why I did do it, but not forgotten that I did. One single act of sex can have a profound effect on one’s life, and now I had a quite reasonless fear that what James and I did was one of those acts and the effect would be cataclysmic.
I went into the drawing-room and contemplated the books on the shelves in there. But not for long. My eyes turned to the big window from which the garden can be seen. It began to rain, and not just to rain, but to come down in floods, beating on the glass and bouncing off the stones. Through it, the shuddering veil of it, the lawn and trees and bushes were a dense mass of varying greens. Lightning struck while I watched, lighting up glittering slate roofs and tossing treetops. I told myself what I sometimes tell my students in a comment on what I have found in their essays: do not subscribe to the pathetic fallacy. James and I had nothing to do with the weather, and the weather nothing to do with us. The thunder came so long after the lightning that it made me jump.
I wondered if James, in spite of what he said, was even now confessing to Andrew. Would he tell me if he was? I went up to bed but couldn’t sleep and came down again in my dressing gown. This time I did pick up The Child’s Child and started to read the first page again, but I got no further than the first line: He knew it was wrong of him, but his life today was so full of wrong actions that it seemed to him one long sin. It reminded me of me. Except for the sin part. Sin is a word that has gone out of our vocabulary, except, I suppose, for Catholics in the confessional.
I had started leafing through it, passing the point I had reached, looking for a date, when I heard the front door close softly. I did a stupid thing. I switched off the light. No one could have been deceived because anyone coming to the front of the house could have seen it, but I left it off, sitting there feeling like a fool and waiting for one or both of them to come in. To walk through the drawing-room and maybe burst into the study. Neither of them did. The porch light went out, the hall light went out, and I wasn’t just sitting in the dark, I was in the profoundest, deepest blackness. I don’t know why I felt for the window and then for the curtains. Pulling them back revealed the half-lit street, a catas grey as the night sky emerging from under a car and streaking into the dense foliage of a garden.
As far as I could tell, the whole house was now in darkness. My green digital clock told me it was half past midnight.
I N THE morning, after Andrew had gone to work, James came down to talk to me. Like the ghost, he knocked on the drawing-room door, something he had seldom done before. He sat down, picked up The Child’s Child, said, “Here’s the book you showed us, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“I met him once,” he said. “Greenwell. He was very old by then. It was at someone else’s book launch.”
Silence fell. I wasn’t interested in someone else’s book launch and nor really was he. His face had become grave, the eyes half-closed. I said that I supposed he hadn’t said anything to Andrew.
“No, and I’m not going to. We’re not going to. Think about it, Grace. What would be the point? You might say, who benefits? Not you or me, certainly. Andrew would be devastated, and that’s one instance where that overused word is absolutely apt. He would be. And he would hate us both. I know how jealous he is. You don’t. You can’t. So who benefits?”
“Truth, I suppose,” I said, feeling like a prig. “What politicians call transparency.”
“Oh, please.”
We sat there, looking at each other, for a while in silence, then starting the argument all over again. I stopped it by reaching or apparently reaching his point of view. “All right,” I said, “we’ll say nothing. We’ll even try to forget it.”
“Thank you, Grace. I don’t think you’ll have any regrets.”
Before all this started, I would have expected if it had
I went into the drawing-room and contemplated the books on the shelves in there. But not for long. My eyes turned to the big window from which the garden can be seen. It began to rain, and not just to rain, but to come down in floods, beating on the glass and bouncing off the stones. Through it, the shuddering veil of it, the lawn and trees and bushes were a dense mass of varying greens. Lightning struck while I watched, lighting up glittering slate roofs and tossing treetops. I told myself what I sometimes tell my students in a comment on what I have found in their essays: do not subscribe to the pathetic fallacy. James and I had nothing to do with the weather, and the weather nothing to do with us. The thunder came so long after the lightning that it made me jump.
I wondered if James, in spite of what he said, was even now confessing to Andrew. Would he tell me if he was? I went up to bed but couldn’t sleep and came down again in my dressing gown. This time I did pick up The Child’s Child and started to read the first page again, but I got no further than the first line: He knew it was wrong of him, but his life today was so full of wrong actions that it seemed to him one long sin. It reminded me of me. Except for the sin part. Sin is a word that has gone out of our vocabulary, except, I suppose, for Catholics in the confessional.
I had started leafing through it, passing the point I had reached, looking for a date, when I heard the front door close softly. I did a stupid thing. I switched off the light. No one could have been deceived because anyone coming to the front of the house could have seen it, but I left it off, sitting there feeling like a fool and waiting for one or both of them to come in. To walk through the drawing-room and maybe burst into the study. Neither of them did. The porch light went out, the hall light went out, and I wasn’t just sitting in the dark, I was in the profoundest, deepest blackness. I don’t know why I felt for the window and then for the curtains. Pulling them back revealed the half-lit street, a catas grey as the night sky emerging from under a car and streaking into the dense foliage of a garden.
As far as I could tell, the whole house was now in darkness. My green digital clock told me it was half past midnight.
I N THE morning, after Andrew had gone to work, James came down to talk to me. Like the ghost, he knocked on the drawing-room door, something he had seldom done before. He sat down, picked up The Child’s Child, said, “Here’s the book you showed us, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“I met him once,” he said. “Greenwell. He was very old by then. It was at someone else’s book launch.”
Silence fell. I wasn’t interested in someone else’s book launch and nor really was he. His face had become grave, the eyes half-closed. I said that I supposed he hadn’t said anything to Andrew.
“No, and I’m not going to. We’re not going to. Think about it, Grace. What would be the point? You might say, who benefits? Not you or me, certainly. Andrew would be devastated, and that’s one instance where that overused word is absolutely apt. He would be. And he would hate us both. I know how jealous he is. You don’t. You can’t. So who benefits?”
“Truth, I suppose,” I said, feeling like a prig. “What politicians call transparency.”
“Oh, please.”
We sat there, looking at each other, for a while in silence, then starting the argument all over again. I stopped it by reaching or apparently reaching his point of view. “All right,” I said, “we’ll say nothing. We’ll even try to forget it.”
“Thank you, Grace. I don’t think you’ll have any regrets.”
Before all this started, I would have expected if it had
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