FORTY-TWO

I did stop and wonder, now Chance and I had finally made love, if that would be an ending to it for me.

Was this all I had been after, a taste of something…different from what I had known all my life? Had I just been looking for some sort of physical excitement? And now I had experienced it, would I be able to return to the contentment of my previous life?

I could not believe I was even asking myself these questions.

Of course, what I wanted with Chance had to do with more than two naked bodies moving against each other, seeking release.

Although, God knows, it was that too.

But it was also something beyond. It was also two naked minds moving against each other, seeking release. The two, our bodies and our thoughts, were an intertwined thing.

As for the Why of it—Why this man? Why not some other man?—who can really answer such a question? It is like being called upon to answer why one loves chocolate.

It was This Man because, for whatever reason, I was most myself with him.

It was This Man because, if I could have, I would have burrowed under his very skin to know him better.

What can I say?

He was original. He did not bore me.

I began to play the “What if?” game.

What if I had met Chance sooner? What if I had met Chance before my marriage to John?

Of course, such a game was pointless, as I well knew. But knowing a thing, and keeping myself from becoming obsessed about it anyway, had become two very different things. It had become impossible, the very idea that I could stop my mind and heart from meandering, racing down any of the streets and narrow alleys where they seemed bent to go.

So what if I was not wholly certain of what Chance’s plans might be, now he had been released. We did steal time together, if only very occasionally, now.

In my weaker moments, I worried he might go his way without me; that he might decide I was not worth the risk, not worth the bother. But then, I would strengthen again. I would think, That is not possible. It is not possible that I should feel what I do, the depth of what I do, and have there be no return. I could not possibly love like this alone.

And so, as to the first question: What if I had met Chance sooner?

I attempted to chase down the answer with the same energetic mind-frame with which I might attack any intellectual pursuit. But I am afraid all my cogitations on the subject yielded precious little. Where might I have met a Chance Wood? Despite the fact his writings revealed a sharp mind, despite the fact he spoke in a voice far more refined in sound than I had suspected, the actual handwriting itself was crude, his dress that of a member of, at the very best, the slightly disadvantaged classes. There was nowhere in my world I might have encountered him in which we might have been on an equal footing, might have had the opportunity to develop more of a relationship than me requesting some service from him; a service he would have been obliged to grudgingly provide. I would ever be a lady, he would be thought by no one to be a gentleman, and any conversations we might have would be cast in stone in advance by the fraternal twinship of those facts.

As to the second question: What if, somehow, I had met him before my marriage to John?

But that, I found, was an equally preposterous proposition. Even had I met him in time, so to speak, I would probably have been too young then to appreciate the worth of the encounter. Would I, confronted with someone of such visibly inferior rank, have had the foresight to see what lay beneath? Would I have been better than Cathy with Heathcliff? Further, would I have had the strength to face off against my parents, against the whole of society, for the sake of it? It rankled me that I could not say with certainty, and I was yet wise enough to recognize this was an answer in itself.

No, it was just as well our relationship had developed as it had. Meeting facelessly, we had been afforded the opportunity to develop a bond without prejudice based on appearances. Meeting over time, we had enjoyed the luxury of having that bond strengthened without fearing the world.

Ah, time, though!

Now we had time, stolen moments of time together, but time itself had become a trickster, a mirror that kept rushing forward and then drawing back. Before, last year, had dragged on interminably by comparison with what was presently going on. Now time sped forward on wings that moved so quickly, I could not keep up with it. It was as though I were flying, airborne from one meeting to the next, with occasional full stops whenever life intruded.

And that life.

So many of the things that occupied my mind previously were now disappearing like so many inessential layers of clothing in a tropical climate. My mind was now a more heated thing than ever, and I could no more populate it with the concerns of Hettie Larwood, Sara Jamison, Maeve Collins, any and every woman I had ever known and their individual plights, or John, than I could sprout true wings and fly permanently to where I longed to be.

Let them clamor for my attention, let them need what they might, I could no longer hear them.

The beating of my own wings as I raced against time and space had simply grown too loud.

Shakespeare was right, I thought: “O brave new world,” indeed.