Phillip nodded.
“There’s a fair bit of track with it, and I got the man to throw in a little station and some men. They’re in this bag here. Think you can set it up?”
“I’ll ask Edgar to help me.”
It was like a sharp kick to the ribs. Anthony forced himself to ride the pain. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, after all.
“Yes,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’m sure he would.”
They were quiet for a few moments. Then Phillip’s hand snaked out, snatched up his cake, and stuffed it into his mouth, an unthinking act conducted with greedy pleasure. Then he selected another, a chocolate fancy, and gave his father a conspiratorial wink before it followed the first.
“Still happy to see your old dad, then?”
Phillip reached over and laid his head against Anthony’s chest. Anthony looped his arms around him, holding him tightly, breathing in the smell of his hair, feeling the visceral pull that he tried so hard not to acknowledge.
“Are you better now?” the boy said, when he pulled back. He had lost a front tooth.
“I’m sorry?”
Phillip began to prize the engine from its box. “Mother said you weren’t yourself, that that was why you didn’t write.”
“I am better. Yes.”
“What happened?”
“There—were unpleasant things going on when I was in Africa. Things that upset me. I got ill, and then I was rather silly and drank too much.”
“That was rather silly.”
“Yes. Yes, it was. I shan’t do it again.”
Clarissa came back to the table. He saw, with a jolt, that her nose was pink, her eyes red-rimmed. He attempted a smile, and received a wan one in return.
“He likes his present,” Anthony said.
“Goodness. Well, that’s quite a present.” She gazed at the gleaming engine, at her child’s patent delight, and added, “I hope you said thank you, Phillip.”
Anthony put a cake on a plate and handed it to her, then took one for himself, and they sat there in some strained facsimile of family life.
“Let me write,” Anthony said, after a beat.
“I’m trying to start a new life, Anthony,” she whispered. “Trying to start afresh.” She was almost pleading.
“It’s just letters.”
They stared at each other across the Formica. Beside them, their son spun the wheels of his new train, humming with pleasure.
“A letter. How disruptive could it be?”
Jennifer unfolded the newspaper that Laurence had left, smoothed it open on the kitchen table, and turned a page. He was visible through the open door, checking his reflection in the hall mirror, straightening his tie.
“Don’t forget the dinner at Henley tonight. Wives are invited, so you might want to start thinking about what you’re going to wear.”
When she didn’t respond, he said testily, “Jennifer? It’s tonight. And it will be in a marquee.”
“I’m sure a whole day is quite enough time for me to sort out a dress,” she replied.
Now he was standing in the doorway. He frowned when he saw what she was doing. “What are you bothering with that for?”
“I’m reading the newspaper.”
“Hardly your thing, is it? Have your magazines not arrived?”
“I just . . . thought I might try to read up a little. See what’s going on in the world.”
“I can’t see that there’s anything in it that might concern you.”
She glanced at Mrs. Cordoza, who was pretending not to listen as she washed dishes at the sink.
“I was reading,” she said, with slow deliberation, “about the Lady Chatterley trial. It’s actually rather fascinating.”
She felt, rather than saw, his discomfort—her eyes were still on the newspaper. “I really don’t see what everyone’s making such a fuss about. It’s just a book. From what I understand it’s just a love story, between two people.”
“Well, you don’t understand very much, do you? It’s filth. Moncrieff has read it and said it’s subversive.”
Mrs. Cordoza was scrubbing a pan with intense vigor. She had begun to hum under her breath. Outside the wind picked up, sending a few ginger leaves skittering past the kitchen window.
“We should be allowed to judge these things for ourselves. We’re all adults. Those who think it would offend them needn’t read it.”
“Yes. Well. Don’t go offering your half-baked opinions on such matters at this dinner, will you? They’re not the type of crowd who want to hear a woman pontificating on things she knows nothing about.”
Jennifer took a breath before she responded. “Well, perhaps I’ll ask Francis if he can lend me his copy. Then I might know what I’m talking about. How would that suit you?” Her jaw set, a small muscle working in her cheek.
Laurence’s tone was dismissive. He reached for his briefcase. “You’ve been in an awful mood these last few mornings. I hope you can make yourself a little more agreeable this evening. If this is what reading the newspaper does for you, I might have it delivered to the office.”
She didn’t rise from her chair to kiss his cheek, as she might once have done. She bit her lip and continued to stare at the newspaper until the sound of the front door closing told her that her husband had left for the office.
For three days she had barely slept or eaten. Most nights now she lay awake through the small hours, waiting for something biblical to fall out of the dark above her head. All the time she was quietly furious with Laurence; she would see him suddenly through Anthony’s eyes, and find herself concurring with his damning assessment. Then she would hate Anthony for making her feel that way about her husband, and be even more furious that she couldn’t tell him so. At night she remembered Anthony’s hands on her, his mouth, pictured herself doing things to him that, in the light of morning, made her blush. On one occasion, desperate to quell her confusion, to weld herself back to her husband’s side, she woke him, slid one pale leg across him, kissed him into wakefulness. But he had been appalled, had asked her what on earth had got into her, and all but pushed her off. He had turned his back on her, leaving her to cry silent tears of humiliation into her pillow.
During those sleepless hours, along with the toxic conflagration of desire and guilt, she tossed around endless possibilities: she could leave, somehow survive the guilt, the loss of money, and her family’s anguish. She could have an affair, find some level on which she and Anthony could exist, parallel to their ordinary lives. It wasn’t just Lady Chatterley who did it, surely. Their social circle was rife with tales of who was having whom. She could break it off and be a good wife. If her marriage was not working, then it was her fault for not trying hard enough. And you could turn such things around: all the women’s magazines said so. She could be a little kinder, a little more loving, present herself more beautifully. She could stop, as her mother would say, looking at the greener grass beyond.