Heaven's On Hold

by Heaven's on Hold (retail) (epub)

  Still, he thought, I’m the one in charge, Annet and I pay her wages. She’s here to assist us and we must learn to take advantage of that. Suddenly he thought of something and rushed to the front door.

  ‘Have you got a key?’ he called. ‘Because I shall lock up!’

  In answer she tweaked a loop of string from the neck of her fleece and waggled a key at him. ‘All set, thought of everything!’

  Despondently he told himself that this was good, it really was. So far she had shown herself to be friendly – perhaps a little too friendly but not unpleasantly so – adaptable, enthusiastic and competent. She had shown initiative. Annet had made an excellent choice and he was going to have to wear it.

  In town he posted the bills and then went into Border and Cheffins.

  Jackie told him that Mr Border was out, and added slightly reprovingly that everything was under control.

  ‘I don’t doubt it for a moment but since I had to come into town … I don’t want any nasty surprises waiting for me.’

  ‘We’ve had a couple of people interested in the farm since you rang,’ she said pointedly, ‘and at round about the right price, which is encouraging. You probaby know Chris Harper’s looking for a property for his parents.’

  ‘Yes, I went over to Stoneyhaye a couple of days back but he’d left for Hong Kong.’

  ‘There are one or two places already on our books which might be suitable, can I give you copies?’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be back on Thursday as you know.’

  He said this to remind himself as much as her. As he waited for her to run off the copies, the expression ‘the first day of the rest of your life’ sprang into his mind. From Thursday the new dispensation would begin – the way it was going to be from now on, with short breaks for holidays, illness and so on. He and Annet would work, and Lara and her successors would look after Freya most of the time. It seemed like a heavy decision freighted with moral issues, and yet parents, either singly or together, were making it all the time. He would be here, at Border and Cheffins; Annet would be in London, forty miles away. And their daughter would be in Newton Bury with Lara who in her turn was several thousand miles from where she belonged. Try as he might he couldn’t get a satisfactory handle on it.

  After the office he went to pick up the photos he’d brought in the previous week, and sat down on a seat in the Formby Centre to look at them. When he slid the twenty or so snaps out of the folder, he found that they covered both before and after Freya. The first eight pictures were of the holiday he and Annet had taken in June. They’d rented a gîte in the Dordogne – two weeks of blissful heat and seclusion. In one of the pictures Annet was sunbathing in a deck chair, one hand resting on a tilting wine glass in the grass, her T-shirt hitched up to expose the smooth dome of her pregnancy, gleaming with Factor 15. In another, she was at a restaurant table, groomed and elegant in a black dress that showed off her ripe decolletage. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her tanned face, and she wore shining long earrings that reached almost to her shoulders. A waiter had been commandeered to take the second picture, which showed the two of them together, David smiling into the camera, Annet laughing and looking away. He knew that attitude, it wasn’t bashful, but comically despairing, probably over something he’d said. He remembered where they’d been when the photos were taken, a jolly little place down a side street, bourgeois and value-for-money rather than smart. It had been an unusual pleasure on that holiday to take Annet out to eat without watching her punish herself the next day. This was the summer she’d finally given in and relaxed. He found her fecund fatness arousing, and once she’d accepted it she did too. It had been a high summer of slow sex.

  There were a few more shots of the cottage, and the view, and one of David arriving back the morning he’d decided to walk down the hill – more of a small mountain really, to get the bread and coffee, instead of taking the car. Annet had been laughing so much the camera shook, but the out of focus picture reminded him of how ghastly he’d felt – heart hammering, face clammy, lungs heaving, the classic picture of a middle-aged man who’d overdone it. And only middle-aged, he reminded himself sternly, if he were destined to live to a hundred and two.

  The next picture was also of him – one taken in the labour ward. He was holding Freya (not that she’d been Freya then, just ‘a girl!’) and his face looked equally blotchy and distressed, though his eyes were wide, pupils dilated. His daughter was a small, scowling person wrapped in a pink blanket, her hair still sticky. He peered intently at the picture, reliving the feelings of that moment. Successive pictures showed Annet with Louise and Coral; Louise holding Freya; Annet holding Freya, flanked by Louise and Coral … He himself featured in only one of this batch, sitting alongside Annet’s pillow with his arm round her shoulders, wearing a rather wary smile. Then there were a few of Freya after they’d brought her home, lying on her mat, in her cot, in the crook of some unidentified arm. He could scarcely believe how far the three of them had travelled since then.

  Shaken, he put the photos away. He was sitting not far from where he’d seen Gina King the day he’d come to find where she went in the middle of the day … Involuntarily he scanned the faces of people at tables, on the fountain wall, milling about in shops. Though he didn’t see her he was sure she was there, and could see him. He realised that he had become used to the idea that she was never far away. Since the day she had left his office – the day they brought Freya home – she had been a presence in his life. There were times when he was not sure whether this presence was in or out of his head, but it remained real. The notes and messages, the scent he so often caught in the house, the face at the window … The face at the window? That was something he still couldn’t account for. But another thing of which he was sure – the red car which had so narrowly missed his had been Gina’s.

  As he got up and left the Centre in the direction of the car he wondered where she was watching him from at this moment. The thought made him straighten his shoulders and quicken his stride.

  Once out of the Centre there was no escaping the relatively depressed nature of the rest of the shops in town. Within a hundred yards there were two closed-down businesses, the second of these currently housing a charity shop. When at work he quite often popped in here to look at the secondhand books – it was surprising what bargains could be found amongst other people’s weedings-out or, in some cases, the contents of entire bookcases being energetically got rid of by the relatives of the deceased.

  ‘Morning!’ the pleasantly-spoken retired man on the till recognised him. ‘Haven’t seen you in here for a few weeks.’

  ‘I’ve been off work,’ said David. ‘ I have a new baby daughter.’

  ‘Well I never – congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you’ve had much time for reading, then,’ went on the man. ‘ You’re out for the count the moment your head touches the pillow, if my memory serves me.’

  ‘Pretty much,’ David agreed.

  ‘Anyway, we’ve had boxloads in recently, so you might find something …’ the bell on the door tinkled again. ‘Morning!’

  There were certainly a lot more books than usual. Some of the bric-a-brac and china which usually occupied the shelves had been moved to accommodate them. And in a pleasant change from the paperback novels which ususally predominated there were dozens of hardbacks in good condition, many of them with the dustjackets still on. They were mostly non-fiction – travel, gardening, biography and diaries; a few local interest books, with a self-published look. He spent a tranquil half hour browsing amongst the former, and selected four: the autobiography of a general with a reputation for literacy and broadmindedness; an American journalist’s treatise on ‘The Real New York’ which he thought might amuse Annet, whose favourite city it was; another slightly older book about the Dordogne, written by a painter of whom he’d never heard, who’d owned a pretty house there in the fifties; and the notoriously scurrilous diaries of
a blue-blooded cabinet minister.

  He wasn’t going to bother with the local history, upon which in his experience, the dead hand of worthiness and wordiness invariably lay, but then his eye was caught by the mention of Newton Bury on one cover, and he drew it out. Sheltered by Hills – a portrait of the village of Newton Bury by D. M. Cartwright. The dedication read: ‘To English village life, long may it thrive!’ which made him think the author might be a woman, and the date of the book’s original publication was 1970. Out of idle curiosity David turned to the central section of illustrations. All the obvious subjects were there – the church, the pub, the school (in its old, brick gabled building, now the home of a computer salesman), the rectory and even ‘the secret manor house of Stoneyhaye, seat of the Wycherley family’. But most surprising was to find his own house, with the caption ‘Bay Court, source of one of the village’s many colourful stories’.

  He added the book to his collection and took them to the till.

  ‘So you did well then,’ said the man behind the counter.

  ‘You were right, there was plenty of choice today.’

  The man wrote the prices down on a piece of paper and began adding them up, but David put down a ten-pound note. ‘ Please, don’t worry about it, they’re cheap at the price.’

  ‘Thank you, I shan’t say no, that’s most generous.’ He put the books in a crumpled carrier bag and handed them back to David. ‘Actually, it’s rather a sad story. The owner of all these was a patron of ours, absolutely first-class chap called Robert Townsend. The hospice is going to miss his energy and commitment very badly. His wife – widow – is thinking of moving I understand. She brought these in only yesterday.’

  ‘What a strange coincidence.’ David took the Newton Bury book out of the bag. ‘We live in this village. I didn’t know Townsend, but he was obviously very highly thought of.’

  ‘Very, oh yes. Good example of “ if you want something done ask a busy person”. Always had time, always went that extra mile. Lovely man.’ He held out his hand for the book. ‘ May I?’

  David gave it to him and he opened it at the flyleaf ‘There you are.’

  There were actually three names on the page, and a faded bookplate opposite which proclaimed that the book had originally been a school prize. ‘To Audrey Collins, for Essays.’ The other two had been Jane Douglas and K Smith, under which was the next in line, signed simply, in blue ink: ‘Robert Geoffrey Townsend’.

  ‘I’m pleased to have found that,’ said David. What’s more there’s a picture of our house in it.’

  ‘Good …’ The man was rummaging for something under the counter. He produced an A4 printed leaflet and opened it on top of the counter, tapping a photograph with his finger. ‘ That’s him, Townsend, at our patrons’ lunch in May. That’s Mary next to him. They were such a delightful couple.’

  David studied the photograph. Townsend was younger, or younger-looking, than he’d anticipated – a big, vital man with crisply curling hair and a broad smile. Beside him his wife appeared tiny – a well-groomed doll of a woman, standing in her husband’s shadow.

  ‘Did they have children?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, and grandchildren. He was a great family man.’

  ‘And his wife?’

  ‘Mary? I didn’t know her but she seemed charming – rather reticent and retiring, but then he was such a ball of fire, perhaps somebody had to be: they made a good team. She’s taken it very hard, as you’d expect after thirty-odd years.’

  David handed back the newsletter. ‘It’s a pretty drastic step to move house so soon.’

  ‘I thought that. Didn’t say anything of course. As a matter of fact I was shocked by her appearance. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a dreadful change in a person. He was her life, I suppose.’

  On the drive home David thought about Robert Townsend. From that hot day following the funeral, this man he’d never known had insisted, like Gina, on recognition. And yet there was some aspect of Townsend’s story that troubled him. The uncared-for plot that had so dismayed him and Maurice, and the traumatised widow described by the man in the hospice shop – there was a clear contradiction that he didn’t understand.

  It was strange, when he got home at four, to hear Freya complaining, not very seriously, upstairs. His first instinct was to go straight up to see her; his second to leave well alone. But Lara called cheerfully down to him:

  ‘Is that you, Freya’s dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re up here getting changed.’

  For a moment he entertained a disconcerting vision of Lara in her underclothes, before realising that she was using the transferred royal ‘we’ that other people, especially women, used with babies.

  He accepted the implied invitation and went up the stairs and into Freya’s room. His daughter was lying on the divan while Lara popped the trail of press studs round the inside leg of her dungarees.

  ‘Hi—’ she glanced up at him – ‘I think I walked a bit too far, she was soaking wet when we got back.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Gosh, now you’re asking, all over … I set off round the village, getting my bearings, you know? Shops, post office, pub, school, community hall … suppose I should say church, but I don’t go to church.’

  ‘I don’t, very often. But you ought to take a look. You like old buildings and it’s extremely historic’

  ‘Better give it a go next time then.’ She picked Freya up and passed her to him. ‘There you go Dad, while I straighten things out.’

  Perhaps he should have been put out by her breezy familiarity, but it was so much a part of her it seemed churlish to object. She seemed unaware that there was any other way of doing things apart from this matey and democratic one, nor as far as he could tell was there a mean bone in her body. As she bounced about the room, throwing discarded clothes in the washing basket, picking up rubbish and ‘straightening’ as promised, he saw how quickly she had colonised the space. She seemed already to inhabit it more fully and easily than either he or Annet, and he found that he didn’t resent this as he might have expected to. An entirely congenial working relationship seemed suddenly to be on the cards.

  ‘I like that picture,’ she said now, pointing at the drawing of Annet. ‘It’s Mrs Keating, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Encouraged he allowed himself the small vanity of confessing: ‘I did it as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Did you …?’ she breathed admiringly, going to study it more closely. ‘Good on you. It’s brilliant.’

  ‘She doesn’t like it.’

  ‘No well it’s like photos isn’t it? The camera never lies, that’s why we never like photos of ourselves. I think you really got her.’

  He was genuinely gratified. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Now then,’ she said, holding out her arms. ‘Shall I? It’s what you pay me for.’

  He handed Freya back. ‘You seem to be on top of everything.’

  ‘Yeah, doesn’t take me long, I get the feel of things pretty quickly.’ She walked past him and began going downstairs. ‘Do you mind if I make myself a cup of tea, and I might give this young lady a spot of juice at the same time?’

  At once David was on the alert. I’m not sure she has juice … I don’t think we’ve got any.’

  ‘You have now, I took the liberty of picking up some rosehip at the little store?’

  ‘I’m not aware,’ he said, slipping into that pompous style that seemed to take over when he was anxious, ‘that she’s ever had it.’

  ‘I expect you’re right, but no time like the present… Unless you have any objection?’

  They were in the kitchen now, and she looked directly at him, eyebrows raised, as she ran the tap.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘none at all, but maybe you should run it past my wife first.’

  ‘Sure, you got it, but I don’t think it’s a problem. When we last spoke she was all in favour of developing a routine. And now,’ she switched th
e kettle on, ‘I’m going to be really cheeky.’

  ‘Yes?’ He asked warily, and she burst into a jackassy laugh.

  ‘Your face! Don’t worry, I was only going to ask if there was somewhere where I could watch TV for half an hour while we have our drink?’

  ‘By all means – the TV’s in the drawing room.’ He made a mental note to rent a portable at the first opportunity. ‘I shall be in the study.’

  ‘That’s really kind. I’m not that addicted to the goggle box, but I love that quiz programme where they have three lives …?’

  ‘I don’t know it,’ he said.

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Daytime TV’s a girlie ghetto. No, carers’ ghetto – nannies, mums, granny-minders, love it.’

  She took a bottle out of the steriliser, added an inch or so of boiled water and shook in a few drops of pink juice. Then she made a pot of tea, and put a cosy over it – an item he vaguely remembered seeing in a kitchen drawer over the years but never before put to use. The cosy was in the form of the famous Dürer hare, he suspected Marina’s touch. At no point did Lara put Freya down, and he noticed there was no crying. Her boundless confidence was catching.

  ‘Okey-dokey,’ she said, ‘we’ll get out of your way if that’s all right.’

  When she’d gone he poured himself tea, and as he carried it across the hall to the study he could see that she was sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa – the sunburst frizz of her hair was outlined against the screen.

  In the study he took the secondhand books out of their bag to examine them more closely. He’d pretty much accepted that he wasn’t going to work for these next couple of days, it was to be an acclimatisation period, so he might as well enjoy it.

  The New York book had no inscription, so he wrote one himself: ‘To whet your appetite for a nice, grown-up, long weekend when the Little Apple of our eye can safely be left … XXX, D.’

  The painterly memoire of the Dordogne had itself been a present, but the message wasn’t what he’d expected. ‘To my darling Mary, to remind you of a magical holiday in a magical place, All my love Robert.’ So the grief-stricken widow had got rid of this, too. Had the memories been too painful? Possibly, but he found that he still didn’t care to think of the New York book, or any one of dozens of others chosen with care and given with pride and love, meeting a similar fate.