I stared at the cream carpet. This was the thing about Ant. He would be honest. I'd get it warts and all now. Except, obviously, there wouldn't be a wart in sight. About how he'd gazed at her hair – Titian, no doubt – in a dusty shaft of sunlight as he sat behind his desk, as she read haltingly from ‘Tintern Abbey’. I imagined the scene: the young don, his even younger student, Ant listening as she spoke of her love for Wordsworth, nodding, smiling encouragingly as she described how she felt she was with him as he wandered the valleys of his native Lake District, how his romance with nature was her romance too. Oh shit.
‘And sometimes, in lectures, I'd find myself just looking at her, directing the lecture at her, embarrassingly. As if she was the only one in the room. And in tutorials, I found I had to sit a long way away from her, over by the window, looking out at the quad to concentrate; couldn't sit too close. And then when we walked to lunch, her to halls and me to the Buttery, well, sometimes our arms would brush together and I'd feel—’
‘Yes, I get the picture Ant!’ I shrieked. ‘You fucking fancied her!’ For an intelligent man he was remarkably stupid. ‘You don't have to walk me through the lightning bolt!’
‘Sorry. I thought you wanted—’
‘I do, but I can do without the glimpses you got of her bra as you strolled through the quad together. I can paint my own nightmarish scenes!’
‘It wasn't like that. I mean, I didn't just feel a sexual desire – that's what I'm trying to explain. Well, of course I did. I did feel that, but what I felt more, was…’
Oh, Ant. I shut my eyes. Spare me. Spare me Love. He didn't even know the word he was grappling for. ‘Something more cerebral,’ I gabbled quickly, deflecting him. ‘A higher plateau, a meeting of minds?’
‘Yes,’ he looked at me, surprised. ‘Yes, that was it.’
No, Ant. No, it wasn't.
‘I… couldn't stop thinking about her. I knew it was wrong, dreadful. She was so young, so impressionable, but everywhere I went, every lecture I went to, every faculty meeting, I'd look out of the windows, hoping to see her, hoping she'd pass by…’
I felt prickly with sweat. Damp under the arms.
‘Why didn't you break up with me?’ I whispered, struggling to maintain some control. ‘Tell me you'd met someone else?’
He hung his head. ‘I meant to tell you. To be honest with you. Not to break up with you. After all, I knew it was hopeless. She was a student, for God's sake.’
‘So you kept your options open. You couldn't have her, so – hey, let's just stick it out with good old Evie.’
‘No! No, Evie, I loved you. We were so good together, are good together. I was just very confused. I knew this was just a passing infatuation, I tried to put her from my mind. And once I did try to tell you about it.’ He looked at me, pleadingly. ‘At the farm. In bed that afternoon, just before—’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’ I got up quickly from the bed. He had tried. Of course he had. That terrible day. Minutes before Neville Carter had drowned. Evie… there's something you need to know.
I went to the other window in our bedroom, the pretty little round one, like a porthole, with the circle of stained glass in the middle. We'd found it in Bath, on a long weekend, hustled it home and got a builder to knock a circular hole in the bedroom wall, pop it in. My arms were folded tightly around me as I gazed out to the street, transformed to a riot of colour through the stained glass.
‘And then, when Neville died…’ Ant paused; beside me, but looking out of his clearer window.
I turned to him, incredulous. ‘You felt you owed it me? To marry me?’
‘No, of course not, Evie. But we were so… so in it together. And suddenly, what I felt for – for Stacey's mother – seemed so frivolous, in the light of what had happened. It belonged to another age, a carefree, careless age. One I no longer inhabited. It felt so wrong. I'd elevated it in my mind to something courtly and noble, and all at once it became… fancying a student. Suddenly I was the sort of man who let children drown while I shagged my girlfriend – oh, and meanwhile, lusted after my pupils.’ He hung his head. ‘I hated myself. I took a long, hard look at myself. Walked all the way around and thought, no. It was a wake-up call.’ He began to blink rapidly. ‘But I didn't just marry you because it was the right thing to do, Evie. I married you because I loved you, and realized I'd been temporarily diverted.’
I stared at him. He clearly believed that. I didn't, but he did. He'd talked himself into believing this girl was all part of his shame, and being a good, nice, decent man, he believed it.
I swallowed. ‘OK, Ant. Quick as you can, canter me through the next bit, there's a good chap.’
He spread his hands out, palms up, a despairing gesture. ‘There isn't much to tell. You and I got engaged, and then a few weeks later I went out for a drink one night, when you wanted to watch something on television, and I went for a walk through the city and ended up at the King's Head.’
‘Did you know she was working there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you stayed till closing time and walked her home?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was a mild night and you walked down by the river, past Magdalen Bridge – where was she, Balliol?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then you took her in your arms and —’
‘Yes, yes! Stop it, Evie. I'm not proud of it.’
‘I need to know.’
‘Well, you do know.’
I breathed in deeply. Let the breath out shakily. ‘Yes, I know. You felt trapped. You felt you were getting married out of force of circumstance, and you felt you had unfinished business and you finished it, in a field, by Magdalen Bridge.’
He hung his head.
‘Did you feel it was finished, Ant? Is that why you never saw her again?’
‘I… yes. I felt terrible. Worse. So I decided – we, decided, we talked about it – that that was it. I switched my tutorial with her to another student, she had another don so I didn't have to see her, and she stopped taking my lectures. Changed to Metaphysical Poets. And then a few weeks later, she just wasn't there any more. I realized she'd gone. I asked another student, a friend of hers, casually, in the cloisters one day, and was told she'd gone home. Back to Sheffield. Was homesick, or something, thought Oxford was too much for her. I hoped she'd transferred to a northern university, was reading English up there.’
‘And you never checked? Never found out?’
‘No.’
‘And have you thought about her since?’
‘No!’ He turned, almost frightened. He came across the room to me, took my hands in his. His eyes were wide, pleading. ‘I mean, once or twice, obviously, but no, I've been happily married to you, Evie, ever since. It was over seventeen years ago! I've never looked at another woman, truthfully, since then. Not in that way. It was something I needed to get out of my system, I suppose.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘A last hurrah, call it what you will. The final nerves of a single man about to go down for life – I don't think that's so unusual.’
No. It wasn't that unusual. What was unusual were the circumstances. I took my hands from his; walked back to the bed. My legs were a bit wobbly. I needed to sit down. I ran my hands through my hair. Then I shut my eyes and covered them with my hands in an effort to think. I pressed my fingertips into my sockets. Then I dropped them, turned to face him.
‘What was her name, Ant?’
As I said it, I saw something pass across his eyes. Something wary. A shadow. I watched his eyes slither to the window. Ant's eyes didn't slither about like that. Some colour rose in his cheeks. He swallowed.
‘Isabella,’ he whispered. ‘Her name is Isabella.’
I flinched as if I'd been struck. I stared at him, horrified.
‘Isabella? Anna Isabella? You called our child after her?’
I gazed at him incredulously. He looked helpless, caught.
‘Evie, look. It wasn't like that. I just liked the name, I…’
I needed something to throw, to hurl, and I needed it quickly. I'd never had the physical urge to hurt before, but I had it now, and as I got to my feet I picked up the first thing that came to hand. A jar of moisturizer, as it happened. L'Oréal, because I'm worth it. It was on my dressing table – small, round, but good and heavy – and I hurled it at his head. Happily he saw it coming, ducked, and it went flying through the window behind him with a spectacular smash, glass flying everywhere, sailing out to the empty street below.
I wasn't far behind. Not through the window, obviously, but seizing my bag and my car keys from a chair, I ran from the room, slamming the door behind me. But a moment later I was back, hurtling across to face my husband again, to deliver my parting shot.
‘Well, you're not trapped now, Ant!’ I screamed in his face. ‘You're free as a bird. Why don't you sod off to Sheffield?’ I was shaking with anger. Positively vibrating with rage. ‘Sod off to your ready-made family up there, to your other daughter, the mother of your other child, why don't you? You could slot in just like that!’ I snapped my fingers in his face.
He stood there, white and shaken, gazing at me dumbly. Then I turned and left. Across the landing, down the stairs, jumping the last two steps, and into the front hall, just as an astonished Anna, who'd walked back from her piano lesson, was coming into the kitchen via the back door. She unwound a silk scarf from her neck, put her music down on the kitchen table, and gazed at me, astonished.
‘What's wrong?’
‘Ask your father!’ I snarled.
I exited via the front door, slamming it hard behind me.
13
Outside in the street I stood for a second on the pavement, holding my head. I had to, actually: thought it might come off; felt I might go pop. The houses opposite were swaying alarmingly and I knew I was hyperventilating so I took a few deep gulps of fresh air. The houses jolted back into position and the blood surged to my head, and with it, the rage. Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Isabella. Anna Isabella. How dare he? Furious, I hastened to my car at the kerb, flung open the door, threw my bag inside, and myself after it. Not a barmaid, I thought as my hand fumbled with the ignition, an undergraduate. A student! My husband, the respected, eminent professor, the man of letters, had an affair with a student. A little voice in my head said he hadn't been so respected and eminent then, or a man of letters, just a fledgeling tutor, only recently with a doctorate under his belt, but still…
I wrenched the gear stick into reverse and shot backwards, too fast, into another car. Shit. Sweat breaking out in beads all over, I leaped out to assess the damage. Not much, actually. Well, a dent to mine and a tiny one to his, but only the bumper, and that's what bumpers were for, weren't they? I bent down, licked my finger and tried to rub the scratch off the one behind. Bugger. Bit worse. Best left, Evie. I turned to scurry back to my car, but my way was barred by a dark-haired man, smartly dressed but tie loosened, collar of his unseasonable overcoat turned up. He looked like that Chelsea manager, José whatsisname, and just as furious.
‘Is this yours?’ He held up a piece of broken china pot between his forefinger and thumb.
‘Oh. Yes, where did you—’
‘On the back seat of my car. After it smashed through the rear window.’
‘No! Oh, how awful.’ I swung around to scan the cars in the street. ‘I'm so sorry, which car?’
‘That one, behind you. The one you've just reversed into.’ He pointed, green eyes blazing, to what I now realized, when I wasn't looking just at the bumper, was really rather a smart locomotive. Dark blue, slightly old-fashioned – perhaps classic was the word I was groping for – and very sleek. Only not so sleek now, with a dented bumper and… oh heavens: a huge gaping hole in the back window, glass and cream all over the back seat.
‘Oh Lord. I – I'm terribly sorry,’ I faltered, appalled. ‘You see I was having an argument, and I picked up the pot and accidentally, well, I threw it, and—’
‘You could have killed someone!’ he spluttered. ‘Do you realize a pebble coming out of that window –’ he jerked his thumb up to the gaping hole in our bedroom – ‘could have knocked someone for six? This,’ he held the piece of china right under my nose, ‘could have bloody finished them off!’
His eyes were boring furiously into mine. Quite close. Quite cross.
I swallowed. ‘Yes. Yes, I do see. And I'm really very sorry. It's not like me at all. You see, my husband and I had a row, an argument, and – and stupidly I reached for the first thing that came to hand. Luckily I missed him, because, as you say—’
‘I couldn't care less about your steamy bedroom fights or your squalid domestic violence,’ he spat. ‘What does concern me is my bloody car!’
I drew myself up to my full five foot three. ‘We do not indulge in domestic violence. My husband and I are civilized professional people. He's a don at the university, if you must know, and—’
‘If he was the Archbishop of Canterbury I couldn't be less interested, and if you threw pots of cream at him all night long it would be all the same to me. Just get your insurance details, right now, lady, and stop holding up my life.’
‘Ooh… there is no need—’ I stopped. Those green eyes were quite intimidating. Rattled, I turned and hastened to my car. I rifled in the glove compartment and found the relevant bits of paper. Ghastly man. I quickly wrote it all down on the back of an envelope, marched back and handed it to him.
‘There,’ I said icily.
As he passed me his, he held on to it for a second longer than was absolutely necessary. I had to glance up. A muscle was going in his cheek.
‘You'll be hearing from me,’ he snapped.
‘Can't wait,’ I snapped back, matching him now, glare for glare. I threw a particularly poisonous one over my shoulder before stalking back to my car.
I got in and shut the door with a flourish. As I started the engine, taking great care not to barge backwards into him again, I realized my wraparound dress had unwrapped itself. I'd been trading insults with him with one black bra cup showing and half a pair of pants with red bows cheekily on display. Bugger. I lifted my bottom from the seat to rewrap my dress and my foot slipped off the clutch. The car stalled, lurched forward and into the one in front. Shit. I froze, horrified. Oh, thank the Lord, it was Ant's. I peered anxiously over the wheel. Just a scratch. Feeling hot and fumbly now, I rearranged my dress and restarted the car, but as I glanced in the rear-view mirror, Green Eyes was watching me. His expression of exaggerated incredulity, finger at his temple, did nothing to improve my mood. I buzzed down my window and stuck my head out.
‘It's my car, actually, so mind your own business, OK?’
He shook his head in naked disbelief. Mimicking him, I shook mine back, adopting a gormless expression and wishing I was the sort of person who could flick two fingers. Instead, I childishly stuck my tongue out as far as it could go, which made my head wobble. Then I faced front and shot off, kangarooing elegantly out of my space and into the traffic, narrowly missing a car coming up behind me.
Bloody man, I seethed as a horn blared angrily in my wake. All I needed. Yes, and you can sod off too. I scowled as my new aggressor swept past, glowering. Bloody men. Bloody male drivers, actually. Raking a harassed hand through my hair, I glanced in the mirror to check the first one was out of sight. Yes. Good. I took a deep, shaky breath, and as I did, he and his poxy car shuffled right down my deck of worry cards and instead, my débâcle with Ant shuffled effortlessly to the top, the trump card flipping over in all its lurid glory.
‘Oooh…’ I shrank down in my seat and exhaled at the wheel. This was all getting far too horrible. Far too horrible. He'd felt trapped. Felt he had to marry me. Felt he'd owed it to me – he'd as good as said so – and all the time, all the time he'd been in love with someone else. Someone younger, clever, beautiful… I gulped down the bile. Someone, who perhaps he'd have pursued, married even, if it hadn't been for Neville. I filtered in another shaky breath through my te
eth.
A few spots of rain splattered the windscreen. I gazed numbly through them into the traffic on the Woodstock Road. No. No, you're wrong, Evie. You're overstating this, overreacting. There's nothing to say he would have even gone out with her, or, if he had, that he wouldn't have come back to you; married you. And anyway, it was all over seventeen years ago. Get a grip, woman! Move on. It's history. Except… it wasn't. Would never be history, not when there was a child. Living proof. I gripped the wheel. This would never go away, never. They'd always be with me, this… this – Isabella – I almost retched – and her daughter, Stacey, and somehow I felt it was my fault. That God was punishing me for forcing Ant's hand, for manipulating him, for letting him know I expected a wedding ring at the end of a decent period of courtship, and, at twenty-six years old, why not? I glanced nervously up at the sky, almost expecting the clouds to part, for God's finger to point, his voice to boom out, ‘What goes around comes around, Evie!’ No. No, God wouldn't say that. But it was definitely all my fault.
I was heading, I realized, out of the city and towards the Ring Road, which meant I'd be taking the Daglington road to the lanes. I was instinctively going home, to the farm, which, even after all these years, I knew I still regarded as such. When we were first married I'd say to Ant, shall we go home this weekend? And he'd laugh and say, we are home! When we were first married… My mind scuttled frantically back. Were we happy? Yes. Very. I knew, in all honesty, that was true. So get over this, Evie. It's a blip, that's all. A seventeen year blip, not even one of his making, not even a male mid-life crisis.
On an impulse, I swung the car all the way around the next roundabout and headed back into town. I couldn't go to the farm. Not to Caro. Couldn't tell her this. I imagined her face, horrified, but also… slightly censorious? Of me? I quaked. Why should I think that? As if she might know, might indeed be the only one to know, of my culpability? My manipulating ways? I went hot.
The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton Page 14