‘Peering intently,’ I say, but at this stage I didn’t know at all what I was looking for; nor did I know how frightened I ought to be. After all, there were three of them; Edwin would hardly intend to murder Richard under Sally’s very eyes; nor could he expect to find an opportunity to make love to Sally under Richard’s. Not that I thought — or ever had thought — that this had ever been in the forefront of Edwin’s mind. What Edwin loved above all else was admiration, and this was what he was getting from Sally in full measure already, without needing to hazard his prowess any further. And what she got from him was, I am sure, exactly the same: admiration. That two such basically self-regarding people would ever exert themselves to break out of this cosy little bubble of mutual admiration and launch themselves on the perilous and uncharted waters of an actual love affair seemed unlikely in the extreme.
I hurried on, scanning the dark landscape as best I could. What did I expect to find? What did I expect to see? The three of them cowering somewhere, an untidy black smudge on the dim expanse of beach? Making stilted conversation, perhaps, reluctantly deciding what to do next? Or maybe already disporting themselves in the dark shallows, shrieking as bathers do? Sally shrieking, anyway.
No shrieks. No dark figures breaking the white line of the foam. And the black smudge that I presently saw was smaller than I had envisaged, and way down towards the water’s edge.
“Hullo, Clare! However did you know where to find us? How clever you are! Oh, it’s so exciting! They’re having a race — all the way to the wreck and back! See? — D’you see? You can just see their heads — that’s Richard, he’s the one a little way ahead; I know it’s him because I’ve been watching the whole time. Look! Look! There he is, he’s just getting into that lit-up bit of the sea where the end bit of the wreck kind of sticks out sideways …! Look …!”
It was always difficult to get a straightforward account of anything out of Sally. She was inclined to start every story in the middle, the exciting bit, and only under patient questioning would she bother her head about the more boring whys and wherefores of things.
And so, patient I was: and this, I gathered, was what had happened. Edwin’s suggestion of a midnight swim had, of course, delighted her, and off they’d gone, in spite of Richard’s being a bit of an old stick about it, currents and undertows and things, you know. Edwin, on the other hand had been wonderful, had explained about the tide being just right for this sort of thing, and that there wouldn’t be any currents. “It was his idea to come to this bit of beach where we were this afternoon. ‘It was the best place for bathing,’ he said, ‘and the water would still be quite warm after all the sun there’s been this summer …’ Gosh, though, he was wrong about than! It was icy, Clare, it was awful! I only put half a toe in, just about, I absolutely shrieked, I couldn’t help it, I came rushing out! I thought they’d be giving up, too, but Oh no! ‘Let’s have a race!’ Edwin called, ‘Come on, Barlow! Round the wreck and back. It’s not much more than a couple of hundred yards! Sally can be umpire. What about it? Are you up to it?’ And so off they went. I started them off — ‘One-two-three’, and — well there they are. You can still see them — they’re very nearly there!”
‘Are you up to it?’ Thus had Edwin challenged his companion, with Sally looking on. What did he think Richard would answer? At that moment, with sick certainty, I fitted together the loose bits of the jigsaw. Edwin, eavesdropping on my telephone conversation with Daphne, had learned of Richard’s heart problem, and had learned too, that he was currently without his pills. Far from imagining (as Jessica had supposed) that the North Sea in October would ‘still be quite warm’, Edwin had known very well that it would be icy (as Sally had found it), and had calculated that if he could somehow induce Richard to bathe in it, a heart attack would very probably follow—a fatal one if no one pulled him quickly out of the freezing water. And no one would. Edwin could easily be too far away when it happened. And so none of it would be Edwin’s fault at all. He hadn’t even asked Richard to come for the swim in the first place; he had only asked Sally, knowing full well that Richard, consumed by jealousy as he was, would not tolerate the two of them going on their own. He would insist on coming too — and that wasn’t Edwin’s fault either, now was it! And then, when Richard failed to have the required heart attack at the first impact of the cold water, Edwin had resorted to the reserve plan of making him stay in it for a very long time, to make him swim, and swim, until his heart, un-helped by the usual pills, would surely give out? And this, too, when it happened, wouldn’t be Edwin’s fault, now would it? He hadn’t made Richard swim out to the wreck. He had merely light-heartedly challenged him to the feat, with Sally listening.
“See? … D’you see them, Clare? They’re practically neck and neck, they’re just rounding the … Richard’s got the outside track, the harder one, so if he does win it’ll be a glorious victory! Oh, he’s a wonderful swimmer …”
“So is Edwin,” I found myself retorting, rather to my own surprise. Strange how I can’t bear anyone else to belittle him, no matter what sort of awful things I may be thinking myself. “He once won the inter-county …”
Sally was instantly apologetic. “Oh, of course he is!” she hastened to say. “I only meant — well they’re marvellous, both of them. Aren’t they?”
I didn’t answer, and she turned and looked at me, a tiny bit uneasy just for a moment. “Don’t you think so, Clare? That they’re both marvellous swimmers?”
“Yes,” I said; and what I was thinking was, Thank God, Edwin’s failed again! This ploy isn’t working, either. Richard is going to make it: his courage, his stamina, his determination will pull him through, heart problem or no heart problem. Good for him! It was becoming clear that he was a match for anything which Edwin might contrive …
It was time, was it not, for one of those dark heads to be reappearing, on the other side of the vessel from where we had last seen them? All around the wreck, the water was more or less lit up by those little warning lights, and we fell silent, straining our eyes towards the rippling, uneven brightness.
Perhaps the distance to be traversed athwart the wrecked stern was greater than it appeared from this distance? Perhaps their speed was beginning to flag, as well it might. Or perhaps each in his own mind was saving his strength for a final winning burst of speed as he neared the beach?
And so we waited. And waited.
It was I who was the first to say that we must do something. Get help? Alert somebody?
“Oh no!” Sally at first protested. “They’ll be furious; it’ll spoil the whole thing!” And then, a minute later. “NO. Oh please, Clare, Richard so longs to win, you don’t understand … If anyone intervenes, he won’t feel he’s really won!”
Did he feel he had really won, in those last moments of his life? We will never know. We did interfere, of course we did; we tried to drag down one of those boats, but it was hopeless, the tide so low and hundreds of yards of empty sand lay before us. So I rushed back to the house to telephone, while Sally started, at last, to shout for help, there where she stood.
Too late, of course. The two bodies were washed up at dawn, coming in with the tide, and Accidental Death by Drowning was, of course, the verdict.
And why not? I, after all, was the only one who had glimpsed the murderous hatred in Richard’s eyes that afternoon. I, likewise, was the only one who was privy to Edwin’s dark and desperate intentions. As if I had seen it with my own eyes, I could picture the two men plunging into the black and icy sea, each with murder in his heart. Each had set out with the intention of drowning the other, well out of sight behind the great hulk of the wreck; and in the heaving, treacherous water, locked in their death-struggle, each had succeeded.
*
I recall very little of the hours that followed, though the bits I do remember are intensely vivid, like one of those lucid dreams. I remember it being morning, and Sally at my side sobbing, “I don’t believe it! It can’t be true, it can’t!” An
d I remember trying to console her, and noticing as I did so that I myself felt nothing — nothing at all. Like stubbing your toe. — For a perceptible length of time — a second at least — it doesn’t hurt at all; the pain hasn’t had time to travel the whole length of the nerve from toe to brain. Something like that. The feeling is on its way, I know it is, but I haven’t yet begun to feel it. And, of course, I don’t know yet what the feeling will be.
As I think I have made clear, Edwin and I didn’t have at all a happy marriage. But, on the other hand, I’ve noticed over and over again that the most grief-stricken widows tend to be the very ones who had the most miserable marriages. Why this should be, I do not know. Perhaps, all too soon, I shall find out.
Meantime, I can only think of the various things that have to be done. Like ringing Daphne, for instance.
Strangely, there was no answer. You would have thought that, worried as she was, she would have been more or less hanging on the phone. There floated into my mind some words she had used when describing her son’s heart problem; ‘He gets it from both sides of the family.’ This could only mean that she, too, had such a problem. Might it not, in this time of stress and anxiety, have caught up with her at last? I found myself half-hoping that this might indeed be the case; then she need never hear the tragic news at all.
What else do I have to do?
Ring Jason, of course. It occurs to me that I know no more what he is going to feel when the fact sinks in than I know what I am going to feel.
But one thing I do know: I am not going to tell him the truth. Any more than Sally (if indeed she knows it) is going to tell the truth to Barnaby. Each of our sons is going to go through life in the comforting belief that his father died a hero’s death trying to save a friend from drowning.
It will be a lie, of course, but what of it? For Edwin, at least, it seems appropriate that a huge, flamboyant lie should be his lasting memorial.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Celia Fremlin, 1991
Biographical Sketch © Chris Simmons, 2014
Preface © Rebecca Tope, 2014
The right of Celia Fremlin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31268–9
Dangerous Thoughts Page 19