In the garden Mrs Lethwes weeds a flowerbed, wishing that Marietta didn’t have to come to the house three times a week, but knowing that of course she must. She hopes the little heart-leafed things she’s clearing from among the delphiniums are not the germination of seeds that Mr Yatt has sown, a misfortune that occurred last year with his Welsh poppies. Unlike Marietta, Mr Yatt is dour and rarely speaks, but he has a way of slowly raising his head and staring, which Mrs Lethwes finds disconcerting. When he’s in the garden – Mondays only, all day – she keeps out of it herself.
Not Vivaldi now, perhaps a Telemann minuet, run Mrs Lethwes’s thoughts in her garden. Once, curious about the music a flautist plays, she read the information that accompanied half a dozen compact discs in a music shop. She didn’t buy the discs but, curious again, she borrowed some from the music section of the library and played them all one morning. Thirty-six, or just a little younger, she sees Elspeth as, unmarried of course and longing to bear the child of the man she loves: Mrs Lethwes is certain of that, since she has experienced this same longing herself. In the flat she imagines, there’s a smell of freshly made coffee. The fragile fingers cease their movement. The instrument is laid aside, the coffee poured.
It was in France, in the Hôtel St-Georges during their September holiday seven years ago, that Mrs Lethwes found out about her husband’s other woman. There was a letter, round feminine handwriting on an airmail envelope, an English stamp: she knew at once. The letter had been placed in someone else’s key-box by mistake, and was later handed to her with a palaver of apologies when her husband was swimming in the Mediterranean. ‘Ah,
There are too many of the heart-leafed plants, and when she looks in other areas of the border and in other beds she finds they’re not in evidence there. Clearly, it’s the tragedy of the Welsh poppies all over again. Mrs Lethwes begins to put back what she has taken out, knowing as she does so that this isn’t going to work.
‘“Silly girl,” I said, straight to her face. “Silly girl, Ange, no way you’re not.”’
Marietta has established herself at the kitchen table, her shapeless bulk straining the seams of a pink overall, her feet temporarily removed from the carpet slippers she brings with her because they’re comfortable to work in.
‘No, not for me, thanks,’ Mrs Lethwes says, which is what she always says when she is offered instant coffee at midday. Real coffee doesn’t agree with Marietta, never has. Toxic in Marietta’s view.
‘All she give’s a giggle. That’s Ange all over, that. Always has been.’
This woman has watched Ange’s puppy-fat go, has seen her through childhood illnesses. And Bernardo, too. This woman could have had a dozen children, borne them and nursed them, loved them and been loved herself. ‘Well, I drew a halt at two, dear. Drew the line, know what I mean? He said have another go, but I couldn’t agree.’
Five goes, Mrs Lethwes has had herself: five failures, in bed for every day the third and fourth time, told she mustn’t try again, but she did. The same age she was then as she imagines her husband’s other woman to be: thirty-six when she finally accepted she was a childless wife.
‘Decent a bloke as ever walked a street is little Liam, but Ange don’t see it. One day she’ll look up and he’ll be gone and away. Talking to a wall you are.’
‘Is Ange in love, though?’
‘Call it how you like, dear. Mention it to Ange and all she give’s a giggle. Well, Liam’s small. A little fellow, but then where’s the harm in small?’
Washing traces of soil from her hands at the sink, Mrs Lethwes says there is no harm in a person being small. Hardly five foot, she has many times heard Liam is. But strong as a horse.
‘I said it to her straight, dear. Wait for some bruiser and you’ll build your life on regrets. No good to no one, regrets.’
‘No good at all.’
