The Watchers on the Shore (29 page)

'And it doesn't make it any less important when you really love
somebody.'

I want to think she means me but I've got a sudden intuition that just at this moment her mind's on somebody else from somewhere
in her past, a past I hardly know about and can't share. Which doesn't matter. Nor, I tell myself, does the future. It's a great
temptation to want now to be a promise for time to come but it
would be a mistake to spoil it by thinking of all the complications
that lie ahead.

'Shall I tell you something?' I say.

'What?'

'I've never been to bed with somebody I was really in love with.'

She doesn't answer.

'I mean, I've told you about Ingrid and me.'

She nods. 'Yes
_r
'

I wonder what she'd think if I said I'd only ever been to bed with
one woman at all, and I think that that's a bit green even for a
provincial lad.

'Have there been any more letters?'

'No, just the second one I told you about." He's still seeing her."'

'Yes.'

'We had a blazing row. It lasted all week-end.'

'You said so.'

I think she wanted to come down then just to have a look at you, but her mother got the call to go into hospital.'

'Shall I have to meet her sometime?'

'I suppose so. She'll think it's funny if she comes down and doesn't see you.'

'She'll be coming down for good eventually, won't she?'

I shrug. I can't think about that, face what it implies. It's somewhere in the vague future.

'I hate it,' Donna says. 'You going home to suspicion and
rows...'

'But don't you see, that would have happened anyway. The letters
took care of that. We could be completely innocent as far as all
that's concerned.'

'Except we're not.'

No, and I don't care.' I reach across the table and take her hand. 'Donna... I said I don't care.'

She nods. 'All right. It's all right.'

A little later the mood seems to pass and we're cheerful together
again, happy that we're here alone, away from prying eyes, with
tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night to share. I could
wonder, as I have before, what she sees in me to make her be here.
She's never said she loves me in so many words. But words like that
don't matter. She's here and I love her. I know it later still, when
my feeling for her has passed the only test except that of time and
we're lying together in the narrow bed in her room, the full silky length of her beside me as she asks:

'Happy, darling?'

'You've no idea.'

She gives a contented little murmur in her throat. A floor board in the corridor creaks and there's the sound of a key scraping into a lock followed by the thump of the door as somebody comes into the next room. In a moment the pipes clunk and gurgle a bit as some water's run. Then everything's quiet again except for the traffic noises from the main road. I expected I'd want to sleep but though my body's relaxed my mind's wide awake... So this is it, my mind says. I'm now morally and legally at fault. Well, legally without a doubt, grounds having been well and truly established. But if the law is some kind of reflection of morality, in this case it's a nit. Because I reckon that a marriage that founders on the odd act of adultery has had something rotten happening to it before. And morality? There's a queer old kettle offish. Go to bed with another woman you love and you're outside the pale; but masturbate into the body of your wife on a Saturday night and you're only exercising your conjugal rights, and everything is nice and respectable and normal. Where can you come to grips with what it's all about? In not using other people for your own ends? Yes, I'll go along with that. In not hurting somebody else? But where does your responsibility to other people cross with responsibility towards yourself? And how far can you sacrifice one for the sake of the other? I've a strong suspicion that goodwill on its own won't do.

Questions, teeming through my mind. But academic; somehow
seen clearly but remotely, not touching my contentment now.
And not, as might well have happened, rolling in in the wake of
the first rush of guilt. Because there is no guilt; nothing like what
I felt with Ingrid all that long time ago; when I felt I'd both used her and debased myself. No, nothing like that at all. Donna stirs
beside me, resettling her head against my shoulder.

'Hello.'

'Hello.'

'What are you doing here?'

'I'm with a man.'

'Nice feller?'

'Mmmm.'

'What's special about him?'

'Oh, all kinds of things ... He's gentle and kind and he's got a
sort of steadiness and honesty about
him ...'

'That's a laugh.'

'What is?'

'The honesty bit.'

'Why?'

'Because he's a deceitful, lying bastard.'

'Not a bastard. But the other thing .. . it's more complicated
than that.'

Yes... When did you first realize I wanted you? It was before the letter, wasn't it?'

Yes. At the party. The way you looked at me after you'd kissed me. And I knew it meant more to you than a quick kill.'

'And what about me with you?'

'That was later the same night. You were sitting on the sofa,
surrounded by people but all on your own. You looked so lonely
and I asked you what you were thinking.'

'I remember. I wanted to bury my head in your lap ... That letter-writer did me a favour. I don't think I'd have dared say
anything otherwise.'

'Why not?'

'Oh, you seemed out of my reach; in a world full of men who talked your language and were a lot more interesting than me.'

'Actresses do fall in love outside the profession quite often, you
know.'

'I suppose so.' -

In fact, it's better if it happens that way. The other thing can be hell.'

'It seemed impossible, though. It was one night when we were in the Mitre and you were talking to a couple of people. I was watching the way you ran your finger round the bottom of your glass and all of a sudden I felt a fierce ache right through me. Not wanting to take you to bed; just wanting to share a feeling with you, to know I was somebody special as far as you were concerned. The actual sex came later... as you know ...'

'You're scared of sex, aren't you?'

'What makes you say that?'

'You're scared it'll show your feelings to be a sham.'

'Ah... It has been known to happen, you know. And anyway, I'm really a very puritanical north-country boy at heart.'

'Yes... But lovely... and very, very good to be with.'

'Am I?'

'Mmmm. I don't know how to describe it... I feel as if I've
been stroked all over inside.'

My mouth finds hers and then my fingertips, light as butterfly
wings, are exploring the contours of her face that I can't see in the
dark. And I'm filled with a wonder and tenderness and gratitude
that carry me to the edge of tears.

Guilt, no. Anxiety, yes. I wake up late on the second morning
in my own room, with it crawling round my guts like a maggot
of doom. Enjoy Now and let the Future alone. Yes, I have done.
But the week-end's all but over and where do we go from here_?
What happens now? There can't be another break like this for
some time because of Donna's commitments at the theatre. Can
we carry it off in Longford without our anonymous friend keeping
Ingrid posted? And with her mother out of hospital now it can't
be more than a couple of months or so before Ingrid'll be down here
to live. Without the letters I could have taken advantage of Ingrid's
reluctance and let her stall as long as she wanted to. But now she smells danger and she'll want to do everything she can to protect
what's hers. Me.

All I ask for now is time. Time with opportunity. Time to sort it
all out at my pace and not that forced on me by somebody else...

'You have seen her again, haven't you?'

'Well of course I have. I'm not going to let a couple of anony
mous letters affect me.'

'And there's nothing between you?'

'I've told you.'

'Yes.'

She's confused and distressed, not knowing what to believe; and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The letters are right in what
they imply. But that's beside the point. She doesn't know this for
sure and it would be all the same if I were innocent. Would it?
Wouldn't innocence give me the power to reassure her in a convincing way? No, I don't love her enough for that. It's one of the
penalties of being married to me. She ought to know it by now and
not ask for more than I can give. It's the dormant things in our
marriage that the letters have agitated; and there's their real foul
ness, what can never make them well-intentioned and right. There's
no way for the writer to know the balance of the relationship he's
interfering with, what kind of fuses his words are lighting and what
kind of charges they're connected to.

'I suppose it's no good me asking you to give that job up and come back here?'

'What, and let her rule our lives?'

'Her?'

'Well him, then. Or it. I don't know.'

'I think it's her.'

'Who?'

"This girl.'

'What!'

'I think she's writing them.'

'But what in hell's name for?'

'To get you away from me.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake! She's had one herself.'

"That could be a blind. To stop you suspecting.'

'Look, don't make me think you're more stupid than you are.'

'I suppose she's bright and intelligent. I suppose you can talk
to her about all the things I don't understand.'

'Look, for Christ's sake will you shut up about her! Will you
just shut up!'

My watch says ten-fifteen. There's a tap at the door. I shout
come in, thinking it's the chambermaid, but when there's no
sound of a key going into the lock I get out of bed and open the door
to find Donna.

'Did I wake you?'

She brushes by me in a wave of scent and freshness, looking at
me in my crumpled pyjamas, unwashed, unshaved, my hair
tousled, and at the still warm unmade bed. There's a gleam of
amusement in her eyes.

'You know you've missed breakfast?'

'I'm not bothered.'

'I've had fruit juice and cornflakes, egg, bacon and sausages,
and toast and marmalade.'

'Sadist. It sounds horrible. I'll have a kiss now and a cup of
coffee later.'

She backs away after the first kiss.

'That's your ration for now.'

'I suppose I don't look much like God's gift to women just at the moment.'