Читать книгу A Random Act of Kindness - Sophie Jenkins - Страница 10

Meeting Fern Banks on our secret assignation in Carluccio’s was the riskiest, most exciting thing that I’ve done in years. Life was thrilling again! The secrecy! The lies I had to tell Enid!

And the shame of telling them!

My married life is comfortable and to a lot of people that would be an enviable state of affairs, because who doesn’t long for comfort, the comfort of the familiar? The older I get, the more the sharp edges rub off my emotions. I’ve got used to love and a kiss before bedtime, a shorthand for intimacy, a desultory declaration of attachment. I know how to deal with the embarrassment of slicing a shot in a round of golf, of believing the World Wide Web traps people like flies, of watching crime dramas that show people having sex.

Enid used to spare us that by turning the TV off at that sort of thing. She held the remote at the ready, like a gunslinger in the Wild West, permanently prepared to shoot, but I’m in charge of the remote now. If Enid’s eyes are closed, I mute the sound and I watch it with my emotions removed. In old age, I’ve become used to most things.

Enid used to wear stockings once, but now she wears knee-highs. She calls them popsocks, but if you ask for a popsock in Marks & Spencer, they don’t know what you mean. They’re knee-highs these days. Same thing, different name. I used to be in the flow of things once, but now I feel as if I’m standing still and life is rushing past me and I’ll never catch up with it, I’m too old.

I’ve never had to shop for clothes for Enid; she’s not the kind of woman who needs a second opinion. Enid’s taste in clothes is conservative but feminine. One thing we both agree on is that trousers on a woman over seventy are invariably unflattering and unnecessary – unless, of course, one is a farmer; we’re not unreasonable people.

She knows what she likes. Her clothes are well-made. They’ll ‘see her out’. I listened to her saying that phrase in dismay. I wanted to buy her something worth living for, but it’s a tall order, to buy something to raise the spirits of a woman who’s unwell.

When I arranged the appointment with Fern Banks, I began by looking at everything through Enid’s eyes, by getting into Enid’s head. I can’t say I started out with a vision of what I wanted; it just gradually formed in my mind by a process of the elimination of what wasn’t suitable. It had to be special! Exciting! Evocative of a time when life was full of expectation. Oh, that frock was elusive!

Meeting Fern Banks in Carluccio’s meant leaving Enid for a second time and telling her more lies. I said I was going to the golf club and although I don’t go there much since Stan died, Enid didn’t question it.

When Fern showed me that blue dress, I knew immediately that it was the one! I felt alive again. I was tingling with excitement that I hadn’t felt in a long time! It turned the clock back!

After I bought it, I took it home and as I went through the door, Enid was calling me.

I felt so guilty that I hid it in my golf bag.