by Julie Cohen
They’d both been running away from something. She was trying to escape her closed-in evangelical family; he was trying to escape the memory of Emily and what he’d done in the war. All their running hadn’t done anything, in the end.
‘And if we’re leaving,’ she said, ‘we’re leaving. William and I. We’re leaving for good.’
‘I understand,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t think you do. You need to stop this, this . . . whatever you’re doing. The drinking, the avoiding us. Or you won’t be seeing William again.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘I think you’ll find that I can. And I will.’
‘He’s my son.’
‘You don’t love him.’
‘Of course I do!’
‘If you loved him, you wouldn’t be dragging him down.’
‘I’m not dragging him anywhere.’
Marie stood up abruptly, scraping the chair on the linoleum. ‘You’ve got another woman, haven’t you?’
He hesitated.
‘You are! You’re having an affair, you bastard!’
‘Keep your voice down, Marie. You’ll wake him up.’
‘You don’t care about waking him up when you come in dead drunk!’
‘Calm down, please. Please, Marie.’
She pointed at him, with a shaking hand that held her smoking cigarette. ‘He’s innocent. I’ll do anything to protect him, Bob. Even if that means taking him away from you forever.’
Emily took a bath the next morning, washing for the third time to counteract the fact that she didn’t want to wash Robbie from her skin. The bubbles were cloying, hibiscus-scented, and the bathroom was aggressively pink: pink bath, pink sink, pink toilet, pink tiles on wall and floor, pink-tinted lights around the vanity mirror. She made the water as hot as she could stand and climbed in, stretching her body in the bath.
A soft double knock on the door, and Christopher leaned his head in. ‘May I come in? I brought you a cup of tea.’
She didn’t want a cup of tea; she wanted time alone, to think. Even though thinking was painful.
All she could do was think about Robbie, and when she was going to see him again. But she was here, with her family. Polly wasn’t going to lie for her. She would have to invent excuses herself, with Polly watching her and knowing.
She knew now that for the last ten years she’d been deceiving herself about her true feelings. But that was very different from consciously deceiving the people she loved, and who loved her. It was the difference between suffering, and making other suffer. She thought of the icons of the bleeding, torn Jesus on the cross that hung from the walls of the clinic in La Paz, dabbed in lurid red paint; so different from the austere, restrained cross in the church where she’d accompanied her parents to service every Sunday as a child. But the message was the same in both.
This was not what good people did.
‘Thank you,’ she said. He came in, closing the door softly behind him, and set the cup on the side of the bath. Then he sat down on the side of the bath, too. He was neat, controlled, but the bathroom tinted his hair and skin pink.
‘I’ll say this once,’ he said. He stared at the pink tiles on the wall above her head. ‘I know who you’ve seen.’
She started, violently enough for the water to slop over the side of the bath. ‘I—’
He held up a hand. ‘Please, don’t say anything. You want to reassure me, but I don’t want you to lie for me. Just listen.’
But he didn’t say anything for several moments, and the only sound was Emily’s quick breathing and the dripping of the tap into the bath.
‘It’s that man at the airport,’ he said at last. ‘He’s the man you never talk about. You’ve been thinking about him for ten years.’
‘I haven’t—’
‘Don’t lie, Emily. Please, don’t lie.’
She swallowed. ‘I didn’t know that I’d been thinking about him.’
At that he did glance at her, as if surprised, but then he focused on the tiles again.
‘How did you know?’ she asked, at last.
‘You haven’t been yourself since we arrived – not since he called your name. You’ve been different.’
‘But that could have been about anything.’
‘I love you. I know. You’d know the same, if it happened to me.’ He smiled, sadly, at the tiles. ‘It wouldn’t happen, but if it did, you’d know.’
She didn’t think she would know. When did she look at Christopher closely? When had she ever had to? He was always there, always Christopher, lean and tall, wearing glasses and a tie, even in the heat. He had a haircut every three weeks; he shaved every morning – once, even, after an earthquake. He worked with extraordinary care and could face even the most daunting surgical conditions with equanimity. He did not change; had never changed.
But he watched her closely enough, loved her enough, to see right through her.
‘I remember when you told me about first meeting him,’ he said. ‘At Cambridge. For six months, you were walking on air, and I had nothing to do with it.’
He sounded sad.
‘And then you were . . . Emily, that September when you came back up, you were a shadow of yourself. No matter what I did, I couldn’t reach you. It was awful to see you like that, and not be able to help you.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I thought that when you started loving me, we could forget all that. I thought I’d helped you.’
‘I thought so too.’ She had to whisper it. ‘I thought it was over.’
‘I do – I do believe that you don’t want to hurt me, Emily. Maybe I’m a fool. I am probably a fool. But I love you enough to think that you wouldn’t intentionally hurt me.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
But I have.
That hung in the air between them, heavy as the scent from the bath oil.
‘We’re here in Miami for another ten days,’ Christopher said at last, and now his voice was brisk. ‘Then we go back to England. And once we’re home, Emily, this is finished. Forever. And we shan’t speak of it again.’
Emily stared at him, unable to believe what he was saying.
‘So do what you feel you must. And then, when we’re home, it will be over.’ He nodded as if reassuring himself. ‘I can trust you. Can’t I?’
‘I . . . ’
He waited.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, you can trust me.’
‘Fine.’ He stood up, brushed down his trousers. ‘I won’t ask any questions, and I trust you to invent plausible enough excuses for your family. I have no desire to be an object of pity.’
His voice broke on the last word. He turned and left the bathroom.
It wasn’t much of a workshop; more like a ramshackle shed, built from bits of fencing and corrugated iron that Robbie had managed to salvage from around the neighbourhood. But it had a neat pegboard of tools, and a scarred workbench (also salvaged), and it smelled of sawdust and glue and varnish, and William had his own little stool in the corner.
Robbie sat, an opened beer on the workbench in front of him, and watched William rubbing sandpaper over the head of the dolphin that Robbie had carved for him out of a piece of driftwood.
‘I’m gonna make it real smooth,’ said William. His chubby fingers gripped the sandpaper. ‘Then I can take it to bed with me.’
‘As soon as your mother says you’re old enough to use a knife, you can carve your own. I’ll teach you.’
‘I’m going to carve dogs. A lot of dogs. I’ll carve a dog for you, Daddy.’ He gave the head of the dolphin a last rub, and put down the sandpaper. He considered the other pieces of sandpaper spread out beside him, and carefully chose a finer grade. Just as Robbie had taught him, to work from coarse to fine, to take care to get into the corn
ers, not to rub too hard, to let the grain of the wood be your guide.
It hurt Robbie’s heart to watch him. William’s movements were so similar to his own. He reached for his beer, thought better of it, and pulled his hand back. He picked up a screwdriver and began work on the bilge pump he’d been repairing.
‘If we had a real dog,’ said William, concentrating on his sanding, ‘he could look out for Mommy and me when you’re away. He could bark at bad guys.’
‘You don’t have to worry about bad guys.’
‘I have dreams about bad guys sometimes. But if I had a dog, I wouldn’t have to worry.’ He rubbed the fine paper over the dolphin’s belly. ‘I like Duke.’
Duke was Marie’s father’s dog. He had bitten Robbie on the one and only time he had visited them on the farm in Wisconsin. Les had seemed to think this was funny.
‘Mommy says that if you ever go away, we would go live with Pop-pop and Nana and Duke.’
So she’d talked about it with William. She was serious about what she said.
The proof made the air heavier, made it difficult for him to breathe. She’d mentioned it to their child. She’d made plans.
‘Would you . . . like that?’ he asked. ‘Living with Pop-pop and Nana, instead of with me?’
‘I like Duke.’
‘Would you miss me?’
William nodded. ‘I’d miss my room too.’
Robbie put down the screwdriver. He went to his son and put his arms around him. Buried his face in his hair and breathed in the scent of sandpaper and strawberry milk and child. This small being, in every way perfect, who he’d loved from the first moment he’d seen, still slimy from birth. Who he loved more than any other person in the world except for one.
‘I’d miss you,’ he whispered. ‘I’d miss you so much. I won’t go away. I promise.’
‘OK,’ said William.
‘I promise you.’ He held him tightly, tightly enough so that William struggled and he had to let him go.
‘So does that mean we can get a dog?’ William asked.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The air was heavy, thick with moisture. Emily found the weather in Florida oppressive at the best of times but this was like a blanket around her shoulders. ‘Is there even going to be enough wind?’ she asked Robbie as she followed him down on to the dock where he kept his boat – not near the ranks of sleek white yachts, but on the side of the marina near the public boat launch, next to a row of fishing boats which reeked faintly of fish. It was a small sailboat, with a tiny cabin. The hull was painted blue, the decks white, its name painted in black on the stern: Little Billy.
‘It’ll pick up. There’ll be a storm before sunset.’ He held out his hand to help her aboard and she caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath. Bourbon drowns out the taste, he had told her. She frowned, but said nothing. His hand didn’t linger on hers. He merely helped her aboard, and then he was untying lines from cleats and springing on to deck himself.
‘It’s not going to storm soon, is it?’ There were puddles on the walkway and pontoon from earlier rainfall; she could almost see them evaporating away in the sunshine. In the distance, the clouds towered, stacked on top of each other. After La Paz the horizon here in Miami seemed so vast and flat. And the rain here was nothing like the rain in England: it was heavy and absolute, and often over as soon as it had begun. Emily had seen a rainbow almost every day. It was so casual a miracle here that people didn’t even bother to look up.
‘We’ll be back long before the storm,’ Robbie said. He pointed to a bench in the cockpit of the boat and busied himself around her, loosening and tightening lines and lowering a small outboard motor on the stern. He moved with quick competence; he’d done this a million times before.
He’d built this boat. He hadn’t said so, but she could feel Robbie in the curve of the bow, the blunt end of the stern. And the name, she realised with a pang, was obviously for his son, William. He’d spent hours making this boat and thinking of his son.
He did not touch her. No slight, almost accidental, meeting of hand and hand; no stolen caress as he went about the business of getting the boat ready to set off. He hadn’t kissed her on the dock, but she hadn’t expected him to. They were being discreet. But here they were almost alone. No one else was on the dock except for a pair of long-billed, shaggy grey and black birds perched on the roof of one of the fishing boats.
Every inch of her burned to touch him. Just thinking about him made her skin heat and her stomach feel queasy with desire. Her pulse quickened from being close to him. But he worked around her, almost studious in his avoidance. The only contact was the scent of bourbon that followed him like a shadow.
He’d suggested a sail instead of a hotel. And she’d thought of their first sail together. How he’d put his hand over hers on the tiller. Lightly kissed her ear as he taught her how to tighten the line, how to keep the wind in the sail, how to tack to change direction.
If Robbie touched her now, if he kissed her, she would at least be able to feel as if she had no choice. That she was being carried away by passion, that she had an excuse, however wrong, for her actions. Instead, she watched him start the motor and navigate the boat away from the dock, past some little scrubby islands out into open water.
Yesterday she had told her mother that she wanted to do a little bit of shopping for her and Christopher’s birthdays, which were both next month. They’d rented a car and gone down to Key West for the day, and were having dinner at a beachfront restaurant under a palm canopy. The surf washed the beach in a steady heartbeat and between waves little birds ran back and forth searching for prey. Emily had sat between Christopher and Polly, which at least hid the fact that both of them were conspicuously not looking at her. She could feel the hostility emanating from her sister. Polly’s movements were jerky and angry.
Christopher was hardly different at all from the way he normally was. Their conversation in the bathroom might as well have never happened. He had been as courteous as ever, as solicitous of her comfort; he’d been full of genial conversation with her family and when they’d gone to bed that night he had made sure to be in his side of the bed with his eyes closed and the light turned out before she emerged from the bathroom.
They often didn’t touch at night, but the gap between them had seemed very cold. Very large.
In the restaurant on Key West, the blazing orange of the sunset had reflected off her mother’s glasses. She wore a wide-brimmed hat and hadn’t tanned in the way both Polly and Emily had, but the colour of the sky gave her skin a tinge of pink. Charlotte Greaves had lifted her Mai Tai and said, ‘This is heaven. This is utter heaven. I’ve been so worried about you, Emily and Christopher. It’s such a relief to have you safe and happy with us.’
‘I’m just happy the whole family is together,’ her father had said. ‘Polly has been busy with work, and with the two of you away, it’s been lonely. I’m so very proud of you, all three of you.’
‘It’s all I’ve wanted,’ said her mother. ‘All five of us together. I just wish you could find someone to settle down with, Polly, who will make you as happy as Christopher makes Emily.’
And she had tried very hard not to look at Christopher and instead she had tried to look away at all the little hunting birds and caught Polly’s eye instead, and her sister was glaring at her with such anger that she had dropped her fork on the floor to give herself an excuse to hide her face under the table for a moment.
She had always been a role model for Polly. Her younger sister had always looked up to her, copied her, stolen her clothes, asked her advice, even though Polly was much more stylish and cool than Emily ever was, even though she was more fun-loving and less serious. She had been used to being Polly’s idol.
Seeing the contempt in her face made her feel sick. She barely touched her meal, and passed on dessert.
Robbie turne
d off the engine as soon as they were in open water and he began to unfurl the mainsail. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked him.
‘No, I can do it more quickly on my own.’
She watched him hoisting the sail and tightening the lines. The muscles in his arms flexing, his hands sure and strong. Two nights ago, he had touched her. He had breathed his secret sadness into her ear.
In the hotel room, she had known it was wrong but she had been too thrilled, too reckless to truly care. She had wanted him too much. But was wanting a good enough reason to ruin everything?
Surely this wanting would stop one day, and then what would she be left with?
Perhaps it had stopped for him already.
One moment the boat was clumsy, fragile, tossed by the waves. The next, the sail had caught the wind and it was powerful and sleek, moving so quickly, with the waves, that the movement was almost undetectable. The sea seemed to be motionless beneath them. And it was silent: nearly silent. Only a splash and a snapping of the sail.
This was like them. Caught up by the forces between them. Moving so fast that they hardly noticed that the rest of the world was stopping still.
‘Robbie,’ she said.
He was standing by the tiller, eyes on the horizon. When she spoke he looked at her at last. He sat down and held out his arm for her and she slid under it, nestling against his body.
‘Do you love me?’ he asked her.
She had not said it, not to him. Not since they had first parted, ten years ago.
She nodded.
‘Tell me. Say it. Please.’
‘I love you.’
His arm tightened around her, or maybe he was just trimming the sail. The scent of alcohol was stronger, here, close to him.
