by Tim Jeal
Derek was crying as he pressed on through tall ferns towards trees silhouetted against water: the sea. Minutes later he was crunching over shingle.
Moonlight shimmered on rock pools and on wet fronds of seaweed, which the tide had recently exposed. Below the rocks the water was a glassy black, the surface smooth as polished ice; and yet there was movement: a long flat swell moving the sea ever so little like water tilted slightly in a huge bowl.
Derek shouted again but his words died at once without echo and the rhythmic sighing of the sea on the shingle went on. Occasionally pebbles clattered hollowly pulled back gently by the water. The black shape of a tanker lit with pin-points of light slid imperceptibly across the bay. Please, Giles, if you’re near or far, please answer, please, if you never answer again, answer now. Memories of hide-and-seek. I’ll count fifty, only fifty, mind, so hurry … forty-eight, nine, fifty … Coming to get you. My fault, he moaned aloud. I didn’t mean it, Giles; I didn’t know how you would feel. From the beginning I never considered you, from the day Charles came to the flat. My fears, my hopes, my marriage. Oh Giles.
The shore was ribbed with ridges of rock running from the land down into the sea; clambering over one such obstacle, Derek slipped and grazed his hands on rough barnacles. Later, looking down from the top of another ledge, he saw a black shape in the water, too far away to see distinctly. He half-ran, half-fell down onto the beach and lunged forward, gasping, until he saw not a body but a large piece of wave-worn driftwood. He sank down onto the wet stones and couldn’t go on for several minutes. Each breath came like a small sob, and in his chest the same sickening ache of shock which a motorist feels after narrowly avoiding head-on collision. A little later the same horror when he mistook some heaped seaweed for a pile of clothes. Another quarter of an hour and he had reached Tregeare, but, since Charles and Diana would have searched there, he pressed on along the shore.
Beyond the village a steep cliff prevented him sticking to the sea. The only way was to cut across fields for a while. After a long walk he climbed over a low wall and saw the sea again. This time there was no beach but a desolate scree, littered with boulders tumbled together chaotically: the remains of the cliff worn away to its constituent parts by waves and wind. As he descended nearer these large boulders the ground became boggy and sucked at his shoes, making it hard going. By straining his eyes he could make out a small cow-path that avoided the worst of the mud. The whole area seemed a mass of little streams which cut shallow gullies in the soft ground. When he reached the rocks he could hear the water making strange plopping noises under them. Again he shouted and again there was no answering call. Weariness and fear made him feel very weak. He hadn’t done anything so energetic since his early twenties and now his calves and thighs felt so strained and numb that they shook uncontrollably when he braced the muscles. A sudden vision of Giles telling him about the geological history of this wilderness of stones and rocks made him weep. At first he tried to hold back but then allowed deep sobs to shake him.
As he stumbled from rock to rock, jarring each joint with every sudden drop, and scraping the skin on shins and hands with each small ascent, he realized that soon he wouldn’t have the strength to go back. He sat down for a while and then, leaving the shore, started back across the boggy ground and began climbing up towards the fields. He reached a small grassy plateau and sat down to rest again. His legs were shaking and when he tried to stand they folded under him. Have to wait longer. He lay back on the grass and looked up at the stars. One side of the sky seemed very slightly lighter than the other now. He didn’t know when he started to doze but it must have been soon after he lay down because he seemed to be back at the house and Giles had come back and was eating cold meat in the kitchen. He was explaining how he had spent the day in Birmingham and had then gone on to see the Scouts in the Peak District. Then Charles came in and started kissing Diana which made Derek laugh and a little later Giles joined in. Somehow they had all moved to the Afro-Asian Institute and Derek was showing Giles the archives. They started tossing letters about like confetti. The dream stopped.
When Derek opened his eyes the stars were pale and indistinct. The crescent moon had become a small insignificant half-disc. From the east, light was flowing as if from a screen lit from behind. From the fields around him he could hear birds singing. The land was no longer grey, silver and black, for now the earth was beginning to glow with dark browns and umber. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. The sky was still a pale misty grey but just above the horizon a pink haze was beginning to flush gold. The colour reflected in the sea but still no sun. For a moment Derek forgot why he was sitting where he was, for, as he looked eastwards, a light no bigger than a flaring match had appeared where the sea and sky met. In seconds this tiny area of molten fire was brighter than all the fires he had ever seen. A channel of gold reached from the horizon almost to the shore. A minute it seemed and the top of the sun was distinct and growing all the time, a half-circle and then an orb. He looked away and pulled himself to his feet; light seemed to be flowing past him like something he could touch. When he looked at the sun again it should have been bright but, strangely, although light was growing all around him, the sun itself seemed paler, its fire diminished by its own reflected light.
As he started walking the agony of the night before flooded back. He felt cold and ill; his limbs seemed to have been stretched and twisted out of place. And yet his despair had lessened. The sun rises every day. Should witnessing a sunrise change anything? And yet his growing optimism could not be denied. As he hurried on across the rough grass, the belief became stronger that when he reached the house Giles would be there.
Like a shipwrecked sailor in a bad storm, in sight of land, but still in danger, Derek made vows. If he comes back I will not indulge my indifference and lack of will by allowing Diana to coerce me, nor will I pretend that my laziness with people is really self-effacing reticence. If he comes back, I will never again fool myself into the belief that I am happy because of my cautious lack of expectations. I will hope for more and therefore give more, if he comes back.
When Derek reached the narrow lane that led back to Tregeare he started to run. Ahead of him a lorry had stopped to take a couple of milk churns from a farm gate. A final effort and he reached the vehicle before it moved off. The driver helped him up into the cab.
It was just after six when he jumped down onto the grass verge at the end of Charles’s drive.
Chapter 11
The hall door was shut but had not been locked. Derek paused at the bottom of the stairs. If he hasn’t come back? For almost a minute he could not bring himself to go up. Around him the stillness of the house, only broken by the distant ticking of the kitchen clock. He started violently as something rubbed against his leg. He looked down to see Kalulu, arching his back and purring. At last he began climbing, slowly at first, but then faster until by the time he reached the landing he was running up three at a time. At the end of the corridor he pushed open Giles’s door.
The boy was sleeping with one hand half-covering his face. Derek denied his first impulse to go across and touch him. Instead he leant against the door-frame and looked and looked at the boy as if afraid that if his eyes left him for a moment his son would vanish again. Tears filled his eyes; relief flooded through him, soothing his aching limbs. He let himself slip down to the floor. Never before such relief. The sudden disappearance of fear left a strange vacuum inside him, but soon a great bubble of happiness was expanding. He scrambled to his feet. A desperate desire to shout and sing his happiness. He dashed across the corridor to his own bedroom.
Diana was asleep. She had not drawn the curtains the night before and early morning sunlight filled the room. Derek could hear birds singing in the garden. He sat down on the bed.
‘He’s back, he’s come back.’
Diana stirred a little and buried her face deeper in the pillow. Derek shook her gently.
‘When did he get in? Where has he been? I
knew he’d come back. I knew. I sensed it; you won’t believe this but I went to sleep by the sea and woke up when the sun was rising. I knew then.’ A lump in his throat made him pause. ‘I thought I saw him dead on the beach but he’s back, he’s come back.’ Tears were running freely down his cheeks. Diana had turned over and was shielding her eyes against the light. Derek was still too excited to notice the way she was looking at him. ‘Where did he go?’ he asked again.
‘He tried to book in at a hotel in Falmouth with no money and no luggage. The clerk phoned the police.’ She raised herself on an elbow. ‘They brought him back between two and three.’ Derek put down the flat tired way she had told him this to continuing drowsiness.
‘You weren’t hard on him?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You’re not angry, surely? He’s back; that’s all that matters.’
Diana shut her eyes and sighed. ‘I wish it was.’
‘He’s not in any kind of trouble?’
She shook her head.
‘Well then, smile, for God’s sake.’ He went up to her and put his arms round her shoulders.
She made no movement at all. Then she looked up at him and said in a dead expressionless voice, ‘He told me, Derek.’ Seeing his look of incomprehension, she added, ‘Giles told me.’
‘Told you what?’
‘Everything, as the saying goes,’ she replied in the same thin lifeless voice.
‘About Angela?’
She nodded. For a moment Derek couldn’t adjust to the new situation. He still felt elated.
‘But can’t you see that it doesn’t matter?’ he cried. ‘A few hours ago we thought Giles might be dead. What happened with Angela was nothing, an accident.’ He looked at her imploringly. ‘Last night changed everything.’
She sat up very straight and said quietly, ‘An accident? Copulation by accident. A strange notion.’ She shrugged her shoulders and frowned. Her breasts looked very white against the browner skin of her arms and shoulders. ‘Actually,’ she went on, flicking the hair back out of her eyes, ‘I don’t care about what you did with each other. It’s a bit sad that you had to have your first fling in years with a nymphomaniac, but there it is. You could have left it just a day or two after her bloke had gone, but then they don’t exactly throw themselves at you, do they?’ She looked at him scornfully.
‘It wasn’t quite as crude as that,’ he said.
‘I’m sure the trees caught fire and each blade of grass shone like silver.’
‘But we agree about it. It didn’t matter much. That’s what you’ve just said.’
She glanced at him sharply. ‘Then what do you think I’m so sick about?’ he shrugged and raised his hands in supplication. ‘You told that boy what you did and then you left him. That’s what makes me sick. You fooled around tossing balls at coconuts while all the time you knew what Giles must have been going through.’
‘He wouldn’t come,’ Derek protested. ‘Should I have forced him to or followed him about all day?’ He looked at her reproachfully and added, ‘Anyway, he didn’t seem shaken or upset.’
‘It never occurred to you that he might keep his real feelings to himself?’
‘Of course it did,’ exclaimed Derek. ‘But what could I do? Twist his arm till he told me how he really felt? My sin was in telling him what I did, not in leaving him to himself.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘If only I’d known he hadn’t seen us.’
A short silence. Derek thought he detected a hint of sympathy breaking through her contempt as she said, ‘He did see you.’
‘He never saw us. He went on a footpath and not by the road.’
‘There was never any footpath,’ she said emphatically.
‘There was,’ he shouted, with sudden anger. ‘Isn’t it enough for you that he betrayed me? Do you have to pour acid into the wound too?’ She was looking at him with the same cool derision. ‘Why the hell should he lie about the path? I’d told him by then.’
‘Can’t you guess?’ she asked quietly, with a taunting smile. ‘To save your dignity. He didn’t want you to think he’d seen his father thrusting away in a field, bottom up, bottom down.’ She pushed back the bedclothes and got up briskly. Derek watched her pulling on her pants. For a moment he felt angry enough to hit her, but the feeling passed, as rage gave way to humiliation and shame. Giles had told her. Mummy, who never really listened, who couldn’t be bothered to read the books he gave her, who made jokes about her studious son at dinner parties. The worst of it was that Derek believed that she had told the truth, that Giles had seen them but had pretended not to, simply to save his father’s dignity. Derek’s limbs had started to ache again and he was overwhelmed by a leaden numbness of spirit.
Diana was making up carefully in front of the mirror, pursing her lips and then opening her mouth a little as she finished with her lipstick; next she set to work with her eye-liner. He watched her methodical movements in the mirror.
‘Why bother?’ he asked suddenly.
‘The heart pumps, the bowels churn. Life goes on.’ She dabbed powder on her forehead and then snapped her compact shut. ‘The sort of thing you say.’ She turned round and faced him again. ‘I think I could have forgiven you everything—Giles, your sad little fumble in a field, the lot—if it hadn’t been for the way you behaved at the ox roast. Sanctimonious, self-righteous, spotless Derek ranting on about adultery as though he hadn’t had a sexual thought for twenty years, while all the time he was wondering when he could get into Angela’s pants again.’ Outside the birds were singing as loudly as ever; another glorious day ahead. ‘Hypocrisy can’t be more blatant than that,’ she said.
‘I’m not all bad.’
‘Just bad for me,’ she replied.
‘All the time?’
She got up from the chair by the dressing table and came and sat down beside Him on the bed.
‘It’d make you feel better if I said yes, wouldn’t it? Help you to dismiss everything else I’ve said.’ A slight pause. She intertwined her fingers and held a knee in her hands. ‘No, you’re not bad all the time. I liked you more before you got bored; it’s hard to get on with people who find one dull, who think they’ve found out all there is to know about one.’ Her tone was reflective; almost like somebody talking in an empty room, he thought bitterly. She gazed at him for a moment. ‘I liked you while you tried.’
‘Tries hard but could do better if he tried less. You mean I bored you.’
‘Nothing wrong with trying hard; it’s the opposite of indifference, after all.’ She was staring ahead of her with a faint smile parting her lips. Diana the wise, the omniscient. ‘You knew much more than I did. I liked listening. Sometimes I found you a bit too earnest but you could be funny too. I often thought, how strange that he still wants to impress me. I was flattered that you thought me worth impressing.’ She scooped up a red sandal with her toes and started to fasten the strap. The last time you bothered with me was in Greece. Five years ago. Then you got tired of trying.’
‘You drained me,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. All right for her to be so cogent after six hours’ sleep in a comfortable bed; she hadn’t spent most of the night stumbling over rocks. She shook her head and gave him a sad, knowing smile.
‘Remember telling me that love is really ignorance? Imposing your own fantasy figure onto a real person?’
‘That’s one kind of love,’ he conceded.
‘Your kind?’ she asked innocently.
‘Not now,’ he begged. ‘I’m very tired.’
‘When you got to know me, you stopped bothering. When I tried with you, you said that you were fed up with conversational opinions; just a way of discovering old arguments and fallacies and dressing them up in new clothes. That’s what you said.’ She bent down and picked up the other sandal. When she had done up the strap, she went on calmly, ‘Everybody has his or her limits, so face facts and recognize them. Never expect too much. Don’t use any other person to compensate for your own deficiencies. Be bored and be boring with your wife o
r husband; it’s bound to happen and, when it does, accept it.’ Her voice had risen slightly while she had been speaking. ‘Your arguments, I think,’ she concluded sharply.
Derek looked down at his mud-stained trousers and shoes and saw them blur as his eyes misted with tears. A clinical posthumous résumé of the evidence before passing sentence. Derek Cushing, I find you guilty of the brutal and senseless murder of your own marriage. How do you plead? Diana was looking at him coolly, as though he had already ceased to concern her. He got up and said passionately, ‘I stopped trying because you stopped wanting me to. My opinions bored you, so I said no opinions mattered. I said everyone was limited, because you found me dull. Excuses to hide the size of your rejection and to reduce the pain.’
‘If that’s true, it makes your silence at the time all the more unforgivable.’
‘It takes two to have a conversation,’ he replied.
‘Easier to explain years afterwards when it’s too late.’
‘That’s what you’re doing,’ he came back angrily.
‘Why didn’t you shout at me, then? Why, if you cared so much? Because it was less trouble to change tactics and say, “If I can’t impress, I’ll ingratiate, cajole, please.”’
‘Would you rather I’d insulted and infuriated?’ he asked. ‘To please demands effort too.’
She raised her eyebrows in mock surprise.
‘As much as lying down in the street and letting people walk on one.’
‘That’s easy?’ he cried.
‘If you like footprints on the face—very.’
Derek grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her roughly to her feet so that her face was inches from his own.
‘Why do people ingratiate themselves?’ he asked in a trembling voice.