No, Connie would not be drawn. On any of it. Such a rare orchid in her exquisitely tasteful, lonely married life; pitied, talked about, endlessly called on to be godmother as if that would be enough. But her thinking veers so fundamentally, often now; she’s reluctant to bring a child into this jangly, jittery world of keeping up, couldn’t say any of this to any of them. Sees it again and again, all around her: how children seem to send the women around her slightly mad. Piteously obsessed. Is it exhaustion? Empowerment now they’re no longer at work? Competitive banker husbands demanding too much of everyone? Too much time on their hands?
The friends who turn into harridans, bullies, where their child’s school is involved, haranguing the teachers and the principals over their precious, infinitely talented darlings; demanding better results, more readings in church, a bigger role in the school play, more tuition, attention, certificates. Imogen has a poo phobia so can never change her baby’s nappies, has to have round-the-clock help and Connie wonders if it’s a secret canniness. Charlotte, Honor and Floss have weekend nannies alongside nannies for each child during the week; when, Connie wonders, are those children actually noticed, let alone surrounded by their parents, basted in love like butter and cherished? India endlessly rails over the mobile phones given out as party gifts at a girl’s twelfth birthday, yet gives out goldfish to every child at her son’s sixth. Then the flurry of end-of-year teacher presents: the voluptuous bouquets from Wild at Heart as big as a television, bottles of Moët, exquisite gift boxes from Space NK. Then there’s the horror of the entrance exams, when her friends disappear into an insanity of pushing and tutoring and hating and shouting and deep, wrenching torment over who got into what. For Connie, sitting back among it all and quietly listening, endlessly listening, this world feels mad, unhinged, overripe.
Could she ever raise a child amid all this?
With no money, at that?
Could she ever compete on the back foot – or would she go mad with it?
47
I have been stained by you and corrupted … What dissolution of the soul you demanded in order to get through one day, what lies, bowings, scrapings, fluency and servility! How you chained me to one spot, one hour, one chair, and sat yourself down opposite! How you snatched from me the white spaces that lie between hour and hour and rolled them into dirty pellets and tossed them into the wastepaper basket with your greasy paws. Yet those were my life.
Summer is unfurling like a carpet Connie steps upon. Out, out, she must be out in it, often, away from the prison of her house. Its thickness of atmosphere. Cliff is biding his time, she can tell; the punishment is brewing and it will be magnificent. She does not know what correcting will befall her since that day when she boldly bared her new self to him, when she finally said no, enough. Cliff has been icily civil ever since but she knows it’s not the end of it; there are little pinpricks of putdowns, often now, leaking through his veneer of control. Once they would have eaten away at Connie but no, not now, because she has something else: an anchor in another life.
‘You could never get a job, Con, you’ve been out of the workforce too long. No one would have you. And you’d do … what?’ ‘Another bag from Rellik? Do you need help? Shoppers Anonymous perhaps?’ ‘Are you getting fat?’ ‘Is that a tummy I can spy coming along?’ Yet still Cliff does not know of Mel, Connie is sure of it, it is just a sense of … difference … a chasm opening up that he can almost sniff out. And so the attempts at shattering her confidence, reining her back, before it is too late.
Even when they are together, even when there is the pretence of that, Connie is not with him now. On this, a trilling day of sprightly light, she cannot resist. Cliff is in his chair by the bench on the lawn and she is expected in her place, her papers on her lap, their public ritual of solidity and togetherness that is noted by everyone who strolls the park. But Connie can’t help it. As Cliff is buried in the How to Spend It magazine she slips into the lip of her wild place. Knows she should not. The risk, the risk.
Mel comes up the path from the shed, is able to cup her breast quick and lift it in enquiry and smile secrets then, ‘Con, Con!’ comes Cliff’s voice from the lawn. Mel grimaces, she departs.
Cliff has a new wheelchair. It’s just been shipped across from the States. Custom-built, state-of-the-art, designed by Philippe Starck, a slip of a thing of enormous strength. He is testing it out, wants Connie to see it. He has moved across to grass that needs a cutting, is trying to get up the soft slope and determined to do it as if attempting to haul himself into independence, movement, action and this new contraption will be the grand symbol of it. The chair struggles with its grip, with the weight. ‘Come on, you little beauty!’ he admonishes. ‘You can do it.’ It goes slowly. Connie is now beside him, encouraging him, softly.
They stop for a breather by a large oak. A squirrel races up the trunk and looks at them quizzically from a high branch. ‘Look!’ Connie cries out. ‘It approves, Cliff, it’s laughing at us.’
‘Fucking vermin,’ Cliff snaps. ‘They should all be trapped and burnt. I’d get the gardener to do it – and watch.’
‘Oh.’ The charming side of her husband that no one but Connie ever sees.
They push on, the chair climbing slowly in its unwilling way. The earth is yielding to it too much, clogging up its wheels. The chair suddenly stops.
‘Blast this wretched thing.’
‘Let me push.’
‘No,’ Cliff says coldly. ‘I didn’t buy it for that.’
Connie tries, can’t help it.
‘Get the fuck off it.’
All the anger in him, from the other day, in his office, all the anger from the past twelve months. Without a word Connie tries to shove the contraption clear, to get him started again. It’s surprisingly hard. Cliff hits back at her with all his might, hits her away from his chair, away from his life. ‘You are pathetic, useless. You can’t even listen, can you, you fucking cunt?’
Connie is very, very calm. ‘I saw the gardener over there.’ Her voice is neutral, her face tight. ‘In the trees. The wild bit. Perhaps he can help.’
‘Well, go and fucking well get him.’
Cliff hits the wheels in frustration. At himself, his wife, his spectacle of a life. ‘If only I could get out and have a look at this fucking cunt of a thing myself.’
Connie strides off and shouts into the trees, ‘Hello? Mel? Can you come and help us, please?’ Not a trace of anything in her voice.
Obediently he comes, shovel loose in hand. Face blank, she business-like. ‘Do you know anything about wheelchairs?’
‘No.’
‘Could you just see if anything’s stuck in the wheels, or broken perhaps?’
Mel drops the shovel. Leans down on the ground. Connie catches a glimpse of his back where his T-shirt rides up, the stretch of golden skin. Her thighs clench.
‘Get your hands in there, come on, man, is there anything underneath, anything caught?’ Cliff’s voice utterly superior, admonishing, cold. ‘You’re not afraid of a bit of muck, are you?’
‘No, sir.’
Mel lies flat on his stomach, trying to work out the mechanism underneath, tinkering, poking, prodding. His hands, shorts, are soon streaked with grass stains and black. But he’s done something right. The motor coughs, splutters into life.
‘I’ll need some help.’
Mel looks directly at her, into her, grins a secret grin. Cliff doesn’t catch it. And before he can protest Connie is behind the chair, firm against Mel, they