‘But you. Poor you. What a wretched thing to happen. And who’s going to look after you? Mrs Abney?’
‘I’ll maybe go and stay with Phyllis.’
‘You mean, your aunt, who lives in Hampstead?’
A car was drawing up in the street outside. The engine stopped; a door slammed. Laura prayed for it to be Alec. ‘That’s why I went to see her this afternoon.’ Footsteps; his key in the lock. ‘That’s Alec now.’
They met as he opened the front door, and she had never been so glad to see him.
‘Laura…’
Before he had time to kiss her, she said in clear tones, ‘Hello, isn’t it lovely, Daphne’s here.’
He froze, one arm around his wife, the other hand still holding his briefcase. ‘Daphne?’ He looked amazed.
‘Yes, it’s me!’ Daphne called from the sitting room. Alec put down his briefcase and shut the door behind him. ‘Isn’t that a nice surprise for you?’
He went through the open door, with Laura behind him, and stood there, with his hands in his pockets, smiling down at Daphne.
‘What are you doing here?’
She smiled back at him, tilting her head, so that her earrings bobbed to one side.
‘Just having a little girlish gossip. I had to pick up a parcel at Euston and it seemed a good opportunity. It’s not often I’m in this neck of the woods.’
He stooped to kiss her upturned face. ‘Lovely to see you.’
‘I really came to talk to Laura about Glenshandra.…’
Behind Alec’s back Laura made an agonized face, but Daphne either did not notice this frantic telegram or else was too engrossed in Alec to pay attention, ‘… but she’s just told me that she isn’t going to be able to come.’
In that instant, Laura could have strangled Daphne. Or strangled herself for having been such a fool as to confide in her.
Alec turned and looked at her, frowning and completely at a loss. ‘Not able to come…?’
‘Oh, Daphne, Alec doesn’t know about it yet. At least he didn’t until you told him.’
‘And you wanted to tell him yourself! How ghastly, and now I’ve let the cat out of the bag. Tom’s always telling me I talk too much. I had no idea.…’
‘I told you. I only saw the doctor this afternoon!’
‘I didn’t know you were going to see the doctor,’ said Alec.
‘I didn’t want to tell you. Until I’d been. Until I knew. I didn’t want you to be worrying.…’ To her horror she heard the break in her own voice. But Alec heard it too and came to her rescue, stemming her distress and confusion.
‘We don’t need to talk about it now, you can tell me later. When Daphne’s gone.’
‘Oh, darling, is that a hint? Does that mean I’ve got to take myself off?’
‘No, of course not. I’m going to have a drink. Let me give you another.’
‘Well’—she cradled her glass in her hand—‘perhaps a tiny one. Not too strong, though, because I’ve got to drive myself home, and Tom will kill me if I bash up the car.’
She went at last. They watched the weaving back view of her car disappear around the curve of the crescent.
‘Hope she doesn’t kill herself,’ said Alec. They went indoors and he shut the door. Laura instantly burst into tears.
Almost as instantly he had his arms around her.
‘Now come along. Calm down. What’s all this about?’
‘I didn’t want her to be the one to tell you. I wanted to tell you myself, when we were having a drink.… I didn’t mean to tell her, but she went on and on about Glenshandra and in the end I couldn’t do anything else…’
‘That doesn’t matter. All that matters is you.… Come along.’ With his arm around her he led her into the sitting room, pushed her gently down where Daphne had sat, and lifted her feet up on to the sofa. The cushion under Laura’s head smelled of Daphne. She couldn’t stop crying.
‘I … kept putting off going to see Doctor Hickley because I didn’t want to be told I’d have to have another operation, and because I thought perhaps everything would sort itself out. But it hasn’t. It’s just got worse.’
Tears were streaming down her face. He sat on the edge of the sofa and gave her the clean linen handkerchief out of his top pocket. She blew her nose, but it didn’t seem to do much good.
‘When have you got to go into hospital?’
‘In a day or two. Doctor Hickley’s going to ring me.…’
‘I’m sorry. But after all, it’s not the end of the world.’
‘It will be if it doesn’t work this time, because if it happens again … she says I’ll have to have a hysterectomy, and I don’t want that to happen. I’m frightened of that happening … I don’t think I could bear it … I want to have a baby … I want to have your baby.…’
She looked up at him, but she could not see his face because it was drowned in her own tears. And then she couldn’t see it, because he had gathered her up into his arms, and her own face was buried against the warm comfort of his shoulder.
He said, ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘That’s what Phyllis said, but we don’t know.’ She wept into his navy-blue, chalk-striped suit. ‘I want to know.’
‘We can’t know everything.’
‘I want a child.…’ I want to give you a child to make up for Gabriel.
Why couldn’t she say it? What was wrong with their marriage that she couldn’t bring herself to say Gabriel’s name? What was wrong with their marriage that Alec never mentioned his daughter, wrote letters to her from the privacy of his office, and, if she ever replied to these letters, kept these a secret from Laura? There shouldn’t be secrets. They should be able to talk about anything, tell each other everything.
It wasn’t even as though she had gone without trace. Upstairs in the attics was her room, filled with her furniture, her toys, her pictures, her desk. On the chest of drawers in Alec’s dressing room stood Gabriel’s photograph, the drawing that she had done for him, proud in its silver frame. Why couldn’t he realize that this refusal to admit even her existence was creating a void between them that Laura was incapable of crossing?
She sighed deeply and pulled away from him, and lay back on the pillow, hating herself for crying so much, for looking hideous, for being so unhappy. His handkerchief was already sodden with her grief. She tugged viciously at its hemstitched corner. She said, ‘If I can’t give you a child, I can’t give you anything.’
Being Alec, he came out with no comforting cliché. But after a little he said, in a marvellously normal way, ‘Have you had a drink?’
Laura shook her head.
‘I’ll get you a brandy.’ He stood up and went out of the room. She heard him moving around the kitchen. Lucy, disturbed by his presence, got out of her basket. Laura heard the scratch of her claws on the linoleum. Then she came into the room and ran to jump up into Laura’s lap. She licked Laura’s face and, tasting salt tears, licked it again. She curled up and went back to sleep. Laura blew her nose again and pushed a straggling lock of dark hair away from her face. Alec returned with whisky for himself and a little glass of brandy for Laura. He gave it to her and pulled up a low stool and sat facing her. He smiled and she smiled back, feebly.
‘Better?’
She nodded.
‘The brandy’s medicinal,’ he told her. She took a mouthful and felt it slip, burning, down her throat and into her stomach. Its strength was comforting.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’ll talk about Glenshandra. Doctor Hickley says you’re not to come?’
‘She says I can’t.’
‘And there’s no question of the operation being postponed?’
Laura shook her head.
‘In that case we’ll have to call Glenshandra off.’
She took a deep breath. ‘That’s what I really don’t want. I really don’t want you not to go.’
‘But I can’t leave you here alone.’
‘I—I thought we could get a
nurse in or something. I know Mrs Abney couldn’t manage by herself, but we could perhaps get somebody to help her.’
‘Laura, I couldn’t leave you here.’
‘I knew you’d say that. I just knew you’d say that.’
‘Well, what did you expect me to say? Laura, Glenshandra doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter. You know it matters.’ She began to cry again, and there was no way she could stop the flood of tears. ‘You look forward to it all year, it’s your holiday, you have to go. And the others…’
‘They’ll understand.’
She thought of Daphne’s face of horror, Daphne saying, Does that mean Alec can’t come?
‘They won’t understand. They’ll just think I’m being as useless and boring about this as they do about everything else.’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘I want you to go. I want you to. Don’t you realize that’s why I’m so miserably upset, because I know I’m ruining everything for you?’
‘You can’t go into hospital and have an operation if you’re in this state.’
‘Then think of something. Phyllis said you’d be able to think of something.’
‘Phyllis?’
‘I went to see her this afternoon. After Doctor Hickley. I thought I’d ask her if I could go and stay with her when I come out of hospital, because I thought if you knew I was with her, then you’d go to Glenshandra, but she can’t have me because she’s going to Florence. She says she’ll put it off, but I can’t let her do that…’
‘No, of course we can’t let her do that.’
‘I told her it’s the first time in my life I wished I had a family of my own. A real family, with masses of close relations. I’ve never wished that before. I wish I still had a cosy mother, and I could go and stay with her and she’d put hot-water bottles in my bed.’
She looked at him to see if he was smiling at this useless fancy, but he was not smiling. He said gently, ‘You haven’t got a family, but I have.’
Laura thought about this, and then said, with a notable lack of enthusiasm, ‘You mean Chagwell?’
He laughed. ‘No. Not Chagwell. I love my brother and his wife and their brood of children very much, but Chagwell is a house where you can stay only if you are in the rudest of health.’
Laura felt relieved. ‘I’m glad you said that, and not me.’
He said, ‘You could go to Tremenheere.’
‘Where’s Tremenheere?’
‘Cornwall. The very end of Cornwall. Heaven on earth. An old Elizabethan manor and a view of the bay.’
‘You sound like a travel agent. Who lives there?’
‘Gerald and Eve Haverstock. He’s my uncle, and she’s a darling.’
Laura remembered. ‘They sent us crystal wineglasses for a wedding present.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And a sweet letter.’
‘Right again.’
‘And he’s a retired admiral?’
‘Who didn’t get married until he was sixty.’
‘What a complicated family you have.’
‘But all charming. Like me.’
‘When were you at this place … Tremenheere?’ The word was difficult to say, especially after a neat brandy.
‘When I was a boy. Brian and I spent a summer holiday there.’
‘But I’ve never met them. Gerald and Eve, I mean.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘We don’t even know if they can have me to stay.’
‘I’ll ring them later on and fix it.’
‘What if they say no?’
‘They won’t say no, but if they do, we’ll think of something else.’
‘I’ll be a nuisance.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘How would I get there?’
‘I’ll drive you down once you’re out of hospital.’
‘You’ll be at Glenshandra.’
‘I shan’t go to Glenshandra until you’re safely delivered. Like a parcel.’
‘You’ll miss some of your holiday. Some of the fishing.’
‘That won’t kill me.’
She had finally run out of objections. Tremenheere was a compromise, but it was at least a plan. It would mean meeting new people, living in a stranger’s house, but as well it meant that Phyllis would go to Florence and Alec would go to Scotland.
She turned her head on the cushion and looked at him, sitting there, with his drink cradled between his knees. She saw his thick hair, black, streaked with white, like silver fox fur. His face, not conventionally handsome, but arresting and distinguished, the sort of face that seen once could never be forgotten. She saw his tallness, easily disposed upon the low stool, his long legs spread, his hands clasped loosely around his glass. She looked into his eyes, which were dark as her own, and he smiled, and her heart turned over.
He is, after all, a very attractive man.
Phyllis had said, Can you see a man of Alec’s integrity having an affair with his best friend’s wife? But how Daphne would love having him at Glenshandra on his own.
The thought filled Laura with a pain that was ludicrous, because she had spent the last half hour persuading him to go. Ashamed of herself, filled with love for Alec, she put out her hand, and he took it in his own.
‘If Gerald and Eve say they can have me, and if I say that I’ll go, you promise you’ll go to Scotland.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘That is what I want, Alec.’
He bent his head and kissed the palm of her hand and closed her fingers around the kiss as though it were some precious gift.
She said, ‘I probably wouldn’t be much good at fishing anyway … and you won’t have to spend all your time trying to teach me.’
‘There’ll be another year.’
Another year. Perhaps in another year, everything would be better.
‘Tell me about Tremenheere.’
4
TREMENHEERE
THE DAY HAD BEEN PERFECT. Long, hot, sun-soaked. The tide was out, and the beach, viewed from the sea, where Eve, after an energetic swim, drifted blissfully on the rise and fall of gathering waves, revealed itself as a curve of cliff, a sickle of rocks, and then the wide, clean sweep of the sand.
It was, for this particular beach, crowded. Now, at the end of July, the holiday season was at its peak and the scene was littered with bright spots of colour: bathing towels and striped windbreaks; children in scarlet and canary-yellow bathing suits; sun umbrellas and huge, inflatable rubber balls. Overhead, gulls swooped and screamed, perched on the clifftops, dived to devour the flotsam of a hundred picnics, dropped in the sand. Their screams were matched by human cries, which, across the distance, pierced the air. Boys playing football, mothers shrieking at wayward toddlers, the happy screams of a girl being mobbed by a couple of youths who appeared to be trying to drown her.
The sea at first had seemed icy, but the swim had got her circulation going and now she was aware only of a marvellous, invigorating, salty coolness. She lay on her back and watched the cloudless sky, her mind empty of anything save the physical perfection of now.
I am fifty-eight, she reminded herself, but had long since decided that one of the good things about being fifty-eight was the fact that one took time to appreciate the really marvellous moments that still came one’s way. They weren’t happiness, exactly. Years ago, happiness had ceased to pounce, unawares, with the reasonless ecstacy of youth. They were something better. Eve had never much liked being pounced on, by happiness or anything else. It had always frightened and disconcerted her to be taken unawares.
Lulled, as though in a cradle, by the movement of the sea, she let herself be gently washed ashore by the incoming tide. Now, the waves gathered their puny momentum, curved into shallow breakers. Her hands touched sand. Another wave, and she lay, beached, letting the incoming tide flow over her body, and after the depths in which she had been swimming, the water now felt actually warm.
/> That was it. It was over. There was no time for more. She got to her feet and walked up onto the blistering sand towards the outcrop of rock where she had left her thick white towel robe. She picked up the robe and pulled it on, felt it warm against the cold wetness of her shoulders and arms. She tied the sash, pushed her feet into thong sandals, started the long walk up towards the narrow footpath that led to the clifftop and the car park.
It was nearly six o’clock. The first of the holiday people were starting to pack up, the children, reluctant, protesting, howling with exhaustion and too much sun. Some people were already well tanned, but others, who had perhaps arrived only yesterday or the day before, were boiled pink as lobsters and were in for a couple of days of agony and peeling shoulders before they could safely venture out again. They never learned. It happened every hot summer, and the doctors’ surgeries were filled with them, sitting in rows with flaming faces and blistered backs.
The cliff path was steep. At the top, Eve paused for breath, turning back to look at the sea, framed between two bastions of rock. Inshore, over the sand it was as green as jade, but farther out lay a ribbon of the most intense indigo blue. The horizon was hazed in lavender, the sky azure.
A young family caught up with her, the father carrying the toddler, the mother dragging the older child by the hand. He was in tears. ‘I don’t want to go ’ome termorrer. I want to stay ’ere for another week. I want to stay ’ere forever.’
Eve caught the young mother’s eye. She was close to exasperation. Eve could identify with her. She remembered being that age, with Ivan, a stocky little blond boy, clinging to her hand. She could feel his hand, small and dry and rough, in her own. Don’t be angry with him, she wanted to say. Don’t spoil it. Before you know where you are, he’ll be grown up and you’ll have lost him forever. Savour every fleeting moment of your child’s life, even if he does, from time to time, drive you out of your mind.
‘I don’t want to go ’ome.’ The drone continued. The mother made a resigned face in Eve’s direction and Eve smiled back wryly, but her tender heart bled for the lot of them, who tomorrow would have to leave Cornwall and make the long, tedious journey back to London; to crowds, and streets and offices and jobs and buses and the smell of petrol fumes. It seemed grossly unfair that they should have to go and she should stay. She could stay here forever, because this was where she lived.