An Unsuitable Marriage Read online

  Once home, Olivia’s mum had come to stay – a protective buffer between her and Rowena. When they spotted her walking up the path, her mum would usher Olivia upstairs and choose from a list of pre-prepared excuses: catching up on a bit of sleep, taking a bath, settling Edward down for a nap. Out of politeness Rowena would stay for a cup of tea before making her own excuses to leave.

  Becoming a mother made Olivia feel like a child again. Being responsible for another human life terrified her. With Olivia, Edward tended to fuss and cry, but with her mum he always settled. When the time came for her mum to go home, Olivia pleaded with her to stay. She knew she was being whiny and unreasonable, putting off the inevitable moment when she would have to cope by herself, but whenever she imagined being alone with a fractious baby, her stomach clenched. I have to get back to work, and to your dad and Sam. You’ll be fine, darling – it’s always hard at the beginning.

  The day her mum left, Geoffrey came home from the factory to find Olivia sobbing on the sofa. He hated it when she cried. What do you want me to do? A question that only made her cry harder. He did the worst thing possible and called Rowena. An epiphany, as it turned out. Olivia finally realised what she was up against. Put simply, Geoffrey was clueless when it came to dealing with the messy business of emotions, so outsourced the problem to his mother, who was no expert herself. Olivia felt her difficulties with homesickness and motherhood were viewed not with sympathy, but as a sign of weakness. Geoffrey insisted this wasn’t the case, that Olivia had a chip on her shoulder and it was up to her to get over it.

  So be it. She washed her face and brushed her hair so that when Rowena arrived, expecting to have to step in for her useless daughter-in-law, she was greeted with a cheery smile, an offer of tea and cake – her mum had rustled up a Victoria sponge before she left – and Edward asleep over Geoffrey’s shoulder. This was Olivia’s new strategy. If she was right and Rowena took perverse pleasure in seeing her struggle, Olivia would simply deny her that pleasure.

  Easier said than done. In her capacity as vicar’s wife, Rowena took it upon herself to visit new mothers and regaled Olivia with glowing reports of how marvellously Lorna Reed was coping with twins: how healthy she looked, how bonnie the babies, how they fed and slept without so much as a murmur. This in contrast to Edward – a difficult, colicky baby who never slept more than two hours at a time. Olivia neglected to wash her hair and wore the same shapeless tracksuit for days on end, the shoulder crusty with dried baby sick. Geoffrey called Olivia’s mum, who took another week off work and returned to Compton Cross. Her advice was that Olivia should try to get out more, mix with other new mums, make some friends. Great in principle, but Olivia had little energy and even less confidence, so launching herself on the mother-and-baby scene – if such a scene even existed – was unthinkable.

  The week flew by and when her mum’s bags were packed, Olivia was five years old again, clinging to her at the school gates. They stood by her red Fiesta, both of them trying to be brave, when Edward’s piercing screams forced Olivia back inside. She climbed the stairs, gathered him up in a heap of blankets, went to the window and watched her mum drive away.

  Olivia came to detest Rowena’s tales of Lorna bloody Reed and her perfect bloody twins until one afternoon Lorna dropped by unannounced, a present for Edward in her hand, Josh and Lily asleep in the car. Olivia stood aghast, wholly unprepared to come face to face with her nemesis. It was a moment before she could speak. Would you like to come in?

  Two hours later they were the best of friends. Over tea and cakes, helpfully supplied by Lorna via the village shop, they compared notes. The saintly twins, it transpired, weren’t saintly at all. As soon as one stopped crying the other one started. Josh had squirmed so much when Lorna tried to nurse him, she feared permanent injury to her nipples and had put him on the bottle. To Olivia, still valiantly struggling under the tyranny of ‘breast is best’, this was a revelation. Can you really do that? Apparently you could. It didn’t mean you had failed, that you didn’t love your child, that you were selfish and inadequate; it just meant your baby did better on formula milk. Lorna had two bottles of formula in her bag. Always carry a spare – excellent advice.

  Edward was squirming in his Moses basket, his face screwed up and an angry shade of puce. Lorna offered Olivia one of the bottles. She hesitated, unsure if this really was allowed or if Lorna, in cahoots with Rowena, was trying to trick her, but Edward emitted such an ear-splitting scream that she grabbed the bottle and shoved the teat in his mouth. He sucked so hungrily she wondered if she had been starving him all along. When he had finished every last drop he fell into a miraculously sound sleep. A blissful six hours had passed before he woke. Olivia remembered weeping with gratitude.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Lorna, licking eclair from her fingers.

  Upstairs, music blared, Lily belting out a pop song in a terrible singing-shouting voice.

  ‘I was just thinking about the first time we met properly, when you came over with that blue bunny for Edward and a life-saving bottle of formula.’

  ‘God, you looked a state. I had half a mind to call social services.’

  Olivia laughed. The boys joined in the singing and Benji tried to burrow inside the fleecy cover of his bed. Lorna stood up and went over to the sink.

  ‘More tea?’

  Olivia was about to say yes when Johnny opened the back door. The kitchen seemed to shrink around him – Gulliver arriving in Lilliput. Newly acquired flecks of grey threaded through his ebony hair. They looked at each other, their expressions somewhere on a continuum between good surprise and bad surprise, before they put on their game faces and smiled like the old friends they were.

  ‘Boots off,’ said Lorna. ‘I’m just putting the kettle on if you want a cuppa.’

  He set about unlacing his boots, the heavy-duty type labourers wear on building sites.

  Olivia grabbed her coat from the back of the chair. ‘I should make a move. I promised Geoffrey I’d go to the storage unit with him and get Edward’s bike. OK if I leave him here?’

  Did it seem too abrupt? Afterwards Olivia thought maybe it did, but she hadn’t prepared herself for Johnny.

  When he dropped Edward off later, he didn’t come in. Geoffrey saw him from the study window, pulling up on the lane and then driving away. He reported this to Olivia as she peeled potatoes, Rowena next to her, rinsing vegetables in the cavernous Butler sink.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s turned his back on you,’ said Rowena crisply. ‘So much for loyalty.’

  Olivia had nothing to add. She was grateful when Edward breezed in and asked about his mountain bike. Tomorrow, promised Geoffrey, without fail. He went to the fridge, got himself a beer and sank dejectedly into the rocking chair by the Aga. It was wrong to let him shoulder all the blame but the truth wouldn’t make him feel better. Quite the contrary. Olivia cut a Maris Piper in half and plunged it into boiling water.

  No, it had to be this way.

  Two

  It was a bit early for the pub but Geoffrey hoped he might see a friendly face, have a chat over a couple of pints – something to lift his spirits. He had walked four miles to the industrial estate, spent an hour searching through the container – their belongings hidden under acres of bubble wrap in floor-to-ceiling boxes – before he finally found Edward’s mountain bike and cycled it back to the village.

  Downings hadn’t been on his itinerary but it was right there opposite the storage unit. A heavy-duty padlock secured the main door; smaller ones on the side doors. All the windows had been boarded up, several broken as if pelted with stones. Graffiti defaced the walls – the usual obscenities, a drawing of a giant erect penis, the start of an anti-war slogan the author had changed his mind about, or maybe he’d been chased away by a security guard. Geoffrey stood for a long time, staring at the empty building, not quite able to believe his years of hard work had come to this.

  ‘You all right, mate?’

  One of th
e uniformed guards had been about twelve feet behind him, a walkie-talkie in his hand. He hung back cautiously at first but then recognised Geoffrey and strode confidently towards him. The last thing Geoffrey needed was to have to explain himself to the man who used to wave at him each morning, admire his brand-new Mercedes, regard him with a satisfying conflation of envy and respect. Geoffrey raised a hand in acknowledgement, got on Edward’s bicycle and pedalled hard in the opposite direction.

  When did he get so unfit? He changed down to a low gear but still the incline towards the village brought him out in a sticky sweat. He used to play rugby every weekend and train at least one evening during the week. Yet another casualty of his financial demise. Downings had sponsored the local rugby team so when the factory went, so did the sponsorship. Geoffrey played on for a while but sensed a difference in the way his teammates treated him. Olivia said he was being oversensitive. No one had ever accused him of that before.

  A few familiar vehicles were parked outside the Lamb and Lion – mud-encrusted Land Rovers mostly. The midday sky was a metallic grey but it looked like the inevitable rain would hold off for a while, so Geoffrey propped the bicycle up against the back wall.

  It had been years since smokers were forced to indulge their habit at the mercy of the elements, but the latent stench of stale tobacco lingered. Geoffrey missed his twenty-a-day habit, something he was shamed into giving up when Olivia was pregnant. He was often tempted to sneak the odd cigarette – fantasised about pulling the sharp smoke into his lungs and holding it there for a few heady moments before releasing it through pursed lips.

  ‘Pint of my usual please, Bert,’ he said, taking a handful of change from his trouser pocket.

  When Geoffrey and Olivia first dated, she had refused to kiss him if he’d had a cigarette. Bert enquired after her.

  ‘Oh, she’s fine. She and Edward are home for half-term, actually.’

  Bert set Geoffrey’s pint on the bar. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’

  Geoffrey wasn’t sure what he was being left to, exactly. Solitude? Even more time to dwell on his long list of fuck-ups and all the people whose lives had been ruined?

  When it was clear Bert wasn’t coming back for a chat, Geoffrey took a seat by the inglenook and sank half his pint in two gulps. Nothing quenched his thirst like a cold beer. A copy of the Western Daily Press lay on the table, an unwelcome reminder of when the closure of the factory had occupied the front pages day after day: job losses, pauperised villagers, mismanaged finances, etcetera. Three former employees came in but didn’t acknowledge him. Bert appeared from the back and greeted them warmly. He said something Geoffrey didn’t catch and they all laughed.

  Being ostracised was a new and withering experience. He had always been so popular. Olivia said it would blow over in time, that he needed to be patient. He closed the newspaper, finished his pint and left.

  On a whim he cycled to Manor Farm. It upset him to see it but he couldn’t help himself. It drew him to it, as though if he stared at it long enough, he would work out a way of getting it back.

  The grass needed a cut. An estate agent’s board had been hammered into the verge: ‘Fine Period Farmhouse’. He and Olivia could have stayed longer but Geoffrey believed that moving out on a date of his own choosing, rather than complying with the bank deadline, exerted some element of control. Olivia and Edward had decamped to St Bede’s; he to his childhood home. So much for control. His phone beeped – a message from Olivia. What are you doing? He had no idea.

  One of the hardest things was having nothing to occupy himself. Since the summer of his graduation, when his parents had persuaded Bob Downing to give him a job, the factory had taken up all of Geoffrey’s time. Working there had been the last thing he wanted but as Olivia had pointed out – and everyone else who felt entitled to an opinion – he was about to become a father, with responsibilities and obligations and no say of his own, apparently.

  It wasn’t even a good fit. His degree was in civil engineering – building roads, dams, bridges – and Downings was a mechanical engineering factory specialising in stainless-steel fabrications. Geoffrey hadn’t wanted to be an engineer anyway, although he could see how his degree may have given that impression. Mediocre A-levels meant universities weren’t exactly clamouring to have him on board, but his father had put in a good word with the admissions tutor at Reading – lay preacher, met on some diocesan awayday – and the only course that would have him was civil engineering. He regretted it almost immediately – had little aptitude and even less interest – but what could he do? Penury limited his choices. He couldn’t see himself in some dreary, dead-end job, so engineering it was.

  Downings had been a family business, Bob having taken over from his father and Downing senior from his father, but Bob’s own son had eschewed sheet-metal fabrication in favour of a career in social work. Can’t understand the appeal, Bob would confide to Geoffrey, but you have to let them follow their own path. If only. Geoffrey’s path had been mapped out with minimal input on his part.

  After a hastily arranged wedding, he and Olivia had moved into a rented stone cottage with four pokey rooms and a narrow strip of grass. Geoffrey was expected to go to church on Sundays, something he hadn’t done since he’d left for university. Olivia had never been a churchgoer but had quickly taken to it: the rituals, the hymns, his father’s sagely sermons. The small but loyal congregation roped her into their do-gooding and she had taken to that too once Edward started school. A photograph of him had taken pride of place on Geoffrey’s desk, swamped by a blazer big enough to grow into, proudly wearing his first pair of lace-up shoes.

  The other day, when Edward got out of the car, he had looked tall, solid, his jaw and shoulders already broadening out. Not once had he complained about having to give up his home, his bedroom, its walls plastered with posters of sporting heroes and the red Ferrari he would buy when he was older. When Geoffrey and Olivia had sat him down and explained why they were moving to the Rectory, Edward said they could have the birthday and Christmas money he had saved, if that would help – one hundred and fifty-seven pounds. Geoffrey remembered the pride he felt at having raised such a good son, and the shame he felt at having let him down.

  An approaching car made Geoffrey duck for cover behind the high privet hedge that ran the width of the front garden. Bad enough to lose your home – worse still to be found loitering outside like some sad fucking stalker.

  *

  The scene that greeted him at the Rectory made him wish he had stayed at the pub. He heard activity in the kitchen and found Olivia in her Hunters and Barbour, snapping leads on to the dogs as his mother looked on, tight-lipped. He was about to mention that it had started to rain and maybe she should wait a bit, but remembered the controversy of a few days before and held his tongue.

  Olivia left with a terse See you later. If she had asked he would have gone with her. He had so looked forward to her visit – although was it a visit when strictly speaking, the Rectory was now her home – to having his wife back again, but she was pent-up and distant, bristling with the effort of not saying all the things she wanted to say. And they hadn’t made love – the thing he had looked forward to most of all.

  ‘I simply asked if a shopping trip to Bath was a good idea?’ said his mother.

  Olivia had mentioned she and Lorna planned an afternoon in Bath and would have taken his mother’s remark as alluding to their dire financial straits: the suggestion she was spending what they didn’t have.

  ‘She’s a bit sensitive about the whole money thing.’

  ‘I can’t pussyfoot around her. Not in my own home.’

  His mother picked up a Brillo pad and set about scrubbing a roasting tin. The quickest way to bring a cessation to hostilities was for Geoffrey to apologise for Olivia, a course of action not open to him if Olivia had actually been present. But since she wasn’t –

  ‘Sorry, Mum. I’ll talk to her.’

  She rinsed the roasting tin under a
torrent of scalding water and wiped it dry. ‘Would you? I don’t want an atmosphere.’

  Her shoulders rose and dropped as she exhaled. When she pulled a tissue from her sleeve Geoffrey thought she might cry. It tore him up to see his proud, stoic mother reduced to tears.

  ‘Since your father—’ Her voice trailed off as she dabbed her eyes.

  ‘I know,’ said Geoffrey, putting his arm round her. ‘I know.’

  He thought the ache of missing his father would have dulled with time, but it hadn’t. Shock had rendered him numb from the feet up and when it wore off, a dark emptiness had taken hold that he just couldn’t seem to shake. His mother blew her nose and put the tissue up her sleeve.

  ‘Good,’ she said, fixing a clip that had come loose in her hair. She wiped her hands on her apron and went to the fridge. ‘I’m making steak and kidney pie for supper,’ she said, a little brighter now. ‘So nice to have people to cook for.’

  *

  In his father’s study, Geoffrey poured himself a small Scotch and tried to see a way of smoothing things over between Olivia and his mother. He hated being caught in the middle, having to negotiate their moods and sensibilities. Yes, his mother could come across as a bit judgemental and her views on most things were laughably outdated, but she was a product of her age and background and she certainly wasn’t going to change now. He had learned years ago there was no point upsetting her, that it achieved absolutely nothing. This nugget of knowledge had been passed from father to son like a faulty gene. His mother being upset meant meaningful looks and long chilly silences and when normality was restored – randomly, after an arbitrary amount of time served – the relief was palpable.