Crooked Vows (15 page)

Jane stands too, levering herself up, rubbing her painful leg. They plod down the slope of the headland towards the next beach, Thomas trying to judge the distance to the next headland at the far end. And beyond that, how much further?

Two hours later they are still plodding through soft sand, and the next promontory still looks a good half hour away. Jane is lagging behind. When he looks back, she is limping more than in the morning. Perhaps he should have been more mindful of this and set an easier pace.

‘Wait a bit, please, Thomas,' she calls to him.

He slows, stops, watches her struggling to catch up.

She flops down on the sand in front of him. She's so tired. She can't go on without a few minutes' rest at least. And she's so thirsty. Why don't they finish the last of the water? It'll run out some time very soon whatever they do.

He begins to object. Shouldn't they be pushing on, looking for more? Then thinks again. Why not? There's so little left. It won't take them much further anyway. He swings the pack down, pulls out the bottle, and hands it to her.

She holds the bottle to her mouth, takes three or four small careful mouthfuls, shakes it to gauge how much is left, and hands it back. There. She's had her share, nearly, anyway. He needs a bit more, carrying the extra weight for both of them.

Thomas feels as if something inside him is shrinking, tightening, as he remembers his secretive mouthfuls at the last stop. Has she picked up his thought, seen what he did. But she couldn't have done. She is offering him the bigger share freely, out of generosity.

He tips the bottle, tasting the muddiness of the last dregs, wondering where the next mouthful will come from.

Choosing a spot on the sand a few feet from her, Thomas flops down and watches the rollers crashing on the beach, enjoying the cool dampness as a slight onshore breeze drifts a cloud of fine spray over them.

*

They are trekking further along the beach towards the next headland, each step requiring as much mental as physical effort. He is walking ahead, trying to pick the firmest level of the sand. Sometimes it looks better high up above the wave line; sometimes it appears to be more firmly packed where the breakers have swept up the slope of the beach leaving it smooth and wet. Thomas keeps switching from one line to the other, but the change never makes much difference.

They are walking barefoot; shoes were discarded the previous day when they both found them a handicap in the soft beach sand. But that decision is turning out to be a mistake: his feet are beginning to blister. Occasionally he slows his stride and looks back to see how far she is lagging behind. Her feet are probably beginning to blister too; she hasn't complained about them, and he hasn't asked. Water bottles rattle in his pack at every stride, reminding him of their emptiness. His throat is parched and an ache at the back of his head has been slowly intensifying, but they must keep moving.

The next rocky headland is much closer, and on the near side of it he can make out something different from the lines of glaring white sand-hills with the occasional scatter of pale, greyish grass and low drab bushes: a small patch of deeper green in the face of the dunes.

As he trudges on the details gradually become clearer. The darker triangle is in the mouth of a small cleft in the dunes. On the far side the higher ground of the promontory rises, but he can't make out what is in the gap. Obviously there's a patch of vegetation quite different from what grows in the parched dunes and the thin dry soil of the rocky headlands. But what, and why?

At closer range he thinks he can pick out something else: a small gutter in the sand emerging from the mouth of the gully. Something there is shining in the sun, high up on the beach above the tide line, but the glare from the afternoon sun ahead makes it impossible to see the details. Despite his exhaustion, Thomas puts on a faster pace, anxiety gnawing at him.

From a few yards away it is clear that a small stream is trickling out of the mouth of a gully, spilling over a shelf of pale rock and flowing a few yards, before losing itself in the beach sand well above the level at which the waves are breaking and sweeping up the slope. Surely, he thinks, so close to the sea, it can't be fresh.

He drops to his knees without waiting to remove his pack and tries a mouthful cupped in his hand. Relief floods his mind. He turns and beckons, urgently.

‘Fresh water! Thank God!'

He thinks of the miraculous spring that gushed out at the spot struck by the saint's staff in the story of Saint Sabas. Immediately another thought intrudes, unbidden, disrupting any idea of a miracle. This little stream was obviously here long before his arrival—here for decades by the look of the shrubbery around it. Why have conflicting thoughts like these recently been jostling for space in his mind more and more often?

*

The sand is cool against his back through his thin shirt. Thomas is lying in the dense shade cast by small deep-green trees growing in a narrow gap between the dunes. There is a faint sound of the water as it trickles down the stream bed and spills over the rock shelf at the edge of the beach. Outside the tent of leaves the glare on the beach is still harsh, but the sun is lower, dipping towards the sea to the west. He realises that he must have dropped off to sleep after drinking as much water as he could take. A few yards away Jane is still asleep, but beginning to stir.

She turns over muttering something, then abruptly sits up, rigid, looking around, eyes wide with alarm. As she turns far enough to see him watching her, the fear fades from her face. Settling back on one elbow, facing him, she explains her fright. It was a dream: she was swimming in a huge expanse of water with no shore in sight and nothing to suggest which way to swim to reach land. Then she woke suddenly and didn't know where she was. Until she saw him, and remembered.

Jane smiles momentarily at him and lies back on the cool, shaded sand, looking up into the canopy of leaves, speaking, as if to the leaves.

‘What a godsend—this place, with the shade, and the coolness, and the water. Especially the water.'

Thomas, too, lies back on the sand looking up into the leaves, wondering about the meaning of that momentary smile. Was it a message of some sort for him? Or was it only relief at escaping from the dream? Her questions the previous day about his embarking on a celibate life—did they also have a meaning for him that he missed? He hadn't thought about this at the time and is sharply aware that this is, for him, uncharted territory. Wilderness.

Jane sits up again. Stands, her feet sinking into the loose sand of the side of the gully. She'll just go for a quick walk. Over this sand-hill. She'll be back in a couple of minutes.

After some initial confusion, Thomas has grasped the coded meaning. He'll do the same, over the hill on the other side of the gully. He tramps up the slope, with a backward glance at her heading in the opposite direction. Over the crest of the hill he changes direction, hurrying towards the head of the gully. Dropping to his hands and knees, he creeps cautiously to a vantage point from which, through a screen of coarse grey grass, he can peer in the direction she has taken. And there she is, glancing around quickly so as to make sure that she is out of sight. Apparently satisfied, she hitches up her skirt, pulls down her pants and squats.

Thomas is rigid with anxiety and guilt about being seen himself but continues to stare at something he has only imagined, shamefully, in the vaguest way. Excitement about seeing and anxiety about being seen—the two feelings compete for space in his consciousness.

She stands, pulls up her pants and smooths down her skirt. The unselfconscious innocence of her movements suddenly turns Thomas's attention onto himself. What is he doing, peering at her furtively, in hiding? He feels shamed, sullied. He cringes down behind the grass screen, backing away from his vantage point, on hands and knees, taking to his feet only when he feels safer, hurrying to be back in position in time, or at least to be returning to the mouth of the gully from the appropriate direction.

He is back where the stream spills onto the beach when she pushes through the shrubs on the other slope. He watches her feet sliding and sinking in the sand, and feels, as he tries to look her in the face, another level of shame. As if he has sullied her as well as himself. And yet, what harm has he done her? If she doesn't know?

Macpherson has listened without comment. Thomas now waits for a response, wondering what the older man has been thinking about his revelations. Perhaps it was a mistake to reveal so much. He has never exposed himself like this before except in a confession to a priest. But this man, as he said at the outset, passes no judgment, does not even appear to think it. How can this be, that he makes no comment on these memories, except to express satisfaction that the recovery strategy is working so well?

Macpherson finally speaks.

‘There is a good deal in today's memories for us to think about. Both of us. We will return to some of them on a later occasion but for now, let me ask you about your dreams. Is there a dream from this last week that you can describe for me?'

Thomas is relieved to move into less intimate territory.

‘I had one the night before last. This is quite strange: it's rather like Jane's nightmare, being in a huge expanse of water, with no sense of direction. Do you think that means something important? The similarity?'

‘Well now, as I've said before, that's hard for me to say. It may be telling you something. You're the dreamer, not me. But perhaps you should describe it to me.'

‘I'm floating in the water. It seems to be late in the afternoon, or evening, really, but I don't have any idea how I got there. The sun has set and the light is beginning to fade. I look around and see that there's a shore behind me, not very far, maybe a hundred yards away. It's not a long swim but while I'm looking at the shore I realise that I'm drifting away from it. It doesn't feel like being caught in a current. It's as if the whole mass of water is moving steadily away from the land, and me with it. I'm a fair swimmer, but somehow I know in my dream that there's no point in trying to swim against this drift.

‘So I turn around to see where I'm being carried, and in front of me, and from side to side, there's an open expanse of water, quite smooth, and moving as a body gently in the same direction. At first I can't see any sign of land; the water seems to go on forever. But then I think I can make something out. It's away on the horizon in the direction I'm moving: just a low shape that's outlined against the last of the light. I can't pick out any detail there.

‘And that seems to be the end of the dream, at least as far as I can remember.'

Macpherson has been sitting back in his chair, face tilted up towards the ceiling, listening intently. He brings his head forward to focus on the younger man.

‘Well now, a very interesting dream. And how did you feel about this situation? Drifting away from land into a wide expanse of water. It could be frightening, or possibly exciting, or …'

Thomas considers for a few minutes.

‘Frightening? No, I don't think I found it frightening. Not particularly exciting either. As far as I remember I felt fairly calm about it. But I was … puzzled, maybe that's the word. Or perhaps a little insecure. I just had no idea what was in store for me—what was coming.'

‘That's very interesting. This may be a very profitable dream for you to spend some time with. I suggest that you put some thought into the difference between this dream and the one you told me about two weeks ago: the dream about drifting down a channel between two steep high banks. What are these two dreams saying to you about what is going on under the surface of your mind?

*

Thomas settles, as far as possible, on the hard seat of the bus shelter. He has a substantial wait for the next bus back toward the parish. He thinks about Macpherson's suggestion that there might be ideas brewing somewhere down under the surface of his mind. Could he have meant new thoughts about the shape of his life? But surely he understands that the shape of Thomas's life is already set—has been for years.

Without any warning his mind is taken over by an image of the young woman with the little boy and the small house with the red door. He wonders whether he will see her again, remembers watching her play with her toddler and being struck with a sense of her innocence. Innocence in spite of her bikini, which the archbishop had declared to be a threat to the sanctity of family life.

The thought occurs to him that it must have been a few decades since the archbishop had any experience of family life. And Thomas himself: for the last nine years his contact with family life has been scanty. For both of them the long-past experience had been a child's experience. What would they know about family life from an adult point of view? He thinks of innocence. Perhaps it is to be found in places where he would not have looked for it until recently.

Thomas looks around for a distraction from these unsettling thoughts. Of course. He picks up
Lives of the Saints
and opens it at random, finding himself facing, on the second of January, a saint he has never encountered before: Saint Macarius the Younger who, like many another early Christian saint, lived as a hermit in the Syrian or Palestinian desert.

The story is about exploits of extreme austerity, for which the man was widely renowned. One day he inadvertently killed a gnat that was biting him and immediately regretted losing the opportunity to suffer the pain in full. So he hurried to a marshy area infested with savage stinging flies and endured them for six months, returning unrecognisably disfigured by sores and swellings.

Subsequently, it seems, someone suggested to Macarius that he leave the desert and go to Rome to serve the sick in hospitals there. After some thought the saint rejected this as a temptation from the devil to seek attention and esteem, instead remaining in the desert to devote himself to further conspicuous extremes of self-mortification.