Sin

by Josephine Hart

  And now, along the top of the hill, ran dark figures. Rubber-armoured. For the water. Their heads encased in monstrous balaclavas for the deep.

  I swam with them to the point of my last vision of my son. As he left me. Another clasped too tightly to him. How mothers hate all others who embrace their child too tightly. They know how easy it is to squeeze life away. So that only a body remains.

  And the remains of his life, this body which I had so loved, came finally to the surface. Attached to the other. The boys’ legs, like tree trunks, were wrapped around each other. Like lovers in sleep. Motionless. Stephen’s arms locked round William’s waist. William’s face seemed pressed deeply into Stephen’s chest. As though it were a part of Stephen’s body. Stephen’s head was thrown back. His last act had been to gasp for air. Before he brought William down. How well Stephen had known all his life what it was to gasp for air.

  And suddenly it was what I had to do. Not to cry. Just suddenly, convulsively, to gasp for air. I lived.

  Dead bodies are heavy. The young divers, like warriors in a field of battle, tried to prise the boys apart.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Mrs. Garton …”

  “Leave them as they are. Don’t separate them.”

  “But …”

  “Don’t separate them.”

  The bodies—like a single statue—were laid on the bank. It seemed a single death. So much did they resemble a sculpture of one long, fine young man. His head that of Stephen. And his legs those of William.

  The men began their work. Two of them gently releasing the bodies as the others forced oxygen into their rejecting lungs. Trying, these strangers, to deceive death.

  But death had been clever. With one’s weakness, and the other’s love, death had harvested them both. And the sun still shone, in a weak October way. It did not withdraw in sorrow. Not even when death’s triumph was finally acknowledged.

  Lexington waited for us and our entourage, as we walked slowly towards it with our dead children. The boys. Our sons. Who after all would not now have the east or west wing. Perhaps Lexington rejoiced, that in time it might be left alone at last.

  Through the French windows and onto the terrace ran Charles and Dominick. My mother stood motionless, eyes closed.

  “Oh, my God …. Oh, my God.” Dominick’s voice.

  He did not run to me. He turned, retching into the protection of the half hedge that separated the terrace from the lawn. Charles stood looking down at the stretchers, guarded on either side by Elizabeth and me, standing behind the bearers. He covered his face for a moment. Then he turned and removed my mother from the path of the carriers with their heavy burden.

  At the front of the house, the waiting ambulance received its cargo. We followed slowly in cars. Not ready yet for a longer separation. The young policeman stayed with Ben to take his statement.

  At the little village hospital, questions were asked of us by the gentlest of police sergeants, and the most solicitous of doctors. As though, in searching for the answer to how, we could find the answer to why.

  At some stage, by unspoken consent, we drove through the dusk back to Lexington. A Lexington we could no longer recognise. It had tricked us. Made us feel safe all those years. In my soft weaving of hatred, I had never felt afraid. Had I defiled Lexington? No. No. Elizabeth’s son had killed mine.

  I bore no guilt. Not in this. I do not—will not accept another interpretation. For that way madness lies.

  TWENTY-SIX

  * * *

  It is pointless to describe the next few days. Those who know, know. Those who don’t, will never understand.

  The Funeral. And boys came from their school to represent the pupils. With their sturdy legs, they burned my eyes. With their faces, they poured vinegar down my throat. And with their sweet voices, they poisoned my ears.

  A sad headmaster and solemn teachers now gave life reports on the boys, whose time they had expected to measure out in terms.

  A government minister, and figures from the world of affairs, and people from the worlds of arts and publishing and academia mingled uneasily together. No one knew what to say. Because the words did not exist.

  Lexington gathered them in, and impressed them. And fed them—after we had laid the boys, now separated, in their graves, side by side in the village churchyard, beside my family. My grave child, William. Now most truly a grave child. He should never have been mine. Too good for me. Was there a pattern here? Some scheme to destroy me. If any of my family had been any good … couldn’t they have interceded on our behalf? Then I remembered. I did not believe in God. Or in the afterlife. And I found that comforting.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  How old and lined we looked on the following morning. But there was no respite. Death demands a new life. No settling into the same old rut after death. It has a double triumph. It robs life, and fatally stings those remaining. What power.

  Now, it used the weakest member, Dominick, to shake us out of any illusion of peace. With harmony forever gone from his life, he wanted to be “straight” with me … with us all … for the first time in years.

  Straight, Dominick? A line, perhaps. Part of something. A rectangle? No, a triangle. Or perhaps not. There were four of us, after all.

  “Did you know, Elizabeth … that Charles had an affair with Ruth?”

  She sat so quietly, without moving at all, that I thought she had not heard.

  “Elizabeth. I’m talking to you. Did you know?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing, Dominick?”

  “I’m revealing a truth. After all, we’ve just experienced the ultimate truth. Makes all this look rather pathetic.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “I need … I need this, Ruth. I need this. I have more courage now.”

  Courage? God!

  “I guessed a little time ago it was Charles. Before … this … I felt that I would die without you, Ruth. But, then, I knew nothing of pain. Three days ago, I knew nothing. I don’t want whatever’s left to be a lie. It’s extraordinary how desperately I want something in my life that is … real.”

  “What Dominick has told you is true, Elizabeth.”

  “Thank you for that, at least, Charles.” Then turning to Dominick: “It’s amazing how many people we bring down with the truth.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to do this. In the end, everybody tries to save his own life.”

  “Not quite everybody, Dominick. William didn’t.” I remembered my last vision of him.

  “He did a brave thing. And lost,” Charles said.

  “Well, I wish to God he hadn’t been brave. I wish to God he’d saved himself.”

  “So do I, Ruth. So do I. To lose Stephen, and know his asthma brought about William’s death … is agony.” Elizabeth started to cry. We were all silent.

  Then she began to speak. Quietly. “How the world has turned. Everything is broken here. In Lexington. In this house, where I’ve been so quiet. All my life I’ve been quiet. So quiet. For I knew … since I was very small, that this was not really my place. I was here … because of a death. I had inherited a grief. But I was loved. So loved. But still I never had the confidence … to be … difficult. Or to displease.

  “And when Ruth was born, it seemed even more important. The more she became Ruth—Ruth the wild, Ruth the dangerous, the brilliant—the more I needed to be good and quiet. That was me. Elizabeth—the good one. It’s a way of life now. A habit was formed. I don’t know another way to be. No courage, you see. Not for Dominick’s cruelty, even now. And I don’t know how to deceive—as you’ve done, Charles. And you, Ruth. I lack the … the stamina … yes. I lack the stamina to do what you have done.”

  “I love you, Elizabeth. Please, please, understand that … please.” Charles moved towards her, beseeching her. I watched him. Beseeching her.

  Tell him, Elizabeth. Tell him how I attacked you. Te
ll him.

  “Charles … dear Charles. Don’t. Some instinct tells me we must not continue. Perhaps you’re for Ruth, and not for me. I had something perfect once, with Hubert. Maybe, if he’d lived, it would have become less perfect. But I don’t think so. No. No. I’m certain. So I’ll just take that memory … if I may. May I … Ruth?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, Hubert, forgive me. Please forgive me.” She cried to him. After all those years.

  “Hubert is … was yours, and only yours.”

  “I know that, Ruth. I don’t need your affirmation.”

  “Stop all this. Elizabeth. Please, Elizabeth. I do not want this.” Charles gripped the edge of the table. As though he needed support.

  “Charles. Neither do I. But I must do it.”

  All of us looked at her. And knew that she would. For, in the end, there is something stony in the heart of goodness. Which is perhaps why, all too often, we avoid it.

  Later, the inquest, investigation of Death. Pointless. For Death always commits the perfect murder. He has never been caught. He uses so many disguises. The face of illness. Or accident. Or violence. The list is endless. He is cruel, funny, macabre, wild, gentle. He is secret. Famous. He hides. Then leaps into full view. He is magnificent. Pathetic. Bathetic. But always, always, Death is triumphant.

  Facts. Established by questions. And answers. Asthma attack. Stephen’s. A non-swimmer. Ben. A hero. William. Racing on his bicycle to save Stephen, floundering desperately … his asthma choking him … in the water. William, a hero, who failed. Two deaths. Too early. There were questions I did not want to hear. To which I gave answers. But did not truly speak.

  After the inquest, she left.

  In Charles’s eyes I became Judas Iscariot. That night, he too left Lexington. And I rent my garments.

  Months later he came back. Weakness, I suppose. Elizabeth was adamant. Utterly impervious to all his pleas. She had gone to live in a remote part of Scotland. In a cottage outside a small village. To paint. Ridiculous, to me, that so small a talent could sustain her.

  I took him gratefully. For I knew that he loved me to the limits of which he was capable. It was not his fault that I had gone further. And found myself alone. I had found that I longed for him … continuously. And I decided to be true to something. The longing was real enough. It seemed then, and still does, sufficient.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  We live in Lexington now. We sold the studio flat in London. My home with Dominick. And William.

  Elizabeth’s studio is rented. For a nominal sum. To a young artist, Beatrice, I forget her second name, who had … a look about her. We never visit. All financial matters are handled through an agent.

  Charles has given Frimton to his son, Christopher. He returned to England. A married man. With a young family. Two boys. I do not visit.

  I came back to Lexington, for my mother. A sudden kindness. Or was it penance? Elizabeth had said goodbye to her. Extraordinary, her late cruelty. But my mother will not hear a word against her, and always says, “I understand.” So do I—in a way. But it is a long road from understanding to acceptance. And I haven’t even begun the journey.

  There is no question of divorce from Elizabeth. Irrelevant, Charles says. She says nothing. To my knowledge. So we live in Lexington, this man and I. The bodies work together. Still move together—in a manner perhaps programmed in us before we were born. Afterwards, he turns from me. Still. In his sorrow. And his pleasure.

  Drugged, in a way, we continue. The surface of our lives is tense. But we’re familiar with that now, and it is less distressing than might be supposed.

  When he looks at me with hatred, as he sometimes does, I accept the blow. And when my nakedness offends him, I cover myself. There was a time when I was a goddess.

  Where once I searched for clues to understand her, now I have all I need to study her. Pictures. Letters. Clothes. Perfumes. Soaps. Books.

  And her husband.

  And still I do not know her.

  When Charles is away—less often now—I sit in her room. I look in the mirror, and I use her small array of beauty aids. I bought a blonde wig. Metamorphosis.

  Sometimes I wear her clothes and her face and hair for hours. Gazing endlessly into the mirror, I remember a teacher at school who had warned of the devil who looks back—if you gaze too long at yourself. The devil does not look back at me. But then, would I recognise him? Elizabeth does not gaze back at me, however closely and falsely I resemble her. And Ruth does not gaze back either. For I am neither Ruth nor Elizabeth. Just a reflection. Bits of me. And bits of her.

  I never thought to lay this mutant out for Charles. I feared he would have seen the horror of it. And might have killed it.

  But my creation, like Frankenstein’s, discovered a life of its own. Once, when I believed Charles was away, as I did my essential, daily penitential walks around the lake, once for William, once for Stephen, he … encountered it.

  And weeping fell upon it.

  All was different. The movements. The sighs. The rhythm.

  Afterwards, I felt I knew her better.

  As he walked in silence towards Lexington, I left the golden hair and blue jeans and white shirt on the bank. And, wet before I ever touched the water, swam through the bitter April waves to the other side and back again.

  There were visions of course. Of the human adolescent statue. But I knew it well.

  I still have my own times. When I am magnificent, voluptuous. When I—Ruth—rise and fall on sheets or on the ground for him.

  But less often. I feel no resentment.

  Dominick? Well, Dominick left. Not quietly either. With as much anger and bitterness as his exhausted soul could muster. I do not blame him. He went to California. Back into academic life. He is much feted. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? There was a brief period of intense promiscuity. He wrote to me—about this aspect of his new life. I burned the letter. In case he has another child. In his new life.

  A few years ago he married a tall, blonde, brainy cliché—fifteen years his junior. I smile sometimes to think of it. He is adored, I gather, as once he adored. A proper harmony. Balance achieved at last.

  No doubt he has a tale he tells. Tales of me. And who knows. He may be telling the truth.

  TWENTY-NINE

  * * *

  I am an excellent driver. I drive fast, with intense concentration. I disdain automatic models, believing that an essential rhythm is lost. Charles, now more deeply involved in his charity work, had to attend, as a member of an advisory committee, a weeklong EC investigation into the rights of refugees.

  I chose this week to drive to Scotland to see Elizabeth. I had to see her. The memory was fading. After two years. My own disguise as Elizabeth was no longer satisfactory.

  Although I was certain that Charles had her address, it was unseemly, I felt, to ask him. After some lies and subterfuge, I got it through the gallery, which was having increasing success with her painting. She was now taken more seriously by everyone. Her tragedy enhanced her reputation. And living alone in Scotland also rather added to it. As did her consistent refusal to be interviewed. It’s not enough to produce the work. Very important also to live the life prescribed for the artist. Loneliness. Suffering, if possible. And poverty. Elizabeth remained deeply disappointing in this last respect.

  I risked her anger. And Charles’s. Would she tell him? I hoped that enough of the old Elizabeth remained to make that unlikely. I had to do it. Perhaps I would just look at the cottage. I was desperate for a physical background against which I could place her current life. In my thoughts, for I thought of her daily. Hourly perhaps. An old obsession.

  I arrived at twilight. Her cottage was three miles outside a small village, dominated by a grand sweep of mountain. A vast playground for the light, racing against the clouds as if to see who would win. Good spot for Elizabeth the artist. Beautiful and obvious.

  I believe in surprise. I simply
drove unannounced to the front of the cottage. There were low windows on either side of the wooden door. I knocked. After a few minutes, standing there in the silence, I tried to look in through a window.

  “Yes?”

  I turned. Embarrassed. Caught in an act of … peeping? What an ugly word. A tall young man in his early twenties stood in the doorway.

  “Is Elizabeth here?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Her … sister.” Well said, Ruth.

  “She doesn’t have a sister.”

  “Really? Who are you?”

  “I don’t have to answer that. ”

  “Full of charm, aren’t you? Where’s Elizabeth?”

  “Not here.”

  “Will she be coming back?” I suppose detective work is like this. I would probably have been good at it.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Now, listen. I clearly must look extremely threatening to you. A strange five-foot-eight female confronting your six-foot-two muscular frame. It’s possible I’m intent on robbery. Even rape. I fully sympathise with your terror at my arrival. But I am Elizabeth Ashbridge’s sister. My name is Ruth Garton. I would like to come in and wait for her. I do not expect tea or wine and certainly not a welcome from you. May I?” I walked towards the door.

  “No. You may not.”

  “Let’s start again. How do you do?”

  “How do you do?” He repeated the words.

  “You’re not English?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Good accent, though.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Where did you polish what I assume was once a drawl?”

  “In London.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Studying. ”

  “What?”

  “Art.”

  “Aha. Where?”

  “St. Martin’s.”

  “Really. I’m impressed. So. You love Elizabeth’s work. Decided to come and worship the artist?”