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Hilary set down the pencil and gazed out into the garden, her letter forgotten for a moment as she contemplated where Julian lay. It'd been three months and he was, she was sure, a part of the earth now. He would have begun to be enwound in it and swallowed, and she thought of the long six months ahead of her, how as the baby grew, Julian would diminish and vanish into the earth entirely, and blinked back sudden tears. Her mouth tasted coppery and dull, as though she'd bitten her tongue without thinking, and even a cup of tea made no difference to the taste.
Against the skin of her left finger, the wedding ring she'd bought him gleamed dully. It was too big for her hand but she couldn't put it aside, hadn't been able to let it stay with him. She didn't cry, but the hard tight band of pain around her chest didn't vanish either. Why had she let him do it, she had to wonder, but refused that thought swiftly. "Did you want to go?" she asked the empty room. "Was it worth it in those final moments?"
There was no answer of course, just the steady silence of too hot summer air. The slightest gust of warm wind ruffled the pages of her letter and brought the heavy scent of the roses to her but there was nothing of Julian in it.
-
The first time Hilary had realised exactly what was the inevitable end for her and Julian, had been not long after Hilary had found the books in the desk. She hadn't meant to look in the drawer, hadn't intended to pry into Julian's life, though he had looked at her with surprise when she'd said something of the sort, as though now they were engaged, all such considerations had fallen by the wayside. Yet she had been searching quite legitimately for paper in his desk, and perhaps an envelope, and there beneath the scattered documents, most of them in the strangely unformed writing that always seemed only half-finished, as though he'd lost interest halfway through shaping letters, there had nestled three small books, neatly bound with brown paper. She wasn't sure what she had thought they would be, but it wasn't 'Patience Rewarded,' For he Loved Her and the collected works of Sir Davies Oswald, and she'd surfaced, holding them out, half laughing at the ridiculousness of them and Julian, not always the swiftest to laugh at a joke at his own expense, had stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment.
"We treasured them in school," he explained, "Cunningham Minor used to smuggle them in and exchange a read for a bullseye, the little pig. He'd stand there and count the minutes off, keeping an eye out for the prefects while sucking on the beastly things."
"Did you read it out to the dorm?" Hilary had asked, the thought amusing her more than she cared to imagine.
Julian, with the delightful earnestness that was at once the bane of Hilary's life and the joy, took her quite seriously. "We had night monitors you know. I did once or twice though, since acting was in my line as you might say."
Hilary had never really thought about what must happen behind the closed doors of an all-boy school and she was intrigued by the glimpse Julian offered. She had a sudden, surprising thought in her mind's eye of them reading about the noble women and the handsome young servants who caught their eye and of course turned out to be the one, the only, the ever, and felt a shiver run down her spine. "How silly," she said briskly and put the books back into the drawer, regretting opening it at all.
"It's not silly at all," Julian said, and came closer with his usual engaging smile and embraced her, warm and whole and real. "Hilary I found you. You know how long some people look. How often it goes wrong. And here I am, I've found my one and my only and my forever," and he squeezed her until the breath almost left her body. "We're so close," he murmured next to her ear. "We're so near to being together, as close as any two people can ever be," and his hand, in a shocking caress, brushed the top of her abdomen.
Hilary could feel her breath contract and a blind dull ache appear behind her eyes at the warmth, at the exultation of Julian's tone, so at odds with the passionless control she and David had exerted when they'd been together. Consummation and consumption had been something to be feared, to be avoided, and she couldn't shake off the crawling belief that David had been right, that his non-traditional view of the matter had been the correct one. His arguments had been eminently logical and she had sheathed her teeth and bit into the bed rather than into David, declined even to lick at the soft skin of his neck or to finish the business. Now though she began to fear, that it had not been her reason or her logic that had restrained her, had not been her forward thinking but quite simply that like any old wives tale, David hadn’t been right for her.
She hadn’t believed in all that nonsense for a long time, but there was no denying that just as she had never had the urge to tear into David and consume him utterly, that with Julian, well, the urge never really went away, hadn’t, she thought, from the moment they’d first talked properly. She had dismissed it at that first accidental meeting as Julian rode past her, because everyone experienced those flashes of feeling, those tiny urges to rend and consume and find perfection, but then there he was again, and suddenly her easy virtue, her smug superiority at not wanting to be like those around her, had become a struggle. Still her mind protested against the barbarism of knowing that Julian would be hers for so short a time, but the rest of her urged her to take him in and finish the business, to complete them both, and it grew steadily stronger.
When she thought of the complicated system she and David had devised, in case her control should fail, she could not imagine Julian partaking in it. From the moment he’d made it clear that he wanted her, that his neck was hers for the taking, he had been set on the only honourable solution to their situation. Nevermind that he was a yellow band, nevermind that she was older than she should be for a first bond and that his mother disapproved of his choice. He had been determined, he had told her, from the moment they met that she was the one for him, that he’d known in a dream that he would be hers. Yet somehow it was only on seeing those books that she realised that he meant it, that he had no thought to the future, to the changes, that in this respect he was unapologetically and unashamedly traditional and it left a hollow, hurt feeling in her stomach.
David had been the opposite, and Hilary supposed that she had got used to that, had allowed herself to agree with her natural inclination towards upsetting social norms, had even begun to believe that they weren’t such outliers after all. But standing there with Julian, his smile so close, she couldn’t bring herself to crush him so soon, to do what was right for him, rather than what he wanted.
That had been her first true understanding that the paths she and Julian envisaged were so wildly different. Before that, vaguely she had thought that they could continue on rather as they were until they had no choice, but Julian had when she finally mentioned that the wedding night might very well not be their last night, reacted with a horror that could not be diminished by her placations or declarations of how much she loved him. What was love, he asked, if they lived side by side in chasteness? Could she say she loved him if she wouldn’t allow him to love her with all his soul?
Hilary had tried pointing out that she wasn’t asking him not to love her with all his soul, but rather to hold back a little from offering up his body quite so quickly on the altar of that love, to refrain from giving her everything and leaving her with nothing. Quickly though, she had discovered that Julian, so utterly pliable in some things, was adamant as stone on this matter. He had no desire to live as Rupert and Lisa did, or to emulate David in any matter, and she had realised despairingly that there was no way she could change his mind. Her unexpected ally in this matter had been Elaine, of all people. Elaine, who flaunted the inset hair of her husband in a discreet brooch that she wore all of the time, pinned neatly to her twinsets, its heavy Victorian lines from a completely different era but fitting perfectly the heavyset face frozen in posterity above the mantlepiece. Elaine, who made it perfectly clear that she found Julian’s choice coldly shocking, and who never missed a chance to remind Hilary of how foolish it would be. Hilary couldn’t decide if Elaine so much wanted to retain Julian in her household forever, undevoured and safe, or if rather she just didn’t want anyone else to possess him. Her eyes followed him when they were in the same room together, and sometimes she smacked of a rival to Hilary, rather than a relative, as though somewhere along the way the lines had blurred.
This had of course had precisely the opposite of the effect Elaine had wished, had stoked a rich, fiery anger in Hilary, a smouldering resentment on a very basic level that someone else should consider Julian as anything but hers, a thought that she rejected with horror and attempted to squash with severity, but which popped up with alarming regularity every time Elaine ostentatiously asked when the wedding would be. Lingering in perpetual engagement was hardly becoming, seemed to be her attitude, as though she would rather Hilary finished the matter for once and for all than let it drag on like this.
Julian had remained blithely oblivious, content it seemed to dream of when Hilary would finally agree to allow him to offer himself up completely, had ignored all the careful hints thrown his way about how young he was, how surely with a coveted yellow band meaning that he could go on to anything he wanted, a band obtained at great cost to Elaine, that he should consider his potential future a little more. But Julian, gracefully obstinate and irredeemably stubborn, had with mute wilfulness declined every attempt to guide him away from Hilary, and Hilary had found to her horror that she didn’t want to let him go. Somewhere between him pale and cold in that hospital bed and now, she had failed to learn how to look away, how to ignore what he offered, how to turn away from his warm head on her knee and that tantalizing prospect - that she had never before entertained - of children.
Sitting in the room, Hilary opened the desk once more and took out a much folded letter, one she’d received after Julian’s devourment. In it, David with his usual brisk style sent his congratulations, though between the lines they read rather more as condolences. Hilary, he had written, no sentimental titles or softeners, if you are the woman I remember then I suspect he must have been quite something to tempt you. I am equally sure that if that is the truth, then you will mourn him more than is proper. I send you my best wishes for yourself and the child.
She wondered if he’d meant it to cut as deep as it did but David for all his coldness and lack of passion had never been cruel, merely driven. She thought of him, yellow banded and resolute, certain of the world he was forging out for himself, of the generations that would follow, and of Julian in the ground, but still the tears wouldn’t come.