Betrayal (23 page)

She’s a pretty boat, I said to explain my interest.

Pretty on board too! cracked one of the lads. All the boys got long hair!

I asked if they cruised far. The same wag reckoned they went just as far as they needed to go out of sight of the shore and start one of their sex and drugs parties. With drunken relish he told me that earlier in the summer they’d been spotted in a quiet bay prancing around the deck naked or as near as dammit.

They went to Alderney a lot, Horrocks the assistant harbour master told me more soberly, but this weekend he happened to know they were headed for Barfleur. That was the destination they’d filed with the customs anyway, though he doubted they’d make it back in a hurry with a westerly gale forecast.

I slept badly, waking regularly through the night. At first light I went to the window in David’s room and looked down the river. Driving rain blotted out the dawn and it was another half an hour before I could be certain that the cutter hadn’t yet returned to her mooring.

I closed up the house and drove back to London. I don’t remember what reason I gave Ginny for coming home sooner than I’d planned, something about the weather being so dreadful that I couldn’t work on the boat. Having received my decision to spend yet another weekend at Dittisham with a burst of exasperation, she greeted my unexpected return in stony silence.

Haunted though I was by Sylvie, I wasn’t yet so obsessed that I could abandon Ginny for a third weekend running, and we spent a quiet two days at Melton, with only a drinks party and a casual supper with neighbours to be survived. I don’t know whether Ginny had decided tenderness was her best tactic or had recognised that beneath my moods and preoccupations lay a bedrock of despair, but she treated me with cautious affection and sudden eruptions of bleak humour. When we made love I thought of Sylvie and had the decency to feel ashamed.

I might have kept away from Dittisham for another weekend, maybe a lot longer, if Sylvie hadn’t called. She came through on my direct line and, in typical Sylvie fashion, did not give her name or even say hello, but announced herself with a question.

Is the boat ready? she asked.

It was a moment before I could speak. What happened to you? I said at last.

What do you mean? she said with breezy innocence.

You know what I mean, I said sternly. When we were meant to be going to France.

But the boat wasn’t ready. You said it wasn’t ready.

Yes, but I’d made other plans for us, if you remember. I was expecting you. You could at least have let me know. I heard the peevishness in my voice and tried to suppress it.

Oh, but it wouldn’t have been any fun going somewhere else, she said. It’s so lovely to sail. I love to sail.

You seem to get plenty of sailing on
Samphire
.

She gave a dreamy murmuring laugh, and I couldn’t tell if she had missed the reproof in my remark or had merely chosen to ignore it.

She asked: So is the boat ready? Can we go?

It’s not that easy, I said. And saying this I remembered how true this was, how Ginny had arranged something for the weekend and I would have to lie to her if I was to get away.

Ahh, Sylvie said. It was a long lingering sound, a sigh but also a signal of dwindling interest.

I have other plans, I explained. But it was a feeble attempt at resistance; I had been prepared to forgive her the moment I heard her voice.

So we can’t go?

I made more doubtful noises to bolster the remnants of my pride, then caved in. It might be possible, I said.

Possible?

Possible.

You don’t sound very keen.

It’s not that. I
am
keen. But after last time how can I be sure you’ll turn up?

Oh, I’ll be there, Munchkin.

The nickname caught me unawares and bowled me back to the past, to a time when her promises had contained untold possibilities and our greatest intimacy had sprung from the exchange of our most secret thoughts.

We’d have to leave by six, I said.

Sure, she said. And I had the idea she was wearing her cat-smile.

Give me your address and number, I said, in case there’re any problems.

Will there be problems?

No, but I must be able to get hold of you, just in case.

She hummed a little, as though considering the merits of my request, then informed me lazily that she lived at Blackwell Cottage up Farrars Lane. She could never remember the phone number, she said – a statement I tried not to greet with scepticism – and took three shots at it before deciding that she probably had it right.

Where shall we meet? I asked.

I don’t know. The end of the pontoon, by the dinghies?

No, I said quickly, thinking of who might see us.

Oh, Hugh, she sang teasingly, you haven’t changed, have you? All right, pick me up from
Samphire
then.

Is that all right?

Sure, she said.

I said: If you don’t turn up, I’ll kill you.

She laughed, as though I had made a really witty joke.

Don’t forget the food, I said, but she had already rung off.

A doggedness overtook my thinking then, a sort of tunnel vision that left out the more uncomfortable truths. My life was in danger of going off the rails; I knew in my heart that an affair was the very last thing likely to put it back on track, yet I couldn’t let go. I clung to the idea of Sylvie as a drowning man clings to a lifeline. I found justifications. I told myself that Sylvie had been the great unrealised love of my life, that she had belonged to a golden future which had been unfairly denied me, and therefore, by some circuitous logic, that I had the right to reclaim her. I persuaded myself that, after stoically enduring the strains of my marriage, I deserved something more exhilarating and undemanding. And the final time-worn excuse: Sylvie’s world in no way impinged on mine, Ginny would never find out, no harm would be done. I told myself all this, and sometimes I even managed to believe it.

I didn’t like myself very much when I lied to Ginny again, but that didn’t stop me from carrying it off effectively. I managed to look her in the eye when I told her I wanted to go sailing at the weekend. Only when she offered to join me did I feel a touch of conscience. Knowing how much she disliked boats, I realised that this suggestion had cost her some effort. But guilt made me unkind, I told her bluntly that I preferred to go on my own.

Ginny flinched slightly. But why alone? she asked.

I need time to think, I said.

But can’t I help?

You help a lot, I said. You really do. I just need time away from everything.

It was that Melton weekend, she declared. Something happened then, didn’t it? Why can’t you tell me what it was?

It wasn’t anything in particular.

But you ran out of the house without a word! You just disappeared!

All those people, I said in a fit of honesty. I had nothing to say to them.

So I shouldn’t have invited them?

I‘m not saying that, I said wearily. It was probably me.

But you didn’t like them?

To lie or risk the truth? I said at last: Not all of them, no.

She began to breathe hard, her face took on a cornered look. She said: So it was my fault, then.

I closed my eyes briefly before saying: Ginny, it’s not a question of fault. The how and why isn’t important, don’t you see?

But she didn’t see. She gave me a long wounded gaze before tightening her mouth and leaving the room. I found her crying in the kitchen and, like two actors doomed to repeat our lines in a long-running drama, we began our habitual progression through apprehension and reassurance, doubt and comfort. While Ginny demanded to know where she had gone wrong, I repeated the well-used phrases that would eventually restore us to a rocky equilibrium. It seemed to me that we succeeded in reaching an uneasy reconciliation not because either of us was ever truly consoled by what the other had said, but because the prospect of the alternative was too terrible for either of us to contemplate.

I promised to make more of an effort with her friends, I promised us more time together, but I would not give way on the matter of the weekend, and the next day Ginny announced stiffly that she would go and stay at Melton on her own. I felt remorse, but mainly I felt relief.

I ordered a hamper from Fortnum’s and supplemented it with some basics from the Dittisham village shop when I got down on Friday afternoon. I tried not to look at the weather, but it was impossible to miss the flailing of the trees and the angry cat’s paws on the water. I persuaded myself that the gusts couldn’t be stronger than force five, but when I went to pick up an almanac from the chandlery they told me there was a gale warning out.

The first spatterings of rain freckled the water as I rowed out to
Ellie
and by the time I had unloaded the stores and got the boat ready for sea it was hammering down. When I set out for
Samphire
at ten to six the outlines of the cutter were barely visible through the murk.

I waited in
Samphire
’s cockpit, getting increasingly damp and anxious. Sylvie finally appeared at six-thirty, a crouched figure in yellow waterproofs emerging from curtains of rain. I called a bright greeting but she did not reply. Leaving her dinghy tied to the cutter, we went on in mine.

Fabulous weather! I exclaimed wryly. Would you believe it?

But she did not speak until we stood dripping in
Ellie
’s saloon.

I suppose this means we won’t be going, she said.

It doesn’t look like it, I said and told her about the gale warning.

Her eyes narrowed, she gave a very French display of displeasure, a hiss, a flash of her eyes, and a clamping of her hands to her upper arms, as though to contain her annoyance.

Think about it this way, I said in my most cheering and, I hoped, beguiling manner, the view here is better than Cherbourg and the chef’s willing if not able. We have wine. We have food. Even – I made a triumphant gesture – candles!

She did not begin to relent until we were on our second glass of wine. In my mood of insecurity I tried too hard to amuse her, I spoke too loudly, I rattled around the galley like some television chef, stirring extravagantly, making bad jokes, dispensing wine with wild sweeps of the arm. Against logic I felt I was responsible for her discontent and must lift her out of it. But then I was still running blind; I wouldn’t have recognised reality if it had come and knocked me on the head. It was a long time before I understood that it was not me who was the main attraction, but France.

We ate, we opened a second bottle of wine. Sylvie emerged slowly from her preoccupations. For a time she sat motionless in her seat, barely listening to what I was saying, then, thrusting an elbow onto the table, she rested her cheek on her hand and watched me with amused detachment. She went to the loo and when she came back she seemed to have made up her mind to enchant me again.

She began to talk lazily, tantalisingly, leading the conversation off in great meandering loops or changing direction abruptly, delighting in her ability to catch me out in small inconsistencies, scolding me now and again in that teasing manner of hers; and once again I had this exhilarating idea that I was the only person in the world for her, that, deep down, there had never been anyone else.

She sneezed, I thought she had a cold, but when I fussed over her she laughed at me fondly and reached across the table to touch my face.

The energy left her as rapidly as it had come. She fell into a dreamy silence, her glass tilted in her hand. I moved onto the seat beside her, my heart racing high in my chest, my nerves taut with hope. Removing her glass to the safety of the table, I touched her hair and kissed her gently on the lips before pulling back, constrained by uncertainty.

She smiled her animal-smile, her eyes narrowed and she came towards me with her head arched back and her lips open.

I rushed at her then, all finesse cast aside. I pushed my mouth onto hers, I grabbed for her breast, it was all I could do not to rip at her clothes.

She flicked her tongue against mine, she gave a low sensuous moan, and it seemed to me that I had never wanted anyone or anything so much in my life.

At first the change was almost imperceptible. Her mouth slackened a little, she became heavier in my arms. Then, quite suddenly, her responses died away altogether and she sank limply against the back of the seat. I stared at her in disbelief. I called her name. She stirred once and laughed softly, then fell into an impenetrable sleep. I shook her, I shouted, but there was no rousing her.

I railed at her, at the wind, at the whole damn world, at myself; by turns I became philosophical and angry and maudlin. Eventually I grew tired. I stretched her out on the bunk and covered her with a sleeping bag, and lay down on the opposite side of the saloon.

I must have slept that night but it didn’t seem like it. The gale racketed until dawn. I lay listening to the whine of the halyards and the thrumming of the mast and the fierce slap of the water against the hull, and I felt the night would never end.

The sun was high when I woke. I saw the empty wine bottles, and beyond them, the empty bunk.

She had taken the dinghy.

It was half an hour before I managed to hitch a lift from a passing boat and get ashore. I drove directly to Farrars Lane. Blackwell Cottage was set back from the road behind an overgrown garden. It was a tiny run-down place with mean windows, peeling grey paint and a rusting transit van standing inside the gates on a patch of weedy gravel.

I beat on the door. The silence reached out derisively, and I hammered again, my fist keeping time with the pounding of my heart.

A sound; a door opening or closing. Unhurried steps approached across an uncarpeted floor, the latch clicked and the door opened an inch or two to reveal a man’s eye and dark uncombed hair falling across an unshaven chin. The face pulled back. I pushed the door open and stepped into a tiny hall with dark paint, cramped stairs and the smell of damp.

I shouted at the receding back of the long-haired man: Where’s Sylvie?