The Beast (21 page)

The last letter, the one he sent, read as follows.

That, he told himself grimly next morning, as he walked back from the mail box, was the only sort of letter they would understand; but in the hours and days that followed he more and more sweated with a sort of horror when he thought of it. He sweated at the idea that he had sent them any letter—that he had so compromised himself, that he had so debased himself—and he sweated at the memory of his words. How could he have written such a hysterical, stupid, ridiculous letter? How could he? Well, he had done it at night, he told himself, as he had sat alone in his room
listening to Meg and the Lieutenant making love, cold and trembling and feeling himself beset by all the demons of the dark. And it had been the product of a period of generally suppressed misery. And it
had
been, for all its hysterical tone, the only sort of letter he could have written without being hypocritical. And yet—if he wanted this communication with his parents to have the desired results, he
shouldn’t
have written it as he had. And since he had so debased himself, to have been hypocritical as well wouldn’t have made him feel any lower.

Oh God, he thought, as he waited for a reply: what have I done?

He was to find out exactly a week after he had written it; and exactly a week before his holiday—his last
holiday
, he realized now it would be—with Meg was over.

Though the reply didn’t come to him. It came—in the form of a short, congratulatory note, wishing her well and all happiness, and hoping to see her and her fiancé soon—to Meg.

Benjamin watched Meg’s face as she read it; and watched it, with nervous glances, as she watched
him
read it. And it showed just two expressions, that face. First surprise; and then anger. A white, tight anger that Benjamin had never seen in Meg before, and would never have believed he could see.

Her skin, under her sun tan, paled. Her lips went thin. Her nostrils contracted. And then slowly and deliberately, she whispered to him ‘How could you, Benjamin? How
could
you? After all they’ve done! I thought you wanted me to be happy!’

And then she sat down on a chair and burst into tears.

‘But I just wrote and told them,’ Benjamin whined, too
shocked by Meg’s reaction to cry himself. ‘I thought—you said the day I arrived that you felt sorry for them, and wanted to go and see them. I thought you’d want them to know.’

‘Well I don’t,’ Meg whispered through her tears. ‘Or I didn’t. Because I’ve been thinking about it, and you were right. They
have
always done everything they could to make us unhappy. And I thought with Bill I really had a chance to get away from them forever. But now—’ she stared at the note that Benjamin was still holding—‘that’s like having a curse coming down on me.’

‘But they just say congratulations.’

‘Yes, and congratulations from them means a curse. Oh Benjamin,’ Meg almost threw at him now, ‘how could you? How could you?’

That was the question Benjamin had been asking himself for the last seven days. And if he hadn’t been able to find an answer for himself, he certainly couldn’t find one for Meg. He
didn’t
know how he could have written any letter at all. Yet he had done, and they—

And then Benjamin checked himself. Because, it struck him, while the reply hadn’t at all been the sort of reply he’d expected—he didn’t know what he’d expected, but certainly not that—it did, ironically, seem to have had just the effect he had hoped it would have. If they had taken him at his word, and written to Meg expressing misgivings, she would have felt defiant and even more determined to have and keep her Lieutenant. But just because he had offered them the chance of destroying Meg—they had taken it. With the effect, possibly, of saving her.

For a while he almost allowed himself to feel optimistic …

But it didn’t last. Because late that afternoon, when Meg
returned to the villa, having been out nearly all day—she had gone without saying a word—she gave him a brief, cool glance and, looking years older than she ever had before, told him curtly that she was going to marry the Lieutenant just as soon as she possibly could. She had phoned Donald and told him she wouldn’t be returning to him.

Benjamin was too exhausted to do or say anything. He simply nodded, went back to the book he had been reading, and told himself that it was over. He had failed. His life’s work, his greatest creation, had turned out to be a fake. His muse, his inspiration, had betrayed him. The saint at whose altar he had prayed for so long had stepped down out of her niche, had turned her back on him—and had farted in his face. He was a failure, a fraud. Everything in his life was dust. Dust and dirt and foolish illusion. He was nothing. Nothing …

The weather changed in that last week; the sky became overcast and gloomy. The heat, that before had been clear and dry, became wet and oppressive. Great enervating sand-laden winds blew up the coast. The sea became grey.

And if, after the incident with Claudio, Meg and the Lieutenant had dragged him around behind them like a balloon on the end of a string, now they punctured the balloon and threw aside the stretched, pathetic little shreds of rubber that remained. They ignored him for the most part; when they didn’t, Meg was white and tight and hard to him, and the Lieutenant dismissive, patronizing and aggressive. There was an invisible sneer on his lips
whenever
he looked at Benjamin, and he seemed to flaunt his wiry, muscular body in front of Benjamin’s pale, bloated mass of flab. He was always wandering naked in and out of Meg’s bedroom, discussing plans with her; and glaring,
contemptuously
,
at his pop-eyed, soft-lipped brother-in-law to be.

But Benjamin hardly saw him, though he was around all the time—he seemed to have taken some more leave—any more than he was really aware of the change in the weather. He just went round in a kind of daze, telling himself that he was a fake, that he was a failure, that he was empty, and that his life, as he had known it, was over. Of course he would go back to New York, and take up his position in the spotlight once more, and probably no one would be able to tell the difference. But he would; and he knew that if, henceforth, he ever looked in a mirror, he would see, as vampires did—nothing.

He stayed in the house all day; at night he went into Gaeta, and walked around the walls of the castle. He walked around so often that the sentries and soldiers
guarding
it began to look at him suspiciously … And as he walked he somehow intoned to those walls and to the man—the monster—who lay within: you have won. You have won. I submit. I surrender. I give in to all the forces of corruption in the world, to all the forces of perverted power. I give in, he told the walls; I accept the truth of your world. I accept your world …

He kept this up for six days; on his last day—or last night—he could keep it up no longer. And going to the castle, and finding a secluded spot where he wasn’t
overlooked
by any sentry—and where few cars or pedestrians passed by—he turned his face to the old, dusty walls and started—for the last time, he told himself—to cry. He cried and cried and cried, and finally he whispered to the monster who lay within: all right, I’ve surrendered. I’ve accepted you and the world you rule over. But now, oh, in exchange for my body, my soul—help me. Help me. You must stop it. You must. Oh please, he whispered. I’ll let myself be
possessed by the spirit of evil—but do, in exchange,
something
. Something …

*

Next morning, when he woke at ten, he felt as if he had survived a storm. He was battered, torn to pieces, washed out and washed up. But he had survived. And this
afternoon
he would go back to Rome, and tomorrow morning he would get on a plane to New York—and Meg would marry her Lieutenant. That was all there was to it. Yes, his life as he had known it—his youth, maybe—was over. But he had survived. And he felt, finally, quite calm and relaxed, and at peace; and thought that perhaps in a year or two, he would be able to laugh about the dramas of this summer. He hoped so, anyway.

And Meg, too, and even the Lieutenant, seemed to have changed overnight; seemed to have survived some sort of crisis. Meg was no longer tight and hard; the Lieutenant no longer aggressive. They both just appeared to be relieved that the summer was over; and that, though it hadn’t been easy, they had come through. Now they could think—all of them—about the future.

The only thing that hadn’t changed in fact was the weather; it remained overcast, oppressive and heavy.

Nevertheless, after they had had some breakfast, they decided that grey skies and seas notwithstanding, they would go for a last swim; a final, cleansing dip, Benjamin thought.

They went, at first hardly speaking—they were all too conscious of the bruises they had suffered and inflicted over the past weeks for any of them to dare to apply more than the slighest pressure—over the road; but finding that the winds seemed to have cast up almost all the refuse of the Mediterranean on the sand—what hadn’t been cast up
floated at the water’s edge—they decided to drive nearer the town, and swim off the rocks there; where, the Lieutenant said, the currents and the form of the coast generally kept the sea cleaner.

They went; and leaving the Lieutenant’s car by the road, clambered down the cliff until they found a rock big enough and flat enough to hold them all. They undressed. And then they sat there, their knees pulled up to their chins, and stared out to sea.

On a rock, not far from them, sat three other people; the only other people in sight. They were Claudio and two of his friends. But Benjamin pretended not to see them; and so did Meg and the Lieutenant.

How long ago that had been, Benjamin thought. And how squalid. And how futile …

‘What are you going to do now, Meg?’, he said, without looking at his sister.

‘I’ll give up the apartment, and then move my stuff down here. Find a room or something. Or stay in a hotel.’

‘I’m going to leave the Navy,’ the Lieutenant said.

‘Bill wants to be a farmer.’

‘Ah,’ Benjamin said, and watched the big swollen waves flop against the rocks. How little spray they made. As if they weren’t of water at all. But of some thick, grey matter, rising and falling …

‘I think a farm’s the only place to bring up children,’ the Lieutenant said.

‘Yes, you’re right.’

And the wind, too, was of the same material …

‘I think I’m going to swim,’ Benjamin said.

‘Me too,’ Meg said.

‘I’ll stay and watch you,’ the Lieutenant said. It doesn’t look too inviting.’

It didn’t; and it didn’t—after Meg, brown and pretty, and Benjamin, pale and heavy, had jumped off a rock, into it—feel too inviting either. It felt like—some thick grey matter. Warm and clinging and clammy; a thick grey dream …

Benjamin swam out some way—he was a strong swimmer—and Meg followed him. And as she got near him she trod water and said ‘You are all right now, Benjie, aren’t you?’

He smiled at her. And now, at last, there was no sulkiness in his smile, no bitterness; no hurt either felt or imagined. He simply smiled.

‘Yes,’ he said ‘I’m fine.’

‘And you know I love you, and I’ll always love you.’

‘Yes,’ Benjamin said; and thought: how right we were to come. This
is
a last, cleansing dip.

‘And I’ll always love you.’

And then, as if from much further off than it actually was, they heard the Lieutenant shout. A shout that came to them like an old dying bird, that no longer had the strength to fly in the heavy grey air. And as they heard him shout they saw Claudio and his friends leap to their feet and point.

And then Benjamin heard Meg scream. And turning in the direction she was staring—out to sea—he saw, coming in at them—but oh, how slowly it was moving—a huge, an unbelievably huge wave. A great heap of slow grey water, at least twenty feet high. It was the sort of wave that Alberto had warned them about.

They turned and started to swim for the shore. Benjamin thought he might make it; or might have done but for Meg. But Meg wasn’t as strong a swimmer as he. And so he stayed close to her; and so they were still some way from
the rocks when he felt himself being sucked backwards; sucked downwards. He managed to turn in the water and stretch out towards Meg—and then he was only aware of things in brief flashes. Brief flashes that seemed to last, however, for a long, long time. As if they were being filmed in grey, slow motion …

He was aware of a great weight on him. He was aware of the sky. He was aware of figures standing on rocks. He was aware of the castle, looming huge and dark over him, seeming to fill him, weigh him down, possess him. He was aware of Meg’s body against his. He was aware of her screaming. He heard her say—but she seemed to be whispering!—‘Let go of me Benjie! Let go of me!’ He was aware of clinging to her as if she were the only thing in the whole world that could save him. And then
something
seemed to explode inside him; and he was aware of nothing more.