Number 1 had looked forward to that life, though we acquired every sensible labour-saving appliance available in 1972 having saved up for them through a three-year engagement when we lived with our parents. She gave up her teaching job just before the wedding after making sure all our well-wishers would give us useful presents. We had a short honeymoon in Rothesay then moved to a rented flat in Knightswood, the earliest and, in the year 2002, still poshest of Glasgow’s housing schemes. We were very happy at first. The washing machine, Hoover et cetera left her free to whitewash ceilings, re-paper walls and carry out many improvements I thought unnecessary, as previous tenants had left the flat in excellent condition. My job in a local housing department office let me walk home for lunch. On Friday nights we went to a film or theatre, at weekends had polite little dinner or bridge parties with other couples, and on most evenings found entertainment in television and a game of cribbage before the small snack we called supper. And so to bed.
I was pulling on a condom after undressing one evening when she suggested we should have a child. It had not occurred to me that her domestic activity was a form of nest-building. Perhaps because I was my parents’ only child I dislike children, so suggested we wait a bit before starting to multiply ourselves: we should first get a bigger house, a bungalow in King’s Park or Bearsden, which would be possible when I was promoted to head office and able to pay a large deposit for a mortgage. She said grimly, “If it’s a matter of payment I’ll go back to teaching and earn us more money that way. But you’ll have to take your share of housework. I can’t bring in a wage and do everything else.”
I said I did not want her to go back to teaching; we were still young and had no need for impatience. She did not reply but refused to make love that night and (though my memory may be at fault — this was nearly thirty years ago) I think we never made love again. She returned to teaching, I started doing the shopping and would have made meals too, but she refused them. When I suggested that I could make meals as good as those my mother made she said, “That’s why I’d find them inedible.”
A month or two later I remarked that only a third of her weekly wage was being deposited in our joint bank account. She said, “That’s because I do at least two thirds of our housework. You may think you do half but you don’t.”
I shrugged and said, “So be it.”
She began going out once or twice a week with teacher friends. My promotion to head office came sooner than I expected. I began lunching in a snack bar with a colleague who also enjoyed cribbage and had a folding board we played upon. His system of marking was different from mine and more interesting. I explained it to my wife one evening while dealing the cards. She flung hers down saying, “If you’re going to change the rules of this bloody awful game I’m done with it.”
I realised that for months she had been pleasing me by playing a game she detested and suddenly I felt for her a terrible loving pity. Had she told the truth at the start I could easily have done without cribbage because we had enjoyed so many other things together — meals and films and small polite parties and lovemaking. But maybe she had only pretended to enjoy these things too because she loved, not me, but a conventional marriage.
One evening she explained she was having a steady love affair with a colleague and wanted to divorce me. I took several minutes to absorb the shock of this.
“If,” I said carefully, “you really need a child let us make one. Let us make it now. We don’t need someone else to give you one of those.”
She smiled mournfully and said, “Too late, you poor old soul.”
I was only twenty-four but shrugged and said again, “So be it.” In those days divorce by mutual consent was impossible under Scots law; one of the parties had to get it by proving the other’s misconduct. She gave me proof of her misconduct, I passed it to a lawyer and paid for half the costs of the action. I moved to a boarding-house leaving her the flat with all its furnishings so she had no reason for a grudge against me.
Years later at an office party I danced with a very lively little stranger. She had huge eyes, a mass of thick black hair, a slightly transatlantic accent and told me she was Polish-Canadian. Contact with her was so exciting that I asked her back to my place. She rolled the pupils of her eyes upwards and murmured, “No, no, impossible tonight, Charlie is very jealous. But we will keep in touch.”
We did. I learned that both Charlie and her husband worked for the housing department. One morning the husband stopped me as we passed in a corridor and said, “You know my wife, I think. Has she told you I am divorcing her for promiscuity?”
She had told me but I denied it. He said, “Yes. For promiscuity. Don’t worry, you will not be cited in court, you are only her latest. Steer clear of her if you value your sanity.”
I thanked him for the advice but was enjoying my casual affair too much to take it. That she had Charlie as well as me made it all the more casual.
One Sunday afternoon she arrived unexpectedly at my lodgings in a state of happy excitement. Early that morning she had discussed Charlie with a close woman friend who had burst into tears and confessed that she too was having an affair with Charlie.
“Guess what I did then?” cried number 2. “I calmed her and cheered her up then rushed round to Charlie’s place and said, ‘Sit down, I’ve news for you.’ He went as white as a sheet. I told him I knew he’d been having it off with Sharon but I didn’t mind at all because I’ve been having it off with you. So now we can all carry on with our new partners and everything will be fine! Isn’t that wonderful? Now you can come and live with me!”
Though foreseeing she would almost certainly marry me I pretended to agree that this was wonderful.
Her home was beside the Botanic Gardens. She had her office there and was the first in Glasgow — perhaps in Scotland — to run a dating and escort business by computer and telephone. It was a profitable business. She ran it efficiently yet insisted on also doing everything good Scottish housewives did, refusing all assistance because she was sure only she could do such things properly. Luckily she wanted no more children, having two girls and a son in their teens who often visited her but preferred their father’s house because, she said, “They think I’m too much of a bossy-boots.”
She was certainly bossy. She both gave and was asked to many parties, and before setting out would glare at something I wore and say, “I refuse to be seen with you wearing that!”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s years out of date. Ten or twenty years out of date.”
“Male clothing doesn’t date like women’s does.”
“That shows you know nothing about it.” Yet she was generous and I had no objection to the new clothes she bought me: they always fitted well and were smart without being eccentric. But I was appalled when I came home one evening and found she had given all my former clothes to Oxfam, so appalled that I packed the few things I needed with the firm intention of leaving that house forever, though invitations had been posted for our wedding reception a fortnight hence. She had a master key and used it to lock me in. I managed to open a window and would have jumped out but her anger suddenly turned to a terrible storm of weeping and pleading. I had never before seen anyone in that state. I could not possibly leave her in it, so stayed and comforted her until we were friends again and got married after all.