Deep Water

by Tim Jeal

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘To plan getting custody of Leo.’

  ‘Darling, you don’t understand.’ Andrea freed her hand and said bravely, ‘Leo wants to be with his father now.’

  Mike’s handsome features became stubborn. ‘Andrea, you cannot give in to a boy his age. He can’t properly know what he wants. Imagine how you’ll feel if you hardly ever see him.’

  ‘He loves his father more than me, and shares all his interests, so why shouldn’t I be happy to let Leo live with him?’

  Mike shook his head slowly. ‘Because if he lives with Peter, you’ll miss him terribly, whatever you may think now.’

  ‘If you knew what Leo said to me, you wouldn’t try to …’ She paused, too upset to continue.

  Mike leaned forward and kissed her cheek. ‘He’s angry, darling. But it won’t last. Please do what’s best. He goes back to school next week. So take him home with you first. Be sweet to him. It’ll only be for a few days. And that way, you’ll spare him a term spent brooding about his dad and you. In three months, he’ll be far more forgiving about a split, and may even decide to live with you after all.’

  For a moment, Andrea wanted to laugh. Mike sounded so wise and sensible, but he had completely missed the point. She said, as if speaking to a foreigner, ‘Leo won’t come home without his father. He’s said so, many times.’

  ‘Then you must persuade Peter to come back for a few days.’ Mike gripped her hand tightly. ‘Listen to me, Andrea. I’ve done enough harm to my own son, and I don’t want to hurt yours. Adults forget, but children never do. I adored being with Simon more than anything else in my life. But after his mother and I parted, she made him dread my visits. So he screamed and hit me when I came through the door. For his sake, I had to stop visiting.’

  ‘That’s so sad, darling, but it’s not like my situation. Your son was too young to make a choice of his own, so you had to make it for him. But Leo’s nearly thirteen, with a mind of his own. So the choice must be his. If he decides to live with his father, I’ll have to accept it.’

  ‘You’ll go through hell like I did, so don’t kid yourself you won’t. If he lives with Peter, you’ll lose him completely. I can’t let that happen to you, Andrea.’

  His frown scared her. If she couldn’t persuade Leo to return to Oxford with her, would their affair be over?

  As if answering her question, his eyes met hers. ‘Leo did an amazingly unselfish thing when he risked his life on that trawler. We owe it to him to get him through this mess with as little pain as possible. If that means being patient for a while, we’ll damned well have to be.’

  Andrea thought she understood. Mike admired courage more than every other quality, so Leo’s brave act placed him on a pedestal, above the rest of them. Disagreeing deeply, she nonetheless couldn’t argue. Not today, with his men disbanded and some dead or missing. She promised to do her best to take Leo home with her before his school term began. Before they parted, Andrea agreed to tell Mike, as soon as she knew whether she had succeeded.

  *

  After looking vainly for Peter all over the house, Andrea went into the bathroom and stifled a cry. He was lying stretched out in the tub, eyes closed, and for a moment she feared a Roman death. But the water was not red, merely dirty, and as he heard her he opened his eyes.

  ‘I guess this isn’t the best place to talk,’ she murmured, disconcerted to see the tip of his penis bobbing like a small pink buoy.

  ‘Don’t go, I’ve been wanting to ask you something.’ He soaped his chest and stomach thoughtfully. ‘Is your affair with Harrington likely to last?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Would you like it to?’ And now his voice shook ever so slightly.

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  He caught his breath as if winded, but rallied at once. ‘Then what’s the problem? Isn’t he so keen?’

  ‘I think he is.’

  ‘You think!’ His angry trembling made the water ripple. ‘I want to know now. Is he fishing you out for good, or planning to throw you back? It’s killing me, tell him that … please.’

  She looked down at the cracked linoleum and said, ‘Mike’s worried I may lose Leo if he goes on with me. He cares what happens to him.’

  ‘What a stinking hypocrite.’ Andrea stared at the battered copper cylinder above her husband’s head. Anything to take her eyes away from his penis, which, to her dismay, had started to jut clear of the water, like an artist’s impression of the Loch Ness monster. Aware of it, he pulled himself into a sitting position. ‘You know what gets me about your lover boy?’ he said, bitterly. ‘He’s so falsely diffident about his looks.’

  ‘You really liked him him, Peter; so why pretend you didn’t?’

  ‘Because I’m so bloody unhappy,’ he shouted.

  At home there were two handles on the wall above the bath. Here there was nothing, and Andrea had not thought of it till this moment. Knowing he would shout at her if she offered to help him get out, Andrea left the bathroom. As she closed the door, Leo appeared on the landing. Without looking at her, he turned and went downstairs. She guessed he had been listening. As they reached the hall, she said, ‘I hope you won’t mind me asking … but has dad said you can go live with him right now?’

  ‘That’s my business.’ The grubby shorts and socks that had fallen to his ankles made his harsh grown-up manner all the harder to endure. Andrea imagined Leo walking about in clothes that didn’t fit, and not eating enough.

  ‘Do you think dad’ll pack your trunk and sort your school clothes? Will he cook your food?’

  ‘I suppose he can get a housekeeper,’ her son remarked, in a worried voice that broke her heart.

  She said eagerly, ‘Sweetheart, come home with me till dad finds somewhere to live. Then go live with him in the summer vacation.’

  ‘If dad doesn’t come home, I won’t come home either. I told you that, mum.’ Leo walked towards the French doors and looked back at her for a moment, before going out. Andrea felt such pain that she longed to call out and remind him that they had loved one another too much in the past to drop every trace of affection now. If she had only spared him from going away to school, there might still be enough understanding left between them to prevent this rift becoming permanent.

  Without meaning to follow him, she went out into the long grass under the apple trees. How could she ask Peter to come back to Oxford for a few days? There was no possible way she could, and Mike was plain wrong to think otherwise. Peter would consider it shabby to pretend to be reconciled with her, simply so that Leo could return to school in a state of happy delusion. After all, what would Leo think of his father later, when he realised he’d been deliberately deceived by him? Mike couldn’t have thought of that.

  When she saw Leo walking back towards the house from the lane, she came to a firm decision and went up to him. ‘Darling, please don’t try and persuade dad to come home with us.’

  ‘I’ll do what I want.’

  ‘You’re such a kind loving son, of course you want dad to come home. Maybe you haven’t realised how hard that would be for me. One can’t be in love with one man, and suddenly start to feel the same way about another without having time to oneself first. So you see, even if I stop seeing Mike tomorrow, I won’t want to live with dad for a while.’

  Leo’s earlier bravado crumbled. ‘Does dad know this?’ he asked sadly.

  ‘I’m sure he does, darling.’

  As tears started to spill down his cheeks, Andrea could not bear it, and with a moan, clutched him to her breast. For a while, Leo remained limp in her arms and did not try to get away.

  CHAPTER 22

  Term had started again at the village school, so Andrea could not arrange to see Mike there. She would have liked to suggest meeting in a field or wood – somewhere entirely private – but at the end of a hurried telephone call she had been too flustered to come up with precise directions. Instead, he had suggested the parish church, which he would b
e passing anyway en route to the station. He was due in London for what he had told her lugubriously would be ‘my terminal bollocking by the old gents at NIDC’ – whoever they were. As they walked up the nave together, she supposed that if this were a happier occasion she might start humming Mendelssohn’s Wedding March in a mildly ironic way.

  Mike glanced at the famous fourteenth-century wall-painting, with its gaggle of men and women being prodded into the fires of hell by assorted devils. ‘At least medieval adulterers knew the score,’ he muttered.

  ‘I guess they did,’ agreed Andrea, imagining he was thinking of sinners who’d loved and lost, and had always expected to. Héloïse and Abelard, Paolo and Francesca, falling unsurprised into the eternal flames. Whereas we are surprised to suffer, he seemed to be saying.

  ‘My train’s the three o’clock.’ Mike looked at his watch. ‘Doesn’t leave us long, I’m afraid.’

  They slid into a pew near the pulpit and an unhappy silence ensued. She wished he would do something loving, like kiss her, or at least hold her hand. Thoughts of legendary lovers and their losses had made his anxiety about train times seem less forgivable.

  Wearing a tweed jacket and check shirt, Mike looked strange to her, though these ordinary clothes were probably more familiar to him than naval uniform. Suddenly she realised how nervous he was and felt a surge of sympathy. Mike was holding his hands together to keep them still. He looked at her imploringly, ‘For God’s sake, Andrea, what did Leo say? Is he coming home with you?’

  ‘Dearest, I had to tell him his dad and I are going to be apart for a while.’

  ‘Why did you say that?’ His smile drooped and died. ‘I’m staggered you imagine he’ll come anywhere near you now.’

  ‘Lying to him wouldn’t have been right.’ The forthright tone she had hoped for emerged as something less convincing.

  His face was distraught. ‘Who cares what’s right if a white lie could have stopped him fretting all summer at that awful school?’ Mike’s fingers tightened on the back of the pew in front. ‘You deliberately did the opposite of what I asked.’

  Refusing to be cowed by his anger, she said, ‘I can’t believe you’re blaming me because I didn’t do something I thought wrong. He’ll worry less if he feels he can trust what I say. Isn’t it for me to worry about him?’

  ‘Not when he’s just risked his life because of us. That makes it my responsibility too.’

  ‘Fair comment. But lying to Leo won’t help him.’

  ‘Come on, Andrea! I only asked you to hold back briefly so you wouldn’t alienate him for good. It was the one thing I begged you to avoid.’

  ‘Whatever happens, I’ll never blame you, darling.’ Andrea felt so shaky that her words came out blurred and breathless.

  Mike held his head in his hands for a moment. ‘That’s not the point at all,’ he objected. ‘I’d blame myself anyway, especially if I had to watch you go through what I did. I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she cried, just then remembering what he had said about his own son.

  A woman with a mop and pail came out of a door to the right of the altar and started to clatter about and splosh water over the chancel floor.

  Mike whispered, ‘I think we should see how we feel in a month.’

  ‘And not meet till then?’ Her head was spinning. He was slipping away from her, without even trying to reach out a delaying hand. ‘You’re so goddamn unfair,’ she cried. ‘You set me impossible conditions; told me I had to take Leo and Peter home with me till school started; and now, because I’ve failed to persuade them, which I was always sure to, you say I can’t see you any more. That’s pretty low.’

  ‘Try to understand,’ he murmured. ‘I felt fine grabbing things for myself when I was in danger. But now I’m safe, everything’s different. Peter and Leo deserve better than a rushed decision.’

  Andrea felt hot and shivery as if she were running a fever. Giving up any attempt to speak softly, she burst out, ‘Just when I don’t want to live with them any more, you decide to leave me for their sake. Do I have that right?’

  His dark eyes were full of tender appeal. ‘All I’m saying is we should take stock after you’ve settled down again in Oxford, when I’ll know about my new posting. The last few days have been hell for all of us.’

  ‘You’re being dishonest,’ she cried, as the woman with the mop gawped at her. ‘If we leave it a month, then that’s the end. Be brave enough to admit it, instead of giving me false hope.’

  ‘Please, Andrea, it’s been the most beautiful time in my life, and I couldn’t bear it if we …’

  Scarcely knowing what she was doing, Andrea was on her feet, stumbling over hassocks in her hurry to be gone before she began to rage or plead with him to reconsider. Above all she must not plead. From the graveyard, she saw, beyond the lych gate, a Wren driver and a weedy looking man in civilian clothes sitting in a familiar looking naval sedan. These people had been waiting for him. What reason had he given them for spending time in church? ‘Got to tell the little lady the party’s over’?

  Her head throbbed with unshed tears. Either Mike had been incredibly unselfish to put a boy’s interests before his own, or he had used Leo as an excuse to end it. But which was true? Ever since her appearance at naval headquarters, with Justin at her side, she had thought Mike honourable. Now she no longer knew. Deserted by his own wife, scared, lonely – wouldn’t he have painted his self-portrait in any way he thought likely to lead to love? The hardest thing for her was knowing that, even if Mike had used Leo, she still wanted to find some magical excuse that would let her go on loving him, as she had done before Leo stuck his nose into her love affair and popped it like a child’s balloon.

  CHAPTER 23

  In the first week of June, Peter and Andrea drove to Yorkshire for Leo’s Sports Day. It was six weeks since Andrea had left Cornwall, and yet Peter had observed few improvements in her state of mind. On three occasions during May, he had stayed in Oxford overnight, and on none of them had he slept in the flat but always in his rooms in college. The reason had never varied: Andrea’s grief over the loss of her lover had made it seem as distasteful to him, as it would have been to her, for him to share her bed. Initially, Peter had assured himself that Andrea would soon admit that he deserved, if not praise, at least appreciation for his restraint and understanding. But nothing she had said to date had given him any such encouragement. He would have become angry and resentful long ago, if he had not been so worried about her.

  Because Andrea had always been an optimistic, buoyant person, with a gift for sniffing out self-delusion in others, it was horrible to see her with dark shadows under her eyes, looking so wretched. Not that Peter blamed her for thinking well of Harrington – he had, too. So well, in fact, that on reflection it seemed a little naïve of Andrea to have expected such a paragon to be with her for longer than a brief episode in his life. Had she ever asked herself why – when other women were plentiful, and many of them younger than herself, and no less keen – Harrington should have been expected to bend over backwards for the sake of a thirty-five-year-old with a troublesome son and the kind of husband guaranteed to lie heavy on the conscience?

  Hoping to comfort his wife, a few days ago Peter had suggested to her on the telephone that Harrington might be the kind of man who only desired unattainable women, and discarded them as soon as they had slept with him. Andrea had brushed this aside. Mike had been faithful to his wife till the day she left him, and was as far removed from Byronic poseurs and picaresque young fornicators from the Tom Jones stable as could be imagined.

  Though she was pale and thin, and often tried his patience to its limits, Peter still loved Andrea too much to think of leaving her – if, strictly speaking, one could be said to leave someone already largely absent. Even now, unless careful, he could see in her lack of proportion something dogged and vital, as well as misguided.

  Recently, without quite knowing why, Peter had used his contacts with
in the Admiralty to find out where Harrington was serving. Great Yarmouth, it turned out – commanding a squadron of motor torpedo boats, which were regularly in action off the Dutch and German coasts. Several evenings ago, Peter had caught an item on a BBC news report which he supposed was typical: ‘Last night our Light Coastal Forces were in action off the Hook of Holland and sunk two armed trawlers and an E-boat, for the loss of two MTBs.’ Mike seemed to be in greater danger than in Cornwall. At the time of his discovery, Peter had thought it best to keep the information to himself.

  They had left York on the Helmsley road, and now were driving north, past fields where the hay was ready for cutting. Though Peter was happy to think that in less than an hour they would be seeing Leo, a sudden thought made him uneasy.

  ‘Darling,’ he asked gently, ‘did you ever hear where Mike was sent after he left Cornwall?’

  ‘I did,’ she answered, turning her unhappy face towards him. Mike writes to Justin most weeks. And he told Leo.’

  Peter was mortified. ‘Why didn’t you tell me the real reason why you’ve been so anxious?’

  She seemed amazed by his question. ‘I should’ve told you I was worrying about Mike?’

  ‘Yes. Far better than leaving me thinking you’d no special reason to be sad, except missing him.’

  ‘You’re right. I’m sorry, Peter.’ She touched his hand where it rested on the wheel. ‘Mike’s coming today.’

  ‘To see you?’

  She gave him the ghost of a smile, before shaking her head. ‘Justin’s spending half-term with him, so he’s coming to get him.’

  Peter frowned. ‘Is Mike refusing to see you, Andrea?’

  ‘He’s not keen. Please don’t ask me why.’

  Even when gazing at the road ahead, through the yellowing mist of dead insects on the windscreen, Peter was aware of her lovely hair, flickering in the wind, as the elms sighed past, and the Howardian hills appeared, looking blue and misty in the summer haze. Andrea had caught the sun and there were faint freckles on the bridge of her nose. She’s perfect, thought Peter. Yet to Harrington, she was only someone who’d given him pleasure, and was of no further use. Fear for her sanity made Peter shiver. Her need to know that the man was alive might go on as long as he lasted, or the war did. And, in the meantime, what about me?