by Lisa Tuttle
How had Graham come by it? Was it possible that he had met her aunt in London, that she had given him a photograph of her niece, that he had been attracted, and dreamed over it, even as she had fantasized about his picture in Marjorie's house?
She asked him about the picture as soon as he came in, too excited to wait and pick a better moment.
He frowned and almost snatched it away. “What are you doing with this? Where did you find it? Have you been going through my personal things?”
“It was in a book, on the bookshelf.”
He was still frowning, not seeing her. “Was it? Oh. I'm sorry I snapped at you. It was a shock—I'm not sure why. After so many years it shouldn't matter. It's not as if I ever really knew her.”
“That's me. That's a picture of me.”
Now he looked at her. There was no liking in his eyes. “Don't be ridiculous.”
“I'm not. That's a picture of me.”
“It doesn't look anything like you.”
“When I was seventeen. Those are my glasses, that's my face, I had long hair—look, I know it's me!”
“I didn't know you when you were seventeen, and I'm the one who took the picture.”
She wavered a little, but it was hard to give up something she'd felt so sure about. “Who is it, then?”
“Just someone I met, a long time ago. A girl I met in India. It never came to anything. I thought it might, for a time, but—nothing really happened. I never really knew her. I don't know why I kept her picture for so long.” He hesitated, and then he crumpled it in his hand.
She gave a little cry.
He scowled at her. “What's the matter? You should be pleased. I'm through with my past, with all my old girlfriends. You're the only one I want now; you're all I need.”
She had hoped, indeed she had almost come to believe, that some magic would be worked in the bothy, that they would come together in some final, irrefutable way and she would know, once and for all, that this was the man she had been waiting for, that they would make each other happy.
But real life was not so obligingly certain as her daydreams. They did grow closer during the next nine days as they talked a lot, more frankly than ever before, and they made love more often, with more tenderness and more abandon.
“You see,” he said one night as they lay together in bed, relaxed and sweating with pleasurable exertion, “you see, it does get better when you know each other. It'll keep on getting better.”
“It will?”
“Of course it will, as long as we want it to. As long as we try. We just have to decide we're going to be happy together, and we will be.”
It was what she wanted to hear, wanted to believe. It was time to stop waiting for magic, and to accept what she had. Her wish had come true. She would accept the consequences.
On their way to Gretna they detoured to Stirling to check out a secondhand bookshop Graham had heard about. They were always happy in bookshops; before they'd met it had been a solitary pleasure, but now it was something they could share.
This time he made one purchase she didn't know about until after they were back in the car.
“Here you are,” he said. “Here's a wedding present for you.”
It was a copy of Agnes Grey, the first copy she had seen since she'd lost her own. It moved and excited her beyond words. More than that, it seemed to her an omen, a final and compelling reason to marry this man.
“Oh, Gray, oh my goodness—thank you! If you knew how much this means—”
“I think I do, actually.”
“I didn't get anything for you, I don't have a present for you.”
“The only present I want is you as my wife.”
And so, a few hours later, with the reckless, terrified excitement with which someone might leap off a cliff in the expectation of being rescued by angels, she formally agreed in front of witnesses and became the wife of Graham Martin Storey.
On their wedding night, in a dingy hotel room in Carlisle, with her husband on the bed beside her reading the second volume of James Morris' The Pax Britannica Trilogy, she began to read Agnes Grey. The first page was so unexpected that it made her dizzy. She read it again, her disorientation increasing:
“All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge; I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others, but the world may judge for itself: shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture, and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.”
She turned the pages, reading snatches at random, searching for something she remembered, anything she remembered, without success. Each new thing she read, every familiar name she failed to find, increased her disturbance. It was hard to catch her breath and there was an odd smell coming from the pages of the book which made her feel a little sick.
“What's wrong?”
She waved the book at him. “This—this isn't the book I read, I don't know it at all!”
“That often happens. The books we particularly loved as children—”
“No, it's not the same book, I'm sure of it. I've never read this before. Could there be—there must be—another book with the same title?”
“Not by Anne Brontë.”
“Maybe it wasn't by Anne Brontë, I don't know, I can't remember noticing the author's name on the copy my aunt gave me.”
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Well, I'm sorry. That's the only Agnes Grey I know of. Why don't you read it, maybe it'll come back to you. Probably your memory edited out the dull bits.”
She could see he wanted to get back to his own book; he couldn't understand her distress. Anyway, she couldn't think of anything better than his suggestion, and so she again began to read it, for the first time.
The book she remembered was a tumultuous romance with fantastical elements, full of suspense, passion and melodramatic situations. This book, which Gray had given her, was completely different, a prim, dry tale about the daily life and misfortunes of a governess in nineteenth century England. There were no pirates, no wild horseback rides, no fairies, no scenes of low life in London. The only thing her remembered book had in common with this one was its title, the name of the heroine.
By the time she had forced her way to the modestly happy ending, Gray had put his book aside and fallen asleep. Nothing was as she had thought it would be: England, Graham Storey, Agnes Grey, true love, her wedding night. And what about marriage? She turned out the light and lay awake in the dark for a long time, listening to her husband sleep and wondering what she had done.
They had been back in Harrow for about two weeks when the phone call came. It was evening, and they had just finished dinner. He leaped up at the first ring and galloped upstairs to his study to answer it.
She imagined him returning immediately, saying it had been a wrong number. When he didn't, she took the dishes to the sink and began to wash up, feeling lonely.
She had finished the dishes when Graham came in, looking like a ghost. He came to her and clutched her hands, seeming not to notice that they were wet.
“What is it?”
“You won't leave me, will you?”
“Sweetie! Of course not! What's wrong?”
He threw his arms around her and held her tight. She could feel him quivering. Then he drew a deep breath and let go. “You'll be sorry you married me.”
“No. Why? What's happened?”
He was looking at her through narrowed eyes, as if trying to assess what danger she might be to him, and she wondered who he was really seeing. He drew a little way back from her and said, almost coldly, “That was Caroline. She says she's pregnant.”
“What's that got to do with you?�
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He widened his eyes at her innocence. She tried taking a breath but couldn't draw it deep enough. “How pregnant?”
“Six to eight weeks, she says.”
It would be six weeks tomorrow since she'd arrived in England; she had noticed that while making this morning's diary entry; now the knowledge made her choke with rage. “How could you?”
“Oh, God, don't you start! I need your support, not more—”
“Six weeks ago I was on my way to you, and you were screwing her. No wonder you weren't interested in going to bed with me the next day.”
“Don't be ridiculous. I'd broken things off with her long before then.”
“Long before? Then what's your worry? It must be somebody else's ba—fault.”
He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I wish. I made out I believed it was. But she says she hasn't been with anyone since me, and I believe her. This—well, it can't be six weeks, I promise you. Not if it's mine, absolutely not.”
“Eight weeks?”
“Or nine or ten. She was never very good at keeping track of her periods.”
“You said you were going to break things off with her as soon as you got home.”
“I did try. It wasn't that easy. I told her there was no hope, we had no future—I told her about you and it still didn't make any difference. I've never understood her motives.”
The unknown Caroline's motives were perfectly obvious; his weren't. “Why didn't you tell me? You told her about me.”
“Because I couldn't. I didn't want to lose you!”
“Then why did you go on sleeping with her? Why, if you didn't care about her and you cared about me, why, when you knew I was coming over here to live with you?”
He backed against the wall, as far from her as he could get without leaving the room, and glared, trapped, frightened and furious. “But I didn't know, did I? I'd asked you, yes, but you kept putting me off. Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn't. Maybe this month, maybe next, maybe not this year at all. I didn't know what you were getting up to in Texas, with your old boyfriend, or maybe somebody new. I wanted you, but did you want me? I knew she wanted me, on any terms at all. I was lonely and vulnerable, and she knew what to do. I never could resist her, sexually. If you'd only come right away, when I asked you to, this would never have happened.”
His eyes were wide, his mouth hung slightly open. She could feel his misery; her heart ached with it. Years of imagining Graham Storey into existence made it all too easy for her to identify with him, to accept his version of the truth and take the guilt onto herself. Anyway, she was his wife now. His interests were hers.
She took a painfully deep breath, struggling to fill her constricted lungs. “All right,” she said, sounding calm. “It's happened. Now, what are we going to do about it?”
The facts were these: Caroline had phoned in a state of extreme anxiety to tell him she'd just learned she was pregnant. She didn't want an abortion, she wanted the baby, and the baby's father. She had asked him to come and see her, to reconsider their relationship. When he told her he was now married, she had become hysterical and hung up.
He was sure she would ring back as soon as she'd had a chance to calm down a little, but the evening wore on and the phone did not ring again.
“Maybe you should call her?”
“Absolutely not! If I did, she'd think I was hooked, that she had a chance to get me back. You don't want that, do you?”
“No. Of course not. But if you got her pregnant, don't you think—”
“I'll pay for the abortion. I'll do more than that. I'll pay for her to have a holiday afterward, to recover. But I don't owe her any more than that. She has no right to make me a father.”
They stayed up late, talking. They were a couple, united against this threat from outside. Trying to understand what Caroline might do, what she might be feeling now, Agnes asked questions about the other woman, and Graham obliged with all sorts of intimate details from their relationship. She knew, even as she urged him on, greedy for more, that she would regret furnishing her imagination in this way, but at the moment this knowledge seemed a necessary thing.
At only one question did he balk: that was when she asked for Caroline's last name.
“What do you want to know that for?”
“I'm just curious. You said she's an actress. I wondered if I might have seen her in anything.”
“You wouldn't know her by name, and I'm sure you've never seen her. She's only been on British television, and provincial rep. I've only seen her once, in a rather bad comedy series. It's not on anymore.”
“Tell me her name anyway.”
He leaned forward suddenly and grasped her hands and gazed intently into her eyes. “You mustn't think of getting in touch with her yourself, you really mustn't. I need you with me, supporting me, not trying to do a deal with her behind my back.”
“Of course I wouldn't!”
“And don't imagine you can talk logic to her, or call on some sisterly solidarity. She's not like that. She's not reasonable. She's not like you at all. I know her, I know what she's like. Leave her to me.”
Two days later Caroline phoned again, late, as they were getting ready for bed. Gray was on the phone with her for over half an hour; he came back into the bedroom looking sick and angry.
“What happened?” She was in bed, a volume of Leon Edel's Life of Henry James in her hands just as if she'd been able to read or think about anything else.
“Bitch.” His hands were shaking as he fumbled out a cigarette from the pack in his jacket pocket. Usually, out of deference to her, he didn't smoke in the bedroom—which doubled as her office—but she said nothing as he struggled to light it, and waited for the answer which came after his first drag. “She says she can't decide what to do. I gave her the hard line: I'd pay for the abortion in a private clinic and a holiday after. If she wouldn't take that, she wouldn't get anything: I wouldn't acknowledge responsibility, I'd have nothing to do with her ever again.”
“She won't have an abortion?”
“She won't say. She says she can't decide what to do until she's seen me again. She wants me to meet her and talk about it.”
They had agreed that they were united on this, acting as one, that they would never allow Caroline to drive a wedge between them. But although she knew her interests were the same as Graham's, her imagination was traitorous. She couldn't help putting herself mentally into the other woman's position, imagining how hurt and furious—and terrified—she would have been had Graham left her pregnant in Texas and then gone off and married someone else. It could have happened; it was a scenario frighteningly easy to imagine. It had happened, only not to her.
“Well, maybe you should,” she said. She didn't dare admit her treacherous sympathy, but what Caroline was asking seemed little enough.
He gaped at her. “Are you serious? You want me to go and see her? You'd like that?”
“I didn't say I'd like it, I just said maybe you should. If that's all she's asking . . . You're not getting anywhere over the phone. Maybe you could convince her in person.”
“Meeting her ‘one last time, just to talk,' during those weeks before you arrived was the last mistake I made with her.”
“That was then, when you were lonely. Are you saying I couldn't trust you with her even now?”
“It's her I don't trust. You don't know her. I never really loved her, but there was something . . . irresistible about her. Even now, I'm still not sure, if she threw herself at me, that I could resist.”
She was naked, only the width of the bed away from him, and he was looking straight at her, but she had a horrible, shrinking sensation, as if she had become invisible, or a child again. If even his memory of the beautiful, sexy Caroline could reduce her to this, she knew she would never survive a meeting with the real woman.
Gray shook his head and began to undress. “I'm not saying that if I went and met her in a pub that I'd be trying to get her clothes off. But
I'm vulnerable, and she knows it. I do owe her something, if it's mine; I can't deny that. I can keep her at a distance over the phone, but if she got me to herself for a couple of hours she'd get to work on my guilt, and God knows what she'd have me agreeing to. I'd change my mind later, of course, but by then it might be too late. If she has the abortion soon it's a simple procedure, but if she leaves it much later—well, then it gets more complicated. But I've told her that. If all I've said doesn't make her see reason—”
“Maybe we should go and see her together.”
“Are you mad?”
“I thought—”
“Don't. Don't think about it anymore.” He turned away to find somewhere to stub out his cigarette. “I don't want you involved in this craziness.”
“But I am involved; I'm your wife.”
“Then leave it to me, all right? Give me your support; trust me to sort things out. You don't know Caroline, and I don't want you to. I think she'll see reason soon enough, when she realizes there's nothing she can do to get me back. She'll have an abortion. I'll pay the bills, and then we can forget about her. And if she doesn't—then we still forget about her. We have to. If she wants to ruin her own life, that's her decision; I'm not letting her ruin ours. We forget about her. Whatever happens. Now let's stop talking about it.”
They stopped talking about Caroline, but the shadow of her unresolved pregnancy continued to hang over them. She phoned twice more in the next week: once to say she would have an abortion, once to say she would not. They heard nothing more.
Agnes didn't know how often Graham thought about his former girlfriend and she didn't want to ask. She herself thought about the other woman almost constantly, obsessively. She bought a book about pregnancy and childbirth and kept it hidden in a drawer beneath her sweaters. She didn't want Gray to see it, certain that if he did he would realize that instead of spending her days writing her next book she was studying the details of each stage of pregnancy, learning them by heart, as if in this way she could somehow get to know, and help, the woman he had said they were to forget. Sometimes she almost thought she was Caroline, that the other woman was her other self, existing out there somewhere, apart from Graham.
