In the two decades since then everything had changed. The people of Melbrook now benefited from a shiny new leisure centre in nearby Linningford, complete with indoor and outdoor pools, Jacuzzi, steam-room and sauna. All the children of the village could swim as a matter of course. The appeal of a simple swimming-pool – by now rather old, and with no accompanying exercise bikes or health bar – had rather diminished. Meanwhile, new people had moved into Melbrook Place and declared themselves more than happy to reintroduce a Melbrook Place fête. There was really no need for the Swimming Day to happen any more.
But the people of Melbrook were both loyal and conservative. When Hugh and Ursula had tentatively suggested, six or seven years ago, that the Swimming Days had outlived their function, there had been a general outcry. People whom Hugh and Ursula had never met; people who, as far as they were aware, had never even been to one of the Swimming Days, had accosted them in the street, and asked anxiously whether the rumours were really true. The residents of the new development just outside the village had drawn up a petition. One young woman, who had only been living in Melbrook for a few months, had waited for Ursula outside church one Sunday, and proceeded to berate her soundly for eroding the character of the village.
In the end it hadn’t been worth the struggle. Hugh and Ursula had capitulated and agreed to carry on; now it seemed as though the Swimming Days would go on for ever.
There was only one year in which they had not held a Swimming Day. Three years before, Simon, their younger son, had died, suddenly, of a brain tumour, at the age of twenty-eight.
He died in February, on a cold grey day, and the coldness stayed inside Hugh and Ursula all year. After the funeral they stayed inside their house, avoiding the world, while outside the blossoms opened and the air grew warm and the sun played on the water of their swimming-pool. Then, when the leaves began to turn and the air grew cooler, they packed up and went to their little house in France. Hugh left his wine-importing business ticking over in the hands of his assistant. Ursula told people not to expect them back for Christmas.
They spoke to nobody. Matthew, their elder son, was in Hong Kong, working hard and coping with his grief as best he could on his own. Their own families, based respectively in Derbyshire and Scotland, were both too far away to have known Simon properly and too close to provide dispassionate comfort.
The only one who understood was Meredith. Their daughter-in-law; Simon’s widow.
He had met her at a gallery opening; she was an artist from America, via most cities in Europe. She was slightly older and slightly cleverer than him, and quite a lot richer. Hugh found her fascinating; Ursula found her frightening. The wedding had been at a register office in London; Meredith had worn a black tailcoat and top hat and at the reception had decorated, in dark-red ink, the shirt-back of Simon’s enchanted managing director.
After Simon’s funeral, Hugh and Ursula looked at Meredith’s blue-white face, her long lank hair and shaking hands, and pressed her warmly to stay with them for a while. Ursula filled her room with flowers and pot-pourri, and ran her hot baths; Hugh poured her deep glasses of whisky and offered her cigarettes. But after two days she disappeared. They received a postcard from the airport; Meredith had returned to her native San Francisco.
For months after that they heard nothing from her. They had not had the chance to get to know her very well; there were no grandchildren to be considered; now it seemed that Meredith, too, had left their lives for ever.
Until she turned up in France. ‘I didn’t realize you guys’d run away too,’ were her first words. Her face was still white; she looked worse than she had done after the funeral. ‘The States didn’t work,’ was all she would say.
They spent an uneasy first week all together in the cottage, skirting and hesitating and avoiding the subject of Simon. Then, one evening, as the windows of the little kitchen fogged up with condensation and Hugh built up the fire in the grate, Meredith began to talk. She talked about Simon, about herself, about herself and Simon, about herself and her family. Her hands shook. She smoked furiously. She made challenging assertions about Simon, then stared from Ursula’s face to Hugh’s face and back again, looking for a reaction. Around midnight, she began to cry. Ursula, strung up, confused and bewildered by most of what Meredith was saying, began to cry too. Hugh leaned across the table and clasped Meredith’s hands tightly in his own. ‘Please don’t stop,’ he said shakily. ‘Don’t stop. And please don’t go away again.’
They stayed in France, all together, until the first anniversary of Simon’s death had passed. Hugh began to communicate with his assistant in England, Meredith began to draw again, but it was Ursula who decided, with uncharacteristic firmness, as February turned into March and another spring began, that it was time for them to go home.
They arrived back in Melbrook on a bright, clear, sharp morning. While Hugh and Ursula unpacked, Meredith wandered around the house and garden as though she’d never been there before. Eventually she came inside.
‘You got two barns here,’ she stated.
‘That’s right,’ said Hugh, surprised. ‘Although, actually, one’s a stable.’ Meredith waved her hands at him impatiently. ‘What I want to know is’, she said, ‘which one can be my studio?’
A bubble of joy rose up inside Hugh. Meredith had always been vague about her plans. He and Ursula had felt sure she would soon announce her intention to move back to London – or further. After all, they had reasoned miserably to each other, what on earth was there to keep a young, independent, vibrant woman like Meredith in a village like Melbrook? Now he tried to catch Ursula’s eye. She was looking confusedly at Meredith.
‘Does that mean …’ she began. Hugh broke her off.
‘Whichever one you want,’ he said, unable to keep the delight out of his voice. ‘Have both. Have the whole house.’
Meredith had lived with them ever since. When Matthew got married in Hong Kong, she designed an outfit for Ursula and went to the wedding with them. When Hugh took Ursula on a wine-tasting trip around Burgundy, Meredith came too.
Every so often she would take off on her own – to London, or Amsterdam, or New York; once for a month to Sydney. During those times, while she was away, the atmosphere was taut, the shared unspoken fear hanging over the house like an exam result. But she always came back to her red-painted bedroom, and her gold-painted bathroom, and her muralled sitting-room. And relief would flood painfully through Hugh, and he would block from his mind the gnawing truth that, sooner or later, Meredith was going to find someone to share her life with, and was going to leave him and Ursula alone again, to live their lives as they did before, but no longer knowing quite how to go about it.
It was Meredith who had masterminded the first Swimming Day after Simon’s death. That year the weather was unremittingly gloomy throughout May; Hugh and Ursula expected that few people would turn up. But they were reckoning without the curiosity of the village. Everyone had heard about Meredith; few had met her. As family after family trooped in, their faces lit up as they saw the object of their visit sitting at the entrance, smiling rather ferociously as donations dropped into the plastic pot. It really was too cold to swim that year; only the hardiest children ventured into the pool. But it wasn’t too cold to sit and stare at Meredith and tell each other what a striking girl she was, and what a tragedy the whole thing had been.
And now Meredith was as much part of the Delaneys’ Swimming Day as Ursula’s elderflower cordial. This year, expecting a large crowd, she had enlisted the help of the vicar’s wife, Frances Mold, at the entrance table. After a shaky first meeting at Simon’s funeral, at which Meredith pronounced herself ‘Agnostic-stroke-Atheist-stroke (if anything) Buddhist, I guess’, these two had developed an unlikely friendship, and could often be seen striding the fields together; a tweed skirt and brogues alongside a pair of velvet jodhpurs and riding boots.
Hugh and Ursula were having a cup of coffee in the conservatory when Meredith poked her head thro
ugh the window.
‘Lots of people are here already,’ she said, gesturing behind her.
‘So we can see,’ said Hugh. ‘Jolly good. We’ll come out in a minute and help.’
‘What I came for’, said Meredith, ‘was that list of people who have paid already.’ She looked at Ursula. ‘You know the one? You had it yesterday.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Ursula vaguely, ‘the list.’ She patted her silvery blond hair, arranged becomingly in a French pleat, and took a sip of coffee.
‘Do you know where the list is?’ asked Meredith. ‘Did you find it last night?’
‘Not last night, no,’ said Ursula, frowning slightly. ‘Wasn’t it on the dresser?’ She looked at Meredith with large blue eyes, bright in the greenish gloom of the conservatory.
‘No, Ursula,’ said Meredith patiently. ‘Don’t you remember? We were talking about it last night. I couldn’t find it, and you said you’d taken it off the dresser to add a couple of names, and you said you’d look for it.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Ursula, ‘now I remember.’
‘Did you look for it?’ prompted Meredith.
‘I may have had a little search,’ said Ursula unconvincingly. Meredith exchanged glances with Hugh. This was the sort of behaviour that used to drive Simon mad with his mother, she thought. And before she could stop it, a familiar series of pictures flashed briefly through her mind: Simon, the wedding, Simon in hospital, the funeral. She felt a short pang of pain, but in a moment her mind was clear again; the memories packaged neatly away. All that was left behind was a strong feeling of fondness for Ursula.
‘But you didn’t find it,’ she suggested.
‘I don’t think I did,’ said Ursula eventually. ‘But I’ll go and have a look for it now, shall I?’ She screwed up her face in thought. ‘You know, dear, I’m sure it’s on the dresser.’
‘It’s not on the dresser, Ursula,’ said Meredith, grinning at her. ‘That’s the whole point. I already looked there.’
‘Well, dear, you never know; you might have missed it,’ said Ursula in gently obstinate tones. She put down her coffee cup on a bamboo table, and stood up. A white and green print crêpe de Chine dress rustled prettily in soft folds around her. ‘I’ll go and look for it straight away,’ she announced.
‘OK then,’ said Meredith, ‘and maybe, Hugh, you could have a look too? Somewhere other than the dresser?’ Hugh winked at her.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.
By the time Louise and Amelia arrived at Devenish House, Hugh had found the list lurking behind an ormolu clock on the dining-room mantelpiece. Meredith had gone to change into her swimming things, and Ursula was presiding over the entrance table, together with Frances Mold.
Frances’s husband, the Revd Alan Mold, was, that morning, taking family service in the neighbouring village of Tranton. He was in charge of both parishes – Melbrook and Tranton – and alternated between them every Sunday. This arrangement had been in existence for nearly ten years, and at first the general idea had been that the congregation from Melbrook would follow him to Tranton every other Sunday, and the congregation from Tranton would reciprocate. In practice, however, the arrangement was cheerfully regarded as a good excuse to attend church only once a fortnight.
The only person who regularly accompanied Alan to Tranton was Frances herself. However, this morning, even she had forgone the family service in favour of a quick eight o’clock communion, in order to be free to help the Delaneys. Now she sat, chatting cheerfully to Ursula at the entrance table, looking about her with a pleasant anticipation.
Although labelled ‘The Entrance Table’, there was, in fact, no obvious place of entrance to the swimming-pool of Devenish House. From the conservatory and French windows of the house, the garden sloped and stepped in a vague Italianate fashion, embellished with carved stone walls, urns and slabs, until the ground flattened out a few hundred yards from the house. And here, framed by a decorative paving area and, beyond, endless smooth lawns, was the swimming-pool – cool, blue and shaped like a kidney bean. It had been installed by the people who lived in Devenish House before the Delaneys, at a time when the kidney-shaped swimming-pool was the ultimate in status symbols. Many times since moving in, Hugh had threatened to fill it in; to replace it with something oblong and functional and further away from the house, or even with nothing at all.
‘That pool could be a putting-green, you know,’ he would exclaim, on days when the tarpaulin cover flapped in the wind and the very idea of plunging into anything cooler than a hot bath brought on a shiver. ‘It could be something useful. Or at least tasteful.’
‘Count your lucky stars,’ Meredith had retorted the first time she heard him. ‘It could be painted black and in the shape of a penis.’
As Louise approached the entrance table, Ursula looked up.
‘Louise, dear! How lovely to see you! And Amelia! No Katie?’
‘Katie’s gone fishing for the day with Barnaby,’ said Louise shortly.
‘Oh dear,’ said Ursula, her face falling slightly. ‘Hugh will be sad not to see Barnaby.’ She paused. ‘But I can quite see that it would be a little awkward …’
She broke off and looked from Louise to Amelia. Only recently had Meredith managed to persuade Ursula that it was really true about the Kembers splitting up, not just malicious village gossip, and when finally convinced, Ursula had been most upset. ‘I find it terribly sad,’ she said vaguely. ‘I suppose …’ She paused and adopted a delicate tone. ‘I suppose you find it very painful to see Barnaby.’
‘Not particularly,’ said Louise tightly.
She glanced at Frances Mold, who smiled back sympathetically and said in a hurried, cheerful voice, ‘Hello, Amelia! How nice to see you!’ But Ursula was lost in her own hazy reflections.
‘Poor dear Barnaby,’ she said without thinking. Then, realizing what she had said, she gave a little start. ‘Oh, Louise! My dear, I didn’t mean …’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Louise shortly. She opened her purse and handed Frances Mold a note. ‘Here; that’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, exactly right.’ Frances gave Louise an apologetic glance. ‘See you later.’
‘Maybe,’ said Louise, discouragingly, and stalked off. She was, she realized, being unfair to poor Frances, who was the most tactful creature in the village. But Ursula’s foolish remarks had, today, for some reason touched Louise on the raw. She clenched her fists angrily by her sides as she strode towards the swimming-pool, and felt an angry frown crease her forehead.
‘Stupid fool,’ she muttered crossly. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid.’
Louise had never been quite as friendly with Ursula as Barnaby was with Hugh. The two men had become friends years before, when Amelia was a baby. Barnaby had overheard Hugh talking in The George about some hedging that needed doing on his land, and immediately offered to help; Hugh had reciprocated with a case of burgundy. After that, the two men had fallen into an easy, relaxed friendship, and Louise had made an honest attempt to forge the same kind of relationship with Ursula. But it had not been a great success. Louise found Ursula rather old, rather dull, and exceedingly stupid. When she started to fuss irritatingly over first Amelia and then Katie, Louise began to find more and more excuses not to accompany Barnaby to Devenish House.
And then everything had changed — with the dreadful death of the Delaneys’ son, and the year they’d spent abroad, and the arrival of Meredith.
Louise had not taken to Meredith. At their very first meeting, Meredith had scowled at Louise’s carefully composed expressions of sympathy and stalked off, black hair streaming behind her. She’d apologized later, but Louise already felt slighted. And ever since then, Louise had always sensed, perhaps unfairly, that Meredith looked down on her, laughed at her, even, for leading such a conventional unchallenging existence.
Since it was not safe to visit Devenish House without coming across Meredith, Louise had found herself seeing Ursula less and less fre
quently. Barnaby and Hugh were still good friends, but Barnaby often observed, ruefully, that Hugh was in less need of company these days. With Meredith there, the Delaney family had become far more self-sufficient than before.
Daisy Phillips arrived at Devenish House slightly after eleven, reached the middle of the drive, and then stopped, stricken with sudden nerves.
She had never been to the Delaneys’ house before. Her parents had only bought the cottage in Melbrook a few months ago, and they hadn’t really got to know anybody in the village. But Mrs Mold had told her to be sure to come to the Swimming Day, and said she would introduce her to everyone. Daisy liked Mrs Mold. She was a piano teacher, as well as the vicar’s wife, and she had passed by the cottage one day as Daisy was practising. Immediately she had come down the path and knocked on the door.
‘A pianist! In Melbrook!’ she had exclaimed. ‘What luck!’
Daisy was going to the Royal Academy of Music in the autumn. She had spent most of this academic year in Bologna, studying with Arturo Fosci, and picking up a little Italian. But then she’d come back to England, and all of a sudden there had arisen the problem of where Daisy should live. With her busy parents both working from their tranquil London flat, she couldn’t really live there and practise. ‘It was fine when it was just the school holidays,’ her father had explained kindly, ‘but if it’s going to be for several months on end …’ And then his mobile phone had rung, and he’d broken off to answer, and Daisy had stood waiting for him to finish, until he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘We’ll talk about it later, Daisy.’
One of her brothers lived in London, but in a tiny flat with room-mates and no space for a piano; the other was travelling round the world. In the autumn she would be able to practise at the Academy, but until then, she really needed somewhere of her own, where the noise didn’t matter. For a while it had seemed as though she was going to have to find her own flat in London, or maybe rent a studio, and then suddenly, at supper one evening, her mother exclaimed, ‘Of course, the cottage!’