Windfallen

  HE HADN'T REALLY EXPECTED TO ENJOY HIMSELF, BUT, Hal told Camille repeatedly, he was. Endless people had sought him out to congratulate him on the mural, including the elderly Stephen Meeker, who had asked him to visit later in the week and take a look at a couple of Arts and Crafts chairs that needed some work. Jones had told him there would be a bonus on top of his check. "It's made all the difference," he said, his dark eyes serious. "We'll have a talk later. About some other work I might have for you." He'd met a number of local businessmen, cannily invited by Carol, who didn't seem to care much about the mural but thought the new hotel was "just the job." It would attract, they said, the "right sort of people to the town." Hal, thinking back to Sylvia Rowan's comments, had fought the urge to laugh.

  Camille, he told her, looked beautiful. He kept catching sight of her talking to people, her hair luminous under the sun, her face relaxed and happy, and his heart would constrict, sentimental and foolish with gratitude that they had survived. Katie, meanwhile, darted fleetingly in and out of the house with other children, like brightly colored sparrows in and out of hedgerows.

  "Thanks," he said, catching Daisy as she exited the ladies'. "For the work, I mean. For everything." She nodded her response as if only half aware of him, her eyes apparently casting about the room for something, or someone, else.

  It was a big day for her, he told himself, turning away. The kind of day on which it would be churlish to take offense. If he'd learned one thing, it was not to look for meanings where there were none.

  He accepted two glasses of champagne from a waiter and stepped back into the sunshine, his heart lifting on the sound of the jazz string quartet, feeling his first real sense of ease and satisfaction for months. Katie ran past him, squealing, a quick tug on his trouser leg, and he walked on, to relocate his wife on the terrace.

  He was halted by a light tap on his shoulder.

  "Hal."

  He turned to see his mother-in-law, standing very still behind a pram. She was wearing her good gray silk blouse, her one apparent concession to partygoing. Her eyes, wide and unusually wary, bore into his almost as if she were going to accuse him of something.

  "Lottie," he said neutrally, his sunny mood evaporating.

  "I'm not stopping."

  He waited.

  "I just came by to say sorry."

  She didn't look herself. As if she had somehow lost some of her armor.

  "I shouldn't have gone on at you the way I did. And I should have told you about the money."

  "Forget it," he found himself saying. "It doesn't matter."

  "It does matter. I was wrong. I meant well, but I was wrong. I wanted you to know that." Her voice was tight, strained. "You and Camille."

  Hal, who had, especially on recent occasions, felt less than charitable toward his mother-in-law, suddenly found himself wishing for some waspish comment, some sharp observation to break the silence. But she said nothing, her eyes on his, searching for a response.

  "Come on," he said, moving toward her, his arm outstretched. "Let's find her."

  Lottie placed a restraining hand on his arm. "I said some awful things," she said, swallowing.

  "Everyone does," he said. "When they're hurting."

  She looked at him, and some new understanding appeared to pass between them. Then she took his proffered elbow, and they walked across the terrace.

  JONES HAD BEEN SO PREOCCUPIED THAT HE HADN'T EVEN noticed she was there. Carol looked up at him, a sly, knowing glance from under her razor-sharp bangs, and smiled her professional smile out at the sea of people before them.

  "I don't know what's holding you back," she murmured.

  Jones tore his glance from across the terrace and blinked hard.

  "What?"

  "You both look as miserable as sin. She seems like a bright girl, bless her. What's your problem?"

  Jones sighed heavily. Stared at his empty glass. "I don't want to break up a family."

  "Is there a family?"

  The barman was trying to attract his attention, trying to gauge whether they should start topping up champagne glasses for his speech. Jones wiped his brow, nodded at him, then turned back to the woman beside him.

  "I'm not going to do it, Carol. I've gone in feetfirst every time. Left everyone else to pick up the pieces. But I'm not going to do it this time."

  "Lost your nerve?"

  Jones shook his head. "Gained a conscience."

  "Jones as knight in shining armor. Now I know you're done for."

  Jones took another glass off the tray that was being held in front of him.

  "Yeah. Guess I am." He turned toward his guests, motioning to the band to lower the volume. And muttered, so low that even Carol had to struggle to hear him, "Feels like it anyway."

  DANIEL SAT ON THE STEPS BEHIND THE KITCHEN, HIS body half hidden by the towers of crates, and placed his empty glass into the pile of empty glasses on the shaded grass beside him. Overhead the sun had started its slow, peaceful descent into the west, but behind him the kitchen clattered and hummed over the sound of the music, the occasional expletive and shouted instruction evidence of the frantic level of activity inside. He knew they thought he was odd, sitting out here by himself all afternoon, not that any of them had the balls to say anything to his face. He couldn't give a toss.

  He just sat, occasionally catching sight of Jones on the terrace as he wandered past the gate, glad-handing, nodding, that stupid fake smile plastered to his face. Daniel sat, took another drink, and thought back.

  JOE WAS STANDING OUTSIDE WITH CAMILLE AND KATIE, a broad-brimmed hat covering his head. He had told Jones, Daisy, Camille, and several other people that it was indeed a "very nice do" and that he didn't think anyone had ever seen the old house looking so fine. He seemed much more enthusiastic about it now that he knew its influence over his family was ending.

  "Tell that to Sylvia Rowan's lot," said Camille, who was still unsettled by the chanting on the other side of the wall.

  "Some people just don't know when to let bygones be bygones, eh, love?" Joe said, and Camille, acutely tuned to the nuances in people's tone, thought she detected something in his. This was confirmed when Hal returned, placed his hand under her elbow, and told her gently that her mother was here.

  "You never said," she accused her father.

  "Your mother has told me what she did with the money," said Joe. "We've all agreed it was a mistake. But you have to understand she meant well."

  "But that's not half of it, Pops," said Camille, realizing as she spoke that she didn't want to have to tell him what the other half was.

  "Please, Camille, love. I've apologized to Hal, and I'd like to apologize to you, too." Camille heard the pain in her mother's voice and wished, like a child, that she could unhear the things she had heard.

  "Will you at least talk to me?"

  "Love?" Hal's tone was gentle, insistent. "Lottie's really sorry. About everything."

  "Go on, Camille," said her father. A tone she remembered from her childhood. "Your mother's been big enough to apologize. The least you can do is have the grace to hear her out."

  Camille suspected she had been outmaneuvered. Her head was filled with the sound of chanting, with the chatter and clink of partying guests. "Walk me through these people to the house. We'll find somewhere quiet. First I need to get Rollo a bowl of water."

  Her mother, unusually, did not take her elbow. Instead she let her cool, dry hand slide into Camille's own, as if she herself were seeking reassurance. Feeling inexplicably saddened by this gesture, Camille found herself squeezing it in response.

  Rollo moved forward tentatively under the harness, pausing as he tried to determine the most obstacle-free path through the moving throng of people. Camille felt his anxiety travel down the harness, and she called softly to him, trying to reassure him. He didn't like parties, a little like Lottie herself. She closed her hands, aware that in some way she was having to reassure both. "Head for the kitchen," she told her mother.


  Almost halfway across the terrace (it was hard to judge, with all these people) Camille was halted by a hand on her arm. A floral scent: Daisy.

  "I'm so hot I think I'm going to melt. I've had to send Ellie indoors with the bar staff."

  "I'll pick her up in a moment," said Lottie, a little defensively. "I just wanted a word with Camille."

  "Sure, sure," said Daisy, who didn't appear to be listening. "Can I just borrow you for five minutes, Lottie? There's someone I want you to meet." Camille felt them all moving forward. Daisy's voice dipped diplomatically, so that Camille had to strain to make out what she said. "He says he's a widower and he's got no children, and I think he's feeling a bit lonely. I don't think he's really enjoying himself."

  "What makes you think I'll be any good talking to him?" Her mother, Camille knew, wanted them to be alone.

  "Have you all got glasses?" A low voice, a woman's. Someone Camille didn't recognize. "Jones is going to do his speech in a minute."

  "He's one of the mural people," said Daisy. "I don't know, Lottie. I thought you might know each other."

  Camille, who had been about to protest that Rollo really needed his drink, felt her mother stop abruptly in her tracks and a tiny, almost inaudible noise escape from the back of her throat. Her hand, in Camille's, began to shake, first tremulously and then uncontrollably, so that Camille, shocked, dropped Rollo's harness to take hold of it with both of her own.

  "Mum?"

  There was no reply.

  Camille, feeling panicked, her mother's hand still shaking in hers, turned around.

  "Mum? . . . Mum? . . . Daisy? What's happening?"

  She heard Daisy lean across her, an urgent whisper. Was Lottie all right?

  Still nothing.

  Camille heard the sound of footsteps approaching slowly. Her mother's hand was shaking so hard.

  "Mum?"

  "Lottie?" A man's voice, elderly.

  Her voice, when it came, was a bewildered whisper. "Guy?"

  KATIE HAD SPILLED ORANGE JUICE ALL OVER HER DRESS. Hal was stooped, trying to wipe it off with a paper napkin, telling her, as he had done a thousand times, that it was time she calmed down, took things a little more slowly, remembered she was in company, when some strange change in atmosphere gradually drew his attention to the far side of the terrace. It wasn't the tiny gray cloud that had managed, in an endless blue sky, to direct its path over the sun, casting the proceedings into a temporary shade. It wasn't the hubbub of conversation, gradually ebbing as Jones stood and prepared to make his speech. Several feet from the mural, with an uncertain Camille clutching at her arm, Lottie was standing directly in front of an elderly man. They were just staring at each other, unspeaking, their faces brimful of some emotion.

  Hal, perplexed by the tableau, stared for some minutes. He stared at the unfamiliar old man, at Camille beside him, unconsciously echoing his stiff-legged stance, and then, as if for the first time, at the stubby features of his father-in-law, who was watching, ashen-faced and silent, from the doorway of the drawing room, two drinks motionless in his hands.

  And then he saw it.

  And for the first time in his life, Hal thanked God his wife could not see. And realized that for all the counseling and relationship guidelines in the world, for all the saved couples and restored marriages, there were some times in a life when keeping a secret from one's spouse was going to be entirely the right thing to do.

  DAISY HAD WATCHED THE TWO OLD PEOPLE AS THEY walked unobtrusively down the stone steps toward the beach. Barely touching, both as self-consciously erect as if they were waiting for some blow to fall, they walked cautiously and in perfect time, like veteran soldiers reunited after a long war. But as she turned, about to try to convey to Camille something of what she'd seen, something of the expressions on their faces, Hal had whisked her away, and Carol had thrust a glass into her hand. "Stay put, darling," she commanded. "Jones is no doubt going to give you a mention, bless him."

  And then Daisy had briefly forgotten them, had found her attention drawn to him, to his weatherbeaten face, to his oversize frame, which always made her think of one of those Russian bears, forced against their will to entertain. And listening to his commanding voice echo out across the early evening, the trace of the Valleys offsetting the gruffness with a melodic lilt, Daisy was overcome by a sudden fear that she had realized too late what it was she wanted. That she could no longer protect herself against it. That no matter how inappropriate, how hazardous, how ill timed, she would rather him be her mistake than someone else's.

  She watched him gesturing toward the house, heard the polite laughter, heard the people on each side of her, smiling, wanting to approve, ready to admire. She stared at the house, at the building she knew better than her own self, and the view beyond it, the brilliant arc of blue. She heard her name mentioned and a polite smattering of applause. And then, finally, her eyes met his, and in that split second, as the cloud moved off the sun and reflooded the space with light, she tried to convey to him every single thing she had learned, everything she knew.

  As it finished, and the people turned away, back to their drinks, back to their broken conversation, she watched him step down from the stone wall and more slowly toward her, his eyes still on hers, as if in acknowledgment. And stopped, in horror, as Daniel launched himself out from behind the privet hedge and without warning, but with a terrible, strangulated war cry, punched Jones full in the face.

  TWENTY

  The noise of the radio filtered downward, passing through the bedroom door, floating down the stairs to where Camille and Hal stood, facing each other with indecision on their faces, the third time in as many hours that they'd done so.

  Joe had been there all evening, since returning home straight-shouldered and silent, accompanied by their feeble and muted inquiries as to whether he was all right and harder, unspoken ones about what they had just seen. He'd said he didn't want any tea, thank you. Nor did he need any company. He was going upstairs to listen to the radio. Sorry if he sounded inhospitable, but there it was. (They were welcome to stay downstairs, if that was what they really wanted. Help themselves, of course.)

  And that had been it. For the best part of three hours. While they conversed in whispers, fielded questions from Katie, who, exhausted, was lying in front of the television with Rollo, and tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to track down his wife.

  "Is she going to leave him, Hal? Do you think that's what it is? Is she going to leave Pops?" The relaxed, sunfilled aspect of Camille's face had vanished, to be replaced by a dark anxiety. And somewhere in there, an anger.

  Hal smoothed her hair back from her hot forehead, glanced up the stairs. "I don't know, love."

  He had told her most of what he knew, holding both her hands, like someone breaking bad news. That the man had looked like an older version of the one in the mural, that the briefest measure of the way they'd looked at each other had dispelled any lingering uncertainties Hal might have had about what that meant. He had struggled to convey how the old man had reached out and touched Lottie's face, how she had not ducked away from the contact but stood, like someone waiting to be blessed. Camille had listened and wept and made him describe the mural to her again and again, dissecting it for symbolism, slowly building a picture of why her mother's behavior, far from being inexplicable, was something they could have--perhaps should have--understood long ago.

  Several times Hal had cursed himself for the role he'd unwittingly played in uncovering Lottie's history, in bringing it back to life. "I should have left that painting as it was," he said, shaking his head. "If I hadn't brought this whole thing back into the open, perhaps she wouldn't have gone."

  Camille's response had been resigned, an unwilling acknowledgment. "She's been gone for years."

  At half past nine, when the dusky sky finally abdicated to an inky black, when Katie had finally fallen asleep on the sofa, when they had called everyone they knew, when they had tried Daisy's mobile number for the
seventeenth time (and considered, and decided against, calling the police), Camille had turned to her husband, her sightless eyes filled with a bitter zeal.

  "Go and find her, Hal. She's done everything else to him. She at least owes him the decency to let him know."

  DAISY WAITED FOR SEVERAL MINUTES FOR THE MACHINE to spit out her change and then, conscious of the bored gazes of those around her, gave up and tentatively carried the two plastic cups of coffee over to Jones.

  They had been in the emergency room almost three hours now, their speedy admission to a triage nurse falsely raising their hopes that they might be seen, bandaged, and leave. No, said the nurse, pointing them toward X-ray. They would need to get a picture of his nose first, as well as one of his head, and then Jones would have to wait for the consultant to realign the break. "We'd normally let you home. But it's a bad one," she said cheerfully, packing his bloodied nostrils with gauze strips and saline. "Don't want any stray bits of cartilage floating around in there, do we?"

  "Sorry," said Daisy for the fifteenth time since they arrived, as they shuffled off to another part of the hospital. She didn't know what else to say.

  It had been easier when it initially happened, when she'd helped haul him off the ground, in shock at Daniel's ranting, drunken state, and desperately attempted to mop up the blood that streamed down his shirt. Then she'd taken charge, grabbing Ellie's supply of cotton balls, shouting for someone to move the cars, the protesters, so that she could get him to the hospital, fielding off Sylvia Rowan, who had descended like some malevolent old crone to crow that there, see? the drink-related violence had started already. "It won't work," the older woman had cried triumphantly. "I'll have the magistrates revoke your license. I've got witnesses."

  "Oh, get lost, you old bat!" Daisy had shouted, pulling him into her car. He was dazed then, having possibly banged his head when he fell, and followed Daisy almost docilely, obeying her urgent instructions to sit, hold this, to stay awake, stay awake.

  Now, however, he was possibly too awake, fueled by bad coffee and the disinfected atmosphere, his dark, headachey eyes glowering out over a surgical dressing, his splattered shirt a ruined reminder of her part in the day's events.