Coral Glynn (19 page)

She suddenly remembered that his Christian name was Walter, although she had of course never called him by that name. The children had called him Papa and Mrs DeVries had called him Terry. He was wearing a sleeveless vest and short pants. His white legs were crossed, one knee over the other; one of his large bare feet dangled in the sunlight. He had a glass of something—whiskey, probably—from which he occasionally sipped, on the grass beside his chair. Once or twice he reached out to stroke the dog, who seemed to only tolerate this attention.

For a moment she thought perhaps it was enough to have come this far, to have merely seen him. Because she did not know exactly why she had come, or what she exactly wanted, it was difficult to know what to do or when to leave.

It occurred to her that if she had a gun, she could kill him. Shoot him and walk calmly back to the station and return to London and no one would ever know. While she was thinking this, the dog whined again and Mr DeVries looked up from his book and saw her. He shielded his eyes with his hand. “Hello,” he called. “Are you looking for Rosalind?”

She did not answer him.

“Hello,” he said again, and got up from his chair. He laid his book splayed open upon the grass and walked towards her. He was smiling. His bare legs were very white, and hairy. He wore a sort of kerchief knotted around his neck. He looked more than a little ridiculous.

“Hello,” he said again as he approached the gate into the side yard.

“Hello,” she said then.

“Looking for Rosalind? I’m afraid she’s not here.” He drew closer but still did not recognise her. He was smiling. “She’s on holiday with the kiddies,” he said.

“I’m not here to see Rosalind,” Coral said.

“Oh. Are you collecting for something? I’m afraid I haven’t got any money on me at the moment.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not collecting.”

“Oh,” he said again. He sounded perplexed. “What is it, then? Can I help you with something?”

“Perhaps,” said Coral.

“Look, who are you? What’s this about?”

“Do you really not recognise me?” Coral asked.

“I don’t,” he said. “Who are you? Do I know you?”

“You did,” said Coral.

He stepped a bit closer to her, but there was still a hedge and the fence between them. His face had changed: all the bonhomie had left it and was replaced by tension. “Look,” he said, “what are you doing here? What do you want?”

“So you do remember me,” said Coral.

“You’ve changed,” he said.

“I suppose I have,” said Coral. “A lot has happened to me.”

He said nothing. After a moment, when she did not speak, he said, “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing from you. I’ve come to give you something. Something I don’t want.”

“What?” he asked.

“This,” she said. She twisted the ring off her finger and held it out to him.

He did not move. “What’s that?” he asked.

“The ring,” she said. “It belongs to your wife. I don’t want it.”

“Well, neither do I,” he said. “And neither does she. Keep it.”

“I told you, I don’t want it. Take it.”

“You came here to give me the ring back?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s odd,” he said.

“I don’t think it is,” said Coral.

He walked towards her then and stood just beside the hedge, and reached out over it, over the fence, and took the ring from her. Their fingers did not touch; he was careful to touch only the ring. He held the ring in his palm and looked at it for a moment. And then he looked up at Coral. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very sorry for what happened to you. For what I did to you.”

Coral said nothing.

“It was awful what I did to you,” he said. “I’m sorry. Rosalind was in a depression because of the kids, and—” he paused. “No,” he said. “There’s no excuse. I’m sorry.”

“There was a child,” she said, “but it is gone. I had an abortion.”

He winced then, and raised his hand with the ring up to cover his eyes and the ring fell in the grass at his feet.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. “Do you need money?”

“No,” she said. “You can do nothing for me.” She looked at him again for a moment and then, surprising herself, said, “Good-bye.”

She turned and walked back around to the front of the house and then down the pathway and onto the street. Quickly she walked up to the corner and turned onto Winslow Road. The little boy with the glasses and the eye patch stood on the sidewalk in front of the house opposite number 41, as if he were waiting for her. He had a little stuffed monkey on a leash that he could somehow make jump up and down and clash little tin cymbals, and for his sake she pretended to be frightened and shrieked and jumped back, and the boy laughed, and she continued walking back to the High Street and she passed the café where she had eaten her lunch and then the shop were she had made her purchases—where the tea towel and eggcup waited behind the counter for her to collect—but she realised she did not want them anymore; perhaps she had not wanted them to begin with. Who knew what one wanted and what one didn’t want?

PART FOUR

The Loftings had separate bedrooms, and each was a kingdom unto itself. Dolly’s boudoir has been described, but Robin’s has not. It was a large, spare room, located at the far end of the hall from Dolly’s, with windows on three sides, which made it the brightest room in the house as well as the coldest. The bare walls were painted a tea-stained cream, and the few pieces of furniture stood at a distance from one another, like unsociable guests at a cocktail party. Only a few personal effects were visible: a stuffed bear sat atop the bureau and a model plane hung by a nylon thread from the ceiling; a second thread had been severed, causing the plane to seem to be in a perpetual crashing nosedive towards the linoleum floor. Anyone seeing this room would assume it belonged to a boy—perhaps a dead boy, and that it had been left untouched in memory.

Every now and then Dolly would visit Robin’s room while he was away and carefully search it, looking for she knew not what. She had no moral qualms about this inspection, for she reasoned that if they shared a bedroom, as so many married couples did, she would be privy to everything it contained, and therefore she had license to examine the contents of her husband’s private chamber.

And though she often searched his spartan room, she never found anything that was hidden, nothing secret or thrilling. And this made her sad, for she would have liked to know that Robin had some sort of a secret life, for it is a burden to complement one’s partner’s life completely.

And then one day in the late spring, she found the letters, hidden between
Stalky & Co.
and
The Light That Failed
, two of the uniform editions of Kipling that Robin kept on his little bookshelf. The envelopes were plain and addressed simply to C. Hart c/o Lofting, Eustacia Villa, Harrington, Leicestershire. All three envelopes remained sealed. She immediately opened and read them.

Dear Clement,

I am here in London and have found a place to stay, a hotel with weekly rates. The address to write to me is The Pavilion Hotel, 24 Chiswick Street, London. I hope you are well and that I hear from you soon. I am so sorry about the trouble I have caused you by being foolish about the girl in the woods. You have been so kind to me and I miss your kindness. So please write to me here as soon as you are able.

Truly yours,

Coral

Dear Clement,

I have moved from the Pavilion Hotel into a room in a house on Grantley Terrace owned by a Polish woman. She is very nice and the room is fine and I have a job now with the National Health. So all is well with me. I’ve returned several times to the Pavilion but there is no letter from you. I suppose this means you have changed your feelings about me and do not care to be in touch with me any longer. But perhaps you did not receive my first letter? If that is the case the address you can write to me now is Coral Glynn, c/o Madame Wiola Paszkowska, 16 Grantley Terrace, London, or you can write to the Pavilion Hotel, I will still check there for mail, and they know me there and will keep it for me (if you send something). I hope you are well and nothing unfortunate has happened. Please write to me I miss you and often think of you.

Coral

Dear Clement,

It has been more than two months and I have not heard from you so I will not write to you again. I understand now why you sent me away and agree that is better this way, I am sorry I did not understand it then and bothered you with my letters. It was all a mistake and I am very sorry for whatever I have done but I know it is for the best. If you feel differently at some future time, please write to me, c/o Madame Wiola Paszkowska, 16 Grantley Terrace, London. (I no longer go to the Pavilion Hotel.) But I will not write to you again, ever again.

Coral Glynn

*   *   *

Dolly was silent that night at dinner. Robin was aware that she often looked up from her plate and gazed at him across the table, but said nothing. “What’s wrong?” he finally asked. “You seem preoccupied.”

“Perhaps I am,” said Dolly. “I was thinking about Coral. And how odd it is that she has never written to Clement.”

“Odd?” asked Robin.

“Yes. Remember how she told us she would write to him, and send the letter here?”

“Of course,” said Robin.

“And she has never written.”

“No,” said Robin. “Unless she sent the letter directly to Clement.”

“But he told us, only last week, that he had heard nothing. And every time he sees me, he asks if a letter has arrived.”

“Well, perhaps she sent him a letter breaking things off, and he is only keeping up the pretence.”

“No,” said Dolly. “Not Clement. He would tell us. Or you, certainly. It is odd.”

“You can never know what is odd about other people,” said Robin. “Things may appear odd, but that does not mean that they are. Usually there are very good reasons for things.”

He paused, and as Dolly said nothing, he continued: “I imagine that once Coral arrived in London she decided she was well done with Clement. Their marriage made so little sense. You said so yourself.”

“Yes,” said Dolly. “It seemed odd to me. So much seems odd to me, even if what you say about odd things is true.”

Robin said nothing.

“Odd and sad,” said Dolly. “It is all very sad to me.”

“I think it is best to forget about it. For Clement’s sake.”

“You are always thinking of Clement,” said Dolly. “You are such a good friend to him. A dear friend.”

Robin ducked his face and covered it with both hands.

Dolly sat quietly, observing him.

After a moment he lowered his hands and looked at her. His eyes shone and his cheeks were damp. “You found the letters,” he said.

“Yes,” said Dolly.

“Then why did you do that? It isn’t like you: it’s cruel,” Robin said. “Why did you play with me like that?”

“It is you that have been playing. I think it is all a game with you: your love for Clement, and for me. If you have any love. Is that how you see it? Feel it? Is it a game you are playing?”

“No,” said Robin. “Of course not.”

“I can imagine no other explanation,” said Dolly.

“I am ashamed,” said Robin.

“Yes,” said Dolly, “at least there is that.” She stood up and left the room, leaving Robin alone at the table. He sat there for a very long time, because there did not seem to be anything for him to do, or anywhere he could go.

*   *   *

When he finally did go upstairs to his bedroom, he saw that Dolly had left the letters on top of his dressing table. He realised that if he gave them to Clement now, it would be the end of their friendship. What a hard, unsatisfying word: “friendship.” It was worth very little, friendship. It did not keep you warm at night. You could not even touch it. Friendship gave you a little bit of something you needed a lot of, slowly starving you, weakening you, breaking you down.

He took the letters into his bathroom and burnt them in the sink, where they left a charred mess of ashes, which he washed down the drain. And then he scrubbed the sink until there was no shadow left upon the porcelain, and washed his hands, and undressed, and put on his pyjamas, and got into bed, where he lay awake for a long time, not crying or feeling very much of anything—just a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of something—a light or a sound deep within him—going out, stopping, leaving him alone in the dark.

*   *   *

For a moment, when the front door of Hart House opened, Dolly did not recognise Mrs Prence. In the first place, she was dressed to go out, wearing a boldly, almost alarmingly green-and-gold-checked coat and a green felt hat with gold feathers in its brim. And she seemed quite alive, which was not a quality that Dolly had ever before associated with Mrs Prence, and so she was taken aback. Her gloved hand was pulled instinctively to her heart, and she gave a tiny gasp.

“Mrs Prence!” she exclaimed.

“Good afternoon, Mrs Lofting,” Mrs Prence said, standing aside so that Dolly might enter the house.

“You are going out?” asked Dolly. It was a well-known fact that Mrs Prence shunned the world, and rarely emerged from the gloom within Hart House.

“I am going into town to have lunch with a friend,” said Mrs Prence, as if it were something that happened every day. “You are here to see the Major, I assume?”

“I am,” said Dolly. “Is he at home?”

“Of course,” said Mrs Prence. “He goes nowhere. In the library all day, every day, staring at the four walls.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you,” said Dolly. “I can find my own way.”

“I’m in a hurry to catch the bus,” said Mrs Prence, “as I don’t want to be late for my appointment.”

“Of course,” said Dolly. “Enjoy your lunch. You are looking so well. For a moment I didn’t recognise you.”

“I don’t think people change as much as all that,” Mrs Prence enigmatically proclaimed, and hastened out the front door and down the steps.

Dolly removed her coat and gloves and scarf and laid them across a chair in the front hall. It was very quiet in the house, and the air smelt stale, as if it had all been breathed a few too many times. The door to the library was closed and she knocked upon it.