The Drowning People (26 page)

“Are you sure I’m the person you want to be sharing with?” His tone was coolly level.

“Shut up.”

Silently I led the way to our cozy room, lit now by a coal fire burning in a recently polished grate. The scent of lavender was once again everywhere and I detected the conscientious presence of Madame Clancy. In the warm half-light Eric and I undressed without much conversation and got into our respective beds. The sheets were crisp and cold.

“Sleep well,” I said.

“You too.”

And he turned out the lights and left me with my thoughts of Ella. But I did not sleep for many hours. I lay awake instead, struggling with my disappointment that on this, the first night of my reunion with her, I should be sleeping alone.

And thus ended that first day.

CHAPTER 20

T
HE NEXT WAS BRIGHTER THAN ITS PREDECESSOR
, a cold day of clear winter skies and sparkling light. Frost covered the ground. Eric and I woke early and were the first to take our places at the breakfast table, where a garrulous Frenchwoman (Madame Clancy, we supposed) handed us croissants and made dire predictions about the weather. Her speech was so fast and her accent so new to my ears that when she had gone I looked to Eric for a full translation.

“She says it will get very cold now,” he said. “Very cold. And she says also that Ella has gone out for a walk. She will be back shortly.”

As he finished speaking Ella walked in, cheeks apple red. “Mornin’ boys.” Her tone was cheerful but she avoided my eyes.

“Good morning.” I was sullen in her presence, a little sulky after the dismissal of the night before. She ignored this.

“The good doctor Pétin usually comes down at about nine for a cup of coffee and a croissant,” she said. “I imagine that’s him now.” And as she spoke a rather apologetic middle-aged man walked in, slightly rotund, more than slightly balding, with wispy gray hair grown long at the sides and brushed over his head to hide this.

“Good morning, Ella,” he said in a gentle, ingratiating voice, the tone of one humoring a child. “I trust that you slept well.” His English was perfect.

“Very well, thank you,” she replied, smiling with a brightness I thought studied as she poured the coffee and introduced us.

The doctor nodded his greeting.

“I’m glad,” he said to Ella. “It is important for you to get as much sleep as possible before you return to London.” Turning to Eric and me he went on, underlining his points with leisurely jabs of his fat fingers. “Sleep, rest, warmth; and moderation above all,” he said. “These are what I believe in, gentlemen; these are my principles.” And with this he took his place at the table and proceeded to eat four croissants in quick succession.

It was not until the middle of the morning that I was able to get Ella to myself, for she disappeared soon after breakfast and I was left politely observing a game of chess between Dr. Pétin and Eric. They played in the
salon,
a large square room in the middle of the house with long windows which gave onto the gravel paths of the garden. Sitting on one of its sofas, smiling occasionally to the doctor and my friend to assure them of my continuing interest in their game, thinking continuously of Ella, I saw her emerge quite suddenly from the yew trees and hastily excused myself to the two men. When I reached her she was by the fountain, walking quickly towards the house, tightly muffled in a man’s greatcoat, with a pale blue school scarf which must have been her father’s wound around her neck. She stopped when she saw me. There was a moment’s pause.

“Hello,” she said finally.

“Hello.”

She made as if to move on but I caught her arm. “Why are you treating me like a stranger?” The wakeful hours of a frustrated night gave an edge to my voice which I could not disguise. “What’s wrong?”

She looked at me steadily for a moment. At last she said, slowly, “Don’t you know?” and looked away from me.

I shook my head. She raised her eyes to mine and studied my face for a moment. The confusion she found there seemed to satisfy her, and she felt in her pockets for a cigarette. I watched as she put it to her lips and lit it. She inhaled slowly, deeply, and blew the smoke upwards, tilting her head. I followed it until it was lost in the bright, cold blue above us.

“Talk to me,” I said simply.

Abruptly she turned away. There was a tangible moment of hesitation which made my heart beat. “Very well,” she said finally, seeming to resolve on something. “But follow me. This way.” And she walked quickly down the gravel path and through the line of trees. I followed her, seeing to my relief that the orchard by day was picturesque and unthreatening, its giants apple trees once more. The frost on the grass glinted in the sunlight and crunched under our feet as we crossed the field. I realized then that I was being taken to the quarry; and as Ella led me through the trees that separated it from the orchard I felt a residual shiver from the night before. But like the orchard, the quarry had been robbed of its terror by the daylight; and it stretched—a pool of dirty water, nothing more—beneath us. On its edge was a bench I had not seen the night before. Ella sat down on it and motioned for me to join her.

She lit another cigarette and took two meditative drags on it. There was silence.

Feeling her distance from me and not understanding it, I spoke. “Why?” I asked more gentle now than I had been before.

“Why what?” She looked at me sharply.

I blushed but steeled myself. “Why did you send me to my room last night when I could have been with you?” I took her hand. She let me keep it, but grudgingly. “I’ve wanted you so badly for so long. We’ve been separated for so long. I didn’t write from Prague because you asked me not to. Now I…”

She took her hand from mine and raised it to stop me. “You really don’t know why, do you?” she said again, ignoring everything but my question, her voice quivering.

I looked at her and saw the tenderness in her face tinged with something I took to be derision. Again I shook my head. Then I looked away and when my eyes returned to hers I saw with a shock that she was on the verge of tears; and she saw that I saw and set her thin lips together. When she spoke again her voice was even and firm.

“I don’t know how anybody could be so naïve,” she said at last.

“What?”

“I think you heard me.” The tenderness had gone from her face now.

“What am I being so naïve about?” I asked humbly.

She looked at me steadily. “Do you really want me to tell you?”

“Of course.”

“And you really don’t know?”

“I really do not know.”

“All right.” She took a deep breath. “Eric is wildly in love with you,” she said slowly, framing each syllable with deliberate precision.

I can hear her saying it now; can see the way her eyes looked into and held mine; can feel the wave of my own surprise and her almost tangible astonishment as I started to laugh. I, who had thought something seriously wrong between us, laughed partly with relief and partly with humor at her error. “Rubbish,” I said. And it was only as I said this that I remembered odd moments of my time with Eric in Prague: truths half-offered and refused; looks observed but not understood; secret smiles. “Rubbish,” I said again, more weakly this time.

“It’s not rubbish,” she said evenly, still holding my eyes with hers. “He can’t bear the sight of us together; he hates me because you love me; he looks at you when he thinks I don’t see.”

“Nonsense,” I said.

“You know it’s not, James.”

I sat still, fighting the dawning realization that maybe she was right.

“How can you possibly know?” I asked at last.

She flicked her cigarette, half-smoked, into the quarry. “Women can sense these things,” she said quietly at last. “It crossed my mind in Prague, but I dismissed it then. I thought he might resent my presence for other reasons. But last night I knew; standing by this bench I knew. That’s why I didn’t sleep with you.” And as she said this something in her seemed to crack. “You know it too, Jamie,” she said, her voice wavering again and the suggestion of tears reappearing. “You know he’s in love with you. You may not admit it to yourself but you know.”

There was a pause. “Since I’m not in love with him, what bearing can Eric’s feelings have on us?” I asked hoarsely.

Ella straightened herself. “How do you
know
you’re not in love with him?” Her eyes met mine coolly now; her tone was more level.

“What?”

“How do you know you’re not in love with him?”

“Because I
know.
”

She looked at me steadily. “No you don’t. The way you’ve buried your knowledge of his feelings only proves how frightened of them you are.” She breathed deeply. “You won’t admit to yourself that Eric loves you or that you might love him back because you’ve always been told that one man can’t love another.”

“I …”

But she held up a hand to stop me. “You’re frightened, that’s all,” she said, and there was derision in her voice again. Turning to face me squarely she continued every word measured and even. “Before we can go as before I want to know that it’s me you really want.”

“It is you I want.” I took her hand but she pulled it away.

“You can’t know that.”

“Oh yes I can.”

“No you can’t. You can’t make an informed decision unless you …”

But I cut her off. “I’m not … like that, Ella.”

“How do you know you’re not unless you face the possibility that you might be?”

“I …”

“I don’t want to be your safe option, James.”

I looked at her helplessly, incredulous. “Are you trying to say that you want me to sample the alternatives?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

I tried to look into her eyes but she turned from me towards the quarry and wouldn’t shift her gaze to meet mine. “You’re crazy,” I said. “You’re completely crazy.”

From the twitch of her shoulders I saw that I had touched a chord. “Don’t ever say that to me again,” Ella hissed.

“But …”

“But nothing. Don’t
ever
say it again.”

I nodded, humbled by her anger. Mutely I looked at her, searching for an explanation for her words; none was given me. Instead she rose to her feet.

“I cannot love emotional cowards,” she said with slow deliberation.

Fighting a spreading sensation of numbness I asked her what she meant.

“Precisely what I say.”

There was a pause; my pulse beat a steady tattoo in my head. “Are you trying to test me?” I ventured at last, lost.

There was silence. “I suppose so,” she said finally. She turned away. “I want you to prove to me that it’s me you want, that I am not a safe option, that you know yourself and your desires.”

“And how can I do that? How can I prove anything to you if you won’t believe what I say?”

There was silence.

“A simple kiss would probably suffice,” she said softly, still not looking at me. “Once you’ve kissed him I imagine you’ll know how you feel. You’ll have forced yourself to face something. Then you’ll know whether or not it’s me you really want.” And with that she walked quickly away and I heard the crunch of her shoes on the gravel as she disappeared into the trees. I sat numbly, staring after her retreating form.

The boy on that bench long ago is a stranger to me now. He does not hear as I call. He sits numbly as wave after conflicting wave crashes over him; he cares nothing for my warnings. I tell him not to be distracted by the letter of what Ella has said, but to look for the meaning hidden in her words. He does not hear me; he cannot. He feels sick and lost and dizzy with the effort of thinking. He is falling, falling into swirling waters he does not understand; and as he falls he reaches out and clutches onto a small shard of unthinking, unexamined resolution. It is to this he clings, for in it he sees his salvation; he clings to it in the mistaken belief that it will help him to float. He does not know treachery yet; or what it does.

From a distance of fifty years I call to him, for I understand now what Ella said in a way he could never have hoped to do. I see her again in that café in $$$. I hear her as she tells me that you’ve no idea how sane you have to be to survive a session with a really respected psychiatrist; that doctors with their endless questions could make anyone doubt themselves and those around them. But he will not hear me; and he sits impassive as I tell him that when we sin we must accept the possibility of those we love sinning too; that when she took a man she did not love from her cousin Ella dealt herself a blow just as damaging as anything she did to Sarah.

I tell him that his love betrayed herself; and that from the moment she had done so she had to live with the terrible fear that others she loved would betray her in their turn. It was that fear which made Ella push me away; that fear which made her need me to prove—by whatever means—my devotion to her. I know now that betraying her own trust made Ella lose her trust in the world; and my heart aches for the fragile girl who wanted only the safety of the knowledge that I loved her completely.

I curse the cruelty of a fate which did not grant me the perception to see that there are some things which even love does not sanction.

I had neither wisdom nor experience, you see; I was a child playing an adult’s game. In my youth and weakness I succumbed to the logic of her insecurity. I came to believe as I sat on that lonely bench that I had been set a challenge, that to prove my worth to Ella I had to pass the test she had set me. And I knew as I sat there that I could not bear the derision of her cool green eyes. I did not know that what I took for derision was in fact fear; that my love was also a child playing an adult’s game; that other proofs might have done in place of the one I finally offered her. As my world spun before me and all ideals of friendship and faith crumbled under the weight of her challenge, I did not know that the test Ella set me was in fact the reaction of a proud mind to the fear of grave loss, however unfounded that fear might be; I did not know that what she needed so desperately was a proof of my devotion to her and not of my courage with others.