Jacintha

by Lorraine Davies

  “Overboard, yes — good word.”

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  “I can’t see Carol because I don’t want to tell her about being tempted, coming rather close, you know … And with the attack, she might think there’s more to it, might not believe me. I can’t bear to face her. That makes sense, doesn’t it?” He’d raised his voice, slammed his glass on the end table and poured another brandy.

  “I thought it might help …”

  “Sorry, Frances, I didn’t mean to be harsh. You’re being very kind, but please don’t push me.”

  After Frances went upstairs, Richard sat and drank more brandy. He was drunk when he staggered up to bed.

  Dreaming, he swam in a sea still as glass. In the distance, Jacintha watched him, her head and shoulders strangely high above the water. Was she smiling? Stern? He couldn’t tell. No matter how fast he swam, the distance between them never diminished. Then, suddenly, he was a few feet away, facing not Jacintha, but Jenny. He cried out and sank beneath the water. Something was pulling him down. He struggled wildly and woke up gasping.

  As he lay limp and sweating, he remembered how he’d kissed Jenny in his dream shortly after she died, how they’d held each other in the warm, caressing water. It seemed an innocent fantasy now, in light of all that had happened. But how long would it have stayed innocent? What was he capable of? Less than a year ago, he had been sure that he would never have touched Jenny. Now he was full of doubt. He must have had the seed of moral failure in him all along. He wasn’t religious, but sinner was a word that came to him. He’d read that to New Agers sin meant “stumbling block,” but surely “sin,” with its snake hiss, was more serious than that. He knew everyone was capable of sinning, but he couldn’t keep a philosophical distance, couldn’t consider everyone else’s capacity for it, only the particular weight and taste and smell of his own.

  He had what he thought of as an odour of guilt. Probably most people wouldn’t notice it; maybe he imagined it. He’d first become aware of it as an adolescent, when he’d stood before his father and said he’d done his homework when he hadn’t.

  “You’re lying,” his father had said, and Richard had noticed a sour smell rising from his armpits. “I can smell it,” his father had said, and Richard had thought he meant it literally, but later realized he was probably speaking metaphorically, hadn’t been close enough to smell his sweat.

  His father had wanted to be a doctor, but at twenty-two he’d married Richard’s mother when she became pregnant, and he’d gone to work in an insurance agency. He was a bitter man who’d died of a heart attack at sixty. He’d had no symptoms of heart problems before that. (Richard often worried that it was hereditary, as his paternal grandfather had also died of heart failure at fifty-eight, but that worry was far from his mind now.)

  Richard had worked hard at university, but his father always seemed more jealous of him than proud. “You don’t know how lucky you are,” he’d said, when Richard graduated cum laude. Richard’s heart ached, remembering.

  He was surprised to realize that for several minutes he hadn’t thought about Jacintha. But the heaviness in his limbs and the acidic taste in his mouth soon returned.

  THIRTY-THREE

  THE NEXT MORNING, he heard footsteps at the front door, when he was alone in the house. His heart pounded. Then he saw a letter had dropped through the slot. It was addressed to him. Trembling, he opened it. It was from Jacintha.

  Dear Richard,

  I’ve written you some emails but have gotten no response, so I’m putting pen to paper, as the old expression goes. I think it will be harder to ignore an envelope in your hand, and also they say that the writing hand is more connected to the heart than the typing hands. And everything I say to you is connected to my heart.

  Dear, dear Richard. Once you’re over the shock, you’ll see that we belong to each other in a way that few people ever get to know. We’ll own each other, always. Our connection isn’t really about sex; it’s an expression of our deeper connection, a marriage of our souls. Think of our bodies in the future performing a kind of holy ritual.

  You must let me see you again soon. Tell that large, bossy woman to stay out of our way. I’ve been to the house again twice and phoned several times, but she won’t let me see you or speak to you. Didn’t you hear me at the door? I guess you were resting upstairs. I know we can work this out. We can’t lose each other now.

  I’m sorry I deceived you. Please forgive me for that. As I said, as I will say to you again and again, I changed when you looked at me with love. That’s when I began to love you.

  Your daughter, your soul,

  Jacintha

  Richard was sitting rigidly, the letter on the kitchen table in front of him, when Frances came in.

  “Richard, what’s wrong?” Frances said. “Is that a letter from her? It has upset you terribly, hasn’t it? We can get a restraining order against her, you know. I’ve already told her that. And if she sends any more letters, simply don’t read them. Would you like me to screen the mail, burn anything she sends?”

  “No. Please. I can do that myself.”

  “But will you? You have the air of a fly caught in flypaper. But not hopelessly — I don’t mean that. I mean, you look as though you have no fight in you.” She touched his arm, leaned in, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “I’m going to go and lie down now,” Richard said.

  “All right, but will you come shopping with me for groceries later? We’ll cook a nice dinner and then maybe play Scrabble.”

  “Maybe.” He took two Tylenols and, after a miserable half hour, he fell asleep.

  When he awoke, Jacintha’s words still pounded in his head. How long would she keep tormenting him? How could he go on? He wished for oblivion, to feel nothing, to think nothing, to remember nothing. He got up, went downstairs, and drank more Scotch.

  He was very drunk when Frances came back from shopping. She took the bottle away with her when she went to cook dinner. Richard managed to eat a bit of fried chicken with rice.

  “Good shicken and rysh,” he said, and laughed giddily.

  After he’d eaten, Frances took him upstairs, changed his dressing and waited while he alternated between giggling and moaning as he struggled into his pyjamas. She made him drink a large glass of water.

  “You’ll feel better in the morning,” she said.

  “Liar,” he said. “But thanks, anyway. You’re a peach.”

  The next morning, Frances said, “It’s a beautiful day, cold but not too bad. Let’s go and sit in the garden for a while.”

  Richard’s hangover had been muted by pills, and he’d managed to eat an omelette and green salad for brunch.

  “I don’t have a coat here,” Richard said. His blood-soaked jacket had been taken from him in the ambulance, and Carol hadn’t thought to bring one of his winter coats to Frances’s.

  “I’ll get you something warm,” Frances said and went up to her bedroom.

  Aubrey’s overcoat was still in their closet. She took it downstairs. “Look,” she said. “Aubrey bought it on Savile Row in London. Feel how thick the cashmere is.”

  Richard, feeling something of a usurper, slipped into the coat.

  They settled into cushioned deck chairs with their coffee. It was a day of clouds. Huge, cottony piles mounded like snow on the solid mountaintops. Frances said she saw an old god reclining in them, beard and Roman nose upward, but Richard couldn’t see it.

  “As a little girl,” she said, “I used to be upset when the pictures changed. I’d see a rabbit and cry when it became stringy wisps. I hadn’t thought about that in decades, and then one day my meditation teacher suggested an ‘amusing meditation.’ He said, ‘Watch the image fade, wish for it to fade, say going, going, gone, and clap your hands.’”

  “Auctioning off your attachments?” Richard said.

  “You’ve got it!” Frances said. “Except there’d be no takers, because everyone has too many att
achments of their own.”

  Richard watched but saw no clouds that reminded him of anything except the mountains they mimicked. They were oppressively large and static. They inched, eked out small wisps, were stubbornly unevocative.

  As a child he’d been interested in the different types of clouds; had learned the names of many of them. And before that there were dinosaurs and bugs and stars and carnivorous plants to study and admire. Then, gradually, as he became enamoured of the world of literature, he had lost his keen interest in the mystery and beauty of nature.

  There was so much he didn’t know about the world. He’d thought he knew enough, and what most to fear hadn’t been a priority. A cliff crushing his house and killing someone had never entered any list of what to dread. As for injury by incest, that was as far from being a possibility as a cannibal attacking him, cutting a slice off his leg and chomping on it, eyes glittering, blood dripping down his chin.

  His leg started to ache insistently. The strong connection between painful thoughts and bodily pain was another thing he hadn’t known about. (Maybe it was just him.) And then there was the unreliability of received wisdom — the truth had not set him free. He was caged by it, scrabbling and biting and squealing like a trapped squirrel he’d once seen throwing itself against the steel bars of a trap.

  Frances suddenly clapped her hands and laughed. “A whale changed into a snake,” she said.

  “I can hardly believe we’re looking at the same sky,” Richard said.

  “In a way, we’re not. Never mind. Come, let’s go in and warm up.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THE NEXT DAY another letter from Jacintha arrived.

  Dear Richard,

  I’ve waited to hear from you, but I’m through waiting. If you won’t see me and then agree to continue to see me, I’ll tell Carol who I am and that we’ve slept together. She won’t want you anymore, once she believes that. Most people are so conservative, so boxed in by convention, that they recoil at anything unusual, no matter how profound and beautiful it is. She’d be disgusted. I’d be sorry to do that, but I’m desperate.

  I can’t believe you want to lose me. We can be together secretly and you can go on living in your sham marriage, if you want to — loving both me and her, but me so much more. (You know that’s true.) That’s one option. Or we can go away together — a much better idea.

  You can’t stay with her. That would be agony for me. We must go away together.

  Phone me, Richard. Very soon. Please.

  Your loving Jacintha

  Richard sat at the kitchen table while Frances made Earl Grey tea. He wondered if he’d ever be able to drink it again, or if the aroma would conjure up this terrible time forever after. He’d been drinking gin and tonic when Grace packed to leave him, and the smell of gin still made him nauseous.

  He heard something at the window and turned to see bamboo flailing in the wind, brushing against the glass, whispering some sad, indecipherable message, something primal, something without hope.

  Then a painting near the window caught his eye.

  “I see you’ve noticed Aubrey’s painting of Carol. It’s been in storage, but I decided I’d like to be able to look at it again.”

  Carol’s hair, so curly in its natural state, had been straightened and fell long and smooth, framing her face. The style Jacintha wore. Carol would have been about twenty-four, Jacintha’s age. He angled his chair so the painting was not in his line of sight.

  “Please tell me what’s troubling you so deeply,” Frances said.

  “It’s hard.”

  “I know.”

  He felt it was cowardly to want to tell. He should bear this by himself. The secret should burn in him, sear his insides, sear his soul. He deserved to suffer, should not make anyone else suffer by sharing his burden. But Frances could probably handle it. He trusted Frances. Maybe he should tell Frances.

  “She’s my daughter,” he blurted, shocked at how quickly the words escaped him. “Jacintha’s my daughter.”

  It was out. He watched Frances’s face. She looked puzzled.

  “How do you know? How do you know it’s true? I mean …”

  “Wait here.” He went to his room and got the DNA result and handed it to Frances. Watched her face again. What was that look? Censure? Shock?

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Frances said. Not censure, then; not even much shock. She got up, put her arms around him. He cried and Frances wiped away his tears with her sleeve, kissed him on the cheek.

  Finally, he said, “I can’t take any more comforting at the moment, Frances.”

  She sat down.

  Richard told her how he had “paid off” Jacintha’s mother twenty-five years ago, how he hadn’t known about Jacintha’s existence, didn’t know who she was until the time of his stabbing, and that Jacintha had known who he was when their relationship began. “You see now why I’m so wretched. Christ, Frances. I almost had an affair with my own daughter.”

  “The stabbing. The boy. Was he the one who told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he believe you’d slept with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  “No, thank god, no.”

  “But you were tempted.”

  Richard didn’t answer, only hung his head.

  Frances was quiet for a while, then said, “She’s your daughter by genes only, not by upbringing. She was a stranger to you.”

  “Christ, you sound like her.”

  “Listen. It’s not the disaster you think it is. That’s the main thing, Richard. You didn’t know. You’ve no need to blame yourself so severely.”

  “And yet I do.”

  “She’s the one to blame. She tricked you. She’s obviously emotionally unbalanced.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Not yours.”

  “I wasn’t there for her.”

  “You were young. You believed her mother had an abortion.”

  “But did I? Or did I just not want to know?” Knowing and not knowing again.

  “Richard, you’ve got to stop whipping yourself like this.”

  “Do you know what the most terrible thing is?” Richard said.

  “No, what is it?”

  Richard glanced at the bamboo, which had turned malevolent, hissing, “Say it, say it.” No, it didn’t need to be said. It shouldn’t be said. He didn’t say it.

  He said, instead, “I don’t think she’ll let me go.”

  “You’ll have to help her — help her to see that she must.”

  “How, for Christ’s sake?”

  “You could urge her to get counselling.”

  “And if she won’t?” Richard stood up. He handed her Jacintha’s latest letter.

  “She really is terribly troubled, isn’t she?” Frances said when she’d read it. “Does she have adoptive parents?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they will have to get involved.”

  “And have the whole sordid thing come out? No.”

  “You might have no other choice.”

  “What about Carol?”

  “You must tell her, Richard. When someone tries to blackmail you, you have to take away their ammunition.”

  “And Imogen? What if Jacintha decides to lie to Imogen?”

  “How would she find her?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know.”

  “Anyway, Jacintha will probably give up once she knows you’ve told Carol everything. Besides, you shouldn’t underestimate Carol’s or Imogen’s capacity to understand. They both love you very much.” After a moment’s thought, she said, “You do love Carol, don’t you?”

  Richard nodded by way of an answer. He wanted to say, yes, of course I do, clearly and firmly, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “You must forgive yourself, Richard, for everyone’s sake.”

  “You want me to ‘be wise hereafter, and seek for grace,’ but I may not be capable of it.”


  “Who are you quoting?”

  “Caliban.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  FOR HIS DREADED audience with Carol, Richard was dressed as though appearing before a court of law: in a white shirt, grey slacks, and a grey tweed jacket. Only the tie was lacking. He sat waiting in a wingback chair, his arms on the armrests; too much, he realized, as though he were the judge and not the prisoner in the dock. He moved to a softer chair, let his shoulders slump. Sweat soaked the underarms of his shirt.

  Frances showed Carol in and left the room.

  “God, you look like death, Richard,” Carol said, and put her hand on his forehead.

  “No, don’t. Please sit down.”

  She sat opposite him, leaned forward. “What is it, dear? Whatever it is, I’m here for you. Don’t be afraid to tell me what’s troubling you so terribly.”

  Richard reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the DNA test result and handed it to her.

  Carol scanned the document. “What’s this? I don’t understand.”

  Richard said nothing. Waited.

  “Your DNA? And Jacintha’s … Is she your student? The one I … I’m so sorry. I thought you and her … You’re related to her?”

  “Yes. My daughter.”

  “Oh my God, Richard. Your daughter? But why didn’t you tell me? I mean, a daughter. Why shouldn’t I know? From an affair before your first marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s nothing to me. It happens all the time. The pity is that you didn’t know. All those wasted years. That’s why she was with you. Why she kissed you.”

  Carol got up, stroked his hair, his cheek.

  “Carol. Stop. Sit down.”

  He watched as fear slowly filled her eyes.

  “Someone said … She might say …” Richard said.

  “What, for God’s sake?”

  “That we were together.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean … physically.”

  “You mean, slept with? She’ll say you slept with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus, Richard. You can’t have done that. Did you? Did you sleep with her?”