He remembered that he had let Edie go, he had set her free, but at the same moment he felt he had locked himself into a cage from which he could never escape. He remembered the blackness of the stones in the earth, like evil eyes scoffing at him and how he kicked at them with all his fury. He remembered a voice and he thought it was her voice. He had turned and it had been her dress and then he had been pulled along, hurried into something — and he never hurried into anything. He remembered the deliciousness of her body and how she had wrapped him up and he felt safe and at home. He remembered how his soul sang when she accepted his proposal. He remembered afterward he had sat up and been stunned to realise it was Beth he had made love to; it was Beth who had accepted his proposal, it was Beth in her dress.
It wasn’t Edie. He had said that over and over to himself so many times in the last three years or so. It wasn’t Edie.
Beth had started kissing him and telling him she loved him and that she had loved him since the first rose, and as her warm kisses touched his skin he thought maybe he could love her back. Maybe all those fights they had over nothing at the front door were love. Maybe he had been blind to his true feelings and it was really Beth he wanted after all and he would be happy.
They had walked back to Webster Street arm in arm and just walking with someone, their bodies touching, in a space no one else shared, filled him with such joy. But they got to the house in Webster Street, and he said goodbye and she called him darling and the word grated shreds from his heart and he knew instantly it wasn’t the right fit.
He had seen Edie because he wanted to see her. He had only wanted Beth when he thought she was Edie and now the bars of his cage were pressing into his skin and leaving harsh red marks.
He had gone home from Beth and gone straight to his piano and played Rachmaninoff’s Musicaux Number 3 over and over and the entire house crumpled under the pain the notes sang. Lilly sat in the kitchen sobbing into a tea towel for all she had lost. She wept for the dances and the kisses in the kitchen with Peter that were never to be again. When Theo’s fingers hurt he still kept playing. Cry for me world, he’d thought, cry for me because I can’t cry for myself.
His insides swirled and churned; he was angry. He had given Edie six years of his life, surely that was long enough. Surely after six years it was right that he accepted they could never be together. It was right for him to search for happiness elsewhere. After he had played the music over and over many times, somewhere as the notes built and moved and shifted, his innards moved and shifted as well and they stopped churning. He felt it and stopped playing, and waited to see what would happen next. Slowly the churning began again in the opposite direction. His fingers once again struck the melancholy notes and he thought how he was being cruel to Edie. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t be with him, she had the child to think of. The child whose smile brought serenity.
As he’d played he realised he had to keep loving Edie even if he had to love her from afar. He wondered what was the more honourable thing to do. Should he break with Beth and say it was a mistake? Or should he marry her? It was an important decision and he couldn’t hurry it.
So he had thought on it every day for the last three or so years.
He’d told Beth they couldn’t be together again as they had at the lake until they were married. He said they needed to wait at least a year to marry because Beth was too young and he couldn’t marry her until she turned twenty-one. He’d thought that would give him enough time to decide and she thought he was being considerate of her age and reputation. The year came and went and in that year he visited the Cottingham home every week and they all thought he was visiting Beth. At the end of the year he told Beth they had to wait another year because it would be disrespectful and hurtful to Edie if they married too soon and Beth’s guilt wouldn’t let her disagree so she accepted it. And so he had afternoon tea with them every Sunday. Then he told Beth they had to wait because there was so much unrest in the world and who knew where it was heading.
Beth was furious. She said he was making her look like an idiot and why couldn’t they do what they had done down by the lake again? She had yelled and stamped her feet and that made Theo only more determined to hold off on marrying her. He didn’t like the way she rushed into things without thinking.
‘I want to wait until we are married Beth, we shouldn’t have done what we did. I want to marry you honourably; we will be together when we marry. I just want to wait one more year until things settle down in the world and we know where we are.’
‘And the way you can wait — that may bloody well be when the cows come home,’ she said and she looked at him with utter contempt.
‘I thought that was one of the things you liked about me, Beth — that I didn’t rush into things.’
She’d pushed him hard in the chest and said, ‘You didn’t mind rushing down at the lake.’
He couldn’t tell her that the longer he was engaged
