by Anne Doughty
They tramped off hand in hand to the water’s edge and then paddled along in the shallow water where the sand was firmer. A few yards away, the dark head of the seal bobbed up and down, watching them out of great, soft, liquid eyes. As they moved along the beach it followed, never taking its eyes off them. Only when Andrew turned right along what appeared to be a low sandbank did their companion disappear.
‘You are now walking on what will be the end of Blakeney Spit in a few years’ time. It’s all right, we can’t be cut off by the tide, it’s falling. Besides, I want you to see the point where West meets East,’ he added, as he strode on ahead of her.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing down at her bare feet a few minutes later.
To her great surprise she saw that tiny wavelets were flowing over her feet from different directions, the ripples intersecting in a herringbone pattern which glinted and sparkled in the strong sunlight.
‘That’s how the whole spit was formed,’ he explained, sounding totally delighted. ‘The opposing currents cancel each other out and the waves deposit the beach materials they’re carrying to form new land.’
She did listen, and she did follow his explanation, but what she was most aware of, here in the midst of the waves, a hundred yards or more from even the deserted beach, was a sense of space, of openness, of being able to breathe after some long confinement. It was a disturbing feeling and one she could not explain to herself, never mind to Andrew.
Arriving back in the early evening, they found an ancient station wagon parked under Aunt Joan’s hedge. After he’d dropped their car in the space behind, Andrew peered at the dusty rear window, trying to read the curling garage sticker. He was rewarded for his curiosity with a paroxysm of barking from a ferocious Irish terrier who leapt to his feet and danced up and down, snarling and showing his teeth.
‘My goodness,’ said Clare, totally taken aback. ‘I’m glad that window is only half open. I think it would like to eat us,’ she said, as they moved briskly past.
‘Ah, there you are, my dears,’ said Aunt Joan happily, meeting them at the garden gate. ‘I’ll just tell Rory who you are.’
She disappeared round the back of the station wagon. Silence broke out immediately, so they turned back to see what was happening. Aunt Joan had opened the hatchback and was being greeted ecstatically by Rory.
‘Now then Rory, this is Clare, and this is Andrew,’ she said, passing over a biscuit which disappeared instantly. ‘Say, How do you do?’
Rory had the most lovely brown eyes. He stared lovingly up at Clare and raised one rather dusty paw for her to shake. She had never seen such an expressive look on a dog’s face in all her life.
‘There now, Rory, go back to sleep,’ said Joan, rubbing his ears. ‘I’m sorry you can’t come in but poor old Bassett is frightened of you. Not your fault, old chap, but cats are like that. You do understand, don’t you?’
By way of answer, Rory lay down, put his head on his paws with a look of resignation and composed himself for sleep.
‘Now, come you on in, as they say in these parts,’ continued Joan, as she led the way up the garden path. ‘Phillida is here. I must say Rory is an even better early warning system than the hinge of that gate,’ she added, as Andrew closed it behind him to the sound of a high-pitched whine. ‘Poor dear Rory. Bassett is quite neurotic about big dogs, but then perhaps she is suffering a trauma none of us know about.’
‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ said Phillida, getting up to greet them as they arrived in Joan’s small, overcrowded sitting-room. ‘Glad to meet you,’ she said abruptly, as she shook their hands vigorously.
Clare looked down at a small, robust woman with a brown and wrinkled face, whose iron-grey hair appeared to have been cut with blunt kitchen scissors. Under a green flak jacket, she was wearing a crumpled white shirt, army surplus trousers and short wellington boots. Her accent suggested that she too had been a pupil at Cheltenham Ladies College.
‘How are you getting on with that dreadful man, What’s-his-name, the Reverend who Roars, I call him. Is he going to go on stirring up trouble?’
The bluntness was disconcerting, but the candour so open and direct, Clare knew the question was meant seriously.
‘’Fraid so, Phillida,’ Andrew replied. ‘But we’re trying to ignore him for the moment.’
‘The newspapers and television do exaggerate the problems,’ Clare added. ‘All they need is a burning bus and they film it from every possible angle, so you’d think it was a whole fleet. It’s bad for the province and bad for our business too, of course.’
‘The guest house.’ Phillida nodded sharply. ‘Used to run one myself. After the war. The first war,’ she added ruefully. ‘Couldn’t stand being polite to people all the time. Prefer animals.’
When they had all stopped laughing, Joan asked Phillida whether she would now stay to supper. ‘You’ve had a good look at them. Do they pass muster?’
‘I’ll stay,’ replied Phillida firmly. ‘But only if supper will stretch?’
‘Not only will supper stretch, my dear Phillida, but there is a very special bottle of wine these dear people brought. Assuming my fridge has not packed up again it should be properly chilled by now. I’ve had it in there since this morning, hoping your curiosity would get the better of you.’
‘Splendid. Can I do anything to help? Or can I be idle and lie in this very comfortable armchair and ask Andrew about his pond.’
‘One more marvellous evening,’ said Clare, as they opened their bedroom door, crossed to the window, and squeezed into the small space from which they could look down across Joan’s garden to the wheatfield beyond.
‘No sign of our friend yet,’ Andrew said, as he scanned the dark edge of woodland that ran along one side of the pale, moonlit field.
They stood together watching, hoping to see the barn owl that had delighted them evening after evening in the last week, its ghostly shape swooping backwards and forwards quartering the field from margin to margin. Joan had told them its nest was only a few fields away in an old outhouse and it was now hunting to feed its young.
‘I think Phillida took rather a fancy to you, my love,’ said Clare quietly. ‘She’s quite a character, isn’t she?’
‘Mmm,’ he said, agreeing. ‘One of what Uncle Hector called a heroic generation of women. Ten years younger than him, but then his wife and most of his friends were.’
‘It must be strange to have friends you’ve known for fifty or sixty years,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Or even seventy, in Hector’s case,’ she added, doing the sum. ‘I wonder if we’ll still have Jessie and Harry, Mary and John, Lindy and Charles, when we’re old. People who know all about us and don’t need to be told this or that, because they’ve been there all along the way, seen what we’ve done and know what’s happened to us. Like Joan and Phillida.’
To Clare’s surprise, he did not reply. His eyes were focused on the dark patch of Joan’s garden just below the window. For a moment, she thought he might have spotted some night creature about its own affairs.
‘Clare, there’s something I have to tell you,’ he began awkwardly. ‘I should have told you sooner, but we had such a rush to get away and once we sailed down the lough, I couldn’t bring myself to spoil it,’ he went on. ‘But I have to tell you before we go to Mary and John tomorrow, otherwise I’ll not be able to be honest with them either.’
‘What is it, love? It can’t be that bad. I don’t think you’ve had time to have another woman any more than Harry has,’ she said lightly, trying to encourage him.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No other woman. I told you that years ago. It’s the one thing I’ve ever been sure about. I do try, you know,’ he went on quickly. ‘I do try to be clear about things and to make decisions, but even with all your encouragement I still find it hard. And when I get things wrong I still feel I’ve let you down.’
‘Why not let me be the judge of that, Andrew. If I feel you’ve let me down, I’ll tell you.’
She waited, wanting to help him but knowing she must give him time to find his own words.
‘I told you there would be a large lump sum coming in from all the work I’ve been doing for Charles and that, in the meantime, my salary wouldn’t amount to very much because Legal Aid doesn’t pay very well.’
‘Yes, you did explain. What’s the problem?’
‘The problem is there won’t be a large sum of money from Charles, because we’ve already had it. He’s been paying me advances every month, so I’d still have a salary.’
‘And what about the Legal Aid work? You’ve been so busy with that you’ve been bringing work home.’
‘Yes, I know. It has been hard work, but there won’t be any money from it. I probably could have guessed it wasn’t going to work out. I kept hoping it might, but it hasn’t. All the cases I took, except one, involved Catholics. All the requests for Legal Aid, except one, were turned down.’
‘Oh my poor love, you really should have told me sooner,’ she said sympathetically. ‘But I do understand. I’ve something to tell you too, but I didn’t want to upset us any more than you did when we were trying to get away. Six of one and half a dozen of the other.’
‘Because your news is as bad as mine, I’m sure,’ he responded, more steadily than she expected. ‘Even I know that if I have no breakfasts to cook before I go to work, we’ve no bookings, and if we’ve no bookings, we’re not making any money. Is that it?’
‘More or less.’
‘So we’ve failed,’ he said, the familiar despair colouring his voice.
‘No, Andrew, we have not failed,’ she said emphatically. ‘Our business project may have failed through no fault of our own, but that is a quite different matter.’
‘But how are we going to pay for this holiday?’ he asked, a hint of desperation in his tone.
‘Perfectly easily,’ she answered. ‘When we did make a profit, two years ago, I put the money in a high rate, fixed interest account. It paid out the day before we left. We earned more in interest on that money than we’ve done by two years hard work,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘But the money is there and it gives us time to think. We haven’t failed. We have each other and we’re happy and we’ve learnt a lot. That’s not failure, Andrew, is it?’
‘No, it’s not,’ he said putting his arms round her and holding her close. ‘There’s something else I have to tell you,’ he went on, in a quite different tone. ‘Don’t move too quickly. The barn owl is on one of the fence posts below us. That’s the nearest he’s ever approached the house. Do you think he might be a good sign, like a rainbow?’
She disentangled herself very cautiously and looked down at the large bird who was scanning the grass beneath him.
‘Good heavens, Andrew, I think you are becoming quite fanciful. Do you think it’s catching?’
Fifteen
‘Well then, Clare, what do you think of North Norfolk?’ John asked, when they’d settled themselves in the sitting-room of their new home, in the small town of Holt where John had his electrical shop.
‘I think it’s quite wonderful,’ said Clare honestly. ‘I know people never want to go home after a holiday, but I really can’t bear the thought of leaving all this sea and sky and hedgerows full of poppies and white campion. There are so many things here I’ve never seen before. Like seals.’
‘And skate and chips too big for the plate,’ added Andrew lightly.
‘There you are, Mary. I told you she’d be a convert. Just as I was,’ John broke in. ‘Oh, it’s not that I don’t miss the green hills of home, like all exiles, but this is a very good place to be. It’s been kind to us, hasn’t it, love?’
‘Yes, it has,’ Mary nodded. ‘And all thanks to Joan and her little flat,’ she went on. ‘If it hadn’t been for her and that flat, we might have settled somewhere else in Norfolk. How do you like living in our first home, by the way?’ she asked, looking from one to the other.
‘Well,’ replied Clare, laughing, ‘we love the wildlife, the owl and the hedgehogs, and the wee birds that hop in and out through the kitchen window, but it must have been cold in winter. None of the windows or doors shut properly. Even in summer you can feel the draughts.’
John laughed heartily. ‘I read recently that more interlock vests were sold in Norfolk than in any other English county. It can be really cold in winter, but it’s much drier than dear old County Down and it is such a help to have it dry in my line of work.’
‘So, how goes your Grand Plan?’ Andrew asked after they heard about improvements to the shop. ‘Is your new garden meant to be a wildlife sanctuary or was it just neglected?’
‘Neglected,’ said Mary grinning. ‘Like everything else. The old lady who lived here nearly made her century, but nothing had been done for years. The kitchen had to come first,’ she explained, looking round at the discoloured wallpaper and paintwork. ‘I hate these curtains passionately,’ she added, breaking into a little laugh, ‘but it has to be one room at a time.’
‘You did say you’d got the holiday cottages up and running, but what about your boat, John?’ Andrew persisted.
‘Yes. They’re doing very well, I’m glad to say. And I have got a boat, but it’s rather more of the owl and the pussycat kind than what we had in mind.’
‘We had not thought either of our dear sons would want to go to university,’ Mary said, matter-of-factly. ‘They are both eminently practical. We thought technical or trade apprenticeship would be what they’d want. But no. Electrical engineering, says one, and, Maybe me too, says the other. They’re both doing very well at school. Sandy is waiting for his A-levels and Johnnie for his O-level results. Johnnie is two years younger but he jumped a year and gets good marks in Maths. I think his teacher will nudge him towards a Maths degree.’
‘So, change of plan for us,’ said John. ‘Little boat for fun and a bit of fishing off Blakeney Point, but the money’s gone into this house to give us all more space. And Mary and I are going to have a big holiday next year. Australia. Visit to Mum and Dad and meet our nephews and nieces,’ he explained. ‘Now what about you two and your Grand Plan?’ he asked, looking from one to the other.
To Clare’s great relief, Andrew laughed. ‘My dear wife says we have to be positive about our achievements,’ he began cheerfully. ‘So far, the only livestock I have raised are rather a lot of frogs in the pond we dug last October. It may not be commercially viable, but we do have a heron who seems to think we are a good idea and visits us quite regularly.’
John laughed in turn and raised his eyebrows. ‘We do think of you very often. We could hardly forget you with the amount of publicity you’re getting on the box. It must be bad for business,’ he said grimly.
‘Yes, it is,’ said Clare nodding. ‘But it’s not just the disturbances. We’ve discovered we can’t buy land because all the surrounding farmers are convinced they’ll be able to make a fortune selling their land for building houses or motorways. Drumsollen itself is just not viable, as you’ve probably guessed. Apart from the competition from the package tour industry, it seems nowadays people expect en suite bathrooms and a telephone and television in their own room, even in a guest house. We just can’t compete in that market.’
‘So, change of plan?’ suggested John soberly.
‘That’s about it,’ said Andrew. ‘Any ideas for the redeployment of a financial genius who speaks fluent French and passable Italian and an unemployed farmer with legal skills?’
‘So that’s what they look like after twenty years or so,’ Clare said, as she stood gazing up at the flourishing buddleias in Phillida’s garden.
‘Yes, they are splendid, aren’t they? My favourite is that Emperor Purple,’ Joan said, pointing with her walking stick to a large bush so covered with long, flowering spikes that barely any foliage was visible. ‘But they all seem to be equally popular with the butterflies,’ she added, as she named the various species moving slowly over the blooms, brightly coloured wings fully open
in the sunshine. ‘Clare dear, your husband seems engrossed in Phillida’s pond. Shall you and I leave them to it? I’m afraid my bad leg is being a bore. Do you mind fearfully if we go and sit down?’
‘No, of course not. Is there anything I can do?’ Clare asked, as they moved back along the garden path. ‘Do you carry tablets, or a rub that I can use?’
‘Tried them all. No use whatever. All IT wants is for me to sit down,’ she said crossly, as she negotiated the French window and picked an upright armchair by the hearth. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ she announced with a sigh, as she sat back gratefully. ‘Actually, the heat doesn’t help at all and I did far too much in the garden yesterday when you went to see Mary and John. How are they both? Do tell all for I haven’t managed to see them for over a month. What’s the new house like? Good deal larger, I expect.’
Clare gave Joan a full account of the new house and told her how welcoming they’d been. She said how vigorous they’d been in encouraging them to come and live in Norfolk and have another shot at their Grand Plan.
‘We told them about our problem not being able to buy land, even if we could afford it now, and John assured us that green belt is respected here. He admitted there were always a few sharp deals going on with, what he called “back garden building”, especially in Blakeney and Cley, but he said developers would never get planning permission here beyond agreed village limits.’
‘I should think not,’ responded Joan fiercely. ‘Redevelop old property by all means, or establish a new village if needs must, but dropping houses like little boxes here, there and everywhere isn’t good for the land. Isn’t good for people either. At least the Parish Councils here recognize that,’ she added. ‘Well, they do now. Surprisingly, it’s the incomers who work hardest to keep a sense of community going. My father was one for a start. He came here from Manchester, had a holiday home in an old railway carriage, then moved down permanently in his mid-forties. He sat on the Parish Council till he died. Dear old Dad,’ she went on, her voice softening. ‘If it hadn’t been for that railway carriage, Bee and I would have been brought up in Manchester.’