The Adulteress

by Noelle Harrison

Min is paralysed by shock. She has not seen her mother in over a year – September 1933 – when she had stood in Giovanni Calvesi’s apartment and neither backed up her mother nor her sister as they fought over her mother’s adultery. She couldn’t share in June’s outrage, and yet she couldn’t understand what her mother had done either, for up until that day she had believed they were both in love with the same man. Charles. However, in Milan, Min had realized they had been competing over nothing. Charles was no match for Giovanni Calvesi in her mother’s eyes. Everything Min had done had been for nothing. It had made her so angry with her mother that she had been unable to speak.

  Min begins to back away slowly, but it is too late. Lionel rushes forward, instantly recognizing his late master’s wife and, barking excitedly, he bounds towards her. Her mother turns round and sees her. She waves to her. Reluctantly Min walks towards her mother. How she wishes June were here.

  ‘Minerva.’ Her mother embraces her, and then steps back and pats Lionel, crouching down to stroke his face. ‘Hello, dear Lionel.’ She straightens up and looks into Min’s face. ‘Where’s June?’

  ‘She caught the train. She should be here soon. I came down with Charles last night.’

  Her mother looks about her. ‘So where is he?’

  ‘He had to go back to London this morning. Urgently.’

  ‘I see.’

  There is an awkward silence. Min feels a dull, throbbing pain in her womb again and wonders if she is bleeding more. When will it end? How long does a miscarriage go on for? She feels as if she has been losing tiny little parts of her baby for days, like splinters being torn out of her flesh. So cruel. Lionel sits down at her heels and nuzzles her legs, as if he senses her pain.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks her mother suddenly, harshly.

  ‘I came as soon as I could,’ her mother says apologetically. ‘It takes a long time to get to Devon from Milan. I was sorry to miss the funeral, but you arranged it so quickly. It was impossible for me to get here in time.’

  Her mother is different. Her voice is even different, softer and with a lilt, maybe the result of living amongst Italians for nearly six months. Her hair has grown, and is not so sculpted. It cascades from beneath her hat into rich waves upon her shoulders. She has put on a little weight, and the result is that her face looks less pointed and more heart-shaped.

  ‘That is because we didn’t want you to come,’ Min says slowly and emphatically.

  Her mother looks surprised. A deep blush spreads across her cheeks. Min has never seen her mother look so embarrassed.

  ‘But why ever not? I was his wife.’

  ‘And also the reason he is dead.’

  ‘Oh, Min!’ her mother gasps, too shocked to say any more. She reaches out and takes Min’s hand, but Min pulls it away from her.

  ‘Please go away, Mother. We don’t want you here. If June sees you she will be devastated, for you know how much she adored Daddy.’

  ‘Please, Min, you are being unfair . . .’

  ‘No, Mother, you were unfair when you ran off and had an affair with your Italian lover, and then never came home. What did you think would happen to Daddy after you had gone?’

  ‘I never meant . . .’ Her mother stutters and then, mustering herself, she says angrily, ‘I am not responsible for what happened to your father.’

  ‘Well, as far as June and I are concerned, you are. I hate you. And, I can promise you, so does June.’

  Min waits for her mother to slap her. She wants her to, so that they can shout at each other and then make up, like they used to do when she was younger. Always a tug of war between them, but this time her mother doesn’t respond. Instead she looks down at the ground, nodding slowly. She says nothing, putting on her gloves, sliding each finger in, one by one. Min’s breath streams out of her mouth in heavy puffs, her chest is tight and her head aches. She waits for her mother to volley with her, but without a word Mrs Sinclair turns on her heel and walks briskly away from her. Min is rooted to the spot, stunned, watching her mother’s departing figure getting smaller and smaller, walking down the path and out of the church gates. There is a car waiting for her, and she gets into it. Min cannot see who the driver is, but she guesses it is Giovanni Calvesi. How dare she bring him to Devon. The car starts up, breaking the silent air and causing the rooks to take flight out of the yew trees, screeching, under the leaden clouds.

  ‘Mummy,’ Min whispers, ‘Mummy.’

  She feels incredibly faint, as if the life has practically drained out of her. She holds her sides, swaying slightly, and then calls out, ‘Mummy!’ Her voice joins Lionel’s barks, and he leaps in alarm at her distress, and at the raucous crows that swoop about her head, making a cacophony of sound.

  It is too late. Her mother is gone, and Min knows she will never see her again.

  ‘I want my mummy!’ She sobs like a little girl, putting her hand on her belly, and with a deep ache wishing she could tell her mother about the baby she has just lost.

  It begins to snow, and Min stands like a statue in the graveyard, letting the white blizzard swirl about her. It is only when her teeth begin to chatter that she makes her way towards the church. Lionel follows her, and they enter its candlelit haven. It is here that June finds her praying on her knees, with Lionel curled up beside her, five candles lit at the base of the Virgin Mary. How is Min to know each candle is for the life of a baby she will lose? How is Min to know she will never become a mother herself, although she is more deserving than her own mother, more ready to shower her children with unconditional maternal love? For now all she can think is that everything bad happens at once – her father’s death, her husband’s anger, the miscarriage and her mother’s desertion. All she has left is June. She is Min’s comrade in pain, her salt-water sister.

  JUNE

  I have been sick. It started the day I got caught in the rain. The day Phelim told me he was in love with me. Of course, I was so involved in my emotions I forgot about common sense. When I finally got home that night I sat for hours on the doorstep to Robert’s cottage, my damp clothes clinging to me, looking out at the moonlight, praying for an answer to my question. What will I do?

  I went into the house, sat at the kitchen table, wrote my question down on writing paper to my sister Min. Tell me what to do, I asked her.

  I knew what I should do. Be the good wife, and never again set foot in the Sheriden house. But Phelim is our neighbour and, when Robert returns home, he will want to call on him now that Claudette is dead. I cannot bear the deceit. Phelim should never have told me he loved me. It was shocking that he said those words to me. He could not have been in his right mind. He was grieving. He was lonely. But then I remembered the look in his eyes, and knew in my heart that I always saw the love, right from the beginning.

  Sitting in my wet clothes, I was thrown into turmoil. Looking out the window at the inky night, the still death of it engulfing me, I was in a rage. No one part of me was in harmony. My head was lecturing me, telling me the impossibility of the situation and at the same time scheming, working out a way of sneaking back to his house in the night so that no one would notice. The audacity of it! But I was a woman on fire, my heart in my mouth. I could taste its ferocious desires. I had not felt this way about Robert since that day in Babbacombe on our honeymoon. Now, in Cavan I was consumed by this keen, primal urge just to unite with Phelim Sheriden physically. If only I had been honest with Robert when we first married, maybe we could have talked about our lovemaking. Robert and I could never discuss sex.

  What was happening to me? I went into the bedroom and threw off my clothes, watching the shapes that the shadows of my body made on the walls of the room. I was in the heart of my home, like a princess in the tower, like a demon in his lair. I opened the wardrobe door and looked at myself in the mirror. Properly. I had never done this before. I only surveyed my body if I was dressed, never naked. I was surprised at what I saw. The pregnancy had ripened my body, yet I was not fat. Sometimes, wh
en Robert and I had made love, I would catch sight of my bare thighs, or of my breast as he touched it, and they looked monolithic to me, but now as I stood unadorned in front of myself I saw how perfect I actually was. My breasts were full, and had grown, and my stomach was no longer flat, yet my hips were narrow and boyish in dimensions, my arms and legs were narrow and lean.

  How pale you are, I whispered to my glimmering reflection and then, without thinking, I touched my breast. The nipple hardened immediately, and I ached between my legs.

  Phelim. His name trickled out of my mouth, like a dying word, and I could not take away the image of his face from my mind. He was just one field away from me, in the top of his house, in his studio, painting, loving me. I had never let my hands touch my own body, and now I let them wander, my mind a feverish confusion. I lay down on the rug in my husband’s bedroom and fondled myself. I was able to take myself to a place my husband had never taken me. I gasped, cried out and then, just as suddenly, within the very same instant, I curled up, desperate with shame. But beneath the feeling of shame still lay my unanswered question. What will I do?

  When our hearts and minds are twisted together in a dilemma, then the body answers for us. And this is what happened to me. The next morning I woke shivering on the cold rug. I had fallen asleep, naked, and now I was cold through to the bone. I got up shakily and pulled on my nightdress, getting weakly into the bed. It must have been early still, because the sky was dusky outside.

  The next time I woke I was so wet I thought for a moment I was lying in a bath, although we do not have one. I opened my eyes, yet nothing was clear, my nightdress was stuck to me and I was drenched in sweat. Fear began to fuel my thoughts. What was wrong? What about the baby? It must have been late, because light was pouring into the room. I tried to get out of bed, but my body would not obey me.

  ‘Oonagh,’ I called weakly. As loudly as I could, I called again. But there was no answer, and I could hear nothing stir in the house. It was Tuesday, and this was one of Oonagh’s days off. I lay in a fever all day and all night, and not a soul came to the house. At first I hoped Phelim would call, but of course he would not do such a thing.

  As the fever took hold of my brain, I dreamed about Robert for the first time. He was in the air in his bomber, gliding above the cities of Germany, like a Roman god, his metal wings protecting him, his face serene, full of forgiveness. I lay on my hot, wet bed and sobbed with terror. I wanted Robert. He was my familiar and I needed him now. I did not care if he had loved Claudette and was the father of her child, for he was the father of mine. Was I so sick that our baby would die? Is this what I had done? Had my lust killed our child? I was filled with remorse for resenting my pregnancy, because now, more than anything, I didn’t want to lose the baby.

  The next day Oonagh found me delirious. She had seen her grandfather like this before he had died, and the vision of my raving, flushed face told her how serious it could be. Giving one of her brothers instructions to run into the village as quickly as possible and fetch the doctor, she then stripped me and bathed me in a basin of cool water in front of the stove. Afterwards she led me back into the bedroom and, peeling back crisp, fresh sheets, put me in the bed. Sitting on a stool beside it, she dribbled water on my tongue, for I was unable to keep anything down. I was hardly conscious, a tiny white sylph in my big nightgown. She looked at my ghastly face and fell on her knees and prayed to God, the Virgin Mary, to all the saints she loved, and then she lit a candle, speaking all the while to sprites she had sometimes seen in the woods at night, because maybe their magic was just as strong as the power of God.

  Whatever Oonagh did, it worked. Along with her prayers she fed me apple sauce, made from apples she had saved from the harvest, three times a day. I did not want to eat it at first, for I knew they were the apples Robert had grown for Claudette, but eventually I gave in. Each day I felt the apples nourishing me. Now, just one week later, I am strong again. My feverish dilemma over Phelim Sheriden seems like a distant haze, because I know what I should do. I must wait for Robert. I am having his child. It is simple. I chose Robert, and now I have no right to make any other choice.

  No, Mother, I will not hear it. You can whisper all you want to in my ear, but I shall cast all those dreams away. We are human beings invested with a conscience, with a sense of our own morality, and we do have duties in this life. I shall not become what you became. I shall not be an adulteress.

  THE ADULTERESS VII

  He is pure talent. She recognizes it, knows it in her heart and soul. His art will outlive them all. He paints in his own way, wilfully ignoring both tradition and the new movements in art – Cubism, abstraction, Expressionism – which had so excited her when she was at the Slade. She tries to talk to him about the German Expressionists and Kandinsky’s Blue Rider. Can they not set up some kind of artistic collaboration themselves and make a book of simple woodcut prints? But he has no interest in anyone else’s pictures, not even hers. Art is his.

  He paints people. Some are ugly, and some are beautiful, but they are never alone. All of his paintings tell stories, and their protagonists are attached to each other, a jumble of limbs, and twisted bodies that manage to create an overall pattern upon the canvas. His dominant tone is brown, and flesh; he paints it as if it is raw meat. His nudes almost repulse her, the way he reduces the body to what it is, blood, skin, bones, muscle and fat.

  She has never let him paint her picture, but now he insists. He is leaving soon, being sent to Africa as a war artist. He wants to paint her a picture as a gift. He does not care that she is married, for that fact has never stopped him falling in love with anyone.

  She came earlier this day so that they could have more light. Her husband asked her where she was going, and she did not even bother to think of a good excuse.

  ‘To see a friend from the Slade,’ she said.

  It was the truth.

  The last year has been hard. Two miscarriages, the second one at nearly four months. Over the course of her marriage she has lost five babies. Each failure breaks off another part of her heart. It is awfully unfair. She misses the company of her sister, and can’t shake the painful memory of her father’s dreadful death. Her husband, constantly moaning about his leg, saying how useless he feels, how ashamed he is that he cannot fight in this war. But she knows deep down he is secretly relieved. She knows him so well. He flies into unprovoked rages over the most trivial thing, taking his guilt out upon her.

  And then London starts falling apart around them. Her marriage mirrors the battered and blitzed city. The wreck it becomes. The daily dangers should have brought them closer, but they don’t. Instead they have driven her into the arms of another man.

  If there wasn’t a war, maybe she might never have taken a lover. If her husband had gone off to fight, maybe she would have felt bound to be faithful. The first time she slept with her artist she thought: why not? I might be dead tomorrow.

  When she travels across London on the Underground train she tries to guess where the next bomb will fall. You never know. After one has fallen, and she has survived yet again, she cannot help feeling this intense sense of liberation, a rush of energy making her want to live life to the full. It is the same feeling she gets when she makes love to her artist. In the Underground station she looks at other people and their eyes are shining too, and she has this sense of togetherness. The whole of London is connected, one living, moving, breathing entity fighting for its life. This is why she feels no guilt as she steps through her lover’s door, for this is part of her destiny.

  He paints her in her clothes. She is sitting at the window, in a rose-coloured blouse, a garnet necklace that her sister gave her around her neck. Her hair falls into soft dark curls, and he paints her eyes a brighter shade of blue than they really are. It is her neck that takes so much time. He paints it tenderly, as if it is the slender stem of a Michaelmas daisy, his favourite flower, the one that reminds him of his childhood.

  It takes one week to pa
int Min’s portrait. Each day they sacrifice their precious few hours together so that he can paint. She watches his hands move across the surface of the canvas, and the expression on his face as he looks at his painting. She hopes one day a man might look at her with such concentration and attention to each moment. She has not painted since the day she left the Slade, unable to silence the censor in her head. What is the point of her painting? She looks with envy at her lover working.

  On the last day, the day he leaves, they finish early. He stands, hands on his hips, and lets her see the painting for the first time. She is startled. It is not the way he usually paints. There is a strange light that seeps across the painting, yet she can’t figure out from where it comes. It lifts off the smoky Thames, which can be seen in the background view of a window, in front of which she sits. Her blouse blushes against her chest, and it is so tactile that she can sense its silky surface on her fingertips, and yet it is her skin that surprises her. It is like paper, white and translucent, as if he has painted a spirit.

  ‘I look like a ghost,’ she says. ‘Am I really that pale?’

  He holds out his hands, covered in paint, and she takes them.

  ‘Yes,’ he replies, kissing her, beginning to unbutton the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons on her blouse.

  He peels his own creation, for he has made her now. He knows this. He has taken her out of the shade and made her stand under the glare of his love. It is a passing emotion. There is nothing permanent in his world apart from the canvases he paints. He does not own Min. No one does now. Not even herself.

  They do not bother to draw the blinds. He imagines their silhouettes projected across the cityscape, as he stands behind her and cups her into him.

  Soon it will be blackout and they will have to turn out the lights.

  JUNE

  Mummy was wrong. Minerva is not the Goddess of War. She thought she was, because she was born clad in armour, but that merely signifies that her virtue and purity are unassailable. Minerva never fought for its own sake. She only took arms to protect the innocent and deserving against tyrannical oppression. In the same way, my sister Min protected me from my mother, although I was the elder.