What Was She Thinking? by Zoë Heller Page B

at the television. I’ve seen Richard watching television once or twice. He has a particular way of turning his head away from the screen and peering at it, sidelong. Sheba says that this has something to do with his bad eyesight. But to me it’s always seemed a
fitting manifestation of Richard’s generally superior attitude: it is as if he is trying, in his pompous way, not to let the telly know that he’s interested.
    “God, you won’t believe what crap these people are talking,” he said. They were quiet for a moment, watching the panel discussion. After a while he turned to her. “Did you have a nice time?” he asked.
    Sheba pretended to inspect split ends in the mirror. “No, not really,” she replied. “It was pretty dull, actually.” She hadn’t planned to say that, but somehow, when it came to it, grumpiness seemed easier to pull off than enthusiasm.
    “Oh dear,” Richard said. He was only half listening.
    “I think I’m going to go to bed,” Sheba said.
    He humphed absently. Then, just as she grasped the door handle, he looked up again. “So how’s Caitlin?” he asked.
    “Oh, okay,” Sheba said. “A bit lumpy and mumsy these days.” She beamed out silent apologies to her innocent friend.
    “Well,” Richard said, yawning, “that’s what life in the provinces does to a person.”
    “Yes,” Sheba said. “Probably.” She paused a moment and then, when Richard did not reply, she opened the door. “Okay, I’m off upstairs,” she said. “I’m knackered.”
    When Richard came up to the bedroom half an hour later, Sheba kept her eyes shut and concentrated on breathing like a sleeping person. He got undressed, and then he read for fifteen minutes. When at last the book slipped from his hand and he began to snore, she remembers feeling strangely let down. Aggrieved almost. She hadn’t wanted to arouse his suspicion, of course. But she couldn’t help feeling that an evening of the sort she had just experienced deserved a less muted conclusion. It
would have been nice, she remembers thinking tipsily, as she drifted into sleep, if she could have confided in her husband about her adventure.
    The next day, at the end of school, Connolly came to her studio again. There was a brief, awkward struggle when he first walked in. And then Sheba changed her mind and let him kiss her.
    “You know, Steven,” she said, after a while, “it’s very, very important— incredibly important—that we keep this secret. You haven’t said anything to anybody, have you?”
    He assured her, indignantly, that he had not. “I mean,” he added, “apart from my mates and that.”
    Sheba looked at him, thunderstruck. He looked back at her for a long moment. Then he laughed. “Fooled ya,” he said.
    Sheba was quiet. She put her hands on his shoulders and studied his grinning face. She told him never to joke about this. She told him that it could be very difficult keeping a secret and that, one of these days, he might feel tempted to confide in someone, but that even if he thought the person trustworthy—even if they swore on their mother’s grave not to tell—he was never to say anything.
    “I’m not like that,” he protested. “I wouldn’t grass on you.”
    “Grass on us,” Sheba corrected him. “You would be in a lot of trouble, too, you know.” She knew this was probably untrue, but she thought it best to give him as much incentive as possible for keeping quiet.
    Connolly stood before her, twisting his head from side to side just as he had done the first time they met. “Come on,” he said gruffly, “let me kiss you.”
    Shortly after that, they repaired to the far end of the room and there, behind the kiln, they engaged in their first act of sexual intercourse. “Everyone’s always asking, ‘How could she?
What made her take the risk?’” Sheba said to me, once. “But the truth is, Barbara, doing that kind of thing is easy. You know how you sometimes have another drink even though