Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

When Justine opened the back door, the setter came at once, not bounding across the lawn as was usual, but hesitantly, as if he knew that his welcome was at risk. At the door with his auburn head lowered, the dog raised hopeful eyes to Justine. His tail wagged twice. His ears perked up, then drooped.

“It’s all right,” Justine whispered. “Come in.”

There was something comforting about the snick-snicking of the dog’s nails on the fl oor as he pursued the smells on the kitchen tiles. There was something comforting about all his sounds: the yelp and the growl when he played, the snarf when he dug and got soil in his nose, the long sigh when he settled into his bed at night, the low hum when he most wanted someone’s attention. He was in so many ways just like a person, a fact that Justine had found most surprising.

“I think a dog would be good for Elena,” Anthony had said prior to her arrival in Cambridge last year. “Victor Troughton’s bitch had a litter not long ago. I’ll take Elena by and let her have her pick of the lot.”

Justine hadn’t protested. Part of her had wanted to. Indeed, the protest was practically automatic since the dog-a potential source of mess and trouble-would be living in Adams Road, not in St. Stephen’s College with Elena. But another part of her had sparked alive to the idea. Other than a blue parakeet who had been mindlessly devoted to Justine’s mother, and a won-at-a-fête goldfish that on its first night in her possession had suicidally flung itself out of its overfilled bowl to become stuck on a wallpaper daffodil behind the sideboard when she was eight years old, Justine had never owned what she thought of as a real pet-a dog to tag along scruffily at her heels or a cat to curl at the foot of her bed or a horse to ride in the back lanes of Cambridgeshire. These weren’t deemed healthy by either of her parents. Animals carried germs. Germs were not appropriate. And propriety was everything once they’d come into her greatuncle’s fortune.

Anthony Weaver had been her break with all that, her permanent declaration of impropriety and adulthood. She could still see her mother’s mouth trembling round the words: “But what on earth can you possibly be thinking, Justine? He’s…well, he’s Jewish.” She could still manage to feel that searing, quite physical stab of satisfaction right between her breasts at the pale-cheeked consternation with which her mother greeted the news of her impending marriage. Her father’s reaction had been less of a pleasure.

“He’s changed his surname. He’s a Cambridge don. He’s got a solid future. That he’s been married before is a bit of a problem, and I’d be happier if he weren’t so much older than you. But, all things considered, he’s not a bad catch.” He crossed his legs at the ankles and reached for his pipe and the copy of Punch which he’d long ago decided was appropriate gentleman’s Sunday afternoon reading. “I’m damned glad about that surname, however.”

Anthony hadn’t been the one to change it. His grandfather had done so, altering just two letters. The original i-n became a-v , and there he was, born anew, not a Weiner from Germany, but a Weaver, an Englishman. Weaver, of course, was not exactly an upper-class name, but Anthony’s grandfather couldn’t have known or understood that at the time, any more than he could have understood the delicate sensibilities of the class to which he aspired, sensibilities that would prevent him from ever breaking through the barrier constructed by his accent and his choice of profession. The upper crust, after all, did not generally rub social elbows with their tailors, no matter the proximity of their tailors’ shops to Savile Row.

Anthony had told her all this, not long after they’d met at the University Press where as an assistant editor newly graduated from Durham University, she’d been assigned the task of shepherding a book on the reign of Edward III through the final stages of the publication process. Anthony Weaver had been the editorial force behind the volume, a collection of essays written by lofty medievalists from round the country. In the final two months of the project, they had worked closely together- sometimes in her small offi ce at the Press, more often in his rooms in St. Stephen’s College. And when they weren’t working, Anthony had talked, his conversation drifting round his background, his daughter, his former marriage, his work, and his life.

She’d never known a man so capable of sharing himself in words. From a world in which communication constituted a single lift of the eyebrows or a twitch of the lips, she’d fallen in love with his willingness to speak, with his quick warm smile, with the way he engaged her directly with his eyes. She wanted nothing more than to listen to Anthony, and for the last nine years, she’d managed just that, until the circumscribed world of Cambridge University had no longer been enough for him.

Justine watched as the Irish setter rooted in his toy box and brought out a worn black sock for a game of tug-of-war on the kitchen tiles. “Not tonight,” she murmured. “In your basket. Stay here.” She patted the dog’s head, felt the soft caress of a warm, loving tongue on her fingers, and left the kitchen. She paused in the dining room to remove a loose thread that dangled from the tablecloth, and once again in the sitting room to turn off the gas fi re and watch the flames’ quick, sucking disappearance between the coals. Then, nothing more to keep her from doing so, she went upstairs.

In the half-darkened bedroom, Anthony was lying on the bed. He’d removed his shoes and his jacket, and Justine went automatically to place the former in their rack, the latter on its hanger. That done, she turned to face her husband. The light from the corridor glittered on the snail-track of tears that forked across his temple and disappeared into his hair. His eyes were closed.

She wanted to feel pity or sorrow or compassion. She wanted to feel anything save a recurrence of the anxiety that had fi rst gripped her when he’d driven away from the house that afternoon, abandoning her to deal with Glyn.

She walked to the bed. Gleaming Danish teak, it was a modern platform with side tables attached. On each of these, mushroom-shaped brass lamps squatted, and Justine switched on the one by her husband’s head. He brought his right arm up to cover his eyes. His left hand reached out, seeking hers.

“I need you,” he whispered. “Be with me. Stay here.”

She didn’t feel her heart open as it would have a year ago. Nor did she feel her body stir and awaken to the implicit promise behind his words. She wished she could have used the moment as other women in her position would have done, by opening the little drawer in his side table, taking up the box of condoms, and saying, “Throw these away, if you need me so much.” But she didn’t do that. Whatever self-assurance powered that kind of behaviour, she’d used up her stock of it long ago. What she had left was what remained once all the positives were gone. For an age, it seemed, she had been filled with outrage, distrust, and a need for vengeance that nothing had yet been able to satiate.

Anthony turned on his side. He pulled her down to sit on the bed and laid his head in her lap, his arms round her waist. In a rote reaction, she stroked his hair.

“It’s a dream,” he said. “She’ll be here this weekend and the three of us will be together again. We’ll take a drive to Blakeney. Or practise shooting for the pheasant hunt. Or just sit and talk. But we’ll be a family. Together.” Justine watched the tears slide across his cheek and drop onto the fine grey wool of her skirt. “I want her back,” he whispered. “Elena. Elena .”