Читать книгу The Philanderer's Wife - Katherine Trelawney - Страница 7

Joscelyn and Paddy moved house, on a rainy April day. The whole process had gone remarkably smoothly, but even so the last few weeks had seemed an unbearably long time to Joscelyn. After many months of willing self-sacrifice, she now realised how desperate she was to have a home of her own. She woke up early, even before her husband, and started listing, in her head, all those useful kitchen appliances, comfy chairs, and books to read in them which would finally be coming out of store.

At eleven o’clock the keys were handed into Joscelyn’s eager hands. Philippa helped her friend oversee the men, make cups of tea (she had arrived with her own picnic bag with a kettle, tea, sugar and milk for the purpose), and do some sterling work on the cobwebs which were revealed behind the last owner’s outgoing furniture.

After the men left, Joscelyn looked around, pleased, and slightly dazed. “It will look nice when it’s decorated,” she said to her friend.

“It looks nice now,” Philippa said. “And it will be quite lovely when it is decorated.”

After a late lunch of ready-made sandwiches and fizzy water Philippa went home to collect her children from school. Joss was just making herself a cup of coffee when Paddy arrived, carrying a bottle of champagne and a large bunch of flowers

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come home to my wife,” he said.

“Perhaps we had better put the champagne in the fridge for tonight,” Joss said.

“Nonsense. It’s cold now. We are in our new home. This is the beginning of what we’ve been waiting for.”

So they drank the champagne and made love on the bed with its specially firm mattress, which had been in store for so long. There were no sheets, of course, because they had not been unpacked yet, but the room felt quite warm with the heating on and some bright spring sun through the window. They drank some more champagne, and Joss, suddenly overcome with the effects of all her anxiety and exertions, fell asleep in the warm sunshine. Paddy found a rug to cover her up, and then he got up and dressed, took the last glass of the champagne downstairs with him, and set to work.

When his wife appeared, bleary-eyed, a couple of hours later, Paddy had unpacked most of the boxes of kitchen equipment and crockery and was devising a system for the kitchen. Paddy was very good at thinking up systems. He was not always so good at implementing them. That usually became Joscelyn’s job.

Joscelyn put the kettle on, to make tea.

“The first thing we need is some new kitchen cupboards. Some nice wooden ones like we had in Victoria Road,” Paddy said.

“I thought we’d make do with these for a while. They’re not too bad, and new ones are so expensive. I thought I’d make a start on the garden room. It looks so awful and it ought to be the best room in the house.”

“The kitchen is the most important room in the house. Then the bedroom. If you have Sunday morning breakfast in the right surroundings, the whole week will go well.”

Joss reflected that it was the kitchen and bedroom where Paddy was likely to spend most time. She had imagined herself in every room in the house, reading in the garden room in the afternoon sun, laying the table for a dinner party in the small dining room, preparing the guest room for her brother and his family when they came to stay, and who knows, perhaps the dining room would one day be full of toys and double as children’s play room. Paddy was a kitchen and bedroom man.

But it was her house. Paddy kept saying so. She would start on the garden room. Paddy’s kitchen could wait, for a little while.

The next day was Saturday, and Paddy had to spend some time in the office, and so Joscelyn went to the supermarket, and carried on unpacking. Paddy was home by two o’clock, a sure sign that he had not lingered or had lunch with anyone. The two of them went for a walk down the high street, and found a fishmongers where they bought prawns and sole for dinner. Paddy was the fish cook. His meals were done with great panache, and used every knife, fork and saucepan in the house. Joss would make a pudding of caramelised oranges.

On Sunday, the sun was still shining, and the first weekend in the new house was a clear success. After breakfast, Paddy went out to buy the Sunday papers, and he came home with an armful of newsprint and a pot of extra large magic bubble mixture.

“What is that for?” Joscelyn asked.

“For Kevin MacAteer’s children. Didn’t I tell you? I told him we’d have him around as soon as we moved in. I’ve invited him to tea, and he is bringing his wife and their two children. Girl and a boy I think, both quite young. I want to talk to him about his new script. I’m thinking of buying an option on it. A little bit of speculation. I could have done the usual restaurant lunch, but now we have a house, I thought that we should start being sociable again.”

“You could have told me,” Joscelyn protested, although she wasn’t really cross.

“I’m sorry, darling. I thought I had. You usually can read my mind, after all. And it will be fun, won’t it? The two of us entertaining in our own home.”

“Yes,” said Joscelyn, smiling indulgently, “it will.”

Kevin MacAteer had written the script for Paddy’s film, Terrible Beauty. Joscelyn had met him several times, but did not realise that he was a family man.

“He doesn’t look as if he has a wife and children.” Joss remarked.

“Well, I suppose that wives and children are such popular things that the most surprising people have them. Look at Alistair. He’s never out of his office, but he’s still managed two, or is it three, with Philippa?”

“Do you mean children or wives?”

Paddy smiled. “In his case, I meant children.”

“Well, I’d better make a chocolate cake then,” Joss said.

Paddy sat in the kitchen with her as she weighed out ingredients in her old black scales, which needed to be washed before they could be used, and mixed them together in the mixing bowl that had been a wedding present. Paddy had found a large book with plain empty pages and a bold cover in a glossy William Morris print. It had been given to him by one of his girlfriends. He wrote “House book” on the first inside page in his large black handwriting. Then he headed pages with the names of rooms, leaving three of four pages empty in between, and after that he began to write lists of “things to do” and “things to get” for each room. Joscelyn watched her husband lovingly.

At the same time she reflected on the fact that the book that had now become their house book had been the first present Paddy had received from another woman after their marriage. She had been rather upset at the time. She had of course known that there would be other women, but this gift, given to him by one of them, had seemed like a real intrusion. Now, at something of a distance, she reflected that Maria, the donor, had definitely been one of Paddy’s better ones. She had only been indulging in a little flirtation; and she’d also had good taste. This was more than could be said for some. Joss reflected that there was, in those packing cases, quite a collection of tapes of music, cufflinks, shirts, ties, books, and videos given to Paddy by admirers, either before or after their marriage.

She voiced this thought to Paddy. “Maybe I should put them all together on a special set of shelves, so that we have the complete collection of mistress memorabilia together?”

Paddy laughed, and Joss could see that he was actually quite taken with the idea. But then he waved his hands dismissively:

“Well, you’d be the person to do it. You have an elephant’s memory when it comes to exactly who gave me what, I’ve noticed. I’d quite forgotten that Maria gave me this. It just seemed to be right for what we needed.”

It was true, Paddy would have forgotten. He lived so fully in the present, looked so much to the future, but the past faded quickly in his mind.

After their guests had gone Paddy went into the study to wire up the computer. Joss, still feeling a little churned up by the thoughts prompted by the new House Book, looked for and found several boxes containing mistress memorabilia. She put them all in one box. She and Paddy didn’t need them; they could be kept packed away, in the cupboard under the stairs.

One item, though, did get removed from the box. It was a rather beautiful piece of Indian marble, inlaid with semi-precious stones. Minerva, the dumpy travel journalist, had bought it for Paddy. She was the first actual mistress Paddy had after marrying Joss. She had been a friend to both of them at first, and then had a fling with Paddy. Joss had tolerated the relationship, and she and Minvera had continued to meet, from time to time, alone. It had been an odd dynamic, because after the affair started, by tacit consent, they had never spoken about Paddy. This forced them to get to know each other better, and meant that they had forged a strange private intimacy.

Nonetheless, Joss had been very pleased when the affair came to an end, and relieved when Minerva, six months later, married a schoolmaster from a major public school.

Minerva was a lively, interesting person, but she knew Paddy was married, and should never have given such a beautiful piece just for him. If she had to give something, it should have been to them both.

Joscelyn put it in a bag. She would take it to the Oxfam shop tomorrow. It would sell for a good price, in Putney, and the money would go to a good cause.

Before sealing the box with the rest of the bits and pieces, she took out one particularly ugly watch (from an old girlfriend from before Joss arrived on the scene), and put it in the bin.

Supper was soup and some crusty bread. Paddy said little, so Joss made conversation.

“I’m enjoying my studies.”

“Good.”

“I feel more confident now. Pippa and Ben have both been ever so supportive.”

“Excellent,” said Paddy, who clearly had no intention of following her friends’ example.

“You know I could do a module of law, at some point. Then you could help me.”

“Goodness me no, Joss. You’re not a lawyer. You’d have to learn lots of facts, and be precise about things. It’s absolutely not your kind of thing. I’m sure you’re fine with a literature course or Art Appreciation or whatever it is you do. You need something that doesn’t too much tie down that magnificent free mind and spirit of yours.”

Joscelyn looked at her husband rather sourly, and he laughed.

But Joscelyn had other thoughts about her future. Thoughts and plans that could be realised, now that things appeared more settled.

“It’s only a part-time course, Paddy. I thought that in due course I could combine it with something else.”

“Fine.” Supper was finished, and as Joss cleared away. Paddy went and found his briefcase, and opened it on the kitchen table. He had a habit of doing this, sometimes, just as Joscelyn put a serious note into her voice. But it was a Sunday evening, and she was entitled to raise domestic and personal concerns.

“We ought to be thinking of having children. Now we have a home. Now that you’re doing so well.”

“Yes.” Paddy was still looking in his briefcase. “But wouldn’t it be better to wait until you are more settled?”

“Well, I was thinking of next year, maybe. Most of the people doing my course have full-time jobs, or children. I’m sure I could do both, especially if I had some help in the house, and maybe the baby went to a child-minder for a few hours each week.”

“I don’t think you’d really want to be a part-time mum, Joss. I think you’re thinking of taking too much on.”

“We’ve always said we would have children.”

“Yes, when the time was right.”

“Would you support me?”

“Of course I would support you. I just don’t think it’s a good idea. You did talk about teacher training, at one time. Wouldn’t it be better to do that before having children? It’s much easier to go back to a career that to start one when you are a mother and have all those extra demands on your time. I think that you should ease yourself back into higher education by doing this course for a year, and then go to college full-time and train to be a teacher.”

“But that would take me three years. And then I’d have to work for two years before I established myself. I’d be thirty-two.”

“Women have babies into their late thirties, and beyond.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to. And plenty of women train for a career after having children. I would probably make a better teacher after I’d been a mother myself. And that’s what I’d rather do. I don’t want to wait five years to have children. I want them now. And I’d like to get the degree I didn’t get when I left school. My way, I could do both.”

“Teacher training is a degree. It’s a vocational degree. It’s much more you, Joss.”

“Shouldn’t I be the judge of that?”

“I think we should settle in here, Joss. And you should spend a bit longer at your course. You’ve only just started. One thing at a time.”

“All right, but can we talk about it again?”

“Yes, of course we can.”

Paddy shut his briefcase. He looked out of the window, looking outwards, from the space of his own dissatisfaction.

“I’m going to go out for a walk.”

Sometimes in the flat, Paddy had seemed like a caged animal. At least here, in the new house, he had a choice of floors to roam before he made his bid for freedom.

“Are you meeting anyone?”

“No, just a walk. I’ll be back to watch the news with you.”

He had been home for a long weekend already. It was pointless trying to keep hold of him.

“See you later, then.”

But when he had gone, Joscelyn felt a little unnerved. Supposing Paddy kept resisting the idea of having children? Philippa had talked about her taking a stand. This was something that would be worth taking a stand over. She would definitely do it, if it were children at stake.

Joss thought about Hilary. Who already had a degree, and from Cambridge, not the Open University. Who was set on her career, and probably wouldn’t think of having children for ten years, if ever.

What if Joss insisted on having children and Paddy left her for a career girl, like Hilary?

And then Paddy came home. He had only been gone half an hour. He was carrying a bag of logs.

“Are you still sitting in here?” He looked at his wife, at the kitchen table. “Come, I’ve got some logs. Let’s light a fire and see if our TV works. It’s nearly time for the News at Ten.”