Jackson's Dilemma (28 page)

As he neared what was evidently his destination Edward began to reduce his already slow pace. He also began to look about him, moving his head slowly to and fro. At one point he actually stopped beside a lamp post and slowly raised his arm and, still staring ahead, took hold. Here his face altered, his eyes began to put on a puzzled expression, as of one who has come a long way and is now lost. A kindly woman even paused and spoke to him. Edward’s head turned slowly and peered at her. She walked hurriedly on. This set Edward in motion. As he continued to walk slowly his face began to wear an anguished look as if searching for something or as one repenting of some dreadful act. A clergyman actually turned and followed him before deciding that he was simply drunk. At last he paused and stood at the corner of a road, then squared his shoulders. He even uttered a little sound like a bird or some small animal. Here, turning down the road, he quickened his pace again and began to shake his head violently as if waking himself up. He stopped outside a house, and with slow deliberation rang the bell.

Anna Dunarven opened the door. When she saw who it was she gasped and it was as if she might faint. Then she opened the door wide. Edward came in, then stood still in the hall while Anna closed the door and passed him, moving towards the drawing room. Edward followed her. The room was full of sunlight. She turned to face him and said, ‘
What do you want?
’

Edward replied, ‘You know what I want.’

Anna sat down on a settee near to the fireplace. She covered her face. Edward picked up a chair, placed it opposite to her, and added in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘I want to
marry
you of course -’

They looked at each other. Edward stretched out his hand. Anna took it in both of hers. Tears came from her eyes. He did not move his position. After a few moments Anna released his hand and stared at him. He moved onto the settee and they closed their eyes and put their arms about each other. Anna murmured, ‘Thank God!’ then, moving apart, they stared at each other.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Edward. ‘I am
very
sorry. But I didn’t know what to do. Of course I’d been thinking about it forever since—’

‘So had I. Sometimes it was torture. But I didn’t know what you knew.’

‘And I didn’t know what you wanted.’

‘Really? I came back to see you marry another woman! That was the final torture, the last giving up of all things.’

‘Anna,
don’t,
I have been in hell.’

‘Have you not deserved it? You would have married Marian! You had a narrow release.’

‘Oh God - yes — I saw you in the churchyard.’

‘I saw you in the churchyard - you were hiding behind a gravestone.’

‘Yes. I wanted to see both of you.’

‘Ah — indeed -
both!
’

‘Then I thought I might meet you somewhere, with Benet or — ’

‘I kept clear — I knew if I met you in public I would—’

‘I thought you were avoiding me.’

‘Only in that sense. Now my dear boy—’

‘Anything can still happen. You must save me.’

‘I must save all three of us, now and forever! You haven’t opened your mouth?’

‘No, of course not!’

‘And I have said nothing.’

‘And he?’

‘He — well, you will see, don’t be afraid. He is a very wise boy, he will not talk.’

‘You mean he knows — I suppose it had to be.’

‘It must be. He found out anyway!’

‘And the future?’

‘That will look after itself. We are strong and so is he. But really all will be well.’

‘So. May I marry you
at once
?’

‘All right, I can’t remember how long it takes in England—!’

‘We shall have to go somewhere else.’

‘Maybe, but only for a time. Edward, don’t be frightened, what matters is that you have actually
come.
Oh, I can hardly believe it!’ Closing their eyes they held each other, then thrust each other apart and looked.

‘You are so young, Anna.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, be it so! But why didn’t you come sooner?’

‘I was waiting for a signal - no I wasn’t, I’d just
given up hope.
I felt since everything was so damned crazy—’

‘I was waiting for a signal. I even went down to Lipcot and looked at Hatting, just the outside, just for an instant.’

‘Was I there?’

‘I don’t know. I just wanted to say farewell - I was so absolutely miserable.’

‘I’m sorry. We’d better sell Hatting.’

‘No, we won’t, why should we, certainly not!’

‘Now we are arguing just like - all right we won’t!’

‘Oh my darling, you have come so far, you have come home to me at last. You have been so brave, my dear knight!’

‘And he? I felt everything was against me. Something terrible may still be against me.’

‘You mean Bran.’

‘I may be blown to pieces. Where is he?’

‘In the garden. Shall I call him in?’

‘So soon - yes, I shall die in the interim.’

As Anna left the room and ran down the steps Edward sat with closed eyes, leaning down and holding his head in a savage grip. When he heard again the quick footsteps outside, he stood up hastily, putting his hand to his heart.

Bran hurled himself at Edward. For a second Edward thought he was being attacked. Then as they both, entangled, fell back onto the sofa, Edward knew that something, the most important thing of all, was well.

‘Oh Edward, Edward—’

‘Oh Bran, dear Bran, you’re not cross with me?’

‘I love you, I love you, I’ve thought so long that you might come one day, I waited for you so long, then I thought you would
never
come -’

‘Well I’ve come now, whatever anybody says, I’ve come and we’ll be together, won’t we! Oh I’m so glad, my child, my dear dear child!’

Then the three of them were all talking at once, hugging each other and crying and laughing and wailing with joy. What had seemed so utterly impossible had now come to pass. When they were a little calmer, and Anna had suggested eating something and Bran had declared he was so happy he would never eat anything ever again, Edward took something out of his pocket and passed it to Bran.

Bran took it solemnly, looked at it, then gave a little cry of ‘oh!’

Edward said, ‘It’s yours.’

Bran nodded his head and was about to put it away when Anna reached out for it and took it. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a stone,’ said Edward.

‘Yes, but what does it mean?’

Bran retrieved it and put it in his pocket.

Edward said, ‘It is the stone which shattered my window on
that day,
the day that was supposed to be the day before my wedding.’

‘You — Bran,
you
did that, you broke that window?’

‘Yes,’ said Bran calmly. ‘Somebody had to start something.’

‘How naughty - but oh how -’

‘How magnificently bold,’ said Edward.

‘But did
that
do anything to you, make you suddenly change your mind? It might have done.’

‘It upset me very much and—’

‘Upset you very much forsooth! You
knew,
but you did nothing! It was really Marian who saved you! May I see the stone?’

Bran produced it and gave it to his mother who studied it and gave it to Edward. The stone was beautiful, dark, rounded, streaked with white and green stripes. As Edward took the stone in his hand his face twisted for a second. He returned it to Bran who put it away again with a proprietary air.

‘Where did it come from?’ said Edward. ‘I couldn’t make it out.’

‘From a lovely beach in Brittany,’ said Bran. ‘Oh do let us go there,
Maman,
don’t you think—’

‘Oh, we’ll go everywhere,’ said Edward. ‘Until your school term begins, you know - but always now we’ll all go together to lovely places—’

‘Oh school, yes - actually I’m looking forward to that,’ he said with dignity.

 

Bran had run away. They could hear him mumbling and sobbing and singing like a bird upstairs. They, downstairs, were also sobbing, sitting on the sofa and embracing each other and having fits of hysterical laughter.

Edward said, ‘We must sober up, we must work it all out, lay it all out, see the picture of what has happened.’

‘Yes, yes, but now we have time—’

‘You didn’t feel guilty? You know you were the creator of it all!’

‘At first it was pure anguish, I just didn’t know what would happen, or what I had done, what sort of thing I had done—’

‘Indeed, dear girl, of course, I could not approach you after
that,
I didn’t know at all how much you might have remembered - or
intended—
it might have been like a rape - or just what you wanted. I thought sometimes that what you wanted was—’

‘What?’

‘That I should
not have remembered anything,
anything that mattered, that really happened, on that night, and that it would all simply have vanished into black forgetfulness. Perhaps it all hung upon your telling me a certain lie.’

‘Yes. I told you that I was pregnant — I didn’t want anyone to know that it was impossible for Lewen to have a child. We had kept it absolutely quiet because we didn’t know what to do. We discussed it, we thought of adopting, but I wasn’t sure, it was such a gamble.’

‘You were looking for a thoroughbred!’

‘Yes, Edward! Of course I had to stick it out, to wait and see if anything was going to happen and what that happening would be like, there might have been nothing at all. I was in such a state, I was fighting against time. And then Lewen went into a coma—’

‘You remember Doctor Sandon, he was your doctor, he was ours also. I overheard him talking to my father—’

‘You mean that you found out - ?’

‘No, not really, I scarcely took it in at the time. I only thought about it on
that
evening, when you invited me in for drinks and -’

‘So you - Edward, you were an angel!’

‘Let us say a gentleman. Actually, I guessed from the start that I was somehow being made use of. But I was so much in love with you, I would have done anything - though I didn’t really know what had happened till the next day - then I started to think! And, well, I had to think for a long time!’

‘And you have been thinking ever since? Oh Edward—’

‘Before you went to France you went to Ireland.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I went to Trinity College, Dublin, and said I was a scholar of Irish history and asked to see the genealogy of the Lewen Dunarvens up to date, and there was Lewen and the date of Bran’s birth.’

‘Oh my dear! How thorough! Yes, and Bran was born in Ireland. That was safer. When did you go?’

‘Soon after Bran was born. Then you stayed in France. But—well - I’ve wondered why exactly you did it - it wasn’t for me. You told me a lie.’

‘Yes, I told you I was pregnant. I loved Lewen so much, he was such a great man, we wanted a child so much, but then he was beginning to be ill, then very ill, and the doctor told
me,
but not
him,
that he would never be able to beget a child, and I so much wanted there to be a child, and then when he went to the hospital—’

‘No one knew that I came and spent that night with you.’

‘No one. I wasn’t sure whether or not you had taken it in at all—’

‘Oh, I took it in!’

‘You were so extremely drunk.’

‘You made me extremely drunk!’

‘Then I told Lewen I was pregnant with his child - and he was so happy - and then of course I told the others.’

‘Oh
God -
I loved Lewen so much - And Bran?’

‘I think Bran has some sort of second sight.’

‘He is like me. He looks like a Cornishman. I saw that in the churchyard. How much of all this has he worked out I wonder? Anyway enough to break my window.’

‘Yes, and it was the photographs -’

‘The
photographs?’

‘Yes, I kept so many to punish myself. I thought I had kept them from him. I realised he had found out something when he stopped asking questions. And then here - the stuff I brought with me - I couldn’t stop him from rummaging in the loft, and then when he met Jackson, they went up there together—’

‘
Jackson?
’

‘Yes,—’

‘Jackson mended the window which Bran broke. We talked about things. I think Jackson has second sight as well. He’s a very strange chap, far stranger than people think. And he keeps his mouth shut.’

‘Bran loves him, so do I.’

‘Yes, and as Bran said, somebody has to start something.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuan was alone. It was evening. He had sent Rosalind back to her flat. It was not that they had had some immediate quarrel. Rosalind would come back the next day. It was just that Tuan was suddenly gripped by fierce, terrible anguish. He felt a pain as if he were being cut in two. He thought I am under a curse, I
cannot
marry! He had lost track of the day, of the time. Between the moment when he had taken off his shirt and some other moment somewhere in the afternoon he had been in paradise, no, that scarcely described it, a kind of
total change
as if some quite
alien rays
were transforming his body and because his body and his mind were one. Perhaps like someone undergoing, still conscious, a very serious operation by a wonderful surgeon whom he trusted utterly, and all the time his eyes were open. Some intense golden light was falling upon him, penetrating, transforming, dissolving inside his body. Of course, Rosalind had been
there.
Her pain, her joy. He recalled them getting up at last and eating a little and drinking a little and laughing strange crazy laughter and shedding lovely tears. He remembered saying softly ‘oh, oh, oh,’ and going on saying it. It had all
happened,
and it was
true.
It was later in the afternoon, or was it already evening, that the pain had come on. Tuan had never been in a hospital, but he thought he knew what it was now, he recognised that particular anguish, which he had kept from Rosalind. They had managed to put on their clothes, and they were crying, only their tears were like soft arrows falling into a pool. Tuan, standing upright, soon to be doubled up with anguish, told her, ‘You must go, you must go
now,
but you will come back tomorrow morning—’