Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

47. Friday Morning

Friday Morning

Nina turns up just as I am about to leave for Meadowlands.

“Time for a cup of tea?” she says.

We take it outside to the little table in the back garden. Autumn is coming, our hedge is burgeoning with blackberries, rose hips, elderberries, and sloes. Time was, Bobby would have been out here, lips stained purple, standing on tiptoe to grasp the fattest cluster of fruit.

As soon as we sit down, Nina says: “Gabriel had a journalist at his place the other day, didn’t he?”

“Did he? I wouldn’t know.”

Nina looks at me, irritation in her pretty face. “Well, you would know, because you were there. And I want to know why.”

“Why what?” I say, stalling.

“Why you were at Meadowlands in the middle of the day when Leo was at school. Why some hack is snooping around in the pub asking questions about you.”

Oh, I want to tell her. I do. Unleash a stream of angst and joy and confusion, a snapshot of the myriad emotions switching through me from moment to moment. Nina and I are close, but she is also married to my husband’s brother. She is the last person on earth I can tell.

“Tell me what the journalist wanted with me. And I’ll explain what I was doing at Meadowlands.”

“All right.” Nina picks up her mug, takes a sip. “She was very young, very confident—well, you met her. She came in at lunchtime, the first time. Ordered a lemonade. Stuck out like a sore thumb. I was curious about her, so I asked her where she’d got her white boots from. A ‘little boutique in Carnaby Street,’ she said.” Nina carries off Flora’s clipped London accent perfectly. “We got chatting and she told me she’d been interviewing ‘the famous author’ Gabriel Wolfe. Said she was hoping for some background from the villagers who’d known him, what he was like as a boy, blah-blah. I told her the Wolfe family never came in the pub, preferring to drink their own champagne at home, no doubt. As far as I know they didn’t go to church either, so no one really saw much of them. Then she said an old friend of his was at the house. Beth. They seemed pretty close. She asked me where she could find you.”

I do not flush beneath my sister-in-law’s hard gaze. Even as the panic rises in my chest, I am thinking of a story, a half-truth which might work. This is who I have become, a practiced, efficient liar.

“Nosy cow,” I say, but Nina doesn’t even smile.

“So? Why were you there?”

“If I tell you, you’ll have to promise not to say anything to Jimmy. Or Frank. Not until I’ve had time to tell them myself.”

She nods, impatient.

“Gabriel’s new novel is a revamp of an old idea, a love story he was working on when we first knew each other as teenagers.”

“Don’t tell me he’s writing about your love affair ?”

The expression in her voice is almost comical. A vocal recoil. Nina knows very little about the time Gabriel and I were first together—it was long before we knew her and is not exactly a topic anyone likes to discuss at Blakely Farm.

“No, nothing like that. But getting to know me again reminded him of the conversations we used to have. We talked about writing a lot back then, it was something we had in common. And, because he was stuck with this draft, he started talking to me about it. We’ve been brainstorming the plot, what might happen next, and I think he has found it helpful. That’s all.”

“I see.”

I don’t like the way Nina is looking at me. Or how her voice sounds: odd, suspicious.

“Well, you should know the journalist came back in the evening. Probably been snooping around the village all afternoon. She sat at the bar and had a Campari and lemonade. Frank and Jimmy were there.”

“What? No.”

“She started asking questions again. Your name came up. I’d told her I couldn’t reveal the whereabouts of any of the villagers and she told me, gleefully, ‘I’ve found Beth Johnson. She lives at Blakely Farm.’ Well, Frank caught that, and he said, ‘What do you want with my wife?’?”

I’m listening to Nina with my hands pressed to my mouth. “What did she say?”

“Exactly what she’d told me. She was writing a color piece—whatever that is—about Gabriel Wolfe and she wanted to talk to the people closest to him.”

“Oh, my God. Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Frank was so angry, Beth. He told her to piss off. He said, ‘If you bother my wife at the farm, I’ll report you to the police for trespassing.’ He was wildly overreacting, and you could see her taking it all in. I don’t know what’s going on with you and Gabriel, but whatever it is, I’d say Frank has a good idea of it.”

When Nina has gone, I pace around the kitchen, talking to myself. What does this mean? Does Frank know? Is this it? The end of me and Gabriel? The end of me and Frank?

I pick up the phone and call Gabriel, dialing his number with shaking hands. There is nothing risky about this, the farmhouse is empty, but I still find myself whispering guiltily into the phone as I repeat the conversation I have just had with Nina.

“Obviously I can’t risk coming over. Not today, not until I’ve seen Frank.”

“But how was Frank last night? Wouldn’t he have said something?”

“I barely saw him. He didn’t bother having supper, he went straight out to the pub.”

This, more than anything else, tells the truth. My husband is avoiding me because he knows. He has always known. We have been stuck in this triangle for more than a decade and, even in our best years, Frank feared being cast out. He didn’t ever say so, he didn’t need to.

“What are you going to do?” Gabriel says, quietly.

You , not we . This is my dilemma, not his. Gabriel can love whomever he chooses. It’s unfortunate he has chosen a woman who is not supposed to love him back.

“I don’t know. I need to talk to Frank.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

I hear the words he doesn’t say: Are we going to be all right?

“I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of? What Frank will do if he finds out?”

“No, not that.”

Frank won’t get angry. I’ve never seen him lose his temper. Or perhaps, I haven’t seen him lose it yet. Nina sounded shocked when she described Frank yelling at the journalist. Like me, she has only ever seen gentle, calming Frank, an expert in soothing his brother, who is often quick to rise. When we had Bobby, I was glad I married a man who never raised his voice at his child. You’d see it all the time, fathers yelling at their children, lashing out with a quick slap or a cuff. Not Frank. In all of Bobby’s nine years, I did not see Frank shout at him once.

“I’m scared of the hurt Frank must be feeling. And of losing you.”

“Yes. I’m terrified of that.”

For a long minute neither of us says anything, breathing together in silence. I am thinking how impossible it will be to say goodbye to Gabriel. Hoping I don’t have to, that whatever it is between us, this crazy, burning obsession, will find its end. And maybe that our ending is not an ending.

“I love you,” Gabriel says. “If this is it, you know I understand. I want you to do whatever is right for you. But—can I say this? These last days with you have made me realize what a fool I was to let you go last time. I always knew that, but now I really know. We were meant to be together. I just hope we get a second chance.”