A Little Bit on the Side (22 page)

The front of the envelope was noted simply ‘Dear Jack.’ Putting down his glass he opened the envelope to find a long letter written in Kate’s neat schoolgirl hand.

Dearest Jack,

I wonder if you can remember the circumstances of our first meeting as well as I do. It was at that wonderfully boozy party that Jenny Roding threw to celebrate getting that producer’s job at the BBC. I was there because I’d known her from our time at school together, and you tagged along with your sister, although as I remember it you hadn’t got an invite. Roger was also there, and it was then that the two of you found that you had quite a lot in common, and became rather chummy for the time you were in London together.

I was wearing a long peasant-style skirt and that bottle-green sweater that you told me later you liked so much because it showed my breasts off to perfection, but we didn’t really have very much to say to one another then, indeed you, as usual, had little to say to anyone, but spent most of your time alone, systematically tippling while listening and judging. Just as you did when you took me along to meet the ‘bloody Commons’ (as you called your political family) and left me to make all the running while you looked on.

I’m sure you will remember that you came away from that first meeting with a less than flattering opinion of me: ‘stuck-up little bitch’ were the words reported and to which you eventually confessed, and we laughed about it often afterwards when chance threw us together again with rather a different outcome. But I wonder what sort of a bitch you are going to think of me now.

I know you’ve always been a great advocate for dealing with a difficult situation face to face, and I never had anything but contempt for those girls during the war who dumped their far-away boy-friends or husbands with nothing more than a half-page ‘Dear John’ letter, but I know Jack that if I try to deal with this situation face to face I won’t go through with it, and so a letter it has to be, and that is going to be difficult enough, for in many ways I haven’t stopped loving you, but I owe you as much of an explanation as I can put into words for what I am doing.

If I’ve seemed a little distracted in recent months it’s because I’ve been trying to get my thoughts together: to filter out all the emotional stuff, and say what I have to say about our relationship in a rational and reasonable way, as you seem to do so easily. That’s always been a puzzle to me too Jack. On face-to-face family and personal issues you’re always so cool and self-possessed, and yet give you a nostalgic reference to the ‘old days,’ the right theme from Schubert, or a moving piece of theatre, and you’re always ready to ‘pipe your eye’, as you put it. Unfortunately I’m inclined rather the other way, so I fear this may end up as a pretty rambling affair.

You’ve often said that in your daily work you always proceed with half-an-eye on what you call the worst possible scenario, and if only you’d been able to carry the same practice into private life we might not be where we are now, for when it comes to the state of our marriage you seem at times to have been completely blind.

There’s such a delicious uncertainty, isn’t there Jack, about what it is that leads two people to fall in love: from the all-consuming physical passion through to the marriage of two minds, or anywhere in between. I’m not at all sure where we fitted into that spectrum, except that for you it certainly wasn’t at the all-consuming physical end. Even in our early days, when all was new and a whole world of love there to be explored, I always had the feeling that there was something semi-detached (the besetting sin of your family you tell me) about your lovemaking.

Perhaps I should have been warned by the frequency with which you used to entertain our friends with that bloody quote about sex from Lord Chesterfield’s letter. How did it go: the cost damnable, the pleasure transitory and the position ludicrous? Well you can’t complain about the cost with me Jack, and although I can’t speak for your enjoyment, I’d have been very willing to be experimental when it came to the position, but for someone so radical in most other aspects of life you seem to have been singularly conservative when it came to sex. Has it never struck you that there was something fundamentally inconsistent about a card carrying atheist (as you love to call yourself) being hooked on the missionary position? You see Jack, I’ve even been infected by your sardonic view of the world and all its ways — can’t resist making a joke about the problem.

You used to do exactly the same. Do you remember? Whenever I tried to talk seriously about it we always seemed to end up with jokes or quotes from your extensive reading — sorry does that sound a bit bitchy? It was either ‘the King’s Great Matter’ or like Feydeau’s Victor you had ‘nothing to declare.’ Even on that German holiday a few years ago, when just for once you stirred from your long slumber and for a few nights it seemed like a second honeymoon (that was such a lovely time Jack) you had to make a joke about it, and attribute the quality of your performance to the high specific gravity of the Stuttgart beer.

But if you’d extended your reading a little, wasn’t it Freud who said that we joke and laugh to relieve anxiety? Were you ever anxious Jack, or was it only me?

Perhaps it was my mistake (if not my fault) from the start. It’s always been big men who have appealed to me. Even as a child it was my Uncle Dick who was my favourite. A mountain of a man, he’d sweep me up as though I was a feather, but I always felt so safe and comfortable when he held me. And then you came along Jack, built by the same firm on much the same lines. My big, brown bear: that was what I called you, another hangover from my childhood love for teddy bears.

But I’d chosen the wrong metaphor, hadn’t I Jack? I know well enough what it is that bears do in the woods, and it certainly isn’t sex: at least not with any sort of regularity. They’re solitary creatures, aren’t they, living apart most of the time, and coming together only occasionally to mate. Well as a couple we fitted one half of that equation perfectly, and I don’t need to tell you which. You were the bear who could take it or leave it alone, and generally you left it alone. And it isn’t as though I could ever accuse you of looking at any other woman ‘in that way’ as the soaps put it. But then you didn’t often look at me in that way either did you Jack? Sorry, that paragraph was bitchy
and
crude, but I know from experience that bears have got broad shoulders.

So there we were Jack, me tending to one end of the spectrum, and you to the other, but although it sounds clichéd to say it, I did also love you for your mind: and for our hugs, and for our cuddles, and for the way you were always so careful to look after me. And I do believe that if the call had ever come you would in truth have died for me, so was I being an ingrate in looking for something more: for some passion, excitement and adventure in our sex life, for instance?

So am I right to blame you if you can’t change? Isn’t it rather the stamp of that one defect in which you are not guilty, since nature cannot choose his origin… As one more quoted at than quoting it took me a long time to tease that one out, and I think it works rather well, so perhaps I’m not doing too badly in keeping emotion out of this. Maybe that’s a sign that our relationship had indeed become more of a habit than anything else.

I’ve taken all of the clothing that I need to last me for some time, but there will of course be lots of practical matters to be resolved. As a civil servant of impeccable integrity, efficiency and thoroughness you will, I am sure, have all our affairs at your fingertips, and I trust you absolutely to let me know how things stand when the dust has settle a little.

As there were no children (that was one thing we absolutely agreed on) there are no hostages to fortune. Indeed if there had been I think I would probably have gone off and had a few affairs when the urge was on me, and let things run on as they are, but as things stand there’s no need for that. We’ve always said, haven’t we, that with no one to think of but ourselves we were always free to act in a thoroughly irresponsible way, so that’s what I intend to do.

There’ll be the property to be sorted out of course, but seeing the way prices for attractive country livings have rocketed since we came here the house, nine acres and outbuildings should fetch more than we could ever have dreamed of when we started out. With that plus whatever our savings amount to divided between us it should leave me quite independent and you with enough to find yourself some snug little den inside the walls of Barlow. Perhaps you’ll find someone else to share it with, although I suspect you’ll carry on quite happily as a solitary, fulminating at your job and the world and becoming increasingly familiar as one of the regulars at The Pump.

Finally there’s my confession. You knew it had to come of course, and I’ve left it to last as it’s the part I find most difficult to write. Despite your demonstrated capacity to remain detached and controlled on these matters it will also, I think, be the hardest part for you to read.

Try as I might I have been unable to find any way of saying this other than bluntly, so I might as well just get on with it and tell you that I am going to live with Roger. I’m absolutely sure you had no suspicion that anything like this was going on, but that as I’ve said is because you’re not really very intuitive when it comes to personal relationships, are you Jack? I think you’ve always seen the sniping between us as a sign of some underlying antipathy, whereas I’ve known all along that it was quite the opposite: a recognition that there was an attraction there, and an acknowledgement of its dangers.

We’d probably just have carried on with the sniping whenever we all met up together, but just over a year ago when I went down on one of my solo trips to see mum and dad during the summer break I also called in to have coffee with Jenny Roding as was, only to find that Roger was also there. We left together. He asked me to lunch, and I happened to be on the re-bound from one of our not-altogether-successful nights together. I’ll just leave it at that Jack.

We’ve only been together a few times since, but it’s been enough to make me realise that this is what I want, and that I’m of an age when either I do it now or resign myself to carrying on with you as I have into a sunset of carpet slippers and bedtime cocoa.

You’ll soon settle down into your Barlow niche Jack. Your last port of call in the Revenue I think you said it would be before you chucked it in for good. I’m hoping that the county won’t make too much fuss over the short notice I’ve given them, and I’ll certainly have no problem finding a job down here.

And now I’m really stuck knowing how to wind this up. Firstly don’t be too upset Jack. Does it help or make it worse to know that that ‘one defect’ aside our years together have been happy, entertaining, interesting and, in one sense, full of love. And if the epithet ‘bitch’ applies there must be many women who would say that I’m an ungrateful one — but they’re them and I’m me. There’s no other way I can explain it.

I suppose that’s it, so there isn’t any secondly after all, except that you may find that this doesn’t come as a surprise to Celia. I’ve never said anything, but from one or two oblique comments she’s made I have the feeling that she sensed my restlessness: female intuition perhaps.

I can be contacted at Roger’s when you’re ready. There’s a casserole in the fridge. All you need to do is heat it up.

Take care. Still love you.

Kate.

Standing at the window Jack read the letter as he read all documents, paragraph by paragraph, with his customary civil service thoroughness and care, but before he’d got to the bottom of the first page he had no doubt where Kate was leading, and as he progressed was puzzled to find that he felt no growing sense of anger or resentment. He was saddened, but objective enough to acknowledge that there was little that she had to say about their relationship that he could honestly challenge. Not until he got to her final disclosure did he pause in his steady, methodical analysis of what was being said, and stand for a few moments gazing fixedly, but unseeing, at the hills in the far distance.

Dragging himself back from a reverie that had resolved absolutely nothing in his mind, he finished the letter, and was turning to pick up his glass when his eye caught the photograph standing on a nearby table. Himself, Kate and Roger taken by a helpful market trader on that golden day almost seven years earlier when they had first seen what was to be their future home on the hill.

It showed them after their lunch at The Pump, standing together beneath one of the arches of the old market hall. Kate in the middle with him one side and Roger the other, their arms linked around her waist, and all of them smiling happily together. He recalled then, how on their last visit to The Pump with Jimmy and Celia, Kate had avoided, studiously avoided he now felt, all his references to that earlier day together, and the constant sniping between Roger and herself. A troubled conscience at her recent behaviour he now realised, but what about those earlier days? Had it all been as innocent then as he was led to believe?

But what the hell did it matter now anyway, he thought, and filling his glass to within an inch of the brim, he took in a generous mouthful and walked slowly though the hall and upstairs towards their bedroom, slightly unnerved by a deeper silence around the place than he was accustomed to at that time of day. It wasn’t that Kate made a lot of noise about the house, but often she would have the radio playing softly in the kitchen, or he could hear the sound of her movements there or the hum of kitchen equipment. Now all was utterly still around him.

At the foot of the door into the little spare bedroom Kate used as a workplace he notice Felix, one of her larger teddy bears that she used to hold open an ill-hung door. He swung his leg and kicked it violently across the room, and then feeling angry with himself at his own lack of control followed it to the far corner where it had landed, picked it up, smoothed its fur, and sat it down in one of the chairs.

‘Sorry Felix,’ he murmured. ‘Mustn’t take it out on you. You aren’t the one who’s been shagging around.’