The Age of Desire Read Online Free PDF Page B

flail. She’d even slap him. She was mortified by her own behavior but equally outraged by his. She would apologize in the morning. She would say it was the overripe air, or the cottage at Pen Craig; that Newport was anathema to her and she had often had breathing issues in the past. But after days and days of this, which he had come to call her “histrionics,” he’d found it was better to call her maid and go back to his own room. And then one night, after three glasses of brandy, he came into her bed in the middle of the night.
    “No, Teddy, it’s late,” she told him. “I was sleeping.”
    “I don’t care, Puss. A married man has his rights. This has to end.”
    “You said you’d be patient,” she said.
    “No one is this patient. Not even me.”
    “You’ve been drinking.”
    “Of course I’ve been drinking. It’s the only way I’ve been able to bear this nonsense.” Tonight, he didn’t even kiss her, he merely climbed atop her, as though she were a mountain he must conquer and he had a flag to thrust into her soil. She cried out at the pain. There was no touching, no caressing. It was more awful than she’d imagined: the bucking, the sharpness, the grunting. No wonder Lucretia couldn’t even speak of it! The searing pain served one good purpose: it did distract her from the fact that she couldn’t breathe. When he was done, which was in very short order, he pulled himself off her and lay on his stomach on the bed, his head away from her, and was very silent.
    “How could you?” she said, her voice as marring as a nail on glass. “Don’t
ever
do that to me again!”
    He muttered something in a crushed, angry voice, which took her ears a moment to interpret. “It wasn’t even worth it,” is what he said, and he began to cry. Truly cry. She didn’t know if he was lachrymose from the liquor, or hurt, or angry. But she was horrified. She would have apologized to him if she hadn’t been so miserable, still throbbing with pain, still in shock. Teddy got up from her bed. And in all these twenty-two years, he has rarely returned. When he has, her head has been turned, her eyes squeezed shut. It’s been miserable for both of them. It’s become their silent truce to leave each other alone, to sleep apart. It’s the marriage they’ve made together. She doesn’t know whether he sees other women. She imagines he must have at one time. As long as it is done very quietly, she hasn’t wanted to hear about it. She is only too happy to give him a wide berth.

    For years, Edith has wondered how other women seemed to
long
for this shattering intimacy that feels more like injury than love. Why should the Comtesse de Noailles find blissful pleasure where she finds pain? Maybe Teddy did it wrong. More likely, she is a woman not made for love. This, in the end, is what she’s come to believe. That she is mis-made. A woman unlike other women. A freak of nature.
    For the first years of her marriage she was miserable, nauseated at least once a day, sometimes even unable to get out of bed. Her great friend through everything has been her old beau, Walter Berry. He writes her often, visits when he can. Having suffered childhood malaria, he’s been ill much of his life. He understands her almost as well as Anna does. Once, a few years into the marriage, when Edith was particularly ill and Teddy his jolly joking self, Walter walked her to her room to lie down.
    Tucking her tenderly into bed, he said, “Dear Edith, I have to ask . . .”
    “What? Ask me. I don’t keep secrets from you.”
    “Okay. I’ll brave it. What, exactly, is it you
see
in Teddy?”
    She was very quiet.
    “I’ve offended you,” he said.
    She still did not speak. She would never be able to explain it even if she chose to.
    “I’ll never ask that again,” he said. He looked utterly ashamed. She did not disabuse him of the notion that what she felt for Teddy was deep and abiding love. There was simply no point. She chose Teddy.