Towards Zero - Agatha Christie [36]
“I see,” she said. “I didn’t think—anyone knew.”
“Well, I do. I—I’m not going to talk about it. But what I want to impress upon you is that it’s all over—it’s past and done with.”
She said in a low voice:
“Some things don’t pass.”
“Look here, Audrey, it’s no good brooding and remembering. Granted you’ve been through Hell. It does no good to go over and over a thing in your mind. Look forward—not back. You’re quite young. You’ve got your life to live and most of that is in front of you now. Think of tomorrow, not of yesterday.”
She looked at him with a steady wide-eyed gaze that was singularly unrevealing of her real thoughts.
“And supposing,” she said, “that I can’t do that.”
“But you must.”
Audrey said gently:
“I thought you didn’t understand. I’m—I’m not quite normal about—some things, I suppose.”
He broke in roughly,
“Rubbish. You—” He stopped.
“I—what?”
“I was thinking of you as you were when you were a girl—before you married Nevile. Why did you marry Nevile?”
Audrey smiled.
“Because I fell in love with him.”
“Yes, yes, I know that. But why did you fall in love with him? What attracted you to him so much?”
She crinkled her eyes as though trying to see through the eyes of a girl now dead.
“I think,” she said, “it was because he was so ‘positive.’ He was always so much the opposite of what I was, myself. I always felt shadowy—not quite real. Nevile was very real. And so happy and sure of himself and so—everything that I was not.” She added with a smile: “And very good-looking.”
Thomas Royde said bitterly:
“Yes, the ideal Englishman—good at sport, modest, good-looking, always the little pukka sahib—getting everything he wanted all along the line.”
Audrey sat very upright and stared at him.
“You hate him,” she said slowly. “You hate him very much, don’t you?”
He avoided her eyes, turning away to cup a match in his hands as he relit the pipe, that had gone out.
“Wouldn’t be surprising if I did, would it?” he said indistinctly. “He’s got everything that I haven’t. He can play games, and swim and dance, and talk. And I’m a tongue-tied oaf with a crippled arm. He’s always been brilliant and successful and I’ve always been a dull dog. And he married the only girl I ever cared for.”
She made a faint sound. He said savagely:
“You’ve always known that, haven’t you? You knew I cared about you ever since you were fifteen. You know that I still care—”
She stopped him.
“No. Not now.”
“What do you mean—not now?”
Audrey got up. She said in a quiet reflective voice:
“Because—now—I am different.”
“Different in what way?”
He got up too and stood facing her.
Audrey said in a quick rather breathless voice:
“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you…I’m not always sure myself. I only know—”
She broke off, and turning abruptly away she walked quickly back over the rocks towards the Hotel.
Turning a corner of the cliff she came across Nevile. He was lying full length peering into a rock pool. He looked up and grinned.
“Hullo, Audrey.”
“Hullo, Nevile.”
“I’m watching a crab. Awfully active little beggar. Look, there he is.”
She knelt down and stared where he pointed.
“See him?”
“Yes.”
“Have a cigarette?”
She accepted one and he lighted it for her. After a moment or two, during which she did not look at him, he said, nervously:
“I say, Audrey?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all right, isn’t it? I mean—between us.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“I mean—we’re friends and all that.”
“Oh yes—yes, of course.”
“I do want us to be friends.”
He looked at her anxiously. She gave him a nervous smile.
He said conversationally:
“It’s been a jolly day, hasn’t it? Weather good and all that?”
“Oh yes—yes.”
“Quite hot really for September.”
There was a pause.
“Audrey—”
She got up.
“Your wife wants you. She’s waving to you.”
“Who—oh, Kay.”
“I said your wife.”
He scrambled to his feet and stood looking at her.
He said in a very low voice:
“You’re my wife, Audrey….”
She turned away. Nevile ran down on to the beach and across the sand to join Kay.
IX
On their arrival back at Gull’s Point, Hurstall