A Perfect Marriage (8 page)

"What do you mean, then?" Her chin was thrust forward, her eyes bright with annoyance.

He opened his mouth and then clamped it shut, controlling his temper. "We seem to have lost the point," he said finally. "Of course your father's welcome to stay as long as he needs to. But not forever, I'm sorry."

Celine swallowed her own anger. "Thank you. I understand. You're entitled to say how you feel."

Offering an olive branch, he said, "Would you like me to set the table?" They had been eating most meals in the dining room since Ted had been with them, because the cosy kitchen table was only big enough for two to sit there in comfort.

"Thanks, I've already done it." Celine picked up the basket of lettuce and shook it over the sink. "You go on up and get changed. Dinner will be about twenty minutes."

I suppose, Max thought, resigned, I can buy another newspaper to bring home.

  
 
Max and Celine spent a weekend helping Ted to pack up the furniture and effects that he wanted to keep. Some went into storage, and Celine and Ted stayed to dispose of the rest. Dora's family took charge of her personal belongings and clothes.

When they returned after emptying the house and leaving it in the hands of an estate agent, Ted looked gaunt and grim, and Max felt intensely sorry for him. "It's really taken it out of the poor old fellow," he said to Celine.

"Yes. It's been hard for him." She put her hands on her back at the waist and flexed her shoulders.

"Are you all right?" It hadn't been exactly easy for her, either, Max thought.

"Mmm, just a bit stiff."
She'd spent days packing things into labelled boxes and clearing cupboards and drawers, not to mention the final clean-up.

He came to stand behind her, massaging her shoulders. "Better?" he asked after a while.

"A bit.
Thanks." She stretched and said, "I think I'll have a nice, long, hot soak and go to bed." "Good idea. I'll see you later."

She smiled at him and went on upstairs.

Her hair felt dusty and gritty, and she fancied it smelled of the sulphur that permeated the air of Rotorua, so she washed that first in the basin. Head wrapped in a towel, she emptied a generous amount of bath salts into the tub before lowering herself into the steaming water.

Half an hour later she tucked another towel about her and used the electric dryer on her hair, then slipped into one of her more glamorous nightgowns. Getting into bed, she picked up a book and began to read. When her eyelids drooped, she looked at the bedside clock and wondered how long Max would be, contemplating going to find him. She heard her father climb the stairs, use the bathroom, and close his bedroom door, but still Max didn't come. In the end she put the book down and switched off the light, falling almost instantly asleep.

 
As the weeks slid by, Ted took a mild interest in the real estate columns of the classified ads, but seemed unimpressed with the very attractively laid-out villages that Celine took him to see. He began pottering around the garden, advising Max on what sprays to use for black spot and aphids and how to prune the shrubs. Max thanked him politely and later asked Celine if Ted had decided yet where he was going to live.

"Give him time," she said. "It's a big decision."

"How much time does he need?" Max sounded unusually irritable.

Although, Celine reflected, it wasn't so unusual these days. In fact, he'd been uncharacteristically moody lately. "What's the matter?" she said. "Are you feeling all right?"

"There's nothing wrong with me. You're looking a bit strained, though. Do you want me to speak to your father, try to get him to make up his mind?"

"No. If you want him to go-"

"I didn't say that!"

"It's what you meant, though."

"Oh, for God's sake
! "

It was the kind of tense, unconstructive argument that they'd been having too often lately. As always, it ended in them both stiffly apologising, but with nothing really resolved. Sometimes Celine wondered if it would be better to have a real, loud, shouting quarrel, rather than these lowkey exchanges of barbed remarks. But, that had never been their style.

And neither had ever harboured grudges or nursed resentments. Their differences had been quickly resolved by a gracious admission of fault, a smile exchanged, or a compromise that satisfied both of them. And sometimes by a wry remark that set them both laughing and dissolved any bitter aftermath.

They seemed somehow to be losing their capacity for laughter. Max was spending less and less time at home; his hours at work appeared to have escalated back to the level
      
 
' of when he'd been in his twenties and fighting for a permanent place in the firm.

Celine found herself tied as she hadn't been before, by a reluctance to leave her father alone for long. Accustomed to snacking at lunchtime on fruit or a tomato sandwich, she now had to think about giving him a nutritious meal, because he seemed thin and almost frail. Also, he was in the habit of sitting down for morning and afternoon teas, and taking a hot drink with a biscuit before going to bed. She knew he was quite capable of making a cup of tea himself, but if she was around he assumed that she would have one, too. And then he'd talk about Dora, about Celine's mother, about the past. Thinking that 1e probably needed a sympathetic ear as part of the grieving process, she sat patiently listening.

Somehow, exercising patience with him left her a little short of it for Max. Often she found herself profoundly irritated with both of them, as when Ted, following a lifelong habit, cast the newspaper on the floor with its pages sliding into disorder, and Max picked it up and precisely realigned their edges before folding it into a perfect rectangle and placing it in the magazine rack by the sofa.

But what troubled her most was that Max seemed to have lost interest in their sex life. They hadn't made love for ages.

She'd thought at first it was out of consideration for her, because she had been tired when she'd first brought Ted home, and was still finding that one extra person in the house made an amazing amount of added washing, cleaning and cooking-and she didn't like to ask Alice to work extra time, as the home help had other employers and a carefully worked out schedule.

There were nights that Max didn't leave his study until after midnight, and others when he stayed at the office until nearly that hour. A couple of times she'd given him an unspoken invitation, normally enough to make his eyes kindle into desire, his mouth curve in promise.

Instead he'd turned away, his eyes blank and cool, as though he hadn't seen.

 
One night, long after her father had gone to bed, she went along to Max's study. She'd washed her hair, put on a
specially
pretty nightgown that he had given her for her last birthday, sprayed her body with a floral perfume, and pulled on a long, transparent peignoir that she seldom wore.

When she tapped on the door and went in, closing it behind her, he looked up from the papers strewn on the big old oak desk that she'd found in an antique shop when she was furnishing the room, and regarded her with a peculiarly empty expression.

She smiled at him, and walked slowly across the Persian rug towards him. "You're working too late," she reproved him.

Max sat very straight in his chair as his eyes involuntarily took in the seductive garment floating about her over the satin gown that skimmed her slim figure. "Celine-" His voice was low, slightly unsteady.

She smiled again, and went round the desk, put her hand on the swivel chair and turned it a little towards her. "Max," she said, the other hand tugging at the satin ribbons that tied the peignoir at her throat, "I miss you:' The ribbon parted, and the edges fell back, further revealing the satin nightdress, low-necked with a front slit from ankle to thigh.

She curved her arms about his neck and sank onto his knee. The chair moved of its own accord, and his arms came round her waist to steady her. She lifted her bare feet from the ground, rubbing them against his trousered legs. Her lips pressed on his jawline, his cheek,
then
his mouth.

She felt him take a breath, fast and uneven, and smiled against his mouth. Drawing back her head a fraction, she defined the contour of his ear with a finger, traced the heavy, straight brows, and ran her thumb over the outline of his mouth. "Kiss me, Max," she whispered, and offered him her lips.

His hands on her waist tensed, and his lips touched hers almost tentatively. She opened her mouth for him, encouraging him, and the kiss gradually became erotic, impas

  
 
sioned
, as she stroked his hair and his nape. She found one of his hands and brought it up to her breast, over the satin that barely covered it. She felt the hand convulse on her soft flesh, and then his palm closed over the centre, and she knew he could feel the small, sudden pebble of hardness under the flimsy fabric.

Nestling down into his lap, she was reassured by the answering surge of his body, and her arms tightened about him, her tongue sliding along his, inviting him to further intimacies.

His abrupt movement startled her as he stood up out of the chair, bringing her to her feet. She tilted her head back to look at him, her hands still linked behind him, her pelvis snug against his. "Come to bed," she urged, making a subtle, seductive movement.

Max was breathing quickly, his face flushed. His hands were on either side of her waist. She edged closer, leaning up to kiss him again. But he raised his hands, pulled her arms down, and said hoarsely, "No!"

Celine blinked. Disappointed and offended, she stepped back a pace, and glanced at the work on the desk. "Is it that important?"

"Yes." He dragged a harsh breath into his lungs. "No. It isn't that."

Looking at him again, she instinctively pulled the edges of the inadequate peignoir together. "What, then?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "You're very.., sweet and-I don't mean to be a boor, but-the fact is, I can't
: "

"Can't?" Her gaze dropped momentarily to the front of his trousers and swept up again. "What on earth are you talking about? Do you think I didn't feel it?"

The dark flush that had receded from his cheekbones briefly returned. "I don't mean I'm physically incapacitated-" He raised one hand to rub his forehead with a thumb and forefinger, and then swung away so that he wasn't looking at her. He picked a pen up off the desk and dropped it. "I mean I can't ...I can't sleep with you. I can't make love to you."

 
For long seconds Celine's mind was totally blank. Then several wild and disjointed thoughts clashed together, from the unlikely to the unthinkable. Momentarily she felt that the room-maybe the entire world-had tilted, so that everything was off-centre, unbalanced. She took a deep breath and let it out. With determined calm, she said, "Look at me."

She saw him brace his shoulders,
then
he turned slowly and faced her, his blue eyes cool and resolutely steady.

"I think,"
she
said, "I have a right to know why."

His throat worked as he swallowed. "I know. I'm sorry if it hurts you. But it was inevitable that you'd have to know sometime." He paused, and the silence stretched. "You and I have never lied to each other, Celine. I'm...I've been ... seeing someone else."

I don't believe it!
was
her first thought. She stared at his unwavering eyes, and told herself it couldn't be true. But, as Max said, they'd never lied to each other. And this was not something that he would make up, for any reason.

"You've been unfaithful to me?" she asked him in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere far off, although it was her mouth that moved, her tongue that formed the words.

She thought he flinched slightly, a small tremor passing over the wooden mask of his face. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"When?"
It wasn't what she'd meant to say, but it was as good a question as any. "I mean
,
was it a one-night stand? I suppose anyone can make a mistake, and I know it's been difficult lately-" Although she hadn't thought things were that bad.

He cut across her desperate rationalising. "No, Celine. It wasn't like that. It's no casual encounter."

"How long has it been going on, then?"

"Does it matter?" He frowned, and when she didn't answer, said curtly, "Several weeks." "What does that mean?
Three?
Six?"

"More like six," he muttered, "if you mean how long have we been sleeping together. It hasn't ... been all that often, actually."

"Oh? Why? Did your conscience bother you?" She heard the waspish note in her voice with surprise. She hadn't even realised that she was angry. She felt too numbed for that.

Max said, "As a matter of fact, yes." He shut his teeth on the last word.

Celine had sometimes wondered what she would do in a situation like this. Not that she'd seriously thought Max would ever betray her. "I didn't think that you would-" She found she was unable to finish the sentence.

Rather hoarsely, Max said, "Neither did I. But it has happened, and-well, you had to know."

For a moment she wished passionately that he hadn't told her. Maybe if she had never known, if he'd kept his lapse secret, she'd have gone on forever in blissful ignorance. "While I was away," she said, jumping to a conclusion. She'd been away a lot, lately.

"The first time it... happened, yes. You were away." "You couldn't do without sex for a few days?"

"You know damn well I can." A frisson of resentment laced his voice, although he kept it level.

Celine moistened dry lips and lifted her chin, looking him in the eye. "Is it over?" she asked baldly. "No," he said. "It isn't over."

Celine felt the ground spiralling away from beneath her feet. She clenched her hands on the fabric of the pretty peignoir, suddenly conscious of its incongruity in the circumstances. She had dressed for seduction, to lure her husband to bed with her. And he'd just told her he was having an affair with another woman. For all the, impression her satin and chiffon was making on him, she might just as well be wearing sackcloth. The only expression she could see in his face was a stony resolve to get something unpleasant over and done with, and his eyes seemed to hold-of all thingscompassion.