The Midnight Falcon

by Graham Saunders

  Chapter 26

  They made their way carefully, delicately picking a route up the murderous path until they reached the little cottage at the top of the cliff. Katrina held Valentina as they sat before a fire and felt the night fall silently around them.

  "Everything has changed." Valentina said. "I'm not sure I know who I am anymore."

  "It's just the shock; you'll feel better after a good night's sleep."

  "I am tired Katrina... I hadn't quite realised how weary I feel. The life I've led has drained me of everything. It was a big price to pay for nothing but failure."

  "No Valentina, you've achieved a great deal there's no way your life has been a failure."

  "I fought to save my country... that lies in ruins now... I corrupted those I loved and led them to their own despair. I lost the one who I've loved since we first met... Not a great record." Katrina could not stand to hear her friend talk like this. "Now stop this, I won't listen to any more. You're just listing the negatives. Without you, I probably wouldn't be alive and as for Natasha..."

  "Natasha?... Without me she'd be living a happy life as a normal French schoolgirl with no troubles in the world, no one plotting her future or her murder."

  "That's all over now... Natasha is safe and free." But Valentina was not listening, slowly bit by bit, she was withdrawing into herself, into an impenetrable shell woven of shame and grief and hopelessness.

  Katrina brought them wine. It was not celebration wine, the mood was of sadness for the death of a young woman that they hardly knew... It was sadness for the loss of the ketch and the brother who would never return. Sadness for Natasha and Colby and a life wasted. All these things had been embodied in the Midnight falcon. It was consolation wine and they drank until the sharp edges of the sadness were softened.

  Valentina finally lost herself in sleep... Weeks and weeks of sleep. A deep hibernation through which she was sustained wholly by the love and care freely given by Katrina. Occasionally she would rise and stand on the cliff top with the cold wind biting into her. If she listened carefully she thought sometimes she could hear the rattle of the Falcon's rigging carried on the wind... calling to her to race heedless down the path to join her.

  Valentina did not emerge from her depression until the winter was almost over, showing the last sting in its tail before the renewal that the coming spring might bring. But when she did emerge she was changed, softened, the veneer of self confidence fractured but she was somehow whole again. But it wasn't until Katrina announced that she and John were to be engaged that Valentina finally fully woke up. The news that Natasha and Colby were coming to Guernsey for the engagement party was the final reason that Valentina needed to cast off the weight of slumber. For far too long she had wanted to be with them again. But she understood now that Colby might no longer feel that he had love to give her and that he was unable to express his feelings to her. She had driven a part of him away, perhaps it was destroyed forever by her actions. She understood that this bitter knowledge was behind everything she had felt over the past weeks of despondency. Now that she would see him again, there was a glimmer of hope... Hope is the last resort we can all cling to when all else fails.

  Overlooking the picturesque harbour of St Peter Port the rooms that Mary had booked for her son's engagement party were the place that Valentina hoped that her wish might finally be made real. A taxi had brought Colby and Natasha straight from the airport. It was already evening when they arrived. They stood by the open door looking lost, looking for a familiar face. Valentina was stunned into silence by the sight of them haloed in the door frame. She stood hardly able to move. Natasha had no feelings for her other than unconditional love; their separation had only reinforced those feelings. They had been apart for too long and the girl ran across the room and leapt into Valentina's open arms.

  "I think you've grown darling." Valentina said as she pulled the girl's face up to her and kissed her cheeks. Then she turned back towards Katrina. "Katrina... There's someone here who you might like to say hello to."

  Katrina lifted her eyes. It was no surprise... she had invited them herself; her motives were exactly as might be imagined and her eyes fell on Colby and watched as he approached Valentina with strange nervousness. Katrina hugged Natasha and then made her way over to Colby. Standing on her toes she did exactly what Valentia seemed unable to do and kissed Colby.

  "I shall have strong words with you if you and Valentina are not reconciled by the end of the evening." She whispered into his ear. "She's not been well Colby... I think you might be the only one who can save her from herself." Katrina looked deep into Colby's eyes and he could feel how seriously she had intended her words to be. Before Colby could reply she turned across the room clutching Natasha's hand. "You must meet John." she said with nervous excitement.

  Valentina moved closer to Colby... "Do you want to take a walk for a while?" She said.

  "Hello Valentina... If you like."

  They moved out of the hotel and walked slowly down the hill towards the lights of the town. The air seemed to hum with the prospect of rain.

  "Shall I start?" Valentina said.

  "Do you have some sort of a speech prepared?"

  "Hardly that... I know I can't expect anything of you after what I did... but I need to try, in whatever clumsy way spills out of my mouth... I need you to know how I feel."

  But it was made more difficult not only because she could not really explain her feelings but because she did not know how Colby would react. "Do you think you might, put your anger on hold for a minute, just to help me."

  "I admit that I was angry... no, maybe not really angry... disappointed. But even that's gone now."

  "Gone in the sense that you no longer care, that there is nothing left?"

  "No not that... never that Valentina."

  She caressed the sound of Colby's voice as he spoke her name. As they walked he seemed to slip away into silence, wrapped up in his own reflections. Suddenly he was aware of her looking up into his face, hearing her say: "And do you know why?"

  "Why what?" He said.

  "That you still care."

  "If I could answer that, I would be a wise man. I just do."

  "Then act as if you care," she said. "You seem as lost as I've been."

  "I've been lost for a long time Valentina... I once thought you might be my way back."

  "I still could be... We can be each other's way back."

  "I was wondering how you would find it back at the cottage. With no one there now Katrina's soon to be married." He said deflecting the conversation towards safer ground.

  "I may not be going back for long," she said "the Cottage and the cliff edge haunts me with unwanted memories. I had such a fondness for the place but I don't need all that goes with it..." She looked up into his face.

  "Where will you go?" He said.

  "Let's go back inside... I'll tell you when we've had a drink. I need to ask you something."

  Back in the hotel there was gentle music playing, an easy background to the jumble of voices that settled over them like a patchwork quilt. Valentina caught Mary le Prevost's eye across the room. She was standing with John and Katrina who still clutched Natasha's arm as if the girl might disappear if she were to let go. Mary waved at Valentina. She smiled back then Katrina blew her a kiss across the room. It was as if Valentina stood on the edge of this newly forming family, welcome but not quite a part of it. She eased Colby to the buffet and they filled plates with the hotel finger food and took glasses of red wine. From the throng of people most of whom were strangers to them, Colby and Valentina drifted off to a corner.

  "You were going to tell me where you might go." Colby said as he sipped from his glass.

  "It's hinges on something I need to ask you..." Valentina said. "You see... I've found this place... A family home, there's plenty of room for... Anyway it's within walking distance of a boat charter company I've got my eye on."

  Colby said something about how ni
ce that sounded. He was careful to float over the subtext but Valentina had begun now, there was no turning back.

  "Would you be interested in bringing Natasha... Coming with me?"

  Valentina took his two hands with impulsive affection and looked up into his face. Before Colby could respond there was a call across the room for glasses to be raised for John and Katrina.

  "Katrina has lived for this moment," Valentina said. "All she ever wanted was a decent man to love her – come on, let's drink to their future."

  At the table, they held up their glasses and drank to Katrina and John. Colby turned to see Natasha, the glow of happiness at being among people she loved gave him a twinge of guilt. He held out his arms to her and she came to him, her face shining with joy.

  "I'm so happy for Katrina." She said. Valentina watched them, the closeness between them had become easy and natural, for an instant she felt shut out again. She tried to imagine herself wrapped in the folds of such a relationship.

  The wine had softened Valentina's reticence and on an impulse she took Colby's face in her hands, and kissed him – like a friend.

  "Can't we start again Colby?" Then she pressed her lips against Colby's mouth again. This time with a passion that had little to do with simple friendship. Colby knew that he could bear no more of this. He felt he could no longer face the torture that he felt every time he thought of her or looked at her face. It called for something that he felt incapable of giving her any more. He could not stand the idea of being false to her, he felt that she deserved more, much more. Deserved a man more worthy than he.

  He made some excuse and went out, leaving her there with John and Mary and Katrina and Natasha and a sea of unknown faces. Colby felt the same way he had on the day when he heard that the Falcon had been sunk, he felt sad and bewildered and incapable of responding in any meaningful way. He went into the men's room to wash his hands. A man, no longer young, combing his hair at the wash-hand basin asked him who he was with at the party. Then staring at his reflection in the mirror he spoke words that resonated with Colby.

  "You know." He said "Sometimes when I look in the mirror these days, I don't even recognise the bugger who's looking back at me."

  Colby thought he knew what the man had meant but before he could summon an answer the man had straightened his unaccustomed tie and returned to the noise of celebration. Colby suddenly felt in need of air and moved out onto the covered terrace among the exiled smokers who breathed their fumes into the damp night. The anticipated rain had started to fall and he stood watching the big drops curling down through the shafts of window light, into a world already drowning. In the air there was a curious soft breath, gentle but filled with the cold sting of the night air. Drips of water from the overflowing gutter, large and shining made a line of wetness where they fell on the gleaming bricks of the terrace. Then he felt suddenly shocked as he suddenly saw himself as someone he no longer knew.

  Colby had been there five minutes or more when Valentina opened the glass entrance doors and came out to look for him.

  "Oh! you're there," she said. "I somehow thought you would be."

  She came and stood beside him. She had put on a coat. The material was thick and softly pink, a colour that he never associated with Valentina. "It's Katrina's – she lent it to me... You're not cold are you?" she said. He was dressed in a light jacket hardly adequate for the weather.

  "It's chillier out here with the rain." Colby said.

  She touched his hands. "You feel frozen," she said "come into my coat," and she undid the buttons and folded him into her warmth, close against the heat of her body.

  "I've been lost for a while Colby." She said. She pulled him close her eyes softly closing as she breathed in the familiar scent of his skin and remembered with pain how easily they had made love just a few months ago.

  "I think you've lost weight." Colby said.

  "Unrequited love can do that." Valentina whispered across his ear into the damp evening air.

  Colby too was pulled into the past as he remembered her body, soft and young and firm-breasted, as he had first seen it in Sachovia a decade ago. Valentina brushed her lips across his face, gently, thoughtfully, as if to soothe him. "You still haven't answered my question." She whispered with her eyes still closed as if the darkness gave her courage.

  "What question?"

  "The question about the family home. Would you come with me? Would it be impossible?"

  Colby watched the rain slowly merging into the background of darkness beyond the lights of the terrace. Would he go with her to the family home? He felt the question float away, losing itself in the rain and darkness, dissolved among the saturated air and the distant crash of waves. Colby knew that it was a question that he was afraid to answer but that finally he would have to find the courage to face it.

  And then Valentina said softly compellingly "It's easy Colby... just say yes."

  Colby stared into the darkness, trying to frame an answer. The rain now silent as it fell onto the glistening concrete. Lost in that silence Colby felt that he could hear an echo of past times bouncing back to him across the darkness.

  "You will come, you and Natasha, won't you?" she said. "You're not still caught up in something that no longer matters are you? Sachovia is dead to me and all that it corrupted me to do. Can't we forget the past and look towards a future together?"

  "I can't come with you," Colby said.

  Valentina did not speak for a few moments. He felt her body quiver before, with a voice filled with infinite sadness she finally said: "Why? Colby tell me why."

  "I just can't come with you." He repeated and heard her sharply drawing her breath through the roundness of her lips that were still held close to him. Still she would not release him from the warmth of the coat, from the pressure of her argument.

  "Do you mean you don't want to come with me?" she said. "You mean you don't want me, that your love for me has died?"

  "It isn't that..."

  "So you do still love me? Remember what you once told me... that you loved me and nothing could ever change that." The directness of the question that he had feared for so long and did not want to face struck him like a poisoned arrow. He felt his entire body drowning with the bitterness of regret. Then he felt her begin to ease the tightness of her grip on him in some half hearted struggle to set him free, but she could not quite let him go, not yet.

  "If you don't love me anymore just say so – Maybe I could understand it. I know I've given you enough reason."

  "How could you understand it?" He said "When I hardly understand it myself."

  She did not speak for a moment or two. From somewhere across the town Colby could hear the sharp sound of a motorcycle. The sound seemed to intensify a silence already so heavy with rain that everything was muted. He could not see a single light from St Peter Port as the rain seemed to bring down the gloom like a dark curtain. In this strange moment of quietness the movement of her body against him seemed suddenly to crystallize his feelings. There was something reassuring in the warmth of the coat, the feel of her close to him again.

  "That was how I fell into depression." She said. "I think it was mostly because of all the things I did to you... If there had been no one that I needed desperately then I might have found the loss of Sascha and the Falcon and all the rest of it easier to bear."

  Carried on the wind the sound of the motorcycle faded into a poignancy. Valentina rubbed her face against Colby's chest. "You know Valentina Gussev died out there in the flames of the Falcon. They found her scorched body the next day and made the identification. No one in Sachovia cares anymore in any case, they have much more than me or even Natasha to worry about now. But when she died it was as if I lost my identity. I need you to recognise me... to call me by my name. Then I'd somehow no longer be lost."

  "And what is your name?"

  "Still Valentina... I'm Valentina Gosling... sailor and sometime lover of the best man in the world."

  Colby
suddenly became aware of her face. The trouble she had endured. He could see that her dream was dying and he knew suddenly that he did not want her to lose it, exactly as Natasha had not wanted to be separated from her. But he had turned his face from both of their wishes. Colby could not bear the thought of her in pain. What he saw of himself, reflected in Valentina seemed gradually no longer strange. The unrecognisable edges of a person distorted as much by fear of love as by lack of love began to reshape themselves into something that was finally starting to make sense to him. Without Valentina he was not whole.

  He had so often thought of her but recently it was always in the abstract, always with sadness. It had not occurred to him before that the pain of love might be what you need to endure to make it real. Nor had he grasped that what he felt for Natasha and even Katrina was almost entirely to do with the love he felt for her. He felt suddenly stupid when he finally realised that he had rejected her love because of his own inadequacy. His feeling of being used, betrayed was just an excuse. Nor had he grasped that he might have made her and Natasha suffer through wielding his selfish pride as if it had been a shield against his pain.

  "Would you forgive me?" she said, "for the shameful, terrible things I did?"

  Colby did not speak, he remembered all the others that he had misjudged though the prism of his own self concern. "Would you forgive me?" she repeated softly, trembling, knowing that her future balanced on his answer and that this was the last chance she would ever have to convince him.

  The self inflicted wounds of his misjudgements were suddenly laid before him with such clarity that he could not speak.

  "I thought of you every night when I lay there in my cottage. After I sent the Falcon off in flames with the last trace of my identity, it was like saying goodbye to Sascha and everything I loved. It was the worst moment of my life as I reached some sort of bottom; there was no one inside my empty body anymore. If not for Katrina, dear Katrina, I might not even have survived... But even in my darkest moments I still wanted you. You and Natasha."

  "There is nothing to forgive anymore." Colby said.

  The sad tipping of her voice into tears seemed to wake him at last. He had never seen her so fragile and holding her, folding himself deeper into the borrowed coat, he shut out the rain and the darkness.

  Valentina lifted her face up to him.

  "Do you remember the time on the Falcon... The first time when we set sail from this little Island?" she said. "That lovely weather, just the two of us?"

  "Yes." Colby said.

  "So will you come with me to the family home?"

  Colby knew now the answer he must give. He nuzzled against her cheek and spoke softly in little more than a whisper:

  "Yes," He said. "I think I will Valentina Gosling."

  "Oh... Colby... It took me a long time to fully understand just what I had done to you, but I know now and I know how much pain it gave you. I know because I have lived with the same pain myself." She pressed her face into his chest and as he held her Colby felt that he could hear the sound of the sea rising up again against the bow of the Falcon. He remembered the happy stolen moments with Valentina before she had told him what she had done. He could no longer allow regrets to be bound up in those memories that stretched back across the years. He suddenly felt set free of his past, he could even, finally, forgive himself for what had happened in black shadows in the stark north African sunlight all those years ago. Valentina had brought him this gift of insight through her own pain. Forgiveness is meant, not only for others, but for yourself and through it all he could no longer fight against the truth that he and Valentina belonged together.

  Staring through the rain he could already feel the warmth of the coming spring, the call of the gulls leaning on the bright air and the crash of the ocean with Valentina and Natasha at his side.

  The End

  About the author

  Graham was born in England but has lived most of his adult life in New Zealand. When not writing he may be found pottering in his cottage or jogging along the beach or the coastal walkways of the quiet sea-side settlement of Maraetai.