An Indecent Obsession

‘You would never have made your life with a man like me,’ he said. ‘I’m just a dairy farmer.’

‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say! I’m not a snob! And tell me the difference between one kind of cocky and another—my father’s a cocky too. The scale’s bigger, that’s all. Nor am I dependent upon having money for my happiness.’

‘I know. But you are from a different class than me, and we don’t have the same outlook on life.’

She stared at him strangely. ‘Don’t we, Michael? Now I find that an odd thing for you of all people to say! I think we do have the same outlook on life. We both like to look after those less capable than ourselves, and we both aim at the exact same thing—encouraging them to become self-sufficient.’

‘That’s true… Yes, that’s very true,’ he said slowly, and then: ‘Honour, what does love mean to you?’

The apparent non sequitur took her aback. ‘Mean?’ she asked, hedging for more time to think.

‘Mean. What does love mean to you?’

‘My love for you, Michael? Or for others?’

‘Your love for me.’ He seemed to enjoy saying it.

‘Why—why, it means sharing my life with you!’

‘Doing what?’

‘Living with you! Keeping your home, having your babies, growing old together,’ she said.

He looked remote; her words affected him, she could see, but had no power to penetrate deeply enough to reach that calm determination which possessed no image of self.

‘But you haven’t served any sort of apprenticeship for that,’ he said. ‘You’re thirty now, and your apprenticeship has been for something quite different. A different sort of life. Hasn’t it?’ He paused, not taking his eyes off her face, raised to his in a fearful bewilderment that yet showed the germ of a comprehension she was unwilling to acknowledge. ‘I think neither of us is suited for the life you’re describing. When I started to talk to you I didn’t think I’d mention this, but you’re a good fighter, you won’t be palmed off with anything but the real root of the matter.’

‘No, I won’t,’ she said.

‘The real root of the matter is just what I said—neither of us is suited for the sort of life you describe. It’s too late to wonder what or why now. I’m the sort of man who mistrusts the wants that come out of a part of me I’m normally able to control. I don’t want to cheapen it by calling it my bodily desires, and I don’t want you to think I’m belittling my feelings for you.’ He gripped her arms near the shoulder. ‘Honour, listen to me! I’m the sort of bloke who mightn’t come home one night because on a trip into town I found someone who in my mind needed me more than you do—I don’t mean I’d desert you, and I don’t necessarily mean another woman; I mean that I’d know you could get along without me until I could come home again. But I might be two days helping that person, or I might be two years. I’m like that. The war gave me a chance to see what I am. It’s given you a chance to see what you are, too. I don’t know how much you’re willing to admit to yourself about yourself, but I’ve learned that when I’m moved to pity, I’ll always be moved to help. You are a complete person. You don’t need my help. And not needing my help, I know you can get along without me. You see, love is beside the point.’

‘You’re approaching a paradox,’ she said, throat aching from the effort to quell fresh tears.

‘I suppose I am.’ He paused, searching for the next thing to say. ‘I don’t think I have a very high opinion of myself. If I did, I wouldn’t need to be needed. But I do need to be needed, Honour! I’ve got to be needed!’

‘I need you!’ she said. ‘My soul, my heart, my body—every bit of me needs you; it always will! Oh, Michael, there are all kinds of need, all kinds of loneliness! Don’t confuse my strength with a lack of need! Please don’t! I need you to fulfill my very life!’

But he shook his head, obdurate. ‘You don’t. You never will. You’re already fulfilled! If you weren’t, you couldn’t be the person I know you to be—warm, loving, interested, happy doing a job few women can do. Almost all women can make a home, have babies. But you’re too different to be content in that sort of cage. Your apprenticeship’s wrong for it. Because after a while that’s how you’d see the life you described with me, devoted exclusively to me. As a cage! You’re a stronger bird than that, Honour. You’ve got to stretch your wings in wider territory than a cage.’

‘I’m prepared to risk that happening,’ she said, white-faced, desolate, but still fighting.

‘I’m not. If it was just you I was describing, maybe I would risk it. But I’m describing me as well.’

‘You’re chaining yourself to Ben far more rigidly than you would to me.’

‘But I can’t hurt Ben the way I’d end in hurting you.’

‘Looking after Ben is a full-time job. You won’t be able to take off to help anyone else on a trip to town.’

‘Ben needs me,’ he said. ‘I’ll live for that.’

‘What if I offered to share your charge of Ben?’ she asked. ‘Would you agree to a life with me that shared our need of being needed?’

‘Are you offering that?’ he asked, uncertain.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t share you with the likes of Benedict Maynard.’

‘Then there’s no more to be said.’

‘About us, no.’ She still stood between his hands, and made no move to escape them. ‘Do the others agree that you should look after Ben?’

‘We made a pact,’ he said. ‘We all agreed. No lunatic asylum for Ben, no matter what happens. Nor will Matt’s wife and children go hungry. We all agreed.’

‘All of you? Or you and Neil?’

He acknowledged the accuracy of this with a rueful twist of lips and head. ‘I’ll say goodbye now,’ he said, hands sliding up across her shoulders to cradle the side of her neck, thumbs moving against her skin.

He kissed her, a kiss of deep love and pain, a kiss of acceptance for what must be and hunger for what might have been. And a voluptuous, erotic kiss filled with the memories of that one night. But he took his mouth away abruptly, too soon; a lifetime would scarcely have been long enough.

Then he came stiffly to attention, a smile in his eyes, turned on his heel and walked away.

The petrol drum was there; she sank down onto it so that she wouldn’t have to watch him until he disappeared, looking at her shoes, at the weak brown tendrils of grass, at the infinity of grains which made up the sand.

So that was that. How could she compete with the kind of need a Benedict had for a Michael? He was right thus far. And how lonely he must be, how driven. Wasn’t that always the way it was? The strong abandoned in favor of the weak. The compulsion—or was it the guilt?—the strong felt to serve the weak. Who battened first? Did the weak demand, or did the strong offer themselves unsolicited? Did strength beget weakness, or reinforce it, or negate it? What was strength, what weakness, for that matter? He was right, she could get along without him. Was that therefore a lack of need for him? He loved her for her strength, yet he couldn’t live with what he loved. In loving, he turned away from loving. Because it didn’t, or it couldn’t, satisfy him.

She had wanted to cry out to him, Forget the world, Michael, curl yourself up in me! With me you’ll know a happiness you’ve never dreamed of! Only to cry that would have been to cry for the moon. Had she done it deliberately? Chosen to love a man who preferred to minister than to love? Since the day of his arrival in X she had admired him, and her love had grown out of that admiration, out of valuing what he was. Each of them had loved the other’s strength, self-reliance, capacity to give. Yet it seemed these very qualities pushed them apart, not together. Two positives. My dearest, my most beloved Michael… I shall think of you, and pray for you, that you continue always to find the strength.

She looked out over the beach, a little battered after the wind and rain of a few days before. There were two beautiful white terns soaring, soaring, wingtip to wingtip as if tied; they wheeled suddenly, still tied, dipped, and were gone. That’s what I wanted, Michael! No cage! Only to fly with you against a great blue sky.