A Traitor to Memory

In the personal realm, however, she'd had more difficulty. She'd placed the achievement of marriage and children before her thirty-fifth birthday, but she'd found it more challenging than she'd anticipated to attain a goal that involved the enthusiastic cooperation of another person. And it was marriage and children that she'd wanted: in that order. Yes, it was trendy to be “partners” with someone. Every third pop singer, film star, or professional athlete was living proof of that, congratulated in the tabloids on a daily basis for their mindless ability to reproduce, as if the act of reproduction itself took some sort of talent that only they possessed. But Jill was not a woman easily swayed by what bore the appearance of a trend, particularly when it came to her Master List of Accomplishments. One did not achieve one's goals by taking shortcuts that were nothing but passing vogues.

The aftermath of her affair with Jonathon had for a time seriously undermined her confidence in her ability to reach her marital and maternal objective. But then Richard had come into her life, and she'd quickly seen that an accomplishment that had so far eluded her was finally within her reach. In the world of her grandparents—even of her parents—to have become lovers with Richard before a formal commitment had been made between them would have been both foolhardy and ruinous. Indeed, even today there were probably a dozen agony aunts whose advice—considering Jill's ultimate objective—would have been to wait for the ring, the church bells, and the confetti before embarking on any kind of intimacy with one's intended bridegroom, or at least to have used what were euphemistically called “precautions” until such a time as the deal was signed, sealed, and registered in the customary way. But Richard's earnest pursuit of her in the aftermath of Jonathon's failure to leave his wife constituted a phase in Jill's life that was both flattering and essential. His desire for her had aroused an equal desire in her, and she was deeply gratified to feel it since, after Jonathon, she'd begun to wonder if she would ever feel that hot aching hunger—unlike any other hunger—for a man again.

And that hunger, Jill had found, was firmly tied to impregnation. It might have been due to a dawning knowledge of how few years she actually had left for childbirth, but every time she and Richard made love in those first months, her body had strained to take him into her more deeply, as if the sole act of surging towards him would ensure that their contact produced a child.

So she'd gone at marriage backwards, but what did it matter? They were happy with each other, and Richard was devotion itself.

Still, she had the occasional flicker of doubt, a memento left her by Jonathon's promises and Jonathon's lies. And while, when doubts surfaced, she reminded herself that the two men were absolutely nothing alike, there were times when a shadow cast on Richard's face or a silence in the midst of a discussion between them triggered a set of worries within her that she tried to tell herself were unnecessary and unreal.

Even if Richard and I don't marry, she would lecture herself in her worst moments, Catherine and I shall be perfectly all right. I've a career to fall back on, for heaven's sake. And the age of unmarried mothers being social pariahs has long since passed.

But that wasn't really the point, was it, her long-range-planning self would argue. The point was marriage and husband as well. And the larger point was family, which she chose to define as father-mother-child.

So now she said pleasantly to Richard with that ultimate goal in mind, “Darling, if you'd only see it, I know you'd agree.” They were in Richard's car on the way to South Kensington from Shepherd's Bush in order to keep an engagement with an estate agent who was going to determine a selling price for Richard's flat. This was progress in the right direction to Jill's way of thinking, since they obviously couldn't live en famille in Braemar Mansions once the baby was born. There was far too little room.

She was privately grateful for this additional indication of Richard's positive marital intentions, but she hadn't yet been able to understand why they couldn't take the next step and have a look at a suitable detached house—completely renovated—that she'd managed to locate in Harrow. Looking at the house didn't mean they were going to have to buy it, for heaven's sake. And since she hadn't yet put her own flat up for sale—“let's not both be homeless at once,” Richard had advised when she'd suggested doing so—there was little chance that having a simple look at a building on offer would result in their owning it on this very day. “It would give you a sense of what I have in mind for us,” she told him. “And if you don't like what I have in mind once you see it, at least we'll know straightaway and I can change course.” Not that she would, naturally. She would merely expend more careful and subtle effort to bring him round to her way of thinking.

“I don't need to see it to know what you have in mind, darling,” Richard replied as they trundled along in moderately bearable traffic, considering the time of day. “Modern conveniences, double glazing, fitted carpet, and large gardens in both front and back.” He looked over at her and smiled affectionately. “Tell me I've got it wrong and I'll buy you dinner.”

“You'll buy me dinner either way,” she told him. “If I'm on my feet long enough to cook you a meal, I'll swell up like a ham.”

“But tell me I've got it wrong about the house.”