Seahorse (27 page)

“Eleven,” I corrected.

Myra fished out a cigarette and lighter from her pocket. I'd never seen her smoke before.

In the wind, the branches curled around us, drawing closer.

“I was exactly like you… Nicholas was… was like breath. I met him in London, at a concert. He told me he watched only my fingers while I played… and my mouth.” She exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “I was twenty-one and thought I'd met a god. Someone so impeccably perfect… I found it hard to believe he was real. We didn't seem to do what other people… other couples did… with him I felt I was watching the world from afar… that it was all out there, everything I ever wanted, and I could reach out and touch it. It was that simple. And so it continued… until one day, he told me he was leaving for India, that he was going away on fieldwork…”

She lifted her head, gazing at something ahead that I couldn't spy.

“Have you ever counted time? I mean, really, counted the minutes, the days, like your mind is some kind of giant hourglass. I wrote him letters everyday—some I just tore up and threw away, scared they might overwhelm him… some I posted…”

“You wrote him letters?”

“Endlessly…”

I want you in me.

Always,

M.

Even though it was midday, the sky had grown overcast, the sun swiftly hidden behind low, quilted clouds. The day glowed with a hidden light, lit from within.

“At some point,” she continued, “I planned this elaborate surprise to travel to India to see him… I was full of him, and only him, and being apart felt like a million needles tearing at me…”

I thought of that afternoon on the lawn, when Myra walked out in her grey dress, still sleepy. “And then you landed up…”

She nodded. “That December… yes, he was so angry. I'd never seen him… anyone… so … angry.” Her voice was soft, almost as though she was speaking to herself. I could only imagine his fury; he'd never directed his wrath at me, but I'd had hints of it, an abrupt stormy sullenness, a swift impatience.

She tugged at a branch again, and let it swing back. “I'd built up this vision of happiness… and he was enraged by my appearance. I couldn't understand it. But there was nothing to be done… I was there, and I couldn't leave… at least he didn't make me leave. I remember that morning, he went away… I don't know where… for a while, and when he returned, he was calmer, saying we could work something out. That I must say I was his cousin or step-sister… that people in India were conservative, and they would talk, and it wouldn't be acceptable for us to be in the same house if we weren't related somehow.”

“And you believed him?”

“I would've believed anything to calm him down… and put him in a better mood.”

She stubbed the cigarette, and walked through the canopy, finding her way out.

Our boots squelched through endless mud, the smell of dung rising thickly ripe and sweet. The hills in the distance seemed painted, hazy behind a light, gauzy mist.

“At first I didn't know what to make of you. When I asked Nicholas… he told me you were delicate… disturbed, in fact… that he'd saved you after you tried to harm yourself…” Myra stopped, and turned to me. “Is that true?”

“It wasn't quite like that…”

She didn't move.

“No. I didn't.”

She continued walking. “He said you'd developed a deep and intense gratitude, this psychological dependence on him… and he was afraid to upset the balance and tip you over again… so I was to treat you well…” She smiled. “He called you his pet.”

My blank slate.

“I felt sorry for you, of course… but sometimes, I was jealous, I hated your proximity to him… something just didn't seem to fit… but I couldn't place it.” The wind blew her hair across her face. “Now, I know. It's true, isn't it… you and him?”

“And Elliot?” I asked softly.

She leaned over the gate, the bar pressing into her stomach. As though she was reaching out for something she couldn't grasp.

“When Nicholas returned from India, we were together for a while in London. I was finishing music school, and things were fine for a few months, or so I thought. And then, suddenly, like it so often happens… they weren't. He'd be annoyed at me… for—I don't know—forgetting to wash my teacup. Silly things that turned into everything. We'd argue, he'd leave… I'd leave… it was terrifying just for how long we could go on… this endless, relentless battle. Like Elliot and his little toy soldiers and forts… destroying and rebuilding. Then, one day he left. He disappeared and didn't return.”

I said it had been that way too, in Delhi. When I returned, one July morning, and Nicholas was gone.

“At least you didn't find out two weeks later you were pregnant.” She laughed, thin and hollow; it reminded me of Eva.

“You didn't tell him, did you?”

The silence was broken by the distant rumble of a vehicle. The roar of its engine echoed in the quiet country air.

“In my eighth month… in sheer desperation… I crawled back here…” she gestured grandly around her, “where I've been trying to get away from my whole life.”

“And your father…?”

She lit another cigarette. Then, absentmindedly, or perhaps she changed her mind, she flicked it away. “My father took me in… disgusted as he was by his daughter. I had no money, no savings, no job… I was a musician, for Christ's sake. All the while I thought I'd get rid of it, and I put it off… again and again, until it was too late… but he took care of everything, my father… Elliot had a nanny, he's being given music lessons… he's going to boarding school soon… no expense spared, really…”

“It's good of him, to look after you like that.”

“Me? He's not doing it for me. It's for Elliot… my father has an immaculate sense of fair play… it's not my son's fault and therefore, he won't be made to suffer.”

“And you?”

Her eyes were a long-lost evening blue. “I offer him… my obedience.”

“Myra…”

“Yes?”

“Don't you think you ought to…”

“Tell Nicholas?”

She climbed over the gate, and started making her way across the field. Here, the scent lingered of freshly turned earth, something light, and mildly flowery. The mist was thickening, rising over the ground like smoke; the light that had throbbed through the day earlier was beginning to drain away.

I caught up with her.

“He abandoned me…”

He abandoned everybody.

“I have no wish to see him again.” From the look on her face I could see it was true. “And so it should be with you.”

We crossed the field, and walked down the narrow country trail that joined the main road. The air echoed with the clopping of hooves. It was Philip on a mare with a glistening chestnut coat, her mane, tail and lower legs edged in lighter hazel, and a streak of white running down her nose.

He stopped beside us. “I'm heading back… she's tired this morning.” He patted the horse's neck.

“We're going home too,” said Myra. “We walked by Coram's Way. I was showing Nem around—”

A small, speeding car suddenly rounded the corner and zipped past. The mare shifted nervously, flicking her ears—I reached out and touched the side of her head and stroked her. She nuzzled my hand.

Philip edged her away from us. “I'm taking her home… before we meet more idiots on the road.”

When he was out of earshot, I said I wasn't certain he meant only the driver.

Myra laughed. “He likes you, Nem… although the horses are the only creatures he truly loves. We used to have three, but when Charlie was put down, Dad vowed these would be the last ones he'd keep.”

“We went riding in Delhi… when you were there.”

“Did we?”

It was hard to imagine how something so embossed in my mind, could be equally absent from hers.

“Yes… you and Nicholas would go swimming…”

“I remember that… to a pool at this big white hotel.”

“Then you met someone who was a member at a riding club… I don't know why you invited me along. You probably wanted me to fall off and break my neck. Or worse, make a fool of myself.”

“Probably… I wanted to show off.”

We were at the dip of the Hollow, and above us, oak trees domed across shutting out the leaf-tangled sky. For a while, we were in shadow, and then we emerged, at the crest of the slope, into sunlight.

Later that afternoon I headed to the stables.

It stood on the other side of a field at the back of the house, hidden from view by tall, rambling hedgerow that hemmed its borders. In the spring, Myra told me, the field was flecked gold with buttercups, and along the shady edges, replete with bluebells. Now, bereft of flowers, it rolled out in shades of dull brown and listless yellow. I even came upon a dead sparrow, a small, upturned tragedy, its eyes ever watchful as I passed.

The stables were a surprisingly modern structure of light wooden planks and a neat tin roof. Inside, clean and warm, cheerful with the sunny smell of straw and sawdust. Someone from the village came in to help everyday.

“But I like doing this myself,” said Philip. He was brushing Lady down with a soft brush. “I can lament the fate of the world, and she just listens. Myra would come in here quite often… not so much anymore.”

I was in the neighboring cubicle, stroking General. He was a larger, more muscled animal, with a deep charcoal coat, white stocking marks and a star on his forehead.

“They're both beautiful…” I said.

“General's a good-looking fellow. We could take them out tomorrow, if you like… how long are you here?”

Two days more. Leaving Sunday, on the afternoon train.

“What did you say you did in London?”

I told him.

“A what—?”

I tried to explain what it entailed, a fellowship from the Royal Literary Fund, but I couldn't help feel he wasn't all that captivated.

“And back in India?”

“I write on art.”

He brushed down Lady's forelegs, his arms stretching, straining. I could see why he still looked the way he did, physically spry and spirited.

“Wonderful,” he said, straightening up. Either as a response to the admission of my profession, or the competent execution of his task.

On my part, it was affirmation.

Of the worlds we choose to inhabit. And the ones we exclude. In school, I enjoyed Venn diagrams not for their mathematical functions—of which I have a hazy recollection—but their aesthetic intricacies. The infinite possibilities of patterns, intersections, unions, complements, symmetries and overlaps. You could say Philip and I inhabited circles that didn't, would never, touch.

For him, I might have been of less interest than the horses.

If prophecies carve a design for the future, premonitions weave patterns into our past.

They're tricky things, unattributed until an event has already happened. Coincidences magnified in our mind, given the weight of instinctual foresight.

At Wintervale, I often dreamed of Lenny.

Was it a sign, I still wonder? Could dreams presage death? Tragedy? Look how many words we've invented to speak of knowing the future. Omen, portent, forewarning, augury. All these signals we should somehow recognize.

I dreamed I visited Lenny's grave. Wandering lost, searching for it among weathered tombstones. Finding it on a hillock, under the shade of a sal tree. A quiet spot, away from the rest. His grave blanketed with wilting flowers, with candles burnt down to uneven stumps.

I'm sorry I didn't visit sooner.

On the wooden cross, a name, a date of birth, and death.

I'd forgotten to bring a token, to show I'd been there to pay my respects.

Empty-handed.

I'm sorry.

Sitting beside the grave, on short, prickly grass, above me the leaves whispering in their own tongues, gesturing in the breeze. Everything around me carrying traces of him. Then they too falling, wilting and dropping to the ground. My friend was part of something larger and more secret than I would ever know for now.