So would it always be like this? He chucked another stone as hard as he could – the compromises, the confusions, the sense that her plans might be just as important as his. Because if it was, he couldn’t stand it. Thank God there was still time to back out – no binding promises had been made.
She watched him from the veranda, skimming stone after stone into the sea, and then she went into the bedroom and lay down.
She wept, furious at first, and then in sorrowful confusion. I love him but do I really want this? The tears, the resentments, the appeasing, the yelling. I’d simply turn into another version of my mother.
She was lying face down on their bed when he walked in. She’d closed the shutters and soaked the pillow.
‘I can’t do it,’ she said in a muffled voice, ‘not like this.’
He put his hand on her back.
‘I know.’
He got into bed, put his face against hers.
‘Saba,’ he said. ‘It would kill me to lose you now.’
‘I went through this with my father,’ she said, ‘feeling wrong all the time – as if my work was a disgrace.’
‘I never want you to feel like that.’
Oh, the sweetness of feeling his hand on her hair, the relief of knowing he loved her still and that they could talk like this without the world crashing in.
‘I’m sorry I ruined your surprise.’ She kissed his chest. ‘It was such a lovely idea . . . and I do want to do it. But I can’t let the company down.’
He was gently unbuttoning her dress; she was smiling at him, but as she lay in his arms afterwards, she felt for the first time the rub of trying to jigsaw two lives together. A premonition that it would not be easy, that it could take a lifetime.
That night they ate supper together on the veranda at a moment in the day when the sun was leaving and the moon rising and the two halves of the water in the bay were silver and gold. It was, they agreed politely, beautiful but she saw it rather than felt it because the row had shaken them both, and Saba felt precariously close to tears as she passed him food and wine and there was a tiptoeing quality to their conversation that was new to them.
At the end of a long silence she said, ‘Dom, tell me what you’re thinking. You look sad.’
He took both of her hands in his.
‘I was thinking about flying.’ He looked sheepish.
‘Flying! Where to?’ She wanted to laugh suddenly. ‘Away from me?’
‘No! No – it’s just that . . . well,’ he fiddled with his fork, and looked at her, ‘I was thinking that when you learn to fly, the taking-off part is the easy bit – it’s the landing that’s tricky.’ He raised the fork in the air. ‘It’s not like a car, it’s more like a one-wheel bicycle – you have to balance the thing longitudinally and latitudinally, and after it’s gone up, you have to learn how to gently come down . . .’ He looked at her thoughtfully, ‘I don’t want to mess it up.’
‘I know.’ She swallowed hard.
In the silence that followed, she heard the rusty cry of the donkey again. He was fed with a bundle of grass every night around eight.
She took a deep breath and held Dom’s hand. ‘Will you solemnly promise me two things?’ she said.
‘This sounds serious.’
‘It is.’ She said it quickly. ‘I want you to promise that you won’t ask me to marry you – not yet.’
She almost laughed – he looked so surprised, or was it relieved?
He looked at her for a long time. ‘How strange. I’d sort of worked my way round on the beach this afternoon to going down on one satined knee quite soon.’
‘I said not yet.’ She was grinning broadly at him. ‘I want to feel free for a little while longer – maybe for the first time in my life.’
What she’d been thinking that afternoon came out in a rush.
‘I want to work. I don’t want to feel guilty about it. I’ve had years of that with my dad, and I’ve had enough. But I don’t want to lose you either.’
She could feel him thinking.
‘Wedlock,’ he said at last. ‘It’s such an attractive word, don’t you think? It fills one with confidence. The lock bit particularly.’
‘I’m not joking, Dom.’ Or was she, now she’d said it out loud? Part of her longed to leap into his arms and forget entirely about being her.
But he was. The old bad habits resurfacing, because this was a new way of thinking for him. It would take some getting used to, and he wasn’t sure yet whether he’d been turned down or not.
Around midnight the sea was black, apart from a strip of gauzy moonlight that ran from the shoreline to the horizon lighting up the raft.
‘I think we should stop talking now and go for a swim,’ he said.
‘Are you mad?’ She was relieved to see him smile again. ‘It’s probably freezing.’
‘We’re British,’ he told her, striding towards the waves. ‘We’re bred for it. Take your clothes off, woman, and jump in.’
When they’d stripped, he flung her over his shoulder and ran towards the sea, and when he dropped her in, she squealed in fright, both pretended and real, because it wasn’t as cold as she thought it would be, and because she liked feeling his arms around her. The comforting maleness of him.
Side by side they swam up the hazy corridor of light, the sea inky black around them, and when they got closer to the raft, they could see in the distance the smudge of the horizon and a boat with one dark sail.
Dom was a strong swimmer and had to slow himself down to stay with her.
She was thinking about the North Sea, and how cold it would feel at night; about her father, who might or might not be sailing there.
Nothing will be the same, she thought; going back to England will be like stepping through a door into the complete unknown.
‘I would like to take another run at my proposal,’ he said. ‘I stuffed it up last time.’ They were sitting on the raft together, their feet dangling in the sea. ‘If I don’t, I’ll kick myself for the rest of my life. So here goes.’
His face looked pearly in the moonlight, and she could see the sharp planes of his cheekbones. You hardly saw his scars at all now except in bright light.
‘I had a moment of truth in the desert; I saw it so clearly – my dream version of you and your reality – and I saw that I needed you both. And if having you means the odd bloody great row, or a bit of saucepan-throwing, who cares? At least I’ll be with someone I adore and admire, and who can sing in the bath.’
‘Oh God.’ She put her hand over his mouth. ‘Stop it. I shouted so much earlier – aren’t you terrified?’
‘Terrified.’ He put his hand around her shoulder and pulled her towards him. ‘You’re a brute. And I am going to be a very unhappy, henpecked husband.’
‘Let’s swim,’ she said. It was too much – too confusing, too wonderful.
‘Wait, wait, wait, impatient woman – I haven’t finished yet. What I mean is some arrangement that won’t involve . . . I don’t know, confetti and matching cutlery, but will take in babies, and perhaps an aircraft for me, and you singing. Is that completely impossible?’
‘Probably.’ She kissed him full on the mouth. ‘It sounds awfully good to me.’
The sea was a fraction colder as they dived in – it took their breath away. When they had caught their breath and were swimming side by side, they sang loudly and childishly, ‘A life on the ocean wave . . .’ By the time they got to the sandbank, they were planning a new trip up the Nile together, and Dom told her something interesting, something she didn’t know before. He told her how Howard Carter, after years of frustration and false hope, had shone his torch inside Tutankhamen’s burial chamber and seen the wall of solid gold, the strange animal statues.
Wonderful things. She tasted the words as they swam side by side towards the indistinct shore. To be young, to be alive, to have a future together; the promise of her own life, still hidden. From here she could see a faint straggling light coming from
their bedroom window, could feel the water growing warm, then cold, shadowy and clear again, the tug of invisible currents against her skin.
Also by Julia Gregson
East of the Sun
The Water Horse
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in 2012 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Julia Gregson 2012
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‘From Blossoms’ by Li-Young Lee, from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee.
Reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of BOA Editions Ltd., www.boaeditions.org
‘Erat Hora’ by Ezra Pound, from Personae. Copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp and Faber & Faber.
‘Burnt Norton’ by T. S. Eliot, from Four Quartets. Copyright © 1936 by T. S. Eliot.
Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber.
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ISBN: 978 1 4091 0811 5
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Jasmine Nights Page 45