to such lengths.’
‘Is he?’ She gave a little smile. ‘Tell me – why have you come back to the island?’ Before he could answer, she said: ‘After all these years, you come to take his wife away from him.’
His heart turned over like a porpoise.
‘I’ve come to lay a ghost,’ he said.
Janet nodded at the sea.
‘So he’s not out of his mind, is he? He loves her, you see. Obsessed with her, if you like.’ She turned to him, ‘Like you are. And so he’s obsessed with the notion that she’s still in love with you.’
He felt his pulse flutter. ‘And? Is she?’
Janet turned back to the sea.
‘He says she dreams about you.’
Morgan stared at her. Dreams … And he felt joy.
‘How would he know what she dreams?’
‘She speaks your name.’
Morgan slumped against the bar happily. Janet went on: ‘So you should go away and not cause any more trouble and pain, Jack.’
‘Trouble? I haven’t uttered a murmur since that awful day she sent me a telegram saying she was marrying Max.’
‘You don’t know what it was like for her to send you that telegram … You don’t know the agony of indecision she went through.’ Janet sighed, and shook her head. ‘The pressure upon her – the last-minute pressure from friends and family alike to think again, was enormous.’ She turned to him earnestly. ‘She will never leave Max. She believes she’s made her bed and must lie in it. So all you can do is cause emotional confusion. And endless trouble.’
Oh God, he was so happy.
‘ And if I don’t leave, what is Max going to do? Burst in here with the police?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s not even here at the moment – he’s in New York. But don’t underestimate him.’ She paused. ‘You must leave.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘Is that the message she sent me?’
She said, ‘She’s not going to see you, Jack.’
He did not believe that. ‘But her message?’
She hesitated, then she said, reluctantly: “‘Tell him I love him. And goodbye.”’
He wanted to shout for joy. I love him … Janet sighed, as if she regretted telling him. ‘And now I must go.’
He was deliciously happy.
‘Will you give Anna a message from me?’
Janet waited, noncommittal.
‘Tell her that I’m not leaving until I’ve seen her.’
Oh yes, he was in love.
It seemed the longest day of his life, and the happiest. He thought through what Janet had said, and he tried to caution himself, against causing pain, against being optimistic, but he did not quite make it. He dared not leave the hotel, he dared not sleep off his jet-lag, in case she came and went while he was asleep. He sat alone at the crowded bar in the garden, slowly drinking beer, watching the hotel lobby, just feeling the excitement, of her, of being back here where she lived. Finally the sun went down, blazing red and gold through the palms; after dinner he could resist it no longer. He got into his rented car. He drove through Saint George’s, out onto the winding coastal road, through the heavy tropical foliage, past the grand houses; then he came to hers, on the seashore. He had never seen it before, but he knew the address from the telephone directory. He drove slowly past it. He stopped two hundred yards beyond. He walked down onto the beach.
The big house was across a little bay. There were lights on, twinkling between the trees. Her house. He stood, looking at it. Imagining her inside it, imagining what she was thinking and feeling; she knew that he was here, he knew what she was feeling, and with all his happiness and his yearning he willed her and willed her to come to him tomorrow. He sat on the dark beach for over an hour, just watching her house, imagining her, remembering her. Finally he drove back to the hotel, and went to bed, very tired but too happy to go to sleep easily.
That first night, five long years ago, their dinners had gone cold whilst they talked and laughed and talked. She had said:
‘Saint Thomas Aquinas will prove it to you, Jack Morgan, by pure Aristotelian logic, even if he cannot prove by logic what kind of God He is – read his Summa in Theologica. He gives five proofs of God’s existence, though it’s his third argument I like best, his Actuality-Potentiality proof of a Prime or Un-moved Mover. “And this all men call God.” No intelligent man could read that book and remain an agnostic, Jack …’
And when the floorshow came on, a troupe of limbo dancers from Jamaica, she had been unable to resist it when the pole was only twenty inches above the floor and she had kicked her shoes off and gone dancing under it, to roars of applause, her long blonde hair sweeping the floor, her arms upstretched, her jerking feet wide apart, a grin all over her lovely face; and when she had come back to the table, flushed and laughing, he had known with absolute certainty that he was going to marry this marvellous girl; he had taken her hand, and what he wanted to say with all his heart was ‘Let’s check into this hotel and make love’, but instead he said:
‘Tomorrow, you’re coming on a picnic, Ms Valentine, and reading Saint Thomas Aquinas to me, it’s this Actuality–Potentiality theory I’m really wild about …’
‘Oh? What about my lectures, Jack Morgan?’
‘What about my immortal soul, Ms Valentine?’
She had agreed to try to save his soul, though not to kiss him goodnight (nor had he tried too hard, in order to impress her), but he had driven back to his digs on air, wanting to whoop and holler and toot his horn, and he had blown Mrs Garvey a big kiss instead when she came out complaining about him disturbing the house by coming in late. ‘Mrs Garvey, be joyful, tomorrow I’m taking the most wonderful girl in the world on a picnic to read Summa in Theologica! …’
‘What about your lectures, Lieutenant-Commander?’
‘What about my immortal soul, Mrs Garvey? – What about my immortal soul? … ’
And what a picnic it was! He bought Summa in Theologica as soon as the shops opened and he swotted up Saint Thomas’ third proof while the delicatessen packed up the hamper. It was an absolutely beautiful spring day for saving his soul! The sun shone bright and the birds sang and the bees buzzed and butterflies fluttered and he sang her ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’ as he tootled her down the Cornish lanes in his beat-up old Volkswagen, absolutely on top of the world. And he knew he was going to live deliriously happily ever after with this wonderful girl, and it was a wonderful feeling to be totally self-confident and very, very amusing. He spread their blanket on the soft grass by the stream and popped the champagne, and the cork flew and went dancing away over the sparkling rapids and he
