"I'm not in a state. It's you getting me in a state, going on about everything. I'm fine."
"Well, all right. But either way. I just wanted us to have a little chat. About after."
Lottie sat down, looking at her husband suspiciously. "After what?"
"The hotel and everything. After it opens. Because Daisy will go back to London, won't she? With or without her man friend. And you won't be needed up there anymore."
Lottie stared at him blankly. She hadn't thought about life after Arcadia reopened its doors. She felt suddenly chilled. She had never thought about what she would do without it.
"Lottie?"
"What?" She saw her life stretching ahead of her; the Round Table dinner-dances, the small talk with neighbors, the endless evenings in this house . . .
"I got us some brochures."
"What did you say?"
"I got us some brochures. I thought we could make it an opportunity, you know, to do something a bit different."
"Do what?"
"I thought we could go on a cruise or--"
"I hate cruises."
"You've never been. Look, I thought we could even take a trip around the world. You know, stop off in lots of places. See some sights. It's not like we've ever been very far, and we'll have no responsibilities now, will we?" He didn't say the words "second honeymoon," but Lottie felt them hanging in the air, and it made her snap.
"Well, that's just like you, Joe Bernard."
"What?"
"No responsibilities indeed. Who's going to look after Katie, eh? While Camille's at work? And who's going to help Camille?"
"Hal will help Camille."
Lottie snorted.
"They're fine now, love. Look at how he was with her over this mural business. Like a pair of lovebirds, they were. You told me yourself."
"Well, that just shows how much you know. Because they're not fine at all. In my view he's five minutes off leaving her again. And that's exactly why I wanted you to take Hal out tonight and find out what's going on in his damn fool head. But, oh, no, you're too busy thinking of cruises and suchlike."
"Lottie . . ."
"I'm going to have a bath, Joe. I don't want to discuss it any further."
She trod heavily up the stairs toward their bedroom, wondering as she did why tears had sprung so easily to her eyes. It was the second time this week.
THE NOISE OF THE RUNNING WATER HAD DEAFENED HER, so she didn't hear Joe's footfall as he came up the stairs, and his unannounced appearance in the doorway made her jump.
"I do wish you wouldn't sneak up on me," she yelped, her hand to her chest, furious that he had caught her unguarded.
Joe halted for a moment, briefly stalled by his wife's tearful face. "I don't often disagree with you, Lottie, but I'm going to say one thing."
Lottie stared at her husband, noting that he was standing straighter than normal, that his voice held just a touch more authority.
"I'm going to take a trip. After the hotel opening. I'm going to book a ticket and take a trip around the world. I'm getting on a bit, and I don't want to get old and feel like I've done nothing, seen nothing." He paused. "Whether you come with me or not. Obviously I'd prefer it if you did, but just for once I'm going to do something I want."
He breathed out, as if his short speech had been the product of some huge internal effort.
"That's all I'm going to say," he said, turning back to the door and leaving his wife silenced behind him. "Now, call down when you want me to put the chops under the grill."
ON THE FIFTH EVENING DANIEL AND DAISY FINALLY talked. They took Ellie for a walk down on the beach, tucking her firmly into her buggy and swaddling her with a cotton blanket, despite the fact that it was a still, balmy evening. Daisy found it difficult to think straight in the house these days, she told him. She had begun to see it not as a home, or even a hotel, but simply a list of problems that needed solving: a loose window catch, an unsecured floorboard, a faulty plug socket, a deadline ticking away. Outside, in the fresh air, she found she could gradually clear her head.
She had begun to breathe. This is what I wanted, Daisy thought, seeing them as if from the outside: a handsome young couple and their beautiful child. A family unit, tight, encompassing, exclusive. She hesitated and then, biting her lip, took his arm. He had closed it to him, so that her hand was warmed, enclosed on both sides.
And then Daniel began to talk.
He had first known there was something wrong when one of his old colleagues had shown him a picture of his own baby and Daniel realized that not only was he not carrying a photograph, but he looked at the man's face, convulsed with pride, and became aware that he didn't feel a tenth of what his colleague evidently felt.
He had finally, painfully allowed himself to admit that he felt simply hemmed in. Trapped in a situation that was not of his making, his beautiful girlfriend vanished and in her place this tearful blob (he didn't actually say "blob," but Daisy knew what he meant) and this squalling child. There seemed to be no beauty, no order in his life anymore. And beauty and order were vital to Daniel. This was a man, after all, who had once been unable to sleep because of a picture rail that had been affixed at a fractionally wrong angle. Daisy had woken at four in the morning to find him meticulously pulling the thing from the wall and replacing it with the aid of no fewer than two spirit levels and several pieces of string. But babies did not care about order. They didn't care that their stink and their noise and their diapers polluted Daniel's little haven. They didn't care that the demands they made on their mothers ripped them away from larger, stronger arms who needed them just as much. They didn't care what time they woke you up or about the fact that you needed four hours sleep in a row just to be able to earn the money to live. "And the thing is, Daise, you're not allowed to complain, are you? You're just supposed to accept it and believe everyone when they say 'It'll get easier,' even when it feels like it's getting worse, that you'll love them blindly when actually, actually you look at these rather ugly, screaming trolls and you just can't believe they're anything to do with you at all. If I'd have said . . . If I'd have said what was in my thoughts in those early weeks, the real truth, I'd probably have been arrested."
It had been the vest that finally did it. He had stumbled into the living room one morning, half delirious through lack of sleep, and trodden on a discarded undershirt that squelched. He had sat, his unclean foot resting on their once-pristine rug, and known that he could just not do it anymore.
"But why didn't you say something? Why did you bottle it all up inside?"
"Because you didn't look like you could bear it. You were barely coping yourself. How could you cope with hearing that your baby's father had decided she was all a big mistake?"
"I could have coped with it a lot better than having my baby's father disappear on me."
They sat down on a sand dune, noting that Ellie had fallen asleep in her pram. Daniel bent forward and tucked her blanket more firmly under her chin.
"Well, I know that now. I know a lot of things now."
He felt restored to her then, the ugly truth of what he was saying bringing forth a kind of sweetness in her. Because he loved Ellie now; that was apparent in everything he did.
"I need to know if we can try again," he said, taking her hand. "I need to know if you're going to let me in. If we can put it behind us. I really missed you, Daise. I missed her."
Down on the sand, a shaggy black dog raced back and forth in overexcited circles, leaping and twisting into the air to catch pieces of driftwood thrown by its owner, leaving long and complicated patterns in the sand.
She leaned against Daniel, and he placed his arm around her.
"You still fit, then," he said, into her ear. "In there."
Daisy closed her eyes and burrowed in, trying to clear her head, trying to focus on the sensation of being close to him again. Trying not to listen to the complications.
"Let's go home, Daisy," he said.
JONES
WATCHED THE COUPLE WITH THE PRAM STROLLING back along the sea path, the man's arm protectively over his girlfriend's shoulder, their baby lost from view in slumber, the evening sun glinting off the wheels.
He sat for some minutes, waiting until they were out of sight, and then turned his car around. It was a two-hour drive back to London. Some might say he was mad to come all this way without even stretching his legs. But he had missed the meeting with Carol, he told himself, pulling past the driveway to Arcadia and back down toward the railway station, his eyes unblinking on the road ahead. There was no point hanging around. That was the only reason he had come, after all.
"IT'S OFTEN DIFFICULT AFTER YOU HAVE A BABY."
"I suppose it'll take time for us to get used to each other again."
"Yes."
They lay side by side, both awake, staring into the dark.
"We're probably both a bit tense. I mean, it's been a strange few days." Daniel reached for her, and she rested her head on his chest.
"You know what, Dan? I don't think we should even talk about it too much. It kind of makes it into an issue . . ."
"Oh. Okay."
"But you're right. I mean, I think I am a bit tense."
He reached for her hand, and she lay there feeling his fingers entwined in her own, trying not to think too hard about the previous half hour. She would have liked to get a drink, but she knew that he needed the reassurance of her being there, that any attempt by her to move would be misinterpreted.
"Actually, Daise?"
"Yes."
"There is something I need to talk to you about. Now that we're being honest and everything."
For some reason an image of Jones flashed into her head, as fragile and opaque as stained glass.
"Okay," she said, trying not to sound as guarded as she felt.
"I think we need to really get everything out in the open before we can put the past behind us."
She said nothing, hearing his attempts at casualness fall flat and feeling the faintest sense of foreboding, like the distant whistle of an approaching train.
"It's about what happened while we were apart."
"Nothing happened," said Daisy. Too quickly.
He swallowed audibly. "That's what you might want to believe. But it did."
"Says who?"
It would be Lottie, of course. Daisy knew that Lottie didn't think they should get back together.
"It was just a kiss," he said.
Then paused.
"Nothing major. It was when I was at rock bottom, when I didn't know whether I was going to come back."
Daisy let go of his hand, pushed herself upright on one elbow. "What did you say?"
"It was only a kiss, Daise. But I thought I should be honest about it."
"You kissed someone else?"
"While we were apart."
"Hang on, you were supposed to be having a nervous breakdown about coping with a new baby. Not putting yourself about around north London."
"It wasn't like that, Daise--"
"Wasn't like what? So there I was with your mother telling me you were practically throwing yourself under a bus, not even well enough to talk to me, and all the while you were spreading it around Britain. Who was she, Dan?"
"Look, don't you think you're overreacting just a bit? It was one kiss."
"No, I don't." She swept the duvet up around her and climbed out of the bed, unwilling to admit to herself that the ferocity of her response might have been linked in any way to her own buried sense of guilt. "I'm going to sleep in the other room. Don't follow me, and don't start padding around the corridors," she hissed. "You'll wake the baby."
EIGHTEEN
The bungalow, clad in bleached white clapboard and surrounded by a little garden of rusting sculptures, stood on the shingle an unneighborly hundred or so feet away from its cluster of neighbors. "I like it like that," said Stephen Meeker as they looked out the window at the unobstructed view of the shore. "People don't have an excuse to just pop in. I do hate it when people feel they can just pop in. It's as if, when you're retired, you should be grateful for any interruption in your dreary old day."
They sat over two mugs of tea in the sparsely decorated living room, the walls of which were hung with paintings of a quality completely at odds with the furniture and upholstery around them. Outside, the sea, glinting under an August sky, was unpopulated, the families and holidaymakers tending to stay up the coast in Merham's sandier stretch of water. It was the second time in a week that Daisy had interrupted his dreary old day, but she had been welcomed, partly for the selection of magazines she'd brought him as a gift and partly because the time she wanted to talk about was one of the few periods of his life, he said, during which he'd been truly happy. "Julian was rather a lot of fun, you see," he said. "Terrifically naughty, especially when it came to finances, but he had this knack for collecting people, in much the same way as he collected art. He was like his wife in that way. A pair of magpies."
He had loved Julian forever, he said, with a rapture that sat oddly on a stiff old man. In the 1960s, when Julian and Adeline had finally divorced, Stephen and Julian had moved into a little place in Bayswater together. "We still told people we were brothers. I never minded. Julian always got much more worked up about that kind of thing than I did." Several of the paintings on the wall were gifts from Julian; at least one was by Frances, who had achieved a belated notoriety after being "claimed" by a feminist art historian several years previously. Daisy, who had been privately taken aback when she saw the signatures on the other canvases, noted with dismay the stained corners, the paper curling into the salt air.
"Shouldn't they be . . . in a safe somewhere?" she asked tactfully.
"No one to look at them there," he said. "No, dear, they will stay in my little hut with me till I pop off. Sweet lady, Frances. Terrible shame, all that business."
He had become rather animated when she'd shown him the Polaroids of the nearly finished mural, wistfully admiring the beauty of his younger self and pointing out names of those people he could remember. Julian, he told her sadly, would not be available for the party. "There's no use contacting him, dear. He lives in a home in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Totally gaga." Minette he had last heard of in a commune in Wiltshire, and George was "something eminent" in economics at Oxford. "Married some viscountess or other. Terribly posh. Oh, and there's Lottie's young man. Or perhaps it was her sister's . . . I forget. 'The prince of pineapple,' George used to call him. I'll remember his name if you bear with me."
Daisy had been shocked to see the exotic, longhaired goddess of the mural named as Lottie. "She was rather a looker in those days, in an unconventional way, of course. A bit of a temper, but then I think some men found that rather attractive. Between us, I don't think anybody was particularly surprised when she got herself into trouble." He put his cup down on the table and chuckled to himself. "Julian always said, 'Elle pete plus haut que son cul.' Do you know what that means?" He leaned forward conspiratorially. "She farts higher than her ass."
DAISY WALKED SLOWLY BACK ALONG THE BEACH TOWARD Arcadia, her bare head hot under the midday sun, her feet, like the waves, pulling back from their intended path. The morning had been a pleasant diversion from the increasingly tense atmosphere at Arcadia. The hotel was gearing up for its finish, its rooms restored to their original, stark grandeur, the new furnishings placed and replaced until their aesthetics satisfied. The building almost hummed now, as if itself anticipating new life, a blood system of new visitors.
So, among its people, one might have expected there to be an air of excitement or of achievement as the work finally drew to a close, but Daisy had rarely felt more miserable. Daniel had hardly spoken to her in forty-eight hours. Hal had finished the mural and disappeared without a word. Lottie, meanwhile, had been jumpy and bad-tempered, like a dog listening for the unseen approach of a thunderstorm. And all the while, outside, came the distant rumblings of dissent from the village. The local paper had now promot
ed what it called the "Red Rooms Hotel Row" to its front pages, from where it had been picked up by several nationals and reprinted as a typical "plucky villagers fight against impending change" story, illustrated with pictures of scantily clad female Red Rooms members. Daisy had deflected several calls onto Jones's office, half wishing, as she did so, that she'd been brave enough to speak to him herself.
Not that Jones's London clientele were necessarily helping matters. A few of his closest drinking buddies, two of them actors, had come up to "lend some support." When they realized that not only was the hotel not yet ready to offer overnight accommodation but that Jones's bar was not yet stocked, they had been directed by one of the decorators to the Riviera, where, several hours later, Sylvia Rowan had ejected them for what she described later in the newspapers as "lewd and disgraceful behavior" toward one of her waitresses. The waitress, who seemed somewhat less perturbed, later sold her story to one of the tabloids and promptly handed in her notice, saying she had made more off that than the Rowans paid her in a year.
The same tabloid had printed a picture of Jones, at some bar opening in central London. The woman who stood next to him had her hand clamped over his arm, like a talon.
Daisy paused for a breather, glancing out at the pale blue arc of the sea, realizing with a pang that it would soon be her view no longer. That she would have to return with her beautiful, bonny child to a city of fumes and fug, of noise and clatter. I haven't missed it, she thought. Not as much as I expected to anyway.
London still felt inextricably tied up with foreboding and unhappiness, a skin she had almost shed. But a life in Merham? Already she could envisage a time when its sociable confines would become stifling, when the neighborly interest of its inhabitants would feel like an intrusion. Merham was still locked into its past, and she, Daisy, needed to look forward, to move forward.
She thought suddenly of Lottie. And then turned back toward the house. She would, she decided, think about leaving after she had sorted out the party. It was a pretty efficient way of not having to think about what she would be returning to.
SHE HAD FOUND DANIEL IN THE SITWELL BATHROOM with one of the builders. He was holding a tile up against the wall, with a piece of dark paper behind it. The builder, Nev, a young man with curls of titian hair, was gazing disconsolately at a pot of white grout.