Chapter Nine #3
He gets out of the car and comes round to my side to open the door for me.
He takes my hand, and we set off slowly down the field of buttercups and dandelions that slopes towards the coast. The navy sea sparkles ahead, and in the distance I can see rugged cliffs jutting out into the water.
Gulls wheel and cry, cotton clouds float across a bright blue sky.
I might as well be in a dream, for the colours seem heightened somehow, and I have to squint in the glare of so radiant a beauty.
‘As you know, I was married before.’
‘Yes, to Hermione,’ I say, hoping that Eddie would know that. I haven’t a clue how long she and Cavill have known each other and how much he will have told her about himself.
‘Our daughter, Josephine, is now twenty-seven years old, married and with two young boys. What you may not know is that we were married only thirteen years before Hermione died of consumption, leaving our daughter motherless.’
‘No, I did not know that.’ Another punt which pays off.
‘I loved Hermione very much, Eddie,’ he continues. ‘I never thought I would love another, but I did, and she, too, was taken from me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter, and imagine he’s referring to Constance.
His jaw stiffens. I can see the muscles tense beneath his beard. ‘She had an accident and died.’ He looks deeply saddened. ‘It was a long time ago, over a decade.’
‘You have, indeed, suffered,’ I say, and my heart aches for the pain he has endured because of me, for I was possessing both Hermione and Constance when he fell in love with them.
‘I should never have remarried,’ he continues, his voice heavy with regret.
‘But I wanted to turn my back on the two women I had loved and lost. I couldn’t bear to put myself through that anguish again.
’ He chuckles sadly and grips my hand more tightly, as if anxious I might let go and run away.
I want to tell him that I was those women whom he loved and lost. I want to tell him that I’ve come back, that I’m not going anywhere, for now.
But I remain silent, holding on to the truth with all my strength lest it slip out of my grasp and ruin everything.
Now is not the time to reveal it. ‘Therefore, I married a woman I didn’t love,’ he goes on.
‘Whom I was in no danger of loving. Who was shallow and charming and amusing. Who was glitter, like a bauble on a Christmas tree. I didn’t want to give of myself again, as I had given of myself in the past. Giving of myself only brought me pain and unhappiness.
’ He looks across at me and smiles in the way one does when one is about to share a delicious secret.
‘Then I met you, Eddie my darling, and I wanted to give my whole self.’ His eyes caress my face, as if loving every contour, and my heart soars like a kite on the wind.
He is Cavill Pengower in the garden at St Sidwell; Cavill Pengower on the deck of the Titanic.
My Cavill Pengower.
I smile back with affection, encouraging him to expand, yet knowing that I will have to leave him a third time. However, this situation is very different. He already loved Eddie Skipton before I possessed her and will likely love her still after I have gone.
This is a love story I will not influence. Will that make it easier for me to let him go?
He shakes his head and continues in a quiet, reflective voice.
‘I didn’t expect to love again, Eddie. I had shut down that part of me and thrown myself with as much enthusiasm as I could muster into my new life.
I had closed the door on the past and committed to the present with all its shallow pleasures.
Who knew that I would meet you? Who knew that I would be ready to love again? ’
‘Fate, indeed,’ I reply. He couldn’t possibly know how busy that hand of fate has been.
‘Perhaps.’ He stops and turns to cup my face in his large hands.
He seems to devour what he sees, and I catch my breath because he has looked at me like this before – as Hermione and as Constance, and I search his gaze in the hope that he is able to see me, Pixie, behind the facade.
I so want him to be looking at me with this tenderness, but he is not.
He is looking at Eddie. ‘Your physical beauty is undeniable, Eddie,’ he says softly.
‘Any fool can see that. But you are so much more than beautiful. When you grow old, your inner beauty will continue to shine out of those lovely eyes of yours and I want to be there, in your gaze. I want you to be in mine. Eddie my darling, I want us to grow old together.’
My eyes fill with tears, because I know we will not grow old together. When I return to my time, he will have grown old without me and already departed the world, and I will have all those years ahead of me. Will I grow old on my own?
‘We are in an impossible situation,’ I say. He cannot imagine how impossible the situation is.
He seems surprised at my shiny eyes. His face softens with affection, and he runs a thumb across my cheekbone where a tear has escaped. ‘Nothing is impossible, if one wants it enough.’
Again, I am in his arms, and we are kissing with an urgency that surpasses those kisses in St Sidwell.
It seems as if, on a subconscious level, there’s a deep knowing that understands the journey we have taken, that is grateful for this reunion and, at the same time, painfully aware of its transience.
Or is it only I who feels it? How can I possibly know?
We walk down to the beach and stroll hand in hand over the dunes.
I ask him about Hermione and Constance, and he is surprised by my keenness to hear about them.
I don’t suppose many women are enthusiastic to know about the women who precede them.
I listen with rapt attention as he opens his heart and allows me to know what’s in it, even though I already know.
Everything is rendered more enchanting because I’m with Cavill.
The sea appears to glitter in a blaze of jumping stars, the sky has enriched to a magnificent imperial blue and the very air seems to shimmer with tiny flecks of gold.
Gulls ride the wind with their white wings outstretched and their desolate cries pull at my heart.
This place could not be more beautiful. Nothing of the modern world mars its splendour.
I think of the horror to come in the decades ahead and realise that this moment is but a brief respite after the Great War, an inward breath before the exhale that will blow out fire like a terrifying dragon, to scorch the earth.
Cavill has no notion of what is to come.
No one does. That is the terrible burden of the timeslider – to know and not to be allowed to tell.
I wonder whether this beach is the ‘usual place’. Have he and Eddie strolled up this strip of sand before? For how long has he been married? How long has he loved Eddie? There is so much I want to know that I cannot ask.
We sit on the bank among the long grasses and out of the wind. He draws me to him, and I rest my head against his chest, fighting to stay in the moment while my mind strays into what-ifs and if-onlys.
‘We’ll make it work, Eddie darling,’ he says. ‘If I know you love me, I’ll move mountains.’
‘I do love you, Cavill,’ I reply. You don’t know how much I love you.
He squeezes me tighter. ‘Then watch those mountains move.’
How romantic those words are, but the mountains that lie between us are impossible to move, even with the power of love.