Back to Bristol Ch. 15

I smiled, "Out of interest, how did you get out of the house without a bra on? Ralph would have noticed, and you wouldn't have wanted that."

"I took it off in the car." She paused, then looked up at me, "Do you remember when I confessed everything, and you said you couldn't have sex, because you were scared of your own emotions?"

"Yes. I remember."

"Well it got me thinking. When I married Peter, and after about six months I realised that he just didn't do it for me and never would. Well I went through a phase of reading what they called erotica for women." She looked at me and almost laughed, "Nothing too much over the top. Proper paperbacks from the bookshops. All very respectable, well almost."

"And?"

"And, I'd spend the odd afternoon reading, but with my hand in my pants. It was the only worthwhile sex I was getting. And I suppose it was those fantasies that started me off on fantasising about you, which kept me going for so long. Anyway, one of them was a bit S&M-ish. Quite a lot really. It was about the young girl, she was about twenty I suppose, falling in love with an older man who was into some quite heavy S&M. It wasn't my idea of fun at all. I'm not really sure why I bought it. But, one of the things was that he used to whip her, and she used to welcome it. It was her absolution for all she felt for him, for enjoying herself in ways that she shouldn't. Heavy Catholic guilt stuff, I suppose."

"Sorry. I don't do S&M. I thought about it on my travels. It had some appeal for a little while, when I hated you and all women, but I don't think it's really me."

"No? Good. But in a way, I've come to realise that I wouldn't say No to some sexual absolution. Maybe that's one of the reasons I do want to go to bed with you. For you to hammer into me, to make me yours again. For you to take me and use me, and mark me in some way, deep inside, so that I know, that I feel, that I'm your woman again. Can you understand that? Letting some of your emotions go, sexually, wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing as far as I'm concerned."

I felt I could answer her flippantly or seriously. I chose serious, "Well, I guess we'll see what happens, if and when anything does. But promise me, don't have great expectations. I don't like that pressure. And you must lower the boys expectations too. When we don't make it, I don't want to be the bad guy."

"I'm sorry, I know I was over the top yesterday. I've tried to reign back a bit already. I'll try having another word with them."

"See that you do." I said as I stood up. The evening was over.

After a fairly tense farewell, with so much being thought and not said, I got myself a whisky and sat and wondered what I thought of the night. I decided that, as far as I could tell, it went as well as I could have hoped.

The next day, Wednesday, Carole greeted me with an inquisitorial raised eyebrow.

I smiled and told her, "As well as could be expected. Pretty good, I guess. We talked, and I guess that's a start."

She smiled, "Keep at it. I'll bring you a coffee. And you're not going to get much chance to brood about it today. You're going to be run off your feet."

At one meeting, just after lunch, Myra was there. She came in and looked straight at me, "And what's your news?"

I smiled at her directness, "We're talking."

"Good." Was her succinct reply.

That evening I phoned Molly, just to check that she had moved to Ralph's. And she had. Apparently it was a little more effort than she thought, and she did say it was a bit of an emotional wrench. Suddenly, what she'd been talking about was coming true. She was leaving the last four years behind. I guess any of us would have some thoughts on walking away from a marriage, however bad that marriage had been. I could understand that. Apparently, she just left a note for Peter to say she'd moved out, and had no intention of returning, so he was welcome to move back into the house. I wondered if I ought to warn Piers that Peter may be in a funny mood in the morning.

I then phoned Mum. She and Len were still enjoying themselves in Scotland. Over the next couple of days they intended to get up to John O'Groats, just to be able to say that they got to the very top of the mainland. Apparently they were still wondering if they'd take the ferry to the Orkney and Shetland Isles. But when I told them that myself and Molly were talking, I think the idea of doing much more in Scotland suddenly died. I had this feeling that I was going to see them back in Bristol in the fairly near future, although I made a great deal of the fact that we were only talking, and that it would take weeks before we would have any idea what was going to come of those talks.

On the Thursday I had two phone calls. The first was from Molly, who sounded a bit strained, but she only wanted to agree that I would supply the meal for us tonight. The second was from Ralph, who didn't want to interfere, but he felt that he should warn me that Molly was feeling a little emotional over leaving her home, and filing the divorce papers. As Ralph said, she has launched herself into an unknown future, you can't criticise her for looking over her shoulder and having a moment or two of doubt.

I had intended to try to focus tonight's conversation on Susan and Peter's collusion. I needed to satisfy myself that Molly was led into that marriage at a time when she was vulnerable and open to manipulation. But, having spoken to Ralph, I decided that I'd focus on gently trying to show Molly that Peter Davies was an immoral bastard who had ruthlessly chased and seduced a married woman. I thought it might help ease her conscience if she realised what sort of man she was leaving behind. And, I had to admit, I'd enjoy proving that he was what I thought he was.

On the way home I stopped off at the supermarket to buy dinner. I wanted something that was nice, but not too special. I wanted to have dinner, not to make an emotional statement. In the end I chose some cooked chicken and a variety of salads to be followed by cheesecake, and all with a decent bottle of wine.

Molly turned up not long after I'd got in. She was dressed very attractively, but I noted that it was not too provocative this time. But she did smell of that perfume, and that could have been provocation enough for me, if I'd let it. We had a glass of wine before we sat down to eat. I could see that Ralph had been right, she was looking strained.

"You looked tired. Has it been hard?"

"I guess it's not been easy. It isn't helped by the phone calls from Peter. They started as soon as he got home from work last night and realised I'd gone. At first they were mystified, he couldn't understand why I'd moved out. Then they became angry, with him swearing at me for moving out before he's had a chance to talk. And finally, late last night, they went to pleading and crying."

"I guess that's to be expected. Does he know where you've gone?"

"Yes. I couldn't see any point in not telling him. And I wanted him to know that I was moving away from him, not that I was moving to you. But I feel so guilty. All his hurt, all his pain is my fault. I should never have married him. I've led him to this point."

"Well, if it's any consolation, to the best of my knowledge, he's been working normally."

"Yes, he said he'd go into work today. But he's moaning that you engineered that he's had a formal warning, which in his view was unfair because his absence was understandable in the circumstances and partly your fault."

"No. Neither of us has any responsibility for how he behaves. He's an adult. And he started this chain of events years ago when he chose to sit down with a married woman, and develop a relationship with her. Let alone his collusion with your mother."

She looked at me, rather sharply, and said, "It wasn't like that. He was just a nice guy and a friend. And you can hardly blame him for taking tips on me from Susan."

I decided to back off for a while, and I tried to keep the conversation fairly neutral. I told her a little about my work at Franks, and about how well I got on with Carole. We talked about when I might see the boys at the weekend, and she suggested that I come to Ralph's for Sunday lunch, it would give the boys a sense of stability in their new home. That led on to talking about the boys, and I again revived the idea that maybe, once this hiatus is over, that we could change them to go to private school.

That idea led to an interesting bit of conversation, when she said, "Well, of course, they've got a trust fund, so it wouldn't be so expensive."

I was surprised, "What trust fund?"

She looked at me, searching my face in disbelief, "Oh! I'm sorry. I thought you knew, I put all the money that I received on our divorce into a trust fund for the boys. It didn't seem right that I took your money into a marriage to Peter. And since then, I've added to it, quite a bit actually. It's because you've always paid too much in maintenance, so I've taken what I thought was the profit on their true costs, and saved it in a deposit account, and then added it to their trust fund once a year." She paused and looked at me, across the dinner table, "I had no right to take your money for myself and Peter."

I was silent for a while, just sipping my wine. I wasn't really surprised, Molly always had a lot of integrity.

Then I asked, "So what will the financial settlement of this divorce be?"

She looked up at me, "I went into a marriage with nothing; I shouldn't have agreed to marry him, so I'll come out with nothing."

"No. That's wrong. Whatever else, you gave him four years of your life. Maybe not love, but companionship, support, sex, and generally sharing your life. That's what he wanted, and he promised to endow you with all his worldly goods or whatever the civil ceremony says. You are owed half of your joint wealth, or at least the increase in your joint wealth in the last four years."

"He shouldn't suffer financially because I'm divorcing him. And anyway, a lot of his money comes from his mother. She left him quite a bit when she died."

She was becoming defensive, so I asked, "What was his mother like?"

She paused, probably surprised by my tangential question, but then she smiled slightly, "She was lovely. She was so proud of Peter, and so delighted that he'd met someone to settle down with. I think she was rather fond of me, and I liked her. Why?"

"No real reason. One of the boys mentioned her once, so I just thought I'd ask. When did she die?"

"About two years ago. That's when we bought the better house. And, of course, she left us the cottage in Wales."

"Where is it in Wales? I assume it's not very far as Peter keeps disappearing off to it."

"No. It's in the Black Mountains, or at the bottom of them really. Just north of Abergavenny, on a sort of round about way of getting to Hay-on-Wye."

"Oh. Pretty country. Can I ask, when did she write her will?"

She looked rather surprised, "About six month's before she died. She had to make some changes, as her sister died at that time, and it affected her old one."

"So, if I was your lawyer, I would argue that she knew exactly what she was doing when she left the money to Peter. She fully expected you to benefit by it, in fact she wanted you to benefit by it. You are entitled to your share."

"No. Peter's been hurt enough. It wouldn't be fair to take his mother's money off him."

"What exactly have you asked for in the divorce?"

She hesitated for a moment, and looked studiously at her salad as she answered, "I haven't. My solicitor said the financial settlement could be agreed later. That it was important to get the actual divorce petition underway."

"She knows you don't want to ask for anything, and she disagrees with you. Right?"

Molly stiffened, "We've discussed it and agreed to sort it out later."

I was becoming annoyed. I knew I quite liked the idea of hitting Peter where it hurts, in his wallet. But it annoyed me that she had either such a low estimate of her contribution to the marriage, or that she cared about him so much that she wanted to protect him. Either way I didn't like it. So, we ate in silence until we'd both finished our salads, and I had served the cheesecake.

I tried again, "I'm sorry, but I've got to come back to it, for Goodness sake Molly, have some self-respect. You put as lot into that marriage, you are entitled to take something out. Please."

"It's nothing to do with you. You're the one that says the divorce is necessary between myself and Peter, that it is nothing to do with us."

"True, it isn't. But you were happy to take half of our money when we divorced. You took that off me, although I'd done nothing wrong, you said so yourself. Now, you aren't going to take anything from Peter. You look after him better than you looked after me. How do you think that makes me feel?"

"I took it and gave it to your sons. I didn't take it for myself."

We ate our cheesecake in silence.

When we'd finished, I cleared the plates and asked, "Would you like a coffee?"

She looked at me, she looked even more tired than when she arrived. I guess she hadn't expected an argument. "No. I know we're meant to talk, but would you mind if I just went home. I don't think I want to relive parts of the last four years with you at the moment, and I certainly don't want an argument."

I kissed her goodbye, saw her to the door, and then poured myself a large whisky.