Distant Voices. Barbara Erskine
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money had by now become for us both an end in itself, more important even than our love for each other.
The trouble started in the summer two years after we were married. We were always very busy at that time of year in the café, for hundreds of tourists crowded into our tiny Cotswold village to see its beauties and its famous manor house, and often I would come home too exhausted even to give Steve his supper before I tumbled into bed, falling asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. I was much too tired to make love.
It was about then that Steve started working overtime in the evenings. ‘I might as well, for all I see of you,’ he said rather bitterly. ‘And besides, I can’t bear to see you so tired.’ And he had weighed my heavy blonde hair – the same colour as his almost – in his hands, and kissed me rather wistfully on the cheek. ‘If I work extra perhaps soon you can give up the waitressing altogether.’
I glanced up at him gratefully and tried not to feel guilty as I noticed, for the first time, that he too was tired, and his face pallid from lying all day under cars when everyone else in the village was deeply tanned from the summer sun.
And so it happened that we had hardly seen each other for the last three months or so at all. We were saving, yes; but without my realising it, our marriage was fading away.
I was feeling especially tired and depressed when one day, as I was serving at the front tables, the ones which looked out of the mullioned windows across the green, a young man came in. He was of middle height, not terribly good-looking, rather swarthy, but he had the most incredible eyes. Light grey, so light they were like silver streaks in his tanned face. He beckoned me over.
‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ he asked in an American accent.
I smiled at him easily, whisking crumbs off the table with my cloth. I was used to this.
‘I’m Linda,’ I smiled. ‘What can I get you, sir?’
‘Tea. An English tea with cream cakes and scones please, Linda my love, and later perhaps you can show me the town?’
‘Sorry sir, my husband will be expecting me home,’ I answered with a practised smile. I turned to get his order.
Usually I dismissed passes like this man’s without another thought, but something about his eyes, and the way his face fell when his gaze rested on the wedding ring which I waved under his nose, tugged at my heart.
When I took the tray to his table I asked casually, ‘You all on your own then?’
He nodded. ‘I’m over from the States for a few months. I’m a photographer and I’m doing a series on beautiful old England.’
There was something so wistful about his smile that I felt my heart do a quick bump.
As I moved quickly round the tables with my tray I could feel his gaze following me and every time I re-emerged from the kitchen with a new plate of scones and clotted cream, there he was watching.
When I took his bill to him he grabbed my wrist. ‘Honey, wouldn’t your husband spare you for half an hour – just to have a drink with me at the pub? I hate going alone.’
I felt my stomach lurch. I had told him Steve expected me. It wasn’t strictly true, of course. He had told me that there was a rush job on at the garage again that night, and he might not be back until even later than usual. As I said, I was depressed, and bored.
I took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I could manage a very quick drink, but not here.’ I thought of the prying eyes and quick tongues of the village folk. ‘Have you a car?’
He nodded.
‘Then pick me up outside the post office.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘I’m on till we close this evening, at six. I’ll see you then.’
His name turned out to be Graham, and he told me at once he had a wife and two kids in Wisconsin. We spent a couple of hours driving round the leafy lanes and then went to the fifteenth-century pub in the next village. He brought me home and dropped me at the end of our lane before going back to his hotel.
It was a perfectly innocent and very enjoyable outing, and so was the next, three nights later when Steve was again especially late. After that Graham took to dropping in at the tea rooms every evening as we were closing and I would tell him whether or not I would be able to spare an hour or two.
Steve was more and more regularly late at the garage as they seemed unusually busy so I saw more and more of Graham. I never mentioned Graham at home. The first time, Steve had come home in a temper from work, very unusually for him, and I knew it had not been the right moment. Then after that it became increasingly difficult.
Then came the time, inevitably, when Graham kissed me.
It happened so gently, so naturally, I hardly noticed it coming and before I could help myself I had returned it, passionately allowing him to draw me against his chest till I could hardly breathe.
‘Oh no Graham. No!’ I pushed him away suddenly. ‘No, don’t. I love my husband.’
‘Sure, honey.’ Gently but firmly he drew me back again. ‘He won’t miss a kiss or two, for a lonely man.’
But I was scared. I turned my head away and pushed with my fists against his chest. ‘Don’t Graham. No. I want to go home, please.’
Reluctantly he released me. ‘Okay Linda, if you’re sure that’s what you really want.’ He looked at me closely and as those silvery eyes met mine I felt my heart give a disloyal little lurch. It wasn’t what I wanted at all.
He dropped me off at the end of the lane as usual and I made my way through the fragrant twilight to the cottage. Steve wasn’t home, so I let myself out of the back door and into the garden. I could smell a whiff of pipe smoke from next door. Ian Johnson and his wife were sitting on their porch chatting quietly.
I had kicked off my sandals to walk on the dewy lawn, so I suppose they didn’t hear me. The cottage was in darkness so they must have assumed I was still out.
‘It’s that pretty little wife of his I’m sorry for,’ came Ian’s voice, low but clearly audible. ‘She doesn’t suspect a thing.’
‘’E deserves to be shot ’e does,’ came his wife’s voice. ‘Such a lovely couple they were. And I was so pleased when old Irene said they could live in her cottage. Hoping for some little ones next door, I was, and now this ’as to ’appen.’
‘She’s bound to find out.’ Ian again, and a fresh cloud of smoke wafted over the roses as he drew on his pipe.
As I stood, listening, I was shaking with cold. My hands gripped the skirt of my dress and crushed the fabric convulsively. I felt terribly sick.
What were they talking about? I wanted to run next door, to scream, to cry, to ask questions, but in my heart I already knew the answer.
Steve’s boss had never been all that keen on overtime in the past, so why should he have started working till all hours this summer especially? Certainly not just to help us with our finances, and I had never bothered to go to the garage to check. I could feel a great sob, like a lump in my chest, and I turned and fled into the cottage before it could come out like a scream of misery.
I sat for an hour or more in the dark listening to the steady calm ticking of Aunt Irene’s grandmother clock. Then I heard the front door open and close again softly.
‘Linda, are you home?’ Steve called quietly.
I couldn’t say a word. I sat in the dark, my hands still clutching my skirt.
‘Lyn?’
He pushed open the parlour door and clicked on the light.
‘Lyn! What are you doing here?’ He gazed at me in astonishment.
I hadn’t actually been crying, but my face must have told him everything for he sat down suddenly on the edge of the rocking chair and ran his fingers through his