But now Louisa felt herself coming to life. It was as if she’d been living life in black and white all this time, and hadn’t even known there was any other way to exist. Now the world was revealing itself to her in bright and glorious colours.
Robert had done this. And yet she was acutely aware that this happiness was held in place only by threads of gossamer. Robert was a phantasm, a ghost. It was all so precarious. Now it wasn’t so much the horror that she was locked up in Coldbrook Hall against her will that kept her awake at night, while Marisa snored and swore and people shouted up and down the wards, but the fear that Robert and his world would be snatched away from her forever.
‘Robert?’ His door was ajar, but the room was empty. The bed was made up and everything was tidy. For one terrifying second she thought he might be gone for good, but then she saw that his pictures and his other things were still there.
She went out onto the terrace, then down to the path, skirting around it towards the main lawn, from where there came the sound of a brass band. She hadn’t dared venture here yet, but if no one could see her then there was nothing to stop her.
The back lawn was a terrible sight: a sea of injured men. Many were in wheelchairs, some elaborate and upholstered, others little more than wooden kitchen chairs on wheels. A nurse was pulling one man around via a pole attached to the front of his wheelchair. He had no arms, and one of his legs, heavily bandaged, was propped up in front of him on a wooden leg rest. Other men reclined on what were effectively wooden trolleys, many with cages over wounded and missing legs. Most had rugs laid over them, despite the heat. A couple of men with bandaged eyes were being led around by nurses and orderlies.
Most of the men were smoking, and she could smell their strong tobacco. A tea urn was being wheeled around. The oak tree in the centre of it all was smaller than in 2017, and healthier too, its trunk intact. Several of the convalescents were at work gardening in the deep flower borders planted up with roses, hydrangeas and lupins, all starting to come to the end of their season. A few men had visitors. One young woman was reading a letter aloud to a man whose eyes were completely covered with a dressing. Opposite them, in a wheelchair, sat a boy whose head lolled to one side. An older man, possibly his grandfather, sat silently next to him holding his hand.
Then she saw Robert, away to the left, in the shade of a horse chestnut tree. She went over. He was leaning against the trunk, his eyes closed.
‘Robert!’ she whispered.
He opened his eyes. ‘Louisa? Is it you?’
‘Let’s go into the woods. There’s no one looking.’
‘Are you quite sure?’ He got up and held out his hand. She slipped hers in. ‘You’re very good at concealing yourself,’ he laughed once they’d reached the trees. ‘It’s as if you have a cloak of invisibility.’
She laughed too, but felt a shiver of misgiving. What would happen if and when his eyesight came back? What would become of them? It was a question without an answer. Best not to think of questions at all. This was a fantasy – a dream; and no rules applied in a dream. And certainly not on a day like this, where the swifts were skimming over the trees and calling to one another, and where the breeze made the branches sway so that it looked as if they were beckoning the pair of them into the cool green heart of the forest.
They went past the little temple, further and further on into the forest. Then:
‘I can smell water,’ he said.
‘You can? I didn’t know that water has a smell.’
‘It does. It’s tart and flat. A bit like gooseberries. And the air is growing cooler. Can’t you feel it?’
‘No.’
A little further and there was the unmistakeable sound of water.
‘You see?’ he said.
‘You were right. Well, what a great pair we make,’ she laughed. ‘Me with my gift of concealment, and you with your bloodhound’s nose. We’d be unstoppable.’
They emerged onto a grassy bank. Just below them a stream flowed, nosing its way past rocks and stones.
‘Oh Robert, it’s absolutely beautiful,’ she said.
‘Describe it. I’d like to know if it marries up with the image of it in my mind.’
‘It’s just so… so peaceful and so green.’ She told him there were two enormous oak trees, one on each side of the stream. That the stream was perhaps a couple of yards wide, its rocks covered in a sprinkling of moss that looked like green snow, and that the water was shallow and moving slowly. ‘It’s so clear you can see all the little pebbles at the bottom. They’re smooth and round, just like on the beach, and all different shades of brown and grey. And there’s a branch lying across the rocks, covered with lichen.’
‘What colour?’
‘Yellow and green. A bit further upstream the rocks sort of step down and it’s made a tiny waterfall. There are ferns everywhere, and pink and yellow flowers – and a bush with red berries. I don’t know what their names are. And all over the water there’s a sort of yellow sheen from pollen that’s falling from the trees. It’s collecting at the sides, where the water is barely moving. It makes it look as if the rocks are melting into the water.’
‘You’d make a good artist,’ he laughed. ‘You ought to take it up.’
A couple of creatures that looked like big rats appeared out of the mud of the bank and plopped into the water.
‘And that sounds like water voles,’ he said.
‘Yes, I think so.’
They sat down. He rolled up his pyjamas and they got ready to dangle their feet in the stream. She forgot to tell him how close the water was, and he cried out in surprise at the sudden feel of it, hauling his legs back up, before lowering them again more slowly. They sat listening to the birds, and the sound of the water flowing past.
Then, after a while, they moved back to sit in the shadow of the oak tree. A little way off a blackbird foraged in the undergrowth. Robert lay back and closed his eyes with a sigh. Louisa propped herself up on her elbow and studied his face, with its low, dark brows and smooth skin, the small grooves around his eyes where laughter lines were beginning to form. His mouth was wide, the lips neither full nor thin, with a small indentation at either side.
Physically, he was very handsome; that much was certain. But her attraction to him was much, much more than that. It was as if he carried something of the sun in him. She felt dazzled, enslaved by him, almost. If he were to ask her to stand up and walk into flames for him, she would do it without a second thought. This was love, she understood – and it had taken her entirely off guard.
She realised she had loved him from that very first moment. Even back then she’d recognised that there was some great force and passion in him, which answered something in her. Somehow, she thought, she’d been able to sense that he would have a profound effect on her life. How dark his hair was against his face. And how ironic it was that he who couldn’t see should create such a stir by his sheer physical presence. Her heart was thudding. Could he hear it? Could he feel the weight of her gaze? Oh God. She sat up.