Realm of Darkness

by C F Dunn

“I’ll make some more popcorn,” I offered, straightening stiffened limbs and standing up.

  Elena surveyed her just-filled glass less than soberly. “If you do not want to watch it, say so. Choose another. Why don’t you like romantic films? You are always making faces about them.”

  Was I? I hadn’t thought I let it show. I slid back onto the sofa next to her. “It’s not that I don’t like them, but they hurt to watch. Too many broken hearts and damaged lives to make for comfortable viewing.”

  “Pah!” She rolled forward in an ungainly sprawl and snatched a DVD from the table. “Not like this! This is not com-for-table to watch!” She waved the box in front of me, nearly spilling her drink.

  “Yes, but Aliens isn’t real, Elena; there’s the difference. I don’t want to hurt. I had enough of all that to last me a lifetime.”

  She stopped waving the DVD, and her blood-tipped nails stilled, her brown-tilted eyes filling with curious concern. “This is to do with Guy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but don’t spoil now with him. Let’s watch something else.” I picked a DVD at random, instantly regretting it: Love Actually. That had been a wasted evening; I didn’t get past Emma Thompson finding the gift intended for someone else. The memory of her expression as her world collapsed lingered long after my abrupt exit from the cinema.

  “Emma, perhaps if you talk with him, this demon you have made will go away.”

  I looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “I think that you have spent so many years hating this man that you have made him into a monster from one of your books. He is not so bad.”

  “He’s not what he seems.”

  “Maybe so, but who is? We all have parts of ourselves we do not want others to see, but it does not make us wicked people. Just because what he did ten years ago was wrong does not make him a bad man, Emma. He made a mistake; can’t you forgive him?”

  Forgive him? I knew I should. What he had done was trivial in the great scheme of things – merely an error of judgment, an omission. It was the last bastion I raised between me and my God, an open wound at which I picked and refused to let heal. To forgive Guy would be to lay myself open and relinquish the hate I clung to. It would free me, but I couldn’t let go.

  “I wish I could forgive him,” I said, subdued, but in truth I didn’t know how to begin, or whether I even wanted to.

  “I know it is hard,” Elena persisted. “It took me many years before I could forgive the man who attacked me as a girl. Sometimes, I do not think I have, but you should try, or your hate will eat you up.” She made little snapping movements with her hand like a crocodile’s jaw. “You should meet with him, and then you will see he is human after all.”

  If only it were so easy. For that to happen I had to look him in the eyes – remember what had passed between us – let it go. Part of me saw the truth of what my friend said, but how could I begin to find forgiveness for Guy when I had none for myself?

  I skirted along the path between students pale and drawn from long nights spent in study, through the doors of the library and down to the silent vaults where the journal lay. There it was, undisturbed and at rest. From my pocket I drew a tiny scrap of paper, slipping it between the archive box and the shelf, where none but I would notice if it were dislodged.

  I found now that I negotiated the campus with a degree of caution I had not used since the edgy days when Staahl was at liberty and a mere insinuation of a threat. I tried to justify my actions by telling myself that I didn’t want to risk the distraction of meeting Guy when I had so much to prepare for the conference. The simple truth was that every time I thought I caught a glimpse of him, or imagined I heard his voice, my gut twisted and I grew cold despite the heat of the day.

  I thought I hid it well enough until a door slammed down the corridor outside my tutor room one afternoon, and I started nervously. Matthew put the portion of my presentation he had been reading down on my desk. “Emma, this has to stop. You’ve been as jittery as a June bug since Guy Hilliard arrived.” I twitched. “You see? I don’t want you jumping at every mention of his name. This is where you work and you have every right to be here without this constant fear of meeting him. Do you want me to deal with him?”

  “No!”

  He smiled grimly. “It’s only for a few more weeks and then he’ll be gone. In the meantime have some fun; you’re overworking again. Why don’t you and Ellie take some time out together?”

  “I would but she’s a bit preoccupied at the moment,” I reminded him. “We could go out though,” I suggested hopefully.

  “Yes, we could, but you might benefit from a little more balance in your life. I’m not sure if I have the right perspective on clothes shopping and cosmetics you seem to have.”

  That sounded like a cliché too far for my liking, and I was about to launch a pithy riposte when I saw his mouth tweak and concluded he was pulling my leg. He had made his point – I took life too seriously. With this in mind, when Elena suggested a day spent shopping in Portland, I accepted.

  “On one condition,” I demanded: “that we don’t mention Guy.”

  “OK,” she said pertly, as if nothing could be further from her mind. “On one condition…”

  I looked at her guardedly. “What’s that?”

  “We go in your car. It is so pre-tty and fast. We can go in your car, can’t we? Please, please, please!”

  “You sound just like Flora,” I laughed, feeling better already. “Only good girls get to go in my car. Are you a good girl, Elena?”

  Her eyes widened innocently. “I’m always good,” she said.

  We passed Longfellow’s venerable statue dominating its square, and headed for the attractive heart of the town where the oldest streets lay fronting the sea. A breeze lifted off the water, cooling the air. We spent our time mooching from one shop to another, laughing at the fiery red lobster toys and stuffed brown moose, admiring the Hopper prints and the quaintly kitsch white-painted lighthouses for the tourists. Elena kept checking her watch.

  “Not keeping you, am I?” I asked after I caught her surreptitiously easing back her sleeve for the third time.

  She jerked her sleeve back down. “Nyet, I am getting hungry, that is all. Are you not hungry, Emma?”

  I consulted my stomach. “No, not particularly, but if you are, that’s fine. There’s a decent looking place we passed just up there.” I nodded towards a side street. “Lunch is on me.”

  Instead of accepting, she moved in the opposite direction. “I think we do a little more shopping first – this way.”

  “I don’t know this part of town very well,” I said a few minutes later as the smaller boutiques gave way to larger institutional buildings and utilitarian stores. She darted into a shop specializing in camping equipment, flicked through racks of men’s coats, checked her watch, and declared it to be lunchtime.

  “OK,” I said slowly, following her into a cramped, nondescript restaurant. She selected a table and sat down by the window. “Would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I’m hungry.” She thrust a menu in my hand.

  “And I’m the Pope,” I said drily. She didn’t reply but ordered corn chowder and fries and waited while I cast my eyes down the menu.

  “Just some fries, thanks,” I said to the waitress, mildly astonished when Elena didn’t comment on the paucity of my meal. “I like it when they leave the skins on.” My random remark went unnoticed.

  Elena grabbed her bag and stood up. “I’ve forgotten something,” she rushed. “I’ll be back in a few minutes; start without me.”

  I resigned myself to waiting, and rummaged in my bag for Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s Inferno. After ten minutes, I regretted sitting in the window, as the midday sun roasted my neck despite the air conditioning. People came and went. The waitress returned with my order. Still no Elena. I ate a few chips and considered moving further into the interior, but all the tables were occupied. I returned to Dante’s “Seco
nd Circle” and his carnal malefactors. The table juddered as someone pushed past, making the cutlery rattle.

  “Still on starvation rations, I see.” Guy’s dry inflection catapulted me into the present as he pulled out the chair and sat down. “And your choice of reading material is as erudite and sanctimonious as ever.” He raised a hand and the waitress came over. “Americano,” he ordered and looked expectantly at me. I shook my head, speechless with fury.

  “Thanks,” I said to the girl, as he hadn’t. He moved the salt over in a clean sweep of his hand, resting his tanned arms on the barren table and looking particularly pleased with himself. I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeming surprised and I wouldn’t leave; my pride made sure of that. The extra weight he carried suited him, made him less angular somehow, but it failed to disguise the vinegar in his blood. He had definitely aged, but he carried it well and the assertive aura he exuded was as beguiling as ever. The waitress certainly thought so as she placed the coffee in front of him. My heart stuttered for a few angry seconds as the sooty stench burned my throat. I leaned back as far as I could until my shoulders touched the glass and felt the vibration of the congested street outside.

  “It’s been a long time since we did this, Emma.”

  I stared stonily at him. “Why exactly are you here?”

  “I have your friend to thank for this. It was her suggestion that we meet and heal some old wounds. Kind girl, attractive with it, but sentimental. Not like you, Emma; you were never one for slush. I must make sure I thank her, take her out perhaps.”

  “Leave Elena out of it. She’s engaged and she’s happy.”

  “I’m not interested in Elena.” He didn’t elucidate. “I see you’re married now. That’s a poesy ring, isn’t it? Looks period. An interesting choice for a wedding ring in the twenty-first century, and that engagement ring…” I hid my hand and interest flashed in his eyes before the heavy lids masked it, an avaricious look I had seen before when he wanted something that wasn’t his to possess: a book, information, me. A knot tightened around my gut.

  “Congratulations,” he continued. “I’m glad for you; it’s what you always wanted.” He didn’t ask me who or when and I had the feeling he already knew. He smiled without warmth and always – always – the suspicion that behind his words were layers of meaning, like strata. “We have some things to discuss, Emma, that’s why I’m here.”

  “Do we?” I said, terse.

  “We do, or at least I do. We have unfinished business. There are things I’ve had on my conscience for a long while.”

  “I’m not your confessor, Guy.”

  He eased forward in his chair, his tanned hands either side of his cup. “I know I’ve hurt you in the past…” I snorted with disbelief, “… but I want to say I’m sorry. I want your forgiveness, Emma. Can you forgive me?”

  My mouth fell open. Guy wanted me to forgive him. Guy asked for my forgiveness. Guy never asked, he always took, regardless.

  “Why?”

  He shifted a fraction, the same sparse movements he always used. I tried to see beneath the exterior, tried to fathom his motives, but his words and colours matched – his contrition appeared real both inside and out.

  “I’ve had a chance to re-evaluate my life over the last few years, take stock, put my house in order. Things weren’t good after you left, I became quite low – you know that – and then I discovered Sarah had been having an affair.”

  I picked up a chip without looking and bit off its head. “I think it’s called poetic justice.”

  He winced. “She took the children and left…”

  “You divorced?”

  “No, of course not.” Someone dropped a stack of plates. In the brief hiatus as people craned their necks to look, we remained staring at each other. “I was in the V and A museum last spring shortly after the Edinburgh conference. You remember the conference, don’t you? You should do – you were at pains to avoid me.” He controlled a bitter smile. “There’s an image in a little Book of Hours – a delightful thing, early sixteenth century – depicting King David praying for forgiveness for his adultery with Bathsheba, and it accompanies Psalm 6:

  ‘O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy

  hot displeasure.

  Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me;

  for my bones are vexed.

  My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O Lord, how long?’

  You appreciate the irony, I’m sure, as much as you would value the object. I think you might say I had a cathartic experience, a revelation. I was being punished for my adultery and I had to ask forgiveness from those whom I had wronged.”

  “Really.” I surveyed him across the table and tried to picture him conscience-stricken and repentant, but it just didn’t work. “So you’ve seen Sarah since this lustral moment?”

  “Not yet,” he evaded. “I wanted to see you first.”

  So, she hadn’t believed him either.

  “You don’t need my forgiveness to salve your conscience, Guy; if you really mean what you say you already have it from God. You could have repented and had done with it a long time ago. Why wait until now?”

  He didn’t like being thwarted, but then he never did. His expression soured. “I tried – remember? But you ignored my calls and you wouldn’t see me. I even called you before Christmas when I heard you were home. You cut me dead, Emma. What more could I have done?” He picked up the cup, but didn’t drink. “Look, I’ve moved on. I’m a different person from the one you used to know. After I left my post in Cambridge I took some time out…”

  I couldn’t resist the barbed, “You found yourself.”

  He drained the cup before answering. “You might put it like that. I started writing again and my research has taken me in a new direction. The only thing that stands in my way is how we left it between us.”

  “You mean I stand in your way? It’s my fault, is it?”

  He all but threw the empty cup on the table. It slid towards me threateningly. I shoved it away again.

  “I didn’t say that. You always have to make everything so bloody complicated.” The muted purples surrounding him flashed angry crimson.

  “Is that all you wanted to say then, Guy? To say sorry and congratulate me on my marriage?”

  He leant back and contemplated me. “You were never this hard.”

  I bit my tongue because he was a long way from the truth. “No, well, I had to learn rapidly.” I caught the waitress’s eye.

  “What do you want me to do with your friend’s order?” she asked as I paid and thanked her.

  “She won’t be back. This gentleman will have it.” I stood and inched from behind the table.

  “Emma…”

  “I’ve already paid, Guy.”

  “I’m not talking about the damn food. Wait, for Pete’s sake…” I threw his restraining hand from my arm and he followed me into the labouring street heaving with workers on their lunch-break and the first of the summer visitors, ambling.

  “Emma, I need to know you forgive me.”

  I stopped abruptly and he almost bumped into me. “You haven’t said why.”

  “Does it matter?”

  It did. I couldn’t say why, precisely, but his explanations were like an incomplete picture and I hated not knowing, because somehow – and for whatever unknown reason – it mattered.

  “Because, Guy, you owe me that much.” People edged around the obstruction we caused, shifting sultry air.

  Eventually he shrugged. “It’s part of my penance.”

  I almost laughed. Without warning, he bent down and forced his mouth hard against mine. I recoiled as soon as I could free myself.

  “What do you think you’re doing!” Furious, I wiped my arm across my mouth.

  “To show you there’s no hard feeling.”

  “Don’t ever touch me again.” Turning on my heel, I nearly collided with two nurses from the nearby medical centre. I apologi
zed automatically and walked away, sensing his resentment boring through my back as I left him behind, leaving only the bitter aftertaste of the coffee and a discordant, ragged pulse in my veins.

  The feeling of being watched remained with me all the way back to the car, and then I forgot about it because Elena waited for me there.

  “Well?” she asked anxiously as the doors unlocked.

  “Whose idea was it, Elena – his or yours?”

  “I thought it would be a good idea…”

  “His or yours?” I repeated.

  “Guy said he wanted to see you and I thought it would be a good way of… of…”

  I wrenched the door open without listening further to her explanation and climbed into the baking interior. The hot leather stung my legs. Grabbing a bottle of water I soaked a tissue, scrubbing at my lips until all trace of Guy and the coffee had gone.

  She climbed in beside me, watching my rough movements with furrowed brow. “We were talking and I said you and I were going shopping and Guy mentioned he was in town. Did you not make up?”

  “Oh sure, he kissed and made up all right.” I could still feel the acid-etched pressure of his mouth on my skin. I felt dirty.

  “Guy said he had things he needed to say to you, and Sam said…”

  “Sam? What does Sam have to do with anything?”

  “Nothing, but he was there with Guy in the staff dining hall, and they asked me to join them for coffee. It wasn’t anything, Emma – just coffee.”

  But it was never just anything with Guy. And Sam? At what point had Guy met Sam, and why? I didn’t believe in coincidence and, if there were such a thing, it was entirely of Guy’s making. I wasn’t cross with Elena – disappointed perhaps, but not cross. She had acted as she always did, with generous-hearted motives for the welfare of her friend. That this might be misplaced in Guy’s case I thought clear; what worried me was that his motives were not.

  As we approached the turning to the university drive, I broke the silence. “So you met Guy for coffee; that’s nice. Had a good chat?”

  Her smile brightened. “Da, he is very interesting. He told me about his travels and all his research. It sounds like your work.”