Occasion of Sin by Rachel Billington

Author:Rachel Billington [Billington, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2019-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Laura had always liked to sit in her living-room, calmly, doing nothing. For years she had been in the habit of going there after Nicky was in bed. She might go with a newspaper or sewing or a book or perhaps intending to watch television. But she knew, in truth, she would do nothing. She loved her drawing-room, the pictures, the flowers, the bits and pieces of bric-à-brac, the leaves of the plane trees outside dancing sunlit on the walls. She used to sit for an hour or more waiting for Miles.

Miles used to enjoy finding her there. He sensed this passive contentment was the source of her day-time energy and good humour. He joked about it, calling her his buddha, his meditating mystic. And it was a kind of meditation.

But now this favourite hour of the day is destroyed. Laura, restless, dreading her husband’s return, wanders about the house. She cooks, she tidies, she telephones Nell.

Nell says, ‘You can’t go on like this.’ She often says this kind of thing which Laura usually disregards as not being relevant to her. She has to go on like this. But for some reason on this occasion, she listens. It gives her an idea.

‘I shall go to Italy,’ she says. ‘It’s Nicky’s summer holidays in a week or two.’

‘That does sound a good idea.’ Nell is enthusiastic, as she is for any positive action, but Laura doesn’t let her into her full confidence. Suddenly her mind is bursting with brilliant images. The Italian coastline, Sorrento, bougainvillea, sun, blue seas breaking on rocky cliffs crowned by pale temples. Churches, piazzas, picture galleries, Pompeii. Restaurants, al fresco, white cotton tablecloths, bread-sticks, an ice-cold bottle of Verdiccio, Martin.

She and Nicky would be joined by Martin. And later, when she could persuade him to stop working for a moment, Miles would take Martin’s place.

Laura has a vision of how she will manage a husband and a lover.

At the back of her mind, unacknowledged, is the memory of when she was last in Italy. With her married man. It had been only there that she had felt a lifting of guilt. Even before that, she had gone there as a schoolgirl. She had spent hours in the Uffizi staring at fourteenth-century madonnas which, in their richness of colour and detail yet purity of intent, seemed to combine all she most admired in the world. Her first kiss had taken place on the Ponte Vecchio. As the man, whose name she could never remember but whose face she would never forget, leant forward, she had a magic sense of stepping off a pedestal, out from a picture frame. She had become the madonna who could give birth and remain a virgin, kiss and yet stay untouched. This feeling has never quite left her.

Italy. Laura puts down the phone to Nell and goes quickly to the kitchen. Miles will be back any minute. She will mention it to him immediately. Lies are not so difficult any more. As long as she is doing something while she tells them.

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