“Ginny is pernicious.”
“Oh—because she gave me a drink, and a dress to wear?”
“This is childish. A childish conversation.”
“True. And you, of course, are acting like a mature man.”
“You must not think,” Ralph said, “you must not think that this was some stupid fling.”
“Oh, wasn’t it? I see, I do see. Your emotions were engaged, were they? Your poor little emotions.” That first rush of energy had died out of Anna’s voice; it was low, toneless now. “Then let me congratulate you. You’ve found the love of your life, have you? Well, go to her then. Quick about it!”
“I don’t want to go. I want you to forgive me, if you can. That’s what I came here to ask you, but you didn’t give me a chance.”
She shook her head. “Ginny has been talking me through it, a woman’s options. A woman in middle life, whose husband flits off to something more juicy. But I don’t feel that I can consider these options, I feel that I’m not going to sit in the house, waiting and hoping. I have done it before, and I’m tired of it.”
Ralph sprung up from his chair. He wanted to cross the room to her, but he did not dare. “I’m not asking you to wait. Or hope. Or anything. Just talk to me, let’s talk it through. I wanted to explain my feelings—”
“Why should you think I might want them explained?”
“Because it is usual. In a marriage. To talk about feelings.”
“Oh yes. Perhaps.
“Listen to me,” Ralph said. “There is nothing to be gained by bandying words and freezing me out. I wanted to tell you what had happened, I wanted to be truthful with you—and if you can’t forgive me now, which I well understand, I wanted to go away with the hope that you might forgive me—in time.”
“I’m no good at forgiving.” She looked down at her nails. “Don’t you know that? It doesn’t matter if the action is to be deferred. I can’t do it. The years pass and they don’t make a difference. I know, you see. Because I’ve been betrayed before.”
“It’s useless, then,” he said. “If you will insist on seeing this as some kind of continuation or extension of what happened to us twenty years ago.”
“All my life has been a continuation of it.” She raised her eyes. “I know you have put it behind you. You have been able to say, let us not hate, we are reasonable people. Even though what happened was not reasonable. Even though it was barbaric and foul.” She put her hand to her throat again. They had hanged Felicia.
“You were not the only person betrayed,” he said. “I was betrayed too.”
“Not so much. After all, you opened the door to them.”
“Yes. Is it the action of a human being, to throw that in my face now?”
“There is no limit to what human beings will do. We know that, don’t we? There is no depth to which human beings won’t sink. And I’ve never claimed to be more than human. Though you would have appreciated it, if I had been.”
He looked as if the breath had been knocked out of him. Sat down on one of Ginny’s fringed Dralon armchairs; on the edge. Wiped his hand across his face.
When evening came Anna and Ginny put on their coats and went to walk by the quay. The water was flat, motionless. The small boats were perched on it, like toys on a steel shelf.
“How are you now?” Anna asked her. “About Felix?”
“You mean him dying?”
She really is faintly stupid, Anna thought. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“Well, you get to a stage where you don’t think about it every day,” Ginny said. “At least, so I’m told. I haven’t reached it yet.”
Anna saw the bulk of the Blakeney Hotel, a ship of flint, bobbing at the quayside and showing its lights. She heard the evening complaints of cattle from the salt marshes, and the competing snicker of sheep. She said, “I don’t understand this thing about forgiveness, Ginny. You hear about these people in Ireland. Their husband’s been shot, or their children blown apart. And you have some woman propped up before the cameras, saying oh, I forgive the terrorists. Why forgive them? I don’t.”
“I thought you were religious,” Ginny said: her tone careful, distant.
“I’m barely a Christian. Never was.”
Somewhere in Ginny’s mind a door opened, just a crack; was there not some story, long ago, about a dead child?
“Why don’t we drop in to the hotel for a drink?” she said.
“A drink, for a change!” Anna said. “Yes, why not?”
They sat in the bar for half an hour, sipping gin among pseudomariners. Evening light on blazer buttons: early diners tripping in to their shellfish and game. “I could ask if they had a table,” Ginny said.
Anna shook her head. “It would be a waste. I couldn’t eat. And I hate to waste food.”
“I’ll make us an egg then, shall I? A nice scrambled egg, or would you prefer it boiled?”
“Whatever,” Anna said. Widow’s food, she thought; food for women alone, for their pale little appetites. Who cares if the flesh drops from their bones, if the light fades from their eyes?
Ginny said, “Be careful, Anna. You’re fifty.”
“Whatever do you mean, I’m fifty?”
