Somewhere Beyond Reproach by Tim Jeal Read Free Book Online Page B

Dinah was made for her greater happiness. That I knew that I should give much and take little, that I started to seek her out because even if I could not meet my own needs, I would be able to meet hers. I only knew that love by definition meant the enjoyment of the object. I would find out all I could and if I found that she was happy with her husband, I should still go on until my love had gained its end, whatever that might be. I was to become fascinated by the circumstances , the symptoms, the events, forgetting the person who had lived through and moulded these. My role had been cast and she would have to fit in. Yet I wanted to give, wanted desperately, aggressively. I had thought so carefully, I was entirely conscious, entirely in control. If only I could have been unguarded, vulnerable or foolish.
    There were still four days till my trip to the cinema with Andrew. Even though I knew that Andrew was the best way to reach Dinah I had not written off the possibility of re-meeting Mark Simpson. It was, after all, almost a moral duty to see what sort of a man I might be depriving, what sort of a marriage I might be destroying. Put like that it all sounds so mean, small and dirty. In comparison with any great achievement how pathetically small mine would be if I achieved it. Yet I was not indulging an emotional luxury. I was doing what I had to. For all of us there is always something that half eludes, tells us in some perfect landscape , in some work of art, some long-forgotten taste or smell, that it is still there: the echo that never quitebecomes a sound. But I had heard, touched, tasted, knew.
    Perhaps I did not think of finding out all I knew about my former friend just so as to know his weaknesses. Perhaps if I had liked him, respected his way of life, thought him capable of making Dinah happy, I should have gone my lonely separate way. When is a mind made up? When does the body of a snake become its tail?
    I took the morning off from work, decided to see where he went from home. As I waited in a doorway opposite I wondered if I would still recognise him after so many years. I felt no nervousness. If I missed him today, I could find him tomorrow. I had arrived at nine; he might have left already. A woman in a yellow dress, a child in school uniform, an old man pushing a pram. I watched the glass door swing open again and again. I looked at the flats and wondered how any man could have designed such monsters on purpose, drawn each fluted balustrade, each decorated pediment, chosen the deep red stone. The doors opened again. A man with a stick hesitated momentarily as he emerged. He started across the road and seemed to be coming straight towards me. From a distance I could not have told. He was almost bald. The stick was no affectation; he leant heavily on it with each step. The eyes, the nose, the mouth. I looked more carefully and as I did moved further back into the shade of the doorway. Mark. Yet like a schoolboy made up to play the part of an older man. I remembered his agility on the tennis court. He turned to the right and limped towards the bus-stop. For a moment I was sure that he had looked straight at me. How close could I dare stand behind him at the bus-stop? If I sat behind him he might see me as he got out. I dashed into a newsagent’s and bought a paper to use in the best spy tradition. Several buses came before Simpson moved. There were five people between the two of us. Almost the whole queue seemed to be waiting for the same bus. If it should be full? If the conductor barred my way? When the right bus came it was almost full. Both of us had to stand on the bottom deck. Simpson was very near the front and I was further back. A man got up andgave him his seat. I watched carefully to see if I could gauge any embarrassment on Mark’s part. He merely nodded and sat down. How long had he been like that? Was he humiliated to be given a seat? A man in his early thirties. I was in no danger of being seen now