The Rules of Engagement

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

Book: The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online
Authors: Anita Brookner
Tags: Fiction, Literary
was steadiness, constancy, familiarity, even availability. But I dismissed this knowledge, as I had to. I had only to watch the expression on his healthy face, see his eyes widen appreciatively, to acknowledge that what I had, or rather what I was given, was enough. I no longer thought in terms of lifelong allegiance. I thought of his strength and what I now perceived as his beauty. He was tall and fair, with a slightly heavy build, the sort of man one sees jogging in the early morning and to whom one pays little attention. Now I understood the message of such exercise: it was an element of courtship, a desire to remain attractive and fit for the main business of life. Edmund put in an hour of such punishing exercise before beginning his normal working day. This was one of the few facts I knew about his life. His wife I managed to forget for most of the time. Fortunately the dinner parties were in abeyance: Constance and the children were in the habit of spending the school holidays at their house in Hampshire, where Edmund joined them at weekends. Digby had more or less given up trying to tempt me with holidays abroad. I think he thought my new-found contentment an appreciation of our life as it was. In any event he was tired, more tired than he had been at the outset of our life together, and may have been slightly relieved not to have to make further efforts to entertain me. To his tiredness I owed the relative safety of my evenings. Perhaps he was grateful for my absence, though I could never quite rid myself of the need to choose unfamiliar streets, to take unnecessary diversions, so that I was in no danger of being sighted from the car, or, worse, being subject to that stealthy and unacknowledged surveillance which had so puzzled and alarmed me and which now, thankfully, seemed to be at an end.
    The days took on a charmed quality. I would leave Melton Court when the sun was at its height, just after three. It seemed appropriate that these matters were taking place in the summer, in those long light days when nature adds its energy to one's own feeling of wellbeing. Edmund's flat was in a small street bounded on one side by a public garden, where I would spend the afternoon, almost innocently, with a book. There was a church, to which I turned my back, as I might not have done at an earlier stage in my life, for I knew that Dickens had married there. When the children appeared, at an hour when they were allowed to make a last use of the climbing frame in the play area, when the tired mothers wheeled their babies home after collecting them from the child - minder, I would get up, put away my book, and cross the garden to the flat in Britten Street, let myself in with my key, and wait for Edmund, who would join me shortly after five. Our time together was brief, too brief, for he always telephoned his family, or was telephoned by his wife in the country at the same time every evening. He was frequently invited out to dinner: friends took pity on him for being left in town. I think that our evenings together held some poetry for him. I was careful never to let him see my rapture, except in one particular circumstance; my former secrecy reasserted itself for my protection, and for his. I knew that he must not be exposed to the depth of my feeling for him, for that would spoil the “ fun, ” and he relied on me to accept this particular bargain. Thus he did not know that when he left I would wander round the flat, take a shower, fantasize briefly about a possible future life with him, and then slowly make my way home to my dozing husband, the television still on, the newspaper discarded by his side. He would rouse himself as sounds came from the kitchen where I would wash up after his meal, and hastily eat some bread and cheese. “ You must ask that friend of yours in, ” he once said. “ It's good of her to give you a lift. ” I made noises of agreement. Even I knew, even then, that there are some limits to

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