Page 4 of The Affair
Mother and daughter had talked on for a while, mainly about Bash, Connie’s three-year-old grandson – who’d apparently sprayed the sitting room with quantities of suntan lotion while his mum was making his tea, leaving pockets of gunk in the loop pile of thesisal carpet, which Caitlin was finding impossible to get out.
Connie read after the call, finally drifting off around eleven. Devan was still not home, but Stacy sometimes had a lock-in for his mates on a Sunday night. She wasn’t worried.
The sound of her mobile woke her from a very deep sleep. Devan’s number came up on the screen, but it wasn’t her husband who spoke. ‘Connie, it’s Stacy here. Slight problem. ’Fraid your old man’s kaylied, can’t seem to stand up on his own. Thought I’d bring him home, but he doesn’t have his keys on him … I worried you wouldn’t hear the bell.’
Connie sat up. ‘God, Stacy, I’m so sorry. I’ll come and get him.’
‘It’s no bother. If you’d just open the door.’
She thanked him and tumbled out of bed, pulling her dressing gown over her pyjamas as she hurried downstairs. She saw her husband’s keys immediately, sitting on the ledge by the front door.
The following morning Devan staggered down to the kitchen around ten o’clock. Connie and Stacy had tried to give him water, then coffee, the night before, but their attempts had just met with flailing arms and angry grunts. So they’d dragged him upstairs and dropped his dead weight onto the spare bed – in what used to be Caitlin’s room. Connie, mortified at her husband’s behaviour, had thanked the publican profusely, then ripped off Devan’s trainers and wrapped him in thesection of duvet not already squashed under his prone, fully clothed body. She’d spent a sleepless night worrying that he might vomit, choke and die. But she was too angry to sleep in the same room as his chain-saw snoring and make sure he didn’t. By morning she was not in the greatest of moods.
‘Hi.’ Devan slumped into a kitchen chair and eyed her cautiously as she began to unload the dishwasher on the far side of the room. When she saw him sitting there, so pathetic, so wasted, she began to slam the plates and cups onto the shelves, hurl the cutlery into the drawer, clank the pans and bang the cupboard doors shut. The cacophony made her ears sing, but she didn’t care.
Her husband didn’t flinch, however, and when she eventually shut the last cupboard door and leaned on the other side of the kitchen table, slightly out of breath and glaring at him, he gave her a sad smile.
‘Made your point.’ He straightened up, still in his clothes from the day before. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry about last night. I don’t know what got into me. I think it was seeing that shiny new doctor, bursting with vim and vigour. It just reminded me of myself, all those years ago …’
Connie gazed at him. ‘Retirement doesn’t have to be grim, you know,’ she said gently. Despite her irritation, she did feel sorry for him. She understood how hard it could be for anyone, going full tilt for so many years, then having nothing to get out of bed for. But that was months ago now and, if anything, he seemed evenmore unhappy. The problem was, he’d never made an actual plan about what he would do when he stopped working. Suggestions had been bandied about, but neither of them had given it proper, serious thought. He’d been too stressed at the time, and since then, apparently too low.
He stared at her for a second, a calculating edge appearing in those deep blue eyes. ‘Really? Maybe you should try it sometime,’ he said, raising his eyebrows in question, the faint smile that accompanied it barely reaching his eyes.
Connie shook her head. This subject had been slowly building a head of steam over the past year. Now hardly a week passed when Devan didn’t try his luck. ‘I’ve told you a million times …’ she sat down so she could meet his eye ‘…I’m not ready. It’s different for you. You got to the stage where you hated your work. I still love mine.’
Devan’s expression hardened as she watched him rasp his fingers roughly across the day-old stubble on his chin. ‘Ididn’thate my work,’ he said dully. ‘I always hoped I’d keep going till I was at least seventy. It just became impossible … too many patients, not enough time or money.’ He gave a dispirited sigh. ‘I keep thinking I’ve made a terrible mistake, giving it all up. But then I remember the reality.’
She’d heard the same thing so often she felt she was running out of ways to respond helpfully. He was, she was certain, using her retirement as a peg upon which to pin his unhappiness. ‘But there are loads of things you could do now,’ she said encouragingly. ‘You weregoing to ring Lillian, weren’t you, find out about that medical website she works for? Or you could talk to your mates at the Royal College of GPs – they’re bound to have some ideas. With your expertise …’
Devan gave a dismissive shrug. ‘There was one thing that cheered me up, Connie, when things were getting on top of me at the surgery and I knew I’d have to quit,’ he said, completely ignoring her suggestions. ‘It was the thought you and I would finally have time, after all these manic years of work, to do stuff together – hang out with the family, go places, see things, meet people.’ He levelled his gaze at her, clearly on a mission to make her understand. ‘We’ve always wanted to do South America, the Great Wall … You haven’t even been to Australia yet. And little Bash, you hardly see him because you’re always away. He won’t be young for ever, you know.’
Connie frowned, her face set. She also looked forward to doing some of the travelling Devan was suggesting. But her summer tours didn’t preclude that. She was only away – sporadically – from April to October, which left five months free. What upset her now was the below-the-belt accusation about their grandson. She was the first to admit she didn’t see enough of him when she was working, but she tried really hard to make up for it during the rest of the year.
‘You’re not being fair, Devan. I never said I’d retire when you did.’ Stupidly, she’d come to realize, she hadn’t considered it might be a problem. When Devan didn’t immediately agree with her, she went on more gently,‘Did I?’
He gave her a sulky look. ‘Maybe not as such. But I assumed, once I did, that you would too.’
‘We never talked about it, though, did we?’ Connie kept her tone reasonable, but his voice rose.
‘So? You’re going to keep on doing this silly job for the next ten years, just to spite me?’
‘“Silly”?’ She was hurt. He sounded like Lynne, her elder sister. Lynne was the one who’d been to college, eventually becoming head of admissions at Aberystwyth University, unlike Connie, who’d dropped out of school at seventeen. She always seemed to put patronizing quote marks round the word ‘job’, when talking about Connie’s trips.
Not that Connie needed validation for what she did. It was her dream job, always had been. She’d previously worked – not as happily – for a self-styled lifestyle guru with an emporium in Bridgwater. Fiona Raven was a chef, designer and broadcaster, who wrote cookery and party books, and produced her own range of gourmet foods, such as jars of cooking sauces, fruit compôtes and nut butters. Connie was her Girl – then Woman – Friday, a difficult job she knew she did well, but for which she got scant credit from Fiona. So as soon as Caitlin had left home – twelve years ago now – Connie had applied for a manager’s job with a railway-tours company and never looked back. Having found, so much later in life, the job she loved, she had no desire to give it all up just yet.
Now Devan reached out for her across the table. ‘I didn’t mean silly, you know I didn’t. I’m sorry.’ Helooked so weary, suddenly, that she thought he might fall asleep where he sat. ‘I think your job is great, and I know you love it. But what about us, Connie? I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that we’re not getting any younger.’
‘Oh, please.’ She pulled her hand from his and stood up.How did the conversation twist away from yesterday’s horrendous binge, so that now it appears to be all my fault?
Shaking her head in frustration, she moved round the table, wrapped her arms around her husband’s shoulders, kissed his bent head and tried another tack. ‘I’m worried about you, Devan,’ she said softly. ‘This drinking thing, it isn’t you.’
For a moment he let her comfort him. But then he nudged her arms off and straightened, heaving himself to his feet. He looked wrecked, his tone bleak. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry.’
Connie took in a big breath to give it a final go. ‘You don’t think you should at least talk to one of the new doctors?’
The stare he gave her was withering. ‘About what?’
She didn’t dare mention depression again, as she had so many times. But this time she didn’t need to.
