The Peacock Summer

by Hannah Richell

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It comes back to her so clearly, standing outside Damson House in the early-morning sun. She’d held the ring box tightly, staring at the doorbell, unable to press it and face the moment she knew she would break Gus’s heart.

  She had sat up late the night before, discussing her fears with Lillian, explaining how trapped she felt at the thought of the baby and Gus’s marriage proposal. ‘What would you do, Gran?’ she’d implored. ‘You had a successful marriage. What advice would you give me?’

  She’d been surprised by the look that had flashed across Lillian’s face. ‘No relationship is perfect, Maggie. No love – no matter how great – can be the source of your life’s happiness.’

  ‘But forty-seven years together . . . the way you cared for Grandfather after his stroke . . . If that isn’t love I don’t know what is.’

  ‘Love. Duty. There is a marked difference between the two,’ Lillian had said, her voice surprisingly soft.

  Maggie had thought for a moment. ‘If I kept the baby . . . if I stayed with Gus . . . do you think that would be love or duty?’

  Lillian had studied Maggie carefully. ‘Only you can answer that. But it’s your choice. You have a choice.’

  ‘Do I?’ She had gazed down at the single glittering diamond set into the platinum band. ‘Now Gus knows, I’m not sure I do.’ She’d sighed. ‘I haven’t even made a dent in my art career – I’m still waitressing at that poxy restaurant. I’ve achieved nothing of what I hoped I would have by now. I’ve been feeling so stalled – so off track. And now this. A baby is sure to keep me from everything I’d hoped for. I can’t help but feel trapped.’

  Lillian had reached forward and taken Maggie’s hand. ‘I have some savings. A little rainy-day fund. Call it what you will. I want you to have it. Whatever you decide, it will help you.’

  ‘I can’t accept it.’

  ‘You can and you will. I insist,’ she’d added, with surprising ferocity. ‘No woman in this family will feel trapped in a life she doesn’t want. Not if I can help it. Use the money however you wish. Spend it on baby clothes, or a ticket to Timbuktu . . . or simply leave it in your bank account for a rainy day. I won’t judge you. Just know it’s there, should you need it. Your safety net.’

  You have a choice. Lillian’s words had run through her head all night and at first light, she’d risen from her bed and dressed hurriedly, her intention being to talk to Gus face to face. But standing there at the front door, remembering all the moments she had shared with the Mortimer family, knowing what she was about to do, she hadn’t been able to face him – to face any of them. She’d opened the door and left the ring on the shelf above the boot rack, slipping away down the drive and leaving Cloud Green far behind her.

  She’s imagined what she put him through a hundred times over, but it’s never been quite as painful as hearing him recount it in his own words. She also knows it will never be as bad as actually living it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again, barely a whisper.

  ‘It wasn’t just me you hurt. I had to tell Mum and Dad what was going on. I’d asked for my grandmother’s ring. I’d told Mum about the baby. Her first grandchild. I had to explain where you were . . . what you’d said . . . why I was such a mess. I had to try and answer their questions when I didn’t even understand myself why you wouldn’t want to keep it. “Why isn’t she here?” they kept asking me. “You must know something?” But I didn’t. I knew nothing, Maggie. Only that I thought you’d loved me.’

  ‘It must have been terrible.’

  Gus nods. ‘So tell me. What happened? What made you walk away? I think you owe me that much of an explanation, at the very least.’

  Maggie takes a deep breath. She leans back in her chair and meets his gaze. ‘I went to find my mum.’

  Gus does a visible double-take. ‘You what?’

  ‘I went to see her. I had to talk to her – to know why she left all those years ago. I had to understand why she couldn’t be a mother to me. I had to know if I was like her . . . if I had the same weakness inside me.’

  ‘And did you find her?’ His voice is soft. Gus has gone very still, watching her intently across the table. ‘Did you get the answers you were looking for?’

  Maggie sighs. ‘She wasn’t that hard to find. Her name’s been there in black and white on my birth certificate all these years. A little searching on the internet was all it took to track her down to a small village just outside York.’

  ‘Go on.’ He leans forward, encouraging her.

  ‘I honestly didn’t know what she’d do when I knocked at her front door, unannounced. I suppose, from the little I knew of her from Albie’s stories, and the little I remembered, I’d been expecting a glamorous free-spirit of a woman. Someone beautiful, bohemian and bold. I was prepared to forgive a woman who had left us for a bigger, better life. I was ready to accept her decisions, when I saw the wonderful life she had escaped to. And I suppose I hoped that she would find me delightful and surprising and infinitely lovable, and perhaps we would find a way to connect after all these years apart.’

  ‘But it didn’t play out like that?’

  ‘No,’ says Maggie flatly. ‘It didn’t play out like that.’

  Maggie remembers with a burning shame the look on her mother’s face as she’d opened the front door of a townhouse on the outskirts of the village she had tracked her down to, her expression slowly changing from polite suspicion to undeniable horror as Maggie had shakily introduced herself. ‘Not here,’ she’d hissed, looking back into the house. ‘I can’t talk to you here.’

  ‘I’ve waited a long time to meet you again,’ Maggie had said, holding her nerve. The woman standing across the threshold in her drab brown sweater and pleated skirt had looked smaller, greyer, somehow so much less than Maggie had ever imagined.

  ‘There’s a cafe in the village, next to the shop. I’ll meet you there in half an hour,’ and with that she had shut the door in Maggie’s face.

  Maggie had ordered a pot of tea and waited at a small, slightly sticky pine table, half-expecting her not to show, but Amanda had scurried in, glancing about the cafe, before sliding into the chair opposite. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said. ‘I couldn’t have you at the house.’

  ‘Right,’ Maggie had said, holding the woman’s eye, suddenly somehow more confident in the face of her obvious discomfort.

  ‘What do you want?’ Amanda had asked, glancing around the cafe again.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I thought it might be nice to catch up on the last . . . hmmm . . . what is it, twenty-one years? Shoot the breeze. Exchange our news.’

  Her mother had had the good grace to look shame-faced, staring down at her lap. ‘How’s your father?’

  Maggie shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him in a while.’

  ‘Oh. But . . . but you look well?’ Amanda had tried again, hopefully.

  Maggie had laughed, aware that if this woman thought she looked well with her green-tinged face and the dark circles around her eyes then she truly didn’t know her at all. ‘Thanks. So, you’re married?’

  Amanda had nodded. ‘John. He’s a good man. We live our lives under the watchful eye of Our Lord. Faith is everything to him – to us,’ she’d corrected herself. ‘So you see,’ she adds quickly, twisting a spare napkin round and round in her hands, ‘I really can’t have you turning up at the house like that. He doesn’t know.’

  ‘He doesn’t know about your illegitimate child? The one you abandoned years ago?’

  She’d winced again. ‘No.’

  ‘He wouldn’t like it?’

  ‘I haven’t told him about . . . about that time of my life.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little . . . hypocritical? You know, under the watchful eye of Our Lord?’

  Amanda had sighed. ‘“We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ”,’ she’d quoted at her. ‘I put my trust in God. He will be my Judge, when the time comes.’

  Maggie had studied her mother, the pictu
re of the woman before her growing a little clearer and a little more disappointing with every passing minute. Amanda had cleared her throat. ‘So . . . was there something you needed?’

  ‘Just answers.’

  ‘Answers?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t help but wonder what makes a mother abandon her own child and never look back. Not once.’

  She’d sighed. ‘I know it seems cruel, Maggie, but it was for the best. I met Albie while travelling through Europe. I was a bit of a lost soul, I suppose. He had that old truck he was driving through Spain and he let me hitch along with him.’

  Maggie had nodded. ‘I remember that truck. It’s one of the few things I do remember from that time – the rainbow stripes.’

  Amanda had nodded, the first glimmer of a smile appearing on her face, before fading just as fast. ‘We grew close and then I fell pregnant – with you. For a while, it seemed as if we might make a go of things.’

  ‘Only for a while?’

  Amanda had shifted in her seat, reaching for a serviette lying on the table in front of her, scrunching it tightly between her fingers. ‘I wasn’t a very . . . stable person. I’d had a difficult upbringing myself. Albie and I were two lost souls. We were dragging each other down. I could see that we were going to fail each other – fail you. I thought it best that I leave. I knew your father came from a wealthy family. I knew he had the resources to look after you properly.’

  ‘You thought it best a young girl – your own daughter – grow up without her mother? You thought money and a fancy house might make your absence bearable?’ Maggie had studied her, incredulous.

  Amanda had eyed her warily. ‘I hoped the sacrifice I made would be in your best interests.’

  ‘The sacrifice you made?’ Maggie had fought to control her angry laugh. ‘I see.’

  ‘It was for the best,’ Amanda had said suddenly and vehemently. ‘I returned to England. I found God . . . and John, my husband. He is a pillar of the Church here. He has brought me peace and salvation.’

  Maggie had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. ‘Well I’m glad you found your peace.’ She’d thought for a moment. ‘Do you have any other children?’

  Amanda had dropped her gaze, still fidgeting with the napkin. ‘Yes. We have three.’

  ‘Three! I have three half-siblings?’ Maggie had shaken her head in bewilderment. ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  Amanda had eyed her nervously. ‘You won’t cause any trouble, will you?’

  Maggie had kept her waiting, letting the anger settle like bile in the pit of her stomach. ‘No, Mum,’ she’d added pointedly, saying it just the once, allowing the word to roll off her tongue, ‘don’t worry. I won’t cause any trouble. I won’t be bothering you again.’

  She’d stood and left the cafe without a backwards glance at the small, hunched woman sitting at the table, still wringing the ripped serviette in her hands.

  ‘She wasn’t who I imagined she would be,’ she tells Gus, her voice flat and empty of emotion. ‘She wasn’t the strong, independent woman I’d been imagining all these years, travelling the world, living a life of adventure. It turns out she was simply weak and selfish . . . and afraid. Seems she ran from one kind of life, fearing entrapment, and just exchanged it for another kind of stifled existence: a small, hum-drum life of fear and self-righteousness.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Gus, softening slightly.

  ‘Thanks.’ Maggie takes a moment to gather her thoughts. She draws a circular pattern with her fingertip in the condensation on the outside of her pint glass. ‘Seeing her did help, though. It told me that I didn’t ever want to be like her. I didn’t want to bring a child into the world, unprepared and afraid. I didn’t want to inflict that damage on another human being. I didn’t want to repeat the pattern.’

  ‘So you left your mum in York and . . .’

  Maggie nods but can’t look at Gus. ‘I scheduled the abortion the very next day.’

  Gus goes still.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t what you hoped for, but it was the right decision for me. I wasn’t ready. There is still so much I want to do – with my art, with my life. I had the procedure a couple of days later and then I booked a flight, as far away as I could get. I ran away. I thought it would be easier if I just disappeared.’

  Gus can’t seem to help his hollow laugh. ‘Easier for me, or easier for you? There was nothing easy for me about what you did, Maggie. Did you even stop to consider the torturous days that came afterwards? Going to bed every night wondering where you were . . . who you were with . . . wondering if that had been the day you’d aborted our baby. And of course, as it always seems to round here, word got out. There was all the whispering and gossip to contend with. All the excruciating sympathy. The whole of Cloud Green seemed to be talking about it. About us. Do you know how that felt?’

  She nods but he thumps his fist angrily on the table. Maggie looks around, but no one has noticed. ‘Actually, I don’t think you do. Because you weren’t here. You weren’t the one left to face it all because you had conveniently done a runner, hadn’t you? You were off God knows where, living it up on the other side of the world while I returned to the flat in London and went about slowly and methodically unpicking our life together, trying to ignore your clothes still hanging in my wardrobe, your make-up in my bathroom, all your sketchbooks piled up on the kitchen table, the half-finished paintings in the spare room.’

  Maggie’s head droops even lower.

  ‘I still don’t understand why we couldn’t work through it together. You shut me out. It was cruel. I could only assume there was someone else.’

  She hesitates. A face flashes before her eyes but she pushes it away. ‘No. There was no one else.’

  ‘Well why then, Maggie? Why did you leave me? Were we not worth more than that?’

  ‘I . . . I . . . it wasn’t right.’

  ‘What wasn’t right? You and me?’

  Maggie nods. ‘We’d been friends since, well, forever. But . . . marriage . . . babies . . .’

  ‘Yes, Maggie. Marriage. That thing two people do when they love each other.’

  ‘I did love you, Gus. Just not in the right way. I didn’t realise until it was too late.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘We fell into a relationship. We got swept up onto a treadmill of expectation – everyone else’s expectation – and we let it lead us. Before we knew it, we’d moved in together. It felt as if we were sleepwalking. We went down a path we probably never should have, and the further we went, the harder it was to turn back. It was so comfortable. So easy. I knew you.’

  Gus is staring at her. ‘You never wanted to be with me? It was a mistake, right from the very beginning?’

  ‘No. Yes. No.’ She sighs with exasperation. She’s imagined trying to explain this to Gus a thousand times, but nothing seems to be coming out right. ‘There was a letter . . .’

  ‘What letter? I didn’t get a letter. There was nothing from you – no note, no explanation. Just silence.’

  ‘No, nothing I wrote. Something else.’ She shakes her head in frustration. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. I realised, too late, that the way I loved you was more . . .’ She hesitates.

  ‘More what?’

  ‘More like . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘More like a friend. A brother. Not a lover . . . not a husband.’

  Gus’s shoulders sag. He looks down into his beer. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She stretches out her hand, reaching for the sleeve of his shirt. ‘I never wanted to hurt you.’

  ‘Don’t.’ He shrugs her off. ‘You could have talked to me. Instead of running off and making the decision on your own; we could have talked about it like adults. Found a way. Even if you didn’t want to be with me, even if you didn’t want to get married, perhaps we could have raised the child, separately but amicably. Did you ever think of that?’

  She shakes her head. ‘You arriving with that ring, so e
lated at the news of the pregnancy,’ she looks down into her pint, ‘it scared the living daylights out of me. You had it all mapped out. You were so certain of everything. But I was terrified of what becoming a mother meant. I couldn’t go through with it. You weren’t supposed to know. No one was supposed to know.’

  ‘So you were never going to tell me about the pregnancy? You were just going to deal with it yourself, and pretend our baby never existed?’

  ‘It was my body.’ She looks at him, imploring him to understand.

  ‘But it was our baby.’ He shakes his head, the anguish evident in his eyes. ‘You took everything away from me – not just our future – but the chance for me to be a father to that child.’

  Maggie swallows, shame burning in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘I really thought you loved me.’

  ‘I did. I do,’ she corrects. ‘You’re my best friend.’

  Gus looks out over the half-empty pub and sighs. ‘Was your best friend. Looking at you now, Maggie, I’m not sure I ever really knew you.’ He drains the last of his beer from his glass. ‘Tell me, how is your glittering career as an artist coming along?’ He eyes her coldly. ‘Have you finished any of the paintings for that exhibition you talked about?’

  Maggie hangs her head.

  ‘Just as I thought. You’re all talk, Maggie. Talk and empty promises. You can’t see a single damn thing through, can you?’

  She can’t answer him. She is too ashamed.

  ‘Come on,’ he says, standing so fast his chair scrapes horribly across the flagstone floor. ‘I’ve heard enough. I’ll take you home.’

  They drive back to Cloudesley in silence, Maggie wilting in the passenger seat with her hands thrust deep into her cardigan pockets. Now that they’ve spoken, it seems clear that it is far too late for bridges to be built and Maggie longs to be free of the oppressive atmosphere of the car, certain Gus can’t wait for her to be gone either. But as they round the final corner, Gus slows the car and leans forward over the steering wheel. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘What’s going on here?’