(1997) Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

Author:Ian McEwan [Mcewan, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General
ISBN: 9780385494144
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1997-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

On the way home I turned south off the motorway where the Chilterns rise and drove to the field. I parked exactly where Logan had, with the car banked on the grass verge. Standing by the passenger door she would have had a clear view of the whole drama, from the balloon and its basket dragging across the field, to the struggle with the ropes, and the fall. She wouldn’t have been able to see where he landed. I imagined her, pretty, in her early twenties, frantic in distress, running back up the road to the nearest village. Or she might have gone the other way, down the hill towards Watlington. I stood there in her place and daydreamed of the secret phone calls or notes that might have preceded their picnic. Perhaps they were in love. Did he suffer tortures of guilt and indecision, the honourable family man? And what violent transformation for her, from the anticipated idyll with the man she adored, to the nightmare, the moment round which the rest of her life would pivot. Even in her terror she would have remembered to snatch her things from the car – her coat and bag perhaps, but not the picnic and her scarf – and she would have started running. It made sense to me that she did not come forward. She stayed at home and read the newspapers, and lay whimpering on her bed.

With no particular aim, I set off across the field. Everything looked different. In less than two weeks the hedgerows and surrounding trees had thickened with the first spring growth, and the grass underfoot gave a hint of the extravagance to come. As though walking through a police reconstruction, I picked up the path Clarissa and I had taken, and followed it to the patch where we had sheltered from the wind. It seemed like a half remembered place from childhood. We were so happy in our reunion, so easy with each other, and now I could not quite imagine a route back into that innocence.

From here I walked slowly into the centre of the field, along the direction of my sprint, to the point where our fates converged, and then along the route the wind had driven us, right to the edge of the escarpment. There, traversing the field, was the footpath that brought Parry into my life. Back there, where my car was now, was where Logan had stopped. This was where we stood and watched him fall from the sky; it was also where Parry caught my glance and became stricken with a love whose morbidity I was now impatient to research.

These were my stations of the cross. I went down the hill, into the field and towards the next place. The sheep were gone, and the minor road beyond the hedge was closer than I remembered. I looked for an indentation in the ground, but there was only the beginning of a nettle patch that extended almost to the gate the policemen had climbed.

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