“Indeed you were. You were very wrong. I can hardly believe your judgement to have been so at fault.”
“My judgement of what?” Frere demanded more severely now. “Of the meaning of the Christian message, or the capacity of local society to understand it? On the latter I am prepared to stand corrected. On the former I believe myself a sounder judge than Mrs Bostock.” He took in the startled dismay on his wife’s face, but he was angry now – an anger born of the sudden shock of this collision. “I regret that you feel yourself to have been injured by my keeping my own counsel, but I do not accept your impeachment of it. We shall not make ourselves loved in this parish by a deficiency of care in our own hearts.”
“Nor shall we win respect by appearing to condone behaviour that it pains me to speak of even. Would you have the Rectory mocked as a house for fallen women? Shall we hang placards at the gate –Come forth, ye sinners all; there is a warm welcome to be found at Munding parsonage. It is Liberty Hall! Oh Edwin, I do not see how you could be such a…”
The sentence ended in a horrid frozen silence between them. They were both trembling now, Frere’s mind reeling at the contrast between his access of cheerful clarity at the church and the awful confusion of this disagreement.
“Well, it is done now,” he said at last.
“Yes, it is done.”
“And you have given thought to what is to become of her?”
“She is paid until the end of the month.” Emilia shook her head, eyes closed, for such considerations were now far from her thoughts. “I believed I acted for the best,” she said.
Frere nodded. Astounded by the heat of his own passion, he struggled to remember that forgiveness, as much as charity, begins at home. “I understand,” he said. “It was indeed a tortuous matter. But I must see what can be done for the young woman now.”
“I had not thought to displease you.”
“Nor I to cause you distress.”
Then they stood, with the yards of carpet stretching between them, and the clock ticking, and nothing to be said.
5
In Dreams
As though she’d turned over a body in a street accident and recognized the face she saw, the girl frowned down at me, then was gone. The old man had already vanished with his wicked pack of cards, and I was wondering what was happening when the letterbox flapped downstairs, and I came fully awake. My watch showed the morning half over. I heard the postman’s van change gear as it pulled away up the lane.
I’d forgotten that the only mail I could expect was a retributory letter from Jess. This was it, and I was in no shape for retribution. I leant the envelope, unopened, against one of two idiotic Staffordshire figurines on the mantelpiece, then sat scowling at it. The cottage was very still. It was like sitting inside a stopped clock. It should have been peaceful, but the letter was as disruptive as that Tarot card had been at Easterness. Both spoke of dilapidated dreams.
I shaved, made coffee, charred some toast, then saw I had a choice: I could evaporate on that tall blue vacancy outdoors or stifle in The Pightle’s gloom. I was washing out my coffee cup when the knock came at the front door.
It had to be Bob wanting to mull over the business of the night before, to reassure me again that Nesbit was a fraudulent old ham, as had been proved by the way he’d backed off. I was in no mood for rational consolation. Or for politeness. One simply asked to be left alone, for God’s sake. Another two minutes and I would have been gone, out, unreachable among the trees. I snatched open the door.
The girl – Laura – was standing there, her car – a battered old Countryman – parked in the lane. She wasn’t looking at me but gazing into the ferns beyond the little box-hedge that led from the gate to the front door. She raised a hand to hush me and, after a moment, whispered, “There was something moving – over there, in that clump of fern.”
Unbalanced that she should have stepped from dream to doorstep like this, and without prior arrangement on either occasion, I said, “It’s a pheasant. She’s nesting there.”
“So close to the house?”
“She was here first. The place was empty when she was building.”
“And you haven’t disturbed her?”
“We try not to give one another any trouble.” It was said without humour. I was still switching channels in my mind.
She smiled, draped a strand of hair behind her ear, and said, “Hello.” The amiable greeting was out of key with my mood. It elicited a churl’s response. Undeterred, she asked if she could come in, and brushed past me, tall and casual in belted jeans with a long, thickly knitted cardigan over a petrol-blue T-shirt. She took in the shady parlour – the worn velvet Chesterfield before the hearth, Clive’s watercolours on the white, rough-plastered walls, the scatter of half-read books. “What a cute place.” (I winced at the Americanism.) “And all to yourself?”
I nodded, instantly aware of the mess around me – unemptied ashtrays, the corduroy jacket with its leather elbow patches slumped like a drunk across a chair, one green wellie leaning against another for support.
“Don’t you go crazy here?”
“I haven’t been here long enough to find out.”
Her nod seemed to accept this as a reasonable assessment.
I said, “I was just on my way out…”
She was still taking in the feel of the place as though there were more of interest there than in its occupant. Her frown disapproved of the state of the weeping fig on the window sill. “You really should water this.”
She was right, though my first thought was, I’ll let the damn thing die if I want to. Then she turned, suddenly businesslike. I saw that she wore nothing beneath the T-shirt – a further disconcerting candour that brought memories of her nakedness in the wood. “It’s about last night,” she said.
My shrug and its silence were non-committal.
“When Edward came round this morning, I told him what a pig he’d been. He felt badly about it.” She looked for a response and found none. “I don’t think you realize how unusual that is. Anyway, he wants you to come to lunch. I’m here to fetch you.” She read the imminent refusal in my face, and forestalled it. “…if you’d like, that is. It’s a fine day. We thought a picnic… cheese and wine, by the lake? He wants to make amends.”
There was a cheerful appeal in the face, an assumption that such largesse was unrefusable, that I couldn’t possibly have anything better to do with my time. “In that case,” I said, “why didn’t he come himself?”
“Ha… well, the thing is…”
“Yes?”
She turned away slightly, fingered one of the figurines on the mantelpiece, noticed the envelope. “You haven’t opened your mail. How can you bear it?” The expatriate innocence to the question did not, I thought, preclude a calculated evasion. My face left it plain that the answer was none of her business. “Hmmm,” she said. “He really got to you.”
“He didn’t bowl me over with his charm.”
“Edward’s not easy,” she conceded. “He’s an old man. He doesn’t have time to mess around. Also he has his pride… He was afraid if he came himself you might say no.”
“And he doesn’t like to take the sort of treatment he hands out so freely?”
She accepted the remark, unflinching. “He was very nervous last night.”
“He could have fooled me.”
“He fools most people.”
“But not you?”
She held me in silent appraisal for a long moment. It was like being stared at by a gypsy, that naked regard devoid of all social grace, skin-stripping. I refracted it back, reminding myself that I was the injured party, until she released her breath, shrugged and said, “My mistake. Okay, if you like we can forget about it. I’ll leave you in peace with your pheasant.” She reached into her jeans pocket for the car keys, swung the ring on her index finger. “Don’t forget the plant.” She made for the door, and turned there so briskly that we were both speaking at once. I gave way.
I said, “It was pretty weird.”
She heard the concession, nodded. “Bizarre things tend to happen around Edward.”
“That business with the card?…” I looked up, saw the interrogative tilt of her head.
“It was for real,” she answered, and then after a moment, “Look, he knows he left you on a hook last night. He was pretty shaken himself… wouldn’t talk about it when we got back. He was smashed, of course, but it was more than that. I haven’t seen him that way before.”
“You’ve been with him awhile then?”
“Two, nearly three years, on and off.” Her glance quietly defied me to broach the deeper layers of the question.
“Here, in Norfolk?”
“God, no.”
We were standing uncomfortably across from one another, strangers, hazard-met. Either this awkward conversation must expire or move, and my voice had relented already. I was showing interest. I said, “I’m sorry. I woke up in a foul mood. Would you like some coffee?”
She shook her head. “I’ve already had. Too many cups make me jumpy. But… a cigarette?”
I offered my packet, and took one myself. “Why don’t we sit down?” She opted for the window seat, one arm draped along the sill, her fingertips consoling the parched fig.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll feed it.”
I brought a milk jug of water from the kitchen sink and began to pour. She said, “You should get a spray for the leaves. There, that’s better, isn’t it?” That question was for the plant, the next for me. “Do you talk to it? You should. It’s good for your own soul too.”
“My father told me never to speak to strange plants.”
“Then he should have known better. I bet your mother did. Look, I think you should come… to lunch, I mean. Make Edward cringe a little. I doubt he’ll actually apologize, but he should be halfway decent. He’s interested in you.”
I left the jug half-full on the sill, sat down and looked across at her. “I should be grateful for that?”
The bitterness was gone from my tone. It was wryer, and there was a smile between us as she said, “You never know.” It was hard not to admire the way the window light descried the tawny variations of her hair.
“The strange thing is,” I offered, “he was a sort of hero to me once. A long time ago… when I was a kid and first started writing.”
Her nod suggested that she had heard this kind of thing before. “I’d never heard of him before we met,” she confessed. “Part of what he calls my ‘vincible ignorance’, I suppose.”
“How did you meet?”
“I was a student at a crazy college in Connecticut. Edward was visiting professor.”
“Creative writing?” I tried to keep the distaste from my voice. In the light of his remarks the previous night, it seemed an unlikely profession for the old poet. “Is that what you were studying?”
“Parapsychology,” she corrected, and smiled at my frown. “I told you it was a crazy college.”
I flashed back to the scene in the wood – that trance-like state that had relapsed so rapidly into joke. “So what are you doing here – ghost-hunting?”
She caught the note of condescension, smiled, lightly sibylline, and looked out of the window. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Not seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Any luck?” One had to say something.
“Some.”
“With or without heads?”
Again that gypsy stare, not offended, but with a wry brow admonishing my flippancy.
“And Edward’s into this?” I asked.
She nodded and drew on her cigarette in silence.
“So you’re his research assistant?”
“We’re lovers,” she said, and looked out of the window again.
I was on the point of admitting that I knew as much, but hesitated. “He certainly seems to need you.”
“Yes.” The answer came matter-of-fact, unemphatic but absolute. I had the feeling that she was using this queer mix of frankness and mystification to her own advantage. A kind of pre-emptive politicking to mask whatever reservations she might have about her own choices. It was a game that two could play.
“So it wasn’t just a joke?”
“A joke?”
“The other afternoon… in the wood.” I held a finger in the air, tilted my head as though alert to invisible presences and, in a portentous voice, quoted her own words: “I think she used to come here.”
Her lips were open, her eyes narrowed. I expected but did not receive a blush. “I knew there was something there,” she said.
“It was me.”
“So it seems.”
There was an awkward gap before I said, “I heard you laughing…”
“Do you often play peeping Tom?”
It was I, after all, who coloured.
“I hadn’t meant to pry, but…”
But what? I was lonely, nosy, horny as only a blocked and solitary writer can be?
Then suddenly, surprisingly, she laughed. “For God’s sake, don’t tell Edward.”
“He wouldn’t find it amusing?”
“He’d never forgive either of us. I told you, he’s very proud.” She did not say, but I guessed, also very jealous.
Her laughter had let me off the hook. “Then I’ll hold it in reserve – in case he takes another shot at me.”
“Does that mean you’ll come?” she asked and then, in swift afterthought: “Or have you seen all of us you want to see?”
Was there an air of flirtation to that double entendre, I wondered? Or was I merely flattering myself that any attractive young woman who had impulsively mortgaged her days to an old man’s lust must, somewhere, be gratified that a younger man had seen, and admired, her nakedness? Certainly the thought in no way mortified her.
“Who is she anyway?” I changed tack. “The ghost?”
“You don’t believe in ghosts,” she smiled.
“But you do.”
“Do I?”
“I thought… Parapsychology?”
“Has many branches.”
I shook my head, smiling at the puzzle of her. “What are you up to?”
“I think you should ask Edward.” She looked at her watch. “Now are you coming or not?”
During the course of those few brief minutes she had completely altered my mood. I was intrigued, looking out again. In her eyes challenge and invitation were renewed. To a man at a loss what to do with the day, with the whole weekend, or, for that matter, with the rest of his life; for whom the alternative was another solitary walk, a drink at the Feathers with Bob Crossley perhaps, and an eventual return to the unopened, unwelcome envelope still waiting on the mantelpiece, to such an unsatisfactory man as I then was, for whom recklessness seemed a possible, if unpredictable, remedy, both challenge and invitation were irresistible. I said, “I suppose Edward and I do have some unfinished business.”
“Good,” she answered. “I’m glad.”
Sequestered a good half-mile down a gated but unsigned, and unmade-up, woody lane, the Decoy Lodge would have been a hard place to find without a guide. It stood far down the lake from the Hall, out of its sight, across the water; even the tall barley-sugar chimneys were concealed by the bend of the opposite shore round a thinly wooded, man-made mount where a flock of Jacob sheep were grazing. The little hill was crowned with what looked like a neo-Gothic folly, a pinnacled fairy-tale fastness in rosy brick, which turned out, under question, to be nothing more romantic than a water-tower.
The Decoy Lodge might have been a
water bailiff’s cottage once, but at some point in its history it had been extended and refurbished as a summer retreat – a place where duck-shooters or boating parties might make landfall, or, such was its secretive nature, a place for other, more intimate assignations. Apart from an upward extension at the eastern gable, it was two-storeyed and low-visaged under a reed thatch, with lancet windows looking out across a lawn that dipped to the lakeshore. There were croquet hoops and a peg set out across the grass. A narrow wooden jetty ran a few yards into the water, and an old boathouse with cracked and missing pantiles and much-lichened weatherboards fronted the lake to the west, where dense rhododendrons bordered the garden before yielding to the woods. Beeches and a full-candled chestnut sheltered the house and its outbuildings from cold easterlies. On a day like this, high and bright, the effect was of a sunny arbour hidden among the trees, invisible from everywhere save the private, mounted pasture on the opposing shore.
Edward had fallen asleep in a deckchair beneath an expansive white parasol. A large pair of binoculars hung round his neck and, beneath them, the shirt was open revealing a fuzz of grey hair at his chest. The neb of a dark-blue hat was pulled down over his nose. A pair of bright red braces drooped at his sides. Beside him on the grass an antique, brass-bound volume lay open, its heavy paper densely printed in Gothic black letter with a framed woodcut illustration at the head of the text: I caught a brief glimpse of a female figure, winged and crowned, sprawling across a naked winged man, and the single-word caption – FERMENTATIO – before Laura flipped the book shut and said, “Wake up, Edward. We’re back.”
The old man grunted beneath the hat. There was a twitching of the moustache. He sniffed and stirred, then pushed back the hat, turned his head and squinted up at us. “I wasn’t asleep,” he growled.
“Liar.”
He grinned, amiably enough. “She got you, I see.”
“And it wasn’t easy,” Laura forestalled me. “He expects an apology.”
Edward grimaced up at me. “Does he indeed?” For an instant I foresaw a resumption of hostilities, then he wrinkled his nose. “Then he must have one. Laura informs me that I was what she inelegantly termed an ‘asshole’ last night. If an asshole’s apology is acceptable to you, would you be so gentle as to consider it offered?”
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