Five

It is evening now, and I am sitting outside on a stone bench on a terrace outside the Lodge. Heinrich Carinthia is sitting in a deckchair a few feet away, reading a newspaper. The others are all still inside, awakening after their afternoon sleep, and thinking about changing for dinner. I am dressed in rented evening clothes that do not fit me very well. Heinrich is wearing a huge green-velvet tent of a smoking jacket over trousers of a mysterious tartan, and velvet slippers with stags’ heads embroidered on them in gold thread. We exchange nods when I come out, but he is absorbed in his paper, so I sit and stare at this alien landscape.

The deep fold of the dale below is shrouded in shadow and dark fir woods. Above the woods small green compartments of pasture are marked out by stone dykes. Sheep are streaming down the hillside towards one such field where there is a circular sheep fold, rounded up by two dogs and followed by a farmer on a quad bike. I can hear the sheep shouting in complaint, as they are gathered in. Above the pasture is the heather, the beginnings of the moor where I have spent the day. A year ago, a few months ago, it would have been unthinkable that I would ever have been in such a place, and had such a day.

The overcast that has covered the sky all day has gone. Now the sky is streaked with red and gold. The air is warm, with that familiar sweet smell I remember from my first visit to Caerlyon. My life has been transformed in these four months. Now, as dusk approaches, a great golden light drenches the summits and ridges of the hills, suggesting infinite distances of undiscovered country, and endless possibilities. A line of cloud sits on the horizon, its domes and pillars catching the evening sun, so that it resembles a distant range of Himalayan peaks. I turn to look at the house, and see Catherine coming towards us along the terrace, carrying two misting glasses of white wine. She is wearing a dark-rose-coloured evening dress that suits her perfectly, and once again, as on the very first time that I met her, I am overwhelmed by her beauty.

She walks across to Heinrich Carinthia in his deckchair and says, ‘A glass of wine, Heini?’

‘Was? Was denn? Ach, it is you, Catherine. I was miles away, watching this glorious sunset. A glass of wine would be very good.’

Catherine hands him the wine and then walks across to me with the other glass.

‘And you, Wilberforce?’

And me?

The question has many possibilities. I take the glass of wine from her, and as I do so her fingers, cool from holding the glass, briefly touch mine. She does not at once withdraw her hand, but glances at me, and our eyes meet for a moment. I see a look of curiosity, of puzzlement, in her expression. Then she leaves the glass in my hand. I do not speak, not even to thank her. I cannot speak. She does not smile, nor say anything, but after a moment longer she turns and walks slowly back to the house.

Who are you? her glance asks. What are you?

I know the answer to that one. I am nobody. I am anybody. I can choose to be whom I like. I turn back with my glass in my hand to watch the golden sky.

‘Was für ein himmlischer Abend,’ says Heinrich Carinthia. ‘So heavenly a night.’

I nod in a friendly way, but do not speak. I still cannot. Heinrich understands how I feel. There is no need for either of us to speak again. The sheep are grazing quietly again. The great silence of the dales has fallen again, a peacefulness that is not like any other, and the two of us watch the sun sinking further down in the sky, in a silent companionship. A single bright star is gleaming, low in the sky. Then another, and another comes out, as the sun goes below the horizon. My heart is choked by my great discovery, the truth I have just seen in this wonderful sunset, the truth I have just felt in the touch of Catherine’s hand.

Because I am nobody, I can choose to be whom I like. I can choose my life to be what I want it to be. I can become anybody; I can do anything.

For the first time in my life, I feel that things, after all, might change for the better. I have been a prisoner for too long, a prisoner of my own self-doubt, a prisoner of a loveless childhood, and a life without experience and without joy. Now I feel an absolute certainty that my life is about to change and become so different from what it has been up until now. It is so simple. It has always been so simple. It is a matter of choice, a matter of understanding that one’s freedom to choose is limited only by courage and imagination. I have enough courage to choose, I hope; enough imagination to understand that life may have more possibilities than I can tell. So I have that freedom. I’ve always had that freedom, but it has taken until tonight to realise it. All I have to do is stretch out my hand and take the things I want. At this moment, on this heavenly evening, I feel absolutely certain in my new sense of optimism. I will learn to have fun; I will learn to have friends, real friends; perhaps one day I will even learn how to love somebody - not Catherine, of course, for she belongs to Ed, but someone like her.

Do you ever have that feeling? Have you had that absolute sense of conviction: that, after all, life is going to turn out really well for you?