Love is a Distant Shore

by Claire Harrison

  Petra Morgan, swimmer, teacher, woman, once a daughter. She sat down on the bed and stared at the nicked surface of her dressing-table. Once a daughter, now no longer. She tasted the words on her tongue, a daughter no longer. They had a hard, unusual edge to them. She had been a daughter all her life. It wasn't a role she could throw off so easily, snap, just like that. It still clung to her so that she felt the old anxiety rise up in her. For her, being a daughter had encompassed many roles. She'd been a mother to her own mother, a protector, a breadwinner, a caretaker, a confidante, a nurturer. What would she be if she didn't play those roles? Who would she become without them?

  She thought about Geoff with his offer of friendship, the hidden offer of sex. She could let him come marching into that void, couldn't she? There was nothing stopping her any more; her shameful secret didn't exist any longer. All her life, she had kept Sheila and her minimal social life at opposite poles from one another. She had spent so much effort juggling times and schedules around so that no one from her outside world would ever meet the woman who dominated her inside one. Her former lover had never even been aware that Petra actually had a mother living in the same city, much less the same flat. The stress imposed on her by that deceit had been almost unbearable.

  But nothing was stopping her now. The cage around her, the cage whose steel bars had been Sheila's needs and wants and fears and dependence, had disappeared and she was free to go. She could walk into Geoff's arms and take what he was willing to give her—sex, pleasure, conversation, emotional support at a time when she could sorely use it. Oh, yes, she could use it. No matter how numb she felt, no matter how clearly her mind seemed to be working, Petra could feel her own fragility. The slightest thing would shatter it so that all her control, her poise, the tension that was holding her together in one piece would break into a thousand parts. Petra had this horrifying image of herself coming apart, the bits and pieces scattered and lost and irretrievable.

  It was tempting to think about Geoff. Take care of yourself. He wanted to help her with that task; he wanted to help her take care of herself. She had felt that desire in him, and she knew that if she reached out, he would be there offering the solace of his body, his kindness, his generosity. How seductive that was. It would be so easy to lean on his strength; it would be so easy to fall into his willing arms, off the edge of the cliff, the narrow path of solitude and unhappiness and independence. But where would that leave her when Geoff wasn't there? When the swim was over and he had left for some remote part of the world? A lover no longer. She would have traded one terminated identity for one even more tentative and more unlikely to last.

  Petra stood up, walked over to the curtains and pulled them open with a determined jerk of her wrist. She couldn't give up what she had spent years becoming. Even with Sheila gone, the structure of the personality that Petra had built around herself was firmly in place. She was a loner, a fighter, a coper and a survivor. And she had the swim to think about. She mustn't lose sight of what she needed to complete that swim; dedication, independence, and concentration. If she weakened and used Geoff as an emotional crutch, that weakness would be pervasive, undercutting her strengths. No, she was going to have to go it alone—as she always had, no matter what surprises came her way, no matter what fate flung in her face.

  It was this attitude that enabled Petra to clean that echoing flat, to get through a sleepless night, to make the necessary phone calls the next day, and to sit in the lawyer's office and have the bombshell dropped on her without even so much as flinching.

  'Well, the estate isn't much, you know,' he was saying, looking at her over his bifocals and gesturing at a sheaf of papers. The lawyer was short, rotund and balding and had been Sheila's lawyer for as long as Petra could remember.

  She nodded.

  'Now, as far as probate… well, it will be simple enough. The will is quite straightforward, everything's left to you, so it's only a matter of filing the proper forms. We'll do that for you.'

  Her voice was low. 'Thank you.'

  'And we'll take care of the obituary if you want.'

  'Yes, please.'

  He cleared his throat. 'Have you notified the rest of the family?'

  'There isn't anyone else.'

  The lawyer shifted uncomfortably and then picked up a small manila envelope that was lying on his desk. 'Your mother gave me this years ago. She said you were to have it when she died.'

  Petra glanced up at him, took it from his hand and then slowly opened it, drawing out the black and white photograph of a laughing young man. He had curly dark hair, light eyes and a happy, infectious grin. He looked like he and the cameraman had just cracked the world's funniest joke.

  'Who?' she whispered and then knew.

  'Your father. I told her we could track him down for her, but she wouldn't do it.' He made a tching sound with his tongue. 'I said it wasn't right. We could have got some financial support for you, but she refused.'

  Petra had been under the impression that Sheila had, a long time ago, destroyed all the photographs from her courtship and marriage. For as long as she could remember, the family album, the one that held pictures of Sheila as a small girl and her dead grandparents, had also had pages that had been ripped out, their edges frayed and torn. As a result, Petra had never known what her father looked like, and she had rarely asked her mother anything about him because, the few times she had dared, Sheila had gone into rages. Now, she stared down at that seemingly carefree young man and felt the fragile egg-shell of her control waver, tremble, threaten to crack. But she took a deep breath and then slipped the photograph back into its manila sheath.

  'Thank you,' she said and stood up.

  The lawyer looked relieved and stood up, too. 'So,' he said, 'we'll be in touch.' Then, he cleared his throat with an awkward sound, and Petra steeled herself for what was to come. He wanted to be sympathetic, she could tell. He wanted to make her feel better about a situation that had nothing in it but distress and unhappiness. But, for some reason that she couldn't understand, acquaintances that barely knew her or her mother felt the need to comment on the occasion with trite platitudes. The insurance agent had said in a falsely hearty voice, 'Well, life does go on.' Her elderly neighbour downstairs had patted her on the shoulder and said, 'It's God's will.' Now the lawyer was about to speak his piece and Petra tried to prepare herself for it.

  'She was a sick woman,' he said with a shake of his head.

  'Yes.'

  'Well,' he cleared his throat again and looked uncomfortable, 'sometimes these things are for the best.'

  Marnie was more animated than Geoff had ever seen her. She chattered brightly, smiled at him frequently and pressed his knee under the table with her own. He couldn't decide whether it was the vast quantity of wine that she'd drunk at dinner that sparked this feverish excitement or the thrill of his presence. He'd remembered her as quiet, a bit sultry, even passive at times. Now, she was at the opposite end of the extreme. Her blue eyes glittered at him between thickened dark lashes, and she kept sweeping back her long, blonde hair with a nervous motion. And, every once in a while, she would lean far forward so that he could glimpse the creamy cleavage barely held in by her dress. Oh, she was stacked all right. That part of her had remained the same.

  '… and I moved to a new building after the burglary. It was too scary coming home and wondering if I'd been broken into again. Of course, I had to pay an extra hundred in rent and that put a crimp into my budget. And it killed the summer holidays.'

  Geoff, bored to death, gave her a winning smile. 'So what did you do?'

  'Well, I had planned a trip out to Vancouver, I've always wanted to see the Rockies, but that was really expensive so I…'

  Had she always been this way? Geoff looked back in the past and wondered if Marnie's conversation had always been so banal. But he couldn't ever remember talking to her. His memories were all of physical encounters; kisses in his car, lovemaking episodes in his or her bed, late-night embraces on do
orsteps. Those memories made him even more restless than he was and, when Marnie had finished a full-fledged diatribe on travel agents, Geoff signalled to a waiter.

  'Time to go,' he said.

  'Oh… sure, Geoff. I'd just like to visit the ladies.'

  When she was gone, Geoff paid the bill, wincing slightly at the sum and thinking that the meal hadn't been all that wonderful considering the reputation of the restaurant and the attitude of the waiter who had treated the food as if it were fit to serve royalty. But the atmosphere was what he'd been seeking, elegant and intimate, the kind of set-up where a man and a woman can sit close to one another and share a dinner without interruption or intrusion. He'd envisaged linen tablecloths, heavy silver and candles. And, having got everything he'd expected, Geoff wondered why he felt so let down.

  Marnie arrived in the restaurant's foyer in full warpaint. Ever since Geoff had noticed Jennifer's over-application of make-up, he'd become aware of cosmetics. Now, he could tell that Marnie had reapplied mascara, blusher and lipstick. Her mouth gleamed at him, red and pouting. And she'd put on perfume as well. As he helped her with her raincoat, the aura of rose wafted from her neck to his nose.

  Outside a light rain was falling, and Geoff had Marnie wait at the restaurant door while he limped around the block and got his car. When he picked her up, she immediately slid over to him so that their shoulders and thighs touched.

  'I love the rain, don't you?' she gushed.

  'As long as it keeps out of my eyes,' he said.

  'You know, Geoff, I think you've changed.'

  He pulled into the late night traffic. 'I have?'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'How?'

  'Well, you're softer for one thing.'

  'Softer? What does that mean?'

  'I can't exactly explain it,' she said, 'but you've lost some of your edges.'

  'I had edges?'

  'Hard ones,' she said. 'Oh, you know, Geoff Hamilton, tough correspondent and Geoff Hamilton, dashing man about town.'

  'Are you saying that my personality's changed?'

  'I guess so. You're not as… distant.'

  'I was distant with you?'

  She nodded. 'You always made sure that I knew you weren't up for sale.'

  Geoff glanced at her quickly and then negotiated a turn. The rain had increased in intensity and he was forced to put the screenwipers on a faster speed. 'Marnie,' he said carefully, 'I'm still not "for sale", as you put it. I'm not interested in…'

  'Oh, I know that,' she said airily, 'but you're not so hard about it. You're a lot… nicer.'

  Geoff tried to look back and call to mind the man he'd been two years ago, but it was hard to capture an image. Had he been so hard? So adamant about what he wanted? He knew that he'd been intent on getting his message across, but he'd always thought that he'd done it with subtlety and finesse. And, in addition, he'd always considered himself as generous and kind, but what Marnie seemed to be saying, in her inarticulate way, was that a cold aloofness had shown through his flirtatious charm.

  'Of course,' she was saying, 'everybody changes. I've changed, too.'

  'Have you?'

  'I don't worry as much about things as I used to. I don't count on things. That way I'm not so disappointed when they don't turn out the way I want.'

  Her voice was bright and cheerful, but Geoff couldn't help wondering how many disappointments, how many broken dreams, had brought on that attitude. Geoff knew he hadn't been the only man in Marnie's life. She was too pretty not to catch the male eye and far too sexy not to invite passes. She'd had half a dozen affairs when he'd taken her out two years before, and he could only guess at the numbers since. He'd always assumed that she'd undertaken their small liaison with the same casualness that she'd undertaken the others, but now he saw that his perceptions of her might have been wrong from the start. He'd taken her at face value, instead of wondering what went on beneath the smiles and willingness to hop into bed at a moment's notice.

  He didn't speak, and Marnie leaned forward and switched on the car radio. A lilting love song filled the car and she snuggled closer to him.

  'It's good to be with you again,' she said with a sigh. 'I missed you when you went to Beirut.' And then she began to hum along with the song.

  It came to Geoff then that what he'd planned for the rest of the evening wasn't going to come off. He had intended to take Marnie home, accept her invitation to see her new flat, have a small drink from her liquor cabinet and then take her to bed. It had been a simple plan, easy to formulate and easy to accomplish. It hadn't taken much thinking on his part, and that's what he'd wanted—or thought he wanted—simplicity, accessibility, ease of acquisition. He'd thought of Marnie as an object that he was going to purchase with an expensive meal and then use until he was satiated with her.

  But something had changed inside Geoff, something fundamental to the way he thought and acted. In the past, he'd been able to think about women as objects; as pretty faces or sexy bodies. He hadn't listened to their conversations or been interested in their personalities, but now the shield he'd protected himself with had splintered, and he could no longer maintain the arm's length distance that he'd successfully kept in the past. Despite all his attempts to the contrary, Geoff couldn't keep himself from seeing Marnie as a 'person' instead of a woman he intended to sleep with. And, seeing her as a 'person', had a totally detrimental effect on his libido. Geoff wasn't particularly attracted to Marnie when he actually tuned into what she was saying or understood what she was like. In fact, beneath the sophistication, the cosmetic overlay, the full-blown décolletage, there was something sad and wistful about her that made him want to comfort her instead of make love to her.

  He pulled up to the kerb in front of Marnie's flat and she reached down and picked up her purse.

  'Coming in for a nightcap?' she asked, and her voice held a blatant hint in it.

  'Marnie, I…'

  'I remember,' she said, 'that you always liked cognac. So I got some, just for you.'

  Street lights pierced the darkness in the car and picked out the brightness of her hair and her expectant eyes. Geoff leaned forward and kissed her gently on the mouth, breaking the contact when he felt her starting to respond. 'You're a sweetheart,' he said, 'but I think I'll skip it tonight.'

  'Skip it?'

  'Yeah, I don't think…'

  'You mean, you don't want to come up with me?' she asked. The forlorn note in her voice was real.

  Telling her the truth, Geoff saw, would have been far too cruel so he lied, tempering his decision to soften it and make it easier for her to bear. 'I'm not feeling well,' he said. 'It's my leg.'

  'Oh, Geoff, I don't mind. And I've got some aspirin and…'

  'I'm sorry,' he said. 'But I think I'd better go back to my hotel. Aspirin won't cure what I've got.'

  'I wish you'd told me,' she said scoldingly, her brow creasing with concern, and he could see that she thought he'd been in pain for the whole evening. 'I thought you enjoyed dinner.'

  'I did. It just started bothering me. The rain makes my leg ache.'

  She was silent for a moment and then she gave a small shrug. 'Another time then.'

  'Sure.'

  'It was a great dinner.'

  'I'm glad you enjoyed it.' Geoff turned to open his door, planning to be the gentleman and walk around the car to help her out, but Marnie stopped him.

  'Your leg,' she said. 'You'd better not.'

  Geoff had never blushed in his life, but now he could feel a heat in his face, and he thanked his lucky stars for the darkness. 'Right,' he said.

  'Goodbye then,' she said softly and, wrapping her arms around his neck, Marnie bestowed on him a long and passionate kiss. When she was done, she touched his cheek with one finger and then slipped out of the car.

  Well, so much for frustration, Geoff thought with irony as he drove off, so much for curing what ails me. He imagined going back to Indian Lake and being subjected to Petra's company twenty-four hours
a day.

  I'll be ready for cold showers and tranquillisers, he thought, I'll be ready for… And then it hit him, and he almost drove off the road in shock. In the past, he'd wanted any woman who struck his fancy, and he'd chosen long-legged blondes because they fitted a mould; he could generalise about them, he could think of them as objects, he could forget about them the moment they were out of his sight. But, for the first time in his adult life, a long-legged blonde hadn't been enough. What he wanted was not any woman, but one particular woman, and she didn't fit the mould at all. She was short and dark, slender and boyish, argumentative and opinionated. She was also pretty, attractive, fascinating and damned sexy. And he was falling for her… hell, he had fallen for her. It was even quite possible that he, Geoffrey Hamilton, playboy and philanderer, was in love with her.

  Geoff tried to contemplate that thought with equanimity and discovered that he couldn't. He had to pull over to the side of the road, turn off the wipers and let the rain pound on the car's roof. He sat huddled in front of the wheel, staring out of the streaked windscreen at the headlights of oncoming cars that blurred and fragmented through the prisms of rain drops. There was no joy for him in the idea of loving Petra—she was so unlikely to reciprocate his feelings and, even if she did, was so unlikely to act upon them. There was that damned swim, her sense of independence, the way she clamped down on her emotions. Geoff knew that she was physically attracted to him, their impassioned and ill-timed lovemaking was ample evidence of that, but he also knew that she'd hated what she'd done and how he had made her feel. Of all the women he could have fallen in love with, Petra Morgan was the worst possible choice he could have made. Logically speaking, he should have fallen for Marnie or any one of her sisters in the flesh. But love wasn't logical, it struck where it wished, a Cupid with a quiverful of capricious arrows. And Geoff, to his horror and dismay, had fallen victim. Just like that—without warning, without reason, without acceptance. Geoff didn't want, to fall in love with Petra Morgan, but he had. Goddamn it, but it seemed that he had.