Authors: Charlotte Oliver
Then I twigged that this was probably about me.
Jack grinned in a nasty way, a way I didn’t recognise from before, and said, “Thomas, get a hold of yourself.”
Tam had stopped short in front of him, then turned back at me; I thought he hadn’t recognised me. Why would he? He’d simply dismissed me as a gold-digger when he interviewed me. There was no need to keep a record of my face in his memory bank.
But he pointed at me and said to Jack, “She’s still
working
for you?”
‘Yes,” said Jack smoothly, “whenever did you become so old-fashioned? Married women are allowed to stay in the workforce these days, you know.”
I cheered inwardly. In fact, it had been
me
who’d determined I should remain Jack’s assistant. I wasn’t going to be idle—I wanted to contribute something to the family business, now that I was part of it. And anyway, I wanted more than anything for things to continue just as before. Jack and I were a team.
“This is
shameless
, Jack, for fuck’s sake. Do you really think you’re going to fool Alfie with this charade?”
Alfie,
I thought,
who’s Alfie?
Then I remembered, with a hint of embarrassment that I’d faltered on this piece of family trivia. Alfie was their father. Who Jack didn’t see anymore. Why would Tam be bringing
him
up?
At that point, Jack glanced at me, his expression betraying nothing. Then he took hold of Tam’s shoulder and frogmarched him into the private sitting-room just off the office. And he shut the door.
They were in there for a long time—an hour at least. They started out shouting, then talking in low urgent voices. Then Tam started shouting again. I caught snatches of words—“illegitimate” and “colluding” and “intention” . . . all kinds of ominous-sounding things.
My blood boiled. I could piece it together if only the general gist: he was trying to tell my husband that he shouldn’t have married me. Oh, but he would regret that. Jack wouldn’t stand for someone talking about us like that.
Then there was a short silence. Then a last batch of shouts.
Then the door burst open and I just about jumped out of my skin. It was Tam again, and this time his eyes were locked on mine and he was coming straight for me. I tried to shrink away, but it was no use.
He stopped short, right in front of my face, and just looked at me. His eyes were sad: desolate, even. I’d expected him to shout. This was worse somehow.
Everything went quiet for a moment. And then he spoke.
“You don’t look like the type who’d sell her soul for a few pennies.” Jack was right behind him, his jaw set grimly, but his expression somehow conciliatory. He pulled Tam away from me, saying, “You’re taking this too far.”
“I’m bloody not, and you know it,” spat Tam. Then his body sagged as if the fight was leaving him. He looked at me once more, in the eyes. I noticed that some strange emotion had turned them from cool green to slate grey. He shook his head.
“Never have two suited one another better,” he said bitterly. Then he turned on his heel and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
I was shaking like a reed as I flicked through my internal dictionary of appropriate responses. But it was no use—this was way outside my frame of reference. I looked reflexively at Jack, hoping I would read some cue on his face that would tell me what I was meant to do. Was this to do with what Jack had said back when I first started as his assistant? About Tam having had a bad childhood, and not caring about others?
But Jack didn’t meet my eye. In fact, he didn’t utter a word. He just ambled back to his desk, took his fountain pen out of his jacket pocket, and carried on with what he was doing.
Shocked, I tried to do the same.
“And from there, he just wouldn’t leave it alone,” I continued, resentfully, as I explained it all the Sharon. “If there was a family event, Tam was there, sneering at me. If I answered the phone, he would make sure I knew he didn’t want to talk to me—he was so short with me. If there was an invitation going out that came through his office, he’d make sure to put a note with it saying that partners weren’t invited. It was horrible. He is horrible.”
Sharon sighed with exasperation. “But what does it matter what your brother-in-law thinks, for goodness’ sake? Surely it didn’t affect you and Jack? People’s in-laws are horrible all the time, and life just carries on.”
I knew she was right. However, the real problem wasn’t Tam—not really. Not at the root of it. He was just a symbol of everything that had gone wrong.
I sniffed, and burst into fresh tears. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive him.”
Did I mean Tam, or Jack? I meant Jack. I knew I did. I couldn’t forgive him for not standing up for me—for letting his brother denigrate me for months without so much as a word. And how on earth was I supposed to forgive him when I couldn’t even tell him I was angry?
That night, the night after Tam shouted at me in the office, I lay awake, unable to sleep, exquisitely conscious of the enormous wall of resentment that was being erected between us, minute by minute. It was never the same again.
The Tam Incident was just one in a series of mishaps that eventually made things impossibly strained between us.
I was, suddenly, his wife, and now I was obliged to become his public companion. It was a difficult transition, as well as being one that couldn’t be put off; Mum and Mia, who might have afforded me a little help under other circumstances, were out of bounds—in particular I felt Mia’s glowering disapproval, without even speaking to her. And anyway—what did either of them know about what I was going through? How was Jack’s world anything like Luke’s or Dad’s? Surely their transformations into wives had been barely noticeable in comparison to mine?
I had the sensation of being pushed, unwillingly, from the shadowy wings to the brightness of centre stage, without the benefit of rehearsal or the comfort of applause.
I stopped going with Jack to ‘work’ things, and started going to ‘personal’ things instead. No more gallery openings, unless they were gala affairs; many dinner parties and birthdays. That meant I was at home alone most of the time. ‘Work’ was most nights; ‘personal’ was, at the most, a once-a-week occasion.
But it was just as well, since I grew to hate being around his friends. He had various circles, but I could find a foothold in none of them. I wore the wrong things, without fail; cocktail dresses when everyone else was in jeans. Smart trousers when everyone was in maxidresses and glittery flat sandals that showed flawless pedicures. Once, a skirt suit, while Jemima turned up in a pair of shorts, a threadbare white vest with no bra, a vintage blazer and a pair of Doc Martens.
There were his university friends, mixed in with a few chums from school and their sisters, girlfriends, wives. They talked about divorce settlements, and holidays with cousins in Palm Beach or Argentina, and their fashion designing businesses, and their guest columns for Vogue, and going to Mahiki, and how nice it was to get back into playing polo after being in France for so long without the horses, and what a drag it was to have inherited the country house since it was a bugger in upkeep and it was
so
hard to find good help these days, especially when one’s out of the country so much.
They ignored me. Not even out of spite; whatever would they talk to me about if they were to try to make conversation? What—budget package holidays to Greece? Deals on furnace cleaning? Where I knew of a bargain on a second-hand Toyota? I made them uncomfortable, with their glossy hair and their perfect white teeth and their private educations.
I realised early on that no-one could understand why Jack had married me. Why Jack had married
the help.
I imagined them whispering it under their breath, horrified at his misstep. They probably didn’t—they were too modern for that—but I couldn’t shake the suspicion.
There were his business friends; hard-nosed, older, never talking about anything but money, auctions, sales,
commodity.
On their arms were second and third wives, glittering with jewellery, immaculately coiffed, their plastic surgery giving them the appearance of well-upholstered pieces of furniture. They regarded my attempts at conversation with distant amusement, interrupting me to go off to the powder room in twos. Their own chit-chat was incomprehensible— nail extensions, bichons frises, Italian marble bathrooms, spray tans, complaints about maids who ‘pinched’—and their eyes brimmed with anxiety. Who would be the next to be usurped?
If he left her, why wouldn’t he leave me? I see now why he said she was always tired, always distracted . . . and I’m only three years younger now than she was back then . . .
Their husbands’ eyes didn’t so much as flicker as they passed over me. I was neither beautiful nor interesting enough to catch the attention of anyone.
And of course, the artists—those with whom Jack had a personal relationship of some kind. They could be broadly divided into two types: those with psychiatric disorders and those without. The former spoke about themselves (and, if I was a very good girl and deserved a special treat, their neuroses) and looked annoyed when I offered an anecdote of my own. The latter steered clear of any kind of conversation. The desolation of the art-party circuit, its patent falsehoods and fawning devotees, was plain to them, and they left as early as was decent and sometimes earlier than that.
After trying desperately, pathetically, to find some acceptance, to at least make acquaintances if not friends, I gave up. Instead, I turned my attention to learning to be graceful about people turning their backs on me to continue conversations. I learnt not to be offended when others talked over me, or seemed not to see my outstretched hand or hear my polite attempts at chat.
Jack commanded attention instantly.
We would walk into a room and, for an instant, there would be perfect silence while everyone adjusted to life under his gaze. His presence changed the atmosphere of a party.
I could rely on him to be the centre of attention. It made my excruciating ineptness that much easier to bear. I could just watch him, entranced, as he charmed every man and woman in his vicinity.
But we argued about it. Or, to be more correct, he would chastise me. “Can’t you just talk? Just say anything?” he would say, his voice scratchy with fatigue, as we were driven home in the early hours of the morning, exhausted after appearing at a circuit of parties. We never went to just one; there were always many places to be, dozens of people to meet. Then one day he said, “It’s embarrassing to have to babysit you.”
The first few times we had that conversation, my heart would break each time. “I
did
talk,” I would protest, confused by his tone. Then, later, when I was past embarrassment and simply ashamed at my ineptitude, I could only muster “I’m sorry,” and “I’ll try harder”. But I knew it wouldn’t help.
Then, after days of tension, we would make love again. I would be destroyed by shame for a week at a stretch, and pained by the distance between us; then, just like that, just when I thought he was going to leave me that very evening, something would change.
It was in his body. He would draw close to me again, in small ways—in the hallway as we came indoors, in the kitchen where I stood, morose, over the millionth cup of tea I was to have that day. I would be disgusted by the crash of relief I felt.
Why can’t you tell him not to be such a child? Not to be such a sulk? Instead you beg for just a scrap of attention. You’re pathetic.
I couldn’t help it. By then I was so in awe of him, in love with him, with his body, with his voice, his face, his mouth. With the times we’d had before. Sex in the back of the Jag, with the shades up. On his desk. On the floor of every room in the house. When he was angry with me, all I could see was us, on every surface I looked at.
And I couldn’t even leave the house. I couldn’t risk being out of range; what if he decided to forgive me—or whatever it was he did when things got better—and I wasn’t there? I had to be there, close to him, ready to welcome him back with pathetic gratitude.
I know it makes me sound like a hostage. But I wasn’t. I understood what we were up against. One day we would work out how to talk about things; right now, I thought, all I can expect is that we get used to each other.
But towards the end (was this really the end? or a blip? how could I know for sure if I wasn’t talking to him? how could we talk about anything if he insisted on silence for days at a stretch?) he was angry with me an awful lot. But on the rare occasions when I asked what was bothering him, he would look bemused. “What are you talking about? I’m perfectly fine.”
Had I just been paranoid the whole time? Had I stage-frightened myself into leaving him when nothing was even wrong?
Well, I suppose the best way to explain it is by telling you about Christmas.
Of course I should just have swallowed my pride and gone skulking back to Mum and Mia for the duration, but I didn’t. Instead, I stayed in London—Jack having been called away to a meeting in Brussels at the last moment. It didn’t help that he hadn’t spoken to me since the twenty-first of December. I cried all day and watched depressing holiday movies while the heavens poured rain, perhaps in a gesture of solidarity; Mary Hazel quietly brought me tissues and tea at regular intervals. She was away from her family too, but that didn’t make me feel any better. All I could think about was that it was our first Christmas as a married couple, and we were spending it apart—and on bad terms, no less.