‘Love And Terror’

 

By Mark Howell

 

It’s amazing how you can move to a faraway island and meet up with someone you haven’t seen in years and years.

 

 

Mary and I last met during a most troubling thing that happened at boarding school — a boys’ boarding school but she was the pastor’s daughter and she’d often hang out with the seniors.

 

 

“Mary!” I blared as she headed directly toward me. “Mike!” she cried, looking me up and down. We laughed and we blinked at one another and we held each other’s hands. She leaned back to take me all in and I did likewise.

 

 

“What are you doing here?” she said.

 

 

“I live here,” I said. “I have for years. And you?”

 

 

“I’m on a cruise,” she said, smiling. “My husband’s taking a nap on the ship.”

 

 

“We must talk,” I said. “Let’s sit in the garden here.” I pointed to a sidewalk restaurant.

 

 

She didn’t seem surprised at the urgency of this. “I do have a little time…”

 

 

She sat down at the round table, brushing her skirt beneath her knees. Shadows of the branches overhead dappled her face. I ignored the hovering wait staff.

 

 

“You didn’t marry Mel, did you?” I asked, straight out.

 

 

“Good lord!” she laughed. “Why would I have done that?”

 

 

“Well,” I said. “You know…”

 

 

Back then, the three of us had been the greatest of friends. And I’d thought about how it all ended just about every day since.

 

 

Mary chatted happily on while we waited to be served and I brooded on the way it had been for us back then, musing once more on what really happened.

 

 

Mel was, as we used to say, to the manor born. Youngest son of a brewery magnate, he wasn’t necessarily heir to any fortune, but he was entitled to a station in life that made him one of the craziest students in the school. His laugh was catching, his sympathy (although not his empathy) was sincere and as broad as his humor. For a girl such as Mary he was easy to like and he seemed to like her, a lot.

 

 

My background had more in common with the rest of the school: A father who ran a sheet-fed printing company in western Massachusetts and a mother who ran a statewide cat show once a year. I lived for laughs and once confessed to Mel that I considered high humor to be holy.

 

 

Mary liked to laugh, too, but without the reverence. Being the daughter of a clergyman was its own kind of joke, sometimes funny, sometimes not. Being the only girl visible on campus was the same thing.

 

 

I was aware of this and it’s possible that I befriended her at first out of some sort of sympathy. But any equality we shared because of that would change in a way — and in her favor — when I felt myself falling in love with her.

 

 

Mel was in love with Mary, too, but that never affected his appreciation of her as an equal. Her brand of humor and her singular status as a girl made Mary an aristocrat in his eyes and I think it was this that made me believe she was a little in love with him.

 

 

 

The fun that the three of us, a group known throughout the school as Mel, Mike and Mary, managed to rustle up was quite ridiculous. Late afternoon was the most tempting time, since Mary would be free from high school and our prep-school schedule tended to get a little ragged by then.

 

 

“Do you remember when we went to the pet store in town and asked to see their coelacanth?”

 

 

 

I clicked myself back to the present. “Course I do, Mary. They said ‘By all means’ and brought out a tank with God knows what in it – looked prehistoric to me.”

 

 

We achieved much worse, of course. At Christmas, we once dressed up as two shepherds and a pregnant Mary and hid in a crèche on Main Street. Whenever a family strolled by we lurched out like a trio of zombies. Children screamed.

 

 

“Your dad was pissed with us for that,” I said.

 

 

“No, he wasn’t,” said Mary. “It was Mel who got upset. He was bored by it.”

 

 

“Mel would never got bored with anything you did.”

 

 

“You think?” She looked away with an expression I couldn’t place. The remark was meant to bite, but not bring some ambiguous reaction.

 

 

“My memories are lovely,” I said. “All of them.”

 

 

“No jealousies?”

 

 

 

“I loved us all and you did, too.”

 

 

A rooster strutted into the restaurant garden. Mary tucked her legs under her chair.

 

 

“He’s OK,” I said. “There are plenty of those around here. They’re our friends, really.”

 

 

“The cock crows three times,” she said.

 

 

“No one’s betraying anyone, Mary.”

 

 

“We’re betrayed all the time,” she murmured. “The passing years. Our frail selves.”

 

 

“You look wonderful,” I said. “Truly. You haven’t changed at all. And you were never frail.”

 

 

“You haven’t changed either,” she said. “Charming as ever. Are you married?”

 

 

“Very happily. With a couple of grown-up kids.”

 

 

“And what do you do?” she asked, her eyes sparkling.

 

 

“I’m a writer. Hence the lean and hungry look. And you?”

 

 

“I’m a teacher. Hence the inner glow. My husband is, too. No kids.”

 

 

“How about Mel,” I said. “What do we know about him?”

 

 

“Last I heard he was in Monte Carlo. Minus the second wife.”

 

 

“You’ve kept in touch?”

 

 

“That’s all from Facebook.”

 

 

“So he’s befriended you?”

 

 

The hovering waiter could wait no longer so we ordered a couple of cocktails. I needed one for what was coming next. For what really happened on that last adventure of ours.

 

 

I aroused the memory once again while Mary looked around and gazed at that rooster. It was at the end of our final year. Mary was quite unhappy about the future and Mel was saying we should “go out with a bang.” I can’t help recalling him use those words and how mortified we felt at them.

 

 

We needed to top it all, he explained. “Up the tower.”

 

 

 

That would be impossible, of course. The tower was strictly out of bounds. It was attached to the chapel and the chapel was open only on Sundays.

 

 

The tower was never open. Hundreds of feet high, its entrance was locked and for good reason. Up at the top, there looked to be a death trap: the outline of a small door on the side of the tower’s spire, likely opening onto the peaked tin roof that ran the length of the chapel’s nave. Around the roof was a low, crenelated stone wall. The whole thing was gothic to the eye and it was a gothic idea to trespass up there.

 

 

And so we decided to do it.

 

 

Early on a chilly morning in March, the three of us set out on our last adventure. Mel, the tallest of us, naturally took the lead. Mary had the lighter hair and might be the most visible, so she took the middle position. I took up the rear.

 

 

Our first obstacle was the chained gate. It barred the way to a spiral stone stairway that went up the tower, winding to the top, all the way to that door to the roof. The gate consisted of vertical metal bars spiked at the top.

 

 

 

“I can’t clamber over that,” said Mary.

 

 

“Sure you can,” insisted Mel, pulling off his sweater and instructing her to tie it around her waist to protect her from the spikes.

 

 

 

With a foothold from Mary and me, Mel then braced his body crown-first first over the spikes, squeezing his bulk through the space between the tips of the spikes and the underside of the steps above him.

 

 

 

Mary then put her feet into my two hands so I could balance her and gently tip her up and through the gap above the spikes. It was an intimate maneuver, as I had anticipated when I first checked out that gate. She squealed slightly as Mel pulled her towards him and hushed her, intimately, as her head landed against him on the other side.

 

 

My effort was just as clumsy but I had the advantage of anticipating how it could be done. From then on we tramped up mist-damped steps toward the top.

 

 

Now and again a narrow slit appeared in the wall above a stone slab seat, where we each in turn took time to catch our breath and take in the scenery. The view seemed crazier and the air chillier as we climbed higher and higher, none of us talking.

 

 

I hadn’t anticipated how scary this ascension would be as we labored beyond the threshold of rules and safety. “I have to stop,” said Mary at one of the last of the ledges. “You boys can wait with me here and tell me again why we’re doing this.”

 

 

“We’re reaching into the future,” declared Mel. “We’re taunting our fall. Heaven beckons and we’re taking the leap.”

 

 

For a moment there, I thought I saw the look of love in Mary’s panting face.

 

 

Mel’s explanation was hard to top. I couldn’t even say what was in my heart. “This is exactly where I want to be right now,” I announced.

 

 

 

She made a show of rolling her eyes, put a thoughtful finger to her lips and then said, “I’m here to choose.”

 

 

I have long pondered that reply.

 

 

 

“C’mon,” she said quickly. “We’re not there yet.”

 

 

And then, when we finally reached the uppermost of those circling stone steps, we encountered disaster. Another barred gate blocking our way. Mel tried clambering over it but got stuck, letting out a grunt and a slight whimper. I had a go as well and also failed. Mary then rattled the chain that linked the gate to a metal post and a dusty puff of rust rose up from it like smoke.

 

 

Mel produced a scouting knife – I had no idea he’d brought any kind of weapon – and unsheathed the blade. He stuck it in the link closest to the lock, twisted it relentlessly, raising clouds of rust until he lost his temper and smashed his foot against the top of the knife handle. This fixed the blade fast in the link and he tried one more frantic twist. The rusty metal snapped apart. “A miracle!” cried Mary.

 

 

We raced up the final steps, headed for the glint of light around what looked more like a hatchway – and pushed it open.

 

 

 

What we saw out that door was like a grown-up toyland with puffy trees and hedgerows and tiny houses and cars. It was the world seen through an eagle’s eyes and a wild wind blustered in our faces.

 

 

It was then, I guess, that it happened.

 

 

Mel had stepped gingerly out onto the tin roof, edging closer and closer to the edge. Mary stepped out after him.

 

 

 

Perilously at the very edge, each of them holding onto the low stone wall, they looked at each other and I saw her lips move, whispering something to him. She was smiling.

 

 

 

Mel wasn’t smiling but he did whisper back to her.

 

 

She lost the smile then, fell to her knees and scrambled back on all fours to the doorway, lowering her head to launch herself back in.

 

 

It was the end of everything. We would never see each other again.

 

 

“What in hell did he say to you?” I asked her now, at the outdoor café on my island home.

 

 

“I asked him,” she replied, “what he’d do if somebody had come out of nowhere right then and there and caught us.”

 

 

“What did he say?”

 

 

“He said, ‘I’d kill them. And now I’ve told you that, I’m going to have to kill you.’”

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