I’ve been reading a new book about yet another failed relationship. Strangers: A Memoir Of Marriage by Belle Burden was published last month and it tells how, at the beginning of lockdown, in the setting of a sprawling second home in Martha’s Vineyard (a great backdrop for the inevitable Netflix movie), Belle receives a voicemail from an unknown number. It’s from a man, telling her that her husband of 21 years, the father of their three children, is cheating on her. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but your husband is having an affair with my wife.’
I know all too well the feeling of blood turning to ice in our veins.
Realising he’s been found out, Belle’s husband, James, is briefly apologetic and reassuring. Belle sends a message to the unknown number to find out how long the cheating has been going on and receives this: ‘I can’t text because my wife has tried to kill herself. She’s in an ambulance.’ James spends the evening on the phone to his suffering lover, in ‘caretaking’ mode.
I haven’t seen a photo of James, but have seen several of Belle, who was just 50 when she discovered she was being forced to be foolish, to live a lie. She is blonde, beautiful and effortlessly well connected: her maternal grandmother was the former Vogue fashion editor Babe Paley, better known as one of Truman Capote’s so-called ‘swans’, a close circle of glamorous socialites (like me, Capote got into hot water, was ostracised, for writing about anyone in his orbit).
My tried-and-tested theory is that men hate it if we are fabulous, always secretly resenting us, their limited imagination telling them that the cheapest, easiest way to trump us is by having an affair.
The most telling word Belle uses is ‘strangers’ and it’s true: you can be naked in bed with a man and have no clue what is going through his tiny, simple, devoid-of-funny-anecdotes, generosity or even kindness head. Is he thinking about your patch of cellulite as he thrusts boringly, repetitively, painfully (at our end) away, or of a text he has just sent to his other lover?
I was on the cusp of 50 when I found out my husband was cheating on me and, in a way, I was relieved: he wouldn’t have to witness me grow old. I would always be an amazing memory in his brain, a pinnacle he’d never be able to replicate. I was a performing seal, never a wife. My husband didn’t even like me, let alone love me.
Being well connected and rich, as Belle Burden is and I once was, turns you into a piece of rotting meat, him an annoying fly feeding off your insecurities. Men resent children, too: Belle’s husband’s almost instant riposte was to tell her icily, ‘You can have the house and the apartment. You can have custody of the kids… I don’t want any of it.’
One boyfriend told me he went off his wife when his son started crawling, ‘because it meant he’d never stay in one place’. The child growing up was her fault, naturally. Another ex told me, ‘I had my seven-year-old to stay for Christmas. I need at least three days to recover.’ I wonder now if my dad resented his seven offspring. He never once said or showed it.
All of the above make up one of the reasons I love Mini Puppy, and all my dogs. They are thrilled if I’ve been to M&S, pointy noses rummaging in carrier bags to see what treats are in store, never coming away disappointed, ungrateful as I failed to buy white pepper. They never shush me or fail to raise their huge brown eyes when I enter a room. I find peace in being alone, devoid of any human interaction. That way lies sadness. Let me shun it, and be no more of that…
JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK
- Zips on coats. I can never do them up! Why don’t fashion designers add buttons or press studs as back-up? I caught a chill! Thanks for that, Mango.
- Zoom meetings. You catch a glimpse of your face and your whole week is ruined.
- The Night Manager series two: I want darling Jed (Elizabeth Debicki) back!
