The Swallow and the Hummingbird (27 page)

He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand where sweat had gathered in beads. He read the letter over and over again. Agonized over one or two of the sentences. Tried to read it from her perspective, hoping he hadn’t been too blunt, checking that she would understand beyond a shadow of a doubt what he endeavoured to communicate. He knew Rita so well. He knew this would break her heart.

The following morning he gave the letter to Agatha to post along with one to his mother, explaining what he had done. At breakfast Susan noticed that his face was taut around the eyes and grey beneath his suntan. She understood at once, but Agatha interpreted it as a bad case of lovesickness.

‘The best cure for that, my boy, is to ride out hard. Take your mind off her. You won’t last very long if you’ve such a soft heart. What you need is a nice Argentine girl. No point pining for a woman so far away. Never did anyone any good, long-distance love.’

George went along with it but at the end of the day, when he was alone once again with Susan, he was able to voice his anxiety to someone who sympathized completely.

‘I feel so cruel, Susan,’ he said, sitting beside her on the swing-chair beneath the veranda. She took his hand and held it firmly. ‘I did as you suggested. I refrained from telling her about you.’

‘Good,’ she replied. ‘I would hate to be the cause of her heartbreak.’ Then she added in a quiet voice. ‘I know what it’s like to have one’s heart broken.’ George turned and looked deeply into her troubled eyes.

‘Do you know what it’s like to have it mended?’ he asked softly.

‘Yes, I think I do,’ she said, gazing at him steadily. ‘To think I thought you were just a boy.’

‘I’m glad I’ve proved you wrong.’

‘Oh, I’m the first to admit when I’m wrong.’ Suddenly, gripped with longing, he grasped her upper arms with both hands and held her gaze with the sheer force of his.

‘I don’t want you to go back to Buenos Aires after Christmas, Susan. I want you to stay up here and marry me.’ He half-expected her to laugh. If he had delivered such an outburst on the boat she would have laughed at him. That condescending laugh that had so irritated him. But she didn’t.

‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she protested weakly.

‘Then tell me. I promise you there is nothing in your past that could be bad enough to stop me loving you. My God, Susan, you’ve enchanted me. I love everything about you. I even love the things about you that I don’t know.’

She looked away and her profile toughened. ‘I’ll tell you if you promise not to pity me.’

‘I promise.’

‘I hate sentimentality,’ she warned. ‘Far worse things have happened to people.’

‘I promise,’ he repeated. She sighed heavily and leaned back against the chair.

‘I was engaged,’ she began. ‘To an Englishman called John Haddon. I was very much in love. We had known each other a number of years and with each year I loved him more. There was no question that it wouldn’t lead to marriage. My future with him was settled and needed only to be legalized.’ She hesitated a moment, staring out into the night as if her demons were there in the shadows beneath the bushes. ‘Then I got pregnant,’ she stated in a matter-of-fact way, but her voice grew thick and quiet. George couldn’t help but silently pity her. No wonder she had looked so sad at Santa Catalina among all those adoring children. ‘John was delighted and we brought forward the day of the wedding.’ She placed a hand on her belly and gently rubbed it. ‘I felt so sick. Lethargic with sickness. But it didn’t matter because a child was growing inside me. A mother will suffer anything for her child. Then one day, playing golf, John got distracted. I can’t remember exactly. But he must have swung his club for when he followed through it hit me in the face.’ George was horrified. He put his arm around her, but remembered he had promised not to pity her and let his hand flop beside her rather than onto her shoulder.

‘The next thing I remember is waking up in hospital with half my face throbbing with pain. It’s a strange thing, pain. You can’t imagine a person can hurt so much and live. But I did. They stitched me up and covered me in bandages. I was drugged to the eyeballs, but it still throbbed. John was distraught, as you can imagine. He felt terrible and was full of apologies. I was more concerned about my baby. To my relief he was fine. Of course, the wedding had to be cancelled, or rather postponed. I remember playing a lot of solitaire in my hospital bed.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Then they removed the bandages and I was faced with the horror of a disfigurement that would be with me for the rest of my life. You see, George, I had been very vain. I had taken beauty for granted. I enjoyed people admiring me. Suddenly I looked like a monster. Beauty is a very fragile thing. I would have to learn to live all over again. It sounds foolish, but it was as if I had lost the use of my legs, an important limb, a vital organ. You can’t imagine how much a beautiful woman relies on her looks. Then John broke off the engagement. He couldn’t cope with an ugly wife.’

George gasped, sickened and furious. ‘The bastard!’ he exclaimed.

‘Yes, he wasn’t the man I thought he was after all. It was a difficult time.’

‘What happened to the baby?’ he asked gently. Susan’s voice had been steady until that moment. It now quivered for he had plucked the most vulnerable string.

‘I suffered a miscarriage,’ she whispered. It sounded so much worse when said out loud.

‘From the shock of the accident?’

‘No,’ she said with a sigh, then added dispassionately. ‘From a broken heart, I think.’

‘My God! I’m so sorry!’ He groaned, his face crumpling with sympathy.

‘You said you wouldn’t pity me!’ she protested angrily as he drew her into his arms and pressed his lips to her temple. ‘I don’t want your pity.’ She tried to push him away, but he held her in a vice until she was forced to surrender to his superior strength.

‘I don’t pity you, Susan. I’ve just realized that I love you even more. I’m going to marry you and look after you for the rest of your life.’

That night the humidity brought on a torrent of rain. Susan slipped quietly into her dressing gown. Her skin felt damp to the touch and the blood pounded against her temples. With a trembling hand she opened the door of her room and stepped into the tiled corridor. The lights on the veranda swung in the wind as the downpour clattered against the glass in the hall, casting a mobile of shadows across the white walls like a cinema screen. She ran her fingers over her throat where her skin was hot and moist, straightened up and turned to face his door. She hesitated a moment. The sound of the gale whipping across the roof sharpened her resolve. It wasn’t a night to be alone. She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it. It made no sound and opened easily, as if facilitating her purpose. She saw him lying on his back, a sheet thrown casually across his waist, exposing his torso. The smell of him mingled with the natural scents of the farm: wet grass, eucalyptus, jasmine, leather and horses. She breathed quietly and stepped lightly towards the bed. He opened his eyes to see her standing over him, her white dressing gown luminous in the moonlight, like a ghost. He didn’t say a word. He simply pulled back the cover and made room for her.

She stood a moment beside the bed, encouraged by his smile. Slowly she shed her dressing gown then lifted the straps of her nightdress so that it, too, fell to the ground to form a white puddle at her feet. Her naked body was now lit up by the lamps that illuminated the veranda and George ran his eyes over the soft undulations of her breasts, hips and thighs, and Susan was confident that in this gentle, unassuming light she looked beautiful again. She climbed in beside him and let him gather her into his arms. He unclipped her hair and scrunched it in his hands so that it fell about her shoulders in disarray. His kiss was slow, exploratory, tender and she surrendered to the longing that had almost suffocated her. George surprised her. His touch was unhurried for he wanted to savour every inch of her body and he was masterful, the man she had fallen in love with, not the boy she had laughed at on board the
Fortuna
. Only his enthusiasm was boyish and that she was grateful for. She kissed him fervently, intoxicated by the warm smell of him and the sensation of her flesh against his and he grinned at her in delight for she was a woman unashamed of her experience and the pleasure she could give to a man.

Depleted of energy they lay together talking until the storm passed and the wet plains were lit up by the early rays of dawn. Susan was pleased she had found the courage to let another man make love to her. It was a hurdle that had once seemed insurmountable. But George reduced all her hurdles to a size that she could kick down with her foot. Her ghosts now seemed to be made out of nothing more than cobwebs.

Rita watched the snow melt and with it her hopes for the future. The week after Christmas saw no letter from George, nor the week after that. Maddie was rarely at home; she spent her time in Bray Cove painting or organizing Harry’s office, having muscled her way into his life. Love had transformed her into an efficient secretary, which surprised her as much as her mother. She didn’t ask to be paid; being close to Harry was more than enough. But, as much as she flirted and encouraged, Harry didn’t so much as touch her.

Then one rainy morning John Toppit brought Rita George’s letter. She accepted it tearfully, overwhelmed with relief and gratitude and at once feeling foolish that she had ever been so weak-hearted as to doubt him. She scrambled into her boots and raincoat and grabbed a large golf umbrella and set out for the cliffs, the letter folded into her pocket. With a buoyant heart she skipped through the rain, enjoying the light tap-tapping of the drops as they landed on the umbrella. In her altered state of mind she now saw beauty in the bare trees and heavy grey skies. She could hear the sea crashing onto the rocks in the distance and smell the salty scent of ozone and wet sand. It was windy up on the clifftops. Just the way she liked it. She sat beneath the umbrella, sheltered by a grassy knoll. This time she held onto the paper with great care so as not to sacrifice another precious epistle to the sea. She savoured his writing on the envelope and shuddered with anticipation as she tore it open and pulled out the thin sheet of paper. As diaphanous as the wings of a butterfly. Slowly she read what he had written and slowly her throat constricted as if an invisible hand was wrapping its icy fingers around her neck, choking her to death. Her breathing became laboured as she struggled for air and understanding. The paper shook in her grip and tears blurred the words so that she could no longer make them out. All she saw was a gloomy future that stretched out before her like the grey sea and the grey sky. Bleak and cold and unfamiliar. She had no experience of living without George. She was afraid she didn’t know how.

When she had read the letter enough times to know the words by heart she put it back in her pocket and drew her knees up to her chest where she hugged them inconsolably. George meant everything to her. She loved him more than she loved life. Without him there was no reason to go on. No reason to live. After sobbing came an empty feeling of resignation. A strange serenity. An unsettling calm. George had taken away his love and therefore the very oxygen that she needed to breathe. There would be no home, no children, no family Sunday lunches in a kitchen that smelt of freshly baked bread and stew. Only silence and sterility, like a vast, dry desert where nothing can grow.

Slowly, she stood up. Her legs were weak and trembling, but they carried her forward to the brink of the cliff. She held the umbrella in her hands until the wind blew it away. She didn’t watch it crash down the rocks and disappear onto the beach below. She let it go willingly and simply stared out ahead as if in a trance. She saw a lone gull riding the gale and slowly extended her arms. She wished that she could fly like a gull. What tremendous freedom birds had. To swoop and dive at will. To ride the breeze high above the earth. If she were in the clouds the earth wouldn’t hurt her. She’d be too far away to care. Detached and blissfully unaware of the minute detail of daily life. She’d see the green of the fields and the blue of the sea and the beauty of the forests and rivers, but not the ugliness of rejection and the hopelessness of the human struggle. What good was love? What a fool she had been to believe in it.

She shuffled closer to the edge of the cliff. She didn’t look down. She looked out ahead at the solitary gull that still glided on the wind. A ray of light penetrated the thick cloud and seemed to catch the tips of his wings, igniting them like candles. To Rita heaven now opened up to her, promising her eternal flight and relief from devastation. She let the gale take her arms and lift them. Up and down, up and down, just like a bird. They felt weightless like wings, detached, as if they were no longer in her control. She closed her eyes and felt the gentle rain on her face and the comfort of the dark. The wind blew her hair across her cheeks and lips and she threw her head back, ready to let it take her to heaven. To peace and silence and oblivion.

Just then two arms grabbed her roughly around the waist and wrenched her back. Shaken from the tranquillity of imminent death she screamed and fell to the ground with a painful thud. Blind with shock and fury she began to wrestle with the stranger who had stolen from her grasp the only escape available to her. They rolled around on the grass, panting like dogs. She clawed at his face, at his hair, at his clothes, at anything that would release her from his clutches so that she could make one final run for freedom. She howled her torment into the freezing air. A strange howl, more animal than human. The clouds closed on the ray of light and the gull disappeared into the mist. Finally, being bigger and far stronger than she, her assailant managed to pin her to the ground. She blinked up at him and when her sight returned she saw Harry Weaver’s strained, scratched features looming over her. He was struggling for breath and wet from sweat and mud, and covered in blood.

‘My God, Rita!’ he gasped in horror. ‘What are you doing?’ The sound of his voice penetrated her numb senses and she suddenly realized how close she had come to ending her life. She began to shake uncontrollably.