I have to get back to Betty, to keep talking. To find how my love has settled in her, and whether it has sparked a mutual feeling. She might let me sleep at her house; I could tell her that Tom is fit to kill me.
It isn’t the nicest walk down to her tonight. The weather has turned. It seems we cannot catch up to the spring.
When I arrive, I don’t want to go inside. The idea of mentioning you again makes me sick. I don’t want to disturb you anymore. I just want to watch her awhile and gather my thoughts.
And so I take myself as far as the window, where her perfect sleeping form faces me, warped by the thin glass. Breathtaking. I want her always sleeping as softly as this. Unharmed, unharming. If I cannot have her alive, I will wait for the day when I can be her grave. When she will sleep this gently forever, and I will wrap myself around her. Imagine, Tom wants me to let her go. As though I could ever let her go.
And then, as if by some horrifying miracle, her eyes open. And she looks out at me. A moment of just her and me, suspended in time. Just eyes meeting eyes through the glass, through the night and all that has passed. And I know that all of the things that I feel for her are real. I know that. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of it, or if I feel differently one day. I love her. I know it. I love her.
She whispers something, and then she says it aloud, and I can only just make it out. It sounds like crying.
‘She’s outside, Bill.’
She kicks back like a mare, waking her husband, who darts up to catch me, too late. I am gone, part of the night again. Part of the hedges. Part, perhaps, of her dream. Only a flicker of the light, something that briefly fascinated and terrified her. Existing only as a moment. Let her catch me on the horizon, running out of her husband’s reach.
I wonder for a moment about leaving my scalp here for her to find. Doesn’t she always say she loves my hair? Well, then she can always have my hair, and know I came for her tonight. Oh god, suddenly the sky is so low. I fear I might have to crouch to walk under it. The dawn is coming on so quick.
And then, a smear becomes a clear shape, and I see Tom coming towards me. Racing, like a bull. Shouting my name. Once more, I amreminded of the night you died. Oh god. For a moment, I remember it all so clearly. How deeply I loved you. The veins at Tom’s temples, bulging. Like Mammy all over again. That’s what he said. Unmarried and pregnant and his problem. I should never have told him you were having a baby. I should never have trusted him with my feelings. He knew that if he pushed Jack, then Jack would push back. But if he pushed you, you would just fall. How easily he knocked you back down the stairs. Maybe he wanted to get rid of the baby. Maybe he wanted to get rid of the pair of you. My hand, reaching for you, a moment too late. I remember it all now.
Tom catches my arms. Once more, in complete control of me.
Don’t forget me, darling.
Tom
I CATCH HER. I SEIZEher. That girl has done enough talking. She won’t be sharing any more secrets with Betty Nevan.
It takes all I have not to crack her head off the stone wall and leave all the madness to drain out of her. I squeeze her as tightly as I can, and I don’t care if it kills her.
It isn’t the first time I’ve had a thought like this. I had it all planned out. How we would do it, where we would put her. The alibi and all that. I’d know how to talk to the guards. It all worked out in my head, except for the guilt. It was the only thing I couldn’t explain away. So I left it.
I fear that intending to kill her is every bit as foul as carrying out the act. For a moment, I had every intention of her ending up dead. You might say there was a world of difference between them, but really, having felt what I did, I’m not sure.
—
At home, the drizzle starts again. Let it pour rain now, I don’t care anymore. Jack comes out of the cottage with Peggy. His hands on her shoulders. Her bag packed. And she rubs the pony’s nose. She looks so like Anna. Have I just seen this for the first time? I’ll say it to her when I see her tomorrow morning, down on the farm.
‘All okay?’
Jack asks, hardly stopping.
‘Grand now. Everything is grand.’
I pat the soil down with the shovel. I pat her on the head. Tomorrow, please God, I will plant a tree here. Something that will grow eighty feet tall, with flowers and fruit.
Jack
TOM COULDN’T COPE WITH THEdamage Anna was doing to our reputation. When a man has so little, that is a lot to take away from him. I’m trying to justify this. We couldn’t have let her carry on the way she did; obsessive, scaring people. Getting too close to people. And I suppose it wasn’t doing Peggy any favours to be raised by somebody so uneven. Anna’s is the last influence I’d want on Peggy. Are there any reasons that explain it away?
I suppose all I have is an honest reason: I am not the good man that I once was. To be frank, it got to the stage where I couldn’t stand to hear Anna take another breath. She had exhausted my patience. I had exhausted every other option.
I believe it’s fair to say that Anna took a great deal away from me. In ways, she took my life away from me. And there have been times that I was worryingly tempted to take her life, too.
To put the kitchen knife to her neck while she slept softly beside me. To watch all that kept her alive suddenly reduced to nothing but a stubborn stain on the floor. Yes, in my most extreme and obscure streams of consciousness, these ideas came to me. When Tom told me how carelessly and gladly she pushed you down the stairs, it was only natural I would want to do the same to her.
But then I would always realise that she would only be anotherthing that haunts me. Another bout of grief to mount within us all. If she had already driven me to these thoughts while living, imagine how intensely she would torment me when dead.
And so, I had no real choice but to let Tom take care of it. I stayed in with Peggy, and he took Anna out. I’m not sure what he did next, but he came back alone, after it was gone dark. Whatever he did, where he left her or what his plan was, I don’t know.
