The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  She blew smoke in his face again. “The way you talk! You’re having a pretty bad day today, is that it? You keep carping, over and over again, and you’re so boring my feet are falling asleep. Maybe we should just have sex after all.”

  She wouldn’t toy with me if she didn’t feel something for me, he thought, making an effort to view her behavior in a positive light. You only toy with a person if he holds some kind of meaning for you.

  “I want to talk to you. It’s about more than just a quickie in the car. At least for me it is.”

  She slung one slender leg over the other, impatient. “I’ve told you I’d come with you to London. Right away. You just have to …”

  “I just have to pay for an apartment and a car, support your lifestyle, and shower you with expensive clothes. I’m not interested.” I’ve got to hold on to some bit of dignity, he thought, at least a shred of self-regard.

  “You’ve got enough money. And if I really meant something to you …”

  “You mean enough to me that I want to marry you. That should be enough proof of my feelings for you.”

  She blew smoke in his face a third time. “Stop that!” He warned.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop provoking me. Stop acting like a damn fool. Grow up already!”

  Bored, she replied, “I do what I want, as you well know. What do you want to do?”

  “I could take myself out of your life once and for all,” he said defiantly, and felt at the same time that he was behaving like a little boy, stomping his feet and yelling empty threats.

  She laughed brightly. She seemed to be enjoying herself. She threw her cigarette on the floor of the car and stamped it out with her foot. Every look, every gesture demonstrated her lack of regard.

  “God you’re sweet, Alan. Really! You’ll take yourself out of my life? No way you can pull that off!”

  She was right, and he could have cursed himself for his weakness. He simply couldn’t pull it off. It made no difference how badly and neglectfully and insultingly she treated him; how ruthlessly she drew him in only to push him away again; or the coldblooded way she made her demands, obviously relishing her certainty that his resistance would crack and he would relent. He knew that she wanted to get to London at all costs and that she would find a way. Sooner or later she would hustle some rich guy who would support her and who wouldn’t be put out by her antics. She was beautiful and fearless and had a captivating zeal for life.

  I love her, he thought with resignation. I will always love her.

  “I have to get to the airport,” he said. “But I’ll take you back to St. Peter Port.”

  “You do that,” she replied lethargically. Her eyes clouded over with a sudden sleepiness. “I’ll go home and put myself to bed. Today is a day for sleeping.”

  “Other people work all day,” said Alan, though he knew that Maya would call him a schoolmaster again, and that she found him unattractive when he lectured her.

  “But,” said Maya, “other people sleep at night.”

  “I see. And you did not sleep last night?”

  The cloudiness in her eyes thickened, and the hint of a smile stole across her face. “No. I did not.”

  The look she gave him said it all. Alan tried to sound casual, but right away the jealousy was making it hard for him to breathe. It coursed through his body and soul like poison. “You had company, then.”

  Her smile widened. She leaned back. She looked like a cat lying calmly in the sun. “That I did. Life, you know …” She tilted her head to one side, closed her eyes for a moment. “Life is so very beautiful and so very thrilling.”

  With a heavy motion he turned the key in the ignition and started the engine. “That’s good that you feel that way, Maya. I’m happy for you.”

  She laughed again, then suddenly she leaned forward and brought her face up close to the windshield.

  “Is that Kevin out there?” She asked in surprise.

  Kevin did in fact appear just then between the high walls that separated the beach from dry land. It looked like the storm was about to blow him away, and he was already completely soaked from all the fog in the air. This sight was so astonishing because it wasn’t at all like Kevin to set foot outside in windy, rainy weather. He hated being wet, hated to look sodden and unkempt.

  “Strange,” said Maya. “What’s he doing here? I can’t imagine he had the urge to go for a walk today.”

  “What he’s doing isn’t exactly safe,” said Alan. “Those are pretty tall breakers out there in the bay.”

  “Maybe he met up with a lover and did it with him in some hollow in the cliffs,” Maya hazarded. She opened the passenger side door, forcing it open with an effort, and yelled, “Kevin! Hey, Kevin, where are you coming from?”

  The wind ripped her words away and scattered them off in inaudible scraps. But Kevin had just made it to the front of the mill. He looked up and saw the car. He jumped and stared at it with an expression of shock, as if he’d just seen a vision. Then, cautiously, he came closer.

  Maya waved her arms wildly. “Kevin!”

  He had reached the car and now he recognized who was sitting inside. The expression of fright on his face relaxed.

  “Maya! Alan!” He could scarcely be heard over the roaring of the storm. “Why are you sitting here?”

  “Get in!” Maya yelled. “You’ll catch pneumonia out there!”

  Kevin opened the back door and sank onto the backseat. His breathing was heavy and rasping.

  “Good heavens!” He managed to say. “What hellish weather!”

  “What were you doing on the beach?” Alan asked, carefully steering the car up the narrow, winding road. Kevin brushed his wet hair off his forehead. “I had to get outside. The walls were closing in on me. I thought I’d just go walk along the shore for a bit.”

  “Look, Kevin, either you’ve gone crazy or there’s something else the matter with you,” said Maya. “You never risk leaving the house if there’s even a single cloud in the sky.”

  “As you can see, Maya dear, you’ve got entirely the wrong impression of me,” said Kevin. He sounded unusually snappy. “I’m not the delicate queen that you so obviously take me for.”

  Well well well, Alan thought, something’s sure eating him today!

  He looked at Kevin’s face in the rear view mirror. He looked pale, strained, and rather exhausted. The high-spirited charm that was otherwise so typical of him was scarcely to be noticed. His lips were pressed tightly together to form a narrow line.

  “You sure woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” said Maya. She laughed. “How did you even get over here? Where’s your car?”

  “I took the bus.”

  “The bus? But why …?”

  “Maya, could you maybe stop interrogating me like this? I mean, do you also want to know if I went to the bathroom this morning? And if so, why, and if not, why not?

  “Good Lord!” Maya said. “Okay, I’ll be quiet already! You’re really in a hell of a mood, Kevin!”

  “I’d like to take you home, Kevin,” said Alan, “but first I’ve got to drive Maya to St. Peter Port, and I can’t make it to Torteval before my plane leaves.”

  “No problem. I have a few things to get done in St. Peter Port anyway. I’ll get out when Maya does.”

  They drove in silence back into town and stopped in front of the three-story house where Maya lived. Kevin got out of the car immediately, barely muttering a quick goodbye.

  Maya watched him walk away, shaking her head. “Now that’s mysterious. Have you ever seen Kevin like that?”

  “No. But to be honest, I don’t really care much for Kevin.” He looked at Maya. “I have to go. I hope things go well for you.”

  “When will you be back on Guernsey?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know yet.” His fingers drummed nervously on the steering wheel. “I’ll probably be in London for a good while.”

  Maya bent over and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call you. I could maybe visit you in London.”

  “We’ll see,” he said stiffly, but he could tell that Maya wasn’t buying it. She laughed and hopped out of the car. Her laugh was still ringing in his ears as he drove to the airport through the ever worsening storm; he could hear it even still as he sat on the plane and the island grew smaller below him, just a tiny speck in the ocean, insignificant, and yet of such great significance for him.

  12

  That evening Franca asked Michael if he was in a relationship with another woman. He admitted it without hesitation. His directness left her almost as shaken as the knowledge that her guess had been right.

  “What does that mean, ‘yes’?” she asked, horrified at this curt and clear response.

  “Yes means yes,” he said impatiently. Less guilty than curious, he asked then, “How did you find out?”

  “I didn’t find out. I just guessed.”

  “Oh, I see — the question was a trap. Looks like it worked!” He seemed a bit angry that he had been so quick to take the bait. “Very clever, I have to admit.”

  Franca waited a few moments. She hoped that he would say something to justify himself. But he said nothing. He sat across from her at the table, played with his glass of red wine and looked at Franca with a cool, faraway gaze.

  “Who is she?” Franca asked finally. She sounded numb and mechanical.

  “You don’t know her.”

  “I suppose she’ll have a name though. A job. Age. Some kind of living circumstances!”

  “What difference does it make?” He poured himself more wine. The expensive watch on his wrist lit up. He had fine hands, strong but still slender.

  “What difference does it make to you?”

  “I’d very much like to know who the woman is that I’m losing my husband to.”

  “That you’re losing you’re husband to! Again you get so dramatic. Do you realize this? How can you even know that you’re losing me to her?”

  “I’ve already lost you.”

  “Nonsense. Things haven’t gotten that far at all.”

  “So it’s just an affair?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to find out. Do I now have to explain it to you in every last detail?”

  Taken aback, Franca answered, “Do I have to wait till you’re able to explain it?”

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  “Just about a year.”

  “And where did you meet her?”

  “In a bar. It had gotten late at the office, I wanted to get a drink somewhere, and … well, there she was!”

  “Is she younger than me?” How insane, Franca thought, to be asking this question at thirty-four! Normally women are over fifty before they start worrying about younger rivals.

  But there probably wasn’t a hard and fast rule. You could always be cheated on, and the other woman could always be younger. Or older. It made no difference, really.

  “She’s a bit younger than you are,” said Michael, “but not by much. A year and a half, I believe.”

  If it wasn’t a twenty-year-old then what was so special about her? What was so fascinating about her, why was Michael so attracted to her? Although Franca could come up with the answer herself, she asked the question, and what she heard was exactly what she’d already suspected.

  “Lord, Franca, she’s your opposite in every way! She is incredibly self-confident, very strong, very sure of herself, she radiates optimism to everyone she meets. She’s full of energy and joy in life. Being with her is an adventure. She’s chock full of surprises and spontaneous ideas.”

  The words poured out of him, and each one struck Franca like a blow. It wasn’t simply that he sung the other woman’s praises. It was that he reduced her to nothing. That he made her indistinct, a woman without charisma, without a single feature that might cause a man to be interested in her. In his eyes she was a pitiful nothing, and it was just like it always was: at the drop of a hat he’d transferred his views over to Franca and she hadn’t been able to stop it.

  He saw her as nothing, and she felt herself to be nothing.

  She swallowed. Again she thought: this is the bottom. The blackest moment. It won’t get any worse. But it will never get better either.

  She read the contempt in his eyes. Instinctively, she knew that he despised her for being incapable of defending herself, of rebelling. By rights she should have flung wine in his face, thrown an ashtray at him or threatened him with the worst kind of revenge. She shouldn’t have let herself slump over and turn into a graying pile of misery. Michael hated weakness, and for him she was weakness personified.

  She couldn’t bear to sit down any longer. She stood up and went to the window. Outside, a raven-black darkness swallowed everything in sight.

  “Where do we go from here?” she asked finally.

  Michael obviously hadn’t given this any thought. “What does that mean, where do we go from here? We go where we’ve always been going. My God, Franca, for years we’ve found a way to coexist somehow. We’ve settled into things, right? Nothing has to change.”

  “Only that from now on you don’t tell me any more that the reason you come home late at night is that you have so much to do. In the future you’ll tell me straight that you’re going to her, right?”

  “If you think that’s tasteful …”

  She turned and faced him. Her rage was balled up within her like a fist. With an edge that she hadn’t put in her voice for a long time, she spat back, “Oh, but what you’re doing, you find this to be tasteful, yes?”

  He shrunk back just a small bit. Obviously, her tone had been a surprise to him as well. “Maybe it isn’t tasteful,” he said after a few seconds, “but this is the only life I have.”

  “And to limit yourself to me would mean wasting it?”

  Now he stood up as well. She could tell that the conversation was getting on his nerves, but that he’d carry it through to the end, if only so that he could put it behind him.

  “If you absolutely have to call it wasting — just look at yourself, Franca! You’re nothing but self-doubt, insecurity, and fear, even when by chance you manage to make a step forward. You take anti-anxiety pills incessantly, and still things get worse instead of better. I can’t plan to do anything with you, neither a vacation nor dinner out at a restaurant. I can’t bring business partners home because you have a panic attack whenever there’s more than one other person here. I can’t take you with me anywhere, because six out of seven days in the week you claim you can’t leave the house. Do you really believe that that’s the life I’d imagined for myself?”

  Franca’s palms began to itch. Panic lay in wait within her. What was she supposed to say to contest this? He was right. Every single word he said. He was right.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and thought at the same time that she was likely the only wife in the world who would herself apologize after her husband had confessed his unfaithfulness. “I … I know I’m a disappointment for you.”

  His gaze took in all of her, and now he didn’t even look contemptuous, but rather pitying — which, if it was even possible, was even worse.

  “You were different once,” he said, “and I really was in love with you. I wanted to have you more than anything else. I thought everything depended on winning you over.”

  “What do you mean, everything?” she asked.

  He threw up his hands. “I mean everything. Happiness. Fulfillment. What do I know!”

  Softly, Franca said. “We might have had a good chance.”

  “We certain
ly might have,” Michael replied. He sounded indifferent.

  And Franca realized: He was so far away from her that he didn’t even mourn this chance any longer.

  PART TWO

  1

  “I wouldn’t come to you if it weren’t truly important, Helene,” Kevin said.

  He looked strung out and pale, like he hadn’t been sleeping much. He was dressed far too warm for the weather that day, unusually balmy for April. He wore corduroys and a blue woolen sweater. He was sweating heavily; moisture mobbed his face, and dark strands of his hair clung to his forehead.

  “Why would you ever have dressed in such heavy clothes?” Helene asked. “It’s almost summer outside!”

  “I was freezing before. Now I’m actually too hot. I don’t know.” Kevin rubbed his hands over his face, exhausted. “Maybe I’m getting the flu.”

  “Well whatever the case, you don’t look good,” Helene said with concern. She poured him tea. “Here, drink this. Or would you rather have something cold?”

  “No, no, tea is fine.” Kevin seemed barely aware of what he was drinking. His hands shook slightly.

  “I wouldn’t come back again so soon, Helene, if it weren’t truly urgent,” he repeated, clearly on edge. “I’m sure by now you’re thinking I can never pay back all that money, but I swear to you, I …”

  “I’m not at all concerned about that,” Helene interrupted. Her tone was soothing. “I’m certain you’ll be able to pay everything back one day, and …”

  “With interest! And compound interest!”

  “Out of the question. I don’t charge friends interest. No, Kevin, I’m just a bit worried about you. You’re always needing more and more money … you seem to have spread yourself a bit too thin.”

  “The greenhouses in Perelle Bay cost a fortune. I had to take out a bigger loan than I’d originally planned. And now I’m behind on the interest payments.”