Because Jon lied to me. He had planned this trip before he ever mentioned it to me—and Marijohn had the piano tuned because she knew he was coming.
Because he talks to Marijohn of things which he has never mentioned to me.
Because this morning he preferred Marijohn’s company to mine...
She dashed away her tears, pressing her lips together in a determined effort to pull herself together. She was being absurd, worse than an adolescent. Trust was a basic element of marriage, and she trusted Jon. Everything was perfectly all right and she was imagining all kinds of dreadful possibilities without a grain of proof. She would go down to the rocks to meet them because there was no reason why she should be afraid of what she might find and because it was utterly ridiculous to sit on top of a cliff weeping. She would go right away.
She found a way to the first shelf after a few minutes and started to scramble over towards the red shirt. In spite of herself she found she was thinking about Marijohn again. Marijohn wasn’t like other people, Justin had said. Marijohn could talk to Jon when he was in the Distant Mood. She could cope with him when Sarah did not even begin to know how to deal with the situation. Marijohn...
The scramble over the rocks was more difficult than it had appeared from the cliff path above. She found herself making wide detours and after a time she had lost sight of the red shirt and realized she had been forced to move too far over to the left.
It was then that she heard Jon laugh.
She stopped, her heart thumping from the exertion of the scramble and from something else which she refused to acknowledge. Then, very slowly, despising herself for the subterfuge, she moved forward quietly, taking great care that she should see them before they should see her.
She suddenly realized she was very frightened indeed.
There was a large white rock ahead, its surface worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. It was cold beneath her hot hands. She moved forward, still gripping the rock, and edged herself sideways until she could see round it to the rocks beyond.
Relief rushed through her in great warm overwhelming waves.
Beyond her was a small lagoon, similar to the ones she had seen from the cliff-path, and a flat ledge of rock sloped gently to the water’s edge. Marijohn was lying on her back on the rocks enjoying the sunshine. She wore a white bathing costume and dark glasses which were tilted to the edge of her nose and as she gazed up at the blue sky far above her, her arms were behind her head, the palms of her hands pillowing her hair.
Jon, in black bathing trunks, was sitting by the water’s edge some distance away from her and was paddling his feet idly in the still water of the lagoon.
Sarah was just about to call out to him and move out from behind the rock when Jon laughed again and splashed one foot lazily in the water.
Marijohn sat up slowly, propping herself on one elbow and took off her sunglasses. Sarah couldn’t see her face, only the back of her shining hair and the smooth tanned skin above the edge of her bathing costume.
“Why?” she said. She said nothing else at all, only the one monosyllable, and Sarah wondered what she meant and what she was querying.
Jon swiveled round, and Sarah instinctively withdrew behind the white boulder so that he would not see her.
“I don’t know,” she heard him say uneasily. “There’s no reason why I should feel so happy.”
“I know.”
There was a silence. When Sarah had the courage to look at them again she saw that Jon was standing up, looking out to sea and that although Marijohn was also standing up she was still several paces away from him. They were motionless.
The sea lapped insistently at the rocks beyond the lagoon; a wave broke into the pool and the spray began to fly as the tide turned. Nothing else happened. There was no reason at all why suddenly Sarah should feel aware of panic. And as she stood rigid with fear, hardly able to breathe, she heard Jon say quietly to his cousin, “Why don’t you come to Canada?”
There was a pause. Everything seemed to cease except the sea. Then: “My dear Jon, what on earth would be the point of that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and he sounded strangely lost and baffled. “I don’t know.”
“We’ve been into all this before, Jon.”
“Yes,” he said emptily. “We’ve been into all this before.”
“After your wife was dead and my marriage was in ruins we went into it in detail right here at Clougy.”
“For God’s sake!” he shouted suddenly. “For God’s sake don’t talk of that scene with Sophia again! Christ Almighty—”
“Jon, darling.”
And still they stood apart from one another, he slumped against a rock, his hands tight, white fists at his sides, she motionless by the water’s edge, the sun shining full on her hair.
“Marijohn,” he said, “I know we’ve never, never mentioned this in words either now after I met you again or ten years after it all happened, but—”
“There’s no need to mention it,” she said swiftly. “I understand. There’s no need to talk about it.”
“But ... oh God, why? Why, Marijohn? Why, why, why?”
She stared at him, still motionless, but somehow that strange stillness was lost as if a spell had been broken and the mystery of the quiet scene was shattered.
She doesn’t understand him, thought Sarah suddenly. She’s going to have to ask him what he means.
And somehow the knowledge was a victory which she could neither understand nor explain.
“Yes,” said Jon. “Why? Why did you have to kill Sophia?”
A wave thudded against the rocks and exploded in a cloud of spray so that the lagoon was no longer still and peaceful but a turmoil of boiling surf. And after the roar of the undertow had receded came a faint shout from the cliff high above them, and Sarah saw Justin standing on the top of the cliffs waving to attract their attention.
She drew further out of sight at once so that he wouldn’t see her, and began to scramble back over the rocks to find a hiding-place before the others started to retrace their steps to the cliff path. When she eventually sank down to rest behind a pile of boulders her breath was coming in gasps which hurt her lungs, and her whole body was trembling with the shock. She sat there numbly for a while, and then the tide began to surge across the rocks towards her as it ate its way greedily inland to the cliffs, and she knew she would have to go back.
Moving very slowly, she stood up and began to stumble blindly back towards the cliff path to Clougy.
2
When Justin returned from the farm with the milk he met the postman pushing his bicycle up the track from Clougy and they paused for a moment to talk to one another.
“Only two letters today,” said the Cornishman placidly, extracting a large handkerchief to mop his forehead. “One for Mrs. Rivers, t’other for yourself. Lor’ it’s hot today, ain’t it! Makes a change, I say. Too much rain lately.”
Justin agreed politely.
Presently when he reached the house he put the milk down on the hall table and stopped to examine the mail. The letter to Marijohn was postmarked London, the address typewritten. Perhaps it was from Michael Rivers’ office. Rivers, Justin knew, still handled Marijohn’s legal affairs.
The other envelope was white and square and covered by a large level handwriting which he did not recognize, J. Towers, Esq., the writer had scrawled, Clougy, St. Just, Penzance, Cornwall. The post-mark was also London.
Justin fumbled with the flap of the envelope, wondering who could be writing to him. The sensation of puzzled interest was pleasant and when he pulled the single sheet of white paper from the close-fitting envelope he sat down on the stairs before opening the folded slip of paper to see the signature.
The signature was very short. Only three letters. Someone had merely written Eve in that same large level handwriting, but even as he realized with a jolt that the letter wasn’t meant for him his glance travelled to the top of the paper automatically.
>
Dear Jon, Eve had written. Had dinner with Max in London last week. He wanted to know why you had asked him where I lived and why you had sounded so interested in me. We ended up by having a long talk about that time ten years ago, and in the end he told me you were back at Clougy and that he had decided to come down and see you. Just thought I’d drop you a line to warn you to be pretty damn careful, as he knows more than you think. If you’re interested in hearing more about this, why don’t you come and see me any time from Saturday onwards—address and phone number above. I’m staying in St. Ives for a few days and won’t be going back to town till Tuesday. Eve.
Justin read the letter three times. Then, very carefully, he replaced the sheet of notepaper in its neat white envelope and tucked the letter deep into the privacy of his wallet.
3
When Sarah reached the house at last there was a silver-gray Rolls Royce in the driveway and the sound of laughter floated from the open windows of the drawing-room towards her on the still air. She slipped into the house by the sidedoor and managed to creep up to her room without being seen. Sitting down in front of the dressing-table she stared into the mirror for one long moment before fumbling with the jars of make-up, and then she stood up blindly and moved into the bathroom to wash the tearstains from her face. When she came back to the dressing-table Jon was on the lawn below and calling something over his shoulder.
“... imagine what can have happened to her,” she heard him say. “Are you sure she said she was going down to the cove, Justin?”
She could not hear Justin’s reply. She stood by the window shielded by the curtain and watched Jon as he began to move forward again across the lawn.
“... better go and find her in case she’s got lost...” His voice tailed away and presently she found her view of him was blurring before her eyes until she could scarcely see.
She sat down again at the dressing-table.
“Of course she’s not lost,” Marijohn’s voice said clearly from the lawn below, sounding surprisingly close at hand. “She’s probably gone for a walk before lunch.”
“Another walk?” said a man’s unfamiliar drawl, sounding amused. “God, she must be an Amazon! No normal woman would spend the morning toiling up the cliffs at Kendijack and then toiling over some more cliffs around Clougy for a pre-prandial stroll! Jon never told me he’d married one of these keen outdoor types.”
“He hasn’t,” said Marijohn briefly. “She’s not.”
“Thank God for that! I had a sudden hideous vision of a hearty female with muscular shoulders and tombstone teeth ... What’s she like? Is she pretty? Jon said that physically she was just like Sophia.”
“Justin,” said Marijohn to the room behind her. “Would you—”
“He’s gone. He slipped out a second ago when I was making my anti-Amazon speech. Well, tell me about Sarah, Marijohn. Is she—”
“You’ll meet her soon enough.”
“Is Jon very much in love with her?”
“He married her.”
“Yes, I know. I was very surprised. She must be damn good.”
“Good?”
“In bed. Can I have another drink?”
“Of course.”
There was a pause, the stillness of a hot summer morning.
“And you,” said Max Alexander. “You. I’m surprised you never married again. What happened after the divorce? Did you go abroad? I never saw you in London.”
“I worked in Paris for a while.”
“God, that sounds glamorous!”
“It was extremely boring. I could only endure it for a year.”
“And then?”
“I came back. Do you want some ice in your drink?”
“No, no, I can’t bear this American fetish of loading every drink with ice ... Thanks ... I see. And what did you do when you returned?”
“Nothing special.”
“Did you come back here?”
“Not straight away.”
“Lord, it’s strange coming back! Didn’t it seem strange to you?”
“No, why should it?”
“Why should it?”
“Yes, why should it? Clougy has many happy memories for me.”
“You’re not serious, of course.”
“Perfectly. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Oh.”
Another pause. A gull drifted far overhead, its wings outstretched, its neck craning towards the sun.
“I must say,” said Max Alexander, “I never thought Jon would come back here, least of all with his new wife. Does he ever speak of Sophia?”
“Never.”
“He’s closed the door, as it were, on that part of his past?”
“Why do you suppose he asked you down here?”
“I was hoping,” said Alexander, “that you could tell me.”
“I’m not sure I quite understand you.”
“No? Hell, Jon was crazy about Sophia, wasn’t he? Any husband would have been. With a woman like that—”
“Sophia no longer exists. Jon’s made a new life for himself and Sophia’s memory is nothing to him now. Nothing at all.”
“Yet he’s married someone who physically and sexually—”
“Men often prefer one type of looks in a woman. It means nothing at all. Besides there’s more to love than merely a sexual relationship or a physical attraction.”
“That is the common delusion, I believe.”
“You think any relationship between a man and a woman is basically sexual?”
“Of course it is! It’s impossible for a man and a woman to have an intimate relationship with no sex in it whatsoever!”
“I think,” said Marijohn, “we’ve somehow succeeded in wandering from the point.”
“But don’t you agree with me?”
“Agree with you? What am I supposed to be agreeing with?”
“That it’s impossible for a man and a woman to have an intimate relationship with no sex in it whatsoever.”
“That would depend upon the man and woman.”
“On the contrary I’d say it depended entirely on their sexual capacity! Take Jon for instance. He’s married twice and had a lot of women but no woman’s going to interest him unless she attracts him physically.”
“Why shouldn’t Jon have his share of sex? Most men need it and get it so why shouldn’t he? And why should his ‘sexual capacity,’ as you call it, affect any other relationship he might have? And what’s so special about sex anyway? It often has nothing whatsoever to do with real intimacy. Why talk of it as if it were the beginning and end of everything? Sex is so often nothing but pointless futility.”
Alexander hesitated slightly before he laughed. The hesitation made the laughter sound a little uncertain.
“For pointless futility it certainly seems to be doing very well!” And when she didn’t answer he said easily, “That sounds very much a woman’s point of view, Marijohn.”
“Perhaps,” she said flatly, not arguing, her footsteps moving into the house. “I must go and see how burnt the lunch is getting. Excuse me.”
“Of course.”
There was silence. Sarah found she was still clutching the edge of the dressing-table stool. She glanced into the mirror. Her dark eyes stared back at her, her dark hair straggling untidily from its position, her mouth unsmiling, devoid of make-up. She reached automatically for her lipstick.
I want to go, she thought; please, Jon, let’s go—let’s go anywhere so long as it’s somewhere far from this place. Let’s go now. If only I could go...
She started to re-apply her powder.
I don’t want to meet Max^ I don’t care if he was your friend once, Jon; I don’t want to meet him because I can’t bear men who talk of women and sex in bored amused voices as if they’ve seen all there is to see and know all there is to know. I want to go, Jon, now, this minute. If only we could go...
She undid her hair and let it fall to her shoulders before brushing it upwards again and pick
ing up her comb.
And most of all, Jon, I want to go away from your cousin because she doesn’t like me, Jon, I know she doesn’t, and I hate her, no matter how hard I try to pretend I don’t ... I hate her and I’m afraid of her although I don’t know why, and Jon, can’t we go soon, Jon, because I want to escape ... It’s not just because she dislikes me—in fact “dislike” is the wrong word. She despises me. You won’t believe she despises me, Jon, because she’s always been so kind to me ever since we set foot in this house, but she does, I know she does, because I can feel it. She despises me just as she despised Sophia.
She put down her comb and examined the little jar of liquid eye-shadow.
Better not to think of Sophia.
But all those lies. Jon, all those lies. And you swore to me her death was an accident. You lied and lied and lied for Marijohn...
Oh, God, I want to go, I want to get away. Please Jon, take me away from this place because I’m frightened and I want to escape...
She went out into the corridor. It was cool there, and the bannister was smooth against her hot palm. She walked downstairs, crossed the hall and entered the drawing-room.
The man turned as she came in. He turned to face her and she saw all that she had not seen when she had listened to his conversation earlier—the humorous mouth, the wide blue eyes that for some reason seemed very honest and trusting, the broken nose, the traces of plastic surgery which stretched from his left temple to the jawbone. There were lines about the mouth. They were deep lines which would get deeper with time, but apart from this there was no other indication that he had suffered and known pain. He looked older than Jon, but not much older. The suffering hadn’t aged him, as it would have aged some men, nor had it given him the worn, tired appearance of exhaustion.
She stood staring, suddenly at a loss for words. It was some seconds before she realized that he too was experiencing difficulty in choosing his opening remarks.
“Good Lord!” he said at last, and his blue eyes were wide with honest surprise. “But you’re young! I thought you were Jon’s age. No one ever told me you were young.”
She smiled awkwardly. “Not as young as all that!”
The Dark Shore Page 11