by Rosie Thomas
‘I love you,’ he whispered as the tide within her receded at last to leave her body washed as smooth and pale as the mother-of-pearl lining to a shell, and ‘I love you’ was torn from him as his own climax possessed him and threw him against her like a great wave smashing and breaking over the sea wall.
The timbre of his voice in that brief instant of surrender, or perhaps the angle of his head and throat as he arched away from her, brought back the long red room and the image of Laura beneath him, dark next to dark. But then the image was gone again, as incredible in this moment as it was hateful to her. She turned from the malign shadow of it to the light of Harry with his arms locked round her and the calmness of extinguished passion in his eyes.
She wanted to laugh for pure happiness, and at finding herself here, naked under the branches and with the prickle of dead needles in her hair. The laugh bubbled up and he rolled over with her in his arms, mock-indignant.
‘Be careful. I may not be the tireless satyr I was at nineteen, but if you laugh too uncontrollably you could just undermine my fragile confidence.’
‘Your what? Hell-raiser Harry Cotton?’
‘Oh, darling, darling. The cuttings. I’d forgotten.’ His hair brushed her face and his mouth found hers again. ‘All a myth. Practically a myth. Listen.’ The laughter ebbed and he said seriously. ‘In all the years, through all the cockeyed things I’ve done, there hasn’t ever been a day like today. Because of William, but,’ he drew her closer against him, ‘much more because of you. Seeing you out on The Mountain, with that wild, angry look of protectiveness for him, and here now, like this, under these trees.’
His voice sank to a whisper, within her head, within her being. ‘Loving you in this place felt better and sweeter than anything I’ve ever known. Like coming home, Angharad. I don’t ever want to leave again. Stay here with me. You, and William. Stay here with me.’
Beyond the safe haven of their warmth, the pine forest spread over the hillside, and beyond that lay the calm green turf and grey rock country that Angharad loved as much as she loved Harry because the two belonged together, inseparable. She felt the closeness of him, familiar yet so erotically different that she ached for him all over again, and beneath them the solid earth, unchanging. The wild hope that they might be together after all, the three of them at home in the shadow of The Mountain, surged up in her and spilled over into dazzling certainty.
It was all she could see now, and the other faces faded away in the brilliance.
‘I will be here. If you leave tomorow, to go and do whatever it is you have to do,’ their hands tightened on each other at the thought of it, ‘and then come back again, I’ll still be here.’
‘As soon as I can. The first minute. I love you.’
A wind had sprung up, and it sighed in the high branches above them.
‘And I love you.’
More gently and more truly than either of them had ever spoken it, yet it was as if the wind brought a chill, warning finger and laid it on her warm skin, and Angharad shivered. Harry had reached imperiously for her again, but he felt it and lifted her up at once.
‘You’re cold. Here, put this on.’ With a deftness that surprised her he found her scattered clothes and buttoned them up for her, wrapping her at last in the warmth of his jacket. He helped her to her feet and kissed her forehead, and his gentleness dispelled the chill again.
‘Home,’ he said, and with laced fingers they began to retrace their steps over the springy needles, and then suddenly they were running, faster and faster, weaving between the trees in a downhill plunge that brought them out from under the canopy of trees and into the moonlight gasping, and laughing, like breathless children. They almost stumbled on the slippery grass and the laughter turned to shouts as they swooped down to the car. Then they saw that the moonlight had turned the rocks and the road to beaten silver, and the beauty of it caught the laughter in their throats. Silenced, they turned back to one another and their mouths brushed just once more.
‘As soon as I can,’ Harry repeated.
In the lights of the car he picked the pine needles out of her hair, and then they turned and drove the long road back to Cefn with the happiness so solid between them that Angharad felt she could have stretched out the tips of her fingers and touched it.
The village street was in darkness except for the single square of yellow light in Angharad’s cottage. Harry stopped at the door and she saw the questioning rake of his black eyebrows.
‘Don’t vanish yet,’ she commanded him. With Harry at her shoulder, she lifted the latch of the old door and stepped into the little house. Gwyn had been dozing in her chair with her spectacles askew and her knitting in her lap, but her head jerked up at once.
She saw the brilliance in Angharad’s eyes, and Harry’s commanding height squarely beside her. She saw that their fingertips were still touching, as if they couldn’t bear to let go of one another altogether. A sigh escaped her, almost inaudible, and her hand lifted to settle her spectacles again. Angharad was beside her at once, kneeling and smiling up into her face.
‘I’m very happy, Aunty Gwyn,’ she whispered.
‘I see that,’ Gwyn said, and lifted herself heavily out of her armchair. From her niece’s bright face she looked to Harry, searching for the impatient, demanding boy who had come to the schoolhouse long ago. But the boy had vanished.
‘You’ve changed,’ she said, and Harry smiled crookedly at the grudging edge of her voice. Gwyn was as protective of Angharad as she had been when he had come in search of her.
‘I think so,’ he answered. ‘I hope so.’
Gwyn gathered up her things and marched to the door. ‘I’ll say goodnight, then.’
‘Won’t you let me see you home?’ Harry asked gravely.
‘One hundred yards down Cefn Street?’ she asked him. ‘I think I can manage that, thank you, young man.’
The door closed behind her stiff back and they looked at one another, and irreverent laughter leapt up again. Shaking with it, Angharad reached out her hands to him.
‘It will be all right,’ she promised him. ‘Everything, all of it, will be all right.’
The little room reflected their warmth back at them. Light glowed off the copper kettle on the mantelpiece, and the silver-framed photographs of William that flanked it. It shone on the white tablecloth smoothed over the red velvet one with the bobble fringe beneath it, and made oval pools on the old walnut upright piano against one wall. Harry lifted the lid and played a single mellow bass note that hung in the air.
‘May I go up and look at William?’ he asked her. She had raised her hand, intending to point at the door. The steep, narrow stairs wound up behind it.
But another sound distracted her. Tap, tap. It sounded like a claw, tapping on the glass.
Angharad turned around, icy premonition congealing the warm race in her veins. At the window she saw a white hand, hooked so that it looked like a claw too, lifted to tap again. Behind the hand, disembodied in the blackness, dead white and with the wide eyes staring in at them, she saw a face.
Laura.
A scream rose in her throat but she crammed her knuckles into her mouth to stifle it. The piano lid dropped with a clatter. Harry had made for the door, but Laura was quicker. It swung open silently and she slid into the room with them, her hand still raised.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t, you know. Hide from me. Hide from Laura. Did you think that you could, poor things?’ Her voice was throaty, almost caressing, but it raised fear in Angharad that prickled with the hair at the nape of her neck. This was a Laura she had never seen before. Her hair was a tangled black cloud, and her clothes were stained with dark, damp patches. In the paper-whiteness of her face the pupils of her eyes had shrunk to tiny, glittering points of light.
But Harry knew her. Anger, and pity, and the shadow of revulsion tautened his face. The creases that the evening had rubbed away sharpened again. He snatched at the wrist of her raised arm, draw
ing it down, his knuckles showing white with the force that it took.
‘Stop it, Laura,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Don’t do this now.’
She whirled around to face him. ‘Not now? Not now, of all times. You’ve been with her, haven’t you? Out on the hills somewhere, in some little hollow? Our hills, Harry. Well? Is she as good as I used to be, Harry, do you remember? She wasn’t, once upon a time, was she? You still came limping back to me, because I was what you really wanted. Like a drug, wasn’t I? You had to have more and more. Over and over again, for all you said that you hated me, and it, and what I did to you.’
Harry’s hand passed over his face in a vain attempt to rub out the weariness and despair.
‘Stop,’ he said again. ‘Haven’t we wrecked enough of each other’s lives already? Let go, Laura, for God’s sake, while you still can.’
Angharad read the hopelessness, and the ice set hard and ugly in her veins. This scene was no more than a repeat of others, stretching away behind them into the remote cradle of Llyn Fair valley itself. She was struck by the thought that this was the heritage that Joe Cotton had bestowed on his children along with his house and the lovely lake, and she had to struggle against the wild urge to laugh.
‘The only wreck in my life,’ Laura was saying, in the same caressing, infinitely threatening voice, ‘is not having you. But I do really, don’t I, my darling?’ And Laura did laugh, with a crazy triumphant ring to it that made Angharad want to turn and run away from her, away from Laura’s malign influence that had snatched away the little, gilded happiness she had shared with Harry tonight. Harry had taken Laura’s other wrist, and he had lifted her up with the force of thrusting her away from him.
Disgust stamped out the quiver of everything else in his face.
‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Go. Now, Laura. Everything is finished between you and me. I don’t want to see you again. I hate you, and I pity you, but I don’t even feel those things as strongly for you as I do for myself. Go,’ he repeated. ‘Leave us alone.’
Through her own fear and horror Angharad saw how stiff, and numb he was. The pain would come later for him. Love surged more strongly through her than it had ever done before, and she understood fully, for the very first time, the black conundrum of Harry and Laura that had puzzled, and thwarted, and excluded her for so long.
She ran to him.
‘No,’ she heard him warn her. ‘Keep out of it.’ But her desire to break the dark chain at last was stronger. She pushed relentlessly between them until Laura’s glittering eyes fixed on her. Her old friend’s fingers curled around her forearm and she felt their chill, and the manicured nails dug painfully into her flesh.
‘Yes, Laura,’ she answered her. ‘Harry and I were together tonight. I love him. I always have, and nothing will change that.’
They stared at each other. Angharad knew that she was fighting for everything, and that the real battle had always, always been with Laura herself. The cold premonition came that she could not win now, because the real Laura had gone away somewhere and this mad-eyed stranger was fighting for her life, with weapons that Angharad didn’t even understand. But she pushed the fear behind her again and faced up to the shell of her friend.
‘I love him,’ Laura said. ‘You can’t even guess how, my china shepherdess.’
‘The difference is, Laura, that I’m not his sister. You cannot marry him, but I can.’ Or bear his children, Laura, poor Laura. ‘I can and will, Laura, and we’ll be happy together.’
Harry moved like lightning to protect her, but he was far too slow. Laura’s white hand with its long, curved nails flashed out and Angharad felt the gouge of it like fire and acid in her face. She stood stricken, with the trickle of blood starting on her cheek. She lifted her fingers to touch the place, and stared uncomprehendingly at the smear on them.
Laura’s glittering eyes followed the movement too, and the slashes on Angharad’s cheek as they reddened and spread. For a moment her face was blank, as if she was wondering who could have caused them. Harry’s movement beside her, as he reached for Angharad, aroused her again. Her mouth went slack, ugly lines deepening beside it, and even the unhealthy glitter in her eyes went out. And then she moaned, a low, terrifying sound that rose in pitch until it was a scream. Harry turned on her and shook her so that her head flopped like a rag doll’s, and then he slapped her face with the flat of his hand. The scream was bitten off at once and Laura crumpled against him. Her eyes closed and tears spurted from under the lids. Her mouth opened again and Angharad flinched before the sound, but all that came was a shuddering, hopeless sob. Laura clung to her brother, her fists beating at him as the storm of weeping possessed her.
Angharad turned away, but not before she had seen Harry’s dark head bend unwillingly over his sister’s and the revulsion in him give way once more to despairing pity.
Laura cried for a long time. Her tearing sobs were the only sound in the silent cottage. At last the storm died away again. Laura pushed the wet coils of hair back from her ravaged face and drew herself up straight. The vengeful glitter sparked up again. Angharad saw that she was still driven by whatever mixture of despair and jealousy, drink and more, that had fuelled her attack.
‘I will not let him go,’ Laura said.
‘Laura. You don’t possess me.’ Harry’s voice was iron, but Laura was oblivious. She was deadly calm now, all her attention focussed on Angharad.
‘Never. Never, never. Listen to me. I’ll do anything to stop you taking him. I’ll kill you, even.’
Angharad stared at her, transfixed.
It was impossible that Laura was saying these words. Her friend, Harry’s sister. Here in the cosy, old-fashioned cottage parlour. The same light on the shiny kettle, polished wood and figured velvet.
‘I want you to believe me,’ Laura said. ‘If I have to, you know, I’ll go for whatever you care about most. If you destroy, so will I. I’ll do whatever will cause you the greatest grief, the same pain that you have caused me.’ The soft silence fell around them. In the heart of it Angharad heard a tiny sound. It was no more than a sigh, and a creak, as William stirred in his sleep upstairs.
Whatever you care about most, I will destroy.
Laura was watching her like a cat, ready to spring. Angharad believed what she had said, believed it so implicitly that her skin crawled with terror. Laura was mad, and Laura was dangerous.
And upstairs Harry’s child lay asleep, the dearest thing to Angharad in all the world.
Laura didn’t know about him, and she must never find out. One glance at Harry’s ash-grey face confirmed her fear, and her resolution.
The wild, protective impulse galvanized Angharad. She had half-sprung to bar the stairway door but she checked and made herself freeze into stillness again.
Her one thought was to get Laura out, far away and for ever. She made herself nod her head, submissively, although the little movement of surrender shot pain all through the core of her.
Laura was smiling now, and the glitter was intensified. ‘Sensible,’ she said. ‘Expedient. Thank you. I think we should say goodnight, Harry, don’t you?’ Her voice was conversational. If it were not for her livid face she might have been taking her leave after a dinner party. ‘Goodbye, Angharad,’ she said softly from the doorway and stepped out into the darkness.
‘She would do it,’ Harry whispered, and the words fell like cinders on the burned-out pyre of their happiness. Angharad understood him as she had never done, and bled for him, and for the hideous burden that had kept him running, and hiding, all the years.
There was nothing to say.
‘Take her with you tomorrow. Away. For him, Harry.’ Her voice was high and child-like, thin against the wastes stretching ahead of them.
Harry’s hands grasped hers, burning them, and she caught the closeness of him for the last time. ‘What should I do?’ he asked her, without hope. ‘The police? Certify her? She’s my sister, Angharad. And what we did we did together, at the begi
nning.’
I know. You love her still. I understand that. There’s nothing to be done.
Angharad said nothing, and her eyes were on the door in the fear that Laura might come back again.
Slowly, slowly, Harry turned away. ‘Kiss my son goodnight for me,’ and he was gone.
With trembling hands Angharad slid the bolts at the top and bottom of the door. She went into the kitchen and searched for the key to the back door, which she had never locked. She found it at last hanging from one of the hooks on the dresser, and the lock grated as she secured it.
Only when she had made sure that all the curtains were drawn so tightly as not to permit a chink of light to escape, did she allow herself to go upstairs. William was fast asleep, his knees drawn up to his chest and one fist clenched against his cheek.
She bent over him to listen to his even breathing, and brushed the tangle of sleep-damp black hair away from his face. Deliberately she made herself see only the sleeping child, her son alone. She closed her eyes to his innocent likeness to the other two faces which had vanished now for ever.
Angharad crossed the little landing to her own room and sat down in the low chair beside the window. She was numb, and cold, and unable to think or even to move. She was still sitting, motionless, when the incongruous sun came up and the little street below her came to life again.
