Chapters (20)
She knew that she needed help. But who on Kinness could give it? There was an elderly nurse, a spinster, who played the organ in the church and taught the children in Sunday school. Could she go to her and say:
“Help me. I can’t bear my husband to touch me”?
The nurse had never been touched, seemed to know nothing of frustration or desire.
In England there would be places to go, people to see—sympathetic doctors, marriage guidance counsellors. Once, a long time ago, she had suggested to James that she should go south to seek advice, but he had been hurt.
“I can look after you,” he had said. “I can care for you. You don’t need other people.”
Now he would be glad for her to go, but it was too late. She was frightened to go to the south of the island where most of the houses were gathered. How could she get on an aeroplane and go to England?
I’m ill, she thought. I live too much in the past.
She heard the door of the storm porch banging. She hoped that it was the wind but she knew it was James.
He was still holding the powerful torch he had been using to search for Mary. She blinked and covered her eyes with her hands.
“What are you doing, sitting here in the dark?” he said. As usual irritation and concern were mixed. “The engine’s still on, you could have put the light on. Besides, it’s very late. You should be in bed.”
“Yes. I didn’t notice the time.”
She’s getting worse, he thought, I must do something, get a specialist from the mainland maybe. But the last doctor from the mainland had given her tranquillizers and she had not taken them.
She stood up. She was wearing a dressing gown and as she stood up it fell open, so that he could see her neck and the top of her breast. Her skin looked very white in the light of the torch.
She saw him looking at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m off out again,” he said. “ I’ve just come in to get changed into warmer clothes. Mary is missing. I doubt if she’s strayed this far up the island, but I said I’d look on the mountain. Don’t wait up or me. It’ll take a while.”
But he was still looking at her.
“I love you,” he said.
As he walked out of the door, and the chill air hit him, he thought: it’s not love I feel for her. It’s lust. Then he thought: there are worse sins than lust, and he went out onto the island.