Coral Glynn (25 page)

But this night she did not chatter and he did not fall asleep. It was a warm undark night near Midsummer’s Eve, and although the bedroom drapes were drawn, there was a sense of the world outside still alive and awake, confused by the unsatisfyingly brief gap between dusk and dawn, in which nothing whole or real could be accomplished.

Clement and Dolly lay in bed tensely awake and rigidly still, in a sort of symbiotic wakefulness. Finally, after what seemed to be several hours of such abeyance, Clement got out of bed. He withdrew himself slowly and quietly, shrugged on his robe and pushed his feet into his slippers, and then stood beside the bed, knowing he could not disappear without remark.

After a moment Dolly said, “Should I not have told you?”

“What?” he said.

“What? About meeting Coral. And her husband. I seriously doubt that they will stop here on their return. They said they would—well, she did—but I know they won’t. They seemed so eager to get away.”

“Then why did you ask them here?”

“I don’t know,” said Dolly. “I was so flustered, having her appear out of nowhere like that. I suppose I was only being polite. But no … No. I thought you might want to see her, and I knew I should not stand in the way of that.”

Clement said nothing. He unloosened and then retied the sash on his dressing gown.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have told you,” said Dolly.

“Of course you should,” said Clement. “Why ever shouldn’t have you?”

“Because it has upset you,” said Dolly. She reached her hand up into the darkness above her, as if there were something hanging there, just beyond her reach, and then let it drop. She smoothed the coverlet that Clement’s withdrawal had disturbed.

“Have I upset you?” she asked.

“No,” said Clement. “I’m just going for a walk.”

“Outside?”

“Yes,” said Clement. “I want some fresh air. Can’t sleep.”

“Shall I come with?”

“No,” said Clement. “Go to sleep.”

“I can’t,” said Dolly. “‘Go to sleep’—such an odd thing to say to somebody, really. It’s the one place we can’t go to when we’re told. The moon as well, I suppose. Even the Amazon jungle or the North Pole I could go to, but not to sleep…”

Clement reached across the bed and put his hand on Dolly’s cheek, which was damp with tears. He let his gentleness and affection be felt and then removed his hand. “I’m just going out for a little stroll,” he said.

Dolly laughed quietly, and said, “Isn’t that what God said, before he abandoned us all?”

*   *   *

Clement went downstairs and through the hall into the drawing room. The inside of the house shone with that merciless night-time brightness. They had left the French doors open and he stepped through them, crossed the gravel terrace, and walked out onto the burnt lawn. The summer had been golden and dry so far. Beyond the field of fruit trees, the building equipment stood massively in the nearest of the water meadows, silhouetted darkly against the still glowing sky, the earthmoving tractors holding their trunk-shovels defiantly and frozenly aloft. Clement stared across the field at the blighted landscape. It was inevitable, he knew, this desecration of the earth, and in a way he was glad of it, for it accelerated his detachment from his life: a ruined Hart House would be one less thing holding him close to the world. It was foolish to resist change, for that is all that there was, but nevertheless it did not look modern, it did not look like progress. There was something prehistoric about the spectacle he beheld, as if the world were plunging backwards into darkness.

But not him. He had been rejuvenated. Dolly had seen to it, sending him to doctors and to a physiotherapist who strapped his legs to a machine that stretched and contorted them and who made Clement kick a medicine ball for hours. And his skin had healed and his muscles had grown limber and strong once again. His stick was stuck among the umbrellas in the copper bucket just inside the front door, a thing of the past. He was able to walk now for as long and as far as he liked, but there was nowhere for him to go.

The Sap Green Forest remained undisturbed. It was to become part of the National Trust, a condition of the transformation of the water meadows into housing estates. The woods would continue to fester in their damp green darkness, holding on to their secret as the world around them was cleared and ruined.

Clement walked across the orchard, through the unremarkable trees, for it was that dormant time of summer when the blossoms have all released their fantastic petals and the fruit has yet to materialise, when the trees are simply trees, and neither beautiful nor bountiful. The footbridge over the stream was in disrepair, but enough boards remained for Clement to cross over, and he followed the path into the woods. It was as warm and still inside the woods as it was outside of them, but the darkness here was more advanced, and a faint dampness lurked in the crevasses and hollows beneath the trees as if this was a hidden enfolded place on the body of the earth.

Clement continued along the path, towards the centre of the woods.

What did it mean, Coral’s return to Harrington? Could Dolly have fabricated it, perhaps to test him in some perverse way? He did not think so: he had decided long ago to trust Dolly, and she, as if aware of his trust, was always scrupulously honest with him. She always left well enough alone, and there was little deception or dissembling between them. Perhaps she was wrong; perhaps Coral would appear at Hart House on her return to London. If she did not wish to see him, why ever would she have come to Harrington?

But he reminded himself he had always been wrong about Coral. He remembered the night in London, at Durrants, lying in the empty bathtub, his razor balanced on the rim, within reach, and Coral without. That had been his chance to separate himself from the world, and he had let it pass, because he had hoped. But that was over now.

Dolly loved him, and her devotion somehow prevented the possibility of him relinquishing his life; she had caught him fast to it, for what is love if not wanting someone alive? It seemed incredible to Clement that anyone would value him in this particular way. Coral had not. She had not cared so much whether he was alive or dead, close or far away.

Of course, Robin had loved him, but it had not been a proper love, and he had been right to turn away from it. It had been a thwarted, impossible love, like those blossoms that rot upon the stem and produce stunted fruit, eaten from the inside out by maggots. It was better to have a quiet, decent life than to be a pouf in Brighton.

Near the centre of the woods, where the darkness was most complete, Clement paused for a moment, deep within the copse of holly, which had grown even larger over the years. It was a strange, uncomforting plant, holly, with its crustaceous thorned leaves, defensive and unwelcoming—and from what was it so steadfastly protecting itself? Coral had pushed herself into its heart and encountered the worst sort of violence. She had lost a button in the holly, and other things as well.

The night made some final pivot, bringing morning closer than evening, and exhaled a breath of cool air. A breeze slowly disturbed the trees of the Sap Green Forest. The holly leaves shivered metallically: a strange sound. It was the sound of the world asking once again to be assuaged. Clement turned and began to walk out of the dark woods.

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