Death be Not Proud (30 page)

My hand shot up to my mouth, my eyes wide. “You told her about me
then
?”

“Emma, I know that it might seem hard to believe, and goodness only knows why you would believe anything I say now, but I have never betrayed my wife in
any
way since we first met. I wouldn't – I haven't – looked at another woman until I met you. I knew as soon as we met that I was in danger of
falling
for you, shall we say. I only came to your reception party out of curiosity because of your name. I had no idea –
no idea
– what the consequences of our meeting might be. I had to make a choice then – we all have to make choices,
don't we?” He gave a bitter-edged smile. “I could have ignored you – but that proved impossible for a number of reasons; or I could have deceived my wife – which I wouldn't do. Alternatively, I could tell her at the outset, and that seemed the only
right
thing to do.” He turned around and faced me fully and I chewed my lip, regarding him doubtfully.

“Look, Emma, it might be a strange set-up – yes, all right, it
is
a strange set-up – but I have always been honest with Ellen…”

“Apart from the lies.”

“I never lied to her.”

Vitriol was still too close to the surface to contain. “Not like you did to me, then.”

He sounded exasperated. “You know why I lied to you; don't confuse the issue. Many years ago, when we realized she was going to survive but would not be able to live any sort of normal life, she said that if I ever met anyone else – anyone I wanted to be with – she would understand. She wanted me to be happy, Emma; she
wants
me to have some sort of normality. This is difficult – I'm sorry, I'm not explaining it very well.”

“I get the drift,” I muttered sourly.

“The thing is, I want her to be as happy as she can be for however long she has left – and I
know
you understand that.”

I thought of my grandmother – wholly dependent on others. I thought of the thin line that separated her from those who found themselves loveless and alone.

“So who's looking after her now, if you're here?”

He looked surprised. “I don't…?”

I thought it self-explanatory. “Well, if you're here, she can't be by herself, unless the other members of the family are looking after her.”

“No, Emma. Ellen doesn't live with us; she's been in
a residential nursing home since the accident. She needs complete nursing care – more than I can give her. I thought you realized,” he said, almost to himself.

I slumped onto the sofa arm. I hadn't understood. The thought of that poor woman paralysed at such a young age and no longer able to live with her family – with Matthew – knowing that one day, in all likelihood, he would meet someone else and knowing that she would have to give him up. Permission or not, it still felt like adultery.

A match struck in the darkness as Matthew lit the first of the oil lamps and the yellow glow sprang up when the wick caught and flared. He adjusted the flame and it burned steadily as he put it back on the table by the stairs. He walked over to the next one on the kitchen table. As the second flame settled, he ventured tentatively, “I realize this sounds odd, but Ellen would like to meet you.”

“OK, OK.” I stood up abruptly. “That's enough for one day, I can't take any more; I'm going to bed.”

“You haven't eaten,” he protested in alarm.

I took the lamp from the table by the stairs and climbed them in a pool of light.

“I'll survive.”

I didn't sleep as much as I had hoped. The wind dropped, the sky cleared and the moon – one day short of being full – shone brighter than the sun had all day. I didn't need the lamp's yellow light, made dull in comparison. Instead, I wrapped myself in the quilt from the end of the bed, and sat in the rocking chair by the window, watching the surreal shadow play on the landscape below.

The anger and hurt of the past few days, fuelled by deep wounds from my past, had filled me until their clamour drowned out love, leaving no space for hope. I struggled then to find my faith. So intent was I on searching that I had forgotten that I didn't need to look, because it was already there. There were no easy answers – just as there hadn't been with Guy – but nor was I alone.

Eventually, having spent several hours grappling with an unquiet mind and finding no rest, by about three in the morning, I gave up. I ran a bath. The moon had shifted so that its brilliance glazed the rooms, and I bathed without the need of any more light than it gave. The hot water came up to my chin, and my face floated above the mercury surface where the moon struck the water at an angle. I lay as still as death so as not to disturb the tranquil plane. I had moved beyond anger; even the hurt of the deception had lost some of its potency in the wake of his disclosure. Amid all the lies, what struck me most at this point was Matthew's honesty. When I thought about it, I couldn't remember him lying to me outright. He hadn't told me the truth, but his dishonesty lay in obfuscation; and even with Ellen, it seemed, it was not so much a case of lying, as not giving her the whole picture.

I let my body sink a little further into the water and pressed my lips together as if preparing to whistle, and blew steadily across its surface, creating regular ripples that broke up the superficial appearance of calm. Matthew had been correct in that his fraud went far beyond deceiving me. Guy sought an affair at the expense of both his wife and me, fulfilling his own pleasure, careless of whom it hurt – until it nearly destroyed him. He had been cavalier in the truest sense of the word and his lies were self-serving. But Matthew created an illusion meant to protect those to whom it belonged, and not harm those beyond it. I felt the sting because I had been drawn to the perimeter of the circle that the artifice was intended to protect. Now that I stood at its edge, my choice lay in stepping within the circle, or staying outside it.

And if I decided on the latter?

I would then be in a similar position as Monica found herself, except I knew far more than she ever did – I knew
everything
. My knowledge would make me a permanent threat to the security of the family for as long as I existed, and how far were they willing to go to protect that? “I could snap your spine,” Matthew had said in the depths of anger. “I could crush the life out of you and no one would know.”

The shifting shape of my body beneath the mirrored surface of the water became deception, the cooling water no longer comforting. I slid quickly out of the bath, hurriedly winding the moss-soft towel around me. If I truly believed Matthew capable of killing me, would I still be in the cabin with him? Would I let him near me; would I be contemplating a life with him? The trouble with obsession, I concluded, is that perception is warped, and nothing is what it appears.

 

Sleep seemed pointless. I brushed my teeth and dressed as if ready for the day, creeping downstairs, using the moon to light my way. Padding softly in thick socks across the cold floor, I went to feed the stove more fuel, dropping the pieces of chopped wood into the mouth and, one by one, watching them ignite and burn. I placed the kettle quietly on the metal surface – it would have been a crime to disturb the peace of the moon – and turned around to wait for it to boil.

He sat on one of the ladder-back chairs by the broken window. Through dark orbs he watched me as I started and froze. He neither moved nor spoke, and it was only in the reflected light in his eyes as he followed my hand to my throat that he showed any sign of life.

“I… I didn't see you there,” I stammered when my heart settled into a trot rather than a gallop. His mouth twitched in amusement and his eyes widened, losing their predatory look.

“I didn't expect to see
you
,” he replied, his smile broadening as he rose to join me. Adjusting the kettle on the stove,
I avoided the invitation to look at him, fixing my gaze on his throat instead, which I thought a safer area of focus.

“I couldn't sleep.”

The moon bled through the fractured glass, casting his hair pale gold in its broken light and shining upon his neck – smooth, supple, strong.

“What are you doing down here?” My question sounded blunter than I meant it to. The sardonic lift to his mouth mildly mocked me.

“Even ‘monsters' need some downtime. I was writing when you disturbed me.”

A gentle
sssss
as drops of water evaporated on hot metal.

“I didn't mean it – calling you a monster – I was angry. I'm sorry I said it.”

I checked to see if he looked annoyed, then rapidly down again as he moved closer, blocking out the light. Even in the dusk that his silhouette cast, his eyes glittered.

“We both said things we didn't mean, but we said many more we did,” he said.

I lifted my face to look at him. “Matthew, what did you mean when you said you wouldn't let me go?”

“What do you think I meant?”

Used to his prevarication, I countered, “
I'm
asking the questions here.”

He lightly touched my cheek with his fingers, setting off a shimmer of warmth in my blood. I backed away.

“Matthew…” I warned.

“I only meant that I would use every device in my power to persuade you to stay.” He moved forward a step, raising his hand and tracing along the length of my jaw with his thumb, making it difficult to concentrate. I stayed still this time.

“Such as?”

He stroked down the side of my neck with the back of his hand, setting the fine hairs on edge. Lips slightly parted, he bent cautiously towards me as my pulse quickened, waiting to see if I would reject him and push him away. Reaching the base of my neck where my spine joined my skull, he curled his fingers around the back of it, using a slight pressure to pull me towards him. I didn't resist, smelling the fresh-air scent that closeness to him always brought, the skin of his throat only a faint gleam in the shadow-light.

“This is taking unfair advantage,” I breathed into the hollow at the base of his neck.

“Do you want me stop?” His lips brushed my cheekbone, the late-night stubble softly grazing my skin.

“I'll have to think about it.”

His hand moved up the nape of my neck into my hair, wrapping his fingers through it and pulling gently so that my face tipped willingly towards his.

“Do you need persuading?”

I was losing myself in his touch, no longer able to fight him on any level. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing.

“Yes, please.”

He hesitated and I opened my eyes to see him searching my face, before his smile intensified.

 

A breathless whistle rose to a high-pitched scream as the kettle came to the boil.

“
God's teeth!
” he exclaimed, killing the kettle with a look that would have had me squirming.

“Matthew!” I reprimanded his blasphemy, made no better by the antiquity of the oath.

“Sorry.” He smiled down at me apologetically. “It's
probably just as well.” He twisted off the sofa and went to remove the protesting kettle from the stove. I sat up, feeling a little dazed. His voice came from the denser form his body made in the unlit kitchen.

“Emma…”

“I know.”

I could hear him pouring water into a mug.

“We don't possess a teapot – not here, anyway.”

The significance lay in what he didn't say. I rearranged my clothing to cover the gap my jumper made as he had lifted me, and flopped back against the cushions, putting an arm over my eyes as if the darkness were too intrusive.

His voice sounded suddenly closer. “It's not that I don't want to – goodness only knows I do.”

I lifted my arm away from my face and stared at the ceiling. “I know, Matthew; you don't have to explain.”

Placing the mug on the floor next to me, he raised my legs like a barrier and, putting them across his thighs, sat down.

“I know what Ellen said, but I still made a promise to her when we married.”

“I understand.”

He rubbed my legs for a moment, rapidly at first, then slowing to the rhythm of his thoughts.

“Does this mean that you'll stay with me?”

He continued to rub up and down the length of my shin but the movement was just a vehicle for the tension he felt.

“Oh, I think you've managed to persuade me,” I said lightly.

He frowned. “I'm being serious.”

I pushed myself up on my elbows and regarded him.

“I didn't need you to persuade me, Matthew, I just needed to work things through. I'm not sure how this is going to work
between us, and heaven only knows it's complicated enough without all the additional stuff thrown in; but as you said, we
are
tied to each other. There are still things I'm not sure about…” He raised his eyebrows, but I carried on. “… But I'm not going to let them prevent me from being with you – not now, not any more. So, you're stuck with me, whether you like it or not.”

His hand stopped moving and became still and he hung his head, his eyes closed. Light from the log burner, orange and low, glowed in fits and starts on his face and only a fine line that developed between his eyes acknowledged that he had heard what I said. I tried to sit up further and my legs shifted against his. He sighed a long, slow exhalation of breath held for an eternity. Deliberately, and with words articulated with great care, he asked, “Are you saying that despite everything, despite what you know and how I have behaved, you are willing to join with me?”

I thought “join” an odd choice of word.

“Through thick and thin, hell or high water, yes – I think so.”

He seemed pensive still. “It may yet come to that,” he muttered.

“Matthew, this
is
what you want, isn't it?”

Hearing the anxiety in my voice, he lifted my legs from him and, taking my face between his hands, cradled it, piercing the veil of apprehension that lay between us.

“I have waited for this… for you… all my lifetime, and there is nothing –
nothing
– I want more than for us to be together.” He did not smile and the words came not from his mouth but from a place deep inside that I had only glimpsed in the past. “I cannot say when that will be and I can offer you nothing more than hope, Emma, and I have no right to
ask you to wait. But I do. I need to know with certainty – will you wait with me?”

This unforeseen path had led to a door that stood open and waiting. Beyond lay a road I could not divine. To step through it and tie my life to this man would commit me to an uncertain future. But I had spent the last ten years hiding from life, and felt compelled to cross the threshold. So – without hesitation, without a backward glimpse at what I left behind – I took a deep breath, uttered a silent word of prayer and strode forward.

“Yes, Matthew, I will wait.”