Biarritz Passion: A French Summer Novel (6 page)

‘No, no thanks all the same,’ said Caroline hurriedly, ‘I’m going to tak
e a pill and try to sleep. Only—would you do me an enormous favour? Could you phone through to Jen and let her know? I just can’t face getting into a load of explanations, you know what she’s like, she’ll probably have a nervous breakdown. Just ask her to tidy things away, I’ll be in tomorrow as usual.’

‘Now you listen to me,’ said Rita warmly, ‘I’m going over there in person and I’ll tell them you won’t be back until after the holiday, and they can just get their fingers out for a change. It’s nearly time for their annual review isn’t it? That should concentrate their minds a bit.’

Caroline opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. She agreed to let Rita handle things, promised faithfully to ring her if she needed anything, and rang off.

Tears had come into her eyes at Rita’s concern. Now they rolled down her cheeks, and into the neck of her blouse. She sat there for ages, incapable of moving. She felt numb, her mind was a blank. Her burst of energy, her new resolutions, seemed like a dream. An insidious little thought popped into her head.

Is this as good as it gets?

It was midday before Caroline awoke. She lay in bed, thinking about what had happened the previous day. The misery of the long grey afternoon, lying on the sofa with the TV on, she couldn’t even remember the programmes, thoughts churning round and round endlessly in her head. The article she had read in a magazine: ‘Are
you
suffering from depression?’

She had thrown it on the floor, burying her head in the cushions. Was she depressed, seriously depressed that is, instead of just going through a fit of the blues? Maybe she needed to see her doctor. Maybe she couldn’t do it on her own. She thought of calling Jill, then decided against it. She was tired of trying to make sense of things. In the evening she had given in, taken a sleeping pill and dragged herself off to bed, her only desire to fall into oblivion, to sleep and sleep and stop the weary treadmill of her thoughts.

Today was Thursday. A new day. No work. She should have felt guilty but instead she felt strangely calm. It was as if the worst had passed, the storm blown over. As she wandered into the kitchen she noticed a patch of sunlight on the floor. The rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Somewhere, a blackbird was singing. She stood by the window blinking.

Looking out at the freshly washed leaves of the trees she felt a lift in her spirits. Where did that come from? Maybe it was the ray of sunshine, a little finger of hope. She came to a sudden decision. She would leave for Willowdale right away. Just pack her bag and g
o. If anyone phoned from work she would say that she had spent the day lying in a dark room and had switched off the phone. To hell with work, it was time to think like Sheryl for once in her life.

An hour later she was packed and ready. She took a last glance round the flat, noticed the unwashed plate and cup on the kitchen side, and with a shrug decided she would see to them when she got back. Pulling the door shut behind her with a feeling of relief, Caroline headed for the car.

There was plenty of traffic during the first part of the journey. She had to give all her attention to the road but was glad of the distraction. Once the motorway was behind her the number of cars diminished and she slowed to a more leisurely pace, enjoying the fresh green of the hedgerows, the cotton-candy cherry blossoms in the gardens of the village houses she passed. The clouds had disappeared, giving way to a sky the colour of a robin’s egg. What was it they said about English weather? Four seasons in every day.

At Amesbury she took a break, enjoying a cup of tea and a scone in a quiet tea-room off the main street. On her way back to the car she stopped at a florist where she bought a bouquet of roses and freesias. The roses would soon be coming into bloom at Willowdale, but Margaret adored flowers, the more the better.

Turning off the main road and heading for the village of Ravensfield, Caroline recognised with pleasure the familiar sights of her childhood, the countryside opening up in a pleasantly undulating perspective of tree-dotted meadows, the occasional church steeple rising from a huddle of rooftops.

At the entry to the village the road branched. Caroline slowed and took the left hand fork leading towards Willowdale Farm. In spite of the name, it hadn’t been a farm for years now; the land had been sold off long ago, leaving the main house flanked by a barn and a couple of stables. At the bend she caught a glimpse of the mellow stone at the back of the house and felt the blend of nostalgia and contentment that always came when she returned to the home s
he had known for so many years.

She turned into the drive, a little too over-grown these days, but Margaret and Birdie couldn’t afford a permanent gardener. As she finally came to a halt and switched off the engine, she felt herself beginning to relax for the first time in what seemed like weeks of tenseness and irritability.

She sat for a moment enjoying the silence, staring at the honey-coloured walls hung with thick-trunked wisteria. Then the French windows were pushed open and she heard voices and loud barking. Cameras roll, she thought with a smile.

She had scarcely time to get out of the car before they were all out on the terrace, coming down the steps to meet her, Titus leading the way, wagging his rear end frantically and barking joyfully. Behind him, Birdie helped Aunt Margaret, while at the same time shouting at Titus to stop his ‘infernal racket’ and exhorting Margaret to ‘watch where she put her feet’. Five years younger than her friend, Birdie had suffered remarkably little from the ravages of time. Her stout upright
figure, clad in summer tweeds, as opposed to the winter ones she wore from October to March, advanced resolutely towards the car, supporting with rocklike firmness the frailer figure of her friend, leaning heavily on a stick.

‘Caroline darling! What a wonderful surprise! We thought you were at work today! How are you my dear? Was the drive alright? Not too much traffic?’

‘Everything was fine. How are you both? Down Titus!’

She gave her aunt and Birdie more hugs and kisses than usual, affected by their enthusiastic welcome, and bent to pat the portly Labrador which was now pawing repeatedly at her foot. Titus covered her hand in grateful slobber and recommenced barking.

‘That wretched animal! He was never properly trained!’

Aunt Margaret, uttering these words, gave a sly glance at Birdie, who had been foolish enough to assert, when Titus was a puppy, that she would turn him into a model of obedience in six weeks. All it needed was a firm hand. Margaret of course had never let her forget her rash promise.

As they moved indoors Birdie winked at Caroline and shot a long-suffering look heavenwards from behind her aunt’s back. Caroline smiled at the pantomime. It had been the same for years, but she wouldn’t have had anything different for the world. It was not just the reassurance of comfortable, unchanged routine; it was also Birdie’s way of signalling that her Aunt was in good mental shape, happily irascible, taking an interest in things and interfering in the affairs of others with wholehearted relish.

‘Tea will be ready in five minutes,’ she announced, settling Margaret into the straight-backed wing chair where she habitually sat. ‘You must be dying of thirst
—I’m sure you didn’t stop.’

Caroline had never managed to convince either of them that the drive to Ravensfield did not necessitate survival supplies and a
flask of brandy. As Birdie bustled off to the kitchen, Caroline flopped gratefully into a fat upholstered armchair facing her aunt. A log fire crackled in the hearth, its warmth welcome despite the sunshine outside.

‘Oh, you don’t know how lovely it is to be here Auntie M!’

Caroline’s words were so heartfelt that Margaret sat up straighter and scrutinised her niece. There was no doubt about it, she had lost even more weight since her Easter visit; she was paler too, her skin almost translucent, the freckles across her nose and cheeks more noticeable, the dark eyes enormous.

‘My dear, you know only too well that you’re welcome here any time. We’d love to have you come and stay every single weekend.’

‘I know. It’s not that I don’t want to, or that the drive is too long. It’s just that, you know how it is when you work all week, you always seem to have so many things to catch up with at the weekend.’

Margaret thought of her niece’s immaculate flat. She had always hated any kind of mess, her bedroom as a child had been a model of tidiness. Inwardly she sighed, wondering yet again just how Caroline occupied her solitary weekends.

‘And how is work, dear?’

She didn’t miss the shadow which passed quickly across Caroline’s face.

‘Work! Auntie, you should know the answer better than I do after devoting your entire life to Her Majesty’s Civil Service Overseas! Bureaucracy bureaucracy bureaucracy.’

‘Things were different in my time,’ said Margaret firmly. ‘There wasn’t as much red tape then, believe it or not. We’re supposed to have modernised and cut back dead wood and this and that and what have we got? An army of public servants. It’s all this European nonsense.’

She scowled. Margaret was a staunch Eurosceptic who believed that Brussels was an invention of the devil.

‘All those people claiming scandalous expenses for simply turning up and showing their faces in the European Parliament! There was a photograph in the paper the other day, do you know, one of the so-called Members was on his phone, the chap next to him was asleep and the woman next to him was showing her neighbour a bunch of photographs! And who do you think pays their salaries?’

‘But Auntie, what about all those extravagant Embassy balls and receptions you told me about, who paid for them?’

Caroline liked to play devil’s advocate. Her aunt gave her a suspicious look, then smiled.

‘I know, I know. All the foreign travel, the social life, I admit I loved it. Of course I never did sympathise with all those privileged ex-pats moaning about the servant problem, but I can’t deny it was exciting, you got out and about, met so many interesting people. And plenty of boring ones too,’ she added as an afterthought.

Caroline laughed.

‘I bet I could outdo you on the subject of bores,’ she said. ‘Honestly, some of the people I work with…’

‘How did you manage to get an extra day off work?’

The question caught her unawares.

‘An extra day? Oh, you mean today
.’

She floundered around for a plausible excuse, then decided to confess.

‘Frankly Auntie M, I couldn’t stand the place a minute longer. I left yesterday morning with a splitting headache and decided not to go back until after the holiday.’

She leaned back in her chair, with a look half-guilty, half-defiant.

Margaret blinked in surprise. Her niece skipping off work? That was a first.

She leaned forward and
took a good look at Caroline over the top of her glasses.

‘Hmmm. I knew it. You’re under the weather. I thought as much. You’re far too pale and you’re obviously not eating enough. What’s wrong Caroline?’

The sudden concern in her aunt’s voice brought tears of self-pity to Caroline’s eyes. She blinked them back, furious with herself. How ridiculous, a frail old lady of eighty, half-crippled with arthritis, worrying about a perfectly healthy young woman. She sat up straight and cleared her throat.

‘There’s ab
solutely nothing to worry about. Really.’

She tried to keep her tone nonchalant.

‘It’s just tiredness, you know how it is. I’ve been busy at work. It’s the kind of job where you tend to get too involved, take the problems home with you…’ she stared for a minute at the leaping flames in the fireplace. ‘And then before you know it you’re feeling sorry for yourself, wondering what the point is, doing the same thing day after day without ever stopping to really think and take stock.’

She raised her eyes to her aunt’s and met a sudden look of comprehension. She sighed. Aunt Margaret never missed a thing.

‘Truth be told, I’ve had the feeling these last few weeks that life is passing me by. That there must be something else out there. Something with more meaning. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, I’m not even thirty yet. Maybe I’m going through a mid-life crisis ten years early?’

‘My dear, dear, child.’

Caroline smiled at the ‘child’ but her eyes misted over.

‘I understand.’

The voice was soft. Something in the tone, a slight hesitation, made Caroline prick up her ears. Margaret continued:

‘I had hoped,
when you met your young man, Liam, I mean, that you’d maybe decide to make things permanent, start a family, give up your job even, oh I know it would just be temporary, that’s the way things are these days, you young women like to have your family and your career, though how people manage to juggle the two I don’t know.’

Caroline remained silent, gazing into the fire.

‘It’s just, if you leave things too late...what I mean to say is, having followed a career myself for so long I know that it can take you over and before you know it you find yourself growing old, and discover that you’re alone.’

She waved a hand at Caroline’s movement of surprise.

‘Oh, I was lucky. I was saved by you. And Annabel. I acquired a family, ready-made. But that wouldn’t have happened without your parents’ accident. Without that tragedy, where would I be now? In some retirement home, or living with Birdie in a utility flat, reminiscing about the old days over a gin and tonic every evening? The problem with you and me Caroline, we both share the same fault, we’re too stiff-necked. We had to learn to stand on our own two feet the hard way, and now we’ve come to expect the same high standard from everyone else. And when they fail to live up to that standard, which of course they do, we persuade ourselves that we don’t really need anyone else anyway, that we can take on the world single-handed. Which of course we can’t.’

She paused.

‘I never did tell you about James, did I?’

‘James?’

‘It was back in the 1950s. I was young, just starting out on my career. They had offered me a posting in Aden, the Colony of Aden as it was called then. It was all so strange, so exotic, I’d grown up in this little village, it was a different world out there, another planet. And the whole region, the Middle East, it was simmering, things were about to erupt, everyone knew it. There was feverishness, everyone out to have fun while they could, the balls, the receptions, we knew it was all coming to an end. And that’s when I met James. At the Embassy. There was a dance, an orchestra, the windows were open, the scent of the flowers coming in on the warm breeze…’