I still don’t know exactly when our relationship shifted in her favor, but it did, and I didn’t even notice until we were in court and I was drying my damp palms on the knees of my trousers, staring at the back of Susie’s head, wishing with all my might that she’d turn around and smile at me.
The clues were all there: her hassles at Sunnyfields as she struggled to win back lost ground after her maternity leave. I thought she was just going back to herself after giving birth, but actually she was hardening way beyond what she had been before.
She was my sweet, soft-hearted Susie, and then, quite suddenly, she was someone else.
chapter ten
WHEN I WENT BACK TO COLLECT MARGIE AT NURSERY YESTERDAY, the tanned young assistant was embarrassingly overfriendly. She kept patting my arm and back and grinning unhappily. They had obviously had a staff chat about me and decided I was a pathetic, unknowing mug.
It’s rare for people to pity me. I did well at school, had pals, wasn’t crap at sports, and got straight into medical school. I had good-looking girlfriends, met Susie, and we both graduated. Even though I didn’t go into practice, everyone knows that was because I chose not to. I don’t think they even pity me for giving up work and staying at home. The women love it because they think I’m caring. Most men my age have realized that seeing patients day after day after day isn’t the unmitigated joy they had supposed. They try to pretend that I’m missing out, but they know, most of them, that their careers will climax in a whimper of boredom. At least being at home there is a possibility that I will write something one day, something important and useful. I’m just not ready yet. I have to let the ideas form first.
Anyway, the women at nursery pitied me, and I have to say, I rather liked it. I don’t know if it’s because they’re female, so I don’t feel threatened, or if I’m too bigoted to think women could possibly challenge my position in the social hierarchy. The pity felt like a comfort, like empathy, as if they understood. Some other mums came in while I was there, and they felt sorry for me too. They all came up to talk to me and rubbed Margie’s hair, cupping my elbow and issuing distant invites to bring Margie over to play. I found myself standing bravely, nodding sadly and sighing quite a lot. My tragic tableau was spoiled when Margie bit another child on the head and we had to leave. I used to get Yeni to drop Margie off on Thursdays, but I might just go myself tomorrow.
I keep thinking about Harvey Tucker. What an utter, utter bastard. Is there any need for him to snub me now, at this moment when I couldn’t be more down? Mum phoned from Marbella this morning. I told her she didn’t need to phone every day and reminded her that it would be costing a fortune. It didn’t work. It was just the usuaclass="underline" more nagging and coughing and needing to be reassured.
It is just possible that Harvey Tucker has the wrong number and is leaving kind, considerate messages on someone else’s machine. I don’t ever recall his phoning here for Susie. One digit out and he could be doing that. Psychiatrists’ writing is awful, so it wouldn’t be hard to get a scribbled phone number wrong if Susie had written it down for him. But that’s crap, because I’ve left him our number every time I’ve phoned. So that’s crap. Tucker, Tucker, you motherfucker.
Yeni has gone out for the afternoon with her friends from the English class, a pimply boy who may or may not be her boyfriend and a fifty-year-old hermaphrodite woman with a jolly-hockey-sticks attitude. Margie’s having a nap now, but before she went down I got our wedding pictures out and we looked at them together. I told her the story of our wedding. About the big cake and dancing with Mummy, and the big car. She said “Vroom” and spluttered orange juice on the couch. Margie’s teeth have come in quite sharp with gaps between them. Her head is big as well, or maybe her hair is just so thin and dark that it makes her head seem unusually big and square. I hope she won’t grow up ugly.
Looking at the wedding photos, I can see nothing untoward in them. Susie’s not brandishing steak knives or anything. We are a normal happy couple, standing stiffly on church steps, in a garden, by a tree, wearing stale smiles. The photos took hours.
The whole wedding felt like it had nothing to do with us. Susie’s parents, her father really, took over. He ordered the biggest, fanciest everything, with knobs on the knobs and extra bells. Both sets of parents were beside themselves with joy; two only children, each marrying a soon-to-graduate doctor. Her parents told me several times they were pleased- even though I was a Catholic. Susie and I laughed about it behind their backs: the joke was on them because I’m a lapsed Catholic. She didn’t want to tell them about that. She said it made me seem even more dangerous.
Mr. Wilkens ordered the biggest dress, the biggest dinner (five courses in a plush Glasgow hotel by the river, free wine, and liqueurs at the end), the biggest kilt outfit for himself and me. In the pictures I’ve got the kilt and shoes and the socks, skean-dhu, sash, jacket, and I’m holding a silly bonnet-type thing. I’m so over-Scottish I look like a visiting American. Mr. Wilkens (call me Alan) measured everything by the size of the bill. Susie ended up lying to him and saying that the return to Corfu cost thousands, just so we didn’t need to go to Barbados. He was pushing for us to get a prenuptial agreement- he pushed quite hard behind the scenes- but I insisted that I wanted Susie to have anything I owned. It didn’t make any sense until he died.
Her mother worried about money. She was alarmed by the cost of everything, even the price of the inscription inside the rings. Once, when we were ordering the cake and the favors out of a catalog, she inadvertently let off a little worried squeal. Mrs. Wilkens didn’t know that her husband was loaded. She didn’t find out until he died two years later. Mr. and Mrs. Wilkens and little Susie Wilkens went to Portpatrick for their fortnight’s rainy holiday every year and used his old undershirts for dusters. The old bastard had almost three-quarters of a million sitting in different accounts and the same again in a low-risk shares portfolio. The money came from way back, and he’d always kept it quiet. Double lives seem to be something of a theme in her family.
Susie was furious with her mother for never questioning him, never finding out. Her mother said that the money was her husband’s business; it wasn’t her concern. No matter what happened in the family, Susie got furious with her mother. The family cat died, blame Mrs. Wilkens; Aunt Trisha broke her foot, blame Mrs. Wilkens; father lied to his family consistently during his thirty-seven-year marriage, blame Mrs. Wilkens. She had a lot more respect for my mum, who I think is a bit of a bully.
Surprise killed Mrs. Wilkens. She was fine when her husband died, but finding out about the money upset her desperately. She had always assumed they were on the verge of poverty and had fetished watery baked beans and walking everywhere into a kind of fiscal piety. She found herself facing a massive windfall when she was just too old to change her values. Her psyche sort of short-circuited, and six months after her husband’s will was settled, she had a series of heart attacks. We were with her in the hospital at the end. She looked so surprised. I’m sure she saw his bank statement during her final seizure.