by Julie Cohen
‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said.
‘I’m always drinking.’ He said it in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘It drowns out the taste of what I’ve done and what I am now. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. I’m just like Dad. Just like Dad, in almost every way. Except he liked planes, and I like boats.’
‘You don’t have to be like him,’ Emily said.
‘You’re a doctor. You know how powerful genetics are.’
‘Biology is just biology. It’s not destiny.’
‘Isn’t it?’
He pointed the boat out to sea, away from the shore.
‘And William is just like me,’ he said. ‘He looks like me, talks like me. He uses goddamn sandpaper like me.’
‘I wish I could meet him.’
‘I wish you could meet him. You’d like him. Right now he thinks I’m his hero.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
‘I’m not. I’m not anyone’s hero.’
‘Polly doesn’t like me much, either. Not since she found out about us.’
‘Tacking,’ he said, and she ducked as the boom swung around over her head to the other side of the boat. There was a moment where the boat wavered, unsure of where to go, but then it picked up the wind and they were moving swiftly again, towards land in the distance.
‘So that’s Key Biscayne,’ he said. ‘We’ll go out there and round Cape Florida Lighthouse. Have you seen Stiltsville?’
‘No,’ she said. She didn’t want a tour guide.
‘It’s something to see. A little village of houses in the sea. Built by shipwreckers, gamblers and rum-runners.’ Robbie reached into his jacket pocket and took out a flask. He offered it to her, and she shook her head.
‘You shouldn’t be drinking while you’re sailing,’ she told him.
‘I can sail this boat in my sleep.’
‘You still shouldn’t be drinking. You just said that you shouldn’t.’
‘I just said that I drink, and I know I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway.’ He took a drink from the flask and put it back in his pocket. ‘Like you know you shouldn’t be here, but you are.’
‘Robbie,’ she said desperately, ‘we only have a little while. Let’s not spoil it.’
‘A little while today? Or forever?’
‘I’m leaving the country next week.’
‘So this is it. Then it’s back to being unhappy, for both of us.’ He jerked the tiller, and the sail flapped.
‘What’s the alternative? This is wrong. All the reasons why we parted back then, they’re still there. And now there are too many people, Robbie. We’d hurt too many people.’
He didn’t answer, or look at her. He took another drink.
‘Christopher knows I’ve met you again,’ she told him. ‘He’s said that he’ll look the other way while we’re here, but it has to end when we get back to England.’
‘And you . . . agree with that?’
‘I don’t see what other choice I have. It’s not just him. It’s Polly, my father, my mother—’
‘Your mother hates everything about me. Your father too, I imagine.’
‘We’d hurt everyone, Robbie, if we stayed together. Everyone we’re supposed to love.’
‘What you’re saying is that you don’t love me more than everyone else.’
‘How can anyone even begin to make a decision like that? Love isn’t a finite thing that you can measure. It’s my family. And I’ve known Christopher for a very long time.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘The same way you love me?’
She swallowed. She looked away from Robbie, to the coast they’d come from: the trees and the white masts and the buildings of white and pink, like a city made of candy floss.
‘Not the same way,’ she said quietly. ‘But I love him. Very much. He’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve any of this.’
‘He’s a better man than I am. I can’t look the other way. I can’t forget that you’re with another man who isn’t me.’
‘He’s not forgetting. He’s . . . giving me time.’
‘I’m not a good man,’ said Robbie. ‘I’m not good without you, and I don’t know if I could be good with you, either. I drink. I’m a horrible husband. I’m probably a horrible father. I don’t know why I think that being with you would change anything.’
‘Robbie,’ she said, and put her hand on his knee.
‘I don’t love Marie. I shouldn’t have married her. But I’m responsible for her now. And I love my son. I love William.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘She’s going to take him away from me.’
She wasn’t prepared for the cold that seized her – the horror that another woman, someone she’d never met, could know their secret, that it could have spiralled so far out of control, that this woman, Robbie’s wife, could take such calculated revenge.
‘She knows too? About us?’
He shook his head. ‘She knows that I’m not committed to her. She knows that I don’t love her as I should. She knows I come home late every night and I make every excuse not to touch her. She knows I’ve never told her about what I did in the war, and I don’t tell her what I really feel and what I really want. She deserves better. She deserves for me to be a better person, but I can’t. Or she deserves someone better than me, but then I won’t see my son again.’
‘She couldn’t take him away from you. He’s your son.’
‘She could. She’s got steel in her. She could do it, if she wanted to. She could move away and stop me from seeing him. If her family closed ranks, I wouldn’t have a chance.’
‘But legally—’
‘Emily, I’m a drunk. A court would choose Marie.’
‘You’re not a drunk. You could stop drinking.’
He didn’t reply.
‘I’m not a good person,’ she said. ‘When I came here, all I could think about was my patients. And now all I can think about is you.’
He took his eyes off the horizon for the first time to look at her. ‘We can’t do it, can we? We can’t have anything but this.’
‘No.’
‘And this used to be enough. When I first met you, all I wanted was to live in the present. To spend as much time with you as I could and savour every moment. But this isn’t enough. I want our past back. I want a future.’
‘But neither of these can happen. Now is all we’ve got. Today, and the next few days.’
‘It isn’t good enough.’
He put out his hand for hers. His hands were so different from hers, from Christopher’s: tanned, weather-beaten, calloused. She held on to him tightly. Something rumbled in the distance, from the towering clouds.
‘So this is the last time,’ he said softly.
She nodded.
‘It doesn’t seem fair to have to do this twice in a lifetime,’ he said.
‘But nothing has really changed. We still can’t be together. We have even more reasons not to be together now.’
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I love you,’ she said.
Where was the sun? The sea had gone as dark as the sky. Even the white sail was muted and grey. Emily took her hand from Robbie’s. When she’d said goodbye ten years before, she’d tried her best not to look at him. She didn’t want to see his face, see his pain, in case it tempted her to touch him and to prevent him from leaving.
This time she knew what it was like to hold someone for years in your memory instead of in your arms. She knew how features blurred, voices faded, touches dissolved. So she looked at Robbie and tried to imprint him on her memory, to be able to take him out when she was alone and felt strong enough. When she was safe, and able to think about this moment when she had been perfectly loved and perfectly alone.
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br /> ‘Emily. Please.’ Robbie stood and reached for her, leaning forward, and several things happened at once. A wave hit the boat and he stumbled. His hand let go of the tiller. The wind gusted, bringing the boat round. The mainsail flapped, the boom swung, striking Robbie on the head and sweeping him over the side of the boat.
She heard the splash before she understood what had made it. The boom kept going, though slower than it had been, and she fended it off with her hands and then twisted to look over the side of the boat.
‘Robbie!’
She could see him, a dark shape in the dark water. He wasn’t moving.
There was a life preserver near the tiller, attached to the boat with a rope. Emily grabbed it and threw herself over the side of the boat into the water. It was nearly as warm as her blood and she struck forward, swimming frantically to reach Robbie. Her clothes weighed her down, her shoes. She was not a good swimmer. She couldn’t see him any more. Salt water stung her eyes and the waves had come up with the wind.
Her foot struck something and frantically she reached down into the water, diving, to find it: material, his jacket. She grabbed hold and kicked her legs hard to pull Robbie up to the surface. So heavy.
Thirteen years old, in the pool in Norwich with the other Girl Guides . . . She tried to remember her lifesaving lessons but the water there had been calm and tame. She kicked and kicked, got herself on her back with Robbie’s head leaning back against her shoulder, her arm around his chest, the other looped through the preserver. He was a dead weight in the water. His eyes were closed.
‘Robbie,’ she gasped, salt water in her mouth. She looked over her shoulder and the boat was several feet away. The rope anchoring the mainsail had come loose and the sail was flapping back and forth, useless for the moment, until it caught the wind by chance.
Emily kicked her legs, trying to get them closer to the boat. Robbie might be dead already: the blow might have been hard enough to kill him. He might have inhaled water and be drowning even now, even though she had his face out of the water. Dry drowning they called it. She couldn’t check for breathing or feel for a pulse: she was too busy swimming, and she didn’t dare. His mouth was open, his eyes closed, his skin pale. His hands floated just below the surface.
She kicked and kicked, holding him tight. Her shoes were stopping her so she toed them off, letting them fall away into the deep sea. Her skirt tangled around her legs. She wished she’d worn trousers. She thought about reaching the boat only not to be able to haul Robbie’s body aboard. What would she do? Cling on to the side, cling on to him, praying someone would come and rescue them? Had there been other boats out? She hadn’t noticed. But this was a busy place – surely someone would come by.
But when? Could she hold on to Robbie until then?
They could die here. They could both die. Not to embrace and to part, but to embrace and to sink, together, to wash up on the shore days or weeks from now. Their bodies returned to the families whom they had decided not to leave.
But they’d never know that. Christopher, and her parents, Polly, Robbie’s wife and son. They’d never know that Robbie and Emily had chosen them over their own happiness. They’d see this death as a betrayal: the two of them had died in illicit, snatched hours.
And if that didn’t happen? If she lived and he didn’t, if he was dead already and she had to live the rest of her life knowing she hadn’t saved him? Who, or what, would that be a betrayal of?
‘Please,’ she sobbed, kicking and kicking and getting nowhere, ‘please wake up, Robbie. Please. Don’t leave me alone.’
Water in her eyes, in her nose, in her mouth. Burning salt and his body wanting to drift away. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, incredibly close. Her muscles ached and burned, her fingers clenched in the cloth of his jacket. His hair was a dark slick on his head. A wave hit them and her face went under.
She felt his arm tighten around her.
He was awake – he was alive.
The boat loomed blue and white out of the water. The hull was impossibly high. ‘Hold on,’ said Robbie, and she held tight to the rope while he hauled himself up on to the boat and turned to pull her up. Banging her ribs on the boat, knocking the breath out of her, scraping her legs, but then she was there. Safe. Gasping for air, shivering, holding tight to Robbie. He clung to her. His breath came in short gasps. It was raining now, hard, warm rain that made the air nearly as liquid as the ocean. The boat rocked.
‘I can’t do it,’ she said. Her teeth chattered. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘You can, you can do anything, you will be all right,’ he said, smoothing her wet hair back, kissing her wet cheeks with his wet lips. Thunder crashed. ‘You are OK. You are safe. I’m so sorry.’
She kissed him and tasted salt. She was shaking badly now. ‘I can’t leave you. I can’t – I thought you were dead.’
‘I’m not dead. I’m stupid. I’m all right.’ But she saw blood flowing down his face now, from where the boom had hit him. She touched it, wondering at its colour on her fingers, before instinct kicked back in and she pulled his head down so she could look for the wound. Her hands shook as she put pressure on it. She seemed to have no strength.
‘I thought you were dead and I’d lost you and it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever felt,’ she told him through chattering teeth. ‘I thought about what it would be like going on living with you dead and I don’t want to do it.’
‘I’m not dead. I’m not dead. It’s all right.’ He soothed hands down her back.
‘I don’t want to live without you. I never want to live without you.’
He pulled back. There was blood on his face, and he was shaking now, too. Shock. Hypothermia, maybe, even in this warm water. They should get a blanket.
Lightning so close, it left an after-image on her retinas: Robbie’s silhouette in black and red. Thunder.
‘What are you saying?’ he asked.
‘I’m saying we’ve already betrayed them. We betrayed them from the minute we met each other. I can’t love him as I should, and you can’t love her as you should. If we’d died together, no one would know that we’d decided never to see each other again. We belong together. I can’t love anyone as much as I love you, Robbie. I can’t do it. I’ve tried and I can’t.’
‘What are you saying?’ he asked again, except this time he whispered it.
‘I can’t lose you again. It’s all hollow in the centre of things without you.’
He swallowed. Staring, pale, into her face.
‘I can’t lose you either,’ he said.
And he held her tight up against him, boat wandering free in the storm.
There were dry clothes in Robbie’s locker below. She rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and the hems of his trousers. He had only one rain slicker and she stayed below, shivering, wrapped in the only blanket, as he piloted the boat to shore. The cabin was tiny and steamed up immediately. She watched him through the hatch and thought about concussion and shock but her thoughts kept returning over and over to what they’d said. What they had done.
It was decided now, whatever would happen. She tried to summon something: joy, guilt, even fear. But she couldn’t seem to. That would come later. Right now she could only think: it was decided.
When they reached the marina, Robbie pulled the slicker over both of them to shelter them from the rain and they walked in step to a little hut with a palm canopy, with a rickety wooden picnic table underneath it.
‘¿Recibió mojado, Bob?’ called the woman in the window of the hut.
‘Sí. Cafecito, Analena.’
They sat at the picnic table and in a few minutes, the woman brought them two tiny cups of coffee. Emily drank hers down immediately: it was incredibly sweet and incredibly strong. ‘¿Podemos por favor tener otro?’ she asked the woman, who nodded. The rain drummed on the canopy and dripped from the palm
fronds.
‘I can’t stop thinking of that piece of music,’ she said to Robbie. ‘The Bach we listened to, that night we met. It’s stuck in my head.’
‘The music that begins where it ends.’
‘And that ring. That ring you gave me, that I gave back to you.’
‘I still have it. It’s in a drawer at home.’
Her knee touched Robbie’s under the table.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ she said. ‘We’ve made the decision and it’s over. The ending is the same as the beginning. Isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘I don’t know if we ever really had a choice.’
‘Do you think she’ll really take your boy away from you?’
‘I don’t know. I hope not.’
‘I don’t think I can do that to you,’ she said softly. ‘Or to him.’
He sighed. ‘The thing is that she’s going to leave me. Now, or ten years from now. I can’t be who she needs me to be. Even if I stopped drinking, if I were home every night. I still couldn’t be that person. Not for her. It’s better to be honest.’
‘We’ve betrayed them anyway. I betrayed Christopher before I even married him, because I knew he’d always be second best. But your son shouldn’t get caught up in it.’
‘I’ll try. I might not have a choice.’
‘We’ll both try, together.’
Analena brought them two more tiny coffees. As Emily lifted hers to drink it, her eyes caught on the flash of her diamond ring, the gold band beneath it. She put down her coffee and slid the rings off her finger.
On the rough, weather-beaten table, they looked like the relics of a life that had been unmade. Another country, another time, another set of decisions, a different ending.
Robbie slid off his own ring and put it with hers. A bigger circle, also made of gold. There was a band of pale skin beneath it and when Emily looked at her own bare finger, she had a matching band.
‘I’ll never leave you again,’ he told her.
PART FIVE
1962
Chapter Twenty-Nine
