by Francis King
‘I came that way, because I d-didn’t want Bibi to know that I was coming. She sleeps l-lightly. She hears every sound down the corridor.’ He laughed. ‘ I climbed down from my balcony. I hope I haven’t damaged the creeper.’
‘How romantic!’
‘No, I’m not romantic’ He sighed and sat down on the stool by the dressing-table, crossing his legs. For a time he seemed to be at a loss for words, as he played with my hair-brush. Then he said ‘Mary.… I came now because I wanted you to know that—that what happened up there this afternoon was entirely serious. I know that it wasn’t awfully successful’—he lowered his eyes to the brush—‘ but I was serious about it, honestly I was. I want you to know that. I’m—I’m rather a complicated sort of person—you may have guessed that. I’ve never really known what I want from people—or whether I can give them what they want. But I know now what I want from you. And I think that in time I could give you what you want. In time. You’d have to be patient with me. My l-life so far has been rather of a mess.… That sounds as if I was making excuses for myself. Doesn’t it? But it has been a mess. It would take too l-long to explain, but it has.… Our family, the death of my mother, the fact that my father and I.… Well, it’s not important now. What I wanted you to know is that I—I’m in l-love with you and that I want to marry you and.…’ He broke off.
I had climbed back on to the bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling with a hand to my forehead. I had a curious feeling of letdown, though I could not have said why. That evening, as I had stripped off my sodden clothes, although I had felt both self-disgust and shame at Bibi’s having witnessed our convulsive love-making on the dusty, creaking floor of the abandoned hut, yet I had also felt a marvellous happiness combined, with the apprehensive warning to myself: ‘But this doesn’t mean all that to him. Don’t fool yourself. This is neither the beginning nor the culmination of anything. It’s something isolated—no future, no past.’ So now I ought to have been glad as he sat there opposite to me, wringing out of himself his curiously clumsy and ingenuous declaration of love. But although I accepted it with an immense gratitude, I felt not glad but inexplicably disappointed.
‘What are you thinking? What is it? Are you angry with me?’
‘Of course not, I don’t know. What I’m thinking,’ I added truthfully. ‘I just don’t know. What happens here seems so remote from the rest of the world outside. There seems no point of contact between it and the world of our house in Kyoto and the Institute and Bill.’ At that moment I thought of Bill as someone whom I had met briefly a long time ago and whose features I could hardly remember. Even our house seemed like something remembered from long ago—a house in which I had lived in my early childhood. ‘I must think,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. I must think after I see Bill again. It’s all been like a dream.’
He came over to the bed. ‘That’s what all my l-life has seemed like for years and years and years. But this has seemed real. The storm, that was real. At last something was real. And what we d-did together, our making love. It’s never been real with anyone before—not even with Thelma—though it’s been more successful.’ He seated himself beside me and placed a nerveless arm around my shoulders. ‘I’m really awfully weak,’ he said. ‘I l-like your strength.’
I kissed him gently on the lips. Then on a sudden impulse I asked: ‘And what will Bibi say about—us?’
‘Bibi …?’
‘Has she said anything about what she saw?’
He hung his head, playing with the cord of his pyjama trousers. ‘Good God, no,’ he mumbled. But I knew that he was lying.
‘You’re very close to each other,’ I said.
He nodded unhappily. ‘Very close.’ Then he suddenly turned again to mc, with a curiously childish smile and a curiously childish eagerness: ‘You’re so l-like her,’ he said. ‘It’s extraordinary. You’re both strong people,’ he said.
I pulled him down on top of me, but his body was stiff and unresponsive, and the kiss which he gave was perfunctory. When I looked up into his eyes, so close to mine, there seemed to be a furtive panic struggling in them. I released him and got off the bed. ‘Let’s think about it,’ I said. ‘Let’s not commit ourselves. I don’t think that either of us is certain, quite certain, of what exactly.… Are we? Perhaps it was just the storm.’
‘I’m certain.’ But he did not sound it, his eyes still holding that look of furtive panic and his voice tremulous.
‘Go back to bed now,’ I said.
I did not expect him to obey me; but at once he slipped away.
I lay for a long time on my bed, with the light off and a faint glow washing into the room from outside the window. I thought of him, but now, like Bill, he seemed like a person known long ago, whose features have to be deliberately reassembled in the memory and whose tone of voice cannot be fixed. Then all at once, without my making attempt to evoke her presence, it was Bibi who was in the shadowy room: now standing in the doorway with a smile at once quizzical and benign on her face; now stooping over me with the pad stained with iodine in one hand; now lying beside me on the bed, the fingers of one hand knotting themselves tighter and tighter in mine. Beside her both Bill and Sasha seemed limp and pale, as though she had absorbed into her being whatever vitality they possessed.
I closed my eyes; I made a deliberate effort to sleep. But my heart was beating faster and faster, with sudden jumps and subsidences; my legs were again tingling where the iodine was on them.
5
‘I’m afraid Sasha seems to have caught a chill. I’ve persuaded him to stay in bed. He has a temperature of just over a hundred.’ Bibi was attending to the goldfish in the pool in the central courtyard of the house, and as she now looked up to speak to me one was wriggling in the cupped palm of her hand. ‘They’ve started this wretched disease of theirs again. Look!’ The gold seemed to be peeling off the fish like a layer of incompent gilding. She gave me a reassuring smile: ‘No, really, it’s nothing to do with you, Sasha’s illness. He’s really got that temperature.’
I felt myself beginning to blush and turned away.
‘I’ll be with you in a moment. Tom and Yuki have gone into Matsue for the day. Yuki has decided he doesn’t like his bathing-costume and that he must go into Matsue to get himself another one. The truth is—he’s getting bored.… There’s the latest New Yorker on the table in the sitting-room, if you’d like to take a look at it.’
Twenty minutes later she called for me: ‘I’m ready now. Let’s go down to the beach. Isn’t it a marvellous day? The sea is as calm as can be, and yet for once it isn’t so hot that everything becomes an effort. It’s lucky we had that storm.’
As we walked down to the beach-house, she linked an arm in mine; but I felt embarrassed and clumsy at the proximity, our legs often brushing against each other as we stumbled over the sand, in a way that reminded me of Tom and Yuki the previous day. Eventually I freed myself, on the pretext of changing the bag which carried my swimming-things from one shoulder to the other. At that, Bibi who had been chattering away, became strangely silent.
When we arrived at the beach-hut and had changed, she placed a hand on my bare back as she propelled me out from the shade of the interior into the glitter of the porch. I raised a hand to my eyes and hesitated before stepping down on to the burning pathway below, but the pressure of the hand increased. Then, all at once, it became a brief caress. I jumped off the porch and she followed by the steps, adjusting her dark-glasses and then hitching at her bathing-costume where it cut into her thighs.
‘Let’s take the pedal-thing.’
This was a kind of floating chair for two, which one moved by turning the pedals in front of one. Tom and Yuki used it often, each of them accusing the other of not pedalling hard enough. Once, when they were so far from the shore that they imagined that they could not be seen, they had embraced each other, the chair turning slowly in a circle far out on the placid water. ‘Really, we should tell Tom and Yuki that one can see them,’ Sas
ha had protested. But Bibi had countered: ‘No, no, leave them be. Why shouldn’t they enjoy themselves? Why not?’
Perhaps it was now a memory of that scene, lurking in my subconscious, which made me reluctant to clamber aboard the chair when Bibi had pushed it out into the water far enough to float. I stood in the shallows beside it, first ducking myself and then splashing water over my shoulders. ‘Come!’ Bibi called. ‘It’s so calm that we can go across to Mouse Island. It won’t take us long.’ She pointed to the hump of dark green on the smooth blue, with its single pine tree like a plume against the sky.
‘But it looks miles away.’
‘No. Only ten minutes or so if we work hard at it.’
Slowly I allowed her to help me aboard.
‘Now don’t do what Sasha does. He pedals so feebly that we invariably start to go round in a circle. All right? Then let’s start.’
Side by side, our legs moved in a gradually accelerating rhythm as the chair first rocked forward in a series of uncomfortable jerks and then began to slip, almost without any effort from us, over the shimmering water. Bibi sighed. ‘Beautiful.’
It was beautiful. An extraordinary calm and contentment suddenly came over me. We were now moving in a perfect co-ordination, so that when I glanced back over my shoulder I saw our wake as two absolutely straight parallel lines, engraved unerringly from the shore out towards the distant island. The air was cool and still; the only sound was the creaking of the pedals and the rustle and slap of the water. Bibi’s bare leg touched mine from time to time; our bare arms rested against each other.
‘Let’s pause for a moment.’ I went on pedalling and the boat began to circle. ‘No, no, stop! Stop!’ ‘I stopped and the circle became a vaguely wavering line as the boat still veered feebly round to the right.
‘Wonderful,’ Bibi said, stretching her arms above her, her eyes gazing up into the dazzling sky, and then lowering them to place one hand on her own thigh and the other on mine. I allowed it to rest there for a time; then I moved slightly in the seat. But the hand followed the jerking away.
‘Don’t be silly, Mary,’ she said.
I blinked out at the dazzle of the waves splintering against the twin floats of the chair, without saying a thing. ‘I know what you really feel. The trouble is that you don’t know it yourself.’
Still I said nothing. I felt my whole body begin to tremble, my eyes started to prick.
She caught me against her with her other arm, the boat tipping sideways so that briefly she was almost lying on top of me. I stood up, the boat tipping over the other way.
‘I think I’ll have a swim here,’ I mumbled.
‘No, sit down! Sit!’
She grabbed me by the wrist, her face suddenly contorted with anger so that it looked ugly and rapacious. I pulled free, the chair rocking wildly, and then fell over backwards into the water.
‘Well, then stay there!’ I heard her shout as I rose gulping to the surface. Furiously she began to pedal at the chair, sending the water fountaining up on either side of it. First it circled me, as though she were trying to run me down in it; then by working at one set of pedals and then another, she got it to go straight and she made off the way we had come, from time to time looking back over her shoulder at me.
She seemed to be laughing, and at first I thought that she was merely joking. I struggled to keep up; I even shouted ‘Bibi I Bibi! Wait for me! Wait!’
Suddenly the chair halted; one of the pedals had jammed. I could see her kicking at it, as I neared her, one hand stretched out to grab the nearest float. But when she saw what I was doing, she at once put out a foot and gave a violent push to my shoulders, sending me under. When I again rose to the surface, the chair was moving away once more.
I continued to pursue it. Then I realised, with growing panic, that if I went on trying to swim at the same speed and she continued to refuse to allow me to climb aboard, I should drown from exhaustion. If I was to reach the shore I should have to husband my resources, swimming for fifty yards and then having a rest. It was fortunate that the water was both calm and warm.
When she saw me dropping back, she too slowed her pace. But it was a long time before she actually turned the chair. I was by then floating on my back, during one of my periods of rest and my first thought as I heard the chair thrashing towards me was the hysterical one that she was returning to finish me off.
But instead I heard her say: ‘Here, take my hand! Take it! I’ll pull you up.… Come on!’ I had splashed away from the chair, kicking out wildly and scrabbling with my hands. ‘Don’t be a fool. I’m not going to hurt you.’
For a long time I could not speak as I coughed and gasped for breath on the narrow seat beside her. Bibi watched me, her face calm and detached.
‘You—you—almost—killed me,’ I got out at last.
‘Don’t be silly. Can’t you take a joke?’
‘But—I almost—almost … drowned.’
She gave a harsh laugh. ‘I wasn’t going to let you drown. I was only teaching you a lesson. That’s all.’ She put an arm round my shoulder, suddenly affectionate: ‘You didn’t really think I’d let you drown, did you? You are a little fool.’
I had swallowed so much water that I felt that I was about to vomit. I buried my face in my arms as the boat gently nudged its way round in a circle. I could still feel Bibi’s fingers on my shoulder. ‘You’re crazy,’ I gulped. ‘ You might have killed me. I—I might have.… I—I could hardly go on.’
Again she laughed. ‘What a lot of fuss! You’re tougher than that.’
‘You’re just crazy.’
‘Stop calling me crazy,’ she ordered sharply. ‘You’re all right. No damage has been done. You’re all right.… Now, come on.’ Again suddenly tender, she attempted to ease my head upwards; but I resisted her. ‘Idiot,’ she said.
‘Thelma would never have drowned if—if all of you.…’ I began to spit water over the side.
‘Let’s talk,’ she said. ‘Just calm yourself and then we can talk.’
She waited, her feet on the pedals without moving them and her eyes fixed on the distant island which we should now never reach. ‘All right?’ she said at last.
I made no response.
‘Let’s face the facts, without any lady-like modesty or shame.… You’re fond of Sasha—that’s the first one, isn’t it? Well isn’t it? Anyway you’re fond enough of him to.… Or do you often let yourself go like that? Never mind. You don’t have to answer.’ She put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a little shake. ‘Are you listening to me? … Well, that’s fact one. Fact two is that Sasha and I are very close to each other. And no one—certainly not you—is going to come between us.’ The last sentence was spoken with a sudden, subdued violence, on a note so low that it was almost inaudible. ‘ No one. Have you got that? Thelma didn’t get it.’ There was a silence. ‘Now if you want a package deal, that’s all right. Because I—I happen to be fond of you. But you’re so stupid that perhaps that still hasn’t got across to you.’ She touched my hair, stroking it down from the crown to my cheek. ‘Stupid girl,’ she said. ‘ Yes, you can have your package deal, that’s how we’ll arrange it. But if you want to be—unco-operative, if you persist in showing all these scruples’—I had pulled free from her touch—‘then you don’t have Sasha either.’
There was a long silence. A fish, rising in front of the chair, made a small plop in the water. A breeze all at once flickered across our bodies and men died.
‘Well? What’s your answer?’
‘I—I’ve never heard anything so disgusting.’
She gave a brief laugh. ‘You are a conventional little goose. Why don’t you get wise to yourself?’
‘Let’s go back to the shore,’ I said, beginning to pedal frantically.
‘Not so fast. Not so fast.’ Still she was laughing. ‘You can’t run away from the truth quite so easily.’
‘I want to go back!’
She began to pedal slowly beside me. ‘You do
n’t want Sasha,’ she said in a slow, mocking voice. ‘Not really. Any more than he really wants you. Do you? Sasha’s not the person you want.’
I jumped up and leapt at her. The boat rocked from side to side as we grappled; but she was astonishingly strong, too strong for me, and she had soon thrust me back on to the chair again.
‘That’s enough of that,’ she said. ‘ Behave.… No, Mary, you must learn to understand yourself. Otherwise, you’re never going to be happy.’
‘I’m perfectly happy.’
‘With that dreary husband of yours? You used to think that you were happy. But you know now you’re not. And it’s not Sasha who can make you happy. You can be quite sure of that. He might have made Thelma happy, though even that’s doubtful. But not you, my dear, not you.’
I looked at her face in profile against the shore which was slowly drawing nearer; and suddenly I had the impulse to stop pedalling and to tell her to stop pedalling too. Without knowing why, I had ceased to be eager to reach the shore; I wanted to stay where we were, rocking up and down on the faint swell, while the breeze from time to time passed like a shadow over the otherwise unruffled waters.
‘You’re sick,’ I said. ‘ You’re both of you sick.’
She laughed. ‘If I’m sick, then so are you. Don’t fool yourself.’
‘You tried to kill me just now. You wanted to kill me.’
‘I’m far too fond of you to think of killing you. I told you that. Though if you continue to be obstinate and silly—I might think about it,’ she added with dreadful jocularity. ‘Now in the case of Thelma.…’ She stopped pedalling. ‘ I could easily have killed her. But, as luck would have it, it wasn’t necessary.’ It was impossible to tell whether she was being flippant or not. ‘Sasha showed her the stone garden too. It was not very original of him to take you there. We used to play together there as children, he and I. But that was before the stone garden existed. There was only the derelict house.’ She slipped down first one strap of her bathing-costume and then the other. ‘That’s better,’ she said. She caught my gaze fixed on her and smiled, as I at once looked away. ‘No, I didn’t drown Thelma,’ she said, ‘whatever you may think. Though I might have saved her—I don’t know. There was a moment when I was swimming out to her and I knew I could swim that much faster—just a fraction—and I thought Oh, what the hell’’. Perhaps that was the effect of the pot with which we’d been having fun. Or perhaps it was just the feeling it would be more—more convenient to have her out of the way. I don’t know.’ One of her large hands was at her breast, gently massaging it. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t going to have her come between myself and Sasha. That was certain.… Any more than I’m going to have you come between us. As I. said, it’s a package deal.… No, the idea doesn’t really horrify you as much as you pretend. It worked with us and Tom. It could work again. Why not?’