it would be rather fun to pretend I was one, so I played up. His Spanish was very bad but he could just manage a little. I told him the villa belonged to an English lady who was away. I said she had taught me a little English and I pretended to speak broken English. It was such fun – such fun – even now I can remember what fun it was. He began to make love to me. We agreed to pretend that the villa was our home, that we were just married and coming to live there. I suggested that we should try one of the shutters – the one you tried this evening. It was open and inside the room was dusty and uncared for. We crept in. It was exciting and wonderful. We pretended it was our own house.’
She broke off suddenly, looked appealingly at Mr Satterthwaite.
‘It all seemed lovely – like a fairy tale. And the lovely thing about it, to me, was that it wasn’t true. It wasn’t real.’
Mr Satterthwaite nodded. He saw her, perhaps more clearly than she saw herself – that frightened, lonely child entranced with her make believe that was so safe because it wasn’t real.
‘He was, I suppose, a very ordinary young man. Out for adventure, but quite sweet about it. We went on pretending.’
She stopped, looked at Mr Satterthwaite and said again:
‘You understand? We went on pretending …’
She went on again in a minute.
‘He came up again the next morning to the villa. I saw him from my bedroom through the shutter. Of course he didn’t dream I was inside. He still thought I was a little Spanish peasant girl. He stood there looking about him. He’d asked me to meet him. I’d said I would but I never meant to.
‘He just stood there looking worried. I think he was worried about me. It was nice of him to be worried about me. He was nice …’
She paused again.
‘The next day he left. I’ve never seen him again.
‘My baby was born nine months later. I was wonderfully happy all the time. To be able to have a baby so peacefully, with no one to hurt you or make you miserable. I wished I’d remembered to ask my English boy his Christian name. I would have called the baby after him. It seemed unkind not to. It seemed rather unfair. He’d given me the thing I wanted most in the world, and he would never even know about it! But of course I told myself that he wouldn’t look at it that way – that to know would probably only worry and annoy him. I had been just a passing amusement for him, that was all.’
‘And the baby?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.
‘He was splendid. I called him John. Splendid. I wish you could see him now. He’s twenty. He’s going to be a mining engineer. He’s been the best and dearest son in the world to me. I told him his father had died before he was born.’
Mr Satterthwaite stared at her. A curious story. And somehow, a story that was not completely told. There was, he felt sure, something else.
‘Twenty years is a long time,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You’ve never contemplated marrying again?’
She shook her head. A slow, burning blush spread over her tanned cheeks.
‘The child was enough for you – always?’
She looked at him. Her eyes were softer than he had yet seen them.
‘Such queer things happen!’ she murmured. ‘Such queer things … You wouldn’t believe them – no, I’m wrong, you might, perhaps. I didn’t love John’s father, not at the time. I don’t think I even knew what love was. I assumed, as a matter of course, that the child would be like me. But he wasn’t. He mightn’t have been my child at all. He was like his father – he was like no one but his father. I learnt to know that man – through his child. Through the child, I learnt to love him. I love him now. I always shall love him. You may say that it’s imagination, that I’ve built up an ideal, but it isn’t so. I love the man, the real, human man. I’d know him if I saw him tomorrow – even though it’s over twenty years since we met. Loving him has made me into a woman. I love him as a woman loves a man. For twenty years I’ve lived loving him. I shall die loving him.’
She stopped abruptly – then challenged her listener.
‘Do you think I’m mad – to say these strange things?’
‘Oh! my dear,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. He took her hand again.
‘You do understand?’
‘I think I do. But there’s something more, isn’t there? Something that you haven’t yet told me?’
Her brow clouded over.
‘Yes, there’s something. It was clever of you to guess. I knew at once you weren’t the sort one can hide things from. But I don’t want to tell you – and the reason I don’t want to tell you is because it’s best for you not to know.’
He looked at her. Her eyes met his bravely and defiantly.
He said to himself: ‘This is the test. All the clues are in my hand. I ought to be able to know. If I reason rightly I shall know.’
There was a pause, then he said slowly:
‘Something’s gone wrong.’ He saw her eyelids give the faintest quiver and knew himself to be on the right track.
‘Something’s gone wrong – suddenly – after all these years.’ He felt himself groping – groping – in the dark recesses of her mind where she was trying to hide her secret from him.
‘The boy – it’s got to do with him. You wouldn’t mind about anything else.’
He heard the very faint gasp she gave and knew he had probed correctly. A cruel business but necessary. It was her will against his. She had got a dominant, ruthless will, but he too had a will hidden beneath his meek manners. And he had behind him the Heaven-sent assurance of a man who is doing his proper job. He felt a passing contemptuous pity for men whose business it was to track down such crudities as crime. This detective business of the mind, this assembling of clues, this delving for the truth, this wild joy as one drew nearer to the goal … Her very passion to keep the truth from him helped her. He felt her stiffen defiantly as he drew nearer and nearer.
‘It is better for me not to know, you say. Better for me? But you are not a very considerate woman. You would not shrink from putting a stranger to a little temporary inconvenience. It is more than that, then? If you tell me you make me an accomplice before the fact. That sounds like crime. Fantastic! I could not associate crime with you. Or only one sort of crime. A crime against yourself.’
Her lids drooped in spite of herself, veiled her eyes. He leaned forward and caught her wrist.
‘It is that, then! You are thinking of taking your life.’
She gave a low cry.
‘How did you know? How did you know?’
‘But why? You are not tired of life. I never saw a woman less tired of it – more radiantly alive.’
She got up, went to the window, pushing back a strand of her dark hair as she did so.
‘Since
