by Ann Swinfen
She sighed. 'When Giles came along, he seemed so strange and glamorous. I realise now, of course, that Gregor is much more of a mystery than your father will ever be. With Giles, everything is on the surface, even if the surface can be adapted to the needs of the passing moment. Gregor has depths and hidden places I haven't explored even now, after all these years.' She thought of Gregor's new sculpture, the Venus Rampant, that he had shown her that morning, then she caught herself up. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't speak to you about your father like this.'
'It doesn't matter. I think I understand Dad pretty well. I've always wondered –' Anya looked embarrassed.
'What?'
'Well, what you saw in him. I realised a long time ago that you were the much more complex character. I've never been able to figure it out, your relationship.'
Frances shook herself. 'What we were really meant to be talking about was your relationship with Spiro. And what I think I was trying to say, in my confused way, was that you shouldn't let yourself be distracted by the surfaces. It isn't whether Spiro opens a restaurant in Wales or goes back to his university job in Greece that is important. It is what you feel about each other at a much deeper level that matters. And that is quite separate from your career. Of course eventually they affect each other, but the issues are different. You have to try to disentangle them in your mind. Think about what you want to do about your career. And think about your feelings for Spiro. Then try to see if they can be fitted together, if that is what you want. What it comes down to, in the end, is what really matters to you in your life. Where do you want to be in ten years' time? Perhaps you and Spiro both need more time to think, anyway. Don't rush into marriage with him, if you aren't sure. Let him open his restaurant. See how you feel about it then. Try to sort out your career – to stay on in Oxford doing what you are doing at present, or to try something different. Perhaps you need to get away from Oxford. It seems to be having a bad effect on you lately. Make a fresh start.'
She put her hand on Anya's. 'The one thing I am sure of, darling, is that you need to do something positive. You can't stand still and agonise any longer. You need to take charge of your life.'
* * *
Across the lawn Gregor was waylaid by Muriel Lacey, whose voice lapped round him warm as bathwater, and about as meaningful. But he was watching Frances and Anya talking. He did not listen to Muriel, straining instead to hear what Frances was saying to her daughter, although the whole lawn and most of the guests were between them. Suddenly she looked up and their eyes met. He looked away.
* * *
Frances and Gregor had gone out for the day in the MG, with a picnic. Usually Hugh was with them; the three of them had always gone about together since they were children. Frances could barely remember now – and only as something dreamlike and unreal, like someone else's story – the time when it was only Hugh and herself, and then the shameful time when they had excluded Gregor. It was a wicked thing they did to him, the shy dark boy with the terrified eyes, who could not speak. Sometimes they heard him whisper a few sounds to his mother, but they thought it was nonsense, gobbledygook. So when they got him to themselves, in a corner of the garden or fields remote from prying grown-ups, they would dance about him shouting: 'Yashee goshtocksee yiddle diddle booshda.'
He never said a word to them, but stood silently shivering, with his arms crossed over his head, as if to ward off blows. They never touched him, and he never cried. This must have gone on for weeks, and then suddenly they tired of it, and simply ignored him. He would follow them around, and gradually he began to speak, and he spoke in English. 'Water,' he would say, pointing at the Ludbrook. 'Dog' – old Ranger, great-grandfather of Harry. 'Bread. Sky. Table. Shoes.' The words came faster and faster, and for Frances it became a game.
'What is it?' she would demand, pointing with her plump childish finger.
'Chair. Grass,' Gregor would reply with mounting excitement, as the barriers around him began to fall. 'Wood. Cup. Book. Paint. Stone. Frances. Hugh. Gregor.'
After that, it was always the three of them together, larking about down Glebe Lane, past the vicarage and church on the way to and from the village school. Climbing trees in the woods. Scratching their arms and legs into bloody tattoos as they gathered blackberries in the farm lanes. (Gregor always came home with most – he had the longest reach, the most staying power, and the greatest self-control about eating them.) Taking long cycle rides around the Herefordshire lanes and over the Welsh border to Hay-on-Wye and Clyro or (labouring and panting) up Hay Bluff.
Sometimes they went off for a week or more on cycling holidays, staying at the primitive little Welsh youth hostels with their smelly outdoor privies that made even St Martins' old-fashioned plumbing seem luxurious.
It had been a long, contented childhood, that seemed to stretch back and back unchanged in Frances's mind to that dimly remembered time when she and Hugh first arrived at St Martins. But slowly, insidiously, things had begun to change. First, two years ago, Gregor had gone away to art college. Because of his disordered schooling he was only a year ahead of Hugh. They missed him, she and Hugh, but they were busy themselves, travelling by bus every day into Hereford. Hugh, in his last year at school, was working for his Oxbridge entrance and his A Levels – she, in the Lower Sixth, about to do the same the following year. Gregor would turn up at least once a month from London, having hitch-hiked to St Martins. But the three of them were slipping apart, pursuing their enlarging lives. Then last year Hugh had gone off to Cambridge, and Frances, the only one of them left at home, had studied furiously.
This summer, the summer of 1957, they were all at home, and Frances had the MG – of which the two boys were understandably envious. Several times a week the three of them would pile into it and venture out into a widening circle from St Martins, further than they had ever attempted by bicycle. They would take a picnic, and eat it on the bank of a river or on top of a hill, or else stop at a pub for a drink and a pie (greatly daring, for Frances was still under age).
On this day, this particular August day, drowsy with heat, buzzing with bees and heavy with the scent of ripening fields, Hugh had gone off on the train to Gloucester to meet a friend from Cambridge, so Frances and Gregor had packed a picnic as usual and driven off in the car alone.
They drove with the top folded down and Frances's dark hair beat like a brown flag in the wind. Gregor's tight black curls vibrated and pulsed with the air and the speed of the car, which Frances sent flying round the loops of the road and up the rising ground into the Cotswolds beyond Cirencester. Gregor had been finding it more and more difficult, going out with Frances and Hugh these last weeks since they had all come home for the summer vacation. Everything was changing. He had finished his basic course at college, though he planned to go back for some additional optional courses. He wanted to start working seriously, saying the things he needed to say in stone and clay and bronze, but he was uncertain whether he had mastered enough of the techniques. Nothing that he had shaped into solid form had yet managed to capture what he could see and feel inside his head. And Hugh was growing away from them. His aspirations had widened at Cambridge. Gregor sensed that soon Hugh would be off for good, leaving Frances and him behind.
And Frances. He was afraid of her going away to Oxford at the end of this summer. And he was afraid to be alone with her in the car like this.
When the three of them travelled in the car, Gregor had always, naturally, taken the back seat. He was, after all, the third member of the trio, the outsider. And sitting in the back he escaped the potent nearness of Frances beside him. Though if he leaned forward her hair whipped in his face and he could open his lips and catch a strand of it between them, crunching it lightly between his teeth. It tasted of soap and the heat of the summer sun.
Now, however, he was sitting in front beside her, and the roll of the car round the bends pressed their thighs together. It was almost more than Gregor could bear. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he did
not dare. He did not even venture to lay his arm lightly along the back of the seat as he would once have done, when the gesture would have been wholly casual, without significance for either of them. Now for him it would vibrate with meaning, and he was afraid that if he touched her, he would lose control. The touch of her thigh he counted to himself as a happy accident, a gift of the motion of the car, and not his responsibility. He had no idea whether these random brushes of their bodies together meant anything to her. She showed no sign. But she did seem to be driving faster and more recklessly than usual.
They had come as far as they could with the car, where the country lane petered out at the last farm gate. From here they would have to climb. Gregor lifted the picnic basket from the back seat, and Frances folded the old, rather moth-eaten plaid rug over her arm. To reach the path up to the top of the hill with its prehistoric long-barrow, they had to cross a stile. Gregor climbed over first, then turned and offered his hand to Frances. She hesitated, above him on the stile, looking down at his upturned face. She had never since she was five years old been helped over a stile. Then she placed her hand in his and sprang over.
They continued to hold hands as they climbed the hill. Neither wanted to make the gesture of withdrawal. But they did not speak until they reached the top, with its wonderful view over the pieced and folded landscape.
'Up here,' said Gregor, drawing her up after him to the top of the barrow, remote and sleeping on its hilltop.
They stood for minutes, their sides pressed together, looking blindly out at the view, with her hair blowing across his throat. There was a slight declivity in the top of the barrow, sheltered from the wind, and Frances spread out the rug here while Gregor unpacked the picnic. They ate their lunch in a silence full of powerful unspoken meaning.
'Sandwich?' said Frances.
'Mmm. Have some more cider.'
* * *
The sun is directly above them, its heat trapped in this hollow where they sit, the view hidden from them by the soft turf-covered humps of the barrow's sunken roof. Gregor puts out his hand and touches Frances's bare arm, and she shivers slightly. Unconsciously, unwillingly almost, he slides his arm around her waist, and she relaxes against him, her head turned into the curve of his shoulder. His hand moves up and delicately cups her breast. She shivers again, violently. Then he cannot help himself, he is kissing her and she puts up her hands to cup the back of his head, and she is kissing him wildly, inexpertly, back.
'Oh God, Frances, I love you,' he cries out, as if in pain.
'I love you,' she says, kissing his chest where his shirt is open, the hollow of his neck below his ear, his eyelids. 'I love you. I love you.'
Her hair is spread out on the grass, and the yellow pouches of wild orchids bob on their slender stems between the strands of it, making a frame for her face.
* * *
'What shall we do about the nature ramble, if Paul doesn't come back?' Nicholas asked Natasha.
'Could you? No, I don't suppose you could,' Natasha laughed.
Nicholas looked slightly put out. 'I've always been interested in natural history, Natasha,' he said stiffly.
'But in books.'
'Yes, well,' he admitted, 'I suppose I'm not a field botanist, like Paul. Still, if the worst comes to the worst, I can take the kids round and point out some trees to them. And wild flowers in the meadow. Mum's pretty good at those. We could do it together.'
He looked at his watch. 'Quarter to three. We've nearly three-quarters of an hour. He'll ring, surely, if he can't make it.'
* * *
'There's nothing you can do at present, Mr Fenway,' said the ward sister firmly. 'Mrs Fenway is resting at present, and doctor will examine her again in an hour, but it seems to be a false alarm.'
Paul started to protest, but she cut him short.
'This is not at all uncommon, you know,' she said quite kindly, seizing a few moments from her hard-pressed day to reassure him. 'I expect doctor will want to keep her in overnight, just for observation, but she will probably be able to come home again tomorrow.'
'We're not at home, exactly,' he explained yet again. 'We are out at St Martins. For the anniversary.'
'Yes, so I understand.' She flashed him a smile, looking nearly human for a moment. 'How splendid! I do envy you.'
'Now.' She began to walk him firmly towards the glass swing doors. 'I think your wife would relax better if you went back. She's rather distressed about both of you leaving the party and is anxious for you to return. The best thing for her just now is to get some sleep.'
She held the door open for him.
'Why don't you ring us some time after six, and see how she is doing? I expect doctor will be able to tell you then whether she will be able to go home in the morning.'
With the skill of long practice she moved behind him, making it impossible for him to get back into the ward without pushing her aside. Paul found himself effectively ejected and on his way across the car park before he knew what had happened.
On the drive to the hospital Lisa had said that the pains seemed to be diminishing.
'I'm going to look an awful fool if it's a false alarm,' she said ruefully.
He unclenched his left hand from the steering wheel and patted her knee.
'And you're supposed to be taking the children on a nature trail round the estate at half-past three,' she reminded him. He had completely forgotten. He groaned.
'I'll be fine,' she said later, propped up against the grey iron railings of the hospital bed-head, with a cup of soupy hospital tea going cold on the bedside locker. 'Do go back, please, Paul. I feel so bad about all this. Go back and carry on as normal. I don't want things spoiled for Natasha. If the pains start up again, the doctor promised me there would be plenty of time to fetch you. Off with you.'
So here he was, working his way out of the Saturday afternoon traffic jams, trying to remember what he had planned to do on this wretched nature trail. He'd prepared some worksheets and photocopied them. Those must still be in his case in the bedroom. One on birds, one on trees, one on plants, and a sort of mystery guessing game one, that he found always went down well on the first field trip with the Form I pupils at school. Nothing to worry about. He could do this standing on his head, if he could just wrench his mind away from the hospital, and the greenish look of Lisa before Dr Porter arrived.
He hadn't done a sheet on fungi, but they were always popular. Little boys in particular were fascinated by poisonous toadstools. Little girls, in his limited experience, shrieked and made faces, though he suspected they were just as intrigued. But perhaps this lot would be too young. He didn't want any of them larking about, doing something silly.
Odd, when you thought about it. Here he was driving towards St Martins, having left his wife, Hugh Appleton's niece, about to have a baby in that hospital, all because of a similar talk on botany when he himself was a schoolboy.
* * *
'Any questions?' asked Hugh Appleton, grinning at them conspiratorially from the table where he had perched, swinging one leg idly. This alone set him apart from the usual Friday evening lecturers, who stayed behind the lectern for safety, gripping it rigidly and staring out over the heads of the boys.
It was Paul's second term at boarding-school, and he was wretched. He had somehow failed to make friends, a situation that was unfamiliar to him. The work was demanding, though not impossible, but he had become overpoweringly indifferent to it. His mind was focused on the piece of paper he kept under his mattress on which he was crossing off the days until the Easter holidays.
Someone – a big prefect with an alarming man's voice and incipient moustache – asked a question from the back row. Hugh Appleton answered clearly, gesturing with his hands, making a neat quick drawing of a tree on the overhead projector transparency. This gave others the courage to ask questions. Soon the explorer – so celebrated they had not expected him to look like an ordinary man at all – was laughing and fielding questions from all over the
hall. Paul's hand crept up nervously and then retreated, several times.
'One last question,' said the Headmaster, benign at having secured such a speaker for the school. He intended to let it be known at the next headmasters' conference.
Hugh Appleton's eye fastened on Paul. He smiled straight at him. 'You there, in the third row – you've been trying for ages.'
Paul got trembling to his feet and cleared his throat. 'Could you tell us, did you see Meconopsis betonicifolia in its natural habitat? And was it monocarpic?'
The boys around him rolled their eyes, and pulled mocking faces, but the explorer beamed at him. 'Well done!' He looked at Paul with real appreciation. 'Now, I can tell you a very funny story about Meconopsis . . .'
After the vote of thanks from the Head Boy – a splendid figure, whose blazer was covered in gold braid – there was a great roar of clapping and stamping from the audience, who had never supposed a lecture on the flora and fauna of the Himalayas could be so interesting, though they would have come to hear Hugh Appleton if he had chosen to speak about dustbins.
Amid the orderly shoving as the boys disgorged from the hall, a hand plucked Paul's sleeve.
'The Head wants you, in his study.' A prefect was looking at him appraisingly.
Paul was terrified. What had he done? He had never been face to face with the Headmaster since he arrived.
'Come in, Fenway,' said the Head jovially. 'Mr Appleton wants a word with you.'
Hugh Appleton looked him up and down. 'So you already know something about botany?'
Paul mumbled something about always having been interested. His ears were burning.
'Here's my card. Mind you, I'm not often there, but it's the nearest thing to a permanent base that I have. When you're in your last year at school, write to me, and I'll see if I can fix you up with a field trip somewhere before you go up to university. That will give you a head start.'