Free Love by Tessa Hadley

Author:Tessa Hadley [Hadley, Tessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2021-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

FIVE

Dear Jean,

I don’t suppose you will have heard – although the channels along which gossip flows are tentacular, so one never knows – of the odd twist of fate that’s befallen me, humiliating and a little absurd. And yet because you and I have always been in tune, I find myself imagining your ideas about it as if you had heard. So I might as well tell you anyway – and you’ll have to forgive me for unburdening myself and, you might feel, burdening you – that Phyl has left me. Just before Christmas – it’s only a few weeks and she may be back, for all I know, by Easter. From my perspective, it’s been rather more like something out of a comic opera than Anna Karenina. All very sudden and sensational, with no preamble – in fact not much post-amble either. A coup de foudre – and presumably, as far as Phyl’s concerned, something like rough justice. Do you remember that old ballad children learn at school, where the Lady runs off with the Raggle-Taggle Gypsies? In a note, Phyl most definitely suggested that she’d seen through something false in our ‘way of life’ together. No doubt the Lady, leaving her feather bed behind, said something to her Lord along those lines.

In this scenario, at any rate, I seem to play, alas, an unenviable role. Talking of Anna Karenina, I’ve been checking my ears every so often in the mirror in the hallstand, because if I remember rightly, Tolstoy gave an unflattering pair of them to the deceived husband, and I know I felt ungenerously at the time of reading that those ears, or horns, were very richly deserved. But you will have read AK more recently than I have, you can correct me if I’ve misremembered it. I imagine you these days shut up against the world and the weather, working your way absorbedly for the umpteenth time through all the classics, in the library at Cressing, which is where you belong. It’s a happy thought.

Anyway, Phyl has gone, and I don’t know where, and as yet – bizarrely – I don’t even know with whom. Perhaps the most disconcerting thing, dear Jean, is how I’m chagrined and embarrassed and even at times outraged, but not heartbroken. Of course there are the children to worry about. Hugh, thank goodness, has gone off to Abingdon, where I know they’ll look after him; Colette is more of a problem. Her marks in class have fallen off, her teachers are concerned, and she’s hanging around with a bad set of girls. At home – when she’s at home, and not out goodness knows where – she cooks up messes which make me fat and give me indigestion, but which I have to pretend to enjoy.

I hope you don’t mind my writing. It’s a long while since we met up. Five years, since you and I had lunch? Much longer, a lifetime ago, since I came with Phyl that once to Cressing.

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