The Rules of Engagement

The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online
Authors: Anita Brookner
Tags: Fiction, Literary
which I had not previously thought myself capable. It was another paradigm shift, a change from one category to another, from the obedience I had once observed to something like a lawlessness which I found altogether more natural. I had a reason for getting up in the morning other than to make coffee, to pour orange juice, and to grill the bacon on which Digby insisted and which I had always found repulsive.
    All day I performed domestic tasks uncomplainingly, knowing that the days were a mere preparation for the evenings, when I should see my lover. I told Digby that I had found an evening class, a fact which he found mildly annoying but which he did not seek to check. Had he done so he would have discovered that these classes met at seven o'clock and finished at nine, and that they had moreover come to an end at the beginning of the summer, when the city began to empty and the students to disperse. From time to time I even regretted these notional classes, only to delight when the stately periods of the Victorian novel, which I still read, gave way to the crudest of language in the course of those evenings to which I now devoted my life.
    I covered my tracks by leaving Digby's meal in the oven, having instructed him by telephone how to heat it up, and by assuring him that a friend would give me a lift home after the class. At first he demurred at this, but my expression was so innocent and so convincing that he believed me. My one cause for concern was that I might see the car, either following me or coming to meet me, but as I was in a part of the neighbourhood quite removed from the school in which the evening classes were held I thought I was safe. And, surprisingly, I was: I was protected by a new-found gambler's insouciance which was in itself a comment on the laborious good behaviour which I had exchanged for a fulfilment that I knew to be my birthright.
    It hardly disturbed me that I was unfaithful to my husband or that Edmund was unfaithful to his wife. With eyes and senses newly sharpened I more or less knew that he made a habit of this, that he thought such adventures a legitimate part of a man's life. Why else did he keep a rented flat for this particular purpose? I was never so deluded as to imagine that I was the first woman to visit this flat or even that I should be the last. It was enough to know that I had rights of admission, and that for one or two evenings a week, sometimes fewer, and never at the weekends, I should meet him there, should linger after he had gone home, and luxuriate in the knowledge that our intimacy was a secret enshrined in this place, which, as far as I knew, had not yet been discovered by any third or fourth party. The day he gave me a key to the flat was the happiest of my life.
    I knew very little about him. I knew that he was a welcome ten years younger than my husband. I knew that he had three children, twin girls, Julia and Isabella, and a boy, David, and that he was devoted to them. When he spoke of them, which was frequently, I felt a mild unease, a wistfulness which I tried to ignore. I was stoical enough to look the situation in the face, and at no point was I tactless enough to ask him if he loved me. His attitude was simple: his sexual confidence demanded that he employ that confidence in the most natural way. He was a man of pleasure, and I was a means of ensuring that pleasure. Nor did he give much time to rationalizing his behaviour, or indeed my own. “ Incredible, ” was all he said. “ One never suspects ... That, of course, is part of the fun. ” “ Fun ” was the only false note; it was the wrong word to describe what I was feeling. Maybe it did not adequately describe what he himself was feeling, but we did not talk about that. Our attachment was at its best when it was wordless. Fortunately, given the limited time at our disposal, it usually was.
    I loved him, while never completely suppressing the knowledge that love was something quite different, that it

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