The Adulteress Read online

  ‘What are you going to do with all these photographs?’ asks Nicholas.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t help it, it’s habit. I have to record everything,’ Kev says.

  Hopper seems tired. He lies down at Nicholas’s feet. Nicholas crouches down by the dog. He doesn’t feel well himself. He looks at the stone house facing him, and it makes him feel strange. It looks like so many houses in Ireland. A stone square, two up, two down, grey slate roof and a glass back porch. Yet he knows he has looked at this before – an overgrown back garden, a few apple and pear trees dotted about, a big oak tree with a broken old swing hanging off it, and the grey house staring down at him. Nicholas turns round suddenly and looks back through the trees. The sun speckles the ground between the leaves and he can see dust motes and cobwebs spinning in the light breeze. It is gentle and still, and yet he feels a sense of anticipation, as if at any moment he will see someone coming through the trees. And then for a second he does. Like an old movie, a black-and-white figure, walking briskly, her hands in the pockets of a man’s coat, her head covered by a headscarf, her chin tucked in, not looking at the woods around her, just wanting to get somewhere, quickly, without fuss or attention. Nicholas blinks and, when he looks again, she is gone.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he asks Kev.

  ‘What?’ Kev asks him, examining a phallic fungi jelly-formation on the ground.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Kev is too busy looking at the details of the woods to see beyond them.

  Without warning the sun goes in and it starts to rain. They turn back towards Nicholas’s house. Hopper hops between the two of them as Kev puts his camera away.

  ‘How’s the head?’ Kev asks, not looking at him.

  ‘Okay,’ Nicholas says.

  ‘Couldn’t believe you played the piano when we got back.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m lying there in bed, God knows what time it is, and the next thing I hear you hammering away on the piano. Bloody lunatic!’

  Nicholas feels a cold hand on his chest and he stops walking. It is as if the hand is holding him back, preventing him from going back home.

  No. He hears a whisper in his ear.

  He is about to say it – that he wasn’t playing the piano last night and it must have been his resident ghost, June Fanning – but then he thinks better of it. He’s not sure why he doesn’t tell Kev. His friend would definitely have been interested. But then he might have shown him that it was all in his head, and that it was Nick himself playing the piano, that he had been sleep-walking. He didn’t want to believe that. He needs June Fanning’s music to comfort him.

  He steps forward, pushing against the cold hand, an invisible wall.

  ‘Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Kev comments.

  Nicholas laughs, takes a cigarette out of his pocket and tries to light it in the rain. ‘Yeah, I’m grand.’

  Kev stops walking, looks at him, smiles. ‘Jackie and Charlie are back tomorrow, you know. Why don’t you come with me to the airport?’

  Nicholas shakes his head in panic. ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Come on, Nicholas, no one’s perfect. You’re a fool to chuck away Charlie.’

  Nick inhales on his cigarette, shakes his head again. ‘I’ve got to stay here. Finish the house.’

  They have reached the orchard now. Kev goes through the gateway. ‘You can’t be serious about this place. You can’t do all this on your own. Come back to Dublin, sort it out with Charlie.’

  ‘No,’ Nick snaps, pushing roughly past Kev. All he wants to do is get away from him, back to the house, and hide in his room. Suddenly he remembers that he heard the piano too last night. He thought it a dream. He had been unable to sleep. His head was full of memories of Charlie, and the image of Geraldine in her bright-pink top looking at him in the pub, and he had felt so sexually frustrated as well, twisting and turning in the bed. The notes from the piano had sawed through his heart, and he had lain on his stomach trying to shove his body into the mattress. The music had stopped then, and after a while he had felt a presence in his room, a slight shift in the temperature, a feeling of spinning in his bed. He turned over, lain on his side. Moonlight flooded the room. He could not see her, but he felt her next to him and he imagined this young woman, Robert Fanning’s English wife, lying down next to him on the bed. They both lay on their backs, side by side. He held his breath, afraid that her ephemeral presence would disappear. He could sense her longing and pushed his hand out from his side. He imagined her tiny fingers holding his, reaching out from another world. When he closed his eyes he had a picture in his head. Himself and June Fanning lying face to face, the tips of their noses touching, resting their lips on each other, but not kissing, only giving. Giving succour.

  Now, walking through the orchard, Nicholas feels more bereft than ever. He never knew it was so hard to live alone, to think that nobody in the real world cared about him. Had he invented June Fanning to fulfil his own lonely yearnings? Was he losing his mind?

  The next morning Nicholas takes Kev to the bus. They have a late breakfast, eating eggs and bacon, sitting on the old chairs in the yard, looking at the orchard.

  ‘Imagine what this place must have been like when it was a working farm.’ Kev bites into a slice of buttery toast.

  ‘A lot noisier, I would think,’ says Nicholas.

  ‘Yeah, chickens clucking and pigs snorting on Old Macdonald’s farm.’ Kev laughs. He takes a slug of his coffee. ‘But seriously, Nick. Do you ever think about the people who lived here before?’

  ‘Well, yes. In fact I would think most old places like this are haunted by their previous inhabitants.’

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Kev’s eyes narrow, and Nicholas pauses. He isn’t sure what he should tell Kev. He doesn’t want to be mocked.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Come on,’ Kev snorts. ‘Ghosts are the inventions of overactive imaginations. I put them in the same box as religion. The one labelled mumbo-jumbo.’

  ‘Okay, Mr Cynic. But how can you be so sure that ghosts don’t exist?’

  Kevin picks up a piece of his bacon rind and chews it. ‘I suppose it’s like anything. It’s only real if you believe in it.’

  It is a warm day. Nicholas opens the sunroof and the car windows. Hopper pushes his snout out of the back window as they bump along the country roads. In this weather the landscape has never looked more charming. The green drumlins roll up and down on either side of the road, the blue sky is cloudless, and a heat-haze shimmers above the surface of the road. Tractors trundle along in front of them as they crawl along the road. Sometimes Nicholas has to remind himself that he grew up in England. Ireland has always been closer to his heart. His father was so proud of being Irish that it rubbed off on him. He wasn’t from Cavan, but from the west, and they had spent most of their summer and Christmas holidays staying with their father’s family in Connemara. Nick’s mother hadn’t liked it much. She said it was too damp and the landscape depressed her, too bleak. She was from the Cotswolds, where she lived still, with the honey-coloured houses, ancient village hamlets and gentle garden landscape. Populated and pretty. Ireland was too wild for Nick’s mother. She had been encouraging Nick and Charlie to move back to England for years. He knew she had been hoping for a grandchild, but she had never said a word to Nick, not once.

  Most of Nick’s Irish family were gone or dead now, but he had always intended to move out west. It was just that Charlie was from Dublin, and their lives had seemed permanently entangled in the capital city. Yet here he was now, living in Cavan, a place he guessed his mother would find even more desolate than the west. What would Dad think? He had been a farmer’s boy, forced to emigrate to England when he was young, and always yearning for home. He thinks of June Fanning’s spirit and wonders why it is that he can see her, sense her presence, but has never once felt his father around. Was that a good thing? Did it mean that John Healy was happy in the next world?

&nbs
p; Under a different set of circumstances Nicholas believes his father was so full of stories that he could have been a writer. But he had been forced to make a living through more traditional ways as a bank manager. That was his upbringing. Nicholas feels grateful his parents had always encouraged his creative hopes and dreams. But maybe his father should have spent more time making him a man of the world, rather than filling his head with stories and songs about fairies from the west, and bog sprites and the dreams of his ancestors who wished to cross the Atlantic and conqueror America. Nicholas glances at the sky and sees a sparrowhawk hovering over a field. He had only been a little boy. Of course his daddy was only going to tell him tales. What must it be like to have your own child sitting on your lap, attentive, idolizing you? You are his world. Nick had always thought of his childlessness in terms of what Charlie was missing out on, but suddenly he realizes he would have made a good father, too. Who could he tell his father’s stories to now?

  They arrive in Virginia and Nick pulls up across the road from the bus stop. ‘Listen, thanks,’ he says turning to Kev.

  ‘What for?’ asks Kev.

  ‘You know, coming to see me and everything.’

  ‘I had a good time. Besides, I’m a lazy git, as you know – we didn’t even do the dry-lining thing.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Nick says unenthusiastically.

  Kev gets out of the car and Nicholas gets out the other side. He opens the boot and takes Kev’s rucksack out. They stand awkwardly on the pavement. Nicholas knows Kev wants to say something about Charlie. She is flying into Dublin this afternoon, and Nicholas can’t get it out of his head.

  ‘Well, bye . . .’ says Nick.

  The two men look at each other. Kev smiles and shoves his hands into his pockets. ‘All right, mate?’

  Nicholas nods. He gets back into his car.

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ Kev takes his camera out of his case. ‘Let’s take a picture of you and the mutt.’

  Nicholas pulls Hopper onto his lap. He smiles at Kev’s camera and his jaw aches. He knows the smile is false, but he can feel Hopper’s heartbeat against his chest and that feels good. The dog suddenly licks his chin, his whiskers tickling his skin and making him laugh.

  ‘That’s better,’ says Kev, taking the shot.

  For a long while after the bus drives off Nicholas sits in his car with Hopper on his lap, the dog waiting patiently for his master to make a move.

  ‘Just the two of us again, boy,’ he says as he gently shoves Hopper onto the passenger seat and starts up the car. But as he drives back towards his farmhouse he knows that’s not true. He is returning to June.

  JUNE

  The light drains slowly away here, not like at home when suddenly it is dark. By the time I am wending my way back up to the house I can see a lamp lit in the kitchen, and the sparks flying out of the chimney. Only then do I notice the strange bicycle outside the front of the house, and my heart does a tiny leap because a part of me hopes this could somehow mean Robert is home. A ridiculous fantasy, for only the day before I had received a letter from him telling me he had arrived safely in the south of England.

  Why did he have to choose the RAF? Is it safer than the infantry, or the navy? I do not think so, for all I can think of are the stories of bombers going down, no crew surviving, and how they are in desperate need of men like Robert to replace them. At least he is not flying yet. I try not to think about it – Robert in his metal machine of destruction, up above France and Germany, dropping his deadly load. Things are beyond my control now and I should just carry on, as best I can. I should keep the place going, so that Robert has something to come back to.

  But how I wish I were not pregnant. It makes me feel even more disempowered for I am now attached, irredeemably, to another entity. It is as if I am constantly off-balance, a strange surge and motion inside me like the swell of the sea, so I am nauseous half the time. It was my sister Min who wanted to have children, not I. At moments I feel angry at this injustice, but then what did I expect – to sail through my marriage, without having children? That only happens to those who are barren, something my dear sister Min must be. How unfair it is that what she desired most was denied her. It makes me more determined to squash my apathy and accept things as they are now.

  I think back to the night Mother gave Min the christening dress, and how thrilled my sister was. We were all certain that within the year there would be a new member of our family wearing it.

  Min’s wedding eve and our mother took us up to the attic to give her a trousseau. ‘I did not think you would need this for a few more years. But as usual, Minerva, you have surprised us all.’

  My mother regarded my sister coolly, knelt down and opened a plain trunk made of walnut. It was just over half-full of linen, crisp white sheets, pillowcases, napkins, tablecloths and handkerchiefs. In between each layer she had put small sprigs of lavender. The scent of clean linen, and musky lavender, wafted up from inside the chest.

  ‘Oh, Mother!’ Min spoke excitedly. ‘Light another candle, so I can see!’

  I leaned forward on my heels to look inside the chest. I reached out with my fingers and traced the outline of the embroidery on one of the table-tops. It was of a red rose and a white rose, their thorny stems entwined.

  ‘I embroidered them myself,’ said our mother, and I looked at her in surprise. ‘Yes, you did not know what a little home-maker I can be,’ she said sarcastically. ‘But you will learn fast, Min, the things that please a husband.’

  ‘Charles is more interested in pleasing me,’ Min said proudly.

  Mother smiled slyly. ‘It is all attention and flattery before you are married, but once you are his wife, it is quite a different matter.’

  I thought of all the wives that our mother had made sad by diverting their husband’s attentions away from them. Even poor Mrs Sanderson, before she had got ill and died.

  ‘It will be different for me, Mother,’ said Min confidently.

  ‘And how so, Minerva?’

  ‘Because I am like you, Mama. I am a femme fatale!’

  Mother burst out laughing. ‘What rubbish have you been reading now? Or is your head turned by the picture that you and June went to see on Saturday? Femme fatale – my goodness, do you not know that femmes fatales never get married?’

  She sighed, closing the chest and sitting back, her arms stretched out behind her, her fingers spread against the floorboards.

  ‘Oh, I should stop you, really I should! But Captain Sanderson is adamant he loves you, and will provide well for you, and as you know your father is putting everything into June’s education.’

  She looked sharply at me.

  ‘I hope you realize this, June, how much store your father has put into your academic career. You are this family’s suffragette. There will be no room for romance in your life.’

  Min giggled, ‘Poor Juno!’

  ‘I would not want to get married,’ I said quietly. ‘At least not yet.’

  But Mother seemed not to hear me, and instead got up and walked over to a dusty old wardrobe in the corner of the attic. ‘Now,’ she said almost to herself, ‘I think it could be in here.’

  She opened up the closet and rustled around amongst the old clothes, eventually pulling out a small garment wrapped in yellowed tissue paper. The stench of mothballs was overpowering and made Min and I cough.

  ‘Here we are,’ Mother said. ‘You should take this too, Min, you will probably be needing it before June.’

  She unwrapped the tissue to reveal a baby’s christening dress.

  ‘Oh, how gorgeous,’ Min swooned, taking it from our mother and fingering the tiny garment.

  The robe was ivory, and made of thick silk, with delicate embroidery in white on the cuffs and collar. What made the dress so grand were its layers and layers of net skirt. It hung limply in Min’s arms as she cradled it.

  ‘This dress has been worn by each generation of the Sinclair family. I believe your father wore it, and his father b
efore him.’

  ‘Do you have your christening robe, Mother?’ I asked, thinking she might give it to me.

  She waved her arm away towards the sloping ceiling and spoke vaguely. ‘Oh no, that was lost long ago.’

  We were quiet for a moment, and I thought about my mother’s family, whom she never spoke of. Her father had died young, and her mother had been unable to cope and had palmed her offspring off on various aunts. Our mother and her younger brother had ended up with a cruel old aunt. She never spoke of her mother now, and we didn’t know whether she was dead or alive. Only once had Father spoken about her. He told me that apparently she had been very beautiful, and a socialite, unhappy to give up her lifestyle to look after her children.

  ‘How old were you when you got married, Mother?’ asked Min.

  ‘I was seventeen, June’s age.’ She sighed. ‘I was as excited as you, Min. I thought my life was going to change completely.’ She turned abruptly, held Min’s shoulders in her hands and stared at her for a minute, before speaking. ‘Are you sure you wish to get married, Minerva?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Min replied, her voice rising.

  ‘But do you love Captain Sanderson, or is it simply because . . .’ Mother faltered, dropped her arms and looked away. ‘He is so recently bereaved. He thinks he loves you, but maybe all he is looking for is comfort,’ she said flatly.

  ‘I have always loved Charles,’ Min said shrilly. I felt a punch of surprise in my stomach. ‘Since I was thirteen I have been in love with my Prince Charming. But it was always a dream that he would love me, because he was married, but now – now my dream has come true.’

  ‘If you say so, Min.’ Our mother sounded weary.

  I looked at her expectantly. Why didn’t she say something else? Could she not stop Min from marrying Captain Sanderson, from deserting me? I felt such a confusion of emotions: cross with Min for abandoning me, yet happy for her at the same time. She had found what she really wanted. It was like when I had found my love for ancient Rome.