A Country Marriage (20 page)

‘I wish I believed that.’

‘Well, for
my
part it’s over and done with, although of course I can’t ever speak for Tom.’

‘No. But I beg you, George, don’t rile him. I know ’tis none of my business an’ I don’t mean to speak out of turn but
I
have to be here all day and sometimes his moods are real frightening.’

‘I know,’ he said, reaching for her other hand and holding them both in his own. ‘It’s his way; summat he does on purpose.’

‘I know that; I’ve seen enough of it recent times. So perhaps when he’s being… well, you know… couldn’t you just ignore him? Your ma is near at her wits’ end with it all, poor Ellen creeps about like a church mouse and although it astonishes me to say so, I even feel quite sorry for Annie now that I’ve seen how she gets the brunt of Tom’s moods.’

‘Annie?’

‘Aye, you should hear how he threatens her with awful things. But I don’t want to speak of that or I shan’t sleep tonight.’

‘Well, let’s both agree not to talk any more about Tom, then.’

‘All right.’

‘Anyway, how have
you
been today?’

That he asked the question briskly suggested to her that he wished to change the subject away from Annie and Tom. But when she glanced towards him, his eyes seemed fixed on something far away and she guessed that his thoughts were there too.

‘Well enough, I suppose. Although I do wish this ’un would come soon. It’s such hard work carrying him about and I’m fair tired with it now.’

‘Well, we don’t want him arriving early.’ To her surprise, he was smiling now; a genuine smile. ‘We want him all proper grown.’

‘I know. We’ve waited all these months, so in truth a few days more don’t make much difference, do it, although I’ll be surprised now if it’s a girl, since I long ago decided on it being a boy!’

‘I do miss you at home,’ he said; and when he pulled her against him she could feel his chin pressing on her head. ‘I can’t wait to bring you both back up there with me.’

She pulled herself free. What an unexpected thing for him to say.

‘’Tis real nice to hear that.’

‘Seems that saying’s true,’ he went on to say. ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I do love you, Mary.’

With a long sigh, she snuggled as best she could against his chest.

‘An’ I love you, too, so just don’t you go forgetting it, up home all on your own!’

Chapter 8

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

The weather on Sunday had been stifling since first light. The air in the farmhouse felt stale and humid and there was little respite to be had anywhere, even in the yard. By mid-afternoon, a bank of heavy cloud could be seen building to the west and in the clammy air, it seemed that no one – man nor beast – was able to stay cool.

‘You all right?’ George enquired of Mary as they sat together after dinner. To his mind, she seemed awful fidgety.

‘Not really, no, I’m not. Although it pains me to complain, I don’t feel right at all. I just can’t settle.’

‘Maybe you should go and lie down for a bit,’ he suggested, reaching to kiss her forehead and thinking that she felt as hot as coals.

‘Aye, that mid be for the best,’ she agreed, seemingly reluctantly.

‘And while you rest, I’ll go back up and water the vegetables, although we’re surely in for a storm afore nightfall.’

Back in the garden at Keeper’s Cottage, he worked as best he could in the muggy heat to remove some weeds, water the crops and inspect the underside of leaves for caterpillars as Mary had reminded him. And, aware that the sky seemed to be growing ever darker, he brought up the cow from the water-meadow and tethered her on the grass under the apple tree. Then, feeling as though he’d earned a drink, he fetched a jar of mead and took it down to the grass beyond the woodshed, although barely had he taken a slug when he heard a woman’s voice calling to him.

‘George? You out here?’ Recognising it as Annie, he sighed. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said, arriving beside him and sinking to her knees on the grass. He looked at her, expecting some great announcement but all she said was, ‘Hot, ain’t it?’ and flapped the material of her blouse.

By way of response, he offered her the mead, surprised to see that she shook her head.

‘Everything all right?’

‘Aye, fine,’ she replied, ‘although everyone up there is real fractious from this heat and Tom’s in one of his foul moods so I was minded to get away. I did think it might be fresher up here but turns out it ain’t, really.’

Her reason for being there did at least seem plausible and since she seemed to pose no immediate threat, he cast his eyes to the clouds. They were low and grey and bulging with their burden.

‘It’ll be better after the storm,’ he commented – but rather than reply, she was getting to her feet. Feeling too hot to move anything other than his eyes, he watched her saunter up the garden towards the pump. Her progress was lethargic and he found himself thinking that the way she was swinging her hips was not unlike that of one of the prime milkers in full pail. Pressing his lips against a grin, he wondered whether she did it purposely.

When she eventually reached the pump, he continued watching as she slowly pushed down the handle and then cupped her hand in the spout of water to drink. She knew he was watching, of course; that much was obvious by the way that when she cranked it again, she held up her hair and splashed water down her neck and chest, seemingly not caring that she soaked her blouse. Apparently refreshed, though, she ambled back down the garden even more slowly than she had gone up but when she drew level with where he was sitting, he was surprised that she continued onwards. Now what was she up to?

‘Just seein’ that you done your job,’ she announced as though able to read his thoughts as she picked her way between the rows of vegetables, lifting a leaf here and there as she went. ‘Wouldn’t want you getting into trouble with your wife.’ What he intended as a dismissive laugh sounded more like a snort and when she disappeared from his view down into the water-meadow, he heard her calling back, ‘You should be down here, George; ’tis cooler.’

He let out a groan. It really was too sticky to bother going to find out, especially since he had no real desire to make conversation with her, but on the off chance that she might be right, he heaved himself up and ambled down to where she was sitting among the long grasses, her lips stained red by something that she was eating. Strawberries. She had picked strawberries; Mary’s favourites and no doubt the few that he had been purposely saving for her return. Damn the woman. Still, he reasoned, too hot to want to raise a fuss, Mary might not be back for some days yet. Shaking his head at her nerve nevertheless, he sat down a couple of feet away and deliberately avoided looking in her direction.

Into the oppressive stillness, the lightest of breezes brought a sibilant hiss through the silvery-green seed heads of the hair grass, and although insufficient to offer any real respite from the humidity, it nevertheless hinted at the relief to come.

‘So when’s this storm going to break, then?’ it seemed to prompt her to ask as she fanned ineffectively at her face with her hand.

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Soon.’

‘Well
I’m
so hot I might expire.’

It was a comment that as far as he could see, didn’t warrant a response. There was, though, something about her demeanour that was beginning to make him uneasy; something that suggested she was sidling up to something. And the longer she remained quiet, the more he began to wonder what it was. Why had she come? Some long time back now, Tom had warned him to stay away from her and briefly, he wondered whether he had warned
her
in the same way. The only safeguard on this occasion was that having already seen his brother earlier in the day and knowing him to be a man inclined to extreme laziness, he considered it unlikely that he would walk all the way up there now for no reason. And it was equally unlikely that Annie had told him where she was going.

Flopping backwards into the long grasses, he tried to decide whether or not he could be bothered to go and fetch the mead that he had left at the top of the garden, concluding that on balance, he couldn’t. Instead, he closed his eyes and lay still, grateful that at least she didn’t seem to want to talk. Before long, though, thinking he heard movement beside him, he opened his eyes expecting to see that she was getting up to leave, astonished to see that in fact, she was pulling her blouse over her head. The thought did occur to him that he should ask her what she was doing but, momentarily, he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, so that in his confusion, he simply froze, propped on his elbows and watching as, ignoring him completely, she tossed the garment aside and then stood up to unfasten a button at the waistband of her skirt. When it fell to the ground, she hooked it away with her toes and then, turning slowly to face him, stood without the least hint of shame, watching while his eyes wandered up and down her body.

Despite what had happened between them in the days before her wedding, he realised then that he had never seen her entirely naked, but from what he could see now she was even more shapely than the improbably curvaceous pictures he frequently summoned from the fragments in his memory. But then, of course, he was comparing her now with the slim, girlish shape of his wife and by nobody’s definition was Annie’s figure either slim
or
girlish. As he lay there, mesmerised into immobility by the sight of her generous breasts, he suddenly understood why she aroused him in the way that Mary didn’t; of course it was her body but just as importantly, he realised then, it was her confidence.

When she dropped to her knees beside him and looked into his eyes, he was unable to look away. Conscious that his heart seemed to be trying to break out of his chest through his throat he held her gaze. And when she leant over him, he felt how the feathery tendrils of her hair that came tumbling forward caressed his cheek and then how, without moving her eyes from his, her lips were on his mouth, brushing with the merest of touches against his own. Something akin to a lightning strike exploded the length of his body, seeming to tense every single one of his muscles, and when in his shock he made no move to push her away, her next kiss was less tentative. All he could think in that moment was that her mouth tasted of Mary’s strawberries and that the longer she kissed him, the more he felt as though his mind was separating itself from his body to watch from one side in dismay. Yes, it was plain even through his turmoil that his head wanted no part in where this was leading and expected him to make her stop. But he also knew that it was only part of him that did.

When, for a moment, she pulled away, he thought that perhaps she had sensed his disquiet, only to read from her eyes that in fact she seemed hardly able to believe her luck. And he couldn’t trust his own eyes either, since as was their habit, they had settled on her lips, always so dark, so luscious and so enticing and forever destined to get the better of him.

Apparently taking his immobility for acquiescence, she was now lifting herself across his thighs and bending to kiss the side of his neck, and at the jolt that ran the length of his spine, he flinched. How on earth was he supposed to resist her? Clearly, she was the devil come to test him. But why, if his head knew that much, did his body pay no heed? An image of Mary – hugely pregnant Mary – flashed through his mind but still he let Annie continue kissing him. Then he had a vision of Tom, his face contorted by rage. Still, though, he didn’t stop her and at that precise point, he knew for certain that he wasn’t going to, either. Even in his state of confusion, he recognised that the last time he had been this aroused it had also been with her, there never having been even a single moment with Mary – diligent in her duty but only ever lying inert beneath him – to rival the exhilaration of being completely at this woman’s mercy. He could feel her now, reaching to unbutton his breeches, and as though having no say in the matter, he raised his hips for her to slide them off. Then he felt her pinning his wrists firmly into the grass by his sides, an action he knew to be delusory because with a mind to he could easily overpower her, except, of course, that he didn’t want to. And clearly it was something that she also knew, choosing the perfect moment to lay claim to what she wanted.

*

When George opened his eyes, slowly and uncertainly, his first observation was simply that the storm still hadn’t broken, and it was only as he pulled himself upright and experienced a flash from what he was sluggish enough to hope might just have been a dream that he recalled what had happened. He risked a quick look down at her face. Lying beside him, her eyes appeared to be closed, and grateful for a moment to compose his thoughts, he lowered his head back down onto the grass, noiselessly exhaling a long breath as he tried to understand how he felt. Had he been asked to imagine this moment beforehand, he would have pictured it filled with remorse and regret – and of course, there was ample time yet for that to be the case – but the sensation that seemed to have overtaken him felt more like relief, as though the source of a persistent ache had finally been excised from his body to leave him feeling soothed and tranquil. And, if he was completely honest, he also felt ever so slightly pleased with himself.

His contemplation, though, was brought to an abrupt end by a fork of blue-white lightning tearing open the dark sky, to be followed moments later by the first lumbering roll of thunder to reverberate across the valley. With a murmur that to George seemed the very embodiment of gratification, she stretched awake beside him, and with apparently no concern for either the clamour breaking out above them or the indefensible nature of what they had just done, she raised her head to say, ‘George, do you think we’d have made a good couple if we’d wed?’

‘
What
?’

Apparently undaunted by his terseness, she repeated her question. ‘Do you think we’d have made a good couple if we’d wed?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Why not?’ We’re good together. I just showed you that.’

‘Because, for heaven’s sake, Annie that’s
all
we’re good for.’ Good God: need he have made that sound quite so brutal? ‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly and turned to face her; at the very least he owed her honesty. ‘No, I don’t think we’d have made a good couple. I’ll admit there’s summat that draws us together but then I’d be hard pushed to deny it after what we just did.’ Vexed, he exhaled a stream of air that sounded like something between a sigh and a groan. ‘But—’

‘What? But what?’ She was sitting upright now, looking at him more intently.

‘Look, Annie, I don’t pretend to understand any of this and Lord knows I’ve tried. Indeed, many’s the time I’ve pondered that very question but I don’t think—’

‘But you said it yourself, we’re drawn to each other.’

‘Aye an’ like I said, I don’t deny it but you asked about bein’
wed
and that’s different. To my mind, a good marriage is based on something more, ain’t it?’

‘How should I know what makes a good marriage?’ she asked, her tone curt. ‘All I can tell you with any certainty is what don’t.’

He raised his head to look at her.

‘No. I seen that.’

The feebleness of his answer was underlined by the snort she gave in response.

‘Mighty sharp-eyed of you.’

‘Annie, look…’ but unsure what it was that he wanted to say, he watched as she bit her bottom lip and cast her eyes out across the blue-black valley.

‘Your brother’s an animal, George. All he does is take pleasure from making me suffer. He don’t love me and he never has, which is summat I discovered a long time ago. And in truth, I sometimes think he only wed me to get the better of
you
.’ The astuteness of her observation made him feel treacherous but he remained silent, telling himself that there was no need to compound her woes by letting her know that it was, in part at least, true. ‘He don’t even
desire
me, least, not in the sense any normal man would. He just uses me to sate his
perverted
needs. And it ain’t as though he ever made any pretence of the fact, either; he was like it right from the start. Granted, when we were
first
wed, I was able to keep him entertained. I mean, it weren’t like I didn’t know how to distract a man from summat I didn’t want to do but since then, well, his true nature’s come out and nothin’ I do works any more. You know summat?’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘He baits me. He baits me to provoking him just so that he can… well, I’m sure you can fancy how he likes to dish out the punishment. But what sort of man riles his wife just for the fun of it? Eh?’ He watched as she briefly closed her eyes and then resumed in a voice that was barely audible. ‘I don’t know any longer which is worse; that he’s filthy or that he’s evil but with every new day that dawns, I wish I’d never met him. I
hate
him an’ I wish he was dead.’