Acts of Love

by Talulah Riley

  Bernadette felt somewhat weak, trying to replay her conversation with Radley Blake in her head.

  ‘What did you guys talk about?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘Um, mostly about the Middle East.’

  Elizabeth nodded earnestly, and Tim laughed. He touched his girlfriend lightly on the cheek.

  ‘Lizzie, I’m going to give the speech now.’

  ‘Now?’ she said, blushing. ‘Okay.’

  Tim took quick strides into the main room. Elizabeth grabbed Bernadette’s arm and pulled her along after him. ‘Come on, Bernie!’ she smiled. ‘Let’s get to the front.’

  Tim asked people for quiet, the music was turned off by some invisible power, and a crowd formed obediently around him. Guests who weren’t lucky enough to be in the room itself jostled in archways and doorways, necks craning to get a good view. Expensively attired, high-maintenance women with coiffed hair and carefully made-up faces towered above their dates on platform heels. Young bohemian girls in Chloé shorts and vintage blouses, their sun-kissed locks falling in tousled waves over their shoulders, were giggling in groups, their arms about each other’s waists. The men were in jeans and sports coats, or suits-with-no-tie. Everyone tried to suppress the merry chatter with shushes and yells, to control their mirth to a level where Tim might be heard. He was beaming round at the happy throng, a glass of wine raised and the usual twinkle of human kindness in his eyes.

  Bernadette glanced towards Radley Blake, still standing impassively by the fireplace. ‘He doesn’t look like a genius,’ she muttered bitterly.

  ‘Friends, family,’ Tim began, ‘Elizabeth and I are thrilled that you could join us for a little holiday celebration.’ He beckoned Elizabeth over, and she went to stand next to him, tucking herself under his shoulder. Bernadette felt a familiar surge of injustice. Everyone whooped and cheered. She tried to catch Tim’s eye, but he wasn’t looking in her direction.

  ‘It’s been a great year, in so many ways. I’ve been very lucky. Made it through the LA marathon – only just! Thank you to everyone who supported me, sponsored me, and put up with me. I finally got to go to the Galapagos – if you haven’t seen the pictures, you will! I have amazing clients, who make my job a dream …’

  Here he nodded vaguely in Bernadette’s direction, and she flashed her best smile in return.

  ‘… and most importantly of all, I found Lizzie.’

  He looked down at Elizabeth, and she gazed up at him with the most sincere and trusting expression in her pale-blue eyes. Never did a simple-hearted woman have love written so plainly across her face. It made Bernadette feel slightly sick. Elizabeth reminded her of a pet Labrador she had had as a little girl in England. It used to have the same docile, untroubled look.

  ‘We’re so happy to be able to announce our engagement!’

  Bernadette’s manner did not visibly change, and anyone who was watching her would simply think it a little strange that she did not move at all, that she was as still and beautiful as a petrified rose. Her lips grew white and her breathing shallow, but it would have taken a keen observer to notice such things. For Bernadette, all sound had receded in a giant whoosh to nothing but a blurred background murmur, and she could hear blood from her heart thudding in her ears. Dark splotches had formed in front of her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to try and rid herself of the blindness. She felt faint and dizzy, and the other people in the room were so far away. It seemed as if she would be entirely alone if she fell, that no one would care or even notice.

  But Radley Blake was staring at her. She couldn’t faint. She’d never fainted before in her life; she wasn’t the swooning type. He bowed slightly, the tiniest of nods in her direction. He was mocking her again, mocking her misery. She was so confused by his behaviour that she managed to snatch a little gulp of air. She took deep breaths, and became more sensible of her environment. People were cheering as Tim and Elizabeth kissed. It was too much to endure, and the strange fog of misery threatened to engulf her entirely. She shut her eyes and succumbed to it.

  Suddenly, strong arms encircled her, and Radley Blake half guided, half carried her outside, pushing through the blithe multitude. The back deck was quite clear, as people were still trying to get close to Tim and his fortunate fiancée, everyone wanting to be the first to offer congratulations.

  Radley seated her, somewhat roughly, on a low deckchair. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine.’ He returned a few moments later with an iced glass and placed it in her hand. ‘Drink this.’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, eyeballing the clear liquid with mistrust.

  ‘It’s water.’

  ‘Oh.’ She took several girlish sips and then, overcome with a sudden thirst, gulped down the rest of it. The fresh air and the water did go some way to making her feel better, and she looked gratefully at Radley.

  ‘It will pass, you know,’ he said. ‘Whatever you’re feeling right now. I promise. There will be a time when you don’t feel it.’

  She was in no mood to engage in meaningful conversation with a stranger. She needed room to think, to make sense of what had happened, to process the enormity of it. Adrenalin had given way to fatigue, but her boisterous nature would not allow her to admit defeat in front of a man, and she raised dark eyebrows in playful mockery. ‘My unwelcome saviour. Do you often drag women from crowded rooms like that, without their consent? I was fine, you know.’

  He smiled suddenly. ‘Liar. You were about to keel over.’

  She smiled at him in turn, and tilted her head in coquettish fashion. ‘You’re amazingly presumptuous. You can have absolutely no idea what I’m feeling. If you did, you would know to leave me alone.’ Here her head dropped a little, and her breathing threatened to quicken again. She was too tired to go on flirting after all. ‘Please leave me alone,’ she said, turning large, sad eyes upon him.

  He got up immediately, and was gone so suddenly she wondered if she had imagined him. It was unusual for someone to match her in erratic behaviour, but he had vanished, abandoning her with all the force of his previous concerned regard. She half wished she hadn’t asked him to leave.

  The next few hours passed in a blur. She continued to hydrate herself, but with drinks much stronger than water. Her fertile mind was working at speed, as her reaction times became slower. She briefly flirted with the idea of tearing off all her clothes, writhing on the wooden decking and screaming in primal agony in front of the other guests, not caring what anyone thought of her, consumed only by her thwarted passion in a Heathcliff-like rage. But such demonstrations were hard to recover from.

  It seemed absolutely wrong. How could Tim and Elizabeth be engaged? They’d only been dating a year.

  She comforted herself with the fact that an engagement was not marriage. Lots of engagements got called off, or dragged on for years and years. The usual selfish optimism, the belief that life would eventually work out exactly the way she wanted it – because hadn’t it always before? – rose to the surface, and she began to feel almost cheerful. Anything could happen over the course of an engagement! Elizabeth could contract some horrible chronic disease from being around her sick patients. Or Tim could come to his bloody senses. He loved her, she knew he did; she had a very keen intuition for such things.

  The party had thinned out. Bernadette sat alone on an outdoor couch, by a low fire pit. She stared into the hypnotic flames, wishing with all her heart, and with no sense of guilt, that Elizabeth would die or disappear. Without realising it, she was emitting a low moan, a sort of wounded animal noise, like a dying calf.

  Elizabeth sat down next to her and worriedly took her hand. ‘Bernie!’ she cried. ‘Are you okay?’

  Bernadette had managed to avoid Elizabeth and Tim since the engagement announcement. She didn’t think she could humanly stand Elizabeth’s gloating. ‘No,’ she said, miserably. ‘No, I’m not okay.’

  ‘Are you sick? Can I get you anything? Do you want some Tylenol?’

  ‘I need to speak to Tim,’ she
found herself saying. Her speech was slurred and she listed to one side, slumping against the concerned Elizabeth.

  ‘Sure! I’ll get him.’

  ‘I need to speak to him privately. Alone. It’s private. It’s very private.’

  ‘Oh, hon!’ cried Elizabeth, stroking her hand. ‘I wish I could help. You look awful!’

  Bernadette turned a cranky eye upon Elizabeth and arched an eyebrow. ‘Private,’ she slurred again. ‘I must.’

  ‘Of course,’ responded Elizabeth, gently and very serious. Bernadette wondered if it was the voice she used with her patients. ‘Whatever it is, Tim can help. Go through to the guest room. Do you know where it is?’

  Bernadette listened carefully to Elizabeth’s instructions, nodding her head, her shoulders so hunched her forehead was parallel to the ground. ‘Wait for him there,’ Elizabeth finished. ‘I’ll send him through to you.’

  Bernadette quietly opened the door to the guest room and closed it behind her, the latch clicking discreetly into place. It was a large and comfortable room at the side of the house, with French doors leading out to the garden. The doors stood open, and a soft, warm breeze gently puffed the sheer drapes back and forth in a mesmeric dance. She felt like she was in some kind of a dream. Tim was being sent to her, and she had to do something, say something, to forever seal their fate. The problem was, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do. She felt a sudden wave of cinnamon-tinged nausea, and fear gripped her. She thought about running away through the open French doors and never coming back.

  She sat shakily on the edge of the bed, trying to steady her physical self and steel her bothersome nerves. She wondered how long she would have to wait before Tim arrived. He seemed to be taking his time about it, considering that Elizabeth had rushed off to find him in a state likely to communicate an emergency.

  The bed was quite comfortable. She pondered lying across it provocatively. Her bronzed legs would look very nice stretched out over the crisp white linen. She could prop herself up on one elbow, facing the door, and scoop her hair over one shoulder. It would make a striking picture.

  She knew that Tim desired her. They had spent years exchanging arch emails, and they lingered for hours over business lunches. Bernadette had always related to him, in full Technicolor detail, the behavior of various men who had tried to woo her. But throughout she was always waiting, always fully expecting, that one day, when he gathered the courage, he would – in some romantic way – declare his true and deeper feelings.

  Tim had a gentleness and sensitivity that was missing in other men. He was non-threatening and non-sexual, and gave the impression that he would do right in any situation. It was his goodness that Bernadette most admired. She herself was too world-weary to be good, but Tim made her feel good by association.

  His engagement to Elizabeth must be nothing more than an error in communication. Bernadette should have made explicit her love for him; there was no way he would choose to marry a bland, unattractive, middle-aged nobody when he could have her instead. She just had to let him know that it was him she truly wanted.

  She looked up as Tim entered the room. She had not had a chance to arrange herself over the bed, and instead of coming across as a seductive siren, she must have looked to Tim like a frightened girl, perched awkwardly, gazing at him with troubled eyes. Whatever he saw, it was enough to make him shut the door carefully behind him.

  ‘What’s wrong, Bernie?’ he asked kindly, keeping near the door. ‘Have you had too much to drink?’

  She was briefly annoyed at his unromantic question, but fear got the better of her, and when she opened her mouth, she was unable to speak. Abandoned by words, she opened her arms helplessly, like a child asking to be carried. Concerned, Tim crossed to her, sat next to her on the bed and hugged her to him. It was all the encouragement she needed, and she breathed in deep, luxuriating in his clean, soapy smell.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Has something happened?’

  She pulled back to face him. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, tragically. ‘Yes, something has happened.’

  ‘What is it? You can tell me.’

  ‘I’m in love with you.’

  It was as if a shock of electricity passed through him, and he jolted back so suddenly, the bed bounced beneath them. His expression half incredulous, he looked at her as though she were an exotic wonder of a female, the likes of which he had never seen before, and for a moment she felt like singing with joy. But then she noticed the pain in his eyes, the torment etched in the lines of his face, and a cold fear gripped her. It had been a relief to say it, finally, and she felt the giddying rush of a secret shared. Telling him had been inevitable – given her open nature, it could be no other way – but what did not necessarily follow was that her declaration should find a warm welcome. The unpredictable, unknowable nature of men frightened her. In her imagination he had been receptive, but in reality he was not behaving as she wished. He wasn’t doing what the heroes in the romance novels did.

  He gave a small, tense laugh. ‘You’re kidding, Bernie, right? Very funny.’ He was speaking politely, as if she were a stranger to him, but worse, he was moving away from her slowly, as though she were mad or threatening, a wild creature about to strike a fatal blow.

  ‘Don’t, Tim, please don’t. You know I’m not joking. I love you. I love you so much.’

  His body slumped, and she noticed for the first time the greying hairs around his temple. He took both her hands gently in his. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘Then don’t! Don’t hurt me. It’s so easy not to hurt me.’ She leaned forward to kiss him, but he pulled away.

  ‘I’m engaged to Elizabeth.’

  Bernadette’s breath was coming in ragged gasps, her chest rising and falling with a too-quick rhythm. ‘Can you honestly tell me,’ she said, her eyes boring into his, ‘that you don’t want me?’

  The rosy blush that spread from his neck to his ears silently announced his defeat. ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said miserably. ‘Of course I want you. You’re so young, and vital – and beautiful.’

  She moved to kiss him again, but her lips had barely touched his before he sprang up alarmed and started pacing the room. ‘I can’t, Bernie, I can’t,’ he said, stricken.

  She took the pacing as a good sign; she could feel her victory close at hand. Bizarrely, at that moment she hallucinated Elizabeth’s pasty face staring at her placidly, those mild blue eyes blank and unknowing. She pushed the thought firmly from her mind, with no stirring of conscience.

  She slowly removed her high heels, lay back on the bed and rested her head against the pillow. ‘You can,’ she murmured, Lolita-like. He stopped pacing and stared at her in consternation. ‘I can’t bear to be without you, Tim. I’ve loved you from the very first day, truly. I want to be with you. Every single piece of me loves every little part of you. I want to marry you, and have a whole parcel of babies!’

  She could feel actual tears welling in her eyes, which was alarming. Tim looked as though he might cry too. He sat next to her on the bed again and began to stroke her leg, near her knee. Her breath caught in anticipation, and she waited for his hand to move upwards, over her thigh. She smiled at him encouragingly. But his hand stayed at her knee, and she realised that his touch was not designed to stir her passion, but was more soothing, the touch of a mother comforting a small child. Bernadette thought of her own mother, and of how much she would disapprove of this drunken behaviour, and her heart ached.

  ‘You – you do want me,’ she said, faltering. ‘You do.’

  ‘Yes, I do, Bernie. But I’ll never be able to have you.’

  ‘Why?’ she cried, petulantly.

  ‘Because I care about you too much. And I care about myself, enough to be sensible. And I mean, you’re … you’re kind of crazy!’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ she said, sitting up in displeasure. ‘I want to be with you. Always.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ he groaned. ‘Don’t say a
ny more. You’ll regret it. You’ll hate me for letting you talk.’ He stopped, and gasped with nervous laughter at the sight of her face. ‘Oh Bernie, you look so fierce. You’d be too much for me. You’d be bored with me after a week.’

  She disliked his laughter, but sensed a glimmer of opportunity in his last comment. ‘Is that what you think?’ she said, swiftly, tenderly. ‘That I’d tire of you, my darling? I never would. You’re the only person in the whole world that I love, Tim. You’re the only man I trust to be good to me.’

  ‘I love Elizabeth,’ he said, unable to look her in the eyes.

  Bernadette stiffened, a calm, icy feeling numbing her heart. She knew that feeling in herself – it was the moment before the breaking storm, the calm of a clear mind before her fury would be unleashed in a primitive, uncontrollable temper. ‘You just said you wanted me.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m engaged. I shouldn’t have said it.’

  And now her rage broke, the spite and anger flowing unchecked, her body trembling with the effort. ‘No, you shouldn’t have said it, if you won’t act on it. You’ve always known how I felt about you. Why flirt with me? Why all the sighs, and the secret bloody hand squeezes, and the longing looks, and the incessant emails? Why do it? You’re just like all the others, and I thought – I really thought – that you were a good man. The only good man.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was that serious to you, Bernie. I mean, you’re the Man Whisperer; that’s what you do! You flirt this way with everyone.’

  ‘Don’t you dare throw that back at me,’ she cried. ‘You were the one who made me the Man Whisperer! I don’t care for anyone but you. I actively despise any man that isn’t you.’

  His head drooped pathetically and his blush was as deep as she’d ever seen it. He was distraught, but she couldn’t stop. She knew, in fairness, that he had never consciously crossed the line of a bantering friendship, although he had given a thousand subtle signals of his longing. But she couldn’t be fair. The humiliation of rejection was bitter and unusual, and she was horrified with herself. To be thwarted by Elizabeth was a loathsome thought, and her own behaviour, her idiocy and lack of control, hurt most of all.