His breathing had steadied. He dropped his suitcase and fished for a handkerchief, mopped his forehead, then turned in a slow circle, trying to see behind the large ferns, the wall of the church, and into the shadowed enclaves of the office buildings. He scanned the park for a jeweled emerald dress, the flash of pale gold hair that would mark her out.
She was not there.
He looked at his watch. Twenty past. She had come and gone. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Perhaps Stirling had found the ruddy letter. It was then that he remembered the second envelope, the one from Clarissa, which he had stuffed into his pocket as he left home. He pulled it out now and read it swiftly. He could never see her handwriting without hearing her tight, disappointed voice or seeing her neat blouses, always buttoned to the neck when she saw him, as if he might gain some advantage from a glimpse of her skin.
Dear Anthony,
This is to let you know as a matter of courtesy that I am to be married.
He felt a vague sense of proprietary shock at the idea that Clarissa might find happiness with someone else. He had thought her incapable of it with anybody.
I have met a decent man who owns a chain of drapery shops, and he is willing to take on me and Phillip. He is kind, and says he will treat him as his own. The wedding will be in September. This is difficult for me to broach, but you might want to think about how much contact you wish to maintain with the boy. I would like him to be able to live as a normal family, and it may well be that continued, erratic contact with you will make it harder for him to settle.
Please consider this, and let me know what you think.
We will not require further financial assistance from you, as Edgar can provide for us. I enclose our new address below.
Yours sincerely,
Clarissa
He read it twice, but it was not until the third time that he grasped what she was proposing: Phillip, his boy, should be brought up by some upright curtain merchant, free from his father’s “continued, erratic contact.” The day closed in on him. He felt a sudden urgent desire for alcohol, and saw an inn across the road through the park gates.
“Oh, Christ,” he said aloud, his hands dropping to his knees, his head sinking. He stayed there, bent double, for a minute, trying to collect his thoughts, to allow his pulse rate to return to normal. Then, with a sigh, he pushed himself upright.
She was in front of him. She wore a white dress, patterned with huge red roses, and a pair of oversize sunglasses. She pushed them to the top of her head. A great sigh forced itself from his chest at the sheer sight of her.
“I can’t stay,” he began, when he found his voice. “I’ve got to fly to Baghdad. My plane leaves in—I have no idea how—”
She was so beautiful, outshining the blooms in their neat borders, dazzling the postmen, who had stopped talking to look at her.
“I don’t . . .” He shook his head. “I can say it all in letters. Then when I see you I—”
“Anthony,” she said, as if she was affirming him to herself.
“I’ll be back in a week or so,” he said. “If you’ll meet me then, I’ll be able to explain. There’s so much—”
But she had stepped forward and, taking his face in her two gloved hands, pulled him to her. There was the briefest hesitation, and then her lips met his, her mouth warm, yielding, yet surprisingly demanding. Anthony forgot the flight. He forgot the park and his lost child and his ex-wife. He forgot the story that his boss believed should have consumed him. He forgot that emotions, in his experience, were more dangerous than munitions. He allowed himself to do as Jennifer demanded: to give himself to her, to do it freely.
“Anthony,” she had said, and with that one word, had given him not only herself but a new, better edited version of his future.
Chapter 8
DECEMBER 1960
Once again he wasn’t talking to her. For such an undemonstrative man, Laurence Stirling’s moods could be perversely mercurial. Jennifer eyed her husband silently over breakfast as he read his newspaper. Although she was downstairs before him, had laid out breakfast as he liked it, he had uttered, in the thirty-three minutes since he had first laid eyes on her that morning, not one word.
She glanced down at her dressing gown, checked her hair. Nothing out of place. Her scar, which she knew disgusted him, was covered with her sleeve. What had she done? Should she have waited up for him? He had returned home so late the previous evening that she had been only briefly roused by the sound of the front door. Had she said something in her sleep?
The clock ticked its melancholy way toward eight o’clock, interrupted only by the intermittent rustle of Laurence’s newspaper as it was opened and refolded. Outside, she heard footsteps on the front steps, the brief rattle as the postman pushed the mail through the letterbox, then a child’s voice, lifted querulously, as it passed the window.
She attempted to make some remark about the snow, a headline about the increasing cost of fuel, but Laurence merely sighed, as if in irritation, and she said no more.
My lover wouldn’t treat me like this, she told him silently, buttering a piece of toast. He would smile, touch my waist as he passed me in the kitchen. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even have breakfast in the kitchen: he would bring a tray of delicious things up to bed, handing her coffee as she awoke, when they would exchange joyous, crumby kisses. In one of the letters, he had written
When you eat, just for that moment you give yourself over entirely to the experience of it. I watched you that first time at dinner, and I wished you would give the same concentration to me.
Laurence’s voice broke into her reverie. “It’s drinks at the Moncrieffs’ tonight, before the company Christmas party. You do remember?”
“Yes.” She didn’t look up.
“I’ll be back at around half past six. Francis is expecting us then.” She felt his eyes linger on her, as if he was waiting for some further response, but she felt too mulish to try. And then he was gone, leaving Jennifer to a silent house, and dreams of an imaginary breakfast far preferable to her own.
Do you remember that first dinner? I was such a fool, and you knew it. And you were so utterly, utterly charming, darling J, even faced with my ungracious behavior.
I was so angry that night. Now I suspect I was in love with you even then, but we men are so thumpingly incapable of seeing what is before us. It was easier to pass off my discomfort as something else entirely.
She had now unearthed seven letters from their hiding places around her house; seven letters that laid out before her the kind of love she had known, the kind of person she had become as a result of it. In those handwritten words, she saw herself reflected in myriad ways: impulsive, passionate, quick to temper and to forgive.