The One in My Heart (19 page)

This unlikely yet enduring friendship between Bennett and Mrs. Asquith was making me like him all too much. I sighed inwardly.

We were inspecting a large, bare plane tree, planted in memory of a son of the house who had died in the Battle of the Somme, when Mr. de Villiers said, “I don’t suppose Zelda has ever mentioned me.”

At last. What we had come to talk about. I glanced at him, imagining the dashing young man he must have been thirty years ago. “No. It was Bennett who first told me about you—he’d heard a bit of the story from Mrs. Asquith.”

Mr. de Villiers wrapped his muffler more tightly about his neck—the cold of the day was the kind that seeped in slowly. “We were seriously involved for a while, and it was the most marvelous time of my life. When I made up my mind to propose to her, I commissioned a specially designed ring. Are you familiar with Tolkien’s works?”

I smiled to myself. “Very.”

“Then you’ll know what I mean when I say I wanted the ring to look like Nenya.”

I nodded, a sharp pinch at my heart. There were three rings of power the Elves had kept for themselves. Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, was wielded by Lady Galadriel.

Zelda would have loved that engagement ring.

“Finally the ring came back from the jeweler. I booked a holiday for us.” He looked up at the sky, heavy with the promise of snow. “But before we went, she had an episode.”

I’d expected those exact words. Still my stomach lurched.

“I knew she had a therapist and a prescription for her condition. But since I had no experience with mental illness—not up close, in any case—at first I didn’t understand what was going on. She had boundless energy, she couldn’t get enough of me, and she became tremendously confident—which was very gratifying, as I’d been telling her for months that she was too modest in her self-belief.

“I began to grow alarmed when I realized she was hardly sleeping. When I woke up at night she’d be on the telephone, talking to friends in America, Australia, or anywhere people were awake. During the day she brought back groceries by the car bootful, morning and afternoon. And she washed all the curtains, sheets, and tablecloths—again and again.

“And then it swung the other way and…” He took a deep breath. “You probably don’t need me to describe what it’s like.”

I shivered, my fingers ice-cold inside my gloves.

“I was a very capable young man who believed that everything was within my power to influence and change. I focused like a laser beam on her condition. We visited the best psychiatrists, the best nutritionists, the best everything. I was convinced that with proper medication, a well-calibrated diet, a rigorously adhered-to schedule, her illness could be controlled like type-one diabetes—still an annoying problem to have, but one that shouldn’t interfere with living a normal life in this day and age.”

My brows knitted. This kind of micromanaging was so different from Pater’s we-just-have-to-be-here philosophy that I didn’t know what to think of it.

“It didn’t quite work out that way. In hindsight, that I’d put so much pressure on her to become well and remain well was probably one of the reasons she was ill again a few months later. And that was a terrible episode—she had to be hospitalized for several weeks.”

Zelda’s first episode in the States, when I was six, had led to a hospital stay. The one in the wake of the ball also required institutional care. But each time she was back home in days. To need several weeks of hospitalization—I didn’t even dare to imagine the severity of that episode.

“She recovered eventually. But I felt I’d lost control over every aspect of my life. A complete failure of a man. So I told her I couldn’t do it anymore, that it was time for us to stop being a couple.” Mr. de Villiers sighed. Before me he seemed to grow smaller. “Six months later I was married. Two months after that she married your father and moved to America.”

Pater had been on a business trip to London when he’d met Zelda. Theirs had been a whirlwind romance, at most six weeks from introduction to wedding. Ever since Bennett first brought up the topic of her old boyfriend, I’d suspected that she might have married Pater on the rebound. What Mr. de Villiers said pretty much confirmed that.

“Have you seen her since?”

“Once at a party in London—she’d divorced your father the year before. We sat together and talked for hours. But when the party ended, we went our separate ways.” He glanced up at the sky again. Tiny snowflakes meandered down, disappearing the moment they touched ground. “My marriage was already an entity in name only, but I was still unwilling to face everything that a relationship with Zelda would entail. I couldn’t handle it as a young man; it seemed impossible I’d do any better as a man of middle age.”

We left our spot before the commemorative plane tree and resumed walking. At the far end of the garden I said, “But?”

“But I never stopped thinking about her. My ex-wife and I decided we simply didn’t have enough stiff upper lip to preserve our marriage solely for the sake of not having a divorce on the CV. The divorce became final in July of last year. I was about to purchase a ticket to New York when I heard that Zelda was ill again.

“Then she recovered and came to see Maggie in December. Twice I drove out here. But I was…too ashamed, I suppose, to call on her when she was healthy, when I stayed away during her illness. So I stood in front of the house and looked up at the window of the room where she always stayed, like a character from
Bowyer Grange
. Each time I drove away without seeing her.”

A snowflake fell on my face, the chill from the tiny chip of ice drilling deep beneath my skin. I should have known. I should have guessed from the moment I saw him that he wanted to be together with her again, this man who had “managed” her into the worst episode of her life.

“If you’d like to know whether Zelda would welcome you back into her life,” I said stiffly, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you one way or the other.”

“Nobody can tell me that except Zelda, and that isn’t why I invited myself here today. Today I only wanted to meet you. She spoke a great deal of you last time we met, and I’ve long wished to see the young woman who stuck by her through sickness and health.”

People persisted in misreading my character. When the Somersets looked at me, they saw nothing but reassuring good sense—as if I could ever bear to appear anything but even-keeled and pulled-together. To be otherwise was to feel the seams of my world breaking apart, to sense the distant rumble that would make the whole house of cards come tumbling down.

To Mr. de Villiers, I stood for all that was selfless and courageous—when there was and had only ever been a stark fear of losing the one person who loved me unconditionally.

Usually I shrug off such mistaken praise—giving false impressions wasn’t my intention, merely a by-product of protecting myself. But now, as we stopped walking again next to a stone sundial at the center of Mrs. Asquith’s garden, I realized that Mr. de Villiers hadn’t just wanted to meet me.

He was hoping for my blessing.

“May I ask you a question, Mr. de Villiers?”

“Of course. And please call me Larry.”

“Does Zelda know about the holiday you’d booked?”

The seemingly inconsequential nature of my question surprised Larry. “I never mentioned it to her, but I believe Maggie did a few years ago. Zelda was visiting and they were looking through some travel magazines together, and according to Maggie, when she came across a picture of La Figlia del Mare, she said, ‘Oh, look, that’s the hotel where Larry meant to propose to you.’”

The wildly romantic La Figlia del Mare, which Zelda had been recommending to everyone since.

I placed my hand on the sundial, feeling nothing but a searing cold. “Obviously my opinion doesn’t count. But since you sought me out, Larry, I’m going to assume that it does matter to some extent: I believe you’ll make a wonderful companion for someone, somewhere, but that someone isn’t Zelda.”

He flinched.

“Our life in New York isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good. She has great friends there and a solid support system. You don’t sound as if you’ll be retiring anytime soon. If the two of you get back together, Zelda will be the one expected to relocate, since her studio is much easier to move across the pond than a TV production.

“And then what? We don’t live in fairy tales and true love cures nothing. It’s more or less inevitable that someday she’ll suffer another episode. You’ll feel as if you lost control over your life again. You’ll feel like a failure again. And where does that leave her? Stuck with a man who can only see her illness?”

Larry’s lips moved, but he made no sound. My stomach twisted at how stricken he looked, but a fierce protectiveness burned in me. This man had his chance and he blew it. What made him think he could just waltz back into her life and pick up where they’d left off?

“I want to believe I have changed,” he said at last, his voice cracking a little.

My fingers clenched together. “And you would bet her well-being on that?”

He had no answer for me. We started walking again. The insubstantial snow continued, leaving no evidence behind of having ever been there. I looked up once to see a curtain flutter in the house. Was that Mrs. Asquith, looking out? Or was it Bennett?

“I have a business trip to Manhattan in early May,” Larry said, as we neared the house. “I was hoping to have dinner with Zelda, Bennett, and you. I suppose you’d prefer that I didn’t contact her at all.”

“I’d prefer that before you did anything, you ask yourself whether it would be good for her—or only good for you.”

We climbed up the wide, shallow steps leading up to the front door. Under the portico I stopped and turned to Larry. “I’m sorry that nothing I said was anything you wanted to hear.”

“The fault isn’t yours,” he said sincerely, if wanly. “I have only myself to blame.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again, suddenly exhausted. “Thank you for showing me the garden. It was very kind of you.”

WHEN WE WALKED BACK INTO
Mrs. Asquith’s drawing room, it was already time for Bennett and me to say our good-byes. Mrs. Asquith presented my fake boyfriend with an elaborately wrapped gift.

“Happy belated Christmas, my dear young hooligan.”

“Not again,” said Bennett, shaking his head even before he undid the wrapping paper to reveal a hardcover notebook.

Mrs. Asquith chortled. “You ingrate. Something from the best stationer in London isn’t good enough for you nowadays, is it?”

Bennett stuck the notebook into his messenger bag and hugged her. “You bought this on High Street for a quid fifty, you old liar.”

“What was that about?” I asked when we were in the car, being driven to the airport.

“Long-running gag. She gives me one every time she sees me, for me to record my sexual shenanigans—then submit for her perusal, of course. When I was younger I used to cut out passages from vintage porn, paste them in, and send the notebook to her.”

I smiled a little at Mrs. Asquith’s gleeful perversity. “Did you tell her about how scarce your sexual shenanigans have been lately?”

“No, I told her about our encounter with my parents.” He paused for a beat. “And I tried to persuade her to let me listen to her heart, but she wouldn’t have it. Said she didn’t trust a young man with a taste for old ladies.”

Had I been there, I’d probably have laughed out loud at Mrs. Asquith’s snark—it was still funny in the retelling. But a sober undercurrent to Bennett’s words caught my attention. “Why were you trying to examine her? Is she okay?”

“Not as robust as she’d like us to believe. And asking for spoilers to a TV show?” He frowned. “That’s not like her at all. She hates spoilers.”

He pulled the notebook out of his bag and flipped through the empty pages. The scent of crisp, new paper perfumed the warm interior of the car. He traced a finger along the edge of the notebook, then turned his face to the window, lost in thought.

The sedan cut smoothly, almost soundlessly across the countryside, the fields and riverbanks of which were still green after a long winter. In the silence my conversation with Larry began to replay in my head, my own voice echoing, every syllable harsh and unforgiving.

In Mrs. Asquith’s garden I’d felt as righteous as a mother lion protecting her cub. But now that moment of adrenaline had passed, I began to see that my instinctive growling and teeth-bearing had been but another manifestation of the fear in my heart, the one constant emotion that undergirded everything in my life.

Except this time the fear could no longer be shut in and locked away. This time the fear had been in control of me, throwing words like grenades toward Larry de Villiers.

Near the airport traffic turned knotty. We had to rush through the terminal to make our flight. It was only after we were airborne, with the fasten-your-seat-belt sign turned off, that Bennett asked me, “So, what do you think of Larry?”

I chose my words carefully. “He seems to care about Zelda still. And he seems to be a kind and considerate person.”

Bennett raised a brow. “So you told him to stay away from Zelda?”

Flaw 2: I’m afraid he sees through me.

I didn’t bother to issue a denial, but only shrugged.

“Ladies and gentlemen”—a flight attendant’s voice came over the PA system—”we have a passenger in need of medical attention. If you are a physician, please press the call button nearest your seat.”

Bennett pressed his call button. “On a plane this size, there’s probably more than one doctor.”

As if to contradict him, a flight attendant materialized almost immediately and asked him to come with her. I craned my neck to follow their progress, but she pulled the curtain behind her and blocked the view into coach class.

I fidgeted in my seat, half of my mind going around in circles with Larry and Zelda, the other half worrying about what was happening at the back of the plane.

After a very long twenty minutes, Bennett returned. “Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Uh-hmm. A little girl was traveling with a cast on her foot. The foot swelled from the low pressure in the cabin and cut off circulation to her toes. So we pried her cast open. I’ll check on her again, but for now she’s fine.”