Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘If Angharad asks me for news of you, or ever seems to need you, for her sake I’ll let you know. But only if, do you understand? And for myself, I wish that you and your family had never existed.’

  Harry barely flinched now. ‘Thank you.’ He was gravely polite. ‘A message will reach me for the time being from Llyn Fair, over at …’

  Gwyn cut him short, with a harsh note in her voice that startled him. ‘Yes. I know where you live.’

  Harry nodded once sharply and then walked away. Gwyn’s eyes were on his back. She was thinking of Angharad alone in London, and the horror in her eyes when she had said that she could never see Harry again.

  If only she was doing the right thing for Angharad. That was what mattered.

  With her days divided between Duff’s and the silent haven of her room, Angharad’s life fell quickly into a routine. She was numbingly lonely, but that was partly her own choice. It would have been easy enough to make new friends through Duff’s. Mario the waiter asked her out persistently; there was a pretty, bubbly girl not much older than Angharad who worked as the restaurant’s PR, and even Pierre had invited her to his home on a Sunday to meet his wife and eat a ‘proper French déjeuner’. Angharad refused all their overtures, as gently and tactfully as she could. It was as if a part of herself, the old friendly, outgoing Angharad, had withered away. All her energy was concentrated on starker imperatives now, on keeping going at her job, on the baby, and on bearing the loss of Harry and Laura, her family and her home.

  There was no room for anything else.

  Angharad found herself a doctor, and matter-of-factly explained her position. The doctor examined her and announced that she was in perfect health. She must expect to be tired sometimes; plenty of rest and the right food were essential.

  Angharad rigorously followed his advice. When she was at Duff’s, she worked with silent concentration, learning so quickly and avidly that she earned approving nods from Pierre. Sometimes she caught him looking at her with puzzled concern, and she smiled as happily as she could. Duff’s provided its staff with excellent meals, and Angharad ate all the protein and fresh produce she could manage. Off-duty, she lay on her bed in her room, thinking and waiting. She lived for her regular letters from Gwyn, seizing each new arrival with the feverish hope that it would bring her good news – of Harry, or her father.

  They never did.

  Gwyn tried to blur the harshness as best she could, writing that time would change everything but Angharad, reading between the lines, knew that William was unbending.

  There was never a word of Harry. Angharad thought about him constantly. Sometimes she had the eerie sense that he was very close at hand, perhaps walking the same streets that she passed along every morning on her way to Duff’s. It wasn’t impossible. He could be here, editing his film, not knowing that she was so close. Perhaps their paths were endlessly passing and repassing, never meeting. At these times Harry became mysteriously identified with the baby growing inside her and she pressed her hands over her stomach, feeling his closeness deep within her as well as all around. She knew that she hadn’t stopped loving him, and that she wouldn’t ever stop.

  At other times he seemed remote, a thousand miles or half a world away, busy and careless and forgetful of her. To Angharad, lying motionless on her narrow bed, these were the longest, loneliest hours.

  She was simply waiting, making no plans. There was no point in planning, because she couldn’t guess what they might say at Duff’s when they found out she was pregnant. All she could do was work, and make herself as close to irreplaceable as she could. She knew that she was successful at that, at least. After her month’s trial Jamie Duff had confirmed her job, and paid her another two pounds a week. She had more than enough for her needs now. Pierre gave her more responsibility and she shouldered it willingly. Timidly she began to make suggestions of her own, and was flattered and pleased when her own dishes appeared on the menu.

  Sometimes she felt so bone-tired that she was afraid that she couldn’t go on standing at the pastry slab a moment longer. But somehow she found the energy to go on, knowing how important it was. It won’t be long before they know, she thought, touching the smooth convexity of the skin between her hip bones. How long can I hide it?

  The pre-Christmas rush came, when Duff’s was packed every day and late into the night. Angharad was not the only one who was exhausted. Pierre had dark patches under his eyes and Jamie himself came to help out in the kitchen. He rolled up his striped shirtsleeves and worked as a relief porter or washer-up. Angharad even found herself directing him in the preparation of vegetables or salads. He was immensely cheerful and good-humoured, teasing her and joking just as if she was like everyone else. She found herself liking him in return, almost as her old self might have done.

  ‘Don’t you have to be in court?’ she asked him half-seriously on one of these days. ‘Unmasking diamond thieves or forgers under cross-examination?’

  Jamie roared with laughter. ‘My dear girl, I don’t have anything to do with burglars. I’m a company lawyer, specializing in tax. Oh dear, has that destroyed a glamorous image? It’s a good deal more lucrative than criminal law, believe me. I couldn’t afford a little hobby like Duff’s otherwise.’

  ‘Isn’t Duff’s a success by itself?’

  ‘Yes, it is, just at the moment, as it happens. We might even open another restaurant if I can find the right premises.’

  Angharad thought that Jamie Duff was looking thoughtfully at her, and she bent over her work so that her face was hidden.

  The restaurant closed for two days over Christmas. Angharad got through the time by sleeping as much as she could, and dreaming of the next Christmas when she would have her baby for company. She would buy him presents, and take him out to see the tree lights winking in the windows.

  Just after Christmas, she was found out.

  She came into the restaurant early one morning and hung her coat up in its usual place. She was smoothing her white apron over her loose skirt when she heard Pierre say ‘Merde’, very softly. She looked round in surprise. Pierre never swore. Angharad realized that she was standing in profile to him with one hand resting protectively on the round swelling. It was too late to try to hide it. Pierre’s eye was far too shrewd. Angharad began to shake all over. She groped for the tall kitchen stool behind her and sank down on it, her wide eyes never leaving Pierre’s face.

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ Pierre said at last. ‘Does Mr Duff know?’

  Heavily Angharad shook her head. Pierre broke the long silence that followed by saying brusquely, ‘Well then. If there is to be lunch today you had better look at the cassoulet.’

  Angharad understood that he would not press her for confidences that she was unwilling to give, but she knew too that he would put the kitchen first. He would see it as his duty to tell Jamie.

  Sure enough, two or three days later Jamie lounged into the kitchen, hands in the pockets of his charcoal grey suit. Angharad sensed that he was trying to look more at ease than he felt.

  ‘Anne, which is your morning off this week?’

  She glanced at the rota and managed to say, ‘Thursday.’

  ‘Fine. Perhaps you will have lunch with me? We could cast an eye over the competition.’ He mentioned a popular nearby restaurant and said, very firmly, ‘One o’clock.’ There was no possibility of demur.

  When Jamie had gone, Pierre shrugged his shoulders at her, with such a perfectly Gallic mixture of apology and resignation that she found herself laughing out loud. ‘I do understand,’ she told him. ‘He had to know sooner or later.’ They went back to work, side by side in companionable silence.

  I’ve been so lucky up to now, Angharad thought. Might the luck hold for a little longer? If only they will let me stay.

  Thursday came, and at one o’clock a waiter ushered her to the table where Jamie was waiting for her. It was in a secluded corner, part-screened by a low partition. Jamie jumped up and pulled out her chair,
and then pressed her to have a drink and look at the menu.

  Angharad’s breath, which had been coming in uncomfortable jagged gasps, drew in more easily. Surely, if he was going to sack her on the spot, Jamie Duff wouldn’t do it like his?

  ‘We must look at the menu very carefully,’ he said, ‘and reassure ourselves that it isn’t a patch on ours.’

  Meekly, Angharad turned her eyes to it. Jamie was adamant that they order three different courses each. They ate their way steadily through them, sampling each other’s food and criticizing it liberally. Jamie was good company. He was fascinated by cooking and by the food business, and Angharad found herself talking easily and fluently to him, as to an equal. It was only when she heard herself insisting a little too vehemently that they should introduce some innovatory nouvelle cuisine dishes that she caught herself up short, blushing.

  ‘No, please go on,’ Jamie smiled at her. ‘I’m interested. But that isn’t Pierre’s style, you know. He’s a cream-and-wine sauce man, at heart. We’d have to do it somewhere other than Duff’s.’ The speculative light was back in his eyes, but the waiter was standing beside them with his coffee pot poised.

  ‘Liqueur?’ Jamie suggested. ‘Brandy? Ah, no. Better not.’

  For a little while they had forgotten the real motive for their meeting. But now it loomed inescapably. When the waiter had gone, Jamie leaned across the table. Angharad was staring down into her cup but she felt his closeness.

  ‘Anne?’ His voice was gentle, tentative. ‘Pierre tells me that you are pregnant.’ She nodded blindly. ‘Don’t you think that it would have been fairer to have told us that at the beginning?’

  Angharad’s head jerked up and hot colour filled her face. ‘How could I? I wanted the job. You’d never have given it to me if you’d known. I’ve proved I can do it. I’m useful to you, I know that. Isn’t it enough, for now? Won’t you give me a little longer? Please, Mr Duff.’

  ‘Jamie,’ he corrected her. His clear English face was grave, the skin a little reddened over the cheekbones. ‘You may look fragile, Anne, but – my God – you’re tough where it counts.’

  ‘I’ve got to learn to be tough,’ she countered. ‘I’m not ashamed or sorry for that. It won’t be easy for us. Me and him.’ Her fingers fluttered over the starched pink linen napkin on her lap. ‘But we’ll survive. You could help us by letting me stay at Duff’s.’

  There was admiration in Jamie’s sharp eyes. Angharad saw it and felt a thrill of triumph. It meant that she was winning. Instead of recoiling from his blue stare, invasive of her precious privacy, she met it and held it. Involuntarily Jamie’s hand reached out. It hung for an instant over hers, so close that the skin on her fingers prickled. Then, a split second later, she drew her hand gently but firmly away. Jamie Duff’s fingers drummed instead on the bare pink cloth.

  ‘Right,’ he said, camouflaging with briskness something that his voice might otherwise have betrayed. ‘You’ve persuaded me. You can stay at Duff’s on the present basis until … damn it, I don’t know anything about pregnant women. As long as you need. Tell me, have you seen a doctor and so forth?’

  ‘Yes. I’m perfectly okay.’

  ‘All right for money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anne …’ there was a pause, ‘are you on your own?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t need anything, Mr … um, Jamie, except to be allowed to go on as I am now.’

  Jamie nodded. He wouldn’t press her any more, and she felt a wave of gratitude.

  The bill had arrived in its white saucer. Angharad stood up a little unsteadily. Suddenly she wanted to get away, to break the thread of familiarity that was beginning to pull this man towards her. She was weak with relief and the release of tension, and she needed to be alone to restore herself.

  But Jamie held her back. ‘One more thing. I want you to make me a promise.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That you will not give birth on, or anywhere near my premises. That kind of spectacle over lunch won’t encourage the relaxed, expense-account trade we’re working so hard to woo. Understood?’

  ‘I’ll do my very best.’

  A ripple of laughter lapped between them. Jamie Duff looked up at Angharad, seeing her pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, in her best dress instead of a white apron, and thought, Jesus, she’s pretty.

  ‘Jamie?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Angharad lifted her hand shyly and smiled her contradictory, half-ironic smile at him. Then she was gone, threading her way carefully between the tables. Jamie’s eyes followed her until she was out of sight.

  As soon as her secret was out, Angharad felt that she and Duff’s were committed to each other. It was easier, suddenly, to accept the casual overtures of friendship. She went to the pictures with Mario, and was amused to notice that he treated her with Italian almost-reverence as a mother-to-be. One weekend she went to an art exhibition with the PR girl. Pierre nodded approvingly. As the weeks went by, they began to fuss around her. A high stool would materialize behind her as she stood at the table, Pierre or one of the waiters would give her a lift home instead of letting her wait for the bus. Angharad was still living alone in her own world, but the edges of it rubbed less painfully against the rest of reality.

  As the baby grew, her awareness of it began slowly to push other things out of her head. The first time she felt it moving, she was sitting on the top deck of a bus watching the heads bobbing at a busy intersection. She was combing the crowds with her eyes, as she had done every day since leaving Cefn, wondering if Harry was among them. Then she felt the tiny, butterfly stroke inside her. Once, and then again, unmistakeably. Amazement took her breath away. It was her own flesh, and Harry’s, but yet another individual, a bud of life moving of its own accord. At her stop she jumped off the bus and almost ran home, seeing in her mind’s eye the tiny, knobbly limbs stirring in their mysterious inner sea. For the first time, she was oblivious to the faces passing by. At that moment Harry might have walked in front of her and she wouldn’t have seen him.

  After that the movements grew more insistent every day. She could feel the press of a heel or the prod of fingers against the constricting muscle. ‘You’re doing fine,’ they told her at the hospital, but there was no need. She knew that they were both perfect. Angharad felt that she was running a long race, and the white tape was inching closer. In the last month she felt breathless and exhausted, but triumphant.

  Jamie came into the kitchen and said, ‘I’m putting you on part time for this last month.’ She tried to protest but he silenced her. ‘You’ve put in six valuable months here. We owe you some kind of maternity concession. Same pay, less hours. No argument.’

  Jamie smiled at her, hiding his concern for the misshapen clumsiness of the pregnant shape superimposed on her fragile figure. Her eyes looked unnaturally wide and the skin of her face seemed too taut over her cheekbones. He wanted to put his arm protectively around her, but he kept his fists clenched in his pockets.

  Angharad accepted the new arrangement, and spent the extra hours of freedom sitting in the sun at her window. She was surprised at how natural it felt just to sit, resting her swollen ankles with her hands folded over the bulge, waiting.

  She bought a wicker basket for the baby, blankets and a few tiny babyclothes. She stared at the minute socks, wondering how a foot could ever be so small. In spite of the simplicity of her preparations there was no room in the little bedsitter and she knew that she would have to move on. The brusque landlady had already indicated as much. Drowsily Angharad set the thought aside. Once she had the baby, held him in her arms, she would know what to do.

  The baby was due in the last week of April. The week came and went, and Angharad waited tranquilly. He was moving much less now, and she slept deeply and dreamlessly.

  On the first day of May, she woke up in the early morning light to feel a slow, tightening wave pass over the weight of her stomach. As she lay still, smiling, it rolled away again.
Then, with a sudden almost audible pop, there was a rush of water. Angharad got up, cleared up her wet things, and then went downstairs to telephone the hospital that she was on her way.

  It was a week later when she came back into the room. She was panting after the climb up the stairs and the effort of lifting the wicker cradle around corners without bumping it. Angharad laid the basket gently on the bed and lifted the folded blanket. William was asleep with his clenched fist against his cheek and his hair very black against the pristine white covers. For a moment she looked at him, half smiling, then lifted her head to stare round the room. It was familiar, yet obliquely different, as everything had been since the moment of William’s birth.

  Jamie had sent a message this morning to say that he had to be in court. He had arranged for a cab to collect her from the hospital and bring her back here. She was to collect her things together and then call the cab once more to drive her to Jamie’s flat in Godolphin Mansions. Angharad fingered the unfamiliar shape of the keys he had sent for her.

  She had so few possessions that it didn’t take her long to pack them, even though she moved slowly and fumblingly. When she was ready, she stood unwillingly in the doorway, wishing that she could stay. The bare little room was home, and she felt too raw and frail to be on the move again.

  But she picked up William’s basket and carried it down to the car, and turned her face resolutely forward.

  The streets around Jamie’s mansion block were cleaner and smarter than those of the old, crowded, cosmopolitan neighbourhood she was used to. There were smart little boutiques here, expensive-looking delicatessens, and well-coiffed women parking nippy runabouts on meters. How would she and William fit in here, on their tiny budget?

  The cab driver complainingly helped her up to Jamie’s door with her bags, and Angharad realized with embarrassment that she hadn’t enough money left to tip him properly. He muttered a sour something as he walked away, and she felt irrational tears stinging behind her eyes.

  The hallway of the flat and the drawing-room beyond were blurred as she walked through. Was this home, then? Jamie’s flat was comfortably, even opulently furnished, but it had a dim air of neglect and unuse. A dirty whisky tumbler stood in a faint film of dust on the glass-and-steel coffee table. Without putting William’s basket down, Angharad walked through the silent flat. There was a well-equipped kitchen that looked as if no one had ever used it, a single lemon shrivelling in the fruit bowl. There was a wide bed with a rumpled duvet in Jamie’s bedroom. At the end of the corridor, just as he had promised her, Angharad found the two rooms. They had been hastily cleared of the mackintoshes and tennis rackets, but there were dusty patches against the walls where boxes had stood, and the windows were laced with dust. There was a note propped up on the chest of drawers.