Ryman, Rebecca (121 page)

In
the nascent moonlight his eyes were like opals, hard and shining dimly.
Somewhere, a jackal howled. Others picked up the refrain, obviously celebrating
the find of a left-over cadaver. Olivia barely moved as she watched him. There
was no question of an intrusion.

"It
was then, in that moment of total recall, that I first knew what it meant to
hate. It was a frightening emotion, so immense that it seemed to own me, to
devour me. And it was then, at my grandfather's pyre, at the age of thirteen,
that I made a vow. Not with words, for at that age I had none that were
adequate. It was a vow forged in silence, in a hate that far exceeded the
limits of speech. From that moment on, my life was preordained. As the lines on
these palms," he thrust his hands out at her, "my route was etched
and unerasable. There could be no deviations, no obstructions. Nor would I
permit any."

His
voice trailed but left behind an echo with which the
night seemed to
reverberate. Olivia finally let her tears fall unhindered. She knew that what
he had divulged to her, this blazing memory carved into the brain of a child,
was the very axis around which his life had rotated. Inevitably, hers too. This
was the essence of what had made him what he was and, curiously enough, what
she had become. This then was the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, the core of
the onion. She now shared with Jai Raventhorne a place in his innermost
sanctum—that one vital day in his life that had fashioned his, extinguished
that of his father, mutilated the lives of so many others. Ironically, what she
would never be able to share with him was his life. The sense of humour of the
gods was indeed inexhaustible.

"You
were a deviation, Olivia. An obstruction." He now said aloud what he had
already spoken in her mind. "I sacrificed you for a crime that was a mere
error of geography: You were in the wrong place at the wrong time." The
deep grooves on either side of his twisted mouth gleamed even more livid in the
moonlight. "And you were foolish enough to love the wrong man."

The
only man.

She
did not correct him. "We delude ourselves that we have a choice," she
said bitterly. "Love, hate—both are competent puppet masters. They pull
the strings, we merely strike postures."

Once
more he was shaken by the force of her disillusionment. He stood helpless and resourceless,
then quickly removed the silver chain he again wore around his neck. Balancing
the rectangular box on a palm, he stared at it a moment, then sat down beside
her. Deftly, with the edge of a finger-nail, he went around the sides of the
pendant and opened it.

"Feel."

With
the tip of her forefinger Olivia probed. At first she felt nothing, then a
delicate presence, a shadow so fragile as to be almost not there at all. Her
gaze on him was questioning.

"If
as his only bequest to me my father left me these infernal appendages," he
jabbed viciously at his eyes, "then from him my mother had even less. A
few strands of hair!" He shut the locket with a sharp snap. "Just
these lifeless lengths from that accursed head that had once lain on her
shoulder, a souvenir of a love that gave her nothing, took away everything. But
she treasured this one pathetic remembrance, cherished it, kept it always
around her neck." His voice softened, his eyes once again far-away,
probing through the swirling mists of time. "She would sit in that
miserable little cell lost in her twilight world of illusory contentment,
chiseling away at those toys of hers with gentle strokes,
singing to
herself in that childish voice I can still sometimes hear. That figure-head of
a girl with her arms stretched above her was her most ambitious labour of love,
a symbol of that freedom she craved, although in her simplicity she could not
have been aware of such a sophisticated concept. That figure-head was of
herself, as she had once been, uncaged and unshackled. She lived in a vanished
world that existed only in her mind, but with me she shared it often,
regressing whenever she could into that lost innocence that was never entirely
lost, the one thing he could not take away from her." Unashamed of emotion
for once, he brushed his eyes with the back of his hand. "One meagre
strand of hair for one meagre life—an inequitable bargain, no? But to her it
was acceptable. From him she wanted nothing more."

Olivia
searched the face he had restructured into a screen. "And you? What is it
that you would have wanted from him?"

To
that he reacted sharply. "Everything! And what I wanted I took. I wish I
could profess regrets, but I cannot." Patrician in his flash of arrogance,
his features cemented.

"He
could have killed you twice."

"Empty
gestures! They meant nothing." The arrogance started to fade and, tired
again, he heaved a sigh. Perhaps he remembered that his hate was wasted now,
that the drama was played out and the curtain down. "No," he amended
quietly. "Maybe they were not empty gestures. Maybe they did hold some
meaning for him, if not for me. I don't know. Now I never will know. Yes, he
could have whipped me to death; I expected him to. I was surprised when he
stopped. And yes, he missed that first shot deliberately." His
small
laugh
held a touch of macabre humour. "Probably the first time he missed
anything he didn't want to. He was an extraordinary marksman."

"You
could have shot him too," Olivia reminded him softly.

"Yes."
Just that. No more. No explanation. "I could never have felt for him, for
her,
his wife, anything but hate. One way or another, they all conspired to kill
my mother. Even Ransome, decent man that he is. And yet . . ." He got up
to saunter away from her and stand staring into the dark vacancy of the silent
night. "And yet, sometimes when I was very alone, when I was lost and
confused and searching for my identity, when I remembered that I had admired
him once—I wondered to myself what it might be like to hear a man such as Sir
Joshua Templewood call me 'son' . . ."

The
hair at the nape of Olivia's neck rose and tingled. In the icy sensation, she
numbed. There was a parallel in his words that
could not be missed. Someday,
sometimes, when Amos too was alone, lost and confused and searching for his
identity, would he also wonder what it might be like to be called
"son" by an absent father? In the wilderness of her imagination,
Olivia saw Amos's dove grey eyes cloud as he too struggled with the same flux
of emotions—anger, hate, bitter accusations, heaving resentments, bewilderment.
Standing as tall, as stubborn, with the identical bone structure, would Amos
too feel the same fleeting sense of loss? Would Jai Raventhorne's denials, his
emotional famines, also be his?

Nothing
she could give Amos would ever compensate for what had been taken away. Olivia
saw the parallel and was chilled, her mind exploding with suspicion, with
renewed fears. He had said that deliberately! It was a trick to part her from
her son. "Amos is
not
like you!" she flared. "He at least
has a
name.
He will never lack an identity!"

He
flinched, taken aback by her sudden cruelty. But he did not return it.
"Yes," he admitted, again anguished, "you have ensured
that."

"He
will have
me
to call him son; he needs no one else."

Recognising
her fear, he sought to allay it. "I know. It will be enough. Why do you
doubt it?"

For
her own ravaging fantasies she punished him further. "I want to establish
clearly that you will have no claim over Amos,
ever."

"I
do not make any claim, nor will I." Helplessly he stared at his feet, not
knowing where else to in his misery. "I will not try to separate you
again, you have my word. I have no place in your life, Olivia. And a child
should have a mother. At least a mother."

With
a small cry, she buried her face in her hands. She could no longer deny the
crux of her agony. She recognised clearly where she was—once again at a
cross-road. It was dark and she could not see her way, but she saw that there
was more than one. Once more she stood alone. Arctic winds pulled and tore her
in conflicting directions. She was blinded by snow; the flurries obscured
everything. The elements howled into a storm; with all the will-power at her
command, she could not combat it. Where were all her resources? Her resolutions,
her infallible sense of logic, that strength on which she prided herself?
Frantically she searched; despairingly, she could not locate any of them.

Then
slowly, with the grace of a sunset, the storm subsided. The howling winds
became tranquil, the flurries of snow cleared. Above
her, the sky
shone without a flaw, and ahead as calm and comforting as a country walk, lay
the path she knew she must take. She filled with an enormous peace. And in that
serenity, with the delicacy of a falling flower, a decision dropped smoothly
into her heart. The ease with which it had arrived now astonished Olivia. But
then she saw that it had always been there; it was she who had not noticed.

She
looked up to find herself encapsulated tight in his unswerving stare. He watched,
he waited, already having gleaned the workings of her mind. Abandoning thought,
Olivia once more stepped into her dream and floated weightless. "When do
you sail?" she asked, or someone asked in her voice.

"Soon."

"Where
for?"

"Somewhere.
It makes no difference."

"You
will run and hide and be able to forget that your son is without a father, as
you have always been?"

"I
hardly have a choice in the matter!"

The
unreality deepened; in her dreamscape, Olivia smiled. "I give you a
choice."

The
stillness around them was eerie. Even the river appeared not to flow. Within
that frozen tableau something moved, then fluttered, then pulsated wildly—a
wisp of a hope struggling to survive. He came back to life and voiced it.
"You would come with me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"
Even
in his hope there was despair.

"Why?"
Neatly, Olivia rearranged the pleats of her dress over her lap. "I don't
know. Perhaps because my life is still not complicated enough. Or because I
would want Amos to hear his father call him son. Or . . ." She stopped,
unable to unblock her throat.

"Or?"

Her
mouth felt rigid, her lips hurt as she spoke words that had remained unused and
rusting for so long. "Or because I love you."

He
was dazed by disbelief. "After all this,
all this,
you can still
say that?"

"Yes,
I can still say that."

Gripped
by rigor and shuddering, he turned away. "It is still a wasted love,
Olivia. I deserve it now even less than I did then." Battling to live, the
hope could not and his eyes dulled.

"As
it was then, it is still mine to waste."

"No!"
He was violent in his rejection. "It would be a senseless, childish
display of bravado. I cannot permit it!"

He
was slipping away from her! Driven by panic, she flew back into reality.
"It would not be bravado! I am not noble like your mother, who wasted her
love knowing that it was not returned. I too, like you, am self-seeking. I
know
that you return to me what is given."

Torn
between two parts of himself, he stood despairing, arms hanging loosely by his
sides. "It can reverse nothing, Olivia, repair nothing. How can I let you
risk destruction a second time?"

"For
me it will reverse everything—even that clock!—repair everything," she
cried, also fighting despair. "You told me, wrote in your letter, that you
loved me. It is that love that has been my staff, my talisman, my strength—even
if I had lost the faculty to see it." In her pleadings there was déjà vu;
they had been here once before. And they had come full circle. "Tell me
again, Jai, please tell me again!"

"No!
You are the wife of another man."

"But
I am also the mother of a child fathered by you, a child fathered in mutual
love!"

"Love!"
His lip curled in an involuntary sneer. "It was a grudging love tainted by
many resentments, Olivia. And I am now even more unholy, stricken by jealousies
that live in my entrails like gut rot. For this tarnished love can you bear a
lifetime of scandal, of social ostracism?" He was ruthless in his
inquisition.

"You
have
borne a lifetime of both!"

"For
me, therefore, they are not novelties. I am used to them. I have taught myself
how not to let them touch me. Can you?"

"As
a discarded wife I already have. They no longer touch me either. And if your
love is indeed tarnished, then so be it." In her panic she was again
reckless. "Even then I will be a gainer."

He
laughed with pitying derision. "You still believe love is the universal
panacea? That even tainted it is a world conqueror?"

"No.
I know now that it is not. But if one does not expect the perfect, it teaches
how to accept the imperfect."

He
threw up his arms. "The world outside your charmed circle is not kind,
Olivia. It is virulent in its dictates and demands."