‘You’re taking the Pill?’ Graham repeated in a puzzled voice. ‘My dear Kay, are you ill?’
I shouldn’t have told him, Kay thought, mortified. They were sitting in Graham’s car overlooking the sea, it being too chilly these cool evenings to sit on the beach.
‘The Pill,’ she said with desperate emphasis, ‘You know...’
She hadn’t meant to tell him, but when he touched her breast and remarked in a wondering voice how very full it was, she had found herself blurting out the reason.
In the six weeks since she had started on the contraceptive, this was the first time she could bring herself to tell him what she had done. Now that the words were said, she knew it was a mistake. Their first time together in ages and already it was spoilt by Graham’s admission that he couldn’t stay longer than an hour and now, her own awkwardly blurted confession.
‘But how did you know where to go?’ He was amazed that she had taken such a step. She told him.
Graham said nothing for some moments, genuinely shocked by her revelation. He felt he didn’t know her at all. It was the kind of action he would have expected from the hostesses he had consorted with in the past, or his wife, who without consulting him, had had herself fitted with an inter-uterine device rather than bear any more children. He did not realise how seriously Kay had taken his words on the beach, or how utterly she had believed him when he declared he would no longer be answerable for his passion.
‘You’re angry with me,’ she cried, seeking reassurance that he was not.
Why had she said anything? She knew all along what she had done was open to misinterpretation. It was why she had held back so long from telling him. Didn’t he realise she had done it for him. Well, for them both. Gone to all that trouble and embarrassment just so that they could make love without anxiety.
Perhaps he didn’t like her fuller figure, she thought, aware that he admired willowy girls like Jean Shrimpton and Audrey Hepburn. To Kay’s intense mortification she had gained a half stone since going on the Pill. The Chief Hostess had commented on it at the last weigh-in.
‘Well you’re fairly tall, Miss Martin,’ she had conceded with a smile, ‘so I suppose you get away with it. But only just. For heaven’s sake don’t put on any more.’
She was the second person to remark on it.
‘It suits you,’ Dave had said but even the unusual compliment coming from him had not reassured Kay. She couldn’t care less what Dave thought. Only Graham’s opinion counted.
She wished again she hadn’t told him. Now everything was spoiled. Something had changed between them since that lovely relaxed day they had shared by the sea a month before.
It had been the last Sunday in August, a perfect summer day. Graham had brought a delicious picnic basket stuffed with good things, smoked salmon and cold roast chicken as well as salad, fruit and several sticks of French bread which they had washed down with chilled wine from his fridge. Kay had never been happier.
They had stayed on the beach all day and then reluctantly gathered up the picnic basket and rug to head back to the car, where they found a note awaiting them on the windscreen. It was from Graham’s brother-in-law, Garry, informing him that Sile and the boys had returned that evening from Spain.
Not the perfect ending to a perfect day. In the month that followed she had heard a few times from Graham but had not met him again until now.
Kay stared miserably down at her hands, remembering the disappointment when Graham’s notes began arriving cancelling their dates. What was wrong, she wondered, her green eyes troubled.
Graham gazed out the window and thought how all the time he had been away from Kay, he had been comparing her innocent loveliness with his own brittle, hostile wife, whose jealousy had grown out of all proportion since Christy Kane had planted the suspicion in her mind that he was having an affair.
His brief visit to Spain had been marred by Sile constantly re-hashing the subject. Never had he seen her so enraged. Worst of all had been the sight of Jeremy and Nicky’s shocked faces as they listened to them fighting.
To make matters worse, the day after his wife’s unexpectedly early return from Spain, she had come found Kay’s swimsuit in the back of his car. When he got home she was on the step to meet him brandishing the evidence.
‘If you are fooling around Graham, you’ll soon regret it,’ she threatened. ‘And you won’t even get a glimpse of your precious sons. I’ll make sure of that!’
Knowing her, Graham could well believe it.
For a while afterwards, he had made the effort to be a dutiful, if not loving, husband sticking close to home on his days off.. But finally he got tired of pandering to her. His marriage was past saving anyway. Even before Nicky was born, it was in shreds. Sile was a jealous woman, to whom he had given cause for suspicion. She didn’t particularly love or need him, he told himself grimly. She was holding on to him because she liked being married to an airline pilot and the style of living his top-ranking job entitled them.
He resolved not to put off meeting Kay any longer. Even if it was only for an hour, he longed to see her and be reaffirmed of her devotion. This last had become vitally important to him in the miserable weeks since his wife’s return from holiday.
Now he was aghast at her admission that she was on the Pill. Good God! Didn’t she trust him! He found himself cynically wondering if she still had that virginity he had been at such pains to preserve.
A muffled sob from beside him made Graham turn his head. One look at her face and all the unworthy suspicions he had been harbouring were swept away by the desolation he saw there. With a muttered exclamation, he caught her to him.
‘Forgive me, darling,’ he said contritely.’
With an abrupt change of mood, he saw Kay’s action as brave and selfless and was horrified at what the past weeks had done to him.
‘Give me a glimpse of that lovely smile, or I’ll begin to think you don’t care for me anymore,’ he continued. ‘How could you think I’d be angry with you?’
But you were, you were, thought Kay. . You looked at me as if you despised me. ‘Oh Kitty, darling,’’ Graham murmured, some notion of how deeply he had hurt her dawning on him. ‘I’ve been going through hell these past weeks. If you only knew....’
He thought of the last minute rush to get the boys into boarding school, the explanations and the lies necessary to cover the true state of affairs at home.
‘But why Dad? Why?’ a tearful Nicky kept sobbing, as they drove down to Mellwood College. ‘Aren’t you and Mummy friends anymore?’
The wrenching goodbye had remained with Graham on the drive back to town. Deliberately turning his mind away from the disturbing memory, he held Kay close. In time, he was aware this affair must end like all the others had but now he needed her badly. His eyes were suddenly wet, as he buried his face in her thick hair. In time, his mind echoed, but not yet.
Seeing how truly distraught he was, Kay responded .She was unable to understand why he was so anxious not to antagonise his wife, when he had repeatedly assured her that they went their separate ways, but she didn’t question it.