CHAPTER FOUR
As soon as she had deposited Jonah safely with Lizzie and her other guests, Clio asked if she could make a telephone call. She knew that Peter would be at the London flat, his habit being to stop there for coffee and what he called a 'Russian five minutes', after travelling up from the country. He was rarely in the office before ten o'clock but when he did arrive he was utterly focused on the day ahead; his family life carefully filed away into another, separate compartment.
He answered on the second ring, his voice sounding rather flat.
'It's Clio,' she said. She no longer said 'It's me' ever since he'd once mistaken her voice for that of his eldest daughter and she'd never forgotten the tiny shock of hearing the unfamiliar tone of protective tenderness with which he'd spoken to her, thinking she was Sarah.
'Darling,' he cried now, as if he were drowning and she were a lifeline flung to him unexpectedly. 'Where are you? Did you get my letter?'
'Yes. Yes, I did. Listen, I'm at a friend's house so I can't be long. I had this idea about us meeting up. Why don't you come down here for a couple of days? Down one day and back the next. I could pick you up from Tiverton Parkway. Hester's less than half an hour away.'
'Hester? Your godmother?' He sounded baffled. 'Are you actually suggesting that I should meet your godmother, sweetie?'
'Why not? I've asked her if you could stay with us and she says she'd love to meet you. It would be fun.'
'Would it?' He sounded frankly sceptical. 'Are you serious, Clio? I think I'd feel just a tad nervous under an old biddy's beady eye.' He chuckled, inviting her to share the joke. 'Can't you just see it? I'm a bit old for creaking floorboards and being sized up by an elderly matriarch.'
Clio was taken aback, almost affronted by his assumptions about Hester. She'd given him credit for a more imaginative attitude. She realized with a pang of horror that he'd disappointed her but she refused to accept his stereotypical viewpoint simply for the sake of harmony between them.
'Hester's not a bit like that,' she said stiffly. 'You've got quite the wrong idea about it all. I hoped you'd see it as a visit to someone who is very special to me. Her age isn't relevant. Hester isn't the judgemental type – and there's absolutely nothing maternal about her.'
'Sorry. Sorry, Clio.' He backed off at once. 'If you think it'll work, then I'll fix it up when I get into the office. I'm missing you terribly and there's a panic on about the Harrison account. Twenty-four hours with you would suit me splendidly.'
She was touched as always by his readiness to retract from a position gracefully, though her confidence was slightly shaken.
'I really think it will work, Peter.'
'Of course it will. Take no notice of me. I've only just got in and I haven't made the transition yet. To tell the truth I'm having a bit of a domestic crisis.'
'Oh.' She was alert, fear speeding her heart. She could never decide how much Louise knew about Peter's London life. 'Nothing too serious?'
'We'll see. Anyway, nothing for you to worry about.'
Clio could tell that he was regretting the slip: he must be rattled to let his carefully segregated lives collide so casually.
'That's OK then.' She knew better than to question him further. 'Will you let me know when you can get down? Any day this week will be fine for us.'
'Sure. Down tomorrow back on Wednesday would be the best bet, but I'll have to check the diary.'
'It seems odd, doesn't it, that I don't know what your engagements are?'
'Oh, my darling, it's just such a total desert without you around.'
'Good,' she said cheerfully. 'Just don't get used to it.'
'No chance of that. Look, I'll leave a message on your mobile as usual, shall I? I know you can't get a signal at Hester's but you can pick it up later on.'
'That's best. I'll be taking some people back to the station later this morning and I'll check for messages on the way home. There's no signal here either.'
'It sounds rather medieval,' he said. A twinge of doubt returned to colour his voice. 'Are you sure I shall like it?'
'Quite sure.' Her confidence had resurfaced. 'You can trust me.'
'Don't I know it, sweetie.' He was laughing again. 'Can't wait to see you. Bye.'
Sitting on the seat in the cloistered way outside the hall, which had once been the chapel, Clio thought about Peter. A few late roses still bloomed on the high stone walls; Lion, Piers' golden retriever, lay somnolent on the cobbles. Clio relaxed. The murmur of conversation and occasional bursts of laughter, Lizzie's voice reciting something and then breaking off short – all seemed to come from a great distance away. Much more real to her was the idea of Peter: his crisp fair hair standing up like an animal's fur as he came out from the shower; his long strong legs and broad brown hands with the nails always clean and pink as if they'd just been scrubbed. She could imagine his arm along her shoulders as he sat beside her, his breath against her cheek, the smell of his skin, and the other million scents and images and sounds that meant Peter to her.
The shutter in her mind, behind which all thoughts of Louise and the children were locked, lifted a fraction. She heard Louise's confident drawl and the higher, fluting voices of his children. She remembered them arriving unexpectedly at the office, during a trip to London to buy school uniforms, and how surprising it had been to see him so natural and easy, joking and letting his small son twirl in the big leather chair, before he whisked them all off to tea without a glance in her direction. Louise, darkly glamorous, had nodded to the members of Peter's staff with all the pleasant indifference of one brought up with servants, seeing them as so many useful appendages, rather on the level of the computers and the telephones: necessary but uninteresting. He'd made no mention of it afterwards – and neither had Clio.
A door opened, the voices came closer; the meeting was breaking up. Clio sat forward on her bench, checking automatically for her car keys and glancing at her watch: plenty of time for the train. She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. Perhaps tomorrow Peter would be on his way to see her.
'I hope you'll be around when I come down to see Hester again,' Jonah said, as they waited on the platform for the train from Plymouth.
'So you'll definitely be back?'
'Of course. I'm hoping that I'll be able to persuade my mother to talk about the war. I think that Dad being ill has changed certain perspectives for her and I know that sometimes she's a bit lonely. It's not easy being a carer. Unlike your parents, mine have been very sedentary: living in one place for all their married lives, very dependent on each other and a few close friends. I think Mum's feeling vulnerable and she might be more ready to talk about the past. Perhaps it's time: she wouldn't have mentioned Hester otherwise. I feel it is.'
'I hope you will come back,' said Clio impulsively, 'but perhaps we can meet up in London sometime.'
He looked pleasantly surprised. 'I thought you were . . . uh, you know?'
'I still spend time with my friends,' she answered rather crisply. 'Shall I give you my mobile number?'
He dug in his pocket for his mobile, tapped in her number with a pen and said, 'Ah, here's the train.'
His travelling companions joined them, bags were collected and farewells were said.
'Thanks for taking me to meet Hester,' Jonah said, leaning from the window for a moment. 'It's meant a lot.'
Walking back to the car, Clio checked her mobile for voice mail. Peter's message was short but clear.
'Catching the nine fifteen from Paddington. Will be arriving at Tiverton Parkway at eleven o'clock. Returning to London late afternoon Wednesday.'
She made a note of the train times, telephoned Hester to tell her that Peter would be with them in twenty-four hours and got into the car.
As she drove up the dual carriageway past Tiverton, she was already making plans for the next day: pick Peter up and take him home to lunch at Bridge House, then perhaps a trip over the moor to the sea and back in time for tea. In the evening it m
ight be a good idea to go out to dinner, just the two of them, to Woods. Peter would like Woods, with its bistro atmosphere and delicious food – assuming, of course, that she could book a table . . .
Clio applied the brakes sharply as a pheasant careered into the road, racing dementedly in front of the car's wheels before launching itself into a wild steep flight upwards into the beech hedge.
'Crazy bird,' she muttered, startled out of her preoccupations. 'You were nearly lunch.'
Letting in the clutch, speeding off again, she tried to visualize the contents of Hester's freezer, wondering if there might be something good for tomorrow's lunch; Peter loved his food. Perhaps, just to be on the safe side, she'd stop off in Dulverton and go into Woods to ask Will, the bar manager, about booking a table. Then she could see what the delicatessen could provide: or perhaps she might buy a rack of lamb from the butcher? She drove over Barle Bridge, along the High Street, veered left into Fore Street and parked in an empty space outside the library.
* * *
When Clio arrived home she found Hester seated at the table in the breakfast-room with several large photograph albums in front of her. Clio dropped her parcels at the other side of the table and went to peer curiously over Hester's shoulder. The small black-and-white snapshots had faded writing beneath them and Clio bent closer to read the words.
'When you telephoned to tell me about Jonah, I remembered that these were in the cupboard in the book-room,' Hester told her. 'I hadn't looked at them for years. It's odd to see them again after all this time. How poignant old photographs are, aren't they? I can hardly believe that I was once the person I see here; I've been looking at me, wondering who I was and how I felt. It's the same in reverse, of course. When we are young we know that one day we will be old but it seems quite unreal. The old woman you see ahead of you, way down the road, is a stranger who could never be connected with how you feel now, at this moment: invincible, immortal.'
'That's true,' admitted Clio, thinking it over. 'I know that one day I shall be old but at the same time I feel that old age will be happening to a different Clio. It's not really anything to do with the me who is here now, today.' And suddenly she thought of Peter, and of making love with him, and knew that she needed him quite terribly, here and now, as a warm, vital talisman to ward off that cold, unimaginable future.
'Blaise was the keenest photographer of the family, and after he went away to the war Patricia took on his mantle.' Hester's calm voice acted as a remedy against Clio's sense of panic, rather like a cool hand on a hot brow. 'This one might interest you.'
She turned over the stiff grey pages and pointed to an outdoor photograph of three young men standing together rather self-consciously but smiling good-naturedly at the camera. Their hands were stuck casually in the pockets of their flannel trousers and two of them wore Fair Isle pullovers in that oddly shrunken style that seemed so much part of the pre-war age.
'"Edward, Blaise and Michael."' Clio read the caption aloud. '"Summer 1938 at Bridge House." Who's Michael? He looks faintly familiar.'
'He's Jonah's grandfather,' answered Hester, smiling to herself. 'Alike, aren't they?'
'Good grief !' Clio bent even closer, scanning the face more closely. 'So you actually knew him? Really knew him?'
'He was at Cambridge with Edward and Blaise, though Blaise was older. They were all great friends. Michael married first, though we never met his wife. By then the war had started and he didn't come here again until he brought Lucy down in 1944. By then, Edward was married too.'
'And Blaise?' Remembering Jonah's theory Clio watched Hester's face. 'He didn't want to get married?'
Hester seemed to withdraw: she didn't move but her expression fell into aloof, almost severe lines.
'No, Blaise didn't want to marry. At least, not in the conventional way. He fell in love very early in his life and he never wavered from it.'
'Fell in love? With whom?'
'With God and with the whole of the human race.' Hester looked both bleak and envious. 'That's why he took Holy Orders. You know all this, Clio.'
'I don't,' she protested. 'Well, I know bits of it, of course, but none of it properly. Obviously I know Blaise became a priest after the war but that's not to say that he might have married. I just wondered, that's all.'
'Wondered?'
'It was just seeing them together like that. It made me wonder. Blaise is so human, isn't he? He isn't all sanctimonious and distant. Actually, looking at this, he must have been pretty hot stuff when he was young.'
Hester chuckled. 'Oh, he was,' she agreed. 'Pretty hot stuff, as you say.'
'Well, then.' Clio breathed more freely, relieved to see Hester smiling. 'That's all I meant.'
'There was a moment,' said Hester, after a little hesitation, 'when I wondered if he might manage both God and a wife but it came to nothing.'
Clio looked away from the expression of puzzled pain on her godmother's face: it was both moving and discomforting. She could think of nothing to say and was grateful to St Francis, who chose to leap suddenly upon the table all amongst the books, scattering the loose snapshots.
'Gosh, look at the time,' Clio said. 'Frank's hungry and so am I. I'll get some lunch. If you clear the books away, I can lay the table.'
She carried the shopping into the kitchen but when she glanced back through the archway she saw that Hester continued to sit unmoving before the albums. She stared straight ahead, as though at some distant scene, and her hands were placed very lightly around the great animal as if she were warming them at a fire.
CHAPTER FIVE
All through breakfast the next morning, Hester was aware of Clio's tension. She looked slightly different today. Her gold-brown hair was held back with pretty combs, rather than twisted casually back with a piece of silk, her lips were touched with a slick of bright gloss and she wore caramel-coloured suede trousers instead of jeans.
Catching Hester's rather quizzical appraisal she said, 'He'll have to have Jonah's sheets,' as though to indicate a proper degree of indifference to Peter's visit, lest Hester was jumping to conclusions about the combs and the suede trousers. 'After all,' she added, 'it was only for one night. Peter wouldn't care anyway.'
Hester made no comment. She wasn't interested in Peter's praise or condemnation of the housekeeping arrangements since it would never have occurred to her that she or Clio might be judged accordingly. She was trying to assess whether Clio was merely excited at Peter's imminent arrival or if her god-daughter imagined some kind of emotional test might be involved in this visit.
'You look delightful,' she said – and Clio flushed brightly.
'Do I?' she asked carelessly.
Hester smiled at her, touched as always by Clio's unexpected moments of vulnerability.
'It always comes as a surprise that women look much older when they dress up. Have you noticed that?'
'No.' Clio was momentarily distracted from thoughts of Peter by this odd idea. 'Do they?' She frowned, trying to picture her friends in both casual and smart modes of dress, but failed to manage a comparison.
'Oh, yes.' Hester was adamant. 'They look more elegant, of course, but older. Take a fifteen-yearold girl out of her school uniform and, with make-up and a sophisticated outfit, she can look twenty-five. There is something rather poignant about it, rather like a small child dressing up in her mother's clothes. In the fifties, when clothes were so much more formal, all young women looked like their mothers; most unfortunate for them, poor darlings. Oh dear! Those frightful permanent waves, just like corrugated iron, and great gashes of dark red lipstick that made them look as if they'd been hit with a hatchet. So unflattering.'
Clio chuckled. 'And what did you wear in the fifties, Hes?' She looked at the petite upright figure sitting at the table: Hester wore jeans, a black roll-neck jersey and an old suede waistcoat. Her soft white hair was piled up into a wispy, untidy knot and her small square face was as wrinkled and brown as an autumn leaf. 'I bet you didn't dress like you
r mother.'
'Well, I didn't,' agreed Hester. 'But then, you have to remember, I had no role model. I went up to Cambridge in the early fifties when I was in my middle twenties, rather old by the other students' standards, but I'd had an unconventional upbringing and had no difficulty in adapting to university life. Sartorially, I was probably what you'd describe as café society. Of course, slacks had become acceptable during the war and I had no shocked mama to gasp and roll her eyes at me.' She smiled reminiscently. 'The other students were very sweet to me. To begin with I think they thought I might be motherly – you know the kind of thing? Listen to their woes and teach them how to cook nourishing meals on a pittance. They soon realized that I didn't do maternal.'
'I bet they did.' Clio was amused by the idea. 'Anyway, at least it can't have been too strange. Almost like going home. Everyone must have remembered your family.'
'Oh, not strange at all. I was very happy.'
'And did you have lots of boyfriends?' Clio could easily imagine that the young Hester must have been rather fun.
Hester's eyes glinted at her across the table. 'Lovers,' she corrected mischievously. 'I never did things by halves.'
'I believe you.' Suddenly, with a little clutch of apprehension and excitement, Clio remembered Peter. 'And so you think I look older today?'
Hester studied her. 'A little. More sophisticated and therefore older. I suppose this is how Peter knows you best?'
Clio looked at her with sudden dismay. Hester's innocent question unexpectedly encapsulated the utter separateness of her life with Peter. Not for them the ordinary intimacy of daily life: no unadorned early morning face or scruffy weekend clothes; no meetings with friends at the pub or family get-togethers. Even after they'd made love, and he'd showered and was buttoning himself back into his city clothes, there was a formality about Peter, as if he were also shrugging himself back into that other, separate life, and pulling on a different persona with his Thomas Pink shirt.
'I suppose it is,' she answered. 'It's a relationship based on work. It's not that we don't relax and have fun together, of course. We always have lots to talk about . . .'
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