Evelyn drifted through the weekend as though she were furnished with light.
The routine was essentially the same as ever. She and Mark went to Buckinghamshire on Friday night, to their five-bedroom Georgian mansion that was only twenty miles outside London, set in eight acres of pasture and paddock. Normally, as soon as they arrived, Mark would become fossilised into sedentary, country life. They would walk the dogs: two basset hounds and a black Labrador – and Harry, the cocker spaniel, who lived with them in London. They would lunch together, and, in the afternoon, Mark would read the Financial Times in an armchair. Sometimes, Evelyn would bake an apple pie. On the land adjacent to the house, there was a converted coach house where the couple lived who tended to the horses and the dogs when she and Mark were up in town during the week. Evelyn liked the Kimberleys, and would pay a visit, taking over a little of what she had baked. When she was overcome with restless energy, she would take Thunder, her horse, out for a canter across the meadow; as his feet pounded the earth, the vibration set her free.
On occasion, she recognised that the house lacked the rumblings of children. Their marriage had needed to grow new life. The worst of it was that the Harley Street doctors had told them that they both were capable of producing a baby, just not with each other. She had wanted to say, Is that the most scientific explanation you can come up with? But Mark hadn’t questioned its nonsensicality, and he wouldn’t have thought it was her place to challenge an eminent doctor. She had often wondered, though, if he was secretly afraid of finding out that the problem might lie with him. It sat there silently between them, this ghost of some other, more fulfilled life that they each might have secretly felt they were owed. And so they kept dogs and horses, filling the blanks with lots of living things to convince them that no blanks existed: ignoring the truth that perhaps they should have adopted a baby years ago. Once she had turned forty, it seemed too late. They knew this because they had had the conversation for all of five minutes.
One day, the previous weekend, she had come across Lady Chatterley’s Lover on a shelf in their vast library. She’d read it when she first moved to London. D. H. Lawrence’s publisher had been acquitted in an obscenity trial at the Old Bailey a couple of years earlier. She had struggled to finish the novel then. But this time, she’d found herself reading it with new eyes.
Now she knew exactly how Constance Chatterley must have felt. In fact, by the time she had finished the novel, she was convinced she was Constance Chatterley. Only Constance hadn’t loved her gardener, not nearly in the same way, so it was quite different. She had hidden the book in a special place, between two of her favourite poetry books, to make it easy to find again.
But this particular Saturday, Evelyn couldn’t read or bake or ride because she couldn’t settle all the thoughts that were running riot. There was no room she could wander into where she could stay for more than a couple of minutes, no chair she could sit on, no task she could complete. Possibilities were rushing at her. Every cell of her body was alive with him again. He was full, and real and he was back! She could barely keep the feeling inside of her. Eddy’s voice, Eddy’s eyes, his laugh, his touch, his kiss – his letter had brought him so far to the fore again that she imagined Mark would be able to actually see him when he looked her in the eyes. So, for that reason, she tried to keep her distance. But when they were together, in the evening, in front of the telly, she found herself observing him out of the corner of her eye. Since returning from her week with Eddy, she had done this often – studied Mark without him knowing – slowly pulsing with guilt at how she had betrayed him. But this time was different. This time, it was the disquieting variety of guilt that came with knowing it wasn’t over.
On Sunday evening, they sat at opposite ends of the patio table overlooking the orchard that hummed and smelt of a rainy summer. They were eating Mrs Kimberley’s cottage pie when Evelyn said, ‘I hired a painter when I was back up home.’
‘Oh yes.’ Mark didn’t look up from his food.
‘Eddy, he’s called. Would you believe it, but it turns out that years ago I was supposed to go on a date with him, but I never turned up.’ She didn’t know why she had said that. She had just wanted to say his name.
Mark prodded peas with his fork. ‘Really? Well, that’s odd.’
She stared at the top of his head, aware of an aching void of displacement and loss. ‘Well, it’s not exactly odd. It’s just a coincidence. One of those “small world” things.’
Mark pierced his last pea.
‘He actually used to help my mother in the garden. He’s very nice. And a very pleasant-looking man, too.’ She struggled to be casual, but was like china, cracking.
Mark looked up from his food. There was a beat of hesitation, where she thought, He knows! Then he said, ‘Do we have any more of this? It’s very good.’
She wanted to say, I’m talking about adultery I’ve committed with a man I’m in love with, and you’re more interested in a pie! But, of course, she didn’t. Getting angry at Mark to somehow assuage her guilt about Eddy was a strategy that even she couldn’t approve of.
Even if she had said, He came every day. We spent hours together talking, doing errands, and we even went to the beach together . . . Mark would never be threatened by someone who had what he’d have labelled as a menial job. Besides, Mark was not the type to mistrust his wife. That would have been a character flaw and a personal failure he’d not have wanted to contend with – on her part, and on his own, for marrying her.
When they went to bed, she was relieved that he didn’t want to make love.
They usually did in the country.