Coming Home

  Following Loveday, stepping out of doors through the French windows of the drawing-room, Judith was dazzled by light. The garden was drowned in it; by a glare that the noonday sun drew and reflected from the sea, so that everything shimmered, flickered, shifted in the summer breeze. The restless leaves of the eucalyptus shivered and turned, silver and green; deep-pink petals, dropping from an overblown rose, were chased across the lawn, and the thick white fringe of Diana's garden sunshade, speared through the centre hole of an ornate cast-iron table, danced and jigged in the wind.

  This table bore a tray of glasses, ashtrays, pottery bowls of potato crisps and nuts. Beyond the dark shadow of the sunshade, canvas chairs had been set up and arranged in a rough semi-circle, tartan car-rugs spread upon the grass. Nettlebed, gauging the clemency of the day, and knowing that the younger members of the Carey-Lewis clan never stayed indoors if they could possibly be out, had clearly used his forethought and been busy.

  Judith looked for Edward, but he was not there. Only three figures waited for them, gracefully arranged, as though they had been posed, set there by some artist, wishful of a little human interest to enliven his landscape. This impression of a canvas — a moment caught in time — was so strong that Judith found herself regarding the scene as though appraising a painting, a brilliant oil, importantly framed in gold, hanging, perhaps, on the walls of a prestigious gallery, its tide, Before Lunch, Nancherrow, 1939. A work that one would long to own, be impelled to buy, however costly, and keep forever.

  Three figures. Athena lay on one of the rugs, propped up on her elbows, with her blonde hair blowing and her face obliterated by an enormous pair of dark glasses. The men had drawn up two of the chairs and sat facing her. One was very dark, the other fair. They had shucked off the jackets of their church-going suits, pulled off their ties and rolled up the sleeves of their shirts, and managed, despite chalk-striped trousers and polished shoes, to look comfortably informal.

  Three figures. Athena, and the two young men whom Judith was yet to meet. She repeated their names to herself; Gus Callender and Rupert Rycroft. So, which of them was Gus? Which was the man who had captured the wayward Loveday's heart, and brought about, in mere days, the final transformation from deliberately gawky teenager to radiant young woman, garbed in Schiaparelli, wearing lipstick, and with the light of love shining from her violet eyes?

  Loveday, unable to contain her impatience, ran to join them. ‘Where is everybody?’ They had been deep in conversation, but thus interrupted, ceased talking. Athena stayed where she was, but the two young men heaved themselves, with some difficulty, out of their deck-chairs. ‘Oh, don't get up, you look so comfortable…’ Judith followed her, out into the sunshine and across the grass, momentarily suffused with the shyness that she still experienced on meeting new people, and hoping it didn't show. Both young men, she saw, were tall, but the fair one was exceptionally lanky and thin, and the taller of the two. ‘…isn't there anything to drink? I'm parched after all that hymn-singing and praying.’

  ‘It's coming, it's coming, have a little patience,’ Athena told her younger sister, and Loveday collapsed onto the rug beside her. Athena turned her dark glasses onto Judith. ‘Hello, darling, heaven to see you. You seem to have been away for centuries. You haven't met Gus and Rupert, have you? Chaps, this is darling Judith, our surrogate sister. The house always seems half empty when she isn't here.’

  Athena, like her mother, had the power to make one feel special. Judith stopped being shy. She smiled and said, ‘Hello,’ and they all shook hands. Rupert was the very tall one, Athena's friend, who had sacrificed his week's sport to drive her back to Cornwall. Unmistakably Army, and the archetypal Guards officer, with his neat moustache, his relentless haircut, and an undeniably receding chin. And yet he did not look effete at all, because his face had been burnt to leather by some foreign sun, his hand-clasp was firm, and his heavy-lidded eyes looked down at her with an expression that was both amused and friendly.

  But Gus was not unmistakably anything. Judith, trying to discover the single element that had finally broken down Loveday's stubborn defences, found herself at a total loss. Gus's eyes were dark as black coffee, his skin was olive, and the deep cleft in his chin looked as though some sculptor had set it there with a chisel. His mouth was wide and sweetly shaped, but unsmiling, and his whole demeanour was one of a man strangely contained, shy perhaps, but certainly giving nothing away. Relating this enigmatic young man to Loveday's ebullient, love-struck confidences was not only confusing but well-nigh impossible. How on earth had it all happened? She did not know exactly what she had expected, but certainly not this.

  He had said, ‘How very nice to meet you,’ and for a moment a ghost of a smile had touched his lips, and his voice was careful, accentless, and yet without a trace of the inherited upper-class drawl of most of Edward's friends. New ground altogether, Judith decided. And indeed, why not?

  ‘Where are you going to sit? Here, I'll get you a chair.’ And he went to pull one forward.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ Loveday asked again.

  Athena told her, as the others all settled down once more in the warm sunshine. ‘Pops has gone up to see Mummy, and Edward's hunting up something to drink. Nettlebed didn't want to put out the booze in case it got too warm in the sun.’

  ‘Did you know Jeremy's turned up?’

  ‘Nettlebed told us. Lovely surprise. Mummy'll be thrilled.’

  Judith said, ‘He's on embarkation leave. He's going to be a surgeon in the RNVR, and he's got to report to Devonport next week.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Athena. ‘How dreadfully plucky. Darling man, just the sort of selfless thing he would do.’

  ‘Explain Jeremy,’ Rupert told her.

  ‘Well, I was trying to, when Judith and Loveday turned up. He's another sort of surrogate member of the family. He's been around forever. His father's our doctor, and he used to be Edward's tutor. I think he arrived when we were all at church.’

  ‘He's going to stay,’ Judith told her. ‘Until it's time for him to go.’

  ‘We must all spoil him and make it very special.’

  Gus had laid his jacket on the grass beside him. Now he reached out a hand to pick it up, feeling in his pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. As he did this, an object slipped from an inner pocket and fell upon the grass alongside Judith's chair. She saw a small, thick sketch-block, secured with a rubber band. Loveday, sitting at his feet, saw this too and pounced upon it. ‘Your sketch-pad. You mustn't lose that.’

  He looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Oh…sorry.’ He put out a hand to take it, but Loveday hung on to it. ‘Oh, do let me show Judith. You wouldn't mind. You're so brilliant, I want her to see. Please.’

  ‘I'm sure she's not interested…’

  ‘Oh, don't be so modest, Gus, of course she is. We all are. Say yes.’

  Judith felt a pang of pity for Gus, who clearly did not want his essentially private work to be put on display. She said, ‘Loveday, perhaps he doesn't want us all gawping.’

  ‘It's not gawping. It's being interested and filled with admiration.’

  Judith looked at Gus. ‘Do you carry a sketch-book with you always?’

  ‘Yes.’ Suddenly he smiled at her, perhaps grateful for her championship, and the smile transformed his rather solemn features. ‘You never know when something will present itself, aching to be set down, and then it's agony if you haven't the means to capture it. Some people take photographs, but I'm better at drawing.’

  ‘Even in church does it happen?’

  He laughed. ‘It might have. Although I wouldn't have had the nerve to start drawing in church. It's just that it's something I automatically carry around with me.’

  ‘Like small change.’

  ‘Precisely so.’ He took the book from Loveday and tossed it into Judith's lap. ‘Feel free.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. Just little sketches — nothing very good.’

  But Loveday excite
dly intervened, coming to kneel at Judith's side, slipping the rubber band off the book, laying it on Judith's knee, turning the pages, and keeping up a proud and proprietary running commentary.

  ‘…and this is the cove. Isn't it lovely? And Gus did it in a moment. And here's the rocking rock on the top of the moor, and Mrs Mudge's barn with the hens on the steps…’

  As the pages were slowly turned to her, Judith found herself filled with a growing wonder, because she knew that she was looking at the work of a true professional. Each small pencil sketch had been set down with the accuracy and detail of an architect's drawing, and then titled and dated in precise situation. Nancherrow Cave. Lidgey Farm, Drawn, he had tinted them with pale washes of water-colour, and the colours were totally original, observed by a true artist's eye, so that an old tin-mine stack stood lilac in the evening light, granite was touched by coral pink, and a slated roof was blue as hyacinths. A palette that Judith — and probably most other people — had never before perceived.

  Now, a beach. Breakers rolling in onto creamy sands from a blue and blurred horizon. Another page; Rosemullion church. She saw the ancient doorway with its carved stonework, and the eleventh-century portal supported by Romanesque capitals. And she felt almost ashamed, because Gus had seen the beauty and the symmetry that Judith, coming and going through that doorway on countless occasions, had never taken time to appreciate.

  They were only half-way through the book, but, ‘This is the last,’ Loveday announced. ‘The rest is just blank.’ She turned the final page with a flourish. ‘Ta-ra ta-ra, it's me. Gus did a painting of me.’

  But there was no need to be told. Loveday, sitting on some cliff-top and silhouetted against the sea, wearing a faded pink cotton dress, her feet bare, the wind ruffling her dark curls. And Judith saw that Gus had taken a portraitist's licence, exaggerating the length of her limbs and her slender neck, the jut of her bony shoulders, the louche, uncontrived grace of her pose. Thus, somehow, he had captured the very essence of Loveday, at her most vulnerable; her sweetest. Suddenly, everything was changed, and Judith knew that the relationship between Gus and Loveday was not as one-sided as she had initially imagined, for this was a miniature portrait painted with love, and all at once she felt a bit like a voyeur, disturbing a moment of the most private intimacy.

  A silence had fallen. At the edge of this she was aware of the soft voices of Rupert and Athena, chatting away together. Athena was making a daisy chain. Then Loveday spoke again, ‘Do you like it, Judith?’ Abruptly, Judith closed the book, and secured it once more with its rubber band. ‘Isn't he clever?’

  ‘Very clever.’ She looked up and saw that Gus was watching her. For a split second she experienced an intense rapport with him. You understand, I know that you know. Don't say anything. He had said nothing, but the words came through to her like a telepathic message. She smiled at him, and tossed the sketch-book over, and he caught it as though fielding a cricket ball. ‘More than clever. Really brilliant. Loveday's right. Thank you for letting me look.’

  ‘Not at all.’ He turned away from her to reach for his jacket, and the spell was broken, the moment over. ‘It's just a hobby.’ He stowed the book away in its hiding-place. ‘I wouldn't like to think my bread and butter depended on it.’

  Loveday said, ‘I'd bet you'd much rather be an artist than an engineer.’

  ‘I can be both.’

  ‘Even so, I somehow don't think you'd end up starving in a garret.’

  He laughed at Loveday, and shook his head. ‘I wouldn't be too sure…’

  Somewhere inside the house, a door slammed. Her attention caught, Athena, with the daisy chain slung between her hands, looked up. ‘That has to be Edward. What has he been doing? I'm simply parched.’

  Edward. Astonishingly, for a little while, Judith had forgotten Edward. But now Gus and Loveday, and all speculations about them, flew from her head. Edward was nearly here. She looked and saw, from the open French windows, the two young men emerge. Edward and Jeremy, both bearing before them laden trays of bottles and glasses. And she watched them come, treading across the sunlit summer lawn, laughing together over some unheard joke, and just seeing Edward again compounded everything. She felt the lift of her heart, and her body yearned to run and meet him, and knew that this was the instant of total certainty. She loved him beyond all else, had always loved him and always would. As well, she had something wonderfully exciting to tell him…a secret to be shared only with Edward. And she told herself that it would be like giving him a marvellous present, a gift that had cost her much, and which she could watch him open. But that was for later. When they were alone together. Just for this moment, it was enough to watch him coming, walking across the grass.

  Gus had pulled himself to his feet and now proceeded to shift things about on the table, making space for the two trays. Rupert, however, sensibly decided to stay just where he was, with his elongated frame gracefully draped in the sling of the deck-chair, and his drooping eyes half-closed against the sun.

  The trays were finally set down with a thankful thump. ‘God, that's heavy,’ said Edward. ‘The things we do for all you lazy louts.’

  ‘We're all dry as dust,’ Athena complained ungratefully. ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Gassing with Nettlebed.’

  ‘And Jeremy too. Such a divine surprise. Come and give me a kiss.’ Which, dutifully, Jeremy did. ‘And such a lot of new faces for you to meet. Gus. And Rupert. And everybody. Jeremy, you're going to go to sea. You are brave. I can't wait to see you in your uniform. Now, who's going to be barman? I'm dying for a gin and tonic. Have you brought some ice?’

  Edward stood between Judith and the sun. She looked up into his face, saw his blue eyes and his lock of fair hair. He stooped, supporting himself on the struts of her deck-chair, to give her a kiss. He said, ‘You got home safely.’

  ‘About an hour ago.’

  He smiled and straightened up. ‘What do you want to drink?’ And it was enough, and for the moment, she didn't need any more.

  With drinks dispensed and everybody settled, they all sat around and discussed plans for the afternoon.

  ‘We're definitely going to the cove,’ Loveday announced. ‘Anyway, Gus and I are going, whatever anybody else wants. The tide's high at five o'clock, and it'll be quite perfect.’

  ‘When do you want to start?’ Athena asked.

  ‘Right after lunch. As soon as possible. And take a picnic…oh, do everybody come.’ She looked with pleading eyes at Rupert. ‘You'd like to come, wouldn't you?’

  ‘Of course. How about Athena?’

  ‘I wouldn't miss it for anything. We'll all go. Except Pops. Because he's not much of a one for picnics.’

  ‘Nor your mother,’ said Jeremy, who had settled himself, cross-legged, on the grass, and cradled a tankard of beer. ‘She's having a day in bed.’

  ‘Doctor's orders?’ asked Athena.

  ‘Doctor's orders.’

  ‘She's not ill, is she?’

  ‘No. Just a bit worn out. She'll sleep.’

  ‘In that case, let's ask Mary to join us. Perhaps she'll help with the picnic. We can't expect Mrs Nettlebed to do another thing after cooking Sunday lunch for all of us. Anyway, she always puts her toes up on a Sunday afternoon, and rightly so, too.’

  ‘I'll help,’ Loveday offered instantly. ‘There's a whole new tin of chocolate biscuits and Mrs Nettlebed's made a lemon cake. I saw it this morning before we went to church.’

  ‘And we must have gallons of tea and lemonade. And we'll take the darling doggies.’

  ‘It's beginning to sound,’ said Rupert, ‘a bit like a military expedition. I expect at any moment to be told to go and dig a latrine.’

  Athena gave him a slap across his knee. ‘Oh, don't be so stupid.’

  ‘Or pitch a tent. I'm useless at pitching tents. They always fall down.’

  Athena, despite herself, began to laugh. ‘What about campfires? Are you any good at those? No, on second thoughts
, you don't need to bother because Edward will come, and he's a whiz at lighting fires.’

  Edward frowned. ‘What do you want a fire for on a day like this?’

  ‘To cook things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Sausages. We'll take sausages. Or baked potatoes. Or perhaps somebody will catch a fish.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘A trident. A bent pin on a bit of string.’

  ‘Personally, I think we should forget about lighting campfires. It's too hot and too much trouble. Anyway, Judith and I aren't coming.’

  Sounds of dismay, distress and disappointment greeted this announcement. ‘But of course you must come. Why not? Why don't you want to come?’

  ‘We have a previous engagement. We're going up to The Dower House to see Aunt Lavinia.’

  ‘Does she know?’

  ‘Of course. Insists we come. Just for a little while, of course. But she hasn't seen Judith since she was ill. So we're going.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Athena shrugged. ‘If it's only for a little while, you can join us later. We'll leave one of the tea-baskets for you to lug down, though, so don't not come, or we'll be short of food. Talking of which…’ She pushed up her dark glasses to look at her watch.

  ‘I know,’ said Rupert, ‘you're starving.’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Instinct. Pure animal instinct. But hark…’ He cocked his head. ‘You need faint no longer. Help is at hand…’

  At which point Colonel Carey-Lewis made his appearance, stepping out from the drawing-room, and stalking across the lawn towards the little group that consisted of his three children and their friends. He still wore his church-going suit, and the wind caught his thinning hair and blew it into a coxcomb. As he approached, he smiled his shy smile and tried to smooth his hair down with his hand.

  ‘How very comfortable you all look,’ he told them. ‘But I'm afraid I must disturb you.’ The four young men were already on their feet. ‘Nettlebed asks me to tell you that luncheon is just about to be served.’