A Rural Affair Read Online Free PDF

I’m just outlining mitigating circumstances. I’d only been married
     a short while; I wanted to keep the peace. Wanted us to be happy. Didn’t want to throw saucepans at this stage.
    And after all, what would I do without Phil? Phil, who pitted his wits against the entire building industry, plumbers who
     plumbed in radiators upside down, tilers who used the wrong grouting, the distressed-pine kitchen fitter, who disappeared
     mid job, with four out of seven cupboards unfitted, and who, when we rang, leaving messages on his answerphone, seemed to
     have disappeared into thin air. Phil eventually tracked him down. His wife, it transpired, had had a miscarriage. But Phil
     had him back working in an instant, albeit looking as distressed as his cupboards, I thought, as I took him a cup of tea.
    ‘It’s the second baby they’ve lost in two years,’ I told Phil as I joined him in the garden, where he was tying up runner
     beans.
    ‘So I gather. But life goes on.’
    I shot him a look. ‘I hope you didn’t tell him that.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Wouldn’t be terribly tactful.’
    He shrugged. ‘Maybe not, but it does.’
    We continued to do the beans in silence.
    Teamwork, that was the key. And of course it would be an even stronger team when we were three. When we had a baby. Even I
     could spot the sink-estate mentality inherent in that notion, but it disappeared the moment I discovered conceiving wasn’t
     that easy; when nothing happened for a year or two, when we had something else to pit our wits against, another cause to campaign
     for, besides the house.
    Phil read books, went on the Internet, and declared that the first thing to do was to identify the culprit.
    ‘The culprit?’
    ‘Yes. See whose fault it is.’
    ‘Bit soon, isn’t it?’ I said doubtfully. ‘Shouldn’t we – you know – try for a bit longer first?’
    ‘What, and waste more time?’
    ‘Might be fun. I read somewhere that if you do it every night for a month you stand more chance of hitting the egg. Blanket
     bombing.’
    I smiled flirtatiously, but he’d already turned back to the computer. And within a twinkling, had made appointments for us
     both in Harley Street. Me to have my tubes blown, him to fill a test tube, assisted by a girly magazine. This fascinated me.
     Not that a smart Harley Street joint provided such a thing, but the idea of Phil looking at one. The results came back and
     we were both declared innocent, which I could tell surprised Phil.
    ‘Why, did you think you were firing blanks?’
    ‘Oh, no, I knew I’d be OK.’
    After that our marriage roared into action, with Phil at the helm, morphing swiftly from house restorer to infertility doctor.
     He knew the temperature of my body to within a whisker, knew when my ovaries were ripe and rumbling portentously, could pinpoint
     to the hour when conditions were ideal for copulation. He knew when I was hot, in the strictest, David Attenborough sense
     of the word. There was to be no blanket bombing, but once a month he’d ring me at work to tell me to hustle home sharpish
     and get my kit off, and if that sounds sexy, it wasn’t. Not when your husband is grimly plunging his testicles into freezing-cold
     water beforehand without cracking a joke – I tried one, about cold fish, and it didn’t go down very well – and not when I
     was instructed to lie doggo for at least an hour afterwards, the only laugh coming when I suggested he lie with me. Personally
     I wondered if the tight Lycra cycling suit he squeezed back into afterwards and wore ninety per cent of the time was helping
matters, but since I was rapidly losing interest in the whole project, I decided not to mention it.
    Why was I losing interest? Why was I finally succumbing to what can only be described as torpor as I rumbled home every night
     on the train from the West End to what should have been my enviable country love nest? Because everyone has their saturation
     point. And happy as I wanted us to be,