by K. M. Peyton
‘Yes. I’m coming back here for a few hours’ kip, then down to Heathrow first thing in the morning.’
Marion glanced at Ruth, but she looked quite calm and non-committal. Perhaps everything had been worked out amicably after all, Marion thought? She was asking Pat about arrangements for the following day.
‘You’ve got Newcastle tomorrow night?’
‘And York the day after, so I’ll stay up there, drive home as soon as I’ve finished.’
‘I’ll put two shirts in then, and your night things.’
‘Yes.’
All very wifely and even-tempered. Pat drove north, and Ruth asked Marion to baby-sit for her the evening he was away. She did so, thinking nothing of it.
The following day, Saturday, she was in the church to tidy up for the week-end visitors when the scorned Melissa Rowley arrived with a bunch of her mother’s fresh flowers to get ready for the weekly flower arranging. Marion usually got the job of washing out the smelly vases at the tap down by the rubbish-tip and clearing up the debris, and made to disappear, but Melissa and her friend Louise offered her some liquorice allsorts. They were giggling and nudging each other.
‘You can have the coconut one if you like.’
‘I like the ones with beads on best.’
‘All right. You can have them both.’
Marion fished her fingers into the box.
‘My father saw yours last night,’ Louise said, grinning. ‘He said he’s courting. Did you know?’
Marion concentrated on the blue liquorice allsorts, not looking up. She felt great flames engulfing her.
‘He’s not!’
‘Truly, having dinner at the Goat and Compass. Gazing into her eyes. My father said.’
‘Well, and if he is, she’s beautiful! She’s not a great fat cow like your mother! She’s not—’
‘She’s married—’
Marion kicked Louise, hard, on the shin, and she buckled up with a squeal, showering liquorice allsorts. Marion ran, as she had run on the day of the concert, desperate for sanctuary, all her squashed-down fears bursting out into the old familiar wildness, uncontainable. Mrs. Rowley, coming in at the door with greenhouse chrysanthemums as big as footballs, staggered as the cyclone passed by. The great latch on the door crashed, echoing all round the roof like a peal on the organ bass notes. Marion ran, and knew there was no one to go to; she was on her own.
She made for the elder trees and the cave of long, burnt grass where the mowers hadn’t bothered, filled with the rank smell of the faded blossoms, where she had watched Pat from after the concert. She crouched there, holding her arms round herself, knowing that Louise had been speaking the truth, that her father was courting Ruth while Pat was away, and that if Pat went to America—‘Oh, Ruth! Ruth! I do want you too,’ she wept. ‘But it isn’t fair! It isn’t fair!’ She cried herself sick, silently, shaking.
One of the husbands came and started the motor mower, and she could see the grass whirling in its wake and smell the crushed, damp smell. Everyone was going on in their Saturday morning way, even Geoff on the boat, and Ruth, no doubt, on the beach with Lud, and nothing was any different, but she felt as if her angels had fallen.
She emerged an hour later when the coast was clear, damp and crushed as the mown grass, but having surfaced without help, older, wiser, sick with foreboding. She went and made toasted cheese, and called Geoff up from the boat. He came in, whistling, and washed his hands in the sink. He smelled terribly of glue.
‘I got something in my eye,’ Marion said, as he stared at her across the table. She could deceive as well as anybody if she had to.
‘Baby elephant by the look of you.’
‘It’s all right now.’
‘Good.’
‘Is Pat still going to America?’
‘Yes, I think so. Why?’
‘I just wondered. Ruth doesn’t want him to.’
‘I know. It’s difficult.’ He said it lightly, eating toasted cheese.
‘If he goes—’ She was going to say, will Ruth come to you here? But she knew she couldn’t ask. She wasn’t quite sure how it worked, this divorce thing, people changing over when they were married. And anyway, although she knew her father loved Ruth, she didn’t know if Ruth loved her father. But if Ruth was just left alone, without Pat, it seemed very likely that. . . .
She started again. ‘Will Pat be away long?’
‘No, not this time. I think the idea is to plan an American tour for next year some time. It will be quite a long time then. That’s what Ruth doesn’t want, for him to do long tours abroad.’
‘But that means he’s successful, if they want him?’
‘Exactly. She should be pleased, and she knows that, and it makes her feel worse that she can’t enjoy his being successful. Because it takes him away from her.’
‘She loves him?’ Marion asked fiercely.
‘Yes, if she didn’t she wouldn’t care, would she?’
It wasn’t like she thought then! Marion felt a great lurch of relief, uncertainty. . . .
‘But—’
‘The trouble is,’ Geoff said steadily, ‘it’s a very unsatisfactory life for her, loving someone who either isn’t there or, when he is, is so wrapped up in his work that he hardly notices her. So Pat’s going to America is a sort of decision-making thing. She’s got to decide what’s best to do. If he goes away she thinks she’ll be able to make, up her mind one way or another.’
‘And if he decides not to go?’
‘Well, I think he’s decided. But if he doesn’t, I suppose it might all be O.K.—for the time being. It’s a bit of a test, in a way, of what he wants most, his work or her.’
It really was, then, as bad as she had thought. Her miracle had brought the whole thing about; without Ephraim it would never have happened. She mumbled this to Geoff, pushing away her plate, tears pricking again.
But Geoff said gently, ‘No, Marion. Sooner or later it would have happened. Ephraim’s offer just makes it sooner.’
But Marion didn’t agree. Later, when Pat and Ruth were back in London, and Geoff was no longer there for Ruth to turn to, everything would be all right. At least, as all right as before the miracle.
Worst of all, worse than anything else, the thing she wanted most in the whole world was for Ruth to come here to live with her and Geoff. She put her arms on the table, buried her head in them and cried.
Chapter Eight
‘HULLO, MARION. DID you get blown all the way here?’
Ruth opened the door and let Marion in, along with a blast of wind and a skirling of sand. It was as if, on the day of the Norwich concert, the day before Pat’s departure for America, God had decided to add suitable atmospherics, for the weather was as thundery as the mood at Fair Winds. Foul Winds more like, Marion thought, seeing the bleakness in Ruth’s face. A large suitcase with fresh Pan-Am airline labels stood ready packed. A smaller one lay on the table, into which Ruth was folding Pat’s concert clothes.
‘Is he really going tomorrow?’ Marion asked.
‘Yes.’
No respite then. Marion shivered.
‘Marion’s here, Pat,’ Ruth called towards the living-room door. Pat was sitting at the piano studying some music, but did not respond.
‘I should warn you,’ Ruth said softly to Marion, ‘he’s horrible before a concert. Don’t expect too much. Afterwards he’ll be all right. It’s nerves.’
Marion was amazed. Her face showed it, for Ruth smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry. You’re not nervous about—about—you know—?’
‘No, I won’t. I promised.’
She was terribly nervous about it, but Pat had said she could beat it if she tried, and she had improved enormously. He was her living proof, having grown out of beating up people who annoyed him. She would sit like a statue all through the concert, as if nailed to her seat, and any tears would be silent ones. It was for Pat: she was determined not to disgrace him. It was her great test. In her own way, she was
as nervous as Pat.
Pat came out of the living-room and put some music in the case.
‘Hi, Marion. You all fit to go?’
‘Yes.’
He glanced at his watch. He was pale and scowling. Out of the window behind him the sea was lashing up the beach, dark under low, bruised clouds. It was half-past five, but looked three hours later.
‘O.K. then, we’ll get moving.’
He shut the case and swung it off the table, and took his car keys off the dresser. Ruth came to the door with them, but he didn’t say anything to her. Marion wanted to say something nice, to cheer her up, but nothing came to mind and she followed Pat dumbly out to the car and got in. He flung his case in the back, got in and they roared away down the road towards civilization. It was so dark he had to put the lights on. Marion could feel the buffeting of the wind, and splatters of wild rain threshed the windows, but Pat drove fast, heedless.
‘What time is your plane tomorrow?’ Marion asked him.
‘Eleven o’clock.’
‘You’ll have to leave very early.’
‘Yes, I will.’
Marion wanted to say, ‘Don’t go,’ but knew she couldn’t. Pat was still scowling, closed-up, concentrating on the road. He was like a stranger. Marion presumed this was what Ruth meant by ‘being horrible’. Perhaps best not to talk, but just stare out at the familiar landscape, unfamiliar under the dark weather, pale fields of stubble ghostly under the purple sky, a church tower gleaming, cows turning their backs. She was nervous too, looking for reassurance. But there wasn’t any. Presumably for Pat neither, until it was all over.
They came into Norwich, not a word having been exchanged all the way. Pat parked the car. There was a theatre with a lot of posters for the concert, but the doors were still locked. Pat went round the back to the stage-door, and there was someone there to let them in and put the lights on.
‘Can I have the stage lights on?’ Pat asked.
‘You want to try the piano? The tuner only left an hour ago.’
The lights came on and revealed the enormous black concert grand like a recumbent lion bathed in light, and the cavernous maw of the auditorium beyond. Marion, curious, went out on the stage and thought of being a performer exposed to this quixotic gloom, and didn’t think she would like it: enough to merely sample it empty. It was unnerving. But perhaps, when he was playing, he never noticed. Only at the beginning, when he had admitted that it was nasty, the getting started.
He played what sounded to Marion like scales for twenty minutes, then the stage-manager came and told him the doors would be opening very shortly, and he stopped and went back to the dressing-room. Ephraim and Mick were there. Ephraim was in evening dress, playing his violin, and Mick was in an armchair reading a stage magazine.
‘Why, my little agent! Patrick! You didn’t tell me we were having such an important visitor tonight!’ Ephraim put his bow arm round Marion and kissed her cheek. He wasn’t much taller than she was.
Marion noticed that Mick didn’t look quite so pleased, and suspected that he was remembering the St. Michael’s concert. He got up though, and gave her a kiss too. He smelled lovely. Marion didn’t know what to say.
Pat opened his suitcase and shook out his concert clothes. The transformation, out of the habitual jeans and pullover into the white shirt and waistcoat and black tail suit, staggered Marion. The ticket for her seat was folded into the white handkerchief that Ruth had dutifully supplied, and he gave it to her, speaking to her for the first time since the short exchange at the beginning of the car journey.
‘You’ll be all right. I know you will.’ And he actually smiled.
‘I’ll take her down now,’ Mick said.
‘Enjoy it, my little pigeon,’ Ephraim said.
‘Thank you.’ One didn’t say ‘good luck’ to Ephraim Voigt, she felt sure, but to Pat it was surely not out of place, this concert counting as one of the ones that mattered a lot? She whispered it to him, following Mick to the door, and he gave her a bleak look and said, ‘And you too.’
The seat in the front row had a good wide gangway in front of it and the Exit door was close at hand. Mick looked relieved, shepherding her through the throng.
‘You’ll be all right on your own? I’ve got to go back—I might have to turn over for Pat, unless they produce someone.’
‘Yes.’
He still looked anxious, but Marion smiled at him. She wasn’t afraid, no more than Pat.
It was a help, in a way, knowing how he felt, and seeing how he transcended it: the example before her very eyes. She wasn’t going to give way this time, however the music might move her. A part of her was holding back, very conscious of the responsibility, and if it meant that she wasn’t entirely free to involve her senses with the beautiful music, it also meant that she was less likely to disgrace herself. It was like being under the elder bush in the churchyard, and knowing that she was on her own, with no Geoff there to field her. It just had to work; there was no alternative. And as Ephraim’s violin soared above the piano’s outpouring she found her arms crossing over and holding the opposite seat-arms hard, and knew the tears were falling down her cheeks, but knew too that she was all in hand in spite of it, silent and contained, triumphant.
At the end of the César Franck when Pat took his bow he looked for her. Marion, clapping madly, saw him smile, and thought he winked. They had to play several encores. The house was in an uproar of applause, and Marion cried again, but only at the end when everyone was getting up and groping for their coats did she let herself go, leaping out of her seat and making for the back of the stage. She felt electrified in her release, not aware until she got up of how much the effort had cost her. She blundered through swing doors, saw Pat in the wings talking amongst a group of people and went to him like a moth to a candle. To her intense relief he took her, unembarrassed, and put his arm round her while she buried her face in the front of his beautiful tailcoat. She wasn’t exactly crying, more like getting herself straight, her breath coming in shivering gasps, but improving. He took out his large white handkerchief and gave it her to cover up with.
‘Did you like it that much, idiot child? Is that how good it was?’
‘Yes!’
‘I told you you could do it.’
He took her back to the dressing-room, still with his arm round her, and sat her down in the armchair.
‘Don’t spoil it now.’
‘No.’
He was grinning, the old, nice Pat, nothing like the cold stranger in the car. Looking at him, thinking of him going to America in the morning nearly made her cry again, but she shied her thoughts away fiercely.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘No. It’s splendid. You managed beautifully. Geoff will be pleased.’
The room seemed to be full of people talking but no one took any notice of Marion, which pleased her. When it thinned out a bit Pat changed back into his old clothes.
‘I’m not going to hang around. I want to get back,’ he said to Mick. ‘There’s not much time now.’
‘No. Ephraim too. I’ll see you in the departure lounge then. No later than ten thirty.’
‘Yes.’
‘Mind how you go. There’s a storm blowing outside.’
Ephraim came and embraced Marion again, to say good-bye.
‘Thanks to you, this has been a real fine holiday. I sure have enjoyed giving these concerts and meeting all these fine people.’
‘Thank you, for the church.’
‘It’s been my pleasure, believe me!’
They left the theatre, head down into a gale of wind, Ephraim clutching his violin case in both hands. His chauffeur was outside with the enormous car, opening the door ready. Final good-byes were shredded by the wind. Pat and Marion butted their way back to Pat’s two-seater and ducked in. It was a relief to slam the doors.
‘What a night! Lucky we’re close to the ground in this job.’
Once out of the city boundaries
the roads were dark, empty and wild. Pat drove very fast, the powerful headlights searing convulsed hedgerows and flailing trees. Leaves came at them like snowflakes. Sometimes the car shuddered, and Pat’s hands would tighten on the wheel.
‘Are you tired?’ he asked her.
‘No.’
She felt strangely exhilarated, as if infected by the weather.
Pat said, ‘I shan’t sleep tonight.’
‘You shouldn’t go,’ Marion said fiercely, suddenly.
Pat frowned, surprised, and said, ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because of Ruth.’
‘She ought to come. I want her to. I need her.’
‘She says you don’t need her.’
‘She’s wrong.’
‘The work matters to you more than she does.’
‘The work matters very much, but not more nor less than Ruth. You can’t measure it.’
Marion didn’t say anything else, wondering what had possessed her to broach the subject at all, and after a few minutes Pat said, ‘Has she spoken to you about it?’
‘A little bit.’
‘Has she spoken to Geoff?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think so. She and Geoff—’
He did not finish the sentence. Marion looked at him, feeling her pulses beating uncomfortably, but he was watching the road. His face was very strained and alight, not relaxed at all. He didn’t look as if he was going to sleep that night or ever again.
‘Nothing is any different now from how it’s been all along, right from the beginning. She knew. I can’t change it. She thinks I don’t need her. I can’t make her think otherwise. I know it’s hard for her, but I told her—I told her—’ He stopped, blinking at a flash of lightning that suddenly split the horizon ahead of them. The road was momentarily white, dazzling, dancing with rain. Marion winced, waiting for the thunder. But Pat laughed.
‘Your magic’s at work again, Marion—we’re going to part in a flash of lightning. The way I feel now, it’s exactly right. Thunder and lightning all the way.’
The speedometer was just under seventy, the road glittering and the sky fragmented with sheet lightning.