Death be Not Proud (27 page)

As the wind rose to scream at us through the crazed window, Matthew ran his hands through his hair, preparing to begin.

“The car crash didn't kill her…”

“That's obvious,” I sneered.

“But it left her – Ellen's – spine broken. She's been quadriplegic ever since.”

Intent on my vendetta, there was nothing he could tell me now that would weaken my resolve to detest him.

“And that's your excuse – cheat on your disabled wife. Oh, this gets better and better; you are a
monster
after all.”

That hurt; his mouth turned down and I could sense the tremor run through him, but he didn't stop.

“That's not all; the crash that paralysed her, killed our granddaughter.”

I bit my lip; I could feel my resolve to hate everything about him weakening.

“Don't try the sympathy card on me, Matthew.”

“I'm not telling you to gain your sympathy, Emma; I'm telling you so that you know all the circumstances. What you decide to do with the information will be up to you; but you need to listen – you owe me that much.”

“I owe you
nothing
,” I said sourly.

“Yes – you do. Did you hear what I said? I told you that our
granddaughter
died.”

It finally registered.

“When?”

“Forty-six years ago.”

“But that means…”

His voice dropped as he watched for my reaction. “Yes, what does it mean?”

He let me work it out for myself, just as my tutor did all those years ago in Cambridge.

“But… how old is she?”

“Ellen was born in 1914.”

“She's…”

“Ninety-six, yes.”

My pulse stammered into life as my curiosity gained the better of me.

“Is she the same as you? I mean, is she immortal – or whatever you are?”

“No, she's the same as you, Emma – she will die.” Whether he meant to or not, he shuddered. “I cannot excuse what I have done to you, but I have not betrayed my wife. Whatever you might think of me now, that's one thing of which you cannot accuse me.”

“So what do you call
this
?” I indicated the cabin with an angry glance around the room.

“Ellen knows we are here, and she knows
why
we are here. It was her idea in the first place; she insisted that I tell you.”

“Matthew, this is
sick
.”

He closed his eyes and his mouth drew into a thin line that hardened.

“I said that I would tell you everything; I didn't say it would be easy. Heaven knows I have sought every –
any
– way
to make this easier, but the facts are what they are.”

Shoving the chair away from me with my foot, I stood back from the table.

“I don't know what's worse: thinking you're cheating on your wife, or that she is complicit. Damn it, Matthew, she's
ninety-six
– she's older than my grandmother. Ugh!”

I went over to the broken window, ignoring the frigid air, and looked out as far as the blizzard would allow. I had already worked out that she must be older than he looked, but it never occurred to me that she would be
that
old. Yet – why not? After all, Matthew was four times her age and I hardly recoiled from him.

“What else is there – what else haven't you told me?”

Snow spat at the window; behind me, Matthew shifted position and took a deep breath.

“We have a son – Henry – and…”

“Henry is your
son
?”

“Yes, and Daniel is my grandson…”

“Not your brother.”

“No. And Maggie is our granddaughter. Her sister was killed in the same crash that paralysed my wife.”

I felt cold by the window and goosebumps crawled up my arms despite the thick jumper I wore. But I could hardly tell whether the ice that replaced the fire in my veins was the result of the air, or the leaching of hope that bled from me.

“Emma, please come away from there, come by the fire.”

“Why?”

“Because you're getting cold. There's no point making yourself suffer.”

“No, you've done enough of that for me.”

“Yes, and it has to stop. No more lies, Emma; I don't want to keep anything from you any more.”

I couldn't resist the temptation to resort to sarcasm.

“But I might
run
, Matthew – aren't you frightened that I might run? Doesn't it bother you that I might leave? It worried you before – what's changed?”

A note of resignation sounded in his voice.

“As you said last night, where would you go? I know that I have nowhere; we are as tied to each other as we are to this earth. And besides, I can't keep you without letting you go.”

I turned around to face him squarely. “What's
that
supposed to mean?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It means that I have to let you make the choice whether you stay or go, and you can't do that if you don't know what to base that decision on.”

Echoes of the argument I'd had with my father filtered back to me, and then another conversation – one that Matthew and I held as he cared for me in his room at the college after Staahl's attack – when I felt equally confused but knew so much less about him than I did now.

“Complications, Matthew; this is what you meant, isn't it, when you said there were ‘complications'?”

“Yes.”

I came back to stand in front of the fire, but it made little difference to the cold inside me, and with a grudging degree of acquiescence I said, “You had better tell me the rest of it.”

“It's complicated,” he warned, frowning again.

“Everything about you always is,” I told him, unsmiling, giving him nothing but the time to explain.

 

“I met Ellen in 1933. She was nineteen and the sister of Jack – one of the athletic team – and I stayed with her family on their ranch when we were in training one season.”

I pictured him with a pretty young girl in the wheat-
fields of some prairie in the Midwest and felt instantly and insanely jealous. I pressed my hands together in my lap and said nothing.

“We grew to like one another and married the following spring. Henry came along several years after.”

The thought of Matthew with anyone else galled me. I reminded my green-eyed self that I wasn't supposed to care, remonstrating with my alter ego for my inconsistency. But it was pointless. I pulled my cross from the confines of my jumper and rasped it angrily from side to side on its chain. Matthew had been observing me closely and, although I glared fixedly at the white-hot heart of the fire, from where I sat I saw the flash as his eyes lit at my poorly disguised envy. He pressed the advantage before I recovered, finding a crack in my defences.

“Emma, I was lonely – I'd had centuries of being alone – and Ellen allowed me to feel human for the first time in countless years. I could share some sort of normality with her, something of which I had been only able to dream.”

I crossed my legs and leaned an elbow on my knee, swinging the cross back and forth tetchily, more angry with myself at this moment, than with him.

“Did she know about you – did you tell her?”

Matthew shook his head. “No, I didn't, not at first. She knew I was strong and fast, of course – she liked that – but not
how
strong, nor
how
fast. She always worried that I didn't eat enough – that was more difficult to hide – but not impossible.” His voice became faraway and I felt the thrill of envy crawl through me again.

“Things were fine between us until after the war. I served as a medic again – wars are useful for creating enough confusion to lose oneself in all the paperwork; but when I came back, she noticed the difference in me.”

“How?”

“Because I hadn't changed. I stayed on in Europe to help with the privations after the end of the war, so I'd been gone for some time. All the other husbands and sons returned scarred in one way or another – emotionally or physically and sometimes both – but I remained unchanged. And not only that, but I looked as young as I did when I went away.”

Although I resisted, I could feel myself being drawn inexorably into the story of his life.

“How did you explain it to her?”

“Well…” He ran his hands through his hair again, making the gold strands stick up haphazardly before he repeated the action, smoothing them back. “I did and I didn't. Ellen didn't have the advantage of your education nor your perception, so I kept my background and my real age to myself.”

I stopped sliding my cross and stared at him.

“She doesn't know where you come from? Still?”

He shook his head slowly. “No, I never told her; I didn't think she would cope with it, I thought she might…”

“Run,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes.”

“But she must have noticed over – however many years you've been married…”

“Of course she
knows
,” he interrupted. “She's not as educated as you are, but she's sharp, intelligent.”

“I didn't mean to imply she wasn't,” I said defensively; “just that she must have asked sooner or later.”

“Sorry.” He drew his hand across his eyes, a gesture he always made when confronted with something that made him uneasy. “Yes, she did. I told her that something had happened during the war – a nerve agent or some such nonsense – that had slowed the ageing process.”

“And she accepted that?”

“Yes. Whether she believed me is another matter; but she accepted what I told her. I think that it was either that or face making a choice.”

“Which was?”

“To stay or go.”

“Oh,
that
one.”

He threw an almost haunted look at me and I returned it stonily. He dropped his gaze and continued.

“We were happy enough together; Henry was growing up and we had a home – although we had to move every so often – and financially we were very comfortable. She stayed.”

There was something in what he said or the way he said it that made me think there must be more to be said on that subject, but just for once I didn't press him, and let him carry on.

“The problems started when Henry met Monica. She was… feisty – also very bright – and a few years older than Henry. We hadn't been in the situation before of having an outsider join our small family; it was a bit of an unknown. Henry, of course, had grown up with me being the way I am; he accepted me because Ellen did and he had known no other life.”

“Monica is no longer alive? You talk about her in the past tense.”

He looked surprised. “Do I? I don't mean to.” He slid forward from the armchair on which he sat and knelt on one knee in front of the stove. As he opened the glass door, a blast of heat scalded my face even where I sat, several feet away.

“
Matthew…!
” He looked back over his shoulder at me, a heavy piece of timber in one hand, ready to throw on the fire. The smell of scorching cloth reached me. “You'll set your clothes on fire!”

He looked down at his chest and brushed his hand over the wool of his sweater.

“Mmm, I'll have to be more careful.”

“Yes, you will!” I wasn't supposed to care and, although I assumed him to be fireproof, I didn't want to test the theory, and the thought of him going up in flames was more than I could cope with at the moment. He threw the log on the fire and closed the door and settled back into his chair. He crossed his legs and placed the tips of his fingers together, looking like a learned professor about to lecture a student. He didn't say anything for a moment and I thought that he had forgotten what he was saying.

“Monica…?”

“Ah yes,
Monica
. Henry and Monica had two daughters: little Ellen and Margaret – Maggie. We all lived together in the same house; we had different parts of it, but we shared meals together, that sort of thing. Monica was observant – too observant. She began to ask questions – not only about me, but about Henry also.”

“Why Henry?”

“Henry… how shall I put it?” Matthew paused while he formulated an answer, searching the pine-clad ceiling for words in which to describe his son. “He has some of my attributes, let's say. He looks like me, for a start, and he hasn't aged as you would expect.”

“But he is ageing?”

“Yes, he is getting older.” He sounded dejected and for a second looked away. “Anyway, Monica noticed. It was more obvious in me, of course, but then over the years with Henry also, and she started asking questions. When she didn't get the answers she expected, she searched elsewhere for them.”

“What do you mean, ‘searched'?”

“She consulted scientists, doctors – even clairvoyants. We had to talk to her, but she wouldn't listen, she wouldn't stop. Then there were the girls. They were showing the same signs of not ageing as quickly. Henry had reached his early thirties by that time, but looked at least ten years younger. Then little Ellen, especially, still looked only six or so, when she was ten.”

I thought of Flora wanting to be very grown up at eight. “I bet she didn't like that.”

“No, not much,” he smiled sadly. “It wasn't as evident with Maggie – not then, at least. Monica started taking them to doctors to have tests. They hated it – they weren't guinea pigs, for goodness' sake, they were just children! Henry tried to stop her but she made life hell for him and she…” I heard a distinct crunch of teeth meeting as Matthew shut his mouth before he said something he might regret. “She became obsessed with the whole concept. Henry said that if she didn't stop he would take them and leave. But she wouldn't stop, Emma, she just wouldn't
listen
.”