A Few of the Girls (20 page)

Bella discovered that her husband was unfaithful to her by the purest chance. She wondered often what would have happened if she had never discovered, if she had never gone to the off-license that day for a bottle of sherry. Everything would have been different, or, more accurately, everything would have been the same, and gone on in the same old way, which was what she liked. None of the dramatic happenings would have happened. Life would have been as it always was.

She needed sherry because she was going to make a real, old-fashioned trifle; there was nothing she could use instead. To have put in two glasses of brandy would have been ridiculously wasteful, and gin, she thought, wouldn't have worked. Beer was out, so she had to go to the off-license, and since it was a nice day she decided to take the dog and have a proper little walk. She had been sitting down too much anyway; it would be good for her to have some exercise.

She knew Mr. Elton in the off-license slightly. She and Jim usually called in there on Saturday mornings after they had been to the supermarket. They were very organized as a couple: she would provide the shopping list in two sections and Jim got the heavier, bulky items each weekend, she got the smaller ones; then, after stocking up on a couple of bottles, they would go to the pub, where Jim had a pint and she had a gin and tonic.

Jim would read the morning paper and she would read a magazine, then they went home to lunch. She could never understand couples who found shopping a chore—all you had to do was be organized.

“Lovely morning, madam,” said Mr. Elton, rubbing his hands happily behind the counter. Mr. Elton was a little too hearty for Bella, but then you can't go around condemning everyone for their irritating little habits, she told herself firmly. She greeted him pleasantly and let her eyes roam around to find a cheap sherry, one which would be good enough to drink, yet not too good to waste by putting in a trifle.

“Did you enjoy that bottle of bubbly last night, then?” asked Mr. Elton, all cheer and grins and winks.

“Last night? Bubbly? No, we didn't have any sparkling wine last night,” said Bella.

“Aha, yes you did! Mr. B. was in here around seven looking for something nice, white and dry and sparkling. I asked him was it an anniversary or something; and he said no, just a little treat.”

Bella looked at him in amazement. Jim wasn't at home last night for dinner. He brought no bottle of anything sparkling when he did come home at midnight. He was exhausted from going over the papers with Martin at Martin's house. Martin's wife had fixed them a nice supper he said; nothing special—more a glorified snack. He had mentioned nothing about bubbly. Bella's brow cleared. He had probably decided to buy something to take along to Martin's house. He hadn't implied it was a meal that went well with bubbly, but then men never tell you the things that are important.

She thanked Mr. Elton as distantly as she could without actual coldness and left him with the cheapest sherry that might actually be drunk by human beings. The incident went from her mind and remained gone until Jim came home at six o'clock.

“Well, you know,” were his first words, “I was going to tell you anyway, so I'll tell you now.”

Know what? Bella's first thought was that he had been sacked. Made redundant. Nothing else could account for the look of seriousness on his face.

“Tell me what?” she said, saucepan in one hand, tea towel in the other.

“Elton told me he had mentioned the bottle of champagne and said he hoped he hadn't let any cats out of any bags. I told him he had but it didn't matter. He's full of excitement up in the wine shop there, he thinks he's in the center of some drama. Silly fool.”

Jim had never spoken like that of Elton or of anyone. What cat had been let out of what bag? Bella was very confused.

Jim sat down on a kitchen chair, took the phone off its hook, turned off the bubbling saucepan on the gas cooker, and explained to Bella that he was having an affair with a girl in the class he lectured in the polytechnic, and that he loved her. He was going to ask Bella for a divorce.

It had been going on for over six months. Martin knew and covered up for him; so did his secretary. Nobody else knew apart from Martin's wife possibly, and now that jovial fool Elton in the off-license. The girl's flatmate knew, of course, but she didn't count, she was from another life, another world.

Bella still had the tea towel in her hand; she began to twist it around and around.

“What's wrong with
me
?” she said in a little whimper. “Why don't you want to live with me anymore? You promised to live with me when we got married, not someone else.”

“I know,” said Jim. “I
know
I did, but I didn't know it was going to be like this. Everything's changed. Don't say you haven't noticed how dull we've got together. You must have been feeling that everything we'd ever hoped for and promised ourselves has all got in this dreary sort of routine of catching up with things, forever. Once the sitting room's been done up it's time to do up the hall, when the car is washed it's time to clean the garage, when the roses are pruned it's time to do the beds by the wall, when the shopping's done it's time to label things in the deep freeze…People weren't meant to live like this—they were meant to spark away and react to each other. We've stopped doing that, haven't we?”

“I'll try and spark and react a bit,” said Bella weakly.

“It's too late now,” said Jim, and he put on his coat again. “I'm just going for a drink, by myself, not with Emma. I'll be back in an hour—I want to think out what we are going to do.”

“
We
are going to do nothing,” screamed Bella in pain. “No, I tell you
we
are making no plans!
You
are making all the decisions and plans. I have no part in it. I'm quite happy to go on the way we are. If there are any changes to be made they are yours, not ours. Just present me with the list of how you are going to go back on all your promises. That's all.”

“Let me go and think things out. I know it will be simpler if I've time to think. I'll write it all down and then we can discuss it as calmly as possible,” he said, not even fooling himself that it would be possible.

Bella put her back to the hall door.

“I want no lists of options, or alternatives. You are going to go on living with me, that was the bargain, that's what we said we'd do. What kind of a life would I have if you went away? What would I do?” She burst into very noisy tears and Jim looked at her with pity from a distance.

By midnight it was clear that he was going; he sounded very weary and anxious to be gone. Nothing she said would sway him. He used very few phrases about how much they had shared together and she did not say at all that she would miss
him,
only that she couldn't cope with a life without him. There were thousands of words, most of them useless. Everything that had to be said was said in the first five minutes. Jim slept on the sofa, and Bella slept not at all.

She tried to preserve some air of normality at breakfast and made him a nice fry. He only wanted coffee. She begged him to give the marriage another chance; she said she'd never ask him to help with the housework if that was the problem. He shook his head and said nothing. As he left the house he said he would be home late and would take tomorrow off work so that they could sit down and draw up a proper financial settlement.

“You're never getting a divorce!” Bella shouted. “Never, never!”

“Well, I'll just go then,” said Jim simply. “And in a couple of years Emma and I will be able to get married anyway. I'd prefer if we could talk about things, because you might like a smaller house, or you might want rent paid on a flat for you. It would be much calmer if you accepted that I literally won't be here again, and that I'm willing to make things as simple for you as possible.”

He was gone.

The morning was interminable. On a writing pad that she usually used for shopping lists, Bella wrote down all the possible courses of action she could take. None of them seemed any use at all when faced with the unchanging fact that Jim was going to go anyway.

What did people do when their husbands walked out? Often enough she had gossiped and tut-tutted about other families where this had happened. But what did a wife actually
do
?

By midafternoon, no housework done, endless tea and biscuits consumed, Bella had stopped blaming Jim and decided that it must be something in herself that was wrong. She took out the old photograph album she and Jim had kept meticulously during the fifteen years of marriage. It went back even further to the year that they had been engaged.

The summers really did seem to have been hotter then, sleeveless floral dresses, funny bouffant hairdos, how thin she was. And how slim in the very formal wedding pictures. She had a real waist then, and her jaw looked very frail instead of padded as it did now. All Bella could see was more flesh and fewer smiles in the progression of snaps. The most recent were the most distressing. They had been taken at Christmas, when Jim's sister and her husband had come for Christmas dinner.

The curiously formal pictures of everyone holding up glasses at whoever was taking the snap seemed to explain everything to Bella. Look at her, for heaven's sake, she had a roll of fat around her waist. Whatever had made her wear a silly tight dress, and how had she let herself become so fat anyway?

In every magazine that Bella had read, the dangers of Letting Yourself Go were written large and menacing. Agony columns used to suggest that you had a facial or lost weight to revive an ailing marriage; girls who had no boyfriends were urged to slim down and they would be rewarded. Anyone who felt depressed or low would feel cheered and high if they were a few inches less around the middle.

Bella must have been too complacent; that's what it was. Jim had never said anything, but he was a man, and, as a man, he must have been put off by her flesh. What Bella must do now was to lose a lot of weight, dramatically, then he would come back again, and the whole horror of last night would be forgotten. In fact, there would come a time when they could laugh over it together.

The biscuit tin was firmly closed. Then firmly opened again and its contents shaken into the rubbish bin. The remaining bread was put out in the garden for the birds. This was going to be a dramatic diet, not one of those where you started and stopped. This one had to work. But Bella knew that weight fell slowly, whereas people who were hungry fell quickly. Perhaps she would go to the doctor about it. Some people got marvelous tablets from doctors, which meant that you were never hungry again. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of this before.

The doctor had surgery from four to six, and Bella sat in the waiting room, full of determination. Dr. Cecil, who was a kind young man, would help her. She had only visited him a couple of times, but he had been very pleasant on both occasions.

“Well, a woman who wants to lose weight is a cheering thing for a medical man,” he said briskly. “Step up here and we'll have a look, you don't seem very overweight to me. Now let's see…yes, a stone less and you'll be in perfect health. Are you feeling short of breath or anything, is that why you want to lose weight?”

“No, it's because I've got so fat,” said Bella, amazed that he couldn't see this for himself.

He listened to her chest, took her blood pressure, and told her that she was a very healthy woman, but she looked a bit strained. Had she any other worries apart from her weight?

“No,” lied Bella. She was going to fight this one on her own.

Dr. Cecil could give her no tablets; she didn't need them, he said, just more exercise, fewer fatty foods, plenty of protein, less carbohydrate. The usual advice.

Could she have some sleeping pills perhaps? Not unless she told him why. He didn't just hand out sleeping pills like candy.