She swam back to the shallow end and without making the least noise she rose from the pool and paused there, luxuriating now in the feel of warm air on her body just as she had loved the sensation of her skin meeting the water.
‘Like Aphrodite rising from the waves, Miss Selkirk. Quick now or I’ll see your bum. There are robes somewhere,’ Stephen said. He was laughing at her. Sara turned round very slowly. He was sitting up now, watching.
‘Thanks,’ she said, languidly pulling her hair up into a wet roll on the top of her head. She looked round and saw the pile of bathrobes, took one, and just as Stephen had done with the towel, set off down the pool side carrying it, pausing every few steps to put it on, one arm, then the next, and last, carelessly, tying the belt which held it together. She flopped down beside him and they sat in silence but for the subsiding laps of the water against the pool side. Stephen poured out a drink and handed it to her. She drank half and handed it back. He put the glass on the floor and pulled her down on to the mattress.
‘You’re tired,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘Very, very tired.’
Sara nodded and closed her eyes. She was tired, but it was worse than that; she was the same. Everything was the same. The beautiful water had not changed anything. The magic, transforming pool was a delusion. She had emerged from it as battered and heartbroken as she had entered it.
‘It’s so awful. Everything’s awful.’ She began to cry again, vodka tears for all of it: James, exhaustion, Andrew, Dvořák, Stephen laughing at her.
‘Don’t talk about it. You’re too tired to talk about anything,’ he said, making it sound almost like medical advice. Almost, until the hand resting on her forehead began to smooth her hair off her face, travelled down her throat and slipped under the edge of her robe and reached a shoulder. Sara’s eyes were still closed when his mouth came down over hers and his tongue began pushing gently. She drew away and looked at him. His hand moved down, loosened the robe and found her breast.
‘Lie still. Lie still. And you’ll feel better.’ The voice was now in her ear and she was aware of his skin, scented like hers with pool water, but warm, human, male, and very close to hers, and his fingers slipping down.
‘Better than what?’ she murmured stupidly, knowing for certain now that she was drunk, and glad to be. She pulled away the towel from Stephen’s body. He was kneeling between her legs. Sara pulled her robe away. She closed her eyes again, wondering though not caring whether it was his fingers or his tongue on her nipples, just as long as he was going to do this for ever. Not, not for ever. With a sudden surge of need she rose and reached for him. He hesitated for a second above her, then he pushed into her. He pushed again, and again. Then he paused above her and looked at her, gauging his effect. Watching her, he slid back and forth, infinitely slow, never taking his eyes from her face. And slowly, so slowly, with infinite slowness, looking back into his eyes as he sank into and melted out of her, Sara began to realise what he wanted. He didn’t want her, not beyond the want of engorged muscle and nerve endings (not that that, she was the first to concede, should be underestimated). He wanted her gratitude. He wanted it so badly he had almost stopped
making love and was hovering in neutral, ticking over, withholding her pleasure until he got it, like the class bully holding sweeties out of reach. She smiled beatifically up at him and whispered, ‘You’re wonderful.’ Three thrusts and two grunts later he shuddered and collapsed on her shoulder.
After an interval long enough, she hoped, to convey adequate respect for his orgasm, she shifted gently and sighed. He rolled off her and lay on his back, holding her hand. The hand-holding was ominous. She hoped to God he wasn’t going to thank her.
‘I wish I still smoked,’ he said. ‘I still miss the one afterwards.’
Sara laughed with relief. She was almost too weary and uninterested to express surprise that he ever had. ‘What, a healthy specimen like you?’
He looked pleased. ‘I’m not bad, am I? I work at it. Eight vitamins a day, no alcohol—tonight’s an exception—exercise, organic vegetarian diet—’
Sara yawned to shut him up. She was exhausted as well as miserable, now that the tension between them had been extinguished, and she wondered how soon she could get away. She was appalled but not altogether surprised by the realisation that now that they had made love (actually, the phrase ‘had sex’ was more accurate, and the words ‘onesided, mechanistic fuck’ could have been appropriately applied) she had lost not only desire but any interest in him whatsoever. She had learned more about him during the few seconds that he had lingered above her, waiting for her praise, than he could ever tell her or wish her to know. She wanted to get away from him before her indifference
showed, before it grew into contempt. Already she could see that really, he was rather pathetic.
He had stood up and was forcing his arms into a robe. He tied the belt and knelt beside her. ‘I’ve lost everything. I have nothing left to offer anyone. All I wanted was to help people and get a bit of recognition. Ivan’s got Hilary and soon she’ll have the baby and they won’t need me any more. Ivan will get a fortune when he sells this place. My usefulness is past.’
For the first time he sounded almost pitiable. Sara struggled to open her half-closed eyes. Before she could say anything he whispered, ‘It’s amazing, you being here, appearing like that. I was feeling so desperate, I had, well, I had been thinking if I got drunk enough I might have the courage to drown myself. Then you came.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘I have to go. Could you, would you please do one more thing? Go to Ivan tomorrow and tell him why I’ve gone. I’ve never told him, but the building’s not mine, it’s in trust, in his name. Tell Hilary—’ Stephen’s eyes were bright with tears, ‘please tell her that I’m—that I send all my love to her and to the baby. Will you do that?’
Sara could barely raise her head. ‘I will.’
He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘Goodbye.’
W
HEN
S
ARA AWOKE
, the sun was up and glaring off the surface of the pool. She got up dazzled, still dazed with sleep and groggy with the headache and thirst that reminded her, as if her sticky thighs did not, of how drunk she had been. She remembered, very unwillingly, everything that had happened, including her promise to tell Ivan and Hilary that Stephen had gone. Her clothes, she also remembered, were down at the far end of the pool. She dived in and swam the length, washing off all she could of last night’s lunacy. She dried herself and got dressed, found some bottled water and took that with her. The flowers for James had gone.
She arrived at the Golightlys’ house before eight o’clock. Ivan answered her knock in the clothes she imagined he had slept in, looking hostile and dirty. He stood in the doorway and looked past her, frowning, his eyes taking in her car and the otherwise empty lane. Sara’s weak social smile turned to one of appeasement.
‘I’m really sorry to disturb you, especially so early, but—’
Ivan’s look challenged her to make the disturbance worthwhile. Sara felt suddenly angry.
‘Look, I know this can hardly be convenient and I promise you I’d rather not be here but I promised your father I’d let you know—’
‘Yeah—what,’ he interrupted, folding his arms, looking past her again. There was no curiosity, simply the wish to be told what and have her go.
‘Look, I’m
terribly
sorry it’s obviously deeply inconvenient, but actually this is pretty inconvenient for me too. I promised your father I’d let you know he’s had to … he’s gone away for a while. He … I think he wants you to decide what to do about the clinic, whether to sell it, or whatever. He said to tell you the building’s yours, it’s in your name.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Ivan said, with a mirthless little smile. ‘Oh. He said you didn’t.’
‘I do, though. My father tends to underestimate what I know. Old habit.’
‘Well, anyway, he asked me to tell you he’s had to go away.’
‘Of course. Well, that’s that, then. Thank you for telling me.’
Sara now saw weariness rather than indifference. He shook his head and looked at her properly for the first time. She wondered if he had been crying.
‘I’ve been awake all night, worrying about things,’ he said. ‘You know, the patients, and poor Warwick. I keep thinking there must be something I should have done. We’ve put our whole lives into that place. It’s been such a shock, and now it’s getting to Hilary, too. The baby—’ To her horror, his eyes filled with tears, which he wiped away with a sleeve. He pressed the fingers of one trembling hand into his eyes and stood on the doorstep, gulping.
‘You need to sit down,’ Sara said.
‘No. No, I’m all right.’ He swayed, with his face hidden in his hands, and gulped some more. But Sara simply had not the energy for compassion. While she did not blame him, it would have felt like effort misapplied to spend too much time helping Ivan feel better for the death of
her
friend.
‘Is Hilary around?’ she asked, considering that the tea and sympathy routine was really his wife’s department. ‘Part of the message was for her, too. Your father says that he—’
‘She’s upstairs. She’s had another threatened miscarriage. She has to rest, or she may lose it.’ Ivan’s voice was swallowed by his sobs. Sara had heard about how long they had waited for this baby. She made another effort to feel compassion and even managed to say some of the right things, but as she took her leave she could not help herself thinking, well, now you might have to find out what it’s like to lose somebody you love.
S
ARA LEFT HER
case, cello and bag in the hall of Medlar Cottage, went upstairs, closed her curtains and fell into bed. When she woke six hours later she got up at once, stumbled down in her dressing gown and dialled James’s number. Tom’s number, as she must now learn to think of it. The answering machine was on but she hung up without leaving a message. There are messages too fragile for machines. Tom might well be staying at his mother’s, or could even be at the hospital. Should she go to the hospital? But Tom might not be there. She thought of James lying somewhere in its impersonal vastness and shivered. She could not go, not yet, not alone.
She went back upstairs, showered and dressed, without noticing what clothes she put on. Back in the kitchen she moved slowly, sedate in her misery, and steadfastly made an omelette using up some sad tomatoes, basil and the good half of a red pepper that was going mouldy. It was odd, she thought, how she could continue to function, how the brain still insisted on her noticing daily trivia such as things in the fridge that needed using up. She ate her omelette with more enthusiasm than she thought possible, feeling guilty to be hungry.
It was nearly five in the afternoon when she wandered up the garden to the pond and swung herself into the hammock. Through the diamonds of the netting she could see the bamboo curtain on the far side of the pond and recalled the sound of James’s voice two summers ago, calling her as she had lain in the hammock then, the rustle of the leaves and his hot face appearing round it, pleased to have tracked her down and reached the top of the garden on a sweltering day. She lay until long after the sun had sunk behind the garden, lighting up the far side of the valley, and eventually she fell asleep again.
She woke this time shivering with cold. The green of the leaves and grass was receding behind the charcoal gleam of twilight. The pale flowers of the roses and meadow sweet held the last of the brightness. Birds called late in the trees; insects were silent. Sara wandered back down to the house, which seemed suddenly too large. Tom’s answering machine was still switched on and again she could think of no message to leave. She wandered from room to room neither tired, rested, hungry nor satisfied, her mind numb yet in a storm of incoherent protest.
Why should James be the one to die? In the music room she took out her cello and tuned up. The Dvořák which she wished to forget had been played on her Peresson cello, the big Romantic instrument that Andrew liked so much. Her need to be soothed called for the Cristiani’s creamy, gentler sound. She would play something that James liked, perhaps. She began Fauré’s
Élégie in C Minor
, and the soft tug of the notes loosened tears which ran down her face as she played. An almost physical ache was
beating in her at the thought that she would never hear James play, or play with him again.
She began to play the theme of the St Anthony Variations. Despite the measured, gracious calm of the music she found herself beginning to grow angry. It enraged her, suddenly, to think that James had been persuaded, by her as much as by Tom, into staying at the Sulis. Had he gone to a proper hospital, his ulcers would have responded to the insult of conventional treatment and he would be alive now, mangled by surgeons and stuffed with drugs, but alive. She put down her bow and blew on her hands. They were still cold from her long sleep in the cooling air of the garden and too stiff to deal with the first variation.
She got up and put away the cello. In the kitchen she ran the hot tap, turning her fingers in the water as they began to tingle, and recalling James’s hands and his poor cold feet. Hot and cold, burning and freezing at the same time. It was now almost twenty-four hours since she learned of his death, and she was only now allowing her mind to turn to the manner of it. She had been too shocked to ask the hospital, but she considered now that it would be almost as if she had stopped caring about him if she did not find out in detail exactly what had happened and what he had gone through. Had he suffered? She had to know. It was a silly idea, she knew, but finding out might be the last thing she was able to do for him. Had the poor darling suffered? Her mind returned to the agonising picture of the struggling St Anthony with the serpent, his livid face gleaming in the shaft of innocuous sunlight hitting the canvas, and next to it the other, reassuring image of St Anthony the benign father, with his crutch, the sweet little piglet and the tiny people entreating his intercession for relief for their
poor burning hands. What else happened to people poisoned by ergot and what exactly was it? Bernadette had not known. In her maddening voice during the interval (another lifetime ago) she had only yapped in her self-congratulatory way that she had found out that the people in the picture were suffering from St Anthony’s Fire, from grain blighted by ergot. And that was all Sara knew: nothing much except two names for what had killed James.