I drank my wine, and looked around the room. In its calm, ordered magnolia and cream, with the blue touches here and there, it reflected what Rose had become. And it was a room that had been arranged entirely to the satisfaction of its occupant. ‘There are advantages to living alone,’ I remarked.
She understood what I meant. ‘Actually, yes.’
We exchanged a glance. Funnily enough, we do understand each other Rose put down her glass and said, ‘Nathan and I were married for a long time. We knew each other well. Just as… just as… you and I do. It was easy to pick up conversations.’ She got up and walked over to the window ‘My life with Nathan was private until you came along. If our marriage had bad patches, and areas of blindness, it was ours and it worked, until you prised it apart. Then everyone took a good look, and it was open house.’ She turned and stared at me, calm and steady. ‘You’ll admit that I don’t owe you anything, Minty. No explanations. No loyalty.’
‘Nathan came here because he wanted comfort, and conversation,’ I cried. ‘He didn’t find them with me. Your bed would have been a natural progression.’
She leant her forehead against the curtain. ‘Could be.’ She sighed. ‘Why don’t you stop now and go away?’
‘Because I’m angry with myself, Rose, but I’m also angry with Nathan.’
She swung round sharply on her heel. ‘Didn’t you once say to me that Nathan is dead – dead? Didn’t you? In your so-matter-of-fact way?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Then leave him alone. Give him some peace.’
‘You’re right. I shouldn’t be here.’
‘Quite,’ she said coldly. She poured a second glass of wine and hugged it to her chest. I made no move, and she said, ‘Aren’t you going? Go.’
What did the self-help manuals have to say on the subject of the second wife apologizing to the first? Those books that encouraged people to believe they could take a grip on their lives and make changes, that concocted dazzling fantasies of resolution, forgiveness and other castles in the air?
‘I want to say sorry to you,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t realize what I’d done until I’d married Nathan and had the boys. Then it all seemed different, particularly when I grasped how disappointed Nathan was… at times. He used to look at me sometimes, and I could see how he hated what he’d done. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for me, but that he’d realized how much he cared for the things he’d discarded.’
Nathan had used Rose badly. I had used Rose badly. I already knew that the full import of one’s transgressions don’t really hit home until years after the event. The manuals don’t mention that one. It was probably too complicated a subject for them to tackle.
‘Poor Minty,’ said Rose, and her irony cut me to the quick. She remained hunched over her wine, neither drinking it nor looking in my direction. ‘You were welcome to him,’ she admitted. ‘He had hurt me so much. Sometimes I thought I’d die of the hurt. But you know the aphorism “This, too, will pass”? It’s true, it does. Thank God. When he turned up here on the day he died, I didn’t make him particularly welcome. Actually, I didn’t want him here. I was busy. He could see that, and he was disappointed. But I didn’t feel I had any reason to put myself out. I had spent so long shaking free, and Nathan’s problems were not mine… I could no longer engage with him, not in the way he wanted… Actually, I blame myself for that.’
‘It was a shame,’ I managed. To be unwanted when you are dying must be terribly hard…
She gave a choking sound. ‘For God’s sake, he left me for you. Remember?’ She turned an anguished face towards me. ‘Remember?’
‘I think of it most of the time. Never more so than now.’
Rose made a visible effort. ‘You have the twins to consider. Sam and Poppy suffered. You may think that they were too old, but they weren’t and they did. I blame you and Nathan for that. There was nothing I could do to help them. You can’t inflict your anger and mistakes on your children.’ She twirled her glass between her fingers. ‘I won’t let you.’
A tiny pulse beat in Rose’s temple and, no doubt, one did in mine. I fixed on the blank television screen in the corner of the room. ‘I’m truly sorry about Poppy and Sam.’ For good measure, I threw in, ‘Poppy’s taken it out on me. She’s a fighter.’
Rose bent down and picked up a tiny mother-of-pearl button. ‘That’s Poppy for you. Sam’s struggling a bit at the moment. I’m a little worried about him and Jilly… The job in America has thrown them both. They seemed so good for each other, but you never know. I want to be around to help, but I’m busy earning a living and getting on with my life and they have to sort themselves out.’ Her voice was tender. ‘Much… much as I love them.’
The tenderness excluded me. ‘They’re growing older, as I am, Rose, and more invisible.’
‘Just as I felt, then.’ She added, in a kinder voice, ‘Grief saps the confidence, Minty. I can tell you that. But it can be fine in the end. Believe me.’ She gestured at the room. ‘When Nathan left, I felt I’d failed myself and the children, but I survived. It took blood and tears, but I did it.’ She balanced the button on the palm of her hand. ‘Nathan did what he wanted to do. I failed to see that he was changing. And why shouldn’t he change? It was his right. But I didn’t see it then. So, it wasn’t all your fault, you know.’ She was letting me off the hook, a little.
The wine had loosened my tongue. ‘Roger and Gisela Gard came to dinner once. Believe it or not, I was playing office politics. One of the twins was naughty and Nathan dealt with it. I saw Roger watching him and I could almost hear him thinking, This is a man who’s lost his stuffing and brimstone, and the thought flashed through my mind that it was better to be dead than a failure.’ I put down my wine glass. ‘The question is, did I wish Nathan’s death on him, Rose? Did I?’
Rose swirled her wine round her glass. ‘When Nathan left, I thought how much easier it would have been as a widow rather than a dumped wife. For a start, no one could have said it was my fault, unless I’d fed him hamburger and chips every night. If he’d died, the situation would have been easier to handle.’
‘Yes.’
She put down her glass, and the gold ring gleamed. ‘I still would have lost my job to you, wouldn’t I?’
‘Probably,’ I conceded. Τ wanted it and I reckoned loyalty in the office was an old-fashioned concept.’
‘And now?’
I thought of Chris Sharp. ‘Much the same.’ I looked down at the carpet. ‘Was Nathan trying to humiliate me when he asked that you be made the boys’ guardian?’
‘Perhaps he was thinking of what was best for them.’
‘Perhaps.’
Rose took my hand. The touch of her flesh on mine was unexpected. ‘Minty, what you don’t understand is… I had got away. Finally. At last. I had stopped dreaming about Nathan. I wasn’t about to involve myself in his life again. I had cut him off.’
I allowed my hand to rest in hers and told her what festered in my mind. ‘I never loved him, Rose, not truly. Not really truly. Not heart, soul, body and mind. He knew he was getting older and wanted different things, and I wasn’t going to make it easy. If I’d loved him, I would have let him… oh, go to Cornwall, a million things.’ My fingers pressed Rose’s. ‘I think he felt desperately alone.’
Rose took away her hand. ‘I’m going to show you a letter, Minty.’ She went to the desk in the corner, picked up a small Jiffy-bag, pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.
I spread out two closely written sheets of paper. ‘My dearest Rose…’ Didn’t ‘Dearest’ mean closest to my heart?