The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

indispensable.

I turned back to the blue chair.

We’re planning a supplement on Africa in the autumn, I heard Nathan say. Shouldn’t you have kept Lucas at home?

He was sitting well back in it, his body folded in a natural position, his face turned towards the door as if he was listening for something, someone. A lock of his hair, tinged with grey, had fallen over his forehead. His mouth was slightly open. Had he been speaking to Rose when his heart shuddered, jumped and declared, ‘Enough’? His left arm was tucked by his side, palm up, fingers curled a fraction.

He was still Nathan – that was evident in the bone structure, the angle of the chin, the width of his forehead. Yet he had become remote. Between one heartbeat and the non-arrival of the next, he had weighed anchor and rowed far away. He had sped past his children, past his life with me towards a horizon of which I had no knowledge.

‘Nathan…’ I reached over and smoothed back the lock of hair. Tidying him as I knew he liked. His skin held scintillas of warmth, and hope flared that I could run from the room, shouting, ‘He’s not dead, only asleep.’

I touched one of the fingers, willing it to curl round mine. What was there left to read in his face, with the blind, closed eyes? There was no distress as far as I could make out, only surprise and a suggestion of… release?

In the other room, I could hear the murmur of Rose’s voice.

Had she traced the line from nose to chin, as I did in the gentlest gesture? Had she bent over to be quite, quite sure that no rogue breath soughed from his mouth, as I was doing? Had she sunk to her knees and whispered, ‘I don’t believe you’re dead, Nathan,’ as I was now doing?

I shed no tears. No easy relief, then. Again I searched Nathan’s face for clues. ‘Why did you not call me, Nathan?’ I begged the still figure, as I knelt in front of him like a penitent. I knew – I feared – that Nathan had struggled on feeling ill and alone. ‘Y?u should have called me. I would have come. Of course I would.’

How was I going to tell his… our… children?

Which would be the right words? My toes cramped, but I welcomed the discomfort.

In the end the pain was too acute. I got to my feet and went in search of Rose. She was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her head in her hands. At my entrance, she looked up. ‘Are you all right?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t think anything, Minty.’

I pushed myself into a chair. ‘I was thinking how unfair it was on Nathan. He didn’t deserve this.’

Rose got up and went to a cupboard, took out a bottle and presented me with a full glass. ‘Brandy. We’d better have some.’

The glass was heavy, with a pattern incised into it. It felt expensive and weighty. I recognized it. We had two exactly the same in Lakey Street. ‘We divided things,’ Nathan reported, when he and Rose divorced. ‘Straight down the line. I owed her half of everything.’ He had been so pleased with his fairness and generosity that I had snapped shut my lips and had forborne to point out that two matching glasses out of four were not that useful and half a set of silver-plated cutlery limited one’s options.

Obediently I drank. Rose asked, ‘Were there any clues that Nathan’s heart was giving him problems?’

‘No. But, then, I hadn’t been looking for any.’

She accepted this. ‘I was concerned about him. Don’t ask me why, as I hadn’t seen much of him. But even so…’ she was too upset to bother with tact ‘… there was always the connection between us and I felt… Well, I knew when things weren’t right. I did try to ask him about his health, but you know Nathan…’ She arranged both hands round her glass and lifted it to her lips. ‘How like him. How very like Nathan to say nothing.’

I couldn’t face talking about his death. The subject and the situation were too big and unknown, too fearsome and desperate. ‘Did you talk to Eve?’

‘Yes She’ll manage, so you’re not to worry. I talked to her very carefully.’

Before I could stop myself, I lashed out. ‘Did you talk to Nathan very carefully?’

‘Stop it, Minty.’ Rose raised a white face. ‘Don’t.’

I did stop it. Instead I groped for clues to the puzzle. ‘I think he saw a doctor a couple of months ago. There were episodes when he said he was feeling really tired. But that was it.’

There elapsed another of those pauses that were impossible to describe, only endure. I gulped the brandy as if it were orange juice. They say men wounded in battle do not, at first, feel anything. Then they do. The brandy was a precaution.

Nathan had not often mentioned death. Not to me, anyway. We were too busy negotiating life. When he did talk about death, it was to wag a metaphorical finger: ‘As long as it doesn’t come too soon.’

What had Nathan been doing in Rose’s flat?

I felt cold and faint. I struggled to reach past myself, to think of Felix and Lucas. They wouldn’t understand, perhaps not for a long time. I tried, too, to consider Sam and Poppy.

And Rose.

And, yet, out of all the suppositions and shocks, the one question that forced itself past my lips was, ‘Rose, what was Nathan doing here?’ I stared at the brandy in the glass and waited for the answer. ‘I must know.’

Rose positioned her glass on the table and got to her feet. Slowly, deliberately, she walked round to where I sat, bent down and wrapped her arms round me. It was a gesture we both suffered and endured. Rose needed to make it because it was in her nature. I had to accept it because I craved the comfort of contact, even from her. She gave a jagged sigh. ‘Poor Minty, what you must think.’

‘Yes,’ I echoed bitterly. ‘What I must think.’

Her soft cheek was against mine. ‘Nathan was here for a reason. Had he told you what happened?’

It was pitiful to lie with Nathan dead in the next room – especially, if you’re a person who prefers to call a spade a spade. But ‘Yes’ slipped through my lips. I didn’t know what she was talking about but hated to admit it.

‘Then you will know that Vistemax…’ Rose’s face was close to mine, her arms a circle in which I was trapped.

‘Yes…’

My mendacity had a false, brassy note but I clung to it. A tap dripped and the fridge emitted a muted electrical choke. We both knew that I was not telling the truth, and Rose was debating how to handle my ignorance of something that was clearly important.

Rose released me. ‘That’s why.’

Wasn’t death supposed to be a cleansing agent? A blow so huge and pulverizing that all the petty emotions, subterfuges and secrets were smashed? It certainly drew a line.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ I braced myself. ‘I don’t know, Rose. Tell me.’

But the phone rang and Rose answered it. She said, ‘Yes, his wife is here. Yes, we’re waiting.’ She was cool and in control, the sort of person who was practised at formalities and procedures. ‘That was the doctor.’ She kept her hand clamped round the receiver. ‘He’ll be here any minute.’

Impatient to know, I laid my hands flat on the table. What’s happened? And why did Nathan come to… you?’ My knuckles whitened with the pressure. ‘Why here?’

Still clutching the phone, Rose told me the truth: ‘Roger sacked him this morning.’

‘Sacked!’ The news was brutal enough to bring the blood rushing into my face. I pressed my hands to my cheeks. ‘Poor Nathan.’ Rose put down the phone. ‘So they got him in the end,’ I said. ‘They always do.’

‘Vistemax is hardly the gulag.’ Rose leant against the sink. ‘And Nathan had a good life with them.’

‘You always did see the best in things and people.’ Still I clung to the inconsequential, and I was curious as to how Rose’s givingness could survive just now. ‘I often wondered if it was a strength or weakness.’

‘I leave you to decide. I don’t think Nathan expected it. Do you?’

‘Nathan did not confide in me’ would have been the truthful answer. ‘He had been there a long time, and he knew the form.’ But, clearly, he had neither known nor cared enough to guard himself against the consequences of Roger’s cynical appraisals. ‘He was in his fifties… and there is a sell-by date for all of us. There was probably