Some Old Lover's Ghost (18 page)

In the morning, when his mother rose at eleven, Max made her tea and gave her aspirins. She looked old and fragile, her dark, lovely eyes swollen by tears. She drank her tea and said shakily, ‘I’ve been very silly, Max. I am so sorry.’ He took her hand, and then she dressed and they took the dog for a walk.

He caught the late afternoon train back to London. The compartments were full, so he stood in the corridor, looking out of the window, smoking. He was very short of cash – the cheque to Leslie Bates had cleaned out his savings account – and he was aware of a weight of depression that he did not seem able to shift. He knew that his mother was just looking for love. What love his father had been able to give her she had long ago destroyed. She wanted too much, and was constantly disappointed.

Back at 15 Pargeter Street, he was unpacking his overnight bag when there was a knock at the door. He had forgotten that it was Wednesday, and thus Tilda’s German lesson. The sight of her made more raw the pain that he felt. He glanced at the exercise she had prepared, stabbed several red lines through it, and said shortly, ‘If you can’t cope with the past tense of “to be”, then you’re going to find German conversation rather limited.’ He saw her flush.

They were reading
Emil and the Detectives
, chapter by chapter. Tilda read, Max corrected her pronunciation and helped her translate. As she turned the pages, he prowled restlessly around the room, straightening ashtrays, replacing books on the shelf. Her mispronunciations jarred him, and after he rectified them she immediately made the same mistakes again. He said impatiently,
‘For heaven’s sake, Tilda – did you leave your brain at Leo Hastings’ house?’ and he saw her rise from her seat, and begin to pick up her books and pens.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to my room.’ She glanced at him. ‘You’re obviously not in the mood, Max.’

He almost let her go, but realized just in time that if he did he would hate himself. He stopped her before she reached the door. ‘Tilda – please.’

She paused, indecision on her face. ‘You’re right, Max – I can’t concentrate. Let’s forget it.’

He had the suspicion that if he let her walk down those stairs, she would not come back. He saw suddenly how empty his life would become. He ran his hands through his hair, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Tilda – I’ve had a bad day. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, though.’

She hugged her books to her chest. Her grey eyes studied him, waiting for an explanation.

‘I’ve been in Brighton, paying a very large sum of money so that some cad would not marry my mother.’

‘Oh, Max.’ Tilda’s expression altered.

‘I think I’ll just shoot the next one,’ he said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Borrow a rifle, and shoot the blighter. I’d hang for it, but it would be cheaper.’

She didn’t laugh, but dumped the books on an armchair, and put her arms round him. ‘Poor Max.’ Because he couldn’t have borne just to stand there like a dummy, he hugged her back and stroked her hair. In that moment of contact he made the discovery that the touch of someone you love is in itself a comfort. Her touch healed him, it was as simple and as miraculous as that. It was not something he had known before, and because the realization unnerved him, he pulled away from her.

The attic – the bed visible through the adjoining door – seemed just then too small, too full of risk. He said, ‘Shall we give up on the German and go out for a drink?’ and was relieved when she agreed. They went to a pub at the end of the road, with little
patched velvet-covered seats in the saloon bar, and a barrage of noise from the adjoining public room.

He told her about his family. It was as though a gate had opened and all his customary reticence had been drowned by a stronger emotion. ‘I was at school when my parents were divorced. It was a very stuffy school – my father was quite well off at that time. The divorce was in some of the papers. Some of the other boys read about it, and they … well, you can imagine. I thought of running away, but I knew that they’d just haul me back. I learned to pretend that it didn’t matter. I got quite good at that, and after a while, of course, they stopped ragging me. The funny thing is …’ Max stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray ‘… the funny thing is that was when I started thinking about journalism as a career. I saw the power of the press, I suppose. Before the newspaper articles, I’d just been boring Max Franklin, who played a reasonable game of cricket for the House and won the odd prize on Founders’ Day. Afterwards, I was the Max Franklin whose mother was a drunk and a tart. Much more interesting.’

She put her hand on his. ‘Max.’

He smiled. ‘Another drink?’ He rose, and went to the bar. He thought, savagely, waiting in the crush, how dull, to talk so endlessly about yourself. He pushed forward and ordered two more halves. Back at the table, he gave Tilda her glass of cider.

‘Roland told me that your parents are dead, Tilda.’

She nodded. ‘I was brought up by my aunt.’

‘And she died …?’

She shook her head. ‘Aunt Sarah’s still alive, as far as I know.’

He frowned. ‘You don’t write home?’

Her eyes were wide and dark. ‘We haven’t spoken for a year and a half. I had a letter from home this morning. Not from Aunt Sarah, though. She doesn’t know my address.’

He said nothing, just looked at her. After a few moments, she fumbled in her pocket and drew out a folded piece of notepaper.
Though he could not read it, Max glimpsed the writing: strong and black and undisciplined.

‘It’s from Daragh Canavan. I never thought I’d hear from him again.’

The naked pain in her voice seared him. He remembered, a long time ago, Anna saying,
She has a broken heart
.

‘You are in love with him.’

She looked up, and shook her head again. ‘I
was
in love with Daragh. Not any more. He married someone else. My aunt helped to arrange the marriage.’

The journalist in him was curious to ask more, but he sensed how much pain the subject caused her. ‘I suppose the fear that lingers,’ he said tentatively, ‘is that you’ll make just as much of a mess of things as your parents did. Marriage, I mean. Family life … all that.’

‘I sometimes imagine having a family,’ said Tilda. She smiled. ‘A real family. Lots and lots of children and a big, rambling house … and a garden with little paths and ponds with tadpoles.’

‘And bonfires in the autumn. Roasting chestnuts in a log fire.’

She laughed. ‘Max. You old romantic. I’d never have guessed.’

He said, ‘Perhaps if you know what not to do, then you can make a better job of it.’ Another great leap of understanding, he realized. The second in one evening. Max, you old sod, he thought, maybe you’re learning at last.

The light that filtered through the frosted window glass gleamed gold on Tilda’s shoulder-length hair. Her lids were lowered over her calm grey eyes. He would have liked to be an artist, to draw her. He would have liked to caress with his hands, his mouth, his tongue her translucent skin, dusted with tiny golden freckles.

Yet there was the letter, bunched in her hand. ‘What did he want?’

‘Oh.’ She glanced down. ‘To see me. I won’t, of course. I won’t reply.’

Max was aware of a deep and drowning relief.

Jossy liked to watch Caitlin as she slept in her cot, but her daughter’s furious bouts of crying produced in her feelings of panic and inadequacy. She was never sure that she was holding Caitlin the right way, or feeding her the right way, or even talking to her the right way. Caitlin herself reinforced all Jossy’s doubts. In the baby’s rare moments of contentment, Jossy was aware of a pleasure in her company; too often, though, Jossy found herself howling with her daughter, or simply handing over the red-faced, furious thing to Nana or the nursemaid or Daragh. They all seemed so much better at it. She knew that she was failing again, failing in something a woman was supposed to find easy and natural.

She did not at first mind that she and Daragh could not make love. The process of childbirth had been so much worse than her most nightmarish imaginings that, when she had eventually been capable of coherent thought, she had known that she could not bear to go through it again. The brief conversation she had with Dr Williams produced a mixture of embarrassment and relief. But as she recovered, she began to remember, and to miss, what she and Daragh had shared. Before her marriage, she had regarded her body and its mysterious female workings with shame and distaste. Daragh had changed that: he had coaxed such joy from her.

When she was able to squeeze herself back into her evening dresses, Jossy accepted a few invitations out. She and Daragh went to a theatre in London and a restaurant in Cambridge, and then to a cocktail party hosted by an old schoolfriend of Jossy’s. Elsa Gordon was tall and slim and blonde and, although she had two children, her stomach was as flat as a board. Jossy introduced Daragh to Elsa. Elsa, shaking hands with Daragh, registered admiration. Then she turned to look at Jossy, her pale blue eyes inspecting her from top to toe, and she drawled, ‘My, what a frock, Joscelin. So original.’ Jossy, hooking her arm through Daragh’s, felt proud.

Somehow, though, in the course of the evening, her pleasure dissolved. She kept finding Daragh and then losing him. She’d
turn aside to accept a cocktail or receive introductions, and when she looked back he’d have gone. Without Daragh at her side, she felt lost, gawky, uninteresting. She saw that Daragh, unlike her, revelled in these occasions. He moved from group to group, always welcomed, never at a loss for words. He never seemed to scrabble around for a topic of conversation as Jossy did; never seemed to find himself, like Jossy, pinned to the wall by a red-faced colonel, and forced to endure a long monologue about hunting.

Eventually, glancing out of the window, she saw a flicker of movement. Daragh and Elsa Gordon were walking through the moonlit garden. Anger gave her strength, and Jossy said a loud ‘Excuse me’ to the colonel and pushed past him, heading through the crowds to the French doors.

They were standing beside the rose bed. She thought that Elsa’s hand was resting on Daragh’s arm, but in the poor light she could not be sure.

‘I’m tired, Daragh,’ said Jossy.

He looked round. ‘It’s only’ – he glanced at his watch – ‘half past nine.’

‘I want to go home.’

Daragh frowned. Jossy began to march back to the house. When he drew level with her, he hissed in her ear, ‘You’re making me look a fool!’ but she kept on walking.

In the hall, waiting for their coats, she caught sight of their reflections in the looking-glass. Daragh’s good looks were only heightened by anger, but she—

She wore a black lace dress that had been part of her trousseau. Yet she seemed to have changed shape since she had bought it: her bust had flattened and her stomach protruded in spite of her corset, so that her figure was pear-shaped. And she must have caught a heel in the hem, because a length of lace trailed, fraying, at the back of the dress. Her hair had frizzed in the heat of the room.
How original
, Elsa had said, and smiled.

Driving home, leaving the town for the flat, raised roads of the Fens, Jossy said, ‘You were with that woman for hours.’

‘We were talking about the children, that’s all. Elsa has a little girl the same age as Caitlin.’

‘Elsa!’
she shrieked. ‘You’re on first name terms, are you, Daragh?’ The car swerved.

He yanked the steering wheel, straightening the car. ‘God, you’ll have us both killed.’

‘She was laughing at me, Daragh. Did you realize that?’

‘Then you shouldn’t have given her cause to laugh. Running around after me as though I was a puppy-dog and you were tugging the lead.’

Jossy accelerated down the long straight road that led to Southam. ‘I have a right to your company. Elsa Gordon doesn’t. I’m your wife!’

‘I suppose so,’ he muttered. ‘Of sorts.’

She gasped. The lights of the Hall grew out of the darkness. Daragh’s handsome profile was outlined by moonlight. Jossy swung the car up the drive, and parked in front of the house. Her anger dissolved, and tears stung her eyes. She whispered, ‘I know we can’t do
that
any more, but we can still kiss and cuddle—’

‘Mary mother of God. I grew out of that at sixteen.’

She stared at him. He climbed out of the car and slammed the door. Then he looked back at her. ‘Jesus – you didn’t think that you were the first, did you?’

Her silence answered him. He laughed as he strode towards the front door. ‘I’m twenty-six, Jossy. Did you think that I was saving it for marriage?’

‘I
did.’

‘It’s different for a woman.’ He unlocked the front door and started up the stairs.

She wanted to say, How many? Who? but he had gone ahead of her. She ran to catch up with him, and at the top of the stairs she put her arms around him, and pressed her body against his. ‘I love you, Daragh,’ she murmured. ‘All I want is to be with you.’ The warmth of him, the scent of him – a mingling of the slight salty smell of sweat and the cologne that he wore – made
her drunk with delight and despair. Sometimes, when he was away, she went to his room and opened his wardrobe, and clutched the lapel of an overcoat, or the sleeve of a cashmere sweater, breathing in his familiar perfume.

When he pulled away, she followed after him, her high heels clacking on the floorboards, the fallen hem of her dress picking up dust. At the nursery door he turned back to her. ‘I’m going to London for a few days.’

‘I’ll pack some things.’

‘No, I’m going on my own, Jossy. Business. It’ll only take a day or two. One of us needs to be here for Caitlin.’

In the nursery, she saw the expression on Daragh’s face when he looked down at the sleeping child in the cradle. She realized with a sudden stab of pain that he had never looked at her like that. Never.

He came to her, as she had known he would. When she arrived home one day after work, Emily intercepted her and hissed in her ear,
‘Daragh
’s in our room! I gave him a cup of tea. I couldn’t think what else to do.’