Back to Bristol Ch. 20

"No. It wasn't all lies. You did love me. I know you did. And you will do again. When you realise........" He took a tissue from the box on the table and blew his nose. "Come to the Maldives please, Molly. We can have separate rooms if you like. But if you could get away from him just for a few days, then you'd realise what a mistake you're making."

"Why would I want to rebuild a marriage with you? With a man who lied and cheated and colluded to get me to marry him in the first place." Her voice was rising. I looked into her face, it was obvious some demons had suddenly been released from their chains. I considered calming her down, to stop what I knew was coming, but it wouldn't be right to interfere between a man and his wife. And anyway, why should I interfere to save him?

Molly stepped backwards and in an icy but raised voice, continued, "I used to like you, Peter. I used to respect you. But now I know what sort of man you are. You lie and cheat to get what you want. I wanted to love you, I really did. I lost so much when you came into my life, I had to believe that it was all worthwhile. But it wasn't, I knew it and you knew it. And, No, you never pleased me in bed. I haven't the faintest idea whether you're a good lover or not, but I can tell you this: you never did it for me."

Peter stood up, hurt and shocked. His voice went up a decibel or two, "That's a lie. You accuse me of lying, but that's the biggest lie of all. I left you satisfied so many times, almost every time. You never refused me, you always wanted sex, and you know you did. And why? Because you knew it would be good, better than he ever gave you. You know it."

"Rubbish. I only orgasmed when I fantasised. I got good at that. I had to. And I promise you, you were never even in the room in my fantasies."

"I don't believe you. We were happy. You were happy until he came back into our lives. Then you started this wishful notion that he would take you back. What was it? His money? His power and prestige? We have money. I've just settled half my own mother's money on you. You have money now. You don't need your stupid fantasies about him. He isn't going to give you the love, the security, and no, not even the good sex that I can give you." He paused, both of them were standing facing each other, eyes blazing, "I may have cheated as you call it to get into your life, but I don't live with some stupid fantasy that Chris Bennett still loves you and will take you back. You cheated on him. OK I made you do it with my skill as a lover, but you cheated on him, and he isn't going to forgive you and take you back. Come home Molly, let's start rebuilding what we once had."

Molly's eyes were still blazing, "We never had it. All we ever had was lies and guilt and wishful thinking. You know it Peter, and so do I." She paused and took a big breath; her eyes softened and she visibly calmed down, "There's a lot of you that is good Peter. Just try to be decent and go and find a woman who will love you for the right reasons."

Suddenly the confrontation was over. Both their shoulders sagged, and a silence invaded the room.

Peter turned to me, as if he had suddenly remembered my presence, "How could you do this? You accuse me of interfering in your marriage, and now you do exactly the same to mine. You hypocrite. You selfish bastard. You told me yourself that Molly and I had a good marriage, yet you must have your revenge. You know you aren't going to marry her, yet you let her destroy our good marriage. You fucking bastard."

Behind him I saw Molly stiffen in anger, and I spoke to her rather than him, "No, Molly. Let him go. Let him believe whatever he wants. He used to believe that he could interfere in other people's lives with impunity. Does it really matter if he now believes that he's an innocent victim? Let him go."

Peter turned and looked at Molly, "You will realise. And I will wait for you until you do. I promise. I love you Molly Davies, I love you. And anytime you want to go to the Maldives, and recapture what we once had, I'll be there for you." And he brushed past her and just walked out.

Molly and myself just looked at each other for a moment, and then her eyes filled with tears, and I was round my desk and holding her in my arms.

"Thank you, Chris. I was scared you'd really tear into him, and you didn't." She gave a half sob half laugh, "I did, but you didn't. Why did you stop me at the end? I was about to launch into him again, he had no right to say those things about you. I thought you wanted him to leave here in tears and yet you saved him. Why?"

"Because I suddenly realised I didn't care about him. I didn't care what state you left him in. You gave me so much this evening. By saying what you did, somehow I felt I'd won, I didn't need to prove it, and I didn't care if he knew it or not."

After a pause, we broke apart, and I cleared my desk to go home. "How about I buy you dinner? You deserve it." I asked, in as normal a voice as I could manage.

She ignored me, and asked, quite hesitantly, "He did raise an interesting question."

I looked up at her, "Surely it isn't a matter of would I accept you back? I love you, and I've said so, and I have no problem saying so. It's a matter of whether we both want the same future, together or apart. And we've still got some weeks to go before your divorce is finalised, let alone doing anything about us. Is that OK?"

She looked disappointed as she always did when she pushed me, and I gave her the same answer, but she said, "I said I'd wait for as long as it takes."

I smiled, "Well it's going to take longer than today. But we are moving in the right direction."

Over dinner Molly didn't seem to want to talk about the meeting with Peter. It was all too painful. I know she had wanted him to go away without her having to say things which would only hurt him, but it had come to that, and she wasn't proud of what she'd said or done. So, I tried to stay off the subject.

But I did have to ask once more about her sex life with him, "Tell me again because I still don't understand. How could you bring yourself to have frequent sex with him if you knew you didn't love him and knew that it wasn't going to do anything for you?"

She smiled forlornly, "It was just something that a wife does for her husband. Like ironing his shirts. I didn't want him to be unhappy, and he loved me and he needed sex, it was the least I could do. It had nothing to do with my sex life, that was erotica and dreams of you." She looked up and into my eyes, "I'm sorry. Knowing that I gave myself to him must hurt you so much."

"Actually, less than you would think or certainly less than I thought it would. The first time, the time in his flat, that hurts, it hurts like Hell, but not after that. It was what was to be expected."

The next day, I had a call from Piers at the end of the afternoon, "Fancy a drink?"

"No, I can't. I've got a business dinner to go to. But I take it you want to know how it went last night?"

"I know how it went. My Deputy is one of the living dead. And more dead than living."

"That bad?"

"When I saw him this morning, I took one look at him and said he should go home. But he said he couldn't. That bastard Bennett would delight in giving him another warning letter or the sack if he did. Apparently you are fucking enjoying this, destroying his life for no good reason. He's a good mind to report him to Head Office for it."

"What did you say?"

"That he hadn't got a leg to stand on. I told him to just get on with his work and to keep his head down."

"Good. If you want some of the gory details, and I don't think Molly would want you to have them all, why not come over to dinner tomorrow night with Jeanette? I reckon it's time that Molly and myself started going public."

And that's what they did. Molly wasn't very happy about it when I phoned and told her. I think she only went along with it out of a sense of duty rather than any feeling of making a progressive step, or even of the pleasure of entertaining friends.

It was Jeanette that came straight to the point, whilst we were having pre-dinner drinks. She looked at Molly and just asked, "Other than whisking you off to the Maldives, did he have anything worthwhile to say? Anything to redeem himself."

Molly looked at me with a very accusing look. I looked at Piers with a very questioning look.

Piers smiled, "Sorry. When I went into Peter's office just before lunch on Thursday, he was reading a travel brochure. He had it open at all-inclusive trips to the Maldives. I asked him if he was thinking of going on holiday, and he said he hoped to be going on one very soon. Remember, I had no official idea about the evening's meeting. He certainly wasn't consulting me."

Molly looked hurt, "He had it all planned out. He thought he could buy me back with a trip to the Maldives. But if he thinks so little of me that he can lie and manoeuvre, then why shouldn't he think that I can be bought?"

I found it rather satisfying that since Molly's initial confession to me, Peter was now going down and down in her eyes.

The evening wasn't a great success. Molly was tense. Myself and Jeanette were OK, in fact we worked hard to keep the whole evening afloat. But Piers slowly went quieter and more sullen as the meal progressed. He brightened up a bit when I gave him a glass of my Balvenie, but even that didn't cheer him a lot. Eventually, just before eleven o'clock, Jeanette took him home.

It took him nearly took weeks to explain himself and apologise. One evening, at about six o'clock he turned up in my office with bottle of Glenkinchie.

"This time I've been the fucking bastard, so I thought I owed you this."

I smiled, "I'm rather glad you were, if this is what it does." And I got up and poured us a couple of whiskies.

As we sat down, I just waited. Piers smiled, "I'm sorry. And I owe Molly a big apology." He sighed, "I guess my distain at how Peter acted, what he did years ago, was beginning to wane. What I saw, more and more, was just a hurt broken man. A man that I used to think of as a friend was just a shell of his former self, and I'd lost a friend and a great working partnership. And then, when we came to dinner, I couldn't help but think about the dinners we'd had with her and Peter. And I felt that she'd been personally lying to me for all those years. She was the smiling, loving wife of a friend and colleague, that's how I knew her. And all of it was pretence. Sorry, but I took it personally."

"And now?"

"And now I've put it into proper perspective, or Jeanette has done so for me. I was a bit part player in the scene. How I was treated was inevitable and immaterial. And, what else could she do, until she plucked up the strength to do what she did. I'm sorry."

After that we went on chatting, but as I hadn't made much more progress in my thinking, there wasn't much of a personal nature to talk about. Instead, we talked about Franks, and ITI, mainly considering the possibility of letting Franks Engineering down in Exeter float free.

Myself and Molly cruised along fairly happy, but there was always a shadow of what Peter might try doing before the decree absolute could be gained at the end of October.

There was Molly's birthday before that, on the 14th October, which was a Sunday. I had to be in London on the Friday before hand, so she came up by train and joined me. We had a nice dinner on that Friday night, and great sex at our hotel afterwards. It was the Saturday that was special, for once I went clothes shopping for a woman and with her at my side. We were on the lingerie trail. I was determined that all the sexy stuff that Peter had bought her, and that I'd enjoyed, should be thrown away. Instead, we spent time buying her complete outfits of both super-sexy playtime lingerie, but also several sets of genuinely nice lingerie for her to wear in the daytime. I wanted her to honour her holiday promise that she would be in sexier clothes underneath whatever she was wearing. Stockings were a must for most of the time as far as I was concerned, and she seemed happy with that. Her only argument was that she would only wear hold-ups in the evening, for all day wear she complained that they either slipped down or were like tourniquets on the thighs to stay up. We bought all sorts of sexy tights, sheer throughout ones, ones with sexy little pantie shapes built in, suspender ones, different colours, with patterns, with seams, without seams, you name it; but they were only for fun or for days when it was cold. The sexier side of things was mainly g-strings and thongs, and many of them were to match the bra and pantie sets bought for day wear. There were a couple of bras that didn't hide a lot, and one waspie that I liked and a couple of basques. There was one fantasy item that I saw and insisted on. It was a sort of waspie basque thing, it had shoulder straps, but a totally open bra, that would leave her breasts totally free, and suspenders and a matching g-string. I wasn't sure when I'd get her to wear it other than in the bedroom, but whenever that was, I was looking forward to it.

On the Saturday evening we went to see the musical Chicago, so we were singing all the songs as we drove back to Bristol late at night. As we drove along, I couldn't help but think just how my life had changed since I first drove this car to Bristol in February. At that time I knew I was driving into the unknown, but never in a month of Sundays would I have ever considered what has happened as even a remote possibility. Those thoughts made me determined not to try and predict the future ever again.

On the Sunday, her actual birthday, I gave her my official present, a new bicycle. Molly instantly saw the significance, that I was inviting her on my days out with the boys. And we celebrated her birthday with a family bike ride, a pub lunch and a lot of loving laughter.

When we got back to Ralph's house, I noticed his expectant look. He obviously had hopes that I would have proposed to Molly on her birthday. I hadn't and he was disappointed.

Peter didn't seem to do anything to stop the finalisation of the divorce. It went through like clockwork. His solicitor dealt with the financial settlement, and Molly got her money. At work, as far as I could understand, Peter was working well. People said he was quiet, and slightly withdrawn, but he was there every day, and did his work. I hardly saw him, we only met once in a while on the design committee for the new laboratories, but he was straightforward and business like then. If we met in a corridor, we would pass with barely a nod.

On the night of the decree absolute I took Molly out to dinner. I knew that this was the end of one chapter for her, but it opened the chapter for me when people, especially Molly, would expect me to take the next step. I took that theme as a pre-emptive strike.

I raised my glass, "Congratulations on putting Peter behind you. Now we are free to really talk about the future, to what we each want, and to find out if we really can make it together."

I thought that sounded quite positive, and Molly joined me in the toast. But then she said, "I know what I want, even more than when I made my confession. I love you and I want to be Mrs Molly Bennett again." And she looked me in the eye, and just waited. When I looked back and didn't flinch, she added, "And I can wait."

I was thoughtful for a moment, before I said, "It's funny. When we were young I simply fell in love with you and just knew that I wanted to marry you. I didn't really think about the future or what we faced and whether we could make it. I just proposed because I loved you. Now I want to be so sure, doubly certain, that we can make it through. I love you, I know that. But whether we can have a successful second marriage I simply don't know."

Molly's eyes filled with tears, "It's because I hurt you so much. I can understand that you don't want to risk that ever happening again. I just don't know what I can do, I'm just so sorry."

"You're right, I am scared. But it is more than that. I want to be sure that I can make you happy. That I can give you the life you want and deserve. You've had a pretty rough few years, you deserve to be happy and to have the life that you want. And I need to know that I can give you that, and that it's a life which would make me happy."

There was a silence between us for some minutes. Molly dried her eyes on her handkerchief, and the waiter came along and cleared the plates. When he'd done that, I decided to change the subject.

"Well I know something, a very minor something, that I do want. I want you to meet Myra Hepsted and preferably become friends. And I want to meet Myra's other half, Dr Will, the archaeologist from Exeter. How about that I set up that we have dinner with them one night, nothing special, just a friendly dinner somewhere?"

I've never heard a more reluctant "OK" than the one I got that night.

So, a week later, on the following Friday, four of us went out to a rather nice little bistro pub in Bath. Gosh, it was fun! I could talk to Molly, and I could talk to Myra if I didn't mind either Molly's or Will's eyes boring into the back of my head. And I could talk to Will, that wasn't too bad, he was at least capable of making polite conversation, but there was no warmth there. The sad thing was, he was a nice guy. The only good bit of the evening was that Molly and Will seemed to get on OK, in fact they seemed to quite like each other.

First thing on the Monday morning, Myra was sitting opposite me at my desk, "Don't blame me, Chris, it was your fault. You suggested it."

"There must be someone I can delegate the blame to. That's what being MD is all about. I didn't get to this job by accepting my share of the blame." I smiled.

Just then Carole came in carrying two coffees. "Ah, here's a likely candidate." I said, cheerfully. "Just admit it was all your fault, Carole, and I'll see what I can do to save your job."

"Am I allowed to know what was all my fault?"

So we told her, and Carole burst out laughing. "Just tell them that they're stupid idiots."

Almost in union, Myra and myself echoed, "We've done that. It didn't work."

"Oh." Was all Carole said, and as she left, "Shit happens."

And then I had an idea, "Carole come back." I shouted.

When she had returned, "See if you can find out what is going on at the rugby and football on Saturday. I want to take Will for a good afternoon out, and preferably drink too much and do a little male bonding. Find out what's my best bet, rugby or football."

Myra smiled, "You won't have to drink too much. Will doesn't have a strong head on him. Am I meant to take Molly on a girl's shopping trip when that's going on?"

"How could she refuse you?" I said and smiled. "Let's hit the problem head on."

Carole came back not much later to say that rugby was my best bet. Apparently a regular younger group of staff and young doctors were going, and their tradition was to have a good time, as she described it.

I phoned Will with the invite, and he couldn't very well refuse. Then I told Molly that I had to go to the rugby on Saturday, and that I'd invited Will. She could refuse the idea of shopping with Myra, and almost did. It was only when I said I would need her to drive me home from Bath that she eventually relented, and agreed.

Getting the alcohol into Will was quite easy. He is a nice guy, and was happy to have a beer or two at rugby. But it loosened his inhibitions just enough for him to really have a go at me about using my position to seduce an innocent girl like Myra. When I protested and told him how it was, he mumbled that 'that was what she told me.' But, having got it out of his system, and with another beer, we suddenly became good friends.