When Lizzie had started treatment, he’d managed to visit her most Saturdays and the occasional mid-week evening. Later, he’d rented a house a mile or so away from Morne and taken short weekends. Finally, at Maeve’s instigation she said he needed a rest he’d taken a whole month’s holiday, an event unheard of before or since, though holiday was a relative term for him, six hours a day on the phone instead of sixteen, and three meetings a week instead of twenty.
At first he saw Catherine only occasionally when she flew in from England, where she was studying under some famous garden designer. He noticed in passing her freshness and exuberance, apparently undulled by four years in London, and her looks, which had settled on her well, which to his mind meant unaffectedly. If he was aware of feeling, it was the great and clear affection he felt for Lizzie. If he’d been asked to describe his heart, he would have said it was full.
In July, a week into his so-called holiday, Catherine came for a two-week stay which extended indefinitely, and they began to walk together. She was a fast walker; he, for reasons his doctor could have spelt out, less so. Eventually, however, they found a pace, and the walks became a regular fixture of the afternoons while Lizzie was sleeping, and some of the early mornings too. Catherine told him about her life in London and the people she’d met and the gardens she was working on, and he felt he was listening to two people, the single girl enjoying the big city, and the working woman who viewed the world with more detachment. On some of their more adventurous expeditions, they began to talk of all the other things that two people discuss on long walks: wars and governments and the nature of progress; ambition and friendship and love. She was an optimist, he a realist; she was what she liked to term a benevolent atheist, he a more-or-less practising Catholic; and so, coming from opposing philosophies, they agreed on many things.
At other times, he teased her as he’d teased her when she was a child, and she rose enthusiastically to the well-remembered challenge, answering as she used to answer, with nonsense and wild exaggeration. Then, towards the end of each walk they would quietly revert to the subject that generally began and ended their outings, the matter of Lizzie’s wellbeing and how to improve it. If their relationship felt comfortable he told himself it was because it had both boundaries and purpose; if he felt an affinity for her, it sprang from the ties of familiarity and time, and their mutual determination to support Lizzie through the weeks of her treatment.
Which moment changed everything? Which of them had got it wrong? Apparently it was him, though for the life of him he still couldn’t work out how. He’d deconstructed and re-examined the succession of events time and again, but still couldn’t see how he’d misread the situation quite so thoroughly.
The first moment that stuck in his mind came on an early morning walk over the black hill to the north of Morne. They’d left Lizzie looking better than for some days, and Catherine was in a buoyant mood. They were talking about holidays and going abroad, and the relative merits of Paris and Rome, which they’d both visited, when Catherine paused abruptly and for no apparent reason turned to him and declared, straight-faced, “I’ve been thinking most women would do far better to go for older men, you know.”
This was a way of hers, to throw a provocative statement into the air and see how it would fall.
“And why is that?” he asked mildly.
“Because then they wouldn’t run out of things to talk about on holiday.”
“Is that a danger with younger men?”
She gave a theatrical sigh, all breath and affectation. “God, yes! The only thing they can talk about is sport. Oh, and bad jokes why do they love bad jokes?”
“Don’t be too hard on them.”
She walked on, pretending exasperation. “No, they’re worse than useless. Older men would suit us all much better. They’ve been to places, done things. They know what they want, they’re much more relaxed with women.”
“Older men would certainly warm to an idea like that with no trouble at all. But how much older are we talking about here?”
She hadn’t thought about this of course. Shrugging, she lobbed a figure up at random. “Ten years? Fifteen?”
“Careful, at that rate you might consign a bright young thing to a decrepit old man like me.”
“Terry!” She touched his arm and grinned at him. “You’re not old! How old are you?”
“I need notice of that question.” He pretended to work it out. “If Buddy Holly died in fifty-nine, then .. . I’m thirty-six.”
“Just a child.” She walked on for a while before stopping just as abruptly. “Will you marry again?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” He wasn’t quite ready for that question. “Who can say?”
“Of course you will! You’d be a catch.”
He snorted, “I think that’s very much a matter of opinion.”
“Well, I think you’d be a catch.”
“Just goes to show your ideas about men are fatally misguided. Who’d want a workaholic heading for a heart attack?”
“Sounds perfect to me.” Then she’d leant across and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Seriously, I’m beginning to see you in an entirely new light. Careful!”
She was joking of course, it was a moment of light flirtation, gone in a trice, though not so light that it didn’t add a small fris son to their next conversation, a fris son that might nevertheless have remained entirely harmless if a short while later, in an incident emblazoned just as strongly on his memory, she hadn’t looped her arm through his and said, “I love it here, Terry. Ireland will always be my home. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel really comfortable in England.”
“Come back, then. Money galore in Ireland now there must be plenty of people who want their gardens uprooted.”
“Oh, it’s not the work there’d be plenty of work it’s the life here. Or rather, it’s the social life.” She chuckled, “By which I suppose I mean the men! Or rather, the lack of them. Too many good Catholic boys, Terry.”
“Religion’s never stopped a man yet.”
She pulled a face of doubt. “It’s Madonnas or whores here.”
“You mean there’s something in between?”
“Ha, ha.”
“So if there was the right man, you’d stay.”
The laughter left her face, she considered this seriously. “Yes,” she declared at last, as though the realisation had surprised her. “Yes, do you know, I think I would.” Then, in a lightning switch, she cast him a mischievous look and said, “I’d stay for someone like you.” He thought she was joking again, she was certainly laughing as she said it, but then she muddied the waters all over again by pushing herself up on her toes and kissing him full on the lips, a kiss that was not so brief that it could be judged an assertion of friendship, yet not quite so long that it constituted a firm declaration of interest either. He was tantalised and baffled in equal measure until he reminded himself that it was a strange intense time for them all, that under the strain of worrying and caring for her mother it was natural for Catherine to look for light relief in games of love and desire. He told himself this, but deep down the idea of loving her was just there, waiting to leap heartlessly to the surface.
She phoned with the dinner invitation the next day. Looking back now, he could see that this was the point at which perspective and judgement began to desert him. At the time, though, it was easy to convince himself that the invitation was Catherine’s idea, that as the one person who had Duncan’s ear she’d persuaded her father that the time had finally come to treat Terry as one of the family. He saw it as a sign of her growing affection for him.
From this distance, the extent of his self-delusion cut him sharply. And when he really wanted to give himself a hard time, he let himself believe that the real reason for the summons had nothing to do with friendship or acceptance, and everything to do with Duncan’s need for money, and that this had been as plain as the nose on his face, if only he’d chosen to see.
Dur
ing the summer Duncan had been away a lot on business, which, as Terry well knew, meant buying mediocre wine expensively in France and wondering why he was then unable to shift it at a profit in Dublin. On the few occasions the two men had bumped into each other at Morne, Duncan had looked at Terry with his customary vague smile, delivered the equivocal greeting at which he was so adept, the muttered, “Oh .. . Terry, I didn’t know you were here’, and, wearing a vacant expression, departed for another end of the house. So when, after twenty-odd years in which dinner invitations had been conspicuous by their absence, Terry suddenly found himself on Lizzie’s right, very much the honoured guest, he took it as a sea change. The fatted calf was on the table, the silver was out, a half-decent claret filled his glass. Duncan was at his most gracious and urbane, the complete host, the practised raconteur, the all-round bon vivant. Lizzie, with echoes of her old self, sparkled with pleasure at having so many of her loved ones at the same table and stayed up until almost ten, which was late for her. Catherine was quieter than usual, distracted or thoughtful, though Terry in his half-unhinged state managed to translate this into a beguiling serenity. At a quarter past ten Catherine announced she was going upstairs to make sure Lizzie was all right. He had no doubt this was precisely what she had done, yet when he raked over this part of the evening later he couldn’t help wondering if it was entirely by chance that he was left alone with Duncan.
Not that he was in the least surprised when Duncan brought up the subject of money; over the previous six or seven years it had become something of an annual event for Duncan to be in need of ‘the odd loan’. Terry braced himself, however, because on the last occasion, just eight months before, Duncan had asked for quite a bit more than before. In the early years it had been two or three thousand, but suddenly it had jumped to twelve, and Terry hadn’t yet been rich enough for long enough that every penny wasn’t still precious to him. He’d had to remind himself that this was a duty, like giving to his own family, and that normal considerations didn’t apply. There were always going to be certain people in your life, related by blood or circumstance, who only had to look at money for it to vanish. His brother was one, his uncle another. Giving to them was a matter of obligation, you didn’t quibble, you wrote it off and never dwelt on it again.
“And what can you offer by way of security?” he’d asked Duncan on the occasion of the twelve thousand because they always went through the pretence of putting the loans on a business footing.
“I thought, the sporting rights for a couple of years?”
Since the oak wood had long since been cut down and the wood pigeon departed there was no question of snipe Terry had supposed he was talking about the fishing, though by the time the local poachers had finished with the brown trout that didn’t add up to more than a couple of minnows. But he’d accepted because honour, however transparent, had to be satisfied.
This time, Duncan began in his customary way, with some bleak observations about the business climate, before announcing that he was experiencing a few ‘on-going difficulties’, which were forcing him to reconsider his entire position, lock, stock and barrel. Not to beat about the bush, would Terry be interested in a business proposition? This, of course, was beating around every “bush in sight, but Terry managed to hold his tongue while Duncan meandered back and forth, skirting the issue with a skill that would have done credit to a Cold War diplomat, before coming in at an oblique angle, with what might or might not have been a firm clue as to what he was after.
“So ... I was thinking of going for a total restructuring,” he said.
“Your business finances, this is?”
Duncan made the gesture of a negotiator who didn’t care to be drawn too soon, a hand twisted one way then the other. “Well.. . could be a bit of both.”
“How much did you have in mind?”
Duncan gave a deprecating chuckle, as if the idea of stating anything so bald as the precise sum he had in mind would be far too crass at this stage in the proceedings. “Well.. .” He had the lazy insipid smile of a man who’d learnt at an early stage that an easy manner and ready charm could get you a surprisingly long way in life.
Without warning, Terry reached some limit of his patience. Leaning an elbow on the table, unfolding a hand towards Duncan, he demanded firmly, “Now, what are we talking here, Duncan? Cash? A lot of cash? Because if we are, I think we might have a difficulty. You see, I’m not interested in the wine business. I’ve no wish to buy into it, I’ve no wish to have a stake in it. And I don’t believe there’s anything else we can usefully discuss in terms of a deal. There’s really nothing I want to buy. So you see ... there’s a difficulty, Duncan.”
Duncan made a show of taking this in good part, because according to the dictates of his simple philosophy one kept smiling through thick and thin. He reminded Terry of a dog that keeps trying to please, even when it’s down. “Of course, of course. I wouldn’t expect you to be interested in anything you didn’t want. Lord, no!”
Terry raised an eyebrow, awaiting enlightenment.
“No, no .. .” insisted Duncan. “I was thinking you might be interested in Morne.”
There was a pause that for Terry was nothing less than electric.
“Obviously, not immediately .. . with things as they are .. .” Duncan struck the brave sorrowful note of the loving husband who can only wait and hope. “When Lizzie’s better.” This was delivered in hushed tones.
“You mean .. .” And Terry could hardly say it. “You want to sell Morne?”
“Sadly, it’s the only sensible option. Business conditions are too difficult here. Far better in England. People actually appreciate wine there.”
Terry was groping for understanding. “But you don’t want to sell quite yet?”
“I was thinking of delayed completion.”
Which meant the money now, and the house handed over at his convenience.
“But, forgive me isn’t the house going to be Catherine’s and Alice’s? For some reason I had the idea that Lizzie was going to pass it on to the girls.”
Behind the bland eyes there was a shadow of annoyance. “No, no never the intention. Lizzie and I were always going to sell in the fullness of time. Go and live abroad. No, no it’s been settled for ages.”
“I see,” Terry murmured, though he didn’t see at all. In twenty years of conversations with Lizzie he’d never heard the slightest suggestion of living abroad; quite the opposite. “And you’re sure this is the only option?”
Duncan went through the charade of considering this. “I think it’s the most realistic.”
Which meant, thought Terry, his debts have got completely out of hand.
“And ... if I were unable to buy?”
“Oh, then I’d put it on the open market. Lots of Germans buying around here. Plenty of interest. No, I just thought with your ties to the area it might just suit you. A place to keep for your retirement, perhaps.” He spun a hand, plucking possibilities out of the air. “A holiday home. A long-term investment.”
And still Terry couldn’t quite take it in. “So ... one way or another, you’re determined to sell?”
A gentle sigh. “Sadly.”
“But you’d prefer to stay a while ‘
“Until Lizzie’s better.”
“Until she’s better.” Terry felt the need to spell everything out in great detail. “Which of course you couldn’t do if you were to sell to a German?”
Duncan tilted his elegant head while he pondered this for a while, as though the thought hadn’t quite occurred to him in this form before. “That’s right,” he agreed with a solemn nod. “It would be disruptive.”
Terry thought: So here we have it, this is the deal. He was to buy time for Lizzie, he was to provide for her happiness by letting her stay in the house that she loved for as long as she lived. He was to pay for this privilege, undoubtedly through the nose, and be content to wait for possession until such time as Duncan decided to move out.
It wa
s the solution of Solomon, and Terry could only bow to Duncan’s masterly reading of his character. At the same time he was pursued by a deep unease. “What about Catherine and Alice?” he asked. “How do they feel? Not to mention Lizzie.”
“Oh, they’re not to know. Mustn’t know,” Duncan cried with a pale laugh. “It would upset them dreadfully. Not a good time to think of change, you know.”
“But.. . the girls do realise they’re not to get the house.”
“They’ve known it for a long time. There’s never been any question.”
“Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be best to mention this business to them?”
“Best? I think not, Terry. Not for them, not for me. Not for any of us.”
“If you say so,” he agreed reluctantly. “A private arrangement, then.”
Duncan was thrilled that Terry should finally grasp the essence of the scheme. He tapped his arm. “That’s it!”
“But Lizzie will have to sign the contract. She’ll have to see it.”
“No, no she won’t need to be bothered with the contents, she won’t need to be told what it’s about,” said Duncan in the certain tone of a man who knows what’s best for his wife, and again Terry’s stomach tightened unhappily. Later, he assuaged his unease with the reminder that Duncan would have sold the house anyway, and doing it this way Lizzie would at least remain in ignorance of it.
Thereafter, the details were, in a sense, academic. It was a question of establishing how much Duncan needed immediately, on signature of contract, a sum that probably equated to his current debts and then some, and how much he wanted when the deeds were handed over, an indicator of how much he thought he’d need in the next year. Thereafter Terry offered yearly instalments, or a lump sum on vacant possession, or a combination of both up to the sum agreed. For form’s sake he beat Duncan down on the total price, but by the time he shook on the deal he reckoned it was costing him sixty to seventy per cent more than Morne was worth at the fanciest possible market price.
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