I think you’re right to go.”
“It isn’t because of being in prison, or being afraid to face people, or anything,” she said. “It isn’t that. It’s just that I have to get away from here.”
“I know,” said Dominic.
“Do you? Do you know what it’s like, loving someone who doesn’t even know you’re there?”
He didn’t say anything to that, he couldn’t; the turbulent heart was back in his throat, quietly choking him. But suddenly she heard what she had said, and understood the answer he hadn’t made. She slid from her chair and fell on her knees beside his bed with a soft, wretched cry of remorse and tenderness, and caught up his hands in hers and laid her cheek on them. The swirl of her hair spread like a wave over his knees.
His heart seemed to burst, and he could breathe and speak again. He took one hand from her gently, and began to stroke her hair, and then her one visible cheek, smoothing the long, silky line of her brow, laying trembling fingertips on her mouth.
“You’ll find somebody else,” he said manfully. “Just give it time. You’ll go away from here, and it will all be different.” He listened to his own voice, astonished and awed. The words he had expected to find bitter were sweet as honey, and tasted not of renunciation but of achievement. “Don’t just settle somewhere else, Kitty, not straight away. You travel. Go right round the world, give him a chance to show up. You’ll find him, you’ll see.”
She lay still, letting him soothe her and listening to the deepening tones of the voice that was feeling its way by great forward lunges towards manhood. This was something she’d never meant to do. She had debated all day what she could bring him, what gift she could offer him for all he had done for her, and she had been able to think of nothing that would not diminish his triumph rather than complete it, so that in the end she had come empty- handed. And here without even meaning to she had made him the perfect return, her life for his life, the gift of her drifting, solitary self to be moulded and urged and cherished, and launched on a new course. He had recovered her, he had the right to dispose of her. And why not? Comerbourne wasn’t the world. One man couldn’t be the world, unless she shut all the rest out. I’ve got to live now, she thought, I’m a piece of his life, I owe it to him to live.
“You know what?” she said softly, moulding the words with her lips against his palm. “You’re absolutely right. That’s just what I’m going to do.”
“Go to India, go to South America, all those places with the wonderful names. There are people everywhere. Nice people. You’ve only got to let them in.”
“Even a few as nice as you,” she said, and smiled up at him, cradling his hand against her cheek. She was in two minds about trying to prolong his pleasure, inviting him to plan with her where she would go and what she would do, but then she thought, no. One more thing she could do for him, and only one, and that was wind up this thing now and get out of his life clean, and leave him a perfect, immaculate, unassailable experience, safe for ever from any anti-climax. Wind it up on a high note, and finish! He’d be miserable for a while, but it would be wonderful misery. Not like mine, she thought, drawn out day after day, month after month in decline. My own fault, my own fault! I won’t let that happen to him. I’ve been to blame. If I’d cared enough, if I’d felt enough, I could have saved all this. He could have been alive still, and poor, frustrated, calculating, vindictive Hammie needn’t have been a murderess. But all I could see was my misery. Now I look at Dominic, and I no longer see myself so clearly, but I see him, he’s real to me. With him I won’t make any mistake.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she said. “And when I do find him, you’ll be the first person to know.”
She rose on her knees, leaning towards him, and her face was where a woman’s face should be, just below the level of his own. She put out a hesitant hand and passed it gently over the back of his head, where the thick hair was clipped short. The touch of her fingers on the dressing was almost too light to feel, and very close to his, all great warm eyes and sympathetic mouth, her face swam out of focus. He drew breath hard, and suddenly his arms went round her and caught her to his heart, and he kissed her three times, beginning at her throat and ending on her lips, inexpertly but not clumsily, with an abrupt, virginal passion.
His mouth was cool and fresh and smooth, and moved her to prodigies of hope and excitement and laughter and tenderness. She knew by every touch of him that there was nothing left in the world that he wanted or needed, not even from her. She let him begin the embrace and end it. She held him tenderly while he willed it so, and as soon as he recollected his role and gently and firmly disengaged himself under the impression that he was releasing her, she took her arms away and drew back, rising and stepping back from him in one lovely, fluid movement.
“Good-bye, Dominic! Bless you for everything! I’ll never forget you.”
She was gone from the room, the door closing softly after her, before he managed to get out in a small, stunned voice: “Good-bye, Kitty! Good luck!” He didn’t say that he’d never forget her, either, but she knew it; never until the Greeks forget Marathon.
When Bunny looked in half an hour later Dominic was curled in his pillows fast asleep, smiling a little with fulfilment and content like a fed infant.
Kitty was as good as her word. Nine months later, one morning in the height of the summer, there was a picture postcard of Rio bay by Dominic’s plate at breakfast. The text said:
I’ve found him, and you’re the first to know. His name is Richard Baynham, he’s an engineer, and we’re getting married in September. Terribly happy. Bless you!
Love, KITTY.
Dominic read it through with a puzzled face, frowning over a hand which was totally unknown to him. He was not quite awake yet, and the message struck no immediate chord. Nine months is a long time. At the end he said blankly: “Kitty?” And then, in a very different voice: “Oh, Kitty!” That was all; but he didn’t leave the postcard lying about, he put it carefully in his wallet and no one else ever saw it again; and he got up from the table and went about his business with a bright reminiscent gleam in his eye and looking several inches taller, a man with a future and a past.
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