Free The Child in Time by Ian McEwan Page A

timing his arrival at the flat to coincide with hers. They greeted one another cautiously. There was a touch of the old, easy affection. They stood side by side in the centre of their living room, fingersloosely linked. How rapidly a home perishes through neglect, and how indefinably; it wasn’t the dust, or the dead air, or the newspapers turned yellow so soon, or the withered pot plants. They said all these things as they dusted, opened windows and carried things to the dustbins. Stephen assumed that they were really talking about their marriage. For the next week or two they circled warily, sometimes polite, at others genuinely, sweetly affectionate, and once even making love. For a while it seemed they would soon begin to touch on the subjects they were at such pains to avoid.
    But it could go the other way too, and it did. As Stephen saw it, the problem was desire. They had no need of comfort from one another, or advice. Their loss had set them on separate paths. There was nothing to be shared. Julie had lost weight and cut her hair short. She was reading mystical or sacred texts – St John of the Cross, Blake’s longer poems, Lao-tzu. Her pencilled annotations crowded the margins. She worked hours each day at a Bach partita. The rasp of double-stopped notes, the spiralling frenzy of semiquavers warned him away. For his part he made the first approaches to a serious drinking habit and indulged the books of his adolescence, reading of unencumbered, solitary men whose troubles were the world’s. Hemingway, Chandler, Kerouac. He toyed with the idea of packing a light suitcase, taking a taxi out to the airport and choosing a destination, drifting about with his melancholy for a few months.
    Being together heightened their sense of loss. When they sat down to a meal, Kate’s absence was a fact they could neither mention nor ignore. They could not give or receive comfort, therefore there was no desire. Their one attempt was routine, false, depressing for them both. Afterwards Julie put on her dressing gown and went to the kitchen. He heard her crying and knew he could not go to her. She would not welcome him anyway. They managed five weeks. The only serious conversations they had during that timewere towards the end when they began to play with the idea of parting; it was not a divorce, of course, nor a separation, but ‘a time apart’. And so a representative from an estate agent came to value the flat. He was a big man with a kind, authoritative manner who commented intelligently as he measured rooms and recorded original features.
    They asked, implored the man to stay to tea. While he took his second cup they told him about Kate, the supermarket, the police, the monastery, the difficulty of being back. He propped his elbows on the kitchen table and rested his head on his hands. He nodded solemnly throughout. What he heard confirmed what he had always feared. When they had finished he dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief. Then he pushed his arms out across the table and took their hands. The grip was powerful, his hands were hot and dry. After a silence he told them they were not to blame each other. For a moment they felt elated, released.
    But that moment passed. An estate agent could do more than they could for each other. What did that mean? They learned later that the man had once been a priest and had lost his faith. The flat was valued and Stephen gave Julie a cheque for two-thirds the amount. She found her cottage and moved out, taking her violins, their bed and a handful of possessions. She refused to install a telephone. They kept in touch with occasional postcards and met once or twice in restaurants in central London where nothing much was said. If there was love it was buried beyond their reach.
    The rain moved across the great space in fine columns of mist towards him. For twenty minutes the ground had sloped away imperceptibly until the distant trees were sunk and his horizon was entirely wheat. It was