by Francis King
I put my feet to the pedals and began to turn them furiously.
‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘ There’s no hurry. Sasha and I are always here. Or in Kobe. I don’t think that we shall move—now.… I know what’s going through your head, but Sasha always does what I tell him. Ultimately. Our relationship is much tougher and much more real than the relationship between you and that priggish husband of yOurs. Oh yes. It has to be. It’s had to stand up to so much. We don’t really need others. Not at all. We discovered that when I had my—my breakdown. I was engaged to be married, you know, and then our father died—and then I realised I no longer needed to be married.…’
Her hand went from her breast to her lap, as she began to join me in pedalling. The top of her bathing-costume was still lowered.
‘You’ve learned a lot this week, haven’t you?’ she said.
First one of the floats and then the other grated on the shore.
Chieko, standing by the beach-house on one leg, the other bent against it, instep to knee, pointed at us as we scrambled down and then burst into a crowing of triumphant laughter.
6
‘What sort of time did you have?’
‘Awful.’ As the car churned up the drive scattering gravel to right and left, I put back my head and closed my eyes. Bibi had been waving to us until we disappeared from sight.
‘I guessed that. That’s why I said that we must start back at once. What happened?’
‘I’ll tell you later. It’s too long. And too complicated.’
‘Well, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.’
‘Oh, please!’
‘And what was the matter with Sasha? Why didn’t he come to say goodbye?’
‘He’s been in bed all day. A chill. We got wet during a storm. We went for a walk together.’
We were passing the point where the path branched off the dusty main road to mount up the hillside to the stone garden. The green tunnel flickered momentarily with shadows, pulsating in and out; then we had passed it, crunching round the next bend.
‘That’s where we walked,’ I said.
‘Where?’
‘Up there. A stone garden.’
‘A stone garden?’
‘Yes.’
The car continued to mount as it swerved round one hairpin bend after another. The shadows of the pine trees were long in the rays of the setting sun, but it seemed far hotter now than when Bibi and I had drifted side by side on the becalmed waters, the cool flesh of her bare arm and thigh against mine and the breeze from time to time pushing through my hair.
Suddenly we had reached the crest of the hill, and looking back we could see the house with its terraces one below the other, and then the yellow shore, and the zig-zag path choked with sand, and at last the beach-hcuse. There was a figure beside it: Chieko. Then two other figures appeared, jumping down, one after the other, from the wide porch under the thatched eaves, and racing each other into the water. Just where the waves crimped the sand, the man caught up with the woman, and it was hand in hand that they splashed into the water before they swam out.
Bill had not seen them; he was looking ahead to avoid a truck piled high with logs. This, I thought, must be the view into which Sasha had told me he had vomited.
7
Suddenly that night I was crying. I could not stop myself, even though I bit on my knuckles and pressed my face into the pillow.
Bill stirred uneasily; then he grunted, rolled over and at last sat up.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ I gulped.
‘But there must be something. Have I done something wrong?’
‘No, of course not. No.’ Again I tried to control the shaking of niy. whole body and the sobs that tore through it like a violent attack of retching.
‘Mary, what is it? What is it?’
‘Bibi … Sasha.…’ It was all I could say; and I had not meant to say it.
‘My God, I’d like to tell them what I think of them! Were they nasty to you? What did they do? Tell me, Mary, tell me.’
‘Later.… Not now.… I can’t. Not now, Bill. Please don’t talk about it.’
‘Hell!’ Then he took me in his arms, my cheek against his and his lips to my hair. ‘ Never mind, darling. Never mind.’
I shrank from the contact but he clutched me tighter and tighter. ‘Never mind. Forget it. It’s all over now. It’s all over.’
It was all over; he could not know, I could never tell him, that that was the most terrible part of all.
Copyright
First published in 1967 by Longmans
This edition published 2013 by Bello
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Copyright © Francis King, 1967
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