Water Theatre (50 page)

“That's a relief! Good man! Had me worried for a minute. Till next time, then.”

He turned to the door, and was about to open it when the words burst out of me. “I know who it was. I know who you were with.”

Slowly he turned back to face me. “Ah,” he said, though it was little more than a sigh, barely a suppressed gasp.

To fill the intolerable silence I said, “I saw her leave.”

“I see.” He stood there, gripping his bag in one hand while he swept the other across his mouth and cheek. “Do you… do you want to talk about it?”

“Don't you think we should?”

Vaguely he nodded his head. “Do you think I might sit down?”

Leaving his bag in the hall, he followed me through into the sitting room. I asked if he wanted a drink, poured him the stiff whiskey he asked for, and then another for myself. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands supporting his head, staring at the rug on the floor.

“God knows what you must think of me,” he said. “I can't expect you to understand.”

“It was a hell of a shock, Hal.”

“And you must be feeling ill-used.” He nodded as if to confirm the thought. “But you see, the thing is… we had nowhere else to go.”

He glanced up at me out of desolate space, still wearing his jaunty hat. I was thinking that London was full of hotels, that there had been no necessity to implicate me in this disastrous intrigue, and I was on the point of saying so when, to my amazement, I saw tears begin to slip in silence down his face.

I sat down across from him as he dragged a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and pressed it to his face. Then he took off his hat and ran his fingers through his dishevelled hair. “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I'm so sorry.”

Clearing my throat, I said, “You know this can't go on, Hal.”

“No, of course not,” he said. “I can see that it puts you in an impossible position. I wouldn't dream of bringing her here again.”

“It's not just here,” I said. “You can't go on seeing her, Hal. Not like this. Not here, not anywhere.”

I saw from the immediate weary dismay on his face that he must have tried to tell himself the same thing many times, but it took the uncompromising certainty of my voice to confirm the truth of it.

“Yes,” he mumbled, “I suppose you're right.” He picked up his hat by the brim and turned it between his hands. Then he looked up at me, his haggard eyes ardent with appeal. “I wonder if I can make you see?” he pleaded. “I know what you must be thinking, but this isn't the squalid thing it must appear, you know. We do love one another, Efwa and I. And we need one another too. We're both exiles, you see… Both exiled from warmth and understanding. You have no idea how hard it's been. I tried to make it work with Grace after I got back
from Equatoria, but… well, the thing's just dead between us. It's been dead for years. My fault, I'm sure. I know it is. Don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming her. But I can't lie in a cold bed, under judgement, Martin. And I've been so damn lonely and demoralized since everything went wrong out there in Africa.”

For a moment I thought he was about to break down completely. I saw the breath shuddering through him. But he put his knuckles to his teeth, biting back the distress, and managed to regain control. He unclasped his fist, wiped his mouth and began to speak again.

“I've done my best to keep up a front, but…. Well, the truth is I was just about at the end of my tether when Efwa came to talk to me at an exiles' meeting and…” He faltered there and glanced across at me in appeal. “You have to understand, neither of us was looking for anything more than a bit of care and concern… not at first…” Hal closed his eyes and raised his hand to fend off a response. “And of course, I feel rotten with guilt about Adam. Sometimes I wake up sweating in the middle of the night. And then I can't sleep…. But what can you do when lightning strikes? And the thing is, he's no good for Efwa. He thinks he loves her, but he just doesn't understand her needs. He doesn't know how to hold her and keep her. She's only his
dream
of Africa, whereas for me she
is
Africa, heart and soul… in her hopes and her fears, in her little weaknesses as well as in her strength. And the great thing is that she gives me hope. Hope that my life can still be worth something. She makes me feel alive again – though goodness only knows what she can see in a daft old fool like me! But I know I matter to her, Martin. I matter to her very much. We've become each other's life, you see. We're only any good when we're together. Yet there's nowhere for us simply to be…”

Again he turned those blue beseeching eyes my way. But asking for what? Understanding? A degree of sympathy? Consolation even? Or was he hoping that, out of love or loyalty, I might relent and assure him it was fine to carry on using my flat to
make love to a woman who was his daughter-in-law and the wife of my best friend?

“But it's impossible, Hal,” I protested. “Surely you must see that? Imagine what would happen if Adam found out. It doesn't bear thinking about.”

“No, he mustn't,” Hal said. “Of course he mustn't.”

“Then how can there be any future in it? You know better than I do how unstable Adam can be. I'm not sure he could survive finding out about this.” Watching him wince against the pain of that thought, I said, “I have to think about my loyalty to him too.”

“Of course you do,” he answered. “I know I've no right…” – he gave me a beggar's sidelong glance – “but this is between you and me, isn't it? You wouldn't ever tell him?”

“What did I just say? Never in a million years. But you've got to get your head straight. You should never have let this happen in the first place, and now it has to stop. You've got to end it, Hal. Right away, however painful that might be. There's no other way out.”

His voice was little more than a whispered croak as he said, “But what about Efwa?”

“What about Adam? What about Grace?”

He sat there on the couch, staring at his knees, nodding his head.

“You don't even have to think about it, Hal. You know I'm right.”

Loudly he drew in his breath and sat for a time with his eyes closed. “Do you think I might have another drink?” he said eventually, and glanced at his watch. “Then I'd better make for my train, otherwise I won't get back tonight.”

Watching as I poured another whiskey into his glass, he said, “I imagine you must despise me now.”

“Never,” I declared. “I think you've been a damned fool, but which of us hasn't been – especially where women are concerned?”

He nodded, looking suddenly much older in the bleak light from the window, then turned to me again. “I think I'm going to need some support to get through this.”

“I know.”

He seemed to draw some comfort from the response. Two swift swigs at the whiskey began to restore his dignity. But I just wanted him out of the place now, and it came as a relief to hear him say, “I'd better be on my way.” He put his hat back on and looked down where I sat frowning in my chair. “I know how hard this must be on you. But you have no idea how much your kindness and your confidence mean to me.” Then he stretched out his arms towards me. “Would you give me a hug?”

Such a thing had never happened between us before. In the tough northern culture from which Hal and I came, men did not hug each other. But I got to my feet. He advanced towards me, gripped my shoulders in his big embrace and whispered fiercely, “You're a true son to me.” His grip tightened for a moment, and the act felt like a dubbing – an honour unexpectedly conferred.

Not long afterwards, he left. From where I stood at the door, I watched him take a deep breath as he regained some composure from the wreckage of his inner life. Then he straightened himself and walked away, braving the indifferent street like a disgraced politician, head held high.

Less than half an hour later the telephone rang. I'd just stepped out of the shower and stood, wrapped in a towel, listening to an urgent voice on the answering machine saying, “Martin, will you pick this up please?”

It was Marina's voice. I rushed to lift the receiver and said her name.

“I wasn't going to do this,” she began. “I was just going to take off and never see you or talk to you again. But I decided I couldn't do that. That it would be an act of cowardice. That I had to speak to you at least, and hear whatever hypocritical
cant you came up with to justify yourself. I decided that I had to tell you exactly what I thought of you before writing you out of my life once and for all.”

“Marina,” I protested, astounded by her vehemence, “what is this? I don't understand. I've been looking for you everywhere. Where have you been?”

“Where have I been? I'll tell you where I've been. Like the deluded fool I am, I've been in Somerset, working on a painting for you. Then I came back today and went straight to your place, hoping that I might see you, that I might give it to you. So I was there, Martin. I saw.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “This isn't right. I don't think you understand…

“What's to understand?” she shouted down the line. “I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the two of you together. I saw her leave your flat. I saw the way you kissed her as she left. I mean, just what kind of rat are you these days? I know you've had lots of stupid affairs. You told me so yourself. But I can't believe you could sink so low as to include your best friend's wife among them.”

“Marina,” I said, “that wasn't me.”

After a moment's silence she said, “Is that the best you can come up with?”

“I'm telling you the truth.”

“The truth?” Her voice was harsh with sarcasm now. “Right. Okay. If it wasn't you, who was it?”

I stood in silence with the receiver at my ear, thinking quickly, in confusion.

“Come on then,” she defied me. “Let's hear it.”

“I can't tell you,” I said.

“I see. You know who it is, but you can't tell me.”

“Marina,” I said, “you're going to have to trust me about this.”

“Trust you?” The words were an incredulous scoff. “Well, to hell with you, Martin! I learnt a long time ago that I can't trust
men in general, and now I know to my cost that I can't trust you in particular. I'm a painter, for God's sake! What I trust is my eyes, and I know what they've seen. And what they saw disgusted me. So get out of my life, do you hear? And stay out of it. Keep clear of me. Don't try to see me or talk to me ever again. As far as I'm concerned, you don't exist any more.”

She slammed down the phone. The receiver buzzed in my ear. I stood in the silent room, shaking.

I rang back at once, but heard only Marina's voice on the answering machine. I spoke to it, believing her to be listening, but she didn't pick up the receiver. I tried again. Again my recorded pleas elicited no response. I must have rung six or seven times without getting through. After putting down the phone for the last time, I decided to go straight over to Bloomsbury to confront her with the truth about what she had seen.

My knock went unanswered, and though it was getting dark I saw no lights at her windows. I scribbled a note asking her to meet me, telling her how important it was that we talk things through, but even as I pushed the scrap of paper through her letterbox I knew that she must have gone away. She had left London with the explicit purpose of avoiding contact with me, and I guessed she would not be back for some time. Adam might know where she'd gone, but I quailed at the prospect of talking to him now.

Each day that week I rang her several times and got no reply. I wrote draft after draft of a letter trying to explain what had happened, but I couldn't bring myself to post even the one I detested least. I was too conscious of the impact it must have – on Marina first and then on the rest of the family as the shockwave of the truth passed on. Also, rightly or wrongly, I had given my word to Hal.
Never in a million years
, I'd said, contracting myself in perpetuity to protect him from the fallout of his folly. Even though it left me in torment, there were moments when I thought that promise was for the best. At other times I would happily have consigned Hal to whichever fiery hole in hell a vengeful fate might choose for him. But
because Marina was out of reach, and because every cell in my body resisted the prospect of confronting Adam, I was unable to act.

The plan to make me the new Africa correspondent was well advanced. The appointment would take me out of the country for months at a time, and I knew that I couldn't bear the thought of leaving before I had spoken to Marina. So, doing the only thing I could think of, I rang High Sugden in the hope that Grace might know where she was.

“Marina? Oh goodness only knows!” Grace's voice felt distracted and strained. “If she's not in Bloomsbury, I've no idea where she is. It could be that place she goes to in Somerset. Or somewhere abroad even. Italy perhaps.”

“You wouldn't have addresses for her in those places by any chance?”

“Oh dear, Martin, you know what she's like. She's been almost a stranger to us for years now. She never tells me anything. I live half in fear of a policeman turning up at the door some day saying something terrible has happened to her.”

“Marina knows how to look after herself.”

“Yes, but…” Grace sighed down the line. “Anyway, why did you want to see her? Was it something important?”

“Well… It's just that I'll be abroad for quite some time, and I thought it would be good to see her again before I leave.”

“I see. And will you be visiting your mother before you go?”

“I was planning to, yes.”

“Then you might look in on us too. Hal's been gloomy since he came back from London last week. I can't do a thing with him. But you've always been able to cheer him up. Do come and see us, won't you?”