He smiled languorously, stretching his limbs out across the bed, reliving the afternoon and evening. He could feel her naked body pressed against his, see her face close to his face as she whispered into his ear the erotic details of her most intimate needs and desires, as she dreamed up some new sexual adventure, each more exotic than any that had gone before.
Recently she had come up with a particularly novel idea, a sex game Charlie had never heard of before. It was amazing really, Charlie thought, that any woman could still do that. Charlie was quite impressed.
Four
On the second Tuesday of every month Constance Lange’s family were accustomed to her absence when she travelled to Bristol to visit her one surviving relative, a great aunt who had been kind to her throughout her lonely childhood. Aunt Ada was now a very old lady living in a nursing home on the outskirts of the city. She had suffered for some years from Alzheimer’s disease. In the early stages of her illness she had spent occasional weekends at Chalmpton Village Farm with Freddie and her great niece. But for more than five years now that had been impossible due to the deterioration in her condition. Constance would describe to Freddie how the old woman now lived in some other world, a strange and frightening fantasy place where the past moulded with the present, what had gone before with what could never be, and where there was no future. Sometimes Aunt Ada knew her, sometimes she did not. And when she was well enough Constance would take her great aunt for an afternoon drive in the country.
‘I’m not sure how much she understands, even whether or not she knows she is in a car, but driving through the countryside seems to have a soothing affect on her, Alzheimer’s sufferers get so agitated, you see,’ she explained to her husband who made sympathetic noises but always had too much else on his mind to listen properly.
Usually Constance stayed until the evening and had supper with the old lady — a service in the nursing home provided at a small charge to visiting relatives — and then drove back to Chalmpton Peverill. The journey took just over an hour and on occasions she did not arrive home until between 10.00 and 11.00 p.m.
But Freddie Lange never minded these absences — if the truth be known, he was usually so engrossed in his farm that he barely noticed. Constance frequently took the opportunity to make a day of it, shopping in Bristol, having lunch with a girlfriend, and Freddie thought it was important that his wife escaped from the village occasionally. Too many people depended on Constance and took her for granted. Freddie was honest enough to admit that he came into that category himself. She was so calm and steadfast, so bright, clever and positive — and at the same time such fun to have around. It was a heady combination. He could also never quite get over how beautiful his wife was.
He really did not know what he would ever do without her. In fact he hoped beyond hope that he would never have to do without her. Losing her was the biggest dread of his life. Freddie was a practical sensible man and he did not dwell on the ultimate prospect of death. There was no point. He was a farmer. He understood there could be no beginnings without endings. He was fatalistic and not overly imaginative. Therefore he did not fear his own death. But he feared his wife dying more than anything else in the world.
Every Sunday morning he and Constance went to church. Freddie wasn’t sure whether or not he had any religious convictions — men like him didn’t think about things like that. He went to church on Sunday mornings because that was what he had done since he was a boy, that was what his family had always done and they had always sat in the same pew. Naturally when he married he assumed that he and his new wife would continue the tradition and so would their children. Constance had never questioned it. Neither had he asked her if she believed in this God they both went through the weekly ritual of worshipping. It would not have occurred to him to pry in that way.
Nonetheless, and he never told a soul, there was not a Sunday, sitting in the stony chill of that little Norman church, that he didn’t pray that he would die before Constance. That was how much she meant to him.
Any man lucky enough to have her would feel the same, he told himself with simple certainty as Constance cheerily left the house on the morning of Tuesday, September 8th.
Freddie stood by the back porch as she reversed the Volvo into the bam, swinging the car around so that she could drive forwards into the village street. It was yet another miserably wet day. He could barely see his wife within the car until she switched on the windscreen wipers as she reversed. She handled the big estate so easily, with so much more aplomb than he ever did. He always found the Volvo cumbersome and much preferred to drive his little MGB roadster — a beautifully preserved concourse job in British racing green — although he didn’t really like taking it out of the garage in the rain.
He waved when Constance pipped her horn as the Volvo’s back end slipped smoothly forwards through the gateway.
He knew Constance remained fond of her aunt regardless of the old lady’s sorry condition. And although he doubted he would ever see Aunt Ada again — in spite of her visits to the farm he had never known her well and really couldn’t see the point when she almost certainly wouldn’t have the faintest idea who he was — Freddie was glad that his wife still took the trouble. Freddie had a strong sense of family. The Lange family tree could be traced back to the time of William the Conqueror. Freddie took that kind of family history for granted, but it was very important to him. He thoroughly approved of Constance caring for her one elderly relative. That was how things should be, in Freddie’s opinion. His own parents had died a few years ago, both in their mid-seventies, within six months of each other, and he wished they were still alive for him to look after. Freddie liked looking after people. His family. His workers. The villagers whom he knew relied on him, as they had done on his father before him, for advice and support in a way outsiders would probably consider unhealthily feudal. It seemed perfectly natural to Freddie.
He still missed his parents dreadfully, but he could not really imagine either one of them having survived long without the other. And that was how he felt about himself and Constance. They were a team. Together they were indomitable. Apart they were nothing.
That night Constance arrived home in high spirits.
‘Aunt Ada was bright as a button today,’ she told Freddie. ‘I said you sent your love and I don’t think she had a clue who I was talking about, but she chattered away all the time. Nonsense it may have been, but she seemed content enough, and at least she didn’t fall asleep on me like the last time.’
It had been just on ten o’clock when Freddie had heard the Volvo purr into the yard.
‘Do you want a night cap?’ he asked now, reaching, without waiting for his wife to reply, for the bottle of Glenmorangie in the kitchen cupboard.
Constance, carrying two large carrier bags, was in the hallway, heading for the stairs, and trying to avoid falling over Josh whose excitement at her return caused him to run in circles around her legs.
‘You bet,’ she called. ‘Just let me sort out my stuff.’
She was down within a couple of minutes, in her hand a small paper bag which she gave to her husband, brushing his weathered cheek with her lips as she did so.
He thought how fresh she smelt after a whole day out, almost as if she had just bathed. But then, Constance invariably seemed so cool and fresh, sometimes appearing to be made of different stuff from other poor mortals.