Bunny.
Raffles came to Thames Ditton.
Compliant enough with the demands I'd placed upon him, he never wrote to me, he never telephoned me, and he never came to call on me at my Mount Street flat. Raffles adhered to the words of my request to the letter, even whilst completely sidestepping the heart of them. I should have been more precise. I should have known that was what he'd do—perhaps I did. I don't know how he found me. I thought I'd taken care enough to cover my tracks. But then, this was Raffles; of course he would find me if he wanted to, when he wanted to. And evidently he did.
I was in the garden when he finally showed up. It was a beautiful morning, blue skies clear of everything but the hot sun of late June and the dances of the summer birds, and so I'd preferred to sit and write at the table I had dragged out onto the patio, rather than in the dreary little cottage, colder inside than out. I was just working my way through phrasing a particularly troublesome line I simply could not get to scan, when I heard a knock on the gatepost; a tattoo so familiar that for a moment I froze, certain I must have misheard. And then I turned, and there he was.
'A. J.?'
'Hello, Bunny,' came the reply, spoken through half a smile, quieter and more tentative than the greetings I'd once been used to. 'Beautiful morning, isn't it? How are you?'
I blinked in the sunlight as it shone down upon him, shimmering over his glossy black curls, closer cropped now at the neck than he'd been wearing them before, though still a mop on his crown. He stood waiting at my gate in a suit of matutinal grey, a pink rose in his lapel with a matching silk tie, so perfect I felt half sure he must have been an apparition. How many times had I awoken in the night to visions of him lying beside me, or standing over me, or walking out of my bedroom door too quickly to catch? But I wasn't asleep, and there he was, as real and as beautiful as the last time I'd seen him, months since.
'What are you doing here?' I exclaimed, manners lost with my wits.
'I fancied a stroll along the river,' Raffles replied with a shrug. 'A morning as bright as this is wasted on the city. I can see why you came down here, Bunny; the riverways at this time of year are simply perfect.'
I remained seated rather than standing to greet him, awkwardly turned-round in my chair, staring at him openly. I was capable of nothing else. 'Yes,' I said, blankly, still not quite catching up; still not quite believing he was there in front of me, let alone getting around to wondering why. 'Yes—there are some nice walks, around here.'
'So, this is where you're staying, is it?' Raffles said, taking in the tiny, half-tumbledown old cottage and it's modest, overgrown grounds. 'It's deucedly pretty, Bunny. I haven't seen a garden with so many flowers in a long time. A real artist's retreat, what! … Were you working on something, before I interrupted?' He nodded over the fence at my paper-littered, makeshift desk. 'This certainly is the place to do it; I imagine there's more than enough to spark the imagination, here. William Morris himself would be jealous of this little bolthole of yours, Bunny!'
'So you'd think,' said I, pushing a self-conscious hand through my hair. 'Not that it's helping me, much.'
'Writing woes?'
'Something like that.'
Raffles ran his hand over the rough wood of the garden gate. 'Well, I won't take up any more of your time, then,' said he, making to leave. 'It was good to see you, Bunny.'
'No!' I called out, without in the least intending to, standing from my chair so quickly that I nearly knocked over a bottle of ink I could little afford to lose. 'Wait! That is—you've come all this way, and there's not a decent pub or cafe open yet within a square mile. Let me at least offer you a drink. I—that is to say, it is a devilishly warm morning, after all, and it's only going to get hotter. I'd hate to be seen as so unaccommodating to not even offer you a drink.'
Raffles had turned back at my words with so dazzling a smile that it nearly knocked the air from my lungs; it was a miracle I'd managed to finish speaking them. 'I am quite parched,' said he, with only the slightest hesitation. 'As long as it's no trouble.'
I could have cried with relief. As much as the shock of seeing him had me rocked, the thought of him leaving again just as suddenly, like some torturing spirit, would have killed me on the spot. 'Of course it's not,' I said, quickly. 'I've just made a pot of coffee, if you like; or I think there's some ginger beer, if you'd rather not have something hot.'
'Ginger beer! Gone tee-total, Bunny?'
'Hardly,' I scoffed. 'Coffee, then?'
'I won't say no to that—if you're certain you aren't busy,' said Raffles, still lingering behind the gate, his restless fingers resting on the latch. 'I don't want to trouble you, old boy.'
'It's no trouble. As I said, I've just made a pot. I usually forget to finish it before it goes cold, so if anything you'll be doing me a favour in saving me from the penance of drinking it reheated.' I turned away as I babbled, busying myself with clearing a space on the table strewn with my work. In my distraction I didn't notice him finally enter, and I had to catch back on a gasp when Raffles' voice next came from directly over my shoulder, close enough that I could have sworn I felt its vibrations across my skin.
'By Jove, you really are going at it, Bunny! Writing a novel, or something?'
'No.' I flinched away from him, not trusting myself; not trusting him. 'About a hundred things at once, and none of them any good. If you'll excuse me, I'll—go and fetch you a cup. I'll just be a moment. Take a seat—that is, if you like. Or not. I don't mind. I'll—I'll just be a moment.'
I left, then, darting back into the cool, dark cottage and catching my breath, leaving Raffles sitting in the garden.
Leaving Raffles sitting in the garden! The weight of that hit me all at once the moment I was out of his sight. In the safety of the hallway I leaned back against the wall and sighed, catching sight of myself in the mirror as I did. I was a mess. Raffles looked as perfect as he always did, and there I was, jacketless and in wrinkled shirtsleeves with a blue inkstain on the cuff, my hair, grown far too too long and disgracefully unkempt, brushing over a collar which could have done with rather more starch. Ink stained my fingers too, and, I noticed with a grimace, in a smudge on my jaw. I scrubbed at it with my sleeve, but it wouldn't budge, the stark, dark ink only making my already wan skin look paler, the faded blue of it nearly matching the dark circles around my eyes. Had I looked this terrible all morning? Surely I was vain enough to notice if I had. Of course I'd look my worst the day he showed up!
And why had he shown up, I finally had the wherewithal to wonder? What on earth was Raffles doing there, sitting in my garden, waiting for me to bring him a mug of coffee, pleading a passion for the river? What did he want? I hadn't seen him for weeks—months! Why had he shown up then, out of the blue and with such an offhand, casual attitude, as though nothing had gone between us? Not me leaving —not me having ever been there in the first place! He was speaking to me as though we were little more than vague acquaintances! As though he were paying a courtesy call to a spurious relative, offering up polite preliminaries before asking to borrow the summer house for the weekend, or for a loan of twenty pounds!
...Ah, and therein lay the heart of it, I thought. Raffles needed me for something; that was the only explanation. Some job impossible for only one man, some crime requiring a lookout or an extra pair of hands… that had to be it. What else? Well, I thought as I stared at myself in the glass, if he thinks I'm as irresolute as all that, as weak, as ignoble, as heartless as all that, he could think again. Little enough he must have thought of me, if the way he had been carrying on across the country in my absence was any measure! How quickly he had moved on! Well, no matter how little Raffles thought of me, I now thought better of myself. No, I knew better of myself, and I knew I shouldn't be so easily manipulated as once I was. If this was the game he wanted to play, he should find in me a more formidable opponent now than in days past.
With a renewed strength of spirit, I snatched up a clean mug for him and, steeling myself with a deep breath and the smallest dash of whiskey from my flask on the sideboard, I strolled back out into the sunshine with all of the calm I could muster.
'It's not so dainty a coffee cup as you might be used to,' I said with a cool smile as I rejoined Raffles in the garden. 'The aesthetic here really is rustic in all senses, I'm afraid.'
'It's charming,' Raffles smiled, warmly. 'I wouldn't mind a place like this to retreat to for the summer months myself, I confess. The atmosphere in the city is devilish at this time of year; nothing chokes like it.'
'The air is a lot fresher out here,' I nodded, 'though my hay-fever is worse. Every silver lining comes with a sable cloud, it seems.'
'I did think your eyes looked a little red.'
'Charming as ever, A. J...' I answered darkly, though not entirely without humour, as I poured cheap coffee into Raffles' mug. I hoped he wouldn't notice—or at least wouldn't comment upon—the beastly quality of it in comparison to the expensive stuff I'd used to insist on drinking. 'I'm afraid I'm out of sugar.'
'Quite all right,' Raffles replied with a swift smile. 'The stuff's terrible for you, anyway; I've been meaning to cut down. Rots the teeth like anything.'
'Tastes good, though,' I said, sitting, sipping my own coffee, and trying not to wince. I had thought I was used to the inferiority of the brand which my rapidly depleting funds necessitated I buy, but for some reason just then it was almost too bitter to stomach.
'A cruel trick of the universe, isn't it?' said Raffles, with a wry smile and a shake of his curly head. 'All of the things that are worst for us seem to taste the sweetest. It almost makes one believe in a Creator up there, after all, doing things simply out of spite.'
'Or to teach us lessons,' I contested. 'To help us build resilience by overcoming hardship, improve resolve by resisting temptation…'
'Ah, I can resist anything but!' Raffles smirked, ever keeping one serious eye upon me. 'But if that's the case, Bunny, if that is what The Almighty is playing at, if you ask me it's deucedly inefficient. One catches more flies with honey, and will have a much better time of it with the mule if he is lured with the carrot than beaten with the stick. Someone really ought to have a word with Him Upstairs—or, indeed, Her, I suppose. The gods really could do with a hand in rethinking Their divine strategy, if that's what They are up to.'
'But that's supposing any God or gods see us as mules to be driven or flies to be swatted in the first place,' said I. 'That implies that we'd be nothing to God but tools to be used, or irritants to be removed, rather than—'
'—sheep to be herded?' Raffles cut in, all condescension and cynicism and cool arrogance.
'Sinners to be punished.'
For the briefest moment a shadow passed across Raffles' face, and I felt his piercing gaze tear into me like a knife through paper; but then, almost immediately, he was all smiles once more. 'Steady on there, Bunny,' he came back with a toss of his head and a hearty laugh, 'that old Sunday School strain is showing; you sound positively pious! You go careful to whom you start spouting such serious religious rot, old boy, or you'll ruin your fashionable reputation.'
'You raised the matter, not me,' I half-snapped, letting him rile me, before composing myself enough to change the subject to something simpler. '...I saw in the papers that you played marvellously well up in Yorkshire. You came very near to a century, if I recall rightly. Well done, old chap.'
'You read about that, did you?'
'Hard to avoid it, without avoiding the papers altogether. You're quite their darling at the moment; and I can see why! You've been having a tremendous season, Raffles—one of your best yet.'
'The weather's been favourable for it,' he shrugged. 'April showers bring May flowers, true enough—they also bring some deucedly good pitches for bowlers. My seam bowl has been coming along a treat this season, and you know how I've always wanted to perfect that. Slow bowling is all well and good, but catching the bat off his guard with a fast seam spin is a thrill not to be beat.'
'You can hardly credit the weather for the performances you have been giving, A. J.!' I said with some enthusiasm. 'Reading about that match you played over in Gloucester only made me sorry I wasn't there to see it myself!'
It was only after I had spoken that I realised what I had said. I had rarely accompanied Raffles to the provinces without good reason or particular circumstance whilst we were together, so reading of his successes second hand in the paper and expressing my desire to have seen him at it was little out of the ordinary for me. But now the expression of that wish held a painful new weight: I'd never again accompany him to cricket matches; never watch smiling from the stands; never provide him company in the pavilion. My absence from his corner was permanent, and of my own doing. Everything had changed, and we couldn't even carry on an anodyne conversation without being reminded of the fact. The grim reality of all I had lost—of all I had thrown away—made me feel both nauseous and all the more resolute.
If Raffles recognised any awkwardness in my words, or if they caused him any pain, he didn't show it, carrying on talking with such surreal easiness that it left my head fairly spinning to keep up calm pace with him.
'Ah, it wasn't as good as all that, Bunny, fear not. The papers always make these things out to be so much more than they are; they print whatever sells copy. Cricket is cricket is cricket,' he said with an indifferent shrug. 'You really didn't miss much.'
'Will you be playing in the Gentleman and Players match at Lord's this year?'
'They've asked me to.'
'Keep it up like you have been and the Players won't stand a chance!'
'There are eleven men on a team, Bunny,' said Raffles, with a smile. 'A match is never won or lost by one man alone, no matter how high the rags might build him up.'
'But one man can make the crucial difference,' I insisted. 'And you've done just that many a time, Raffles. You can dispense with the false humility, it simply won't wash—not with me!'
He laughed softly behind his coffee cup, shaking his head, his bright eyes dancing over me in that old familiar way. 'We'll see.'
We carried on talking about nothing much, cricket, politics, books, the usual sort of thing—the usual sort of thing still safe enough to talk about, at least. After a while, a natural lull fell in our conversation. Its quality felt to me painfully removed from the comfortable silences which used to reign over cosier moments together at dinner, at home… with a dull ache I forced myself to turn my mind from the thought of days past. Raffles for his part took the momentary silence as an opportunity to turn and look around the garden with a spirited curiosity.
'I say, Bunny,' he said distractedly, grazing his teeth over his lower lip, 'you're devilishly close to the river here, aren't you?'
'About as close as you can get without being in it,' I replied. 'It runs just out down the other side of the house. There's a small dock right onto it, in fact, just the other side of the back road, opposite. The dock belongs to the cottage, I think, or it has shared access rights, at least. I confess I didn't pay overmuch attention to the details when I leased the place.'
'Always pay attention to the details,' murmured Raffles, before looking back at me with a bright smile. 'But that is marvellous, Bunny, your very own dock! Or near enough your own, anyway. And I don't suppose you've made the least use of that terrific bit of fortune, have you? If I were living here, the very first thing I should have done was enquire about hiring a little boat to take out!'
'I don't need to hire one; there's one down in that bottom shed.'
Raffles' eyes lit up in the dangerous way I knew all too well. 'You don't have a boat, Bunny?'
'I don't, but the cottage does, and I have full use of it, if I want—which I don't. That shed is a wreck, Raffles, as is everything in it. I had to venture in there the other day for a stepladder—some little bird, a nightingale or something, decided to make a home for itself on top of one of the bookcases, and I had to try to—' I cut myself off, realising how much I was letting on the poor state of my living conditions. 'Well, anyway, when I went down to that horrid shed to fetch it, I could barely wade my way through the chaos and the dust—not to mention the spiders and mice! Any boat in there probably hasn't seen the water since the coronation.'
'Bunny, Bunny, Bunny, where is your sense of adventure!'
'I'm not sure that an ancient canoe in a rat-infested shed, and the placid waters of the Thames can by any stretch of the imagination be considered adventurous, A. J…'
'Adventure can be found anywhere you look for it, my dear chap! Will you show me the boat, Bunny? Please?' His grey eyes were wide and shining as he asked me, his smile innocent and eager and full of mischief, speaking straight to the weakest point of my heart. 'You know I'll keep on till you do.'
How could I refuse?
'You are a child, you know that?' I sighed, even as I set down my cup and made to stand. 'Why do you care? It's nothing special, you know.'
'To see if it's seaworthy for you, of course!' he replied as he stood, shooting me a mischievous grin. 'Come along, Bunny, my lad!'
And so we fought our way around the overgrown lower path to the back of the house and into the decrepit and dusty shed, wherein we found, as I had promised, an ancient, dilapidated canoe.
'Oh, she is a beauty! ' Raffles exclaimed, once we'd finally dragged the small boat out into the sunlight. 'Bunny,' he said, turning to me, eyes bright, 'you didn't tell me she was such a lovely little thing as all this!'
' Lovely?' I looked down at the paint-chipped skiff, covered in dust and in my estimation likely to disintegrate in a heavy shower, let alone if shoved into a river. 'I think you and I must have a differing definition of the word.'
'Philistine! She just needs a lick of paint here and there, a little attention paid to her on Sundays, and I think you'll find yourself a rather trustworthy friend in this grand old lady. She really is a delicious shade of green, and—ah! Flowers painted down this side! I'm in love, Bunny, I'm in love! We simply must take her out.'
I grimaced and held back a groan. 'Must we?'
Raffles' ardor cooled at my words and tone with such a look of veiled disappointment that I found myself immediately regretting them. 'You're busy, of course,' said he, standing back up straight, dusting his hands off on his trousers. 'I have rather sprung myself upon you unsolicited, haven't I? Far from sporting, old chap, and I completely understand if you've not got the time. It's been deucedly decent of you to put up with me for this long. I'll go.'
'No! No, it's fine. It's not that I'm too busy,' I replied quickly—too quickly—dodging the easy excuse he had handed up to me on a silver platter. In truth, I was busy; I actually did have a looming deadline, and had neither the time nor the emotional fortitude to spend on Raffles. Still, the prospect of letting him leave right then was impossible. Mental resolution I may have had, but my heart? My heart was as weak as ever it was.
'You're sure?'
'I'm sure,' I nodded, feeling a smile relentlessly tugging at the corners of my mouth in response to Raffles' own, ever following his lead, even in expression. 'I've all the time in the world and nothing with which to fill it. It's only that I don't particularly fancy drowning…'
'I wouldn't let you drown, Bunny,' said Raffles with a smile, biting his tongue between his teeth, playful and perfect and agonising. 'Come on, then; where's this dock of yours?'
That afternoon was as beautiful as it was difficult, and as delightful as it was complicated. The rickety little skiff, to its credit, did not dissolve upon hitting the water after all, and proved to be not only eminently river-worthy, but really entirely charming, and an altogether pleasing afternoon's diversion. Raffles was even more enamoured than I, christening the boat "Victoria" and claiming her—for he was quite insistent on calling the boat "her"—to be the "Queen of the Thames Ditton Riverways."
We were out for hours, sculling in a leisurely fashion along the walls of Hampton Court, wiling away the hours pleasantly, and only almost capsizing twice. We even stopped in a pub a way up the river. Raffles bought us both a late lunch, and, for the briefest of moments, it almost felt like the good old times; times when we could for a moment forget about our shadowy secret life and live for a minute in the sun; times when we could forget about the rest of the world, and simply exist as our own true selves, complete in one another's company.
It was almost like that, but not quite.
How could it be, when there were so many things we couldn't say, so many subjects upon which we couldn't speak? We couldn't speak of the past; everything in it was filled with us together. We couldn't speak of the future, because together we had no more future of which to speak. And the present was, for my part if not for his, fraught with pain, sorrow, and uncertainty. All roads may lead to Rome—for me it seemed that all repartee led to Raffles, and to the life with him I had long since left behind. I was painfully aware of this at every juncture, at every halting sentence, at every unfinished thought. Of silences there were plenty, for Raffles could hardly be expected to keep up such a one-sided conversation ad infinitum, though he tried. It could hardly have been enjoyable for him.
And yet he did not leave. He made no more excuses, he offered no reasons to cut the day short—if anything, he found ways to prolong our time together. We must stop and eat lunch to win back some of the energy we had lost through our (very lazy) rowing, he insisted; and then we must take the boat further up the river to exercise off our lunch! At one point, Raffles had us stop simply in order that he might hop out of the boat and run across the road to buy a newspaper! And that was an adventure in itself, as we could find no convenient dock nearby, and Raffles got it in his head he could simply leap from the boat to the bank—which to his credit he did manage, even if he very nearly ended up in the river.
It was as we were rowing back toward my cottage, much later in the afternoon, Raffles lying back in the boat, the gold and green dappled light from the overhanging trees dancing over him, that our conversation took the turn I had long been anticipating. It was then that I finally thought we had landed upon the reason for his visit at all, and I steeled myself for the questions, requests, propositions, and pleas which I expected him to make, and which my better soul ordered me to refuse even as my traitorous heart pleaded with me to accept.
As ever, Raffles defied expectation.
Skimming through the paper, Raffles fell upon my latest published verse. It was nothing remarkable—though I had agonised over its writing for days—merely a short satirical piece on the subject of the pearl which was so dominating newspaper print at that time. Raffles was very complimentary of my work, as he so often was, but somehow beneath his generous warmth I thought I could feel tectonic plates begin to shift. He made some green-eyed comment upon the value of the pearl, and some ostensibly offhand note in flippant tones about how one could never dispose of such a thing, were one to steal it.
I was immediately set upon my guard. Raffles had already tentatively quizzed me upon my funds, or lack thereof, and I had unadvisedly confessed to more than I ought, speaking with more grateful vigour in venting my woes than I would have done in more steady a frame of mind. It took little imagination to follow where Raffles' train of thought would lead: I was hard up; he had the means to get cash. It was a one to two step, the simplest of equations, the most obvious of paths. He might even suggest going after that very pearl in particular, I remember thinking, my breast filling with righteous condemnation of him at the mere thought of such an outrage; my indignance all the more vituperative for the fact that that very idea had already disgraced my own thoughts in weaker moments.
And yet down that road he did not venture. Raffles cut himself short with an apology upon realising what he had said, and changed the subject not to touch on it again, leaving me feeling like a knight with no dragon, a debutante with no ball. I had readied myself to protest, to deny, to, with calm righteousness, refuse and chastise the offers I was so certain he would make, only to be left to sit in silence at the end of the boat. A. J. retreated once more behind the screen of his newspaper and resumed his reading aloud of articles he thought might be of interest to me. He didn't bring it up again. He didn't bring any of it up.
I was glad, of course. This was what I wanted. This meant that he was respecting my wishes, meant that he respected me. Or it may have meant, I thought as I stared at the black and white print which shielded him from me, that Raffles no longer needed me. That he never had needed me; at least not enough for me to be worth chasing now. He had obviously grown tired of asking me to stay with him, to trust him, to follow his lead, and had exhausted all of his arguments as to why I ought to. With none left to make, he'd given up on them. Given up on me. Given up, or no longer cared, or never truly cared—it hardly mattered either way, I supposed. Either way, Raffles no longer had need of me. He no longer wanted me.
This was good, of course; or so I told myself, watching the oars sink and rise from the murky green waters as I rowed, trying my best to keep the motion smooth and steady. This was in every way the best case scenario. Was this not precisely why I had broken with him in the way I had, so that the cut might be clean and heal all the quicker? The fact that Raffles was so sanguine, that he made no overtures to wanting me back, no grand gestures, no heartfelt pleas—that only proved how good a job I had done of it all.
I admit I was surprised that my obvious poverty compared to my former position hadn't moved him to make the suggestion; that my painfully apparent nosedive from comfortable living and decent society hadn't moved his usually generous spirit. But then why should it? I'd told him I was happy, and he had no reason to disbelieve me. And I was happy, really. Happy enough. Or—I was happier than I had been. Well, I was healthier, at least, morally and spiritually, if not physically and financially.
...Money was a concern. I was running up bills like there was no tomorrow, even as I did everything I knew how to avoid it. I was as successful at frugality as I had been at the finer points of burglary—and at just about everything else beside. My parents, it seemed, had always been right about me: I was destined to be a failure. I'd felt like less of one, with him.
That's not to say that I'd wanted Raffles to invite me back. I would have been furious with him if he had, for countless reasons that hardly need explaining. And yet still part of me was just as frustrated that he wasn't asking me, and not only because I wanted the opportunity to refuse him. Quite the opposite. I wanted the opportunity—I wanted the excuse—to accept him.
How much more harm could it do, I had asked myself, if I occasionally helped him out on some small job here or there? Even if only once or twice a year, just enough to tide me over and keep in good credit? It wouldn't be putting Raffles in any more danger than he was already putting himself in—I might even be able to help keep him out of it! And yes, I would have been wandering from the straight and narrow, but I was already hiding from my creditors for debts owed, and what was that if not socially sanctioned theft? And as far as the risk was concerned, it had been the overlap of our personal and professional crimes which had pushed us over the edge, hadn't it? I could have one without the other, couldn't I? I was already suffering for want of him; why should I suffer for want of ready cash, too?
It was mean. It was cheap. It was hideously pragmatic and completely bereft of finer feeling. But it was the truth, and I can't deny I had thought about it; I had hoped for it, even. That was the most that I could hope for, after all, for I wouldn't even dare to hope he might ask for anything else. That he might offer other things. That he might want me back for my sake, not simply for crime's, and in asking undo that which I was beginning to believe had been the noblest and most selfless mistake of my life. No, I couldn't come close to hoping for that. I could suffer the disappointment of the one; the other would break me.
But, as I say, he gave me neither chance nor excuse to refuse or accept him on any front. Together we soaked up the rest of the sunlight in guarded peace, clinging on to the vestiges of the day for as long as we could, reluctant to let it slip away into the past and forever beyond our reach, as so many other beautiful and terrible days had done. The night air fell heavy as I walked Raffles to the station in time for him to catch the last train of the night, the darkness and quiet that surrounded us a blanket of both melancholy and comfort. We stood together on the platform, beneath the lights, beneath the stars, neither one acknowledging the shadow of our looming good-by. I stared up the track for the coming of the train, both anxious for and dreading its arrival and inevitable departure.
'I think it's late,' I murmured, more to myself than to Raffles, glancing up at the station clock for the fifth time in as many minutes.
'Are you that keen to be rid of me, Bunny?'
'No—of course not. I'm only concerned you've missed the damned thing.'
'I haven't missed it, Bunny. Don't worry. You do worry far too much, old chap. It's not healthy, you know.'
'Not for nothing!' I snapped. 'The trains here are few and far between, Raffles, and have a deucedly bad reputation for not showing up at all, and always at the most inconvenient of times. I'd hate for you to get stranded.'
'The price one pays for fresh air and greenery, eh?'
'I suppose so,' said I, glancing again at the timetable on the wall. The train was far from late. Raffles was right; I was worrying too much. I always worried too much. '...I'm not sure the price isn't rather too steep, all things considered.'
'The trains can't be all that bad, surely?'
'They're not,' I sighed, and again we fell into silence.
I was exhausted, physically, mentally, emotionally, and more than ready to fall into my bed and pray for sleep. Though I little wanted Raffles to leave, leave he must, and so I wished the time would come sooner rather than later. The waiting was draining me, the dragging of good-by reminding me of nothing so much as those medieval torture racks I'd read about in history books, designed to keep prisoners alive for as long as possible, awake to every pinch and every cut; the long, slow death. At least they had an end to look forward to. All I had were more endless days, each more grey and empty than the one before.
I was roused from my tired, morbid thoughts by the sound of the train finally approaching in the far distance. When I looked up, I found Raffles' gaze resting heavy upon me. I tried to muster up a smile, but the effort proved too much, and I managed only to meet his eye.
Raffles shook his head. 'You don't look well on it, Bunny. I never did believe in this Thames Valley. You want a change of air.'
'A change of everything,' I replied morosely, glancing again up the track. The train was yet to come into view, though its steady rumbling was growing ever more obvious to the ear through the otherwise silent night.
'What you really want is a sea voyage,' said he.
'And a winter at San Moritz,' I snapped with a sarcasm biting enough to have belonged to Raffles himself, irritated anew at his continuing lack of notice or care for my obviously impoverished state. Still, I am loth to admit that I was almost grateful for a reason to be cross with him, just then. If Raffles could remind me of his insensitivity, his coldness might numb the pain of his leaving just at the moment I needed that the most. It was so much easier to be angry with him. And yet still so very difficult. 'Or do you recommend Cannes or Cairo? It's all very well, A. J., but you forget what I told you about my funds.'
'I forget nothing,' he replied, his hand touching lightly—too lightly—upon my elbow as he spoke. 'I merely don't want to hurt your feelings. But, look here, a sea voyage you shall have. I want a change myself, and you shall come with me as my guest. We'll spend July in the Mediterranean.'
Raffles' words, bright through the darkness, came so unexpectedly that I felt half certain I'd imagined them. I blinked, stupidly. 'But you're playing cricket—'
'Hang the cricket!' he cut in sharply, his keen eyes still upon me, never once leaving me. The lights from the train as it rounded the corner into the station chased the shadows from his sharp, pale features, which, in spite of my misgivings, wore an expression of intense earnest.
'Well, if I thought you meant it—'
'Of course I mean it,' said Raffles, his grip on my arm tightening. I glanced at the train as it rolled into the platform, clouds of blue smoke drifting away to meet the infinite splendor of the stars, before looking back at him, barely daring to meet his eye. 'Will you come?'
We didn't have long. The train doors were opened—a porter called for all who wished to board, to board—Raffles called to him to wait—the whistle blew. This was too fast. I didn't have time to think, and so replied before doing so, my answer coming from my heart, not my head.
'Like a shot,' I said, dubiously, hopefully, dazedly, 'if you go.'
At my reply, Raffles clasped my hand in both of his and shook it with vigour. 'Good old Bunny,' said he through a smile as dazzling as ever, beneath eyes that seemed almost on fire. Under the chastisements of the longsuffering conductor we made our short way down the platform to the passenger doors. A. J.'s hand was still gripping mine, half-pulling me along with him as he went. 'I'll write, Bunny.'
'If you like.'
Raffles dropped my hand, then, and sprung up onto the train; when I asked whether he had my address, he merely laughed, and the porter shut the door behind him. Leaning through the open window, Raffles held out his hand to me, and I reached my own up to meet it. Our fingers pressed briefly together for one last time. 'Good-by, rabbit,' he smiled, calling out over the whistle, his voice nearly drowned out by the grinding of the wheels as they chugged into motion. 'For now!'
As the train disappeared into the shadows of the night, the shadow of his handshake still echoing through my skin, the echo of his voice still humming through my skull, I couldn't help but wonder, with neither judgement nor expectation, whether Raffles would be true to his word—and how long it would truly be before I saw him again.
