Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  "It was then, in that moment of total recall, that I first knew what it meant to hate. It was a frightening emotion, so immense that it seemed to own me, to devour me. And it was then, at my grandfather's pyre, at the age of thirteen, that I made a vow. Not with words, for at that age I had none that were adequate. It was a vow forged in silence, in a hate that far exceeded the limits of speech. From that moment on, my life was preordained. As the lines on these palms," he thrust his hands out at her, "my route was etched and unerasable. There could be no deviations, no obstructions. Nor would I permit any."

  His voice trailed but left behind an echo with which the night seemed to reverberate. Olivia finally let her tears fall unhindered. She knew that what he had divulged to her, this blazing memory carved into the brain of a child, was the very axis around which his life had rotated. Inevitably, hers too. This was the essence of what had made him what he was and, curiously enough, what she had become. This then was the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, the core of the onion. She now shared with Jai Raventhorne a place in his innermost sanctum—that one vital day in his life that had fashioned his, extinguished that of his father, mutilated the lives of so many others. Ironically, what she would never be able to share with him was his life. The sense of humour of the gods was indeed inexhaustible.

  "You were a deviation, Olivia. An obstruction." He now said aloud what he had already spoken in her mind. "I sacrificed you for a crime that was a mere error of geography: You were in the wrong place at the wrong time." The deep grooves on either side of his twisted mouth gleamed even more livid in the moonlight. "And you were foolish enough to love the wrong man."

  The only man.

  She did not correct him. "We delude ourselves that we have a choice," she said bitterly. "Love, hate—both are competent puppet masters. They pull the strings, we merely strike postures."

  Once more he was shaken by the force of her disillusionment. He stood helpless and resourceless, then quickly removed the silver chain he again wore around his neck. Balancing the rectangular box on a palm, he stared at it a moment, then sat down beside her. Deftly, with the edge of a finger-nail, he went around the sides of the pendant and opened it.

  "Feel."

  With the tip of her forefinger Olivia probed. At first she felt nothing, then a delicate presence, a shadow so fragile as to be almost not there at all. Her gaze on him was questioning.

  "If as his only bequest to me my father left me these infernal appendages," he jabbed viciously at his eyes, "then from him my mother had even less. A few strands of hair!" He shut the locket with a sharp snap. "Just these lifeless lengths from that accursed head that had once lain on her shoulder, a souvenir of a love that gave her nothing, took away everything. But she treasured this one pathetic remembrance, cherished it, kept it always around her neck." His voice softened, his eyes once again far-away, probing through the swirling mists of time. "She would sit in that miserable little cell lost in her twilight world of illusory contentment, chiseling away at those toys of hers with gentle strokes, singing to herself in that childish voice I can still sometimes hear. That figure-head of a girl with her arms stretched above her was her most ambitious labour of love, a symbol of that freedom she craved, although in her simplicity she could not have been aware of such a sophisticated concept. That figure-head was of herself, as she had once been, uncaged and unshackled. She lived in a vanished world that existed only in her mind, but with me she shared it often, regressing whenever she could into that lost innocence that was never entirely lost, the one thing he could not take away from her." Unashamed of emotion for once, he brushed his eyes with the back of his hand. "One meagre strand of hair for one meagre life—an inequitable bargain, no? But to her it was acceptable. From him she wanted nothing more."

  Olivia searched the face he had restructured into a screen. "And you? What is it that you would have wanted from him?"

  To that he reacted sharply. "Everything! And what I wanted I took. I wish I could profess regrets, but I cannot." Patrician in his flash of arrogance, his features cemented.

  "He could have killed you twice."

  "Empty gestures! They meant nothing." The arrogance started to fade and, tired again, he heaved a sigh. Perhaps he remembered that his hate was wasted now, that the drama was played out and the curtain down. "No," he amended quietly. "Maybe they were not empty gestures. Maybe they did hold some meaning for him, if not for me. I don't know. Now I never will know. Yes, he could have whipped me to death; I expected him to. I was surprised when he stopped. And yes, he missed that first shot deliberately." His small laugh held a touch of macabre humour. "Probably the first time he missed anything he didn't want to. He was an extraordinary marksman."

  "You could have shot him too," Olivia reminded him softly.

  "Yes." Just that. No more. No explanation. "I could never have felt for him, for her, his wife, anything but hate. One way or another, they all conspired to kill my mother. Even Ransome, decent man that he is. And yet . . ." He got up to saunter away from her and stand staring into the dark vacancy of the silent night. "And yet, sometimes when I was very alone, when I was lost and confused and searching for my identity, when I remembered that I had admired him once—I wondered to myself what it might be like to hear a man such as Sir Joshua Templewood call me 'son' . . ."

  The hair at the nape of Olivia's neck rose and tingled. In the icy sensation, she numbed. There was a parallel in his words that could not be missed. Someday, sometimes, when Amos too was alone, lost and confused and searching for his identity, would he also wonder what it might be like to be called "son" by an absent father? In the wilderness of her imagination, Olivia saw Amos's dove grey eyes cloud as he too struggled with the same flux of emotions—anger, hate, bitter accusations, heaving resentments, bewilderment. Standing as tall, as stubborn, with the identical bone structure, would Amos too feel the same fleeting sense of loss? Would Jai Raventhorne's denials, his emotional famines, also be his?

  Nothing she could give Amos would ever compensate for what had been taken away. Olivia saw the parallel and was chilled, her mind exploding with suspicion, with renewed fears. He had said that deliberately! It was a trick to part her from her son. "Amos is not like you!" she flared. "He at least has a name. He will never lack an identity!"

  He flinched, taken aback by her sudden cruelty. But he did not return it. "Yes," he admitted, again anguished, "you have ensured that."

  "He will have me to call him son; he needs no one else."

  Recognising her fear, he sought to allay it. "I know. It will be enough. Why do you doubt it?"

  For her own ravaging fantasies she punished him further. "I want to establish clearly that you will have no claim over Amos, ever."

  "I do not make any claim, nor will I." Helplessly he stared at his feet, not knowing where else to in his misery. "I will not try to separate you again, you have my word. I have no place in your life, Olivia. And a child should have a mother. At least a mother."

  With a small cry, she buried her face in her hands. She could no longer deny the crux of her agony. She recognised clearly where she was—once again at a cross-road. It was dark and she could not see her way, but she saw that there was more than one. Once more she stood alone. Arctic winds pulled and tore her in conflicting directions. She was blinded by snow; the flurries obscured everything. The elements howled into a storm; with all the will-power at her command, she could not combat it. Where were all her resources? Her resolutions, her infallible sense of logic, that strength on which she prided herself? Frantically she searched; despairingly, she could not locate any of them.

  Then slowly, with the grace of a sunset, the storm subsided. The howling winds became tranquil, the flurries of snow cleared. Above her, the sky shone without a flaw, and ahead as calm and comforting as a country walk, lay the path she knew she must take. She filled with an enormous peace. And in that serenity, with the delicacy of a falling flower, a decision dropped smoothly into her heart. The ease with which it
had arrived now astonished Olivia. But then she saw that it had always been there; it was she who had not noticed.

  She looked up to find herself encapsulated tight in his unswerving stare. He watched, he waited, already having gleaned the workings of her mind. Abandoning thought, Olivia once more stepped into her dream and floated weightless. "When do you sail?" she asked, or someone asked in her voice.

  "Soon."

  "Where for?"

  "Somewhere. It makes no difference."

  "You will run and hide and be able to forget that your son is without a father, as you have always been?"

  "I hardly have a choice in the matter!"

  The unreality deepened; in her dreamscape, Olivia smiled. "I give you a choice."

  The stillness around them was eerie. Even the river appeared not to flow. Within that frozen tableau something moved, then fluttered, then pulsated wildly—a wisp of a hope struggling to survive. He came back to life and voiced it. "You would come with me?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?" Even in his hope there was despair.

  "Why?" Neatly, Olivia rearranged the pleats of her dress over her lap. "I don't know. Perhaps because my life is still not complicated enough. Or because I would want Amos to hear his father call him son. Or . . ." She stopped, unable to unblock her throat.

  "Or?"

  Her mouth felt rigid, her lips hurt as she spoke words that had remained unused and rusting for so long. "Or because I love you."

  He was dazed by disbelief. "After all this, all this, you can still say that?"

  "Yes, I can still say that."

  Gripped by rigor and shuddering, he turned away. "It is still a wasted love, Olivia. I deserve it now even less than I did then." Battling to live, the hope could not and his eyes dulled.

  "As it was then, it is still mine to waste."

  "No!" He was violent in his rejection. "It would be a senseless, childish display of bravado. I cannot permit it!"

  He was slipping away from her! Driven by panic, she flew back into reality. "It would not be bravado! I am not noble like your mother, who wasted her love knowing that it was not returned. I too, like you, am self-seeking. I know that you return to me what is given."

  Torn between two parts of himself, he stood despairing, arms hanging loosely by his sides. "It can reverse nothing, Olivia, repair nothing. How can I let you risk destruction a second time?"

  "For me it will reverse everything—even that clock!—repair everything," she cried, also fighting despair. "You told me, wrote in your letter, that you loved me. It is that love that has been my staff, my talisman, my strength—even if I had lost the faculty to see it." In her pleadings there was déjà vu; they had been here once before. And they had come full circle. "Tell me again, Jai, please tell me again!"

  "No! You are the wife of another man."

  "But I am also the mother of a child fathered by you, a child fathered in mutual love!"

  "Love!" His lip curled in an involuntary sneer. "It was a grudging love tainted by many resentments, Olivia. And I am now even more unholy, stricken by jealousies that live in my entrails like gut rot. For this tarnished love can you bear a lifetime of scandal, of social ostracism?" He was ruthless in his inquisition.

  "You have borne a lifetime of both!"

  "For me, therefore, they are not novelties. I am used to them. I have taught myself how not to let them touch me. Can you?"

  "As a discarded wife I already have. They no longer touch me either. And if your love is indeed tarnished, then so be it." In her panic she was again reckless. "Even then I will be a gainer."

  He laughed with pitying derision. "You still believe love is the universal panacea? That even tainted it is a world conqueror?"

  "No. I know now that it is not. But if one does not expect the perfect, it teaches how to accept the imperfect."

  He threw up his arms. "The world outside your charmed circle is not kind, Olivia. It is virulent in its dictates and demands."

  "There is no world for me outside you and Amos."

  "Oh yes, there is!" He was again brutal. "You still have a husband—and I cannot share you with anyone. With me, Olivia, it is all. Or nothing. As in war, so also in love!" His arrogance now was hurtful.

  Did he truly reject her? No, no, that could not be—she would not permit it to be! He was only testing her, measuring her courage, experimenting how far she could bend without breaking. He did not see that in doing so he was trying to rationalise the irrational, justify the unjustifiable, resolve by logic that which was insoluble. He forgot that beyond this, beyond words, there was another dimension. Some called it—as he had!—an affinity.

  Under her breath she laughed. "What a fool you are, Jai Raventhorne! Like me, a Kansas mule." Her tone turned soft as silk. "I've fought my fate, the world, once. I would willingly fight them again, for you. What I no longer have the energy to fight again is you." She rose, walked up to him and, tired of not touching him, of loving him from afar, of not loving him at all, surrounded him with her arms. "Have you not learned yet that with me too, always, as in war so also in love—it is all, all, all. . .?"

  Shocked, he stood rigid and unmoving in her embrace, not daring to touch her in return, not daring even to breathe. He could not find a voice except to gasp out her name.

  For a moment, a spellbound moment, neither could she breathe. Drunk with the heady rush of his well-remembered, never-forgotten muskiness, drowned in the lightest of light whiffs of his faintly tobacco-tinged breath, Olivia almost died of his nearness. Starved for so long, she skimmed feathery lips across the texture of his neck, tasting once more the salt of his skin, holding its sharpness in her mouth, unwilling to let it go. "If you don't want me," she whispered, intoxicated, "then let me hear you say it outright. That, at least, is owed to a woman who has borne you a son."

  He was resurrected into life with a spasm. Hesitantly his arms rose and within them, he held her closer to him. "Oh yes, I want you, oh yes . . .!" Hopelessly defeated, he was abject in his capitulation. He breathed tumbling incoherencies into the profusion of her hair, on her cheeks, all around her upturned face. "How can you ever know how much you have been wanted?"

  "I can if you tell me." She rested an ear against his pocket. Yes, it was still there, safe for her—only for her!—syncopating like a kettle-drum!

  "My God, you still need it said?" He was again incredulous.

  Between open shirt buttons she kissed the hollow of his neck. "Still!"

  Bewildered by what he could neither define nor understand, by what he could only feel, he suffocated her with random kisses that made her fight for breath. "There has not been a day, not a fraction of one, when you have not been loved and wanted. Absent or present, you rule my thoughts, command and control me, drive me to despair and in my despair I lose my mind." He forced her away to grip her shoulders and hold her at arm's length. "I am an insufferable, demanding man, Olivia, and still extreme in my reactions. You will not be able to tolerate me for long. And then I will lose you again."

  "And you cannot bear to be a loser, is that it?" Unshed tears made her eyes even more bright. "I promised you once to tolerate anything you chose to be. It was a reckless promise, one that was not within my capacity to honour then. It is now. I too need another chance, Jai, I too." The grip of his fingers dug deeply into her flesh. She loosened it to take his hands in hers. "This is the truth, Jai. Why can't you accept it as such?"

  He could not match her eloquent persuasions and was stricken with inarticulacy. Frustrated, he gathered her to him roughly, cursing his own incapacities under his breath. "Why, why, why! How many damned whys do you still have left for me?"

  "As many as will take to learn you entirely."

  "Entirely?" He groaned in his exasperation. "If even I cannot learn myself partially, what you assign to yourself is a lifetime of study!"

  "Well then, that is perfect," she retorted with abandon, free finally in soul and spirit. "As it happens, I do have a lifetime to spare."

>   He did not pay heed to her gay insouciance. Still troubled, he was unrelievedly solemn. Raising her chin, he stared into her eyes, enchanted by their dancing lights but nervous at the size of her submission. "Your love awes me, Olivia. I am alarmed by its sheer persistence. At the same time it dazzles me, but I know neither how to love well nor to receive with grace. What I feel for you still angers me, for it is a bondage and I rebel against slavery. You entrust me with so much, too much, and I am inadequate as a caretaker." He tried to smile but couldn't. "I would want you to be happy, as ... as my sister," he stopped and flushed, "as Estelle is happy. But I am unsure what makes the substance of happiness . . ." At a loss again, he shrugged.

  Tenderly, she smoothed out the lines of anxiety on his forehead. "For me the substance of happiness is to be with you. Perhaps, if we're lucky, we can both learn to love well again, learn to receive with grace."

  Abstracted, he caressed her hair, still frowning. "It will not be easy, Olivia."

  She sighed. "No. But then, has it ever been?"

  For a long moment he remained unspeaking. Then, disengaging himself, he bent down to retrieve the momentarily forgotten bundle. For a while he held it between his hands. His eyes closed and, soundlessly, his lips moved. He lifted his precious treasury to them and kissed it once. Then, before Olivia could guess his intention, he had thrown it with all his strength into the middle of the river. She gave a startled cry, but he restrained her impulsive move towards it. "Let it go," he commanded, but with profound feeling. "It is time for the dead to bury their dead. I am done with apparitions."

  Olivia's eyes filled. "But you loved her!"

  "I will always love her," he assured her gently. "One clings to the dead when there is nothing living to turn to. Now, it seems, there are others to love." He brushed her wet lids with his fingertips. "Don't cry. You know I cannot bear your tears and you have cried enough."

  Mesmerised by the still-bobbing blur on the surface of the water, she could not wrench her eyes away from it. She was racked with renewed shame. "I must tell you that—"