Three Continents (15 page)

Next day Manton's dignity was shattered. He didn't come down for breakfast, and when I went to look for him, I found him with Sonya in her bedroom. She was sitting up in bed, in her little bed jacket and a hairnet, and she was trying to comfort Manton, who was on his knees by the side of her bed, his head on her eiderdown. She clasped his head and murmured to him, and at the same time tears fell from her own eyes as they must have been falling all night, for her face was stained and swollen with them. She looked like an old, old grieving woman, which of course she was. And Manton, sobbing in her arms, was like a grieving son. “Look, here's darling Harriet,” Sonya tried to rally him when I came in, but he kept his face buried, while putting out one hand for me to grasp. I did that, and got up on Sonya's bed and she embraced both of us. It was comforting to be there with her, leaning on her soft warm bosom half-naked under her bed jacket. Yesterday she had had that air of being a dependent, but today it was gone as completely as Manton's calm dignity. But in her case I don't think it was due to the reading of the will but to the strength of her feelings—for Grandfather, and for Manton, and me. She was as truly Grandfather's widow as she had been his wife, and no person and no will could alter that.

It wasn't the fact of the will but its spirit that had laid Manton low. “He didn't love me,” he said. “He didn't trust me. And he was right. No he was,” he insisted, though we hadn't contradicted him. “He was so different from you, darling,” Sonya said. “It happens often with father and son, it's a well-known fact in psychology, there is even a name for it—” She broke off: “But he was so wonderful! Such a wonderful man!” “He was! I'm not saying he wasn't!” Manton shouted; and continued in a deflated voice: “It's me who's not wonderful. Not at all wonderful”; and after a gloomy silence, “Look what I'm doing with Mother's money. I'm again overdrawn, I'm ashamed to say, though how or why I couldn't tell you. I thought when I came into Mother's money everything would change, that I'd be able to manage for the first time in my life, but it's even worse. I guess that means I'm worse. Father was right. Absolutely right.” Again he buried his face in Sonya's bedcover, again she did what she could to comfort him.

After a while she wiped her eyes but not successfully, for new tears kept coming. “It's wrong,” she said. “I should be laughing and singing with happiness and joy—to have known such a man! And that he should have stooped down to someone so small like myself. Darling Manton, dearest child, if you cry anymore I can't bear it.”

“It's not the money,” Manton wept from her bedcover.

“I know it's not the money! As if you would have one moment's thought about that as long as I'm here and have a crust of bread to eat.” Both knew she was speaking very metaphorically: Grandfather had left her more than a crust, and Manton needed more than that. “But you see, children,” she said, and she gathered both of us to her little warm bosom, “what he wanted was that we should look after Manton; that we should keep everything in trust for you, darling, so that you wouldn't spend it all at once with your generous nature. Don't you think so, Harriet dearest? Yes I'm sure that's why he did it like that: for us to take care of it all for Manton.”

He raised his face from her bed: He looked not unhopeful. But next moment he shook his head—“That's not what Michael and Harriet want.”

“Yes we do,” I said quickly, though I must admit I hadn't thought of it that way.

“No. You want to give it away. Like Propinquity.”

Well, I hadn't thought of that either, but now that he said it, I couldn't contradict him. And even if I did on my own account, I couldn't speak for Michael.

“I'm not blaming you,” Manton said when there had been too long a silence. “It's something you believe in and I admire you for it. And good Lord, I can hardly ask you to believe in me, the way I've carried on. And now there's Barbara,” he added gloomily.

“Barbara!” Sonya exclaimed. “We love Barbara!”

“You do? Of course, so do I, but she is awfully young and a bit—she hasn't had that much education, and I don't think she could have taken it if she had—I mean, let's face it, she just isn't bright.”

Here I began to protest, and as I defended her, saying every nice thing I could about her, Manton cheered up considerably. He said “Hm. Well. Yes. She
is
a good girl. And quite sensible really. You can't say she hasn't got her head screwed on right.”

“You certainly can't,” I said.

“Or her heart in the right place. Which is more than you can say about some people. Barbara
wanted
to come—she wanted to be here with us at my father's funeral—whereas your mother,” he told me, “his own daughter-in-law, couldn't get her ass over here. Sorry, Sonya. Sorry, Baby H. But I do feel strongly about that.” He looked self-righteous, the way he always did when he pointed out Lindsay's shortcomings. “I wish Father could have met Barbara. He'd have liked her, don't you think? Perhaps if he had met her he'd have trusted my judgment more. He'd have known I was no longer the jerk who married Lindsay.”

He sighed, and so did Sonya. “When we're young, we think we know it all,” she said. “And will we listen to anyone older and wiser? No.”

“No,” Manton agreed.

“If we like something, at once we have to have it: even if it's poison. And it often is poison.”

“Absolutely,” Manton said.

“It's a dangerous age. Youth is a dangerous age.” But in spite of her tear-swollen face—was it my imagination, or was there just the flicker of a smile, a shadow of remembered happiness? And the same with Manton, while trying to look sage as he agreed with her again.

Suddenly Sonya exclaimed: “Thank God this child is so sensible and wise!” Manton echoed: “Thank God!” It took me a moment to realize they meant me. I was surprised, even laughed a bit. Sensible and wise! When I couldn't make up my mind about anything—like whether to go back to school or not; whether to give away the house or not; even how I felt about people, whether I liked them or not. But there was Manton saying “I don't worry about you at all, Baby H.; anyone unsuitable getting hold of you or anything like that.” And Sonya said “Oh no no no—when the time comes, she'll choose someone so beautiful and wonderful—and we'll all be so proud of her and we'll make such a wedding, such a wedding: If only he could be here to see,” she said and wept and wept and wept again, although it wasn't only the way people cry at funerals but as they do at weddings too.

Manton and Sonya left for the city next day. Michael and I were ready to leave too, but we were made to feel it would be irresponsible just to walk away from the house that was now ours. It was the Rawul who made us feel that way: not by reproaching us but only asking, in a fatherly manner, what we proposed to do about the house; and when we didn't propose anything, making some suggestions of his own. He seemed very taken with the place and kept walking around it with approval. I guess it was the perfect summer house by the sea—which was what it had been for Grandfather, though never for Michael and me. It had several big living rooms downstairs, surrounded by porches, some of them glassed in to form sun parlors. There were large bedrooms with verandas on the second floor, and another floor with a whole warren of small bedrooms, and an attic divided up into even more and even smaller bedrooms. It was comfortably furnished with worn old family pieces, which had been there since the house was built; some of them had in the meantime become valuable, and there were Grandfather's library and a few collectors' items he kept on his desk, such as Talleyrand's
inkstand. It was because of these probably that the Rawul and Crishi felt we couldn't just leave everything and walk away, although that was what had always been done, with a family from the Island, the Macleods, acting as caretakers. The Rawul, seeing that Michael and I didn't know what to do, discreetly took charge. He himself had to get back to Propinquity, but he arranged for Crishi and the followers to stay behind to look after the place for us and make some necessary repairs. I also heard them discuss some structural changes, such as fixing up the top floor, uninhabited since Grandfather's father's time, when a full domestic force had lived up there. Crishi didn't trouble Michael and me with these plans but gave his orders to the followers, who took over in their usual efficient way.

Crishi loved being there; not inside the house but on the beach and in the ocean. He walked around in his swimming trunks and fell into the waves whenever he felt like it; and afterward he lay on the sand, drying off the drops of water that glistened all over him. It seemed he stayed outside most of the night too, for I saw him come in at dawn—tousled, damp, trailing the towel on which he had fallen asleep. He slept a good part of the day; when I went walking along the edge of the ocean, I saw him lying on his stomach in the shadow of a dune, and when I came back, having walked a mile or so, he was still there in exactly the same position. Later, when I went out again, he was gone, and I found him lying on the black rock, which jutted out into the sea. I walked past him and kept on walking, on and on, away from the inhabited part of the Island to where it trailed off to a point. Then there was only water, and the sucking, lapping sound of it close by and the dull roar of it in the distance.

On my way back I stopped at the Linton house—the last on that side of the Island, ours being the last but one. Ever since I could remember, the Linton house had been deserted: in fact, abandoned, for it had been built too close to the ocean. For several years nothing much appeared to be happening to the empty house; it still stood there in its old-fashioned modern-architecture geometric style, but there was something eerie about it, for everyone knew it was doomed, with the ocean encroaching on it. One year the top cantilever
collapsed, and after that the entire front of the house, and now all that was left was the rear wing and the garden and swimming pool. The place had not lost its eerie character—as well as the waves eating away at it, there were the rumors I had heard about what had gone on inside.

Walking past it, I came to the black rock again, and Crishi was still sleeping there, face down. I sat near him and leaned against the rock to rest a bit before returning to the house. The sun was setting, and while that part of the ocean into which it was sinking was burning with fire and color, the rest of the water had grown dim and so had the sky and the dunes and everything else around, smoky blue with dusk. A slight chill had replaced the heat of the day; it ruffled my skin but Crishi kept on sleeping as though he were still drenched in sun. I looked at his naked back and the strange scars I had wondered about before, which appeared so incongruous on the satiny texture of his skin. While I was looking at him, he stirred and quite suddenly he turned from his stomach to lie on his back, and from that position he looked at me, entirely awake and alert. It was strange, the way he always gave this impression of alertness, even though his eyes were dreamy and deep. He smiled at me as he lay there, and his smile was also paradoxical, for while his teeth were white and sharp—one might almost say sharpened—his lips parting over them were silky soft. We didn't speak; he didn't even sit up. I don't know how it happened—I think he gestured to me the way I had seen him do to Michael (“come here, I want you”)—gestured and smiled to me; I leaned closer over him, which seemed to be what he wanted, and then he put up one arm and drew me down with my breast touching his naked chest and my lips on his. A swooning sensation came over me, dark, vibrant, and pleasurable, an entirely new sensation for me.

I should mention here that up till that time I had not had much sexual history. I never seemed to be interested the way other girls were, and when they started talking about it, I never cared to listen. I guess that is unnatural, and I know most the girls thought so. I did go out with boys, but I didn't care for any of them and it was always because they wanted it and not I. I felt very remote from them, and it irritated
me when they tried to get closer and to make scenes, because I preferred to be alone or with Michael. To oblige them, I let them touch me and all that, and a few times I went quite far—very far, all the way—but only to see what it was like and not really feeling anything and surprised that they felt so much. Sometimes there were older men too, and on the whole I preferred them—they didn't seem to be in such a rush and also knew what they were doing better; but even when I liked them, such as Rob Kemp, my history tutor, I didn't let them get in control of me. There was never any question of that; I just didn't care enough, and on the whole didn't care whether we kept on seeing each other or not. When Rob Kemp's wife, Ann, started to fuss, I thought it would be easier to break off and I couldn't understand Rob's reaction—after all, it was he who had a wife and children and should have wanted to go back to them.

After Crishi had kissed me, he seemed not to want anything more but said it was getting chilly and he was going up to the house to put on a shirt. I was surprised but not sad—no, glad to walk with him to the house; he was holding my hand and swinging it to and fro. Our house had been built some way back from the ocean and quite high up, so unlike the Linton house it had not been endangered in any way but stood as solid as the day it was built. Although the Island was quite populated by now, and the other big houses along the coast were hotels with many summer visitors, our house continued to look solitary. The dunes sloped away from it down to the beach and the only view was of sand and waves and the black rock and the wind blowing through the tufts of dry grass.

Next morning I went walking along the beach again. It was quite early, but I saw Crishi was already lying there, apparently asleep. I resisted sitting beside him but walked on even farther than usual, almost into the town, past all the beaches belonging to the hotels, where children ornamented their sand castles with shells; and on to the public beach, where the lifeguard was, and the changing rooms, and the visitors lying on towels with their suntan oil. When at last I turned back, it had become hot, but the edge of the waves washing over my feet was cool and refreshing. I didn't walk
fast, I lingered—I wasn't in any hurry; sometimes, to cool off, I went farther into the water. The nearer I got to where I had seen Crishi, the more I delayed—I wanted yet didn't want to sit by him and put off the decision. When at last I approached him, Michael was there with him, and that was a relief and I didn't hesitate to join them. Crishi was still sleeping, and Michael was looking at his back the way I had done the day before. It was very hot sitting there, for the sun had shifted and with it the shade in which Crishi had sheltered himself. Michael and I didn't move or speak but waited for him to wake up.