Who's Sorry Now (2008) (41 page)

‘You don’t mind me going out this evening, do you love?’ Amy asked him as they lay together in their lovely new double bed. Since Chris was always up before dawn to bake bread and Danny kept them awake half the night, Amy had taken to joining her husband when he took a nap in the afternoon. With luck, the baby would also sleep for an hour or two.

Chris assured her, with as much conviction as he could muster, that he didn’t mind in the least. ‘Why ask me? You must do as you please, you generally seem to.’

Inwardly flinching at his indifferent tone, Amy cast him an anxious glance. She was growing increasingly concerned by this coolness towards her. A distance seemed to be growing between them and she couldn’t quite work out why that was, and they still hadn’t re-established marital relations. It was getting almost as bad as when they were first married. Except then they’d felt inhibited by the close proximity of his mother on the other side of paper thin walls. Now they had their own home, so what was the problem? Determined to change all of that she tugged back the sheets, climbed astride him and started kissing him.

‘What are you doing?’ he cried, as if a wife had no right to be kissing her husband.

‘I’m trying to show you that I’m not as tired as I once was, and that I’m in full working order again. Also, if you’ve noticed, there’s no sound coming from Danny’s cot, so we could make the best of what time we’ve got, eh?’

Chris started. ‘Maybe we should go and check on him.’

‘I already have and he’s fine.’ She peeled off her nightdress so that he could enjoy the rosy fullness of her breasts. ‘I’ve really filled out, don’t you think?’ she teased.

Chris swallowed. He couldn’t ever remember her looking more lovely, and he loved Amy so much. More than anything he longed to make love to his beautiful wife but the memory of that anonymous letter held him back. Amy had said that she was going out this evening, yet she hadn’t told him where. Nor had he asked. Perhaps he should.

‘Where are you off to tonight then?’

Amy was peeling off his baker’s tee-shirt and kissing his chest, scrabbling at his shorts in an effort to pull those down too. She longed to be completely honest and casually remark that she was actually attending a meeting of the CND. She’d been riddled with guilt for a while after Patsy told her that Chris had tried to check up on her. And she’d tried to tell him, she really had. Many times. She would deliberately steer the conversation round but he always managed to change the subject. He hated it when she talked about politics. And this certainly wasn’t the right moment. This was the nearest they’d got to love making in months.

‘Has anyone told you that you talk too much? Come on, Chris, we haven’t got long before Danny wakes for his next feed. Touch me. Kiss me. I can’t do this on my own.’

She was running her fingers through his hair, flicking her tongue over his mouth. She blew a few hot breaths into his ear and Chris could resist her no longer. With a low groan he snatched her to him and began to kiss her hungrily, swiftly turning her onto her back so that he could make love to her properly. It felt so wonderful to be holding Amy again, to be loving her. He cried out as he sank into her, so needing to be a part of her.

‘Cooee, anyone in? It’s only me.’

Chris was out of bed in seconds. Amy pulled the sheet over her head in silent agony.

Amy dressed for the meeting as she always did in something bright and trendy. Tonight she chose her red Capri trousers and a striped top, and she couldn’t fail to notice how Chris appraised her as she came downstairs. His eyes seemed to be asking why she was making herself so pretty just to chat with Patsy.

She might have told him then but, following the disastrous afternoon love making session, Amy was not in the mood for the quarrel which would surely follow her confession. She felt in dire need of some free time of her own - out of the house.

Her mother-in-law had stayed for at least an hour, drinking tea, talking to her son and complaining about Amy’s Madeira cake. Too heavy, and not enough cherries. Amy hadn’t expected the woman to actually enjoy it, but it was annoying that Mavis didn’t seem to appreciate the effort it took even to find the time to produce something home-baked when she was run off her feet with a baby and a part-time job. Amy wondered why she bothered at all when she was married to a baker, except that she was also trying to find some way to please her husband and to lighten his load. Thomas still hadn’t set foot in the bakery for weeks.

They’d had words after Mavis had gone, Amy blaming Chris for never locking the front door and Chris arguing that his mother would think it odd if he did.

‘Who cares what she thinks, we surely deserve some privacy?’ Amy had argued.

‘You know she always likes to pop in for a cuppa of an afternoon and see little Danny after he wakes from his nap. How was I to know you were going to jump on me like that?’

‘I shan’t bother next time,’ Amy had yelled right back, tears welling in her eyes as she stalked off upstairs to get ready for her night out. He’d followed her, of course, and they’d both calmed down after a while, although it was sad that at one time after a quarrel they couldn’t wait to make up in wild passionate love making.

This afternoon Chris simply went to make them both a cup of tea. So unromantic.

Amy despaired of ever getting close to him again. She’d thought everything would be wonderful once they were in a house of their own, but it didn’t seem to be working out that way. What with the baby exhausting them both, and her mother-in-law’s interference, the last thing she needed right now was an argument about a radical peace movement of which he’d be bound to disapprove.

She kissed his brow. ‘I won’t be late.’

‘Where will you be should I need you?’ he asked, again with that coolness to his tone.

Amy hesitated, guilt bringing a flush of colour to her cheeks. She turned away to fuss with her bag and comb her hair. ‘Why would you need me? Danny is asleep and will hopefully stay that way. Put your feet up and listen to the wireless. Isn’t there a match on? I’m popping over to see your dad for a start, to take him the rest of my failed Madeira cake, then I shall find someone to gossip with. Don’t I always?’

Five minutes later she was out in the street, breathing in the cool night air, an uneasy feeling in her chest that this secret was beginning to weigh heavier than that flipping cake.

Before she’d reached the end of the street Chris had rushed upstairs, collected Danny and was hurrying round to deposit him with Aunty dot. By the time Amy had finished chatting to his father, he’d be free to follow her and make one more effort to discover whether what the letter had told him about his wife was true.

Thomas was sitting in his shed, as always, with the cat Blackie on his knee, smoking his pipe when Amy tapped on the door.

‘Come in, it’s a shop,’ he joked.

‘I’ve fetched you a piece of cake,’ Amy said, setting the tin down on an upturned orange box. ‘Although Mavis says it’s a bit heavy and doesn’t have enough cherries in it.’

‘Eeh, that’s all right, chuck, I’m not too fussed about cherries and I do love soggy cake.’

‘Bless you. Shall I put the kettle on?’

They sat companionably together, drinking tea and eating the deliciously moist Madeira cake which Thomas declared wasn’t half bad for an amateur. Outside, in the cool of an autumn evening, Chris huddled beneath a tree, waiting.

‘Chris misses you at the bakery,’ Amy said. ‘Do you think you might feel up to helping him occasionally, when he’s particularly busy?’

Thomas regarded her in all seriousness. ‘Happen, but it’s his business now. Better he make his own way. He doesn’t want his old dad hanging round his neck all the time. He gets enough of that from his mother. How’re you getting on with my missus these days? Is it easier now you have a place of yer own?’

‘Better, I think,’ Amy agreed, with only the slightest hesitation in her voice. ‘She’s still very critical of my taking a part-time job, and played pop when she heard I was off out again tonight. She seems to think that a woman should never leave her own fireplace, or show any sign of a brain.’

Thomas reached for another slice of cake and chewed on it for a moment in silence. ‘So where are you gallivanting off to this time? A bit of a chat with your friend Patsy, is it?’

Amy hesitated. She hated to lie. Of course she’d kept secrets before, like the time she hadn’t told her parents that she and Chris were planning to elope to Gretna Green. But that was different. She and Chris had carried the weight of that secret together, and it had been an important one.

But she’d never kept a secret from her lovely husband before, nor told a lie in her life, not as such. Not even over this CND thing. She’d simply avoided telling Chris that she was involved with the organisation. When she said she was off to gossip with some friend or other, she nearly always managed to do just that, if not for quite as long as she claimed.

Although obviously there had been one or two occasions when she’d been late and had dashed off straight to her meeting. Guilt ate at her soul. Had that made it into a lie? Had Chris recognised it as such and was that the reason he’d apparently checked up on her with Patsy?

‘Nowhere special,’ she told Thomas now, prevaricating as usual.

‘Well, so long as our Chris knows where you are and doesn’t mind, what business is it of my wife’s?’

Amy nibbled on her lower lip, then cast her father-in-law an anxious sideways glance. Did he too know she was keeping a secret? She’d come to love this old man. He was her friend and she hated to deceive him, hated to deceive Chris, had never meant to, not really. She’d been a coward and perhaps it was time she owned up.

Setting down her mug, she said, ‘Actually, I was wanting your advice on this very subject, as a matter of fact,’ and Amy began to tell Thomas all about her newly-acquired passion.

She was late arriving at the meeting hall, rushing in all flustered and apologetic. Jeff Stockton made a space for her beside him and Amy quickly concentrated on what was being said. Jeff’s girl friend, Sue, was absent for once, but Jeff and his colleagues were well into planning the nuts and bolts of their next demonstration. Once she’d caught the drift of their argument, Amy was more than ready to voice her own opinions on the subject, often disagreeing with them.

‘I don’t think we need a band,’ she protested. ‘It’s just an extra expense.’

‘But we had one at Easter and it worked well. It certainly caught everybody’s attention.’

‘A silent vigil could be just as effective.’

Someone said, ‘She’s got a point. We’ve a serious message to get across. We don’t want to look as if we’re just out for a good time.’

They thrashed the subject out thoroughly, along with several others about posters and banners, of trying to get an interview in one of the local papers, or even on the radio. In the end, as always, their decisions were governed by cost, so there was to be no music, and the banners would be home-made. Amy even found herself offering to make some handbills to push through letter-boxes, although how she would manage that without alerting Chris to what she was up to, she’d no idea.

Yet hadn’t she just promised her father-in-law that she would be honest and tell him about this secret passion of hers?

Amy’s chat with Thomas had taken longer than she’d expected but his advice had been exactly the same as Patsy’s. ‘Don’t keep secrets from your husband, it’ll only rebound on you.’

Right at that moment, had she but known it, Chris was outside the Friends Meeting House, hiding behind a wall. He’d quietly followed her from the allotment, keeping well back so that she wouldn’t see him, but he had no idea why she’d come to this place. Had she suddenly got religion? he wondered, and become a quaker. Although he knew that many clubs made use of these rooms so it could be any one of a number of women’s organisations she was attending. She might have joined the WI, or the WVS, or a mother and baby group. Something perfectly innocent.

He was still there when Amy came out, and he saw at once what he had most feared. She was talking to a young man. He was tall and lanky with a shock of untidy brown hair. Chris wasn’t close enough to see his face but his wife was standing right beside him, laughing up at him in that way he knew so well. The young man was laughing too, then cupping her face between his palms he growled at her, as if he were pretending to be a dog, or a man needing a woman. Then he affectionately ruffled her curls.

‘You always were an argumentative soul.’

The young man’s laughing voice carried clearly across to where Chris hid in the shadows.

He felt sick. He saw at once that it was all true what that letter had said. His wife was indeed having an affair, and this was her lover.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Carmina could hardly believe that September was here already, still with no firm date fixed for her wedding, although after a great deal of effort she had most of the arrangements in place, much to her satisfaction. The banns had been called, Father Dimmock persuaded to officiate, and the reception was to be held at the co-operative rooms. Not the most tasteful choice perhaps but since Papa had insisted on no fuss, there seemed little alternative.

She looked down at the list in her hand, ticking items off one by one.
 
The flowers were ordered: white lilies with sprigs of orange blossom. Her gown was hanging in her wardrobe and she’d even warned Joyce that she would be needing a very special hair appointment.