by Rachel Hore
‘I see that you’ve put in a bid for promotion,’ Platt went on, rocking back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head, giving himself the appearance of a large, malevolent insect. ‘I’m not sure that you’ll get it, mind, it’s quite a step up for someone like you, but taking this task on will improve your chances.’
Great. He’d delivered a double blow. Not only did he belittle her ambitions, but he’d made it plain that refusal of his request now would do her no good at all.
‘As you know, Gordon, I’ve already got a huge amount to do. Can I think about it?’ She nearly reminded him how she hadn’t been well the term before, but bit her lip, realizing it wouldn’t help her status in his eyes. To a man with no imagination who had never suffered from depression or anxiety, people who did were practically basket cases. Of course, he wouldn’t have expressed it like that, he knew the jargon, but at meetings she had sensed his unease about the subject of well-being.
‘Of course, take all the time you like,’ Platt said affably, ‘but I need your decision by Monday.’ He smiled benignly at her and picked up a file from his in-tray, thus signalling that the conversation was over.
By five o’clock, Briony was mentally and emotionally exhausted, but also furious, with Platt, but also herself. This, she recognized, as she glanced at her watch, wondering what had happened to the student who hadn’t turned up, was a good thing. Anger could be a positive emotion, her counsellor had once suggested. It could encourage her to take control of a situation rather than allow it to defeat her.
The student obviously wasn’t coming. Wonderful, she could go home on time. Deliberately ignoring a sheaf of papers waiting to be marked, Briony locked her office and sneaked out.
At home she kicked off her shoes, poured herself a glass of white wine and went to run a bath. This evening would be for herself, she sighed, as she lowered herself into the hot scented water and closed her eyes. Supper, read more of Paul’s letters, watch TV. She wouldn’t worry about the wretched Platt. A phrase her dad’s father used to say floated into her mind. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ and she smiled as she remembered asking him what it meant. ‘Live for the moment and don’t worry about the future.’
Her eyes snapped open. Luke, she was supposed to email Luke about Sarah’s letters. On the one hand she wanted to, on the other she didn’t quite know whether she was stirring something up by contacting him. Really, she told herself as she got out of the bath, pull yourself together. They were both grown-ups and contacting him with information he needed for his work was hardly unreasonable.
She had his email address, so after she’d eaten her supper she quickly wrote to him, hoping he was well and asking him what it was he specifically wanted to know. Then her phone rang and picking it up she felt a little shock as she saw the caller’s name. She swiped the screen.
‘Luke? Hello.’
‘Hi. I got your email and thought I’d give you a call.’ Was she imagining that his voice in her ear sounded tentative, not his usual light confident self? Her heart went out to him and in her agitation she got up from the sofa and went over to the window, looked down onto the night-time street below. There was a black and white cat walking along the top of a fence.
‘It’s good to hear from you,’ she said softly. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine. How about you? Have I got you at a bad time?’
‘No, no, I was watching telly, but nothing important. Anyway, what about things at Westbury Hall? Is the garden project going OK?’
‘Yes, it’s been going well. I’ve nearly finished drawing up the plans, then I have to cost them. I need a few more details about some of the plants, though. Kemi managed to borrow the picture of the garden from Mrs Clare’s flat, but it doesn’t go into enough detail.’
They talked for a while about the specifics. Had Sarah mentioned the location of particular plants in her early letters, Luke wanted to know, before the garden had been turned over to wartime farming? Briony didn’t remember.
‘I think it’s best if I simply send you the relevant transcripts,’ she said, ‘but there’s something I must tell you. You’re not going to believe it, but I’ve found the other half of the correspondence. Paul’s letters to Sarah, I mean.’
Below, the cat had settled itself on a fence post, its tail twitching as it stared at something down on the ground. A mouse, maybe, Briony thought, craning to see.
‘Have you?’
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ She described how she had come by them. ‘I’ve started reading them. Nothing useful about the garden so far, but, Luke, they’re full of his wartime experiences. He was in Egypt. At El Alamein!’
‘I take it he survived?’ Luke laughed. ‘Stupid question, I suppose. Unless you’ve found a letter that says I’m dying, this is my last will and testament.’
‘I haven’t,’ she said stiffly, thinking he was making light of her discovery.
‘You’re still very involved in it all, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s more than academic, then.’
‘Yes, of course it is. It’s about my family. Paul quite often mentions my grandfather, Harry. And Ivor Richards. They were all there in the same infantry company together, which is not as much a coincidence as it sounds, since it was a Norfolk regiment. Though quite what they were doing there I don’t know, as on the whole, Norfolk Battalions weren’t sent to Egypt.’
‘I didn’t mean to sound flippant. You know . . .’ Briony sensed Luke searching for the right words. ‘It took a bit of courage for me to ring. I didn’t know whether you’d want to hear from me.’
She felt such a flood of feeling that it was hard to say, ‘Oh, why?’ with coolness.
‘I may be paranoid, but you seem to have been avoiding me lately.’
Outside, the cat pounced on whatever it had been stalking. A mouse or a shrew? Briony got a horrible glimpse of the creature hanging from its jaws.
‘Luke,’ she said, after a moment, trying out her strongest tone. ‘Of course I haven’t.’
‘Right.’ His voice was strained. ‘Scrub that then. Don’t worry.’
‘I saw Aruna last night. But of course you probably know that.’
‘Yes, she said it was the first time for ages and that it had been good to see you.’
‘It was lovely to see her, but she seemed unhappy, Luke. I know it’s not my business, but she is my best friend.’
‘Do you think I don’t get that, Briony?’
‘All right, it really isn’t my business.’ She could sense Luke’s anger.
‘OK. Well, if you’d email me over those transcripts I’d be grateful. The job is taking longer than I’m being paid for. And I’d like to get that guy Greg off my back.’ Again, that bitter tone. She chose to ignore it.
‘How is Greg? Oh, and poor Mrs Clare.’
‘Mrs Clare is back in Westbury Hall with a carer in attendance and improving. Her son gave permission for me to borrow that plan. Which reminds me, Kemi asked after you.’
‘Oh, she’s so nice, Kemi. Say hi from me. I’ll send the stuff over in a moment.’
Briony ended the call and stared out of the window for a long time, watching with distaste as the cat played with its prey, going over the conversation in her mind. Luke was troubled about something, sounded deeply unhappy in fact. He seemed cross with her, too, and she didn’t know what she’d done to deserve that. What a mess everything was at the moment. A car drew up outside the house opposite and the cat ran off as a young couple unloaded a baby in a car seat. They were smiling and laughing. The lamplight fell on the face of the sleeping infant, round and chubby with tight black curls. So cute. They looked so content, the little family, caught in the golden aura of the street lamp, that Briony felt suddenly terribly alone.
Thirty-four
‘What should I do, Sophie? If I say no he’ll spike my promotion, but if I say yes I’ll be so overwhelmed by work I won’t be able to function.’
Briony was sitting in the office of one of her collea
gues, surrounded by posters of illuminated manuscripts with marginalia of fabulous beasts. Sophie was a mediaevalist, Swedish, in her early thirties, with short, clipped fair hair streaked with purple. Her seated pose, upright, long legs in skinny jeans crossed at the knee, suited her forthright, don’t-mess-with-me manner. She was the department’s union rep, so a natural person to go to, but Briony, who hated being confrontational, had really gone to her for friendly, not formal, advice.
‘He has no right, Briony.’ Sophie jabbed the air with a blue-nailed finger. ‘You don’t have to take the work on and there would be trouble if he tried to interfere with the promotion board proceedings. Still, he is on it and his word counts. You do want him on your side.’
‘So I should say yes?’
‘You should say no. Be tough and he’ll respect you. That’s the type of man he is. So much of this place runs on people’s goodwill, that’s the trouble. And he exploits that. But there are rules, and if necessary the union will back you up.’
‘I don’t want to involve the union at the moment. I worry about appearing a troublemaker.’
‘That is a typical female response,’ Sophie said with a sigh. ‘I like making trouble.’ Her eyes sparkled and Briony laughed. It was good to feel that someone was on her side. All too often in this place staff crept about doing what they were told. Once she’d jokingly said to Sophie that she was surprised that the Head of Department had agreed to the appointment of someone like her with such trenchant views. Sophie’s response was direct: ‘I was the best candidate for the post. You have to believe in yourself, Briony, and others will believe in you too.’
‘You’re lucky having such self-confidence,’ she sighed now.
She stood to go and Sophie bounced up and gave her a hug. ‘So, think about it over the weekend, eh? Then blaze in on Monday and tell him your decision. Remember, it’s your life.’
‘You’re right.’ Briony’s eye fell on one of the posters. ‘That griffin – it is a griffin, isn’t it? – looks like someone we both know.’ Sophie stared at it and they both burst out laughing. It was the mustard-coloured legs of the creature and the curly bits of feather on its head.
As she walked back to her own office she saw that she had a missed call. Greg Richards. She sat for a while at her desk wondering what he might want, then shrugged, her curiosity getting the better of her reluctance. She touched the screen of the phone to ring him back.
The little mews tucked away in the maze of streets north of Sloane Square was deserted when Briony walked down it early the following evening, the only noise being the flapping of a giant piece of polythene broken loose from the scaffolding that enveloped one of the houses. The builder’s board shining in the streetlight read Judd Holdings Basement Solutions. Not fun to live next door to, she told herself, examining the numbers on the doors she passed. Number Five, however, was several yards beyond the building work, with a neat two-storey Georgian frontage and a pair of olive trees in tubs standing sentinel at the entrance. Briony pressed the brass doorbell and smoothed her hair while she waited.
The door flew open and there was Greg in T-shirt, jeans and loafers. ‘Briony, come in out of the cold, honey,’ and she found herself sucked into a warm, dimly lit hallway redolent with the savoury smell of cooking. She could hear the tinkle of piano music. He kissed her on both cheeks and she gave up her coat and handed over the wine she’d brought.
‘I don’t know if it’s any good – the man in the shop picked it.’
He squinted at the label, said he was sure it would be lovely and ushered her into a large, knocked-through living room with two black, grey and sable velvet sofas festooned with furry zebra-striped cushions. The far wall was lined with chunky bookshelves in a light-coloured wood. Ceiling lights like abstract sculptures in glass and metal twinkled above her head.
‘It’s like the Tardis,’ she exclaimed. The modernity of the inside was such a contrast to the exterior of the house. ‘Gorgeous, of course, but I’d never have guessed all this lay beyond your Regency front door.’ When she slipped off her shoes, the hardwood floor was deliciously warm beneath her feet.
‘It’s a listed building, of course,’ he said. ‘But my predecessor did most of the work inside. God knows how she got it past the planning department. Now what can I get you to drink?’
While he was out in the kitchen fetching white wine, Briony surveyed the contents of the shelves, several of which were set wide-spaced for the outsize art books and his vinyl collection. Rows of hardbacks mostly had titles like Nietzsche and Leadership and The Zen of Globalism, but there was an impressive line of recent celebrity sporting biographies, too. She was concluding sadly that there was nothing here that she would want to read when Greg returned with a bottle in an ice bucket and a couple of glass goblets. She sat down rather self-consciously on one of the velvety sofas. It was squashy, but very comfortable.
‘It’s good of you to come,’ he said as they clinked glasses and he settled on a sofa opposite, one arm along the back of it. Although his pose was a study in relaxation, she sensed a coiled-up energy and tension in the firm line of his lips. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Briony. As I told you on the phone, your friend Luke mentioned in an email that you’d found another set of letters, from this guy Paul, and . . . well, I’d better explain my interest. Did you bring them with you, by the way?’
‘Yes, they’re in my bag.’ Briony felt a bit annoyed with Luke for telling Greg about them, but recognized he’d done so in all innocence, thinking they might offer further information about the garden.
Greg was eyeing the bag which she’d left by the door of the room.
He leaned forward and, setting his goblet on the table, stared across at her. ‘I would like to know what’s in them. It’s my father I’m thinking about. He’s elderly, you see, and he worries about these things.’
‘What would he be worried about?’
‘That there’s something detrimental in them about his father – my grandfather that is – Ivor. I’m not sure what it is exactly, he won’t say. It all started when I told him about you that time you came to stay at Westbury Lodge. It seemed to upset him.’
‘I didn’t mean to upset anyone.’ Briony’s nerves were on edge. She thought of the farmer, David Andrews, and his wife Alison, how her visit had disturbed them, too.
‘I’m not saying that you did. Tell me about the letters, though, Briony. Do they mention my grandfather?’
‘They do, yes. I’m not sure how much background you know?’
‘Only that Paul was a German who worked on the estate as a gardener and there was some animosity between the two of them.’
‘Yes, that’s more or less it. They both fancied the same woman – that was Sarah – but it was more than that. Your grandfather disliked him because he thought he couldn’t trust him, saw him as the enemy. Then they ended up in the army together in Egypt.’
‘Perhaps I should flick through them, then, just to reassure my dad.’ Greg’s voice was very mild and reasonable and Briony didn’t know why a feeling of reluctance came over her. She had to force herself to stand up and fetch her bag. She brought out the cigar box, thinking how light and inconsequential it was. When she opened it, she saw that in her rush last night she’d not put everything back tidily. ‘Apologies,’ she said, ‘it’s a bit of a jumble.’
‘No worries. I’ll sort them out.’ They were standing very close together now, so close she could smell his expensive cologne. She glanced up into the friendly, wide-spaced eyes, then down at the box in her hand.
‘Let’s have a look,’ he said and he came and sat down close beside her on her sofa and took the first letter from the pile. She watched him open it and frown at the difficult handwriting. Greg listened carefully as she read it out to him, tapping the table with the side of his finger. ‘I see,’ he said, somewhat mysteriously. ‘And what about this one?’
The next he picked out was so plainly a love letter that Briony felt self-conscious reading it alo
ud to this man who sat so close. She did so quickly and folded it away. ‘There are several in that vein,’ she told him.
‘He has a way with words, this Paul,’ Greg said in a caressing voice that made her feel uncomfortable and she felt herself shrink away from him on the sofa, wishing now that she hadn’t come.
Greg smiled, his eyes glinting. ‘Nothing about my grandfather so far.’
‘There’s mention of him later in some of the ones sent from Egypt, but I still have one or two to read. I had to stop last night because I had work to do.’ Why did she feel so on edge?
‘What do they say?’ His voice had a harsher tone this time. Suddenly she wanted very much to go home. She closed the box and started to stand up. ‘Briony, please. I tell you what, perhaps I can keep them, ask my PA to photocopy them in the morning and courier them back to you?’
‘No, I don’t feel I can do that,’ she whispered.
He stood up too. ‘Why not? You can trust me with them, can’t you?’ He looked so pleading and she couldn’t say what it was that troubled her.
‘I’ll finish reading them and type them up. That’s what I did with Sarah’s letters.’
‘Ah yes, Luke sent me the transcript.’
‘He did?’ That was annoying of Luke, but then he wasn’t to know.
‘Yes. In respect of the garden, of course. The letters were extremely interesting. There’s not much about old Ivor, but there is a bit where Sarah tells Paul she thinks my grandfather really has a bit of a thing for her. So you’re right.’
‘She talks about it several times.’