One Night for Love

England. She was at home. She would not allow nameless terrors to consume her.

And so she had come outside—and she was going to face the worst of her fears. The cloaked person whom she had spotted from the rhododendron walk and in the woods this morning was not the worst fear. The cottage was.

The night was still and bright with moonlight and starlight. It was also almost warm. The cloak she had worn seemed unnecessary, though perhaps she would be glad of it in the valley, Lily thought as she hurried down the lawn and found the path through the trees. Especially if she stayed all night. She thought she might do so as she had on that first night, when she had been turned away from the abbey. She thought she might sleep on the beach after she had forced herself to go to the cottage—though not necessarily inside it. Now that she had left the house, some of her fears had already dissipated, and she did not think she would be able to bring herself to go back there. She wished she never had to go back.

She paused when she reached the valley. The beach looked inviting with the moonlit sea at half tide. The sand formed a bright band in the moonlight. It would be soothing to the soul to walk barefoot along it—perhaps to climb the rock again. But it was not what she had come to do. She turned her head reluctantly to look up the valley.

It was an enchanted world, the fern-covered cliff dark green and mysterious, the waterfall a silver ribbon, the cottage so much a part of its surroundings that it seemed a piece of nature more than a structure built by man. It was a place to which she must return if she was somehow to piece together the fractured shards of her life.

She turned slowly in its direction and approached the pool with lagging footsteps. But she knew as she drew close that she was doing the right thing. There was something about this little part of the valley that was very different from the beach or any other area of the park—or from any other spot on earth. Neville was right and she had been right—it was one of the special places of this world, one of the places in which something broke through. She hesitated to think of that something as God. The God of churches and established religion was such a limiting Being. This was one of the places in which meaning broke through and in which she could feel that she might understand everything if she could only find the thoughts or the words with which to grasp it.

But then meaning was not to be grasped. It was a mystery to be trusted.

One needed courage to trust places like this. She had lost her courage the afternoon of the picnic. She needed to restore it.

She went to stand among the thick ferns that overhung the pool. She undid the strings at the neck of her cloak after a couple of minutes and tossed it aside. After a brief hesitation she pulled off her old dress too and kicked off her shoes until she stood there in just her shift. The air was cool, but to someone who had spent most of her life outdoors it was not uncomfortably cold. And she needed to feel. She stood very still. After a few minutes she tipped back her head and closed her eyes. The beauty of the moonlit scene threatened to steal everything for the eyes. She wanted to hear the sounds of water and insects and gulls. And she wanted to smell the ferns and the fresh water of the waterfall, the salt of the sea. And to feel the cool night air against her flesh and the ferns and soil beneath her bare feet.

She opened her eyes again once all her senses had become attuned to her surroundings. She looked into the dark, fathomless waters of the pool. The darkness with its suggestion of something to be feared was an illusion. The pool was fed by that bright fall of sparkling waterdrops, and it in its turn fed the shimmering sea. Darkness and light—they were a part of each other, complementary opposites.

'What are you thinking?'

The voice—his voice—came from behind her, not very far distant. The words had been softly spoken. She had neither seen nor heard his approach, but she was curiously unstartled, unsurprised. There was none of that terror, that panicked feeling that something menacing was creeping up on her that she had felt on the rhododendron walk and in the forest this morning. It felt right that he had come. It felt as if it were meant to be. What had gone wrong here could not be put right if he were not here with her. She did not turn around.

'That I am not just someone observing this,' she said, 'but that I am a part of it. People often talk about observing nature. By saying so they set a distance between themselves and what is really a part of them. They miss a part of their very being. I am not just watching this. I am this.'

She was not thinking out the words, planning them, formulating a philosophy of life. She was merely speaking from her heart to his heart. She had never shared herself so deeply with another human being. But it seemed right to do so with him. He would understand. And he would accept.

He said nothing. Yet his very silence said everything. There was suddenly a feeling of perfect peace, perfect communion.

And then he was beside her, touching the backs of his fingers to the hair at her temples. 'Then the one remaining garment has to go too, little water nymph,' he said.

There was no element of suggestiveness in the words. They merely showed the understanding and acceptance she had expected. While she crossed her arms and peeled her shift off over her head, he was shrugging out of his coat and waistcoat and shirt.

'You were planning to swim, were you not?' he asked her.

Yes. She had not known it consciously, but yes, it would have been the next logical step even if he had not come to put it into words for her. She needed to immerse herself in the waters of the pool, to make herself an inextricable part of the beauty and peace that had been restored to her this night—the perfect gift.

She nodded. He was a part of it too, magnificent in his nakedness after he had stripped away the last of his garments. They looked at each other with frank appreciation and—oh yes, with the stirrings of desire, of hunger, of need. But there was more than just that. There were needs of the soul to be fed, and for now they were of greater importance than the cravings of the body.

Besides, there was all night…

He turned and dived into the pool—and came up gasping and shaking his head like a wet dog. His teeth flashed white in the moonlight. But before he could say anything Lily had dived in too.

The water was cold. Numbingly, breathtakingly cold. And clear and sweet and cleansing. She felt as if it were penetrating beneath the layer of her skin and soothing and cleaning and renewing. Now that she was in the water, she saw after she had surfaced and smoothed her hair back from her face, it was no longer black but shimmering with moving light. Darkness was only a perception, she realized again, dark from one viewpoint but bright from another.