The Adulteress

by Noelle Harrison

  Robert looked out of the window. ‘It’s such a beautiful afternoon. Why don’t we walk along the promenade on the cliff, get a little sea air.’

  ‘All right then.’ I was a little disappointed, but then we had the whole evening, all the night, did we not?

  Now it was late afternoon, and there was a rosy glow above the ocean. I gazed at the blue sea lapping gently on the beach, and at it stretching across the Channel, at the low white line of the south coast of England, which eventually petered out, leaving an infinite expanse of deep blue like the sea in Italy, even though it was the English Channel. The air was cold, but very still. We could hear the waves breaking against the shore, even from up on the cliff. They were swathed in the chill bands of an early English spring, and I believed there was nothing so pure on the face of the earth.

  Robert led the way, and we began to wend down the path, towards the beach. The colour of the sea reminded me of Italy – being on Ponza in particular – and I noticed that Babbacombe beach was shaped in a tiny half-moon, not nearly as big as the Chiaia di Luna, but still a crescent shape. Closer to the shore the water was a paler blue, where spindly rocks fingered out into the sea. The approach to Babbacombe, however, was completely different from Ponza. Here we were surrounded by downy English shrubs on our descent, and the beach had an utterly homely and familiar feel to it, like the landscape of my childhood, soft and safe.

  We walked on the shingle-and-sand beach, sheltered from the wind by a large red sandstone cliff protruding out to sea. We were the only people there, as the light was quickly leaching out of the sky and the temperature was dropping. I shivered.

  ‘Are you cold?’ my husband asked me, pulling me closer to him.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  He planted a kiss on my lips, and we stopped walking for a moment. As he bent down to me, the kiss gradually became longer, more passionate.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about my Roman Julia. How she fed her soul on being touched, on letting someone – anyone – right inside her. I kissed Robert back with force. I loved him utterly. He was the only man I desired and I wanted him to fill me up, again and again, all of my days, every day. We pulled away reluctantly, and Robert looked into my eyes, as if he was asking me something. He took my hand, and led me along the beach. A breeze came across the waves, lifting my hair off my face and flushing my cheeks.

  Robert pulled me with him, around the red rock into a tiny cove, hidden from the clifftop view. I followed him behind a boulder, and he turned me around by the shoulders so that my back was to the sea and I was facing him, with the cliff behind him. His lips fell onto my skin, kissing my forehead, and my cheeks, and my neck, feverishly. I put my arms around his waist and clung onto him. I imagined I was a limpet and he the rock, wet with passion from the ocean. I closed my eyes and smelt the salt in the air, tasted the tang of it on my tongue, my open mouth, as Robert pushed his lips onto mine. I felt his hands about my waist, and how they gently pushed beneath my skirt, unfastening my stockings, so quickly, and letting them fall about my ankles. A distant voice inside my head whispered, What if someone sees you? Someone who knows you, your father or your mother? But no one could, for we were hidden from view, from the whole wide world. I squeezed my eyes fast, afraid of the expression on Robert’s face, convincing myself I was half-asleep and we were both in a dream. I held onto him, tighter, tighter, and then I felt his nakedness brush against my thigh, and I quivered with anticipation.

  This was different from our wedding night. Different from all the days afterwards in our honeymoon bed. This was like the elements. How I imagined Julia felt when she coupled with another man. He parted my legs with one hand and lifted my skirt with the other, and then quickly pushed inside me. He gave a low moan. ‘Open your eyes,’ he said in a hoarse voice. My fingers dug into the back of his tweed coat, as he pushed deeper inside me. I lifted my eyelids slowly, but he was not looking at me. It was as if his gaze was looking directly through me, as if he could see someone else inside me. It was unnerving. He appeared completely different. The dusky glow in the sea made his skin darker, and his hair had fallen forward and was tousled by the wind, his lips curled, pushed out by his teeth so that they seemed fuller. For one second I thought of Giovanni Calvesi, and it made me feel sick. But then I could feel my husband inside me. I found myself no longer motionless, but pushing back. An emotion overcame me, whereby I wanted to be here forever, locked into Robert, in our primeval motion by the sea. I found myself opening up, tingling sensations beginning to stir, which I had felt once before, but never with Robert. I began to pant, and then just as I had closed my eyes again and was willing to open my mouth and cry out, he stopped. I pushed against him, once, twice, desperately a third time, but he would not move. He had lifted me up against a rock, and now he was leaning against me like a dead weight. In vain I squeezed his waist and squirmed beneath him, but I could feel him slipping away, and now all there was left between my legs was wetness, and his juice, inside me, all over me. I opened my eyes and he was smiling at me, the old Robert again. He smoothed back my hair and kissed my forehead, before bending down and gently pulling each stocking up my leg and attaching it to my belt. He pulled down my skirt and coat, and then stepped back as if he had just been rearranging furniture. Suddenly I felt very cold, and I began to shiver, yet I could not move. Inside I was still throbbing. Did he not see the look on my face? How could he not know? But Robert was doing up his trousers and pulling his coat about him. ‘Come on. We’ve just time to get back and changed for supper.’

  I looked at him, astonished, for he made no reference to what we had just done, what we had shared. The intimacy of our love-making seemed wasted, like the limp strands of wet seaweed strewn about the rocks beside me. I began walking slowly, he linked my arm and we moved back the way we had come in silence. My heart was clamouring. I felt betrayed – yes, that was how I felt – to be opened up in such a way and then left stranded. But Min had told me this was how it was for a wife.

  ‘Never expect too much,’ she had said, the night before I married. I had been so cross with her for saying that, because I had been brimming with expectation, and my sister managed to cast a shadow on my marriage before it had even begun.

  ‘Stay with him in his desire,’ Min had said, ‘and then you will be satisfied through him. Never seek your own pleasure.’

  After my wedding night, I remembered my sister’s advice and had stuck to it all week long. I had enjoyed giving my husband such gratification, because he made me feel attractive, and powerful. I was mistress of all his desires. I had not looked for anything else. But now I felt jarred, and irritated. I no longer felt covetable, but abandoned somehow, although my husband held my arm and helped me up the cliff path as if I was his most precious possession. What had got into me?

  And if it weren’t for the apple trees, I might have behaved or said something to Robert that would have damaged our marriage forever. But when I saw the three wild crab-apple trees, just like the little ones in the lane on the way up to Daddy’s house, I thought of Father, and Mother, and how lucky I was to have a husband who loved me like Robert. These were old crab-apple trees, very aged and gnarled-looking, and I only noticed them by chance as they were leaning away from the path at crazy angles, as if they were trying to hide themselves behind the other trees. The trees were not in bud yet, but I remembered their small pink flowers, with a scent similar to honeysuckle, as sweet and innocent as a baby’s skin. I stopped walking and dropped Robert’s hand.

  ‘Oh, look.’ I walked towards the three trees and, reaching forwards, I picked one of the leaves. It was small and almost heart-shaped, glossy and mid-green.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They’re wild crab-apple trees.’ I turned to Robert and showed him the perfect leaf stuck to my palm. ‘How odd that they should be here, so close to the sea.’

  ‘I’ve never seen one of these before,’ said Robert, stepping back and shoving his hands in his pockets.

 
‘There were some crab-apple trees down the lane, where I grew up. And sometimes we made jelly with them. Oh, look, goodness – I can’t believe it – there is one tiny little apple.’ I reached up and picked the miniature yellow fruit. ‘You can’t eat them raw, very bitter.’ I spun it between my fingers.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to anyway,’ Robert replied, beginning to walk away up towards the promenade. ‘I can’t stand the taste of apples.’

  ‘How odd,’ I remarked, almost to myself. ‘I can’t imagine not liking apples.’

  I popped the crab apple in my pocket and skipped after him. He reached back and took my hand. I felt him holding me tight, the reassuring pressure of his fingers against my wedding band. My frustration by the sea was suddenly gone with the breeze, and I looked up at the sky, my eyes following a group of seagulls fending off a buzzard. The clouds were gathering, and I could smell the tang of rain approaching. Our afternoon of sunshine was a brief, bright interlude in a wet March honeymoon. We walked leisurely back towards the hotel. Happiness began to swell in me again, as I felt the joy of being attached to Robert, the pride of being the wife of a proper man, like my sister was. I was no longer a girl. I had fully graduated into womanhood, and I supposed now that the bewilderment and thwarted desire of earlier was part of my lot as a wife, as Min had warned me. I was determined never to let my guard down again.

  I believe in symbols. My father told me that apples were always sacred to the pagan love goddesses, and to share an apple with your loved one was to seal that love forever. That day on Babbacombe beach I was glad I had found the wild crab-apple trees because I thought they stood for our marital love, and the endurance of my partnership with Robert. But my husband does not like apples.

  Maybe we are meant to love many times, and in many different ways. Maybe we are never meant to marry?

  Possibly the early Romans were right. For them, marriage was a contractual tool, which involved no romance whatsoever, but brought about financial, political and reproductive resolutions. I cannot believe that they were a heartless race, but a generation of people who understood more than we do the vagaries of passion, the fickle nature of our hearts, and that sometimes we believe we are in love with someone just because they are there with us, in a particular moment in our lives. We can share it with them, and not be alone. When I think of this, I think of Phelim. I know by the way he looks at me that he can bring me to the edge of love, a place my husband never could.

  MIN

  June is late. Her train must be delayed. Min had come down the night before with Charles. They had stayed in a small hotel in Brixham. The same one they stayed in at the time of the funeral. Charles was supposed to come to the Mass with her and drive the two sisters home, but this morning he informed her that he had to return to London unexpectedly, for business reasons, and she would have to get the train back with June. Min was secretly relieved, for they had argued all the way down in the car and she couldn’t bear another moment of antipathy in his company. Not when she was feeling so very vulnerable. Besides, he seemed particularly irritated by the presence of Lionel, her father’s dachshund, which they had to collect when they arrived. Charles kept saying that he had no wish to keep the wretched animal, but Min was determined otherwise.

  Min thought about her husband, and how he didn’t look so much like a Prince Charming when he was cross with her. His eyes looked tiny, like an angry pig’s. His face became tight, his lips a straight narrow line across his face, and his forehead appeared too shallow. The perfection of his face was a veneer. It was his height, and the way he dressed and held himself, that lent him the aspect of a handsome man, but really, up close, he was not so dashing. Min pinched herself. How could she think such horrible things about the man she loved? They had been married just over a year. They should still be enthralled with each other. Yet so much had happened within that year. Min felt she had aged ten.

  She wandered through the churchyard, Lionel at her heels. She was early for the Mass, yet had not wanted to hang around in the town. As soon as Charles had left she had risen. With only a cup of tea lining her stomach, she had set out for the church and the graveyard. She was bleeding still. She didn’t know when it would stop. It left her feeling empty and emotional, her thoughts in a turmoil. She hoped to gain some peace here in the place where her father was buried.

  It was odd the way she had ended up looking after her father, rather than June, for her sister had always been his favourite. But Daddy had not wanted to distract June from her studies, especially since it was her first year at university. It had fallen on Min’s shoulders to visit her father in Gloucestershire, at the boys’ school where he worked, and make sure he had clean laundry, and not too much drink in his cupboards. At least he dined at the school, for she would have imagined he might have starved to death otherwise. The headmaster and the other teachers were very understanding, for often her father was unable to get out of bed to teach his classes, and they turned a blind eye, for he was such a brilliant scholar he deserved some leniency. But when he began to turn up to classes stinking of whiskey, something had to be done. That was when Min was called upon. Although she was the youngest daughter, the fact that she was a married woman somehow made her more responsible.

  Charles had little sympathy for her father. He saw things from her mother’s point of view, and when Min tried to get his help, he said her father deserved to lose his job. He said her father was lazy. But at least Daddy wasn’t a coward.

  Min had begun to suspect Charles was unable to operate without a woman behind him, to bolster his ego. He was so very touchy, especially when she asked him about the war. From what she could make out, he had not actually experienced any kind of combat at all. It embarrassed her when he dressed in military uniform and talked about the war in company, for she could see he was just an actor playing a part. And yet she knew that her husband adored her, and this was what made him so cross with her, for he believed she could never love him to the same degree. Again and again it would come up, as it had the previous evening.

  ‘I wonder, will your mother be there tomorrow?’ he had said, as they drove south into the gathering darkness.

  ‘I hardly think so,’ she had replied tightly. ‘She didn’t come to the funeral, so why would she come to the memorial Mass? Besides, we don’t want her there.’

  ‘How do you know June might not want to see her?’ He flicked his eyes over in her direction. She did not look back at him, but out of the window of the car, at the sky losing its colour and the trees swaying in the wind.

  ‘Because she feels the same way as me. We both hate Mother.’

  ‘Min, you should forgive her,’ Charles said patronizingly. ‘You know your father was a difficult man. She must have put up with a lot.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what Daddy was like. You, of all people, have no right to tell me how to behave with my mother.’

  ‘She was first and foremost my friend, Min. I have told you so many times how it was only that one time we kissed, and that was because Meryl had died. She comforted me.’

  ‘How very kind of her. But you know, Charles, it is not the usual way in which people comfort each other.’

  She had managed to make Charles cross, something she did frequently. ‘It does not become you, Min, to speak in such a way about your mother.’

  His face hardened as he looked ahead at the road.

  ‘You mean it makes me ugly?’ she spat back, stupidly.

  ‘No, but it makes me wonder why you married me. Sometimes I am afraid it was out of revenge, to take me away from your mother.’

  His words stung her as if he had slapped her. She had loved him. Of course she had. She had always loved him, since she was thirteen. But the last few days had been painful, and confusing. She had never expected to lose the baby, although she had been very sick for the first seven weeks, unable to keep much food down, and then she had been bleeding sporadically the last week. She had just hoped it would stop, and everything would be normal. But
the night before last she had felt strange vibrations within her womb, and then deep, knifing pains in her abdomen. She had not wanted to tell Charles, for she had not wanted to believe it was true, and so she had crept out of bed and sat on the landing as blood began to pour from her, soaking her nightdress and making a stain on the carpet. Charles had found her there at five in the morning, tearful, and not far from hysteria. He had bathed her gently, and had told her it didn’t matter, they could try again, as long as she was all right – that was what mattered to him. He even suggested she go to art school, which she had dreamed of doing before they married, and forget about having a family for a few years. They had plenty of time to make babies in the future.

  That was two days ago, and now it was as if, to Charles, the miscarriage had never happened. He was the same brusque man he had been before she found out that she was pregnant, and she missed his attention, the way he treated her as if she was something extraprecious while she was pregnant. As the car accelerated, Min determined that she would try to conceive again as soon as possible, even if it was just to regain the gentle devotion of her husband.

  Min shivers and wraps her coat tightly about her. Her hat is pulled down low over her forehead, and she is wearing gloves, but still the cold wind bites into her. She looks up at the sky. It is dark, with heavy storm clouds. She guesses it might snow. She walks between the graves, down the gravel path, until she turns a corner behind the church. She stops in her tracks. Standing with her back to her, in front of Father’s grave, is her mother. Stylish as always, Min’s mother is wearing a rust-coloured cloth coat with a grey fur collar, and a hat to match. In one hand she carries a black suede bag, which matches her shoes, and a pair of fawn gloves. In the other hand she carries a tiny limp bunch of snowdrops. She leans down over the grave and places them on the mound of fresh earth. She then steps back, crosses herself and stands motionless.