‘That’s not true,’ I said.
‘It is true. They slept together that term and she almost left you, but she couldn’t bear it because you were so pathetic. That’s the kind of loyalty you inspire.’
I gathered together my towel, my book, my bottle of water. I stood up and said, quite quietly, ‘Whether it’s true or not, we both know that you are the one who needs my pity, not the other way around.’
I turned to walk back to the house.
*
The first blow caught me sharply on the side of my head, hard enough to make me reel dizzily and half-turn in the direction it had come from. Mark’s second punch, to the bone below my eye and catching my nose, sent me sprawling to the floor, a red flare exploding behind my eyes, a sickeningly familiar agony in my right knee, the pain suddenly vivid like a whip crack. I put my hand to my face and there was blood on my fingers, and I think I tried to say something at the same time as noticing that Mark was wearing shoes, not sandals, and although I saw him aim a kick at my stomach I could not process it quickly enough to think how I might defend myself except that I wanted to make myself very small.
The kick, when it came, felt like it had forced the acid out of my stomach as well as the breath out of my body. I felt that I would vomit at any moment, that I was already vomiting. I saw the blood from my nose and my eye on the stones beneath my head and I realized that only one of my eyes was open.
I managed to whisper, ‘Stop, please,’ and, looking down thoughtfully, he did stop. He tipped his head to one side and after a few moments, saying nothing, he walked back to the house.
When he was gone I was surprised to find my body still breathing. In and out. Without any directions from me. There. In and out. Breathe, my body said to my mind, breathe. And after a short pause it said, come on. This has happened before. It is possible to survive. Stand up now. Walk away. Come on. Breathe.
Mark was in the converted stable block, watching videos — I could tell from the noise. I stood wincingly. I had fallen on my damaged knee and, as I put weight on it, a bright star of pain flared in the joint. I limped to the main house, supporting myself on the wall, and found my stick in the umbrella stand next to the door. I packed a bag quickly — a change of clothes, sunglasses, my wallet — and called a cab, telling it to meet me at the end of the drive, not at the house. Through all of this, I continued to breathe, entirely without my own volition.
24
I went to a hotel in the town. They know me there, and know not to ask about the blood on my face and the blossoming red and purple across my eyes and cheek. Nevertheless, I put my sunglasses on before I went in.
In the room, I called down to reception for ice and rinsed the blood from my face in the basin. I bent my head one way and then the other experimentally. A crunching of gears, grinding of bone, but not too much pain. My nose was unbroken. When the ice arrived, I wrapped some in a cloth napkin and held it to my nose and eye, hoping to stop the worst of the bruising.
It hadn’t happened for months, not like this. It doesn’t happen above twice a year, if that. And I understand it, although I understand that it can’t go on.
I sat on the bed, feeling my knee shriek as it bent. That would have to be dealt with, but in a moment. Outside, it was coming on for dusk, the sky half-visible through the thick dark-red patterned curtains. It is an old hotel in the centre of the town with rooms on two sides with views of the campanile. The rooms are dusty in a way that modern rooms do not become dusty — they have high ceilings and drapes and dark carved wood to hold the dust. I breathed through my mouth — sneezing would be painful at this juncture.
I pulled myself up, holding on to the bedside table for support. I undid my trousers and let them fall to examine my knee. Yes. Some swelling already, a grinding twist as it moved. I prepared another icepack, positioned a chair next to the bed and raised my leg on to it. I sat there, facing the view of the campanile as dusk settled, a napkin full of ice held to my face and another to my knee. The ridiculousness of this situation struck me for the first time and I wanted, briefly but intensely, to call someone to share the joke. I felt that somewhere I had gone wrong, since I found I had no one to call to share a joke as good as this.
Just after sunset a stream of bats began to leave the roof of the campanile. They nest there during the day and come out at night to feed. Against the pink-orange of the sky, they are a steady stream of milling black, pouring from the peaked corners of the roof, smearing dark across the sky before they dissipate into the town and surrounding countryside. Their fluttering noise is loud and uncanny. The event — the evening flight of the bats — is something of a local attraction. Many tourists lie on their backs in the square beneath the campanile, watching the bats pour across the sky. I, sitting in my chair in the hotel, clasping my ice, wearing only a shirt and pants, fell asleep without warning or hesitation.
The next day, I went down to the harbour for lunch. It’s a twenty-minute walk and I wanted to test out my knee, feeling it bend and flex awkwardly, but not as painfully as the previous day. I drank coffee and orange juice and had hunks of cheese with bread and fruit. I tried to think of what I should do, but my mind continually slipped off the subject. I wondered again if there was anyone I should telephone. I supposed I could call my parents in England, but the thought was absurd — what would I say? What would they say to me except ‘Come home’? There was a thought curling alongside the coffee and the fruit and the view of the ships in the harbour, a simple seductive thought. It said that I would do what I had always done for the same reasons I always had. My debt to Mark was not yet paid, my business with him not yet concluded.
I stared out at the ships, tiny paper triangles on the horizon. A few tourists were meandering along the seafront. An elderly couple had set themselves up with side-by-side easels, painting watercolour views of the sea. A young family dashed past, parents calling the children to heel in clipped Italian phrases. I paid my bill but remained seated, sipping my juice, watching the sea and the harbour.
There was a couple — a man and a woman — a few hundred yards away, at the other end of the curved front of shops and restaurants. They were standing outside a souvenir shop, looking at some postcards on a stand. He was facing in my direction but so far off that I couldn’t see his face. Her back was towards me. All I could do was admire her; the long elegant legs in wide, linen trousers, the low-backed halter top, the broad straw hat with a black-and-white scarf tied around the crown. I was looking simply because I thought she was beautiful. And there was something in her bearing as well, a self-control as she stood resting her weight on one hip, searching calmly through her bag. My eyes stung. I shaded them from the sun and looked at her. I found myself thinking, I could love that woman. That one right there, I could love her.
Fantastic, I thought. Just great. Well done, James. As if things weren’t confusing enough already. But somehow I couldn’t stop looking. She handed her camera to the man at her side, resting her arm lightly on his. She reminded me of something. She slipped off one sandal, shook out a pebble, then replaced it on her foot. She posed, leaning against a bollard on the quayside, and he took a picture of her. She linked her arm into his and they walked away from the quay, towards the centre of town.
I was overwhelmed by a sense of loss — what if, I could not help thinking, what if she were the great love of my life, that woman? I knew it was absurd and yet I could not rid myself of the sensation. Hurriedly, I took up my stick, left a few coins on the table and limped after them.