The Affair

by Hilary Boyd

  She had also lost her peace of mind. Devan was being so loving, so solicitous – she could not have asked for a better husband. But guilt made her jumpy and Jared still encroached, unwittingly, upon her thoughts. She wanted to be fully present with Devan, but memories snuck back through the cracks, unbidden, like mice into an empty house. It was hardly surprising, thinking about it, that she’d fallen victim to the nearest virus. She remembered Devan saying he just wanted things to go back to how they were. Even knowing the impossibility of this, Connie wanted it too, more than anything else in the world.

  18

  ‘I talked to Monica today,’ Connie said to Devan, as they drove the twenty minutes to Glastonbury. It was a month since she’d collapsed in her hotel room and she was on the mend at last. But the cough persisted and drained her energy, making sleep – even drugged to the hilt with knock-out syrup – intermittent. She was sleeping in the spare room now, because trying to control her cough and not wake Devan just made the spasms worse. ‘She groaned when I said I couldn’t do Croatia either.’ Connie had cancelled her Jungfrau Express tour, which should have started a week ago, as soon as she realized she wasn’t shaking off the chest infection. But she’d assumed she would be well enough for the Croatian trip. It took in the beautiful Plitvice Lakes and the Postojna Cave, which she’d not yet seen and had been really looking forward to. It was a thirteen-night tour, though, which she knew would be exhausting.

  A thought flashed across her mind. Will Jared know I’ve cancelled? She silently chided herself. But a small part of her still had not fully accepted that she would never see him again. ‘So that’s me done for the year,’ she added quickly. Croatia was her last booking before the European tour season ended.

  Devan shot her a sympathetic look as he drove. But she knew he must be secretly relieved. He’d been really worried about her. Too much medical knowledge was sometimes a burden, with mutterings of pneumonia, collapsed lung, broken ribs and heart problems as he watched her body torn apart with the paroxysms. ‘Are you upset?’ he asked.

  ‘Bit disappointed. I’m never ill, as you know.’ She thought back to when she’d last spent a whole day in bed and couldn’t recall a single one.

  There was silence. Then Devan glanced at her again. ‘Listen … You don’t have to retire next year if you don’t want to, Connie.’ He was concentrating on the road again. ‘I know you said you would. But you love it so much … you can always change your mind.’

  Connie’s eyes filled with tears. Her husband had controlled himself valiantly since she’d been ill, not once digging at her about the job being too much for her. But as she began to show signs of recovery, she had thought he might bring it up again. Although, quite honestly, the thought of going anywhere at the moment, let alone on a long train ride across Europe managing forty passengers, made her feel quite faint.

  ‘Thanks … Maybe see how things go,’ she said, reaching over to lay a hand on his arm as they pulled into the car park next to the abbey. But Devan was scrabbling about in the well under the dashboard for coins, almost as if he were self-conscious about finally meeting her halfway on the issue.

  If she wasn’t touring, though, the thought of doing only what they were doing today, maybe for the rest of their lives, filled Connie with mild dread. Devan’s cunning plan for building up her strength was working so far. He kept arranging leisurely jaunts into the countryside, where they would walk short distances, rest, walk some more. They might visit a church, a beauty spot, or do what they were doing today – poke around the brightly coloured shops of Glastonbury – making Connie exercise without realizing it. She was always wiped out by the time she got home, but she was grateful to her husband. And she enjoyed the days out, after weeks cooped up, too wobbly to make it to the end of the road. But they also made her nervous. This is what retirement could look like, she thought, as they passed yet another purple-painted crystal shop on the crowded pavement.

  They found a seat outside a vegan café on the town square and ordered mint tea for Connie and a black Americano for Devan, with two banana and peanut butter cupcakes – about which Devan was highly suspicious.

  ‘I hate feeling like this,’ Connie said. ‘I’ve been so dependent on you, so whiny … and I feel really vulnerable when I’m out in crowds. I seem to have lost my nerve.’

  ‘That’s normal. You’re convalescing,’ Devan assured her, biting cautiously into the cupcake, then nodding slowly in appreciation.

  ‘Yes, but I feel so old, Devan. Like really crocked and old. It’s horrible. And I worry it’s a slippery slope …’

  She looked towards the spire in the centre of the square, around which a number of tanned young people in shorts and hiking boots were hanging out, laughing and smoking, tinnies in their hands, lumpy backpacks lying at their feet. She pointed to them. ‘This is where we started,’ she said, with a smile, remembering the medical tent at the festival as if were another life, she and Devan other people.

  Her husband turned to look. ‘I thought you were the craziest girl I’d ever met.’

  ‘Crazy? Me?’ Connie was astonished. He’d never said that before. ‘Gaby was the crazy one.’

  He laughed. ‘She was stoned. You were crazy. You kept dancing barefoot around the tent to the music, your gorgeous hair all over the place, legs covered with mud, laughing like a lunatic and saying things like “You look so weird in those trousers”, which were perfectly standard jeans. I was sure you were on something too.’

  Connie stared at him. ‘You’re making this up. I don’t believe you.’

  Devan’s face was alight with mischief. ‘You don’t remember, though, do you?’

  ‘I do! I remember everything. You did look a bit peculiar in those tidy jeans. But I liked it.’ She frowned. ‘I remember the mud … Did I really dance around the tent?’ Her memory was of being the sober, responsible friend, saving Gaby’s life.

  He nodded. Now they were really laughing.

  ‘I probably had been drinking,’ she admitted.

  ‘You probably had,’ Devan agreed. Suddenly serious, he added, ‘You’ve always been someone who grabs life by the balls, Connie. I love that about you.’ He reached over and took her hand ‘You’re so not old. I think you’re gorgeous.’ His words made her want to cry, especially given the dilapidated state she was in. She felt like an animal who’d just crawled out of her cave after a long winter in hibernation. Her hair was faded and wild – badly in need of Janine’s ministrations – her nails were flaking, her skin felt like the surface of a prawn cracker and was pretty much the same colour. She was still too thin. ‘Gorgeous’ did not really cut it.

  September plodded by. It was now six weeks since Connie had become ill. Six weeks during which she’d cried with despair that she would ever be well again. Six weeks of being home, being cosseted … being loved. And six weeks since she’d seen or heard of Jared. She was a lucky woman, she knew, and tried not to think of how much she didn’t deserve Devan’s love. Not when the occasional dream of Jared still made her body vibrate and quiver, like a leaf in the breeze. But she thought about Jared less and less. Her brain was quietly beginning to wrap her memories in the convenient mists of time.

  Today, Saturday, Jill picked Connie up after breakfast. ‘Are we bonkers, driving all the way to the Forest of Dean?’ her friend asked, as they headed west towards the M5.

  Connie laughed. She loved food festivals: cookery theatre and sampling cubes of local produce, hot lunch in pots with little wooden spoons, mini plastic beakers of cider, beer and wine to test, and the general good humour and friendliness foodies inspire. But that morning she had almost cancelled.

  She just couldn’t seem to get her spirits up – or her enthusiasm for anything. Her life seemed just a grey trudge from hour to hour, day to day. Although physically she was no longer ill, the cough only plaguing her occasionally, it felt like a monumental effort to respond to Devan, let alone the few friends she’d been in touch with recently. A whole day with Jill – who
liked to talk about things on which Connie might have to concentrate – rendered her a bit panicky.

  ‘It’ll be worth it,’ she assured her friend.

  ‘Should be. Although, according to the app, rain’s forecast. Shame for all those stallholders.’

  Connie sat in the warm womb of the car and couldn’t think of a thing to say. She wanted to close her eyes, but knew she must not: it was barely ten o’clock.

  ‘You know old Mr Solomon’s cottage, down by the post office?’ Jill said.

  ‘The one with the wooden dolphin outside?’

  ‘That’s gone now. The son-who-never-visited has done the place up and is renting it out, according to Chloë, my mate at Tovey’s. I bumped into her with that yappy terrier of hers that always growls at me as if I’m a burglar.’ Jill fell silent for a moment as she negotiated a right turn, as instructed by the satnav’s imperious Astrid, then added, ‘Someone’s taken a six-month lease, apparently.’

  Connie wasn’t really interested, but she made noises as if she were. ‘It’ll be weekenders, I expect.’

  ‘It’s only two bedrooms, and one’s a cupboard, apparently. Probably a couple who live in London and have a yearning for fresh air and farm shops.’ She sighed. ‘Another one empty most of the year.’

  The fair was packed and cheerful – music playing, lots of small children, delicious smells all vying with each other to make her mouth water. Connie blindly followed her friend around the stalls, responding to Jill’s enthusiasms. The predicted rain didn’t arrive till later, but it was chilly and Connie – who felt permanently cold these days – wished she’d worn more jumpers under her anorak. They ate beef, olive and sultana empanadas from a Chilean street-food stall, then shared a cone of hot, sugary churros with chocolate sauce, and sampled numerous beverages from plastic cups, some of them alcoholic, which Jill sipped, then passed to Connie to finish. So by the time they reached the car – a tiring trek across a bumpy, muddy field – Connie was pleasantly tipsy. It had been a good day and she was glad she’d made the effort.

  She slid into the passenger seat of Jill’s Mini Countryman and sighed with relief, her body limp with fatigue. Eyes half closed, she glimpsed in the side mirror a man in a Barbour, his bushman hat pulled low against the rain, walking past the rear of the car. He stopped to speak to Jill, as she went to open the boot in order to change out of her wellies. After a minute, he strode off along the row of parked cars. Although she couldn’t hear what was said from where she sat, the raised tone of his ‘goodbye’ struck a chord in her sleepy, slightly intoxicated brain. After a second, she knew whose voice it reminded her of: Jared’s. It jolted her out of her lethargy.

  ‘Who was that?’ Connie enquired, as Jill climbed in and banged the door, throwing her bag onto the back seat.

  ‘Nice man. Lost his car keys, poor sod.’

  ‘Heavens … What’s he going to do?’

  Jill started the engine and put on the wipers. ‘Go back and have another look around the fair, see if someone’s handed them in. Although he didn’t hold out much hope. Then call a garage, I suppose. He didn’t seem as upset as I’d have been.’

  ‘What was he asking you?’

  ‘Nothing. I think he just wanted to share his misery.’ Jill gave her a sharp look. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Fine … Just thought I was going to sneeze.’

  Connie laughed silently at herself. As if Jared would turn up in a muddy field at a food festival in the Forest of Dean! I’m going senile as well as getting doddery. But during the drive home she sat in silence, her thoughts unwillingly returning to the times they’d shared in the various locations around Europe. As she slumped in her old blue anorak and jeans, her face gaunt and pale, her limbs weak from ill health, she wondered if those nights had really happened. Now she was back in the slow, rhythmic flow of home life, it seemed almost impossible that she was that woman … that she had allowed herself to be.

  Do I regret it? she’d asked herself over and over. And the answer was both yes and no. She was ashamed of – and deeply regretted – the breach of faith in their marriage, which she could never recover now. Some people thrived on the thrill of the lie. Not her. The guilt had made her physically ill.

  But on the no side, however wrong she knew it to be, and however much she felt regret for those nights, she was aware that she would not have missed them. As she crept into her seventh decade, a man celebrating her body in the way Jared had – especially at a time when Devan had seemed not to find her the least bit attractive any more – had been nothing short of a miracle. If he could see me now, she thought tiredly, and almost smiled.

  Devan had cooked supper. He’d been practising while she was ill, having no choice unless they were to exist entirely on supermarket ready meals. Tonight, it was grilled lamb chops, flageolet beans, baked tomatoes and a green salad. Connie helped herself to mint sauce, then handed the jar to him.

  ‘Thank you. This looks lovely,’ she said.

  As they ate, Connie regaled him with her day at the fair: an English wine she’d tasted, the goat’s cheese she’d almost bought, and a demonstration of knife skills. ‘Jill forced me to try one of those slithery rollmops and I thought I was going to throw up.’

  Devan smiled, but she could tell he wasn’t really concentrating on what she was saying. ‘OK,’ he began, widening his eyes at her, ‘so something happened today, which I’m rather excited about.’

  She nodded but didn’t interrupt him.

  ‘You know Sylvie Masters, the doctor who did locum work for the surgery for a while?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Well, she rang this morning. Apparently she’s setting up this hospice in Weston … and she wanted to discuss me joining the team part-time.’

  She sat up straighter. ‘Wow, Devan. That would be great, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Con. It’s so up my street. I always found it so heartbreaking when a patient was dying and I had no time or facility to help.’ He took a large gulp of wine. ‘It won’t be up and running for a couple of months or so. But if this works out, it might be two, three days a week …’

  Connie laughed with delight at seeing her husband so invigorated, the light back in his eyes.

  ‘And I really like Sylvie,’ he went on. ‘She’s so straightforward and professional. I’m going to drive over next Monday, meet her, check the place out.’

  They spent the rest of the meal discussing the potential job. This, Connie thought, is what we’ve both been waiting for. She wasn’t thinking in terms of her tours, just that Devan would finally be busy and engaged again.

  ‘Then me and Bill got chatting to this guy in the pub at lunchtime.’ Devan interrupted her thoughts. ‘Says he’s just signed up for a six-month rental on Mr Solomon’s place. Plans to move in in a couple of weeks, apparently.’

  ‘Jill heard the same from her friend at Tovey’s. Weekender?’

  ‘Nope. Wants to try living in the country, he says. Seems to be on his own, didn’t mention a wife or girlfriend. I liked him. Youngish, seemed intelligent and well-travelled. It’s nice to have someone under sixty moving into the village, for a change.’

  19

  By mid-October, two months after Connie had fallen ill, she felt back to some semblance of her old self. She’d finally had her hair coloured and trimmed – the grey roots she’d been seeing in the mirror every morning only adding to her sense of decline – and treated her nails to a rare luxury manicure. She was almost back to her normal weight but, most crucially, she could feel the veil of torpor lifting.

  These days, she woke with cautious optimism, mentally scanning her body as she lay in bed for signs of weakness, finding none. It seemed as if she’d been through some sort of test … and emerged undeservedly unscathed. Although part of her still listened for the buzz of the aircraft overhead, the moment when the bomb would finally drop and she would be punished.

  This morning Connie turned to her husband. Watching his face as he slept, she realized that the linger
ing tensions between them were much reduced, as Devan had got stuck into working with Sylvie. She wondered what lay ahead for them, in these last decades of their lives.

  She’d promised herself – and Devan, who seemed happy with this compromise, in light of his new commitments – that although she might not retire completely, she would cut down on her tours next year. She couldn’t afford a repeat of this summer on any level. Her vulnerability to Jared had scared her. The length of time it had taken her to recover from the virus had scared her too – one no doubt feeding into the other. And whereas there was fault on both sides for the breach in their marriage, Connie had been the one to cross the line. It still shocked her that even a marriage as seemingly strong and solid as theirs had shown it wasn’t invincible.

  She gently placed a hand to his head, feeling his soft hair, his warm cheek against her palm. I love you, she whispered silently. Devan stirred, opening his eyes. He blinked and smiled, taking her hand in his. He reached forward to kiss her and they snuggled into each other’s arms under the warm duvet as the autumn dawn began to light the room.

  ‘Just popping to the shop,’ Connie shouted upstairs. She was glowing, satiated from the lovemaking that had followed the cuddle, rosy from a hot shower, her body revitalized in a way she had not felt for a long time. ‘We’re out of bread.’

  Old Mrs Mounce – whose son owned the village store – was behind the till, as she was most mornings. Connie thought she must have been eighty if she was a day, her plump face covered with liver spots, her hands shaking as she took Connie’s wholemeal loaf and the newspaper to scan.

  ‘Nasty out,’ Mrs Mounce commented, probably for the twentieth time that morning – she never talked about anything but the weather, which never failed her in its fickleness.