Water Theatre (36 page)

Towards the end of term, never thinking for a moment that she would accept, I invited Marina to my college's May Ball. As a buffer against rejection, I suggested that a bohemian artist such as she had become would probably have no interest in attending this bourgeois mating ritual, but I thought it worth a try. She came and appeared out of the room I'd rented for her in the Blue Boar, wearing the expensive midnight-blue dress which her father had bought for her birthday three years ago. When I told her that it looked stunning on her, she said, “It seemed a pity not to give it at least one outing.”

“You've never worn it before?”

“And probably won't ever again.”

“Hal would love to see you in it.”

“Yes, but he never will.”

“Oh come on,” I protested, “I thought you'd have given up fighting him by now.”

“I have,” she answered, “but that doesn't mean I have to please him.”

“Well, we don't have to please anyone but ourselves tonight. Let's enjoy it, shall we?”

“I mean to do just that.”

And she did – the champagne, the food, the dance band beating out quicksteps and foxtrots in the hall, the jazz combo in the marquee, the string quartet playing Mozart and Vivaldi in the cloisters, the tall stained glass of the chapel windows illuminated from inside. Marina and I were as relaxed in each other's company as at any time since the night she'd come to my room at High Sugden – which is to say, of course, that she was more relaxed than me.

Over dinner we chatted about Adam for a time. On the few occasions she and I had been together that year, Adam had also been present, so this was our first chance to talk about him freely. What did I really think, she wanted to know, about his commitment to Efwa Nkansa, and how serious was her attachment to him?

I told her I wasn't sure on either count and that, for all I knew, it might be no more than a mutual infatuation that would burn out as quickly as it had flared up.

“That's what I'm afraid of,” she said. “I don't understand why mum and dad didn't let Adam stay on in Africa. It would have given them time to find out whether it was going to work.”

Later, as we leant on the parapet of the bridge looking down at the punters waiting for the firework display to begin, I risked asking her about her lover in London. “How does he feel about you being here with me tonight?”

“That's over,” she said.

“By your choice or his?”

“His actions, my choice.”

I nodded. “Can't say I liked him much. Wasn't he a bit old for you anyway?”

“That wasn't the problem – though he did turn out to be too like my father.”

“In what way?” I asked, surprised.

“Full of big ideals about how the world should be run. Also a complete rat in his private life. Don't look so surprised – you must know about Hal's affairs!”

“Not really,” I mumbled.

“Oh come on, Martin, you can't be that naive.”

“Well, I'd wondered of course. I mean, he's very attractive to women, but…” I slid away from half-truths. “Anyway, what about your man? Is he married then?”

“He was. His wife had the sense to leave him. But he still screws around.”

“And you were hoping for something else?”

“Yes,” she said flatly, “fool that I am.”

“I don't think you're a fool.”

Marina turned to look at me, shaking her head. “You've never seen any of us very clearly, have you? Not me, not Adam, not Hal. Not even poor old mum, I bet, and she's the simplest of us all. You always think the best of us, don't you? But we're not like you, us Brigshaws. We're not straightforward, not any of us.”

“Is that how you think of me?”

“Course I do. You're just about the most honest person I know.”

Swallowing, I said, “Do you think it was honest of me to ask you here tonight as if we were just friends? As if I didn't still want you more than anyone I know?”

“Why do you think I came?” she asked. “Do you really want to watch these fireworks? Haven't you got a room in college?”

Marina and I in bed together again then, albeit my narrow single bed, and with a rowdy, drunken noise rising from the room below us on the staircase. I was trembling as I helped her out of the dress, but she smiled and said, “You've done this before.”

She was right, of course. During my second year in college my confidence had grown, and a few of the girls who cycled in from Newnham or Homerton had proved responsive to my northern accent and a spurious air of knowing what I was about – an air that soon became more self-possessed. But that night with Marina was different. Our mouths opened softly as they met. My heart swayed as we slipped out of our clothes. Then we lay together on the bed and filled that intimate dark space with kisses and whispers, ignoring the noise from the floor below. Tenderly I gave myself over to love for her, and though it might have been nervous and unseasoned, love it surely was; so I dared to call it by its name.

“But are you sure it's me you love?” she said quietly.

“Of course I'm sure,” I answered at once. “I'm absolutely sure.”

“You might just be in love with love itself.”

“I don't see how there can be a difference. I love being in love, yes. It makes me feel more real, more completely me. But it's you who makes it happen,” I insisted. “It's only you I love. It only ever has been you.”

So we kissed and held each other more closely still, but when I lay over her, lifting my hand gently to her face, I felt the dampness of tears on her skin.

“What is it?” I pushed myself up to gaze down at her. “Are you all right?”

“It's nothing,” she whispered, turning her face away. “I was just thinking,”

“What were you thinking about?”

“I'm sorry. It doesn't matter.”

“If you're crying,” I said, “it matters. Tell me. What is it?” In the half-light of the room she turned to look up at me again. Her eyes searched mine, her gaze more vulnerable than I'd ever seen it before.

“Tell me,” I said again.

“I was thinking about the abortion.”

Softly as that whisper came across the narrow space between us, it pierced right through me.

“I'm sorry,” she gasped, “I shouldn't have said anything… It's not fair…”

“Yes, you should. It's part of who you are. It's part of what I love.”

“You can't really mean that.”

“I do. I do mean it – even though that must have been a terrible time for you.”

I shifted my weight to lie beside her again, stroking her cheek with my fingertips, and felt the breath shaking through her.

“The worst thing,” she began. “The worst thing was when I knew that…” But again she faltered there.

“What?” I asked, afraid to hear yet feeling her need to speak. “Go on.”

“It was as if a presence I had felt inside me vanished. As if a spirit had been there for a while, for a purpose, then left.”

Gently I tightened the fold of my arm across her. We lay together in silence, filled with mutual sadness, mourning her loss. Some time later, in the half-light of my room, to the accompaniment of the revellers singing a rugby song on the floor below, I found the courage to say, “Marry me.”

“No,” she answered at once, “I can't do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it wouldn't be right… Because we don't know who we are yet.”

“I know that I love you. I know that I want to be with you.”

“Oh God, it's so loving of you,” she said ruefully, her eyes closed, “but think about it, Martin. We're still at the start of everything. I've already made big mistakes. If we give away our freedom now, before we've even begun to understand what it means for us, we might end up hating each other.”

“I could never hate you,” I protested.

“If we don't know who we are,” she said, “we don't know what we might do.”

“I'm prepared to take that risk.”

“I'm not, Martin. Not for myself, and not for you either.”

I would have pressed her further, but her voice was too firm. Also, even as I braced myself against it, a part of me, my inward observer, felt secretly relieved by her refusal. Then, for a time, we were overtaken by a further sense of loss – both of us, I think, though each in different ways. So we lay cradled in each other's arms for a long time, each with our own thoughts, uttering no more than a few hesitant sentences of mutual tenderness and consolation, until Marina said that she thought it best if I took her back to the hotel.

Nevertheless, I woke the next morning hoping that something permanent had begun between us, however long it might take to mature; but I was wrong. I didn't even see Marina again until some months later, and by then it had become clear that she was avoiding me. I suspected it already by Graduation Day. Hal and Grace had flown home from Africa for the occasion, but for reasons that were not at all convincing Marina decided not to come to Cambridge with them. Yet I was more relieved than disappointed by the decision, for with her mother and mine chatting together outside the Senate House, I could only look on, flustered and ridiculous in my hood and gown, seriously thankful that Marina was not there to complicate an already fraught situation.

Meanwhile, as my father gazed in wonder down sunlit King's Parade, he was telling Hal that he'd had no idea how cushy a life his son had been living for the past three years. And then, throughout lunch, undeterred by the fact that his experience was largely limited to seafront bars and bazaars, he regaled Hal with his wartime knowledge of Africa “from Cairo to the Cape”.

Hal listened patiently enough, and deepened my affection for him by saying in his West Riding accent, “Well, unless I'm much mistaken, Jack, it won't be long before your Martin has seen more of the world than you and me put together.” But
then he glanced briefly across at Adam, who was furious with his parents for not bringing Efwa out of Africa with them, and added as he looked away again, “As for that lad of mine, I've no idea when he's going to shape up and frame himself.”

Adam and I had booked a punt to take our parents along the Backs that afternoon. On the way to Mill Lane we met Larry Stromberg coming out of Fitzbillies, accompanied by a tall person of indeterminate gender wearing a velvet jacket and a pair of purple trousers. Larry paused to nod amiably at my parents. My father stared in amazement at the other person's tangled red hair and blue eye shadow as Larry congratulated Hal on the medium-term success of his efforts to bring the empire of the Philistines down about their ears. Then the pair sauntered off down Trumpington Street with Larry's arm draped round his friend.

When we arrived at the millpond, Adam grabbed the pole and stepped onto the counter of the punt, leaving me holding on to the painter. Hal handed my mother down to sit beside Grace, then he and my father settled themselves on the cushions at Adam's feet. Perched in the bow, I pushed off, scowling at the remote figure of Adam, who poled the punt downstream, safely above it all.

Having expressed her admiration for the woodwork of Queen's Bridge and the view of King's, my mother turned to Grace, remarking what a pity it was that Marina hadn't joined us. If truth were told, she admitted, she and Jack had hoped that something was quietly going on between the Brigshaws' daughter and me.

“Oh I believe there once was,” Grace said, smiling. “But you know how these things are. I think they're just good friends these days. Isn't that right, Martin?”' She rested her hand on my mother's arm. “But I'm sure he'll have no difficulty finding a more reliable girlfriend than Marina. It's really her loss. Believe me, if I was twenty years younger I could quite fancy him myself!”

And the two women laughed together at the idea.

Was that the last time I heard Grace laugh, I wonder? I don't suppose it was, but when I look back across my later memories of her, it's a forlorn figure that comes to mind, bitter and pitiful, as though life had reneged on all the early promises it made, disappointing her at every turn.

Hal and Grace did not stay in England for long after that day, but it was long enough for Hal to antagonize both his children once again. I was briefly back home in Calderbridge for my cousin Kathy's wedding at the time, so I didn't hear about their big row until Adam told me about it afterwards. He was still fuming after Hal's renewed attack on his plan to bring Efwa to England and marry her. Marina had sprung to her brother's defence, and succeeded only in calling Hal's frustrated rage down on her own head. When he accused her of degenerating into some sort of artsy trollop with no morals to speak of, she retorted that it was he who had convinced her of the hypocrisy of bourgeois values – not through any of his high-minded rhetoric, but by his furtive escapades outside marriage.

Then it was open warfare between them. Even Adam had been shocked by Marina's vehemence, particularly when she dismissed Hal's involvement in African affairs as no more than a further twist in the history of white colonialism. Hal might have set himself up as an autocrat playing at politics in Equatoria, she declared, but he shouldn't delude himself into thinking that anyone took him seriously in the UK – least of all his own children.

Astonishingly the row ended with Marina standing her ground unshaken, while Hal stormed out of the flat into the London night, leaving Grace to repair the damage as best she could before making her way back to their hotel by taxi.

At her mother's entreaty, Marina had turned up the next day for a brief and uneasy show of reconciliation before Hal and Grace flew back to Equatoria. After they'd gone, Marina told
Adam she thought he was a fool to be contemplating marriage. Why was he mortgaging his whole life that way when it had scarcely yet begun? Had he learnt nothing from their parents' disastrous relationship? As for herself, she was a free woman and intended to remain so for the rest of her days.