Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

‘If that’s the way you want it.’

‘But who is it?’

Nathan took his hands out of his pockets and smoothed down his hair. The transition from the successful newspaper executive into a troubled, middle-aged man shocked me. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this…’

Head bowed, like a victim, I waited. ‘Who, Nathan?’

He swallowed. ‘It’s Minty.’

After Nathan had shovelled a few things into a bag and departed, I walked through the house. I did not know what else to do. I went up the stairs and along the landing. Outside the main bedroom, our bedroom, I came to a halt for I could not bring myself to enter it.

It’s Minty.

No, I choked, backing away from Nathan. It’s not possible. Minty would not do that.

But she had.

I grasped at the banister for support. Did hearts stop beating with grief and shock? Mine was thrashing around like a wild thing, and I was shivering uncontrollably.

Down the stairs I went, clumsy and frantic, into the sitting room and, with hands that felt as if they did not belong to me, I emptied my book bag on to the floor: papers, a novel, a cookery manual, a biography of Gladstone.

Why had I done that?

I abandoned them there, a frozen torrent on the floor, and went to inspect the invitations propped up on the mantelpiece. Only a day ago, I had scrawled an A on both and entered the dates in the family diary. I turned them face down – how silly, how convenient, I had not wished to go to either. As I did so, my wedding ring caught my eye. I stared at it, heavy on my finger with the weight of the years. It did not belong there any more. It did not belong there. It scraped at my flesh as I tugged it over my knuckle – ripped at the weight of those years – and dropped it beside the invitations.

The catch at the french windows was stiff and always stuck. I had to pull hard before the doors opened. Cold evening air streamed into the sitting room. I sat down in the blue chair and shivered.

Eventually, when the interminable evening had worn away, I went up to the spare room, to the toile de Jouy curtains and the white roses, and lay face down on the bed, my arms stretched out in my personal Calvary

Some time during the night I woke, frightened by the unfamiliarity of the bed and unsure where I was. I was still lying face down and the pillow under my face was wet.

I remembered. I got up, went to my own room and climbed between the sheets, inhaling a faint smell of Nathan. It was dark, but no darker than the darkness in my mind.

How had I not seen?

How had I not sensed?

You have been a fool, Rose.

I had married Nathan because he understood. He, too, had wanted to step inside the house and shut the door against the world. Within the closed intimacy, the unity of us two, we had loved each other with gentleness, tenderness and gratitude, and we had told each other that we might try to build a Garden of Eden together.

I suppose we both forgot that everything is finite and everything decays.

Last June Minty had come to Lakey Street for supper, just spaghetti and a glass of wine, over which we had planned to discuss various projects. You don’t mind? I asked Nathan. She won’t stay late. As long as she doesn’t, he replied. I’m tired.

Because I was behind with the food, I spent quite a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking the tomatoes into pulp then sieving them.

‘Oh, Nathan,’ I heard Minty exclaim, and then her breathy laugh. They were sitting in the garden, making inroads into a bottle of wine. I fried an onion until it was beautifully transparent, added a little grated carrot and stirred it into the ragu. Leaf by leaf, I washed a lettuce, dried it and set a pan to boil for the pasta. Let them talk, I thought to myself. It will do Nathan good.

I was hot and tired, but the kitchen was untidy and I took time to wash and dry the used utensils, then put them away. It was nine o’clock before I carried the supper into the garden and the wine bottle was empty.

Nathan was talking and gesticulating, and Minty was watching him through slanting dark eyes. I set down the tray. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Loyalty,’ said Minty. ‘We were discussing how you are loyal to people you have known for a long time.’

‘How do you mean?’

Nathan got up, opened another bottle and poured more wine. ‘Whether you lose sight of the original reasons for your loyalty and end up being loyal simply because you have known someone a long time.’ His hand poised over my glass. ‘Don’t you agree, Rosie?’ He was smiling but I sensed that he was angry too.

Puzzled, I looked up at him. ‘I suppose I do.’

‘I think you do.’

Holding her glass to her chest, Minty sat back in her chair. ‘I’ve no idea. I expect I’ll find out…’ A wing of shiny hair fell across her face and she brushed it back. ‘When I’m older, I suppose.’

Later in the conversation when we were discussing holidays, Nathan astonished me by saying, ‘Rose has this secret lust for adventure, although she hides it because I prefer to keep going back to the same place. She travelled a bit before she met me.’

‘Nathan’s teasing, Minty,’ I interjected lightly. ‘He’s also quite wrong. I gave all that up when I married him. It was no sacrifice. Being on the move isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.’

Minty’s dark eyes, resting on Nathan, were shiny with sympathy. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Rose told me she used to go travelling with Hal Thorne.’

I cried out into the silence of the bedroom. Once. Twice. Cries of pain and disbelief.

A long time later, the darkness in my mind merged with the darkness in the room and I must have slept.

Chapter Six

The phone by the bed woke me abruptly. With an effort, I turned my head and the clock informed me that it was six o’clock. The possibility that either Sam or Poppy was in trouble pierced my torpor, and I snatched up the receiver.

‘Rose?’ It was Nathan and, for a second, I imagined he was ringing to tell me that he had been kept overnight in the office – big story breaking, Rosie - and that he was on his way home. ‘I wanted to check you were OK.’ It was the calm, sensible, negotiating tone. ‘Are you?’

It had taken me a few years to understand the art of negotiation with Nathan. It was a question of returning a question with a question. ‘What do you think?’ My hand crept across the space in the bed that he should have been occupying.

There was a quick intake of breath and the public voice vanished. ‘I couldn’t bear to leave you like you were…’

He went on to say a lot of things about not wishing to hurt me and how his decision had been made after careful thought – ‘Not so careful,’ I flashed back – and how he would not have done it unless he considered it was necessary for his happiness… and, even, mine.

Etc., etc.

‘Keep my happiness out of it,’ I said. ‘You’re muddling us up.’

‘Sorry. That was stupid. But I just need to know you’re OK.’

‘That’s very touching, Nathan.’

Supposedly the past is a foreign country of which we should beware. That was not true: it was oneself that was the foreign country, the unexplored, possibly dangerous side. The woman who clutched the telephone with whitening knuckles and wished to inflict as savage a hurt on her husband as he had inflicted on her was unknown to me. I did not recognize her and, although I was interested in, even intrigued by, this strange woman, I was also