16 July 2006
I don't know.
Harry's world shifted slightly on its axis, with those words.
I don't know.
He thought he understood what she had not said, thought he understood why she was looking at him like that, with tears shining in the corners of her luminous eyes, why she seemed so wretched, so lost, so forlorn. It was an unthinkable burden to bear for all those years, and as he watched her he realized, quite clearly, that she had likely never confessed this secret to another living soul. That trust she gave him freely, as she had done from the moment they first met; she had given him this piece of herself, this bit of darkness that she carried, trusting that he would cradle it in his hands, that he would not turn it into weapon meant to maim her as so many others had done. That trust was humbling, and devastating; he wasn't entirely certain he deserved it, but he would be damned if he would betray her now. He owed her too much for that.
"Ruth," he said softly, wanting nothing so much as to reach out and draw her into his arms, yet hesitating; it was one of those rare moments when stillness was called for, when the slightest movement on his part might bring them together or tear them asunder, and he felt that responsibility, too, felt the weight of it heavy on his shoulders. Her heart was a precious gift, and he would not carelessly throw it aside.
She scrubbed her cheeks with her hands, and then wiped them dry on her skirt, ducking her head and taking one deep, steadying breath, as if to banish the doubt, the fear, the self-loathing that threatened to drag her under completely.
"George came to see me, the day after you left," she told him in a quiet voice, still refusing to look at him. "He knew what Connor Kelly had done to you, and he knew that you and I were…friends. He wanted to make sure I was all right."
As she spoke she seemed to grow stronger, more confident; she turned to him and raised her chin, squared her shoulders like a boxer preparing for the final bout, beaten and bloody and almost certainly doomed, but determined to face her fate with dignity. "He was a good and kind man, James," she told him again. "He wasn't particularly brave, or particularly strong, but he was good. He was good, and you were gone, back home to your wife where you belonged. Maybe it was wrong of me, to take up with him so soon after you'd gone, but I didn't know what else to do. I had to live my life, James."
"You did," he agreed softly. That was not something he could ever blame her for; every time Harry had gone to bed with her, thoughts of his wife had lingered just in the back of his mind, and he knew that he was in no position to judge Ruth for whatever she had done, in order to forget him, to move on with her life.
"You'd been gone nearly two months, when I found out I was pregnant." Still she soldiered on, determined to tell her tale, a sinner begrudgingly carrying out her penance. "I'm not sure the doctor believed me, when I told him that I must have got pregnant in July. Especially once she was born." Here Ruth turned away from him completely, her hands clutching the edge of the sink for support, her eyes staring unseeing through the little window before her, as if she were looking, not at her little garden and her scrubby little trees, but into the past, seeing herself as she had been all those years before. "She was born in March; Saint Patrick's Day, actually, if you can believe it. She came early; the doctors were certain she wouldn't be born until April, based on what I told them about George and me. But she wasn't little, James. She was strong, weighed nearly nine pounds. Damn near killed me, coming out," she added wryly, still refusing to look at him.
Harry's heart constricted at those words, at the thought of Ruth in pain, in danger, at the thought that maybe it was all his bloody fault. How could he have done such a thing, left her to bleed and struggle all her own, without him there beside her, to steady her, to hold her, to guide her through? What must that have been like for her, lying to George, lying to the doctors, fearing that her very life might be forfeit, and no one would ever know the truth of her heart? There was a smaller piece of him, though, some part of his heart that he was trying valiantly to ignore, that swelled with pride at the thought that Maren might have been his, that his child had been, from the start, strong and determined and damn near as stubborn as her mother. Stop it, he told himself. It's only a dream.
It was not a dream he'd ever harbored before this moment. He had never even considered the possibility; he and Ruth for the most part had been careful, and besides, at the time he already had a wife and children, the picture of the happy nuclear family waiting for him back home in London. It had never occurred to him to wish such a fate on Ruth, to bind her to him so irrevocably, to saddle her with a constant reminder of the man who had loved her, the man who had left her. Now, though, now that he was older, now that he was wiser, now that he had lost his family and in the losing of it discovered what a precious gift it had been, he could envision this dream. This little family, he and Ruth and the child they should have had, the child they should have raised together.
"George was her father in every way that counted, James," Ruth told him softly. There was no anger in her voice, and he knew that her words were not meant to wound him, much as they did. No doubt Ruth had spent the last twenty years telling herself the same thing, that it would be cruel to deny the role that George had played in Ruth and Maren's lives. After all, George was the one who had been there for them, who had loved and supported them, not Harry. Harry had been far away, playing the game of spies and shirking his familial duties in all their many forms. No doubt this George had been every bit as good and kind as Ruth said he was, and in that moment, Harry couldn't help but think that such words would never be used to describe himself.
"He changed her nappies, and sang to her when she wouldn't sleep. He was the one who kicked the football with her, and told her funny stories to make her laugh." With each word she spoke Harry felt his heart break that little bit more. It should have been me, he thought, and in his mind he saw not just Maren, but Catherine and Graham as well, saw all the moments when he should have been there for his children, but had chosen instead to wall himself off from them, crawling off to Thames House to tilt at windmills in the darkness rather than spending time with his children when they needed him. "Maren loved him, James."
"And you?" he asked her before he could stop himself. "Did you love him?"
Ruth sucked in her breath sharply, those sparkling, diamond-bright tears making a reappearance as she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. The question was unkind, he knew; he had no right to ask this of her, to demand that she bare her soul to him when she had already given him so much, and he had offered her so little in return. It was cruel, he knew, to dig his fingers into her wounds, to poke and prod at her for the sake of his own reassurance. No good can come of this, he thought, even as it occurred to him how lovely she was, even as he recalled the warmth of her, the heat of her kiss, even as he longed to experience it again. There was a part of him that needed to know, however, needed to know whether she had thought of him, as he had of her, whether the time they'd spent together had been no more than a moment of madness she regretted, or if it was a pleasant memory, a piece of hope to cling to, as it had become for him. Duty had given him an excuse to see her, but it was love that compelled him to come, to stand beside her in her kitchen and ask, one final time, for the truth.
"I have no idea how to answer that question, or why I ever would," she said, a bit of steel creeping back into her voice now. Harry remembered that, too, remembered that well of strength she kept hidden deep in her heart, that hardness that could come to the fore when she was afraid. Ruth had spent a lifetime protecting herself, sheltering herself from the dangers of the world, and behind that delicate face there lurked the heart of a fighter, the heart of a woman who knew her worth, who stood her ground. There were so many layers to her, so many different pieces all working in tandem to create the glory and the tragedy of her, and though Harry had learned so much about her, he knew that she was an enigma he could never hope to understand completely. Perhaps that was part of her allure; she was every bit as complex, every bit as difficult as he was himself.
"I shouldn't have asked," he conceded, taking a conciliatory step away from her, hoping that if he gave her the space she so dearly longed for, she might turn to him with fondness in her eyes once more. It was a fool's hope, but Harry had always been a fool when it came to love. Love, love, careless love.
"Why did you, then?" Ruth demanded quietly. As was so often the case, she did not need to shout or bluster or raise her voice in any way; the softness of her was too compelling to be ignored. But how could he possibly answer such a question? How could he possibly tell her, this woman he had known so briefly, from whom he been so long estranged, this woman he had placed upon a pedestal of his own making, this woman who had come to mean so much to him, this woman he feared he did not truly know at all? What could he say to her, and how would she respond if she knew the truth? Would she be horrified, to think that he had been fixated on her for so long, or would she be relieved, to know that she was not the only one who had nursed a quiet, desperate affection in her heart for the last two decades? There was a moment, a single instant when they balanced together on the edge of a knife, when it seemed to Harry that calamity might befall them at any moment, and he had no inkling of which way he should go. Truth, lies, love, duty; it was too much for one man to bear.
"You didn't come here for this," she said with a sigh, running her fingers through her hair. It seemed that Harry's earlier protests as to his motivations had not convinced her, and he felt her pulling back from him in more ways than one, as she returned her attentions to the dishes in the sink, her posture closing her off from him even as he felt a certain coldness radiating from her. The heat, the desperation, the passion of a moment before had begun to fade as she closed her heart off from him, and something deep inside Harry's chest broke free in that moment. He caught her by the arm, turning her to face him abruptly, stepping into her into space until they were so close that with each short, tense breath she took her chest brushed against his own.
"This is exactly why I came, Ruth," he told her, feeling that spark of need reigniting between them as she stared up at him, her full lips parted and her eyes shimmering up at him, frightened and hurt and yearning all at once.
There was nothing else for it, then; he did not know when next he might have such a chance, to see her, to touch her, to feel, even for a moment, that she belonged to him and him alone, that there was no one else in the world save for her, save for him, save for them together. Outside that room was a world full of people, demanding her time, her smile, her grace, but there in that kitchen she was his Ruth again, that girl he had known, the girl he had loved, the one woman whose name had been tattooed on his heart long ago when he was young and afraid of nothing save for losing her. There was no stopping him now, nothing standing in his way, and he bowed his head to kiss her, all unthinking. Though she gasped, when his lips first brushed hers, she did not draw away; instead she fisted her hands in his shirt and pulled him ever closer, the same hunger, the same need that drove him spurring her on until they were wrapped so tightly around one another that he lost all sense of himself. There was only Ruth, her lips, her tongue, her needy sighs, and Harry reveled in the joy and the freedom and the terror of it all.