‘What is the matter? Please tell me. You’ve not been the same since yesterday, since the bomb.’ They had shared that pinprick of time, when she had suddenly caught sight of him, and he had caught sight of her, and his heart had somehow taken flight. Her face had been full of love for him in a way that he didn’t think he’d seen before. Her eyes had glistened with tears. And it was then that he had realised how lost he would be if he were ever to be without her.
And yet, as he stood here, he could almost see her brain composing words. Words that would hurt him. He hoped she wouldn’t speak them. He feared something, and yet he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was.
He sat down in the leather chair opposite the fireplace, unable to take his eyes off her. Christmas was coming. He just wanted Evelyn happy for Christmas. She usually loved this time of the year – and he had always loved the pleasure she had taken in decorating their tree and ordering all their festive treats; she was like a child. ‘What’s got you looking like this, Evelyn? Tell me. You can tell me anything, you know that.’ He said it, but it wasn’t true. Then a horrible thought occurred to him: what if she is ill?
She slowly swung her legs around so that she could sit up properly. It seemed to take her a moment or two to orientate herself. She was ill. He was sure of it. She was going to give him horrible news. Suddenly, he saw his life unfolding without her. But that was the thing. It didn’t unfold. It stopped. He couldn’t see a future without Evelyn.
‘There’s something I never told you,’ she finally said. ‘Something you’re not going to want to hear . . .’
She was dying. He would always remember: Evelyn told me the terrible news right before Christmas. He could already see the funeral: the cathedral, all his friends. Nineteen eighty-FOUR. His first year as a widower. All these tomorrows rushed at him, blinding him like he had just stepped into a blizzard.
‘I met a man when I was back home,’ she said. ‘My mother’s gardener. Someone I knew years ago. We had an affair.’
He was sure he could actually feel the blood leaving his body. If he had been standing, his legs might have given out. His first thought was that he had misheard. His second was relief that she wasn’t dying. His wife had slept with a gardener? Was that what she’d just said?
Maybe he wasn’t hearing straight.
But he knew he was hearing straight.
And then it came to him. ‘I knew,’ he said, gazing at the floor. The pattern on the rug blurred, its sharp colours mingling through the glaze of his tears. Harry was lying on the rug between them, warming himself in front of the fire without a care in the world, just like Mark wanted to be. Happily married to a happy wife at Christmas, without a care in the world. ‘What I mean is,’ he said when he could speak again, ‘I suppose I suspected.’
Had he? Well, perhaps not exactly that. But he’d always suspected that he would never be able to keep her; his time to lose her would come. Her spirited independence had attracted him to her years ago, and he would never have wanted to change anything about her, but he had hoped that, over time, she would have become slightly more stable. She had a good life – he’d tried to give her everything he could – and yet she seemed to long for the past more than she enjoyed the present, and he’d always known he could never give her that. He plucked absently at the edges of the dark-green throw that was strewn over the arm of the chair. He had a habit of fiddling with things when he got nervous. A habit from his boyhood. He used to have a slight stammer, too. But he had conquered that because people mocked him and he hated being mocked.
‘So wait a minute. Am I to conclude you were going to go back and see him, this gardener’ – he could barely say the word – ‘yesterday?’ Hadn’t she mentioned hiring someone to paint the house? He hadn’t really been listening, unsure about how a story about her mother’s gardener could possibly be of interest to him. But why hadn’t he listened? Evelyn never made idle conversation.
‘Yes,’ she answered, like a witness under oath.
‘I knew,’ he said again, with more surprise than animosity. He had known something was wrong as they had walked back home. Once she had got over the relief – at least, he’d thought until now that it was relief – of seeing him alive, she had seemed like a ghost of herself.
‘Does anyone else know about this?’ he asked. He would process it better if it was contained. But women could never keep anything secret. She’d probably told everyone at her dance class, half of Covent Garden and all the wives in their circle.
‘No,’ she said, and he all but wilted with relief. Then he felt guilty that this should even matter.
He sat there trying to read the situation. Adultery happened. That said, it was usually the husbands committing it. It seemed entirely different when it was a wife. His wife. He still couldn’t believe it. He felt hurt more than betrayed. Just hurt. And sad. Normally, he’d have switched on the Christmas tree lights by now. The unlit tree felt symbolic. Her betrayal of him suddenly tore at his heart.
‘So what does this mean?’ he asked her, somewhat disgruntled that she appeared to have the upper hand, and he was having to almost implore her to tell him where they stood. But he dreaded her answer. He genuinely didn’t know where this was all leading. It was hard for him to imagine her wanting to be with someone other than him. Not because he had a vastly high opinion of himself, just that he, himself, had never felt any need to be unfaithful, so it was hard to get his head around why she had. Though, he could have been unfaithful, he was sure, if he had wanted to be. It was what people of his class regularly did. But the difference was that he would have been discreet. And he certainly wouldn’t have stooped as low as to do it with the hired help.
He was sure there must have been someone she’d have told.
‘Are you in love with him?’