“Oh, please don’t. I’ll be peeing all night. Look.” I turned the cup over the saucer and shook it; a couple of drops came out. “See, all gone.” I got off the chair and onto my knees, put the cup and saucer down, and inched the two feet across the carpet.
I know, Gil, you don’t want to read this. But you have to, every word. No skipping or skimming; this, my love, is your punishment. All I ask is that afterwards you break that stupid rule of yours and you remove these letters from their books and get rid of them. (More things our children mustn’t read.)
This is what happened—the facts, the reality. I’ve always found that reality is so much more conventional than imagination. And over the years I’ve imagined far too many things: your women, your places, your actions.
Jonathan’s knees were together; I opened them and kneeled in the space between. I took his glass of whiskey and put it on the floor behind me, and then I kissed him. He tasted of alcohol and sweetness; of the first spoonful of Christmas pudding after the flame has gone out. I hadn’t kissed another man for more than sixteen years.
He pulled away but I took his bottom lip in between my teeth and bit, gently. I lifted my dress over my head, undid my bra, stood up and took off my knickers. I waited in front of him naked, and he held my buttocks and pulled me to him, pressing his face between my legs and breathing me in, long, deep breaths. It was me who had to break away then, had to reach out to pull his shirt from his trousers and unzip him. Everything we did, the kissing, the undressing, the touching, everything was done slowly, as if at any time we were allowed to change our minds. Neither of us did. And when he came inside me as I sat astride him, his hands on my breasts, I watched his old familiar face from the perfect angle, and not once did I think of you.
In the morning I was woken by the click of the hotel door closing. The empty space beside me was still warm. Jonathan had left a note on the pillow:
I told you I couldn’t do this. I’m going to see Gil to get him to meet you at the Swimming Pavilion. Go home to your husband.
Jonathan x
PS—Sorry about Ireland.
I am grateful that he felt you and I, our marriage, our family, were more important than his flight to Addis Ababa, more important than anything he and I could’ve had together, but I don’t deserve it, any of it. I never meant for this to be my life.
Time, tomorrow, for one more letter.
Ingrid
[Placed in The Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss, 1812.]
Chapter 43
They left Gil sleeping, still wearing the pink dress and with an empty glass beside him. Gabriel turned the music down, and Jonathan took the bottle with a drop of whiskey remaining out to the veranda. The rain stopped and the eaves dripped onto the rail and splashed onto the weeds below.
Jonathan lifted a fat hand-rolled cigarette from the top pocket of his shirt and held it out to Flora.
“I brought this for Gil, but perhaps the whiskey has done the same trick. You should have it.”
She took it from him, rolled it between her fingers, and held it up to her nose: the faintest whiff of tobacco and marijuana, waves of dusky orange.
“Or smoke it now. Why don’t you and Gabriel take it to the beach?”
Flora looked at Gabriel, who shrugged. She stared at the window into the bedroom.
“Go on,” Jonathan said. “He’s sleeping. He’s fine, and Nan will be home soon.”
Richard had phoned to say he had discovered a muddy and wet Nan on the promenade in Hadleigh. She’d got a lift in a passing van halfway there and walked the rest of the way across the fields. Nan had gone to find Viv, but a notice was pinned to the door saying the bookshop was closed due to staff illness, and Nan didn’t know where Viv lived. Richard said he would take her for a warm drink and then drive her home.
Flora stood up, still hesitating. There was something she was meant to tell Jonathan, something that Nan would have said, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
“Do you want to come to the beach again?” she said to Gabriel. “Where we went last time?”
They sat on the rocks at the bottom of the chine and looked out at the sea, grey and choppy in the wind. A couple of boys were lobbing stones into the waves. It was chilly, the tide was in, and only pebbles and a strip of seaweed showed along the edge of the water.
“I was sorry to hear about your mother,” Gabriel blurted out. “Her disappearance, I mean.” He hugged himself and blushed. “I still think of that afternoon I spent with the two of you. I should have got in touch but I wasn’t sure it would be welcome.”
They watched the boys flicking seaweed with sticks and bending to poke at whatever it was they had found underneath.
“What do you think about smoking this?” Flora said, holding the joint up.
“Yes, sure,” Gabriel said. “Do you have any matches?”