was left to charity than that. Her own relatives – all distant cousins – would fume when they found out what she had done only at the reading of the will. It would be like a scene from Dickens. Such a shame she by definition would be unable to attend.
I’ll specify that my will is read in the drawing room, she decided. If there is an afterlife of the sort that allows me to come, then I’ll make sure I’m present. I’ll swing from the chandelier with the ghosts of past Jacks. That is something to look forward to in all the grim prospect of death. A last hurrah.
She looked down at her chapter.
The House that Jack Built – Chapter Thirty – My Old Age
At first, I wasn’t keen on Paul Whittingham. He never appreciated me in his youth, bringing his long-haired friends home to smoke spliffs in the snug and tell his mother that the smell came from the joss sticks. Employment sobered him. The hair was cut, a suit donned, and the city beckoned. He followed his father into Lloyd’s shipping. How his ancestor the admiral would’ve scoffed to see his flesh and blood sitting at a computer screen analysing the risks of going through the Suez or around the Horn. Go out there and see for yourself, he would’ve bawled in his voice that carried over the storm. But Paul was made for comfort. Not for him was life on the High Seas; he was born for riding a desk and drinking down the pub with his friends. They all grew soft, rounded faces and bellies, hair retreating, courage shrivelling. The irony is that the Eighties made these men out to be heroes. Insurance, as he told the woman he was wooing, is much more interesting than it seems.
He was lying to her, of course. All the men who brought their wives here have lied to them one way or another. All have had mistresses. Sometimes that mistress was a woman, more rarely a man, on occasion the sea. Best of all was when their first love was me.
I dismissed this new wife of Paul’s at the beginning, thinking she was too flighty for the flabby insurance broker. A dancer, he told his mother proudly. A prima ballerina. Or had been. Bridget Taylor had risen through the ranks of the Royal Ballet but, before she could take on any of the leading roles, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She rejected the temptation of pushing herself beyond her body’s limits, resigned from the ballet and took to temping – quite a come down for one who had dreamed of her name in lights. And then Paul fished her from the typing pool. Needing a respectable date for the company Christmas dinner at the Savoy, his eye fell on the elegant secretary in her neat French suits. As the date turned into a relationship, he found he wanted to lose a few pounds, take up some active hobbies, even attend the opera with her if she so wished. They never went to the ballet. She didn’t ask and he never suggested. He learnt tactfulness in his middle years.
His mother was delighted her lacklustre son had polished himself up. She handed over the house and moved to Bournemouth where her sister lived. A Jack returning to the sea – none of us were surprised.
Paul went on one knee to propose under the lilac tree while it rained down bridal confetti. He offered his bride his love, his considerable income, a share in his pension, and a house. It was me that decided the lady in his favour. She liked him well enough, but her first love had been dancing and that had died on her. Rather than be a widow for the rest of her life, she settled for the pleasant prospect I offered.
They hoped for children to fill the empty rooms, but Paul was never the most virile of men. His wife languished, wondering what was wrong with her. It was only after his accident that she discovered what she was missing.
Bridget put a line through that last paragraph. It was all true: Paul in another age would’ve realised that he was gay, or at least more suited to celibacy. Instead he’d taken the route most thought inevitable in those days: a heterosexual marriage. That didn’t mean she wanted that private failing laid open to all those who read her account so they could dissect and dismember. The house had witnessed it, as well as their mutual relief when they no longer had to pretend they enjoyed the marital bed after Paul had retired from active service. It was his sporting hobby that brought about that state of affairs. Tennis. Not a collision on court or anything of that nature, but a tumble from the balcony of the tennis club when he’d drank too much champagne – a more middle-class fate could not be imagined, he had always joked. She didn’t want readers to get the wrong idea about Paul. He could be huge fun and was blessed with an acerbic sense of humour about himself. They’d liked each other quite fiercely. The way he dealt with his injury was the truly heroic period of his life. They may even have grown to love each other a little.
His injury had also set her free. With his tacit consent, she had looked elsewhere for sex. As long as there were no consequences, she was free to choose. The house had witnessed her embarkation on what was to be a series of affairs. It had been with their first tenant, an Italian naval officer who lodged with them for a glorious six months, that she’d discovered the sensuous woman hidden inside her. If only she could’ve still danced professionally, she was sure she would now have produced incandescent performances as the many lovers in the prima ballerina’s repertoire. She hadn’t known enough when she was twenty-one, even though she had thought she knew it all, in the way the young have to think they are the first to discover love. Silvano he’d been called, which sounded romantic even before he started whispering sweet demands in his husky Italian. They’d had their trysts up in the attics on a daybed she’d stored up there, safe from interruption as Paul kept to the ground floor. She’d even danced again, just a little, as her lover lay back on the cushions and watched. Brava! he’d said. Brava!
Everyone should have one lover like that Italian in their life, she thought. One Silvano.
‘Mrs Whittingham! I’m just off!’ called Jonah.
‘I’m in the kitchen!’ Her tenant was a very different kind of man to Silvano but equally interesting in his own way: a talented actor if she was any judge.
He stuck his head round the door. ‘I’ll be late – night shoot.’
‘I’ll leave the chain off the front door for you.’
‘Thanks. Hard at work I see?’
‘I don’t suppose you want to read it, do you?’ She was only teasing. Jonah hadn’t proved to be a sympathetic audience for her work so she didn’t pursue him any longer. She’d given up with Kris too, and Rose all that time ago, and the forgotten ones in between. Perhaps Jenny would be the right reader? Her bookshelf was promising.
‘I’m afraid I won’t have time. I’ve got to learn my lines.’
‘You dodged that bullet very nicely, Jonah. Well done.’
He returned her smile with a brief one of his own. She’d been helping him have an easier time at college and on set by teaching him some of the tact than he’d missed out on in his unorthodox education.
‘What do you think of Jenny?’ she asked, curious what he’d made of this rival in the house.
‘She’s lovely and odd all at the same time.’
‘Lovely and odd. Hmm, yes, I suppose that’s accurate. She should fit in then. You find her attractive?’
He shrugged, clearly not wanting to answer that. ‘She played me a tune on that fiddle of hers that put a knife right in the gut – it was amazing.’
‘I thought I could hear music when I went to bed.’
‘We were in the snug. Did we disturb you?’
She knew full well he’d gone out on the balcony again but unless she actually saw him on it, she didn’t feel it her place to reprimand him. It meant he didn’t fog up the snug with