'You've got it. Just let me know the dates. Does that mean I shan't see Hester, though?'
'I think you've got a thing about my godmother,' Clio said lightly. 'You could come at either weekend; before she goes or when she comes back. I can't take her this time but she's determined to drive herself. I feel worried but at the same time I think she needs to have a go. She's so thrilled at the thought of being with Blaise again that I think it will give her all the energy she needs.'
'That's what I wanted to talk to her about, you see. We never got as far as what happened after the war, with Hes and Blaise and Edward all together, and it might be important. I'm trying to see the shape of this play; where to begin, where to end. Mum seems a bit more relaxed about it now. She's coming down to Bridge House, by the way, in a couple of weeks' time.'
'But that's fantastic. Hester must be really pleased.'
'She sounded it. I am too. I think none of us can really move forward until Mum's been back to Bridge House. I know Hester feels the same.'
'And was it Hester's message that made her change her mind?'
'Yes, it was. It was the thing needed to sort of jolt her out of her shock. It made her curious, you see. Hester simply said, "Tell Lucy that I'd love to show her the Midsummer Cushion once more before I leave Bridge House." She was horrified to hear that poor old Hes was having to go and I think that that was part of her decision too. It would be terrible to think that she'd left it too late ever to see Bridge House again.'
'Good for Lucy,' Clio said. 'I'm looking forward to meeting her . . . for all sorts of reasons.'
He chuckled. 'She wants to meet you too. Don't know why. Just something I mentioned in passing, I think.'
'What?' asked Clio immediately. 'What did you say?'
'Can't remember now,' he said maddeningly. 'So what are these dates then?'
She told him and waited while he muttered and checked through a diary and muttered some more and then told her which days he could manage.
'Can you meet me from the station?'
'I suppose so,' she said with exaggerated patience. 'Are you ever going to be able to drive again?'
'I have a confession,' he said. 'I might as well make it at once. I've never passed a test. I have an antipathy to driving. I am clumsy, get distracted easily, crash into unsuspecting cyclists, and anyway I don't need to – at the moment.' A silence. 'Does that mean it's all off?' he asked anxiously.
'No,' she said, after a moment. 'No, of course not. I'm just . . . well, surprised, that's all.'
'But not horrified and repulsed?'
She laughed. 'You're an idiot, Jonah. Of course I'll pick you up. Let me know when you can get down and I'll tell Hester that you're coming for the weekend before she goes to Hexham, and staying on for a few days. We could go to Woods one evening . . .'
Later, she put her head round the door and grinned at Hester.
'Great news about Lucy, isn't it?'
'It's wonderful news. I can hardly take it in.' Hester removed her reading spectacles and looked at Clio with a kind of happy disbelief. 'I've imagined it so often, you know; going through it in my head, and trying to picture exactly how it would be, but none of the scenarios quite fit satisfactorily. I shall have to ask Jonah to write the script for us.'
'It's rather scary,' agreed Clio. 'It'll be best for you and Lucy to do this one alone, I imagine? I shall be around, of course. In case you need me.'
Hester nodded. 'Quite alone,' she agreed. 'I think that Lucy and I will have much to say to each other. But I hope that she'll stay for at least one night and anyway, you'll want to meet her, won't you?'
The question sounded innocent enough but Clio coloured a little.
'Of course I will, after all you've told me about her. Oh, by the way, Jonah can manage the first part of next week when you're away in Hexham.' She spoke quite casually, though unable to repress a little smile at the thought of it. 'But he'd like to come earlier, for the weekend, so as to see you before you go. I've said that's OK.'
'Good.' Hester replaced her reading spectacles and smiled back at Clio. 'You'll have fun.'
Clio's smile grew wider: she beamed. 'I know,' she said happily.
* * *
So it was in late May that Lucy came again to Bridge House. Horrified at the prospect of such a crucial meeting taking place on a railway platform – a feeling that Hester had readily understood – she'd insisted on taking a taxi from the station. Hester was waiting for her on the terrace when the car drove in over the bridge and turned again to go back out. When the sound of the engine had died away, Lucy passed through the little gate. The two women stood staring at one another, each seeking some sign of recognition in the other's face, while the river murmured in the hot sunshine and down in the wood the cuckoo called.
This time it was Lucy who looked down, just a little, at the older woman, but it was Hester who spoke first.
'No grey rabbit this time?'
Lucy smiled involuntarily and Hester reached out for her hand, holding it tightly for a brief moment.
'Not this time.' Lucy returned the pressure readily. 'Though I still have him. He was a great favourite with Jonah.' She set down her case and looked about her curiously. 'I've thought and thought about how this would be,' she said. 'How much I'd remember and whether I'd think that everything had shrunk. You know how people say that, when they go back years later to places they've known as children? The odd thing is that I don't really remember any of it at all. Just the atmosphere and odd flashes of things.' She grimaced a little. 'You'd think I'd remember this place particularly, wouldn't you?'
'Not necessarily. You children spent much more time in the garden and the wood than on the terrace. If you were inside the drawing-room looking out on a dark wild night you might have a different experience, of course.'
Lucy looked at her again, a long, searching look. 'What a mess,' she said bitterly. 'Wasn't it, Hester? I can't get over the waste. All those years of thinking that it was all my fault.'
Hester was silent for a few seconds, watching her compassionately. She gave a tiny sigh. 'I only hope you can forgive us, otherwise nothing can be salvaged. You being here is . . . it's a miracle. Thank you for coming, Lucy.'
Lucy leaned on the wall, staring down into the water, and when she spoke again, Hester came close to her so as to hear her voice above the sound of the river.
'Why didn't you write to me, Hester?'
The older woman felt unexpected tears pricking and stinging her eyes. 'Probably because you didn't answer my letter,' she said remorsefully. 'I thought you might not want to resurrect the past, you see. Eleanor told me that you'd said you'd settled in with your aunt and that you'd soon be starting school . . .'
'Eleanor told you?'
'She wrote to tell us that Michael had been killed and that she was going to America but that letters and cards would be forwarded to you from the London flat. We all sent Christmas cards and letters: me and Nanny and Jack. I remember he was very particular about me sending his card. And then we heard from Eleanor just after I'd sent the package to you.'
'Jack sent me a card?' Her face crumpled, her lips trembled. 'Oh, how much that would have meant, back then.'
'You never got them.' It was a statement, not a question. 'So that explains it. I never thought of that, you see. I just assumed that you were busy with a new life, after all, you were only four or five – and you must take into account that I had no idea that you'd seen the fight and that Eleanor had lied to you. Even so,' Hester shook her head, 'it doesn't excuse the fact that I should have stayed in touch. Made sure. I was taken up with Edward, and with Blaise. I didn't think clearly. That was unforgivable.'
Lucy covered Hester's hand with her own where it lay clenched on the stone wall. 'I keep going over it until I think I shall go mad, you see,' she said. 'I don't want to but I can't seem to help myself. I can't step free of it. And then Jonah gave me your message about the Midsummer Cushion and it was like a kind of trigger. I always fe
el that it all started with the Midsummer Cushion and that, if I saw it again, I might be able to put everything into perspective. You said that I should see it before you leave Bridge House – we'll talk about that later, Hester, if we may – and I wondered if you meant that I ought to see it on your wall, where I first saw it.'
'That's not quite the way of it,' answered Hester carefully. 'I have a different reason although I hope that the outcome will be the same. Are you ready to see it now or would you like to see your room or have some coffee or something?'
Lucy shook her head. 'I'd like to see the Midsummer Cushion first,' she said. 'I feel that it's terribly important somehow.'
The two women stared at each other, each one's heart was beating fast: Lucy's with a fearful anticipation; Hester's with terror that she might have misjudged the situation.
Hester swallowed down her fear resolutely and turned towards the house. 'Come, then,' she said. 'Come and see.'
Lucy went with her into the house, staring round as they passed through the drawing-room, trying to fit the shape of it into the memories that had haunted her for so long, and Hester hesitated, eyebrows raised, as if suggesting that Lucy might like to take time to look around her or ask a question, but Lucy instinctively shook her head – all that must come later – and followed her out into the passage. On the hall table a Jiffy bag with the words 'THIS IS FOR LUCY' written across it in black ink was propped against a jar, and she glanced at it curiously before going on again – not up the stairs as she had imagined but through the kitchen and so into the garden. Hester crossed the lawn, walking quickly as if to ward off questions, and Lucy hurried to keep up with her, growing more and more puzzled. As they approached the gate in the hawthorn hedge Hester paused, turning to Lucy.
'Remember the vegetable garden? And the chickens?' she asked. 'Yes? Well, it wasn't always a vegetable patch. It's just that we needed to grow our own food during the war. It used to be a little meadow, you see, and afterwards, when I moved back after I'd retired, I had an idea.'
She stood aside and Lucy went up to the field gate, still frowning with puzzlement, and then caught her breath in a tiny gasp of amazement. The small square hayfield, some three-quarters of an acre, was a patch of vivid colour. Bounded by flowering hawthorn hedges, the sweet feathery grasses were thickly sown with wild flowers. Blue cornflowers, scarlet field poppies, butter-yellow buttercups, rich pink clover and delicate lilaccoloured lady's-smocks all bloomed in abundance. The rosy haze of sorrel clouded the edges of the hayfield and the scent of bluebells drifted in the warm air.
'"It is a very old custom among villagers in summer time to stick a piece of greensward full of field flowers and place it in their cottages, which ornaments are called Midsummer Cushions,"' quoted Hester softly. 'I decided that, rather than try to mend and patch the tapestry, or to grieve over its loss, I would try to make something new. I wanted to create a living reminder of the Midsummer Cushion. What do you think, Lucy?'
Lucy bit her lips. 'I think you were right,' she said at last. 'Can we . . . go in?'
Hester lifted the latch and swung the gate open. Lucy passed through into the hayfield, advanced a few steps, and then turned to look back at Hester with an expression of wonder.
'It's quite beautiful,' she said. 'All the flowers, just as I remember them.'
She extended her arms, as if she would embrace them, and Hester smiled, remembering the small Lucy stretching out her eager hands to the silken flowers in the frame.
'Rather better like this,' suggested Hester, 'than imprisoned under glass? And we can pick some for you to take home as a keepsake. You could press them into a book, if you would like it?'
She saw that Lucy was near to tears and she put out a hand to her, just as she had reached out to her all those years before, and they went together into the hayfield, becoming a part of the small tapestry of living colour that rippled and danced in the warm west wind.
the end
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Extract from 'Folk Tale' by R. S. Thomas, from Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan, London, 1986: © Kunjana Thomas, 2001.
Extracts from the poems of John Clare are taken from John Clare – Selected Poems, edited by Jonathan Bate, Faber and Faber, London, 2004.
My thanks to Sarah Jordon of Time 2 (www.time-2.com) for introducing me to Lifestyle Management.
My thanks also to Caroline Day of the Devon Lupus Group (www.lupusuk.com).
THE WAY WE WERE
Marcia Willett
It was in the middle of a snowstorm when Tiggy arrived at the remote house on Bodmin Moor. She was alone, her partner tragically dead in an accident, and Julia, her dearest friend, welcomed her into her warm and chaotic family. Tiggy started to live again and await the birth of her child, temporarily secure in the supportive love which surrounded her.
But Tiggy's happiness is destined to be short-lived, and nearly thirty years later, when her son is about to become a father himself, the next generation discovers that there are secrets from the past which must be uncovered . . .
A wonderfully engrossing new novel from
this well-loved author.
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Memories Of The Storm Page 26