The Wonder Worker (39 page)

IX

He stared
at me in stupefaction.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, stumbling over my words, “but I just couldn’t face discussing it with you.”

“But why on earth did you do it?”

“I got fed up with contraception.”

“But
I
would have taken on the contraception!”

“I didn’t trust you not to want to skip it every now and then. I knew you always wanted a daughter because you were so disappointed in your sons.”

“I was never disappointed in them!”

“Oh yes, you were, Nicky! Oh yes, you were!”

“I admit I’m sorry neither of them share my interests, but—”

“Sorry? You’re devastated! In fact only someone irrationally upset
on the subject of offspring would suggest that we should have another child in these particular circumstances!”

“Forgive me, but I’m not prepared to be diverted by these wild accusations—I’m still reeling from this truly appalling disclosure and I still don’t understand why you decided to be sterilised. You couldn’t just have done it because you were fed up with contraception!”

“Well, I did. I hated taking all those hormones and then I hated risking a perforated uterus with the coil and then I hated scrabbling around with a diaphragm—and anyway, it was
my
body! Why shouldn’t I have my tubes tied if I wanted to?” Sheer fright was making me sound much more belligerent than I really was, but the effect of the belligerence was disastrous.

“I can’t believe you could have been so criminally selfish!” exclaimed Nicky, turning on the anger again. “That’s the kind of behaviour which gives the Women’s Movement a bad name! You’re talking as if you exist in isolation from everyone else and owe nothing to anyone but yourself!”

“Well, that was how I felt after being married for all those years to you!” I shouted, determined now not to collapse again in the face of his anger, and in consequence becoming uncharacteristically shrill.

“What a cheap remark! Damn it, this confession of yours makes me wonder what else you’ve concealed over the years! Have you ever had a lover?”

“No, of course not!”

“That’s the wrong answer. You should have said: ‘Don’t be stupid!’ and looked hurt!”

“Well, I’m saying: ‘No, of course not,’ and I hope I’m looking bloody furious!” I was in better control of myself now. I’d remembered that attack was the best form of defence, and that enabled me to harness my anger so that it became an asset instead of a handicap. “And what about you?” I demanded. “What have you been keeping quiet about during the last twenty years? I noticed earlier, when I said I always felt I loved you more than you loved me, that you never came right out and said you’d always been faithful!”

“I didn’t think it was necessary! And anyway it’s not true to say you always loved me more than I loved you!”

“Oh yeah? Would you be able to swear on the Bible that you’ve been faithful to me since the day we married?”

“Well, of course I would! Don’t be ridiculous! I couldn’t sustain my ministry—particularly this ministry—unless I live as I should. If I
were to start screwing around on the side I’d be finished, just as poor Lewis was back in 1983. You can’t lead a double-life and preserve your integrity—you can’t exploit others without damaging not only those others but yourself and maybe innocent bystanders as well. We’re all too interconnected for exploitation not to have an adverse effect somewhere along the line.”

“Well, if we’re talking of exploitation—”

“Okay, so you’ve been feeling exploited. But if I’d only known—”

“So why the hell didn’t you know? The truth is, Nicky, you were never sufficiently interested to bother to imagine what I was feeling!”

“The truth is I never dreamed you were capable of deceiving me on such a cosmic scale!”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Just because I had a minor operation—”

“
Minor?
”

“I admit it had a major consequence, but technically—”

“Forget it, all that really matters is that you deceived me. Now let’s hear about the other deceptions. If we’re going to start a new phase of our marriage, I’m not tolerating any no-go areas—”

“There aren’t any.”

“Of course I did wonder occasionally what you got up to down in Surrey while I was in London, but I always tried to have faith in you, I always willed myself to believe that for the boys’ sake, if not for mine, you wouldn’t go messing around with one of those bone-headed Surrey businessmen who can only talk about money—”

I suddenly had an inspiration. If I confessed, he would back off. He would see that the marriage couldn’t possibly be continued. Reality would dawn. He’d come to his senses, accept a new vision of the future, release me. It was my one remaining chance of escape.

Dizzy with fear again but driven on by desperation I interrupted: “All right, I’ll tell you. He was a Surrey businessman and he did talk about money, but he wasn’t bone-headed. He was my accountant, and he was shy and rather sweet. If you’d ever bothered to meet him you’d have written him off as dirt-common and dead-boring, but I liked him a lot. I only broke off the affair after the take-over because I felt he was getting too involved and I didn’t want things to get out of control.”

I stopped. I’d been staring down at my hands, but the silence which followed my last sentence was so loud that I looked up. At once I saw Nicky was shattered. Evidently he had not after all suspected me of infidelity. The gibe about a lover had been a mere reflex, an auto
matic seeking of a reassurance which he had never seriously doubted would be forthcoming.

Now it was my turn to be shattered. I stammered: “I’m sorry, I never intended—never wanted—you to know, but I was so lonely, you see, and you couldn’t share the business with me in any way, and Jim found my success so exciting—”

“But I thought you said your accountant was a young man who’d only recently qualified!”

“Yes, he was a lot younger than I was. I wouldn’t have had the courage to approach someone older. I wouldn’t have felt in control.”

There was a deadly pause. Nicky’s face was very pale and set, his eyes slatey and expressionless.

“I feel sorry for young men today,” I said, so driven to fill the terrible silence that I hardly cared what I said. “They’re so grateful to meet an older woman instead of the usual sex-mad teenage girl who expects them to know every position in the
Kama Sutra
and deliver multiple orgasms on demand.”

A second, even deadlier pause began. All Nicky said when he broke it was: “How many others have there been?”

“Only two. One was a young man I met last summer when I was organising the flowers for that enormous wedding down on the Sussex border, and the second was a young American I met by chance at Fortnum’s, but both affairs were very brief and I wouldn’t have wanted to prolong them.”

Nicky looked away. Then suddenly, wholly unexpectedly, he wiped his eyes with his cuff, levered himself to his feet and blundered from the room.

X

My heart
felt as if it was bursting. Groping my way forward, unable to see properly, I followed him upstairs and found him lying face down on the double-bed in the largest room. I lay beside him, my arm around his shoulders, and wept silently for a while. It was only when he tried to push my arm away that I managed to whisper: “I didn’t love any of them, but I felt so cut off from you and they made life bearable.” When he failed to reply I added in misery: “I know this means you can never trust me again and that going on with
the marriage is impossible, but I do care for you, I always will, and I wouldn’t want us to wind up enemies.”

He twisted around to face me, levered himself groggily upright on one elbow and said in a flat, dogged voice: “Okay, you’ve made your point. I drove you into being unfaithful because I’ve been a self-centred, insensitive workaholic, but I’ll make amends now, I swear it—I swear that now I fully understand the situation everything will change.”

“Oh, Nicky …” I was almost fainting with relief. He was facing reality at last. The end of the marriage was in sight. We were going to part with dignity.

“Of course I forgive you for the infidelity,” he said strongly. “Of course I shall trust you again and of course we must go on with our marriage. I accept that the others meant nothing to you and that you still love me.”

I was appalled.

“We’re going to survive this crisis,” he was saying obstinately. “All this honesty’s been very painful, but at least I know now what has to be put right and I won’t rest until you’re happy again.”

I tried to speak but I couldn’t even think coherently. Indecipherable mental patterns whirled across my mind and reduced me again to a passive powerlessness. I felt as if I’d been tossed into a maelstrom so fierce that any hope of survival was futile.

“We won’t mention any detail of this conversation again,” said Nicky, confident now and very determined. “We’ll treat all our past errors as forgiven—they won’t be forgotten, but now that they’ve been exposed we’ll be free to go beyond them and get on with building a new future.” He started to kiss me.

I kissed him back because I was confused, because I was stupefied, because I was in such a mess that I had no idea what else to do. Amidst all my chaotic emotions I was aware of a longing to be nice to him, to be kind, to be generous—to be anything which would make amends for all the pain I’d given him by that dreadful confession. How could I have been so cruel to my oldest and dearest friend? I felt I was drowning in guilt again, awash with self-loathing. Here I was, married to this wonderful clergyman who was being so good and so Christian, forgiving me when I didn’t deserve it, loving me no matter what I did, and what was I doing to express my gratitude? Nothing! How despicable I was, how utterly self-centred and disgusting … I suddenly saw that he’d been right all along in his criticism, and that
I’d been both mad and bad ever to think of leaving him. Swept on by this tide of shame I blurted out: “Oh Nicky, I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to hurt you so much, I really didn’t—”

“My darling Rosalind,” he said, “it’s all right—everything’s all right, and now we’re all set to live happily ever after.”

How mad can one get? But by that stage I was so demented that I believed every word he said.

I

At that point
in this catastrophic scene we floundered around in pursuit of sexual intercourse. No doubt we thought we were making love, but in retrospect I can see I was making amends to him while he was making a big effort to convince us both that the crisis was past. We eventually achieved a connection but Nicky came too soon and was almost beside himself with annoyance. I’d never before heard him use so much forbidden language in such a short space of time.

Knowing how upset he was I felt more guilty than ever, and my increased guilt drove me to embrace him even more lovingly—while simultaneously I wondered what the hell I was doing and where on earth our mess was going to end. But those were dangerous questions, so dangerous that they had to be instantly suppressed, and instead of trying to answer them I frantically told myself that my sole aim in life now should be to spare Nicky from further agony and ensure the boys weren’t ruined for ever. I myself was of no consequence. I just had to soldier on and keep a stiff upper lip in order to avoid more chaotic scenes packed with shouting, violence and unspeakable emo
tion, otherwise known as hell on earth. Vaguely I started to recall pictures painted by Hieronymus Bosch.

It was too cold to linger long in the bedroom and neither of us now wanted to stay at the cottage. After the sex I gathered together my belongings while Nicky cleared up, and we departed ten minutes later. There was never any question about our destination. Nicky had said I had to be with him at the Rectory until the boys returned from school, and I now accepted that this was the first step towards restructuring the marriage and living happily ever after, just as a decent wife and mother should.

Dutifully I got into my car and followed Nicky east along the road which led to London.

II

When
we stopped for a sandwich lunch at the service station on the M3 Nicky phoned Lewis and I stood by the open booth to listen to the one-sided conversation.

“… so it depends on the traffic, but I’ll cut down through Earls Court to the River, and we should be home reasonably soon …”

I noticed the use of the word “home” and the casual familiarity with London. I felt as if I were journeying to a foreign country while Nicky was merely returning to his native land.

“… and could you tell Alice to make something special for dinner tonight? Rosalind and I’ll eat in the flat, but Alice doesn’t have to worry about that, I’ll carry everything upstairs …”

I’d quite forgotten Alice Fletcher, the new cook-housekeeper at the Rectory. Did I really want a servant living in and getting on my nerves? No. But on the other hand I certainly had no intention of slaving away cooking communal meals and winding up a drudge chained to the Rectory sink.

The problem with the Rectory, dreadful old dump, was that it had a public, professional use in addition to being a private home. I had always treated the ground floor as a write-off, constantly subject to invasion by all kinds of peculiar people, and on my irregular visits to the house I had confined myself to our flat upstairs, but the flat was horrid, quite unmodernised, and one couldn’t possibly entertain there. If the house were to be made into a decent home the ground floor would have to be reclaimed, but there was currently a major obstacle
standing in the way of reclamation: Lewis. When his arthritic hip had made climbing the stairs too difficult, two of the ground floor reception rooms—formerly interconnected and divided only by double doors—had been amalgamated to provide a large bed-sitting-room for him, and the hall cloakroom had been transformed into a bathroom.