Wild Mountain Thyme

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  Victoria said, “I love you.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “But you,” he told her, “don’t happen to be having a baby.”

  * * *

  The clock on the mantelpiece astonished her by chiming, with silvery notes, seven o’clock. Victoria looked at it, disbelieving, and then at her wristwatch. Seven o’clock. The Rossini had finished long ago, the dregs in her coffee mug were stone cold, outside it was still raining, and in half an hour she was due at a party in Campden Hill.

  She was assailed by the usual small panic of one who has lost all trace of time, and all thoughts of Oliver Dobbs were, for the moment, forgotten. Victoria sprang to her feet and did a number of things in quick succession. Took the coffee mug back into the kitchen, turned on a bath, went into her room to open her wardrobe and take out various garments, none of which seemed suitable. She took off some clothes and searched for stockings. She thought about ringing up for a taxi. She thought about calling Mrs. Fairburn and pleading a headache, and then thought better of it, because the Fairburns were friends of her mother’s, the invitation was a long-standing one, and Victoria had a horror of causing offense. She went into the steaming bathroom and turned off the taps and splashed in some bath oil. The steam became scented. She disposed of her long hair in a bathcap, slathered cold cream on her face and wiped it all off again with a tissue. She climbed into the scalding water.

  Fifteen minutes later she was out once more and dressed. A black silk turtleneck with a peasant-embroidered smock on top of it. Black stockings, black shoes with very high heels. She blackened her thick lashes with mascara, clipped on earrings, sprayed on some scent.

  Now, a coat. She drew back the curtains and opened the window and leaned out to gauge the weather. It was very dark and still windy, but the rain, for the moment, seemed to have ceased. Below, the Mews was quiet. Cobbles shone like fish scales, black puddles reflected the light from the old-fashioned street lamps. A car was turning in from the street, under the archway. It nosed down the Mews like a prowling cat. Victoria withdrew her head, closed the windows and the curtains. She took an old fur coat from the back of the door, bundled herself into its familiar comfort, checked for her keys and wallet, turned off the gas fire and all the upstairs lights, and started downstairs.

  She had taken one step when the doorbell rang.

  She said, “Damn.” It was probably Mrs. Tingley come to borrow milk. She was always running out of milk. And she would want to stand and talk. Victoria ran to the foot of the stairs and flung open the door.

  On the far side of the Mews, beneath a lamp, the prowling cat was parked. A big old Volvo estate car. But of its driver there was no sign. Puzzled, she hesitated, and was about to go and investigate, when, from the dark shadows at the side of the door, a figure moved soundlessly forward, causing Victoria nearly to jump out of her skin. He said her name, and it was as though she had been taken, very swiftly, down twenty-three stories in a very fast lift. The wind blew a scrap of newspaper the length of the Mews. She could hear the beating of her own heart.

  “I didn’t know if you’d still be living here.”

  She thought, these things don’t happen. Not to ordinary people. They only happen in books.

  “I thought you might have moved. I was sure you’d have moved.”

  She shook her head.

  He said, “It’s been a long time.”

  Victoria’s mouth was dry. She said, “Yes.”

  Oliver Dobbs. She searched for some change in him but could find none. His hair was the same, his beard, his light eyes, his deep and gentle voice. He even wore the same sort of clothes, shabby and casual garments that on his tall, lean frame did not look shabby at all but somehow contrived and distinctive.

  He said, “You look as though you’re just going out.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m late as it is. But…” She stepped back. “… You’d better come in, out of the cold.”

  “Is that all right?”

  “Yes.” But she said again, “I have to go out,” as if her going out were some sort of an escape hatch from a possibly impossible situation. She turned to lead the way back upstairs. He began to follow her and then hesitated. He said, “I’ve left my cigarettes in the car.”

  He plunged back into the outdoors. Halfway up the stairs Victoria waited. He returned in a moment, closed the door behind him. She went up, turning on the light at the head of the stairs, and was going to stand with her back to the unlit gas fire.

  Oliver followed her, his eyes alert, instantly scanning the pretty room, the pale walls, the chintzes, patterned with spring flowers. The pine corner-cupboard that Victoria had found in a junk shop and stripped herself, her pictures, her books.

  He smiled, satisfied. “You haven’t changed anything. It’s exactly the way I remembered. How marvelous to find something that hasn’t changed.” His eyes came back to her face. “I thought you’d have gone. I thought you’d have married some guy and moved. I was so certain that the door would be opened by a complete stranger. And there you were. Like a miracle.”

  Victoria found that she could think of absolutely nothing to say. She thought, I have been struck speechless. Searching for words, she found herself looking around the room. Beneath the bookcase was the cupboard where she kept a meagre collection of bottles. She said, “Would you like a drink?”

  “Yes, I’d like one very much.”

  She laid down her bag and went to crouch by the cupboard. There was sherry, half a bottle of wine, a nearly empty bottle of whisky. She took out the whisky bottle. “There isn’t much, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s marvelous.” He came to take the bottle from her. “I’ll do it.” He disappeared into the kitchen, at home in her flat as if he had walked out only yesterday. She heard the chink of glass, the running of the tap.

  “Do you want one?” he called.

  “No thank you.”

  He emerged from the kitchen with the drink in his hand. “Where’s this party you’re going to?”

  “Campden Hill. Some friends of my mother’s.”

  “Is it going on for long?”

  “I don’t suppose so.”

  “Will you come back for dinner?”

  Victoria almost laughed at this, because this was Oliver Dobbs, apparently inviting her to have dinner with him in her own flat.

  “I imagine I will.”

  “Then you go to your party, and I’ll wait here.” He saw the expression on her face and added quickly, “It’s important. I want to talk to you. And I want to have time to talk to you.”

  It sounded sinister, as though someone was after him, like the police, or some Soho heavy with a switch knife.

  “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “How anxious you look! No, there’s nothing wrong.” He added, in a practical fashion, “Have you got any food in the house?”

  “There’s some soup. Some bacon and eggs. I could make a salad. Or, if you wanted, we could go out. There’s a Greek restaurant around the corner, it’s just started up…”

  “No, we can’t go out.” He sounded so definite that Victoria began to be apprehensive all over again. He went on, “I didn’t want to tell you right away until I knew what the form was with you. The thing is, there’s someone else in the car. There are two of us.”

  “Two of you?” She imagined a girlfriend, a drunken crony, even a dog.

  In answer Oliver laid down his glass and disappeared once more down the stairs. She heard the door open and his footsteps crossing the Mews. She went to the head of the stairs and waited for him to return. He had left the door open, and when he reappeared he closed this behind him, carefully with his foot. The reason that he did this was that his arms were otherwise occupied with the weight of a large, mercifully sleeping, baby boy.

  3

  FRIDAY

  It was a quarter past seven, at the end of a grueling day, before John Dunbeath finally turned his car into the relative quiet of Cadogan Place, down the narrow
lane between tightly parked cars, and edged it into a meagre gap not too far from his own front door. He killed the engine, turned off the lights, and reached into the back seat for his bulging briefcase and his raincoat. He got out of the car and locked up.

  He had left his office, and commenced the daily ordeal of the journey home, in lashing rain, but now, half an hour or so later, it seemed to be easing up a little. Dark and still windy, the sky, bronzed with the reflected glow of the city lights, seemed to be full of ominous, racing clouds. After ten hours spent in an overheated atmosphere, the night air smelled fresh and invigorating. Walking slowly down the pavement, his briefcase slapping against his leg, he took one or two deep and conscious lungfuls, and was refreshed by the cold wind.

  With his key ring in his hand, he went up the steps to the front door. It was black, with a brass handle and a letter box that the porter polished every morning. The tall old London house had been turned, some time ago, into flats, and the lobby and staircase, although carpeted and neatly kept, always smelled stale and stuffy, unaired and claustrophobic with central heating. This odor greeted him now, as it greeted him every evening. He shut the door with the seat of his pants, collected his mail from its pigeon hole and began to climb the stairs.

  He lived on the second floor, in an apartment that had been cunningly contrived from the main bedrooms of the original house. It was a furnished flat, found for him by a colleague when John had left New York and come to work in London at the European headquarters of the Warburg Investment Corporation, and he had arrived at Heathrow off the plane from Kennedy and taken instant possession. Now, six months later, it had become familiar. Not a home, but familiar. A place for a man alone to live.

  He let himself in, turned on the lights and saw on the hall table his message from Mrs. Robbins, the daily lady whom the porter had recommended should come in each morning to clean the flat. John had only seen her once, at the very beginning, when he had given her a key and told her more or less what he wanted her to do. Mrs. Robbins had made it clear that this was quite unnecessary. She was a stately person, portentously hatted and wearing her respectability like armor. At the end of the encounter he was fully aware that he had not been interviewing her, but that Mrs. Robbins had been judging him. However, it seemed that he had passed muster, and she duly took him on, along with one or two other privileged persons who also lived in the house. Since then, he had never set eyes on her, but they corresponded by means of notes that they left for each other, and he paid her, weekly, in the same fashion.

  He dropped his briefcase, slung his raincoat onto a chair, picked up Mrs. Robbins’ letter, and along with the rest of his mail took it into the sitting room. Here all was beige and brown and totally impersonal. Another person’s pictures hung upon the wall; another person’s books filled the shelves which flanked the fireplace, and he had no wish for it to be any different.

  Sometimes, for no particular reason, the emptiness of his personal life, the need for welcome, for love, would overwhelm him, breaking down the careful barriers which he had painfully built. On these occasions, he could not stop the memories flooding back. Like coming home to the shining brilliance of the New York apartment, with its white floors and its white rugs, and a sort of perfection which Lisa had achieved with her eye for color, her passion for detail and her total disregard for her husband’s bank balance. And, inevitably, Lisa would be there, waiting for him—for these memories belonged to the beginning of their marriage—so beautiful that she took your breath away, wearing something gauzy by de la Renta, and smelling unbearably exotic. And she would kiss him, and put a martini into his hand, and be glad to see him.

  But most times, like this evening, he was grateful for quiet, for peace; for time to read his mail, to have a drink, to reassemble himself after the day’s work. He went around the room turning on lights; he switched on the electric fire which instantly became a pile of rustic logs, flickering in the pseudo firebasket. He drew the brown velvet curtains and poured himself a Scotch, and then read the message from Mrs. Robbins.

  Her notes were always brief and abbreviated, rendering them as important sounding as cables.

  * * *

  Laundry missing pair sox and 2 hankchfs.

  Miss Mansell called says will you ring her this evng.

  He leafed through the rest of his mail. A bank statement, a company report, a couple of invitations, an airmail letter from his mother. Putting these aside for later perusal, he sat on the arm of the sofa, reached for the telephone and dialed a number.

  She came on almost at once, sounding breathless as she always did, as though perpetually in a tearing hurry.

  “Hello?”

  “Tania.”

  “Darling. I thought you’d never call.”

  “Sorry, I’m only just back. Just picked up your message now.”

  “Oh, poor sweet, you must be exhausted. Listen, something maddening’s cropped up, but I can’t make this evening. The thing is, I’m going down to the country now. Mary Colville rang up this morning, and there’s some dance going on, and some girls got flu, and she’s desperate about her numbers, and I simply had to say I’d go. I tried to say no, and explain about this evening, but then she said would you come down tomorrow, for the weekend.”

  She stopped, not because she hadn’t got plenty more to say, but because she had run out of breath. John found himself smiling. Her spates of words, her breathlessness, her confused social arrangements were all part of the charm that she held for him, mostly because she was so diametrically different from his ex-wife. Tania had, perpetually, to be organized, and was so scatty that the thought of organizing John never entered her pretty feather-head.

  He looked at his watch. He said, “If you’re going to be at some dinner party in the country this evening, aren’t you running things a little fine?”

  “Oh, darling, yes, I’m going to be desperately late, but that’s not what you’re meant to say at all. You’re meant to be desperately disappointed.”

  “Of course I’m disappointed.”

  “And you will come down to the country tomorrow?”

  “Tania, I can’t. I just heard today. I have to go to the Middle East. I’m flying out tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, I can’t bear it. How long are you going for?”

  “Just a few days. A week at the outside. It depends on how things go.”

  “Will you call me when you get back?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  “I rang Imogen Fairburn and told her I couldn’t make it this evening, so she understands, and she says she’s looking forward to seeing you even if I can’t be there too. Oh, darling, isn’t everything grim? Are you furious?”

  “Furious,” he assured her, mildly.

  “But you do understand, don’t you?”

  “I understand completely, and you thank Mary for her invitation and explain why I can’t make it.”

  “Yes, I will, of course I will, and…”

  Another of her characteristics was that she could never finish a phone call. He interrupted firmly.

  “Look, Tania, you have an appointment this evening. Get off the line and finish your packing and get moving. With luck, you’ll arrive at the Colvilles no more than two hours late.”

  “Oh, darling, I do adore you.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “You do that.” She made kissing sounds. “Bye.” She hung up. He put the receiver back on the hook and sat looking at it, wondering why he couldn’t feel disappointed when a charming and engaging female stood him up for a more exciting invitation. He mulled over this problem for a moment or two, and finally decided that it didn’t matter anyway. So he dialed Annabel’s and cancelled the table he had ordered for this evening and then he finished his drink and went to have a shower.

  * * *

  Just as he was on the point of leaving for the Fairburns’ a call came through from his vice president, who had had, on his journey home in the company Cadillac, one or two important thoug
hts about John’s projected trip to Bahrain. Discussing these, getting them collated and noted, had taken a good fifteen minutes, so that by the time John finally arrived at the house in Campden Hill, he was nearly three quarters of an hour late.

  The party was obviously in full swing. The street outside was jammed with cars—it took him another frustrating five minutes to find a scrap of space in which to park his own—and light and a steady hum of conversation emanated from beyond the tall, curtained first-floor windows. When he rang the bell the door was opened almost immediately by a man (hired for the occasion?) in a white coat, who said, “Good evening,” and directed John up the stairs.

  It was a pleasant and familiar house, expensively decorated, thickly carpeted, smelling like an extravagant hothouse. As John ascended, the sound of voices swelled to a massive volume. Through the open door that led into Imogen’s drawing room, he could discern an anonymous crush of people, some drinking, some smoking, some munching canapés, and all intent on talking their heads off. A couple was sitting at the head of the stairs. John smiled and excused himself as he stepped around them, and the girl said, “We’re just having a tiny breath of air,” as though she felt she must apologize for being there.

  By the open door was a table set up as a bar, with another hired waiter in attendance.

  “Good evening, sir. What’ll it be?”

  “Scotch and soda, please.”

  “With ice, sir, naturally.”

  John grinned. The “naturally” meant that the barman had recognized him for the American that he was. He said, “Naturally,” and took the drink. “How am I going to find Mrs. Fairburn?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll just have to go and look for her, sir. Like a needle in a ruddy haystack, I’d say.”

  John agreed with him, took a spine-stiffening slug of whiskey and plunged.

  It wasn’t as bad as it might have been. He was recognized, greeted, almost at once, drawn into a group, offered a smoked salmon roll, a cigar, a racing tip. “Absolute certainty, old boy, three-thirty at Doncaster tomorrow.” A girl he knew slightly came and kissed him and, he suspected, left lipstick on his cheek. A tall young man with an old man’s balding head swam forward and said, “You’re John Dunbeath, aren’t you? Name’s Crumleigh. Used to know your predecessor. And how are things in the banking world?”