I fingered my silk gloves all the way back to London, as the train sped through the darkness. Charles, Min’s Prince Charming, met me at the station. He talked non-stop about how successful his importation business was, and how he believed that soon English people would catch on to eating spaghetti, and Italian pasta and other foods. Then he would be very wealthy. I believe he was showing off to me, as if he wanted to prove something. Quite odd, since he had never before been too interested in my opinion. He didn’t ask me about Mother, although he knew that I had just been to see her.
It was a damp drizzly evening, mild for December, and as we pulled up at my sister’s house in Highgate, all the lights were on inside. On the doorstep I stood still for a moment, for I could hear Min’s sparkling voice singing. Strauss. Charles opened the door and we were greeted by Lionel as he raced towards me across the hall, jumping up with excitement. I bent down and rubbed his ears, kissing the tip of his nose as Charles took my coat and hat in the doorway. He took forever to hang them up. He is such a careful man, so neat and punctilious. How funny to think my sister married someone like him, when she is unable even to keep her own hair tied up for more than an hour. Opposites do attract.
I almost skipped for joy up the stairs. Three hours with Mummy and Giovanni Calvesi had felt such a long time. When Min saw me she stopped singing in mid-flight, let out one loud peal and ran across the room to hug me. Her audience was one lone man sitting on the sofa, and he started in surprise at her outburst. Min squeezed me so tight I could hardly breathe. I could feel her ribs and was shocked at how thin she still was. Over her shoulder I could see her guest, woken out of his musical reverie, standing up and looking curiously at me, his hazel eyes reminding me of a deer, wary and used to solitude. But something about me held his attention, for instead of looking back at Min when she began to speak, as all the other men did, his gaze did not falter.
My husband’s eyes are able to do all sorts of things to me. They can fill my belly with warmth, and let me know how he wants to be alone with me. They can criticize me silently, reminding me to be modest. They can cut me down, making me feel ashamed. I suppose Robert is a little old-school, like his chum Charles. How strange that those two old-fashioned men should end up marrying modern girls like Min and I.
Min was so excited to see me that Charles had to tell her to calm down, or else she might have another fainting attack.
‘Are you not well, Min?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I am fine, darling. Just sometimes I get a little tired, dizzy. It is the lot of the hard-working artist, so caught up in their creativity they forget to eat!’
Charles raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Robert, let me introduce you to my sister-in-law, June Sinclair. June, this is an old colleague of mine, Robert Fanning.’
Robert stepped forward, and we shook hands. His touch was warm, and his hands large, so that mine felt like a small child’s. He looked about the same age as Charles, but his expression was less stern, his smile broad and youthful.
‘A pleasure,’ he said, a small blush spreading across his cheeks, and I could feel myself colouring too.
‘Come on, Robert; let’s leave the girls to their chat. I have a fine malt whiskey in my study.’
Alone at last, Min and I sat down on the sofa to talk, but my heart was still thumping after touching Robert’s hand. Min noticed immediately, of course.
‘Oh, he is lovely, isn’t he, Juno? And a bachelor too, with a very good job, quite a match.’
‘He is a little old, though,’ I said cautiously.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Min squealed, ‘He is the same age as Charles, or thereabouts. No, he is just right for you. Young men can be so possessive, and impetuous. Older men give one a little more freedom, I think. Besides, they have more money.’
‘Min!’ I exclaimed with false shock.
‘Charles used to work with Robert, and he thinks Robert is an excellent fellow. We shall have to fix you up. I do believe you need a little romance in your life.’ Min flicked the hair out of my eyes. ‘Too much study makes Juno a dull girl.’
I suddenly felt self-conscious, and a little worried. How could I possibly think this man would be interested in someone like me? ‘Where are the other guests?’ I asked nervously.
‘Oh, they are coming, soon.’ Min glanced at her watch. ‘Poor dears, Charles wants us to try out some new Italian pasta. He calls it farfalle, and it is quite beautiful, like bows or butterflies. But I don’t think it will be what our guests are expecting on Christmas Eve!’
We looked at each other. Min leant forward, took my hands in hers and squeezed them. Not for the first time, her lovely face took me aback. Even I, her sister, was sometimes swept away by Min’s effervescence. Her beauty was such that, though manifested on the surface, it came from within as well and made her the centre of attention everywhere she went. Yet it was the kind of beauty that made her lonely, for no girl had ever wanted to be Min’s friend, and every man wanted to make love to her. It was why she was married before she was out of school, and I believe it trapped Min. I never envied my sister.
‘We should see each other more.’
Min pursed her rosebud lips in mock admonishment. ‘We live in the same city, for heaven’s sake!’
‘I know, I’m sorry. How’s the Slade?’
‘Oh, the Slade is splendid!’ Min looked out of the window suddenly, so that her thick, inky hair tumbled out of its loose bun. ‘I meet so many talented artists, people from all over the world: Frenchmen, Polish, German. You know, they are saying the Fascists are planning to take over Europe. I have a German friend and he decided to leave Germany because he is a Jew. He told me Hitler and the Nazis plan to force all the Jewish people to leave Germany. He says he thinks he will try to take over the whole world. Can you believe such a thing might be, Juno?’
‘I don’t think that could ever happen,’ I said.
‘But look at the British Empire – we did it.’
I had not thought of it like that before. I suppose because I am English and one always thinks the side one is on is right.
‘You know Robert is Irish?’ Min smiled slyly at me. ‘So it is just as well we were reared good Catholic girls!’
‘Min, stop teasing me.’
But my sister was right. She could see it more clearly than I. How Robert and I were destined to be together. I believe I fell in love with Robert that very night. He sat next to me at the dinner table and gave me so much attention that my head was in a spin by the end of the meal. In the New Year he called to my lodgings constantly, taking me to the pictures, out to dances, whatever I wanted. Then, onValentine’s Day, we went walking in Hyde Park, and he got down on one knee. Producing an engagement ring from his pocket, and stuttering the words like a teenage boy, this mature man, nearly twenty years my senior, asked me to be his wife. I think it was in that moment that I loved Robert so completely. I could sense the utter humility in his actions, and it overwhelmed me with a compassion I had never encountered in my whole life.
We were married two months later. It was a simple ceremony in London. His father couldn’t come because he was busy on the family farm back in Ireland, and Robert’s mother was dead. Of course my father was dead too, and I didn’t want to invite Mummy and Giovanni. I could not bear to compare Robert and myself to her and her lover.
But she found out anyway and acted as if she cared, demanding to know what Robert’s background was. I saw a flash of her old superior self, for she could not help but let it surface. When she discovered he was Irish she was even more patronizing.
‘For goodness’ sake, June. What are you doing, marrying some bog man from the back of beyond? You have no idea of his breeding.’
I wanted to shout back at her: And what of your Italian artist? What is so special about his pedigree?
‘I believe Robert’s family is very respectable,’ I replied. ‘Devout Catholics.’
‘But what about your degree, June. What would your father say?’
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br /> ‘I don’t think it appropriate for you to tell me what you think Father would say, when it is evident that you did not consider his feelings for a long time.’
That silenced her.
But it did not matter what Mummy thought, not one whit. Min and Charles were our witnesses, and what with friends from Robert’s work and a few of Min’s acquaintances, we had a grand day.
We spent our honeymoon in a hotel in Babbacombe, and I had planned to show Robert Torquay, and walk with him by the sea. But it rained the whole weekend. What did we care? We had been waiting three months to consummate our love. It had felt so long, although everyone called it a whirlwind engagement.
What did I feel when Robert first made love to me? I am trying to remember.
Very happy, that was the first sensation, and a little nervous too. I never knew whether he was a virgin as well, but I doubted it because he was so much older than me. I remember nearly laughing in the middle of it, because I suddenly had a picture in my head of Lionel, the dachshund, having sex with Delia, the black Lab that belonged to the Judges. It had looked so ridiculous. I couldn’t quite believe humans did this too, and then called it love.
And how did I feel when it was finished? Unfinished, I suppose.
I bloomed with pride though, because now I was a married woman and I was happy to walk away from university, and ancient Rome. I had my own story now and I didn’t miss history. I was so delighted to live in another kind of world. London was new to me all over again. We rented a small flat in Hampstead. I spent each day cleaning it until it shimmered, pressing and starching Robert’s work shirts and reading Modern Woman for more tips on housekeeping and new recipes. My college books were packed away, and I filled my mind with fashion and film stars. Sometimes I would walk down to the Finchley Road, hop on a bus into Oxford Street and then get on another bus back up again. I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t want to go shopping or see anything in particular. I just loved sitting on the bus as it trundled down the road, watching everyone living their lives, listening to the humdrum sounds of this great city. It made me feel a part of something.
London. Just a few years ago, but everything was different. Robert was happy for it to be just the two of us. He liked London as much as me. Three years flew by in a whirl. After I was married I saw my sister more often, and even though we never regained the symbiosis we had as children, we spent lots of time together. Min took me to art exhibitions and concerts, and I took her to the cinema. We fell in love with Clark Cable together. Min fancied herself Vivien Leigh, and I was Carole Lombard. We discussed fashion, and new dishes to cook for our husbands, and in between it all Min managed to paint. She never stopped painting. Sometimes she asked me about my classical studies and Julia. I would shrug my shoulders and tell her I had lost interest in my Roman princess. Min would cock her head and tell me off.
‘No, Juno, you are just taking a break from your studies. You will return to them one day.’
She seemed so certain that I would.
It was strange that each time we met neither of us discussed Mother. Since I had married I did not want to visit her, because I was afraid of what she might think of Robert. Or did I think he would fall for her, too?
We lived each day one at a time, carefree and gay, loving our new husbands, and pushing the idea of children to the back of our minds. We had plenty of time, or so we thought.
Then war broke out, and everything changed. Robert was offered a job in Dublin, and he took it. He said he wanted us to be somewhere safer, somewhere we could think about starting a family. It was the first time he had mentioned children, and it broke my little bubble of contentment. He said we would try Ireland for a while, and return to England once things were back to normal.
Who would have thought the war would still be going on now?
I remember we took the ferry to Dublin. It was packed with people, and none of us on the boat could look each other in the eye because we felt as if we were all running away. There was no laughter, or singing, just the depressing cloud of guilt suspended above us all.
If we had not returned to Ireland, I would have been in London with Min when the bombing started, and things would have turned out differently in the end.
Now it is worse than ever, because Robert is fighting and, instead of being closer to him when he is on leave, I am stuck here in the back of beyond. The Blitz doesn’t frighten me. I would rather be in it, living on the edge, right up on the precipice of life. Min once wrote me that when death is such a hair’s breadth away she feels so alive. Everything looks like a painting by William Blake, like a startling vision from God. She wrote that danger brings you closer to the divine.
THE ADULTERESS V
Does sex reach a plateau impossible to maintain? If they were not committing adultery, would it fade faster? If they were married to each other, would they have even taken themselves to such heights of passion?
She never experiences such lovemaking with her husband. She never craves him as much as she craves this man, so that she might be about her daily business and the sudden thought of him makes her damp, agitated, counting the hours to their next rendezvous.
Is their love art? Is it something exquisite, which they have created, but which is an illusion of what is real? If only she could hang their feelings up on the wall of her house, they would remind her that it is possible to let a kindred spirit into her heart, even temporarily.
JUNE
I tread a pathway through the orchard and head into the woods. Things do not seem so bleak, because I can spend the afternoon in Phelim’s company and forget my husband is in England, flying planes, risking his life every night while Phelim and I laugh and chat and sometimes he plays me the piano. The way through the woods feels like a well-worn path, as if others have taken this trail before me and will do so in many years to come. There is a sense of not being alone, and again I think of Robert’s parents and of James D. Are their disapproving spirits silently censoring me?
The time of year assists my daily desertions from our farm. It is mid-winter, and I am told there isn’t much to do until February when they start to plough. Besides, the Tobins have been looking after me well, for they view Robert as one of their own.
Oonagh comes as regular as clockwork, three mornings a week. Slowly we are becoming more comfortable together, although we are from such very different worlds. I find her a strange mixture. Some days she will chat about the fairies as if they are real, talking of the banshee, and the pooka – the shape-shifter, she calls it sometimes – and how they can creep up on you if you’re not careful. In the next breath she will talk about ‘Our Lady’, and finger the medallion that she wears around her neck.
The best night is Sunday in theTobins’ house, when all the Mass-going is over for the week. Everyone appears lightened of their sins and determined to let their hair down. Oonagh and her two sisters sing, her father plays the fiddle and her brother the tin whistle. Everyone else dances. It is not the kind of dancing I am used to. They do it in their shoes, stamping their feet up and down on the flagstone floor, like a form of tap dancing. All the dancers – men and women – stand as rigid as poles, their arms clamped to their sides and their faces completely expressionless. It is the legs that say everything, leaping, and stamping and twisting in the air. Then they twirl each other round and round, and it makes me dizzy even to watch, for I could not try to do this type of dancing. Oonagh’s mother stands by the stove, laughing stoutly and declaring that the dancing is grand for cleaning the stone floor. It is a kind of folk dancing. When I watch Oonagh and her sisters dance, I wish I could join in. I wish Phelim were here with me to show me how to do it, for I could not imagine my husband jumping up and down on his toes and twirling me around. But Phelim Sheriden is never invited to the Tobins’.
Last Sunday they had a visitor from the north of the county. I believe he was an uncle of Oonagh’s, and this man performed lilting. It is quite an incredible thing, for Oonagh told me there was a
time when people were so poor here they couldn’t even afford musical instruments, and so they made up all of the sounds themselves. We rode the waves of this man’s effortless lilting, and I believe my sister Min would have adored it as much as her beloved Strauss. For me, it was the essence of what I have come to be fond of in Cavan. A pure simplicity in what you hear, see and feel, which can be transcendent. It binds me to the land, where my emotions unravel. It is easy to keep them fettered when you live an urban life; not so out in the countryside, where all of nature is a metaphor.
After the song everyone was quiet for a while, and Oonagh’s mother got up slowly and began to make the tea. Oonagh signalled for me to go outside with her, and we stepped out into their yard under a full moon. I could hear their cows restless in the byre, but all the other animals were quiet.
‘I saved this,’ she said to me, producing a red apple from her pocket. We had spent the day before collecting the last apples, and storing them in pits with sand so that they might last the winter. Oonagh smiled at me conspiratorially. ‘Let’s do an apple spell.’
‘What’s an apple spell?’
She looked mildly surprised, but her dark eyes glittered mis-chievously. ‘Myself and Teresa do it every year, but now she is going to marry Brendan. She doesn’t want to do it in case . . .’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘In case what?’
‘It’s mad to think you’ve never done an apple spell,’ she said, taking a small knife out of her pocket, ‘and you with a sister and all. I can’t believe the two of ye never did this.’ She began to peel the apple, speaking all the time. ‘What you do is, under a full moon,’ she raised the knife up to the sky so that it glinted silver in the dark, ‘you peel an apple all in one go. You don’t break the apple-skin peel. You throw it over your shoulder, and then you see which way the peel falls, and it should spell the initial of your true love!’
The Adulteress Page 23