“Oh no. There’s nothing organically wrong with her, except the broken hip. People can live a long time with dementia.”
Tricia left her mother in the hospital for the night and went home. Helen had fed the younger children fish and chips and put them to bed. The papers were all over the kitchen table. Tricia cleared them up automatically while making a cup of tea. Then Mark came in, whistling a hymn, his briefcase in his hand and a bag over his shoulder.
“You’re home already,” he said.
“Where have you been?” Tricia asked.
She guessed at once, because he immediately looked guilty.
“You’ve been with a woman, haven’t you?”
Mark hesitated for a moment, expressions passing over his face—guilt, belligerence, suspicion, and at last his normal arrogance. “Our marriage is a nonsense, it has been for years. You know that. You don’t want me and you never have. You’d see that if you looked at it calmly.”
“I’m perfectly calm,” Tricia said, and she was. The kettle boiled and she poured the water onto the teabag in her cup. “What are you going to do?”
“How do you mean?”
“Are you going to leave us? Do you want a divorce so you can marry this woman?”
“You forget, I’m a Catholic, I can’t have a divorce. And we could hardly have this marriage annulled with four children to show for it.”
“You’re such a hypocrite, Mark,” Tricia said, still standing with one hand on the handle of the kettle. “Adultery is all right, betrayal of marriage vows is all right, but divorce, oh no, unthinkable. You write all the time about ethics and virtue and logic, but I think you might apply some of those things to your own behavior.”
“You’re acting like a child,” Mark said, always his accusation. Usually he made her feel like a child, but not tonight.
“I think you should leave. Go back to her, or go somewhere, but leave the house. I don’t want to see you here.”
“All right, I will.” Mark was flushed with anger now. “You don’t know anything about making a man happy. You never did. I stayed with you from duty, I supported you all these years.”
“Just go away!” Tricia shouted. “Now.”
He drew a breath and turned his back and walked down the stairs and out of the front door.
When he had gone she sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the shelves of china against her terracotta walls. When she tried to drink her tea she realized she was shaking when she spilled it all over her hands. She had called him a hypocrite. She had told him to go, and he had gone. Her mother was in hospital. Helen had thought about somebody who wasn’t herself and coped just like an adult. She picked up the mug in both hands and carried it to her mouth.
17
Three Is Enough: Pat 1967–1969
The moon landing took Pat by surprise, as it did most people. Of course she’d noticed Sputnik, and Gagarin, but somehow reaching the moon seemed more significant. In the BBC’s translation of Leonov’s words the Russians claimed the moon for all the peoples of the Earth, but she felt it ominous that they were there, and even more ominous later when they went back and began building a base. She looked up at the full moon from their garden in Harston and felt it brooded over them.
Bee felt completely differently. “It’s a triumph for science. Didn’t you ever read science fiction? Donald and I used to read Astounding whenever we could get it. The moon’s the first step. It doesn’t matter who got there first. It’s part of our future in space. I wonder what they’ll do with hydroponics in their moon base. I’d love to work on that.”
“They could drop bombs from there,” Pat said.
“They can hurl missiles up from Earth just as easily,” Bee said, and frowned. “Did you see the cancer cluster figures? I don’t think there’s any doubt that it’s because of Kiev fallout. Children with thyroid cancer, that’s appalling. The Americans weren’t thinking about us at all when they dropped that bomb. We have our own space agency. I’d like to see some Europeans up there too.”