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The kettle whistled as if to punctuate his opening statement. We both remained silent as he took the kettle from the stove and poured the hot water. I dipped my teabag quickly, eager to get the liquid warmth into my system to battle away the icicles that had formed within. After a moment Troy sat down and continued.
"As it was probably told to you, I did return to Farthinggale while you were away on that trip to Maine right after your college graduation. I thought I had reached the point where I could return to Farthy and bury myself in the work once again, waiting patiently for my twenty-ninth birthday and what I believed would be my inevitable death before I reached thirty, a death," he said, raising his tired, tormented eyes to me, "I must confess, I now wanted. For to me, Death had become a doorway to a new world, an escape from the misery of living without you. For when I lost you so much of me died. I no longer lived in fear of death, just in quiet expectation."
He paused to sip his tea and looked off for a moment, a quaint, quiet smile coming to his face.
"As usual, Tony thought he could buy away my depression. I don't blame him for that. In fact, I feel sorry for him, knowing the frustration he must have always felt. He made this great party, just to cheer me up and keep me from thinking about my upcoming birthday. He promised he would see to it that I wasn't left alone for a moment." He laughed. "I must say, he had found this girl . . . she must have been part leech. I had to sneak away to go to the bathroom.
"Anyway," he continued, "she couldn't stand my indifference. Apparently, she had always been successful with men and I was proving to be a very annoying frustration. She became rather insulting. It doesn't matter what she said. I wasn't really listening to her anymore and I just wanted to get away from everything and everyone. I had realized that returning to Farthy was a mistake; I couldn't live here being close to you and never having you. I was already being hounded by the memories of your voice. I saw you everywhere around me. It was as if every girl at the party were nothing because she wasn't you. It was maddening, and Jillian knew it. Every time I looked at her she wore a sadistic smile of satisfaction.
"I had no plan; I never intended to do what I did. I think I went for the horses because I was driven by the happy memory of our horseback rides, but when I got to the stables, there was Jillian's horse, looking as defiant and as tormenting to me as Jillian. Impulsively, I decided to ride Abdulla Bar and show that horse it could be handled by someone other than Jillian.
"I know it was a silly, immature thing to do, but I was angry, infuriated at my destiny, enraged at a world that would permit such things to happen. Why was I singled out for such misery? I thought. Why, when I had finally found love and hope, was it ripped away from me and why had fate and destiny put it into Jillian's power to do it? The unfairness of it all was too overwhelming. I didn't care about anything anymore, least of all my own well-being.
"I saddled the horse and we burst out of the stables toward the beach. My fury found its way into the horse. He galloped as though he, too, were running from life, as if he were chosen to be the vehicle to carry me from this existence into the next. Don't you see," he said, some excitement in his eyes as he leaned toward me, "a& I was riding that horse, feeling the wind through my hair, sensing the terror in its wide, wild eyes, I became convinced that the horse was meant to carry me out of this world, out of my miserable life. So I deliberately turned him toward the sea, and the horse defiantly charged forward as if it, too, were suicidal.
"We rode into the ocean until the waves lifted us and tossed both horse and man into the deep. I saw the horse struggling behind me, its eyes still angry, defiant, now accusing me of bringing it to this horrible death, and for a moment I did feel pity for it and hated myself. I could touch nothing without destroying or harming it, I thought. I was meant to be swept out to sea.
"I closed my eyes," he said, sitting back in his chair and closing his eyes as he spoke, "willing and ready to accept my inevitable death."
He opened his eyes, now cloudy with foreboding.
"But the ocean cannot be controlled or made to serve any man's desires. It is a slave to no one, even one as desperate and as determined as I was to use it as an instrument of death. Every time I went under, the waves lifted me up and out. I bobbed and floated. I was tossed and carried. I lost my boots. I saw Abdulla Bar lifted and washed back toward shore until he could touch the bottom and bring himself out and onto the beach.
"I closed my eyes and waited for the mighty ocean, the great waves I had often listened to and stared at alone at night, fascinated with their beauty and their strength, to take me down into their cold darkness.
"But instead I was cast about until I lost consciousness. When I awoke, I was some distance down shore, sprawled on the beach, alive, my a
ppeal for a quick, painless death rejected. As I lay there feeling sorry for myself, I suddenly realized that the ocean had at least provided some relief--it had given me the opportunity to be considered dead. I could truly leave my identity and my life at Farthy behind. In a real sense I had effected an escape from some of my misery.
"So I gathered myself up and without permitting anyone to know what had happened to me, not even Tony, especially Tony, I returned
surreptitiously to my cottage for what I thought would be the last time, and I took some of the things I wanted and needed and then went off to disappear into the night."
He sat back again, as if that had explained it all. My feelings of shock and amazement were quickly replaced with feelings of anger. Oh, oh, oh! All the pain he had caused--letting me think he was dead. And now it was too late. Too late for us to be together! How could he let me suffer so when he was alive? Alive all this time!
"But what about the pain you caused in permitting us all to think you had died? Don't you know what it did to me?"
"I believed it was nothing compared to the pain you would have had to endure living your life knowing I was nearby, knowing we could never be lovers; nothing compared to the pain you would have knowing the torment I was going to endure as well. I realized it was selfish in a way, but I thought it was better.
"It was better," he added, nodding. "Don't you see, Heaven, you've pulled your life together and done significant things. Perhaps if you thought I was still alive, if I had continued to live here in the cottage, you would never have left Farthy. Perhaps you would be like Jillian. I don't know. I thought I was doing what was best for both of us. I hope you will come to believe that. It would be too painful for me to have you hate me now," he said. His dark eyes were filled with the fear of just this happening.
"I don't hate you, Troy," I said. "I can't hate you. I hate only what has happened. What did you do after you left that beach?"
"I traveled about." He sat back and tucked his hands behind his head as he spoke, remembering and reciting his secret existence. "I went to Italy and studied the great masters of art and architecture. I went to Spain and France. I sought relief in travel and in distractions. For a while that worked. I tired myself out moving about from one place to the next, and then"--he paused and straightened up in his chair again, again leaning toward me--"suddenly, I woke up one night in England. I was staying in an inn near Dover Beach. I had gone there because I couldn't stop thinking about that poem by Matthew Arnold. Remember it? I once read it to you. Some of the lines haunted me.
.
"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another!
for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain . . . .
"It seemed so true, especially for us. I lay there in my down-quilted bed listening to the sound of the sea and I thought I heard your voice; I thought I heard you calling to me from the ocean and I thought there was no longer any point in running away. I couldn't run away. Not from you, not from the memory of your face and your voice and your touch.
