Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [276]
She heard Bernard come into the room. She didn’t turn. She heard his approach and she saw from the corner of her eye that he’d brought a tray with him and was placing it on the demi-lune table between the room’s two lakeside windows. Above this table, a large mirror hung, and reflected in it Valerie saw the tray held an offering of tea, toast, and boiled eggs. She also saw reflected her husband’s face.
He was the one to speak first. “I did it because I could. My life’s been like that. I’ve done what I’ve done because I could do it. I suppose it was a challenge to myself, much like winning you. Much like making more of the firm than your father and grandfather had been able to do. I don’t even know what it means that I’ve done what I’ve done, and that’s the worst of it because that tells me I might well do it all again.”
“Isn’t that a comforting thought,” she said dryly.
“I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“Another highly comforting thought.”
“Listen to me. The devil of it is that I can’t say it meant nothing to me because it did mean something. I just don’t quite know what.”
“Sex,” she said. “Virility, Bernard. Not being such a little man, after all.”
“That hurts,” he said.
“As it’s intended.” She looked back at the view. There were things to know before she decided and she might as well know them, she told herself. “Have you always?”
He did her the courtesy of not misunderstanding. “Yes,” he said. “Not all the time. Only occasionally. All right, frequently. Usually when business took me elsewhere. Manchester, perhaps. Birmingham. Edinburgh. London. But never with an employee until Vivienne. And even with her, it was like the rest, at first. It was because I could. But then things went further between us and I thought I saw a way to have two lives.”
“Clever you,” she said.
“Clever me,” he replied.
She glanced at him then. Such a little man, actually. He was shorter than she by nearly five inches. Small, a little delicate, mischievous looking, cocky, grinning… My God, she thought, all he needed was a hunchback, a doublet, and tights. She’d been as easily seduced as the Lady Anne. She said to him, “Why, Bernard?” and when his eyes narrowed, she added, “Why two lives? One is usually more than enough.”
“I know that,” he said. “It’s the curse I live with. One life was never enough for me. One life didn’t… I don’t know.”
But she knew and perhaps she’d known all along. “One life couldn’t prove to you that you were more than Bernie Dexter from Blake Street in Barrow-in-Furness. One life could never do that.”
He was silent. Outside the honking of ducks drew Valerie’s attention back to the window, and she saw a V of them flying in the direction of Fell Foot Park, and she thought of how ducks taking flight or landing made such a silly, awkward spectacle but ducks in flight were as graceful as any bird and the equal of any bird doing what birds do. It was only the getting there that was strange and different.
Bernard said, “Yes. I suppose that’s it. Blake Street was the pit I climbed out of but its sides were slippery. Any wrong move, and I’d slide back down. I knew that.”
She moved away from the window then. She went to the tray and saw he’d brought only enough for her. One cup and saucer, two boiled eggs but only one egg cup, cutlery for one, a single white napkin. He wasn’t so certain of himself after all. There was a small mercy in this.
“Who are you now?” she asked him. “Who do you want to be?”
He sighed. “Valerie, I want to be your husband. I can’t promise that this— the two