‘It was meant, wasn’t it? Our meeting – everything since...’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, wanting him, needing him, a little afraid of what else was happening. He touched his mouth to hers with a tenderness that quickly flared to passion. It seemed an array of shooting stars exploded across a midnight sky, and she clung as he lifted her up and carried her back to that rumpled bed.
In a daze she watched him undress, her own fingers fumbling until she was naked too, reaching out to hold him as he came towards her. She pressed her face against his body, kissing him, hearing him gasp at every touch. He was trembling and so was she, the shocks between them so exquisite they were almost unbearable. With the lightest touch he pushed her back, and slowly, as though performing part of a ritual, entered her with such gentleness it seemed no more than an extension of a light caress.
One flesh, joined but barely moving, the centre of awareness not deep in the flesh but spreading from the mind, encompassing them both. Slowly, he began to move, with steadily mounting urgency driving sighs and moans of pleasure from her lips, while she felt her soul expanding, drifting somewhere on a sea of rapture, tied to bodily sensation, but only just. She heard her own voice, and his, through the pulsing of a heartbeat, a beat that rushed and swelled like the booming of the sea, taking her with it in huge waves that curled and broke against an unfamiliar shore. Her soul was the sea and the cry of a bird, and his was the unrelenting force that drove her on; the night and the stars were Liam’s.
She was borne up, lifted, broken in a vast cascade of shimmering light; and from somewhere came a long drawn-out cry that could not have been hers, but it was, it was, and so far away...
The aftermath lingered like the wash of the tide when the storm is over, and they clung together like half-drowned castaways, speechless, blinded, deafened, aware of nothing but each other and the fact of being alive. Inert, locked as one, it seemed that time and place had ceased to be; everything was shimmering and echoing, the smallest movement such torture that even breathing brought its pain. It was like being bathed in a burning light, and the silence and the stillness were alive with tremendous power.
Slowly, very slowly, the intensity waned, and as it finally left them, tears seeped unbidden from Zoe’s eyes, silent at first, and then in great, heaving sobs that were impossible to control. Stephen moved then, cradling her like a child, murmuring soft words of comfort against her hair.
‘I know, I know... darling, I know.’ He kissed her wet cheeks and her lips, tasting the saltiness of her tears, and he knew what it was that racked her, because he had felt it too.
Neither of them wanted to talk about it, particularly at first. Words seemed a desecration, but the awareness was in their eyes, in every touch. Stephen referred to it only once, and that was later, after he had made love to her again. ‘That was beautiful,’ he said softly, a smile lighting his eyes, ‘but it didn’t blow my mind. And I think that’s how I prefer it.’
Exaltation was one thing, but in that coming together they had not been alone, he would swear to it; never, in the whole of his life, not even in the most abandoned of lovemaking, had he experienced anything like that. And that lovemaking had been far from abandoned. It was controlled, but not by him, and certainly not by Zoe. From that moment in the doorway, Liam had been with them. Everything seemed to have been orchestrated, like a symphony played many times before.
Stephen did not pretend to understand it. It was not something that worried him, exactly, but it stayed in his mind and he thought of it often; and so, he suspected, did Zoe.
Over the next few days, memories, facts, discoveries occupied them, moving constantly back and forth between Zoe’s research in London to the Elliotts in York, and from there to Stephen’s experiences in the Gulf.
Once that subject had been broached, he found it easier than he had imagined. Somehow, discussing his own experience in relation to Liam’s during the First World War, helped to set much of it in perspective. He found Zoe’s attitude practical as well as sympathetic, and the fact that she was interested in his job rather than resentful of it, not only eased the stress, but reinforced his confidence in her. Sensitive she might be; but she was stronger than he had previously given her credit for, and Stephen was happy to acknowledge his mistake. If, in the future, he had to leave her, he knew full well that she would not buckle at the first crisis. The Gulf, for her as much as himself, had been a baptism of fire; if she could withstand that, he reasoned, then she would probably weather most things.
She was honest enough not to spare him the worst of her anguish during those dreadful weeks, just as he was honest enough to admit that he had been wrong in keeping silent; but with love and trust between them, there was no longer any room for foolish pride.
‘Either yours or mine,’ he gently reminded her.
They were in Kensington Gardens when he mentioned, casually, the idea of Zoe travelling with him. It was a beautiful afternoon, the manicured expanse of London’s parkland as far from the barren expanse of oceans and deserts as it was possible to be; but the contrast forced Stephen to think of what would, eventually, have to be faced again. Not the Gulf: he had played his part for the company, and had told them he was not going back there; but life at sea was something different. He hoped Zoe understood that.
Her eyes were shining as she glanced up at him. ‘Do you mean it? Could I really come with you?’
Stephen laughed. ‘All the time, if you wanted to.’
‘But I thought – didn’t you say, before, that you were thinking of giving it up?’
On a deep breath, he said: ‘If you wanted me to, I would...’
With a sudden, fierce hug, she shook her head. ‘I don’t need that kind of sacrifice. It’s you I want, and your work is part of you, just as what I do is part of me – and we’ll make it succeed together.’
‘I suppose your work’s portable?’
‘I’ll make it so,’ she said fervently.
It was not until they returned to Queen’s Gate that afternoon that Stephen remembered the things he had brought from York. He gave her, first of all, that illustrated copy of the Rubaiyat, and watching her face as she opened it, full of wonder and delight, knew he could not have given her anything better. All at once she started to talk about her commission, to show him the work already done, explaining the symbolism and the ideas which had inspired every illustration. Stephen was enthralled; he knew almost nothing about art, and less about the history of design, but her enthusiasm was catching and the subject held them even while she was preparing dinner.
Settling down afterwards, with lamps lit against a falling dusk, Stephen refreshed their glasses and lit himself a cigarette; then he reached into his pocket and brought out the little silver case. It was strange to realize, as he handed it to Zoe, that Georgina’s gift was no stranger to this flat.
‘I haven’t cleaned it, and it’s difficult to open, but I’d rather you tried it for yourself...’
She was intrigued, and while she felt for a way to spring the catch, he told her where he had found it, and about the inner certainty that had led to the search. ‘Somebody had obviously hidden it. Probably Louisa.’
As Zoe agreed, the cigarette case suddenly opened, its contents falling into her lap. She looked first at the photographs, and as she saw the one of Liam and Georgina together, her frown softened into a sad, compassionate smile. ‘Together,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not at all surprised, are you?’
He shook his head, unable to speak, tenderly pushing back a lock of hair from her face. She stared at that photograph for a long time before opening the little square of cheap paper on which Georgina had penned those few lines to Liam all those years ago. For a long time she said nothing.
Seeing the tears in her eyes, Stephen drew her close. ‘You know, I might have written those words,’ he whispered, ‘while I was away. I wish I had, because that’s exactly how I felt.’
For a while they clung together, and Zoe wept a little. When she was calmer, she sa
id: ‘But we were right, weren’t we? They were a lot more to each other than brother and sister. No wonder Louisa hid the evidence.’
‘It’s a wonder she didn’t destroy it,’ he murmured, trying to envisage the depth of shock.
‘Perhaps she’d always known, deep-down. Maybe she felt guilty...’
‘Maybe she did. We’ll never know.’
They were lost for a while in contemplation: there had been neither time nor place for Liam and Georgina, and never a chance of happiness. Whatever it was they shared, that affair could never have been resolved, no matter how long Liam lived. As lovers, they were doomed from the beginning.
‘By an accident of birth,’ Zoe said softly. Suddenly, she thought of Tisha, and could have wept. ‘And Tisha just didn’t understand, did she? She had that independent streak, and it saved her – but not knowing, not understanding… She must have been so hurt by what happened. No wonder she was as she was…’
Stephen held her close. ‘It all goes back to Robert and Louisa, doesn’t it? If he hadn’t been married, or if they’d never met...’
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘if they hadn’t met, we wouldn’t be here, would we?’
That gave Stephen a strange feeling, akin to his old suspicion that somehow his life was linked to that of Robert Duncannon, as much as to his son, Liam; that somewhere old accounts had been rendered and were now being settled through himself and Zoe.
It struck him then that Robert and Louisa had never married, and he wondered why, when both of them were free. Had Liam and Georgina’s affair rebounded on them, made it impossible?
Zoe voiced his thoughts, and for a while they discussed the many different facets of that life-long relationship, and certain parallels began, rather chillingly, to emerge.
‘You say he didn’t die until 1923, six years after Edward’s death. Well, even granting the fact that they were both in late middle-age by then, they could have married. Why didn’t they?’ Stephen tapped Georgina’s letter. ‘Imagine it – and if you think of where we stand today, it shouldn’t be too difficult to put ourselves in their shoes.
‘I’m unhappily married, but I can’t get a divorce. We meet, fall in love, and at some stage or another, I persuade you to become my mistress. For a while, life’s wonderful, but I’m away a lot with my job, and after a few years it all starts to fall apart at the seams. We eventually go our separate ways. You, as Louisa, marry the cousin who’s always loved you, and to make life simpler, our three children are brought up as his. Then, years later, our eldest son and my grown-up daughter meet, and fall in love...’
Stephen paused to let that sink in, and as it did so, he saw the mounting aversion in Zoe’s eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘It’s a horrifying thought. We’d blame ourselves, wouldn’t we? We’d be saying we should never have met, never given in to that overwhelming passion, and certainly never had children. Even if they weren’t hung up on sin, Zoe, the guilt must have been like a lead weight, no matter what else they felt for each other.’
As her gaze slid away from his, he touched her cheek. ‘I don’t wonder the rest of the family kept quiet about the Duncannons.’
He woke, early the next morning, thinking about Robert, and about the years in which this flat had been a base for him and a refuge for Georgina. In the dim light, Zoe’s period furniture and elaborate cornices fostered the illusion that little had changed. When Stephen considered world upheavals and the bitter continuation of struggle in Ireland, it seemed to him that progress was no more than superficial gloss, a coat of paint on the rusty old tub of human nature, making its journey between the same old ports. Tolerance tried very hard to cure it, but religion and politics were as corrosive as ever, and while the crew battled on, the brokers sat on a sunny quay, totting up the profits.
Robert Duncannon must have seen plenty of that, Stephen reflected, particularly during the last ten years of his life, when he was approaching his sixtieth year and treading a fine line between government expediency and his own sense of what was just. Judging by his letters of that date, the Easter Rising and its bitter aftermath had broken Robert’s faith in a peaceful settlement. With the advent of the Black and Tans he had resigned his post, given up this War Office flat and become something of a nomad, dividing his time between Dublin, Waterford and York. Stephen wondered briefly whether he had become involved in any anti-British activity then, but it seemed unlikely, except perhaps to turn a blind eye from time to time, or withhold information from those arrogant thugs, the Black and Tans. Robert’s attitude, it seemed, had been one of contempt.
It seemed, too, that as a professional soldier he had resented being kept from the war in Europe. For a man who had been decorated twice for bravery, in the Sudan and South Africa, Stephen could understand the depth of Robert’s frustration caused by his enforced involvement with the holding operation in Ireland. It was false diplomacy, a papering over of the cracks, until a burst of madness that Easter of 1916 tore everything apart.
Reading again, last night, Robert’s description of the devastation, Stephen mentally substituted York for Dublin, and understood exactly how he must have felt. He could understand, too, why Georgina had never wanted to go back.
The war in Europe, conducted over a strip of land extending from the North Sea to the Swiss border, had destroyed a generation, taking with its Robert’s eldest son, his two nephews and Tisha’s husband, Edwin Fearnley. Ultimately, it had killed Robin too.
A generation, a way of life, was gone forever, and the face of Europe was irrevocably altered. Bitterness and grief, Stephen reckoned, must have been standard baggage in every family, from the steppes of Russia to the Isle of Ushant in the far west. For a man who had been prevented from doing what he was trained and qualified to do, there must also have been a large measure of self-recrimination.
In the summer of 1921 Robert Duncannon had gone abroad for two months, on a motoring tour of the battlefields, sending Louisa letters and postcards from all the places mentioned by his sons in their correspondence. Clearly, that journey had been something of a catharsis for him, a means of coming to terms with the unalterable truth of Liam’s death.
And towards the end of the following year, he had followed Georgina, via Egypt, to Australia.
Thinking about her, Stephen’s eyes were drawn to Zoe as she slept. He gazed at her for a long time, aware of an inexpressible tenderness, a love for her that went far deeper than the physical desire which had initially drawn them together. Looking back, it struck him that even then there had been something else, a mutual sympathy and understanding, a sense of recognition, somehow, that he could only think was inspired by shared blood and a common inheritance. It had acted like an emotional short-cut, obviating the need to discover things like background and social interests, and going straight to the heart of the matter.
The full extent of that other relationship between Liam and Georgina could only be guessed at. Nevertheless, he was convinced the emotions were shared to every last nuance; and just as he wanted more than anything that Zoe should be safe, and cared for, and happy, so he knew that Liam would have wanted the same for the woman he loved so completely.
Stephen had only heard about those final letters of hers, never seen them, for they had been pushed down amongst earlier bundles, as though Louisa wanted nothing to leap out and remind her of that illicit affair.
After breakfast, Zoe set aside the letters from Robert that had occupied their attention the evening before, handing to Stephen those written by Georgina. There was a note of sympathy, posted from Cairo almost a month after Liam’s death, and in its terse, wrung-out phrases, it was almost possible to hear the heartbreak.
Knowing what both of them now knew, it required little imagination to transport themselves back to that date in October, 1917, and envisage a young woman’s agony at the death of her lover. The worst nightmare realized, dread made fact, and the added anguish of being so far from home, without the comfort of being able to grieve with others w
ho had loved him. Zoe thought it must have near-killed Georgina to write that note, to sympathize without being able to beg for sympathy.
Stephen felt her isolation.
Remembering the deaths of his parents, he knew how emotionally crippling distance could be, how hard it was to believe that they were gone, how lengthy the period of grief. He had not fully understood his own sense of loss until his wife’s betrayal released it, and then the bereavement pain had been almost unendurable.
He understood the course of Georgina’s pain, could follow it so easily in those widely-spaced letters to Louisa.
In earlier missives, written before Liam’s death, Georgina had described the strangeness of Egypt while confessing a liking for it. After the bleak, unremitting years in London, Cairo was exciting and the bazaars compulsive, constantly tempting her to buy things for which she had no use; and there was a sybaritic splendour in the shady halls of those great, converted palaces in which she spent her days. As long as there was shade to cling to, Georgina wrote, she found she rather liked the heat; that off-duty, relaxing, it made her feel like a cat, content with absolutely nothing to do, which was a luxury she could not ever recall enjoying before.
Even if she was telling Louisa only the best part of her experience in Egypt, it was possible to read a lot of truth in those lines, to understand that for many years Georgina’s life must have been a long, exhausting round of activity. Compared to London, and York and Dublin before that, Cairo was obviously a relief; and after the additional stress of her affair with Liam, and an agony of parting that Zoe and Stephen could only guess at, it seemed those first few months in Egypt were like balm to her soul.
But there was more. Her remarks on the loneliness of the desert, and the eeriness of the Pyramids at sunset, seemed, even after all these years, to be alive with thoughts of Liam. For her, his memory was there, even if he was not.
In one postscript, she mentioned that a friend of Liam’s, Lewis Maddox from Dandenong, had very recently surprised her by introducing himself.
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