She pulls the edges of the sheets together precisely and smooths the cotton out with her palm, flattening it now so it’ll be easier to iron tomorrow. The investment in good-quality bed linen felt extravagant but has been worth it. Guests have mentioned it positively in their reviews.
Usually, she takes pleasure from this job, from the feeling that she is building a successful rental business, that it’ll help to keep them afloat as John’s health declines.
Though whether it will, or not, remains to be seen.
It feels impossible to remove him from this land, so she can’t bear to think of the alternatives.
She places the folded sheets in the laundry basket, ready for ironing in the morning, and returns to the kitchen. Birdie follows her, as does her own dog, a soft little terrier called Annie. She checks her dough. It’s ready to bake. She puts it into the Aga and sets a timer.
It is unspoken that John will need to live out his days here, whatever they are like. He can’t move to a home. It would kill him and would be a miserable end to a dignified, quiet, loving life. He’s never done any harm to anyone.
Or so she wants to believe.
But what if the changes in his brain are more sinister? What if they’ve unlocked something else in him? Her fear that he has begun a pattern of intimidating guests won’t leave her. She’s going to have to confront him about it.
The worst thing, she thinks, is that there’s no one other than John that she would rather talk about this with.
But that already feels impossible now. He’s so often beyond reason lately, as if he’s regressing from man to child, robbing her of a partner and casting her, instead, in the role of his caretaker.
It makes her feel desperately alone and she doesn’t want to be, doesn’t know how to be.
William might come up here and take over the farm, she supposes, but he might not. She won’t put pressure on him to live a life he doesn’t want.
At least, she thinks, as she puts the kettle on and sits down to wait for it to boil, at least John and I have loved each other unstintingly all these years.
It has been so good, their modest, beautiful life together here. A sort of miracle.
Ruth’s head is spinning. She can’t tolerate listening to Jayne and Emily any longer. Her mood has flipped.
Talk of the hoax Edie pulled at school has seeded an idea. Is this where it all started, where Toby got the idea to have a relationship with a student? With someone who’s barely an adult? Did it start there? Or perhaps it didn’t need a catalyst because an attraction to younger women is just in him.
She stands up, mortified to feel herself swaying a little. “I should check the potatoes,” she says. Jayne frowns. Did I slur my words? Ruth wonders. Perhaps I need to slow down on the drink. The elation she felt earlier has drained away. Desperate to hang on to it she pours more champagne into her glass before taking it with her into the kitchen.
She finds that Jayne has put the stew in a casserole pot, the potatoes are neatly mashed and in a baking dish. Ruth has a sense that time has slipped.
Of course, the potatoes can’t still be boiling. They’d be mush by now. She forgot about them when she went upstairs but is irrationally and powerfully annoyed by Jayne’s competent rescuing of the situation. She feels it’s made a fool of her.
She pulls out the cutlery drawer and lays the table. Two lumpy pottery candle sticks go in the center. She punctures a packet of paper napkins and extracts three. She suspects the other two look down on her domestic efforts and feels a wave of self-hatred. She’s convinced they think she’s pathetic, but has no idea how else to prove herself except by pleasing others.
Alfie. She can please him. That’s easy. No. Don’t think of him or you’ll cry. What happened to all the optimism she felt a few moments ago?
Everything she’s placed on the table seems to shimmer, to replicate itself. She blinks.
Ruth finishes her glass of champagne. The beautiful constancy of alcohol. It’s poetry to her. A meditative song, smoothing out her highs and lows, her louds and quiets. It numbs.
Everything on the table swims and doubles again and won’tstay still. It’s unbearable to look at. Her body is uncomfortable. Underwear pinching and crawling. Clothes too tight. Her internal organs seem to be jostling and chafing against one another, unhappy sharing space. No wonder Toby doesn’t want this. It’s only a collection of flesh and bone.
The truth is that time sags, drags, wears out and she used to think she’d married a man who would find beauty in that.
The sound of the rain seems infernal. It falls unapologetically, bowing the grass on the slope behind the kitchen, spreading shadows. Drops tremble on the glazing bars.
But it’s better than staring at those flames licking in the room next door as her anxiety builds again, zero to sixty in no time at all, better than Jayne’s implacable rationality and the seduction of Emily’s beauty.
Her feelings toward Emily harden. Women like her are predatory. They tempt men.
No. That’s not right. Emily is blessed, Ruth tells herself. She can’t help that she’s beautiful. It’s older men who shouldn’t be tempted by young flesh.
But Toby certainly finds beauty in the images of women he studies. He’s published books about it. Degas’s bathers and ballerinas, in their tutus and nakedness. He has intimately described their bodies, their poses, the sensuality of paintwork and form. The bathers and ballerinas are younger women, some of them girls.
