‘No, not only that. It’s much more. And less, in a way. Michael seems to have … gone away somewhere. I don’t mean actually away, although God knows he’s in the house with us less and less of the time, the hospital and patients and committees seem to consume him. It’s as if he’s retreated into himself, closed a door on me, and I find myself … at one minute angry with him for rejecting me, and bitter and resentful, and at the next what must seem, I don’t know, cloyingly there, with my claims and expectations, wifely, needing to be loved. Like an obligation.’
Marcelle took a breath.
‘I don’t know when we stopped being partners, and became antagonists. The two of us, drawn up on either side of some battle line. Looking back, I don’t know when it happened, only that it has happened. We quarrel and the arguments are never resolved, and then there are silences, and times when we preserve this terrible politeness, and then there are arguments all over again.’
She was crying properly. Tears spouted out of her eyes and she felt them making hot runnels down her face. There would be tracks in the foundation she had applied to give herself some colour.
Jimmy murmured, ‘Poor thing, poor old Mar. Here you are.’
He produced a big, clean white handkerchief, right on cue. Marcelle sniffed into it and bit her lips to stop herself crying any more.
‘This evening, for instance. We were late, it made me anxious, and then my anxiety made us both irritable so we quarrelled.’
‘You hate being late, you hate apparent failures. Nobody notices them except you, but then you are a perfectionist.’
‘Am I? I don’t believe I am. Do you and Star make each other happy?’
As she looked at him then, through the sodden blur of tears and champagne, Marcelle thought she saw an evasive mask slip over Jimmy’s cunning-fox features.
‘Oh, Star and I have evolved our own systems. After so many years long-married couples do, don’t they?’
Marcelle thought of Star’s aloof dignity at the parties where Jimmy flirted and murmured and kissed. She had seen her tonight, with a diamante star clip holding her hair back behind one ear, dancing with Andrew Frost while Jimmy skimmed between the Clegg twins. The Roses would have to have a system.
‘Michael and I loved each other, I thought that was our arrangement, but it seems not to be. I don’t believe he loves me any longer.’
Jimmy was still stroking. ‘I’m sure it’s not as bad as that. Do you think he’s got someone else?’
Marcelle shook her head. ‘No. He seems too cold for that, too frosted up inside himself.’
‘Have you got someone else?’
‘Of course not.’
They were quiet for a minute. The music from the conservatory filtered through to them, a thumping bass beat. The party was reaching full momentum. Gathering her wits, Marcelle wished she had not cried, had not been seen to give way, even here, even only by Jimmy. She cast around for some way of diminishing in his eyes what had seemed only a moment ago to be such an important confession.
‘It’s probably our age, just restless ennui before we settle down to a comfortable twilight together.’
‘Perhaps,’ Jimmy said. He shrugged, a little comic contrivance of bafflement. Then he rolled her hand into a fist for her, placing it back in her lap, ready to fight.
Partly to reinforce her claim, partly to shift the focus from herself, and a little because she wanted to reward him for this moment of intimacy that she knew was ending, Marcelle smiled faintly and said, ‘It isn’t just Michael and me who are having our problems.’
‘Hmm?’
Jimmy’s face sharpened, but his eyes held hers.
‘Perhaps we are all going through it, in our different ways.’ It was a comfort to identify herself with the group. She wanted to share what she knew. ‘I saw Gordon, the other day, with Nina. They were in Nina’s car together.’
As soon as it was out she regretted it, but it was said and she smiled at him again, a smile of complicity now.
‘Together?’
‘Oh, yes. I don’t know exactly how I knew, but I did as soon as I saw them. It was unmistakable. I felt it, here.’ Her fist, still clenched, gestured at the pit of her stomach. ‘They were horrified to see me.’
Jimmy grinned. ‘I imagine they would have been.’
He looked pleased, smiling his narrow-eyed smile, and intent, as if he was so busy digesting this new piece of information that he had forgotten her. The tip of his tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth. The look of him made Marcelle feel slightly disgusted, and this distaste surprised her.
‘How interesting,’ he mused, more to himself than her. ‘How interesting it all is. Don’t you think so?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so, if you can detach yourself sufficiently not to feel concern.’ It was as if Nina and Gordon and Vicky had dwindled away to tiny organisms that divided and recombined in some Petri dish under Jimmy Rose’s observation. ‘You won’t say anything, Jimmy, will you?’ she asked.
He touched her hand once again. ‘You know me,’ he assured her.
Marcelle reluctantly nodded. ‘I suppose we should go back and join in, shouldn’t we?’
He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, but only very lightly, dismissively.
‘I think we must, but you should go and fix your face up first.’
Outside the gunroom they went their separate ways.
Jimmy strolled into the noisy thick of the party, his hands in his pockets, smiling and joking his way through the various groups. At the buffet in the dining room he helped himself to a plateful of the excellent food that Hannah’s caterers had prepared. He made himself comfortable in the niche of a padded window seat half-hidden by a curtain, and watched the procession in front of him as he ate.
He saw Nina in her black dress, and noted the way her face fell into sad lines when she thought nobody was looking at her. He watched Gordon solicitously steering Vicky to a comfortable chair, and bringing her a plate of food and cutlery and a napkin, and then looking up over his wife’s bent head towards Nina, standing with her back turned to him. Jimmy fluently read the brief contraction of his dark features as an expression of powerful longing.
Jimmy took a long, meditative swallow of his wine. It was very palatable, of course. Darcy never served plonk at his parties. Jimmy spent an enjoyable minute calculating how much this year’s party must be costing the Cleggs.
From his vantage point he also saw Andrew, flushed with champagne, and Janice following him with Marcelle, her face now freshly powdered. Hannah was commanding them to come and eat, laughing a great deal and wobbling slightly on her pin-thin heels. Behind them came his own wife with her arm in Michael Wickham’s. They were the same height. Jimmy tried to imagine what he would want if he were seeing Star for the first time. He thought her androgynous, mys-terious air would still interest him.
There was no sign of Darcy, the person he really wanted to see. Jimmy left his dirty plate on the window seat cushions and slipped away in search of him.
He found him in the drawing room, leaning with his arms outstretched on the mantelpiece, smoking and observing his guests.
‘Howdy, pardner,’ Jimmy drawled, flicking at the fringes on Darcy’s Gaultier jacket.
Darcy said nothing. It was silently recognized between them that they needed one another as a focus for aggression, but tonight he could not summon up the energy to spar with Jimmy, who ranged himself beside him gazing outwards into the room. Darcy felt, as he sometimes did, that the disparity in their sizes made them both appear a little absurd.