Infidelities Read Free Page A

Remembering the way she’d felt so free in New York but also so scared – realising that she was on the verge of deciding something that needed thought and care but rushing towards it as though with her eyes closed, rushing forward amidst all the clubs and the bars and the partying, running around New York and knowing Bobby was over in London, waiting, waiting …
    Certainly what she was aware of at the time was the way that day, that morning, each detail around the monk – the dark stones and brickwork of the village building, the gilt detail around the face of the clock, the fresh blue china colour of the summer sky, early and fresh and really like polished china because there’d been rain last night – seemed to charge itself, Helen thinks now that’s exactly it, the phrase, ‘charge itself’, each detail lending her its full and significant meaning. And set against these things,these
things
, the
thingness
, if you like, of building stones and of sky, was the vivid colour of saffron robes, the little earthen bowl, pale straw of the sitting mat … These elements of the monk that seemed on another plane altogether, ethereal, even though they were right there in front of her, come out of a place way beyond herself, unknown to her entirely, of hope or faith or dream.
    Something started for her then. She had the strong instinct which of course she immediately quelled to put her hands together to form her hands into a prayer position like the monk was doing, to extend herself towards him that way … But she hadn’t done that, not anything crazed or needy. Instead, she’d managed, after all the initial feelings of belief and disbelief and of wonder, to be exactly as Elizabeth had suggested. She’d approached the monk, gently put a few coins and a crumpled note into the begging bowl at the corner of the mat, and said, slowly but in a very safe, English way, ‘Welcome.’
    The man looked into her eyes. He didn’t speak.
    That ‘welcome’ must have sounded strange yet Helen hadn’t felt foolish about it, or even embarrassed – really it was as though she’d entered a kind of dream. Everything was quiet, set. There was a stillness in the air, around the monk, that Helen was part of – as though the stillness had entered her, was part of her. A feeling Helen recognises now in a way she couldn’t then as calm. It was only when Margaret Cockburn from three doors down arrived, and came up to the monk and said ‘Welcome’ pretty much in the same way Helen had, that it was as if she remembered,with a start, the twins back home on their own, and she rushed away, arriving at the house with her heart like a roaring engine as she tore up the stairs, three at a time. There were the boys though, just as she’d left them, quiet and placid and only starting to move when she leaned over them and startled them with her noisy, ragged breath. She stayed there some time, standing over them, watching them, listening to the small sucking noises they made as they opened and closed their mouths, getting ready for their next feed … But even as she did so by then all she was thinking about was the monk in the village and that moment of her standing before him and feeling everything was still, like a painting she could stay standing in front of and as long as she stood there would never feel panic again or terror or deep, deep despair.
    All that day she’d thought of nothing else. Remembering that feeling. Trying to get it back. So though she couldn’t really understand why she would need to look at the monk again, nevertheless she knew she’d have to – so she bundled the boys up into the pram and used picking up Winnie from playgroup as her excuse to go back to the village.
    ‘There’s an interesting spaceman come to visit us,’ she’d said to her daughter, meeting her at the church hall door. ‘Shall we go and see him, you and I?’
    Winnie looked up at her, her hair tumbled from her morning’s play and with that lovely