The Line Between Us (22 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

I remembered the harvest time that year and how mechanical it seemed, with no real sense of satisfaction at the gathering in. I was thrown off course by Mr Brown’s death, his poor tumbled body always in my sight and as autumn flamed into the valley, the leaves looked bloodied on the trees. I couldn’t find a place for myself. Wherever I was – at home, in the tool shed, in the vineyard – I didn’t want to be. I felt untethered and utterly at a loss. A pall of November mist lay over us and the nights began to close in around Nanagalan. I had forgotten that bereavement could be so peremptory in its comings and goings – anything could set me off: the Sunday hymn singing, a glimpse of the motor in the garage, seeing the first robin of the winter busy with its beaky gleanings in the kitchen garden, just about anything would have me burying my face in the crook of my arm, cuffing away my own grief’s gleanings.

Jenny was good to me in those troubled months. In her quiet way she accompanied me through the days of mourning. It was like being orphaned all over again. I couldn’t grasp what had happened, I couldn’t make sense of it and she was gentle with me in my bewilderment. I think she was as shocked as I was and we passed each other on the stairs going up to bed, or in the kitchen making breakfast with the same numb expression on our faces. I became used to the slight touch of the comfort she tried to give me: a hand on my shoulder, a glance in my direction when the spate was on me. “The busy heart?” she’d say, reminding me of the Rupert Brooke poem from our courting days. It was a kindness that reached me from a distance, but it was a kindness that reached me. She’d look at me with a downward turn of her mouth that was almost a smile, as though she were in some way culpable, as though she would have changed things, if only she could.

We made it through that disconsolate winter and into the quietude of early spring. With the first stirrings of the garden I had fleeting moments of hope that the worst would soon be over and that 1939 would bring some promise with it, or at least some respite. In chapel at the Easter Service, washed clean with prayer on my knees before God, I had the first real intimation of remission. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. I took some early daffs up to Mr Brown’s grave, safe in the embrace of the churchyard wall, and I looked at the inscription on his headstone and discovered with a pang that he was called Wilfred. I stood there for a while with my head bowed, thinking of all the other things about him that I should have liked to have known.

The storm which had the shaking of Mrs Brown blew itself out soon enough and she began taking herself off to the Fleece of a Friday evening.

“For a port and lemonade, just the one,” she said, but each week the jet brooch she wore in memory of her late husband was pinned to her collar at a jauntier angle. “It’s for the company,” she said over her shoulder as she set off up the drive. “That’s all.”

She found some company rather quickly, all things considered. Within six months of Mr Brown dying she had the butcher from Llancloudy under her flaky spell and I tried not to picture her reading aloud to him about black pudding faggots, caul fat and stout gravy.

When the new Mrs Hughes moved away from Nanagalan after a whirlwind romance, you shut down more rooms in the house, engaged a part-time cook and at one of our weekly meetings you told me you were going to learn to drive.

“I’m also going to grow my hair long and let birds nest in it, clothe myself in the wedding dress I’m never going to wear and seal myself up here in mouldering splendour, growing a little madder with every year that passes. You can’t say I’m not planning ahead.” You kept me at arm’s length with your brittleness. It was when you were in pensive mood, glancing at me at then looking away, opening your mouth to speak and saying nothing, that I could almost convince myself that things were as they had always been between us. We avoided any kind of awkward acknowledgement by being cordial, by taking a polite interest in aspects of each other’s lives which had no meaning. We were so successful that sometimes I wondered if I had dreamed that we kissed each other on a June night, the gasp of your lips parting at the touch of mine.

When you said that you were learning to drive, you neglected to mention that Nicholas had offered to teach you. One unfurling, sap-filled afternoon in the spring, I was mowing the lawn on Dancing Green, lulled by the reach and retreat of the lawn mower and the green spume of the cut grass when I heard the sound of an engine – not the hiccoughing lurch of the Daimler making a cautious descent, but something lighter – with torque, I suppose, and sophistication. Looking up I saw an open-topped blue sports car skimming down towards the house. You were driving, with your hands braced against the steering wheel and your hair, escaping from a scarf, scattered like largesse in the wind. From here it looked as though your eyes were tightly closed. You skidded to a halt in front of the Herbar, making Jenkins, who was planting rose trees, dive for cover.

“Steady on, old girl,” said your instructor, guffawing. He was in the first sprawl of middle age, his sandy hair reduced to a few strands, sporting more moustache than was strictly necessary as if to compensate. He had the studied casualness which the rich spend money to acquire: the artless cravat, the open-necked shirt, the blazer just so. “Jolly good show, though. How about a spot of reversing?”

I continued the precision engineering of my stripe of lawn, making a study of both of you together. It was like watching a film with the sound turned down so that all your gestures seemed exaggerated, your expressions too pronounced, the two of you performing for each other the larger than life “driving lesson”. I fought to keep the line straight as I imagined Nicholas, salivating, pressing himself up against you, and you, hurting yourself in his tight embrace.

In April, when Germany denounced the mutual assistance pact that Mr Chamberlain had signed with Poland, the government introduced conscription and called up men aged twenty and twenty-one for six months’ military training. Jenkins became more precipitate than usual, rushing from job to job in a state of high alert and he started working on a new list. When I first met him he recited the names of flowers to me. Now, if I came upon him unawares clipping the box hedges in the Herbar or pruning the spring flowering shrubs, he was whispering about weaponry under his breath, “… the Thompson M1928, the Thompson M1928A1, the Bren light machine gun, the Lewis gun, the Vickers K machine gun, the M2 Browning machine gun, the Lee Enfield bolt action magazine fed repeating rifle …”

“You’ve missed some, back there,” I said indicating a straggling tuft of box. “You need to keep your mind on the job, my lad.”

He jumped up, nervily. “Yes, Mister?” he said, looking at something just beyond my left shoulder.

“You need to think about what you’re doing,” I said mildly. A scent of resin rose from the clippings. In the distance I could hear the crow of a cock, snared on the valley breeze.

“I’ll be doing my bit, soon, that’s what I’ll be doing,” he said, rising up onto the balls of his feet, readying himself for action. “I’ve had my papers.”

God in heaven, I thought. I glanced at the boyish set of Jenkins’ head, his snub nose, his freckles. He looked barely old enough to be in long trousers. He looked as though he’d still have conkers in his pockets and scabs on his knees.

“You’ll be doing important work here, growing food and suchlike, if the war kicks off.”

“But what if my country needs me?”

“You don’t have to go, not if you’re working the land.”

“I’m going to do my bit,” he reiterated, dropping back down onto all fours and resuming the clipping of the hedge. As I set off for the vineyard to remove some of the early side shoots from the vines, I could hear him mouthing the names of different kinds of hand grenade.

Nicholas appeared to be giving you more driving lessons then you really needed, or so it seemed to me.

CHAPTER FIFTY

I remembered thinking, after a while, that Jenny took the death of Mr Brown harder than the rest of us which, when I thought about it, didn’t quite add up, as the two of them were never close. She looked withdrawn and her kindness began to have a vague abstraction to it, as though it had become detached from any real sympathy. I came home one evening and she was cleaning my best boots, slathering on the blacking then polishing them until stray bristles flew from the brush.

“That’s my job. You don’t have to do that.”

“I was doing my own,” she replied, panting a little with the effort. “And anyway, a good wife should look after her husband,” she said, buffing the leather to a shine and I thought then that she had been a good wife to me, that between us we had reached an accommodation. I washed my hands and sluiced my head and neck under the kitchen tap. Lately, her studies – she was doing some sort of certificate in advanced librarianship – seemed to take up more and more of her time and when she came home she was often so exhausted she would lie on the bed for half an hour, although when I looked in on her she was frequently staring up at the ceiling, her jaw tense, not sleeping. I thought the polishing and the mending – sheets turned sides to middle, buttons sewn, elbows patched – were some kind of reparation for her being late so regularly, or absent even when she was here.

Then, out of the blue she started preparing elaborate meals, kneading pastry, making batter – and the sauces! What on earth is a béchamel sauce and why would you want to cook it on a Wednesday?

“You don’t have to –” I’d begin, “Simple food … like we always … you know … is fine by me,” and she’d shake her head and start whisking, or stirring, or folding in (the phrases we were learning) even faster.

One day I came home from work and she was in the kitchen, standing at the table resting her weight on her fists, her head slung low as if the burden of it were too much for her to support any longer.

“I’m five months pregnant,” she said, without looking up. “And Emlyn won’t leave his wife.”

I was halfway to hanging my jacket on the back of the door and I halted, wondering if I should loop it over the chair instead, because suddenly I didn’t seem to have the energy to reach the hook. The jacket was a tired old thing that I’d had for ages, made from some kind of waxed canvas that was wearing through in places. After a moment or two I folded it over my arm, smoothing it flat. It seemed oddly empty of me.

“Who’s Emlyn?” I said, glancing over at my wife. She lifted her head, tipping it right back then arching her spine as if she were in discomfort and the intimacy of the action was shocking, in a way, something I felt I shouldn’t have seen. I took a step back. I couldn’t locate myself in my own kitchen.

“He’s my lover.”

“You’re pregnant?” I would have looked at her belly then, but she sat herself in her chair and folded her hands in her lap.

“We’ve been lovers for two years and friends before that.”

“Emlyn?” I held my jacket to my chest as insulation, hugging it close, resting my chin against the material while I tried to think. The shoulder was splitting at the seam and the cotton was fraying. “When’s it due? The – baby?”

“We work together at the library. It’s due in October.”

“This has been going on for two years?” I said, trying to make sense of what she was telling me. I sat down abruptly. “I … I don’t know what to say.”

Her hands weren’t folded in her lap, they were resting against her stomach, and I was conscious of the fluttering communion between her and the baby – the searching, reassuring pressure of her fingers. I could feel her gaze upon me, her face tilting this way and then that in contemplation. “If I didn’t know better,” she said, “I could almost believe you cared.”

I shook my head, sorrowfully. “I do care. That’s the whole point. I’ve always cared.”

Jenny raised her eyebrows at that.

My mouth was inordinately dry and I wanted the cleansing respite of a cold glass of water, but I didn’t seem to be able to find the vigour to stand up and cross to the sink. I felt as if all my vital strength had been taken from me. I stared at Jenny, imagining her as a stranger I had just met to see what I would make of her if I didn’t know, and the longer I regarded her the less familiar she seemed to me.

“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” she said. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Sauce for the goose?” I could hear the geology of shock and disbelief and shame and anger in the harsh seams of my voice and I didn’t know how to soften it. Her air of preoccupation over recent months – over years, over years – was starting to make sense. When I looked carefully, I could see her altered state in everything about her: in the rounding of her cheeks, the knot of her black hair that was loosened and glossy, the motherhood bloom of her, all of it made new and differently and not by me.

“I do care,” the words, when I repeated them, had the same truth they had always had for me. I wanted her to know about the damage she was inflicting.

“You never loved me, Ifor. Let’s not pretend. It would insult me if you tried to pretend.”

I thought of Brown’s words. Fond isn’t worth the paper that it’s written on. It seemed that he was right. “Perhaps not as you wanted me to.” I said. “I’ve always thought we were quite alike, you and I. Quiet souls; bookish, and so forth.” I felt as if the stuffing, the breath, everything, had been knocked out of me. “Two years?” I shook my head. There was something to mourn in that time and I, so inured to grieving, hadn’t realised.

“If you had given me a single sign. If you had shown the faintest interest,” she said, leaning forward with vehemence. “But all you thought about was – what was it you called her? – your employer.”

I made as if to stand up, thinking of cold water, thinking of fresh air, thinking my wife is pregnant with another man’s child. “At least I’ve been – loyal.” I placed my head in my hands, as if I could contain my thoughts, as if I could protect their thin bone casing. That June night, you at the door with your champagne, you in this room, you in my arms. The stammer and choke of abstinence: of not touching, of not undoing, of not sinking then lying then holding then having. Your shadow on these walls flickering all around me, and all the while Jenny had been spreading her legs for her librarian.

“He won’t leave his wife. He’s told me. He’s made it very clear,” she said, her voice for the first time beginning to falter. “He has two daughters, and a job, and a life that he … doesn’t want to give up.” She pressed her lips together, but couldn’t stop them trembling. I saw the brimming in her eyes, pent tears on the brink of overflowing. “It’s not being enough,” she whispered. “For anybody. That’s what –” She rounded her shoulders, hunching herself forward. I watched a teardrop being absorbed by the cotton of her dress, although I hadn’t seen it fall.

This was territory that I, the less-loved son, the surviving second best, could understand. I reached into my pocket and found my handkerchief, then handed it to her gently.

“We love each other. We just can’t … be together,” she wiped her eyes, folding the handkerchief in upon itself. “So now you know.”

The freedom that her words dangled before me was a wound I hadn’t thought to sustain. “What are we going to do?” I said. “You and I?”

Wearily, she handed me back the handkerchief. “I don’t know,” she sighed. “That rather depends on you.”

For better, for worse, I thought, to have and to hold from this day forward – such rigorous and unrelenting promises. “I’ll stand by you,” I said shortly. “Of course. If that’s what you want.” I started pulling on my jacket. I wanted some air. I wanted some time to think.

“Ifor –?”

My fingers were already on the latch. I glanced back at her.

“Yes?”

She looked at me searchingly for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said.