Only in the Night (10 page)

It was not a case of a friend telling her. Nor even overheard gossip. She saw them with her own eyes. She was walking down Harley Street on her way to John’s rooms when his car passed her. She raised her arm to wave and get his attention when she saw him kissing someone in the back seat of the car. She was so shocked by the sight of John in the arms of another woman that she stopped in the middle of the pavement, dropped her arm and very nearly convinced herself that she had imagined it. Taking several deep breaths and feeling very foolish she walked on, her eyes still on the Jaguar ahead of her. John’s car stopped, and so did Eliza. The chauffeur opened the door and discreetly turned away, then John emerged and helped a beautiful, very well-dressed and groomed woman from the car. The lustful look in his eyes, his body language with the woman, showed a togetherness with her that Eliza recognised. She had not seen that look directed at her for a very long time – years, in fact. Had she ever seen it as acutely as she saw it now for this woman?

She watched her husband, quite clearly besotted, raise the woman’s chin with an index finger and kiss her on the lips. His arms went around her and drew her to him. Eliza slipped stealthily into a doorway
so as not to be seen by them. She felt guilty for having caught them like this. Had John ever been so obviously affectionate to her? She watched him raise the woman’s hands to his lips and kiss them. She could feel his reluctance to let her go and wanted to die right then and there.

Someone opened the door to leave the building behind her and Eliza, who had flattened herself against it, slipped into the silent entrance hall. It was one of those elegant Harley Street buildings where doctors had their consulting rooms, looking much the same as John’s building, as all the others on this street famed for its doctors. The elegant eighteenth-century rooms were always furnished sparsely but in good taste: the right chandeliers in the entrance hall, Chippendale chairs and settees in the reception room, usually filled with quiet people dragged down to silence by worry about their condition or a friend’s or relative’s.

A sigh escaped Eliza. Deceit played out before her very eyes had quite unnerved her, made her weak-kneed. She sat down on one of the Chippendale chairs facing a line of brass nameplates of the doctors in the building, the tears trickling down her cheeks. She heard a muffled sound, the whirr of a small lift hidden somewhere at the rear of the hall. A nurse appeared, white-clad, a small pristine cap pinned to the top of her head. The nurse’s rubber-soled shoes hardly made a sound on the white marble floor as she walked to the reception room to summon a patient.

Eliza jumped when a few minutes later, after the lift had whirred its way upward in the building, the same nurse came and stood before her. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ answered Eliza, who was just barely able to speak.

‘Who are you waiting to see?’ asked the nurse.

Eliza raised her eyes. The brass plates on the wall caught her attention. She felt not so much saved as relieved to see Robert Flemming’s name. He was the children’s paediatrician, the nicest and kindest of men, one of the few of John’s colleagues whom she really liked. Enough to use his name as a reason for her being there but certainly not enough to confide her distress in him.

‘Mr Flemming.’

‘I’ll send his nurse down to see you,’ said the good Samaritan nurse.

‘No, please don’t do that! I’ll be fine and wait my turn.’ And Eliza very nearly choked, trying to hold back a sob.

The nurse left, vanishing somewhere into the recesses of the building, and Eliza closed her eyes and made an effort to compose herself. Her eyes were still closed when she heard Robert Flemming’s voice, husky but kind, and felt his hand raise her chin.

‘Oh dear, Eliza, you’re not very well, are you?’

‘No, Robert,’ she answered, and burst into tears.

He helped her from the chair and walked her to the small lift hidden behind a wooden panel. She trembled so much he had to steady her. Once on his floor he asked, ‘Eliza, shall I call John?’

‘No, please don’t do that!’ And then once again she burst into tears.

Robert Flemming walked her past his nurses to his consulting room and sat her down on the leather settee. After bringing her a glass of water he sat down next
to Eliza and placed an arm around her. It was several minutes before she was able to calm herself and when she did she leaned against him silently.

They remained thus for a considerable time, until Eliza was able to sit up and tell him, ‘How embarrassing.’

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

She gave him no answer which caused Robert to suggest, ‘A cup of tea? I could do with one.’

The nurse was called in and Robert let Eliza be and attended to some case-reports on his desk until Nurse Keely returned with a tray. It was placed on the table in front of the settee where Eliza had remained, dry-eyed and staring into space. Robert returned to sit next to her and pour.

Quite calmly she told him what she had seen. Robert handed her a cup of tea and replied, ‘Drink this, it will do you a world of good.’

Eliza sipped from her cup and almost immediately felt revived by the hot smoky taste of the Lapsang Souchong. She sighed. Gazing into Robert’s eyes, she asked, ‘I suppose, like so many other wives, I’m the last to know?’

‘Marriage never changed John. We all assumed that when you married him there was an understanding between you.’

‘An understanding?’

‘That he would be devoted to you, love you best, more than any of his other women.’

‘We! Who’s we?’

‘His colleagues, your friends.’

‘And why would they assume such a thing, Robert?’ A certain anger was coming into her voice now.

‘Because though he never flaunted his women in front of you, he was not particularly discreet.’

Eliza was astounded. Trembling, she placed her cup and saucer on the table and then her hands over her face. Several minutes went by before she removed them and told Robert, ‘I feel such a fool, so humiliated. How could I not have known, not seen it coming, or even thought he might want another woman? I didn’t, you know!

‘I was once loved by a man who was devoted to me, I was his world, and I assumed that John, who had won me away from him, felt as that man did. I thought we had given our lives to each other. The life I held back from that young man. I’m afraid I don’t understand deceit and disloyalty.’

‘I’ve known John for a very long time, Eliza. Maybe he doesn’t see his philandering as disloyalty, just sex. This isn’t in defence of him, just to point out to you that it is a possibility you must contemplate before you confront him with what you’ve discovered. Now you wait here and drink your tea. I have two more patients waiting and then I’ll take you home.’

‘You don’t have to do that, Robert.’

‘I think I do, and besides I want to. I am after all your friend and have been for many years. But then, maybe you don’t know that any more than you know your husband.’

That last remark gave Eliza something more to think about. Had she been so blindly in love with John, so self-involved, that she’d never realised Robert had always been there for her as a close friend as well as being a colleague of John’s and her children’s paediatrician? Suddenly his many kindnesses to her,
the way he’d supported her against John in little things about the children, the many quiet talks they had had together during those social occasions she detested, came to mind. Only now did she think about those things and realise that she had taken Robert’s affection for her, his friendship, for granted.

In the car on the way home she asked, ‘Robert, I think I have been blind, naive about more than John’s infidelity. I have been so busy getting on with being John’s wife, and the mother of his children, I have no idea who or what I am, how John sees me … how
you
perceive me.’

‘I can’t speak for John.’

‘Then speak for yourself.’

‘Are you sure you want to hear this now?’

‘Yes, very sure.’

They were riding through Hyde Park. Robert pulled the car to a halt and cut the motor then turned in the seat to face Eliza and took her hand in his. ‘I have always seen you more as a victim than a wife. A willing victim: young and naive, not at all a match for John and his charm. The bearer of children rather than their mother. Not that you would not nurture your children but rather because you don’t know how to. That natural mothering instinct is not there in you, it has never developed because you’re still undefined, still a child yourself. John delights in keeping you as his young thing. It’s very appealing for a man, that child-woman quality, but it doesn’t make for particularly good mothers.’

‘And that’s what you think I have?’

‘In abundance. It’s very sexy to some men.’

‘And to you, Robert?’

‘When I first met you I found you a refreshing,
sensuous young beauty. That John was besotted with you told me a lot about you, what an erotic delight you must be. I liked you then, but as the years went by I liked you more: for having beautiful babies and returning to university to do your own thing, for being so devoted to John and still being able to retain something of yourself apart from him. I think I’ve loved you for a long time from afar. Now you’re not going to get upset about that, I hope?’

‘I never guessed you had any feelings for me,’ answered a stunned Eliza.

‘You weren’t meant to. I would not have spoken about my feelings for you even now but you did ask. I don’t think this is the time to talk any more about them. For now, the best thing I can do for all concerned is to take you home.’

In front of her house Eliza and Robert stood for several minutes gazing into each other’s eyes, taking the measure of their friendship, seeing one another in a new and more intimate light. ‘I’m sorry you had to learn about John in such a brutal way. I meant to say that before, in my office, but to be sorry for you was not so important as being honest with you.’

She was very much aware that he was not saying, Call me if you need me. I’m here for you. You have a friend. He didn’t have to. The look in his eyes, the stance he took next to her, told her he was all those things and more. She also liked the fact that he didn’t ask her what she was going to do about John and her marriage. He took it for granted that she was capable of dealing with her philandering husband, and now that her eyes had been opened could correct the mess she had made of her life.

Nothing would ever be the same for Eliza after she had discovered how conveniently she had blinded herself to the reality of her life. Her first inclination as she entered the house was to grab her two children, put them in her car and flee to Little Barrington or the Villa Montecatini, her mother and father, home, the only home she’d ever really had. But once in the entrance hall and being confronted by Mrs Fanshaw with a message from John, she realised that to flee would be an act of panic. It would be to lose the life of sorts that she had worked hard at. If not the right life for her and John, it was still the only one she had. In an instant she knew that she would not flee, she would deal with the mess of her marriage and her own weakness. She needed time to sort herself out and get a life for herself and her family that worked for them all. But her brave thoughts did not stop her from bursting into tears once she was out of Mrs Fanshaw’s sight.

Eliza felt a stranger in her own house, lost and adrift. She went directly to the nursery. It was empty, the children were with Nanny in the park. She was shocked, not because they were gone but because she could at last face the truth: love them as she did, she was relieved she didn’t have to deal with them. She felt as much a stranger to them as she did in her house. In her bedroom John’s dinner clothes had been laid neatly across the bed: dress shirt, studs, silk bow tie, suit, socks, shiny shoes. She stared down at them and thought: John.

Only to him did she feel a sense of belonging, only with him was she not a stranger. Her heart raced. She hugged herself, imagined she was in his arms, that he was comforting her. She yearned to hear his voice, for
him to tell her how sublime a creature she was, how divine she was in bed, to feel his lusty penetrations take her into an erotic nirvana. She collapsed on the bed and, crushing the shirt to her face, wept into it for some time before she calmed herself and remembered he was a deceiver, disloyal, had abused the life she had entrusted to him. He was making love with, fucking that woman she had seen him with. And other women too.

Dry eyed now, she left the room to go to John’s upstairs study and when she returned it was with a pair of long silver paper scissors, a favourite possession of his. Very calm now, Eliza sat down on the bed and quite deliberately and methodically cut his evening clothes into small squares. She was amazed at how much pleasure she was deriving from this desperate act. So much so in fact that when she was finished with his clothes she attacked his custom-made Lobb shoes with two tubes of toothpaste and an electric toothbrush.

Eliza looked at her handiwork which she had assembled in a neat mound in the middle of the bed topped by his Crest-polished evening shoes. Delighted with what she considered a job well done, she ran a bath for herself.

A couple of hours later she was dressed in a long silver lamé Versace dress, silver sandals, with her face and hair looking young and fresh. She looked exactly the way John liked her to look when he took her out on his arm to a grand dinner party: sexy, provocative, almost untouched, and all his. A date rather than a wife.

She was sitting on the bed, legs crossed at the knee, leaning against the pillows, the bedside lamp casting a
lovely soft light on her, the silver lamé shimmering, when she heard his footsteps on the stairs and his voice calling out, ‘I hope you’re ready, darling, we don’t want to be late.’

Seconds later he burst into the room, looking happy and sexy and handsome as he peeled off his jacket. He saw her before he did the pile of swatches that had once been his clothes for their evening at St James’s Palace. She was amused that she could still dazzle him, stop him in his tracks.