He informed Jane of his intentions, which, as usual, she accepted without any adverse comment, and a little later began the stroll down the hill to Instow sea front and the North Devon Yacht Club at the Bideford end of Marine Parade. Leaving his car behind meant he could drink as much as he liked. And by the time he faced the uphill walk home he was usually feeling no pain.
Felix was aware that he might be beginning to drink too much. Jane had tentatively mentioned it once or twice, but had never laboured the point. After all, she was in no position to criticize him. And Felix had swiftly responded that if he wasn’t worried sick about her, he probably wouldn’t drink at all. Although he didn’t really believe that was true. He’d always enjoyed bar-room bonhomie.
On that day it was well after four before he left the yacht club. He’d found a sailing companion without difficulty, as he had predicted that he would. An old school chum, working on his own vessel not yet ready for its river mooring, had been delighted to be offered a diversion from a day of tedious tasks. He not only crewed for Felix, but then spent a convivial afternoon in the bar with him.
Felix was an amiable drunk, whose nature led him largely towards agreeable melancholy when under the influence of alcohol. As he stepped out of the clubhouse into the fresh sea air, he began to reflect on his first meeting with Jane. It had been love at first sight, it really had, even though, at the time, Felix would have said he did not believe in such a thing.
There’d been a vacancy for a waitress at Cleverdon’s. Jane, who’d recently moved into the area following the death of her mother and was living in a bedsit over at East the Water, applied for the job. As soon as she walked into the café for her interview, Felix was captivated by her natural prettiness, her warm shy smile, the beautiful glossy brown hair which fell to her shoulders, and the look in her bright eyes which held just a hint of unknown sadness. His heart had melted. And he’d known, with devastating clarity, that this was the woman he would marry.
Was he glad that he married her? Yes, of course he was, he told himself. Apart from anything else, she had given him two beautiful children. Was he happy with his life? Well, until recently the answer to that would have been a resounding yes. Nowadays he wasn’t quite so sure. There were certainly problems in his marriage. Problems he’d never imagined could have happened. Not to him, anyway. Not to him and Jane.
Felix didn’t like problems, and he had no real capacity for dealing with problems.
He caught his toe on a piece of uneven pavement along the seafront, stumbled slightly, and hung on to a lamp post for support.
Was he still in love with Jane, he asked himself? Obscurely he found himself thinking about the fateful news coverage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they became engaged to be married, and Charles had been asked if he were in love with Diana. That had been before Felix was born, of course, but the footage was still shown repeatedly on TV and, like so many, in view of subsequent events, Felix always found himself chilled by it.
Charles had memorably replied, ‘Whatever in love means’.
Felix suspected that if he even had to ask himself that question, then he wasn’t still in love with Jane. But he had been once, by God he had. He certainly wouldn’t have needed to ask ‘whatever in love means’ when Jane had consented to be his wife. And how many couples were still in love with each other after seven years of marriage?
Loving your husband or wife, now that was a different matter. Did he still love Jane? Felix squinted into the bright sun. He told himself he was being ridiculous. He really shouldn’t go there. He was half pissed and fully pickled. Did that make sense? He didn’t know. Did he still love his Jane? Of course, he bloody well did.
He loosened his grip on the lamp post and hoisted himself up to his full six foot one inches, making a monumental effort to stand straight and generally pull himself together.
Then, walking with any sign of inebriation now so very slight that only the most intent observer would notice anything amiss, he stopped off at Johns, the village shop.
The shop often stocked flowers from local suppliers. Felix hoped there might still be some late daffodils on offer, Jane’s favourite. There were. A large bucket stood outside containing four or five bunches.
Felix bought the lot, and proceeded along the Parade, still concentrating hard on his walking, whilst clutching an armful of budding yellow daffs.
By the time he reached Estuary Vista Close, Jane had collected the twins from school, as she routinely did, and was in the process of preparing their tea. Fish finger sandwiches. Their favourite.
Felix pecked Jane on the cheek and presented her with his daffodil offering. She responded with smiling thanks. If she noticed that he had once again been drinking heavily — and he was pretty sure that she would have done, Jane knew him far too well not to — then she passed no comment.
Felix assumed she was getting used to it. He supposed that was what all married couples did sooner or later. They just got used to each other. And put up with each other, of course.
Some things, however, he thought to himself, were more difficult to get used to than others.
He bent to attend to his children, who had, upon his arrival in the kitchen, jumped from their chairs at the table and wound themselves around his legs, noisily demanding his attention.
After only a few minutes of playfulness, fatherly teasing, and listening to their tales of the school room and playground, Felix, who was beginning to feel extremely weary, was grateful when Jane announced that the twins’ beloved fish finger sandwiches were ready, and they should return to the table. Smartish.
He then took the opportunity to retreat to the bedroom. There he did what he often seemed to do nowadays: slept off his afternoon excesses before joining Jane for dinner.
Two
Jane Ferguson was definitely no longer happy with her life. But she didn’t blame Felix. By and large he was a good husband. And she believed that he loved her. As she did him. In spite of everything. He was kind, and he was an excellent provider; albeit not entirely through his own efforts. He was also the best of fathers.
She didn’t mind his streak of lazy indolence. She had been aware of it from the very beginning of their relationship, and had always regarded it as being the flip side of the coin to the charmingly easy-going man she’d fallen in love with.
She wished he did not drink quite so much. This was a relatively new thing. And she could understand his desire to seek an escape from reality, but she didn’t like it that Felix’s increasingly frequent afternoon drinking encroached upon his time with his children. All too often he would retreat to bed to sleep it off just at their tea time, when he would otherwise be joining in and making this ordinary evening event so much more fun than she ever seemed able to. Felix was good at that.
But no. Jane didn’t blame Felix for anything. She blamed whatever it was that was going on inside her own head. The wretched curse gnawing away at her very being, making it increasingly more difficult for her to cope with even the most basic challenges of her day-to-day life. She had almost totally lost confidence in herself. She only went out when she had to, preferring to remain in her own familiar territory. Even then, her days were filled with nervous uncertainty.
Jane was beginning to dread bedtime more and more. And she suspected that Felix was too.
Nonetheless she continued to proceed with the routine of a normal family evening as if there were nothing wrong. Or she tried to, anyway. After all, what else could she do?
Felix emerged at around six thirty p.m., just as Jane was preparing to put the twins to bed. He seemed very nearly sober. He’d always been a quick recoverer.