Some Old Lover's Ghost (51 page)

‘And what on earth do you think gives you the right to walk in here, uninvited, and criticize the way I live? We haven’t all been to a smart school, you know … We don’t all have a private income—’

He said mildly, ‘I left school at fifteen, actually. My parents were
tailors in the East End. The war helped me – I wasn’t fit enough for active service, so I went into a unit which made stirring little films that were meant to keep up morale on the home front. You know the sort of thing – “With root vegetables, we can win the war” … “Make your saucepans into ack-ack guns.’” Archie blinked. ‘After the war, I worked for the Central Office of Information, but then I couldn’t stand it any more – too patronizing – so I left to go freelance. And as for my right to come here … well, I thought that I was your friend.’

‘I don’t have friends, Archie. I haven’t time for friends.’ Her voice was brittle.

This time, the silence lasted longer. Then he said slowly, ‘No … I would imagine that you keep everyone at arm’s length. You’re very good at that, aren’t you, Tilda? It took me weeks to pluck up courage to speak to you the first time, and then – well, I hardly know any more about you now than I did six months ago. I understand that you’re not attracted to me. I wasn’t expecting that. But friendship would have been nice.’

He picked up his hat and gloves. She said, and the words trembled, ‘Archie, you don’t understand. You don’t know anything about me.’

His smile was fleeting. ‘That’s the thing, isn’t it? You made sure of that, didn’t you? It’s been like trying to get to know an icicle.’

He left the house and she went back to the washing-up. But one of the plates slipped from her hand on the journey from sink to draining board, and smashed on the tiled floor. Tilda stared at the shattered pieces for a moment and then she ran upstairs. In the bathroom, she splashed cold water over her face, but her reflection – red eyes, peeling nose, dark shadows – told her that Archie had been right: she looked terrible. Old and plain, with lines of bitterness and loneliness and disappointment beginning to extend from nose to mouth. She sat on the living-room sofa, her coat around her shoulders, and wondered whether Archie had been right, too, in the other things that he had said. Whether she was indeed cold and unapproachable; whether she had learned to wall
herself off from other people. Whether Melissa had left because her mother had changed, had become unloving and distant.

She mopped her eyes and found pen and ink and writing paper. She began the letter,
My dear Max …

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

I was wakened by my doorbell ringing repeatedly. I staggered out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown, and opened the front door an inch.

‘God, Charles—’ I said. ‘It’s
Sunday.’

‘I’ve had a marvellous idea,’ he said. ‘But first, these.’ His arms were full of croissants and Sunday papers and cartons of orange juice. He squinted at me. ‘You don’t look well, old thing.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said weakly, letting him in.

‘Good-oh. Then I’ll make coffee.’

I was quietly sick in the bathroom while he messed around in the kitchen. ‘You all right?’ he said, when I came out. He was looking at me closely; his expression was unsettling. I noticed that he had spilt coffee on the work surface and floor, a trail of sticky dark grounds.

‘I told you, I’m fine.
Charles
, you’ll scald yourself—’

The coffee pot was overflowing. He laughed, and replaced the plunger. Then he said, ‘I thought we should have a day out.’

I looked at him blankly. ‘Where?’

‘Cambridgeshire. Southam. We could do some preliminary research for the programme.’

‘Charles,’ I began. ‘I’m not sure—’

‘Just to see whether it would work.’ He poured out two cups of coffee. ‘Please, Rebecca.’

I longed to shake my head, make some excuse. I wanted a day in which I did not even have to think about Tilda Franklin and her wretched family. I hadn’t much liked Southam the first time I had seen it. But I knew that I must force myself to consider Charles’s offer of a job, and come to a decision about the book, and about the baby. All these things were interlinked. And I wondered, too, whether the answers to some of my questions lay in Southam. Whether I had not looked quite carefully enough on my earlier visit.

‘All right,’ I said.

In Charles’s ancient MG Midget, we circled London on the M25, blessedly quiet for once, and then drove north up the M11. Charles drove both fast and recklessly, and all my bones rattled, and I thought nastily to myself that I’d probably be saved the trouble of arranging to terminate my unwanted foetus. As it had not rained for days, the wheels of the Midget sent up clouds of dust.

‘Shall we eat in Ely?’ shouted Charles, when the bulbous silhouette of the cathedral marked the skyline.

I shook my head. ‘In Southam,’ I yelled back. I remembered that the pub had sold food. I wanted to see the Pheasant. I wanted to know whether Jossy’s private detective might have been mistaken, and whether Daragh might have huddled there unnoticed on the evening of 10 April, playing cards, drinking to forget his troubles.

The fields flattened as we drove down the slope of the Isle of Ely, and out into open country. Charles slowed a bit, glancing from side to side. ‘Terrific,’ he said, his eyes focusing on the rusting farm vehicles, the crooked little cottages. ‘Bags of atmosphere. Imagine it in winter. Which way?’

I directed him along the fork in the road that led to Southam. I saw the landmarks that had become familiar to me from Tilda’s telling: the bridge where she and Daragh had first kissed, the
river where they had sailed in the stolen rowing boat. As we neared the village it seemed to be deserted, still and silent in the windless heat, a veil of black dust over the road signs and lamp posts and white-painted gates.

‘Like the Midwich cuckoos,’ said Charles flippantly. ‘Alien seed—’ he added, and then glanced at me. ‘Sorry, Becca – tact’s never been my strong point.’

I glared at him.

‘If you don’t want to talk about it, it doesn’t matter,’ he added. ‘None of my business, more’s the pity.’

‘Charles—’

He brought the car to a screeching, dusty halt outside the church. Pulling on the handbrake, he said, ‘Well – you are pregnant, aren’t you?’

I eyed him furiously. ‘How did you know?’

‘Puking in the bathroom first thing in the morning is a bit of a giveaway. And you look—’

‘Radiant?’ I supplied sarcastically.

‘Not exactly. A bit blobby, actually. Round the face.’

I blew my nose loudly and concentrated on not crying so that I wouldn’t look even blobbier. After a while, Charles said, ‘Just tell me it isn’t the loathsome Toby’s.’

I shook my head. ‘Not Toby’s,’ I mumbled.

‘A pert-bottomed bricklayer’s, then, that you picked up on the way back from the shops …’

‘Idiot.’

Then he said, ‘It’s Patrick Franklin’s, isn’t it?’ and I just nodded.

I put my dark glasses back on, and we walked down the road to the pub. Inside, half a dozen people lounged at the bar or perched on stools set beside tables. I guessed that what must originally have been two small rooms had been knocked into one larger one, though even that was not of any great size. There were no alcoves or inglenooks, and it seemed improbable that Daragh Canavan could have been overlooked in the crowd.

‘Have you thought about the job?’ Over sandwiches, Charles
twitched restlessly, fiddling with his beer glass, his cigarettes and car keys. I noticed that he hardly ate anything.

I looked out of the window. A woman was wheeling a pram up the street. The pram was battered and ancient, and she wore cheap, skimpy clothes and down-at-heel shoes. I thought of Deborah Greenlees, Tilda’s mother, who had been born in this village. Deborah’s punishment for bearing a child out of wedlock had been the loss of her freedom and ultimately her life; the price that such women pay nowadays is that of poverty.

‘After all … with a baby … unless you’re thinking …’ His voice trailed away.

I knew what he meant, though. To go through with this pregnancy, or to terminate it: the question haunted me. It would be much easier to keep the child, as I longed to, if I worked for Charles. And if I wrote the sort of sensational book that would sell.

I placed my hand on his, stilling his restlessly drumming fingers. ‘I don’t know, Charles. It’s a big decision.’ I watched him light another cigarette from the dog-end of the last, and I remembered his office, the chaotic heaps of paper, the garbled memos. ‘Is everything all right with you, Charles?’

‘Everything’s great,’ he said, flinging out his arms in a gesture so expansive that he knocked over his glass. I dug tissues out of my pockets and dabbed at the trail of beer. ‘I’ve been on the phone to simply everyone – masses of ideas – the bank’ll stump up as soon as they realize how much money they’ll make out of it—’

He was becoming angry, and the landlord was staring, so I said something soothing and hauled him out of the pub. We walked down the street and along the path that led beside the church. Neither of us spoke again until we reached the great field that divided us from the Hall.

Evidence of the summer’s repair work still scarred the earthworks, a blackish tear in the growth that carpeted the bank. The grass had scorched in the heat, and fluffy white parachutes had escaped from the seed-heads of the thistles. The wall of the dike seemed to isolate us, sealing us away
from village and countryside, encasing us in the great brassy bowl of field and sky. Heavy, steel-grey clouds filled the low horizon. Our footsteps made no sound on the parched earth. I was reminded of that evening in Richmond, when I had run from Patrick’s house: that same disturbing feeling of being cut off in time and space from one’s surroundings. Not a blade of grass moved and, in the distance, field and sky seemed to melt together, shimmering.

When Charles took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves, I was shocked by the way his bones almost seemed to force their way through his skin. He had always been thin, but now he seemed skeletal. He gave me his hand to help me up the slope, and his fingers lingered in mine as we stood looking down into the water. The level had retreated, and a sour smell issued from the mud. Flies danced on the surface of the murky water.

‘There’s the Hall,’ I said, looking up to the distant building. It looked smaller today, somehow; it seemed to have lost some of its solidity.

‘And that?’

I followed the direction of his outstretched arm to the dingy white house on the far perimeter of the field. ‘That’s the steward’s house. Kit de Paveley, Jossy’s cousin, lived there.’

‘Was he a farmer?’

‘He was a teacher and an amateur archaeologist. He was very interested in the history of the area.’

‘Could have written a book or two, then. Might be useful for the programme.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Then I shaded my eyes with my hand, because I thought I had seen a flicker of movement behind those small black window panes.

‘Rebecca?’

I realized that Charles had been speaking to me. I had to ask him to repeat what he had said. I blinked and looked back at the house, but saw nothing. A play of light, perhaps, or the reflection of a willow branch, moving in the hot, thundery breeze, caught in the glass.

‘I said, you could marry me if you like.’

I turned round, startled. I thought he was joking, and I laughed. ‘Oh, Charles – don’t be silly—’

He muttered, ‘Always the bridesmaid,’ but once more I detected anger in his eyes. Unnerved, I threaded my arm through his and kissed him on the cheek, and together we headed back to the car.

The following week I went to see Tilda in hospital. This latest illness had changed her, and her frailty was written in the visible fragility of her body and in the way that she drifted sometimes randomly into the past. I could not possibly have asked her,
Did you kill your lover
? It would have been much too intrusive and cruel.

I reminded her about the letter she had written to Max in 1949, asking to visit Melissa in France.

‘Max wrote back by return of post,’ said Tilda. ‘That was when I began to hope a little. He said that I could visit whenever I wanted. I thought it was for Melissa’s sake, but even so, I knew that he did not hate me quite so much.’

‘So you left England …?’ I prompted.

‘As soon as Josh’s Easter holidays began.’

‘Just the two of you?’

‘Just the two of us. Erich would not travel, of course, and Caitlin said that she must stay at home to rehearse the play.’ She glanced at me. ‘You look tired, dear. Shall we stop?’

I knew that I looked awful. I hadn’t slept properly for weeks, and I felt far iller with this child than I had with Toby’s. Still, I couldn’t help smiling. Tilda – frail, elderly Tilda – was concerned about
my
health.

‘You should have a holiday, Rebecca,’ she added. ‘I’m sure Melissa would let you have the cottage for a week. You must ask her.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ I said, to pacify her. ‘Tell me about France, Tilda.’

‘I began to feel happy again,’ she said, smiling at the memory,
‘as we travelled down through France. The sun … the warmth. Max and Melissa met us at the station. I wept when I saw Melissa, of course. I just couldn’t help myself.’

‘And Max? How was Max?’

‘Cold,’ she said. ‘Reserved. We went back to his house to dine. He hardly spoke to me. I remember seesawing between joy at seeing Melissa again, and despair at the way Max distanced himself from me. Josh was to stay at the garage overnight, and I was to sleep in a little hotel in the village …’

Tilda said goodnight to Melissa and picked up her bag. Outside, the sky was ultramarine, punctured with stars. Josh and Max were on the forecourt of the garage, Max holding a torch as Joshua peered into a car engine. ‘I’m leaving for the hotel now, Max,’ Tilda explained. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Josh.’

Max said, ‘I’ll drive you.’

‘There’s no need. It’s only a short walk, and I’d like the fresh air.’