Sin (11 page)

We swam towards the bank. And fell on it.

She held her arms out to me. Love and pity. Defeating me again.

“Damn you, Elizabeth. Stephen brought him down. I know it. Stephen brought him down. My William. Trying to save him. Stephen brought him down. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

Why should I call on You now?

“Oh, God. How I hate you, Elizabeth. My God, Elizabeth. You've done for me at last.”

I moved towards her. And I spat water over her. Then I took stones. I threw them at her. I made my hand a weapon. The palm held sideways—like a knife—and I hit her jaw. I moved towards her neck. I moved, ready to kill. Then I saw a dead bird on the ground. I picked it up. And splattered it onto her chest.

She lay there weeping and whispered, “Ruth. Don't. Think of our boys. Our boys.”

And I stopped at last. And looked down at her. Was something broken? I could not see through the blood. Whether I got to the bone or whether— again—I had only hurt soft tissue. The smell? That could have been the rotting body of the bird. Parts of which clung to her dress. And not something rotten in Elizabeth that I had at last burst open. Not exquisitely, as I had dreamed, but with sick, defeated, ferocious grief.

Then, racing down the hill came the ambulance men. Carrying their useless stretchers. I ran towards them, screaming.

“They're at the bottom of the lake. I can't get them. The stretcher's useless. There is no body.” Stephen's face floated into my consciousness. “There are no bodies. ”

They stood helpless. The willing helpers. Those trained to deal with dramatic death. They looked lost without a body. Carefully to move and place onto their precious canvas altar.

“The fire brigade … their divers are on their way.” A young woman in a suit spoke.

“Mrs. Garton?”

“Who are you?” I almost spat the words at this intruder.

“I'm Sarah Duncan and … this must be …” She turned towards Elizabeth.

“Elizabeth Harding, I'm Stephen's mother.”

“The … phone call said … two boys … .”

“Stephen and William.”

“Your sons?”

“Yes.”

“I am so … so …”

Sorry?

“Mrs. Garton. If we went to the house it would be … better.”

“No.”

“Mrs. Garton … please.”

“No.”

“Lady Harding?”

Elizabeth shook her head. Blood dripped down and mixed itself with some particles of flesh from the bird. And Elizabeth's shirt was blue. Not white as normal. I had not noticed this before. The doctor bent down and from her case took gauze and tinctures. And started to repair some of the damage I had done to Elizabeth's face.

“I fell,” she said. “Badly. Running towards the … boys. Onto the bird. And I fell onto the edge of the lake when I was getting out.”

I said nothing. Someone had handed me a large blanket to wrap around my shoulders.

“Mrs. Garton. Lady Harding. It would be better for you to remove your wet clothes.”

“No.” From us both.

Healers hate to feel useless. Hate to recognise that nothing works. Like priests, they need to prove their power. Most particularly in extremis. Except that, unlike priests, they have nothing to offer the dead body. Certainly not what the priest can offer—a new disembodied existence. Still with us. But not seen. Why should the dead want to stay? Watching the weeping but not able to join in. After all, it was their life that was lost. No future. Time finished for them. Full stop. No new sentence. No new paragraph.

The boys' lives. A short story. Their future, gone. No future. “Never, never, never, never, never.” Five nevers. I always thought that significant. And “kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.” Lear needed the six beats for his rage. The two interwoven, of course. For who has grieved who has not raged? And raged, again.

And now, along the top of the hill, ran dark figures. Rubber-armoured. For the water. Their heads encased in monstrous balaclavas for the deep.

I swam with them to the point of my last vision of my son. As he left me. Another clasped too tightly to him. How mothers hate all others who embrace their child too tightly. They know how easy it is to squeeze life away. So that only a body remains.

And the remains of his life, this body which I had so loved, came finally to the surface. Attached to the other. The boys' legs, like tree trunks, were wrapped around each other. Like lovers in sleep. Motionless. Stephen's arms locked round William's waist. William's face seemed pressed deeply into Stephen's chest. As though it were a part of Stephen's body. Stephen's head was thrown back. His last act had been to gasp for air. Before he brought William down. How well Stephen had known all his life what it was to gasp for air.

And suddenly it was what I had to do. Not to cry. Just suddenly, convulsively, to gasp for air. I lived.

Dead bodies are heavy. The young divers, like warriors in a field of battle, tried to prise the boys apart.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Garton …”

“Leave them as they are. Don't separate them.”

“But …”

“Don't separate them.”

The bodies—like a single statue—were laid on the bank. It seemed a single death. So much did they resemble a sculpture of one long, fine young man. His head that of Stephen. And his legs those of William.

The men began their work. Two of them gently releasing the bodies as the others forced oxygen into their rejecting lungs. Trying, these strangers, to deceive death.

But death had been clever. With one's weakness, and the other's love, death had harvested them both. And the sun still shone, in a weak October way. It did not withdraw in sorrow. Not even when death's triumph was finally acknowledged.

Lexington waited for us and our entourage, as we walked slowly towards it with our dead children. The boys. Our sons. Who after all would not now have the east or west wing. Perhaps Lexington rejoiced, that in time it might be left alone at last.

Through the French windows and onto the terrace ran Charles and Dominick. My mother stood motionless, eyes closed.

“Oh, my God …. Oh, my God.” Dominick's voice.

He did not run to me. He turned, retching into the protection of the half hedge that separated the terrace from the lawn. Charles stood looking down at the stretchers, guarded on either side by Elizabeth and me, standing behind the bearers. He covered his face for a moment. Then he turned and removed my mother from the path of the carriers with their heavy burden.

At the front of the house, the waiting ambulance received its cargo. We followed slowly in cars. Not ready yet for a longer separation. The young policeman stayed with Ben to take his statement.

At the little village hospital, questions were asked of us by the gentlest of police sergeants, and the most solicitous of doctors. As though, in searching for the answer to how, we could find the answer to why.

At some stage, by unspoken consent, we drove through the dusk back to Lexington. A Lexington we could no longer recognise. It had tricked us. Made us feel safe all those years. In my soft weaving of hatred, I had never felt afraid. Had I defiled Lexington? No. No. Elizabeth's son had killed mine.

I bore no guilt. Not in this. I do not—will not accept another interpretation. For that way madness lies.

TWENTY-SIX

It is pointless to describe the next few days. Those who know, know. Those who don't, will never understand.

The Funeral. And boys came from their school to represent the pupils. With their sturdy legs, they burned my eyes. With their faces, they poured vinegar down my throat. And with their sweet voices, they poisoned my ears.

A sad headmaster and solemn teachers now gave life reports on the boys, whose time they had expected to measure out in terms.

A government minister, and figures from the world of affairs, and people from the worlds of arts and publishing and academia mingled uneasily together. No one knew what to say. Because the words did not exist.

Lexington gathered them in, and impressed them. And fed them—after we had laid the boys, now separated, in their graves, side by side in the village churchyard, beside my family. My grave child, William. Now most truly a grave child. He should never have been mine. Too good for me. Was there a pattern here? Some scheme to destroy me. If any of my family had been any good … couldn't they have interceded on our behalf? Then I remembered. I did not believe in God. Or in the afterlife. And I found that comforting.

TWENTY-SEVEN

How old and lined we looked on the following morning. But there was no respite. Death demands a new life. No settling into the same old rut after death. It has a double triumph. It robs life, and fatally stings those remaining. What power.

Now, it used the weakest member, Dominick, to shake us out of any illusion of peace. With harmony forever gone from his life, he wanted to be “straight” with me … with us all … for the first time in years.

Straight, Dominick? A line, perhaps. Part of something. A rectangle? No, a triangle. Or perhaps not. There were four of us, after all.

“Did you know, Elizabeth … that Charles had an affair with Ruth?”

She sat so quietly, without moving at all, that I thought she had not heard.

“Elizabeth. I'm talking to you. Did you know?”

“No.”

“What are you doing, Dominick?”

“I'm revealing a truth. After all, we've just experienced the ultimate truth. Makes all this look rather pathetic.”

“Then why do it?”

“I need … I need this, Ruth. I need this. I have more courage now.”

Courage? God!

“I guessed a little time ago it was Charles. Before … this … I felt that I would die without you, Ruth. But, then, I knew nothing of pain. Three days ago, I knew nothing. I don't want whatever's left to be a lie. It's extraordinary how desperately I want something in my life that is … real.”

“What Dominick has told you is true, Elizabeth.”

“Thank you for that, at least, Charles.” Then turning to Dominick: “It's amazing how many people we bring down with the truth.”

“I'm sorry. I have to do this. In the end, everybody tries to save his own life.”

“Not quite everybody, Dominick. William didn't.” I remembered my last vision of him.

“He did a brave thing. And lost,” Charles said.

“Well, I wish to God he hadn't been brave. I wish to God he'd saved himself.”

“So do I, Ruth. So do I. To lose Stephen, and know his asthma brought about William's death … is agony.” Elizabeth started to cry. We were all silent.

Then she began to speak. Quietly. “How the world has turned. Everything is broken here. In Lexington. In this house, where I've been so quiet. All my life I've been quiet. So quiet. For I knew … since I was very small, that this was not really my place. I was here … because of a death. I had inherited a grief. But I was loved. So loved. But still I never had the confidence … to be … difficult. Or to displease.

“And when Ruth was born, it seemed even more important. The more she became Ruth—Ruth the wild, Ruth the dangerous, the brilliant—the more I needed to be good and quiet. That was me. Elizabeth—the good one. It's a way of life now. A habit was formed. I don't know another way to be. No courage, you see. Not for Dominick's cruelty, even now. And I don't know how to deceive—as you've done, Charles. And you, Ruth. I lack the … the stamina … yes. I lack the stamina to do what you have done.”

“I love you, Elizabeth. Please, please, understand that … please.” Charles moved towards her, beseeching her. I watched him. Beseeching her.

Tell him, Elizabeth. Tell him how I attacked you. Tell him.

“Charles … dear Charles. Don't. Some instinct tells me we must not continue. Perhaps you're for Ruth, and not for me. I had something perfect once, with Hubert. Maybe, if he'd lived, it would have become less perfect. But I don't think so. No. No. I'm certain. So I'll just take that memory … if I may. May I … Ruth?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Hubert, forgive me. Please forgive me.” She cried to him. After all those years.

“Hubert is … was yours, and only yours.”

“I know that, Ruth. I don't need your affirmation.”

“Stop all this. Elizabeth. Please, Elizabeth. I do not want this.” Charles gripped the edge of the table. As though he needed support.

“Charles. Neither do I. But I must do it.”

All of us looked at her. And knew that she would. For, in the end, there is something stony in the heart of goodness. Which is perhaps why, all too often, we avoid it.

Later, the inquest, investigation of Death. Pointless. For Death always commits the perfect murder. He has never been caught. He uses so many disguises. The face of illness. Or accident. Or violence. The list is endless. He is cruel, funny, macabre, wild, gentle. He is secret. Famous. He hides. Then leaps into full view. He is magnificent. Pathetic. Bathetic. But always, always, Death is triumphant.

Facts. Established by questions. And answers. Asthma attack. Stephen's. A non-swimmer. Ben. A hero. William. Racing on his bicycle to save Stephen, floundering desperately … his asthma choking him … in the water. William, a hero, who failed. Two deaths. Too early. There were questions I did not want to hear. To which I gave answers. But did not truly speak.

After the inquest, she left.

In Charles's eyes I became Judas Iscariot. That night, he too left Lexington. And I rent my garments.

Months later he came back. Weakness, I suppose. Elizabeth was adamant. Utterly impervious to all his pleas. She had gone to live in a remote part of Scotland. In a cottage outside a small village. To paint. Ridiculous, to me, that so small a talent could sustain her.

I took him gratefully. For I knew that he loved me to the limits of which he was capable. It was not his fault that I had gone further. And found myself alone. I had found that I longed for him … continuously. And I decided to be true to something. The longing was real enough. It seemed then, and still does, sufficient.