The Forgotten Story (33 page)

‘I'm going to Cape Town in any case,' he said.

‘There's your mother. Why spoil her life? Why should I come between you?'

‘You haven't. We're on perfectly good terms and I think you could be. She's become reconciled to the idea of my going abroad in any event.'

She stirred restlessly, but didn't try to move away.

‘I'm – I'm not your type, Tom. Honestly. I don't fit in. I felt that always before. Why should it –?'

‘One doesn't have to fit in in a new society.'

‘I don't even fit in with you. I'm – not worth your career. I'm restless, capricious, changeable …'

‘I want you as you are. Life can be too safe, too easy. You've made me see that. We're different, but we can each help the other. It's just a question of taking the chance.' He said no more, hardly able to believe that so much progress had been made, afraid to spoil it by a wrong emphasis, the ill-chosen word.

Silence fell in the room. In South Africa the strange stars had moved on two hours ahead in their flight towards a new dawn.

Then he said: ‘There's bitter feeling between the British and the Boers. No one can tell how it will turn. That's another chance.'

She did not reply.

‘All this unpleasantness that's coming,' he said, ‘ will pass quickly enough. It's the further future that counts. If we back it for all we're worth it won't let us down.'

‘Give me two or three days more,' she said. ‘Will you? Then I'll decide.'

He said quickly: ‘As long as you like.'

‘No. Not as long as I like. Two days more. You see – you see, Tom, I'd like to put a term on it. We got married in such a hurry, on the impulse of the moment almost. Then I left you in the same way. When I married you I thought it was for good. I truly meant it to be. Then when I left you I meant that to be for good as well. Now if I come back to you I want that to be all quite changed. I don't want to come back on impulse like a – a beastly shuttlecock. I want it to be entirely deliberate. And if I
do
come back – it's really going to be for good this time.'

He put his hand on her hair for a moment and thought she did not notice.

‘For better or worse,' he said.

‘For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Easy to promise and hard to fulfil. I – I've always felt ashamed of leaving the way I did, for the reasons I did. They seemed good enough at the time, Tom. But sometimes I was desperately ashamed. Somehow, it was because I hated myself so much that I tried to hate you. But – I didn't seem to be able to help it. All sorts of things came up, confused the issue. I – I've tried so hard to hate you. Remember that.'

‘So long as you failed.' ‘I failed.' There was silence in the room. ‘Nothing else matters,' he said. ‘Nothing. Nothing. Sleep now.' Her head settled more comfortably upon him. Her breath for a

time continued to have a catch in it that would not quite settle

down.
He listened to it and wondered if she could hear the beating of

his heart.

In another room Anthony slept. About him the human comedy had played itself out, swinging him with it from time to time as it gyrated. For the most part he had been uncomprehending, either as spectator or participant. The larger issues had passed him by, happening just beyond his purview, casting shadows upon his life but leaving him out of sight of the main procession.

Lonely and forlorn, he had come to the house of Joe Veal at the crucial moment of its decay. Like a sick plant the outer petals of the family had one by one peeled off, at length revealing the worm in its heart. Now the ruin and disintegration was complete. Torn between conflicting loyalties, having no mature standards by which to judge, he had contrived to steer a middle course of which no adult need have been ashamed. Much that was unpleasant had happened to him and more was yet to follow.

But at present, worn out by sea-sickness and nervous strain, he had forgotten what had happened and was ignorant of what was to come.

He did not know how Pat had contrived to be here so soon. He did not know how the cabin door had come to be locked, nor exactly how, when he should have been drowned, he had yet come to be saved. He did not know that the polite gentleman who had questioned him at Tom Harris's would come to see him again in the morning and take down a statement which he would later be required to confirm before a stern old judge in a court of law. He did not know that his young personality and companionship were yet to prove the final cement which would bind together during the next two difficult years the young couple who, after an initial breakdown, had just resolved to begin again.

Nor did he know that his father was married again, to a widow with two young children, and that they could see no place for him in their household. Nor did he know that he would never see Canada, but would travel to South Africa instead.

Being a normal boy and not a seer, he knew none of these things, and for the present did not care. He had been cold and frightened and sick, and now was warm and safe and comfortable.

Anthony slept.

First published in 1964 by Bodley Head

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Copyright © Winston Graham, 1964

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