The Diamond Waterfall (52 page)

Two days after his sister left, Reggie proposed again. “A chap has to keep trying, even if it means
being
trying. Can't help thinking you say to yourself, “That little pip-squeak, how dare he?” but you don't, do you? Because I shall make good, you know. Just got to get a few ideas off the ground. Shan't be staying up with Aunt forever. But while I'm here—faint heart and all that … think about it a bit, would you?”

Now it was October. After a few days of autumn sunshine, bad weather set in. She worried it might affect her father, worried how he would manage the winter. Dr. Selwood (she had discovered his name—Geoffrey) still visited twice a week. She had to stop herself haunting her father's room the day he was expected. (Why? Why am I like this?) Once they'd smiled and waved as she passed him by in the family motor car.

A Thursday, his visiting day, and by noon, great banked black clouds, a cold spitting wind. The trees outside the morning room where she sewed bent their branches. Her mother was in Scotland (with her lover, thought Sylvia).

She was in the drawing room, practicing Beethoven, when Geoffrey Selwood was shown in.

“I don't disturb you?” He looked worried. “I'd like a few words—about Sir Robert.”

Her knees were weak. Sit him down. Ring for a drink. (“You
will
have something? My turn to play hostess.”) Sitting formally, she on the sofa, he in an upright chair, a glass of sherry before each of them. He looked a little disheveled, reminding her of the howling wind which, moaning around the corners of the house, had formed part of her piano practice.

“I should have said, would have told Lady Firth, Sir Robert's condition is substantially worse. I said nothing to him. Would think it better not. But there
is
—when do you expect Lady Firth back?”

“A week tomorrow. Is it, what is the danger?”

“Please. I don't mean to alarm, but would rather err through prudence.
No, I don't think we should call your mother back. In the first instance it would only alarm
him.
But I must warn you that this winter is critical.”

“Yes, yes.” She felt sick with dread. Sick too at the stiffness of this meeting, which seemed to be between two different people. Who had been those two in the tea shop? If small talk could bring it back … But exchanges about the Irish troubles, the weather, her mother's Scottish visit— they ate away the time.

He had gotten up to go. He was hurried, of course—had perhaps other visits. She wanted to say, “That book, I have not been able to read it, am afraid to open it even. I found one quotation, but since then … I want to know now,
why?
What is in it to frighten me?” But the question (to which I know the answer, she thought), the question itself was explosive.

Then, as if to accompany the thought, came the outrageous claps of thunder they'd waited for all day. A darkening, rattling of window panes. Then: cloudburst. As he stood there, she said in a small voice:

“The heavens have opened.”

He smiled, and held his hand out in farewell. “Try not to worry about Sir Robert. Pessimism is sometimes only caution.” “You can't go out in this. Have you seen it?” “And worse. I shall be all right—”

“Please, I insist. It's scarcely safe to drive. In an hour or so—we are just about to eat, you are particularly invited, a thank you for the tea, we had meant to invite you formally, it is the least we can offer.” (I must be mad.)

She saw that he hesitated—then, with a smile, yielded easily. “Why not? When you're so kind. But if I may telephone home? They expect me, and of course if I should be called out … I must say always where I am.”

From courtesy, after he had telephoned she took him upstairs to her father. But his manservant, Coulson, said he was already settled for the night.

They sat at opposite ends of the long table. And spoke of—what? She could not remember afterward. Outside the storm seemed not to have eased at all. Before she rang for coffee, he asked to telephone again: “To make sure the line is not down or anything like that.”

“The piano,” he said when he came back. “Do you play much? It struck me, who know a little, that you do it very well.”

“Thank you. I don't practice as much as one should. I'm not very serious—”

“You should be.”

“I do it mainly on account of my father. He likes me to play to him. Since he became ill, he's liked it. Earlier, as a child, I used to prefer the light stuff my mother played. Songs she'd sung. I cut my teeth on those. Then suddenly discovered—the real thing.”

He put his cup down. “Before I go—you shall play me the Beethoven I interrupted.” He said it in a crisp, businesslike voice. A last duty to one's
hostess. She got up a little hesitantly, reluctantly. He rose too, and as they stood together, the light from the lamp behind fell in such a way that he looked suddenly old. She saw in a quick glimpse how he would be in twenty, even thirty years' time.

“I can't manage the
presto. Presto alla tedesca.
I'll go straight into the slow movement.”

She sat at the Blüthner and played, not well, the
andante.
He sat in a chair where she could not see him. As she played she felt misery through her fingertips. When she'd finished, the feeling came over her as when she had come down the stairs from the tea shop. She sat for a moment, her hands over the keys.

She turned, very suddenly, and caught in that second his expression. As their eyes met:

“Dear God,” he said very quietly. He was looking away from her now.

“What's happened?”

He said slowly, “You wouldn't ask, I think, if you didn't know.”

They were both silent. When she thought she could no longer bear it, he said suddenly:

“If you will look at me. Directly at me. Yes, like that. Because I shall only speak once.”

She had come to sit on the chair opposite his. He reached over and took her hands in his (if someone should come in!). The long fingers were dry but warm. He said urgently:

“Listen to me, because I dare to only now. I know I do you wrong to speak—”

“Please, please!” She was almost weeping.

“I do us
both
wrong. I know that—Sylvia. The first time I've used your name. It's as beautiful as you are. And as you were, that time when I came in and you—”

“The Diamond Waterfall, oh, the Diamond Waterfall. He wanted me to put it on—”

“It haunted me, your hair down, so beautiful with your hair down, I wanted to forget and could not. However busy, I could not.”

“You must,” she said bravely, “we must. It's both of us …” She held back the words: love me, stay with me, tell me that you cannot live without me,
as I cannot live without you.

He stood up, taking his hands from hers gently. Outside, the wind had almost died down. Where the rain had been heavy, water ran from drains blocked by the leaves. Standing in the doorway, watching his motor drive away, she shivered.

That first night she lay awake. And the next, sleeping a little only toward dawn. She did not think very much—just lay still, feeling her heart aching.

Geoffrey came three times a week now to see her father. Always at more or less the same time so that it wasn't too difficult to avoid him. She supposed he did this to help her. To help them both. She dreaded they might meet. (And yet I want it so, I want it so!)

In the end it was not in the house at all, but in the road that they met. He, coming out of a cottage on the edge of Settstone moor. She, trudging back from a long walk, her father's labrador with her. She took her aching heart often for walks.

He came toward her at once. She said, “I thought you were going to ignore me—get in your motor as if you hadn't seen me.” She made her voice bright, social.

He smiled. Tired crinkled eyes. She wondered if
he
slept. “I was in to see old Mrs. Aske—she won't have her daughter living with her and the little servant girl can't manage.” His voice trailed away. The dog sniffed in circles around him, then leaped up, nudging him.

“Down, Raglan, down.” She pulled at the dog's collar. “He's being a nuisance.”

“It's just, he recognizes me.”

She could not look up, and busied herself with the dog's lead. “Come on, old fellow.” As she bent, a lump, hard and impossible, came into her throat. She said, her voice tight, “We must let you get on with your rounds. I— expect the day's hardly long enough—”

“Sylvia, Sylvia, I can't—”

“It isn't working,” she burst out miserably, “it isn't working, is it? Is it? Tell me it's not all right for you. I tried and I tried—nearly three weeks, and no sight of you. And yet I know you're so near, so often. I am not very strong, you know!”

“Nor I. Nor I,” he said sadly. “Sylvia, darling. Darling.”

“If only to talk,” she said, “just to be together. Not to lose
everything
we glimpsed.”

“I've tried,” he said. “God alone knows how hard I've tried. Because it is you whom I must spare … But darling … yes … we were too brave, too soon …”

“Yes.” She clutched at the words.

“I must see you.
Talk
to you. But
where?”
He crouched down, caressing Raglan. “It should be easy, but is so difficult.”

She said in a rush just as the idea came to her, “The little sitting room, next to the darkroom in the tower. It used to belong to my sister—the one who's a nun now.” Her words tumbled out: “It's quite shut off, no one goes there. If you wouldn't be afraid—and you needn't—it would be right. And your car, it could be left—I know where you could leave it and it wouldn't look amiss. There is no danger. If you know when you could be there …” Her voice trembled with happiness, and hope.

No danger. No danger. She was to think many times afterward, How could I, we, be so foolish? So obsessed, so alive to the danger of discovery, we did not see the danger was something quite else. Only two such truly innocent people —for I was that, she thought afterward, and he too, for all his greater years— mistaking good intentions for achievements.

The rooms could not have been used since Alice's day. The darkroom was as she had left it when she went off to nurse in 1914. The anteroom, a little chill and damp, covered in dust sheets, her and Gib's photographs pinned on boards around the walls. In many ways a sad room—abandoned, forgotten. She didn't feel the need to tell anyone she was using it, but to make an alibi—or perhaps just to feel near him when he wasn't there—she would go in it at least two other afternoons.

At first, it was enough just to be together. The happiness of those first few afternoons, stolen and short. He would have to work late to pay for it.

If by remotest chance anyone should come, he was to hide in the darkroom (oh, beginnings of deceit). In the anteroom they would for certain hear footsteps on the stairs, which took long enough to climb. It was for this that they did not lock the door. It gave a feeling of being more open, less ashamed.

How could they be happy though, when almost from the beginning he spoke of leaving Settstone? “I'd thought of it before. Now I realize I
must.
I'm not very strong about this, or not strong enough. But it would be better for … everyone.”

She understood what he said, but it didn't belong to now.
Now
was together on the worn red sofa, holding hands. (Surely it didn't hurt to hold hands?)

He told her about his Somerset childhood, the Great Blizzard of 1891, early memories of his father. One brother, three older sisters. University, hospital. War (Gallipoli, India, France.). His children. His wife. Yes, Patricia. Above all, Patricia.

“My first practice in 1909—she was my principal's daughter. We married in 1912. It wasn't ever a great success. But—a promise is a promise. And she's good. That's what's so terrible, that such a thing should happen to her when she is so
good.
But long before her illness—us together. It was she who most wanted the marriage. So determined, so persuasive. Vivacious too, in those days. I've felt guilt ever since. … She, I don't think she noticed anything. Or ever has. I was so busy—not enough money, small children, the war. Then in 1916, the beginning of the disease. My obligations, of loving care, responsibility.”

Her
guilt. It wasn't fear of discovery, not that. And it began too before the real wrongdoing, before everything went too far—so far there was no going back. Perhaps it was their fourth meeting: November already half spent, gray December in sight.

He spoke, very definitely now, of going to work abroad. “Patricia thinks she would like it. The children, I haven't said anything yet.”

It will happen,
she thought. This is the way it will end.

She was often in the room now when he came to see her father. Their attitude to each other, friendly, slightly formal. Her father was if anything growing worse. The worry of that gnawed. He said:

“Selwood can't do much—no medico could. A good chap, visits regularly. Don't think really, though, I want to see this winter. Struggle, you know. The
struggle.”
Yes, the battle for breath. Emphysema. He was always in his bedroom now. No more motor excursions or visits downstairs.

Sometimes Mother would be in the room too. In her company Sylvia felt sad, a little lost. She would have liked to tell her everything—but knew she could say nothing. Yet Mother had a lover. She had Erik. Although he rarely came to The Towers, it was certain she spent much time with him. They went away together.

My whole life is altered, she thought. Perhaps this was what people meant by a “whirlwind romance.” She felt as if she'd been blown by just that whirlwind. Snatched up, and set down in a strange country whose rules she didn't know. Love, she'd thought, would be—what?