It was done smoothly without a ripple on the surface, but the net result was to leave Tash alone with Jeremy, and she could not help realizing that Carlos was aware of this.
She stood with Jeremy under the porte-cochère while Carlos and Hilary drove away.
“I’d like to show you that beach now,” said Jeremy. “Do you have time?”
“Oh, yes, all the time in the world.”
“I’ll have to borrow your car. Carlos drove off with mine.”
It was strange to be a passenger in her own car with Jeremy driving, and yet it was pleasant.
They drove through the woods for only a few minutes before she heard the mutter of surf.
“I had no idea we were so near the sea!”
“A little uncanny, isn’t it? Woods always make you feel that you’re inland. This road is called Further Lane, and that’s uncanny, too. Farther is the word you use for distance in space, but further really means distance in time. I’m always expecting to drive into the eighteenth century on this road.”
The car shot out of the trees. Now there were sand dunes on either side, with wild grass streaming in the wind from their crests like long hair.
The road ended in a turnaround at the top of a steep rise in its gradient, probably to accommodate one of the dunes.
There was no one else there at this hour of the night. Jeremy halted the car at the very edge of the macadam and switched off the headlights.
There was only starlight now. All they could see of the ocean was the foamy, white edge of waves creaming on the sand. Beyond, there was only a black void, without any sign of an horizon, that seemed to go on forever. Without surf, there would have been no sea; without stars, no sky.
Jeremy switched off the engine and began to speak in the sudden stillness. “Tash, there are some things you ought to know now. I loved Vivian, but she did not love me. She knew a divorce would hurt my future, and she cared enough about me not to want that. So she hesitated, feeling trapped, bored and unhappy. A generation ago she might have taken to drink. In this generation, she took to drugs.
“For a long time I knew she was unhappy, but I didn’t know why. I suppose she was trying to spare me as long as she could. I didn’t even think of divorce. How could I when she was so obviously in some kind of trouble?”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I don’t want you to feel guilty. You must not get the idea that you came between Vivian and me. That would be too heavy a burden of guilt for anyone like you.
“Vivian and I had been divorced emotionally before you and I ever met. She and I were trapped. Sooner or later, one of us was bound to fall in love with someone else. It was chance or Fate that I was the one, and that I fell in love with you.
“Nothing you said or did made me do it. I just did. And now, I must know if you fell in love with me. I’ve never been sure. Did you?”
He waited for an answer in words, but the only answer she could give him was in her eyes.
Swiftly he bowed his head to kiss her lips. She had never known a kiss like that before. Her arms lifted to draw him closer to her heart, and everything else was forgotten in mutual surrender.
PART III
Desolation Bend
14
EVERYONE AT FOX RUN knew they were lovers, and that they would marry after a decent interval, but no one in the household ever showed the slightest awareness of this. The lovers were cosseted in a snug cocoon of discreet silence. The only exceptions were occasional glances in their direction tinged with envy. There are few people, however cynical, who do not hanker a little after the rare experience of happiness in love which passes so many by. This envy was wistful, quite without jealousy or malice.
The conspiracy of forebearance included the press. No hint of the truth appeared in any newspaper. Even the most intrusive gossip columnists left this story alone. After all, Tash had no enemies in public life, and Jeremy, who did, had won the sympathy of most people by his ordeal on the night of the fire. Everyone who knew them seemed glad that the Governor had found a way to mend his broken life.
But what about the invisible multitude out there beyond the newspapers and television screens? What was being said by people who didn’t know them?
There was one clue: the letters addressed to Jeremy or Tash that came pouring into the mailing department of the secretariat at Fox Run, some signed, some anonymous, and about thirty-five percent abusive. The largest number of these came from the western counties, where Jeremy was going to open his re-election campaign in the next few days.
The minds behind these letters were as inflexible as muscles in spasm and locked onto a few archetypal ideas with the tenacity of rigor mortis. Once they got hold of an idea they seemed almost physically incapable of letting it go, the way a steel needle is physically incapable of separating itself from a magnet.
They were now denouncing Jeremy as “soft on communism” because his strike settlement had led to renewed trade with Barlovento, which had a government they considered leftist. Egged on by Barloventan political exiles, they wanted to believe anything nasty they heard about the “traitor” as they called him. So they seized upon rumors of the role Tash played in his life with gleeful avidity.
She was not just the Whore of Babylon. She was Lady MacBeth. One letter even quoted: Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. . . .
Job was the one who first showed Tash a sampling of the letters. He did it one afternoon in her own office in the stone barn.
