When Angela left the shop, Patchin gave her back an intense look, noting that she had changed completely from the clothes she had worn at lunch. When she returned with the tray of tea, she had covered her pretty white blouse with an old brown cardigan. She was still nervous, restless, very slightly ill at ease. Patchin knew that she was a hopeless liar but did not ask any more questions. There was a fresh smell of lemon soap, and Patchin knew she had washed her face, probably plunging it repeatedly into cold water to get rid of the faint, pink flush. Again he covered her silence with talk of how he might go down to the river that evening. The season for coarse fishing did not start till mid-June, but it was something he occasionally did out of season, inspecting favourite angling haunts to see how they had been affected by the high level of the Thames in winter.
During the next few weeks he added to his short list of pastimes the one of observing his wife: nothing that she did escaped him, even the merest hint of exasperation or frustration was filed away silently in his head — but nothing unusual ever attracted a comment from him.
It would not have required special ability as an observer to note Angela Patchin’s revived interest in her clothes; even on Monday mornings when she did her weekly wash and on Wednesdays when she usually cleaned Pound Cottage from top to bottom she stopped wearing her old navy skirt and blossomed out in a new green one worn with a pretty apron or jeans. She went to the Marks and Spencer store in Reading ostensibly to buy a summer frock but returned with several packages.
One Monday afternoon when Angela had gone for another walk, Patchin closed the shop for a quarter of an hour and thoroughly inspected her chest of drawers. He took meticulous care in moving and replacing the various things; he found several new items of underwear, including a particularly skimpy pair of knickers and a brassiere designed to thrust size thirty-six breasts up and outwards as if proffering them to some lusty lad in a Restoration play. But which lusty lad? That was the question that teased Daniel Patching brain, taking his attention away from his work so that he tended for the first time in his life to become a little absentminded and not quite the usual model of efficiency. It was immediately noted by the villagers — “Seems more human somehow” was the general verdict, though expressed in different ways.
For a while Patchin speculated as to whether Lord Benningworth’s son had returned to Pasterne and was again flattering Angela. If so, it seemed a more serious matter than before, now apparently extending to her amply filled blouse. But an inquiry, casually phrased, to the Benningworth’s housekeeper informed Patchin that the heir to the estate was still working happily in New York and did not plan to return home before Christmas.
Patchin’s reaction to Angela's unusual behaviour varied considerably. At times he became quite fascinated by his secret observation in a detached way, as he had once studied an elusive old pike in a pool near Hambleden Milclass="underline" for weeks throughout one autumn he had tried various baits to entice the wily monster until he realised that the pike could be stirred into action only by a fish with fresh blood on it; so Patchin had served up a dace, liberally doused in blood, and the pike had succumbed. At other times Patchin experienced a feeling of cold fury that someone was stealing his wife from him; he was quite certain that it was happening. Once he woke with a horrid start in the middle of the night, convinced that the telephone had rung just once, and then lay awake consumed with feelings of jealousy and twisted lust; he did not fall asleep till just before the alarm bell rang at six.
Perhaps Angela’s changed attitude to sex was the most obvious giveaway. Before the Monday afternoon walks and the new clothes, she seemed to have regarded it as a rather boring routine matter to be managed as quickly as possible before turning away to sleep. Now she never turned away and was always ready for sex, keener than he could ever remember her being. Her kisses were open-mouthed and lingering, her embraces passionate and urgent; as he brooded on this he realised that “urgent” was the key word — that was it, she was urging him on to more effort so that he resembled, when her eyes were closed, her other, very passionate lover. Even after an orgasm she was unsatisfied, longing for something else. It would be impossible to describe the various feelings Patchin experienced as his wife became ever more knowing in bed, with wanton behaviour and explicit movements trying to get him to obtain the results she enjoyed elsewhere. One night she wanted him to make love in a new position, and as she determinedly pushed him into place he could see the grim joke of it so clearly that he nearly laughed. Nothing could make it more plain that Angela had a very virile, enthusiastic lover, much more skilled at the amatory arts than he would ever be, a lover who liked first to be inflamed by skimpy knickers and a “display” brassiere and then performed perfectly.
It was not until a Friday in the middle of June that Patchin was able to identify his enemy. He disturbed Angela while she was making a phone call when he entered Pound Cottage that lunch time a few minutes earlier than usual. As he opened the door, the telephone was slammed down, and Angela ran upstairs to cover her confusion. That afternoon Ray Johnson, the youngest postman in the area, called in at the shop ostensibly for a pound of sausages and some bacon. Johnson grinned over at Angela in the little office, calling out "Afternoon, Mrs. Patchin.” Angela did not reply but just nodded, flushing very slightly. Apart from that telltale flush there was something subtle about the way Johnson addressed her, with just an inflection of the “Mrs. Patchin,” as though the formal mode of address was something of a joke between the pair. Daniel Patchin took his time in the cold storage room to give them a chance for a few words. The moment he opened the door, Ray Johnson stopped talking and grinned foolishly as though he had forgotten what he was going to say.
Idiot, Patchin thought, you young idiot, but passed over the momentary awkwardness for Johnson by commenting on the sausages: “Cook’s specials this lot. Part of a batch I made up for the Manor. The old man likes just an extra pinch of pepper.”
Having once seen his wife with Johnson, there was no longer any doubt in Patchin’s mind, for it seemed to him as if there were some invisible but subtly tangible connection between them, an unspoken intimacy born of their long afternoons together, probably in Calcot Wood where there were some idyllic glades. As he did up the bacon and sausages and the embarrassed couple said nothing, Patchin could visualise them on a greensward in a patch of dappled sunlight, the flimsy knickers being removed together with the trick brassiere, and then Angela’s urgent movements as the mutual madness began. Patchin felt as though his obsessive thoughts might show on his usually phlegmatic face, so he cleared his throat loudly and shook his head, saying, “Sorry. Throat's a bit sore. Hope it’s not a summer cold.”
Ray Johnson gave Patchin an unusually serious, not altogether friendly look as he replied, “Yes. Let's hope not.” The look negated the banal response, and Patchin thought Liar; it would please you if I came down with pneumonia. For the first time it struck him that the feeling of jealousy might not all be on one side. Probably Johnson was also jealous of the nights when Patchin slept with Angela; possibly Johnson was coming to hate him as he had hated the unknown lover.
Later that afternoon, when Angela had gone back to the cottage to make some tea, Daniel Patchin stood at the open door of the shop staring at the pond where a pair of Canada geese had alighted and were being harried and made unwelcome by the aggressive, though small, coots which dashed in and out of the reeds, making proprietorial noises. And indeed Patchin did not miss anything that happened on the pond, noting how the mallards vanished and the white ducks kept out of the noisy quarrel like only faintly interested spectators. But Patchin’s mind was elsewhere, brooding on his predicament: it was the first time since the Korean war that Patchin felt he was faced with a problem he did not know how to handle. Ray Johnson was a tall, slight lad with curly black hair and a mouth that always seemed to be open, either grinning or laughing to show very white teeth. Johnson was easily the most popular of the local postmen; he was extremely cheerful, full of banter and old jokes. Patchin had always found that slightly irritating — but now the trifling feeling of irritation was replaced by the strong one of implacable enmity. Patchin had no intention of confronting Angela with his suspicions or of trying to surprise the lovers in the act, even though he thought it could be arranged one Monday afternoon in Calcot Wood. For all he knew, Angela might then decide to leave him — he did not know how heavily their reasonably prosperous and comfortable life together weighed against the hours of passion spent with Lothario Johnson. No, the only answer was to get rid of him as the coots would undoubtedly rid themselves of the intruding Canada geese.