Love Song

by Charlotte Bingham

  Aunt Rosabel suddenly turned a face of panic on the young Australian nanny. ‘But – but what am I doing here?’ she asked. ‘Why aren’t I in my own house?’

  ‘Your house is being repaired, Mrs Fairfield, and when it’s all finished you will be there again. Nothing to worry about.’

  Verna looked back at Hope and nodded at her, and in an attempt to reassure her mouthed as silently as possible, ‘Probably had a bad dream.’

  ‘You’re going to be all right. Don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs Fairfield, Nanny’s here. Remember the joke we were having yesterday? Nanny’s here?’

  Hope waited and then hearing them laughing together she went back to bed. Verna was probably right. Aunt Rosabel must have had some terrible nightmare. But the next morning Verna, whose patience seemed endless, and whose kindness was bottomless, shook her head.

  ‘No, Mrs Merriott, I was thinking about it. Normally she sleeps so well. No, I would say the pills that the doctor gave her brought about some sort of confusion. This happens with old people. I mean,’ she added, joking, ‘until the old lady decided to go jogging with you, she really was very fit. And she will be again, don’t you worry.’

  But Alexander was not so sure. He worried aloud on the telephone from London that Hope had been encouraging his elderly relation to do too much.

  ‘I don’t want her going before her time,’ he said sternly.

  ‘She’s not going before her time, Mrs Merriott,’ Verna laughed when Hope confided Alexander’s worries to her. ‘Great heavens, she’s fine in every way. She’s just turned her ankle, that’s all. But to make our sleep patterns just a little easier I’ve thrown away the sleeping tablets – mild though they were, I think they’re just not what was needed. Painkillers, yes, but not both. So many doctors are such junkies, really they are. I’ve some homoeopathic tablets that will be very soothing, and if she takes them with a hot drink she won’t know anything until morning!’

  Hope looked after Verna’s bustling figure as she put Letty in her pram and pushed her out of the cottage door and onto the path that led to the gates and the road. She would gamely walk her down to the village shop some three miles away, coming back with fresh loaves and farm butter, and anything else that Hope needed. Hope did not know what life would be like without her, but her wages were now being paid out of the sale of West Dean Drive, not out of Alexander’s earnings, because there were none. Yet he was so convinced that his many ugly ducklings were about to become swans, Hope had to believe him. Or at least, she wanted to believe him, because only by believing him could she go on with her quiet life at Hatcombe, with walks and talks with Aunt Rosabel and watching Letty growing day by day more beautiful.

  She turned back to the cottage and saw Aunt Rosabel’s upright figure leaning on her stick, waiting for her. As soon as she drew near her Hope could see that the look in her eyes was the same as in the night, and knew that it would take all her courage to deal with the old lady on her own now that Verna had disappeared to the village with Letty.

  ‘Aunt Rosabel?’ she called to her. ‘Isn’t it a lovely morning? Winters nowadays are definitely becoming warmer, wouldn’t you say?’

  Aunt Rosabel’s brilliant gaze was turned on Hope, but her words were strangely pathetic. ‘I cannot understand it,’ she told Hope sadly. ‘He’s normally in for dinner, but look, he’s not here. What can have happened to him, do you think?’

  ‘I expect he’ll be back soon,’ Hope heard herself saying. And then, ‘Come inside and wait for him. You’ll see, he’ll be back soon.’

  Once inside, Aunt Rosabel went and sat by the fire as if nothing untoward had been said.

  This time, instead of issuing dire warnings for the safeguarding of his great-aunt, Alexander had no time to listen.

  ‘It’s just the pills,’ he said dismissively, ‘as Verna said. Just stop giving her the painkillers and you’ll find she’ll be right as rain. If you hadn’t insisted on taking her walking she’d be perfectly all right.’

  He rang off after only a minute or so. Putting down the receiver with a sigh, Hope asked Verna, ‘But supposing it’s not the pills?’

  The handsome Australian girl continued to give Letty her tea, but as she did so she looked at Hope in a worried way. They both knew the problems if Aunt Rosabel’s mind was beginning to go, and it would be all too heartbreaking.

  ‘I’ll wait until she’s fallen asleep tonight, and then I’ll remove her cup from her bedside and lock her door. I’m always up with the lark, so I can return the key before she discovers. At least this way we will be able to get some sleep, not lie awake worrying if she’s wandering about the cottage or on her way down to the lake, Mrs Merriott. Can’t have all of us doing without our shut-eye.’

  Hope could not help wondering what she would have done if she did not have Verna. She would be all alone in the countryside with only the baby and an old lady whose mind might be beginning to go.

  ‘What does Mr Merriott say about his great-aunt?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem very interested.’

  ‘No, well, that’s normal, if you don’t mind my saying so, Mrs Merriott. Men don’t like this kind of thing, it frightens them.’ Verna looked across at Hope but Hope said nothing, simply because there was nothing to say. ‘At least the house is getting along fine,’ she went on brightly. ‘Mr Frances told me he would have finished the first part of the building works very soon – sooner than he had scheduled, in fact, which must be a first.’

  Hope nodded, but again she remained silent, because a terrible thought had occurred to her. Later she tried to ring Alexander, but once more he was not obtainable at any of his given numbers, and so she was left with Aunt Rosabel who, to her relief, seemed once more quite her usual self.

  She continued to behave normally when Alexander and the girls came home for the weekend, so that Alexander teased both Hope and Verna that they were hysterical women with too little to do. The girls appeared to notice nothing until on Sunday evening, just before they were due to be driven back to school by Alexander, Melinda caught her mother by the arm and said, ‘Is everything all right with Aunt Rosabel, Mums?’ And then, in answer to Hope’s enquiring look, ‘It’s just that she woke up suddenly this afternoon and told us that she was going to join the WVS and nothing we could do or say would stop her. And she kept calling Rose by her sister’s name – Victoria. Verna says it’s what is called a time lapse but, I mean, is she all right?’

  Hope nodded as cheerfully as she could. ‘Good heavens, yes,’ she said, her heart sinking. ‘Perfectly all right. It’s just as Verna says – a sort of time lapse.’

  After that, with the girls back at school once more, it was difficult for Verna and Hope to go out together unless Aunt Rosabel accompanied them. Otherwise one of them would stay behind to sit with her.

  Hope found herself worrying about Aunt Rosabel more than ever in the next few days, until Jack phoned and asked Hope and Alexander over for lunch. There was a pause while Hope’s gaze wandered around the kitchen, to the jug of flowers she had just arranged, to the rough brown loaf she had baked that morning, to the ingredients of the salad waiting on the side to be mixed.

  ‘We’d love to come,’ she heard herself saying and her heart seemed to stop with the knowledge that Alexander would almost certainly be in London, that she was telling a deliberate lie, and worst of all that she really wanted to have lunch with Jack Tomm alone. Which was wrong. But as soon as she had heard his voice she had not cared. She wanted him to herself.

  For the next few days she lived in terror that something would go wrong between her present and that future for which she now found herself living. The future which was to hold lunching alone with Jack.

  Once or twice she told herself that she should really back out of the date, but then the glorious realization would come to her that, lunching alone with Jack, she could be someone else. That from the moment she stepped from Verna’s car she would no longer be the mother of four daughters, the wife of Alexander,
the friend of Verna, the carer of Aunt Rosabel. She would be, quite simply, Hope.

  And so the excitement grew in her mind, and secrecy added to that excitement, so that she could hardly eat, and she seemed to be washing her hair five times a day in order to style it as beautifully as she could, make it look polished and gleaming, and have her combs at just the right angle. Even as she realized what a fool she must look to anyone else, the excitement would not go away. She would be lunching with Jack, alone.

  But then of course Alexander, who now hardly telephoned during the week when he was in London, perhaps by some second sight, phoned Hope just as she was leaving the cottage, hair done, and wearing a navy-blue pullover with matching corduroy skirt and what Verna called ‘cute boots’.

  Hope was just about to say ‘I’m out’, but before she could Verna handed her the telephone. Crossing her fingers that Verna, who had disappeared upstairs to see to Letty, would not hear, Hope told Alexander her second lie. ‘I’m going shopping and then having my hair done in Marlborough,’ she told him, and then fled the housekeeper’s cottage leaving Verna to give Aunt Rosabel and Letty lunch.

  I should not be doing this, she told herself as she drove Verna’s car over to Jack’s house. I should be staying at home with Aunt Rosabel, but I have been cooped up in the cottage at Hatcombe for what seems like weeks now, and I would like to see Jack’s house. I am only going to see him out of curiosity, she added, continuing to lie to herself. Just curiosity, that’s all.

  ‘I’m afraid Alexander could not come. He’s been detained in London,’ she explained as Jack came out of the Mill House to meet her.

  ‘Oh good,’ Jack said, without any attempt at pretence. ‘I was hoping it might just be the two of us. Much more fun.’

  He tried to look contrite but seeing Hope burst into laughter at the audacity of his honesty, he smiled. He could not help being honest, just as Hope could not help laughing at his truthfulness. It was breathtaking, and somehow shocking too. And although Hope felt a momentary twinge of guilt that her laughter might be betraying Alexander in some way, she nevertheless found that she almost floated ahead of Jack into his house, still feeling as if she had suddenly been freed from prison. She realized it was wrong, but at that moment she simply did not care.

  She stood in the hall of the Mill House and knew at once that it was everything that everyone would want. Not grand and elegant like Hatcombe but simple and welcoming, and glowing with colours – as in a sixteenth-century painting, vibrant reds and dark greens. It was a man’s house and a family house, and both at the same time.

  ‘Of course, you haven’t been here. I keep forgetting.’ Jack nodded and indicated that Hope should go ahead into the sitting room. ‘It’s a mill house, as you can see, fourteenth century originally, part timbered, part stone, and part old red brick. No. Stop. I’m being a building bore. They’re even worse than jazz bores!’ He went to the drinks tray. ‘Wine?’

  Hope drifted past the crackling log fire and gazed out of the sitting room window, which overlooked the millpond outside. The pond lay dark and calm, populated by a clutch of what she recognized as Muscovy ducks, all of which were busy catching insects. Inside, the colours of the sitting room were cream and amber, the paintings few and modern, and Jack was bringing through a tray of smoked salmon and chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches for them to eat in front of the fire, ‘just cosy’.

  ‘Do you like it – do you like my house?’

  ‘I was just thinking, it’s everything that a house should be.’

  She looked at him and wondered how his wife could possibly have left such an attractive, kind and intelligent man. At the same time, Jack looked at her and wondered why this slender, beautiful woman with the sad eyes should be abandoned all week by her handsome, pompous husband.

  ‘There’s no way that a house can lie, is there?’ He sat back in his winged armchair and smiled at Hope. ‘Whatever you are, from wherever you’ve come, wherever you’re going to, your house will always tell the truth about you, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And so, Mrs M, what does this house tell you?’

  Hope put down her wine glass and immediately stood up, eager to rise to the challenge that she could hear in his voice.

  ‘Right, you’ve had it now,’ she joked. ‘There is no way that I am going to show you any mercy. You know that, don’t you, Mr Tomm?’

  ‘I don’t want any.’

  Hope did not turn and look at him, knowing just by that remark that certain territories that had lain between them were now crossed, but she continued as if she had not noticed. ‘Yes. So. The man who owns this house is certainly a very strong character, we can see this from this lovely amber colour he has used, and he is not afraid of contrasts either because suddenly there is red too, on the reverse of these cream cushions and in the folds of the pelmets of the curtains. That he loves art is also obvious. Here is a David Tindle, and there an Edward Piper, and a John Piper and a …’ she leaned over the sofa staring at yet another signature on an exquisite drawing, ‘and a drawing by Nicola Hicks. All these choices show very good taste indeed, I have to tell you.’ She turned and looked at Jack with a ‘Shall I go on?’ look in her eyes.

  ‘No, it’s OK, I love talking about me. Go on about me – especially the bit about my great taste.’

  ‘Right. Now the piano. A Bechstein grand and to the side a metronome, and a stave – I think that’s what a music sheet waiting to be marked up is called – and pens and pencils. Well, now, let me see, could it be that this is the house of a musician? And not only a musician, but perhaps a composer? Even perhaps the composer of a certain “Meadow Grasses”, a song that went to the top of the charts about five years ago?’

  Joining in the fun, Jack let his head drop into his hands and pretended to groan while saying, ‘Oh, no, no, I am discovered. You have uncovered who I am!’

  ‘Music teacher! Who did you think you were kidding? And anyway, did you really think you could keep your fame from Ben the local postman whose ears and eyes are super-powered and whose bicycle wheels carry news faster than a wire service? But never fear, Mr Tomm, your secret is completely unsafe with me. I shall tell the whole of Wiltshire not just who you are, but what a lovely house you have.’

  Hope sat down again, leaving Jack laughing and applauding her performance before he disappeared in search of coffee, after which Hope demanded to see the rest of the house.

  He led the way upstairs, and as he did so they passed pieces of sculpture, well placed on window sills and shelves, and other larger pieces set in alcoves along the landing. When they came to the bedrooms he seemed to take great delight in showing Hope the two rooms which were rumoured to be the oldest in the house, small cell-like chambers with stone-mullioned windows, before leading her to his own bedroom, a magnificent room which faced south and overlooked the millpond, the stream and the meadows beyond.

  ‘I masculinized it, if there is such a word,’ he told Hope, as they both stared at the steel bed and then up to the concealed modern lighting, at the leather chair at the desk in the corner, and at the dark colours of the furnishings, the lack of anything at the windows except the simplest, darkest blinds, the cupboards of dark wood.

  And there was a small silence which Jack filled by going on to explain, ‘After Dave, as in Davina, left, I ripped out the rubbishy phoney four-poster and all the frills, and the dressing table and the chintz-covered chair, and I gave them to the local Oxfam shop. I don’t think they knew what to do with it all, but who cared? After that I felt much better. As if I’d got rid of her myself, not that she had left me, which, after all, was the truth. But, well, now of course—’ He stopped. ‘Now of course women look funny here, at least so I’m told. Out of place.’

  It was his way of saying that he had not been a monk after Dave as in Davina left, and Hope was grateful to know, although she took care not to look at him, not even a glance as he spoke, preferring to pretend to be more interested in the view, and aft
er that his paintings, and the family photographs – his boys with a kite, his daughter Cyndi in a long flowing velvet cape and carrying a bunch of wild flowers.

  ‘I took that,’ Jack said as Hope leaned forward to appreciate the photograph on the wall in its modern silver frame.

  ‘Very talented photographer. Is there anything you can’t do?’

  Jack took Hope’s hand and kissed it briefly. ‘Plenty,’ he said, sighing and turning away. ‘But most of all too much that I shall never do, and that sometimes makes me sad.’

  ‘What sort of things will you never do?’

  ‘Paint a really good picture, pilot my own plane – oh, you know, those things – I mean the way our kids talk we must seem like Victorians to them. Helicopter pads are everywhere in these parts now, you know, as strange to us as motor stables as garages used to be called in the old days must have been to our great-grandparents, but our grandchildren will be going to school in them. We’ll be saying Whatever next? as they pop off to the moon for a quick few days the way we might pop to Paris.’

  Hope turned back to Jack, smiling, but as she did so her eye was caught by something that Jack, who had his back to it, could not see.

  ‘Anything the matter?’

  She continued staring ahead but eventually turned her eyes back to Jack’s and shook her head. ‘No, why?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘It’s just that you looked so strange suddenly, as if you had seen something.’

  ‘No, it was nothing. Just a shadow.’

  She passed quickly from the room, and Jack followed her, and moments later they were laughing and she was looking at her watch, and murmuring about staying too long, but with her heart sinking, and feeling wretched, because she knew that she had to leave the Mill House and Jack and head back to Hatcombe, and that her one day of being just ‘Hope’ was over.

  ‘It’s been so lovely—’

  ‘You’ve been so lovely—’

  ‘You’re being direct again.’ She turned and smiled, feeling safe to tease him as she climbed back into Verna’s little car.