Before I Knew You Read online

  ‘So William got kind of mad,’ she explained to Jill, adding loyally, ‘as he had every right to, and Harry has gone back to his mother’s.’ She sighed, managing not to add that the impasse had shown no signs of a breakthrough, not even on Harry’s actual birthday. He had spent the night clubbing with friends, Susan had reported – enjoying the rift, William said, rather than offering any constructive help on what was a truly dire situation.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear …’ Jill wrung her hands. ‘But he was supposed to do so well, wasn’t he? Oxford, William said.’

  ‘Yeah, well, with those grades, William says it’s retakes or nothing, but – and this is what has been driving him really crazy – Harry is apparently refusing ever to take another exam as long as he lives, which is insane, of course, and I’m sure the kid will come round … but, hey, you know what? George got his grades yesterday and it was top marks across the board!’ Beth clapped her hands together, trying to boost her own spirits as much as her mother-in-law’s. She had felt rather sorry for George (normally the least easy to like of the three), for having his own unexpected academic triumph so cruelly blighted by the lingering shadow of his elder brother’s disgrace. William had said well done a couple of times, but there had been no celebration lunch in a noodle house.

  But the person for whom Beth felt the greatest sympathy was herself. She found the intensity of these family wrangles both alienating and abhorrent. Worse still, they were continuing to make the man she loved not only unhappy but unreachable. Since the day of Harry’s results there had been several more front-door-slamming walks. He returned from each one smelling of smoke and with a grimace etched so deep into his pale, handsome face that Beth was beginning to fear it might never dissolve. No solace she offered seemed to help: comforting words, comforting meals, not even sex, which, although now taking place with something like its usual reassuring frequency, did not quite lead to the dreamy post-coital peacefulness that she had once so treasured. She detected a new urgency to William’s lovemaking too, a sense of desperation almost, that seemed to linger even after their climaxes, as if he had been seeking something that remained unfound.

  ‘So here you are!’ William exclaimed, bursting into the little bedroom.

  ‘Beth has just told me about Harry,’ said Jill at once. ‘I’m sorry, love – what a worry for you.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ William agreed briskly. ‘But, do you know, I’m fed up of letting that child bring everything down. Beth and I are on holiday …’ William slipped an arm around her waist and dropped a kiss on her head ‘… a fact I know that I, for one, have been in danger of forgetting. So what we both badly need, Mum, is lots of that restorative Yorkshire air you and Dad like to brag about, not to mention some of your even more restorative home cooking. Don’t we, darling?’ William kissed Beth again, more tenderly this time, his face crinkled with smiles.

  ‘Oh, we so do …’ Beth found that she was almost too choked to speak. This was her man, back again, her beloved, loving, attentive man. If the oxygen of northern England could perform that in the space of ten minutes, she would be indebted to it for life.

  ‘And George’s GCSE results were unbelievable –’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Jill interrupted excitedly, ‘Beth mentioned that too. Haven’t I always said he was the clever one, the dark horse who would do well? Middle children, now they’re the ones to watch. Like that sister of yours – running her own language school in France, if you please, while Lizzy never set her sights so high … although I’m not saying you’re not a high-achiever, love – all those share-options you talk about. I’ll never understand them, no matter how many times you explain.’ Clucking fondly, she turned to Beth. ‘And where are you in the family pecking order, dear? I’m sure William must have told me but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Oh … well, actually there was just me.’

  ‘Well, that can be good too.’ Jill shifted her attention to the bedroom window, tweaking at a pleat in its floral curtains. ‘Oh, look, Will.’ She pointed through the pane. ‘We’ve got a visitor.’

  William left Beth’s side and went to peer over his mother’s shoulder. ‘Oh, God, not Henrietta. I’m not in the mood for her, I really am not.’

  ‘And who is Henrietta?’ ventured Beth, glancing with some longing now at the lovely linen dome of fresh white bedding next to her, thinking how enticing it looked compared to the prospect of milky English tea and the labour of conversing with people she knew barely or not at all.

  ‘She’s the daughter of the Purleys who own the farm next door,’ Jill explained, smoothing her manly crop of white hair with the palms of both hands as she squeezed past Beth to get to the door. ‘They’re away and she’s up here to keep an eye on the place. She and William grew up together – birthday teas and the Pony Club. Lizzy was more her age but they never really saw eye to eye, those two … Come on, William dear, she’ll want a cup of tea and I think your father’s already taken off with the boys to the river – the fish are jumping early, he says, now the days are shortening.’

  William pulled a comical, reassuring face as he followed his mother out of the room, but Beth, left to edge her way along the passage and down the stairs, felt childishly stranded. A guest with an unpleasantly strident voice, she decided, even before she caught up with the gathering in the kitchen and found herself being introduced to a tall, muscular woman clad in an obscenely tight pair of riding pants and a T-shirt, carelessly flecked with mud and wisps of straw. She moved around the kitchen with enviable familiarity too, pulling mugs and plates and cake tins out of cupboards, her auburn ponytail as thick and swinging as the very thing from which it had acquired its name, her ruddy, handsome face working energetically as she talked and smiled. There was a masculinity to her that Beth couldn’t help being glad of, but her eyes were large and vibrantly blue and seemed, every time she looked at William at least, to dance with knowing amusement.

  ‘You’ve slept with her,’ Beth accused, the moment they were alone, perhaps because the moment itself had been so long in coming, what with wedges of fruit cake to succumb to first, over talk of things and people of whom she had never heard, followed by a frenzy of vegetable-peeling and table-laying into which she had jettisoned herself purely to appear like the dutiful daughter-in-law she so knew she wasn’t.

  With three pheasant roasting under layers of bacon, dishes warming and the redoubtable Henrietta pressed into returning for dinner, they had escaped upstairs at last, to ‘freshen up’ before the meal. Beth had changed into a smart black skirt and coral shirt and was doing what she had so longed for three hours before – lying on the plump, freshly laundered bed, her bad foot propped on a pillow. William was leaning out of the window, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Henrietta?’ He turned to laugh, rills of smoke floating round his mouth. ‘Er, no, thank you.’

  ‘Well, something, then … something,’ Beth muttered, turning her head away, hating herself. Along the landing she could hear sloshing noises from the cottage’s one and only bathroom as the boys took shifts at washing off the mud. The fishing had produced merriment rather than fish, with a long, convoluted tale about both boys ending up half clothed in the freezing river and then being commanded by their grandfather into a variety of sprinting races to warm up. The trio had returned damp and breathless, exuding a joy that was evident still in the sploshing and joshing coming along the corridor and which, instead of lightening Beth’s spirits, only served to heighten her sense of being out of things, of not belonging, not even to William. ‘Honey, I just hate that you feel the need to smoke,’ she ventured, in an effort to crush the feeling into non-existence, as William hurled his stub into the grey evening air and ducked back inside the little bedroom. ‘If you’re stressed you should bring it on to me.’

  William laughed. ‘And why on earth would I do that?’

  ‘Because that’s my job – as it’s any wife’s job – to be there for her husband to lean on.’

  ‘Well, that’s very swe
et, Beth, but I think you’ve got enough on your plate as it is. And much as I love you, nicotine gives me a hit you cannot quite provide.’

  William had spoken lightly but to Beth’s fragile state of mind the remark felt like a smack across the face, an outright declaration of her inadequacy. ‘Have you even looked at that book I got you?’ she snapped. ‘How to Quit in One Day … Have you even looked?’

  William, who had started to massage the toes of her sore foot, stopped abruptly. ‘No, Beth, I haven’t. Now, leave it, okay? Just leave it.’

  Beth caught her breath and held it, seeing again the flying laptop, the jewels of glass spraying out of the TV screen. It wasn’t the violence of the act that had frightened her, she realized, so much as the sense of something breaking, something special and irrevocable, something between her and William. ‘It’s because I care for you,’ she murmured, slowly releasing the air in her lungs. ‘I can’t remember my dad’s voice – or even his face that well – but I can hear him coughing every morning, every morning, William, making way for that day’s pack.’

  William stood still, doing his best to look compassionate rather than irritated. Although Beth made few references to what he knew had been a tough childhood, he had heard about the coughing father before, several times. A drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, Beth’s dad had finally left for good when Beth was five, leaving no money or fond memories. A phone call from a hospital a few years later revealed that he had met his death in as ugly a fashion as he had lived his life, under the impact of a jack-knifing lorry on a Missouri freeway. Recalling this now, William tightened his expression, fighting the urge to point out that coughing was neither a sin nor a sure indication of the manner of a man’s impending death. But Beth was already moving the conversation on, saying something about Harry and the tragedy of getting hooked so young.

  ‘Harry?’ William laughed sharply, scornfully. ‘Making a hash of his A levels is one thing, but as I’ve told you, that child is too sensible – too vain for that matter – about being fit and playing rugby ever to take up smoking.’

  Beth looked at her hands, the fingers interlaced across her stomach, the nails trimmed into perfect smooth semi-circles and shining with her favourite light pink polish. Lying on sofas was good for manicures, she had discovered, if nothing else. She liked it when her hands looked good and pretty. Unlike other body parts – not to say people – hands never let you down. William was leaning against the window-sill, clearly waiting for her to respond, arms and legs crossed in a show of relaxation that contradicted the tension in his face. This arguing was new, hateful, but worse still, Beth reasoned, would be not telling the truth. Harry was in so much trouble already, it was hardly like it was going to make a big difference. And William being mad at Harry was preferable to him being mad at her. Anything was preferable to that. ‘That day I twisted my ankle …’ She took a deep breath before going on to describe the details she had hitherto withheld – namely, Harry’s familiar casualness both with the cigarette and the Goth girlfriend.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ William pushed off from the window-sill and advanced on the bed.

  ‘I’m not sure … I guess … Well, the truth is, I promised Harry I wouldn’t.’

  ‘You promised Harry? Well, that’s nice.’ William spun away with a look of disgust.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Beth cried, in a tone that was accusatory rather than apologetic. ‘I just didn’t think it was such a big deal.’

  William folded his arms, glaring at her. ‘Well, that’s where we differ. He is my son. For him to behave so out of character is a big deal, as I think recent events testify. And you putting loyalty to him over me,’ William shook his head, releasing a dry, bitter laugh, ‘call me petty, but that doesn’t feel insignificant either.’

  ‘I was just trying to get along with him,’ Beth pleaded, appalled both that they were rowing and at the stance William was taking. ‘You know – trying not to be the wicked stepmother. And anyway,’ she continued, frustration getting the better of her, ‘it’s hardly like it would have made a difference to anything, is it? He’s eighteen, for Christ’s sake, at an age when he can do what he likes, regardless of what you think. What’s gotten you really upset, I reckon, are those D grades. Or are you going to blame me for those too –?’ She broke off as a faint, trilling voice floated up from the ground floor, announcing supper. ‘Oh, William, don’t be mad,’ Beth whispered. ‘I do understand, really I do. And of course I shouldn’t have made that pact with Harry over you … I see that now.’

  ‘It’s dinner – we’d better go down.’

  ‘William …’ Beth tried to seize his arm as he walked past the bed. ‘Please, baby, it’s too horrible to argue –’

  ‘Forgive me if I overreacted. It’s been something of a testing week.’

  ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘And I love you,’ replied William, in a dull voice, holding the door open till she was on her feet but then striding ahead of her to the stairs.

  Beth started after him and then stopped, overcome by a body-blow of longing to be back within the spacious, orderly, beautiful confines of their marital home, with its pretty pitched roof and tidy yard, and all the towering maples guarding it like a private army. Widely acknowledged as an area famous for its excellent public schools, Darien as a choice of location had surprised some of the work colleagues who doubled as friends and who therefore knew Beth well enough to suspect that having kids might not be high on her and William’s agenda. But Darien was also in the heart of the state she had been brought up to revere for its affluent beauty – rural but tamed, boasting some of the most fabulous real estate money could buy; a veritable picket-fenced paradise, interspersed with parks and ponds, which, like the handsome fringes of Long Island Sound along its coast, bobbed with sleek yachts and motorboats the size of small houses. For years Beth had drooled over magazine snapshots of such images, vowing that if the world were ever to become her oyster it was this particular corner of it that she would choose.

  How, she wondered now, had she ever agreed to let trespassing strangers onto such hallowed ground? Sophie and Andrew Chapman, in her precious corner of the world, still so newly acquired, so treasured – and with their kids, too, no doubt fouling the place up. Had she been out of her mind?

  Glancing down, Beth saw that her ankle, although feeling a little better, was still bulging visibly over the edge of her smart heeled shoe. In warmer, dryer temperatures it would have ached less, she was sure. Downstairs, a rapping of the door knocker was followed by Henrietta’s confident high-pitched tones ringing through the hall.

  Beth edged back into the bedroom and fished her cell phone out of the bottom of her purse. Only a little more than a week remained but it felt like a lifetime. She needed at least to hear an American voice, garner some news from home, no matter if that news came from Florida instead of Connecticut. She wasn’t herself in England, Beth reflected bleakly. It didn’t suit her. And neither was William. The place was bad for both of them, very bad. She started to punch in her mother’s number and then stopped, recalling William’s merry warnings about the impossibility of getting signals for anything among all the dales and valleys – or whatever the hell they were. He had described the area as a geographical conspiracy against anything technological and Beth had laughed, never imagining how personal that conspiracy could feel, how hostile.

  ‘Fucking country!’ She flung the phone onto the bed, where it bounced once before landing with a clatter on a section of bare floorboard peeking between the two thin rugs that passed for carpeting. For a moment Beth held her breath, imagining a break in the jolly conversation downstairs, heads tipping to the ceiling, eyes rolling in mutual critical concern at what the foreigner was playing at.

  More likely, they hadn’t even noticed her absence, she decided miserably, feeling the too-tight cut of her skirt as she retrieved the phone and then groaning at the sight of her reflection in the narrow mirror pinned to the wall. There was no escapi
ng it: she had gone up an entire size – and all on her lower half as usual: hips, stomach, ass. Her skirt was straining so hard the stitches on the seams showed. It was a miracle William hadn’t said anything, a total miracle. Although love-making was always in the dark, these days … could that be why? Had she grown hideous?

  Beth forced herself to look again at the mirror, this time turning sideways and sucking in her stomach. She breathed deeply, holding her head high, drawing on ancient, hard-fought lessons for inducing calm, lessons she hadn’t needed for years. No, not hideous, she reminded herself, but … beautiful, like all God’s creatures. And in just over a week’s time this cold, damp, hateful experience would be behind her, boxed safely, as memories could be if one worked at them hard enough.

  On the top stair she faltered again at a wild whoop of laughter from the kitchen. She should have checked on her choice of clothes with William. Maybe her skirt and blouse would be too formal. Why hadn’t she checked with William? He was wearing chinos and a clean shirt. But then William invariably wore chinos and a shirt. It was different for women … It was always different for women.

  Beth took another deep breath, telling herself that her spry, business-like mother-in-law was bound to have smartened up for dinner, as would the dreadful, meaty, hearty Henrietta, even if it was into an outfit that made as big a deal of her peachy ass as the gross riding pants. Of course the skirt was fine. She was fine. Beth spread both her arms for balance as she started down the stairs, gripping the banister with one hand and pressing the other against the wall. Her ankle might have been feeling better for its rest, but with other, older, deeper frailties stirring, no measure of self-protection felt too great.