Garden of Stars (20 page)

“I don't think so. I think I was perfectly composed,” Sarah replied, concentrating on keeping her voice neutral.

“Well, it's good that you're back,” continued Natalie breezily, seeming oblivious to any problem. “Hugo has been absolutely marvellous, he's really kept the show on the road. But it's too much to expect him to do it all, with so much on his plate at work.”

He's only done what I do every day of the bloody year. And what about the importance of my work?

“I'm sure he couldn't have done any of it without you, mum.”

Everyone perceived Hugo as so perfect, just as Inês's John had always been viewed. But who knew what a spouse was really like, except for the person married to them? And who should judge another person's feelings?

Sarah went into the sitting room, switched the overhead light on and turned the dimmer up full. “Now, where is my other baby?”

Ruby was hiding under the cushions, giggling with relief that mummy was back. Sarah jumped onto the sofa, grabbed her and kissed her. Soon both girls were on top of her, laughing and screaming. She buried her face in their hair, their necks, breathing in the delicious earthy, human smell of them, drinking in their love.

And wondering what else Hugo might have said to her mother about Scott.

Hearing Hugo's key in the door at around 10pm, Sarah went to welcome him, a cold glass of beer waiting for him on the kitchen table. He hugged her briefly and enquired after her journey home. He seemed distracted, preoccupied with something. It didn't take long for Sarah to find out with what.

“Sarah, have you got something to tell me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something about what happened between you and your boyfriend.” The word ‘boyfriend' was heavy with sarcasm.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Hugo's about turn from the casual indifference of a few days ago to his current mood of querulous jealousy was hard to fathom.

Absolutely nothing happened, she reassured herself. I only kissed him. That's all.

“I rang the hotel.” Hugo had clearly intended to spin it out further, but couldn't resist launching straight in.

“Which hotel?”

“The hotel in Lisbon.”

“Oh. Why? My mobile was on all the time.” Sarah automatically put her hand in her pocket and pulled out her phone, as if proving to him by doing so that she was always available.

“I couldn't get hold of you on it and I wanted to know when you were leaving.” Hugo's dark-rimmed eyes held hers defiantly, and his voice was hard.

“I see. I left at about eleven-thirty on Sunday, as planned. I don't remember seeing any missed calls from you. Anyway, we spoke when I was on the motorway.”

Hugo ignored this point. “I know when you left. The hotel told me. But what they also told me, which you didn't, is that he left with you.”

“Who did?”

“
Scott
.”

“Scott?” Sarah repeated his name with a casual air that belied the sliding fear running through her veins.

“Yes, Scott. Who else? It was a bit of a shock to find that you'd gone off together.”

“Gone off together is a bit of an exaggeration, and I'm sure that's not what the hotel said.” Sarah was flannelling wildly, playing for time. “I gave him a lift to the airport, he was flying home. I was heading to Porto; it wasn't out of my way, and it seemed like a nice thing to do.”

“Couldn't he have got a cab?”

“Of course he could have got a cab. But I offered him a lift. What's wrong with that?” She had been hurt when Hugo had not reacted at all to the fact that she was meeting Scott. Now that he was reacting, it was even harder to deal with. “Hugo, I think you're blowing this up out of all proportion.”

Since when had she found it so easy to lie? Or at least, to be so economical with the absolute truth. “And if it was such a big deal – why didn't you mention it when you called me in the car?”

“I hadn't had time to think it through then.”

There was a long silence. Defending herself was making her seem defensive, Sarah realised, which in turn made it seem that she had something to be defensive about. She poured the rest of the beer into his glass.

“Have some more! It's been a long day.”

Hugo drank noisily and then put the glass down again. A film of froth covered the sides. “Look, I'm sorry. I was just a bit confused by what the guy said, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it.”

Hugo's shoulders had slumped downward and he sat down, letting his head drop. It was as if the fight had suddenly gone out of him, leaving him contrite and beaten.

Sarah rubbed her hand across her eyes, suddenly feeling overcome with tiredness. “Let's just forget about it, shall we?”

“Give me a kiss then, to make up.” Hugo held out his arms to her. “My beautiful Sarah. I've missed you so much.”

She responded with a hug. As she walked behind him out of the kitchen and up the stairs, she wished with all her heart that she could echo his sentiment.

That it was the man she had married whom she believed herself to truly, wholly love, and not the man she had let slip through her fingers.

Lying in bed, sleepless, her thoughts went back to the journal. Inês had been married, but found herself drawn to someone else, not because John was awful or abusive or unattractive, but just because these things happen when you are neglected, your needs ignored, and a kindred spirit comes into your orbit and sets your world spinning in a whole new direction. How much even more so when you had a history with that person, a relationship that had never reached a ‘natural' end? But Inês had resisted temptation – as she herself had, Sarah reminded herself – and that proved that it was the right thing to do and that she must do more of it, better and with greater effort.

16

Walking to Inês's house the next day, girls in tow, Sarah wondered whether she should question her about the journal. Somehow it felt wrong to until she had finished it. And anyway, what would she ask? Did you love your English tutor or just fancy him? What were your feelings for John? Was the fact that you couldn't get pregnant the real problem? She could not demean Inês with questions of such utter crassness.

“I'm so thrilled to see you,” Inês said, as soon as they arrived. “I've been dealing with correspondence all morning and I'm thoroughly tired of it.”

Sarah loved the English she spoke, so measured and antiquated, using words such as ‘correspondence' and ‘frock' and never shortening ‘telephone' to ‘phone'. She felt even closer to Inês than ever before, perhaps from knowing that Inês was not, in fact, perfect, some kind of saint, someone who stood apart from others with her righteousness. She was just an ordinary person, albeit one with uncommon wisdom and grace, with the same flaws as everyone else.

A loud clattering on the stairs and the dramatic flinging open of the drawing room door precluded further conversation. The brass door handle thudded jarringly as it made contact with the wall and Sarah winced at the thought of the dent in the paintwork that it would create. But Inês merely raised her head calmly, looking towards the source of all the noise, just as a dishevelled figure in an old black donkey jacket came into sight on the threshold and stood there, brandishing a muddy garden trowel.

“Billy!” exclaimed Sarah. “You gave us a shock, appearing out of nowhere like that.” She paused, taking in the trowel that was shedding clods of earth onto the polished wooden floor. As she spoke, another brown, clayish lump dropped slowly down and landed with a dull thump. “I'm not sure that you should be up here with that filthy thing – it's making quite a mess. And what are you doing here so late, anyway? You usually go home at four, don't you?”

“Sarah!” Inês's voice was sharp. “Billy's welcome anytime.”

Before Sarah could say anything in response to this unexpected reprimand, or react to Inês's uncharacteristically harsh tone of voice, Inês had gestured to Billy to come closer. “What's the matter, Billy?” she asked, the words tender and soothing.

“Broken,” he replied. “Trowel broken!” He sat down on the sofa next to Sarah, frowning at the trowel and shaking his head, as if disappointed at how it had let him down.

Sarah took it from him and began to examine it whilst she thought about what to say next. She hadn't meant anything by her remark about the time, but on the other hand she couldn't deny that she sometimes felt Billy was a little over-familiar. He had learning difficulties that were largely undefined but that Sarah understood to be the result of lack of oxygen during a traumatic birth. John had employed him to tend the 130-foot garden behind the house as a Saturday boy, and then full-time once he had left school, and Inês had kept him on ever since even though the garden was not really big enough to justify it, saying that she couldn't think who else would ever give him work, that anyway she liked having someone else about the place and that she felt a moral duty towards him. Sarah assumed these were the same reasons why Inês gave him so much leeway.

And she had to admit that he was unfailingly kind to Honor and Ruby, who didn't seem to notice what he lacked intellectually. Neither did the plants in the garden for he had a green-fingered ability to grow anything and everything. He was always busy, if not actually tending the plants, then working in the garage at the bottom of the garden, a big pot of strong tea by his side. He spent hours potting up trays of seedlings and cuttings and making brightly painted wooden spinning tops, all of which he donated to local fundraising events and charity shops. He could coax almost any plant to bloom, from roses to orchids, and construct almost anything out of wood, from picture frames to simple pieces of furniture.

“Show me what the problem is, Billy,” Sarah asked him now, gesturing towards the trowel, although she could already see that the handle had started to detach from the front part and was about to sever completely. Billy pointed to the fractured joint and shook his head again. “Broken. Need new one.”

“I see what you mean. You definitely do need a new one. I'll order one for you on express delivery and you should have it in a day. How does that sound?”

“Thank you,” he replied, the anxious wrinkles around his eyes and furrows in his brow smoothing out and disappearing. And then, abruptly, “Bye.”

“Bye, Billy,” replied Inês. “Take care, my dear.”

Sarah tried to give the muddy trowel back to him, but he waved his hand at it disparagingly, saying “No, broken” twice over. Then his familiar shuffling gait signified his departure from the room and Sarah and Inês were alone with the quietly playing girls once more.

“Poor Billy,” said Inês, in a flat tone of voice that was as unfamiliar to Sarah as her cross one of earlier. “Sometimes he gets very flustered about things for what seems to be no reason – but still – it's nice for me to have him around. You and he are all I have now. And my dear – you dealt with him very nicely. Thank you for your patience.” It was as though Inês was trying to make up for snapping at Sarah earlier.

“Well, I don't know about that, I think it was luck rather than judgement. You're very good to him, Inês, employing him for all these years; most people aren't nearly so tolerant and understanding.”

As she spoke, Ruby appeared beside her and started to pull at her leg, complaining that she was bored. Attempting to distract her, Sarah crouched down and pushed a bright red toy car with one wheel missing towards the middle of the room. It skidded lopsidedly along until it collided with a discarded doll. As Ruby ran after it, Sarah turned back to Inês.

“But I am a bit worried that he's going to give you a heart attack one day, barging in out of the blue like that. Would you like me to speak to him about it?”

“No!” Inês's voice was brittle, and she had pulled herself upright in her chair. “That is not necessary at all.”

Inês's immaculate English once more, precise and deliberate, the language of the Queen,
Brief Encounter
and the BBC. When she had had enough of a subject, it was clear in every perfectly enunciated syllable.

“There are things about Billy that you don't understand yet.”

Sarah was engulfed by guilt and embarrassment; she'd been talking about Billy as if he were a child, or even worse, sounding as if she herself were, and was childishly jealous of the attention that Inês gave to him. She noticed that Inês's face seemed to have sunk during the discussion, her creased eyelids drooping lower over irises that had imperceptibly dulled; her bent and twisted hands so tiny against the elaborate fringes of the shawl that lay across her shoulders. Sarah bustled around, overly-busily, making tea and tidying photo frames on side tables that were already perfectly in place, trying to dissipate the tension through unnecessary activity.

“Sit down, Sarah,” said Inês, softly.

Sarah sat, an antimaccassar that she had taken off to put right still in her hand.

“You have something on your mind, don't you?”

Sarah felt her stomach muscles tighten and her throat constrict.

“I know that you're keeping something from me.” Inês had a knack of getting straight to the point and could make searching questions sound as if she were merely asking the time. “Would you like to tell?”

She sat silently, hands folded in her lap, head slightly to one side, watching Sarah with an expectant air.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders as if admitting defeat and laughed over-brightly. She had wished for Inês's counsel so recently, but now the opportunity to talk had come, she felt tongue-tied and embarrassed.

“It's nothing really. But you asked me if I would see anyone I knew in Lisbon and I said no. But I did. I saw Scott.” She took a deep breath. “It was quite by chance. He was staying in the same hotel, attending a conference, you know, a work jolly – there were lots of his colleagues there. He just appeared by the side of the swimming pool on my first evening.”