The Songbird

by Marcia Willett

  ‘Merlot sounds perfect. Only a small one, though, please. I’ve got to drive home.’

  Briefly he wonders what she’d say if he asked her to stay but knows he hasn’t got the courage. He feels completely out of his depth – and he’s loving every minute of it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AS SHE DRIVES home Kat is feeling slightly guilty. She likes Jerry – it’s so easy to connect with him – yet she is wondering whether he has the right temperament for a flirtation. Their talk is effortless; he loves the theatre. It’s so good to make him laugh, to gasp and stretch his eyes, to fall in with new ideas and concepts.

  Yet she suspects that, deep down, Jerry is a conventional soul. He’s stepped out of his comfort zone by buying a modern flat and is experimenting with a re-emerging personality that has been overlaid with marriage and fatherhood. He’s beginning to build a new life with new friends and he’s ready to embrace something exciting and different.

  What she can’t decide is whether this is a vulnerable time for him when he should be protected from himself. Perhaps, after all, the woman in the café would be better for him.

  Whizzing along the main road on her way home, Kat can’t helping laughing to herself. Jerry had several glasses of wine and grew more loquacious, inviting her to the cinema later this week at Dartington.

  ‘Love to,’ she said at once. ‘How about tomorrow?’ – and could see that he was slightly taken aback and incredibly pleased, rather as if he were a teenager and this were his first date.

  Unlike Gyorgy or Miche, Jerry has a gentleness about him that is terribly attractive. She is used to driven, selfish artists who are ready to sacrifice anybody to their creations. There is nothing ruthless about Jerry. She’s well aware that his admiration is feeding her ego, that she likes the early indication of devotion in his eyes. He is flattered by the attention of Irina Bulova, which, in turn, is feeding his ego.

  He asked her about Gyorgy, about the music he’d composed for her, and she tried to describe the magic between them that informed his music and her choreography.

  ‘You must miss him, all of it, dreadfully,’ he said, not mawkishly but with an intensity of understanding.

  In that moment she was swamped with the bitter pain of missing and longing but she caught herself up and stretched out a hand to him. He hesitated, just for a second as if surprised, and then took her hand between both of his warm ones.

  ‘Yes I do. Terribly.’

  He chafed her hand and then let it go, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

  ‘It’s the same for you, though, isn’t it?’ she asked, remembering his conversation with Sandra in the Thrive Café. There are photographs of his wife and his family on the shelf and he instinctively glanced towards them.

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  They were silent, as if the ghosts of their former loves and lives were hovering near them. She could feel his unease and wondered how to restore the earlier light-heartedness.

  ‘So this film, then,’ she said, picking up her glass. ‘Shall we meet in the Roundhouse?’

  ‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘Or in the White Hart?’

  ‘That would be good,’ she says at once. ‘We can have a drink in the bar and then wander over to the Barn. Lovely.’

  Yet she was aware of a subtle shift in the atmosphere, as though that invocation of their past lives had altered the dynamic. It was time to go. She finished her drink and got to her feet.

  He stood up quickly, not certain if he should try to persuade her to stay, not knowing quite how they should part. She could sense him wondering if they should shake hands, kiss briefly, or just smile. His anxiety touched her heart. Forty-odd years of happy marriage hadn’t equipped him with the knowledge of how to conduct an affair.

  ‘Thanks for the drink.’ She brushed his cheek very quickly and lightly with her lips. ‘Saved my life. See you tomorrow. Six thirty-ish.’

  She hadn’t looked back at him, still standing at the open door, but hurried away down the stairs.

  Now, Kat turns off into the lane that passes the Staverton Bridge Nursery, crosses the river, and slows down as the level crossing gates swing closed. A steam-engine clatters past and she sits watching it, thinking about Jerry.

  ‘Cruelty to dumb animals, darling,’ she says to herself.

  This was a saying Gyorgy always used when she’d flirted with young men who were dazzled by her fame. As Kat waits for the gates to be opened she wonders what Jerry is doing; what he is thinking.

  ‘It’s just a visit to the cinema,’ she mutters defensively, as though Gyorgy is listening. ‘How can that possibly be a problem?’

  Jerry is standing staring at the photograph of Veronica, who gazes back at him, holding one grandchild in her arms and another by the hand. The photograph is nearly fifteen years old and Vee is wearing her motherly smile. It manages to be happy, commanding and confident all at once.

  He studies it. Is there reproach in that steady gaze? He thinks of Vee, back then, when on those odd social occasions he’d drunk more than usual or paid slightly too much attention to a pretty woman. Glancing around – flushed with a sense of wellbeing, with pleased surprise at his ready wit – he’d meet that steady gaze across a dining-table, across a room full of revellers, and he’d know exactly what Vee was thinking. ‘You’re making a prat of yourself, Jerry.’ That glance was the equivalent of a douche of cold water and generally restored him to his senses very quickly.

  And, he reminds himself now, he was always very glad of Vee’s restraining influence. She was quite right. He was too susceptible to flattery, too delighted when he made an attractive woman laugh. She’d prevented him from making a fool of himself.

  He can imagine what Vee would be saying to him now, and a part of him knows that she would be right, but this time he doesn’t want to hear it.

  ‘It’s just a visit to the cinema,’ he mutters, turning away, picking up Kat’s empty glass. ‘How can that possibly be a problem?’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TIM TAKES THE toy car out of the paper bag and looks at it, shiny and new in its plastic pack. After a moment he tears at the wrapping and removes the car, running it across the palm of his hand, thinking that it looks less of a present and more . . . more what? Something left in the same way that the pine-cone face was left on the arm of the bench: a sign of friendship.

  He sits down at the kitchen table, still rolling the car to and fro, and wondering why he didn’t take Mattie to see Pan or the dogs’ graveyard or tell her about the face on the bench. He fully intended to but at the last moment it felt all wrong. It’s too important to treat it as some light-hearted entertainment though he doesn’t really know why he feels so strongly. He was unable to think of how to introduce it without either making it all sound rather twee and silly or investing it with too much significance, thus arousing everybody’s interest. He simply couldn’t bear the idea of Mattie, Charlotte with Ollie, perhaps even William and Kat all tramping into the woods to see these things that are so special to him.

  Now, Mattie has gone back to London, her brief stay over, and he’s missing her. His muscles ache today and he feels tired but he’s set his heart on a walk into the woods. He swallows his medication and pulls on a coat. The early May weather has turned chill and damp. The fresh new leaves are fuzzy with shining raindrops and mist drifts like smoke in the river valley.

  He walks slowly, his hands thrust into his pockets, the toy car clutched in one fist. Part of him is relieved that there was very little opportunity to have time alone with Mattie. It is still possible to maintain the fiction that he is a fit, able man and to enjoy her natural response to him.

  Sometimes he rehearses what he might say to her: ‘I have this degenerative disease, which attacks the muscles. Soon I might not be able to walk and eventually it will affect my respiratory passages. Then I’ll die. But nobody can quite say when because, apparently, it’s a very rare form of it. It could be months or maybe longer, but I don’t
really have a future.’

  He can imagine her reaction, the slow change of her expression to horror and terrible pity, and instinctively he shakes his head at the prospect of it.

  As usual the peace of the woodlands – the banks of flowering azaleas, the scent of bluebells, the flittering of the birds in the canopy – calms his fear and alleviates his misery.

  Pan is still holding the bluebells, though they are drooping now, and he’s still wearing the necklace of periwinkles. Tim pauses as usual for his moment of homage and then moves on. He feels a mix of hope and anxiety as he eagerly approaches the wooden seat. The face is there on the broad arm and at first it seems as if there is no change here either. Then he sees that the switch of pine he left for a pipe has been removed and the stones of the mouth have been rearranged so that it turns down to form a sad face.

  Tim studies it. He wants to laugh, delighted that the child is joining in the game. Very carefully he brings out the little car, places it on the wooden arm beside the face, and then stands back to look about him. There is no sound, no movement.

  He sits down on the damp seat and stares out across the fields. Today the moors are shrouded in mist but now there is a radiance in the damp air: a brightness that touches the trembling raindrops with light and gleams on wet green leaves. A phrase slips into his mind: ‘There lives the dearest freshness deep down things . . .’

  ‘I expect you’re too young for Gerard Manley Hopkins,’ Francis said yesterday on one of his visits to the courtyard, ‘but I brought this for you to look at anyway. You never can tell with poetry.’

  He took the rather battered book, touched by the old man’s thoughtfulness, and watched Mattie hugging him and how Francis looked down at her with his penetrating gaze. Mattie’s response interested Tim. She looked back at Francis gratefully, smiling as if she welcomed his scrutiny, as if his presence brought her some kind of relief. They clearly seemed to understand each other and this exchange comforted both of them. She began to tell him about her interview, guiding him to the bench where they sat side by side, whilst Tim leafed through the book of poetry. He noticed that some phrases were heavily underscored, and there were remarks pencilled in the margins, and it was rather moving to read these and gain an insight into the old man’s private thoughts.

  He glanced up to find Francis’ eyes on him, though his head was still inclined towards Mattie, and Tim gave an almost imperceptible nod and raised the book as if thanking him.

  ‘There lives the dearest freshness deep down things . . .’ That phrase struck a chord, and now, out in the wood, it comes vividly to life. Life is surging up all around him from deep down in the warm earth, fresh and sweet. His plan, to finish his life before he becomes helpless, seems so much more difficult to contemplate out here in these woods. Here, miracles can happen. Hope springs up, twining and climbing around his heart, like the honeysuckle in the thorny hedge.

  Tim gets up, casts one last glance at the toy car and sets off towards the dogs’ graveyard. He knows that his longing to see the child is simply a desperate flight back to the past: his past. He longs to see the small happy boy that he’d been before he stood at the garden gate with Ban; before his mother died. Somehow, then, there might be some sense of forgiveness. He longs for a sign that he is not alone.

  As he approaches he sees a heap of something pink on Brack’s grave, as though a scarf has been dropped on it. He hurries forward and then stops abruptly. Someone has gathered the camellia’s fallen flower heads and arranged them into the shape of a heart. Tim stares down at it, his own heart hurrying and fluttering in his side. He feels weak and, without thought or intention, he subsides to his knees. Coming just at this moment, and crazy though it is, he feels that is a sign that he and Ban are at last forgiven. He can’t stop the tears that stream down his cheeks and he scrubs his arm impatiently across his face knowing that he is behaving like an idiot. Yet he continues to stare at the camellia heart, at the stone etching of the little dog, and he cannot stop weeping.

  Presently, weak and exhausted, he stumbles to his feet and begins to make his way back home.

  Unpacking Oliver from the car, Charlotte sees Tim emerge from the woodland path, wave his hand and disappear into his cottage. She waves back unperturbed by his hurried retreat. She’s learned that living in such close proximity teaches people to respect the others’ privacy. Anyway, she’s quite pleased to be able to take Oliver in and get him down for his rest. A lunchtime session in Plymouth with some of her friends – all naval wives with small children – has been a rather uproarious affair and Oliver is fractious. Charlotte’s looking forward to having a few minutes’ peace and quiet.

  She misses Mattie after she’s gone: it’s always been the same. Even when there have been arguments and irritations she is sad to see her sister go. As she carries Oliver inside, Charlotte still can’t quite imagine setting off to Washington for two years and leaving all her family whilst Oliver is still so young. She feels that it’s rather a lot to ask of her. She said as much to Francis when he came down from his lair to see them all during Mattie’s visit.

  He sat silently, listening to her working through her thoughts: how she’d prefer to have time to live here with Andy learning how to be a proper family; that she needs time to adjust. Wooster came to lean against his knees and Francis gently pulled his ears as he listened.

  ‘I suppose you’d still be learning how to be a proper family in Washington,’ he said thoughtfully when she finished. ‘It might draw you even more closely together and make you strong and independent as a little unit. It’s an amazing opportunity for you all. After all, you’d be in a very safe environment. How many young people would leap at such a chance! Quite a promotion for Andy, I imagine. And what an experience for Ollie.’

  Charlotte was slightly put out by this positive take on the prospect before her. She had expected more consideration.

  ‘Oliver will be far too young to be affected by it,’ she answered rather snappily.

  Francis pursed his lips thoughtfully, still pulling the ears of Wooster, who was panting, grinning fatuously with delight.

  ‘Is one ever too young to benefit from life experience, I wonder. Surely everything has an impact on him one way or another, even if he can’t actually remember the details later on.’

  Now, Charlotte lowers Oliver into his cot and looks down at him. He’s very drowsy but content. She’s pleased that he was so good with the other children, amazed and amused by them in turn, and very good-tempered until the journey home. Yet she still cannot imagine her little family far from home in a foreign country.

  It occurs to her that she is frightened. She realizes that during this separation Andy is becoming a stranger to her; she’s forgetting what it’s like to have him around, talking to him, being in bed with him. She’s known him for less than three years and for a great deal of that time he’s been at sea. He hardly knows their child. How will it be when they are together in a place where she knows no one: no parents an hour away across the moor, no Mattie dashing down to see her, no William and Aunt Kat next door? Even Tim is becoming more familiar to her than Andy.

  Charlotte folds her arms across her midriff as though she is holding herself together. Her mother is sympathetic, but her own years as a naval wife have toughened her, and her father is more concerned with Andy’s promotion than Charlotte’s anxieties as to whether she will cope, about which it is clear he has very few fears. He gives her a hug, tells her she’ll be fine and that they’ll come out to visit them. She finds it difficult to explain her true feelings and demand sympathy. She is generally the one who is tough and strong, exhorting her sister or her friends to pull themselves together during bad times, insisting that they must refuse to allow weakness to triumph.

  Staring down at Oliver, her arms still wrapped about herself for comfort, Charlotte realizes that this is the first time in her adult life that she has felt truly weak and frightened. Up until now she has had very few challenges and she begins to see that
her lack of sympathy with other people’s problems is due to her inability to connect. Her assumption that they should be able to cope is a result of her own lack of experience and empathy.

  Becoming a mother was the first step to this new self-awareness; separation from Andy was the second. Dimly she sees that her default mode is a critical one; she is impatient with muddle, indecision and neediness.

  Oliver is sleeping peacefully, unaware of her turmoil, and she covers him gently with his blanket and goes out, closing the door quietly behind her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT’S ALMOST LUNCHTIME by the time Fiona arrives at the Cott. She loves this long, white-painted fourteenth-century building, with its heavy golden thatch and low beams. It’s so cosy in the winter with its log fires burning at each end of the bar, and in the summer it’s fun to climb up to the big decked terrace and sit under the wooden pergolas with a cold drink. The pub is already quite busy but Anton comes out from behind the bar to take her case and show her to her room, and by the time she comes down again he has her favourite cocktail waiting and a table reserved.

  She likes this attention, it makes her feel special, and she sighs with pleasure as, having ordered her lunch, she sits back to enjoy her drink and look around. It’s quite a shock to see Kat sitting a few tables away with a man that Fiona doesn’t recognize. There’s no reason at all why Kat shouldn’t be having lunch in the Cott with a friend but something in the way they are together prevents Fiona from making herself known. She shifts back in her chair, slightly out of sight, so that she can watch them without being seen.

  He looks nice, thinks Fiona, though rather conventional for Kat’s taste. Her men usually have a certain ‘Sturm und Drang’ about them, which this fellow, with his greyish-fair floppy hair and pleasant smile, seems to be lacking. Nevertheless they are clearly enjoying themselves. He is telling Kat a story and she is listening intently, watching him with enjoyment, responding with enthusiasm. Fiona can see him expanding in the warmth of her attention.