‘Promise.’
‘Perhaps with Felix, that would be a laugh.’
‘If Libby ever gives him any time off.’
They were standing in front of the barrier marking the entry though to the departure lounge. Behind Daisy a herd of Japanese tourists was swarming round the security camera’s conveyor belt, unloading bags and purse-belts and sets of keys.
‘About Marcel—’
‘Don’t give me the substitute father-figure crap, will you Mum, because if you met him you’d see that it wasn’t like that at all.’
Frances smiled. ‘Believe me, I had thought about it. But no, I was simply going to say that what you feel is all that matters. From what you’ve told me he sounds delightful. I can’t wait to meet him, I really can’t.’ She gave her daughter a firm hug, breaking off with a laugh to confess, ‘You know, ridiculous as it now sounds, I used to worry about the age gap between me and Dad sometimes, thinking that when we reached our dotage even seven years could make a hell of a difference. But of course in the end we didn’t get that far so it was irrelevant. Nobody can be sure of anything. Which means you should take happiness where you can.’ She smiled, her eyes glassy with an emotion that reached well beyond the poignancy of airports and farewells.
‘Thanks Mum,’ Daisy grinned. ‘So how did it go with this James Harcourt person then? You haven’t really said.’
‘Fine, it went fine.’
Daisy bent over to gather the handles of her bulging holdall, grunting with the effort of slinging it over her shoulder. ‘Good. I thought he sounded nice on the phone.’
‘Yes, very nice.’
They were interrupted by the announcement that Daisy’s flight was ready for boarding.
‘I’ll ring when I get there if you like —give you my new phone number.’
‘Yes, do that.’
Frances stood watching until the last speck of her daughter’s denim jacket was lost from sight in the mêlée of passengers and security guards. By which time the tears were pouring freely down her cheeks. Aware of pitying glances, she hastily retreated to a ladies’ toilet to compose herself before seeking solace in a cup of coffee.
She had not lied. The evening had gone well. James Harcourt was everything and more that he had advertised; attractive, kind, intelligent, sensitive. The weathered look of his face suited him, contributing to the impression of a man easy in his own skin. His wife had died of ovarian cancer six years before. He had two sons, one an anaesthetist in London, the other a journalist working in the Far East. That he was well off was in no doubt. He was part of a consortium that ran several luxury hotels, scattered in exotic sites round the world, an occupation that had apparently kept him too busy and itinerant to embark on the lasting relationship for which he longed. It was quite clear that whoever filled such a slot would be thrust into the fortunate position of accompanying him round the world, enjoying five-star meals and being beautified in health spas.
When nerves allowed, Frances had glimpsed a rich sense of humour and the sort of authoritative confidence that had drawn her to Paul. In fact, she reflected, furiously stirring a sachet of brown sugar into her coffee with a white plastic stick, if Paul’s spiritual self really had been trying to appoint a natural successor he could not have done a better a job. James too, seemed in little doubt that their destinies had been meant to coincide. As soon as their plates had been cleared away, he had moved the candle and vase of flowers between their wine glasses and gently taken hold of her hand.
‘God, I’m glad we did this,’ he said, his voice velvety, his eyes pulling her into their rich blue stare.
Frances opened her mouth to say she was glad too, only to realise that making such a statement would suggest sentiments that were quite untrue. A tick-list of attributes was not enough. Looking across the table at the sincere, kind, hopeful, handsome face of her companion she could muster only the mildest interest. Nothing stirred inside, not the remotest fizzle of chemistry or desire, no sense that any yearning of his could ever reflect even the smallest pulse of hers.
The airport coffee was scalding and bitter. Frances sipped gingerly and doggedly, merely for something to do while inwardly she raged at the complicated way in which Daniel Groves had made her life intolerable and her powerlessness to do anything about it.
‘Finished with this then?’ enquired a young girl in a green uniform traipsing round the tables with a black rubbish sack.
‘No…oh yes, go on then.’ Frances pushed her Styrofoam cup, still half-full of coffee across the table.
‘Smile, it may never happen,’ quipped the girl, taking the cup and tossing it, liquid and all, into her bag.
Frances smiled weakly and set off on the trek back to the short-stay car park. Next to her car an Asian family were piling out of a Discovery vehicle, stacking bags and suitcases across the space behind her rear bumper. They gestured apologetically as she got into the driver’s seat, misreading the ill-humour etched into her face as being directed at them.
‘No hurry,’ she mouthed, slipping the key into the ignition and closing her eyes for the wait. You have a good life, she told the dancing yellow spots before her eyes. You have loved and loving children only making marginal messes of their lives. You have friends and plans and a rosy future. A wealthy hotel proprietor has offered to take you to grand establishments in exotic places. You have a home, money and self-esteem.
When she opened her eyes again the Asian family had gone, leaving a clear passage for her to exit from her space. What she could see of her level of the car park was deserted apart from a lone male figure pushing a trolley towards the lifts. On the trolley was one small suitcase and a large black coat, its sleeves trailing carelessly round the wheels.
Frances sat up, blinking furiously, for a moment seriously imagining that she was experiencing some form of hallucination. The figure was a few yards from the lift doors. A reflex of delight made her heart skip before she remembered herself. Then an extraordinary wave of what felt like anger broke inside, so forcefully that before she could contain herself she was striding towards him, her heels clacking on the concrete floor. On seeing her approach, Daniel merely turned and pressed the lift button.
‘Where are you going?’ she demanded, which was not what she had planned to say at all.
‘Montpelier. Not that it’s any business of yours.’
‘I’ve been seeing Daisy off—’
‘I know, Felix told me. I was worried I’d bump into you. Christ, is this fucking thing working or not?’
‘You seem very angry,’ she said quietly, all the wind taken out of her own sails by his evident sullenness and the sudden terror that, instead of missing her, he had, on the contrary, been coping rather well.
‘Me? Angry?’ He turned to her, pressing his hand against his chest in a show of sarcastic surprise. ‘Now why would that be, I wonder?’
‘Do you want to go somewhere we could talk prop—?’
‘No, I do not. I am going to Montpelier where an acquaintance has offered me a flat for the next three months, where I can apply myself to my work without any of the petty distractions of provincial England.’ The lift arrived and slid open. As he pushed his trolley in, one of the wheels caught on the side. ‘And where I hope to have an affair with a sultry Frenchwoman, preferably one who’s not so terrified of disaster that she makes it a self-fulfilling certainty and whose loyalties are the deep-rooted variety.’ With these words, Daniel at last successfully manoeuvred the trolley into the lift. He turned to await his departure with a stern face and folded arms. What would have made a wonderfully dramatic exit was however thwarted by further displays of waywardness from the lift doors, which, perhaps over-taxed from the recent exertion of trying to close their jaws round Daniel and his belongings, now chose to remain obstinately open.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Never mind,’ he replied grimly, slapping with increasing desperation at the panel of buttons.
‘Anyway you’re in the wrong car pa
rk,’ she snapped, just as the lift doors finally sealed Daniel’s stony face from view. ‘Long-term is the other side,’ she shouted, turning on her heel and almost colliding with a bemused looking businessman who had been hoping to catch the lift before its departure. Giving the man a defiant what-do-you-think-you’re-staring-at glare, Frances stomped away, managing not to glance backwards until she reached her car. She was just in time to see the doors slide open to greet their new passenger, revealing nothing inside except four walls of silver spray graffiti.
Chapter Forty
Back home there was a message on her answering machine. Not Daniel in an airport booth, as she initially, wildly hoped, but Hugo Gerard, asking her to call him as soon as possible.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ he assured her, hearing the breathiness in her voice, ‘just to say that the truant’s turned up at last.’
‘The truant?’
‘The missing share certificate – it had somehow got separated and misfiled. I’ll pop it in the post, shall I?’
‘Oh…yes please…thank you.’
‘There was one other thing – a bit of a long shot. Four tickets to a film première have come our way – some well-to-do, charity-organising friend of Laetitia’s. The fact is, we were wondering whether you and Daniel would like to come with us? I’m afraid it’s the day after tomorrow, so we need to know soonish.’
‘Hugo – how kind – I – thank, you but no. We…that is, Daniel and I are not together any more.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear. How dreadfully clumsy of me. I am sorry.’
‘Please don’t be.’
‘He seemed such a nice chap too.’
‘He was. He is…it’s complicated…’
‘Complicated eh? Always a bad sign.’ There was a gruff laugh. ‘Still, no loose ends at this end now, anyway.’
Frances put down the phone with a heavy heart. With Daisy gone and Felix at work, the house felt very empty suddenly. She shivered, as an echo of the crazed loneliness of the previous autumn fluttered inside, reminding her that such demons could be tamed but never entirely vanquished.
Feeling too gloomy to draw, she applied herself to the long-postponed challenge of finding the keys to the garden shed together with a manual for the lawnmower. The clean contours left by Joseph over Christmas had long since been lost to a frenzy of spring growth. Weeds were running riot round the flower beds, while the lawn had become a lush metropolis of dandelions and daisies. Daunted by the sheer size of both the lawnmower and the booklet detailing its features, she seized a garden fork and set to work on the biggest of the flower beds, beginning at the back where bindweed had knotted itself round the stems of the roses and a wind-blown cluster of tulips. The recent spell of clement weather had left the soil dry and compact. With each dig Frances had to jump on the metal shoulders of the fork to persuade it to sink into the ground. Soon she had thrown off her anorak and rolled the sleeves of her shirt to her elbows. The roots of the bindweed formed a maze of white stalks under the ground, so deep that she had to probe with her bare hands to find the source of them, sometimes two feet down. The deeper she went the more moist and malleable the soil became. It was a painfully slow, curiously satisfying job, but arduous enough, after forty minutes or so to make the prospect of motoring up and down the lawn seem positively recreational.
Happily, most of the manual turned out to contain information irrelevant to the business of cutting grass. A mere two pages, containing very clear diagrams, covered the necessities. Full canisters of oil and petrol had been left tidily beside the machine, together with a small handwritten reminder saying, ‘NB: Easy on the choke!’ Recognising Paul’s writing, Frances smiled to herself, welcoming the accompanying ripple of affection like an old friend.
In spite of having followed all instructions to the letter, she could not resist letting out a whoop of triumph as the engine rumbled into life. After a cautious start she was soon beetling up and down the lawn, enjoying the breeze in her hot face and the simple pleasure of having mastered a new challenge.
Daniel, appearing unnoticed at the side of the house, paused to admire the spectacle before him: the gentle green slope of the garden, the woman in mud-spattered jeans and wellingtons, ploughing shimmering furrows in the grass, her sunny hair and shirt tails flying, a look of intense, eager concentration on her face. He leant his cheek against the cold stone of the wall, wishing suddenly that he could stretch the moment into an eternity, with everything between them still to play for, with none of the possibility of the rejection he so feared.
He began speaking as soon as she switched off the engine. ‘You missed a bit just here,’ he said, pointing to a patch of grass near his feet. ‘And your lines swerve to the left, but only slightly.’ He tipped his head, squinting at the lawn. ‘Otherwise, not bad at all.’
‘Why aren’t you in Montpelier?’ Frances retorted, dismounting from the lawnmower with as much dignity as she could muster, inwardly pleased at the archness of her tone, the way it masked her delight.
‘There are so many answers to that question, that I hardly know where to start.’
‘Go on.’ She unscrewed the oil compartment and made a big show of studying the dipstick.
Well, there was the problem of the car park. Very kind of you to draw my attention to it. Can’t think what got into me, going to the wrong one. Then there was the small matter of a ticket, which I had planned on buying at the airport. What with full flights and impossible connections it was going to take me two days to get there. So then I got that sort of fate-is-conspiring-against-me feeling, making me wonder whether I really wanted to go to Montpelier at all.’
‘I see.’ Frances screwed the oil cap back in place and turned to face him. ‘So you thought you’d bother me instead, is that it?’
‘Yes, I think that’s about it. I know you told me not to, but I’ve never been very good at doing what I’m told. I also wanted to tell you that I was pretty cut up to hear that you’d found a replacement for me so bloody soon. This Harcroft person, he sounds odious. Felix told me all about it.’
‘Ah.’ Frances turned away to hide a smile, relieved to have found so simple a reason behind his accusation of disloyalty at the airport.
‘What do you mean, “ah”?’
‘I mean, Felix doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I was just rekindling an old flame. A very wealthy flame too, fantastically eligible and utterly charming.’ Behind her she was aware of Daniel leaving the sanctuary of the house wall and beginning to make his way across the lawn. ‘So finding a sultry Frenchwoman is temporarily off the agenda then, is it?’
‘Temporarily.’ He walked slowly, sliding his feet through the mounds of freshly cut grass as if needing to feel each step of the way. When he got within a couple of yards of her, he stopped. ‘I decided that if you hadn’t had a residue of affection for me you wouldn’t have shouted at me in the car park. And then I thought that perhaps you could see this Hargreaves person every other Saturday and let me have you in between. Because,’ he rammed his hands in his pockets, clenching his fists out of sight, ‘forcing myself to keep away from you has not been that much fun.’
‘Every other Saturday? That does sound like a very fair offer indeed,’ replied Frances thoughtfully. ‘There’s just one small problem.’ She frowned. ‘This other man – he’s called James Harcourt by the way – I’ve tried to like him, I really have.’ She shook her head to emphasise her exasperation. ‘It’s really extremely irritating, since he is everything a woman in my position could wish for. A respectable age, intelligent, good-looking—’
‘Yeah, you said all that.’
‘But the maddening thing is you kept getting in the way. In my head, I mean.’
‘And is that so bad?’ he whispered, releasing his hands.
‘Unspeakable.’ She dropped her eyes to the ground, where she watched a small ladybird alight on a single blade of grass that had somehow escaped the blades of the lawnmower.
‘Because it’s bound to
go wrong?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘So let’s make it go wrong anyway?’
‘Put that way it doesn’t sound the most watertight argument in the world.’
‘It’s about as watertight as deciding never to leave the house in case you get run over by a bus,’ he retorted, taking a last step towards her with the intention of pulling her into his arms. The moment was however, rudely broken by a squeal from the direction of the house. They both turned to see Felix and Sally rounding the corner nearest the drive on an old bicycle. Sally was perched on a rusty metal rack behind the main seat, her legs flying, both hands gripping Felix’s bony hips.
‘Bloody hell,’ exclaimed Felix, before a dig in the ribs from his passenger prompted him to swallow his surprise. ‘Just wanted to ask – Sally’s broken up and Libby’s given me the afternoon off and I was wondering if I could borrow the car?’
‘Take it,’ Frances called back hoarsely, feeling for Daniel’s hand and lacing her fingers in his. They stood in silence for a few minutes, listening to the sound of slamming doors and the revving of the car engine. ‘I still think it’s hopeless, obviously—’
‘Obviously.’
‘But I’m not going to talk about it any more. Just quietly let it happen.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
‘For some curious reason the children seem to like you. And from what I can gather you’ve even been buttering Libby up.’
Daniel widened his eyes in a show of innocence. ‘All I did was pop into the shop a couple of times—’
‘So Felix said. And I wanted to thank you with regard to him particularly—’
‘No need. All I’ve done is point him in a new direction. And I like Libby too,’ he added, ‘now that she’s stopped eyeing me like some kind of enraged beast.’
Frances giggled.
‘She was also kind enough to sell me one of your pictures – the only way I could think of feeling close to you. Smouldering trees and scorched earth – I love it.’
‘Silly, I’d have given you one. You had only to ask.’ Frances turned to look down towards the countryside rolling away from the bottom edge of the garden. Daniel stepped behind her, slipping his arms loosely round the circle of her waist.
The Lover Page 26