‘yes, dear’, and ‘what did you say, dear?’ and ‘where were you last night?’, who lay passively and compliantly on her back during sex. He had forgotten what the life of the mind was like. Most women, he had noticed, whose looks assure them of acceptance and approval from infancy, neglected their intelligence and sensitivities, as did Grace – but not so Doris: Doris could hold her own at any dinner party in the land. She was perhaps a little humourless, but like a Persian rug of great quality, there must be some flaw in the design, or else God will be offended.
‘All that aside,’ observed Doris Dubois, ‘– and not that I want to marry you, marriage being such an old-fashioned institution, and I would always rather be known as Doris Dubois, rather than Doris Salt, I couldn’t bear to be so near the end of the alphabet – nevertheless, if I were to be your legal married wife, and not just your partner, I would not want there to be another Mrs Salt around.’
Barley Salt felt his heart contract with joy. He had done the best he could with the cards dealt to him at birth – but there were still dinner tables at which he felt inadequate, at which he felt people laughed at him, for the rude, crude fellow he had been born. If the conversation turned to opera, or literature, or art, he felt at a loss. To be actually married to Doris Dubois, so at ease in all these areas of life, would be triumph indeed. And she, for all her disclaimers, had brought the matter up, not he.
What is this? A letter through the post from Barley’s solicitors? He wants to deny me my name? He wants to rob me of my very self? I must no longer be Grace Salt? Extra alimony offered – £500 a week – if I revert to my maiden name? (At least he bribes, he doesn’t threaten.) I must hurl myself back to my unmarried state and be seventeen again and that long lost creature Grace McNab? I can’t remember who she was. How can this be, what have I done, am I so worthless that he can’t endure me to have so much as a past that’s linked with his? I must wink out of existence altogether? Well, I can understand it. Look at me! Described as murderous by the Judge, labelled a would-be murderer: Barley must feel he is entitled to protect himself and her. Of course he wishes to obliterate me. What am I but an hysterical woman who once performed a senseless and gratuitous act of violence – I quote the Judge – and deserve no better. A man may seek the authenticity of his feelings, as our one-time marriage counsellor described my husband’s love for Doris Dubois, but a woman must not.
‘Judge Rubs Salt into Grace’s Wounds,’ said the headlines.
‘Lovesick Drama of Fat-Cat Spouse,’ and so on. ‘TV Culture Queen Stole My Man, alleges Salt Wife’. A hundred faces crowding in on me with phallic lenses and popping bulbs as they hurried me, distraught and disgraced, blanket over my head, to the police cells. By the time I emerged, greyer and fatter by a year and a quarter, the media had lost interest; only a couple of film crews, some local journalists, and a woman’s group wanting a donation were waiting. The authorities kindly let me out the back entrance, so that even my lawyer missed me, and I had to make my own way home. Or what I now was to call home: Tavington Court, a great block of apartments in Victorian red brick behind the British Museum, where sad divorcées hide, and little old ladies grateful for the protection of the resident porter, and widows living their leftover lives in genteel loneliness. It takes up a whole street and those who have grandchildren to visit are lucky. I am not so lucky. My son Carmichael is not likely to oblige.
All my conversations at the time were with lawyers and accountants and all they seemed to want me to think about was the prospect of age and infirmity and death in the future. I was victorious, but only to live my leftover life alone. And I didn’t suppose Carmichael wanted me out in Sydney – ‘to be near my son’ – embarrassing him.
The media have lost interest in me altogether now. They are happy for Barley and Doris’s happiness. They were married last week. The wedding was in Hello!, and I hear put the circulation up no end. My plight becomes yesterday’s fish and chip wrappings. As Doris would be the first to point out, how that dates me! Fish and chips are not eaten from newsprint now, the EC would never allow it, but if sold at all, out of recyclable polyethylene cartons. I don’t like eating alone in restaurants, sitting there with my book, feeling the pity of others. It is quite astonishing how few people I know. My married life revolved around Barley: the people we knew, knew us as a couple. I was just the tag-along. They feel sorry for me now and when the kind people, as I think of them, do ask me round, it is to lunch not dinner and we normally eat in the kitchen. It is better than nothing.
I have lost the art of conversation. Once I was quite good at it, but after years of living with Barley who always waxed so noisy and indignant if ever I said anything more than yes dear, no dear, I learned the prudence of silence, and in the end he took me for a fool. And there certainly wasn’t much snappy dialogue in prison and for awhile after I came out I was struck quite dumb, and had to search for words with which to express my thoughts at all.
Doris Dubois is anything but dumb. I do not watch her show: it is too painful for me: but sometimes flicking through the channels I forget and come across her, fronting her highly successful Artsworld Extra. It’s on twice a week. Nine o’clock peak time Thursdays. Late night repeat, Mondays. Her perfect figure, the bouncy, short cropped hair, her startling smile, the ease with which she handles ideas, the evident intelligence, the breadth of information, the flying sound bites – the worst you can say about her is that she looks like a Captain of Hockey on speed. And why, unless you have special reason, should you say the worst of her? Even I have trouble doing so.
Doris Dubois now has Barley’s name – though I notice she doesn’t even bother to use it – as well as his love, his time, his attention and his money. I have the couple followed from time to time by a detective, one Harry Bountiful. What asplendid name! I chose him because of it, flicking through the Yellow Pages. Doris and Barley will meet up in Aspreys in Bond Street, then drift over to Gucci’s where Barley will perhaps buy a pair of loafers, the better to walk through St James’s Park and feed the ducks. Then perhaps they will call in at Apsley House, address No.1, London, built for the Duke of Wellington, the one who defeated Napoleon. There they will see the fine equestrian painting of the Duke by Goya. If they look hard they will see the faint shadow of a tricolor hat beginning to show through the surface paint. The portrait was originally of ‘King’ Joseph Bonaparte of Spain, Napoleon’s brother. But the Duke and his victorious troops were at the gates of Madrid, the usurper had fled, so Goya prudently painted a new head on the body, and sold it to the Duke. An artist has to live. Why waste a perfectly good horse?
Or perhaps Barley and Doris, hand in hand, will drift off to Bulgari in Sloane Street, to stare at some ruby imbedded steel circlet for her slim arm, wondering whether they will or whether they won’t, but mostly that they will. Because she deserves it. Because she is her. They will stroll along to South Ken., and the Victoria and Albert Museum to study, say, the Sèvres dinner service (1848) that was once Queen Victoria’s own, and Doris will explain its fineness to him, and the curator will even let them handle the settings. They are an important couple, and she has friends in high cultural places.
It is thanks to his new wife that Barley can now judge the quality even of the plates set before him, tell china from pottery, and understand how the two can never merge. He knows now where camp begins and crassness stops. Doris is Barley’s living Fine Arts programme. They are in love; perhaps they give more time and attention to each other than either can spare. Her ratings drop just a little: his dividends falter. Because meanwhile, as Harry Bountiful puts it, the real world goes on. But this couple, newly discovered to one another, is blessed. Strokes of good fortune come their way. Last week Doris got five numbers in the lottery and won twelve hundred pounds. Barley’s latest office block won an architectural prize. Perhaps Doris was close to one of the judges.
I tried to explain to the Court that it was
