‘My husband’s for sale,’ she remarked. ‘Any offers?’
The post brought a copy of the post-mortem. I sat at the kitchen table and deciphered it word by word at the kitchen table, decoding the medical terminology to understand Nathan’s heart, lungs and brain.
The brain was fine. I could have told them that. Any fool (which included Roger) knew that. Snap, snap. The messages in that brain zipped unerringly from synapse to synapse. One of those messages had been a simple one: I must provide for my family. Another: Let me get on with my job.
Nathan’s lungs? For a man of his age, in excellent condition.
The arteries? They had been Nathan’s Achilles’ heel, if it could be put like that.
How often had I observed his outer casing? Hundreds of times. He was a man who looked good for his age. (NB A label that is quite different in meaning when applied to the male.) He looked right in his old blue shirt at home or on the beach, tousled and windblown. In his favourite grey office suit, he seemed substantial and capable of action. Yet, as it had turned out, that pleasing outer casing was host to those highways and by-ways that had hidden treacherous blockages.
Yet as I pondered and deciphered I saw so clearly that we are the architects of our own death. Nathan’s brain and lungs belonged to the successful, upright man. But layers of his secret grief had been laid down in his arteries, and they had killed him.
I abandoned the post-mortem on the kitchen table, unlocked the door and went out into bright sunlight.
It was spring.
Early in our affair, during one of the lunchtime sessions at my flat, Nathan gave me a Valentine. It was large, vulgar, and had a padded pink satin heart at the centre – his idea of a joke. Inside he had written: ‘In spring, thoughts turn to love.’ ‘Love,’ he had said dreamily, propped on an elbow, ‘I wish I could describe what it feels like…’ With his other hand, he ran his fingers up and down my bare shoulder, a whisper caress. ‘I had forgotten how perfect it is.’
Back in the office at Vistemax, a mini production crisis was brewing. While I was illicitly kissing her husband, Rose was snatching a sandwich at her desk and dealing with it.
‘You will forgive me,’ Nathan’s finger rested on my breast, ‘if I’m rusty on the subject.’
‘Of course,’ I answered. Now that the sex was over, I was impatient to be back in the office to see what was going on.
He lay back on the pillows. ‘I feel you’ve rescued me, Minty. Given me back a sense of purpose.’
‘Do you never talk to Rose about this sort of thing?’
He grimaced. ‘It’s easy to tell you’ve never been married.’
‘You must have done once.’
‘It gets buried, Minty, under the everyday.’ He held up a hand and ticked off his fingers: ‘Bills. Travelling to and from work. Endless discussions about the children. House maintenance.’
I remember feeling outraged on Rose’s behalf. That was to my credit, at least. ‘She only bore your children, kept house, warmed your bed and, no doubt, sorted your socks. All to make your life easy.’
‘I can’t deny it.’ Nathan pushed me down, and kissed me, his mouth hot and lazy with spent passion.
Had he, when he was married to me, purchased a bottle of good champagne and stolen a lunch-hour with Rose? Had he drawn her down on to the blue and white quilt, kissed
I wish, I wish, I’d told Nathan then, over the padded satin heart, that I loved him, because it would have made him happy.
The lawn was ragged, and the boys had trampled the worm casts into the grass. Very soon I would have to think about mowing it, which I had never done. That had been Nathan’s department. Felix’s football had been abandoned by the door, and I picked it up. Flakes of dried mud dusted my fingers.
I was ravenous, but food made me nauseous. I choked when I bit into a piece of bread or tried to swallow a mouthful of soup. Yet hunger was making me shaky and weak. I held up my hands and examined them. The fingers were trembling. One of my thumbnails had torn on the lock, and a tiny pearl of blood was drying on the cuticle. I sucked at it. The metallic taste made me retch.
I halted by the lilac tree – such a perfect resting point in the route round the garden. (Rose knew that.) I looked up into it. A few leaves in a bright, trashy green had shaken themselves loose. The colours hurt my eyes; the sounds and scents of new growth were unbearable.
‘The young and pretty,’ one of Rose’s friends had comforted her when Nathan left her (and Poppy had told me), ‘can be pretty wicked. But they only get away with it for a short time.’
‘Nathan,’ I murmured, into that sparkling morning, ‘what would you want? Do you want to lie in a peaceful churchyard under the yews? Or would you rather be where you lived, fought, hustled and made your children?’
My eyes filled. I would definitely have to mow the lawn, and I hadn’t a clue how to set about it. Yet mowing lawns couldn’t be that difficult.
14
Rose telephoned as I was planning the order of service. She asked how I was, and had I managed to sleep, then went straight to the point. ‘Minty, I’d like to give an address at the funeral.’
‘Do wives give addresses?’
‘I’m not his wife, remember. I’m a… well, friend-wife.’
‘I thought only people who didn’t care too much gave the address. Otherwise you break down.’
‘It’s my last gift to him. The children would like it.’
‘
‘Nathan’s children.’ She sounded very far away. ‘Where are you?’
‘Romania. A trip that’s been planned for months. I couldn’t get out of it but I’m cutting it short. Is that agreed? Only five minutes, but I don’t trust -’
‘Trust,’ my voice echoed feebly.
‘Anyone else to give the real Nathan.’
Was the real Nathan the man who colour-coded his files? Who said, ‘We have to be careful with money’? The man who had longed to put on a worn pair of jeans, battered boots and walk the cliffs above Priac Bay? Or was he the man who had propped himself on his elbow and searched unsuccessfully for the words to explain how happy he felt?
‘Rose, I’ve made a decision. Nathan will be buried in Altringham. I thought it better he was somewhere where he’d been known. Where he won’t be alone.’
‘Oh, Minty.’ Rose was almost inaudible. ‘Thank you.’
Barely half an hour later, Poppy was on the phone. She was hostile and cold, and I no less so. ‘About the hymns, Minty. Dad’s favourite was “Immortal, Invisible”. We should start with that. He was very particular about hymns.’
‘Was he?’
‘You wouldn’t know, perhaps. You didn’t need hymns when he married you. And “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” to finish with.’
I groped for a dim memory of various weddings I had attended with Nathan when those hymns had been sung. ‘I don’t think he liked either of them. He thought they were boring.’
But Poppy had appointed herself keeper of her father’s flame, and in this matter she was not to be denied. Her voice trembled with anger. ‘I think we’re the ones to know what Dad liked or disliked.’
During the first verse of ‘Immortal, Invisible’, Sam bent his head and wept. Jilly slid her hand unobtrusively under his elbow and pressed closer. He edged away from her and blew his nose. Jilly dropped her hand and stared straight ahead.
Across the aisle, seated on either side of me, Felix and Lucas shifted uneasily at the sight of their big brother’s grief. For the hundredth time, I questioned if they should be at the service. Both had gone missing as we were due to leave Lakey Street and, after an increasingly tense search, Eve discovered them in Nathan’s cupboard. I bribed
