On Chesil Beach (10 page)

It stood clear before him, and he was an idiot not to have seen it. For a whole year he had suffered in passive torment, wanting her till he ached, and wanting small things too, pathetic innocent things like a real full kiss, and her touching him and letting him touch her. The promise of marriage was his only relief. And then what pleasures she had denied them both. Even if they could not make love until after they were married, there was no need for such contortions, such agonies of restraint. He had been patient, uncomplaining—a polite fool. Other men would have demanded more, or walked away. And if, at the end of a year of straining to contain himself, he was not able to hold himself back and had failed at the crucial moment, then he refused to take the blame. That was it. He rejected this humiliation, he did not recognize it. It was outrageous of her to cry out in disappointment, to flounce from the room, when the fault was hers. He should accept the fact, she did not like kissing and touching, she did not like their bodies to be close, she had no interest in him. She was unsensual, utterly without desire. She could never feel what he felt. Edward took the next steps with fatal ease: she had known all this—how could she not?—and she had deceived him. She wanted a husband for the sake of respectability, or to please her parents, or because it was what everyone did. Or she thought it was a marvelous game. She did not love him, she could not love in the way that men and women loved, and she knew this and kept it from him. She was dishonest.

It is not easy to pursue such hard truths in bare feet and underpants. He drew his trousers on and groped for his socks and shoes, and thought it through all over again, smoothing out the rough edges and the difficult transitions, the bridging passages that lifted free of his own uncertainties, and so perfected his case, and felt as he did so his anger surge again. It was approaching a pitch, and would be meaningless if it remained unspoken. Everything was about to come clear. She needed to know what he thought and felt—he needed to tell her and show her. He snatched his jacket from a chair and hurried from the room.

FIVE

S
he watched him coming along the strand, his form at first no more than an indigo stain against the darkening shingle, sometimes appearing motionless, flickering and dissolving at its outlines, and at others suddenly closer, as though moved like a chess piece a few squares toward her. The last glow of daylight lay along the shore, and behind her, away to the east, there were points of light on Portland, and the cloud base reflected dully a yellowish glow of streetlamps from a distant town. She watched him, willing him to go slower, for she was guiltily afraid of him, and was desperate for more time to herself. Whatever conversation they were about to have, she dreaded it. As she understood it, there were no words to name what had happened, there existed no shared language in which two sane adults could describe such events to each other. And to argue about it was even further beyond her imagining. There could be no discussion. She did not want to think about it, and she hoped he felt the same. But what else were they to talk about? Why else were they out here? The matter lay between them, as solid as a geographical feature, a mountain, a headland. Unnameable, unavoidable. And she was ashamed. The aftershock of her own behavior reverberated through her, and even seemed to sound in her ears. That was why she had run so far along the beach, through the heavy shingle in her going-away shoes, to flee the room and all that had happened in it, and to escape herself. She had behaved abominably.
Abominably
. She let the clumsy, sociable word repeat itself in her thoughts several times. It was ultimately a forgiving term—she played tennis abominably, her sister played the piano abominably—and Florence knew that it masked rather than described her behavior.

At the same time, she was aware of his disgrace—when he rose above her, that clenched, bewildered look, the reptilian jerkiness along his spine. But she was trying not to think about it. Did she dare admit that she was a tiny bit relieved that it was not only her, that he too had something wrong with him? How terrible, but how comforting it would be if he suffered from some form of congenital illness, a family curse, the sort of sickness to which only shame and silence attach, the way it did to enuresis, or to cancer, a word she superstitiously never spoke aloud for fear it would infect her mouth—silliness, for sure, which she would never confess to. Then they could feel sorry for each other, bound in love by their separate afflictions. And she did feel sorry for him, but she also felt a little cheated. If he had an unusual condition, why had he not told her, in confidence? But she understood perfectly why he could not. She too had not spoken up. How could he have begun to broach the matter of his own particular deformity, what could have been his opening words? They did not exist. Such a language had yet to be invented.

Even as she elaborately thought this through, she knew very well there was nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all. It was her, only her. She was leaning back against a great fallen tree, probably thrown up onto the beach in a storm, its bark stripped by the power of the waves and the wood smoothed and hardened by saltwater. She was wedged comfortably in the angle of a branch, feeling in the small of her back, through the massive girth of the trunk, the residual warmth of the day. This was how an infant might be, securely nestling in the crook of its mother’s arm, though Florence did not believe she could ever have nestled against Violet, whose arms were thin and tense from writing and thinking. When Florence was five there was one particular nanny, fairly plump and motherly, with a musical Scots voice and red raw knuckles, but she had left after some unnamed disgrace.

Florence continued to watch Edward’s progress along the beach, certain that he could not see her yet. She could drop down the steep bank and double back along the shore of the Fleet, but even though she feared him, she thought it would be too cruel to run away. Briefly, she saw the outline of his shoulders against a silver streak of water, a current that plumed far out to sea behind him. Now she could hear the sound of his footfalls on the pebbles, which meant that he would hear hers. He would have known to come in this direction because it was what they had decided, their after-dinner plan, a stroll on the famous shingle spit with a bottle of wine. They were going to collect stones along the way and compare their sizes to see if storms really had brought order to the beach.

The memory of that lost pleasure did not make her feel particularly sorrowful now, for it was immediately displaced by an idea, an interrupted thought from earlier in the evening. To love, and set each other free. It was an argument she could make, a daring proposal, she thought, but to anyone else, to Edward, it could sound laughable and idiotic, perhaps even insulting. She never could quite get the full measure of her own ignorance, because in some matters she thought she was rather wise. She needed more time. But he would be with her in seconds and the terrible conversation must begin. It was another of her failings that she had no idea what attitude to take with him, no feelings beyond her dread of what he might say, and of what she would be expected to say in return. She did not know if she should be asking for forgiveness, or expecting an apology. She was not in love, or out of love—she felt nothing. She just wanted to be here alone in the dusk against the bulk of her giant tree.

There appeared to be some kind of parcel in his hand. He stopped a good room’s length away, and that in itself seemed to her unfriendly, and she felt antagonistic in return. Why had he come chasing after her so soon?

Indeed, there was exasperation in his voice. “There you are.”

She could not bring herself to respond to such an inane remark.

“Did you really need to come this far?”

“Yes.”

“It must be two miles back to the hotel.”

She surprised herself with the hardness in her voice. “I don’t care how far it is. I needed to get out.”

He let this go. When he shifted his weight, the stones tinkled under his feet. She saw now that it was his jacket that he carried. It was warm and moist on the beach, warmer than it had been during the day. It bothered her that he thought he had to bring a jacket with him. At least he had not put on his tie! God, how irritable she suddenly felt, when minutes ago she was so ashamed of herself. She was usually so keen to have his good opinion, and now she did not care.

He was preparing to tell her what he had come to say, and he moved a step closer. “Look, this is ridiculous. It was unfair of you to run out like that.”

“Was it?”

“In fact, it was bloody unpleasant.”

“Oh really? Well, it was bloody unpleasant, what you did.”

“Meaning what?”

She had her eyes shut as she said it. “You know exactly what I mean.” She would torture herself with the memory of her part in this exchange, but now she added, “It was absolutely revolting.”

She imagined she heard him grunt, as though punched in the chest. If only the silence that followed had been a few seconds longer, her guilt might have had time to rise up against her, and she might have added something less unkind.

But Edward came out swinging. “You don’t have the faintest idea how to be with a man. If you did, it would never have happened. You’ve never let me near you. You don’t know a thing about any of it, do you? You carry on as if it’s
eighteen
sixty-two. You don’t even know how to kiss.”

She heard herself say smoothly, “I know failure when I see it.” But it was not what she meant, this cruelty was not her at all. This was merely the second violin answering the first, a rhetorical parry provoked by the suddenness, the precision of his attack, the sneer she heard in all his repeated “you’s.” How much accusation was she supposed to bear in one small speech?

If she had hurt him, he gave no sign, though she could barely see his face. Perhaps it was the darkness that had emboldened her. When he spoke again, he did not even raise his voice.

“I am not going to be humiliated by you.”

“And I’m not going to be bullied by you.”

“I’m not bullying you.”

“Yes you are. You always are.”

“This is ridiculous. What are you talking about?”

She was not sure, but she knew it was the route she was taking. “You’re always pushing me, pushing me, wanting something out of me. We can never just be. We can never just be happy. There’s this constant pressure. There’s always something more that you want out of me. This endless wheedling.”

“Wheedling? I don’t understand. I hope you’re not talking about money.”

She was not. It was far from her thoughts. How preposterous to mention money. How
dare
he. So she said, “Well, all right, now you mention it. It’s clearly on your mind.”

It was his sarcasm that had goaded her. Or his flippancy. What she was referring to was more fundamental than money, but she did not know how to say it. It was his tongue pushing deeper into her mouth, his hand going further under her skirt or blouse, his hand tugging hers toward his groin, a certain way he had of looking away from her and going silent. It was the brooding expectation of her giving more, and because she didn’t, she was a disappointment for slowing everything down. Whatever new frontier she crossed, there was always another waiting for her. Every concession she made increased the demand, and then the disappointment. Even in their happiest moments, there was always the accusing shadow, the barely hidden gloom of his unfulfillment, looming like an alp, a form of perpetual sorrow which had been accepted by them both as her responsibility. She wanted to be in love and be herself. But to be herself, she had to say no all the time. And then she was no longer herself. She had been cast on the side of sickliness, as an opponent of normal life. It irritated her, the way he pursued her so quickly along the beach, when he should have given her time to herself. And what they had here, on the shores of the English Channel, was only a minor theme in the larger pattern. She could already see ahead. They would have this argument, they would make up, or half make up, she would be coaxed back to the room, and then the expectations would be laid on her again. And she would fail again. She could not breathe. Her marriage was eight hours old and each hour was a weight on her, all the heavier because she did not know how to describe these thoughts to him. So money would have to do as the subject—in fact, it did perfectly well, because now he was roused.

He said, “I’ve never cared about money, yours or anyone’s.”

She knew this was true, but she said nothing. He had shifted position, so now she saw his outline clearly against the dying glow on the water behind him.

“So keep your money, your father’s money, spend it on yourself. Get a new violin. Don’t waste it on anything I might use.”

His voice was tight. She had offended him deeply, even more than she intended, but for now she did not care, and it helped that she could not see his face. They had never talked about money before. Her father’s wedding present was two thousand pounds. She and Edward had talked only vaguely of buying a house with it one day.

He said, “You think I wheedled that job out of you? It was your idea. And I don’t want it. Do you understand? I don’t want to work for your father. You can tell him I’ve changed my mind.”

“Tell him yourself. He’ll be really pleased. He’s gone to a lot of trouble for you.”

“Right then. I will.”

He turned and walked away from her, toward the shoreline, and after a few steps came back, kicking at the shingle with unashamed violence, sending up a spray of small stones, some of which landed near her feet. His anger stirred her own and she suddenly thought she understood their problem: they were too polite, too constrained, too timorous, they went around each other on tiptoes, murmuring, whispering, deferring, agreeing. They barely knew each other, and never could because of the blanket of companionable near-silence that smothered their differences and blinded them as much as it bound them. They had been frightened of ever disagreeing, and now his anger was setting her free. She wanted to hurt him, punish him in order to make herself distinct from him. It was such an unfamiliar impulse in her, toward the thrill of destruction, that she had no resistance against it. Her heart beat hard and she wanted to tell him that she hated him, and she was about to say these harsh and wonderful words that she had never uttered before in her life when he spoke first. He was back to his starting point, and calling on all his dignity to reprimand her.

“Why did you run off? It was wrong of you, and hurtful.”

Wrong. Hurtful. How pathetic!

She said, “I’ve already told you. I had to get out. I couldn’t bear it, being with you in there.”

“You were wanting to humiliate me.”

“Oh, all right then. If that’s what you want. I was trying to humiliate you. It’s no less than you deserve when you can’t even control yourself.”

“You’re a bitch talking like that.”

The word was a starburst in the night sky. Now she could say what she liked.

“If that’s what you think, then get away from me. Just clear off, will you. Edward, please go
away
. Don’t you understand? I came out here to be alone.”

She knew he realized he had gone too far with his word, and now he was trapped with it. As she turned her back on him, she was conscious of playacting, of being tactical in a way she had always despised in her more demonstrative girlfriends. She was tiring of the conversation. Even the best outcome would only return her to more of the same silent maneuverings. Often when she was unhappy, she wondered what it was she would most like to be doing. In this instance, she knew immediately. She saw herself on the London-bound platform of Oxford railway station, nine o’clock in the morning, violin case in her hand, a sheaf of music and a bundle of sharpened pencils in the old canvas school satchel on her shoulder, heading toward a rehearsal with the quartet, toward an encounter with beauty and difficulty, with problems that could actually be resolved by friends working together. Whereas here, with Edward, there was no resolution she could imagine, unless she made her proposal, and now she doubted if she had the courage. How un-free she was, her life entangled with this strange person from a hamlet in the Chiltern Hills who knew the names of wildflowers and crops and all the medieval kings and popes. And how extraordinary it now seemed to her, that she had chosen this situation, this entanglement, for herself.