‘Maybe,’ Sunny said. ‘Always a first time.’
‘Walk with me back to the house.’ Mary took her sister’s arm. ‘No, I always imagined you rather despised the gardener’s art. Thought it was trivial or time-wasting or something when you can buy such good produce in the Thursday market.’
‘You garden if you like gardening, I guess,’ Sunny said shortly. Her sister sideglanced her wryly. ‘I like it,’ she said. ‘I still suspect you don’t. That’s why you hire that hippie.’
‘I didn’t come out to talk about Fitz,’ Sunny said shortly. ‘What did you come out here to talk about?’ Mary released her arm to bend over to pick off a dead head.
Sunny walked on a pace and stopped. Looking towards the house she agonised about her next words. Was she about to make a monumental fool of herself? ‘I came out to ask you what you thought of Cy,’ she said before she could stop herself. Her sister found another dead head and twisted it off its stalk. Turning to look at her Sunny saw that she was still bending, searching for more withered flowers. ‘For God’s sake, Mary,’ she said. ‘Will you stop that pretence of gardening.’
Mary stood up. ‘Pretence of gardening?’ she said mildly. ‘There, you don’t think much of it. Don’t deny it.’
She looked Sunny straight in the eyes. ‘You know what I think about Cy,’ she said. ‘I told you when you first decided to marry him. I thought he was fast, racy, not entirely well-bred. You know that I’m an appalling snob at heart. I haven’t changed my opinion of Cy very much in eight years. Have you?’
Sunny shrugged, disconcerted by her sister’s answer, desperately uncertain of her ground. ‘I think perhaps Cy’s having an affair,’ she said.
Mary’s grey eyes rose slowly to Sunny’s face. ‘Do you mind?’
‘That’s a pretty strange thing to say – do you mind?’
‘Strange?’
‘Most people would want to know who with?’
Mary shrugged. ‘I’m concerned about you, I suppose. OK,’ she said slowly, ‘who with?’
Sunny watched her, all but shaking in disbelief. Not Mary. Not her old, old, elder sister. Cy would go for something different surely, an actress, a showgirl. Not Mary.
Mary reached for a dead bud, stopped her hand in mid-movement and walked on to place her sister just behind her. ‘Do you have any ideas, Sunny?’
While Sunny struggled to decide on her answer, her sister turned slowly to face her. Her cheeks, Sunny noticed, were flushed. Her eyes were brimming at the corners. Was it the brightness of the sun or an acute, heart-stopping guilt? Poised between believing the two reasons, ready to burst into apologies, Sunny said: ‘Yes. I have some idea.’
Mary knew her next few sentences were crucial. She frowned very slowly, holding the intense silence between them. Both were aware of birds fluttering from branch to branch, of a distant car taking the Page corner at speed. ‘Someone from the club?’
Her sister stood, biting her lip. ‘Anita,’ she said, on the spur of the moment.
She watched Mary gasp in breath. ‘Anita? Anita Simpson, for God’s sake! She’s too…’
‘Old,’ Sunny supplied the word.
‘I was going to say unattractive. Her age is beside the point.
‘No, I don’t believe it,’ Mary said with finality. ‘Cy loves you. And on reflection, you’re right. Anita is too old. Far too old.’
Anita and Mary had been born in the same year, the same month. Sunny looked at Mary’s frank, honest face and misconstrued her anger. Relief flooded her body. She was on the edge of apologies, of confession of her suspicions. Then a movement made her look down. Her sister was still holding a gardening trowel; it was being shaken violently by the trembling of her hand.
As soon as Sunny had left, Mary walked into the house. She felt more drained, more frightened than she had ever felt in her life. Those moments of confrontation in the garden had brought home to her more powerfully than anything else could, the appalling risks she was running. She didn’t love Cy, she was fairly sure of that. She enjoyed being with him; she was excited by the sex they shared. Even the shock of the Vietnamese masseuse had faded quickly. That was what was so frightening: everything with Cy was so easy to accept. Even the risk of discovery. Except when it had nearly happened as she stood in front of her younger sister in the garden a moment or two ago.
She knew she was poised on the brink. She knew her very first impressions of Cy had been the right ones. She had been a fool, allowed herself to be flattered into adultery with her own brother-in-law. For him it was adventure. She stopped pacing the long room. The deeper shadow that had crossed her mind was that for him it was not an adventure. For him it was a means of securing her vote!
She found she had nearly gagged on the thought. She pushed it away. But her anger was rising.
In the back of her consciousness she had heard Fin’s car draw up, the door slam, voices. Despite her anger she experienced a moment’s hope that it might be Cy with Fin, but when the door opened it was the older, modulated voice of George Savary that was greeting her. They shook hands while Mary apologised for her gardening clothes.
‘Good to see you looking so well, Mary. Like you I’m an enthusiastic gardener.’ He waved his hand towards the French doors and the garden beyond. ‘Unlike you I have no overview of what a garden should look like. But that’s a criticism of the military, I suppose. Lacks imagination.’
‘I wouldn’t say any of us on the committee could accuse you of a lack of imagination, George,’ Fin said clumsily. ‘I think you’ve opened a lot of people’s eyes to a very unsatisfactory situation. I asked George over,’ he turned to Mary, ‘to have a word with you about how you stand.’
Mary felt her fists clench involuntarily. ‘I think you might have consulted me first, Fin,’ she said angrily. ‘But in any case, I think which way we vote is something for each of us to decide individually.’
‘According to our own estimate of the situation,’ Savary said, nodding. ‘According to our own conscience.’
‘Indeed,’ Mary said. ‘Now I don’t want to be impolite, George, but I’m going to take a shower while you and Fin talk over whatever it is you two want to talk about. And afterwards I’ll come down and we’ll all have a drink together.’ She forced a smile. ‘How would that be?’
‘It’s for you to say, Mary,’ George Savary said, inclining his head.
Upstairs Mary lay back against the glass wall of the shower while water coursed over her body. Inevitably the sensual impact of the warm water conjured up memories of Cy. But whole afternoons were spent these days resting on a hoe in the garden, with a book slipping from her lap in the conservatory, dreaming. Recreating those fierce excitements which had never come her way before.
She dried herself and dressed slowly. When she arrived downstairs again it was nearly an hour later. She was not sorry to see that George Savary had left. To Fin she affected mild disappointment.
‘He decided to walk back across the fields,’ Fin said. ‘I don’t think he felt very welcome.’
‘Are you surprised?’
Fin shrugged apologetically. ‘Not tactful. OK, sorry.’
‘It’s not important.’ Mary dropped into a sofa and reached for a magazine.
‘George says it is,’ Fin said with a rare show of persistence. ‘George says the way we each vote is damned important.’
‘Fin, I am not going to be canvassed. Do you understand? I’m going to make up my own mind.’
‘If that’s what’s happening, fine.’ Mary brought her head up slowly from the magazine. ‘I wouldn’t like to see anybody make a fool of you, Mary.’ He paused. ‘We’re old friends. We can say these things.’ He looked at his watch, mimicked surprise. ‘My goodness. I’m going to be unforgivably late if I don’t hurry. Don’t wait up for me.’ She never did.