by Ann Swinfen
I suppose, she thought, Gregor is like another brother to Mum. They must have known each other since she was four and he was about seven. He's a pretty good uncle too. Safe. A bit more reliable than Hugh, who could be anywhere now, and I do think he might have come back for Natasha's party.
'Oh, dear,' said Frances, as Anya got out of the train. 'She's alone.'
* * *
Katya pedalled round by Glebe Lane on her way back to St Martins. She was riding Mabel's bike – a sturdy, old-fashioned upright, with sensible baskets for shopping. She reckoned that Mr Lacey would just about be leaving the vicarage, and she could walk up with him. Beyond the squat Norman church with its soaring late mediaeval steeple, the vicarage sat in the middle of its garden like a prim spinster aunt amongst a crowd of unruly children.
The vicarage garden was to Richard Lacey what specimen cabinets for birds' eggs or fossils or skewered butterflies had been to his clerical predecessors. Richard's collection, however, was on a grand scale. He collected steam railway rolling stock. Not 00 gauge, or even the child-sized versions that are sometimes to be found as amusements in the grounds of stately homes. Richard's trains were the real thing.
It had started nearly thirty years ago, before he had come to his present parish. After Beeching's cuts to the railways, he had discovered from one of his parishioners in Derby, where he was then incumbent of his first parish, that a particularly fine specimen of a 1920s narrow-gauge steam engine was being sold off for scrap metal. The parishioner (himself a scrap metal dealer) had agreed to buy it for Richard and deliver it to his house. The arrival of a steam locomotive on a trailer behind a huge lorry in a narrow street of terraced houses had caused some consternation, not only to the neighbours, but to his wife. Regretfully, he had had to ask the dealer to store the engine in his yard, where he visited it three times a week, painstakingly restoring and polishing.
This state of affairs could not be allowed to continue, particularly after he had also managed to obtain two carriages, one in the beautiful old GWR livery, and one that had regularly been used on the Flying Scotsman run. Richard began to look about for a rural parish, where the vicarage had a large garden.
When he had been offered his present parish twenty years ago, he had mentioned his hobby diffidently, but the Bishop (eighty-seven, and hard of hearing) had said, 'Splendid, splendid, my boy. Always been fond of steam trains myself.'
Muriel Lacey installed her furniture in the new vicarage and painted the dark brown walls of the lovely Georgian house in soft shades that brought it back to life again. The Laceys had no children yet, but she was still optimistic. Clunwardine Priors would be a delightful place for them to grow up. Twenty years later, there were still no children, but there were four more engines and seven more carriages dotted about the vicarage garden and orchard. There was also an engine from a Welsh colliery line, and a very early and valuable Victorian goods wagon. The room Muriel had set aside as a playroom for the children was spilling over with carriage lamps and station signs, huge metal advertising plaques for Oxo and Lipton's Tea, and two dozen leather money pouches for ticket collectors (1930s vintage).
Making the best of what God had seen fit to offer her, Muriel catalogued and arranged, and finally opened a museum of Richard's collection. It was she who wrote articles for railway journals and gave occasional lectures for the WI or local history clubs. Richard still liked best to exchange his dog-collar for a boiler suit and tinker with his engines until they were as glorious as the day they had first rolled out on the track.
'Good morning, Katya,' said Richard. He was standing just inside the vicarage gate, his hand thoughtfully stroking the rounded side of his favourite engine. He looked as though he might be planning to spend the morning there.
'Morning, Mr Lacey. Are you coming up to St Martins now?'
Richard stared at her blankly for a moment, then laughed at himself. 'Of course, of course. I was just on my way up. I want to check that everything is ready for the service at half-past eleven. Muriel can't come till the party proper, as soon after twelve as she can manage. She thought she'd better keep the museum open this morning, as she's planning to shut it this afternoon.'
They started up Glebe Lane together, Katya wheeling Mabel's bike.
'Down for long, are you, Katya?'
'Just the weekend,' said Katya sadly. 'School on Monday.'
'Of course, of course. It's beginning to look so sunshiny, I was thinking it must be the summer holidays. Are you coming down then?'
'Absolutely.'
'Mum and Dad both here?'
'Only Mum. Dad may come down this afternoon, after his rehearsal.'
'Ah yes, Vet in Hot Water. Muriel loves it. I've only seen it once or twice. It's the same night as my parochial church council meetings.'
'I think it's stupid. It's gross,' said Katya savagely. 'How would you like it if you had to go to school with people who have been laughing themselves sick at your father dropping his trousers and rolling in farmyard muck all over their television sets?'
* * *
The rehearsal was not going well. Penny, who had replaced the clever little Judy as Giles's assistant vet, was a lumpish girl who tried to play for coarse laughs. They had just had the statutory farmyard tumble, and she had tried to put in a bit of suggestive business of her own. Giles had complained, the director/producer had backed him up, saying that this was a family show, and Penny had sulked. When she was supposed to be helping him out of the pig trough (represented by an empty props basket) she had deliberately twisted his arm so that he fell painfully sideways and wrenched his back.
Giles lay on the floor, gasping a little with the pain.
'It's your own fault, you tub of lard,' Penny had hissed at him, so no one else could hear. 'If you'd lose some of that blubber round your middle, you wouldn't have accidents like that.'
Giles was so appalled, he could think of nothing to say.
'Take ten, darlings,' said the director. He walked over and looked down at Giles. 'You all right?'
Giles got painfully to his feet, and tried to flex his back. 'I'm OK,' he said shortly, though he was not. He couldn't risk crocking his back. 'Just a bit winded. Let's push on and do the farmhouse interior. Remember I've got to get away early today.'
'OK. By the way, there was a message for you.' The director freed it from his clipboard. 'Will you ring Nigel Laker when you have a minute.'
'Right,' said Giles, pleased. 'I'll go and do that now.' There was just a chance that Nigel might have something for him. He was putting together a new series, and had promised to keep Giles in mind.
Down the phone Nigel's voice was cheerful. 'I've got the go-ahead. I'd like to talk it over with you a.s.a.p. This afternoon.'
'Can't.' Giles's heart sank. You had to move in quickly with Nigel or his interest would shift to someone else. 'I've got to go down to this tremendous do in Herefordshire, my wife's old home. Fiftieth anniversary of the St Martins community.'
'Hey, I read about that anniversary party in one of the Sunday supplements. I was already interested in St Martins. Sounds quite a place.' Nigel's voice quickened with enthusiasm.
Hope jumped up in Giles's chest. 'Tell you what, Nigel. Have you got your car? How would you like to come down with me? We can talk on the way, and I can introduce you to the people there. All the former members are coming back – quite a few famous names.' He held his breath. Nigel was a notorious cultivator of famous names. This way Giles could avoid the train journey and weigh the scales a little in his favour while Nigel was still at the planning stage.
'Great. What time do you finish? I'll come and pick you up.'
'In an hour,' said Giles with determination. 'We'll have a pub lunch on the way down. If I phone St Martins now, I can fix you up with a room for the night.'
He was humming as he put the phone down.
* * *
On the way back to St Martins from Hereford station, Anya insisted that Gregor should sit in front. 'For your great
long legs!' she laughed. She was resolutely cheerful. She perched in the middle behind them, ignoring the seat-belt and leaning forward with her elbows on the backs of their seats.
As the two women talked, Gregor allowed his mind to drift, and thought of all the people homing in on St Martins – now, and over the past half-century. He saw them, layer upon layer of time together, like migrating birds returning by instinct to the place where they belonged.
His own instinct had brought him back at the beginning of the eighties, after more than twenty years of temporary resting places in France, in Italy, in Sydney, in California. He had travelled light – one large suitcase and the bag carefully fitted out for his tools. Sometimes he stayed only weeks, sometimes months or years. He had been in California for five years, working and teaching. But wherever he lived – in rooms or motels, or the small flat overlooking Sydney harbour – he never unpacked his suitcase. He kept his clothes stored in it and could, at any moment, add his toothbrush and shaving kit, and leave.
At the end of the fifth year in California, when he received the letter renewing his teaching contract with UCLA, he took a bus out to a deserted part of the coastline he particularly liked, and went for a long walk. As a result of that walk, he sent a courteous reply to the letter, saying that he was returning to England but would be happy to come back and teach at the occasional summer school in future years. The next morning, ignoring the expense, he telephoned Natasha.
'Of course you can come home,' she said, not sounding in the least surprised. 'When you get here we will put our heads together. You must have a better studio, now that you are a so-famous international sculptor.'
Gregor snorted, and began to protest.
Natasha silenced him. 'I have an idea about the stables. We will talk.'
Gregor's instinct had been right. His experience of the world had been enriching in artistic terms, but now he needed time to rest, to assimilate, to come to terms with himself. He was past forty. He wanted to plan the rest of his working life, and he needed a place where his personal life was calm and stable, free from the clamour of society hostesses and nubile students. Apart from the occasional foray to open an exhibition, he became something of a recluse.
St Martins, he thought to himself, is a nourishment of the spirit. I cannot put my finger on it, but there is something about the place – not so much the physical place as the atmosphere – that provides sustenance. The experiment Natasha and Edmund set out on all those years ago has certainly borne fruit. He thought of the broken refugees like himself, after World War II, who had been made whole, and moved on, or stayed like Birgit and Peter. Of the musically gifted boy who had run away from abusive parents in the fifties and somehow found his way to St Martins. He was now the resident conductor of a famous German orchestra. Sally had come at the age of seven with her unmarried painter mother, played with Nicholas as a child, and later married him. There was the Romanian violinist. She had left just last summer, and her letters to them bubbled over with the excitement of her burgeoning career. Natasha could today look back on fifty years of great achievement.
Natasha. She was very frail now, and left the running of the domestic side to Mabel, although she still chaired the monthly committee meetings with the same decisiveness as before. Everyone still came to her for reassurance and advice. But reality must be faced. She could not carry on much longer. Gregor glanced sideways at Frances. Does she worry about her grandmother? he thought. Does she care about what will happen to St Martins when Natasha is gone? Is she really so bound up in the career of that husband of hers?
'Look!' cried Anya, waving frantically. 'There's Tony and Katya! Has there been a mix-up? Are they on the way to meet me?'
'No, Tony's new girlfriend, Alice. She's arriving at ten forty.'
Frances gave a toot on her horn as the two cars passed, starting a fit of barking from a gypsy dog at the encampment in the lay-by.
Chapter 4
Alice Tyler, in close-fitting white trousers and red blouse, with a white jacket slung over one shoulder and her hair tied back with a red silk scarf, paced up and down outside Hereford station. She had left a message the previous morning with Tony's flat-mate about the change in her train time, and he had promised faithfully to pass it on. Obviously he hadn't done so. She had already been waiting fifteen minutes, and was becoming irritated. Those two still behave like students, she thought impatiently. They are so incompetent.
Like Tony, Alice was an artist, but she worked in acrylics, not watercolour. She painted huge abstract canvases that appealed to forward-looking district councils and companies making take-over bids. Currently, she was artist-in-residence at a northern college newly elevated to university status, where she taught her students with vigour and severity. She painted almost entirely on commission, except when preparing work for a major exhibition, where her growing reputation would ensure that a quarter of the paintings would be sold at the private view, before the exhibition opened.
A car rounded the corner from the supermarket, but it was not Tony's. A good-looking, dark-haired man a little older than she got out and leaned over to thank the people inside before lifting out a small suitcase and closing the door. The car drove off, as the man gave a final wave. He did not, however, go into the station with his case, but looked about him, then crossed to a sign saying 'Taxis'. There were no taxis waiting.
After a few minutes, he said politely to Alice, 'Excuse me, but do you know if there is a bus I can catch to a place called St Martins?' He had a slight foreign accent she could not identify.
'St Martins?' Alice was immediately interested. 'That's where I'm going, though my lift hasn't turned up yet. You are –?'
'Spiro Ionides. I was coming with Anya Kilworth, but I missed the train in Oxford. Fortunately I was given a lift by those kind people.' He nodded his head towards the direction in which the car had gone.
Alice held out her hand to him. 'Alice Tyler. Tony Kilworth is supposed to be meeting me.'
'Ah yes,' Spiro shook her hand, bowing slightly over it. 'Of course I have heard of you. I saw your exhibition last summer, just after I arrived in England.'
'You must be Anya's Greek.'
He coloured slightly, and Alice remembered that Greek men were reputed to be macho and possessive, but was merely amused that her own outspokenness should have disconcerted him.
'Don't worry about a taxi. I'm sure there will be room for you in Tony's car, if he ever. . .ah, this looks like it.'
Tony's car – a classic Triumph 2.5 that he had spent much time restoring when he should have been painting – swept up to the front of the station with a flourish.
'Hello, darling,' said Tony, kissing Alice, who did not return the kiss. 'Hope you haven't been waiting long.'
'Twenty-five minutes,' she said sternly. 'This is Spiro Ionides, who also needs to get to St Martins. Have you room?'
'How do you do,' said Tony. 'Hop in, there's just my kid sister.' He opened the passenger door. 'Katya, nip in the back and let Alice sit in the front.'
Katya regarded Anya's Greek with interest as he took the seat beside her. 'I thought you were coming with Anya,' she said.
Spiro gave her an attractive smile as Tony headed out of Hereford on the road back to St Martins.
'I am afraid I missed the train in Oxford. It was stupid of me, and Anya will be very cross.'
'Yes, she will be. But she's only just arrived. We passed her on our way in to Hereford. Mum picked her up at the station. How did you manage to get here, if you missed the train?'
'Hitch-hiked.'
Katya's eyes widened. Spiro was dressed in a pale grey Italian suit, an immaculately laundered white shirt, and a dark blue silk tie with matching handkerchief protruding just the right distance from his breast pocket. He did not look like a hitch-hiker, and her respect grew visibly. He wasn't at all what she had imagined – quite different from Anya's usual men, who dressed in baggy trousers worn at the knee and old sports jackets or hand-knitted jumpers. Th
at such a man as this Spiro should resort to hitch-hiking in such a matter-of-fact way impressed her. She turned her attention briefly to Alice, who looked pretty fab, in a way Katya yearned to look, but dared not. Alice seemed to be having a restrained squabble with Tony in the front.
'I wouldn't mind if I hadn't specifically asked Bill to tell you, and he promised he would. I had to go to Birmingham yesterday to see a client, and I came on from there.'
'I'm sorry, really.' Tony seemed less than his usual suave self. 'No harm done, though – we wouldn't have bumped into Spiro if I'd been on time.'
'Are you a musician?' Katya asked Spiro. 'Or a painter?'
'No, I am an economist.'
Katya made a face.
'I am also,' Spiro grinned at her, 'a very good cook.'
* * *
After delivering Gregor and Anya to the front of St Martins and parking her car in the stableyard again, Frances put her head round the back door to see whether she was needed in the kitchen.
'Everything is under control, Frances,' said Olga. 'Go away and be quiet for a little. You have been up longer than any of us this morning. It's more than an hour till the service. Coffee in the drawing room beforehand, for anyone who wants some.'
Frances went out of the stableyard, along the path and past the chapel, pausing to pat her favourite gargoyle, who leaned out from the corner of the roof, just above head level. He continued to stick his tongue out at her. She returned the compliment, affectionately.
Harry, William's golden labrador gazed up to her from the flower border beyond the chapel, where he was lying disconsolately curled up, with a look of resignation in his eyes.
'Coming for a walk, then, Harry?' called Frances, and he burst out from under the lavender bush, sending a glittering shower of last night's raindrops in an arc over his head. He couldn't believe his luck.
'Poor old fellow,' said Frances, as he planted his muddy feet on her chest and blew lovingly into her face. 'I'm afraid Dad's not going to be able to take you for a walk for a long while yet, if ever. And I don't suppose anyone else remembers, or has time. Shall we walk up to the big meadow, then?'