Only in the Night (11 page)

‘You look marvellous, and you
are
ready.’

‘I certainly am,’ she answered. It was the tone of her voice that made him realise something was amiss. He took only two more steps into the room before he saw the mound that had been his evening wear. He gazed at it but briefly then turned away from it and her to close the bedroom door.

He was very calm when he asked her, ‘Are you all right, Eliza?’

‘Yes, I am now.’

‘Have you destroyed my other evening suits?’

‘No, just one gave me enough satisfaction.’

‘You do know that it is too late to cancel this dinner invitation? We must go.’

‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that, John, I’m quite ready to go,’ she told him as she rose from the bed and walked from the room.

When they returned that evening it was gone midnight and still they had not spoken a word about what she had done or why she had done it. In fact they hardly spoke at all throughout the evening and when they did they were polite. John looked in on the children as he usually did whenever they returned home from
an evening out. Eliza did not. She went directly to their room.

‘Thank you for not ruining the evening for me,’ he told her as he removed his jacket and went to stand next to her in front of the long mirror where she was removing the dress’s short ermine jacket banded in silver lamé. He placed his hands on her shoulders and kissed the side of her neck then took the jacket from her hands.

She wheeled around to face him. ‘Everything in its time, everything in its place. One of your dictums, I believe? Well, this is the time and the place, John. No woman, not even one as young and naive as I have been, likes to be made a fool of. And what a fool, what a laughing stock, you have made of me! Do you love her, that woman I saw you with in front of your office this afternoon? The way you looked at her told me that you do. You’re a pig and a cheat for deceiving me with that woman. Disloyal and dishonourable for leading me on to believe
I
am the love and passion of your life. I gave everything up for you, to make you happy …’

John interrupted her. ‘No, my dear, you did not give everything up for me. You have that quite wrong. You never had anything to give up. Now we are not going to have a hysterical scene. Instead we are going to talk this out like the two civilised people we are, people who love each other.’

And that was exactly what they did before they eventually went to sleep wrapped in each other’s arms. Two days later they flew to Fiji in the hope of healing Eliza’s marital wounds. It was more like a second honeymoon than a holiday because she was
still sexually besotted with John and he was loving and charming to her, but the holiday did not heal their damaged marriage. Instead Eliza was made to understand that John would never change but that he intended to love her better than any other woman who might enter his life. His confession that marriage was not much to his liking but children, and having a family were, that he tried to think of her as someone he’d seduced rather than a wife, was hurtful to Eliza, too painful was the picture he drew for her of why she could not leave him. He would not give up his children to divorce. She must face the fact that she had no money of her own, had never earned or saved a penny so was dependent on him to take care of her. But the most tormenting thing for her was when John told her she could never leave him because she was too much in love with him and the life he had constructed for her, because she had given herself completely to loving him and the erotic life he had addicted her to. It was all true. Eliza knew at that moment that until she was strong enough to walk away from John she would remain with him in her unhappy marriage.

It was to take four more years, a master’s degree in law, a not very rewarding spell of working with a firm in Lincoln’s Inn, and falling in love with her best friend, Robert Flemming, before she walked out.

Chapter 6

The last three months before Eliza walked away from her marriage were quite desperate times for her. Completely alienated from her home-life from the moment John left the house until his return, and having resigned from her job, she spent most of her days window shopping on Bond Street and having long coffee breaks at Fortnum & Mason or Richoux and afternoon tea at the Ritz or Claridge’s, occasionally with a sister or a friend but mostly alone. She spent hours sitting in Farm Gardens off Mount Street chatting to strangers walking small dogs, and lunched alone in small out-of-the-way restaurants. Observing, always observing, strangers, imagining the lives they were leading, measuring their happiness.

Those friends who did join her had no sense that anything was wrong, Eliza was as jolly and charming as she could be. The first few days spent creating this new pattern to her life seemed strange and yet somehow extremely pleasant. After a week she was amazed at what a good time she was having on her own.

She was always home by five in the evening when she would look in on the children, who treated her more and more in the same way as John did, as if she were
an awkward child rather than a woman, their mother. They loved her and dismissed her as her husband did for being a pretty, silly mummy. She would bathe and change and wait for John to return from the hospital, his office, or some liaison she could only guess at because in all the years since she had caught him in his infidelities he had been careful not to offend Eliza by being at all obvious about them in her presence.

Dawdling her days away, she was always ready and waiting for her evenings out with John, and to spend her nights sating her erotic appetites with him in bed. In the morning she would wake hungry once more for sexual delights. Eliza felt as if she were regressing in time: back to those early days when John had first seduced her, had whetted her appetite for sex.

It was several weeks before she realised that the only life she was having with John was one where she was sexually there, seducing him, baiting him to take her down a more thrilling sexual road while at the same time she was distancing herself from him as the love, the great passion, of her life. She was living in a strange kind of limbo that was both pleasurable and disconcerting, almost schizophrenic.

Then one morning, after a particularly exciting night of debauchery, John told her, ‘My darling, lazy Eliza, you’re such a delight because sexual satisfaction is all you think about. Having you for a wife has one most delightful advantage. You don’t fuck like a wife, more like a whore. You were and still are, after all our years together, value for money in the sex game.’ And he kissed her passionately, used his hands to caress her naked body.

It was instantaneous, struck her like an unexpected
blow to the head. His words not so much knocked her
out
as
into
her senses. She removed his hands from her body. He was having no protest. They caressed her breasts again and once more she removed them, not with anger nor with any suggestion that there was something wrong. She pulled herself up against the bed pillows and reached out to run her fingers through his hair. She felt him relax under her stroking.

She told him, ‘You know, John, before I met you, a simple Tuscan farmer who loved me and who was gentle and kind, appreciating everything that I was and respecting it, taught me how to enjoy sex as part of loving. It took you and your seduction of me to turn me into a whore, just a lady who gives sexual services for a price. How flattered I was to be your whore, without ever realising until this very morning that that is what I am to you. About the only thing I will be able to pride myself on about this marriage is that I never cheated you. You got what you wanted. I have
always
been value for your money.’

This was just the sort of talk that excited John’s lust. He broke into peals of laughter and made a grab for her. The joy of forcing her to submit to the power he had over her and watch her dissolve in endless streams of orgasm was one of the pleasures of his life. He missed and had to watch her slip away from him and off the bed.

Eliza knew when his lust was up and how to tantalise him. She had reached for her silk dressing-gown, rubbed her body with it and tossed it to him. Once more he laughed while he watched her move around, naked and provocative. Every step she took, every stance she struck, was a pose to tease him with. She
knew well his erotic thoughts, the things he would be planning for them: that light sting of his belt on her flesh to excite a touch of fear, issued to teach her who was master of their erotic games; the elegant sexual toys that he used for her pleasure, to reduce her to begging to be riven by him. She could feel his eyes eating into her flesh but didn’t turn around to face him. Instead she slid the painting on the wall opposite their bed away to expose a wall safe where her jewellery and any spare cash was kept.

‘Put it all on. I like to see you naked and glittering with jewellery. It’s so decadent, erotic as hell, and fun to fuck you looking like that.’

For the first time since they had been together, she found his husky and yet smooth and seductive voice no longer irresistible, merely ridiculous. She did not obey him. Instead she took a stack of banknotes held together by a rubber band and walked with it to the bed where she sat at the foot facing him, striking the most open and lewd position. One that decadently exposed her sex to his eyes.

She waved the stack of bank notes in front him and asked, ‘You think I’m value for money? Would you say as good as a very good lady of the night, a first-class hooker?’

‘Most assuredly,’ answered an amused John. He liked this new game she was playing with him.

‘How much would you have paid such a woman for a night of sex such as we had last night?’

‘It’s the woman who sets the price, Eliza.’

‘I set it at two thousand pounds. Would you say that was a fair price?’

‘OK, done at two thousand pounds,’ said a by now rampant and amused John.

Eliza peeled off exactly two thousand pounds and tossed the remainder of the bundle of notes to John. He caught them with one hand and, smiling, told her, ‘Eliza, as usual you shortchanged yourself. I would have paid three thousand for a night like last night. Now come and kiss me and see what you can earn for this morning. Maybe a bank note at a time placed strategically?’ he teased.

She slid off the bed and walked to the bathroom and on through to her dressing room. An impatient John called her back several times before she returned to him. When she did she was dressed in a pair of jeans and a cashmere polo-neck jumper, a leather jacket over her shoulders matching shiny riding boots. She was carrying a small Louis Vuitton overnight case, the money held in one hand. Eliza stood at the foot of the bed facing John, who was stunned into silence.

She placed the case on the floor and as she stuffed the money into her pocket, said, ‘John, I’m leaving you, taking this money for services rendered last night which you declared to be a bargain. My solicitor will be calling yours. I would like a divorce without scandal as soon as possible.’

‘You’re being ridiculous!’

‘Maybe so, but let me tell you – it feels terrific.’

‘You will never get custody of my children.’

‘Not a problem, John. You took them away from me a long time ago. You can keep them.’

‘You can forget money or alimony!’

‘Calm down, John, I’m taking my car and my horse. There is nothing else I want from this marriage. Not
your houses or possessions, only to see
our
children whenever they want to see their mother, for them to know that I am there for them. And that will be made clear to them through the courts, not you.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked, now wrapped in his silk dressing-gown and standing only inches away from her.

‘Put it down to being tired of being your whore or perhaps growing up. It was never a marriage. Pick anything that satisfies your ego, you always do.’

‘If it’s another man, Eliza, I’ll get you for adultery!’ he told her, anger in his voice.

‘John, infidelity never appealed to me. I never considered another man for one minute from the day I met you until now as I walk out on you and the miserable, honey-coated life you dealt me. You were an evil prick to have done what you did to me.’

‘And you were a willing masochist, remember that.’

‘Or an inexperienced, naive girl who fell in love with you on the rebound. Goodbye, John. No scenes. Remember how you deplore them. Not now, not ever. You pride yourself on being a civilised man and I expect you to be that way to me when, and if, our paths cross in the future.’

‘You can’t have the BMW.’

‘Fuck off, John, and keep your BMW. Do you begrudge me a few bits of my clothing as well? Yes, I suppose you do.’

With that Eliza dropped the keys on the carpet and walked from the room, leaving her case standing where she had placed it. John followed her out and in a more controlled voice, speaking quite softly, told her, ‘I
don’t want you waking the children, not even to say goodbye.’

‘I never really had a chance to say hello, did I, John?’

Those were her last words to her husband as she walked past the nursery door and out of the house to take a train for Little Barrington and home, having left behind eight years of her life.

She was, as she had expected to be, received by her mother and father with barely a question. Surprised but not shocked that she should have left her husband and children because she found them and her life intolerable, they rallied round her as did her sisters with affection rather than sympathy, though it was evident to the family that Eliza was deeply upset by the failure of her marriage.

After several days at home she brought her horse from John’s stable and spent hours riding through the countryside, easing herself back into the Forrester way of life. Old friends who had been abandoned by her when she married John made her feel as if she had only been away a day. But when Tuscany time came around, much as she wanted to go to her beloved house with Julian and Dulcima, she somehow could not face a return after eight years until she felt emotionally more stable. Everyone guessed, and Eliza knew, that she simply was not ready to face Vittorio.

So instead she lived between Little Barrington and the woodsman’s cottage, and because she had no money, took a job as a roving Justice of the Peace for the Cotswolds. There were lawyers to be paid for. The divorce never got messy because Eliza wanted nothing from her marriage and allowed John to sue her
for divorce on the grounds of desertion. It moved along quickly without his even suggesting a reconciliation. Another blow to her ego, another indication of how little she’d meant to him.

In the year that followed her walkout there was much soul searching into her role as bad mother, bad wife, her being in love with John, her selfishness, how very shallow a life she had led, her sexual desires. She had been seriously damaged by the dark side of John, and had consequently lost confidence in men and love and most certainly herself. She had been burned by man’s inhumanity in the guise of ‘A Better Life-Love For Another’. Her family, good people, and Robert Flemming, who was a genuinely kind and loving human being who truly cared for his fellow man, were her healers.

After a year alone in which she remained celibate, Eliza married Robert Flemming. It was an easy marriage if not a passionate love. She found in life with Robert a respect for her as an individual that she had never received from John. They did everything together, including buying and furnishing a large cottage by the pond in Westwell which was close to Little Barrington and not very far from John’s house in Coln St Aldwyn. It took several years for him to come to terms with Eliza’s walking out on him, their children and their marriage, but since they were country neighbours and rode in the same hunt, knew the same people socially, he was never less than civil to her.

Robert lived in London during the week and Eliza took the train in on occasions to spend a night there with him. It was always the country for weekends.
Eliza and Robert had a child together, Samantha, and her birth helped to bring Eliza’s children with John back into her life. Robert had remained the Hope-Quintin children’s doctor and it was he who always maintained a good relationship with John and the children, he who broke the news to them that he was marrying their mother, and he who told them they had a little sister. At first it was no more than curiosity that brought the children back into Eliza’s life but several years later there was a genuine love for their half-sister and Robert, a newfound respect and affection for their mother, between them all that brought them together in an easy-going and friendly relationship. However, their real love and devotion would always remain for their father who could do no wrong in their eyes, whereas they felt their mother could.

What was evident to both Robert and Eliza soon after Samantha was born was that she would be no better or no worse a mother to Samantha than she had been to Alexander and Olivia. Robert and Eliza had thought she would bring the baby up on her own but she simply did not have the disposition to handle that. The will was there but the reality was that John had not so much damaged as killed her mothering confidence. A live-in nanny was found soon after Samantha’s birth and together Robert, Nanny and Eliza raised Samantha, and Eliza learned how to love and nurture her child, and even those from her first marriage.

That Robert and Eliza had a deep affection and respect for each other, loved each other for who and what they were, that they were each other’s best friend, was finally not enough to keep the marriage together. There was no shock, no despair, only a little
disappointment for them both when on the night of their eleventh anniversary, while they were dressing to go out to dinner, Robert approached Eliza who was sitting at her dressing table combing her hair. They gazed at each other in the mirror and he said, ‘I somehow don’t think we are going to make a twelfth anniversary, do you, Eliza?’

There was a long pause as she reached up to offer her hand over her shoulder to Robert who had remained standing behind her. He took it and lowered his head to kiss her fingers then resumed eye contact with her through the mirror. ‘Are we that unhappy?’ she asked her husband.