Beauty
I was still waiting. He seemed to have forgotten my presence entirely, and I did not want to draw his attention to myself if that was the case. He gazed at the rose as if he expected it to provide the answers to whatever questions he might have had. I avoided looking at it at all. It seemed that we might linger there for all eternity waiting for something to break our stalemate, but in reality we did not have to wait very long.
I heard her footsteps coming down the garden path long before she came into view, but I knew it was her. Who else would it have been, after all? I retreated back to my bench, and from there behind an enveloping curtain of damp ivy before she came close enough to catch a glimpse of me.
She walked right up to him, but he was oblivious to everything but the rose until she stood by him.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hob!” he said, startled. “I thought you had left.”
“I came back,” she said.
“To stay?” he asked.
“No,” she said quietly. He turned away from her. She reached up and cupped his cheek and he met her eyes.
“Please,” he said. “I would give you anything.” He looked about him frantically, then his gaze landed on the rose. He picked it up and offered it to her. “Take it. Only stay with me.”
I had never seen such naked desire on any face before, and I would have felt more than a little uncomfortable at being such a voyeur, but that I was not sure whether it was the rose or him that she wanted so. At last she shook her head. “I am not ready for it,” she said.
The light died completely out of his face, and when he put the rose down and the glow faded from it, the garden became so dim that all I could see was their silhouettes, and I was glad of it.
“I know why you have come,” he said. I had to strain to hear it.
“I wanted to see you again,” she said.
“Really?”
“I missed you,” she said. “We have been apart less than a day –“
“It has been two days,” he interrupted.
“Two days?” she said. “I must have lost more time than I thought. This is the second night since I left?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I have missed you,” she said. “One day, or two, I have missed you.”
“But still you will not stay,” he said.
“Not yet.” That was so quiet that I was almost certain I had misheard.
I did not want to be an observer any more – this was far too private, so I was going to close my eyes and put my fingers in my ears, except that the next thing Hob said concerned me.
“Is Beauty here?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. I thought he would look at me and give me away, but he never looked away from her. “You have come here for her, although you were so angry at her. Have you forgiven her, then?”
I leant forwards, nearly disturbing my concealing curtain of ivy. I needed to hear this.
“Of course I have,” she said. I breathed again.
“So easily?” he said. “How? Why?”
“She is my sister, and I love her. Of course I forgive her, whatever she has done – always have always will. That’s all there is to it, you know – it is an action of two parts – one to repent and one to forgive. The moment she was sorry I forgave her, and that’s the end of it. That is what it is.”
