CHAPTER 29
late July
‘I’m melting,’ said April. ‘Like the wicked witch.’
‘I thought wicked witches got burned at the stake.’
‘I’m burning at the stake then.’ April lay back on the lawn under the shade of the big copper beech. Its leaves filtered the sun’s sparkle like carmine prisms. ‘My flesh is dripping off me.’
‘I love days like this,’ said Jack. ‘For me, the hotter the better.’
April squinted up at him where he sat, back against the tree trunk. Gabe was stretched out full length on the shaded grass, twitching in his sleep.
‘But you’re always hot. No matter what the weather.’
‘Am I?’ he said, amused.
‘I can feel you even from a distance.’
‘Maybe I store up energy. So I can use it later, when I need it.’
‘Maybe you photosynthesise, like a plant.’
‘Could explain why I shrivel to nothing in winter.’
‘Oh, don’t.’
‘That’s how it is.’ He glanced upwards. ‘In winter, this tree loses all its leaves and its sap retreats. I lose weight and strength. And in summer, I regain it.’
It was true, April thought. When she’d met him, he’d been lean and sinewy as a long-distance runner, and there’d been a sallow tinge to his dark skin. Now, he was the image of vitality, filled out and strong, his skin the glossy brown of a chestnut. He still wore his boots, but his trousers were drill cotton, not corduroy, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his shirt buttons undone to midway down.
Where was he from? She’d wanted to ask him that question so many times. And the reason she hadn’t, she knew, was not that she expected he’d decline to tell her, his justification that information about his past had no bearing on the present. She’d held back because she knew it suited her to live in a world where, if only for a few hours a week, there was just the two of them. It was like opening up a storybook and knowing it was just you, the reader, for whom the characters spoke and acted. You did not have to share that moment with anyone.
‘Are you real?’ she said.
‘Ha!’
He dropped down next to her, propped up on one elbow, his expression half amused, half appraising. Then he bent his head and kissed her, firmly, properly, and for much longer than before.
All the energy sapped by labour and the heat rushed back into April and spread everywhere, all at once, so that even her fingertips pulsed with it. The sensation was not completely pleasurable. There was an edge to it, like pins and needles or skin brushed lightly across nettles, and underlying it a fear, as if a strong hand was dragging her down below the water.
He broke the kiss.
‘Ask me that question again,’ he said, his smile this time, in April’s mind, one of self-satisfied triumph.
April sat up so abruptly he had to duck his head back to prevent it being collected by her elbow.
‘Why did you do that?’ she demanded.
With a slow exhalation of breath, he pushed himself off the ground, sat facing her, arms resting lightly on his knees.
‘Did you not want me to?’
There was a scrupulously honest answer to that, thought April, and then there was the right answer.
‘You know I can’t,’ she said. ‘You know that’s not part of who I am.’
He winced, as if stung by an accusation he knew to be valid, but ready to defend his point all the same.
‘Does a kiss have to mean that much more?’ he said.
‘More than what?’
‘Than something to enjoy.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘We’re two grown people,’ he said. ‘We like each other, enjoy each other’s company. Why not enjoy each other physically as well?’
Because I’m not at liberty to enjoy anything was April’s first thought. But the thought that overrode it was that he was right: she did enjoy his company. She enjoyed working with him in the garden, learning about plants and soil. She enjoyed watching things grow, often from nothing but a seed the size of a dust mote. She enjoyed his calm talk and the reassurance of his physical presence.
She enjoyed working on the house, too. The satisfaction of seeing drab and damaged surfaces revived, the expectant tang of paint and varnish. The sense that the house was grateful. Oran’s singing, the banter between them, even the terrible stewed cups of tea.
She enjoyed being with Edward and Sunny, in the rose-scented courtyard, or in the purposeful cheer of Sunny’s kitchen. She’d even enjoyed the brief flurry of baking, though she would be quite happy to never again see another gooseberry.
April had been enjoying it all, and until right that second she had not realised how much. She’d thought she was being rational, that everything she’d done had been for practical reasons only. But that was a delusion. She had been straying from the path for months now, and she’d not had the wit to know or the eyes to see it. April was furious with herself.
‘Would it really be that bad?’
Jack must have seen her expression change.
‘It would be wrong.’ April needed to be clear. ‘Wrong for me.’
She could hear him breathing, slow breaths as if he was thinking about what to say next. She hoped that he would not try to touch her again. If he did, she had no doubt that in her current mood she would hit him.
‘Can I ask one question?’ he said.
‘I might not answer.’
‘That’s all right.’
April held her own breath for a moment, as if by doing so, she might be able to freeze time. But what point was there in prevaricating? Jack was a man who seemed to have all hours at his disposal.
She breathed out, slowly, reluctantly.
‘Go on.’
‘What do you believe would happen if you became yourself again?’ he said.
April was relieved. This was a question she had asked herself enough times to have formed a confident answer.
‘I don’t think the world will end, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think a bolt of lightning will strike me down. But I would be taking what I am no longer entitled to. Joy, love, pleasure — I gave up the rights to those when I took them from my son, when I became responsible for ending his life.’
‘That’s a harsh call. Harsh as can be.’
‘Why should I go on as before when he can’t? Why should I have all those things he never will? If I caused his death, then I should pay a price, don’t you think? Nobody was about to send me to jail, so I made my own sentence. Don’t you think that’s only right?’
‘Doesn’t matter what I think.’
‘No,’ said April. ‘No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks or wants. This is my choice, for my reasons, and I’m the only one who can judge whether it’s right or wrong.’
‘And what if I asked you one more thing?’
‘Another question?’
‘What if I asked you to reconsider?’
April hesitated. ‘Why would you do that? You wouldn’t change your life for me, would you?’
That brought a rueful smile.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You have me there.’
‘Then why?’
He did not answer right away.
‘I dived into a river once,’ he said. ‘Someone I cared about had gone in and was being dragged under because the river was flooded and the current was swift. I could see the water was treacherous, but I did not think of anything except saving her, so in I leapt.’
‘Her?’
‘A friend. It was a long time ago.’
‘And you saved her, didn’t you?’ April could not see how it would be otherwise.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I could not reach her. The water was too rough, too fast. It dragged me under, too. I drowned.’
April grabbed his hand and held it tight. She’d been sweltering but dread had crept into her bones and now she shivered with cold.
‘I remember looking
up from under the water,’ he said. ‘All above me was grey-green and swirling, but through it I caught a glimpse of blue sky and I felt a great sadness because I knew it would be the last time I saw it. Then the water came into my lungs and it all went black.’
‘But you can’t have drowned.’ April linked her fingers with his, as if to lock their hands together. ‘You’re here now, with me. Very much alive.’
‘I was lucky. The river tumbled me like a stick, over and over, but then washed me up down-river on a stony bank. And whatever bit of instinct was left in me spewed the water out of my lungs, and I came to, coughing and choking, bruises and cuts everywhere, and all my clothes ripped right off.’
He glanced down, lifted the toe of his boot. ‘Still had these though. I suspect they’ll survive right through to the second coming.’
His smile was faint and regretful, but the fact he was smiling made April want to hit him again. She did, but lightly, a cuff on the shoulder.
‘I detest you,’ she said, ‘for traumatising me with that story. What was the point of it, anyway?’
The face that looked across at her with affection was strong-boned and remarkably unweathered. He reached out to smooth her hair behind her ear.
‘I’m not sure it has one. But I wanted to tell you that there was a moment, a fleeting instant between the sadness and the blackness when I understood the peace that death could bring. I understood why some people gravitate towards it, why they don’t want to resist its pull. I’d always thought those people foolish, but now I can see better their point of view. I still don’t agree with it,’ he added, ‘but I don’t judge them half as harshly.’
‘Oh, my God!’ April tensed. In reacting to the drama of his story, she had forgotten how it had begun. ‘Your friend! What happened to her? Did she—?’
His expression sobered, and he would not meet her eye, but once again reached to touch her hair.
‘She died,’ he said.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
He was clearly disinclined to say more, so April did not press him. She watched the rise and fall of his breathing and imagined the steady thump of his heart. His skin beneath his open shirt was smooth and brown and warm.
‘I’m so glad the river didn’t want you,’ she said.
He tilted his head. ‘Well, maybe that’s a start.’
And then he began to bounce up on his toes, full of energy that had suddenly arisen from God knows where.
‘Come on,’ he said to her. ‘It’s too good a day to waste.’
He snapped his fingers to wake Gabe, and stood waiting for her, eager to be off. April was not so sure that she should go with him. She had strayed and needed to get back on track, and that would best be done on her own.
Yes, that would be best. But he was already on the move, dog at his heels, and as she watched him go, April was filled with a clawing panic. When he’d told his story, for a moment there, she’d felt him go under. She’d felt his last impulse to breathe that drew not air but water into his lungs, felt his hand ripped from hers as he was swept away.
April ran after him, slipped her hand in his and held on tight.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The best place,’ he said. ‘In weather like this.’
The place was a swimming hole, further into the woods than Jack had ever taken her. At the edge of a small clearing a deep dark-green pool lay beneath a wall of moss and fern-clad rock, down which spilled the waterfall that had formed it and continued endlessly to fill it. The waterfall was a natural spring, less a cascade than a steady trickle, out from under a rock ledge. The pool leached into a rivulet that April assumed eventually widened and joined the big river or sank back into another hole in the ground. There was a hole in Wales, she recalled, that had no detectable outlet. Things that washed in never, ever washed out.
April dipped a toe in the pool and gasped.
‘It’s freezing!’
‘Only at first.’
Jack’s shirt and boots were already off and he was now, April saw, about to remove his trousers.
‘You’re not going in naked?’
He paused. ‘How else would I go in?’
‘I’m not going in naked!’
‘Why not?’
So many reasons.
‘Water’s cold.’
‘Wear clothes, then,’ he said. ‘It’s all the same to me.’
With a last tug, his trousers were off. It was too late for April to look away so she did not bother. As it was, he turned his back to her and sprinted to the pool, hitched up his legs and dive-bombed into the water. Gabe, who’d been drinking at the edge, was showered in freezing drops that made him start back and sneeze. Jack surfaced with a shout, then made a splashy, messy crawl to the rock wall, hauled himself out and began to climb.
‘Your master’s a ten-year-old boy, Gabe,’ April said. ‘In the body of a man of indeterminate age.’
Gabe stared at her with what looked to April like mournful agreement, loped over to a birch tree and flopped down under it.
‘Good thinking,’ she said, and found her own spot to sit down on, a patch of grass that was scrubby and uneven, but free of nettles and far enough from the pool to avoid the splashes that fountained out every time Jack leapt from the ledge above the falls.
April became acutely aware that by watching him swim, she was seeing every bit of him. He was utterly unselfconscious and yards away from her, yet it still felt too intimate for comfort. So she lay back on the ground, shifted around to avoid the worst of the stony, rooty lumps, and closed her eyes.
She heard his footsteps and quick breathing, and felt a waft of air and flecks of cool water on her skin as he dropped down next to her.
‘Are you not coming in?’
‘It’s freezing,’ she said. ‘Don’t deny it — you’re covered in goosebumps.’
‘Soon warm up.’
‘Don’t even think about throwing me in, either. I’ll do you an injury.’
‘Perfect water on a perfect day. Such a waste.’
There was an edge to his voice that put April on alert. Jack’s manner might be terse at times but he was never angry. Even when she’d laid into him earlier he’d taken it calmly. Though he hadn’t hidden the fact he did not agree with how she chose to live her life, he’d not pressured her or shown any impatience. To be rebuked by him, even mildly, was a new experience, and not one April found she cared for. But she was tough, he’d said so himself. She could hold her own.
‘You can enjoy it,’ she said. ‘I’m not stopping you.’
‘I’d be happier if you enjoyed it, too.’
‘Then you’ll have to be less happy.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right, that’s it then …’
And he was on his feet, pulling on his clothes with angry haste.
‘What are you doing?’ said April, alarmed.
‘I’m off.’
‘No!’ April scrambled to her feet. ‘I can’t find my way back on my own!’
‘Yes, you can.’
He tugged up his bootlace, tied it, snapped his fingers for the dog.
April’s heart was hammering. She only just resisted a panicky impulse to clutch hold of his arm and hang on.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she said. ‘To punish me? For not giving you what you want?’
That stopped him. The anger on his face yielded to remorse.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper. Your life’s your own, just like mine is, and I should let you live it your way. But it’s becoming so much harder to do that. So much harder to watch you—’
He stepped close, made as if to touch her and then thought again, kept his hands by his sides. April’s heart still battered against her chest, but now the alarm was of a different kind. The panic to avoid loss had become apprehension about what new element might be about to enter her life. This was not the Jack she’d known until now, who let his thought
s out slowly and with restraint. This Jack was about to burst open like a chestnut left too long on a fire, and spill everything, all at once. Every thought he’d been keeping to himself was about to pour down on April, and she was very much afraid she might drown.
‘April, are you really going to let all these opportunities for joy pass you by?’ he said. ‘Do you truly want to exist in the same grey, stale, cheerless, loveless half-light until you die?’
There it was. What he really believed. What he really wanted to say to her. The worst thing was not that he’d said it after all this time, after she’d begun to believe she was safe with him. The worst thing was that it was an exact echo of the question that had formed inside her the moment she had buried her old life. A question she’d refused to acknowledge, let alone answer, but that had persisted all the same, like a weed whose roots stay in the ground no matter how deep you dig.
And though the words were so familiar to her, coming from his mouth they sounded bright and sharp as new pins. They pricked and hurt, and April was desperate to make the pain go away.
To her amazement, she summoned enough willpower to push back. ‘Don’t blackmail me,’ she told him. ‘That isn’t fair — or kind.’
His face, usually so composed, was showing everything he felt. April saw pity, remorse, affection and frustration. She saw kindness and sympathy but also a pressing need to make his point, to leave her in no doubt how important this was to him.
‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘There’s no point, because I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. All I can do is ask you — beg you — from my heart, to reconsider.’
The clearing had seemed so quiet before, but now the noises swelled around her. The glittery rasp of insects, the jangle of the birds, the waterfall pouring, endlessly, as if sealed in a loop of time. In her mind ran a film of her own making, a sequence of images known and invented, of Oran the child, abandoned; of James’ mother, who’d lost her only son; of a father whose grief was so strong that he let his house go to ruin around him; of her own boy, and his father, her husband, and all those who’d cared whom she’d pushed away, and she felt the regret of what was lost and what might have been pour down over her as if it, too, would never stop.
The Hiding Places Page 28