I had banged down the glasses in the kitchen and realized that what was so infuriating was that she probably knew exactly what I was thinking: knew I didn’t love him, knew I didn’t care what he did, knew I cared a good deal that I was married to a fool, knew that I knew she knew what she did know. She might even know that somewhere in me was pity for Jack: the coiled contemptuous pity for somebody who, thinking that he is exhibiting his manhood, has merely been caught with his trousers down. I suffered an insupportable, vicarious sense of degradation. When my mother had run away with another man and left me and my father, I had felt bitter hurt but not this extended humiliation. A woman can never seem as ridiculous as a man, since whatever pride she may have is more broadly based and therefore less vulnerable. Her transgressions may arouse great passion, even scorn, but seldom that profound, half-hysterical contempt. Lili had lost no dignity since she had never laid claim to it.

Someone said, ‘You must have a drink now you’re here.’ But as I had come in the guise of a messenger, a porter, and not really as a guest, his words were not pressing and I was allowed to leave.

Soon after, Lili left the country and I thought never to see her again. My sudden appearance had caused Jack such fright and shock that he became what he considered to be a model husband—that is, he hardly went anywhere at all unless I could be prevailed upon to go with him and he frequently stayed in of an evening. He said he didn’t know what had come over him and it would never happen again. I could think of nothing to say, but I used to wish that I could get my hands on Lili. I forgot about her, but I never forgave her.

Shortly afterwards Jack died. Sometimes I wished that he could have died before his pride was lost, and sometimes I didn’t care. I haven’t really cared about anything since—except Syl.

In one way I was relieved that Syl had not married until now. My family had been Catholic since Adam was a lad. They had lived in a remote corner of the North and the upheavals of the ‘reformation’ had not troubled them. None of us had been called to martyrdom and we all took the Faith for granted, like air and bread. When my mother left my father all those years ago, the gentry and the yeomanry for miles around had been delightfully scandalized, for adultery and divorce were social sins and rare in those parts. But my uncles and aunts, her kin, without talking, or even thinking, about it, feared for her immortal soul. They were ashamed in the social sense and angry with her for so shaming them, but those emotions are bearable. It is the knowledge that somebody you love—one of you—might, by sin, separate herself from you for eternity that is a source of anguish. Embarrassment and wrath kept my family away from the neighbours for a time, but it was not those feelings which would make one of my uncles fall silent, another give a sudden exclamation and bite his lip. It was not because my mother had put her sisters into the awkward position of having to hold their heads high before the curious regard of the neighbours, when what they wanted was to clap their hands over their ears, close their eyes and pretend they were insensate that made one of my aunts weep silently in church and another take to saying Decades of the Rosary at peculiar moments. It was the fear that one of them was lost.