The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [79]
Kathryn folded her hands in her lap, considering this self-confessed lapse in character. The voluptuousness of the nursing, the slight suggestion of a belly, combined with the height, the angular shoulders, and the long arms, were arresting, undeniably attractive.
“How did you do it?” Kathryn asked. “I mean, how did it work?”
Muire Boland raised her chin. “We had so very little time together,” she said. “We did whatever we could. I’d pick him up at a prearranged spot near the crew apartment and bring him here. Sometimes, we had only the night. At other times . . .” Again, she hesitated. “Jack would sometimes bid schedules in reverse,” Muire said.
Kathryn heard the language of a pilot’s wife.
“I don’t understand,” Kathryn said quickly. Though she thought, sickeningly, that she did.
“Occasionally, he would be able to arrange it so that his home base was in London. But, of course, that was risky.”
Kathryn could remember the months Jack had seemed to have a terrible schedule. Five days on, two days off, only the overnight at home.
“As you know, he didn’t always get London,” Muire continued. “He sometimes had the Amsterdam-Nairobi route. I took a flat in Amsterdam during those times.”
“He paid for this?” Kathryn asked suddenly, thinking: He took money from me. From Mattie.
“This is mine,” Muire said, gesturing to the rooms. “I inherited it from an aunt. I could sell it and move to the suburbs, but the thought of moving to the suburbs is somehow rather chilling.”
Kathryn, of course, lived in what might be described as a suburb.
“He gave you money?” Kathryn persisted.
Muire looked away, as if sharing with Kathryn, for a moment, the particular treachery of taking money from one family to give to the other.
“Occasionally,” she said. “I have some money of my own.” Kathryn speculated on the intensity of love that constant separation might engender. The intensity that being furtive and secret would naturally create. She brought her hand to her mouth, pressed her lips with her knuckles. Had her own love for Jack not been strong enough? Could she say that she had still been in love with her husband when he died? Had she taken him for granted? Worse, had Jack ever suggested to Muire Boland that Kathryn hadn’t loved him enough? She winced inwardly to think of that possibility. She drew a long breath and tried to sit up straighter.
“Where are you from?” Kathryn asked when she trusted her voice.
“Antrim.”
Kathryn looked away. The poem, she thought. Of course. Here in the narrow passage and the pitiless north, perpetual betrayals . . .
“But you met here,” Kathryn said. “You met Jack in London.” “We met in the air.”
Kathryn glanced down at the carpet, imagining that airborne meeting.
“Where are you staying?” Muire asked.
Kathryn looked at the woman and blinked. She could not recall the name of her hotel. Muire reached forward and took another cigarette from the box.
“The Kensington Exeter,” Kathryn said, remembering. “If it makes you feel any better,” Muire said, “I’m quite certain there was never anyone else.”
It did not make her feel any better.
“How would you know?” Kathryn asked.
The outside light grew dimmer in the flat. Muire turned a lamp on and put a hand to the back of her neck.
“How did you find out?” Muire asked. “Discover us?”
Us, Kathryn heard.
She didn’t want to answer the question. The search for clues seemed tawdry now.
“What happened on Jack’s plane?” Kathryn asked instead.
Muire shook her head, and the silky hair swung. “I don’t know,” she said. But there was, possibly, an evasive note in her voice, and she seemed noticeably more pale. “The suggestion of suicide is outrageous,” she said, bending forward, putting her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. The smoke curled through her hair. “Jack would never, never . . .”
Kathryn was surprised by the woman’s sudden passion, by a level of certainty she thought only she had felt. It was the only emotion the woman had shown since Kathryn had entered the flat.
“I envy you having had a service,” Muire said, looking up. “A priest.