by Rebecca Lang
‘Then it all seemed so distant, especially when I was back in Africa,’ he added, listlessly. ‘It was all such a mess, and all I could think of was that I would be an invalid for the rest of my life. Now we want to make a new life here.’
As they sat holding hands, Anna acknowledged that this man was not the Simon she had loved. He had grown up and changed, partly because of the accident and perhaps partly because of an inevitable maturation process. The accident has changed him, made him morose and cynical, which was understandable.
‘Don’t cry, Anna,’ he said again. ‘I’ve come to terms with my situation. I can even work, after a fashion, which is more than I dared to hope for just after the accident. And I’m planning to marry.’
‘I’m very glad for you.’ That sentiment was sincere. Now he belonged to himself—he did not belong to her in any way.
He had said it casually, as though the two of them had not had a love relationship, a passionate affair. It was almost as though it had completely slipped his mind.
‘I had brain damage, Anna, which has changed my personality, so that I will never be the same person that you knew.’
All she could do was nod silently.
‘I’m very fortunate,’ he went on, ‘that I don’t have to earn a living, even though I do work now, part time. We have family money, which is safe and secure.’
‘I have to tell you,’ she began, in a rush, wanting to get it over, ‘that when you left Gresham, I was pregnant with your baby, Simon.’
‘What?’ he said, squinting at her as though she were a mirage. ‘Pregnant? You were pregnant?’
‘Yes, I didn’t have time to tell you.’
‘Well…that’s amazing. I had no idea.’ He was staring at her, as though trying very hard to remember that they’d had a sexual relationship. Also, she thought she detected a slight spark of interest in his eyes, together with slight puzzlement.
‘I…we…have a son,’ she said falteringly. ‘His name’s Finn—he’s a wonderful boy. I thought you ought to know. That’s why I’ve come here.’
For several moments there was silence while he took in what she had said to him. ‘I can hardly believe it,’ he said, staring at her. ‘So you were alone when I should have been there with you. I’m sorry, Anna.’
‘You couldn’t know,’ she whispered, tears gathering again. If she had needed any proof that he was a good man, this was it, worrying about his neglect of her. Seth was a good man, too—that conviction came to her at the same time.
His face was still almost expressionless. ‘I can’t seem to take it in, because it was the last thing I was expecting. I can never father a child again,’ he said flatly, ‘unless there’s a miracle. And I don’t believe in that sort of miracle.’
‘Would you like to see a photograph of Finn?’
‘I would…yes, please.’
Anna fumbled in her bag for the envelope containing professional photographs of Finn, as well as some very informal small snapshots that she and her parents had taken in the garden at home. ‘Here he is,’ she said, handing them over into his hands, which shook. ‘I…I thought I would give you my address in Gresham, then if you come to Canada and would like to meet your son, we shall be there.’
‘Yes…thank you,’ Simon said, looking at the pictures. ‘Oh, Anna, I should have been with you.’
Pressing her lips together to stop them trembling, Anna said nothing. She had been vindicated, and that would be enough.
‘He looks like a sweet boy—and I can see a family resemblance,’ Simon said. ‘This is incredible…It’s going to take a while for this to sink in, Anna. My brain is so tired these days. Of course, I’m delighted. Could I keep one or two of the photographs?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Take as many as you like.’
‘Thank you, Anna. Thank you for giving birth to my child, for not giving him up for adoption. He looks healthy and happy.’
‘He is,’ she whispered.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes amazingly good things can follow tragedy. I’ve met Seth, who’s related to me, and that has reunited our families again. Otherwise I don’t suppose that would have come about. And now you tell me that I have a child when my hopes of fatherhood had been taken away from me. I’m sure you’re a great mother, Anna, I can tell.’
‘I try to be,’ she said softly, wanting to run back to the sanctuary of her room so that she could weep for this young man who had been changed for ever.
Clasping her hands tightly in her lap, she watched him while he went through the pictures again and again, and chose three for himself. ‘I’ll show these to Sophie,’ he said. ‘We’re going to meet for dinner, I understand?’
‘Yes.’ Anna could see that he was tired. ‘I’ll leave you now, Simon, you must want to rest.’ She got up.
‘Anna,’ he said. ‘There’s something I want to say to you.’ He reached forward and took both her hands, appearing to concentrate very hard on what he was going to say. ‘If I’d known…if I’d had any idea that you were pregnant, I would have made contact. I would have done what I could to give you some support.’
‘I know you would, Simon.’
‘You see…I’ve been very depressed…suicidal even. It’s been a strain on my family. I’m not over it yet…perhaps I never will be. Sometimes it comes over me—swamps me, you might say—and then I can’t do anything.’
‘I understand,’ she said.
‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘Seth is very…taken with you, if that’s the right word. I could tell by the way he spoke about you. He seems a good man.’
‘He is a good man,’ she agreed, a strange relief coming over her, as though Simon were handing her over to Seth.
Just then there was a knock on the door and Sophie came in. ‘We’re going to have some tea,’ she announced, ‘in my room. Then a rest before dinner.’
Anna stood there, looking at her. From what Simon had just said, it was as though he had never entertained the idea that they would marry…or if he had done so once, it was so long in the past that he did not remember what such a desire felt like. It was all over and done with, that part of what they had shared. He himself had entered a nightmarish world in which physical and mental survival had been uppermost in his mind. There had been pain and suffering, in which she’d had no part. All she could do for him now was to let him share their son in the future.
‘See you a little later, Simon,’ she said.
‘Perhaps we should go for a walk in the snow, Anna?’ Seth said, coming in behind Sophie, as though he were tuning in perfectly to her thoughts and emotions, as though he had been hovering outside. ‘You and me.’
‘Yes…please,’ she said, her voice barely audible.
Simon was very perceptive, she thought, if he knew on such short acquaintance that Seth was ‘taken’ with her, and she wondered if Sophie had told Simon all about Seth’s failed marriage, as he had told her. Because he could not be a partner to her himself, perhaps he wanted to pull in Seth as a father to his son.
‘We can have tea first if you like,’ Sophie said.
Automatically, Anna moved towards the door, feeling numb with shock and drained.
In the lift going up to the sixth floor, which they had to themselves, Anna responded to Seth’s questioning glance. ‘I want to cry,’ she said. ‘It’s so tragic. He kept three photographs of Finn. It’s not pity that I feel…it’s a terrible sense of waste.’
‘He’s a very brave guy,’ Seth said, ‘making the best of a bad job. We’ll have tea, then put on our warmest clothes and go out for a walk, just the two of us. All right?’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’d really like that.’
* * *
At tea, Sophie looked at the photographs of Finn. ‘He’s so adorable,’ she said, ‘and I can see that he looks like Simon, though more like you, Anna.’
Anna nodded. ‘He is adorable,’ she agreed. ‘He has a very sweet, calm personality.’ As she spoke, she fou
nd that she could not yet associate this changed Simon, and his sister, with Finn.
Instead, she had the images in her mind of Seth reading a story to her son, carrying him to sleep on a sofa at his house, then carrying him to the car, putting him in his bed later. The realisation was coming to her that she had, without noticing it, come to think of Seth as taking on the father’s role with her son, with the added bonus that they were related.
That would not do, because it was not reality. Yet neither could she associate this strange, morose Simon with her sweet Finn.
All the time they were having tea she struggled to control her emotions. Clinical depression was something that she’d had only theoretical experience with, during her nursing training, and had not worked in psychiatry. However, she did not need to be trained to discern that Simon had changed a lot, that he was very low in spirits. Again she wondered if he was on medication, and whether something of his low mood had been caused by brain damage. Later, perhaps, if she got a chance, she would ask Sophie about it.
At the moment she was certainly depressed herself, a sense of sadness like mourning pulling her down. At the same time a kind of strange peace was with her. She was glad that she had found Simon and had imparted the news about his son. Something was finished. Any earlier ideas that she had harboured about perhaps renewing her relationship with Simon, perhaps asking him to help support her son, had disappeared. In the end, everything had become simplified—she had managed to make it clear that she had no demands whatsoever to make on Simon. Even if she had, he was in no position to help anyone, except perhaps financially, and that she would never ask for now.
* * *
There was snow on the sidewalks and also falling gently in big flakes as she and Seth walked, bundled up to their eyes in warm clothing. They were both preoccupied with their own brooding thoughts.
Seth took her gloved hand in his as they walked along the streets near the hotel, and she let it rest there. They looked into shop windows to distract themselves from the strong emotions that had surrounded their meetings with Simon.
‘I have to thank you, Anna,’ Seth said at last, after a silence in which neither of them felt compelled to speak, ‘for enabling me to meet my extended family. Without all this I would probably never have made contact with them. And it’s amazing that they’re hoping to come to Canada.’
‘Well, it was inadvertent on my part,’ she said. ‘I’m really glad that something positive has come out of it for you, Seth.’
‘How do you feel now?’ he asked.
‘Very sad, unbearably so…for Simon, rather than for myself. I forgot about myself, which is as it should be. It was a real effort not to break down.’
‘You’re right, that’s as it should be, I think,’ he said. ‘It’s what happened to him that’s at the forefront of my mind.’
‘I don’t want him to think that I pity him,’ she went on. ‘I’m relieved now that I know. It’s the end of something.’
‘There’s always a sadness in endings,’ he said pensively. ‘Even if you know it’s the right thing. Even when there’s tremendous relief. It’s a sadness for lost time, for what might have been, for mistaken judgement…all those things.’
They crossed a street at the traffic lights, surrounded by swirling snow, jostled in the crowds. Seth knew Boston, knew where they were going, so he led her to shops with interesting displays in the windows, to distract her.
‘It’s not because he’s an invalid,’ Anna said, renewing the conversation when they were in a quieter stretch of a street. ‘It’s because what was between us has died. We’ll remember it in our son…if Simon wants that. If he doesn’t…I won’t mind now, because I see that I am on my own in being responsible for my child. For the first time, I don’t mind. Finn is with me, and I love him so much, enough for both of us.’
They walked on, feeling the flakes of snow on the exposed skin of their faces, its refreshing coldness welcome, as though it were part of a cleansing rite. Although she did not say that to Seth, Anna had a sense that he was feeling it, too.
‘This is one of the strangest days of my life,’ she reflected.
‘And it’s not over,’ he teased her, squeezing her hand. ‘I’ve been wanting to say this all day. Please forgive me for casting doubts on your interpretation of events when we first met.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘In your shoes, I expect I would have felt the same.’
‘When I get home,’ she remarked, ‘I’m going to put away that large photograph of Simon that I have on the mantelpiece, to see if Finn will notice. It’s the past now.’
‘That’s probably a good idea. Simon doesn’t look like that any more,’ he said. ‘If Simon comes to Canada, you can possibly get new pictures of him to show Finn, so that Finn will recognise him if Simon decides they should meet.’
They walked for a long time, going round in a large circle, building up an appetite for dinner.
‘I’d like to invite you to the hotel bar for a drink before dinner,’ she said. ‘I’d like a cocktail, and I’ll treat you to whatever you want. It’s a small thank you.’
‘I accept,’ he said.
* * *
Dinner was not the ordeal that she had envisaged. They carefully avoided any discussion about Simon’s medical condition and talked about Africa instead, and of other places they had travelled to, then of what the family hoped to do when, or if, they came to Canada as immigrants. They hoped to buy land, perhaps a farm, so that they could have an income from that, while Simon hoped to get a limited amount of work as an assistant surgeon in hand surgery, in which he had recently specialised, because that was what he could do sitting down. Already they had real-estate agents looking for suitable land for them.
Again Anna felt her emotions difficult to control when he talked about that, his very limited professional life, even though he seemed grateful that he was able to do something. Before the accident he had anticipated a very promising career as a trauma surgeon, as well as a general surgeon. He had been very skilled at his job.
From time to time she exchanged glances with Seth. He knew precisely what she was thinking.
If Simon could adapt to that, then she could adapt to the life of being a single mother. The troubles that she had to bear seemed paltry compared with his. She was privileged to have Finn.
As they sat at the table, she felt Seth’s eyes on her frequently. Through all this he was getting to know her, and vice versa. Yet a lot of the time she had little idea what he might be thinking.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A WEEK later, Anna sat in the sparse office of Hector Smythe for what he called a debriefing.
‘Well, Ms Grey,’ he said, from the other side of the desk on which he had placed the manila folder, which was somewhat fatter now, ‘I think we can say that we have had a successful outcome. Yes?’
‘We have,’ she agreed. ‘I’m very grateful to you, because now I have a peace of mind that I have not had for a long time, even though it’s all very sad. I know Simon’s alive, that’s the main thing, and my original faith in him is intact.’
They had talked extensively about the case, during which she had been able to tell him that Simon had had no idea that she’d been pregnant, that he would have made an effort to support her had he known. From that she had come out with her self-esteem more or less intact, she told him. Simon had not deliberately deserted her.
‘I think I can stamp this “case closed”.’ Hector Smythe smiled at her. Earlier she had handed him the cheque for his services. ‘Of course, if you find later that there are any loose ends that need to be tied up, you can come back to me. For instance, if your circumstances change with regard to finances, I can advise you there. It could well be that Simon, of his own accord, will offer to contribute to his son’s education and support once he has seen the boy.’
‘It’s possible,’ she agreed.
‘I also have some excellent lawyer friends, in family law,’ Hector Smythe went on,
‘whom I could recommend if you contemplate marriage at any point and your husband wants to adopt Finn but allow visiting rights to Simon Ruelle…if it turns out that he wants them. Of course, you don’t have to do any of that if you prefer not to.’
‘Thank you. I’ve decided to wait now to see what Simon will do. I’ve done all that I’m going to do for now,’ she said, looking at him calmly across the desk. ‘I feel so much more at ease.’
‘I’m glad you’ve come to that understanding,’ he said. ‘Um, will you and Dr Seth Ruelle remain friends as well as colleagues?’ he enquired politely, looking at her with his very shrewd brown eyes. ‘A very nice man.’
‘I certainly hope so,’ she said carefully, ‘but I really can’t say at the moment. You see…he has some issues of his own from a previous marriage. And he comes from a very wealthy family—out of my league, you might say.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I would make an educated guess that he has more than a passing interest in you, Ms Grey. He told me something about his previous troubles, we were able to discuss them. I wish you both well. I think you would be good for each other, you have a lot in common with your work. And he’s related to your son.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Be friends first, that’s important,’ he said. ‘I see a lot of messed-up people in my line of work.’ He stood up. ‘Make an appointment to see me any time you want, Ms Grey, if need be, for any sort of follow-up.’
‘Thank you again,’ she said. They shook hands.
After leaving Hector Smythe’s office, Anna walked down the street feeling as light as air and grateful to him. The gist of his advice was that one should do the sensible thing in relationships, otherwise impulsive behaviour generally came back to haunt one in a negative way. She felt like laughing aloud with a peculiar kind of joy that came out of relief.
It was a crisp day, with a little snow on the sidewalks and on the trees that bordered them. After years of speculation she felt free and almost girlish again, with a rare sense that life was good. She was young, of course—it was just that most of the time she didn’t feel it. As she walked, she swung her bag back and forth, enjoyed the sound of her boots crunching on the snow and the feel of her warm coat as it swished around her legs. The feel of the soft wool scarf around her neck, the hat on her head seemed like new experiences to her that she could enjoy in their simplicity. Tentatively, she could look forward again, perhaps go back to university to take an evening course to get her brain into shape again.
