Playing for the Ashes (97 page)

He watched her from the dining room window. It was drawing towards dusk, and the failing light glinted softly against her. It shot her hair with streaks coloured like brandy. It made her skin luminous, ivory touched by gold. She was dressed in the expectation of continued good weather, in an apricot tunic and matching leggings, with thin-soled sandals on her feet.

As she moved from one bush to the next, he reconsidered her question about love. How to explain it, he wondered. Not only to her and to her satisfaction but to himself.

She wanted something analysed which did not make itself available to analysis, at least not by him. Love was to him one of life’s larger mysteries. He couldn’t adequately explain why his heart had decided to settle itself upon her any more than he could explain how the moon maintained a force upon the movement of the ocean, how the earth spun on an ever-tilting axis that effected seasons, how despite the furious spinning of this planet, what stood upon it stood upon it and did not hurtle into oblivion. Some things were provided for by nature. Love was one of them.

If he could have made a rational choice, it probably wouldn’t have been Helen Clyde. It would have been someone more likely to appreciate a hike out to Chysauster Village and a ramble through the stones of those ancient prehistoric dwellings without saying, “Good Lord, Tommy. Can you imagine what this ghastly wind must have done to those poor women’s skin in those days?” It would have been someone more likely to say, “Ashby de la Zouch?
Ivanhoe
, of course. The great joust. And Lord Hastings as well, but we know what happened to him, don’t we, darling?” It would have been someone who walked through the musty remains of Alnwick Castle and thought of Hotspur and what he had lost through giving in to the thrall of his own ambition. But the someone who might have meditated upon Chysauster, waxed poetic about Ashby, and evidenced the appropriate degree of mourning for the spilled blood of Northumberland would not have been Helen. With her exasperating indifference to the millennium of history that surrounded them, with her insouciant ability to enjoy what life offered in the here and now, with her utterly spurious frivolity. She was out of place, she was out of time, she was of different people and another century altogether. They stood not a candle-flicker’s chance in a gale of surviving more than a year if they married. And he wanted her anyway.

Perdition catch my soul, he thought, and he smiled grimly and then laughed aloud to think of what
that
particular love had come to. It didn’t bode well that the Moor’s declaration of passion sprang to his mind when he considered Helen. But on the other hand, if they kept their bed free of pillows and Helen free of handkerchiefs, they might have nothing to worry about.

Isn’t it all about risking anyway? he asked himself. Isn’t it all about believing in another soul’s power to redeem us? That’s the why of it, Helen. Love doesn’t arise from similarity of education, similarity of background, similarity of experience. Love arises from nothing and creates as it goes. And without it, chaos is indeed come again.

Outside, she ceased her work with the secateurs, stooped, and began to pick up the fallen, dead flowers. She’d forgotten to take a rubbish bag into the garden with her, so she used the front of her tunic as an apron and tossed the remains of the roses there. He went out to join her.

“The garden needs work,” she said. “If you leave roses on the bush once the roses have died, the bush keeps putting energy into them and ends up blooming less. Did you know that, Tommy?”

“I didn’t.”

“It’s true. But if you cut off the
flo
wers once they’ve begun to fade, the energy’s constantly diverted into fresh buds.” She scooted forward, half-standing and half-bent to her task. She wasn’t wearing gloves and her hands were getting dirty. But she was, he saw, still wearing his ring. There was hope in that. There was promise as well. And an end to chaos.

She looked up suddenly and caught his eyes on her hands. She said, “Tell me.”

He searched for the words. “Would you agree,” he said, “that Elizabeth Barrett loved Robert Browning?”

“I suppose so, but I don’t know much about them.”

“She eloped with him. Cut herself off from her family for the rest of her life—from her father in particular—in order to spend her life with him. She wrote a series of love poems to him.”

“The Portuguese sonnets?”

“Yes. Those.”

“And?”

“And yet in the most famous of those sonnets, she can’t tell him why, Helen. She tells him that, she tells him how—freely, purely, with childhood’s faith—but she never tells him why. So Browning had to take her at her word. He had to accept the that and the how without the why.”

“Which is what you’d have me do. Is that it?”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“I see.” She nodded thoughtfully and picked up a few more of the cut, dead
flo
wers. The petals broke away from the sepals within her grasp. The sleeve of her tunic caught on a thorn from one of the bushes and he freed it for her. She covered his hand with hers. “Tommy,” she said and waited for him to lift his eyes. “Tell me.”

“There’s nothing more, Helen. I’m sorry. I’ve done my best.”

Her face softened. She gestured from him to herself and said, “I didn’t mean this, us, this business of love, darling. I meant tell me what’s happened. The newspaper said it was over, but it isn’t over. I can tell that by looking at you.”

“How?”

“Tell me,” she repeated, more gently this time.

He lowered himself to the lawn that edged the bed of roses. And as she crawled among the plants, scooping up the cuttings, smudging her tunic and her leggings, dirtying her hands, he told her. About Jean Cooper and her son. About Olivia Whitelaw. About her mother. About Kenneth Fleming and three women’s love for him and what had happened because of that love.

“I’ll be off the case on Monday,” he
fin
ished. “Frankly, Helen, it’s just as well. I’m out of ideas.”

She came to sit next to him, cross-legged on the lawn, her lap full of the remains of the roses. “Perhaps there’s another way,” she said.

He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing but Olivia. All she has to do is hold fast to her story, and she has every reason in the world to do so.”

“Except the reason she needs,” Helen said.

“Which is?”

“That it’s the right thing to do.”

“I don’t get the impression that right and wrong have a great deal of meaning in Olivia’s life.”

“Perhaps. But people can surprise you, Tommy.”

He nodded and found he didn’t want to talk about the case any longer. It was too much with him, and it made the promise of staying too much with him over the next few days. At least for the moment, for the evening as well, he could choose to forget it. He reached for her hand. He rubbed the specks of dirt from her
fin
gers.

“That was why, by the way,” he said.

“What was?”

“When you asked me to tell you and I misunderstood. That was the why of it.”

“Because you misunderstood?”

“No. Because you asked me to tell you. You looked at me, you knew what was wrong, and you asked. That’s the why of it, Helen. That will always be the why.”

She was silent for a moment. She seemed to be examining the manner in which his hand held hers. “Yes,” she finally said in a quiet,
fir
m voice.

“So you understand?”

“I understand. Yes. But I was answering you, actually.”

“Answering me?”

“The question you asked me last Friday night. Although it wasn’t really a question, was it? It sounded more like a demand. Well, perhaps demand isn’t right, either. More like a request.”

“Friday night?” He thought back. The days had passed so quickly that he couldn’t even remember where he had been and what he had been doing last Friday night. Except that they’d been scheduled to hear Strauss and the evening had been ruined and he’d gone to her flat round two in the morning and…He looked at her quickly and found her smiling.

“I wasn’t asleep,” she said. “I love you, Tommy. I suppose I always have in one way or another, even when I thought you would always and only be my friend. So yes. I will. Whenever you choose. Wherever you want.”

OLIVIA

I
’ve been watching Panda, who’s still lying on the dresser in an artfully arranged pile of letters and bills. She looks quite peaceful. She’s made herself into a perfect ball, head touching rear end, paws tucked under tail. She’s given up trying to understand why her bedtime rituals have been disrupted. She doesn’t question why I’ve sat in the galley hour after hour instead of removing myself to my room in her company and plumping up the blankets to make her a nest at the foot of the bed. I’d like to take her from the dresser and set her on my lap for a while. There’s a certain comfort that only comes from a cat’s condescension to be held and petted. I make kitty-kitty sounds to get her attention. Her ears move in my direction, but her position doesn’t alter. I know what she’s telling me. It’s no different from what I’ve been telling myself. What I’m going to go through, I’ve got to go through alone. This is like a dress rehearsal for death.

Chris is in his room again. It sounds like he’s keeping himself awake by earnest spring housecleaning. I keep hearing drawers slide open and cupboards snap shut. When I call out that he should go to bed, he calls back, “In a while. I’m looking for something.” I ask what. He says, “Picture of Lloyd-George Mar-ley. He wore dreadlocks, did I tell you? And Persian slippers with pointed toes.” I comment that Lloyd-George Marley sounds quite the snappy bloke. Chris says, “He was.” I say, “Did you lose touch with him or something? Why’s he never been round the barge to see us?” I hear a drawer slide open and its contents get dumped onto Chris’s bed. I say, “Chris, why’s he never—” And Chris interrupts. “He’s dead, Livie.” I repeat the word
dead
and ask how did he die. Chris says, “Knifed.” I don’t ask Chris was he with him when it happened. I already know.

I don’t think the world has much to offer in the way of happiness and contentment, do you? There’s too much grief and too much pain. They’re born of knowledge, attachment, and involvement.

It’s a useless activity, but still I wonder how things might have been had I never gone to Julip’s all those years ago and met Richie Brewster. If I’d finished university, taken up a career, made my parents proud…. How many needs of other people are we required to ful
fil
l in our lifetimes? How much blame are we to take upon ourselves for our failure to supply the appropriate degree of another’s fulfillment? The pat answer to each question is none and none, as any of the agony aunts will tell you. But life’s messier than the agony aunts would have it.

My eyelids burn. I don’t know what time it is, but it seems to me that the screen of black that lies across the galley window is beginning to lighten to grey. I tell myself that I’ve written enough for now, that I can go to bed. I need my rest. Hasn’t every doctor and healer told me that? Conserve your strength, conserve your energy, they say.

I call for Chris. He pokes his head into the corridor. He’s dug up a red-and-gold fez from his cupboard, and he’s wearing it perched on the back of his head. He says, “Yes, memsahib?” with his hands folded on his chest. I say, “Wrong country, twit. You need a turban. Will you sit with me, Chris?” He says, “You’re there, then?” I say, “Yes.” He says, “Right,” and flips his head back to toss the fez into his room. He comes into the galley. He slides Panda off the dresser and onto his shoulder. He sits opposite me. The cat doesn’t react. She knows it’s Chris who’s got her. She lies like a beanbag curved over his shoulder. She begins to purr.

With his other hand, Chris reaches across the table. He opens my left palm and carefully places his fingers between mine. I watch my fingers twitch before I can make them close over his. Even when they do, I can tell my grip isn’t firm any longer. His fingers close after mine do. “Go on,” he says.

So I do.

Mother and I talked in the early hours of that morning in Kensington. We talked until Chris arrived to fetch me. I said, “He’s my friend. I think you’ll like him,” to which she replied, “It’s good to have friends. A single good friend, in fact, is more important than anything.” She ducked her head and added somewhat diffidently, “That’s what I’ve found, at least.”

Chris came in, looking like he’d been worn down from boulder to gravel. He had a cup of tea with us. I said, “It was all right?” He didn’t look at me as he said, “All right.” Mother glanced between us curiously, but she asked no questions. She said, “Thank you for caring for Olivia, Chris.” He said, “Livie tends to care for herself.” I said, “Pooh. You keep me going and you know it.” Mother said, “That’s the way it should be.” I could tell she thought there was more than friendship between me and Chris. Like most women in love, she wanted everyone else to have a share in the feeling. I wanted to say, “It’s not like that between us, Mum,” but I felt a twinge of jealousy that she should have managed to grasp what was out of my reach.