The Adulteress

by Noelle Harrison

  ‘Come on,’ said Min clambering back into the bedroom. ‘I’ll draw you.’

  She turned on a lamp, and pulled her sketchbook and pencils out from under the bed.

  ‘Oh, do we have to?’ I moaned, turning round and sliding into the room off the sill.

  ‘It’s so hot we can’t sleep anyway – please, Juno.’

  ‘All right, but can I read?’

  ‘I suppose so. Sit in front of the window, that’s it. I think I’ll make a painting of this, put the wisteria in behind you.’

  I sat facing into the room, Virgil’s epic spread on my lap. Min came over and arranged my hair.

  ‘Dear Juno,’ she whispered, carefully curling my hair around her ring finger. ‘I will marry young, you know, and have lots of children, lots and lots, and all of them I’ll love.’

  THE ADULTERESS I

  He is stabbing her. She lies on the bed, her arms outstretched, crucified, her fingers curled around the cold, metal bed-frame, and licks his breath off her lips.

  It feels like a wound, the way she seeks him. It comes beyond her will, this desire. The agony of her need has ripped away all her decency. She is living by her instinct, her resolution in tatters.

  She releases her fingers, and suddenly grips his shoulders, pale and gleaming in the half-light of early evening. He lifts his bent head, and smiles. Her accomplice. He reaches down, neither gentle nor rough in his movements, but with authority, for she has given that to him, has she not?

  Her lover puts his arms behind her back and pulls her up to greet him. He takes her in. And his hips move in unison with hers, stabbing, deeper, deeper, so that they are no longer a mere man and a woman, but one writhing entity, showering bedclothes about them.

  She closes her eyes, suddenly reminded of a scene from her childhood. She is racing along the beach with her sister. She remembers the sensation of their flesh smacking together as they fall in a tumble on the sand. They are fighting and loving, all at the same time. Two lonely girls, fierce in their loyalty to one another, and fierce in their competition. Who had won the race? She cannot remember now, nor can she think which of them pulled the other down so that she would not be beaten. The chase was forgotten, became an intimate scrum along the beach, not caring about how they were scratching their limbs, and tearing their clothes, not caring about the sand in their mouths, as they kept spitting it out. She believed she loved her sister more than any other human being on the earth, and she her.

  The Adulteress always feels as if her husband is wearing kid gloves when he touches her. She is often surprised when she looks down to see his bare hands, as they tentatively dab at her skin. He looks at her as if she is a miracle, yet her lover always looks her straight in the eye.

  She paints a picture in her head. The sparkling sun showering a crowd of jostling children dancing at the edge of the sea, splashed by the waves, the summer light casting bright haloes about the children’s heads. They are excited and noisy, for they are waiting for their fathers’ boats to come in. It is a moment of pure innocence and joy. It is the sensation of her lover’s flesh tipping her inside.

  The blustery seaside day spills out of her mind, illuminating her lover’s studio. On the beach there are no shadows. The sea is clear and full of life, the sky is wide and open, yet here in his den she has never looked into all the corners. Cobwebs hang between the ceiling and picture rail, and the window is grubby with green mildew.

  Her lover lies on top of her, and his weight pushes her down into the soft mattress. She can smell how old it is. She wonders how many souls it has held in suspense. She tries to look away as he lifts a strand of hair out of her eyes.

  Why are you crying? he asks, his eyes amber in the near-dark, his hand cupping her chin.

  She shakes her head, unable to stop. She imagines how they look from above, lying in their tangled lovers’ heap. They are art.

  JUNE

  When one walks one notices the detail in everything. Maybe this is why I miss cars. I am unable to turn a blind eye to my new environment. Walking to Mass, I cannot ignore it. Right here, in front of my nose, is glaring poverty. Barefoot children, and people with nothing at all, and I can’t help thinking about all the hard times this nation has been through and how, in the main, my country is responsible. It is strange this is something Robert and I have never discussed before.

  Robert even sounds more Irish here. In England his accent was hard to discern. Indeed, Min had to tell me he was Irish. Now, among the people of his youth, he is becoming more and more unmistakably an Irishman. I had not realized before how very proud he is of his country. My husband is a chameleon, and it is hard to imagine him and Charles together, the latter being such a quintessential English gentleman. But that is what I thought Robert was too . . .

  None of our neighbours are concerned about an invasion. They are more afraid of bombs dropping on us by mistake. After what happened in Belfast, and Dublin, we all dread the sound of the terrible drone of the bombers passing overhead, echoing down the chimney into the kitchen. On those rare nights it is as if we are all frozen into a tableau. We are a Dutch interior, dark corners, small windows, and bare plastered walls reflecting light onto our pale faces. The men at the table stiffen, gripping their cards tightly in their hands, while we women breathe shallowly in the stillness, our fingers suspended above our crochet, needles poking out at angles.

  At these moments I survey our company as if from above, like the ghosts of Robert’s parents. The lovely Tobins who sit about our kitchen, so good and kind to us, and generous in everything they have. Yet although Oonagh chats away to me, and her sister, Teresa, asks me questions about the films I have seen, and sometimes gets me to practically re-enact the whole story, I also have to be careful what I say. In private I am sure the Tobins wonder how Robert came to be with me. I once overheard Sean Tobin teasing Robert that he seemed to have returned home with the very Queen of England as his wife. But I am no more royalty then anyone else in our kitchen. The women think me grand, but I cannot help the way I talk.

  Things weren’t so easy for us, either. Maybe it is worse to have a lot, and then lose it. Mummy was constantly struggling to keep up appearances, and poor Daddy never knew quite how to provide for his family.

  ‘Education, that’s the key to your future, girls,’ he kept telling Min and I. He never wanted us to be dependent upon a husband, like Mummy, expecting him to fulfil her life materially, and more besides. At that time I do not think she would have been happy even if he had been a duke who owned half of England. Who would think that, years later, she would change to such an extent?

  October ends and, with it, the incessant rain. At last the grey blanket has been lifted from the sky. Late autumn brings dramatic displays of light. The clouds are now purple, ringed by the frustrated sun, shooting through the woods like golden arrows into the earth. It looks like a storm might break at any moment, and yet it has not rained for one whole week. The earth is no longer boggy, but soft and springy, covered in carpets of verdant green moss. In London all seasons were the same, but here I can even smell the difference. Ireland’s scent is bred from the earth, as if she cannot quite leave go of it, like a child clinging to her mother. There are rainbows nearly every day, arching the landscape, making me truly wonder whether this really is the place fairies come from.

  Oonagh has plenty of stories for me about the fairies – none of them seem too nice, not the sweet sugar-plum fairy variety of my childhood imaginings. The one she says most are afraid of is the pooka. He most often appears as a sleek dark horse with sulphurous yellow eyes and a wild mane. He roams the countryside tearing down fences and gates, scattering livestock in terror, tramp-ling crops and doing all sorts of terrible things to farmers.

  It is the pooka that has brought the foot-and-mouth. He lives on top of the mountains and no one goes there. He is a restless, troubled spirit, endlessly moving, galloping up and down slopes, his hooves split, his whinny shrill. Is he the wild voice of the landscape, an
gry at our humble interference?

  Someone in some small part of Ireland did not do enough to placate him, and the pooka has spread sickness among the livestock, destroyed the fragile livelihood of countless farmers throughout the country. Now no one wants Irish cattle. We are lucky in Cavan. The disease has not spread here yet, and the local defence force is out on all the bridges, trying to stop it entering this corner of the county. It seems that, to the Irish, this is more serious than a possible invasion by the Germans.

  I would like to think these fairy stories are humbug. Are they not just a different kind of mythology from my own preferred Greek and Roman gods? I have heard neighbours in our kitchen speak regularly of encounters. They are ordinary people, without a need for drama in their lives. It does leave me wondering.

  When I go walking in the woods it is easy to believe in such things. It is as if I am inside a painting and, if I ripped through the canvas, there would be another world on the other side, where I could see spirits as translucent as dragonfly wings, hovering above the bogs, waiting for me to slip in. I am not sure whether they are benevolent or not.

  It has become a daily ritual for me, this walk in the small woods between our house and the Sheridens’. Although Robert promised we would visit our neighbours, we still have not done so. I miss my music so much. It is not just that I yearn to play. I want to listen as well. But Robert is wrapped up in the foot-and-mouth crisis, and my needs seem frivolous.

  Today I saw Mrs Sheriden walking in the woods. I am so used to being on my own that I almost cried out with fright when I saw another person. It was getting dark, and since Robert was not back yet, I nipped out before it was time for tea. My hands were sore from the churning, and I longed so much just to push them into the damp moss, as soft as plush velvet. I was crouching down by a small pool, doing just this, when I heard a voice, more of a call. I looked up through the trees and saw a woman, small, with short dark hair. She stood quite still, with her hands in her pockets, and called again.

  ‘Danny!’

  I expected to see a dog bounding through the undergrowth, but nothing happened. There was something about the way the woman called that sounded so wretched that I crouched down further under the ferns, reluctant to be seen. I don’t know how I knew it was Mrs Sheriden, but I did. Maybe because she walked off in the direction of her house, or maybe because there was something about her that looked French – her big dark eyes, or pale skin, or the way she dressed. I was intrigued. Who is Danny?

  Robert is home late for his tea. He was with the Tobins all day, since one of their boys has joined the local defence force and they are short a hand.

  ‘Sean thinks the foot-and-mouth mightn’t last too long coming into the hard weather, but I don’t think it works like that.’ Robert shakes his head as he takes off his boots. ‘I think the frost will preserve the disease, make it worse.’

  He stands bolt-straight, staring at me, yet through me, out the door, at the orchard.

  ‘God help us if it spreads to here,’ he says quietly.

  ‘We’ll be all right, won’t we, Robert?’

  ‘Yes, it will be tough, but we will be fine. It will be worse for others, for those who’ve had to destroy their whole herd. It will be the final straw after the English sanctions,’ he looks at me, and sighs. ‘I don’t know what to think any more.’

  I go over to the hearth and check the dinner. I do not know what he can mean.

  ‘I find it hard to forget what happened here in Ireland, the way the English sent over the Black and Tans, who ran roughshod over the countryside, murdering innocent people in cold blood. How much hatred that caused.’

  I turn and watch my husband carefully. He has never before spoken about this to me.

  ‘And yet,’ he says, rubbing his calves, ‘and yet I feel something else inside my heart, June.’

  I follow him with my eyes as he paces the room, coming to stop with his back to me, looking at the picture of his mother on the dresser.

  ‘That is why I left this place before, and why I came to be in England. I had to escape from—’ He breaks off, and the fire sparks, making me jump.

  I stamp out the embers with my foot.

  ‘My brother fought for the English in the First World War,’ he continues. ‘He was a hero, but no one mentions it. My neighbours consider it best forgotten. But, June, I can’t forget.’

  He turns round, shoving his hands in his pockets and, to my horror, I think I can see a tear forming in my husband’s eye. It frightens me. What should I say to him?

  ‘Robert, that is the past.’ My words are hesitant.

  ‘How can you say that, you of all people, when you are so obsessed with history?’

  ‘It’s different. That is ancient Rome, not in our lifetimes.’

  ‘I feel that I am burying my head in the sand, living in my father’s house, surrounded by memories from my childhood, from those years when James D. was fighting. What happened to England, June?’

  ‘What do you mean, Robert?’

  But I know what he is saying. Our life is so different now from how it was when we first married. London was our city. We belonged to it, like Minerva and Charles, and we thought we would be part of it forever. Could my Irish husband feel the same shame I did? Were we deserters?

  ‘I know that de Valera thinks we should stand on our own two feet, as a nation, and be independent from England, but this is wrong, June. It’s not just about England and Ireland. It’s about the whole world, it’s about the future.’

  His tone is deadly serious. As he speaks, the light has suddenly gone out of the kitchen as if day has turned to night at the turn of a dial. I go to the dresser, fumble around for candles.

  ‘Here, let me do that, go back to the dinner.’

  I return to the hearth, aware that I am illuminated while my husband is still hidden in the shadows of our kitchen looking for the candles. The fire hisses and spits. It is the only sound in our safe little house. I think of fires burning in London, houses in flames, and men and women destitute. Minerva. Charles. It makes my throat tighten, and I long to scream out loud. Again I feel an urge to shout at Robert, order him to take me home.

  ‘What will we do, Robert?’ I ask instead, my voice barely raised above a whisper.

  ‘This is our home now, June, we will stay here.’ He sounds resigned, and his tone is almost patronizing. ‘But I do not know how long this war will go on for, and I fear it will only get worse.’

  I feel sick when he says this. How can it get worse when London is already in smithereens, and people most dear to me are in daily danger? I try to think of something else, let my mind drift to thoughts of ancient gods and goddesses, and the battles of old empires, but it is silly to be doing this, standing on the flagstones of Robert’s cottage, doing my woman’s work. Those thoughts are the frivolous imaginings of a girl who had time on her hands, not a busy farmer’s wife. That was my life before the war. An image of Claudette Sheriden comes into my head and, without thinking, I speak.

  ‘I saw Mrs Sheriden in the woods today.’

  There is a crash, and I turn round sharply, nearly knocking the stew onto the ground.

  ‘Blast!’ Robert is crouching on the floor, and I can see tiny shards of glass glistening under the kitchen table. ‘I dropped the candlestick on mother’s picture.’

  He bends down, carefully picking up the photograph of his mother. It is a very old photograph, possibly the very picture her husband had been given when she was his fiancée. It is the only picture Robert has of one of his parents.

  ‘Let me help . . .’ I wipe my hands on a towel.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ he says tightly. And then under his breath, so that I nearly don’t hear, ‘Damn Claudette Sheriden!’

  I stand quite still, wounded by being dismissed in such a manner, and by a new feeling. There is the presence of another woman in our kitchen, as cloying as the aroma of our dinner. It curls inside my stomach, making me feel suddenly nauseous. I feel like a f
ool. I feel how a woman like Mrs Sanderson must have felt when my mother’s presence swallowed her up.

  I remember the last time I saw her, sitting demurely at the white ironwork table, spattered by reflections from the weeping willow tree, sipping tea from one of Grandmother’s china-blue cups. Mrs Sanderson never said much; instead she watched. Her eyes darting in her round face, always in the shadow of our mother. It strikes me how similar we are. We were always the observers, watching the drama of our family members unfold before us. The others were the principal characters, and Mrs Sanderson and I stayed backstage. What was she wearing when I last saw her? I can’t remember, although I can recall vividly every dress Mother and Min wore each time the Sandersons came to tea. What colour was her hair? Was it brown, or more copper; or paler, even a mousy blonde? She had been such a nondescript woman. Even her illness and death had been without drama. She had just crept away, thinner, paler, diminishing until she was no more. It was shocking. And the memory of it makes me shake all of a sudden. I feel guilty about Mrs Sanderson. I regret I didn’t pay her more attention, and that I used to laugh at Min’s impressions of her. She was a woman who bolstered a man, but she was never adored. Not like my mother.

  And her funeral. No, I do not want to remember that day. I lean over the stove, stirring our stew diligently, listening to Robert as he sweeps up the glass from his mother’s picture frame. Yet still the images return. There we are, Min and I, standing in the cold church and Min whispering to me, ‘Do you know that Mrs Sanderson is the first person we have known who has actually died?’

  She looked almost excited about this, her cheeks flushed, and her hands fidgeting.

  I stared back at my sister stonily. ‘And so?’

  ‘So . . . it’s . . . important . . .’ Min began hesitantly, but the rest of her words were drowned out by the organ striking up.

  Even Father managed to come to the funeral. He said little, nodding and smiling weakly at us, and taking Mother’s hand whenever he could. Once I saw her pull her hand out of his, and I was sure Father recoiled, as if slapped.