Sabine by A.P. Page B

cynicism would be part of my survival kit. But it’s not so. I believe in Cupid’s darts and Aristophanes’ apples and in Once-in-a-lifetime and Till-death-do-us-part and the whole darn caboosh, because that is the bittersweet fruit of my experience.
    I’ve had other passions since, other affections, other ties, other people who’ve touched my heart and even those who’ve messed around with it – I’m human in that respect, we all are, despite the image – but I’ve never had another love. A child might have filled this empty space, which is why I never had one. No one else to really love, ever, after Sabine.
    She was there in the château, sitting in the half-light of the salon correcting homework, when I got back from the hunt, trophy still dangling from my hand. To tell the truth I was at a slight loss as to what to do with this trophy affair. Aimée said therewas no taxidermist locally and we’d have to wait until someone going back to Paris was willing to take it for me. The de Vallemberts maybe, or else the Marquis himself: he was always helpful where the needs of a
jolie jeune fille
were concerned. But meanwhile I was stuck with the thing. I felt impeded and ashamed, like a chicken-killing dog whose victim has been hung round its neck as a deterrent to further raids.
    So? Sabine said, scarcely bothering to look up from her work. (That fearsome
alors:
capable of acting as goad, gibe or growl, depending. Now it was a growl.) Enjoy yourself, scampering through the woods with all the
beau monde?
    The volume of my ‘no’ made her check a little and she raised her head and looked at me square.
    No?
    No.
    And that was it more or less. The space of three nos. I looked back every inch as square, and this was when it happened. It was the first occasion, since the start of Christopher’s dare, that our eyes had held each other’s gaze for any length of time. Up till then it had been grandmother’s footsteps: a long hard stare to make the other one look, and when she did – or when I did – a quick turning away before we were caught. Probably we had known all along the effect that prolonged eye contact would have, and probably that was why we had shunned it. Shyness, fear of the thing that would grow intobeing between us. No, not grow, that would burst into being between us. Because that’s what love is, take note all you parched old fogeys with your evolution theories and your gardening theories and your painstaking Lego constructions, block on piddling little block, that’s what love is and that’s how it’s born: fully grown like Minerva. First sight, maybe not, but first look, first real deep look.
    And anguish and happiness are born along with it – quite different from the wishy-washy namesakes you have felt before. You suffer a sky change. Your world switches solar systems, a different sun rises on it, shedding a different light: warmer, brighter, more intense. The rose-pink of tradition, no, that’s songwriters’ shorthand, but neither was it
la vie en gris
any more: it was the dawn of my brief
vie en or.
I had a much loved pet rabbit when I was little to which I gave the most splendid name I could think of: Goldie. Forbearing smile from my father at this childish choice, but I stuck by it and still do: gold is tops and gold is the colour I will for ever associate with Sabine. Gold hairs on her skin, on her arms and the back of her neck, gold streaks in her hair, gold flecks in those true tortoiseshell eyes of hers that could never lie, never conceal anything, not even with the lids shut. And gold light on everything from that moment on. And all the darker the darkness when the light went out.
    I had no time to appreciate these great astronomical developments, however, because at this point,to the surprise of us both, Sabine suddenly snatched the hoof from me and lashed its ribbons of skin across my face.
    Hey! That hurt!