With an exclamation of triumph Colin took the box and emptied it on to the bed. Pearls, lockets, rings, lay tangled on the sprigged pale duvet, and among them Hugh’s charm bracelet.
Never, in all her twenty-five years as a mother had Elizabeth struck one of her children, but now as she saw those thin pale hands picking avariciously over the milestones of her life something inside her seemed to snap. In a quick sweep of her hands she had gathered up the things and thrown them, all jumbled, into her pocket and she faced Colin her eyes blazing. The slap she dealt him across the face sent him reeling backwards, the imprint of her fingers first white and then red across his cheek and mouth.
‘Your father was right about you all along,’ she shrieked at him, her voice dumb, the sound coming from her mouth belonging to a stranger. ‘You are ungrateful; you are a scrounger; you’re no good. No good at all. Get out! Get out! Get out of this house before I call the police!’
And he had gone. Later, when the tears had stopped, she realized how nearly he had hit her back. The cold fury on his face had been almost insane as he looked at her, but he had said and done nothing and with that sole scrap she would comfort herself in the months and years to come. He had done nothing. One deep shuddering breath and he had turned and walked from the room, leaving the house by the front door which reverberated defiantly behind him from the slam.
On 28th March Colin was arrested and taken to Marylebone Police Station charged with conspiracy to defraud and Gareth put up bail for his son. Three weeks later as he chaired a meeting at the RIBA Gareth had collapsed with a massive stroke. Forty-eight hours later he was dead.
Elizabeth saw the next few months through a pale veil of valium, surrounded, as Colin was convicted and sent to prison for five years, by a warm protective trio of children who treated her like rare Dresden, sharing her out between them in a layer of impenetrable cotton wool. Once or twice she tried to fight her way to the surface, sensing sunlight through the mist which swam above her head, but each time she sank again, drowning in depression.
She stayed with Michael the most. He had married and had a little boy and when all else failed to reach her she warmed to those tiny clinging trusting hands. It was in this house, at the long untidy happy dining table where breakfast lay in a shower of toast crumbs and splattered groats, that she had nerved herself to reach for the Telegraph, wearily unfolding it to face a further instalment of the enquiry into Colin’s money-making débâcle, and seen a photograph of Hugh.
Stunned she stared at it. The hair, the eyes, the mouth – each had been sculpted and hardened and worn, but it was the same face. She glanced up guiltily at her daughter-in-law who was spooning scrambled egg into Crispin’s mouth.
‘If you’ll excuse me, Ann dear, I’ll take my coffee and the paper out on the porch for a while.’
She was quite unconscious of Ann’s stare; of the excitement which had been betrayed by her voice, of the fact that her movements, which for months had been slow and dreamlike, were suddenly electric with trembling.
On the straw chair on the porch she arranged her skirt with care and, turning to the side table, poured the slopped coffee back from the saucer into the cup. Then, cautiously, she looked again.
The photograph stared out at her from the page, the eyes direct and challenging. Her heart thumped a little with fear and she lowered her gaze to the caption.
‘Major General Sir Hugh Denniston,’ it said, and below it: ‘Army Representative to join Whitehall Committee.’
Strange, that in all these years she had never known his full name, never known he was a war hero, a holder of the VC, that he had been repeatedly parachuted into France, had been captured, had, dear God, been tortured by the SS, was married, divorced, the father of two children, had headed this committee, that committee, been in Kenya, in Northern Ireland, in Rhodesia …
A gentle hand on hers made her realize suddenly that she was crying.
‘Liz? Liz, darling. What is it?’ Ann was kneeling at her feet.
Those tears, floodgates of misery and happiness, had released the straitjacket which had held her for so long and, sitting there on the porch with the sunlight slanting through the dew-wet plane trees, her arms around her daughter-in-law and her warm sticky grandchild, she relived those moments by the pond in Hereward’s Wood and looking up at the clear autumnal morning sky saw again the defiant crippled squadrons limping home, and progressing, knew that Gareth was dead and Colin was in prison.
It was Ann who rang him. His number had all the time been in the telephone directory.
She had waited until Elizabeth, newly alive, had gone to the hairdresser and then, her heart quaking a little lest the baby wake up and cry or the milkman call or Liz change her mind and return, Ann had picked up the receiver in her bedroom and begun to dial.
The phone was answered by a woman. Disappointed, Ann hesitated, then she asked for Hugh and he came to the phone. The woman was his daughter.
Somehow she had expected to be speaking to a dreamer and the incisive voice unnerved her. She began to feel a little foolish. Perhaps Liz had been right after all to dismiss laughing the notion of contacting him. Perhaps it was all much too late.
Floundering, the receiver slipping as her palm grew moist with embarrassment, she began her story. She began at the wrong end, with Gareth’s death, when all the time she had planned to say ‘Do you remember Hereward’s Pond and a girl with red hair?’, and the polite silence in the receiver rebuked her.
But he did remember. When at last she managed to say the right words the quality of his silence changed. She felt his stillness.
‘Elizabeth?’ The word sounded stiff and painful from his lips when at last she stopped gabbling and waited for a reply. That was all he said, ‘Elizabeth.’
‘Would you … that is, do you think you and she should meet?’ she asked tentatively after yet another silence.
‘Does she want to?’ he asked, and she could sense the piercing interrogation of his eyes on the other end of the telephone line.
‘She doesn’t know I’ve rung you,’ she confessed.
‘She didn’t want to ring herself, of course.’
‘No, she didn’t want to ring herself.’
It was Ann who suggested the hotel – the public place, the neutral ground – and who wrote the date in her own diary and then for three days was too appalled at her own temerity to confess to Liz just what she had done. And as she told her she knew at once she had been wrong. If Hugh and Liz should meet again, it should have been at the behest of fate in the cool secret thickets around Hereward’s Pond, or perhaps it should never happen at all, allowing each to remember a young golden image of the other and a dream to treasure in their heart.
‘I won’t go,’ she thought as she sat alone on the autumnal golden terrace at the back of Michael’s house. I’ll be ill. Or go away. I’ll go abroad.
She had stood before the mirror inside her wardrobe door for a long long time, staring hyper-critically at herself: the hair still auburn but a glossy darker colour now than it had ever been naturally; the figure neat, slim, good legs – legs are always the last part of a woman to ‘go’ Gareth always used to say, and she had gone around for weeks studying the thin elastic-controlled limbs of old ladies. Her eyes were still clear and needed glasses only for reading and television and her skin was good, pale now and no longer tanned. It was inside that she had not changed. Inside she was still that dreamy, vulnerable girl of seventeen, but would he know it? Would he recognize her at all?
Hugh’s picture was folded inside the lid of her dressing case and she took it out again and looked at it. They seemed to have worn well, he and she, but how much had they changed, really?
The Vogue lying open on her knee, she watched him approach her across the room. He had shown no visible sign of recognizing her but unerringly now he was threading his way towards her through the chairs and tables. And then at last he was standing before her.
‘I thought you might not recog
nize me,’ she said at last, looking up to meet his eyes.
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘I must have changed. I feel different sometimes.’
‘Better or worse?’
‘Some of each. Won’t you have a drink? I don’t like drinking alone.’
He smiled, sitting down on the edge of the chair opposite hers, in the same movement beckoning the waiter and in some mysterious way conveying his order without even speaking.
‘I tried to find you, you know,’ he said. ‘But your grandparents had gone. No one seemed to know anything about you.’ He gave one small shrug which to her betrayed more eloquently than the most poignant speech the agonized months he had spent searching for her when at last he had returned to England after the war. He gave a sheepish grin. ‘This is one hell of a place to meet. I take it you don’t normally frequent West End hotels.’ He pronounced the word without an ‘h’.
‘It was Ann’s idea, remember?’
‘You get on well with your daughter-in-law?’
‘Very. She’s been very kind. Did she tell you my son, my other son, is in prison?’ She had to say it quickly, to get it over with, to stop Colin’s shadow hovering between them.
He leaned back slightly, reaching into his jacket pocket for a silver cigarette case.
‘What for?’ He tapped the cigarette on the case before returning the latter to his pocket and half turned to the waiter who, having set a double whisky down on the table before him, had produced a lighter.
‘Fraud.’ She sipped defensively at her champagne. ‘It was all in the papers. It killed my husband.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen the papers much. I’ve just come back from Zimbabwe.’
The gentle look he gave her told her he didn’t mind. Not about Colin. He was part of her as were Gareth and Michael and little Crispin and the girls and all the last forty odd years.
‘Your husband, what did he do?’
‘He was the architect Gareth Sullivan.’
He frowned then, his glass half-way to his lips. ‘But I met him. I met him several times. He was on a committee with me once,’ and sitting forward, his elbows on his knees, he stared at her. ‘All this time, Liz, and I never knew.’
Knew what? That she had married Gareth? That she was in London? That she was alive at all? All three perhaps.
He was watching her closely, reading her thoughts. ‘Come on. This place is ghastly. Knock that back whatever it is –’ he was looking at the glass in her hand ‘– and let’s get out of here. I’ve got a car outside.’
She had forgotten he was so much taller than she. He made her feel delicate and feminine, almost girlish again as she followed him across the carpet. Behind them the woman with the glossy fingernails lowered her glass and stared after them.
She found a car outside, on the double yellow line, in the care of the doorman and affecting not to see the fiver which changed hands as the man opened the door for her she slid into the seat, waiting for a moment in that strange encapsulated silence for Hugh to come round and climb in behind the wheel. As they pulled effortlessly out into the traffic she leaned back and closed her eyes. She did not ask where they were going. She knew it would be the woods behind her grandfather’s farm, now owned by strangers but mercifully preserved, where, at this time of year, the beeches were a cloak of gold.
As soon as she had got into the car she had spotted the tattered wartime copy of Keats in the glove pocket in front of her and quietly she smiled at the message. She wondered if he had remembered too the bracelet he had given her and gently as he guided the car into the traffic of the Cromwell Road she began to ease it down her wrist past the tightly buttoned cuff which had been so carefully fastened to conceal it.
The Magic Carpet
The day started badly.
‘Why didn’t you go into that first car park? There was loads of room.’
‘Because it was so far from the fête. You know you hate walking.’ Malcolm’s voice had the patient note in it which always drove Ginny wild.
‘I do like walking in the country, it’s different, and look at this queue. Well be here all day.’
The line of overheating cars crawling over the sticky tarmac was radiating heat beneath the blazing sky, while the procession of people strolling from the village kept safely, sensibly on the grassy verge in the black shadow of the heavy walnut trees. Ginny eyed them enviously. Her dress was sticking to her back.
‘I’ve a good mind to get out and walk.’
‘Why don’t you, if you’re going to be so grumpy?’
‘All right. I will.’
She grappled for the handle of the door. Only when she was standing, slamming it shut, did she feel a twinge of conscience.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind me walking?’
‘I don’t mind. I’ll meet you there, OK?’
The shade of the trees was heavy with bees and pollen and thick, humid heat. Her toes, bare in sandals, were pricked and stung by the grass vergey things which grew there. But at least it was better than the imprisoning seats of the car. Poor Malcolm. He was stuck there till he reached the car park. So much for an afternoon in the country. The idea of the little church fête had seemed such fun at the time – they hadn’t dreamed there would be such a crowd. Distastefully she eyed the crawling vehicles, their heavy fumes polluting the country air.
A surge of excitement hit her as she came round the corner and saw before her the white marquees in the field, the khaki ex-desert army tents, the lines of booths with, in the centre, a tiny roped-off ring and everywhere the smell of drying grass with the sweetness of hay. Over a loudspeaker somewhere came music and as it was outside and a bank holiday she wanted suddenly to dance. She paid her ten pence at the entrance and then stood still uncertain what to do. How would she find Malcolm again? She walked cautiously in the direction of the car park. She could see the sun reflecting on the lines of windscreens behind a hedge.
Balls thwacked against the canvas backing to a coconut shy and she stopped to watch. ‘Three goes for ten pence, love. Go on. Have a try.’
Why not?
Hitching her bag on her shoulder she took the three heavy balls from the man’s hand and hurled the first one down the field.
‘Bad luck, love. Two more goes.’ Distracted, he was giving change to someone behind her. Her next go went wide. And the last.
She made a shamefaced grimace at the man and walked on. And then suddenly he was there, grinning, his camera in his hand.
‘Malcolm! Did you come in by another entrance?’ She was hoping he hadn’t been watching.
‘I saw you. Three bosh shots. How much did that little effort cost you?’
He was laughing at her and she blushed a little. ‘I bet you couldn’t do better.’
He couldn’t.
They were even, now. Together they walked slowly into the white elephant tent. ‘We might get something for the flat, Malcolm. There’s so much we still need.’
‘Like a dented warming pan or three chipped Victorian teapots, I suppose?’
Indignant she punched him in the ribs, then she began to push her way to the front of the gossiping women to where piles of exciting things were laid out on lines of flat trestle tables. All round the smell of trampled grass was very strong in the creamy twilight of the tent.
Strange, how two people with so much in common and so much in love could disagree so violently about decorating their first home. He wanted it light and airy; modern and functional. She had pictured it cluttered with Victoriana, draped and decorated, the windows festooned with lace.
‘My goodness, Ginny, you need one of these.’ His voice, mocking gently, was at her elbow. He had picked up a grimy watercolour in a fractured gilt frame. ‘What is it?’ He peered in the dim light. ‘The Relief of Mafeking, I think … Still it doesn’t really matter much.’
She ignored him, her hand straying over the spines of a pile of books, glancing at the titles.
Reluctantly he re
linquished the picture and followed her. ‘Look, a novel by Mrs Radcliffe,’ he exploded with a laugh. ‘Ginny, my darling, that’s for you …’
She was getting hot again, fed up with his teasing. In the distance at the far side of the table she could see a neatly folded embroidered tablecloth. As she pushed her way towards it, a gently determined hand reached out from the crowd and it was gone.
‘That’s your fault,’ she flashed at Malcolm, suddenly. ‘If you hadn’t been fooling round distracting me I would have got that cloth. It would have looked lovely on the little round table.’
‘Not my table with the melamine top.’ His voice became suddenly threatening. ‘No squalid cloth with somebody else’s gravy stains is going on that. It’s simple and perfect as it is.’
‘It’s not; it’s … it’s bare.’
‘That’s right. Bare.’
A woman came between them for a moment. When she had gone he was smiling again. ‘Come on, Ginny. Don’t let’s quarrel. Let’s go and see what else there is outside. This tent is getting too hot.’
They fought their way back to the entrance. Ginny was scowling. The tablecloth still rankled. ‘That table needs something,’ she muttered at his broad back as he pushed his way ahead of her into the sunshine.
‘A pot plant, possibly. That is all,’ he flung over his shoulder. ‘Now forget it.’
A small child, red-faced and screaming, ran in front of them, the picture on its T-shirt grimy with melted chocolate.
‘Come on, Ginny. I’ll buy you an ice-cream.’ He groped for her hand and together they made their way towards a booth with a long queue at the far side of the ring where two ladies, hot and dishevelled, unused to the problems of melting ice-cream and soggy cones, were battling manfully to supply the queue.
‘What kind of pictures are we going to put in that room, Malcolm?’ Her mind was still on the flat as they shuffled slowly over the browning grass.
‘Perhaps one big one, over the couch. I haven’t decided.’
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