‘Damned?’
‘For this. You and me. According to your God, are we damned?’ He pulled a crumpled packet of cigarettes out of his back jeans pocket and lit one.
‘Only if I die unexpectedly between now and my next confession. You’re damned anyway, of course. Atheists are.’
‘You go to confession?’
Mark grinned.
‘When the mood takes me.’
‘Do you confess this?’
‘This?’
‘What we do, all of this. You know.’
‘I confess everything. It feels wonderful. I come out and feel that I’ve never done anything wrong in my life, that God has forgiven all and I am utterly new again.’
‘And then what? Start your wickedness all over again?’
Mark flicked his eyes up at me and held my gaze. His eyes looked deep blue, cornflower blue and hooded, more mysterious than ever.
‘This isn’t wickedness, James.’ He leaned forward and planted a kiss lightly on my lips, pulling away when I tried to draw him closer. ‘Don’t you realize that you are the thing that allows me to be a good husband?’
He jumped to his feet faster than I could manage and was off and out of the barn while I was still struggling to pull myself upright and go after him.
Mark and I did not always have sex when I visited Dorblish. During Daisy’s first two years of life, he came to London half a dozen times, and on each occasion we reverted to our usual ways, but the distance between each visit was so great that, each time, I began to wonder whether in fact we had now finished with that episode in our lives, whether the occasional lapse was a mere aberration. I was even able to convince myself that this was what I wanted. After all — I was able to think away from Mark’s presence — hadn’t our affair run its course?
And then he would call some afternoon and say, ‘Oh, James, I thought you might like to know I’m running up to town for a few days next week. It’s half-term, isn’t it, James? Would you like to meet up? At my flat, on Tuesday afternoon?’ And I would say yes. And when we met he would stand above me and gently insist that I admitted the truth, and I might enquire, ‘What truth?’ and he would explain that I knew quite well what he meant, and prove it to me until I could only shout out that yes, I still desired him, that yes, I wanted him, and this gave him satisfaction.
Daisy grew sturdy and sweet. She learned to say her own name, ‘Daidy’, and mine. She began to recognize Jess and me, to trust us as she trusted her family. Once, on a walk, she could not quite clamber over a fallen log and held out her little hand to mine with such an expectation of my aid that I felt suddenly heartsick at the charm of her. I wondered then what she might make of me when she was grown. If she knew the truth, what would she think? Dirty old man, corrupter of parents, breaker of sacred trusts. She already knew how to place her hands together to pray with Nicola before bed; she would grow up a Catholic child, and I doubted that her views on morality would be as flexible as Mark’s. I took her hand and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her high into the air as she giggled and shrieked. But she’d already grown too old to enjoy being held. As soon as we were past the log, she struggled and wriggled until I put her down.
Did I imagine it, or did Nicola not want me around her child? I began to notice this, or think I noticed it, when Daisy was nearly two. There began to be a little habit. Jess and I would arrive for a weekend and Nicola would say, ‘Good news, my parents are taking Daisy for the weekend. You’ve just got time to say goodnight to her and Mark will drive her round.’
And we’d protest of course, but Nicola would say, ‘No, we grownups should be allowed to talk. I’m sure that’s what Mark wants, isn’t it? Grown-up talk like you have in London.’
And there was a little business of bringing Daisy out, beginning to be sleepy in her pyjamas and socks, and a round of kissing and maybe a story or a game, and then Mark would buckle her into the car seat and drive her around to Nicola’s family. They were so close that this back and forth was constant; they drove to each other for meals, to watch television in the evening, and to ferry Daisy between all the places she was loved the best. Mark had his wish: to be at the heart of such a family.
And at this point, Mark would say, ‘Oh, James, keep me company on the drive?’
And I would say yes of course, certainly I will.
And on the way back there was a place, invisible from both houses, a sharp bend in the road where we would stop the car and allow ourselves to be overtaken by desire. Cars rocketed past us round the bend, faster than I thought safe, but we were parked on the verge and Mark would say, ‘It’s fine, it’s fine, they go faster in the country than we do in the city.’ And I thought of making some joke about how fast we were going now, but the moment had passed and his scent was too intoxicating and his hand on the bare skin at the small of my back was too great for thought.
*
And one night, after one of these visits, driving back home to London, Jess said, ‘Darling, something awful.’
She was driving. I was lolling in the passenger seat, drifting on the edge of sleep.
‘Mmmm?’
‘Nicola thinks Mark’s having an affair.’
I was cold. Just that. As if I might have been cold for a long time but had only just noticed. I tried to decide what sort of noise an innocent man might make.
‘Really?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
A click, a tick-tock. Jess changed lanes.
It seemed plausible to sit up a little, to open my eyes.
‘Does she know who with?’
Jess shook her head, keeping her eyes on the road.
‘She thinks it’s someone he sees in town.’
Cold again. Very cold. Cold and empty.
‘Huh,’ I said.
‘Have you ever seen him with anyone?’
I swallowed, made a noncommittal hmming sound.
‘Don’t think so. Not that I’ve noticed.’
Jess nodded.
The traffic thickened a little. The car slowed. I opened the window a crack. To the right and left of us were luminous yellow fields of rape and lanes of traffic, fumes, honking.
I swallowed. ‘It’d hardly be surprising, would it? I mean, we know what Mark’s like.’
Jess nodded. ‘Yes,’ she rolled her shoulders, stretching the joints. ‘I think Nicola wants us to talk to him for her … but there’s nothing we can say really, is there? He is how he is. He always has been.’
A pause. The traffic inched to a standstill. An engine revving behind us.
‘What’s she going to do?’
Jess pursed her lips. ‘I tried to explain that maybe it’s not about her. And perhaps she should talk to him. Or find a way to let him know she knows. Because it needn’t mean the end to a relationship. Not everyone thinks that way. Perhaps Nicola could find a way to accept it.’ She sighed. ‘But I don’t think she understood. I think, if she found out it was true, she would take Daisy and leave.’
The cars ahead started to move again. Jess nudged the car into gear and began to gather speed.
21
Nicola’s voice, whispering from behind the hedge, said, ‘Yes, I’m sure she does, but you’ll have to tell her they aren’t suitable.’
Then Mark’s voice, angry but restrained: ‘I’m not telling her anything of the sort. They’re family stones. Daisy can have them set differently when she’s older.’
‘She’s not having them set at all. I don’t want any presents from your mother. You know how she spoke to me when we …’
‘She speaks to everyone like that. It’s only that you take everything so bloody personally. Look —’ now he was wheedling slightly — ‘it’s not for you or me, it’s for Daisy …’