by Mark McCrum
Francis couldn’t resist. ‘About animals tearing each other up?’
‘Yes, but they’re animals. They act on instinct.’
‘Which is OK, is it? I find some of those David Attenborough programmes pretty alarming. Sweet little seals being attacked by sharks.’
‘It’s the circle of life. You should see my darling cat Horatio when he catches a vole. He tosses it from paw to paw, with a truly wicked gleam in his eyes.’
‘And you don’t mind that?’
‘He’s a cat. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s supposed to do.’
‘In God’s well-appointed universe?’
‘He died in June,’ Diana said. As she looked down, he noticed she was gulping.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She pulled out an embroidered cotton handkerchief from her substantial bosom and wiped away a visible tear. ‘Thank you. He has left rather a void.’ She sniffed, then smiled. ‘We all have to go sometime, don’t we?’
One advantage of this age-group, Francis thought, was that they knew – by and large – how to behave at this sort of occasion. After the tasty little asparagus tartlet starter new plates appeared along with great bowls of pasta in a creamy orange tomato sauce. Diana turned decisively to her other side to engage the ambassador, twinkling as she offered him a glass of wine and broke into his existing conversation. Francis followed suit, turning the other way to Mel from the art group. She wasn’t doing the writing, she said with a laugh, because she wasn’t any good at it. She did try, sometimes, bits of poetry, but she knew it was rubbish.
‘Maybe it isn’t,’ said Francis.
‘No, I can assure you, it is. I’m not that great shakes at art either. But I enjoy it. Splashing around with acrylics. He’s not a bad teacher, is Gerry. Quite strict about drawing, which I like. Though you’d never guess from his paintings, would you? He said a funny thing yesterday. “Imagine your children were going to die if you didn’t get your line exactly right.”’
‘I guess that concentrates the mind.’
‘And I’m here with my friend Belle, who I’ve known and worked with half my life, so we have fun together. Away from our other halves. Well, my other half. Belle’s Michael sadly passed last year.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Francis said politely. ‘So are you still working together?’
‘Oh yes, very much so. We have a little interior decoration business based in Knaresborough.’
‘Like Poppy …’
Mel rolled her eyes.
‘You don’t think she was serious?’ Francis added.
‘Knaresborough’s only four miles from Harrogate and I never heard of her – or her business. Perhaps we had different clients.’
‘And what does your husband do?’
‘As little as possible,’ Mel cackled. ‘No, really, Brian’s officially useless.’
Before Francis could stop her, she was off. About how Brian spent all his time on the golf course, never fixed anything in the house, never did any washing up, on the few occasions he did, messed it up completely, leaving the dishes greasy and little bits of food in the drain. Then he ate in a very unattractive way, talking while he was eating, so you could see his food in his open mouth. Then he got half his dinner down his front anyway, so she was constantly having to wash his pullovers.
‘I’m surprised you’re still together,’ Francis said with a laugh.
‘So am I,’ Mel replied. If she wasn’t so lazy, she’d probably have given him his marching orders by now. Mind you, they had two children. Grown up, but with their own families, who lived nearby. Changing everything around now would be very disruptive.
After the pasta came the secondo: big flat earthenware dishes of lamb chops roasted with rosemary, sauté potatoes, gleaming green runner beans. Duncan had given up on Diana, so Francis was back with her.
‘Another glass?’ he offered.
‘I shouldn’t, but I will. This is my holiday. I look forward to it all year.’ She smiled round at the two long rows of glowing faces. ‘I’ve been coming here for over twenty years. Hard to believe, but it’s true.’
She had first come, she went on, when she’d split up with her partner, who’d run off with a client. ‘God knows what he saw in her. I suppose she was in London and I was stuck up in Suffolk. But the truth was I never imagined, for one minute, that David would leave me. We had such a good life together. A beautiful half-timbered house, five acres, tennis court, swimming pool, all the trimmings. It was a wreck when we bought it, but we did it up together – a real project, as you can imagine – and David was so proud of what we’d done with it. Then glorious summer holidays, year after year, down in the convertible to France. We used to take three weeks and drive the Route Nationales, you know, keep off the motorways, such fun. Whizzing along, warm air in our faces, poplars on either side. Stop wherever we found ourselves, as you could in those days. Even those trucker stops, Les Routiers they were called, had wonderful food. Skiing in February. Christmas in a nice hotel somewhere. And then suddenly there I was – alone. It was quite a shock to the system, I can tell you. Come the summer I had absolutely no idea what to do about a holiday. But then, after a few ghastly solo years, looking at penguins in Patagonia and so forth, I heard about this place. And came. It was the second year that Stephanie and Gerry did it. It turned out to be just the tonic I needed. So I’ve been coming ever since.’
The irony was, she went on – flushed and rather tipsy now, Francis thought – that once her ex’s floozy had got him she didn’t want him; she soon discovered what a selfish pig he was. ‘Of course he wanted to come back, but it was too late by then. The trust had gone. He quickly found a replacement. Men do, I’m afraid – no disrespect to you, Francis. And she – Number Two, I called her, or Miss Piggy, she looked like one, I’m sorry – kept him on a very short leash. Much shorter than I ever had. Ha ha! He had to live with that, the silly fool.’
‘How did you know all this?’
‘Oh, he never moved very far away. From Saxmundham, where we’d been. I stayed because I love it round there. I moved into a dear wee fisherman’s cottage in Aldeburgh, another wreck, but I soon fixed that up. D’you know Aldeburgh? Pretty little seaside town, albeit our beach is mostly pebbles. I saw him on a bench there once. He didn’t come over. I was tempted to say hello, but I didn’t want to get into a fight, because he was never very happy about our settlement. I’m afraid I took him to the cleaners.’
She was sad, though, because they’d had such a wonderful relationship when it was going strong. ‘A proper partnership. He helped me and I helped him.’
‘And is he still alive?’
‘Oh yes, he’s still chuntering on. She’s got her work cut out, these days, Miss P, because he’s not very well, by all accounts. Dementia,’ she hissed. ‘Very sad. But not for me.’ Her eyes twinkled.
‘Did you have children?’
‘Never wanted them. We were working too hard and having too much fun. I sometimes regret it now, when I see my friends with their grandchildren. It’s a nice insurance policy for your old age. But Francis, one thing you realize when you get to my time of life is this: that some things were meant to be, and some weren’t. There’s no avoiding that.’
Just as he thought she might start weeping into her green beans, someone made a light remark and the conversation became general. Tony (‘the spy’) was opposite Mel, and next to him, opposite Francis, was the third member of the art course, a thin, elegant, straight-backed woman called Angela, who reminded him powerfully of the Old Lady in the Babar stories. She bared her gleaming white teeth at him in a frequent smile, even though the ambient din made it hard to exchange words.
A great chocolatey pudding arrived. The waitresses came round, bending over the diners to get their orders for coffee and tea. Then came the ping of Stephanie’s spoon. ‘Duncan, Sir Duncan, I should say,’ she giggled, ‘is now going to give us a talk about his amazing house – in Wiltshire – and its even more a
mazing garden.’ It seemed as if Stephanie had been imbibing freely too. She hadn’t mentioned the ambassador’s title publicly before, though she had come up behind Francis earlier and whispered loudly, ‘You do know he’s a sir.’
The guests all trundled off to bed as soon as Sir Duncan’s PowerPoint presentation was over. Perhaps envy had done for them, because Framley Grange lived up to Stephanie’s gushing epithets. It was a perfect English manor house with a perfect English garden. The little audience gasped quietly as yet another fabulous image revealed yet another pergola, arbour, grotto, herb garden or carefully planned lavender walkway. Afterwards Francis found himself on a sofa in the little library where the talk had been. Roz was with him, and they each had a glass of grappa – her idea.
‘He’s certainly got a beautiful place there,’ said Francis. ‘You’d wonder why he’d ever want to leave.’
‘Oh, everyone needs to get away, don’t they? Even the queen. Although, come to think of it, she never really gets away …’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘If she’s abroad she’s working, isn’t she? Shaking hands with heads of state and so forth, being nice the whole time, very exhausting. And then, when she takes a break at home she’s stuck in one of her houses.’
‘Stuck?’
‘Think of it. She never turns up at some place completely out of the blue where she’s never been before and has no idea what it’s going to be like. And there’s maybe a welcome cake on the side and a pint of semi-skimmed in the fridge. That’s my definition of a holiday.’
‘OK.’
‘It’s all, “Hello, Balmoral, haven’t I been here before? Oh yes, I have, and we will have the stag for dinner, thank you. Hello, Sandringham, oh how very nice to see you, how’s your lovely wife and kids been keeping these past eleven months—”’
‘So why did you decide to come?’ Francis asked, cutting off this bizarre and frankly tipsy riff. ‘Were you really looking for love?’
Roz grinned. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I needed a new direction. I’ve been doing the same kind of writing for years. Business writing, basically. It’s all a bit formal, though I have got my little blog as well, as you know. I had the idea that coming out here, in the groves of Tuscany, I could release my inner creative juju.’
‘And have you?’
‘Maybe. With your help.’ She reached over and patted his thigh, then looked at him in a way that made him wonder whether she might be about to come on to him. And that wouldn’t have been unwelcome, because there was something about her, and the way she held your gaze, that was undeniably sexy. Although obviously not right here, scrutinized by the entire writing course for the rest of the week.
‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I was telling a bit of a fib earlier.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m not really single.’
‘No?’
‘I’ve got someone. But he’s a secret. Has to be, because he’s married.’
‘Aha.’
‘I do love him, and want him, every day in every way, but you know, there’s this wife.’
‘I see.’
‘Who’s frankly a total pain in the arse. I don’t know why he’s with her. Anyway, I’m talking too much now. Just wanted to get that off my chest.’
‘No worries.’
She gave him a look of deep scrutiny. ‘You’re very anodyne, Francis, you know that.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You do know what anodyne means?’
‘Harmless … neutral …’
‘Exactly. I mean, it’s hard to make you react. You’re constantly chipping in with these nice little comments, interspersed with not-so-discreet leading questions. So I spill my guts out but I never really find out about you.’
‘That’s your choice.’
‘There you go again. Jokey and evasive.’
‘I think it might be time for me to go to bed.’
‘You see. You can’t take it. When the chips are down you’re up and off. Anyway. He’s basically a bastard. He’s got her. And he’s got me. Though not for much longer.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I’m not in the longevity business anyway.’
It was an odd remark to make, Francis thought, as he made his way up the worn stone stairs and along the tiled corridor, past a string of Gerry’s depressing abstracts, to poky Masaccio. Out through the slatted shutters the moon had risen above the mountainous horizon, a bruised circle, almost full. It flooded the long valley below with silver light, casting blue-black shadows from the trees under his window. He remembered Chekhov’s famous advice, the bedrock of many a creative writing course, which Zoe had alluded to in her take-down of Poppy in class that morning. ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.’ Though of course the great Russian had never said that exactly, had he? He stood there for a minute or two, sipping at the large glass of water he’d brought up, to which he’d added a pre-emptive Alka-Seltzer. It was all very beautiful and he had drunk too much. Certainly for a tutor who had to be on form tomorrow, adjudicating between all these restless egos.
THREE
Tuesday 25 September
Francis woke early. Was it the wine he’d had at dinner? The grappa with Roz? He didn’t know, but he was wide awake and buzzing while it was still pitch-dark. He switched on his dim bedside light and read for a bit, before trying to fall back to sleep again. But the gods of slumber were not in a mood to return this morning, even though Francis knew that his teaching would be sharper and more patient if he was properly rested. Eventually it was dawn. Through his narrow oblong window he could see the sky starting to glow pink. He got up and looked out. Beyond the dark silhouettes of trees, white mist sat in the valley. He decided to get up and out into the landscape. He put on yesterday’s clothes and pulled a fleece on top. Even through the window he could feel the chill of the morning air.
He clicked his bedroom door gently shut behind him. Downstairs, the heavy wooden front door of the villa was locked, but the big iron key was there on the inside. He let himself out, then tiptoed across the gravel towards the slatted wooden table below the vine where later he would be holding his morning class. Today he had a couple of excellent exercises for the group, including his session on dialogue, which Roz had told him she was longing to get stuck into, as dialogue was something she struggled with. ‘You and so many others,’ Francis had said, ‘but after you’ve done my workshop on it you’ll be totally freed up.’
‘Can’t wait,’ she’d replied.
At the end of this long table was a swing chair, which hung from a bolt in the roof, where you could sit back and read. Indeed, there was often a polite stand-off for this choice spot; you would see one of the guests tiptoeing away from the lunch table to put their books on its comfy teal blue cushions to claim it for their afternoon snooze. Beyond that was a cast-iron gate, which opened on to a set of stone steps running down the side of the house to a ragged formal garden, with gravel pathways between unkempt beds of flowering plants. Stephanie and Gerry kept their villa in good shape, but the gardens weren’t quite as well-maintained. Whatever the lean and hungry-looking Fabio did on that noisy tractor of his, it wasn’t weeding.
A path paved with variegated flat stones led down to an arch in the perimeter wall. Through a battered wooden door, another, pebbled path led down past a stand-alone outhouse with a terracotta tiled roof to an old tennis court, below which the grass slope dropped away into the valley. Here, to one side, Francis found a wooden bench, glistening silver with dew. He wiped it roughly with the back of his hand, then sat, taking in the silence and the view.
It was, undoubtedly, magical. The sun in the east had spread a sultry crimson blush right across the panorama of sky and was now touching the highest slopes of the distant mountains with yellow-pink light, even before it had risen above the dark, forested ridge to the right. Below him, white-grey mist swirled up the valley, puffing into clouds which broke loose and were tinged with pink as they rose higher, up, up,
like escaped balloons, into the empyrean. He took out his notebook and tried to work out how he could possibly describe such a scene; it was something he liked to do, a writer’s exercise, attempting to nail beauty, always the hardest thing. But even as his Uniball Eye poised over the lined blue paper of his Smythson notebook and he jotted down the inadequate words pink glow spreading across, fading to left, he heard, very distinctly in the silence, a scream. It came from the villa, and it came from a woman.
He got to his feet and ran. Back up the way he’d come, clattering up the steps into the courtyard, round through the front door and into the hall. To find … nothing. There was no sound on the stairs. Upstairs, the doors in the long corridor were all shut. Surely he hadn’t imagined it?
He paused for a full half minute, not sure what to do. He could hardly start searching the bedrooms one by one, could he? Unless the scream was repeated, he was stuck. Was he? What if by failing to act he had allowed something terrible to happen? But how could he act? How embarrassing would it be if it had just been someone having a nightmare? He decided he would go back to Masaccio and read until breakfast. If there was a follow-up he would be right there; hopefully able to get out into the corridor in time and work out exactly which room it was coming from.
He sat on his bed for a minute or two listening to the silence. ‘I’m not in the longevity business.’ Roz’s strange remark ran round his head as he picked up the pile of paper that was Zoe’s manuscript. To distract himself from his worst imaginings, he scanned the chapter titles and saw that this was a Jewish memoir. Hardly a surprise, as Zoe described herself as such. But he hadn’t reckoned on this: grandparents escaping from Polish pogroms, close relatives dying in concentration camps, a harrowing personal story behind the soignée, well-to-do, old lady that she was now.
By eight o’clock he was ravenous. He went downstairs to find Diana alone at the long table in the courtyard, her statuesque face soaking up the early sunshine. ‘Statuesque’ really was the word, he thought, as he avoided tripping on the two stone steps up into the dining room, where he helped himself to a slice of cold ham and a warm crispy roll. Diana’s fine old features, framed by her bangs of white hair, looked like something carved from stone – the Sphinx perhaps.