“Well, you don’t understand very much, do you? It’s filth. Moncrieff has read it and said it’s subversive.”
Mrs. Cordoza was scrubbing a pan with intense vigor. She had begun to hum under her breath. Outside the wind picked up, sending a few ginger leaves skittering past the kitchen window.
“We should be allowed to judge these things for ourselves. We’re all adults. Those who think it would offend them needn’t read it.”
“Yes. Well. Don’t go offering your half-baked opinions on such matters at this dinner, will you? They’re not the type of crowd who want to hear a woman pontificating on things she knows nothing about.”
Jennifer took a breath before she responded. “Well, perhaps I’ll ask Francis if he can lend me his copy. Then I might know what I’m talking about. How would that suit you?” Her jaw set, a small muscle working in her cheek.
Laurence’s tone was dismissive. He reached for his briefcase. “You’ve been in an awful mood these last few mornings. I hope you can make yourself a little more agreeable this evening. If this is what reading the newspaper does for you, I might have it delivered to the office.”
She didn’t rise from her chair to kiss his cheek, as she might once have done. She bit her lip and continued to stare at the newspaper until the sound of the front door closing told her that her husband had left for the office.
For three days she had barely slept or eaten. Most nights now she lay awake through the small hours, waiting for something biblical to fall out of the dark above her head. All the time she was quietly furious with Laurence; she would see him suddenly through Anthony’s eyes, and find herself concurring with his damning assessment. Then she would hate Anthony for making her feel that way about her husband, and be even more furious that she couldn’t tell him so. At night she remembered Anthony’s hands on her, his mouth, pictured herself doing things to him that, in the light of morning, made her blush. On one occasion, desperate to quell her confusion, to weld herself back to her husband’s side, she woke him, slid one pale leg across him, kissed him into wakefulness. But he had been appalled, had asked her what on earth had got into her, and all but pushed her off. He had turned his back on her, leaving her to cry silent tears of humiliation into her pillow.
During those sleepless hours, along with the toxic conflagration of desire and guilt, she tossed around endless possibilities: she could leave, somehow survive the guilt, the loss of money, and her family’s anguish. She could have an affair, find some level on which she and Anthony could exist, parallel to their ordinary lives. It wasn’t just Lady Chatterley who did it, surely. Their social circle was rife with tales of who was having whom. She could break it off and be a good wife. If her marriage was not working, then it was her fault for not trying hard enough. And you could turn such things around: all the women’s magazines said so. She could be a little kinder, a little more loving, present herself more beautifully. She could stop, as her mother would say, looking at the greener grass beyond.
She had reached the front of the queue. “Will this make the afternoon post? And could you check my PO box? It’s Stirling, box thirteen.”
She hadn’t come here since the night in Alberto’s, convincing herself that it was for the best. The thing—she dared not think of it as an affair—had become overheated. They needed to let it cool a little so that they could think with clearer heads. But after her unpleasant exchange with her husband that morning, her resolve had collapsed. She had written the letter in haste, perched at her little bureau in the drawing room while Mrs. Cordoza was vacuuming. She had implored him to understand. She didn’t know what to do: she didn’t want to hurt him . . . but she couldn’t bear to be without him:
I am married. For a man to walk away from his marriage is one thing, but for a woman? At the moment I can do nothing wrong in your eyes. You see the best in everything I do. I know there would come a day when that would change. I don’t want you to see in me all that you despised in everyone else.
It was confused, jumbled, her writing scrawled and uneven.
The postmistress took the letter from her and returned with another.
Her heart still fluttered at the sight of his handwriting. His words were so beautifully strung together that she could recite whole swathes of them to herself in the dark, like poetry. She opened it impatiently, still standing at the counter, moving along to allow the next person in the queue to be served. This time, however, the words were a little different.
If anyone else noticed the acute stillness of the blond woman in the blue coat, the way she reached out a hand to steady herself on the counter as she finished reading her letter, they were probably too busy with their own parcels and forms to pay much attention. But the change in her demeanor was striking. She stood there for a moment longer, her hand trembling as she thrust the letter into her bag and walked slowly, a little unsteadily, out into the sunshine.
She wandered the streets of central London all afternoon, patrolling the shop windows with a vague intensity. Unable to return home, she waited on the crowded pavements for her thoughts to clear. Hours later, when she walked through the front door, Mrs. Cordoza was in the hallway, two dresses over her arm.
“You didn’t tell me which you wanted for the dinner this evening, Mrs. Stirling. I’ve pressed these, in case you thought one might be suitable.” The sun flooded the hallway with the peachy light of late summer as Jennifer stood in the doorway. The gray gloom returned as she closed the door behind her.
“Thank you.” She walked past the housekeeper and into the kitchen. The clock told her it was almost five. Was he packing now?
Jennifer’s hand closed over the letter in her pocket. She had read it three times. She checked the date: he did, indeed, mean this evening. How could he decide something like that so quickly? How could he do it at all? She cursed herself for not picking up the letter sooner, not giving herself time to plead with him to reconsider.
My dearest and only love. I meant what I said. I have come to the conclusion that the only way forward is for one of us to make a bold decision.
I am not as strong as you. When I first met you, I thought you were a fragile little thing. Someone I had to protect. Now I realize I had us all wrong. You are the strong one, the one who can endure living with the possibility of a love like this, and the fact that we will never be allowed it.
I ask you not to judge me for my weakness. The only way I can endure is to be in a place where I will never see you, never be haunted by the possibility of seeing you with him. I need to be somewhere where sheer necessity forces you from my thoughts minute by minute, hour by hour. That cannot happen here.
At one moment she was furious with him for attempting to force her hand. At the next she was gripped by the terrible fear of his going away. How would it feel to know she would never see him again? How could she remain in this life, having glimpsed the alternative he had shown her?
I am going to take the job. I’ll be at Platform 4 Paddington at 7:15 on Monday evening, and there is nothing in the world that would make me happier than if you found the courage to come with me.
If you don’t come, I’ll know that whatever we might feel for each other, it isn’t quite enough. I won’t blame you, my darling. I know the past weeks have put an intolerable strain on you, and I feel the weight of that keenly. I hate the thought that I could cause you any unhappiness.
She had been too honest with him. She shouldn’t have confessed the confusion, the haunted nights. If he’d thought she was less upset, he wouldn’t have felt the need to act like this.
I’ll be waiting on the platform from a quarter to seven. Know that you hold my heart, my hopes, in your hands.
And then this: this great tenderness. Anthony, who couldn’t bear the thought of making her less than she was, who wanted to protect her from the worst of her feelings, had given her the two easiest ways out: come with him, or remain where she was blamelessly, knowing she was loved. What more could he have done?
How could she make a decision so momentous in so little time? She had thought of traveling to his house, but she couldn’t be sure he would be there. She had thought of going to the newspaper, but she was afraid some gossip columnist would see, that she would become the object of curiosity or, worse, embarrass him. Besides, what could she say to change his mind? Everything he had said was right. There was no other possible end to this. There was no way to make it right.
“Oh. Mr. Stirling rang to say he’ll pick you up at around a quarter to seven. He’s running a little late at the office. He sent his driver for his dinner suit.”
“Yes,” she said, absently. She felt suddenly feverish, reached out a hand to the balustrade.
“Mrs. Stirling, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You look as if you need some rest.” Mrs. Cordoza laid the dresses carefully over the hall chair and took Jennifer’s coat from her. “Shall I run you a bath? I could make you a cup of tea while it’s filling, if you like.”
She turned to the housekeeper. “Yes. I suppose so. Quarter to seven, you say?” She began to walk up the stairs.
“Mrs. Stirling? The dresses? Which one?”
“Oh. I don’t know. You choose.”
She lay in the bath, almost oblivious to the hot water, numbed by what was about to happen. I’m a good wife, she told herself. I’ll go to the dinner tonight, and I’ll be entertaining and g*y and not pontificate on things I know nothing about.
What was it Anthony had once written? That there was pleasure to be had in being a decent person. Even if you do not feel it now.
She got out of the bath. She couldn’t relax. She needed something to distract her from her thoughts. She wished, suddenly, that she could drug herself and sleep through the next two hours. Even the next two months, she thought mournfully, reaching for the towel.
She opened the bathroom door, and there, on the bed, Mrs. Cordoza had laid out the two dresses: on the left was the midnight blue she had worn on the night of Laurence’s birthday. It had been a merry night at the casino. Bill had won a large amount of money at roulette and insisted on buying champagne for everyone. She had drunk too much, had been giddy, unable to eat. Now, in the silent room, she recalled other parts of the evening that she had obediently excised in her retelling of it. She remembered Laurence criticizing her for spending too much money on gambling chips. She remembered him muttering that she was embarrassing him—until Yvonne had told him, charmingly, not to be so grumpy. He’ll squash you, extinguish the things that make you you. She remembered him standing in the kitchen doorway this morning. What are you bothering with that for? I hope you can make yourself a little more agreeable this evening.
She looked at the other dress on the bed: pale gold brocade, with a mandarin collar and no sleeves. The dress she had worn on the evening that Anthony O’Hare had declined to make love to her.
It was as if a heavy mist had lifted. She dropped the towel and threw on some clothes. Then she began to hurl things onto the bed. Underwear. Shoes. Stockings. What on earth did one pack when one was leaving forever?
Her hands were shaking. Almost without knowing what she was doing, she pulled her case down from the top of the wardrobe and opened it. She tossed things into it with a kind of abandon, fearing that if she stopped to think about what she was doing, she wouldn’t do it at all.
“Are you going somewhere, madam? Would you like help packing?” Mrs. Cordoza had appeared in the doorway behind her, holding a cup of tea.
Jennifer’s hand flew to her throat. She turned, half hiding the case behind her. “No—no. I’m just taking some clothes to Mrs. Moncrieff. For her niece. Things I’ve grown tired of.”
“There are some things in the laundry room that you said didn’t fit you anymore. Do you want me to bring them up?”