He said often that he loved her, like a perfect gentleman who had been used to obeying and getting obedience all his life. But he never said why, and she was ashamed at telling herself that it was not enough. She couldn’t let him know what she wanted, yet couldn’t bear to wait for him to say what she needed to hear. If he couldn’t tell her why he loved her she would rather be told why he hated her than have him say nothing in response to the basic question. She hadn’t gone through the misery of leaving one marriage in order to accept something which was not good enough for her, and, since she loved him so much, was not good enough for him either.
Yet every gesture and action proved that he certainly did love her, a new experience that was overwhelming, making her the victim of an intoxicating see-saw of emotion which at times she doubted her ability to live through. The intensity of her new life (was it new, and why?) daunted her to such an extent that she couldn’t finally say that she wanted it. There must be something else apart from this – and death.
He seemed made for the sun, walking by the blue sea and smoking his cigar without any cares, happy with her, adoring her. She had never been adored before. There was nothing she lacked. If anyone had asked if she were happy she would say yes. She was. There was no other answer. They had been here a week, so long that it had become timeless. They never talked about leaving. No question of pushing on. No discussion of what new place to see. Neither joy nor anguish on the merits of staying for ever in one place. Every morning he woke at six and went for a swim. He got out of bed with more alacrity and punctuality while travelling, as if he were still at sea perhaps, and had his duty to perform, than he had when at home and needed to rise by the alarm clock.
They walked the same route, drank coffee at the same place. But the afternoons were different. ‘Tell me something,’ she said.
‘I’m an afternoon man,’ he told her. ‘Having been a morning man all my life, I can now afford to be. My faculties don’t prosper till the afternoon, even though I’m an early riser.’
She stopped at a stall and bought a postcard for Judy. ‘I miss her.’ She counted the ships on the sea. ‘Strange as it may seem. There’s a part of me that’s always wanted to be independent like Judy.’
They walked across the road. Water flickered into grits of white, visibility sharpening on the horizon. ‘You mean that you would like to live alone, as Judy does?’
‘I wanted to for years. It seemed the nearest thing to heaven. But I didn’t make the break when the longing was most intense. I got used to the torment, and so couldn’t snap free. I grew resigned.’
‘You did it, eventually.’
‘In a somnolent kind of way.’ They walked along the shore. ‘But I didn’t make a dramatic exit like Judy.’
‘Who knows what her exit was like?’ He laughed. ‘I’m sure no prize was ever offered for the most lacerating departure, though I imagine it was just as difficult and agonizing for you as for Judy.’
‘But it took me nearly twenty years.’
They watched cars driving along the road. ‘And you still want to live alone?’
‘I was doing so when we met.’
He remembered.
‘I actually thought I was enjoying it, and maybe I was. But presumably the state didn’t suit me. Do you ever remember the time when you saved my life?’
‘I relive it occasionally, hoping you’ll never think I did the wrong thing.’
She held his hand as they walked. ‘What day is it? I’ve lost count.’
‘Friday, according to my almanac.’
‘I didn’t want to live alone.’ She added after a pause: ‘What surer proof could you want?’
‘It’s not only me you’re living with,’ he said, stopping to relight his cigar by cupping the end in his hand against the wind.
She stopped, and looked at him. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s not only you I’m living with, is it? It’s your past, your ideas, and all the different people in thousands of years who have gone to producing you. It’s your nationality, religion, dreams, battles, great migrations – if there were any; struggles and miseries, all the human permutations of every kind of change, which there obviously were; the strife and jubilations, which I hope there were. You wanted to escape, but I pulled you back into them. I shan’t remind you of that again. I never intended to, but it still seems to be what we’re talking about. I belong to you and your millions of bits and pieces for as long as you’ll allow me to. I’m part of them, just as you are a part of mine, and you know as much about my past as I do myself, because we went through that heap of intimidating evidence in the flat, and I told you everything bit by bit as it came to light. So neither of us can live apart from each other. Even if we went away this minute and never met again we wouldn’t really separate. By living together, we are interdependent, yet still independent, in a peculiar sort of way. I see you as more truly liberated than Judy, more courageous. You’ve been through a great deal more, and I know you are still going through it – though I’m not diminishing her suffering, either.’
She saw his face, the same she had glimpsed while driving and thought so empty. Did he teem with speculations every minute of the day? It was the same face she had woken up to after killing herself. She was amazed, yet glad to hear him talk, for how else could she know what was in his mind if, as was generally the case, she was too craven to question him directly, or too indifferent to want to know anything.’
She walked on in order to maintain her smile of equanimity, for she was exhausted by uncertainty and self-distrust. He saw more in her than there was, she thought, something he wanted to perceive but which did not exist. He was doing his best in every way. Or maybe it did not exist – whatever it was – because she did not wish it to. Who was he to say that it did, or she to say that it did not? – this mysterious quality she could not get hold of. She didn’t want to disappoint him by denigrating herself, though it was hard not to. But if all that he mentioned was a reality then it was something she herself could neither see nor feel, and therefore if it was present to him and not to her there was an imbalance in their association which, however she tried to correct it, would be the end of her independence for ever. He spoke in this way because he wanted something from her which she did not know existed, and which she might not want to give even if it turned out to be there and she eventually discovered what it was.
He also wanted to give something to her. That was certain. He already had, but she found it harder to receive than to give, and was terrified at becoming enmeshed by it. But perhaps it had already happened, and if so, there was no cause to be afraid. She had abandoned everything, but was there nothing else to be done but go on with him?
In the old town there was a market selling an abundance of vegetables and fruits, as well as olives, spicy sausage, cheeses and bread. He bought a bag full, did the buying, chaffing at the women as if he spoke their language perfectly and not just a few phrases which, she had to admit, he mimicked pretty well. They loved him, she saw. He flirted and they flirted. It was their way. And they smiled as if they loved her as well. She bought a melon while his back was turned, and the woman who handed it to her knew she was pregnant.
They drove along the coast to where it wasn’t too crowded.
‘I thought sailors couldn’t swim,’ she said, taking her clothes off.
‘It’s not that they can’t. It’s often that it does them no good when they have to try.’