one who did the courting. I was the one who did the seducing. I was the one who managed the terms of the affair. I was even the one who decided when it was over. So you ask, Was he in love? and I reply, He was in gratitude.
[Silence.]
I often wondered, afterwards, what would have happened if instead of fending him off I had responded to his surge of feeling with a surge of feeling of my own. If I had had the courage to divorce Mark back then, rather than waiting another thirteen or fourteen years, and hitched up with John. Would I have made more of my life? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But then I would not be the ex-mistress talking to you. I would be the grieving widow.
Chrissie was the problem, the fly in the ointment. Chrissie was very attached to her father, and I was finding it more and more difficult to handle her. She was no longer a baby – she was getting on for two – and although her progress in speech was disturbingly slow (as it turned out, I needn't have worried, she made up for it in a burst later on), she was growing more agile by the day – agile and fearless. She had learned to clamber out of her cot; I had to hire a handyman to put in a gate at the head of the stairs in case she came tumbling down.
I remember one night Chrissie appeared without warning at my bedside, rubbing her eyes, whimpering, confused. I had the presence of mind to gather her up and whisk her back to her room before she registered that it wasn't Daddy in bed beside me; but what if I wasn't so lucky next time?
I was never quite sure what subterranean effect my double life might be having on Chrissie. On the one hand I told myself that as long as I was physically fulfilled and at peace with myself, the beneficial effects ought to seep through to her too. If that strikes you as self-serving, let me remind you that at that time, in the 1970s, the progressive view, the bien-pensant view, was that sex was a force for the good, in any guise, with any partner. On the other hand it was clear that Chrissie was finding the alternation between Daddy and Uncle John in the household puzzling. What was going to happen when she began to speak? What if she got the two of them mixed and called her father Uncle John? There would be hell to pay.
I have always regarded Sigmund Freud as, for the most part, bunk, starting with the Oedipus complex and proceeding to his refusal to see that children were being sexually abused in the homes of his middle-class clientele. Nevertheless I do agree that children, even very young ones, spend a lot of time trying to puzzle out their place in the family. In the case of Chrissie, the family had up to then been a simple affair: me, the sun at the centre of the universe, plus Mommy and Daddy, my attendant planets. I had put some effort into making it clear that Maria, who appeared at eight o'clock in the morning and disappeared at noon, was not part of the family setup. 'Maria must go home now,' I would say to her in front of Maria. 'Say ta-ta to Maria. Maria has her own little girl to feed and look after.' (I referred to Maria's one little girl in order not to complicate matters. I knew perfectly well that Maria had seven children to feed and clothe, five of her own and two passed on by a sister dead of tuberculosis.)
As for Chrissie's wider family, her grandmother on my side had passed away before she was born and her grandfather was tucked away in a sanatorium, as I told you. Mark's parents lived in the rural Eastern Cape in a farmhouse ringed by a two-metre- high electrified fence. They never spent a night away from home for fear the farm would be plundered and the livestock driven off, so they might as well have been in jail. Mark's elder sister lived thousands of miles away in Seattle; my own brother never visited the Cape. So Chrissie had the most stripped-down version of a family possible. The sole complication was the uncle who sneaked in through the back door at midnight and into Mommy's
[Silence.]
I often wondered, afterwards, what would have happened if instead of fending him off I had responded to his surge of feeling with a surge of feeling of my own. If I had had the courage to divorce Mark back then, rather than waiting another thirteen or fourteen years, and hitched up with John. Would I have made more of my life? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But then I would not be the ex-mistress talking to you. I would be the grieving widow.
Chrissie was the problem, the fly in the ointment. Chrissie was very attached to her father, and I was finding it more and more difficult to handle her. She was no longer a baby – she was getting on for two – and although her progress in speech was disturbingly slow (as it turned out, I needn't have worried, she made up for it in a burst later on), she was growing more agile by the day – agile and fearless. She had learned to clamber out of her cot; I had to hire a handyman to put in a gate at the head of the stairs in case she came tumbling down.
I remember one night Chrissie appeared without warning at my bedside, rubbing her eyes, whimpering, confused. I had the presence of mind to gather her up and whisk her back to her room before she registered that it wasn't Daddy in bed beside me; but what if I wasn't so lucky next time?
I was never quite sure what subterranean effect my double life might be having on Chrissie. On the one hand I told myself that as long as I was physically fulfilled and at peace with myself, the beneficial effects ought to seep through to her too. If that strikes you as self-serving, let me remind you that at that time, in the 1970s, the progressive view, the bien-pensant view, was that sex was a force for the good, in any guise, with any partner. On the other hand it was clear that Chrissie was finding the alternation between Daddy and Uncle John in the household puzzling. What was going to happen when she began to speak? What if she got the two of them mixed and called her father Uncle John? There would be hell to pay.
I have always regarded Sigmund Freud as, for the most part, bunk, starting with the Oedipus complex and proceeding to his refusal to see that children were being sexually abused in the homes of his middle-class clientele. Nevertheless I do agree that children, even very young ones, spend a lot of time trying to puzzle out their place in the family. In the case of Chrissie, the family had up to then been a simple affair: me, the sun at the centre of the universe, plus Mommy and Daddy, my attendant planets. I had put some effort into making it clear that Maria, who appeared at eight o'clock in the morning and disappeared at noon, was not part of the family setup. 'Maria must go home now,' I would say to her in front of Maria. 'Say ta-ta to Maria. Maria has her own little girl to feed and look after.' (I referred to Maria's one little girl in order not to complicate matters. I knew perfectly well that Maria had seven children to feed and clothe, five of her own and two passed on by a sister dead of tuberculosis.)
As for Chrissie's wider family, her grandmother on my side had passed away before she was born and her grandfather was tucked away in a sanatorium, as I told you. Mark's parents lived in the rural Eastern Cape in a farmhouse ringed by a two-metre- high electrified fence. They never spent a night away from home for fear the farm would be plundered and the livestock driven off, so they might as well have been in jail. Mark's elder sister lived thousands of miles away in Seattle; my own brother never visited the Cape. So Chrissie had the most stripped-down version of a family possible. The sole complication was the uncle who sneaked in through the back door at midnight and into Mommy's
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