Tim (11 page)

After a while he ceased weeping and lay absolutely motionless within her arms, only the slight rise and fall of his breathing under her hand telling her that he lived. Nor did she move; the thought of moving terrified her, for instinct told her that once either of them shifted even the smallest bit, he would withdraw or she would have to draw away herself. She pressed her mouth further into his hair and closed her eyes, profoundly happy.

He gave a deep, sobbing sigh and moved a little to get more comfortable, but to Mary it was the signal that her moment was over; gently she eased herself slightly away from him, so that he still lay within her arms but could lift his head to look at her. Her hand in his hair tugged at it until he was forced to raise his face, and the breath caught in her throat. In the faint light his beauty had a fey quality about it, he was an Oberon or a Morpheus, unreal, other-worldly. The moon had got into his eyes and sheeted them with a glaze of blued silver; they stared at her blindly, as though he saw her from the other side of a filmy curtain. Perhaps indeed he did, for what he saw in her no one else ever had, she reflected.

"Tim, won't you tell me what's making you so unhappy?"

"It's my Dawnie, Mary. She's going away soon and we won't see her very often. I don't want my Dawnie to go away, I want her to keep on living with us!"

"I see." She looked down into the unblinking, moonstone eyes. "Is she getting married, Tim? Is that why she's going away?"

"Yes, but I don't want her to get married and go away!" he cried defiantly.

"Tim, as you go on through the years you'll find that life is made up of meetings, knowings, and partings. Sometimes we love the people we meet, sometimes we don't like the people we meet, but knowing them is the most important thing about living, it's what keeps us human beings. You see, for many years I refused to admit this, and I wasn't a very good human being. Then I met you, and knowing you has sort of changed my life, I've become a better human being.

"Ah, but the partings, Tim! They're the hardest, the most bitter to accept, especially if we loved. Parting means it can never be the same afterward; something has gone out of our lives, a bit of us is missing and can never be found or put back again. But there are many partings, Tim, because they're as much a component of living as meeting and knowing. What you have to do is remember knowing your Dawnie, not spend your time grieving because you have to part from her, because the parting can't be avoided, it has to come. If you remember knowing her rather than grieve at losing her, it won't hurt so much.

"And that's far too long and complex and you didn't understand a word of it, did you, love?"

"I think I understood a bit of it, Mary," he answered seriously.

She laughed, dispelling the last of the moment, and thus inched him out of her arms. Standing upright again, she reached down her hands and pulled him to his feet.

"Mary, what you said, does that mean one day I'll have to see you go away, too?"

"Not unless you want me to go away, or unless I die."

The fires were quenched, thin tendrils of steam curling up between the grains of sand, and the beach was suddenly very cold. Mary shivered, hugging herself.

"Come, let's go back to the house, Tim, where it's warm and light."

He detained her, staring into her face with a passionate eagerness normally quite foreign to him. "Mary, I've always wanted to know, but no one will ever tell me! What's die, and dying, and dead? Are they all the same thing?"

"They all relate to the same thing, yes." She took his hand in hers and pressed its palm against his own chest, just over the left nipple. "Can you feel your heart there beating, Tim? Can you feel that thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump under your hand, always there, never stopping for a moment?"

He nodded, fascinated. "Yes, I can! I really can!"

"Well, while it beats, thump-thump, thump-thump, you can see and hear, walk around, laugh and cry, eat and drink and wake up in the morning, feel the sun and the wind.

"When I talk about living that's what I mean, the seeing and hearing and walking around, the laughing and crying. But you've seen things get old, wear out, break apart? A wheelbarrow or a concrete mixer, perhaps? Well, we, all of us with beating hearts under our ribs-and that's everyone, Tim, everyone!-we get old and tired, and wear out too. Eventually we begin to break apart and that beating thing you can feel stops, like a clock that's not been wound. It happens to all of us, when our time comes. Some of us wear out faster than others, some of us get accidentally stopped, if we're in a plane crash or something like that. No one of us knows when we'll stop, it isn't something we can control or foretell. It just happens one day, when we're all worn out and too tired to keep going.

"When our hearts stop, Tim, we stop. We don't see or hear ever again, we don't walk around, we don't eat, we can't laugh or cry. We're dead, Tim, we are no more, we've stopped and we have to be put away where we can lie and sleep undisturbed, under the ground forever.

"It happens to us all, and it's nothing to be frightened of, it can't hurt us. It's just like going to sleep and never waking up again, and nothing ever hurts us while we're asleep, does it? It's nice to be asleep, whether it's in a bed or under the ground. What we have to do is enjoy living while we're living, and then not be frightened to die when the times comes for us to stop."

"Then I might die just as easily as you, Mary!" he said intensely, his face close to hers.

"Yes, you might, but I'm old and you're young, so if we go on as people usually do, I should stop before you. I'm more worn out than you are, you see."

He was on the verge of tears again. "No, no, no! I don't want you to die before I do, I don't want it like that!"

She took his hands in hers, chafing them urgently. "There, there, Tim, don't be unhappy! What did I just tell you? Living is to be enjoyed for every moment we're still alive! Dying is in the future, it isn't to be worried about or even thought about!

"Dying is the final parting, Tim, the hardest one of all to bear, because the parting is forever. But all of us come to it, so it's something we can't close our eyes to and pretend it doesn't exist.

"If we're grown-up and sensible, if we're good strong people, we understand dying, we know about it but we don't let it worry us. Now I know you're grown-up and sensible, I know you're a good strong person, so I want you to promise me you won't worry about dying, that you won't be frightened of it happening to me, or to you. And I want you to promise that you'll try to be a man about partings, that you won't make poor Dawnie unhappy by being unhappy yourself. Dawnie is alive too, she has as much right to find her own way of enjoying living as you do, and you mustn't make it hard for her by letting her see how upset you are."

She took his chin in her hand and looked into the clouded eyes. "Now I know you're good and strong and kind, Tim, so I want you to be all of those things about your Dawnie, and about all the things that will happen to make you sad, because you mustn't be sad a minute longer than you can help. Promise?"

He nodded gravely. "I promise, Mary."

"Then let's go back to the house. I'm cold."

Mary turned on the big space-heater in the living room to warm it up, and put on some music she knew would make him light-heartedly happy. The treatment worked, and he was soon laughing and talking as if nothing had ever happened to threaten his world. He demanded a reading lesson, which she gave him gladly, then declined another form of amusement, curling up on the floor at her feet instead and sitting with his head resting against the arm of her chair.

"Mary?" he asked after a long while, and just before she opened her mouth to tell him it was time to go to bed.

"Yes?"

He twisted around so that he could see her face. "When I cried and you hugged me, what's that called?"

She smiled, patting his shoulder. "I don't know that it's called anything very much. Comforting, I suppose. Yes, I think it's called comforting. Why?"

"I liked it. Mum used to do it sometimes a real long time ago when I was just a little shaver, but then she told me I was too big and never did it again. Why didn't you think I was too big?"

One hand went up to shield her eyes and stayed there a moment before she dropped it onto her lap and clenched it tightly around her other hand. "I suppose I didn't think of you as big at all, I thought of you as a little shaver. But I don't think how big you are is very important, I think how big your trouble is is much more important. You might be a big man now, but your trouble was much bigger, wasn't it? Did it help, to be comforted?"

He turned away, satisfied. "Oh, yes, it helped a lot. It was real nice. I'd like to be comforted every day."

She laughed. "You might like to be comforted every day, but it isn't going to happen. When something is done too often it loses its attraction, don't you think? If you were comforted every day whether you needed it or not, you'd soon get a wee bit tired of it. It wouldn't be nearly as nice any more."

"But I need comforting all the time, Mary, I need to be comforted every day!"

"Pooh! Fiddle! You're a conniver, my friend, that's what you are! Now I think it's bedtime, don't you?"

He climbed to his feet. "Night-night, Mary. I like you, I like you better than anyone except Pop and Mum, and I like you the same as I like Pop and Mum."

"Oh, Tim! What about poor Dawnie?"

"Oh, I like my Dawnie too, but I like you better than I like her, I like you better than anyone except Pop and Mum. I'm going to call you my Mary, but I'm not going to call Dawnie my Dawnie any more."

"Tim, don't be unforgiving! Oh, that's so cruel and thoughtless! Please don't make Dawnie feel that I've taken her place in your affections. It would make her very unhappy."

"But I like you, Mary, I like you better than I like Dawnie! I can't help it, I just do!"

"I like you too, Tim, and really better than anyone else in the whole world, because I don't have a Pop and a Mum."

Twelve

It transpired that Dawnie wanted to marry Michael Harrington-Smythe at the end of May, which left little time for preparations. Learning the background of their son's bride-to-be, Mick's parents were just as anxious as Dawnie's to reduce the size of the wedding to a bare minimum.

The two sets of parents plus the engaged pair met on neutral ground to plan the wedding, neutral ground being a private room at the Went-worth Hotel, where the reception was to be held. Everyone was uncomfortable. Distressed in collar and tie and Sunday corsets, Ron and Es sat on the edges of their chairs and refused to be drawn into polite conversation, while Mick's parents, to whom collar and tie and corsets were an everyday occurrence, chatted in bored voices which held a slight suggestion of plum-in-mouth. Mick and Dawnie tried desperately to lessen the stiffness, without much success.

"Dawn will naturally be married in a long white gown and have at least one attendant," Mrs. Harrington-Smythe said challengingly.

Es looked stupid; she had forgotten that Dawnie's real name was Dawn, and found it disagreeable to be reminded that the Melville family had chosen a low-class diminutive. "Um," she answered, which Mrs. Harrington-Smythe took to mean acquiescence.

"The men in the wedding party had better wear dark suits and plain blue satin ties," Mrs. Harrington-Smythe continued. "Since it's a small, private wedding, morning dress or white tie and tails would be most unsuitable."

"Um," said Es, her hand fumbling underneath the table until it found Ron's and clutched thankfully.

"I'll give you a full list of those the groom's side will want invited, Mrs. Melville."

And so it went, until Mrs. Harrington-Smythe remarked, "I believe Dawn has an older brother, Mrs. Melville, but Michael hasn't given me any idea of what part he's to play in the wedding. Naturally you realize he can't be best man, since Michael's old friend Hilary Arbuckle-Heath is filling that role, and I really can't see what other function is available for him in such a small wedding party. Unless, of course, Dawn chooses to change her mind and have a second attendant."

"That's all right, Ma'am," Ron said heavily, squeezing Es's hand. "Tim don't expect to be in the wedding party. In fact, we were thinking of letting him go to Miss Mary Horton's for the day."

Dawnie gasped. "Oh, Pop, you can't do that! Tim's my only brother, I want him to see me married!"

"But Dawnie love, you know Tim don't like crowds!" her father protested. "Think what an uproar there'd be if he vomited all over the place! Sweet balls of Christ, wouldn't that be just lovely? No, I think it would be better all around if Tim just went to Miss Horton's."

Dawnie's eyes glittered with tears. "Anyone would think you were ashamed of him, Pop! I'm not ashamed of him, I want everyone to meet him and love him as much as I do!"

"Dawnie love, I think your old man's right about Tim," Es contributed. "You know how he hates crowds, and even if he wasn't sick everywhere he wouldn't be very happy if he had to sit still all through a wedding ceremony."

The Harrington-Smythes were looking at each other, absolutely bewildered. "I thought he was older than Dawn," Mrs. Harrington-Smythe said. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize he was only a child."

"Well, he isn't a child!" Dawnie flared, red spots staining her cheeks. "He's a year older than me but he's mentally retarded, that's what they're trying to conceal from everyone!"

There was an appalled silence; Mr. Harrington-Smythe drummed his fingers on the table, and Mick looked at Dawnie in surprise.

"You didn't tell me Tim was retarded," he said to her.

"No, I didn't, because it just never occurred to me that it was important! I've had Tim there all my life, and he's a part of my life, a very important part of my life! I never remember that he's retarded when I'm talking about him, that's all!"

"Don't be angry, Dawn," Mick pleaded. "It really isn't important, you're quite right about that. I was simply a little surprised."