Back in London, Mark walked around their bed in his black socks and white shirt-tails, throwing a tantrum because he’d misplaced a cufflink. The contrast between her husband and her lover astounded Evelyn all over again. It was as though both men were standing at the fork of two long roads. Eddy was thinking of just hopping on his bike and flying off down there at lightning speed, and Mark was trying to decide if he should pack an umbrella.
‘I don’t know why you can’t just come tonight. You have to eat dinner,’ he said.
‘I’ve told you already. I have a headache. And, besides, you know I’m not really needed.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him vent his anger by screwing up one of her face towels that had happened to find itself on top of his dresser, and throwing it on to the bed.
She knew that his bad mood was more to do with his inability to control her. It was the one contention in their marriage. ‘It’s your Northern-ness,’ he’d say, implying that still, after all these years of living in London, Evelyn had failed to conform in the ways he saw as mattering. Once, when she had complained about how hard it was to make proper friends in London, he had suggested she take elocution lessons.
‘I can’t see how my accent can be the problem! Unless it’s a problem for you.’ She had glared at him. ‘Is it?’
He had frowned as though she were a tiresome child. ‘Of course it’s not. But you’re the one always complaining you don’t fit in.’
‘I thought you loved how I spoke? I thought it was part of what attracted you to me?’
‘I do love how you speak, darling. Just not always what you say.’
He had been teasing her. But since then, she’d been determined to keep her accent. In fact, she decided she was going to work hard to re-introduce any ugly Northern terms she might have once tried to stamp out, just to annoy him further. But she didn’t keep it up.
He was now fastening the cufflink that he’d found. ‘What do you mean, you’re not really needed? I need you. Doesn’t that count? It’s a bloody dinner. No one’s asking you to change political allegiance or solve world poverty.’
Mark had a gentlemanliness that made swear words sound respectable. Something that had attracted her to him years ago. But recently, she had started to wish he would fume once in a while.
‘If it’s just a dinner, it shouldn’t be a big deal then, should it?’
‘Exactly. So why is it?’
‘Oh Mark . . .’ She thought she might burst if he didn’t leave her alone to her thoughts of Eddy. ‘I’m under the weather. I’m not in the mood to make polite conversation with another wife whom I don’t even know . . .’ She wanted to say, I just don’t think I can do it one more time, and I just don’t see why I have to. But that would have sounded selfish and spoilt, because it was selfish and spoilt. Generally, she played the dutiful wife, and sometimes she caught herself realising it wasn’t even an act. Yet she often wondered why it couldn’t have been her business dinner, with Mark trying to talk to some husband who didn’t want to be there. The old Evelyn would have gone to make Mark happy, simply because she loved him and he asked very little of her. But getting the letter from Eddy had given her new power.
She pretended to browse through a magazine, hoping this would be the end of it. As she moved her eyes over glossy pages of type, she was seeing herself riding in Eddy’s van, wishing he had driven their lives in a circle, back to when they had first met, so she could have her choice all over again.
When Mark was dressed, he turned and looked at her stretched out on the bed, with affection. He kissed her forehead. ‘Have it your way. It would be nice if you’re still up when I get home, though. I feel I haven’t properly seen you or talked to you in ages.’
‘But we spent the entire weekend together.’
‘Yes. But you didn’t seem there.’
Dear Eddy, she wrote, with delight, when she was certain Mark had gone and wasn’t coming back. She had been surprised to see that Eddy had supplied the address of his friend Stanley. How uncharacteristically furtive of him!
I was astonished to get your letter. I have not been able to get you out of my mind. I’m sorry I left so abruptly. It was cruel of me. But it was the only way I knew I would leave. If you had held me in your arms again, and said, Don’t go, I would not have gone. All the reasons why I had to would not have mattered.
I have spent hours analysing my feelings for you – whether I am genuinely in love, or motivated by a need for some colour in an otherwise monochrome existence. But now I see it as it simply is. I have everything I should want in my life, and yet there is something I want that seems to negate everything else. And, for a brief time, I had it with you. I keep coming back to that day our eyes met in the church, and that sense I had, almost immediately, that you were going to be central to something. Strangely enough, I believe my mother knew. I am sure she hoped that somehow, with a little help, we would find a second chance.
Thinking of us is all that keeps me happy these days. I wonder how long this spell I’m under will last, or if I’m destined to think of you forever.
I wonder if you will go on tending to the garden until the end of the growing season? I know we had this conversation, but I am enclosing money for the next few months. I really don’t know what my plans are any more. My resolve to sell the place has somehow weakened. I don’t know what our letters – if this is the start of a correspondence – will mean. But I am going to take it for what it is: a welcome addition to my rather confused life.
By the way, you were wrong about something. You said you understood that it would take a very special man to get me to leave my marriage, and you didn’t think you could possibly be him. Well, sitting here writing this, I couldn’t envision leaving my marriage for anyone who wasn’t you.