Harvest

by Celia Brayfield

‘I didn’t really make it, that woman over there did.’ A little rabbit-twitch of a smile as she pointed out an angular, uncoordinated body under a panama hat.

  ‘Tamara Aylesham – our design writer did a story on her my first year in France. Tamara Lady Aylesham, decorator extraordinary to the international Francophiles.’

  ‘Extraordinary was the right word.’

  ‘I always wondered how she got on with her clients.’

  ‘At the time, she was good company.’ Jane remembered long afternoons beside the pool at the local hotel, lounging under the sun with a hat on her pregnant belly to shade Sam’s unborn eyes, while Tamara, well lubricated after lunch, lost swatches, dropped samples and let her calculator fall in the water.

  ‘Aren’t they farming wild boar now?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Not a success, then?’

  ‘They’re great rooters, the sangliers. They root up their fences and then they charge out into the fields and root up the crops.’

  ‘You’re talking about my savage piggies!’ The decorator extraordinary windmilled towards them. ‘You’ve never heard such cheek – the mayor came to see me and said I had to give up, the farmers were furious with me. I told him they ought to hunt them, I wouldn’t mind …’

  ‘Great sport, boars. Dangerous, you know, you need the right dogs.’ Tamara’s fourth husband left conspiring with Anthony to ensure a supply of whisky and joined them. ‘Rhodesian ridgebacks would do the job …’

  ‘Darling, do you think we should breed them instead? Let the piggies breed themselves? Boar shooting at the Chateau …’ The conversation crackled merrily around ways Tamara and her husband could redeploy their dwindling assets to provide an income sufficient to maintain a castle without needing to get up before lunchtime more than once a week.

  Jane said, ‘Did you ever meet Graham Moynihan? Michael’s old partner? Interesting man?’ and seeing Nick hugely amused Grace let herself be taken away from him, wondering why neither she nor Jane seemed to be feeling the antagonism that was expected of two women involved with the same man.

  She was aware now that Michael was aware of her. How many times they had played this scene, both cool and social, she almost nauseous with the tension of pretence, he flawless in his timing. First the flash of greeting containing the silent promise of a semi-private conversation later. He would choose the time. Useless to cut across his will in that, she had tried it once and his bubbling spring of amusing conversation had dried at once, leaving them high and dry as strangers until someone else approached.

  The terrace was becoming crowded. So many familiar faces, just a little more lined after five years. Moynihan was stoop-shouldered with a dry, lopsided smile; his wife, for all her weight, would be a girl forever, with bright, naive brown eyes. She talked to their kids, a blond boy and a brown-haired girl who towered bashfully over most of the adults, politely answering questions about their exams. ‘I know this is a gruesome thing to say, but I haven’t seen you since you were little moppets waiting for the tooth fairy.’

  ‘That’s OK, just don’t go on about how much we’ve grown, all right?’

  She let the gathering crowd take her where it would, talking to a French lawyer, the neighbouring Belgians, two jolly gay writers from the far side of Castillon, and Berenice Stern, who she decided was living proof that a woman could be too rich and too thin but still be too Versace and blow the lot. Morris Donaldson appeared, the most changed of them all, his pleasant rounded face lost in the bloating of his cheeks and neck. Perspiration already stained his shirt, and with him came a dark-haired woman Grace did not recognize but presumed to be his former researcher and second wife. She looked uncomfortable balancing a large baby on one hip and holding a shy older boy by the hand, out of place in her short, tight-skirted suit.

  A fresh-faced boy in green breeches appeared and conferred with Jane. Under his arm was a hunting horn glinting in the sun. Nobody could look at their watch as slyly as Michael. It was past one. Unobtrusively, he pulled Jane away from the crowd.

  ‘Where’s Imogen?’

  ‘I don’t know, isn’t she here?’ She was irritated. He had made no move himself to check on his daughter’s arrival.

  ‘Has she rung?’

  ‘You know if she wasn’t coming she wouldn’t bother telling us. Yes, Stephen called, from the train. They were expecting to be here on time.’

  ‘Stephen …’

  ‘Why must you always be down on that boy – you know he’s been the saving of Imi’s life.’

  ‘That’s your opinion.’

  ‘It’s the general opinion. I’ve sent Debbie to meet them.’

  ‘Then where are they?’ he demanded immediately, brazen-faced. Evidently he believed that he had apologized enough that the night before could now become a fading memory.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I overestimated Debbie’s capacity to get over attempted rape.’

  ‘Jane, what is the matter with you? That’s an unkind thing to say, it’s not like you … why are you trying to undermine me today?’

  ‘Please don’t use that tone of voice to me.’ Amazing that he could be bursting with rage and the only sign was the darkening of his eyes and the compression of his brows which made him glare like an eagle. He left her abruptly. She found herself pleased to have succeeded in making him angry.

  The Moynihans had goaded her; they had arrived first, bringing with them bitter memories. ‘How are you?’ Andy had enquired, implying that she knew the answer, and it was not good, but she had no intention of hearing any conversation on the subject. Graham had given her his hearty handshake and said the same thing, ‘How are you, Jane?’

  What a fool she had been to presume that because Andy had brought her the bad news, and been the first confidante of her unhappiness, their friendship was to endure. She had learned immediately how defenceless the wife of a powerful man becomes when she chooses to oppose her husband. Her mistake had been to assume that because Andy sympathized with her, Graham would do the same. Over a kitchen supper at their house, with Emma, six months old, asleep in her Moses basket, she had dissolved into tears because on Michael’s desk at home she had found a notebook with Grace Evans’s name on it and a recent date. ‘There’s no significance in that,’ Graham had asserted immediately from the head of the table. ‘It’s ridiculous to assume anything because Michael’s picked up a producer’s notes. He probably needs them.’ Andy, at the stove behind her husband, made an alarmed face but Jane ignored it. ‘It’s not ridiculous, I know they’re having an affair.’ ‘You can’t possibly claim that kind of knowledge,’ he had told her, and then allowed an uncomfortable silence to fall, making her feel that she had been unpardonably rude to question the character of his friend under his roof.

  She was never invited to their house without Michael again. Within a year Andy distanced herself, pleading her workload and her family, and Jane realized that without it being asked Graham had disciplined his wife into loyalty to Michael. Masculine force majeure prevailed, and cut her off. Even when Michael ousted him from the NewsConnect board, Graham apparently did not consider it proper to allow his wife to associate with her.

  Standing by herself at the end of the gathering party, Jane reflected that most of the couples in the room would behave the same way. Beside Michael’s influence, her poached salmon and handwritten place cards counted for nothing. No wonder Berenice Stem was so vinegary. Jane shook off her cynicism and decided that lunch should wait no longer. Imogen was late as usual.

  Thinking that Grace was still tense, Nick leaned towards her and said quietly, ‘Are you all right? You look all right. You know all these people, don’t you? It’s not an ordeal after all.’

  He himself was glowing with enjoyment. Grace poked him gently in the stomach, knowing how much he would be looking forward to the meal. ‘You really can enjoy other people’s good fortune as much as if it was your own, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course. That’s the best way, isn�
�t it? How much nicer it is to enjoy all this than to have to organize it, eh?’ He noticed that she had not really answered him.

  A second youth bearing a hunting horn appeared and the pair took up positions either side of the terrace steps. At a nod from Jane they raised their instruments and blew a long, merry fanfare to indicate the commencement of lunch.

  For Berenice’s sake Jane had ordered a temporary board walkway under a striped canopy across the meadow. It led to a wide dais in the shade of the young oaks, where green chairs decorated with roses were ranged around the long white tables. Further into the wood, in the deep shade of the old trees, two white fringed hammocks were tied, and the small children were tumbling in and out of them. A small pink and white striped pavilion with a pennant on top hid the caterers’equipment. The salmon was enthroned in splendour at the apex of the serving table.

  Dropping their pretence of dignity, the horn players sprinted boyishly past the procession to join the rest of their quintet a short distance away from the diners, where they applied themselves immediately to Mozart.

  ‘That must be your husband.’ Michael was at Grace’s side, seizing his moment while Nick was deep in conversation with Andy Moynihan.

  ‘Yes, that’s the poor fool who took me on.’ She looked at him calmly, willing him not to start scanning her face with his old, searching expression. It was no good, already Michael was standing too close and examining her with too much intimacy, and he had hold of her arm so she could not move away. Andy was screening her. She could hear Nick getting a lecture on one of her favourite subjects, toxic shame as an element of the addictive personality.

  ‘A lucky man, not a fool. In medicine, isn’t he? A surgeon?’ Luscious was the right word for her, Michael decided. She looked luscious. The sheen on her golden skin, those magnificent shoulders.

  Unconsciously, he was caressing her with his eyes. Grace smiled inwardly, flattered against her will, recognizing the extent of the man’s greed. He was insisting even that his ex-lover’s husband should reflect his glory.

  ‘Nick’s a virologist. He’s attached to a team studying the HIV virus in mothers and babies, and does some general practice as well.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘It’s very interesting, because some babies born with the virus manage to overcome it; his team want to find out how they do it and if adults can do the same. I’m simplifying, of course.’

  ‘But that’s fascinating.’

  ‘I’m glad you approve.’

  ‘I always approved of you, whatever you did. You know that. And which of these children are yours?’

  ‘None of them. That’s been a problem for us.’ Now which way was he going to jump?

  He was making his I-could-kick-myself face. ‘Oh God, was that insensitive. It was, wasn’t it? Sorry. Sorry.’ Her memory retrieved a sad moment when she had told him that he was so fond of that word she would not be surprised when he died if it was found engraved on his heart.

  Screaming came from the little ones; a thin girl with a cream smock flapping about her legs detached herself from the group and sprinted towards them. ‘Daddy! You’ve got to come and sort Sam out. He wants to kill our frogs.’

  ‘This is Emma.’

  The child who almost killed me. In spite of her expensive embroidered sun frock Grace’s instinct was that the little girl was a mess. She looked messy, not at all the chocolate-box angel portrait which Michael had always painted of her.

  ‘Daddy, you must come.’

  ‘I’m sure Sam isn’t doing anything he shouldn’t.’

  ‘He is, he is.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Emma. Go and tell the others to come and sit down.’ The genial father was not Michael’s best role. He was looking around for his wife while Emma’s eyes were growing huge with distress.

  ‘You’re always on Sam’s side. You never say I’m right, and I always am.’

  Michael simply turned away and ignored her. Grace was distressed; the child’s sense of grievance moved her so much she forgot her inhibitions. ‘I’ll come and see, shall I?’ she offered. ‘It’s all right, Emma, I’ll come – you show me …’

  The child regarded her in a cautious silence. Then Grace found her hand taken and she was led away across the meadow and on into the ancient trees, trying to fit this odd little girl into Michael’s endless accounts of her precious charm and adorable cleverness. The eczema was ugly, but the sunken eyes, the lifeless thin hair, the shadowy face had nothing of childhood in it, and the little mouth was pursed as if it was used to demanding what was needed but seldom received. There was something inconsolable about Emma, she felt that nothing would make the child content. But what are my instincts worth, since nature doesn’t find me fit to be a mother?

  In a shady area Morris Donaldson was already on his knees by the hammock investigating the threatened frogs. He had put on weight, she had seen that from occasional photographs in the paper, but now that she was close she could see that he had aged too; his face was almost grotesque and his hair was grey and thinning.

  ‘All a big fuss over nothing.’ He rose clumsily as she approached. ‘The wee girls haven’t caught a frog yet, so this talk of amphibicide is all exaggeration. Grace. Good to see you.’

  ‘How are you, Morris?’

  ‘I’m going to catch my own frogs.’ The announcement was made by the biggest child, a fleshy boy with glasses.

  ‘You can’t, piggy. You’re too fat.’ This taunt came from a white-blonde sprite whose sweet oval face was splashed with large freckles. Grace placed her as the eldest of Morris’s children.

  ‘That isn’t kind,’ her father admonished her.

  ‘No, but it’s right.’ Emma rolled herself sulkily into the hammock.

  ‘I’m not unkind. You have to be really quick to catch these frogs and Sam’s much too fat. He can’t bend over …’

  ‘That’s enough. Come along, everyone’s sitting down for lunch.’

  ‘He can’t, though.’ Emma was swinging the hammock from side to side, a malicious smile on her face. Grace felt an atmosphere among the children; whatever squabble there had been had obviously been disturbing. Sidelong, so he would not feel observed, she looked at Sam in wonder. Stolid and self-important. She would never have imagined Michael’s son like that; nor would Michael, she was sure.

  He had spoken with touchingly unoriginal enthusiasm about skateboards and football.

  ‘Come on, everyone.’ Sam was pompous behind his glasses. ‘My father wants us to sit down now.’ None of the smaller children moved. ‘Come on,’ he urged, ‘it’s lunchtime.’

  ‘We know, Sam.’ Emma did not move. ‘You go on. We’ll come later.’

  ‘No,’ he insisted, ‘we must all go now.’ The two Donaldson children took Morris’s hands and began to drift towards the table, with Sam marching behind them. A very small child with a red topknot remained, sitting placidly on the grass watching Emma in the hammock.

  ‘That’s my baby sister. She’s not too bad, but my brother’s disgusting.’ Emma had extended her arms and was squinting at the trees through her fingers. ‘He is a pig. And don’t tell me that’s not nice, because it’s true.’ She rolled out of the hammock, ran over to Grace and pulled her skirt. ‘Will you sit with me? I think he’s frightened of you so he’ll behave.’

  The toddler suddenly put up her arms, demanding to be carried, and Grace timidly picked her up, expecting a howl of protest at any second. The infant seemed content, however, and poked her cheek experimentally with one tiny finger.

  ‘How are you, Grace?’ Donaldson asked again as they caught up with each other. ‘I haven’t seen you here before.’

  ‘I’m a foreign correspondent now; my husband and I live in Paris, but we’ve a summer place about fifty miles south of here. Jane asked us, actually.’ His question, of course, was about herself and Michael; her answer seemed largely satisfactory.

  The little girl was lying content and wide-eyed against Grace’s shoulder. As they approached th
e dining table with the troop of children, Jane came quickly forward to take the child, her eyes apologizing. ‘She wasn’t upset?’

  ‘She wanted to be carried, that’s all,’ Emma informed her mother, then took the little one by the hand and led her down to the seats allocated to the children. Looking over Jane’s head, Grace saw an odd expression of benevolence on Michael’s face. He’s getting off on this, she thought; he wants to keep us like some kind of harem, all his women and children living happily together under his roof. And his eunuchs. She saw that Graham Moynihan had been seated with the Belgians.

  She found her name card opposite Michael at the middle of the table, a long way from Nick who was with Jane and Andy near the children. There were three empty seats next to the young Moynihans. She had Alan Stern on her right and the young black-haired man on her left. It must have been Michael’s doing; he was trying to tell her she was important to him. Michael had Amina Bhatia, his evening news presenter, on one side, and Berenice Stern on the other. Beyond her was Stuart Devlin, another old network face who looked almost unchanged, in a short-sleeved khaki shirt with a new scar just visible in his hairline.

  ‘Great report from Gaza,’ she complimented him.

  ‘Glad you saw it,’ he muttered.

  Her dark-haired neighbour leaned over. ‘Stewart Molfetto.’ His handshake was fierce. ‘With NewsConnect. I gather you’re a former employee?’

  ‘Not quite, I was a network news producer.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Having made one misjudgement, he was almost too wary to speak again. Wild mushroom salad was served.

  She turned to Stern and said flattering things about his recent profile in Vanity Fair, watching him relax as she assured him of the distinction of both the writer and photographer employed.

  ‘I thought it was rather bitchy, myself.’ Stern was listening intently, his blue eyes narrowed to triangles.

  ‘Vanity Fair is bitchy. That’s its function, I think people allow for that. I thought the piece was excellent for Altmark. Aren’t your people pleased?’

  ‘Oh yes. My wife – less so.’ A very gentle smile. Berenice had merited half a paragraph, mentioning her commitment to couture clothes.