Memories Of The Storm

by Willett, Marcia

  Jonah put out a cautious hand and stroked the soft warm animal rather gingerly. St Francis stirred, licked his left flank once or twice and resumed slumber without acknowledging Jonah's caress.

  'Told you so,' said Clio with some satisfaction. 'Come and sit down. I've made a mushroom omelette and then there's a casserole.'

  During supper it was easy for Hester to divert the conversation away from the war to Jonah's work: the scripts he'd written and the novel he was presently adapting for television. Clio had seen one of his plays, which they discussed at length, and he entertained them with stories about productions and famous actors. He was a witty raconteur, making them laugh and encouraging their questions, so that it was much later, when Clio was stacking the dishwasher in the kitchen and Jonah and Hester were still at the table drinking coffee, that tension crept back to chill the cheerful atmosphere.

  'It's stopped raining,' Clio called through the archway, 'though there's a terrific gale blowing. Listen to the river.'

  She leaned across the sink and opened the window so that the restless voice that had distantly accompanied their supper was suddenly borne in upon them on a wild rush of wind, clamouring now with a renewed violence.

  'Can we go out and see it?' asked Jonah. 'The river must be pretty impressive after all that rain.'

  To Clio's surprise, Hester rose and took him out through the kitchen into the yard rather than on to the terrace outside the drawing-room where visitors were usually shown the river. A light outside the door illuminated the courtyard and he passed Clio's car and went on to the bridge. Hester watched him from the doorway, Clio at her shoulder. The noise of the water was overwhelming: brawling, brutal, black and oily-looking in the darkness, its sheer force was breathtaking. Branches and other detritus swirled upon its swollen breast, smashing against the stone piers of the bridge and vanishing beneath the arch, and all the while the river roared and thundered as it raced between its imprisoning banks.

  Jonah came back to them slowly, his face clenched painfully as though his head hurt; his eyes looked at them unseeingly. He staggered slightly as the wind gusted even more strongly, and Clio put out her hand and drew him into the warm shelter of the house.

  'I'll show you your room,' she said, concerned by his expression. 'Let's get your bag. I left it in the hall.'

  They went upstairs together and Hester returned thoughtfully to the kitchen to finish the clearing up. When they reappeared about ten minutes later, both looked equally strained.

  'I'm sorry we didn't get round to talking properly about Mum and the war,' Jonah said rather awkwardly to Hester. 'I'd like to know more. It's odd but I feel strangely affected by this place.' He grimaced, as if embarrassed by his admission. 'Probably overwork. I think I'll turn in.'

  Hester, who was not given to endearments or shows of affection, touched him lightly on the shoulder. 'We will talk, I promise. When the moment is right. Sleep well, Jonah.'

  He went away from them, up the stairs, and Clio gave a little shiver. It was obvious that Jonah's reaction had renewed her earlier anxiety and convinced her that something mysterious was happening. She came up close to her godmother, looking seriously into her face, and Hester took a deep, steadying breath.

  'Who was it that he saw?' asked Clio. Her natural poise had deserted her and she seemed vulnerable, even frightened. Nevertheless, Hester decided that this time she must answer truthfully.

  'He saw his grandfather,' she said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was with an unexpected light-heartedness that Hester woke next morning. The gale had roared away to the east, leaving a freshly rinsed, clear blue sky, and the air was cool and still. The weight of premonition and anxiety that had arrived so suddenly with the wild south-westerly wind had now swept off with it, leaving Hester with an unfamiliar sense of anticipation. This morning the bright sunshine that glittered on the dripping trees and gleamed over the rain-drenched garden mocked at the fears and terrors of the night and dispelled the shadows.

  Hester, congenitally uncommunicative until after her second cup of coffee, was relieved to discover that Jonah was not inclined to early morning conversation. He smiled at the two women, accepted some coffee and picked up a section of the newspaper. Clio, recognizing the familiar signs, shrugged mentally and ate her toast in silence. Jonah ate nothing, drank his cup of black coffee and then went away to pack his overnight bag, which gave Clio the opportunity of proposing her plan to invite Peter down.

  'Of course,' said Hester, pausing in her daily battle with the crossword. 'It was so kind of him to let you have the time off to look after me. By all means invite him to stay. I should very much like to meet him.'

  She was aware of the sharp look Clio shot at her but pretended to be absorbed again in her crossword. She suspected that Clio was trying to decide whether she should speak openly about her relationship with Peter – about the personal aspect of it – and Hester knew that such a disclosure would require explanations, justifications, even advice. She would prefer to wait until she'd met this man with whom Clio had fallen so much in love before she revealed her own fears. She'd been in love, long years ago, with a married man: a university lecturer with whom she'd had a brief but passionate affair. The remembrance of it made it difficult for her to criticize Clio's relationship with Peter, especially as she had no idea how he felt about his wife, although her instincts told her that it would be Clio who would suffer most. Hester had long been hoping that Clio would open her heart, thus giving them both the opportunity to speak truthfully but, with Jonah likely to burst in at any time, this was certainly not the moment.

  Meanwhile her god-daughter dithered uncharacteristically at the end of the table, holding her plate in one hand and the marmalade pot in the other, and they were both relieved when Jonah reappeared, bag in hand, and paused to speak to St Francis, who was washing himself in a slanting puddle of sunlight in his favourite chair.

  'My parents have a dog,' he said. 'She's a pretty Sussex spaniel, very sweet, but I rather like this enormous fellow.'

  'I'm a dog person,' Clio told him over her shoulder, removing her breakfast things and picking up her car keys. 'But I can't justify having one in London. Maybe, one day . . .'

  'It's a pity you won't be here for Lizzie's event,' said Jonah. 'I think it's going to be fun. Any chance of getting more time off next spring?'

  Clio grinned. 'Lizzie asked me the same question. I don't think Peter is quite that philanthropic.'

  'Peter?'

  'Peter's my boss,' answered Clio. Her voice was proud, defiant and tender, all at once, and Jonah's eyebrows flicked upwards as if he'd made a rather disappointing discovery.

  Hester noted his expression.

  'Come back again, Jonah. Come and stay,' she said to him as they wandered out to the courtyard. 'You must speak to Lucy first to make sure she's happy about it, and then come and stay and we'll talk.'

  'I'd really like that. It's taking time for me to get my head round it all. That my grandfather was actually here with my mother, I mean, and that they were friends with your family.'

  'Watch it, Hes. He'll be making up a story about it if you're not careful.' Clio was standing by the car with the door open, watching them with affection. 'He's a dramatist, remember.'

  Hester gave a final wave as the car turned onto the road, smiling a little. St Francis had strolled out behind her and was now sitting on the bridge with his tail hanging down, and she smoothed his hard head. There would be no need for Jonah to invent a story: the truth was more than enough to satisfy his creative need. And how like his grandfather he was: not very tall but neat and strong-looking. As he and Clio had come in through the door last night, his black hair plastered to his skull, his dark eyes shocked and wide, her heart had somersaulted in recognition. Just so had Michael looked all those years ago, coming back into the house from the dark, wild evening, with Eleanor's arm protectively about his shoulders, soaked with the rain and dazed with horror.

  Leaning on the br
idge beside St Francis, Hester was uncomfortably aware that the memory of her sister-in-law was still able to trigger a reaction of animosity. From the very beginning, when Edward had brought her home to meet his family, Hester had disliked Eleanor. Standing in the sun, stroking the cat's soft warm back, Hester wondered just how much she would tell Jonah. Where would the story begin? With the return to the family's fishing lodge by the river Barle when their father died in 1936 and she was just eight years old? She could remember the preparations for the long journey to the West from Cambridge, one or two of her father's colleagues from the university coming to the station to bid them farewell: her mother, silent with grief, and attended anxiously by her two older children, Edward and Patricia, whilst their nanny kept the three younger ones entertained.

  She could remember, too, the terrible emptiness and anguish in her own small heart. It was because of the sudden death of her adored father that she'd transferred her love wholesale to Edward, who most resembled him, and why, five years later, she had so resented Eleanor. Perhaps that was the beginning: Eleanor's arrival at Bridge House with Edward.

  St Francis was purring with a kind of rumbling growl, pulsating gently beneath her caressing hand, and Hester chuckled suddenly with a swooping uplift of the spirits. The prospect of revisiting the past, exorcising the ghosts, filled her with an odd kind of pleasure. It would bring release to relive it. After all, there was nobody left to be hurt by the story that she would tell Jonah: surely not even Lucy could suffer now. Last night she'd been fearful, infected by Jonah's reaction on the bridge and anxious lest she might reveal secrets that his mother had deliberately kept private. This morning she wondered if she'd been foolish. If Lucy gave her blessing to it then she would gladly tell Jonah their story. Already her mind was fingering the past as one might peruse an old book, turning the pages and looking upon long-forgotten scenes.

  She leaned on the sun-warmed stones beside the cat and gave herself up to the luxury of remembering.

  In the car the atmosphere was oddly strained. Without Hester and her calm acceptance of the previous evening's events, Jonah and Clio were both suddenly rather shy.

  'How different it looks this morning,' Jonah was saying, clearly determined to play the part of an appreciative guest. 'It's an extraordinary landscape.'

  They were travelling beneath a canopy of bare branches, the high wooded hill rising precipitously to the right of the road; the misshapen woody roots of massive trees grasped the mossy banks like prehensile toes digging deep into a rich black mulch of wet leaves and earth. Beyond the river to his left, Jonah glimpsed bright, jewel-green meadows fringing the further bank but, as the road climbed steadily round the side of the combe, the noisy torrent was left behind. Peering from his window, Jonah could still see the glint of a small stream far below as it curled and twisted along the valley floor to join the Barle at Marsh Bridge.

  Clio was wondering what to say to him that would distract him from the unexpected drama of their arrival. This morning, in the bright sharp sunlight, the idea of an apparition seemed an impossible one. Yet Hester had been firm: something from the past had reached out to touch Jonah; that much was clear.

  'He saw his grandfather,' she'd said. 'Something happened here that might well have left some kind of emotional vibration' – and had been unwilling to say anything else beyond expressing a hope that she and Jonah would have a long talk together.

  After that, Clio had taken refuge in thinking about Peter and planning his visit. She'd decided that the elemental wildness of the storm had heightened reactions, normal feelings were clearly out of control, and hoped that things would look different in the morning. And so they did, yet it was still difficult to think of just the right conversational opener. As they passed over the cattle-grid onto the open spaces of Winsford Common, Jonah solved the problem for her.

  'I'm sorry you won't be here for Lizzie's event,' he said. 'Have you been taking a sabbatical from work?'

  'It's my holiday, actually. Hester's had a hip replacement and though she was looked after by the Social Services for the first few weeks, I thought she might like someone with her until she could drive again. Peter let me take my holiday in one go.'

  'Lucky for Hester. How did she come to be your godmother? Do you mind me asking?'

  'Not a bit. My mother was one of Hester's students and my father was reading History at Lincoln at the same time. Hester and my mother developed one of those real bonds that occasionally spring up between student and tutor and they stayed closely in touch after Mummy graduated. Daddy was doing his Ph.D. at Bristol when they got married. He'd just heard that he'd got his MA when I appeared on the scene. Hence the name: Clio was the muse of history but not many people know that these days. It's spelled with an "i" not an "e". Anyway, Mummy asked Hester to be my godmother and when I was little we usually spent part of the long vac with her and other members of the family at Bridge House. She always keeps my room for me. My parents moved about rather a lot when I was growing up, they're a peripatetic pair, and Hester has been a constant in my life. It's been important and special to have her there.'

  'I envy you.'

  Clio had the feeling that, although Jonah was staring out over the sunlit spaces of gorse and heather to the distant hills in the west, he was seeing something else: a child arriving at Bridge House, perhaps, and running up the stairs to make sure that her little room was just the same.

  'Jonah's brilliant,' Lizzie had said to her. 'He's amazingly visual; so quick to see a scene or pick up a nuance.'

  Now, Clio believed that he was doing exactly that. Glancing sideways at him, she saw that his face was intent and his whole body tensed as if he were watching a little scene of his personal devising and hearing voices other than their own. His expression reminded her of Peter's when he was thinking through a new advertising campaign. She knew better than to interrupt someone who was working, and turned right at Spire Cross without further comment, but she knew exactly the moment when he returned to her, his attention once more focused with them inside the car, and she smiled.

  'You'll see Winsford properly this morning. It's a lovely little village.'

  They were descending between high banks and tall trees, down a narrow lane running between whitewashed cottages and stone houses into the village.

  'It's great. Oh, and look! The river's come back,' he said cheerfully as they sped away again up towards the valley road to the moor. 'Fantastic!'

  'Only it's not the same river,' she said. 'This is the River Exe. Our river is the Barle.'

  He laughed at that, as she had meant him to. 'Nice to have your very own river as well as your very own room,' he commented. 'I rather envy you Hester as well. My godparents have never shown much interest in me. I like Hester. She has that self-contained serenity of the true academic or, perhaps, a nun.'

  'How odd that you should say that.' Clio sounded startled. 'Hester wanted to be a nun when she was young, but somehow it didn't work out.'

  'Really?' He was intrigued. 'I wonder why not.'

  'I've no idea. She has a cousin, Blaise, who is a chaplain to a convent of contemplative nuns in the north of England. She adores him and I have to say he is utter heaven. Anyway, after the war, when Blaise took Holy Orders, I think that Hester decided to try the contemplative life for herself but she gave it all up before she'd finished her novitiate and went to university instead.'

  'And that worked for her?'

  'Oh, yes. Her father was a Cambridge don and her brother Edward and Blaise were at Cambridge so you might say that academia was in the genes. The whole family had a passion – well, Hester still does – for the poetry of John Clare. She wrote quite an important book about him back in the seventies when he was still very underrated. There's been a resurgence since, so I understand, but old Hes was a real mover and shaker of her time.'

  'Was she in love with Blaise?'

  Clio glanced at him, almost shocked. 'I've no idea. Why do you ask?'

  'I don't know.' He hunch
ed slightly in his seat, as if thinking something through. 'It's just odd that she should suddenly want to go into a convent, I suppose, unless it was because he was unavailable.'

  'She might have had a vocation.' Clio sounded faintly defensive.

  'But she didn't, did she? Or she'd have stayed. I'm sorry if I sound inquisitive or rude. It's just that I'm really hooked by all of it, I don't know why.'

  Clio shook her head. 'I think you can see a play coming out of it. Or a treatment. Or whatever you call it.'

  Jonah grinned, seized by the mysterious, magical excitement of a new creation revealing itself to him. 'You could be right,' he answered, and then leaned forward in his seat as the car turned off the lane and into the drive, which wound across the wild open heath.

  Michaelgarth stood high above them, strong and invulnerable on the bracken-covered slopes, looking beyond Porlock Common to the sea.

  'It's wonderful, isn't it?' asked Clio, following his gaze.

  He nodded. 'We were all rather surprised when Lizzie decided to move to Exmoor,' he told her. 'A lot of people split their lives between town and country, of course, but Lizzie seemed so settled in her little house in Bristol. I believe she still uses it when she's working but it came as a shock to hear that she was going to marry a man who lived and worked on Exmoor and was planning to spend all her spare time there. Now I can understand why she loves it here so much. It's not just the house, is it? The whole place is just magic.'

  'I quite agree but we mustn't forget that Piers has something to do with it too,' said Clio mischievously.

  She drove through the archway into the old garth and parked the car in the open-fronted barn. Michaelgarth had been built on the ruins of an old priory. High walls connected the house to the stables and barns so that the ancient cobbles were enclosed and the whole was possessed by a sense of peace and timelessness. Climbing out of the car, Clio and Jonah crossed the garth and went together into the house.