Summer on the River (17 page)

‘But he was married,' Claude persists. ‘You had no rights, no security. You were always alone at Christmas. He wasn't around for most of the time. You must have been lonely? Jealous, sometimes? Resentful?'

Evie frowns at her hands as if she is struggling to remember exactly how she felt; to be completely truthful.

‘It's difficult to explain it exactly,' she says slowly. ‘To begin with, I am not a naturally maternal woman. I never longed to be a nurturer or to be a wifely person. I loved my job at the university and then, when I began to write, it totally absorbed me. Researching the Civil War and all those old Devon families, adding a few extra relations and retainers from my imagination, this was almost all I needed. I had one or two relationships that were, to be honest, mostly physical, but TDF was …' she hesitates, ‘… he was utterly different. He never promised anything, you know. He was never going to leave Marianne but I didn't want him to. I'm very happy on my own. I'm very independent and I always worked antisocial hours. Our time together was a bonus. It refreshed us. And if you're wondering if I felt guilty about Marianne then I'm afraid the answer is that I didn't. TDF was old enough to know what he was doing and so was I. I played by the rules and it worked. I don't think she ever knew …' She tails off and looks at him, frowning. ‘Why are you asking this now?'

He shakes his head, not wanting to talk about Charlie and Jemima. ‘It just occurred to me that it must have been a bit tough, sometimes.'

‘It probably sounds odd,' Evie says, after a moment, ‘but it was the friendship we valued. People always think that any extramarital relationship has got to be about steamy sex but actually there are lots of people having perfectly satisfying physical contact with their spouses who are lonely in their marriages. They aren't mentally compatible; they don't laugh at the same things or have the same interests. Sex blinds them to begin with, then children keep the family involved through mutual needs and interests, but as the children grow up the real emptiness is revealed. It's the meeting of minds that's the real turn-on; sex is a bonus. An optional extra. But the sense of being known, understood, without having to explain – it's magical.'

Claude remembers how Charlie and Jemima stood together; the expression on Charlie's face as he came out of the Royal Avenue Gardens. He feels dread and delight both at once. He longs for Charlie to know this joy but he cannot see how it can possibly work. Should he warn him that Jemima is coming for coffee? Would that make him stay away or encourage him to turn up?

‘What is it?' Evie is staring at him, puzzled.

‘Nothing,' he says. ‘At least not … no, nothing.'

‘Are you thinking of taking a mistress, Claude?'

He bursts out laughing. ‘I should be so lucky.'

‘Then why the third degree this late in the day?'

‘No, no,' he says, distressed that she should think that he is criticizing her. ‘It isn't that. It's just I wondered, that's all, how hard it must have been for you.'

‘Anything I say has got to sound specious, hasn't it? “Marianne didn't know so it didn't hurt her.” “I made TDF happy so he was nicer to his wife.” That kind of crap. Perhaps if I'd hoped he would leave her, or if I'd lived in London, I might have suffered more but we were very semi-detached. Even so, we cheated. I asked Charlie about it once.'

‘
Did
you?'

She shrugs. ‘He guessed. One or two things were mentioned by accident after we were married and it seemed silly for us always to be skirting round it. So I asked him if he or Marianne had ever suspected anything. He said that he once joked to her that Dad always came back very happy and relaxed from Dartmouth and did she think it was more than the sea air that spiced him up. She answered that she didn't mind much as long as he came back in good form, and if there were a woman involved then she was getting a very poor deal out of it. Something like that. He was very laid-back about it.'

Claude can't decide whether this makes him feel better or worse: whether he should warn Evie about Jemima or tell Charlie to keep clear in the morning. The dread is beginning to outweigh the delight and he wishes that Charlie had gone to Polzeath with Ange after all.

Maisie has been safely delivered to her mother and Jemima is walking Otto beside the ley.

The meeting with Miranda was more difficult than she imagined, trying to keep her emotions under control, hiding her disappointment at not seeing Charlie.

‘Are you OK, Mimes?' Miranda asked, staring at her curiously. ‘You look kind of … het up.'

Jemima protested that she was fine, that she and Maisie had been having fun, but then Maisie had chimed in with how they met Charlie and had an ice cream and went to the dog show.

‘Really?' Miranda arched her brows in a particularly irritating way. ‘This sounds interesting.'

Jemima cursed under her breath and began a very light-hearted version of the story: how she'd mistaken him for someone else and it was just so typical of regatta. It was doubly embarrassing because she hadn't yet told Miranda about her meeting with Ben in Alf's and now it seemed too late. So she tried to play it down but Maisie made much of it, so that by the time the story was finished Miranda was fascinated.

‘He sounds rather nice,' she said slightly enviously. ‘Are you going to be seeing him again?'

Jemima had wanted to shout, ‘No, I shall probably never see him again,' and instead was obliged to laugh and tell her not to be so silly.

‘Only you,' said Miranda, amused, but with a faint note of bitterness in her voice, ‘would let yourself be picked up like that.'

Surprisingly, the comment hurt, though it was perfectly reasonable.

‘Maisie was our chaperone,' Jemima said lightly, ‘and it wasn't like that at all. So how are things? Have you booked up that Australian trip yet?'

Luckily this question distracted Miranda: not only had the trip been booked, she told Jemima, but now her mother was considering the idea that they might – she, Miranda and Maisie – all move to Australia.

‘With the boys out there it would be easy,' Miranda said. ‘And of course I'd get a nursing job in a flash. What d'you think?'

Jemima had to prevent herself from sounding too enthusiastic. Just at that moment she wouldn't have minded at all if Miranda had vanished away to Australia right then: lately she's been so prickly, so stressed. Jemima controlled herself, however, reminded herself of past, happier times, discussed the pros and cons, and at last they said their goodbyes and she was able to set off on the journey home.

Now, back at Torcross, there is time for some quiet reflection. She follows the track beside the reed beds, listening to the noisy squeaking of a family of coots who swim amongst the tall rushes. Spikes of purple loosestrife and dark pink willowherb lean across the path; pale convolvulus clings to bramble bushes where blackberries ripen in the sunshine. The water at this end of the ley is covered with a muddy-brown weed at the edge of which coots are feeding; a swan, with two cygnets paddling in her wake, glides on her leisurely way towards the stretch of distant, clearer water. The rushes grow so tall that the road across the Line is hidden, though the sea can be seen beyond their feathery tops, so that the roofs of cars, glimpsed intermittently, flash in the sunshine like silver-backed dolphins and the double-decker bus, gliding out of the village, is a majestic showboat sailing between the ley and the sea.

Jemima stands aside to let a party of walkers pass, smiles at them, nods in agreement with their remarks about the beauty of the scene and the wonderful weather. Otto sits obligingly, waiting for them to squeeze past on the narrow path.

‘Such a good dog,' one of the party says, patting him, and Jemima nods again. Yes, Otto is a very well-behaved and obliging dog and she feels very lucky to have him, especially just at the moment. It was good to come back home from Dartington to his loyal, unquestioning devotion after a car journey fraught with odd swings between elation and despair. Charlie will have left for Polzeath and what seemed to be the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her was nothing but a fleeting moment: a brief illusion of joy. She hadn't realized how much she'd been counting on seeing him again, though to what end is not clear. She said goodbye to him, told him to go away, but then, when she turned and waved her scarf, she saw his face illumined with joy. There, all amongst the madness and noise and excitement of regatta, it seemed impossible that they should be kept apart. Just for them, there would be a miracle: a space for their love in which nobody would be hurt.

‘You are a complete fool,' Jemima tells herself. She stares out across the ley, struggling between a terrible sense of loss and a lurking conviction that it could not have been for nothing. Oh, there have been other loves, other passions, but never before this strange, deep-down sense of knowing; of belonging.

Otto waits on the path, head on one side, watching her. She crouches down, taking his head between her hands, and he licks her cheek encouragingly and wags his tail.

‘What shall I do?' she asks him – and suddenly she thinks of Ben. She remembers how Charlie spoke of him with such affection and called him Benj. She wonders if Charlie told him that they met; what he said.

She stands up, turns back with Otto at her heels, and tries to decide how to contact Ben and what to say to him. Will he think she's contacting him now simply because of Charlie? That he's a kind of consolation prize?

Jemima swears under her breath: she likes Ben and she hopes they can still be friends. She'll text him, she decides; be open about meeting Charlie and take it from there. She'll invite him out to see the cottage and buy him a pint in the pub. After all, she tells herself, she has nothing to lose.

‘She hasn't been in touch then?' asks Charlie for the third or fourth time and Ben puts the lasagne back in the oven, drops the cloth and reaches out to check his mobile. He shakes his head and sits down again at the table in the breakfast room where Charlie is relaxing with a gin and tonic.

If it were not so painful it would be quite amusing to see Charlie's obsession. It's like he's sixteen again – except that he's a married man of forty-three – and Ben doesn't quite know how to handle it.

‘It's a damn nuisance not having a car,' Charlie says, ‘or I'd drive out there. You know. Just on the off-chance. We could both go.'

Ben is silent. He simply can't imagine how Jemima might react if they both were to turn up unexpectedly.

‘You could bring your car back down now from wherever it is you keep it, couldn't you?' wheedles Charlie. ‘You can put it in the garage.'

‘Evie uses the garage,' Ben says. ‘That's the deal.'

‘OK then. You can use her space. She's parked just across the road. You bring your car down, she hops into the garage and you go into her space.' He looks happy, eager for some action. ‘After all, it's silly not to have your car back again.'

Ben watches him, wondering how to distract him.

‘You know that money I owe you?' he says.

Charlie stares at him, as if he is trying to bring him into focus. ‘Money? Oh, that. Yes. Look, don't worry about that, Benj. That's just between us.'

‘I know it is. It's only that when the flat sells I'll be able to pay it back.'

Charlie turns his chair so as to look more directly at him.

‘We haven't really talked about all that properly yet, have we? You must be gutted.'

Ben thinks about what he might say; how he might perhaps draw comparisons between what has happened to him and what might happen to Charlie if he should pursue Jemima. He doesn't want to sound preachy but he wonders if this might be an opportunity he should take – for Charlie's sake. At the same time, honesty compels him to tell the truth about his feelings.

‘We'd been drifting,' he says. ‘Once Laura left home the cracks were more obvious. Nothing was said. I took more assignments away from home, Kirsty seemed to be visiting her family more often, and then I discovered that she was actually seeing this ex-boyfriend. That was a bit of a shock. I suppose I was prepared to put up with the lack of real closeness but I never thought she'd cheat on me. I was angry and hurt.'

Charlie looks shocked and Ben can see that he's relating this to his own experience with Jemima. His face is easy to read:
This is quite different
, Charlie is telling himself.
Whatever might happen between me and Jemima is completely separate from anything else.

‘Anyway,' Ben says, ‘Kirsty wants out so we're selling the flat. We're splitting it three ways so that Laura gets her share now. What's left will come to me and then I can pay you back.'

‘And what about you?' Charlie seems to be making an effort to bring his concentration back. ‘How do you really feel about being alone?'

Ben knows that he must be truthful now, which will undermine what he said earlier, but he can't lie to Charlie.

‘I have a weird kind of sense of relief,' he admits. ‘I feel free of anxiety and responsibility. Laura is up and running, and more or less independent. She and I will continue as we always have done, and I can live how I want to live.'

Charlie's face has cleared; he looks hopeful. ‘So you believe, in the long run, that it was all for the best?'

Ben searches for the right words. ‘I suppose it can't be right to cheat on someone,' he says reluctantly, ‘but it's very difficult to judge people, isn't it? Perhaps Kirsty was lonely within our marriage and needed something, or someone, to fill the gap. I can't blame her for it. I'd let things drift. At least she was honest about it.'

He watches Charlie filing away his words, weighing them, deciding how they might apply to him in the future.

‘It worked for my father and Evie,' he says.