Feminism, she thinks, has a long way to go before men take on the detritus of family life – not the spectacular bread and butter pudding, brought out to ‘oohs and aahs’ (which always has the whiff of ‘Man makes pudding! Round of applause!’), but ordering bin liners and making sure there are enough light bulbs. When the children were little, Miriam felt as if she were being buried under sand drifts from the Sahara: music lessons, homework folders, kids’ parties, thank-you notes, fresh fruit and meter readings. It silted up the corners of her mind until there was no space for anything else. Ian sidestepped it with strategic incompetence so that his mind remained free to focus on Important Things (such as work, or reading an interesting book). It was one of the biggest shocks of adult life – the injustice – and no one had warned her about it, certainly not her mother, who felt it was only right and proper that Miriam take on the more organisational tasks in life because she was ‘so good at them’. She’d better not think about it now, or she’ll get too angry.
She lifts the Le Creuset onto the white ceramic draining board, wondering why people rave about the things when they are almost un-lift-able and scratch everything they touch. Ian hasn’t made it home for lunch so she’s eaten the stew by herself, then struggling to lift the damn heavy pot in order to pour the remains into a Tupperware box and struggling also not to feel hard done by. She’s alone so much these days, in part because when the sand drifts receded, along with the departure of the children, they left an excess of time, while Ian’s existence maintained its steady course, which was essentially Rushing About Being Important. She has to fight, very often, not to take umbrage at the separations and also its converse, to retain some sense of herself in their togetherness. Wasn’t every marriage a negotiation about proximity?
The temptation she feels during periods when he’s very busy and she’s left alone a lot is to become defiantly independent, but then it’s hard to let him back in. She has to make herself de-frost in order to come back together. She wonders how far Edith has travelled on this rather arduous journey or whether she has even embarked on it with Will Carter. When you are in your twenties, the problem of dependence and independence can be swiftly resolved by ditching your boyfriend, and she has a feeling Edith might be on that brink.
She squeezes out a cloth and wipes the kitchen surface in slow, pensive swirls. It is a slog, marriage. How could she tell her daughter that without making it sound worse than it is? Built on hard work and tolerance, not some idea of perfection as Edith might have it. Miriam has had the thought in the past that Will Carter’s handsomeness is an emblem of Edith’s belief in perfection – or at least her belief in appearance. She hasn’t realised yet that looks count for nothing, that how things appear are nothing next to how they feel.
If she were here now, Edith would no doubt spout forth – rather self-righteously – on all the shortcomings that she, herself, would never put up with in a marriage, as if there were some gold standard from which she could not fall. She gets that from Ian, of course. Well, life isn’t like that. It is full of compromises you never thought you’d make when you were young. Marriage is good – that’s what she should say to Edith: that you get to an age when your attachments are so solidly stacked around you, like the bookshelves that reach to the ceiling in the lounge, and they are so built into the fabric of your life that compromise seems nothing next to their dismantling. Yes, she thinks, running the cloth under the tap and enjoying the warmth of the water through the rubber gloves, with age comes the recognition that one is grateful for love.
Looking out again to the garden and squeezing the cloth, she thinks back to their evening at the theatre last night; all their clever friends who loved to talk about books and philosophy. She’d wondered if they had more money and more sex (they couldn’t possibly have less sex) and better second homes or whether they were, perhaps, (well, one shouldn’t hope for these things) secretly miserable and having affairs.
‘Are we all here?’ Ian said, on the snowy pavement outside the Almeida theatre. ‘Ready to set off?’ Miriam looked at him, her handsome husband with his impeccable scarf in a cashmere double-loop. He was commanding – well, that’s Ian of course – but also vaguely distracted. Work, probably – it so often took over his mind. That was the cost of being married to The Great Surgeon and she noticed, then and there, a swell of pride.
They set off towards Le Palmier restaurant, talking and laughing, arms looped in arms. Miriam walked by herself, though she was at the centre of the group. She’d been crying – Lear always made her cry – and her body had a rather pleasurable spent feeling of release, while her stomach growled in hot anticipation of dinner. Someone took her arm – it was Patty, pressing her body close to Miriam’s. She got a blast of Patty’s perfume – Diorissima – even over the cold.
‘I thought that was just wonderful, didn’t you?’ said Patty.
‘Completely wonderful. I feel wrung out, in a good way,’ said Miriam. Thought Gloucester was a bit shouty though.’