Realm of Darkness

by C F Dunn

“Emma, wait, what is the matter? You look so sad.”

  “Do you believe we get what we deserve?”

  “I do not understand what you are saying.”

  “Do you think we’re punished for our sins, Elena? Is that why Guy is here – as a reminder of what I did to his wife, as retribution for my crime against an innocent woman?”

  Her brown eyes widened. “What are you talking about? This is crazy nonsense. You did not know he was married…”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “No! He did not say, and you assumed…”

  I laughed – a hollow, raw sound that grated my throat still sore from grief. She grabbed my elbows, almost angry. “You take this on yourself, but you always say to me that God forgives. If it is so, then He forgives you.”

  “For me to be forgiven I have to ask for forgiveness – and give it in return.”

  “Have you not done so for this woman?”

  “Constantly.”

  “Then, it is so,” she declared, but she didn’t know what I hid so deep inside me that I had forgotten until recently to look.

  “But not for him, not for Guy. I thought I had, but… but now, after all this…”

  “Are you angry because he wants to marry Matthew’s niece; are you jealous?”

  “No, Elena! You don’t understand.” I hid my face in my hands. “I can’t tell you. I don’t know what to do.”

  She swept her arm around my shoulder. “In Russia, we have a saying: ‘if you rely on God, you won’t fail.’” And it was something I believed, or thought I did; but how could I look God in the face and ask for help when I so stubbornly refused to do this one thing required of me? “But,” she went on, “we also say: ‘we should hope for God, but lock your house just in case.’” I managed to raise a smile at the simple pragmatism. Elena clapped her hands. “Ah, so you have not altogether lost your humour – this is good. Now you get changed and we do not talk any more of this man. Matias will not let me mention his name. ‘Elena,’ he said to me, ‘I should be enough man for you; this Guy is trouble.’ And I let him show me how much man he is. It was so romantic. I think I shall have to make Matias jealous again.”

  I thought that it wouldn’t be so very hard, but he had little to be jealous about – Elena wasn’t going anywhere. A natural flirt she might be, but she adored him as much as he loved her, and adultery would not blight their lives in years to come.

  I blew my nose. “I must look a fright – and I’ve used half a box of your tissues. Sorry.”

  “Hah! There! See? You are good at asking for forgiveness. Why don’t you stay here with me and we can have a girls’ night in?”

  “I can’t; I promised Eckhart I’d be there. I think he’s relying on me to do some of the socializing for him – he’s dreading it.”

  She shrugged and went to answer a solid knock at the door. I felt flat, drained, all the highs and lows of the past weeks rendered featureless and out of reach. Me ask forgiveness? I said to myself as I sought the seclusion of her bathroom to wash and change. Not when it really matters, clearly. Not so that it counts.

  Occupied with my own thoughts, by the time I emerged I’d forgotten there might be someone else with her. Sam stood up when he saw me.

  “Emma – hi.”

  “Sam,” I acknowledged. He looked more together than I’d seen him for ages – happy, almost. From the sound of it, Elena was in the kitchen putting something in the oven. I waited until she slammed the door shut and joined us again.

  “I’m off. Thanks for letting me blub. Don’t take any notice, it’s probably PMT.” She gave me one of her don’t be daft looks. “Anyway. Thanks.”

  Dawdling awkwardly by the apartment door, Sam picked up my jacket and held it out to me. I took it from him.

  “See you, Sam.”

  “Elena says you’re going to the conference dinner,” he said. “I’ll walk you there.”

  “No, thanks, I can manage.” I remembered all too clearly the last time he insisted on walking me home and so, it seemed, did he. He fingered his chin.

  “Sure, I know you can, but I wanted to say something. Give me a break, Em – please?” His mahogany eyes smiled at his own joke. “Yeah, I know, I deserved to get the crap knocked out of me. My jaw’s healed fine. No hard feelings, OK?”

  We ended up walking slowly down the hall to the stairs to the lower floor with Sam struggling to begin a conversation. “Elena said you were upset because Guy’s been bothering you. She said…”

  “Elena’s said too much already…” I stopped myself. “Sorry, go on.”

  “I thought he was OK when I met him – thought he could be a buddy, you know?” He gave me a quick glance. “Look, if I’ve said anything that’s made things difficult for you, then I’m sorry, OK? I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Why – what have you said?” We came to a standstill halfway across the iron-hard square of ground that made up the quad, still dead brown, not green, despite the watering. He took his time answering, so I risked looking at him. “What have you said, Sam?”

  He scuffed at a patch of dry turf with his heel, avoiding me. “Stuff I shouldn’t – about you. Yeah, you probably gathered that.” That came as a relief; it must have shown because he went on, “And about Ly… Matthew. Sure, I know I shouldn’t have, but you know I was jealous, right? OK?” He crammed his hands in his pockets in his familiar defensive gesture. “It’s no excuse, but I was off my head, annihilated, butt-toast…”

  “You thought Guy was a friend. He got you drunk. You talked. It’s what he does, Sam, forget it.”

  We started walking again. Most of the delegates had gathered in the main reception room for drinks before dinner. Guy would be there, waiting, watching. Sam came to a sudden halt, curiosity replacing his painful remorse. “Em, you remember that picnic we went on? Yeah, sure you do. You mentioned something about a “sleeping dog”. You said you’d been bitten – once bitten, twice shy, you said – and when I asked you what happened, you said, ‘What happens to all dogs that bite – he was muzzled.’” Laughter flew from the windows, not a pleasant sound, but one fuelled by alcohol and ego and heat. “The dog – that was Guy you were referring to, wasn’t it?”

  I raised my face to the sky, seeking some sign of a breeze to cool my flaming skin, but found none. “Yes,” I said eventually, “that was Guy.”

  “And now he’s back to bite you?”

  I checked to see if he mocked me – enjoying my torment, revelling in revenge – but he wasn’t. If anything he looked genuinely concerned.

  “Yes, Sam; he’s back to bite me.” Across the quad, a viperous hisss announced the evening watering. Welcome cool drops sprayed my bare arms and raised musty humours from the ground, but we stepped out of range and back into the fetid air. The dinner gong sounded. “I’ve got to go. Thanks for… well, you know, just thanks.”

  For the first time since that day of the picnic on the shores of the lake, he smiled with uncompromising warmth. “Sure, Em – you too.” I watched him as he started to walk the way we had come, the irrepressible Sam I remembered from our first meeting evident in his buoyant step. As I made my way towards the open door, I heard him call, “Hey, Em, you know what we do with mad dogs in the States?” I turned, and he raised two fingers in imitation of a gun. “We shoot ’em.” He fired off a couple of shots through the open window into the body of the crowded room. “Yes’m, dead dogs don’t bite.”

  I waited in a corner of the outer hall until I could be certain to avoid Shotter and Guy, and then slipped in among a group of Swedish delegates as they made their way to the great hall. Just like at the All Saints’ dinner, the Dean displayed the college’s sumptuous wealth on each of the three long tables, and the room droned with the visitors’ approbation. Even though I knew Staahl couldn’t hurt me any more, sweat chilled on my skin at the memory of that night, but Eckhart saw me and ushered me towards a place at the table from where I played host to the people around me. Guy sat next to Shotter at the far
end where Matthew had once been, and now and again they exchanged comments and Guy’s eyes would challenge mine.

  It helped playing a lie and I found myself grateful for it. The great hall lacked air conditioning and my skin crawled with heat, my tights constricting stickily, perspiration gathering beneath my collar and at the base of my spine. By the end of the meal I had eaten next to nothing, leaving my temper raw and exposed. My clothes hung limply, but inside a slow fire smouldered, ready to erupt. Like the clashing colours of canvas chairs on a beach, the voices of the people around me were strident and abusive, vying to be noticed in the choking smog that permeated the soul of the room.

  By ten to ten we rose from the table and I could escape the cloying tincture of coffee grounds lingering in empty demitasses, but there was nothing I could do to avoid the brooding dread of the impending confrontation that had dogged me all day.

  “Professor, before you go…” Eckhart scurried up. I was surprised he was still speaking to me, but he had been impressed by my students and had been overheard saying as much to Shotter. What the Dean said in reply I hadn’t been told. Beyond Eckhart, I caught sight of Guy, no doubt charming the pants off the small group of women gathered around him, not because he wanted to, but because he could. He raised his eyes to me. I looked away.

  Eckhart swayed a little, his tie stained and his glasses awry, but the moderate consumption of alcohol had rendered his speech fluent and his gaze direct.

  “Professor, there has been a slight change to tomorrow’s scheduled guest speaker. Professor Pornelli has withdrawn his paper at the last minute, very inconvenient – he didn’t say why – but it seems we have an admirable substitute. Indeed we are honoured to…”

  “Let me guess,” I interrupted. “Dr Hilliard has stepped into the breach. How fortuitous.”

  Colin Eckhart pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose, looking like Mole. “H… how did you know?”

  “Because she’s a little witch,” Guy broke in, raising the glass he still carried in silent salutation, which I answered with a hostile glare.

  Eckhart beamed. “Excellent, excellent. How appropriate for the conference. Witch – very good, most humorous. And we know what happens to witches, don’t we?” he guffawed in his good-natured way, his glasses slipping down his sweaty nose again.

  Guy’s eyes flickered over my face, his mouth barely moving as he breathed out, “They burn.”

  Eckhart chortled. “Quite so, quite so. We have much to celebrate. Yes, yes – such a success. Care to join me for a drink, Dr Hilliard? You too, Professor?”

  I was too angry to answer. Guy ran a finger around his collar, finding the knot of his tie and loosening it. Releasing the top button, he revealed a dark, mouth-shaped smudge against his olive skin, which he stroked with a finger – a deliberate movement even Colin couldn’t fail to see.

  “Dr D’Eresby – or is it Mrs Lynes now? – and I are otherwise engaged this evening, Eckhart. Give me a lift back to your place, Emma?”

  Colin had not drunk so much that he missed the innuendo, or perhaps because of the wine the full implication of what Guy said revealed itself in all its tainted glory. He stammered out his confusion, but I was beyond caring because, as far as I was concerned, it was just Guy and me now. Him and me.

  “Get yourself a bloody taxi,” I flung at him, and left him to do just that.

  It was past eleven when I finally arrived home. The house sat in darkness bar the single light in the hall. Guy’s taxi drew up at the front minutes later. He told it to wait and, slinging the strap of his case over one arm, followed me through the hall to the study.

  “No husband waiting for you? I’m surprised he’s left you all alone in a big house like this. One could never tell what he might come home to.”

  I declined to answer. Soft yellow light washed the room as I switched on the desk lamps, comforting and so at odds with how I felt. I had spent all day working out what I would say to him – all day – but it came down to this: “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Grandpa?”

  Guy looked around for somewhere to sit, pushing several things to one side on Matthew’s desk and, in perching, took possession of it. I chewed my cheek.

  “Doug? Still harping on about him after all these years? I often used to wonder what lay behind your infatuation with him; it was quite infantile. You know, his obsession with you was unhealthy…”

  I restrained my temper – just. “Answer the question.”

  After a brief pause during which, stony-faced, I returned his gaze, he shifted off the desk, casting a hand in the direction of the books. “He would have liked all this. He liked poking around minutiae, meddling in the infinitesimal. Meddling – it’s what he did best,” his lip curled, “old Doug. How did you find out?”

  “His diaries.”

  “Of course, his bloody diaries – always going on about the importance of keeping notes like a damn antiquarian. ‘My journals’ he used to call them. Journals.” He paused as if expecting me to react, but went on when I didn’t. “I thought they’d been destroyed a long time ago. I was surprised you never mentioned them when we met at Cambridge, and then I realized you didn’t know.” He threw his head back and laughed. “That was a gift.”

  I still grappled with the fundamental question he seemed reluctant to answer. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew him, Guy – that we had already met?”

  He whipped round and I stumbled back, caught off-guard by his sudden irritation. “Because I didn’t want you to know!” With a spiteful finger, he tapped his head. “Haven’t you worked it out yet? Didn’t your grandfather spell it out in his journals for you? Do you really believe that it was all a coincidence? Why do you think you were accepted into one of the best colleges in Cambridge? Why do you think you got onto my course when there were dozens of spotty little undergrads fighting for a place? You didn’t even have all the basic entrance requirements – you’re functionally innumerate, for Pete’s sake. They wouldn’t have given you a second glance if it weren’t for me.”

  I must have looked like a drowning fish as he tugged his tie from around his neck while he waited for his words to sink in. “Yo… you gave me preferential treatment?”

  He folded his tie into fifths, dragging out the moment. “What do you think?”

  Blood rushed back to my face. “I earned my place. I worked my guts out to get there…”

  His lip curled in a derisory leer. “You thought it would be handed to you on a plate.”

  He had hooked me, and now he played me out on the line. I fought back, but the rising note in my voice was the sound of desperation and he knew it; he relished it.

  “I didn’t! You know I didn’t. I didn’t expect anything other than what I’d earned. If you really thought that, you wouldn’t have accepted me on your course, Guy – not you – you despise nepotism as much as I do. You didn’t make it easy for me – I earned it.”

  He leaned forwards over the back of the chair. “I made sure there were no obstacles. Straight firsts – no seconds for you.”

  “I earned it!”

  “On your back.”

  “What?”

  He tucked the tie into his top pocket, the gold silk protruding like a head above a parapet. “You heard me. You were a willing little lay out to buy herself a degree. You earned it all right.” My head spun. This was all wrong. I concentrated on controlling my breathing and let my head clear. Something wasn’t right about the air around him; his words and emotions didn’t rhyme. I had paid too much credence to the words and not enough to what lay behind them.

  “And you were willing to be bought by sex, Guy? I don’t think so.” There, I saw it again, that distinct flash of colour, but too quick for me to determine its complexion. “Why did you want me on your course if I didn’t deserve to be there?”

  A salacious rise to his mouth, but he avoided answering the question. Instead, he pulled a volume from the bookshelves, opened it to the frontispiece, checked the date, and put it back.
Hands on hips, he scanned the spines of the adjacent books as if looking for something. “You know, Doug cried the day you won the scholarship at school. He was so proud of you it was pathetic.”

  Disregarding the jibe, it nonetheless struck me as odd that he thought it significant enough a memory to be commented on. “You remember that?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” More to the point, why should he? I detected more to his sniping than his desire to get a rise from me; more, even, than a long-harboured resentment of my rejection. Unravelling Guy was worse than the Gordian knot. I tried pulling another loose end.

  “Grandpa called you ‘Vir’ in his diaries.”

  “Vir,” he spat. “His hero, he called me. I was come to save the day. I would take up his banner and seek the Holy Grail of Knowledge. I was his heir presumptive until…” The air became suffused in green rancour, a bitter bile he could neither control nor hide.

  “You were jealous of me? But I was only a child, his granddaughter, Guy. What did you expect? Of course he loved me.”

  “It was more than filial affection; he doted on you – he invested in you – he gave you the key…”

  His eyes narrowed to slits as my head snapped up. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You heard him mention it.” He took a step towards me. “Did he tell you what it was?” His eyes became greedy, a look I had seen so many times when knowledge was tantalizingly within reach. But he didn’t know. Guy didn’t know what – or who – the key was. A slight speckled moth with wings of ermine danced desperately against the lampshade, going nowhere. I undid the window and lifted the sash.

  “If he’d wanted you to know, he’d have told you,” I prevaricated, cupping the moth in my hands. “He didn’t trust you, Guy. It wasn’t just me; you did something and he saw you for what you really are. What did you do?”

  He barked a laugh. “He wrote about it, did he? Stupid old fool.”

  “He said that the offer was withdrawn. What offer? Why?” Moth wings beat against the cage of my hands. I offered it the freedom of the open window, but it flew back in, drawn irresistibly to the light.