Bryan had shared this thought with Becky and she had laughed.
‘Bryan, if I thought for one second that you might turn into a wife-beater who expected me to fetch his slippers, do you honestly think I would suggest it in the first place?’
‘Okay, but … you know what they say about power corrupting?’
‘Did power corrupt Rick when Ilsa gave him the authority to make the decision for the two of them? Did he make the selfish choice? Or did he choose what was best for her?’
Bryan leaned back against the bench and nodded to himself. She was right. Rick had seen the bigger picture and done what he believed was morally right — and Bryan would be inclined to do the same. If he took on the role as head of the family, he would approach it in the same way as his relationships at work after he got promoted — as a position of responsibility, not a position of power. Besides, he didn’t even like the idea of having an ‘obedient’ wife.
‘So, how do you want to approach this?’ he asked himself.
For some reason, Star Trek came into his thoughts. In every version, there was the Captain and the Number One. The Number One was in charge of the running of the ship and the Captain was responsible for the success of the mission. The Captain made all the important decisions, but he always consulted his officers first. And although the Captain was in charge, he or she was always subject to a code of ethics. In fact, there were several episodes which explored the idea that a Captain’s authority rests on his adherence to those principles.
Bryan thought about his situation with Becky. They had a kind of mission: to somehow facilitate a little girl’s growth into an independent, self-responsible young woman. But Bryan saw that it would be good to have something beyond that. Was there some higher purpose he had beyond pursuing a career and providing for a family? It would be good to think about that. It would be good to get Becky to think about it too.
Bryan stood up and began walking down the grassy slope, taking long relaxed strides as his mind went to work.
***
Becky loved the Star Trek metaphor. The only change was that she wanted to be the ‘Captain’s Woman’ rather than Number One.
‘Well, you can be Number One during the day and the Captain’s Woman at night,’ said Bryan.
She was less enthusiastic about the ‘higher purpose’ idea.
‘If we shared a higher purpose, we’d have found it already,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I just want to have a good life and do a decent job with Tara. Let someone else find the cure for cancer.’
Bryan nodded and digested the information. He knew he was going to say yes to Becky’s proposal, but he wanted to be clear on the terms and conditions. After all, if he was going to accept conditional love, he wanted the conditions to be smart. But after Tara was put to bed and the two of them relaxed on the couch in each other’s arms, there was one more issue to address.
‘When we retake our vows,’ said Bryan, ‘do you picture a private ceremony or do you want to invite family and friends?’
Becky snuggled close to her husband and stared at the wall.
‘I think a private ceremony,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Bryan, I would love to invite family and friends! I would love to do it in a chapel this time, instead of a registry office. I would love to declare my intentions to the world! But I already know how my parents will react. And your parents. And pretty much everyone we know. I can see us having to explain ourselves over and over again, and I don’t know how to do that without also mentioning the whole Marcus DeVere thing, and I don’t particularly want to do that. It was hardly my finest hour. Plus we’d have to find a way of explaining it to Tara.’
Bryan nodded his understanding as he held her. Becky turned her head to look at him.
‘What do you think?’ she said.
‘I would be open to either option.’
‘But…?’
‘But…’
Bryan’s voice tapered off. He frowned and then winced.
‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘This is going to sound weird.’
‘You mean, weirder than usual?’
‘Thank you, dearest.’
‘Well, you’re going to tell me anyway, so you may as well get it over with.’
Bryan gave Becky a look, then took a deep breath.
‘When you mentioned us retaking our vows in a chapel,’ said Bryan, ‘I had the thought that we wouldn’t be making promises to each other. Instead, it would be you and me making promises to God. And it’s weird because we don’t go to church and I don’t really believe in God and I certainly don’t believe in slavishly following the rules of any religion.
‘And yet … I really like the idea of God. I absolutely believe that there is such a thing as moral light and moral darkness, and that it’s not just virtuous but intelligent to learn to tell the difference. The problem is that moral light and darkness are invisible to the eye, and there are so many people who want to tell us what it is, that it gets very confusing. So, for me, God represents the wisdom I need to be able to tell the difference properly. And, in my mind, God doesn’t judge. If I have a situation, God just points out: This bit is darkness, that bit over there is light … but you decide what to do with the information. Does that make sense?’
‘Bryan, I had chills when you said the words “moral darkness”. Do you know what came up for me?’
‘What?’
‘Marcus DeVere.’
Bryan shifted himself so that he was looking Becky full in the face.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Well, you already know that when I felt overwhelmed with Tara as a baby, that I asked God for help. And I do that a lot. Whenever I feel like I can’t handle something, I say, “Please God, help me” and I kind of mean it even when I don’t. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘But when I was dancing with Marcus DeVere and he was turning me on with all those things he was saying, well … I knew it was wrong. And I knew I was out of my depth. And yet, I didn’t ask God for help. Not even in my thoughts.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I didn’t want to be saved. I already knew what Marcus had to offer: a moment of glory. A moment when I, Rebecca Sandford, could actually claim to be the most beautiful woman in the land, the envy of all other women. And I know it’s an illusion, but it’s a powerful illusion, a powerful feeling, and I wanted it. And, in that moment, I didn’t care about anything else. That’s moral darkness.’
Becky let out a sigh.
‘You know, we’re so fixated on good and evil,’ she said, ‘that it’s easy to believe that so long as you’re not doing anything out-and-out evil, that you’re still a “good” person. I know that was going through my head when I was with Marcus. He’s not an “evil” man, what we were doing wasn’t “evil”, even making love wouldn’t have been “evil” in and of itself.
‘But it was morally dark. And if darkness is the absence of light, then I suppose moral darkness doesn’t have to be evil — it just has to be empty of moral light. And that’s the word which comes up whenever I think about my experience with Marcus DeVere: empty. It was empty.’
Becky turned to Bryan.
‘Whereas whenever I look at you,’ she said, ‘the word which comes up is full. Life being with you is full — full of love, full of sex, full of intimacy. But also full of difficult emotions and painful talks and endless soul-searching. My god, Bryan, sometimes your need to get to the bottom of things makes me want to scream! It’s hard work!
‘But maybe that’s why we need each other. You push me to face my own darkness when I wouldn’t face it on my own. And I remind you to drop your search for the Meaning of Life every now and then, so you can actually live it. What do you think?’
Bryan looked at Becky. He looked at her for what felt like a long time. Then he moved off the couch, went down on one knee, and took her hand in both of his.
‘Rebecca Sandford,’ he said. ‘Will you remarry me?’
Becky burst into tears.
‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Yes, yes, yes! A thousand times yes!’
And she threw herself onto him with such force that they both tumbled backwards onto the carpet.
***
It was a bright, crisp morning in May. The sun shone through a crack where the great velvet curtains hadn’t been quite pulled together the previous night, drawing a line of light across the hotel room’s Regency interior and up and along the four-poster bed.
Becky cracked open an eye. It was like waking up in the bedroom of a duchess, with the cream-and-green ivy fabric designs surrounding her on the counterpane and the drapes. The sheets on the bed were stiff and warm, the linen freshener still detectable over the smell of last night’s sex. Becky turned her head and saw her Man next to her, his head almost sunk out of sight in a great white pillow. He was asleep.
Becky slipped out of bed and walked naked to the ensuite bathroom, her bare feet enjoying the lush carpeting. Pushing the door to without closing it, she sat on the gleaming white commode with gold handles and took a pee. She flushed, washed, and then spent a moment looking at herself in the huge bathroom mirror which stretched along one wall.
She looked the same as a couple of days ago. And yet she felt totally different.
Yesterday afternoon, she and Bryan had stood in a small stone chapel nearly eight hundred years old and spoken their vows to God. Well, technically she spoke them to the officiating minister, plus a couple of witnesses taken from the church staff. But standing in that old building on flagstones centuries old, their voices echoing in the way that only seemed to happen in churches, Becky really felt she was making her promises to that great, expansive Everythingness. The same One she had asked to help guide her in being a good mother. And the moment she vowed to obey her husband, she felt her whole body relax as though she had cast off some great burden. She had looked at Bryan as he spoke his vows and wondered what the hell she would have done with her life if she had never met him.
Bryan had been very quiet afterwards. They had driven to a country pub and ordered an early dinner while sitting outside in the beer garden. It was beautiful weather and there was a lovely view over a vale, but Bryan didn’t seem to notice.