournemouth. Relations between her and them were strained and had been since she moved in with Jerry, got pregnant, and dropped out of the art foundation course she was doing at a north London polytechnic. Strained but, since the original rift was mended, not broken off. It was her parents who’d persuaded Sir Ronald to let her have this house. Still, when she spoke to her mother on the phone, she had the impression they considered her a divorced woman who had only got what she asked for.
The children had to share a bath. It cost too much to keep the immersion heater on for long. Eugenie stared searchingly at her brother until he said, “Stop looking at me. Your eyes are making holes in my tummy.”
“Mummy,” said Eugenie, “did you know his willy is called a penis? Some people call it that. Did you know?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Titus told me when Jordan got his out to do a wee. Are they all called a penis or is it just his?”
“All,” said Zillah.
“You should have told me. Annie said it’s wrong to keep children in the dark. I thought she meant keep them in a dark bedroom but she said, No, she didn’t mean that, she meant it’s wrong to keep them in the Darkness of Ignorance.”
“It’s a willy,” said Jordan.
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is, it is, it’s mine and it’s called a willy.” He began to cry and beat the water with his hands so that splashes went all over the room and Zillah. She dabbed about her with a towel. Every towel had to be washed by hand and dried on the line, as she didn’t need to remind herself.
“Do you have to provoke him, Eugenie? If he wants to call it a willy, why not let him?”
“Annie says it’s wrong to teach children baby words for Parts of the Anatomy.”
Zillah got them to bed. When she had finished reading Harry Potter to them-though Eugenie could read perfectly well herself and had been able to for two years-she thought as she kissed them goodnight that they might not see their father again. It seemed, suddenly, intolerably sad. If he intended never to see her again, he wouldn’t see them either. In Jordan’s rosy face on the pillow she could see Jerry’s nose, the curve of his upper lip, in Eugenie’s his dark blue eyes and strongly marked eyebrows. Neither of them was much like her. Last time Jerry had been at Willow Cottage, when he was sitting at breakfast that final morning, Jordan had taken their two hands, hers and Jerry’s, and laying his over hers on the table, said, “Don’t go, Daddy. Stay here with us.”
Eugenie hadn’t said a word, just looked at her father with cool, penetrating reproach. Zillah had hated Jerry then, even though she hadn’t wanted him to stay, hated him for not being a proper dad to his children. They could have a new one in Jims and everything a good father should provide.
Still, there was no getting away from the fact that she was married already. But Zillah knew it was hopeless to start thinking about divorce now. The children were involved, so it couldn’t just be done by post. There would have to be a court hearing and custody decided. Jims wouldn’t wait. He was notoriously impatient. He had to get married, or at least get himself engaged, before someone outed him and that might happen any day. If she hesitated he’d go after Kate Carew.
So if she married him, was she going to do it as a divorcee or a widow? If as a widow, wouldn’t Jims find it odd that she’d said nothing about Jerry dying in the train crash when it happened? It would have to be as a divorcee. Or, better still, as a single woman. Then she wouldn’t have to produce the decree absolute or whatever it was to show the registrar. Or the vicar. Jims might want to get married in church.
Zillah hadn’t given a thought to religion since she was twelve, but so do old beliefs and habits resonate faintly throughout life that she balked at marrying in church in a false character. Besides, she’d been married to Jerry in church and she knew enough about church weddings to know that the vicar would say something about declaring if you knew any impediment to the marriage. If Jerry being still alive wasn’t an impediment she didn’t know what would be. She was balked but not put off the idea. Now she’d thought of these stumbling blocks she found she really wanted to marry Jims. There was no doubt. She’d say yes on Thursday.
Dragging all those sopping wet and still dirty clothes out of the now cold water in the sink was one of the things that decided her. To get away from that. And the crack behind the outfall pipe from the lavatory where water (or worse) dripped, and the clothesline that fell into the mud when overloaded and the life-threatening electric wiring. And, when Annie didn’t offer her a lift, having to walk two miles to Fredington Episcopi where there was a small, ill-stocked village shop, and two miles back, laden with junk food in plastic carriers. She’d say yes.
But somehow she’d have to get over the question of what, on forms you filled in, they called your marital status. And it was for Jims as well as the registrar or vicar. He was no fool. Why shouldn’t she say she and Jerry had never actually been married at all?
Chapter 5
IN THE FRUIT and vegetable section of Waitrose at Swiss Cottage, Michelle Jarvey was choosing food for her husband. Matthew was with her, pushing the trolley, for it would have been difficult attempting to buy anything if he were absent. Besides, they did everything together. They always had. He’d try kiwi fruit, he was saying, now the Coxes were over. He couldn’t stomach any other sort of apple.
To the other shoppers Mr. and Mrs. Jarvey would have presented a sight almost comic. If to themselves they
