a week for the last six months, he had feasted his eyes on it, stroked it, kissed it, entered it. And she loved it. Loved him, she told him time after time, crying out when she climaxed, gripping him with her thighs, holding onto him, as if she were drowning. She revelled in it, in everything they did, the strange places they found to indulge in sexual fantasies, the risks they took.
‘George, how long can we keep this up?’ she asked, some time later, when they were lying side by side, with their bodies glowing and the smell of straw and sex in their nostrils.
‘For ever, I hope.’
‘You’re simply sticking your head in the sand. Barbara will find out sooner or later.’
‘Why should she? I make no secret of the fact that I take an interest in your affairs. Which is why I’m supposed to be here. She wants to sell the land and let the farmhouse. I’m supposed to find out how you feel about moving into something smaller.’
‘You know how I feel about it, George.’ She rolled over and propped herself on her elbow to look at him. ‘I want to get out of here. It’s haunted by John and his first wife. Everywhere I look I see them, every time I move even the smallest ornament, I imagine them standing over me, disapproving. To me it represents a year or two of happiness and endless months of horror watching him die.’
‘I’m going to build us a bigger house, so how do you like the idea of moving into the one we’re in now? You would own it outright which is more than you do the farm.’
‘It’s OK by me, so long as we can still be together.’
‘Then, I’ll put it in hand.’ He reached for his clothes, picked the straw out of them and dressed. ‘I’d better be going.’ He bent over to kiss her. ‘See you soon. There’ll be lots of legitimate reasons for me to come now.’ He laughed. ‘Business reasons.’
She stayed where she was for several minutes after he had gone, then slowly dressed herself and went down to finish grooming her horse.
Things didn’t improve on the business front: the economy lurched from one crisis to another. Bankruptcies were at an all-time high, leading to massive unemployment. Barbara’s sympathies were all with the men who were out of work and she felt guilty that she had so much, that her children were plump and well clothed, that George seemed to be able to maintain his lifestyle with barely a hiccough. ‘I work damned hard for it,’ he told her, more than once. She forbore to remind him of the money that had come from the sale of the land belonging to the farm. He was touchy about that, even though it had been his salvation.
They moved into their new home in the spring of 1926. George christened it The Chestnuts because a couple of the old trees were included in the garden. The house was large and modern with every possible labour-saving device built into the kitchen, including a refrigerator. There were four bedrooms and a luxurious bathroom. Barbara had enjoyed furnishing it, though George had haggled over every single item, bullying the poor shopkeepers, who were struggling as much as he was, into huge discounts. And though she was glad to leave their first house, which had always been associated in her mind with sharp practice, if not downright dishonesty, she wished he hadn’t used so much of the proceeds from the sale of the land to build it; the plot alone must have cost a fortune. She had intended the money to help with the business, not for her own comfort.
He had an answer to that, as he had for everything. ‘It proves George Kennett is not only a survivor but a winner,’ he told her when she mentioned it one morning at breakfast, the only time of day they had more than two minutes together. ‘If he can build a house like this in the middle of a recession, then there must be something special about his business acumen. Besides, it kept the workforce busy when I might have had to lay some of them off. What sort of message would that have sent out, do you suppose?’
‘Lay them off? Things aren’t that bad, surely?’
‘They will be if the miners have their way. The country relies on coal for almost everything. If my customers suffer, then I suffer.’
Barbara hardly blamed the