Besides, what would happen to her, to Eithne? She had planned to step back into his need of her now that Valerie and the boys were gone. He would never again live in the Georgetown house, but she would; she could be a great help to him there, entertaining the right people, the “important” people. A nod from Eithne meant that you were “in,” and while she wasn’t particularly political-minded, she knew everything there was to know about protocol. She had considerable power of her own, but it would mean nothing if she were to lose Edward. Particularly now that he was only a few short steps from the summit. She had always sensed this, but losing him had seemed an unlikely disaster, until today.
Edward stayed in the grove for a long time. Once, noticing a small white object thrusting through the matted carpet of pine needles, he knelt and uncovered an Indian Pipe, freed it, and for a long time contemplated the miracle of its growth. The stem, blanched from a winter beneath the snow, curved like a swan’s neck. Edward realized the plant’s beauty but there was no response in his heart; his recognition of it began in the intellect and ended there. This was frightening enough . . . to remember an emotion but to be unable to feel it . . . and Edward, getting to his feet, hurried away from the spot as if the Indian Pipe were a poisonous viper. He was not yet at the bottom of despair, but he was close to it. So far . . . and he was certain of this . . . he hadn’t behaved like a madman, hadn’t worn his coat backwards or switched his shoes from right to left or slipped into babbling incoherencies. Some inner voice kept right on dictating what gestures he should make, what words he should speak to appear normal. Only the horrible thing about it was that he heard himself speaking and saw himself behaving as if he were on the outside of himself . . . a solipsist in reverse? Sitting in judgment upon himself he took great care to censor any indication of self-pity, or to admit, ever, that a rug had been pulled out from under him and that he had fallen flat on his face at the foot of the throne. A stranger had said to him once: “You’ve had it too easy. All the breaks. If you ever come up against it . . . really up against it . . . boy, it’ll go hard with you!” At the time, he had put the outburst down to that curious resentment aroused in certain men by handsewn shoes and well-cut jackets . . . as if filthy overalls were a guarantee of noble purposes and a stained necktie meant you were a good fellow. He wondered, now, if perhaps his critic had been right: at his birth all the ingredients of well-being had been shaken out of the cornucopia: inherited wealth, physical stamina, solid forbears, an ingrained, deep-rooted belief in the essential Tightness of his country. Well. None of these gifts made him sacrosanct. He had been spit upon by mobs, splattered with eggs, hissed at. Woven into the popular applause, like steel wire in a braid of hemp, there had been hatred enough to cut his hands to the bone as he climbed. But climb he had. And might again. If only he could find a reason to!
He had come to the edge of the wood and could now see the lake, calm save close in shore where little waves broke with monotonous regularity against the beach. Across the silvery water, a chain of hills, heavily wooded, were nowadays a sanctuary for small game . . . too many gun-happy hunters had all but exterminated the wildlife there. Edward had hunted as a youngster, accepting it as a sport because his father and grandfather did. But he was responsible for the bill that ruled slaughter out of the district for fifty years to come. There were deer there now . . . the beavers were at work again, the skunks and squirrels and porcupines had ventured back . . . there were even a few red foxes and small bear . . .
Edward slid down a bank, crossed the beach and went out to the end of the Easterly dock. He stood there for a long time, unaware that the sun was almost gone, and that a chill current of air had begun to drift along the shore, trailing with it shreds of night mist. He heard the chuckle of water around the piles beneath him but didn’t look down. It was deep this far out and would be cold. He began involuntarily to imagine drowning . . . the plunge, the struggle, the final letting go.
Then he saw that someone had come along the beach and was trying to attract his attention. It was a girl wearing slacks and a bulky red sweater. She was dripping wet, as if she had just stepped out of the lake. Even from where he stood he could hear the slush of water in her rubber-soled sneakers.
She called up to him: “Will you help me? A man’s hurt, His car turned over. He’s trapped. He’ll drown if we don’t get him out!”
“Drown?”
“The car rolled into the lake. Please come. Please hurry!”
Edward ran back along the dock and jumped off into the sand beside her. She ran ahead and there was nothing to do but to follow her. Apparently she hadn’t recognized him and for this he was grateful; he hated being pinned like a specimen to some stranger’s collection of celebrities. This girl was intent not on him but on the car which had righted itself and now stood half-submerged about fifty feet off shore. The driver was under the wheel, his left arm across the door, a bloody hand trailing in the water.
The nausea of shock was at the pit of Edward’s stomach again, and he hesitated at the water’s edge, debating whether to go to the injured man’s rescue or to turn and run for help.
“I tried,” the girl said. “I couldn’t! But I tried . . .”
So. There was no help for it. Edward peeled off his coat, removed his shoes. The first step into the icy water made him recoil and stooping to conceal his reaction he tugged at his socks. Then, barefoot, he waded out, the girl splashing, half-swimming beside him.
“Go back!” he shouted.
She shook her head and kept right on.
The man in the car was only half-conscious, but he attempted a jaunty grin when he saw Edward.
“Fancy meeting you here!” he said. Then, with a wash of pallor, he fainted.
As Edward struggled to release and lift the heavy body, he thought that if anyone were trapped it was he, himself. He got the man back to the beach and put him down where a bank of sand offered some protection and support. The girl followed. Her teeth were chattering, her lips blue beneath the smeared-on crimson of her lipstick. She brought Edward’s coat and he covered the unconscious fellow as well as he could. Then she went back for the shoes and socks and handed them to Edward.
“What were you doing on this road?” he demanded. “Didn’t you see the sign back there?”
“Yes. We saw it.”
“Then why didn’t you turn around? What were you after?”
“A story,” she said. “You, of course! We’re reporters.”
“I see,” he said, “very well. There’s a doctor in the village. I’ll call him from the house. It won’t take long. Wait here.”
He turned abruptly and hurried back toward Easterly along an old shortcut he knew that by-passed the pines. Almost obliterated by a tangle of frozen weeds and thorny bushes, the path was steep and rough. Edward crashed through, taking long strides. It was almost dark now and the lake mist was drifting up, clinging, breaking loose again, leaving torn shreds as if a company of tattered ghosts had passed. A castanet-rattling of frogs in a damp hollow ceased abruptly, then began again. Of course those two on the beach were scout ants staking out a lump of sugar for their colony! No use to ask them for a few days’ grace; the rest of the horde would arrive tomorrow and the public flaying would begin again: that pitiless exposure which was like being skinned alive . . . a laying bare of lungs, heart, viscera, veins, nerves. And he recalled a statue he had seen somewhere of a martyred saint neatly and expertly deprived of his flesh which he held like a toga, and with a certain elegance, over his arm.
Edward had reached the top of the slope when he heard the girl behind him. He didn’t
