‘But most people, these days, they don’t have the time, and they don’t really make friends with their neighbours particularly. I didn’t expect Malcolm to agree to the party, but he did. The kids, they weren’t around – I can’t remember why not – oh, it was – well, we were on our own, and it was a nice moment, not that I’d engineered it or planned it to get a favour out of him. But I asked and he said straight away, “Yes, let’s have a party.” He said it straight out, and he gave me a big smile, and it was something I’d asked, and it was something he could say that would please me. You see, he wanted to please me.’
‘He sounds a nice man, your husband,’ Alice said.
‘I think he is,’ Katherine said, almost surprised, it seemed, at the insight she’d been led to.
‘And you know him best,’ Alice said.
‘Do you think so?’ Katherine said.
‘Well,’ Alice said. ‘You know, I honestly don’t know – I mean, I don’t know you, I certainly don’t know your husband but—’
She stopped. Katherine withdrew her hand; without her noticing it, she had reached out and rested it on Alice’s. ‘I’m sorry,’ Katherine said, after a time. Something of her formal voice had returned; she might have been regretting the lack of stargazer lilies, late on a Friday afternoon. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘That’s all right,’ Alice said. ‘But you do know him best.’
‘I wonder,’ Katherine said.
‘You must do,’ Alice said. ‘Married to him.’
‘Maybe,’ Katherine said. ‘It was just that moment. When he said, “Yes, let’s have a party.” He hadn’t wanted to please me like that, not for years. He used to want to, it used to be all the time and you never noticed. You know when it’s been dry, all summer, and then one day it rains; and then everywhere there’s this smell of grass and earth and flowers, everywhere.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘Yes, I know that.’
‘But you never noticed it had gone, that smell,’ Katherine said. ‘And after a while, if it goes on raining, you can’t smell it any more. It’s just the air, it’s just ordinary, you take it for granted.’
‘It was like that.’
‘Yes, it was like that,’ Katherine said. ‘But I’m so stupid. I always ruin everything, always. He said that, and immediately I said the thing I was thinking really. I said, “Let’s have a party,” and he said yes. And then I said we could ask all sorts of people, not just the neighbours, and he said, yes, we could, why not? I don’t know who he was thinking of, or who he thought I could be thinking of. But then I said what I couldn’t help saying, I said, “For instance, we could ask someone like Nick.” And he didn’t say anything. But I went on, I said, “After all, he’s never been here, he’s never come to the house, it would be nice to have him over.” It was an awful thing to say, it really was. I said it anyway. I don’t know what he said back. Maybe he said, “Yes, why not?” but it was awful for him. I don’t know what I’ve been doing to him. I couldn’t help it.’
By now they were sitting. Alice looked away from the beginnings of Katherine’s tears. The kitchen was brilliant with elective cheerfulness, constructed with wallpaper and blinds and spotlights; its morning yellow sunlit and shining with well-kept order and cleanliness. But there was a woman weeping in it, somehow. Alice had walked lightly across the road, and found herself in a place without landmarks. She looked out of the window tactfully; incredibly, her family were there, getting on with the unloading.
‘You’ll be wanting to get back,’ Katherine said dully.
Alice turned back to her. Probably better, she told herself firmly, that the woman tell her all this. She was going to have to tell someone, and better her than one of the woman’s children. There were things your children should never hear. She’d forgotten the woman’s name. That was awful, and now surely irreparable.
‘That’s all right,’ Alice said. ‘It’s better that you tell someone.’
‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘That’s right. It’s better I tell someone like you all this rather than the children. Or a neighbour.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said, startled. ‘Of course, I am a neighbour now.’
‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘Yes, I suppose you are.’
‘Listen,’ Alice said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something directly, because—’
‘Depends what it is,’ Katherine said, smiling, wiping her face with a tea towel – the Beauties of Chatsworth, Alice registered irrelevantly. There was something cheeky in her recovering voice; it wasn’t true, Alice thought, that you saw what people were really like only in a crisis.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything at all,’ she said. ‘You really don’t. But is that really the whole story?’
‘The whole story?’
‘I meant about Nick,’ Alice said. ‘Nick? That’s his name?’
‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘About Nick?’
‘You and Nick, I mean,’ Alice said.
‘Me and Nick,’ Katherine said. A formality came into her voice again as she saw what Alice had meant. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not having an affair, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘That was what I was suggesting.’
‘Well,’ Katherine said, attempting a light laugh, ‘I suppose you did ask permission to ask a direct question, and I don’t know a more direct question than that. No, as it happens, Nick and I are not having some sort of mad passionate affair. I suppose there isn’t an enormous amount of point in my saying that. I wouldn’t be very likely to say anything different to you if we…’ she paused for a second ‘…we were in fact having an illicit affair. But one doesn’t happen to be.’
‘No,’ Alice said. ‘No, I believe you.’ It was true. She did believe it. Oddly, it was the way the note of deception had crept into the woman’s voice that convinced her. The woman, whatever else she was, had no gift for lying, and in most of what Alice had heard from her, the note of helpless truth had been audible. It was only at that point, asked directly if she were, in fact, having an affair, that the voice had started to listen to itself as if to monitor its scrupulous lies. And yet the voice was telling the truth; Alice had no doubt of that. The woman was not having an affair, as she said. But Alice had touched something secret and cherished; she had touched, surely, some characteristic and elaborate pretence. Katherine had lapsed into what, surely, was her usual allusive and interior style where Nick was concerned; she had treasured him up and made a precious mystery out of him before the only audience she had, her husband and children. There was nothing there; Alice could see that. But she’d played it out, and he’d believed what she’d wanted him to believe. The woman sat there in her kitchen, looking firmly ahead, away from Alice. She was smiling tautly, her expression now as she wanted it to be, and that must be bad to live with. An affair would be better; that was something to forgive, to walk away from. To have done nothing wrong, to make a secret of nothing, to coach yourself in the gestures of mystery and deflection, to turn your head away to suppress a manufactured expression of recalled rapture, all that, daily; from that there was no walking away.
‘Where’s he gone?’ Alice said.
‘Malcolm?’ Katherine said. ‘I don’t know. He’s just