After You Left(65)

‘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?’

What a question. But it had to be asked. ‘I assume you must be, if you’re telling me this. Is that why you’ve been sitting here moping like this, Evelyn? Because you’re married to me, but you’re in love with a gardener from home?’

His wife had chosen to scrape the bottom of the barrel on some mission to make herself less depressed. He thought this uncharitable thought, but recognised he was only thinking it because his pride instructed him to.

Her eyes remained fixed on him, but she wasn’t seeing him again. He thought that was his answer, right there. He studied her, oddly fascinated to be staring into the daydreaming eyes of his wife while she was in the throes of pining for another man.

And he was right. Evelyn was gone. She had returned to her house, to Eddy’s warm arms. To their day at the beach. Their walks, their talks, their lovemaking. To the way he had sang to her years ago. To his sad gaze at the Mayfair Ballroom. Every time that song had come on the radio, she’d had to switch it off. Long John Baldry. ‘Let the Heartaches Begin’. Two or three lines in, and she was ready to crumple.

Mark’s voice sounded far away. In her peripheral vision, she could see the colourful oil painting of a summer garden that hung above their mantelpiece. They had bought it from a small Cork Street gallery. She could see the antique wall sconces from Sotheby’s, and a bronze figurine on the pedestal table by the armchair that they had found at a flea market in Venice. The things they had chosen together, which might not seem important, yet they furnished their life and told of their history. She could see Mark in the foreground, sharpening again before her eyes.

He had just asked her if she was in love with her gardener.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Or at least, I thought I was, yes.’ In that instant, she felt so numb that she didn’t know any more.

The word yes faded as Mark heard it, as he tried to un-hear it. Faded, then came back again. He continued to look at her. He ought to be thinking of her as a stranger now, a pariah. He ought to hate her, or at the very least be furious. And yet, for some odd reason, he couldn’t. He saw this clearly for what it was: a symptom of this perpetual ridiculous homesick business in her. He saw it this way, simply because that was the best of all the possible explanations.

‘What do you want to do then?’ He hadn’t dragged her kicking and screaming from that abysmal Holy Island, with the wretched tide that you were always planning your life around. If she hadn’t wanted to be here, she should have left. If she didn’t want to be here now, she should go. He wanted to say all this; he would have loved to say all this, but he didn’t dare. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him.

She heard his question. Her eyes swooped over his well-worn Burberry blazer, his maroon tie with the greasy stain on it that he must have acquired over lunch. Mark always missed his mouth when he ate, or managed to dangle his tie-end in his soup. Her gaze landed at his feet. His shoes were a bit of a disaster, too. He could afford plenty of expensive new ones, yet he always wore the same clapped-out pair that Tessie polished every day. Mark was shabby chic. She had seen that expression in Cosmo and thought, Yes, that fits him. She felt strangely detached from all of his quirks, though. She was looking at him as though he were a stranger, assessing him. Someone might have just introduced them at a dinner party. The face appeared suddenly years older, the skin pale and slack. His sparse, greying hair formed a halo of frizz around the top of his head. His eyes were bloodshot, and his shoulders sagged like a ragdoll’s. There was something intensely grandfatherly about him. But something that made her still love him, nonetheless.