Laura said:
“And what about you? What does God require of you-now?”
“Oh-just to be an ordinary sort of guy. Earn my living, marry a wife, raise a family, love my neighbours.”
“And you’ll be satisfied-with that?”
“Satisfied? What else should I want? What more should any man want? I’m handicapped, perhaps. I’ve lost fifteen years-of ordinary life. That’s where you’ll have to help me, Laura.”
“I?”
“You know that I want to marry you, don’t you? You realise, you must realise, that I love you.”
She sat, very white, looking at him. The unreality of their festive dinner was over. They were themselves now. Back in the now and here that they had made for themselves.
She said slowly: “It’s impossible.”
He answered her without due concern: “Is it? Why?”
“I can’t marry you.”
“I’ll give you time to get used to the idea.”
“Time will make no difference.”
“Do you mean that you could never learn to love me? Forgive me, Laura, but I don’t think that’s true. I think that, already, you love me a little.”
Emotion rose up in her like a flame.
“Yes, I could love you. I do love you….”
He said very softly: “That’s wonderful, Laura… dearest Laura, my Laura.”
She thrust out a hand, as though to hold him away from her.
“But I can’t marry you. I can’t marry anybody.”
He stared at her hard.
“What’s in your head? There’s something.”
“Yes. There’s something.”
“Vowed to good works? To celibacy?”
“No, no, no!”
“Sorry. I spoke like a fool. Tell me, my dearest.”
“Yes. I must tell you. It’s a thing I thought I should never tell anybody.”
“Perhaps not. But you must certainly tell me.”
She got up and went over to the fireplace. Without looking at him, she began to speak in a quiet matter-of-fact voice.
“Shirley’s first husband died in my house.”
“I know. She told me.”
“Shirley was out that evening. I was alone in the house with Henry. He had sleeping-tablets, quite a heavy dose, every night. Shirley called back to me when she went out that she had given him his tablets, but I had gone back into the house. When I came, at ten o’clock, to see if he wanted anything, he told me that he hadn’t had his evening dose of tablets. I fetched them and gave them to him. Actually, he had had his tablets-he’d got sleepy and confused, as people often do with that particular drug, and imagined that he hadn’t had them. The double dose killed him.”
“And you feel responsible?”
“I was responsible.”
“Technically, yes.”
“More than technically. I knew that he had taken his dose. I heard when Shirley called to me.”
“Did you know that a double dose would kill him?”
“I knew that it might.”
She added deliberately:
“I hoped that it would.”
“I see.” Llewellyn’s manner was quiet, unemotional. “He was incurable, wasn’t he? I mean, he would definitely have been a cripple for life.”
“It was not a mercy killing, if that is what you mean.”
“What happened about it?”
“I took full responsibility. I was not blamed. The question arose as to whether it might have been suicide-that is, whether Henry might have deliberately told me that he had not had his dose in order to get a second one. The tablets were never left within his reach, owing to his extravagant fits of despair and rage.”
“What did you say to that suggestion?”
“I said that I did not think that it was likely. Henry would never have thought of such a thing. He would have gone on living for years-years, with Shirley waiting on him and enduring his selfishness and bad temper, sacrificing all her life to him. I wanted her to be happy, to have her life and live it. She’d met Richard Wilding not long before. They’d fallen in love with each other.”
“Yes, she told me.”
“She might have left Henry in the ordinary course of events. But a Henry ill, crippled, dependent upon her-that Henry she would never leave. Even if she no longer cared for him, she would never have left him. Shirley was loyal, she was the most loyal person I’ve ever known. Oh, can’t you see? I couldn’t bear her whole life to be wasted, ruined. I didn’t care what they did to me.”