Strangers (43 page)

‘Let’s go out and explore.’

‘Let’s do that.’

They went out again into the intoxicating air. They walked along the beach, hand in hand, with their shoes crunching satisfyingly in the shingle. Annie stepped backwards to look at the houses along the front, and an unexpected wave washed around her ankles. She took off her shoes and poured the water out, laughing, and Steve carried them for her as they walked on. The ebbing tide uncovered runnels of glittering wet sand, and Annie left her footprints in them until the next wave came and left the sand smooth all over again.

Beyond the town there was a long shingle bank, and at the far end of it the high, round mysterious bulk of a Martello tower. Annie put her wet shoes on again and they walked along the track towards it. In the lee of the shingle bank there was a little yacht basin, and the dinghy’s rigging drummed out a sharp tattoo in the wind against the steel masts. When they reached the tower they stood for a moment staring up at the smooth, massive walls, and then looked past it at the line of coast that it had protected. It curved away into the distance, to the point where land and sea were indistinguishable.

They were dwarfed by the tower’s size and by the emptiness beyond it. Annie listened to the waves and the cries of the gulls, now amplified and now drowned out by the wind. She half-turned, away from Steve, and looked inland. Here there was empty marshland spiked with coarse grass and furrowed with muddy tide channels. Further inland, a long way off across the great flat space, she could just see the upraised finger of a church spire. The wind was cold on this exposed promontory, and she shivered. But she was exhilarated, too, by the remoteness of it, and by the noise of the sea and the wind that almost drowned their insistent thoughts. Under the vast sky Annie had a sense of their impermanence, a sense that they borrowed the majesty of their surroundings to reflect on their own small concerns. She knew that they were incapable of making even the smallest lasting impression. But the tower was solid, spanning the centuries, and the sky and the sea were everlasting.

And perhaps nothing else mattered so very much.

Suddenly the notion was comforting, even soothing. They were there, and then they were gone, all of them.
Remember this
, Annie told herself,
when the time comes
. She was smiling. Steve had been watching the melting line of the horizon, but he turned now and saw her, and their eyes met.

‘I know,’ he said. He heard her thoughts, as always.

They stood for a moment in the shadow of the tower, looking at one another while they could.

Then Annie shivered again, and she felt the wet bottoms of her trousers clammy against her bare ankles.

‘Let’s walk back through the town,’ Steve said.

They walked slowly, hand in hand, looking in at the windows of genteel teashops and old-fashioned grocers’. There was an estate agent’s in a pinkwashed cottage, but they passed that by, neither of them so much as glancing at the inviting, impossible invitations that it held out. The cosiness of the high street, with its back firmly turned to the sea, warmed Annie through again.

They went back to the little blue house and Annie made tea, carrying it up on a tray to the balcony room so that they could watch the light change on the sea while they ate and drank.

In the quiet isolation of the house they were suddenly almost shy together. Annie was conscious of the months that had gone by since she had seen him last in the chic greyness of his flat. They sat close together but they didn’t quite touch now, as if they were uncertain of what the other wanted or expected. For a moment, Annie wasn’t sure whether she knew him at all. Steve took her hand and she jumped, bumping awkwardly against the wicker sofa arm. They laughed then, fracturing the tension, and Steve said, ‘Come on. I’ll take you out to dinner.’

Annie bathed and changed in the little square bedroom. She took her clothes out of her bag and laid them neatly on one side of the patchwork-quilted bed. She put her hairbrush and jars of cream at one side of the chest of drawers, and then glanced at the bag that Steve had brought, still standing at the opposite side of the bed. She unfolded her clothes and put them on hangers in one half of the wardrobe, feeling the strangeness of having only her own things.

Anne picked up her empty case. It was a battered, nondescript one, veteran of numerous family holidays and weekends. Steve’s unopened bag was a soft black canvas-and-leather holdall, quite unlike anything Martin and she had ever owned. She touched it briefly with her fingertips, thinking with momentary sadness that it belied all the connubial intimacy of the room. She turned quickly and stowed her own suitcase in a cupboard.

Standing in front of the dim mirror, she made up her face as carefully as if she were going to the grandest function of her life. When she came back to Steve he was sitting on the balcony staring out to sea, but he turned at once to look at her with an odd, admiring expression, as if they had only just met.

‘You look wonderful,’ he said. He kissed her and she felt the sudden imperative beat of her response to him. He touched the corner of her mouth with his.

‘Dinner,’ he said.

The roads across the wide, flat fields were empty and he drove the big car very fast. The sun was setting, and the rays of light slanted from the west, behind them, in long, oblique bars. They swept through a dense forest of black pines, miles of it, and when they came out again the sun had gone down and the summer dark had thickened in the sky.

Annie felt that she had never been so aware of the landscape and its lightness and darkness. She thought that all the magnificent effects of it were just for Steve and herself tonight, and then she remembered their insignificance beside the Martello tower, and she laughed softly. Steve’s warm hand closed briefly over hers.

They came to another little town, this one left high and dry on its river estuary by the receding sea. There was a square enclosed by old red-brick buildings that glowed in the last of the daylight, and a little restaurant on the corner. There were paper tablecloths and bright overhead lights, and Annie and Steve’s table was crowded into a corner by other tables packed with yachtsmen and fishermen and a handful of holidaymakers.

The seafood was the freshest and sweetest that Annie had ever tasted, and after it came sea bass in a simple, buttery sauce.

The two of them ate as if they had been starved, and drank straw-pale Chablis that tasted of stone and steel. Under the influence of it Annie’s cheeks turned pink, and they talked and laughed about little things as if no world existed beyond the uncurtained velvet-black of the restaurant windows.

Much later, they drove back again to the creaking darkness of the house overlooking the sea. They blinked at each other when Steve turned on the lights, unwilling to let the precious evening slip out of their hands.

‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘I’ll light the stove, shall I?’

There was wood in the log-basket beside it, and soon the stove was glowing. The real scent of burning driftwood enfolded them. Steve brought out a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He gave a glass to Annie and she drank, feeling the heat of the spirit in her throat.

‘Listen to the sea,’ Steve whispered.

In the room’s stillness the waves seemed to break almost over their heads. He drew aside the curtain and they saw the distant beam of a lighthouse, an arm of light that swept over the sea and withdrew, and then reached out again.

The shyness of the early evening had gone. They turned to each other naturally now, not impatiently, but eagerly, knowing that the time was right. Annie felt his heart beating under her cheek as she rested against him. She tilted her head back to touch her mouth against his, and then he bent over her. He blotted out the red heat of the stove, and the lighthouse beam. Annie’s head fell back against the cushions and her mouth opened to his.

He undid the front of her shirt, touching the buttons one by one, and his hand and then his mouth touched her breast.

‘I love you,’ she said simply.

They were both conscious of the flood of words, held back.

Steve said, ‘Come to bed now.’

They climbed the narrow stairs to the upper room.

Annie had no sense of separation now, no sense of anything except that they were here, and the importance of this moment.

With clumsy hands they took off one another’s clothes, and the air was cold against their skin. They reached out and touched the healing scars with their fingertips.

‘Almost better,’ Steve whispered.

‘Almost. Not quite, yet. Not quite.’

They turned back the patchwork cover, like a couple in their own bedroom. Then Steve lifted her up and laid her on the bed. Annie felt the chilly sheets, and then he was beside her, his arms around her. They clung together and their bodies warmed each other, and they let their hands and mouths speak for them while they still could.

When her body cried out for him he leant over her for a second and they looked into each other’s eyes. Steve smiled, but Annie could see the pain beneath his eyelids.

Oh don’t be hurt, my love
.

She reached up, drawing his mouth to hers. He came inside her and she cried out, inarticulate.

They made love slowly, very gently, without the urgency and desperation that had driven them in London. When Annie opened her eyes she saw in the faint changes of light over the beamed ceiling the invisible sweeps of the lighthouse lantern across the sea. And when Steve let himself go at last and called out her name,
Annie, Annie
, she cradled his head in her arms and kissed his eyelids, and afterwards they lay still together and the murmur of the waves broke over them all over again.

‘Today, with you, has been one of the happiest days I have ever known,’ Annie said, almost to herself. That it couldn’t repeat itself, unfolding into other days until they were old, was both its sadness and its strength. They had known this day, at least. That was what Tibby had meant. Suddenly, with certainty, Annie knew that that was the truth.

‘Remember it,’ Steve echoed.

‘Remember it,’ she echoed, sealing the pact of the day.

She lay in Steve’s arms with her mouth against the smooth warmth of his skin, and fell asleep listening to the sound of the sea.

Annie dreamed the dream again.

The blackness was not just dark, but a terrible weight on top of her. She was pinned by it, crushed and bleeding, and in a minute, in a second, the weight would collapse and she would be blotted out. She opened her eyes wider until they stung in their sockets and there was still only the acrid dark. She was utterly alone. She knew that, because she was shouting somebody’s name and he couldn’t answer her because he was gone, or dead. She was certain he was dead. Terror engulfed her as she heard the rumble beginning overhead and beneath her. Now the rocks would smash down, and the pain would destroy her. She struggled, with a last, impossible effort, and reached out into the empty darkness.

But it wasn’t empty. She was calling his name, and he answered it. His arms held her as she sat up, gasping and sobbing.

‘Annie. Annie. I’m here. It’s all right.’

‘Steve?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m here.’ His voice was low, and calm, and she felt the terror falling away in ugly swathes.

‘The dark.’

‘I know. It’s all right. Look, there’s the lighthouse.’

And through the window she saw the beam of it, bright, and regular, and beautiful. Steve held her until her breath came steadier. He kissed her wet eyelids and brushed the matted damp hair out of her eyes. She shuddered and lay against him, letting the ordinary reality of touch and sight and smell lift her out of the black terror. ‘Was it the same dream?’

‘Yes. Exactly the same.’

With one arm still holding her, Steve reached out and turned on the light beside the bed. Annie saw the reality of the patchwork quilt and the beamed ceiling; their discarded clothes and her own belongings laid out on the top of the chest of drawers. Colour flooded softly back into the room.

‘Look at me now,’ Steve said. She turned her head slowly. He took her fingers and pressed them to his face. To Annie it was as if they were in the wreckage again, but she could see him now, and touch him, and she wasn’t afraid any more.

‘It’s over,’ he said. She listened carefully to the echoes in the words. ‘You’re safe now.’ With their linked fingers he touched the fading scars on her arm and shoulder and the long one across her belly. ‘We survived. We made each other survive. It’s all over, Annie.’

She nodded, suddenly mute with exhaustion.

‘Lie down again.’ Steve turned out the light once more.

She did as he told her, and he drew the quilt around them. Without knowing that he was doing it, Steve put his arms around her and held her exactly as he had done in the worst moments, when he was afraid that she would die. But her breathing was regular now, warm on his cheek, and her face when he touched it was clean and smooth.

It’s over
, he told himself once more. He remembered when the rescuers came. He had let go of her in the end, under the arc lights in the icy air. Now, the dim sweep of the lighthouse beam was like the faintest echo of those same lights. Involuntarily, uselessly, he held her tighter. ‘Are you still awake?’

Her cheek moved against his shoulder. ‘Yes.’

‘Are you still frightened?’

‘No,’ Annie said. ‘Not any more.’ She was certain now, as sure as she would ever be of anything, that the terrible dream was gone and that it would never trouble her again. ‘The dream is over too,’ she said. ‘It won’t come back any more.’

In the darkness, with only the faint grey shimmer of the lighthouse as a reminder, Steve smiled with his mouth against her hair.

They lay for a long time, holding each other, in the old position. And then, at last, they fell asleep.

The sun rose over the sea, and filled the rooms of the blue house with penetrating light. When Annie went to look out, yawning and wrapping herself in her robe, the fishing fleet was coming in, drawing after itself a double wake of silvery, foaming wash and black swooping gulls. The diesel engines chugged in the stillness. Steve came and stood beside her and they watched the wake from the boats fan out and reach the shore in ripples which rolled over on to the shingle with hardly a splash.