Hannah handed him a cup of tea and indicated that he make himself comfortable at the kitchen table. Maddie followed him and placed herself in her father’s chair. Humphrey had driven off to work at dawn without saying a word. He hadn’t smiled or even said ‘good morning’, which was most unusual. He had spent a sleepless night devising elaborate plans of revenge on George, which was quite out of character, then imagined Rita’s fragile body falling from the cliff like a stone. Her misery affected him in a way that he could never have imagined. He felt cheated, made a fool of but, more crucially, useless. His child was broken and he was incapable of putting her back together again.
Harry drank his tea, aware that Maddie watched him with her sharp, alluring eyes. He knew she was infatuated with him. Even at his most unassuming he could sense when a woman was drawn to him. Not that women fell over themselves to seduce him – in fact, it had only happened on two occasions – but he instantly recognized that predatory, calculating look and the way they leaned towards him breasts first. However, he didn’t dare contemplate a relationship. Maddie was like the forbidden fruit at the top of the tree. The juiciest, softest, most succulent of peaches, temptingly swelling with ripeness in the autumn sunshine. Not only was she forbidden but she was way out of his reach, like the apple in the Garden of Eden. He was not prepared to yield to temptation and pick it.
‘What did you bring for Rita?’ she asked, having overheard his conversation with her mother from her bedroom upstairs.
‘A book. Fables of La Fontaine.’
‘That’s nice. When she’s finished with it, I’ll read it,’ she lied.
Harry was eager to get back to his book. The one he had been writing for the last two years: an epic tale of love and betrayal in war-torn France. He was struggling with the love aspect of it. When he got up to leave, Maddie declared that she was going with him. Harry knew she wasn’t intending to paint birds on the beach dressed like that and there was nothing more to do in his study, or his house for that matter. But Maddie was determined.
‘Can I read what you’ve written so far?’ she asked, deciding she’d tackle the problem of actually reading the book once she got there.
Harry was about to shake his head and explain that it wasn’t nearly ready to be seen, but then he was struck with an idea. Maddie was young, intelligent and sensitive. Perhaps she could be of help and give him an honest opinion. Maddie could certainly be counted on to speak the truth without the slightest hint of tact.
‘All right,’ he said, straightening up. ‘Let’s go.’
He left the book for Rita on the table, said goodbye to Hannah, Eddie and Ezra Gunch, and climbed into his car, followed excitedly by Maddie. She was determined to make herself indispensable.
Once at the cottage, Harry lit the fire in his study and settled her onto the sofa with the manuscript of the book so far. She gulped at the weight of so many pages, but was encouraged to see that at least it was typed in double spacing. He put some Tchaikovsky on the gramophone, brought her a cup of tea and a biscuit, then left her to it, while he tapped away on his typewriter, disappearing further and further into the wintry world of war. Maddie noticed to her delight that the painting she had done of the bar-tailed godwit was framed and hanging on the wall above his desk.
She read the first few lines, took a bite of her biscuit then watched his back as he worked. She loved his tufty hair, his broad shoulders, the way his shirts always creased, however well they were ironed. He dwarfed the little desk and chair like a giant in a fairy tale, yet he was gentle and modest as if unaware of the power of his size. He didn’t feel her stare for he continued to type, pausing every now and then to find the right word. During those moments he would lift his chin and search for inspiration out of the window. Then his fingers would type again, very fast and efficiently, before he lost his train of thought. But he never looked around. Maddie resigned herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to get any attention however much she huffed and puffed behind him and began to read again. To her surprise by the third page she was scanning the lines with increasing speed and no longer taking a break to glance longingly over at him. He had an engaging, fluid way of telling a story. She felt she was really there in the small French town of Masmatre. She could smell the smoke in the café, hear the low hum of voices, taste the coffee and croissants. To her surprise she enjoyed it so much her tea grew cold in the mug and the rest of the biscuit remained untouched on the plate.
By lunchtime she had finished the first ten chapters and was reluctant to stop when Harry suggested they find something to eat. She stood up and stretched, leaving the manuscript on the sofa. She found cold meat and salad in the larder and a loaf of bread in the bread bin. She knew her way around his kitchen better than he did and laid the table with all that she could find. Then they sat down to eat.
‘Lie if you don’t like it,’ he said with a shy smile, bracing himself for her commentary. He was used, but not immune, to Maddie’s candour. Maddie was pleased her opinion mattered and chewed on a piece of bread to keep him in suspense. ‘Please say you like it,’ he begged finally. ‘If you hate it, don’t be too brutal, writers are very sensitive.’ Maddie took a sip of water and sat back in her chair.
‘I love it,’ she replied truthfully. ‘I really feel as if I’m there. I am Molly Cosgrove, the spy, the adventuress, the brave heroine of your story. She’s daring yet sensitive, capricious yet vulnerable, beautiful but not in a conventional way. It would make a terrific film.’ Harry seemed to swell with gratitude.
‘You really do like it?’ he asked, and finally Maddie felt important to him.
‘I love the way you write. You don’t go into too much detail. You keep the momentum of the story going. I’m dying to know what happens. I can’t stand it, I’ve got pages and pages to go. I’m dreading the sad bits. Does she fall in love? Have I met him yet?’ Harry grinned, a wide, infectious grin that consumed half his face.
‘I’m not telling you,’ he teased. Maddie giggled.
‘Oh, please. Tell me she doesn’t fall in love with Klaus the Nazi?’
Harry shook his head. ‘I said, I won’t tell you.’
‘There’s a dark chemistry already. He’s handsome and cold, attractive but dangerous. Very dangerous and predatory. I hope she doesn’t have an affair with him, she’ll get hurt.’ Then her eyes glittered. ‘Oh no! She’ll have an affair with him to glean information, won’t she?’ Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me I’m right?’
She moved her face closer to his, but he simply smiled at her secretively. Then her impulses got the better of her. In her excitement she kissed him. The smile suddenly disappeared and a worried frown darkened his face. They stared at one another for a moment, Maddie in surprise and Harry in panic. Neither spoke. For once Maddie couldn’t think of a clever thing to say. She waited for him to either kiss her back or tell her to leave. She suddenly wished she hadn’t ruined the moment. He studied her face anxiously and she searched his eyes for an indication of his thoughts. She could hear their breathing and feel the heavy thud of her heart as if they were cymbals and drums in her ears.
‘Maddie,’ he began, but his voice was little more than a croak.
She was quick to take action. Instead of backing away she suddenly realized that the best form of defence was attack. She placed a finger over his lips and shook her head. Then slowly she removed it. His mouth remained shut but his eyes communicated his fears. Maddie leaned forward and pressed her lips once more on his. She opened them very slightly and traced her tongue over the inside of his mouth. Harry was unable to resist. He wound his hand around the back of her neck and drew her to him. Then he was kissing her passionately to the sound of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto pounding loudly from the sitting room next door. She felt his rough cheek with trembling fingers. In that moment, when the lines of reality and fiction misted, she was Molly Cosgrove and he Klaus the Nazi. With one movement of his arm he swept the remains of the lunch to the other end of the table. A glas
s fell over and water spilt onto the floor but they didn’t care, it simply enhanced the drama of their encounter. To Maddie’s delight and amazement, she discovered that Harry was as impatient as she was. He didn’t carry her up to the bedroom, as she had imagined, or make love to her on the sofa in front of the fire, but right there on the kitchen table. Under the influence of his sexual desire Harry Weaver became a different person. The lover so often found in fiction but rarely in reality. He was commanding, sensitive, generous and sensual. He made Hank Weston, Steve Eastwood and Bertie Babbindon look like amateurs. By comparison with Harry they were gauche and fumbling, their awkward attempts to excite her like the heavy-handed exploring of schoolboys. Harry had the slow, gentle touch of a man who knew exactly how to pleasure a woman and Maddie writhed and moaned beneath him like a brazen whore experiencing true orgasms for the first time after years of faking them.
When they lay together, bathed in each other’s sweat and the juice of that forbidden fruit now picked and devoured, Maddie sighed with happiness, unaware that her lover’s sighs were heavy with guilt and regret.
‘Good morning, Miss Hogmier,’ said Reverend Hammond as he popped into the village shop to post a parcel to his brother-in-law in Nottingham. ‘Lovely morning, isn’t it!’ he exclaimed heartily.
‘Quite beautiful. I hope Rita Fairweather doesn’t walk out on the cliffs today.’ She raised her thin eyebrows at him provocatively. Reverend Hammond nodded slowly.
‘Quite so,’ he replied cautiously as if he were afraid of being overheard.
‘Fancy that! Wanting to kill oneself over a man!’ Miss Hogmier had never been loved or in love so the very idea was alien to her.
‘Poor Rita. It’s a harsh blow indeed to have one’s dreams shattered so young.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I don’t believe she really wanted to kill herself.’ Miss Hogmier tut-tutted and rolled her eyes at his naïvety.
‘Of course she did. She was swaying over the edge, seconds from death. If it hadn’t been for Harry Weaver she would have perished. Broken on the rocks. Imagine what a horrid sight that would have been.’
‘She’s a level-headed girl. I’m sure it was a terrible mistake.’
Reverend Hammond stepped back as the door opened with a tinkle. He frowned as there was no one there. Then his eyes fell to the ground where they caught sight of a large black cat slinking in like a silky breeze. He shuddered, remembering Mrs Megalith. Miss Hogmier’s face contorted with fear.
‘Don’t breathe a word,’ she hissed to the shaken Reverend. ‘The Elvestree witch has spies all over the village and we’re all under surveillance.’ Elwyn Hammond left as fast as he could, forgetting altogether to post his parcel.
Rita awoke to the sound of her mother at her bedroom door. ‘Darling, Max’s here for you.’ She blinked in the stream of sunlight that fell onto her bed through the gap in the curtains, momentarily uplifted by the enthusiasm of so bright a morning. Then she remembered George’s letter and sank once more into depression.
‘What does he want?’ she groaned, rubbing her eyes that were still sore from crying.
‘He’s cycled all the way over. He says he wants to take you for a walk.’
Rita would have preferred to stay in bed. Sleep was the only way to forget. But she reluctantly dragged herself to her feet and into the bathroom. She didn’t sense the contrived nature of Max’s visit. Mrs Megalith had suggested he go. No one wanted her to walk out on the cliffs alone. Max had been only too happy to oblige and had bicycled over at once. Little did Mrs Megalith know that it served his own secret purpose to spend time with Rita. Besides, having lost his heart to her, he felt he was more qualified than anyone else to give her guidance.
Rita shrank back when she saw her bloated, yellowed complexion in the mirror. She looked grotesque. Splashing her face with water didn’t do much to alleviate the problem, but at least it woke her up. She ran a brush through her knotted hair, wincing at the pain before giving up the struggle. She tied it back, unwittingly accentuating the unhappiness that drew in her cheeks and forced out her bones, then threw on some clothes, not really caring how she looked. What was the point now that George no longer wanted her?
When she saw Max waiting for her in the kitchen, ruddy-cheeked from the cold, bracing wind and smiling at her sympathetically, she felt her spirits stir a little. She let her mother bustle about, handing her a cup of tea and encouraging her to eat the porridge she had made especially for her. ‘Put some honey on it dear, it’s fresh from Elvestree and will do you good.’ She watched her daughter with the scrutiny of an owl until she had taken her first, unenthusiastic mouthful.
‘I thought you would like to walk up the beach on a day like this,’ Max said. ‘I spotted a couple of spoonbills in the estuary this morning,’ he added, knowing this would cheer her up.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, they were sweeping up insects and small fish with their bills, making the odd grunting noise in appreciation. Primrose says they are rare in these parts.’
‘But there’s something rather magical about Elvestree,’ said Hannah, watching her daughter take another spoonful of porridge and feeling heartened. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if penguins started arriving all the way from the Galapagos.’
Rita and Max set out toward the cliffs. The resplendence of the morning was infectious and Rita found that, in spite of her unhappiness, the sunshine and blue skies soothed her hurt. She didn’t fear the cliffs after the events of the day before. On the contrary, she was still drawn to them for they harboured the shadows of the past. They walked along the top and Max made sure that he walked on the outside. Rita found this amusing but pretended she hadn’t noticed. She did, however, cast her eyes down to the rocks and beach below and imagine what her fate might have been had Harry Weaver not arrived in the nick of time to pull her back.
They walked down the grassy path to the beach and sat on the rocks in the shelter of the cliffs to watch the birds and listen to the soothing sound of the sea. Rita toyed with the little dove pendant that George had sent her the month before.
‘Part of me wants to throw this into the sea,’ she said sadly. ‘But I just can’t let it go yet.’ Max pulled a shell off a rock and turned it over in his hands.
‘It’s hard to write someone out of your life when they’ve been such a big part of it.’
‘George was my life,’ she replied with emphasis. ‘I can’t quite believe it’s happened. But the leaden feeling inside reminds me that I’m not imagining it.’
‘It will get better.’
‘I know.’ She lifted her chin and let the icy wind caress her features. ‘I feel as if he’s died, but there’s no funeral or body to mourn.’ Max stared out to sea and smelt that familiar scent of his childhood reach him once again from the thawing corners of his heart.
‘But George will come back one day. He is not dead. You will have the opportunity to talk to him about it. One day when the wound is no longer raw.’
‘I think I would have coped better if he had died in the war. Death isn’t rejection.’
‘It can be worse than rejection,’ Max argued in a quiet voice. He threw the shell onto the sand and began to pick at another. ‘They go without taking you with them.’ Rita looked at him quizzically, then realized suddenly that he was no longer talking about her.
‘But that gets better too, doesn’t it?’ she said in a soft voice. Max looked at her.
‘Time makes everything better. That is one thing that experience has taught me. Some day you will have to take off that pendant. Keep it in a box, safely tucked away where it won’t stare out at you all the time to remind you of what you have lost. Believe me, it works. Only when you have healed can you reminisce with nostalgia and without pain.’
‘Megagran says that I have to talk about it,’ she said, tucking the pendant back into her jersey.
‘She’s right. That makes you feel better too. But don’t expect it to work overnight.’
‘You rarely talk about your fam
ily.’
‘You know Ruth and I had a little sister?’
‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘Lydia. I don’t remember her much. She was only a baby. I can still smell her, though. I can smell her bedroom. A soft, warm smell, like hot milk.’
‘Did she . . .?’
‘Yes, she died too. In the camps.’ He cast his eyes to the sand and focused on a small crustacean that was wriggling its way across a shallow pool of water. ‘I’m lucky to have Ruth.’
‘Do you talk about it with her?’ Rita asked, without realizing that the tragedy of Max’s family was taking her out of herself.
‘No. She’s afraid to remember.’ He lifted his eyes and looked at her. ‘I talk to you.’ Rita smiled.
‘We can help each other,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘It can be our secret project.’
‘I’d like to go back one day.’
‘To Vienna?’
‘Yes. To the theatre my father built. I dream about it sometimes. It seems so big in my dreams and yet, I know that my memory of it is distorted because I was just a small boy. It was beautiful, though. Full of golden lights and rich crimson velvet. Like the palace of a king. One day when I’m rich I’ll buy it back.’
‘Maybe you’ll marry an actress like your mother and she’ll sing in it.’
‘Maybe,’ he replied with a chuckle, but he was imagining taking Rita.
A flock of gulls flew overhead and Rita and Max shaded their eyes with their hands to watch them. Bathed in sunlight they swooped and glided, playing games with the wind that only they knew. Then they landed on the sand in a gaggle to search for food. The sight of those birds lifted their spirits, reassuring them both that while people change some things never do.
Chapter 20
Harry was mortified. He had taken advantage of a young girl without having thought through the consequences. It made no difference that she had the sexual experience of a much older woman, she was only nineteen and he was a middle-aged divorcé who should know better. Tormented by his own foolishness he withdrew like a tortoise into its shell, hoping that the problem would go away if he didn’t confront it.
The Swallow and the Hummingbird Page 24