Some Old Lover's Ghost (52 page)

‘Then I’ll walk with you.’ Max wiped an oily hand on a cloth and took her suitcase before she could stop him.

Always the gentleman. Sometimes Tilda thought that had been part of the trouble. They had come from such different backgrounds: she from Sarah Greenlees’ gypsy, hand-to-mouth sort of life, Max from a world where the way you spoke, the way you dressed, was more important than what you felt.

They set off down the twisting, narrow lane. High banks of hedge and wildflower separated them from the fields. There was still a warmth in the air, and the full moon silvered the fields and vineyards.

It was Max who spoke first. ‘I was sorry to hear about Sarah. A bit late in the day for condolences, I know, but I’m sorry that I didn’t come to her funeral. I should have done so. She was a remarkable woman.’

He was looking ahead, twilight flooding the hollows of his
face. His words jolted Tilda out of her stupor of exhaustion, a consequence of her long train journey. She knew that she must make an effort, draw something from reserves that were almost depleted.

‘Sarah was fond of you, Max. You and Josh and Erich were the only men I ever heard her have a good word for.’

He laughed, and his face momentarily lightened. He had not aged during two years in France. The threads of grey in his dark hair had not spread, the lines on his face had not deepened.

‘Sarah was an original,’ said Max. ‘You must miss her.’

‘I do. I miss her very much.’

‘Rosi has sent me an invitation to her wedding. She wants me to give her away.’

She glanced at him. They had almost reached the village. It was not easy, Tilda thought, to unpick the knots of thirteen years of marriage. They remained, catching at you, tripping you up.

‘You will, won’t you, Max?’

‘Of course.’ It was too dark to make out his expression. He asked, ‘And Hanna and Erich – how are they?’

‘Hanna is working very hard, as usual. Too hard, perhaps. I think that as both of her parents were doctors, she feels that if she fails she’ll have let them down. Erich wouldn’t come with us, of course. He still can’t bear crowds. He’s never spoken to me about what happened in Vienna, Max. Never. Not once.’ Her voice was bleak with an awareness of her failure. ‘I managed to persuade him to see a psychiatrist, but it didn’t work out.’

‘And Caitlin? How is Caitlin? I thought you might bring her to France.’

It was the first time Max had mentioned Caitlin. Caitlin, the daughter of Tilda’s half-sister and Tilda’s lover.

She said, more lightly than she felt, ‘Kate’s in a village play and didn’t want to miss any rehearsals. Hanna and Rosi are looking after her.’

They crossed the square, walking beneath lime trees whose leaves whispered in the light breeze. She did not tell Max that she had been relieved when Caitlin had refused her invitation to
come with her to France. Guiltily relieved. Nor that she could not rid herself of the suspicion that Caitlin’s hatred of her had a more fundamental cause than the resentment of a bereaved child for its foster parent.

They fell into a pattern: while Tilda and Melissa spent time together at the hotel or at the garage or in Saintes, Max and Josh went for long cycle rides in the countryside.

They stopped one morning at a café, where Max bought himself a beer and Josh a lemonade. Sitting outside in the shade of an old fig tree, Max thought how much Josh had altered since he had last seen him.

‘How’s school?’ Max asked.

‘It’s OK.’ Josh wiped away his lemonade moustache with the back of his hand. ‘I’m in the rugby First Fifteen.’

‘And cricket?’

‘Symonds major will be captain, but I might be his vice-captain.’

‘That’s terrific, Josh.’

It was, Max realized, the sort of conversation he had had with his father, every six months or so in the bar of the Savoy. A few years on and he and Josh would talk about the Boat Race and Twickenham, and he would offer Josh a cheque because that was his only way of showing affection, and Josh would refuse it. He asked himself whether that was what he wanted, and knew that it was not.

‘And weekly boarding? You’re happy with that?’

Josh shrugged. ‘We have to eat the most awful things at breakfast, Dad. They’re called washers because they look like the things you put in taps. Luckhurst says they’re made of blood and fat. Yuck.’

‘I meant,’ said Max, ‘would you prefer to stay at school over the weekends? Sometimes weekly boarders feel they miss out.’

Josh shook his head. ‘I have to go home at the weekends, Dad, to sort the generator out. It broke down three times in the winter. The camshaft is dodgy. And Mum gets fed up if I don’t come
home. I stayed once because there was a rugger match and she was really fed up, I know she was.’

‘Is he … is he all right, this colonel?’

‘He has a super collection of swords. He lets me have a go with them sometimes. And he showed me how to skin a rabbit. It was a bit disgusting, but it’ll be useful when I fly round the world. And it’s good when the generator breaks down because then we have oil lamps which make the house look really spooky. Though Caitlin fusses about the cold. But –’ and Josh looked up at Max – ‘girls always do, don’t they?’

Max nodded absently. He had a mental image of Tilda slaving away in an unlit, freezing kitchen, watched over by an ex-army type who was clearly insane. What he wanted to say to Josh, but knew he should not, was,
Does he treat her like a servant
? Just the thought of that induced in him a rage that took him by surprise.

Josh added, ‘I always make sure there’s lots of kindling before I go back to school on Sunday. Erich sometimes forgets about the kindling.’

‘You’re a good boy, Josh,’ Max said, and reached across the table and ruffled his son’s hair. They got out the map and planned their journey home.

When they reached the garage, he dismissed the village lad who manned the petrol pump in his absence and went into the house. Tilda and Melissa were in the kitchen, surrounded by baskets of shopping. It was late afternoon and the sun shone directly through the low kitchen window. In the bright light, Max saw the threads of silver in Tilda’s long hair, and the fine lines around the corners of her eyes. He saw that she was thinner than she had been, and that she looked tired. He said suddenly, ‘We’ll go out for dinner tonight. The restaurant in the village is very good.’

Melissa said, ‘All of us, Daddy?’

‘All of us,’ said Max, putting the shopping away.

In the restaurant, eating and drinking, he found himself remembering Pargeter Street, picking Tilda up from the floor
of the kitchen after she had fainted. How fragile she had felt; how, before she had come round, he had let himself brush back the strands of hair that had fallen over her face. He refilled their wine glasses and thought, and now she’s scrubbing floors for some old nutcase – not exactly what you had in mind, was it, Max old son, when you promised to love and cherish her. You chuck in your job, disappear into London for a little
crise de nerfs
, and expect Tilda to sit at home waiting for you. And when she doesn’t, when she ends up in the arms of that smooth-talking sod who’s been chasing her for years, you behave as though she’s committed the next worst crime to the planning of the Final Solution, and abandon her completely.

It wasn’t that he didn’t mind about Daragh Canavan any more. He did: he knew that he would always mind. It was just that he had begun to see it as part of a chain of blame and parting and love and pain for which he bore a responsibility, as Tilda did.

‘Dad,’ said Melissa. ‘Dad.’

Max looked up.

‘Dad, I have asked you three times whether we can have ice cream.’

Max mentally shook himself. ‘Of course you can. We must all have ice cream. And chocolate sauce. And those coloured things.’

‘Hundreds and thousands,’ said Melissa in a tone of patient superiority. ‘They are called hundreds and thousands, Dad.’

Max called at Tilda’s hotel at nine o’clock the next morning, and told her that he was taking them all to the beach at Royan. He had risen early and packed a picnic. The Rolls needed to be run in; he would drive them to Royan in style.

They travelled through the countryside, parking at the far end of the town. On the sand, Josh hurled on his swimming trunks while Melissa changed with great decorum under a voluminous towel. Max lit a cigarette.

‘Aren’t you going to swim, Daddy?’

‘Not yet. In a while.’

He watched the three of them run down to the sea. The tide was a long way out, so they had to tread through the swathe of sand and pebbles and shells, Josh darting ahead, Melissa skipping beside Tilda. When they reached the shallows, Josh dashed into the water: to his knees, his waist, his shoulders. Melissa doggy-paddled, shrieking in the chilly Atlantic water.

Max walked down to the sea shore. The sand was smooth and cold and rippled by the sea. He had not yet changed, and his shoes were lapped by the waves. His cigarette burned down to his fingertips, the long grey worm of ash falling onto the sand. Josh and Melissa were fifty yards or so out, ducking and cavorting in the water like seals. But Max’s gaze rested on Tilda, further inland, swimming a few strokes and then standing up and looking around at the children. Her long hair had darkened, and clung to her head and back like ochre seaweed. Her bathing costume, the old-fashioned, pre-war kind, outlined her slim body. Max realized in a sudden, shocking moment that he still loved her, had always loved her, would always love her. The hatred and anger that he had felt towards her had been just an aspect of love.

He heard Melissa call his name, but turned abruptly and began to walk back to where they had left the picnic basket beneath his old cricket umbrella. He scrabbled in his pocket for another cigarette, having wasted the last, but then put the packet away unopened. He stood for a long while, his back to them, wanting to shut this sudden drowning realization away and return to the undemanding existence he had created for himself. But he knew that he could not. He had closed himself off from the world for a while, but then the world had reclaimed him: the curé with his chess games, Cécile with her kindness to him and her mockery of him, and, most of all, Melissa. They had all drawn him back, but it had been Melissa who had reminded him of the storms and tempests of family life, Melissa who had shown him that he still had a part to play.

They ran back from the sea to the beach, Melissa shivering, wrapping herself in her towel, Josh rolling in the sand until he was covered with pale, sparkling grit, like granite, and Tilda bending
and squeezing the salt water from her hair. Max poured tea from the thermos and unwrapped greaseproof paper from sandwiches, and said little. The breeze had got up, conjuring small jagged waves from the water.

After they had dressed and eaten, they went back to the car. They drove through Royan, where Max was to call briefly on a prospective customer. Royan had been bombed heavily by Allied forces before its liberation at the end of the war, and the devastation, still visible four years later, shocked him. Max saw houses that seemed to have been topped and tailed, like gooseberries, possessing neither roofs nor front doors; and walls with single floors attached, suspended eerily over chasms. The roads were pitted and cratered. A few new buildings had begun to rise from the empty heart of the town. Max drove slowly, looking around. It occurred to him that this, too, had touched them. That it had not been just he and Tilda who had been at fault, because history had played its part, tearing them asunder, showing them such savagery, such a contempt of human life, that they had for a while lost the ability to believe in better things.

On the last evening of Tilda’s holiday, they cooked crêpes in the cramped kitchen of Max’s house, taking turns at tossing the batter in the heavy iron pan.

‘Bags I next,’ said Melissa, and flicked the pancake. She missed, and it caught on the side of the stove, sliding slowly to the floor. Josh crowed with laughter.

Tilda, leaning against the dresser, held out her glass to Max, who refilled it. ‘Mustn’t drink too much or I’ll never get up tomorrow.’ She surveyed the wreckage. ‘Your poor kitchen, Max.’

The following day, she and Josh were to catch the three o’clock train from Saintes. Max had insisted on booking them on the
wagon-lit
to lessen the exhaustion of the journey. Just as, knowing how little money Tilda had been allowed to take out of England, he had insisted on paying for everything. His courtesy towards her had, during the ten days of her stay, been unimpeachable. There had been no trace of the old, cynical, sarcastic Max. Sometimes,
over the last day or two, she had found herself believing that time had lessened his anger.

Josh was tossing a pancake. It soared into the air, turned once, and landed neatly in the pan.

Tilda clapped. ‘You should be a chef, Josh.’

‘I’m going to be an explorer. I’m going to travel round the world.’

‘You can’t earn a living doing that,’ Melissa said scornfully.

‘Yes, you can, can’t you, Dad? You travelled a lot, didn’t you, Dad? So did Aunt Sarah, didn’t she? And Aunt Sarah had lots of money. She buried it under the kitchen floor.’

Max looked enquiring. Tilda explained, ‘Sarah left me a dozen sovereigns – one of her employers must have given them to her, I suppose. Kit de Paveley sold them for me.’

‘Where did your mother live, Mum?’

Tilda felt, suddenly, as though she was standing at the edge of a morass, and asked quickly, ‘Is there another pancake? I’m starving.’

Josh poured batter into the pan. Melissa said, ‘Aunt Sarah and Mum’s mum lived in Southam, silly. They were sisters. Didn’t you know that?’

‘Did your dad live there too?’ Josh flipped the pancake.

And in her mind’s eye she saw Edward de Paveley, driving his car, the big old Bentley in which Jossy had died, through Southam. How the hens and small children had scattered at the imperious hooting of the horn; how the older villagers had touched their caps as he had passed. Less than twenty years ago. It seemed much longer, a world away.

‘The frying pan, Josh,’ said Max.