The Vanished Child
Page 26
She was still kneeling among the flowers. He sat down near her, not too near.
“How could I prefer . . . anyone else to Harry, how could I prefer you, and still love Harry as I should?” Her voice was so quiet he could hardly hear it.
“You didn’t prefer me, you kissed me. You love Harry.”
“Yes. But—” She looked him full in the face. “There shouldn’t be any buts.”
“You love him, but he wants you to give up your music. I’m simple in comparison. I want you to go on. You don’t love me as you love him, and I don’t love you as he loves you, but I know where music stands with you and he doesn’t. So I’m easier. And we were shocked, we had found Jay. ”
He watched her face as she considered and rejected that excuse.
“It had started before then,” she said in a low voice. He didn’t want to take her through any of this.
“No, no. You love him, my dear, and you want to keep your promise to him. But you couldn’t. So last night you decided you were in love with someone else, and then you could go home and play the piano. My dear, it is a cheat; you don’t need a grand love for that. You simply need to win one from Harry, and you will.”
Her cheeks were red. “That sounds as if I’ve been selfish and I’ve used you for Harry’s sake.”
“The someone else you decided you were in love with was me. That was a compliment to me, no hurt. And I needed to know I could fall in love with someone else, so I chose you; I couldn’t have chosen anyone but you. I needed you.” Impossible to say this to anyone without taking hands; Reisden did not take hers, and that was the only lie in what he was saying, that if he as little as held her hand it would not be true any more.
“You needed me?”
He lay back in the grass and the flowers; they rose around him and he did not have to see her. “I want you to have your life; you’re simple for me, you see; I think I can help you make that come out right, and in doing that I shall be able to feel I have—“ he hesitated over the word, then used it —“loved someone without hurting her. You see that is important to me.” He heard a rustle in the grass beside him; she sat beside him. Her knee brushed his shoulder. There should be no sensuality in those places of the body, but he moved away. She reached out her hand toward him, then drew it back.
Neither of them spoke. High up in the blue sky, the wind moved the clouds. The cicadas sang like their blood in their ears.
“When I am married to Harry,” she said quietly, “I will live in the house with Gilbert and you. It will be strange never to touch you, not for the rest of our lives.”
“I won’t be there,” he said quickly.
“No, you have to be there. Harry and I would go away.”
“Child, you don’t understand. I'm not Richard Knight. I have always told you so.”
She looked out into the air. He could read her disbelief in her drawn-down brows. Ask me how much I’m lying, child, and I won’t be able to tell you. So don’t ask me; believe me. She passed one hand back of her neck, as though she would toss long hair back; but it was all smoothed up and pinned.
“I will go away,” he repeated.
“I wish that you were Richard!” she said suddenly.
“Not worth thinking about, Perdita.” She would have been eleven when he married. Twelve. And if she had been a few years older, a woman in Paris, the woman he had seen last night? Not worth thinking about. He would have Paris, but not here and not her. He wanted somebody. He had to be careful of her.
“I don’t want to become Richard,” he said, “but to find out what happened to him. Will you help me? Would that be too difficult?”
“I would do anything for you,” she said, and he thought she was very young.
“I want to look at where he disappeared, in the Clinic, if it still exists.”
They got up from the ground. He didn’t help her up, which was another awkwardness. She led the way across the fields of burning purple flowers up the rise of the hill to the Clinic, through the side door, up some shadowy narrow stairs, and down a corridor. In the rooms on either side the children were taking their afternoon naps. The doors were open to let the breeze pass through, though there was no breeze. Only one of the doors was closed, and she opened it and stood aside to let him pass through.
“You won’t stay?” he asked.
“No, I want to go think, I guess.”
He nodded, wanting not to show disappointment, not wanting to be disappointed; then said “Yes” because she wouldn’t see the nod.
She stood a moment at the door. “What we did last night? I meant to do it. I’m not sorry. I don’t know what to think of myself. But I’m not.”
She left him alone in the room from which Richard Knight had disappeared.
Yes, he thought, I meant it too.