The Worlds Within Her (42 page)

In the coming days, Cyril began to see that she could not be mollified. I watched as he gave up on excusing or explaining himself. Any word beyond a simple acceptance of what she said would infuriate her. She saw it as talking back to her, and that was a right — I am speculating here, you understand, my dear — a right she felt he had forfeited.

She had often spoken, before, of how much she had given up in marrying him, in leaving England, in accepting a life so utterly alien. But she had spoken with no rancour: as if it were
an adventure she had embraced. I admired that about her. I felt it took great courage. The same courage which had forbidden her to see her husband as the useless man. The courage which, I began to see, had deserted her for reasons withheld from me. I felt that she was now left with only the dissatisfactions of the life she had chosen.

Understand, my dear. This was a change that occurred over a period of two or three weeks, no more. Celia had told me that they had fallen in love very quickly, and they seemed to be falling out of love just as quickly — a sign, I think, of the passion they shared.

The tensions in the house became palpable, and it was my husband, I think, who suggested we all go off to the beach house for the weekend. Cyril was unsure, but when he saw the brightening that came to Celia — the brightening we all saw — he seized on the idea.

Oh, hello. You again. Time to turn her?

Mrs. Livingston, my dear, I must leave for a few minutes. This is a sight I cannot bear. This rolling of your body. This physical helplessness. I shall return, my dear, never you fear.

THROUGH THE DARKNESS
Jim said, “All these years, Yas. The years of long days, the evenings, the countless weekends. And now this.”

His breath was raucous, the rattle of ice in his glass a startling counterpoint.

She said, “At least you got a shot. There'll be another.”

He sniffled. “This was it, Yas.
The
building. A construction of light.”

His shudder vibrated in the night, a disturbance of the air that separated them.

“It's over, you realize,” he said.

“There'll be other projects, Jim. You may have to dim some of the light next time around. Didn't anyone at the office —”

“Yes, but no one else understood what I was trying to do. This design was my baby.”

My baby:
Her heart pinched. Yes, perhaps he had found a baby to replace, or displace, the other. She knew the thought to be harsh, unkind, but she knew, too, that it was true. Even as she resented him for it, she ached at his failure. Success would have brought him a new strength, and perhaps that strength would have fed them both.

“I insisted. I didn't want any obstructions to the flow of natural light, I pictured a flood —”

“But you're always so careful.”

“There's a margin, Yas, between being careful and being creative. And sometimes the more creative you are, the narrower the margin becomes. Perhaps I let the margin become too narrow.”

“You've been over the calculations?”

“It would have held up.” His glass clattered on his desk. “It would have held up.”

In the silence she could hear his brain racing: skittering over calculations, speculating on stresses.

“I've been undone,” he said, “by clients without courage. Colleagues without vision. You should have been there, Yas. When it came to the crunch, no one'd back me up. When the
client said no, he couldn't take the chance, there was utter silence. Then someone turned off the light.”

YASMIN THINKS: YET
another world.

As they approach the beach, the quality of the earth changes from a packed brown clay to a sandy white. The brush grows sparse, the vegetation thins out.

They park in the shade of the trees, not palms — there are none in sight — but leafy giants with gnarled trunks. They are widely dispersed, their branches high above creating a canopy that mottles the sand with shadow.

They walk barefoot and in silence to the beach — wide and flat, painfully bright in the sunlight.

A caution, Yasmin notices, has come to Cyril. There is something watchful about him. She asks what is wrong.

After a moment, he says, “I wish the place had changed, even a little.”

He turns around and begins walking along the beach away from the river channel.

Yasmin follows, the sand hot on her soles, a fine dust powdering her toes white. She sees the beach curving beyond his shoulders; sees it ending not far ahead in boulders and rock and plants reaching rope-like tendrils out towards the sea.

Cyril calls: “There used to be a — Look, it still there.”

She follows his raised arm to a spot beneath the trees — more numerous here, clustered. And at first she sees only shadows
and trunks. Then, behind them, a hill of rock and boulders. And finally, nestled in the greatest darkness amidst the trunks, the regular but crooked line of a house.

Cyril cuts across the sand towards it, his pace quickened. The house, he says, has always been here. A fisherman's shack. There used to be a family: a man, his wife, and innumerable children. “I use to envy them, you know. I thought they had an idyllic life. No school, growing whatever vegetables they needed. The father and the eldest son heading out in their pirogue every morning before dawn to set their seines.”

“Seines?”

“Fishin' nets, nuh.”

The house, when they get to it, is small: hardly enough for a couple, unimaginable for a family. Of simple construction — wooden planks nailed to posts — it has not withstood the years. Many of the planks are black with rot, some had fallen askew, the door is gone and the roof has caved in, forming an almost elegant frieze of poles and dried palm branches.

Yasmin says, “It couldn't have been a comfortable life, though.”

Cyril nods. “I know. I see that now. But back then … It was a fantasy I had, and fantasy does only grow in ignorance. You know, we use to come here often, but we never spoke to them. Never even really went close. This was their part o' the beach, and over by the river was our part. They never went over there, either, at least not while we were here.”

“What d'you think's happened to them?”

“Who knows?” He steps closer to the ruin, thinking, but jealous of his thoughts. Then he shakes his head, turns and strides away back towards the beach.

Yasmin catches up to him just as she enters the sunlight. “Actually,” he says without breaking stride. “There was one time
when Ram spoke to the father. He had to, you see. He needed to borrow one of his seines.”

THERE. BACK.

You do appear to be more comfortable now. Does that feel better? Even your breathing seems easier, there's a touch of colour to your cheeks. I would like to think that's a good sign, but I have grown fearful of looking for signs, as you know.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes. That morning.

A Saturday. Glorious weather. A detail I remember for several reasons, but particularly because the day before, Friday, had been full of cloud and rain. The drive to the beach that evening was unnerving. The road was narrow, you see, and unlit, and even if there had been a moon — which there was not — the coconut tree plantations to either side would have obscured it thoroughly. The car's headlights seemed to be without reach, not so much illuminating the road as creating shadows around it, and many of the stories from my childhood came back to me. Stories of
douens
who kidnapped people and of
soucouyants
which drank human blood — and particularly the tale of a mysterious white woman dressed in a flowing white gown standing beside the road with a lantern. She had been known to lead the unsuspecting into the depths of the forest and abandon them there. My fear must have been obvious, for Celia, sitting in the back seat beside me, took my hand and squeezed it in reassurance.

So when I awoke late the following morning to a clear and
sunny day, I was delighted. I took my tea out to the porch. How the sun sparkled off the water, my dear! How it dazzled! And the horizon — the horizon was as sharp as a stencil. As real as a destination.

My husband and Cyril were already down on the beach, sitting side by side. My husband was scooping up sand and letting it run slowly from his fist, a sign of restlessness. This sitting about did not come easily to him. He had had to cancel several weekend engagements but he had felt it imperative that Cyril and Celia get away, and he knew they would not come by themselves.

You might think this was a simple thoughtfulness on my husband's part — and you would not be wrong. But there was more. Although he never told him so, my husband depended a great deal on Cyril, not only as a hop-to-it man but also as a sounding board. Cyril, he had said to me, never offered a single original thought — but he had an ability to reflect your own ideas back at you in such a way that their merits and faults came clear. But the problems with Celia — whatever they were, Cyril had given no hint — were distracting him. They had made him careless and absent-minded, and had to be solved before he caused serious damage. He planned to send them off for a walk together later that evening, to give them a chance to talk things out.

Then something caught my eye on the floor of the porch. A shard of china. Then several. Patterns: a horseshoe, a heart, the crescent moon.

And with no effort my mind reconstituted the tasseomancy cup. I thought: Oh, dear …

Alarm, you see, came slowly to me — but it came steadily. I scanned the beach for signs of her.

And then far out in the water, distant, distant beyond the breakers, a head and two arms flashing like wings, urging her on, pulling her farther and farther away, towards the line that could never be reached.

I don't remember realizing what was happening. I don't remember my teacup crashing to the floor. But later, after the hysteria had calmed to grief, my husband told me that I had wailed a banshee scream.

That day, my dear, Cyril lost the only anchor he had left. He became, in my husband's words, irretrievable.

Yes. Precisely.

Irretrievable: it is the only word.