Homecomings

by Marcia Willett

  ‘You’re quite right,’ she says, as she brushes past him to follow Ned and Hugo into the kitchen. ‘It would definitely be Land’s End.’

  He wants to grin and punch the air but Prune and Ben are beside him and he stands aside to let them go ahead, then falls in step with Adam.

  ‘So do you think that Ben feels like Daniel in the dragons’ den?’ he asks. ‘I think he’s handling it very well, poor chap.’

  ‘Well, I did wonder,’ answers Adam. ‘I said to Dossie that it’s rather like having four fathers checking you out, but he seems very calm. I like him.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll stay in hospitality very long,’ says Jamie. ‘He’s just saving some money before he goes on his IT course. Hugo and I promised Prune that we wouldn’t josh him too much. And we wouldn’t mess with Prune, I can tell you.’

  Standing together, looking into the kitchen, Jamie is aware of Adam beside him. He feels his tension: not the assessing wariness that a military training instils but a nervousness. It’s as if Adam is waiting to be judged – and found wanting.

  ‘It’s a damned nuisance,’ Jamie says randomly, ‘this not being able to have a vodka or a glass of wine. It would be easy to forget to keep track, but you feel such a prat at a party, standing there with a soft drink.’

  Adam gives him a quick glance. ‘Dossie did just mention …’ he begins awkwardly.

  ‘It’s not a secret but it’s a bit of a fall from grace, if you see what I mean. From pilot to loser in six easy lessons.’

  Adam frowns. ‘Oh, but come on. You’ve still done more than most people would ever dream of. I wish I’d done anything so … well …’ He shrugs, as if embarrassed that he’s being over the top.

  ‘I gather that you’re in a good job at an estate agency in London. That’s impressive, too.’

  Adam sighs and Jamie can hear bitterness, frustration and disappointment in that sigh. ‘My old pa wouldn’t have agreed with you.’

  So here it is, thinks Jamie. All these years on and it still has the power to hurt. And the fact that he was disinherited isn’t going to make that any better.

  ‘My dad was a bit like that, too. He was with the British Council so he and Mum were always abroad. Hugo and I were at school here together, which is why we’re so close. More like brothers than cousins.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ remarks Adam. ‘Wish I’d had someone like that.’

  And then Hugo calls, ‘Come on, you two, or there won’t be anything left,’ and Adam steps back to let Jamie go ahead into the kitchen.

  As Adam watches Jamie join the group around the kitchen table, suddenly the connection is made. Jamie reminds him of Mike. He’s very charismatic but there’s something more than that. There’s that quick kindness that Adam had found so comforting all those years ago. He remembers the remark Mike made when they’d talked about difficult relationships with their respective fathers and how Mike had said: ‘You can’t do right for doing wrong.’ In that moment it was as if they’d been allies and, just now with Jamie, it was as if he’d allowed Adam to see the damage to his self-esteem so that they might also share something.

  It’s clear that Jamie and Dossie are attracted to each other – he’d noticed it when Jamie arrived to fetch the wine glasses – and Adam wonders how that might work out. After all, Jamie lives in Oxfordshire, and it’s almost impossible to imagine Dossie leaving Cornwall.

  Adam catches Ned’s eye across the kitchen and almost instinctively he straightens up and moves forward to join the group. Ned’s one of the old school, like Pa, and Adam can’t quite shed this response to him. It’s interesting that Ben doesn’t seem to share this reaction to these older men but just calmly carries on, talking easily, joking, and presently he says to Prune, ‘So what about some music?’ and everyone laughs.

  ‘I told you,’ says Prune, resigned. ‘At work, in the car, wherever. We have to have the music.’

  As Adam watches, he sees that Hugo and Jamie are struck by a similar idea. Hugo looks at his older cousin and shrugs.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘You first.’

  Jamie grins at him and goes out of the kitchen, leaving the door open. Presently there is the sound of music: jazz piano. It’s very good and Adam sees Dossie raise her eyebrows in approval, and the way Hugo smiles to himself in a slightly bitter, ‘So here we go again,’ grimace.

  Ben says, ‘Wow. Is that Jamie playing?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Ned after a moment. ‘That’s Jamie.’

  ‘Cool,’ says Ben happily, and the party continues.

  In the morning, Rose looks around at the remains of the festivities with a jaundiced eye. Hugo and Jamie are still sitting at the kitchen table finishing breakfast, drinking coffee.

  ‘It’s always the same,’ she mutters. ‘There’s them that play and there’s them that clears up after.’

  ‘We’ve done a bit,’ says Hugo placatingly.

  ‘And Dossie offered to stay on last night and clear up but we wouldn’t let her,’ adds Jamie quickly.

  Rose smiles to herself at his quick defence of Dossie and raises her eyebrows at him. He’s looking irritated, as if he suspects he might have given himself away, and she grins at him to let him know he has.

  ‘Good party, was it?’ she asks brightly.

  ‘Yes,’ says Hugo happily, unaware of any byplay. ‘Ned’s still sleeping it off. So we’ll stay down here, shall we?’

  ‘Looking at this lot I doubt I’ll get further than the kitchen this morning,’ agrees Rose amiably. ‘So are you two going to hang around and get in my way or are you getting out from under?’

  They look at each other.

  ‘We thought we might help,’ begins Hugo.

  ‘But we could take the dogs for a walk instead,’ says Jamie. He grins at her. ‘Whatever would we do without our Rose?’

  And just so, she thinks, Jack would’ve looked – that same grin, the challenge in his eyes, and tilt of the head – and her heart twists with pain, even all these years on.

  ‘Oh, and I was hoping you might help me out,’ Jamie adds, finishing his coffee. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t consider doing some ironing for me, would you?’

  Hugo chokes on his coffee, Rose begins to laugh, and Jamie looks at them, puzzled.

  ‘Are you OK, old man?’ he asks Hugo.

  Hugo nods, unable to speak, and Rose shakes her head at Jamie.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I only do ironing on very special occasions. Now, just go, the pair of you, and take those dogs out of my way.’

  When they’ve gone, and it’s quiet again, Rose makes herself some coffee and sits down at the table. She’s thinking about an afternoon many years ago, not long after Jamie announced his engagement to Emilia. She came in, knowing that Lady T and the Admiral were at one of their bridge afternoons, and heard the sound of the piano. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening, and then she began to climb, as if she were being drawn upwards by the music. It moved her, touched her heart, made her feel all sorts of things she couldn’t explain, and she hesitated outside the drawing-room door where she could just see Hugo, his eyes closed, his hands flying, his fingers moving so quickly over the keys. He didn’t look like the Hugo she knew; he looked different, almost frightening in his strength and confidence. She was so rapt, drawn in by the sound, that she moved closer, hypnotized, so that when he stopped she was just a few feet from him.

  He opened his eyes and stared at her, slow and dreamy, as if he were coming back from somewhere far away. To her distress she saw that he had tears in his eyes and she felt guilty, as if she’d spied on him, seen something she shouldn’t.

  ‘That was beautiful,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No,’ he said at once, getting up and coming round to her. ‘No, I was just …’ he hesitated, shaking his head, ‘just saying goodbye to someone. Something.’

  Instinctively she thought about Jack and put out her hands to him. He took them, holding them tightly as he tried to blink away his
tears.

  ‘I’m being a fool,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry, Rose.’

  ‘Come here,’ she said gently, and she released her hands from his grip and put her arms around him, holding him against her. ‘There. There, now.’

  He clung to her, and as she thought about Jack, so recently dead, and her own grief, combined with the mood the music had wrought in her, her hold tightened. She turned her face and touched his damp cheek with her lips, tasting the salt of his tears, kissing them away. Blindly, eyes closed, he began to kiss her in return and, after a moment, she gently disengaged herself, took him by the hand and led him into his bedroom just down the landing. Quickly, lest he should lose confidence, she pulled him down with her on to the bed and began to make love to him: whispering to him, helping him, guiding him, enfolding him, until he cried out and then collapsed sideways beside her. Tenderly she pushed back his untidy dark curly hair and smiled down into his blue eyes. He seemed incapable of speech and she began to laugh. At last he began to laugh, too.

  ‘That was amazing,’ he said.

  She could see a whole variety of emotions in his face: delight, shock, confusion. Now was the dangerous moment. She gave him one quick last kiss, slipping away from him; reaching for her discarded clothes. She dragged on her jeans, pushed her feet into her shoes, and gave him one last, brief smile. He stretched out his arms to her, and she could hear him calling after her as she hurried away down the stairs. On an impulse she left the house, so as to give him the chance to recover. She ran all the way home, wondering what she’d done, how it would be in the future.

  He went back to London the following morning.

  ‘Hugo sent something for you, Rose,’ Lady T said, a few days later, slightly puzzled. ‘A little present for doing something very kind for him. Some ironing, I think he told me?’

  She pushed the package across the kitchen table to Rose. Cautiously, fearfully, Rose unpacked it whilst Lady T watched her.

  It was a perfect, long-stemmed pink rose, made of silk.

  ‘How very nice,’ Lady T said coolly. She sounded faintly surprised.

  Rose wrapped it up again quickly and put it with her bag.

  ‘It was quite a lot of ironing,’ she said, trying to control the need to laugh.

  When she got home, Rose unrolled the wrapping paper again and smoothed it out. Two words were written on the inside: ‘Thank you’. Underneath was a telephone number. That touched her, somehow; showed her that Hugo was there should she have need of him. She knew she wouldn’t telephone him but the relief was very great when she saw the blood on her knickers a few days after their brief sharing of love and grief.

  It was several months before Hugo returned to Cornwall. When she came into the kitchen she saw at once that he was at a loss as to how he should behave towards her and she grinned at him.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ she said. ‘Nice to see you back again.’

  ‘You too, Rose,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better. Ready for anything. Must have been all that ironing I did last time you were down.’

  Margaret came in behind her.

  ‘Ironing?’ she repeated. ‘Has he been making you do his ironing? Honestly, Hugo. As if poor Rose hasn’t enough to do in this big house.’

  ‘It was a nice change,’ says Rose, laughing at Hugo’s discomfiture, ‘but I did warn him that it was just the once.’

  ‘It was definitely a rather special occasion,’ Hugo said, beginning to smile, ‘but I wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of it.’

  After that, things were easy and natural between them. Hugo was mostly in London, Lady T and the Admiral died, visits were few and far between … And now Hugo is back again. Luckily, time and distance has removed any embarrassment between them, but earlier, when Jamie mentioned the ironing, there was just a spark of awareness in Hugo’s eyes, an exchange of something shared when she grinned at him, acknowledging their private joke.

  ‘Don’t even go there,’ Rose tells herself as she stands up and begins to clear the table. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’

  But she can’t prevent herself remembering.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  LUCY AND DANNY have gone back to Geneva and Emilia begins to think about where she might see Jamie again. She plays patience on her laptop: if this comes out I’ll meet him in Relish; if this comes out I’ll see him in The Chough. She takes the ferry to Padstow and wanders around the narrow streets and the harbour. She googles The Chough and phones to book a table, then drives herself over for lunch.

  The tall, attractive boy behind the bar smiles at her, shows her to her table and hands her a menu. Foolishly she’s tempted to ask if he knows Hugo or Jamie but casts the thought aside. Even if they use the pub occasionally this boy is hardly likely to know them by name.

  She eats her lunch slowly, alert to each newcomer, but neither Hugo nor Jamie appears. What, she wonders, would be Jamie’s reaction? Her biggest fear is that he will no longer recognize her. Each day she stares at her reflection in the mirror, almost willing herself to see the resemblance to Lucy that Hugo noticed. It’s rather sad that, having seen Jamie, her plan to ensnare Hugo has vanished almost as quickly as it did in Bristol all those years ago. It’s as if she’s fallen quite madly in love with Jamie all over again, and she longs to see him.

  Various scenarios occur to her. She’s certain that he’ll still be in the RAF and will be living near one of the bases or maybe he’ll be at the MOD in London. In which case he might have already left Cornwall and gone home. This could simply have been a short visit to see Hugo – assuming that Hugo is living in Cornwall or has a holiday home here – and she’s missed her opportunity. As for Jamie being married, having a family, she can’t face the thought of it. She is quite certain that this is all meant to be happening: it’s fate.

  Neither does she want to think too much about Lucy’s reaction if she were to be told that Nigel wasn’t her father. Emilia takes a deep breath. She remembers those last few days with Jamie, her flight to London, and then the letter attempting to explain why she was leaving him. She sees now, with the clear vision of hindsight, that she should have got some kind of job, trained to be something, bought a little house, but back then it was always so much easier, each time Jamie was away, to get into the little car and go driving back to London. Back to the parties, the backstage dramas, and, of course, to Nigel … It was so much more fun, it was what she was used to, and being seen around with Nigel at that time when the sitcom was top of the TV viewing lists was simply magic. Rather like it had been at first with Jamie, she thinks, until the realities of being a service wife began to chip away at the glamour.

  Nevertheless, each time she looks at little Danny she knows exactly from whom he has inherited those brown eyes and that black hair. Even if she were able to persuade herself that Lucy was Nigel’s child, there’s no doubt about Daniel. And surely, she says to herself, surely Jamie would want to know that he has a daughter and a grandchild? He wanted children so much. He has a right to know. And Lucy …? Well, Lucy must be told the truth, gently, of course, but firmly. One way or another she’ll be able to persuade Lucy how impossible things were back then. Emilia shrugs away the difficulties. She’ll think about them later. Meanwhile she’ll make another plan of action.

  A text pings in from Lucy:

  Hi Mum. Just heard that the things I ordered from the Steamer Trading Cookshop in Pydar Street in Truro have arrived. Could you possibly pick them up for me? Thanks. xx

  Emilia sighs, slightly irritated. She remembers from her trip there with Lucy that it’s quite a long drive, but it’s a lovely little city and it will be a change. She’ll go in the morning. In the meantime she’ll take the ferry to Padstow, and maybe she’ll see Jamie again. But this time she’ll be prepared.

  ‘So was it a good party?’ Janna shakes her head at Dossie’s blissful expression. ‘Looks like you’ve got it real bad, my lover. Hopeless, you are. Hopeless.’

  ‘No, I�
��m not,’ protests Dossie, but she can’t help smiling. ‘Yes, it was really good. And you should have come to it. Everyone’s longing to meet you.’

  ‘Scarcity value,’ says Janna. ‘That’s the secret of my success.’

  Rain pours from an unrelenting grey sky and the two of them sit inside at Janna’s little gate-leg table watching the drops bouncing amongst her tubs and pots of flowers and herbs.

  ‘Adam stopped off to see Clem but he’s going to come to meet you any minute. Are you ready for him?’

  Janna thinks about it. She feels quite calm, here in her little room, with all her things around her, and anyway, she has no real fear of Dossie’s brother. Meeting a group of strangers in someone else’s house might be a bit of a test but if she’s truthful, she’s looking forward to seeing Adam. And before she can answer, or think about it further, there’s a knock on the door and suddenly Adam is here, brushing drops of rain from his hair and smiling at her as Dossie introduces them.

  ‘It’s chucking it down,’ he says, shaking Janna’s hand, slipping off his jacket. ‘And it’s cold with it. Thought it was supposed to be summer.’

  ‘Cast not a clout till May is out,’ she tells him, thinking how like Clem, and how like Dossie, he is.

  ‘Ma used to say that,’ he answers her, ‘but is it the month of May or the hawthorn blossom? Not that it matters. It’ll be just as cold and wet in August.’

  ‘That’s Cornwall for you,’ she agrees. ‘D’you want some tea? Oh, wait. Dossie says you only drink coffee.’

  He looks at her as if he is surprised and pleased that she’s remembered that, and she warms to him.