Читать книгу Local Customs - Audrey Thomas - Страница 18

IT WAS WRONG OF ME TO KEEP SILENT FOR SO LONG, BUT I DIDN’T know what to do. Finally I asked my father and Elisabeth for advice. The whole sorry tale came tumbling out, how it must have been a coup de foudre, how I was an absolute nincompoop when it came to women, how she was the last person I should take out to the Coast; she’d be dead within a month.

“Have you told her that?”

“Not in such harsh words, but yes. The men die like flies, and I understand from a letter from William Topp, who is acting president while I’m away, that of the first group of missionaries who arrived in January, only one remains. The missionaries who already resided there were dead before the others stepped on shore.”

“But you knew about the climate when you asked her to marry you.”

“I did, I did. And I told her about the snakes and the poison berries, everything I could think of.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said, ‘You can’t scare me.’ This is a woman who lives life in her head; she has no idea … In fact, I think she finds all this ‘exotic.’”

I put my head in my hands. “What am I to do?”

Elisabeth said softly, “Do you love this woman, George?”

“I thought perhaps I did. Maybe I was simply in love with the idea of having an intelligent companion … out there.”

“Does she love you?”

“In her own way, I suppose. We haven’t used the word ‘love’ very much.”

“Well,” said my father, “you must make your own decision. The lady herself has given you an out. She sent you up here to ‘think it over,’ before the engagement was made public. You seem to have thought it over and you do not wish to marry.”

I could not bear to tell them that her latest letter threatened suicide. I was not a man who took kindly to threats. I told myself that she was merely hysterical — and justly so, considering my long silence — but suppose she meant it? What then? How could I live with myself?

The day after my talk with my parents, I determined to take a long walk to clear my head and then, that evening, to write to Letty and to tell her in the kindest way possible, that the engagement was off. “My dear sweet Letitia,” I would begin, “There is no nice way of saying this …”

I hiked to Lossiemouth, taking some bread and cheese and a flask of tea with me, and ate my simple meal leaning against a rock and staring out over the soft brown sand at the ocean beyond. The fishermen here were a hardy lot, but their wives were even hardier, hiking up their skirts and carrying their husbands on their backs, out to the boats, so that their garments would not be wet when they set out on those chill waters. When the men returned with the catch, it was these same women who filleted the fish and smoked them and packed them for transport south. All this as well as their ordinary household duties — meals, children, washing, and so on. They might have been ignorant of anything except their own rather narrow world, but even as a boy I admired them (although their children ran after me hurling stones and insults). What a contrast between these women, with their huge, competent hands and wind-scoured cheeks and the hot-house bloom I had asked to marry me. Strange to think that what I was staring at as I ate the last crumbs of cheese was that same ocean I look out on from Cape Coast Castle. So cold here it could drown a man, in wintertime, in a matter of minutes; so warm over there, it felt like soup.

“My dear sweet Letitia,” I practised, “I admire you so much, but I cannot find it I my heart to marry you.”

“Dear Letty, you told me to go away and think about our engagement, to be ‘absolutely sure’ — those were your words — that we were right for one another—”

“Dear Miss Landon …” No, too cold and uncaring.

I sat there most of the afternoon, dreading what was to come, cursing myself for ever getting involved with that woman, but knowing I had waited an unconscionable length of time before writing.

And then there, on the hall table, was a letter from her brother, accusing me of dishonourable behaviour toward his sister, of saying that I had made her ill by my silence, implying, in fact, that I was the cad to end all cads.

No one could be allowed to attack my honour. I could fight a duel or I could marry her. There really wasn’t any choice.

I sent off a letter to Letty, apologizing for the long silence, saying I was still terribly worried about her health in that climate, but that if she was game, then so was I.