“I never felt deprived here,” said Adam, leaving the fire and taking a seat in the other armchair. “Your mother was kind to us, and fed us all without complaint, ungrateful louts that we were.”
Nathan smiled. “I’m sure she never thought that.”
“I was sorry to hear about your parents.” Adam reached automatically to adjust his dog collar, then remembered he’d worn mufti instead. He always worried that his clerical garb made people uncomfortable in a social situation—even those, like Nathan, who had known him long before he became a priest. “It must have been difficult for you, so soon after Jean.”
Staring into the fire, Nathan turned his glass round in his fingers and said slowly, “I don’t know. I was numb at that point, and it seemed as though I just went through the motions. I’m still not sure I’ve really taken it in.” He looked up at Adam and smiled. “But I was going to tell you about the cottage. That’s what made up my mind for me, about what I should do. I didn’t think I could bear staying in the Cambridge house without Jean, and I’d been toying with the idea of taking rooms in College, but I couldn’t quite make up my mind to do that either. Then when Mother and Dad passed away within weeks of each other and left me this …” Nathan stood and went to the window, shutting the curtains against the rain now driving against the glass.
“It was paid for, of course, but in quite horrendous condition,” he continued. “I felt utterly at sea. It took a friend to pound the reality of the situation through my thick skull. Jean and I had lived in the Cambridge house for almost twenty-five years; the mortgage was near to being paid off, and the property values had shot up.”
“So you sold the house and used the proceeds here.” Adam gestured more largely then he intended, the whisky having rather gone to his head. He’d fasted before Communion this morning, then discovered the bit of vegetable flan he’d been saving for his lunch had gone moldy.
Nathan retrieved his drink and stood cradling it, his back to the fire. “It’s actually been quite liberating, funnily enough. Jean and I put off so many things over the years, thinking we’d wait until we could afford them, but somehow it never came to pass.” Grinning, he added, “Having two daughters probably had something to do with it. Those two delicate little things could go through pound notes like starving dogs in a sausage factory.”
Adam remembered Nathan’s daughters not as the young women, dark clothed and red faced with weeping, whom he’d seen briefly at Jean’s funeral, but as two little girls in white frilly dresses and pink hair ribbons. “Are they both married, then?”
“Jennifer, yes, but Alison’s too busy making her mark on the world to have time for men right now, other than as a temporary convenience,” Nathan said, affection evident in his tone.
“She was always Lydia’s favorite, wasn’t she, your Alison?”
“From the time they were babies, Lydia said Jenny was born with
Pushing himself up from the depths of his chair, Adam followed Nathan into the entry again. Now he saw that in the room to the left, which had been a seldom-used formal parlor in Nathan’s parents’ day, a baby grand piano stood alone on the bare polished floorboards. Adam remembered the old upright that had stood in Nathan and Jean’s sitting room, the recipient of much abuse by Nathan as he pounded out the old music hall tunes he’d learned from his mother. Before he could comment, Nathan beckoned him through the center door.
The back of the house, which had originally been divided into kitchen, scullery, and dining room, had been opened into one large room. A kitchen-dining area filled one end, a comfortable den the other, and windows had been added along the back of the house from which Adam imagined one could see the river on better days.
Nathan gestured towards the table, already laid with place mats and stoneware, as he went through to the kitchen. “Sit down while I organize things a bit. I found some carrot and lentil soup in the freezer, then I thought we’d have omelettes and a green salad, if that suits.” He checked a pot on the stove, gave it a stir, then went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Australian Chardonnay. “It’s all down to Ikea,” he said with a glance at Adam as he started a corkscrew into the bottle. “From the furniture to the cutlery. I’d never have managed otherwise.”
“It’s brilliant, Nathan, really brilliant.” Adam took the glass Nathan poured him. “Here’s to your new life,” he said, raising his glass, then choked as the wine bit unexpectedly at his throat. “Sorry.” He spluttered and coughed, then took another, more careful sip. “You and Jean always entertained well, and you seem to have gone right on with things. I admire that.”
Nathan stopped with a soup ladle poised over a bowl. “The first couple of years I ate frozen dinners in front of the telly. When I ate. And I daresay I didn’t do too well at the housekeeping and laundry, either.” He shrugged and went back to distributing the soup between two green bowls. “But after a while I began to think about how exasperated Jean would have been with me. She followed me around the house, nagging: ‘Nathan, you should be ashamed of yourself, letting things go this way.’ So I cleaned up my act, and I’ve found I actually enjoy it.”
“Do you think you’ll marry again?” asked Adam as Nathan brought soup and a basket of hot bread to the table, then slid into the chair opposite. “It’s been my experience that those who’ve been most happily married often do.”
For the first time, Nathan took his time answering. He buttered a piece of bread, tasted his wine, then said, “I don’t know. A year ago I’d have said absolutely not—even six months ago, the same. But now…” Shaking his head, he grinned at Adam. “Never mind. I’m a foolish, middle-aged man who shouldn’t allow himself to indulge his fantasies. I suppose I’m suffering from a case of delayed adolescence, and that it will pass.”
“And if it doesn’t?” asked Adam, his curiosity aroused.
Nathan picked up his spoon, dipped it into his soup. “Then the Lord help me.”
CHAPTER
3
So light we were, so right we were, so fair faith shone,
And the way was laid so certainly, that, when I’d gone,
What dumb thing looked up at you? Was it something heard,
Or a sudden cry, that meekly and without a word
You broke the faith, and strangely, weakly, slipped apart?
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “Desertion”
A particularly vicious gust of wind snatched Vic’s paper napkin from her lap and whirled it away across the
