Meet Me at the Museum

by Anne Youngson

  “Where have you been sleeping while I’ve been away?”

  “What?” said Edward, as if he hadn’t heard me. But he had heard me, and for the first time, I heard myself; understood the question I had been asking myself since I went to bed the night before. I looked up and round at the three faces watching me, and all that I thought I knew and understood about my life dropped away and left me with no clue who this person was, who had lived in this house for all these years. Given birth to these children. Been a wife to this man.

  I can hardly bear to keep writing, but I will stick to the story. If I get that down, it may be easier to say what is important. To explain how I feel.

  Tam stood up and walked out of the kitchen. Andrew stayed. Edward said:

  “I don’t know what you’re implying.”

  “I was asking,” I said, “if you had slept in one of the spare rooms.”

  I looked square into his face. He has a high color from the life he has led. His eyes are blue and surrounded by thousands of lines. The lines are threads of white against the bronze of his cheeks, for he is a man ready to smile or ready to frown, and whenever he does either, his face creases up, and the lines are in the folds of skin protected from the weather. It was what I noticed: the depth of color on his face and the lines standing out in the blankness of his expression. What he said next mattered. I was certain he had not slept in another room in the house, without going to check. Or, if he had, it was not alone. I could see it in his face, in Andrew’s face, in Tam’s quick retreat. Had he lied to me then, I cannot say what I would have done. I might have struck him, though I have never hit anyone in my life and would probably not have been capable of it. I might have thrown something, broken something, vomited on the floor. If he had lied, I would have lost all the dignity I was holding on to until I had time to understand what was happening to me.

  But he did not lie. He turned his head and asked Andrew to go. Then he told me the truth. The facts, that is. I understood those. I have more difficulty understanding everything else he said, about how he felt, what he thought, and I do not know how much of it to believe.

  The facts. He has been in a relationship with another woman for over a year. He has visited her house on the afternoons when I thought he was playing golf, on some of the evenings when I thought he was at meetings, in the pub, attending formal dinners. He has spent less time at the market, the agricultural merchants’, neighboring farms than he told me. More with her. On the rare occasions when I have been away overnight, or the slightly more frequent occasions when he has had an excuse to stay away—conferences, golfing trips—he has spent the night at her house. I have never noticed. I have never had one moment’s suspicion.

  At first, I was furious. I do not feel angry, truly angry, very often. I do not readily recognize insult, or believe I have the right to resent it at the pitch that would make anger an appropriate response. When Edward finished telling me the story, I was so angry I could not speak. And what was causing this was not the betrayal—which is what matters, and I will come to that—but the detail. The woman he has been having an affair with (why do we use such a word to describe it? What does “affair” mean? It sounds light and airy, and I told myself not to use it, but there it is, slid onto the screen) is Daphne Trigg. Daphne Trigg. A woman I despise. Whose opinions and attitudes are banal, ill informed, and prejudiced. Whose interests are narrow, trivial, and entirely self-centered. I might—though I probably wouldn’t—have been able to swallow the enormity of my husband being attracted to a woman so offensively ordinary and dull if she had been physically much more appealing than me. I have no very high opinion of my own appearance, and I am ready to admit that Daphne may be, or have been, prettier than I am, or have ever been, but she is not in a different league. Both of us can only claim a place in the category of women who are neither ugly nor beautiful. She is younger, by six or seven years, but overweight and with no idea at all of how a woman of her age and figure ought to dress. I may be careless in what I wear, but I am not ridiculous.

  Not only (I feel as if I am starting to rant. Forgive me. This is how I felt at the time and the bile is rising in my throat as I think of it again) has Edward chosen to betray me with someone I cannot recognize as a more appealing companion in any way—emotional, conversational, or physical—he has also chosen to do it within our social, even familial, circle. Although I would have said we did not know them well, Daphne and her husband had been known to us for years, used to go to the same events we went to. She knows other women I know well and among whom I count several as friends. I may not be the only one out of this whole group who knew nothing of what was going on, but those who knew, I feel sure, are in the majority. For the last few months she had become part of the family by being part of the farm. I have a right to be furious.

  * * *

  Later, when I had walked out of the kitchen, leaving Edward in mid-self-exculpatory sentence, and hidden myself in the chicken shed in order to think, I began to realize how much more important than the choice of Daphne Trigg was the betrayal itself. I had been, as you know, puzzling over the matter of how my life had turned out and why, but I thought at least I understood what that life was. The weft and the warp of it. The firm ground and the boggy. I thought I knew where it was roughly darned and where neatly patched, but despite all the flaws in the fabric, I believed in the essential wholeness of it.

  I understood there was no passion between Edward and me. That there were topics that interested me and not him, topics that interested him and not me. I understood that I had become a farmer’s wife, and whether I would have chosen it or not, I did the job as well as I was able. I understood that I did this through loyalty to Edward, who had, through all the years, provided me with companionship and comforts. I owed him this loyalty because, for all the lack of passion and the topics avoided, he was a good man. I thought the choice I had made was the wrong one for me, but as long as it worked for him I had to make it work for us both, because he was a good man. So I thought; loyal to me, I would have said. But I was wrong. Being wrong in this fundamental way, how could I now make sense of the life we had led together? All these years, in a house I did not choose, what was the point of it? How much of a fool had I been?

  I sat on the filthy straw in the chicken shed for so long, so quiet, so still, that a couple of birds came up and began pecking at my boots to see if by chance any tidbit suitable for a chicken might have become wedged in the tread. A hen set up a racket to let the world know she had laid an egg, and another rushed up to give her a peck as she came out of the nesting box. If I could have fitted in the nesting box, I think I would have crawled into it, to be safe from the curiosity and malice of the hens I live among.

  I have difficulty avoiding Edward. He keeps looking for me, trying to explain himself, to excuse himself, to reassure me. It is too hard to think, so I have decided to leave, at least until I have understood better what all this means. I feel I can count on nothing. I have to look afresh at everything I have done and thought, with this new knowledge. Writing to you is one of the things I need to think about. I must ask you to be patient with me. Not to answer this letter. I know whatever you say will be thoughtful and kind, and I cannot bear it. Please wait until I can bring myself round into a position where I can be sure my feet are planted squarely on firmer ground.

  Tina

  Silkeborg

  February 27

  Dear Tina,

  I have waited for your next letter, as you asked me to do, but I am finding it hard to fill the hours. You must know how important it has been to me, talking to you. What must I do now? Receive visits from my family, make visits to my family, go to work. But when I am doing none of these things? In the hours and hours I would want to spend thinking about what you said to me last, what I will say to you next? When I should be noticing things, to tell you of them, when I should be noticing things because you have told me to notice them. It is not just the hours I cannot fill. There is a part of me that
feels empty when I do not hear from you.

  I have passed some time reading again all the letters I have received from you. At the beginning—do you remember?—you told me you and Bella were always planning to visit the Tollund Man. When things were bad for her because of the battle with her ex-husband over the child, you said one of you would suggest that now was the moment. The other would say no, it was not. I am sure if Bella were still alive, she would be telling you to come, and there is no reason why you should not. You have saved up this trip, so you seem to say, for the right moment. This is the right moment. Visit Silkeborg. The museum is open every day. Transportation is easy. The sky, the weather patterns, the landscape may be the same in Bury St. Edmunds as they are in Silkeborg. But from here, the view will be different.

  I will wait for you. I would come to you, if you wished it, but I think we should meet for the first time here. Under the same roof as the Tollund Man.

  If you do not answer this I will not know if you have received it and chosen not to answer it, or if it has not reached you because you do not have a laptop wherever you are, or access to the internet. I say this, of course, to make it harder for you not to reply.

  I will say nothing about what you told me in your last letter, because I do not feel I have the right to do so unless you ask what my opinion is. What my feelings are. What I can say is that I think of you every day and I feel pain on your behalf.

  Love,

  Anders

  Bella’s Flat

  Bury St. Edmunds

  March 5

  Dear Anders,

  You made it hard for me not to answer, that is true. It is also true that I wanted to write to you, but while this is true, it is not necessarily right. I will come to this.

  I am living in Bella’s old flat in town. It belongs to Alicia now; she put it up for sale after Bella died, but she has not tried to sell it. She has ignored the estate agent’s requests to tidy it up, redecorate, rearrange, and she has refused the couple of offers she has had. Meanwhile, she has come back several times to stay in it—her home is still in Italy. Because she has not cleared the flat of all Bella’s things, it still feels like her place, somewhere she may yet be, only in another room. It still smells as it did when Bella was alive. I think this is why Alicia is trying not to part with it. Each time she came over I visited her here, and each time it has felt like a refuge. I thought it was Alicia’s refuge, but now it is mine.

  Although there is clutter in the flat, as there is at home, it is clutter that has the possibility of movement within it. It is made of what might be, at any moment, picked up and used. Piles of books to be read; articles cut from magazines and not yet filed or thrown out; slippers waiting for the moment when the door is locked for the night and a descent into comfort and idleness can begin. Not like the hardened crust of useless ornament that fills the farmhouse. When I realized I could no longer stay there, I arranged with Alicia that I could come here. I shut the door behind me, took Bella’s purple embroidered jacket out of the wardrobe, and cried and cried into it. Until I could almost hear her voice telling me to stop. To take control.

  I have been here for a week now and I still feel, when I come back into the flat, the same shock of Bella’s absence and the opposite sense of being warm and safe. I have tidied up, but only to the extent of making orderly piles, throwing out the rubbish, scrubbing the kitchen surfaces, and replacing the pans I could not bring back to a standard I would accept for preparing food. I hope I have reached a balance between keeping it as Alicia still needs it to be—full of Bella—and making it comfortable to live in.

  Now I have come to the end of the things that are easy to write about. I have been turning over all the other topics I could fill the pages with—lists of the scarves Bella owned, anecdotes about the places I have found stray earrings, an analysis of her musical tastes as demonstrated by her CD collection. But really, why would you care to read any of this? When I know you are waiting for me to tell you the state of my emotions, the state of my marriage. So much harder to describe.

  Let me tell you, first, what I now know. I know who knew when I did not.

  Andrew. He says he worked it out only when Daphne began to come into the office every day, seeing them together so often. I might have done, too, if I had seen them together, but they were more careful with me; I rarely did see them together. Even if I had, my blindness was so complete, it would have taken more than a shared glance to illuminate it. Knowing has been hard for Andrew, I see now. He is uncertain and unhappy, but we have not found a way to talk about it.

  Tam. I think he has known from the start. He is treating the business as a major inconvenience Edward and I are inflicting on him. He wants nothing to do with it, and he is not interested in who is to blame. We are both equally at fault for the crime he perceives we have committed—upsetting the smooth running of the farm and undermining his comfort.

  Sarah. I don’t know how long she has known, and I am not going to find out, because I feel the smirk behind her sympathy, like a pin left behind in the seam of a sweater I have just finished sewing up.

  Various friends. I know they know because they have called to offer shoulders to cry on, and they must have been aware of the relationship to have picked up so quickly that it had been exposed. I do not cry on shoulders. It has never been something I did or wanted to do. (Until now. I am crying on yours, my dear Anders. How can I bear it?)

  Mary did not know. This is a huge relief; if she had done, I must believe she would have said something. She tells me she was uneasy, but not about Daphne.

  I know now that Edward has been giving Daphne, or allowing Daphne to take, money. I know this because she made sure I did. Edward had not mentioned it, and in truth, I could not care less. But Daphne obviously wanted me to know. She came out of the office when I went back to the farm to fetch a few clothes and spoke to me in the yard. I expected the sight of her to make me furious all over again, but as soon as she tottered up in her high-heeled shoes and began to patronize me, I felt sorry for her. I realized she is as much a victim in all this as I am. She told me she was sorry and she had not wanted me to find out, but maybe it is all for the best because, of course, it has been hard on Edward. He is such a kind man he could not bear the thought of hurting me, and this was why he had kept it secret. It had been harder still for her, though, not being able to live openly with the man she loved. He had made sure she did not suffer financially because of his soft-heartedness toward me. She hoped there would be no hard feelings between us.

  I wondered, listening to all this, whether she believed Edward wanted to replace me with her, or whether she was trying to convince herself he did. He does not, I could have told her, but didn’t. She is deluding herself, as she will soon find out. I may not have been as much fun to be with as she is, but I have always been much more useful. I cannot imagine that Daphne would cook and clean, wash and iron, work on the farm, keep the cupboards stocked with everything anyone opening the cupboard would expect to be there, know where anything that might be needed could be found, mend whatever needed mending, make appointments for the doctor, the dentist, the hairdresser, the chiropodist, the vet, and remember to remind everyone when these were. If Edward wants Daphne to do all this, and more, he would have to ask her to do it. And even if she agrees, she would not do it without complaint. And even if she agrees, and carries out whatever she has agreed to do, it would not be to a satisfactory standard. I have seen her at work in the office, and she would not suit Edward in the role of wife rather than lover. He knows that. He does not want me to leave him, which is something else I know, now that the first storm is over, but Daphne does not. So as I stood there in the yard, hand on the car door, feet in a smear of slurry, listening to her voice, raised to compete with the wind, telling me how perfectly it had all worked out, I pitied her. And although it is not easy being me at this moment, at least I can be grateful I am not Daphne Trigg.

  The things I still don’t know are: why did Edward do
it; what happens next; what am I in all this?

  Edward has given me many explanations for being unfaithful. They vary with his mood. When he is feeling aggrieved because I do not respond, he tells me it is all my fault. I am cold, uncaring. I have never been wholeheartedly enthusiastic about his enthusiasms. This is true. When he is in despair at the idea I might abandon him, he says it is all his fault; he has appetites and has been unable to control them. This may be true. When he is both aggrieved and in despair, he says it is all Daphne’s fault. She seduced him. I do not think this is true.

  What happens next? I do not know what Edward thinks will happen next. I know he does not want me to go, but he has also said nothing that would lead me to think he is prepared to end the relationship with Daphne to make me stay. I think he is waiting; he does not know what I am thinking about what happens next. Now I am going to come to the part that is hard.

  When I first found out, I reacted with outrage. I felt like an innocent woman, grossly deceived by those she had trusted, those she had served. But once I had calmed down, I began to challenge my own innocence. Because of you. We have never met; how can a correspondence with you be compared to a recurring act of physical infidelity? I can imagine you exclaiming to yourself. Let me explain. The least important part of what Edward has done, as far as I am concerned, is the sex. So what? If he had strayed in this way a dozen times, with casual strangers, I might have been disappointed, thought him weak, but it would not have made so much difference to our life as a couple. I have often wondered, in fact, if this had happened and supposed, on balance, it probably had; now I am reasonably certain it must have done. What is so overwhelming about the relationship with Daphne Trigg, though, is that it is a relationship sustained over time and therefore has an emotional dimension. He turned away from me as a person, not simply as a sexual partner. Do you begin to see? I am doing exactly that. I am reaching out to you as a partner in my emotions, and I have kept this secret from my husband because we, you and I, have approached a level of intimacy in this context that would make him feel excluded and diminished. At least, if I imagine our positions were reversed and I uncovered such a correspondence as you and I have been having between Edward and another woman, it would make me feel excluded and diminished, and I have to assume it would be the same for him.