Chapter 76 Bigamist
Nothing better than a Sunday morning run to contemplate the future.
I do a circuit of Ally Pally to reflect on yesterday while Stephen takes the children out to the park.
Hollis, despite his many faults, is a better option than Stephen, who is jobless, unfaithful, inadequate, and, it seems, quite without backbone.
I decide that I’ll have the children, despite their general inadequacies and neediness. I imagine Georgie doesn’t want them anyway. Baronetess Mallenberg is, no doubt, intending to repopulate her family line from scratch.
After I shower, I find Nelly alone in my office in the midst of a discarded hammer and splintered wood. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else in the house.
‘What are you doing here?’ I say.
‘I don’t like her,’ she says, drawing in one of my notebooks.
‘Who don’t you like?’ I peer over her shoulder. She’s drawn a rather good picture of a pretty and glamorous woman. I presume it’s me and am quite flattered.
‘We met her in the park,’ says Nelly, jabbing at the picture.
‘Who?’ I say.
‘Georgie,’ she says, almost spitting.
I want to take the hammer to Stephen’s head, but that will have to wait. I watch Nelly draw a succession of arrows hitting the woman in her chest and legs and face and am pleased that the picture is not of me.
‘Darling, what happened?’ I kneel and swivel her chair around. I hold her hands. They seem so small all of a sudden. ‘I’m your mummy. She’s just a nobody. Nothing to worry about.’
Nelly swivels back to her notebook, satisfied, draws another arrow right through Georgie’s heart and walks out with Dolly in her hand. I’m not sure the books on divorce advise such honest appraisals but it did feel deeply satisfying.
‘Love you,’ says Nelly at the door, without turning back.
I breathe in sharply. It’s the first time in her life that she’s said that to me, and I break into a smile. She might be breaking up our marriage, but I have one thing to thank Georgie for.
‘Nelly’s here,’ I say to Stephen, pointing at the living room, as he returns frantically from the park.
‘Oh, thank God,’ he says. ‘We looked everywhere for her. How did she get back?’
‘Walked.’
‘God, I’m sorry,’ he says, and puts Nathan down. ‘Go on, go and see if Nelly’s all right.’
‘I didn’t find Nelly, but I found this,’ says Nathan, and he opens his hand to show me a large beetle on a dead leaf. I congratulate him and he runs off shouting to Nelly about his monster find.
‘In here,’ I say to Stephen and point to the living room with the hammer. The last man I entertained in this room met with a sharp and sudden ending, but I don’t mention this. He walks past me like a schoolboy entering the head’s study for a caning.
‘You took them to meet Georgie. What have you got to say for yourself?’
‘It was a mistake . . . Yeah. A total . . . Complete . . .’
‘Fuck up?’
‘Misjudgement. Mum told me that children are much better if you just tell them the truth as early as possible. Nelly just ran off. We were desperately looking for her.’
‘You’re sometimes so stupid it offends me to think that I actually married you.’
‘It wasn’t ideal. Not my best decision.’ He hits his head with his hand and looks genuinely upset.
‘You can have your divorce,’ I say, swinging the hammer loosely. ‘Not that you’ll need one.’
‘What?’ He sits up, clearly confused.
‘I won’t fight it, and I don’t want anything from you.’
He looks at me with a scrunched-up face that denotes suspicion. ‘That’s uncommonly considerate, are you dying?’
‘No. But I’m having the children.’
‘Shouldn’t we share them?’
‘You don’t seem responsible enough. I’ll let you have weekends. But you’ll have to see them alone for the first year. I don’t want Georgie near them, OK?’
‘Well, OK, at least until they’re used to the new situation,’ he says, as expected. It’s always best to negotiate terms when your enemy is weakest.
‘Now, about us. Stephen, you’re not the first man to respond to a debilitating degeneration of his masculinity, and the growing autonomy of his wife, by sleeping with a younger woman.’
‘She’s four months younger than you, Lalla.’
‘Exactly, and you’re not the only man in the world, either. Actually, you’re not the only man in this marriage. Not even the only husband, in fact.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’ve met someone, recently. A past relationship has reared its head. It presents a good opportunity for me.’
‘Who is it? Someone we know?’
‘Someone I was married to before I met you.’
‘You never told me anything about being married.’
‘Thought it’d just complicate things. And anyway, I’d forgotten all about it by the time we met.’
‘Are you being serious?’ he says, his voice all puffed up.
‘His name’s Matthew Hollis. An Australian. Opposite of you in almost every respect – charming, faithful, fantastic lover.’
‘Look, I’m really sorry this has happened to us, but you shouldn’t do anything on the rebound. You’re not planning on marrying him, are you?’
‘No need. We’re already married,’ I say. I watch his face melt in confusion.
‘You get drunk and go to Vegas last night or something?’ he laughs.
‘We never formally divorced,’ I say. ‘Technically, we’re still married. In my defence, though, I thought he was dead.’
Stephen stomps from one side of the room to the other, pulling a face and shaking his head as if this is all too much for any man to understand. ‘What about our marriage, though?’
‘Why does that matter to you?’
‘We’ve been married for seven years, Lalla.’
‘You’ll be pleased to know our marriage doesn’t exist. It’s void.’ I stare at him and he stares back, open-mouthed. ‘Of course, we still exist, all our special memories and all that, but it doesn’t count. Like a no-ball in cricket – you can score runs but you can’t be bowled out.’
The cricketing simile captures his attention and he nods. ‘You always have something. I’ve never really known you, have I? So how does our divorce work?’
‘You don’t need one, because we’re not married.’
‘So, I can just marry Georgie? I don’t even need to divorce you?’
‘Yes. I have no claim on you. No legal rights to your money.’
‘You’re not entitled to anything?’ There’s a hopeful twang to his voice. Not quite heartbroken by this news, it would appear.
‘The only child in you quickly rises to the surface, doesn’t it?’
‘Mum’s going to love this!’ he says, standing.
‘Georgie’s going to be thrilled.’ He shakes his head in disbelief, takes his phone out, and leaves.
I feel something lurch in my stomach, but I try not to take it too badly that he seems delighted that our seven years together can be popped like a balloon.
I reassure myself that he’s lost a great deal more than he’s about to gain. I outscore Georgie on beauty, intelligence, wit, spontaneity, humour, physical attractiveness, ambition, drive, and even kindness. She outscores me on only two things – skiing, and resemblance to a horse.