‘But I haven’t any children and I’ve never been an artist. It’s different for you, Robert. You’ve built houses, even churches; left your stamp on such a lot of things.’
‘But so have you. What about those vestments that you made? They sound like works of art themselves. And you told me once you were looking after chasubles which dated from Victorian times, really precious things. Well, in another hundred years or so, someone may be cherishing your vestments, admiring all the skill which went to make them. And then there’s prayer. You can’t discount it as a force, even if you don’t believe in God. Who can say for certain that your years and years of praying didn’t touch and reach the people it was meant for, affect the world in some way? Prayer may be something we just don’t understand yet – something like electricity, invisible but powerful. Do you know, when I was standing just outside your convent walls, I could actually feel a sort of …’ He frowned into his glass, shook his head impatiently. ‘I just don’t have the words. They all sound fey or batty, but those centuries of concentrated praying seem to have created a sort of force-field round the place.’
Hilary glanced up at his eager solemn face, so different from the face of half an hour ago, the grotesque grimacing face which had uttered those wild sounds. How strange he was, this man. Yet if what he said were true, then her convent years had not been wasted, fruitless. She had touched the world, as she had always aimed to do.
‘And another thing, Hilary, you’ve affected me – yes, really left your imprint. I’ve never met another woman like you, and I’ve met a fair old number in my time. You’re a marvellous sort of mixture – like a child, in some ways, and yet with such high ideals and iron self-will, and so serious about everything. I like that. Even if you ran away tomorrow – which I shan’t allow, don’t worry – I’d still feel your influence. You’ve made me change the way I see things.’
‘I have?’ Was he mocking? ‘But you’re the one who tells me everything. I know nothing on my own, Robert.’
‘You know a lot of things.’ He came to sit beside her. ‘Including how to kiss. How about a goodnight kiss – just one?’
Her own mouth opened almost willingly this time, though the kiss was different – brandy-flavoured, gentler; less tongue, more nuzzling lips. She didn’t need to pull away. He released her mouth himself, sat close and quiet, his arm around her shoulders. She could hear the jerky panting of the fire, the sudden hiss and spurt as flames surprised damp wood, the rhythmic roll and kickback of the waves. She followed Robert’s gaze as he looked far out to sea, the furled power of the breakers swelling slowly, slowly, until they exploded on the sand.
‘Do you realise, darling, it’s not completely dark, not even now? There’s a sort of gleam on the horizon.’
She looked where he was pointing, saw the sky not heavy curdled black, as it had seemed at Brignor just an hour ago, but pearled and fretted with the palest silver-grey. It must have been there all the time, yet she hadn’t seen it, had called the darkness total. Robert shook his jacket out, draped it round their shoulders, joining them again.
‘You know that time thing I was trying to explain just now, well it’s rather like the movement of the sun. I mean, people long ago used to think the sun was dead, just because they couldn’t see or feel it. The light and heat had gone; disappeared, apparently, for ever. We know it’s there, of course; still hot, still bright, but simply in the other hemisphere. Well, you can also view the past like that. It’s there, in some dimension, as much “now” as now itself is.’ He reached out for his brandy, held it in the fire light, watched the flames flicker in the glass. ‘In one sense, there can’t be any “now”, because even as we grasp it, it’s changing, passing on, yet if you look at it another way, eternity is now, or now’s eternity. Am I making any sense?’
She nodded, slowly. If the past were still alive, then her parents were still with her; Robert’s mother still stocking up her larder; her old and saintly Abbess still praying on her knees – not in heaven, but in some infinite dimension. Heaven and hell had both vanished altogether: no need to dread the one, nor languish for the other. She could see them now for what they were – human and misleading ways of trying to understand Robert’s subtler concept of an eternity beyond time. She kept her eyes focused on the faint gleam of silvery light, realised now it was vitally important, as a symbol of a new eternal life. Even her own small frail achievements were shining in a new dimension: she had sewn her vestments into history; helped to weave a force-field around Brignor; even stitched Robert to her, now their lives and mouths had joined.
The words of the psalm they had recited every night at Vespers suddenly welled up in her mind.
Even the darkness is not dark for you
and the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
She repeated them again, silently, wonderingly, as she watched the silver etch a little deeper in the black.
Chapter Twenty Five
Hilary shut her ears and eyes against the brusque intrusive voice – a stranger’s voice, a male voice. The bed was very hard, harder even than Brignor, but she didn’t want to wake yet; felt lazy and contented, as if she had been told good news which she couldn’t quite remember, but which had seeped right through her pores. She squinted through her eyelids, glimpsed a stretch of sand, a tartan-patterned sleeping bag, rumpled up and empty – suddenly remembered where she was. She rubbed her eyes, struggled out of sleep. Where and why had Robert gone, and whose was that rude other voice, which had now faded to a murmur? She turned in its direction, saw Robert and a policeman striding side by side across the sand. She sat up with a jerk. A policeman! What had happened in the night? Was Robert in some trouble? Were they planning to arrest him, wouldn’t even allow him to get dressed? He was still in his pyjamas, and bare feet.
‘Wait!’ she shouted, as she wrestled with her sleeping bag, tried to force the stubborn zip. The policeman didn’t hear, just picked up his push-bike, which he’d left lying on the dunes, mounted, pedalled off. Robert bounded back to her, wincing as he stumbled on a half-buried piece of rock.
‘Hilary, my darling, you’re now an official law-breaker, a felon and a trespasser. Which isn’t bad for someone who’s still technically a nun.’
‘Me?’ She hobbled up, still trapped in her blue sleeping bag. ‘But why? Whatever’s happened?’
‘We’re not allowed to camp, that’s all. It’s illegal on the beach – and also forbidden to light fires, or leave litter, or park cars. I didn’t know, did you? He’s moved us on, in any case, says he’ll be back in half an hour, to check we’re well and truly gone. I can’t say I’m that sorry. I hardly slept a wink. I suggest we drive to the nearest grand hotel and order a decent four-course breakfast.’ He yanked the zip to free her, bundled up the sleeping bag, turned back with a grin. ‘Is there a grand hotel in Norfolk?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve never stayed in a hotel.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’ She laughed. ‘Nuns don’t, you know.’
‘Yes, but before that, as a child?’
She shook her head. ‘My mother hated holidays.’
‘I spent half my childhood in hotels. My mother didn’t like it either, but she didn’t have much choice.’
‘You mean your father travelled for his job?’
Robert’s face looked guarded, suddenly, as if a shutter had come down. ‘Let’s not talk about my father. I don’t want to spoil this glorious morning. Look at the sun! And it’s only half past six. That copper must have been a monk in another incarnation, if he’s on his rounds so early.’
‘Half past six was late for us. Positively indulgent.’ She tried to keep her tone light, while reflecting on his words. Did Robert hate his father, fear him? The little idyll she had constructed in her mind of his mother stocking larders, his father building shelves, went crashing to the ground. She knew so little, actually, about his family, his background; still found it difficult to ask him p
ersonal questions, delve into his past – in that respect was still a nun.
Robert stopped her clearing up, removed the bedding from her arms, claimed them for himself. ‘Talking of indulgence, don’t I get a kiss this morning?’
His pyjamas seemed so flimsy thin, one silky layer between them. His chin had grown rougher in the night. He hadn’t cleaned his teeth, and nor had she. All her old fastidious fears were surging back again. She was still a nun in far too many ways, despite that letter, which Reverend Mother Abbess might even now be reading. She shivered, pulled away. ‘Look, we’d better get a move on. Half an hour’s not long to get everything packed up.’
‘Okay, you clear up here and I’ll go and have a shave. I can see you don’t like stubble.’
They were on the road by seven, washed and dressed, and in Robert’s case, close-shaved. Hilary still marvelled at the way his sports car ate up distances which had seemed endless as a child; trudging in her Wellingtons and red hand-knitted mittens against driving rain or wind. She never remembered warmth like this in Norfolk; the golden dazzling light which seemed to have been shaken out on all the fields and hedges, like glitter from a tube. And the colours she recalled were always greys, or dull and sober greens; not these startling vibrant yellows in mustard fields and gorse, these creamy clouds of elder flowers and meadowsweet, that shout of scarlet poppies against a haze of golden-brown. The hedgerows seemed prolific – a tangled mass of jostling stalks and heads; ragwort dwarfing vetches, bindweed choking willowherb; every stem tussling for more space, every fat and glossy leaf thrusting to the fight. And there had never been so many birds – not just sea-birds: curlews, plover, oyster catchers, but also larks and lapwings, stonechats, yellow-hammers; rainbowed pheasants strutting by the roadside, or skeetering to safety from the red jaws of the car. She watched a jackdaw preening on a signpost, spelt out the name beneath it. ‘That’s my village,’ she said out loud, with a sudden lurch of longing, undercut by fear.
Robert swerved, swung the car off the main B road, and along the narrow lane. Trees grew high each side, so that they were in a private tunnel, the sun shut out except for glints and nickers, a sudden welcome coolness brushing her bare arms. They both fell silent, half-nervous, half-expectant, as the car emerged again into brilliant sunshine; a straggle of small houses, a church, a pub, a store – nothing changed, except the village seemed deserted, as if it had died and been forgotten; no gossips at the corner, no mourner in the tangled weed-choked churchyard.
Their footsteps echoed as they walked down past the church. The car looked wrong, parked blatantly outside it; too modern, too expensive, far too flashy bright. Even Robert seemed out of place in his stylish shirt, pale trousers; too healthy altogether for this ancient crumbling place; and certainly too big. The village was a toy, with a modest church, a midget pub, narrow small-boned houses squashed together. She was scared what he might think when he saw the house she’d lived in as a child – an unexceptional cottage with neither space nor charm, and built of dull red brick. The house he’d designed in Leicestershire had been grand-scale and distinguished, with a conservatory, a library, extensive formal gardens laid out with pomp and style. She stopped in front of the ragged patch of dandelions, somehow still expecting to see her father’s tidy patchwork of paving stones interspersed with salvias, the blue edging of lobelia which led up to the door. ‘FOR SALE’, she saw, instead. The sign looked old and tired, as if it had advertised its wares too long, encountered little interest.
‘There’s no one here,’ she said. What had she expected – her mother in the kitchen, her father marking school books?
‘Good! That means we can go in and look round.’ Robert was already through the gate, trying the front door. It was securely locked and bolted, the other doors and windows equally unyielding. Hilary trailed after him, as he rattled the back door; felt barred again, locked out of her past, as she had also been at Brignor. She peered in through the windows at the bare and grimy rooms, could feel her mother’s outrage at the dirt, the desolation. She turned her back, walked slowly down the garden, remembering her father’s Brussels sprouts, the way he lambasted slugs and caterpillars with the same weary sarcasm he employed for second-formers.
Her eyes were pricking, her chest felt tight, constricted. Suddenly, Robert was behind her, coaxed her round to face him, took her in his arms. She tensed at first, as if her parents were both watching from their poky bedroom window, shocked and disapproving. But this embrace was nothing like the wild kiss on the sands. His body wasn’t bucking, stirring; nor his hurting urgent mouth prising hers apart. He simply held her, while tears slid down her face, ran into her mouth. She didn’t wipe her eyes, just swallowed salt, remorse. She owed her parents tears.
They didn’t stop again until they reached the obelisk. Hilary had almost forgotten that ugly and pretentious monument, pretending to be solid when it was only brick inside, thinly faced with stone; plaques on all four sides setting out the distances to neighbouring towns and hamlets.
‘Oh, do let’s stop a moment. My best friend Katy lived here and we spent hours just sitting by that thing, planning how we’d send down messages from heaven if one of us died first, and how we’d keep a throne warm for the other.’ She smiled. ‘What arrogance! It never crossed our minds we’d land up in the other place, or that God would object to our using all His busy angels to deliver paltry bits of information, like whether dogs had souls or if God allowed riding-schools in heaven.’
Robert laughed and slowed. ‘It’s an interesting piece of architecture, and very grand for such a tiny village. G.R., it says up top. Was that George III or George IV?’
She blushed at her own ignorance. ‘I’ve no idea. I simply saw those as my own initials, which is partly why I liked the thing, I suppose. I told you I was arrogant.’
‘Your initials? How? Liz said your name was Hilary, even before you were a nun.’
Hilary got out, smoothed her crumpled skirt. ‘I was actually called Gloria, but I keep that very dark.’
‘Why, for heaven’s sake? It’s a splendid name, full of fame and triumph.’
‘That’s the trouble. I just don’t feel it’s me.’
‘Course it is. It also means glory in the sense of light. You know, like in the Christmas carol, “While glory shone around.” That’s exactly right for you, darling. I always think of you as bathed in light.’
‘Oh, Robert, don’t. You’re mocking me.’
‘I’m not. You’re very fair and you’ve got this sort of inner light – bright both in and out. Anyway, I love the name. To tell the truth, I’ve never much liked Hilary. It seemed too plain and almost masculine. You’re Gloria from now on. Glorious Gloria. I’ve just chiselled your initials into this rather marvellous obelisk for all the world to see.’
Hilary walked towards the plinth, resentment fighting pleasure. He hadn’t asked if she objected to being suddenly renamed, made her father’s child again. ‘I was named after Gloria Swanson, if you really want to know.’
‘Even better. She was one of the most glamorous of females.’
‘But I’m not glamorous.’ She remembered the photo on her father’s desk, the ineffable Ms Swanson in a silver frame, lips pursed and pouting, ostrich feathers in her hair. Katy’s father had all his children’s photos on his desk – Katy largest, in pigtails and a gymslip.
Robert traced her cheekbones. ‘Yes, you are.’
‘What, in this skimpy skirt and sandals?’
‘Yes. In fact, we’ll have to find a really swish hotel now. Glorias don’t slum it.’
‘Oh, Robert, no, we can’t. It’s far too grand.’ Hilary gazed up at the panelled walls, the portraits; down again to the bowls of hothouse flowers. ‘I haven’t got the clothes or …’
‘Don’t worry. Ms Swanson’s private valet just dropped by with a little blue silk number. He left it in the suite upstairs. You’d better come up now and see if you approve.’
She followed him upstairs, a wide and curving s
taircase with more flowers on the landing, chambermaids bobbing as they passed. They had stopped here just for breakfast, or so she’d thought as she’d sat in the palatial dining room, flushing as a waiter spread her napkin, another poured her coffee. After the most luxurious breakfast of her life, which started with fresh mangoes and ended with brioches, Robert had left her in the lounge with a pile of magazines, told her he was going to reconnoitre. An hour had passed before he reappeared, wearing a tie she hadn’t seen before and an air of satisfaction.
‘Yes, it is the best hotel. I’ve checked on a few more and they’re nothing like as comfortable. I hope you like our room.’
They were standing now outside a panelled door, which occupied the prime place on the landing. Hilary touched her ring, felt the sharp arms of the crucifix hidden in her palm. He must have booked this room for Mr and Mrs Harrington, yet officially she was married still to God. He unlocked the door, which revealed another inner door, opened that as well. A huge four-poster dominated the room, its niched and pleated curtains matching the frills on counterpane and pillows; the dark oak of the bedposts echoed in the antique chest of drawers, the tall broad-shouldered wardrobe, the highly polished table which held a bowl of fruit.
‘Well, what d’you think?’ he asked her, not waiting for her answer. ‘Not just double doors, but two separate layers of curtains on the bed.
See?’ He pulled the white nets close, and then the heavy velvet. ‘How’s that for privacy?’ He crossed back to the wardrobe, took out a dress with a low plunge back, floating panels in the front, tiny shoestring straps. ‘Ms Swanson’s new creation. I only hope it fits. The shop said they’d take it back, but it’s ten miles down the coast, at least, and there was nothing else as glamorous. Want to try it on?’
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