Evelyn Street
Behind the barn
CHAPTER ONE
"Just what did you mean by that?" Mike Peters turned slowly around and faced his wife. He had already opened the door, intending to stalk out, but now he slammed it shut again, and Sandra recoiled from the look of cold anger he was levelling at her. But she continued to stare back at him, fury flashing in her green eyes. Tossing her sleek, raven-crowned head, she fought the beginnings of fear which were trying to root deep inside her.
"Just what I said!" she retorted bitterly. "You've got some plan in mind for that little vixen… I saw the way you were looking at her!"
"For Christ's sake, Sandy, try and be reasonable!" Mike snapped, resisting the temptation to go over and shake his wife until her teeth chattered. He felt extremely uncomfortable and just a little bit guilty. A guy can't help looking, he told himself, when a broad as well-built as Eve Slater comes into view, and as the girl was going to be working for him, he had to be friendly to her, hadn't he?
"Are you sure she's from the Agricultural College, and not just some little number you've…"
"I'm sick and tired of listening to your accusations," Mike interrupted, "and I haven't got all day to stand here and argue with you. Miss Slater," he went on quietly, "is a student from the college, and perfectly qualified for the project. She is majoring in Dairying, and will be with us for three months. Anything else?"
"You can't tell me she knows anything about farming," Sandra persisted, feeling her anger and jealousy combine and stick in her craw, choking the hot bitter words out of her. As she continued to rail at her husband, a suffocating feeling of futility and frustration swept over her. I didn't mean to nag him like this, she told herself hopelessly. I can't help it… but she's so young and attractive, and the way he was looking at her…
"I have to go now," Mike said tonelessly, "it's almost milking time."
"That's right," Sandra hurled, "go back to your damn cows… and your girlfriend!" Great gulping sobs convulsed her, and tears ran down her face as she stared at the departing figure of her husband. God, why does she have to cry like that? Mike shrugged as he slammed the door behind him. As always, he was moved by the sight and sound of her tears, and felt the guilt inside him strengthening with insidious speed. He would have liked to take her in his arms, caress and soothe her, stroke away her fears, in spite of her nagging and accusations, but somehow, he couldn't. He knew he was afraid that she'd reject his offering of peace, and felt that he couldn't stand the humiliation. If she wants to be like that, why should I be the one to give in? he reasoned angrily, as he hurried over to the barn.
Sandra crumpled like a rag doll onto the leather couch. Her sobs resounded in the small room, and the fading daylight cloaked everything in the office with ominous ambiguity. She felt small and alone and unprotected and totally incapable of drawing the strings of her life together. The woman who had screamed at and harangued her husband over a trivial incident was not the real Sandra Peters. The real Sandra was a loving, warm woman who stood by and encouraged her husband in all ventures. But who was that whining domineering shrew? I can't help it! she told herself again, burying her tear-stained face in her hands.
The vitriolic, stinging memory of her discovery of her husband's infidelity of over a year ago came rushing back with painful clarity – the humiliation, the feeling of complete insecurity, the anguish of it all was as fresh as if it had just happened. Even though they had made up, and she had sworn to forgive and forget, and Mike had tried, and was in fact a model husband since then, she couldn't purge herself of the bitter memory. She knew that she had taken every opportunity to get back at him, remind him of his indiscretion, to throw it up in his face on occasions when it was most wounding to him. She knew that the misery, the unhappiness of their co-existence, because it couldn't be called a marriage in the usual sense of the word, was mostly her doing, and yet, nothing would erase the jarring, searing memory of that dreadful time last year. She hadn't waited to verify her discovery, find out how long his involvement had been going on, or how serious it was. She had confronted him immediately, threatened divorce, court action, instant ignominy, and had relented only after weeks of ceaseless apologies, declarations of future fidelity and sworn avowals of love by her distraught husband. In a way, she had to admit to herself, she had enjoyed his obvious distress at her threat to leave, and had basked in his repeated statements that "he couldn't live without her." But the satisfaction she gained from the knowledge that he couldn't do without her was short-lived, and her ego had suffered too bruising a blow for her to maintain for long her role of sweet, forgiving but slightly-martyred wife. So her veiled recrimination had begun, and had gradually become more open and venomous, culminating in her accusations of today.
But she couldn't fool herself into thinking which she knew in her heart were unjustified, that her misery and discontent sprang completely from her husband's behavior. Even in her present misery, she was forced to admit that her unhappiness was accentuated by underlying discontent with her whole life. She had never dreamed when she had got engaged to the up and coming junior executive in the largest New England textile firm, that they would end up in the heart of New Hampshire farmland. She and Mike had such a good time in Boston, their first apartment, actually a tiny terraced house, their fast little sports car, their young, happy-go-lucky friends. She had enjoyed so much being a working girl and wife, and her job as assistant buyer of sportswear for a large department store was flexible enough so that she could take that bit of extra effort which made her dinner parties such a success. All her clothes were of the very latest fashion, and even though she got a discount on them, Mike's salary and hers combined had been generous enough to allow her to afford the extras, like that pale pink silk full length dress and matching coat which she had got for the opening of the opera season. Everything was going their way, and Sandra actually enjoyed the weekends they spent in the White Mountains, away from everybody, in that fishing cabin Mike rented.
At that time, she thought rural life was romantic – sitting before a roaring fire in the big stone fireplace, lighting the kerosene lamps at night, cooking the fish Mike had caught. After their hectic weekday round of activities, it was great being alone together, and when they got back to Boston, all their friends used to exclaim enviously over their rustic experiences.
It was just after their second wedding anniversary when the blow fell. Mike's company was moving south, and Mike decided to resign. Sandra was glad about that, shuddering at the thought of moving to a small town in South Carolina, and had naturally assumed that Mike would take up another position with a similar company. But her husband had other ideas. His uncle had willed his rundown old farm in New Hampshire to Mike, and he had always had a stronge urge to try his hand at farming. He had looked upon his company's removal from Boston as an act of fate, and had felt that he had enough saved to enable them to give farming a try. Dividends would keep them going for a while and the capital would be sunk into the renovation and working of the farm.
Even now, six years later, Sandra still shuddered at the memory of that appalling first year on the farm. The cold draughty house, the constant presence of the builders, with their clouds of cement dust, ceaseless hammering and banging, cooking and washing and existing in the most primitive conditions – Sandra thought that she would never survive. All her clothes got torn and muddy and she had ceased to care about her appearance that first year. But the greatest change had been in Mike. He was obsessed with the farm – every spare minute was spent on it; it occupied his mind completely; nothing seemed to matter to him but the farm. Sandra had nurtured the secret hope that the whole project would collapse and they could go back to the relative civilization of Boston. But nothing seemed to deter Mike – not even the loss of their small herd at the end of the first year through foot and mouth disease. He had become strangely stoical, and shrugged off his loss, and grimly went about restocking his farm with more of the huge, ponderous black and white animals of which Sandra was deathly afraid. Mike used to tease her at first, saying that the languid Friesians wouldn't touch a fly, but he had gradually become more and more impatient with her when she refused to share his enthusiasm over them. As time went on, she lost her fear of them, and even developed sympathy for them, and she was unable to bear the mournful lowing that rent the air when the tiny furry calves were taken from their mothers so soon after birth.