“Well!” Terry declared as he got up to kiss her. “Time has treated you well.” It was true. She had slimmed down and she had developed a style that managed to look both simple and sophisticated. Her dark hair was straight and loose around her shoulders and closer to auburn than he remembered. She wore little make-up, but with her bold eyes and clear skin she didn’t need to.
She cast him an appraising glance. “You’re looking affluent.”
“You’re a cruel woman, Rebecca.”
She laughed. “I meant just that affluent.”
“What you meant was that I’d put on weight.”
“It doesn’t matter in a man.”
“Ah, but how I wish that were true.”
She ordered a salad but refused wine. He had invited her to the Connaught because it was quiet and the tables were well spaced, and because it was she who had contacted him and he didn’t think she would have done so unless she had something to say.
To begin with, however, she made him tell her all about his business, his horses, and his life, though for her life was just another word for love life. He did his best to avoid answering that one. “Oh, you know,” he said equivocally when she pressed him.
“No, I don’t!”
There was curiosity in her persistence, but also, behind her brittle smile, a wistfulness. In the end she wore him down and he admitted, “Well, there is someone, yes. A companion.”
“Ouch! What a word companion. That says it all, Terry. God!
Companion. That’s awful. Is she married or something?”
“No.”
“Companion. You’re not in love with her then,” she accused.
Finding some sort of consolation in honesty, he said, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t know, won’t know,” Rebecca remarked cryptically. “In love with someone else?”
He laughed mildly at this. “No.”
“Hoping to be in love with someone else?”
“I’m not a dreamer, Rebecca.”
She feigned horror. “We’re all dreamers, Terry.”
But he wasn’t having it. “I’ve got most things I want, I work hard, I have a good life. And the things I can’t have I don’t think about.”
“Wish I could say the same,” she said wryly. She told him about the changes in her life, the sale of the marital home in Hampstead, the new flat she had bought off Eaton Square, the progress of her divorce, which was going smoothly, she said, only because they’d refused to fight over money. “But then neither of us need to,” she said matter-of-factly. “My father died a couple of years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t remember where the family money had come from, but he knew there was plenty of it.
“So here I am, rich and single, God help me.” She cast her eyes heavenward. “Looking for Mr. Right.”
“He’ll come along.”
She shook her head at his naivety. “Nah! I’m a difficult woman to please, Terry. I’ll never be happy with a lawyer, doctor, all-round regular guy who wants me to stay at home like a good girl. I like my own life too much. I like my own way too much,” she declared regretfully. “Used to getting what I want.”
“A bit hard on yourself.”
“Just honest.” She pushed her food around her plate. “That’s why Ben and I were so well suited.” She left this thought hanging in the air for a moment before looking up at him and giving the tiniest shrug. “We were both coming from the same place. We both wanted the same things.”
“I wouldn’t have put you and Ben in quite the same category so far as ambition went.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure, Terry. I’m fairly determined when I want to be.” She gave an ironic smile that didn’t entirely hide the self-disdain beneath. “I often think back to that weekend in Ireland, you know,” she said reminiscently. “The day at the Curragh. We were having such a good time.” She meant: before Catherine came along, before she lost Ben. “And that other weekend we had with you, when you took us to the west coast. Though I have to say I did feel a bit I suppose guilty.”
“You, Rebecca? Why?”
“I knew what Ben was up to behind the scenes.”
“Oh, did you now?” said Terry calmly. “And what was Ben up to?”
“Oh, trying it on,” she said with a chuckle. “Financing that Mick what’s-his-name to buy that hotel for a song, and then selling it straight on to you at a big profit.”
“It was still a good buy, mind.”
“But you pulled out.”
“Yes, I pulled out.”
She tilted her head, inviting explanations.
“I don’t like people being untruthful people who’re meant to be on my side, at any rate.”
“Ben was furious.”
“Was he now? And why should that be?” Terry asked facetiously, though not without the small hope, albeit remote, of gaining some insight into Ben’s character, which had long been a mystery to him.
“Oh, you’d blocked him, that’s what you’d done. And he didn’t think he’d done anything to deserve it. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong certainly. By his reckoning you’d encouraged him to set the whole thing up and then left him in the lurch. Ben’s always been very good at seeing things from his own well, individual point of view.” She shook her head indulgently. “He’s never forgiven you.”
“One of his more curious decisions. Like not marrying you.”
Having shuffled her salad to one side of the plate, Rebecca finally gave up on it. “You’re quite wrong,” she said firmly. “It would have been a disaster to marry me. He couldn’t have stomached a wife with money, you see. He needed to be the one earning, the one wearing the financial trousers. Oh, Catherine could play around with her gardens, but it wasn’t serious money, was it? No, from that point of view Catherine was perfect. Minor gentry down on their luck. Class without cash. Perfect!”
Terry had never had any pretensions to psychological insight; instinct had served him well enough over the years. He could only listen to this judgement with quiet dismay.
Rebecca said, “There’s another side to that coin, of course. A man who likes to feel in charge of his life, who’s dead set on making his own way he’s not too good when things start going wrong.”
This speech made Terry wary in a way he couldn’t quite identify.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Rebecca added. “I don’t mean he’d get difficult or nasty. No, rather that he’s the sort to fall apart. Quite a pussycat really.”
He understood suddenly; she had made it obvious in so many ways.
“You’ve seen him recently?”
She met his eyes with a spark of acknowledgement.
Terry felt his stomach tighten unpleasantly. “In what capacity? If I may ask?”
She reached into her handbag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. “I’m meant to have given up,” she murmured. “But it’s these or the weight.” Coming to the question in her own time, she said, “Shoulder to cry on.”
“I see,” he said stiffly. “And what does Ben have to cry about?”
“Plenty, actually.”
Tell me, do.”
The scorn must have been strong in his voice because she looked at him sharply and hesitated. “He’s got money troubles,” she said cautiously.
“I can’t say I’m entirely surprised.”
“Oh?”
“Always biting off more than he can chew.”
“But he’s always been successful in the past, Terry. Always done well.”
“So these troubles are exceptional?”
“Absolutely! It’s something totally unforeseen. Something desperately unfair, Terry. I wish I could tell you just how unfair. The thing is’ her dark eyes widened soulfully “I was going to ask if you might be able to manage some help ...”
“For Ben? I rather think you’ve come to the wrong place, Rebecca.”
She leant closer and said earnestly, “I know Ben hasn’t done you any favours, Terry. I know
he’s been .. . less than clever in his dealings with you. But at heart he’s not bad, he’s just thoughtless.” Reading his expression, seeing she wasn’t going to make progress on that tack, she withdrew the argument with an uplifted palm, a splay of her fingers. “Listen .. .” She dropped her voice. “Can I tell you something in absolute confidence? Will you promise not to tell anyone?”
“I’d rather not be entrusted with secrets that shouldn’t be mine to keep, Rebecca.”
She gave a small sigh of frustration, then, after what appeared to be an intense inner debate, decided to trust him anyway. “He’s been blackmailed,” she said abruptly.
Terry did not alter his expression.
“I don’t know the details, but it’s something bad. He’s completely broke. Desperate for money. I thought maybe ...” Taking a plunge, she said baldly, “I thought you might want to help him because of ... the situation. Because of Catherine. I’d lend them money myself, but my father knew me too well, I’m afraid. It’s all tied up in trusts.”
Terry sipped his wine and suppressed the urge to knock back the rest of the glass in one. “Blackmailers don’t go away. They keep coming back. He should go to the police.”
“He can’t.”
“Can’t?” he enquired carefully. “Or won’t?”
“Can’t.” She leant across and touched his arm. “But look -this is the last payment. Definitely. If he can just get through this .. .”
“But, Rebecca, there’s never a last payment.”
“Oh, but there is! The blackmailer said right at the outset that he only wanted half a million.”
“Only half a million?” Terry repeated caustically. “That is a large amount of money by anyone’s standards.”
“That was the amount that ... was in dispute. I can’t say any more.” By the sudden doubt in her face, she looked as though she had already said too much.
He folded his napkin and called for the bill. “Rebecca, I’m not the person to ask. I’m sorry.”
She attempted a thin smile. “Damn.”
“And, Rebecca?”
“Mmm?” She was hardly listening.
“Don’t do anything you will later regret.”
Her eyes flashed defensively. “Meaning?”
“Catherine needs her husband.”
“Hey,” she said with a lightness that didn’t conceal her indignation, ‘you don’t have to tell me. I know that one thousand per cent. No, you’ve got me wrong if you think I’ve got ambitions in that direction, Terry. Believe me, once bitten! I wouldn’t want Ben on a platter, not if he were free, single and on my doorstep. Besides which,” she argued more fiercely still, ‘he won’t ever leave her. He’s determined to stay. Through thick and thin.” She shook her head firmly. “No, Terry, you’ve got him wrong if you think he’d ever give up on her.”
Terry bowed to her judgement, though nothing could dislodge his impression that the lady had protested too much.
Dear Terry, Forgive me for not having replied before but I’ve received so many letters something like four hundred, many from people I’ve never met that I’m only just beginning to get to grips with them all. Catherine had started other letters the same way, which gave the words a sense of neutrality, but now she must thank him, and that required more careful thought. Eventually she wrote: Thanks for writing so regularly, and thanks for the flowers from Morne, which were an extraordinary reminder. He could read into that what he may. She went on: Concerning the garden, I can’t say that Mrs. Kent’s ideas are right or wrong, I can only say it all depends on what sort of a garden you want. Gardens do change and metamorphose. I think it’s a mistake to try to keep them exactly the same. However, from what you describe of Mrs. Kent’s ideas, it sounds as though she’s trying to create an English garden rather than an Irish one. While this might suit some places I suspect it would be wrong for Morne, where the strength of the garden has always been its relative lack of structure and the way it merges so perfectly into the surrounding countryside.
Catherine paused, feeling cold and a little faint. The infection had left her exhausted. Even now, the pen shook slightly in her hand.
I will be glad to draw up some ideas for you, if you would still like me to. The best thing would be for me to produce some outline plans from memory, then if you approve them to draw up more detailed plans. If you want to take things further, I could arrange for the preparation of the site, the building of paths and structures as appropriate, the purchase and planting of trees and plants, plus follow-up care for the first season if this is required.
My fee for outline plans would be ... She wondered how much she could get away with and put down a figure that was three times her usual charge. She did the same for the other options. If he agreed to all three options she would also get a commission on the plants, which could bring the job in at well over ten thousand. She told herself that he could afford it.
If this is acceptable I could send you some outline ideas in a couple of months when I’m back at my desk.
She finished it Yours, with thanks, and added at the bottom Perhaps you could reply to the above address in the first instance.
Rather formal. Decidedly cool. Entirely reasonable.
She folded it and stuck it in the envelope before she had the urge to redraft it.
They’d given her a side room while she recuperated, and she took the opportunity to sleep through the afternoon. She was woken by Julie.
“Visitor,” she announced.
“Who?”
“Female and young.”
“But who?”
“Foreign-sounding name. Maeve?”
When Catherine eventually got herself to the front hall, she didn’t immediately recognise the pale figure in black sitting in the waiting area. It was only as the woman stood up and stepped forward that Catherine realised with a slight shock that it was indeed Maeve.
“I hardly recognised you!” she declared.
“I’ve done a bad thing,” Maeve confessed, standing with her hands clasped, palms up, her elbows pinched in to her waist, like a supplicant. “I’ve come unannounced. And that was wrong of me.”
Catherine reached out to grip her hand. There aren’t many people I’m glad to see, but you’re one of them.”
It was a blustery day with spitting rain but after a week in a stuffy sickroom Catherine was desperate for air, so they went outside and sat in a sheltered corner of the garden, by beds of thriving weeds and wilting roses whose petals were torn aloft by the scurrying wind.
“Are you warm enough?” Catherine asked.
“Me? Oh yes. And you?” Maeve was wearing a loose black jacket over a long black skirt and a woollen scarf wrapped several times around her neck, but no amount of clothing could disguise her obvious frailty. Her face was pinched, her hands thin and bony, there was not an ounce of flesh on her.
“Your father told me you’d been ill,” Catherine said.
“Oh.” She shook her head gently, as if the subject were hardly worthy of discussion. “I’m on the mend now.”
“What was wrong?”
Maeve addressed this question hesitantly. “It began with an infection, which turned into septicaemia. I was in intensive care for a week. And then just when I was getting over that I had a bad reaction to one of the drugs and went into a form of shock. So I managed to give everyone a second fright. And since then well, it’s been slow.” She spoke solemnly and unemotionally, her eyes lowered a little, her body so still that she might have been a figure in a painting, with her pale skin, her dark eyes, her hair held back in a band. Only the loose strands at her forehead provided movement as they were pulled to and fro by the wind. “Anyway, I’m all right now,” she said.
“And what about the nursing? Are you still studying for that?” Asking this, Catherine remembered the shy chubby girl with rounded cheeks and a sweet smile in the garden at Morne, talking about her plans to study at a London teaching hospital.
“I’m switching to nursery nursing.
I’m starting at a college in Dublin soon.”
“How lovely.”
“I’ll be happier with children. It takes a special sort of dedication to care for the sick.”
“I’m sure you’ll make a fine nursery nurse.”
Maeve glanced away, and once again Catherine was struck by the changes in her, the fragility of her body and the gravity of her expression. “I’m so glad you came,” she said.
“Oh, I’ve wanted to for a long time, but it’s only now .. . I’m on a trip with Dadda, you see. We’ve just come from Paris.”
“How nice.”
“Oh, I’d rather stay at home. I’m not a one for the race meetings or the restaurants or the shopping. But it pleases him to take me, so now and again I go along.”
“Your father he’s been writing to me every week.”
“Yes ... he said.”
“I’m just in the process of replying. Will you tell him?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“It’s been hard to get round to letters.”
“I’m sure it has,” she replied in the same solemn manner.
“And the garden at Morne, tell him I’ll be accepting his offer to redesign it Catching Maeve’s look of astonishment, she paused. “You didn’t know?”
Maeve stared hastily down at her hands, frowning fiercely. “I had no idea. I can’t imagine why he should expect you to ... why he should ask such a thing.”
“I gather he has doubts about Mrs. Kent.”
Maeve was still breathing rapidly. “Yes. Mrs. Kent.”
There was a long pause in which Maeve continued to stare at her hands. Then, with an obvious effort to pick up the conversation again, she asked, “And you, Catherine? How are things with you?”
“Things? Oh, they’re as well as can be expected.”
“Will you get better?” she asked simply.
“If you mean, will I get back to how I was before, the answer’s no.” Maeve watched her with rapt attention as she explained the limitations on her mobility, the walking on smooth surfaces, the crutches and callipers. “But there we are. There are worse things. I might be quadriplegic, I might be dead. It’s all a question of how you look at it. The usual thing cup half empty, cup half full.”
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