The Editor's Wife (33 page)

‘Let's not go back yet,' Diana said. ‘There's a nice park on the corner.'

A gusty wind was rattling the crocuses and buffeting the ducks on the corrugated surface of the pond as we made our way past the tennis courts, on which a few fanatics were knocking up. It was midweek and we almost had the place to ourselves. A pair of teenage truants were snogging in the bandstand. At the sound of our approach they broke apart, their eyes flickering over us without interest –
What would you know about it?
– and then resumed. Diana tacked off discreetly towards the swings, which were creaking backwards and forwards in the wind, as if peopled by phantoms. An elderly couple were sitting on the park's only bench, holding hands with the placid affection that is the reward for half a century of marriage. In that journey from bandstand to bench I felt I had witnessed the whole trajectory of love.

Diana spoke. ‘I read your novel. When it came out, I mean. I kept my eye open for other books by you, but I never found any. Did you not write any more?'

‘No.'

‘That's a pity.'

‘I never felt the urge to write another. It was a bit like jumping out of an aeroplane. I only needed to do it once. And it's not as if there's a shortage of books to read.'

‘You had a talent, though.'

‘If I did, I think I buried it with Owen.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I would never have finished the book without his encouragement. He was the one I was trying to impress. His judgement was the only one that mattered, really.'
There was a silence as Owen's name rose spectrally between us.

‘It must have been very hard for you, Diana,' I said at last, feeling that the subject of back then could and must be broached.

She didn't deny it. ‘There were some grim times. The thing that surprised me most was how many of our friends stayed away. I thought at the time it was because they blamed me, but I realised later that it wasn't the case at all. People just naturally shun tragedy. Once they've said sorry they don't know what else to say, and people hate being embarrassed more than almost anything else. So you see your silence wasn't unique.'

‘It was only the thought that you were dead that kept me silent. Nothing else would have done.'

‘I realise that now. The person who helped us most at the beginning was Susan Canning – Lawrence's widow. She'd lost her husband in even worse circumstances, if that's possible, and been left with two young children, like me. She knew better than anyone how I was feeling. We leant on each other a lot in those early years.'

‘So that's how Alex met her future husband?'

‘Yes. The children practically grew up together. Like cousins, almost, until they were ten or eleven. But when Susan remarried, and then I did, our paths diverged, inevitably. Alex only remet Craig four years ago at my husband's funeral.'

‘She told me. That he'd died, I mean. I'm so sorry. It doesn't seem fair.'

‘Yes, cancer's spiteful like that. It doesn't make any allowances for your previous suffering.'

‘You've had more than your share.'

‘When you put it like that it sounds as though I've done nothing in my life but bury husbands. But either side of those two deaths there were some happy years.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

We had almost reached the kiosk by now, at which a lone woman sat behind the counter, turning the pages of a magazine. ‘Shall we have an ice cream?' I asked. It was a frivolous impulse, completely out of tune with our sombre conversation, but Diana wasn't remotely offended. ‘Oh, yes, why not?' she said. ‘We're out of doors, and the sun is very nearly shining.'

‘First ones I've sold this season,' said the kiosk attendant, snapping the lid off the tub of vanilla and gouging at the surface with a metal scoop. Rummaging under the counter she produced two chocolate flakes and forced one into each ice cream.

We walked on, in case a change of rhythm disturbed Larry, both of us using our free hand to guide the pram.

‘I meant to ask,' I said, remembering something that had been puzzling me. ‘In your letter, you said a reference in my manuscript made you think Leila and Owen were already having a relationship. I can't think what it was I wrote that gave you that impression, because I never had any inkling of it. I always thought Leila was a lesbian.'

‘Why did you think that?'

‘I don't know.' I shook my head. ‘I'd never even met
any lesbians. She was just my idea of what one ought to look like. Outrageous stereotyping, I'm afraid.'

‘How funny.' Diana nibbled the edge of her cone delicately. ‘She wasn't like that at all. She was always crashing in and out of bed with different men, but underneath, in love with Owen all along and biding her time.'

‘I suppose you're going to tell me Ravi Amos was straight as well.'

‘Oh God, no, he was as gay as a coot. You were spot on there. He fancied you too.'

‘Oh Diana, that's such bollocks,' I protested. ‘He had no interest in me whatsoever.'

We had reached the park gate now: there seemed no option but to head back home. This was disappointing – Diana spoke so much more freely in the open, away from the inhibiting consciousness of her role as mother and grandmother.

‘So what was it I wrote that made you wonder?'

‘Oh yes.' Diana discarded the dry wafer snout of her ice cream in a litter bin and licked her fingers. ‘That day Leila met you outside the British Museum and took you to lunch, she brought up the subject of your visiting me at Aysgarth Terrace – the implication being that I'd told her about it. But I hadn't. I hadn't even spoken to Leila since the morning after that dinner party with Ravi.'

‘Meaning what?'

‘Meaning that she must have heard it from Owen.'

‘That doesn't necessarily prove . . .'

‘No, I know. It just made me wonder.'

‘But I got the impression she was warning me off you.'

‘Did you? I didn't read it like that at all. It seemed to me she was promoting the idea. She encouraged you to think I was interested because she wanted you to take me off Owen's hands, or off his conscience at least.'

‘I don't believe it. I mean I don't believe Owen was having an affair with Leila all along. He was far too honourable.'

‘But honourable people sometimes do dishonourable things. We know that.'

‘But there are some who don't. Who are just good, through and through. Owen was one of those.'

‘We'll never really know,' said Diana. ‘And it hardly matters now. But, OK, let's leave him on his pedestal.' She gave me a quick, sidelong smile, which brought before me the mischievous quality that had first attracted me when I had sat beside her at the Powys Society. I realised that my earlier sense of surprise at her altered appearance had worn off already. Now she just looked herself: familiar, lovely. I felt a schoolboyish impulse to kiss her, but there was the pram (and its contents) to consider, and besides, we had reached the end of Alex's road by now.

‘I can't believe you're a grandmother,' I said. ‘When I was young grannies were small and barrel-shaped, with grey poodle perms and bunions. Now they're blonde and they wear toenail varnish and foxy shoes and dress like their daughters.'

‘You wouldn't catch me in Alex's clothes,' Diana replied, horrified. ‘She dresses like a hobbit.'

I couldn't help laughing at the literary flavour of this insult. ‘Is grandparenthood as much fun as they say?'

‘Yes. You have the same overwhelming love you had for your own children, but you don't worry so much. Poor Alex. She's so exhausted and so anxious, she hardly has a chance to enjoy him at all.' She sighed. ‘I wish I lived nearer.'

‘Literary agents don't have to live in London, do they?'

‘No. But I'm rooted now. I've got Justine in Wandsworth, and lovely neighbours, and a friend who takes me to the theatre now and then.'

‘Alex wouldn't mind you coming to visit often, surely?'

‘No, but I don't want to be one of those awful mothers-in-law who descend for weeks at a time. It would be so much easier if I could just pop over when they need me.'

‘You could always stay at my place, if you like,' I said, with sudden inspiration. ‘I've got a spare room,' I added, in case she misunderstood me. ‘It smells a bit of Gerald at the moment, but that can be sorted.'

‘Thank you. I'll bear it in mind,' she laughed. I resolved to redecorate it at the first opportunity: get a proper blind for the window, and some new bed linen. A new bed, in fact.

‘Likewise, if you ever need somewhere to stay in London, I've got a spare room too.' There was a hint of mockery in her repetition of my rather graceless phrasing, but when I looked at her through narrowed eyes she smiled innocently. ‘But you need to get in early for Wimbledon fortnight. I get very booked up.'

‘Are you close to the grounds?'

‘Very. If the wind's in the right direction you can hear Cliff Richard.'

I didn't have time to reply that there was every chance that I would soon be in London to check on the renovations at Gleneldon Road as we were now at the gate, and the front door opened. Alex stood there, yawning and sleep-rumpled, one cheek and ear cherry red where they had been crushed against a pillow. ‘You've been ages,' she said, in a tone which combined gratitude with reproach. ‘I was worried.'

Diana and I pulled guilty ticked-off faces. ‘Sorry,' said Diana, recovering. ‘Did you sleep at all?'

‘Not really,' said Alex. It's a funny thing, the way even honest people lie rather than admit they've been asleep. We lifted the pram over the threshold, past the rocking horse, and Larry's eyes snapped open. Before he had uttered one cry Alex was tugging at the buttons of her shirt.

‘I've got to feed him. I'm in agony,' she said, wheeling him into the sitting room.

‘Carry on,' said Diana. ‘We'll start eating if that's all right.' We repaired to the kitchen, where a man in jeans and a rugby shirt was on his knees attempting to assemble a flat-packed cot. The floor was strewn with torn cardboard, bubble wrap and stray wing nuts.

‘This is Craig, my son-in-law,' said Diana, watching his lack of progress with amusement. ‘Craig, this is Christopher, who was there at Larry's birth.'

He stood up, shedding metal washers, which rolled to the four corners of the room. He was in his twenties: handsome, athletic. ‘Ah, the famous amateur midwife. What can I say? Very pleased to meet you.'

We shook hands solemnly across the unmade cot.

‘I can't take any credit for the midwifery,' I said, wanting to make it absolutely clear that I hadn't been a witness to the act of parturition. ‘I was downstairs, pacing. I think I did a pretty good impression of an anxious husband, if I do say so myself.'

‘I wish I could have been there,' Craig said. Funny how attitudes change, I thought. Only a couple of generations ago men weren't allowed to be present at the birth of their children. Now it's a right and a duty. ‘Never mind,' he went on. ‘Next time.'

Diana, rooting in the dishwasher for clean cutlery, raised her eyebrows at this admission, and Craig laughed.

His struggle to make any headway with the cot was beginning to depress me. There were only five panels and the diagrams were cartoon-like in their simplicity, but I didn't want to draw attention to his incompetence, so I contented myself with trying to corral the diaspora of screws, nuts, washers and Allen keys, before any of them rolled under the kitchen units.

‘Are you any good with these things?' he asked me at last, adding with a disarming lack of male pride, ‘I'm hopeless.'

‘I
think
I can see what needs doing,' I said, trying to contain my extreme impatience to take over. ‘Shall I?'

We were knocking in the last of the castors when Alex reappeared, minus Larry. ‘How are we going to get it upstairs past the rocking horse?' she enquired.

‘Oh that bloody horse!' said Craig. ‘I'm sorry, Diana, I know it's an heirloom.'

‘No need to apologise,' said Diana. ‘I never liked it myself.'

At lunch Diana, Craig and I had champagne, while Alex drank some hot fennel concoction that was reputed to ease infant colic. I noticed Diana making efforts to guide the conversation away from Larry and towards topics of more general interest, but Craig and Alex's world had contracted to the four walls of the nursery and their focus was not easily deflected. I felt it was asking too much of them to make idle small talk with a relative stranger when there were such overwhelming demands on their concentration. Alex's invitation had been impulsive and generous, but later, perhaps, regretted. As soon as lunch was eaten, I resolved to go.

‘How long are you staying here?' I asked Diana at one point, half wondering if there would be time for another meeting.

‘I'm going back tomorrow,' she replied, offering me another chunk of bread.

‘Why so soon?' said Craig, with genuine dismay.

‘Yes. Stay longer,' pleaded Alex. ‘It's lovely having you here.'

‘I can't. Anyway, you'll have Justine.'

‘Oh yes, I'd forgotten. You're off on one of your jaunts.'

Diana looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘You make it sound as though I'm always jaunting. This is a one-off.'

‘Mum's going to Lapland,' Alex explained.

‘To see the Northern Lights,' Diana conceded. ‘It's just a long weekend.'

‘You don't sound very keen,' said Craig.

‘I'm not unkeen,' said Diana. ‘It just seems a long way to go for a bit of magnetic interference.'

We all laughed at this towering snub to Nature.

A crescendo of squawks from upstairs brought lunch to a natural conclusion and I made my excuses to depart.