scene: the connubial bedroom, when the boys were about ten. Roz lay sprawling on the bed, Harold sat on the arm of a chair, looking at his wife, smiling, but determined. He had just said he had been offered a professorship, in a university in another state.
Roz said, ‘Well, I suppose you can come down for weekends or we can come up.’
This was so like her, the dismissal of a threat – surely? – to their marriage, that he gave a short, not unaffectionate laugh, and after a pause said, ‘I want you and Tom to come too.’
‘Move from here? And Roz sat up shaking her fair and now curly head so that she could see him clearly. ‘Move?’
‘Why don’t you just say it? Move from Lil, that’s the point, isn’t it?’
Roz clasped her hands together on her upper chest, all theatrical consternation. But she was genuinely astounded, indignant.
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘I’m not suggesting. I’m saying. Strange as it may seem …’ – This phrase usually signals strife – ‘I’d like a wife. A real one.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘No. I want you to watch something.’ He produced a canister of film. ‘Please, Roz. I mean it. I want you to come next door and watch this.’
Up got Roz, off the bed, all humorous protest.
She was all but nude. With a deep sigh, aimed at the gods, or some impartial viewer, she put on a pink feathered negligee, salvaged from a plays wardrobe: she had felt it was so her.
She sat in the next room, opposite a bit of white wall kept clear of clutter. ‘And now what are you up to, I wonder?’ she said, amiably. ‘You big booby, Harold. Really, I mean, I ask you!’
Harold began running the film – home movies. It was of the four of them, two husbands, the two women. They had been on the beach, and wore wraps over bikinis. The men were still in their swimming trunks. Roz and Lil sat on the sofa, this sofa, where Roz now was, and the men were in hard upright chairs, sitting forward to watch. The women were talking. What about? Did it matter? They were watching each other’s faces, coming in quickly to make a point. The men kept trying to intervene, join in, the women literally did not hear them. Harold, then Theo, was annoyed, and they raised their voices, but the women still did not hear, and when at last the men shouted, insisting, Roz put out a hand to stop them.
Roz remembered the discussion, just. It was not important. The boys were to go to a friend’s for a weekend camp. The parents were discussing it, that was all. In fact the mothers were discussing it, the fathers might just as well not have been there.
The men had been silenced, sat watching and even exchanged looks. Harold was annoyed, but Theo’s demeanour said only, ‘Women, what do you expect?’
And then, that subject disposed of – the boys – Roz said, ‘I simply must tell you …’ and leaned forward to tell Lil, dropping her voice, not knowing she did this, telling her something, nothing important.
The husbands sat and watched, Harold all alert irony, Theo bored.
It went on. The tape ran out.
‘Do you mean to say you actually filmed that – to trap me? You set it up, to get at me!’
‘No, don’t you remember? I had made a film of the boys on the beach. Then you took the camera and filmed me and Theo. And then Theo said, “How about the girls?’”
‘Oh,’ said Roz.
‘Yes. It was only when I played it back later – yesterday, in fact, that I saw … Not that I was surprised. That’s how it always is. It’s you and Lil. Always.’
‘What are you suggesting? Are you saying we’re lezzies?’
‘No. I’m not. And what difference would it make if you were?’
‘I simply don’t get it.’
‘Obviously sex doesn’t matter that much. We have, I think, more than adequate sex, but it’s not me you have the relationship with.’
Roz sat, all twisted with emotion, wringing her hands, the tears ready to start.
‘And so I want you to come with me up north.’
‘You must be mad.’
‘Oh, I know you won’t, but you could at least pretend to think about it.’
‘Are you suggesting we divorce?’
‘I wasn’t, actually. If I found a woman who put me first then …’
‘You’d let me know!’ she said, all tears at last.
‘Oh, Roz,’ said her husband. ‘Don’t think I’m not sorry. I’m fond of you, you know that. I’ll miss you like crazy. You’re my pal. And you’re the best lay I’m ever likely to have and I know that too. But I feel like a sort of shadow here. I don’t matter. That’s all.’
And now it was his turn to blink away tears and then put his hands up to his eyes. He went back to the bedroom, lay down on the bed, and she joined him. They comforted each other. ‘You’re mad, Harold, do you know that? I love you.’ ‘And I love you too Roz, don’t think that I don’t.’
Then Roz asked Lil to come over, and the two women watched the film, without speaking, to its end.
‘And that’s why Harold is leaving me,’ said Roz, who had told Lil the outlines of the situation.
‘I don’t see it,’ said Lil at last, frowning with the effort of trying. She was deadly serious, and Roz serious but smiling and angry.
‘Harold says my real relationship is with you, not with him.’
‘What does he want, then?’ asked Lil.
‘He says you and I made him feel excluded.’
‘He feel excluded! I’ve always felt – left out. All these years I’ve been watching you and Harold and I’ve wished …’ Loyalty had locked her tongue until this moment, but now she came out with it at last: ‘I have a lousy marriage. I have a bad time with Theo. I’ve never … but you knew. And you and Harold, always so happy … I don’t know how often I’ve left you two here and gone home with Theo and wished …’
‘I didn’t know … I mean, I did know, of course, Theo isn’t the ideal husband.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘It seems to me it’s you who should be getting a divorce.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ said Lil, warding off the idea with an agitated hand. ‘No; I once said in joke to Ian – testing him out, what he’d think if I got a divorce and he nearly went berserk. He was silent for such a long time – you know how he goes silent, and then he shouted and began crying. “You can’t,” he said. “You can’t. I won’t let you.’”
