Moon Island

by Rosie Thomas

  Uncertainty made time stretch and distort, like a long road shimmering in a heat-haze. These beach days of sunshine and waiting, and Marian’s autocracy, seemed to dwindle into infinity behind and ahead of Leonie. She moved her bare feet in the sand, an impatient flurry of movement which made John turn his head and look at her. ‘It’s too hot out here, don’t you think?’ she said to him, the words dropping into a vacuum in which the waves and the gulls and the children’s voices were suddenly silenced. ‘Shall we go inside out of the sun?’

  He unlinked his hands and stood up, as easy as if nothing significant were happening. They saw that May was walking in the thin strip of shadow at the foot of the beach wall, but as soon as she noticed they were watching her she veered sharply and arrived at the edge of the volleyball game.

  ‘Come up and have a cold drink in my house,’ John said.

  They walked away from Marian and the encampment of baby toys and strollers. Leonie felt the eyes of her mother-in-law following her, but for once there was no call asking her to bring Sidonie’s parasol or some bottled water when she came back down again. The shingle was cool underfoot, then the wooden steps burned her with their splintery heat. She hopped too fast and almost overbalanced, and John steadied her with one hand.

  ‘Sorry. Should have some shoes on.’

  They crossed the garden and climbed the shallow steps to the porch. Shade fell across Leonie’s burning face like a blessing. John held open the door for her and she passed into the shadowy room. The dimness and the wintry smell of woodsmoke was momentarily confusing, and she looked around to regain her bearings. A Walkman and a scatter of tapes lay on the table, amid a litter of dirty plates and glasses. Sneakers and a baseball cap and a Coke bottle decorated the steep stairs.

  John opened the old-fashioned refrigerator and took out ice and mineral water. He filled a glass and gave it to her, and Leonie drank and rolled the beaded coldness between her sweaty hands. It was the first time they had been alone together since their walk to Berry Island. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘Why do you keep saying that?’

  ‘I suppose I’m just used to it.’

  ‘That sounds like the answer of a weaker person than I think you are.’

  He took her by the arms and while he was holding her looked carefully into her face. Instead of saying anything she waited, letting him discern whatever there was to see. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  She knew what she wanted now, this minute, and the recognition made her skin burn. Beyond that she had no idea how to sort the longings into a sequence she could give voice to.

  He slid his hands to her shoulders and drew her against him. There was still time, Leonie thought wildly. Everything that had happened between them up to now – talk, lunch, kiss, walk – could be lightly dismissed or explained away. She could give a little regretful laugh or a rueful shrug, and step away from John Duhane and back into the dissemblance of her life. I don’t want to. I don’t want to step back. It was impossible for everything to go on being exactly the same. Whatever she did, it would have to mean change beginning at this moment.

  Even as she hesitated Leonie was reflecting on damage, and how the instrument of her infidelity would almost certainly smash the last struts of her marriage and the remnants of Tom’s affection for her – if there were any. There was John’s life to consider also, and his daughters’, and the complications that would be visited on all of them. But if there was no stepping back, all she could hope to do was walk forward. The thought was like a reprieve and it made a beat of happiness shiver through her. John saw the change in her eyes and bent his head as she lifted hers.

  When they kissed the tape of guilt and self-admonition stopped running. It was natural to do what they were doing and the urgency of it amazed them both. Leonie gave herself up to him and he took the offering with pleasure. It was a long time before they moved apart again and even then he kept hold of her, as if he was afraid that otherwise he might lose her.

  He was looking for words and at last he said, ‘I’ve wanted to do that almost ever since I met you. But I don’t want to cause pain, or do damage. I’ve experienced enough of that.’

  His echoing of her feelings was so precise that she laughed in sudden surprise and touched his cheek with her fingers. What scarred veterans we both are, she thought. ‘I knew you did, and I know what you don’t want because I don’t want exactly the same things. But neither do I want to turn my back –’ she paused, reversing her palms upwards to reveal their emptiness ‘– on whatever chance we might have. Am I allowed to acknowledge that? Or is it misplaced?’

  ‘No,’ he said gently. ‘Not misplaced as far as I am concerned. But I am free to say that because I’m not married or in any way attached. Except to my children, that is.’

  Leonie nodded. ‘There are some things I should tell you. I’d like to tell you, before anything else happens between us. If anything else is going to happen, of course.’

  ‘Would a proper drink be a help?’

  ‘Yes, it would.’

  He found a bottle and poured whiskey for both of them. Leonie sat down on one of the battered chesterfields and let her head fall back luxuriously against the cushions. The bright sunlight squared behind the old windows made the whiskey taste dramatic and nocturnal. She blinked back the tears the first gulp brought to her eyes. ‘The failure between Tom and me began a long time ago. Began and took its course. It’s complete now. It was nothing to do with you, then or now, except that on the day we had lunch at Sandy’s Bar I looked down at my plate and it dawned on me that Tom and I didn’t love each other any more. And once I knew it I couldn’t get rid of the knowledge.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘I did that clumsy thing of kissing you in the car-park. It was in a kind of reckless glee, because of what I had just realised and because I knew that at least there would be a difference now, instead of the same old painful monotony.’

  ‘And there was I thinking you kissed me because you wanted to kiss me.’

  Leonie took another happy swallow of the whiskey. The rawness of it in her throat was fiercely pleasurable. She thought she could easily get drunk, letting all her locked-up feelings run sloppily loose, then climb into bed with John Duhane and never get up again. ‘Oh, I did want to. And I wanted to give Spencer Newton something to think about, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He wasn’t touching her now. He was simply sitting beside her and listening, and the wholeness of his attention made her understand how isolated she had been. She basked in the comfort of his notice, resting her cheek against the glass she had just emptied. ‘I think I’m an intimacy junkie.’

  The idea was tangential enough to make her wonder if she was already drunk, but John didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yes, maybe we both are. And we’re afraid of our addiction, so we shy away from what we long for.’

  He was at least as lonely as she was, Leonie understood. She remembered what John had told her about Suzanne and the other stillborn relationships that had followed Alison’s death. It wasn’t just May and Ivy, then, who had pinched the bud before it flowered, but something in John himself. And what did that mean about him and Alison? ‘Tell me about her,’ she asked and waited, suddenly aware of the shadows in the room that remained out of reach of the sunlight, and the insistent murmur of the sea.

  ‘Al was very … vivid. I told you. She could swing between euphoria and despair within a day, sometimes it seemed like within an hour. And she never saw anything wrong with that, she thought it was how life should be lived. She never made compromises about what she wanted or what she believed in. I always loved her, from the time we first met.’

  ‘And she loved you.’

  He took it as a question. ‘Yes, in her way.’

  ‘Were you faithful to each other.’

  ‘I was.’

  On the beach May pushed herself into the volleyball game. The bright sunlight made her frown but Kevin Beam sidestepped t
o allow her some space and she flashed him what she thought might be an Ivy smile. If she could penetrate this circle, she thought, and join up with the younger Beam brothers and their dumb games and be near Lucas, then she could get free of Doone. If she hung out with the other kids and smoked weed and giggled like Gail and Ivy and the others, then everything would be ordinary again. There would be no island woman and no grave overgrown with wild herbs and nothing to be afraid of.

  The ball boomed over her head to the opposite side of the net and Lucas swung his crossed wrists to connect sweetly with it. The ball soared again as a star-shaped image of brown limbs and torso and a face blurred with hair printed itself behind May’s eyes. She planted her feet apart and bent from the hips, waiting for the ball as she had seen Ivy do, but she was too late and her eyes were still dazzled as it came out of nowhere and hit her on the shoulder.

  ‘Hey, Maysy, that’s some cool play. We want you on our team for Pittsharbor Day.’

  She knew that Kevin and Joel were smirking behind her back. She twirled round to face them and forced another smile. ‘Sure. You can count on me.’

  ‘Thanks, man.’

  ‘May!’ Lucas was calling her. He punched the ball in her direction and as if she were pulled towards him on a thread May’s head lifted in response and her back straightened. She jumped and her arms stretched out to meet the swelling black dot.

  The blue air seemed to shimmer around her and gravity lost its hold as her feet left the ground. She knew she couldn’t fail and sure enough her shoulder drove her fist through an immaculate arc and her knuckles connected with a jolt of pain that was also a stab of pleasure. The ball skimmed back over the net and Ivy missed it altogether.

  ‘Yeah!’ Lucas smiled and swept the hair back from his forehead. Ivy and Gail applauded, even though it was a half-ironic slow handclap.

  In the unaccustomed perfection of the instant May was thin and strong, and confident of her powers. She leapt once more in pure exultation and Marty Stiegel caught her in his camera lens. ‘Good one,’ he told her casually and lowered the camera again. He adjusted the sling tied to his chest and cupped his free hand protectively around the baby Justine’s sun-bonneted head before he strolled on again.

  ‘Five two,’ Lucas called. He jerked a thumbs-up at May and she felt such a pinch of love for him that it crimped her chest and threatened to stop her breath. She bent double, pretending that it was the play that had winded her. After the game the players streamed down to the water’s edge. Lucas and the other boys dived like seals under the glittering swell, while Ivy and Gail and Richard’s daughters shrieked and danced in the shallows. Droplets of water starred their arms and shoulders with diamonds. May was sweaty and still scarlet from her moment of glory, but she was too self-conscious to wear her swimsuit. She hovered in her shorts and T-shirt until Joel sneaked behind her, planted his hands at the small of her back and propelled her into the water. She stumbled forward and lost her balance. A wave broke and she fell, hearing the shouts and laughter.

  The water was icy. She gasped and a flood filled her mouth and nose. She came up coughing and blinded, humiliated by water that was not much more than knee-deep.

  The next wave washed another body up beside her. Lucas jumped out of the surf and grabbed her wrists, then dipped and rolled his shoulders to hoist her on to his back. Only staggering a little under the burden he stood upright and lunged for the deeper water.

  His back was slick and cold. May’s mouth collided with his neck and she tasted salt and – with a shock of amazement – the unique flavour of his skin. He was gasping with laughter and still wading, drunkenly now because she was slipping from his grasp, and before it was too late she pressed a blind and desperate kiss against his shoulder.

  Lucas tottered and they fell together. Even under the weight of water May thought she could hear his laughter, but when she surfaced again he was watching out for her. ‘Swim,’ he ordered, and obediently she rolled on her back and kicked towards the island. Immediately the world receded and there was nothing but the sun on her closed eyelids, and the fingers of the tide combing her hair, and the turbulence of Lucas swimming alongside her. Happiness made her buoyant. She forgot that she had been afraid of the rolling currents and the island with its dark spine of trees, even the omnipresent dark shadow of Doone.

  They swam for fifty yards, then Lucas stopped and trod water. ‘You okay?’

  She nodded, speechless, wishing she could offer him something other than her awkwardness in return for the gift of his attention. In the end she just smiled at him. Lucas looked at her for perhaps half a second longer than he had ever done before.

  Ivy was waiting on the beach. The double band of her silvery bikini gleamed as she half turned, hands resting on her hips and all her weight balanced on one leg.

  ‘Time to head back,’ Lucas said. He ducked under the water and when he surfaced he struck out with a powerful crawl. May paddled after him towards the beach. When she waded out he was already standing with Ivy, their heads close together as she rubbed his hair with her towel. ‘Don’t get cold, May,’ Lucas called. ‘Go put some dry clothes on.’

  May’s ears filled up with extraneous sound again. She heard the surf and the complaints of gulls, as well as Ivy’s laughter. But she did exactly as Lucas told her. She picked up a dark-blue towel and swathed herself in it, before plodding up the shingle towards the beach steps and the Captain’s House.

  The light in the room had dimmed as the sun travelled westwards. It was the colour of dust now and the shadows in the corners were touched with violet. Leonie and John had talked for a long time, exchanging their histories in a conversation that seemed to her to have been more intimate than sex. They touched each other’s hands and explored the contours of one another’s faces, but it wasn’t until the day receded and left them in the dusk that they stopped talking.

  The whiskey bottle was half empty, but Leonie had never felt more clear-headed. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she whispered.

  ‘Not quite yet.’

  The cushions of the chesterfield smelled of mildew and smoke. The timbers of the house seemed to shiver as Leonie and John wrapped themselves together. There was a long, blind interval while they kissed again.

  Then Leonie opened her eyes.

  There was a face at the window, muffled to the throat in a dark wrap, looking in at them. The eyes were staring with horror in the white mask and the wet hair lay in ropes plastered to the skull.

  May had no idea how long she stood frozen to the porch boards. In truth it was probably no more than two or three seconds. But she knew that the tableau of her father and Leonie Beam with their arms and legs entwined and their mouths greedily fastened together was already indelible. She would never be able to make it go away.

  It bred another image out of itself.

  Once again the other picture came swimming up out of a dark place. The pairs of legs and arms seemed to writhe and multiply, clothed and naked, and the intent unseeing faces fed on one another until they blurred and became one, and turned into everyone she knew and everything she feared.

  May drew back her fist, just as she had prepared herself to punch the volleyball, with the same ecstasy of determination. But now she drove her arm straight through the window glass. There was a smash and a scream – she never knew whether it was hers or not – and a white-hot wire of pain ran up her arm and straight down to her heart.

  The floor, the rugs and the mildewed cushions were splashed with blood. Leonie knelt in front of her with an armful of towels and over her shoulder May glimpsed the shocked crescent of her father’s face.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ Leonie was murmuring over and over. The towels were bloody too, but there wasn’t as much of it as she had feared. ‘John, bring me a bowl of water, some cottonwool, anything.’

  May’s fist was clenched and the curled fingers were mired with blood. Leonie swabbed at the lacerated knuckles and May bit the inside of her cheeks to stop herself moaning alou
d.

  ‘Look, see, you’re okay. Open your fingers. Show me, May, please let me help.’

  John came with a bowl of warm water and offered it up. Leonie rinsed out a cloth and swabbed the cuts clean. Gently she prised the curled fingers loose. The veined wrist was miraculously unscathed, the palm was sticky with blood but uncut. Leonie bowed her head with silent relief.

  ‘May, do you know what you just did? Do you know what you could have done, severed an artery?’ John’s voice was loud and Leonie could hear the raw vibration of horror in it. He gasped for breath and the loss of control told Leonie more clearly than all their hours of talk how deeply he cared for his daughters. ‘You could have bled to death.’

  ‘John …’ She tried to calm him but May sat upright.

  ‘I don’t care. I wouldn’t care if I did die. Like Doone Bennison.’

  John made a movement that was so quick and violent Leonie thought he was going to hit the child. Instead he enveloped her head in his big hands and pulled her face against his chest. He tried to rock her, murmuring, ‘No, no.’

  Slowly Leonie stood up. She wanted to leave them alone and to spare herself from seeing this. But May snatched at her wrist with her undamaged hand. ‘Stay,’ she commanded.

  She was so angry with her father for what she had just seen that she wouldn’t be alone with him, even if it had to be Leonie who was the buffer between them.

  Leonie hesitated and saw John unwillingly nod. ‘I’ll dress those fingers,’ she said.