A Quiet Life(110)

Back in the kitchen, Laura took some chops out of the icebox. She could not be bothered to peel potatoes, but the bread she had bought the day before was still soft, and there were ripe tomatoes for a salad, the remains of a cauliflower cheese that she had cooked the day before that could warm through in the oven. He stood looking out of the window as she moved around the kitchen, looking into the garden where the shadows were lengthening under the trees.

‘So you start next week—’

‘You remember Stefan—’

Their voices tangled, and then Edward’s statement that Stefan wanted to see her fell into the silence she left.

‘I won’t,’ she said.

As if he was reassuring her, Edward told her that he hadn’t been followed, and neither was Stefan, that they had met for a few seconds on the way to Lvov’s rooms this morning. Laura could not understand why he was talking in such detail – it was not allowed, and she said again, ‘I won’t.’

Edward rubbed his hands over his eyes. ‘We couldn’t have known.’ His statement was ambiguous, and Laura chose not to straighten it out. Left as it was, it might suggest that he knew Laura had told Alex about Joe, but that she could not have foreseen the outcome; that he believed she was not to blame. How she longed for that to be the case.

She went to the icebox and got out a bottle of wine. ‘Just one?’

They drank together, as the chops sizzled in the pan.

‘I’ll tell you something else – Archie’s coming to London too. Monica will be pleased, won’t she?’ Edward was clearly responding to Laura’s desire to change the subject, and she tried to join in, discussing with him how much Monica disliked Washington, how good it would be to see them again. They went on talking inconsequentially as she dished up the supper, and then as they ate Laura finally said what was on her mind, what had been on her mind for so long.

‘If you wanted to, would there be another way – I mean, could you—?’

‘There isn’t a way out, for me. But I’ll tell Stefan you won’t meet him again.’

‘Is that really true? Is there no other way for you?’

‘How could there be? I’m sorry, though. For you.’

It was hard to hear him say that, and to realise how alone he must feel now, in his pursuit of his goal. Laura could not tell if he had also lost faith that the goal could be there, ahead, on the infinitely receding horizon. ‘Don’t be sorry for me,’ she said.

‘But you regret it all, don’t you? You wish you’d never started. Never met me.’

This honesty was a place they had never been before, a place beyond all the fury and drunkenness in Washington, beyond their recent politeness and their attempts to create a show of a new life. Laura pushed her chair back and its wooden feet caught on the slate floor with a horrible squeal. She took his plate. His hand went out to the wine bottle. She put the plate down and covered his hand with hers.

‘No. I don’t.’ As soon as she said it, she realised it was true. Up to now in Patsfield, although she had been playing the part of the dutiful wife, she had not been doing so with any conviction; really she had felt that she was only playing a temporary role, biding time until Edward was back on his feet. But tonight, as she saw how he was trying to make something good and decent for them, even within the trap they had made for themselves, she was filled with pity and protectiveness. Any mistakes he had made, after all, she had also made – and worse. The disintegration was mutual. It was not something he had brought upon her. And then she wondered, hot on the heels of the softening she felt, was she the drag on his happiness now? Would he feel freer without her? ‘Do you regret me?’ she made herself say, matching his honesty with hers. He took his hand from hers.

‘I’ve made many mistakes in my life,’ he said, as his hand grasped the wine bottle and poured both of them the last of the wine. ‘Loving you was not one of them.’

Laura bent and kissed him, and he stood up and took her properly in his arms. In that moment, she was ready to find him again, and they went upstairs. It had been a long time since they had made love, and it was a different journey from the ones they had made in the past. She undressed him, undoing the buttons of his shirt, the cold buckle of his belt, as he undressed her, both of them finding the warmth of flesh and shuddering with the intimacy of the touch. They did not fumble and rush, half dressed, tumbling towards their orgasm, she allowed him to be fully naked and herself to be naked with him. Now that he was no longer drinking heavily, his skin smelled as it had done when they had first met, she realised, as she moved her mouth down his throat and chest; it had that fresh scent she remembered, something like apple peel. From time to time she was afraid of losing the shape of her desire, in this newly gentle exploration, but in the end she found the lines of her own pleasure, flowing through his responses. There was a moment, as she straddled him and he entered her from below, when she realised that they did not have to spin stars out of one another to find one another. It was different, but it was the same. It was no longer being overtaken by desire for her golden hero. They came together as equals, bringing one another through the waves of pleasure, and just at the moment of her orgasm, she lost the bitter consciousness of her divided self, she was no longer separated from herself or from him.





4


A few weeks later, in the height of summer, Sybil and Winifred came down to Patsfield one Saturday with Sybil’s children. Edward was in Rome for a conference and Laura had spent the week working on the house. They did not seem to have much money left in the bank even though Edward’s salary had now been restarted, but she had spent some of it on new curtains – olive green and dark blue – and a tea table that could go on the terrace. A climbing rose on the west wall had burst into great red splurges, and she had picked some of the bigger flowers and put them in a bowl in the hall. Inside and outside the summer scents wove together. There was no point, she thought, in trying to pretend that the house was like Sybil’s, a great accretion of intently hoarded possessions, but she tried to make it into a pretty frame for that summer day.