The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

inquest?”
    “Yes.”
    “And?”
    “Nothing really. A shocking accident.”
    “What age was he?”
    “Sixteen, almost seventeen.”
    “Christ!”
    She downs her whiskey. I never try to stop her. She knows her limits. I have never seen her drunk.
    “Good God, I recognise that portrait! That’s from the hunting lodge. You didn’t have that the last time I was here.”
    “Which is too long ago.”
    “For God’s sake, Thomas! I owe you nothing. Nothing! And yet still I come to you. I travel by boat, which I hate just slightly less than I hate flying. Always a foul crossing, a brutal sea. I drive through these ugly towns and villages. It’s bungalow hell. What terror do these people have of being too far from the ground? Some peasant lust for the earth? Bungalows everywhere. And grey after grey: it makes the place seem like a mirage. This rubbish about green! For heaven’s sake, how could you spot green through the driving grey rain?”
    And she rages, again. I stand motionless. I remain silent. She is here.
    “I do all this to come here. That is essential. If you came to me, Thomas, we know what would happen. You are a man who might not leave. You are a man who could not leave once. This is a good agreement. It is a good arrangement. Islands, close but separate. And that ghastly Irish Sea. It must always be difficult to get to you. We’ve done well with this elective distance between us. In this, at least, we did well. Would you say I come to make love to you, Thomas? To make love? To you? What a phrase! ‘Make love.’ Who the hell can make love? People make bread, jam, babies. Who the hell makes love? Not us, Thomas. Not us.”
    I know I must stay silent. Is that not a sign of love? To stand silent against the onslaught? To endure? To let her rage flow? To allow it to flow so that it does not engulf her? To know the point at which to pull her back? A man in love does this. I am consumed by her. Do I truly love her? The way I truly loved my wife? I wish I’d never met her. I wish I’d never met Harriet Calder. When she is here with me I wish I’d never met her. When she is not here with me I wish I’d never met her. I wish for a life without her in it. But I live such a life. Perhaps I love her too much? Is that possible? Well, is it? She is burning a little now with the whiskey. I know this woman. Is that all that it is? To know the woman? She looks at me, that sudden look, and then it’s gone. Soon we will go upstairs. She will run up and I will walk slowly. She will turn around quickly. Then she will strip, the way a boy strips. I will lock the door, as I always do. I will lean back against the door as I always do, for support, and she will throw herself on me and we will be lost. Again.
    My bed is large and old. We do not share a bed. It is a place we go to. It is a territory we invade and then abandon, like absentee landlords. Its iconic position in marriage, the bed in the couple’s room, the theatre where all is played out, is the symbol not of sexuality but of coupling. “The bed I built can never be moved for it is built around the trunk of a deep-rooted olive tree.” Odysseus returning to Penelope. The great complicated secret of the bed known only to them. And it was thus she knew he was indeed her husband. There is always a secret between couples, sometimes within it lies the seed of their destruction. I stand behind her and unpin her hair. She bows her head.
    “Harriet,” I whisper.
    “Say nothing, Thomas. Say nothing.”

        FOUR
    The letter lies on my study table. My father’s handwriting has always seemed to me to be in exquisite contrast to his character. It is spidery-light, as though the writer cared more about the hieroglyphics than the content; a deception, for few men weigh their words or their actions more carefully than my father.
September 18th, 1962
Dear Thomas,
I have taken a long time to reply to you. It is always an exercise in exactitude to write to you in