“What d’you mean, darling, ‘really’ married? Did you have one of those funny affairs on the beach in Bali like Mick Jagger?”
“I mean we weren’t married at all.”
He accepted it. The South Wessex Conservative Association chairman would very likely never find out. Zillah had a few qualms when she remembered her wedding to Jerry in St. Augustine’s Church, Kilburn Park-but not many and not for long. The PR woman, Malina Daz, was told Zillah was single but had lived for several years in a “stable relationship” with the children’s father. Wisely, she decided to say nothing to the newspapers about Zillah’s marital or nonmarital status and not to mention the children, counting on Jims’s relatively low notoriety quotient to make it unlikely questions would be asked. She was counting also on Zillah’s beauty to solve everything. Zillah looked ravishing when the photographer arrived and she had dressed herself in her new Amanda Wakeley cream silk trouser suit with the Georgina von Etzdorf scarf knotted at her throat. Handsome Jims leaned negligently over the back of her chair, his perfectly manicured hand lightly caressing her long black hair.
But when Malina changed her mind about Jims’s fame and suggested they might describe Eugenie and Jordan as her niece and nephew, children of her sister tragically killed in a car crash, Zillah drew the line. So, rather surprisingly, did Jims. Malina must remember, he said, that he wasn’t all that well known, he wasn’t a celebrity.
“Temporarily,” said Malina briskly.
“If I get a post,” Jims said, dropping his voice, “it will of course be rather different.”
All this was making Zillah nervous. “My children won’t go away.”
“No, darling, and we don’t want them to.”
“It might be wise,” said Malina, “not to give any interviews to the print media for a year. Could we have your first husband tragically killed in a car crash?” Reluctantly she was forced to relinquish this favorite scenario. “Well, no, maybe not. But by then,” she added coyly, “another wee one may be on the way.”
Zillah thought the chances of another wee one slender in the extreme. She had no experience of interviews or journalists but was already frightened of them. Still, she had long ago cultivated the art of banishing unpleasant thoughts from her mind. It was the only form of defense she knew. So, every time a picture of Jims as shadow minister of state at the Home Office or under-secretary for health came into her head and she had a vision of a reporter appearing on her doorstep, she thrust it away. And whenever a voice whispered in her mind’s ear, “Tell me something about your previous marriage, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith,” she plugged it up. After all, she knew Jerry wouldn’t reappear. What surer way could there be of making plain your intention to disappear than by announcing your death?
Jims bought her an engagement ring, three large emeralds mounted on a square cushion of diamonds. He’d already given her a Visa card in the name of Z. H. Leach and now gave her an American Express platinum card for Mrs. J. I. Melcombe-Smith and told her to buy any clothes she liked. Wearing her new Caroline Charles green suit with the bead-encrusted bodice, she dined with Jims in the Churchill Room at the Palace of Westminster and was introduced to the leader of the Conservative party in the Commons. Seven years ago Zillah would have described herself as a Communist, and she didn’t know if she really was a Conservative.
“You are now, darling,” said Jims.
After dinner he took her into Westminster Hall and down into the Chapel of St. Mary Undercroft. Even Zillah, who took very little notice of such things, had to admit that Sir Charles Barry’s stonework was impressive and the lavish fittings magnificent. Obediently, she looked at the bosses showing St. Catherine martyred on her wheel and St. John the Evangelist boiling in oil, though she was squeamish about such things and St. Lawrence being grilled made her feel a bit sick. She’d take care not to look up during the marriage ceremony. Against all this rich and brilliant color, she decided, an ivory wedding dress would be most effective. Because she’d fixed on the single-woman option, she was determined to push aside the memory of her marriage and was almost reconciled to a church ceremony.
It was a pity the children couldn’t be there. She rather fancied Eugenie as bridesmaid and Jordan as page. They’d have looked so chic in black velvet with white lace collars. Apart from these frivolous considerations, she was seriously concerned about her children. Their existence was one of those not exactly unpleasant, more disturbing facts she couldn’t banish, though she tried. That is, she tried not to think about them except as the two people she was closest to in the world, possibly the only people she loved, for her affection for Jims hardly came into that category. But the circumstances were too awkward to allow her to forget the troublesome aspects. For one thing, they constantly asked when they were going to see Jerry again. Jordan had a disconcerting habit of declaiming loudly out in the street or, worse, when Jims brought an MP friend to call, “Oh, I do want to see my daddy!”
Eugenie, though less emotional, always spoke more to the point. “My father hasn’t been to see us for months,” or, quoting the babysitter Zillah now employed almost daily, “Mrs. Peacock says my father is an absentee dad.”
The last address Zillah had for him was in Harvist Road, NW10. Sometimes she got out the piece of paper on which he’d written it down and just stared at it, thinking. There was no phone number. At last she phoned Directory Enquiries. Without a name they couldn’t or wouldn’t help her. One afternoon, leaving Mrs. Peacock with the children, she went up to Harvist Road on a Bakerloo Line train to Queen’s Park. The place reminded her of her student days when she and Jerry had shared a room in a house near the station. They’d been very happy for a while. Then she got pregnant and they married, but things were never the same.
“Needles and pins, needles and pins,” said Jerry, quoting his old granny, “when a man marries his trouble begins.” They were on their two-day honeymoon in Brighton. Then he said, “I quite like being married. I may do it a few times more.”
She smacked his face for that but he only laughed. Now she was looking for him to find out if he was willing to stay dead. His name wasn’t on a bell at the street number he’d given her. When she banged the lion head knocker an elderly woman came to the door and said, “I’m not interested in double glazing,” before she’d even spoken.
“And I’m not selling it. I’m looking for Jerry Leach. He used to live here.”
“He called himself Johnny, not Jerry, and he doesn’t live here now. Hasn’t since last year. Months and months. The answer to your next question is no, I don’t know where he’s gone.”
The door was shut in her face. She walked across the road and sat down on a seat in Queen’s Park, gazing at the green expanse. A black girl and a white girl, walking past, looked curiously at her short-skirted linen suit and high heels, put their heads together and giggled. Zillah ignored them. It was evident that Jerry didn’t want his whereabouts known. She must make up her mind he’d gone forever. What would he think when he saw her and Jims’s photograph in the paper? Perhaps he didn’t read them. But he’d be bound to find out sooner or later if this thing Jims called a reshuffle took place before the wedding. Because by then Jims might be a minister and on account of his youth and good looks and her youth and good looks, a target for the media. Jerry was a rotten provider and generally hopeless with money, and unfaithful and callous, but not wholly bad. He was the last man to try and rubbish her chances. If he saw she’d made a good marriage and done well for herself, he’d most likely laugh and say, “Good luck, girl, I won’t stand in your way.” Besides, he’d be relieved she wouldn’t nag him any longer for child support. Not that he’d ever given her any, there being no blood in a stone.