A Word Child (31 page)

‘That's why you must change your job.'

‘Oh don't keep saying that! It's not so bloody easy. Maybe I will later on. I can't see that far ahead. But the immediate thing is — '

‘I don't want you to see him.'

‘So you've said six times, but why? You can't seriously think he'll murder me!'

Crystal was now silent for such a long time, staring at her sherry and not drinking it, some new sort of alarm began to break in on me. She was behaving in a strange way, as if some other harder form of being were coming about within her.

‘Crystal, what is it?'

At last she spoke. ‘My darling, I must tell you something.'

‘What, for Christ's sake? Have you got cancer or something?' Utter panic squeezed my heart.

‘No, no, it's about the past, things that happened then.'

‘You swear you haven't got cancer?'

‘I swear. Listen now. I never really told you about that time, about what it was like for me at that time.'

This was perfectly true. We had never discussed the accident, what had happened before it and what had happened after it. I told Crystal enough for her to be able to make sense of the business. That is, I told her that I had been having a love affair with Anne. Apart from that she had to rely on telepathy. Neither had I ever asked what those days had been like for her, while I was lying in hospital smashed up and half dead. Silence was better. Crystal and I had been through so many horrors together in our childhood, we had formed a tacit pact never to inquire, never to ‘go over' what had happened.

‘Do you want to tell me now? Why? Whatever can be the point? I'd rather you didn't.'

Crystal was silent again for about a minute. Then she said, ‘I think I must tell you. I think there is a point. It's becoming too awful not to.'

‘
What,
for God's sake? You're driving me mad with your hints.'

‘Wait. I'll tell you. Only listen. Please be patient. I think it will be easier for me if I tell it all in order so as to show the whole of it. Listen now. The first I knew was I got a telephone call from the college. They said you had had a serious car accident and you were in the Radcliffe Infirmary. That was on the Tuesday night, in fact it was very late, about midnight or after, I had gone to bed. What time was the accident?'

‘About ten.'

‘Well you were by then in the hospital and they telephoned me and of course I went at once to the railway station but there was no train until five. So I waited and I got that train to Birmingham and then I got the train to Oxford and I got to the hospital about eleven and the first person I saw was Gunnar. Anne was still alive then.'

I poured myself out some more wine. My hand shook violently. Crystal's face was transformed, hardened. She was looking at the floor.

‘Gunnar told me that you were “both” badly hurt, and I could not understand him at first, but then I gathered that Anne had been with you in the car. I tried to see you, but they wouldn't let me, they were operating on you. Anne was somewhere else in the hospital. Gunnar came along to see how you were. I think he didn't know then how bad Anne was, perhaps they didn't tell him, or perhaps they didn't know. I was sitting on a chair in a corridor and I was feeling very faint, and he said hadn't I better come back to his house and lie down, as there was nothing we could either of us do just then by waiting, so I went back with him to his car and we went to his house which you remember it's just — quite close — and we went there and he wanted me to eat something only of course we couldn't either of us eat. The little boy, the child, I can't remember his name, wasn't there, I think he was away with some relations. And I lay down in a bedroom upstairs and he went back to the hospital, and he told me of course he would find out how you were. That must have been about two or three o'clock and I was feeling very collapsed. Then I sort of fell asleep or went into a kind of coma, I lay there and everything went strange. Then I woke up again in the most fearful terror, it was about six o'clock and I was alone in the house, and I got up and began to go downstairs, and as I was on the stairs the front door opened and Gunnar came in and said “Anne is dead”, and he went on into a room at the back and sat down at a table. I heard what he said and I took it in but I could really think of nothing but you and I asked him “Is Hilary dead?” and he said nothing, he just sat there looking at that big window and the garden and he was as still as a statue, like paralysed, and he would not answer, and I went to the telephone and I wanted to telephone the hospital only I couldn't remember its name and I was crying so I couldn't see the numbers anyway, so then I just ran out of the house. I knew which way the hospital was and I began to run along that way, crying. Then someone just grabbed me, it was Gunnar, and he just pulled me and led me back to the house and of course I went, I was almost hysterical with fear, and he got me inside and put me to sit on a chair in the hall and he telephoned the hospital and got through to the ward where you were and he spoke so calmly and clearly, and they said the operation had been successful and you were resting, and somehow the word “resting” was so wonderful just at that moment, but I was still shaking with fear, and Gunnar asked if I could see you, and he spoke so calmly and clearly, and they said yes maybe, and then he led me out, he really led me, and he pulled me along by the sleeve, and he put me into the car and drove me to the hospital and led me up to the ward, and I did actually see you, though you didn't remember afterwards, you were just coming round from the anaesthetic and your jaw was all bandaged up but your face was quite all right and your eyes were open and you looked at me and somehow you looked so whole and so like yourself and I was weeping with relief and the nurse said that you'd get perfectly well again, though I don't suppose she knew really, and then I went out and Gunnar was waiting outside and I told him, and we went down and got into his car and went back to the house, and then he sort of collapsed and we sort of changed places. And the telephone was ringing and it was Anne's mother, you remember, well I suppose you never knew, that they couldn't get hold of her in the morning, she was on holiday in Spain, and she rang up from Spain, and I made Gunnar talk to her, and after that he asked me to deal with the telephone or if anyone came round, and just tell them what had happened and that he didn't want to see anyone. And a few people did ring up and one or two came to the door and I told them and all the time Gunnar was sitting in the back room again, just sitting there quite still at the table and looking at the window. And oh I felt so relieved about you, I was able then to be so sorry for him and so sorry about Anne, they had both been so kind to me, so awfully kind, kinder than anyone, and I went info the kitchen and I began to feel hungry, and that was so wonderful too, and I made some toast and opened a tin of beans, and I wanted Gunnar to eat something only he wouldn't and he wouldn't move, he just sat and sat, and I ate the beans, and then I found out where the drink was kept, you see he had offered me brandy in the afternoon only I had refused it, and I got out the brandy and the whisky and the glasses and I put them on the table, and I put out, funny I can remember it so clearly, I can
see
it all so clearly, a plate of chocolate biscuits. And I gave Gunnar some brandy and I drank some whisky myself, I think I felt then that whisky was somehow less extreme than brandy, and Gunnar drank the brandy and then he began to cry terribly, with huge tears on and on and still staring, and then at last he began to cry less and he ate a chocolate biscuit and then he began to talk, and it must have been about ten o'clock or later. And it was such a strange thing, he talked about his childhood and about his mother who was half Norwegian and about how he visited his grandparents on some farm near some lake and how he once went to Lappland and saw reindeer, and he talked a lot about reindeer and about how, so funny, they like the smell of human water, urine, and how they eat this special moss, and what it was like in the north where there was no night for months and then no day for months and he talked about the northern lights. And all this time we were drinking and I think he drank all the brandy in the bottle, and I drank a bit of whisky and felt very strange, and I kept saying he ought to go to bed, but in an odd way we didn't either of us want to go to bed, we just wanted to make it go on and on and sit on and on and go on and on talking forever in that strange way, it was as if we were in a trance. And then at last we were so weary and he started to cry again and that showed that that was at an end and he got up and started to go up to bed, still crying. And I went up too and I felt so exhausted and so peculiar, and I went into the room where I had been lying down in the afternoon and I undressed and put on my nightdress, because I'd packed a little case when I came away, just night things, and then I went to see what Gunnar was doing and he was just lying down on his bed, and I told him to get undressed and get into bed, and he took his shoes off and his trousers and he was sort of falling about. I suppose it was the brandy. And I pulled back the clothes for him to get into bed and he got in and then said in such a — such a terribly sad miserable way, Don't leave me! So I stood there beside him for a while and he was sort of moaning and then I pitied him so much I got into the bed beside him and I took him in my arms and then he made love to me.'

‘
He made love to you?
'

‘Yes.'

‘What on earth do you mean, Crystal?'

‘Just like that, like it is.'

‘Do you know what you're talking about?'

‘Yes.'

‘You mean that on the night of Anne's death Gunnar fucked you?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's not possible.'

‘Yes. But try and understand what it was like. It was not like — it was not like for real — I mean it was real — you see he didn't know I was a virgin — well, I suppose he must have done but he seemed surprised — but it all happened — as if it were in a dream — somehow as if it had to and without talk — and yet it was not a dream, and I was very awake, very conscious, and — '

‘And you
let
him?'

‘Yes, of course. I would have done anything for him on that night — I felt so — you see, you were alive and Anne was dead — and in some strange awful way the fact that she was dead made you that much more alive — I felt somehow I owed something to Gunnar. I owed him the world — and I was so sorry for him, I wanted to hold him and hold him, and he had been so kind to me, so awfully kind — and of course it was the brandy and the shock and — of course it wasn't me just as me, he — it was like for absolute forgetting, for blindness — it was like someone might look at an awful dirty magazine because it sort of takes the attention away from everything else — I don't think in a sense he knew what he was doing, though in a sense of course he did — '

‘Wait a moment, Crystal, describe this properly. Oh God, oh
God
! He made love to you. How long for, and what happened afterwards, and did you stay the night in his bed?'

‘I don't know — how long for — ' she said. ‘I don't know. I was — After it he fell asleep and I went away to my own bed and I went to sleep too. When I woke up in the morning he was already up and dressed and downstairs and talking on the telephone. He was arranging about the funeral.'

‘Christ.
Christ.
What did you do then?'

‘I dressed and packed up my things and I went downstairs and he put down the telephone, and do you know he had already earlier rung up the hospital to find out how you were, and he said you had had a good night. And I asked him if I could help him and he said no and we were standing there in the hall, and I said could I make him breakfast and he said no, and he offered me some and I said no, and I had put on my coat, you see, and I had my case. And I thanked him and said I would go to a hotel, and he said he would drive me, and I said no and he didn't insist and he opened the door. And I said good-bye to him and I stretched out my hand and he kissed it and I went out and after that I didn't — see him — any more at all.'

‘Do you think he remembered what happened in the night?'

‘I'm not sure. I suppose so. Otherwise he would not have kissed my hand, would he?' She added after a moment, ‘You know, he is the only man who ever did that, kissed my hand.'

‘Crystal, I wonder if you know what this is doing to me?'

‘I had to tell you,' she said, still not looking at me.

‘Much better not.'

‘I had to. If he had not come back I shouldn't ever have told you. But with him there, so near, and now — you've seen
her —
and you asked me why — I didn't want you to see him — ' Tears suddenly broke out of Crystal's bent face.

‘You've changed the past,' I said. As I moved away from her and sat at the table opposite to her, watching her cry, I felt that hundreds of things had changed which I had not yet had time to notice. ‘Oh why did you, why — '

‘I loved him.'

‘What on earth do you mean.'

‘He was so kind to me, and that day at the party, he treated me — like someone important — '

I recalled the day of the party, the day which Crystal had said was ‘the happiest day of her life'. Was that because Gunnar had been kind to her?

‘You don't have to love everyone who's kind to you,' I said. And I thought, well, why not, when there have been so few? Gunnar. Clifford. Arthur. ‘You never told this to anyone else, did you, Crystal?'

‘No, of course not, of course not! I broke off with Arthur because I knew I could never tell him.'

And I had thought she had broken with Arthur because of me, to support me, to be with me, to be entirely beside me in my ordeal. But in reality she had broken because of Gunnar, because — ‘Crystal, you don't
still
love Gunnar, do you?'