Ryman, Rebecca (122 page)

"There
is no world for me outside you and Amos."

"Oh
yes, there is!" He was again brutal. "You still have a husband—and I
cannot share you with anyone. With me, Olivia,
it is
all.
Or nothing. As
in war, so also in love!" His arrogance now was hurtful.

Did
he truly reject her? No, no, that could not be—she would not permit it to be!
He was only testing her, measuring her courage, experimenting how far she could
bend without breaking. He did not see that in doing so he was trying to
rationalise the irrational, justify the unjustifiable, resolve by logic that
which was insoluble. He forgot that beyond this, beyond words, there was
another dimension. Some called it—as
he
had!—an affinity.

Under
her breath she laughed. "What a fool you are, Jai Raventhorne! Like me, a
Kansas mule." Her tone turned soft as silk. "I've fought my fate, the
world, once. I would willingly fight them again,
for
you. What I no longer
have the energy to fight again is
you."
She rose, walked up to him
and, tired of not touching him, of loving him from afar, of not loving him at
all, surrounded him with her arms. "Have you not learned yet that with me
too, always, as in war so also in love—it is all, all,
all. . .?"

Shocked,
he stood rigid and unmoving in her embrace, not daring to touch her in return,
not daring even to breathe. He could not find a voice except to gasp out her
name.

For
a moment, a spellbound moment, neither could she breathe. Drunk with the heady
rush of his well-remembered, never-forgotten muskiness, drowned in the lightest
of light whiffs of his faintly tobacco-tinged breath, Olivia almost died of his
nearness. Starved for so long, she skimmed feathery lips across the texture of
his neck, tasting once more the salt of his skin, holding its sharpness in her
mouth, unwilling to let it go. "If you don't want me," she whispered,
intoxicated, "then let me hear you say it outright. That, at least, is
owed to a woman who has borne you a son."

He
was resurrected into life with a spasm. Hesitantly his arms rose and within
them, he held her closer to him. "Oh yes, I want you, oh
yes . .
.!"
Hopelessly defeated, he was abject in his capitulation. He
breathed tumbling incoherencies into the profusion of her hair, on her cheeks,
all around her upturned face. "How can you ever know how much you have
been wanted?"

"I
can if you tell me." She rested an ear against his pocket. Yes, it was
still there, safe for her—only for her!—syncopating like a kettle-drum!

"My
God, you
still
need it said?" He was again incredulous.

Between
open shirt buttons she kissed the hollow of his neck. "Still!"

Bewildered
by what he could neither define nor understand, by what he could only feel, he
suffocated her with random kisses that made her fight for breath. "There
has not been a day, not a fraction of one, when you have not been loved and
wanted. Absent or present, you rule my thoughts, command and control me, drive
me to despair and in my despair I lose my mind." He forced her away to
grip her shoulders and hold her at arm's length. "I am an insufferable,
demanding man, Olivia, and still extreme in my reactions. You will not be able
to tolerate me for long. And then I will lose you again."

"And
you cannot bear to be a loser, is that it?" Unshed tears made her eyes
even more bright. "I promised you once to tolerate anything you chose to
be. It was a reckless promise, one that was not within my capacity to honour
then. It is now. I too need another chance, Jai, I too." The grip of his
fingers dug deeply into her flesh. She loosened it to take his hands in hers.
"This is the truth, Jai. Why can't you accept it as such?"

He
could not match her eloquent persuasions and was stricken with inarticulacy.
Frustrated, he gathered her to him roughly, cursing his own incapacities under
his breath. "Why, why, why! How many damned whys do you still have left
for me?"

"As
many as will take to learn you entirely."

"Entirely?"
He groaned in his exasperation. "If even I cannot learn myself
partially,
what you assign to yourself is a lifetime of study!"

"Well
then, that is perfect," she retorted with abandon, free finally in soul
and spirit. "As it happens, I do have a lifetime to spare."

He
did not pay heed to her gay insouciance. Still troubled, he was unrelievedly
solemn. Raising her chin, he stared into her eyes, enchanted by their dancing
lights but nervous at the size of her submission. "Your love awes me,
Olivia. I am alarmed by its sheer persistence. At the same time it dazzles me,
but I know neither how to love well nor to receive with grace. What I feel for
you still angers me, for it is a bondage and I rebel against slavery. You
entrust me with so much,
too
much, and I am inadequate as a
caretaker." He tried to smile but couldn't. "I would want you to be
happy, as ... as my sister," he stopped and flushed, "as Estelle is
happy. But I am unsure what makes the substance of happiness . . ." At a
loss again, he shrugged.

Tenderly,
she smoothed out the lines of anxiety on his
forehead. "For me the substance of
happiness is to be with you. Perhaps, if we're lucky, we can both learn to love
well again, learn to receive with grace."

Abstracted,
he caressed her hair, still frowning. "It will not be easy, Olivia."

She
sighed. "No. But then, has it ever been?"

For
a long moment he remained unspeaking. Then, disengaging himself, he bent down
to retrieve the momentarily forgotten bundle. For a while he held it between
his hands. His eyes closed and, soundlessly, his lips moved. He lifted his
precious treasury to them and kissed it once. Then, before Olivia could guess
his intention, he had thrown it with all his strength into the middle of the
river. She gave a startled cry, but he restrained her impulsive move towards
it. "Let it go," he commanded, but with profound feeling. "It is
time for the dead to bury their dead. I am done with apparitions."

Olivia's
eyes filled. "But you loved her!"

"I
will always love her," he assured her gently. "One clings to the dead
when there is nothing living to turn to. Now, it seems, there are others to
love." He brushed her wet lids with his fingertips. "Don't cry. You
know I cannot bear your tears and you have cried enough."

Mesmerised
by the still-bobbing blur on the surface of the water, she could not wrench her
eyes away from it. She was racked with renewed shame. "I must tell you
that—"

"Don't
say it." He sealed her lips with a finger. "It is part of the past
that must now be forgotten."

She
removed his hand and stilled it between hers. "But you must know
how
I—"

"I
know how. It was Sujata who took it. Isn't that what you want to tell me? You
paid her well to."

Olivia
gulped, mortified. "How did you—"

"It
was surprisingly easy." It might have been her imagination, but something
stirred in the depths of those veiled, silver-fish eyes, something she had
never seen before, a faint twinkle. "I know Sujata's perfume," he
explained with halting care. "Wherever she has been it lingers."

Her
eyes widened. "You haven't—"

"No."
Again he caught her thought before she could complete it. "I have not
harmed her, nor will. She has gone to Benares." He sensed Olivia's quick
stab of jealousy and caressed it away. "You must forget Sujata now. We
have both done things
we are not proud of. I more than you, Olivia, I far more than you!"

Forget.
Two
simple syllables, yet two of the most demanding
in the English language. So much
to forget! Fleetingly, Olivia's thoughts turned errant again. Theirs would be a
hesitant happiness, their hopes stolen from a still-grudging fate, their future
touched by fears of the unknown, of the unknowable. Once again she would sail
across uncharted seas. There would be doubts and discoveries, resentments and
earnest resolutions, inevitably at least some persistent barriers. There would
be suspicions and pain, losses and gains—oh yes, gains!—and always with them
would be that past never wholly forgotten. It had not yet been fully lived out,
perhaps; it would resist healing balms, and some scars would remain, always
itching faintly.

And
between them, unforgotten and unforgettable, there would be Freddie. And
Alistair—as much a part of herself as was Amos.

No.
The past could not all be obliterated yet. Its agonies would linger for both,
and sometimes also divide them. Within, they would share a world as close to
magic as any world could be. But the world they faced outside would be savage
in its refusal to forgive. Would she truly be able to bear that? Yes, a hundred
times yes! He was justified in his insecurities but wrong in his conclusions.
In all this, all this that was yet to come, she had a source of strength that
he had not considered: they would never again be on opposite sides.

And
without him life had no meaning anyway.

He
followed her through the labyrinth of her deep inner silences, tilted his head
to a side and raised an eyebrow. With matching intuition, Olivia understood his
unasked question. "No." She straightened, squared her shoulders and
shook her head. "No second thoughts. Not now, not ever. I was merely
trying to tailor the past to fit the future."

"And
you are certain that it will fit? A square peg in a round hole?" He was
still sceptical.

"No,
I am not certain. But if my determination can bring me
you
again, then
it can also make a square round. I am, after all, renowned for my resourcefulness."

At
that he laughed. Finally. A full-throated laugh, fluid and free flowing, a
laugh empty of doubts, filled instead with the wonder of revelation. As he had
done once many lifetimes ago, he removed the chain from his neck and fastened
it around hers. "I
can still give you nothing that I value more. You wear it now with my mother's
blessings." His hands at the back of her neck stroked it, then cupped her
face. "With it I bequeath you my past. My future appears to be yours
already."

It
was a commitment, this time irreversible. And this time, Olivia knew, it would
be mutually honoured. She raised the locket to her lips, then, taking his hand,
kissed the bruised knuckle with which he had punished himself. "Come. Let
us go to the carriage," she said, laying his palm against her cheek.
"I have brought your son to return to you."

*****