by Rosie Thomas
Nine
The plane tilted in its last circuit through the dense cloud and swung towards the landing approach.
Harry Cotton stretched wearily and gave up the pretence of sleep. He turned to the tiny window but could see nothing except the wing beneath him and the grey vapour streaming upwards. Manchester, England, he thought. Shrouded in rain. He counted off the obstacles that stood between him and the luxury of bed, and sleep. There was the airport terminal, fetid air and queues, and the baggage carousel. Then the hire car desk, and the drive through the rain, two hours at most, that would take him home.
As the plane came out of the last layer of cloud and swooped towards the ribbon of runway, Harry smiled. Odd that he still, after all, thought of Llyn Fair as home. Out of the jumble of thoughts disconnected by exhaustion, came a moment of pure exultation. Llyn Fair. The secret hollow high up in the hills, the old house, and the black and silver lake with its curtain of trees. For a moment Harry tasted the anticipation, the drive and the first sight of the mountains ahead, and then the road curving and climbing until the peaks soared above him and he was home again.
With a long shrieking roar the plane’s wheels touched, bounced, and the brakes bit. The aircraft slowed, swung, and they were taxiing. Harry saw the heavy pall of rain and the loophole of happiness closed. He was aching from the long, cramped flight and he still had the remains of a New York hangover. He felt dirty, unshaven and impatient with himself. This was the last time he would ever come home to Llyn Fair. The house and the lake were to be sold. He was here to sign some papers, to make a sketchy show of filial duty in putting the last of Joe’s tangled affairs to rights after his death. But in truth he had come back to say goodbye. And once he had said it, and the house and the lake were gone, then perhaps he could turn away from all of it for good.
Then a vacation, Harry reminded himself. Not in Wales, he didn’t want that, but in some quiet, unreminiscent corner where nobody knew him and where the telephone didn’t ring. There had been too many films, one after another, too many deals, and so many faces that they had blurred together and left him, after so long, with only two that were still sharp. The plane was stationary now, and the mechanical thanks for coming home with British Airways was crackling over his head. Harry pulled his well-worn leather jacket on over his sweatshirt and jeans and followed the tide of passengers to the exit. In the doorway the hostess saw his dark height coming and brightened her smile, but Harry was for once too tired to see it.
The arrivals queues and delays were exactly as he had known they would be. At length, Harry lifted his single small suitcase from the carousel and turned towards the customs avenue. He was almost through and into the knot of people waiting beyond when he saw Laura.
She was standing a little to one side, completely still, with her hands in the pockets of her loose cream jacket. Her smooth black hair perfectly framed her oval face. She was apparently deep in thought, but she was looking straight at him.
Harry stopped dead, but the press of people behind him pushed him on. Only when Harry was beside her did she take her hands out of her pockets. With the tips of her fingers she touched her mouth, and then his.
‘In Christ’s name, Laura,’ he said, almost roughly. ‘What are you doing here?’ Looking down, he saw her perfect skin and the dark eyelashes, and smelt his sister’s musky, exotic perfume. She looked thinner than when he had last seen her, more fragile, and more beautiful. Her fingers were cool against his wrist now and she was smiling, faintly rueful at the harshness of his greeting.
‘Waiting to drive you home. Any objections?’
Harry sighed. ‘Want a list? No, forget it. How did you know?’
‘Rang the New York office. Not a very taxing process. They gave me your flight number. And here I am, all excited to see you. Although I can’t think why, now I come to look at you. You look a bloody wreck. Is that all?’ she asked, nodding at his case. ‘Still living like a gipsy?’
‘Laura.’ Harry took her arm and drew her to him. He moved to kiss her cheek but she turned her head and their lips met. His hand dropped at once, but it was another long second before he raised his head.
‘I told you, Laura. Not now. Not ever.’
‘I heard you, darling.’ Laura’s voice was perfectly smooth.
‘Good. Well then. I never look my best after a transatlantic flight. You, on the other hand, look exquisite.’
‘I have plenty of time to devote to it.’ There was no attempt to hide the bitterness in her voice.
‘Ah. Where’s Jerry?’
‘No idea. Tokyo, I think. I’ve been at Llyn Fair for a couple of weeks. There’s a decorator looking at it. I think we should get a much better price if we take out some of Monica’s more obvious excesses first.’
Harry shrugged. ‘I couldn’t care less. Let’s just sell it. What does Monica say?’
‘Approximately the same as you. She’s in Marbella. Widowhood doesn’t suit her, she tells me.’
Harry gestured impatiently. ‘If you’re going to drive me home, shall we set about it? Or would you prefer to stand in the airport all day?’ Laura looked at him, past the black frown and the tired creases around his eyes, and straight into his head. With the look the barriers between them melted and they were laughing again, as they had done when they were children.
‘Sweet, equable Harry. So lovely to have you back.’
‘And to be back, my dear little sister. Lead on, then. I’m clay in your hands, as always.’ His voice was light, and he was behind her so her answer was inaudible.
‘If only you were. If only. But then, perhaps I wouldn’t love you in quite the way I do.’
Laura’s car was a silver-grey Mercedes 280SL, with scarlet leather seats. She tossed his case into the boot and held out the ignition keys. ‘Want to drive?’
‘No, thanks. You show off your pretty toy. Present from Jerry?’
‘What else?’
Laura drove recklessly fast, but without Harry’s assurance at the wheel. Knowing that she was goading him, he let his eyelids droop and then, quite unexpectedly, real sleep overtook him. Beside him Laura drove on, the ghost of a smile lifting the corners of her mouth.
When he woke up again, with an uncomfortable start, they were almost home. Harry felt a moment of disorientation, thinking that he was still on the plane. Then he saw the ridge of The Mountain, and the hollow in the lee of it that sheltered Heulfryn cottage. A tractor was out on one of old Mr Ellis’s fields, inching painfully slowly over the spring ploughing. The Mercedes swept past the old fountain at the foot of Cefn Hill.
Harry winced, as if a stab of cramp had sliced him, and sat upright to light a cigarette that he didn’t want.
Laura was humming softly. She broke off to say, ‘One for me too, please.’ Harry lit one for her and she turned her head a little with her lips parted for him to put it in her mouth. Ignoring that, he held it out and when at last she took it he saw the perfect, varnished ovals of her nails and the assertive glitter of her wedding and engagement rings. ‘Jerry’s rocks,’ she called the square sapphire and its cluster of diamonds. Jeremy Argent appeared to believe that marriage entailed choosing a beautiful wife, loading her with all the right trappings, and then leaving her to her own devices while he pursued his interests elsewhere. Harry had never been able to understand why Laura had married him but, he thought, with a kind of grim humour, he was probably not the best judge of that.
He looked sharply away from Laura and out at the Welsh landscape. The bare hills were still winter-brown and the thorn trees, bent over by the wind so that they looked like old men, showed skeletal fingers against the grey-white sky. The land had a steely grandeur at this time of year that meant more to Harry than the softer, blurred beauty of the brief summer. Only down beside the valley road were the trees misted with pale green, and he knew that in the grass under the shelter of the hawthorn hedges the first violets would be showing. Violets, he thought, savouring the contrast with the steel and concrete wa
steland that he had left behind. He played briefly and unguardedly with the idea of asking Laura to stop so that they could search for them together, and then told himself that he could do it alone, tomorrow.
It was ironic that everything he had done in the years since leaving here, all the frenetic escapades, had left him with nothing except a stronger desire to be alone.
A sudden shaft of sunlight swept over the naked ribs of land ahead of him, and Harry was reminded of the sunrise he had filmed with Angharad at the old tin chapel.
Except for Angharad Owain. He would have liked to be with her. He remembered her strange, self-contained sweetness as clearly as he could see the angles of her face in his mind’s eye. This landscape brought it back to him. With inexplicable generosity Angharad had shared herself with him, and then she stumbled on him making love to his sister – under the old half-hating and half-intoxicating compulsion that still dragged at him. And Angharad had run away, putting herself beyond his reach with the rigid determination that was as much part of her as her sweetness. She had never asked for him, or mentioned him, her aunt had said. And all this hunting for her had been in vain. Wherever she was now, she was probably happily married, busy at some enviable, even-tenored domestic life. While he was battering about the world and hating it more with every passing day. Over the years he thought he had forgotten her, but coming home again told him that he hadn’t.
Home again with Laura sitting beside him, her aquiline profile against the flashing hills. Not even that had changed. Harry sat back again in his red leather seat and Laura couldn’t have guessed the tenor of his thoughts from his impassive face.
They came to the crossroads and then began the winding ascent to the high valley. Harry saw that some elms had been felled, and knew that the rooks which had nested there for as long as he could remember would have gone too. The small loss struck him with magnified bitterness.
Yet the approach to Llyn Fair was just the same. The white gate was freshly painted, and the driveway looked spruce and well-swept. Harry had been home for a few hours, in the midst of a tight shooting schedule, for Joe’s funeral. There had been no time then to look at anything. But now he looked about him and saw that Laura was seriously pursuing a good sale for the house and estate.
The Mercedes came out of the arch of trees and rolled slowly over the gravel. The silver-grey lake water was shadowed, in this light, with deepest undersea green and there were shivering columns of ripples fanned by the wind over the glassy surface. When he turned to look at it, Harry saw that the house was freshly painted and the wrought-iron curlicues of the verandah looked crisp and white. Scaffolding had been erected against the end gable. It occurred suddenly to Harry that Laura was busy here for the sake of being busy. Keeping herself occupied in the passing of empty, opulent days. None of them needed the money from the sale of Llyn Fair, not Monica nor Laura, and certainly not himself.
He felt a quick stirring of sympathy for her and feeling her standing at his shoulder, he put his arm around her. Laura’s head rested against him, and he smelt her scent again.
‘Welcome home,’ she murmured, and although he answered briskly, ‘It’s time we stopped thinking of it as home,’ he knew, and understood, what she meant. He had been looking back at the lake and the trees when he heard the front door slam. Surprised, Harry looked round and saw a man crossing the manicured gravel towards them. He was Laura’s age or a little younger, with a tanned face and brown eyes under a mane of sun-bleached hair. He was wearing pale suede trousers and a bright periwinkle-blue shirt.
‘Oh, yes,’ Laura said smoothly, not moving from the circle of Harry’s arm. ‘This is Lucian. He’s an interior designer.’
Harry looked at him. ‘Yes. I see,’ he said, smiling agreeably, and Lucian missed the bite in his eyes.
‘Hullo, Harry,’ he said. ‘So exciting to meet you. I’m a great admirer of your movies.’ He was holding a sheaf of drawings and waved them at Laura. ‘Laura, darling, these are ready now and I wondered if …’
‘Not now,’ she said sharply. ‘I haven’t seen my brother for months. It doesn’t matter when we talk about what colour the walls should be.’ She turned away and walked towards the house, her high heels crunching sharply on the stones.
‘Sorry about my sister’s manners,’ Harry said after a moment.
Lucian laughed. ‘That’s just Laura,’ he said. ‘I know her well enough now not to let that worry me.’
Harry followed Laura in under the new white-painted arch and over the stone flags of the hall. The house looked bare, uncomfortable, and undeniably chic. Clearly Laura and her friend had been very busy indeed. Harry’s dark frown had returned, and he was feeling the first exhaustion of jet lag.
Drawn by the force of habit he walked through the kitchen, out into the brick-paved yard, and up the flight of wooden steps that led to his old red room over the stables. It was dusty and bare except for a few neglected pieces of furniture. The silence struck him, and he remembered how as a boy he had felt this was his impregnable castle, out of the glare of Joe’s domain across the yard.
Harry imagined that Laura had gone up to her own room. Then with a shock that was followed by the recognition of inevitability, he saw that she was sitting, framed by the arch, on his bed. Her chin was cupped in her hands.
She looked sad, and like a little girl again.
Harry walked across to her and knelt down so that their eyes were level. Gently he drew her hands away so that he could look into her face. At once the sadness vanished from her eyes and a smile licked in its place. It was a smile of conspiracy, there was a glimmer of a taunt in it, as well as pleading and clear loneliness. Harry was touched, and at the same time afraid of being so important to her. And afraid, too, of how much she meant to him.
He didn’t move.
Laura leant forward. Her breath was warm on his face. Then her lips parted and, as delicately as a butterfly, the tip of her tongue touched his mouth. The room was very still and even the clouds beyond the windows seemed to have stopped in their race. Harry had a sudden, confused memory of smooth skin against his, black hair tangled on the pillow, hunger and fury driving him on, and then the sight of a white, shocked face staring at them from the empty arch that faced him now.
Harry dropped his hands. Slowly, as if some part of him hurt, he stood up. Laura never took her wide eyes from his face, but the sadness flooded back again.
‘I don’t think I’ll sleep up here,’ Harry said, as if he was rejecting a hotel room with an unfavourable outlook. ‘The old man’s gone.’
‘Poor Joe,’ Laura said, almost to herself, and Harry, thinking about it, said, ‘Yes.’ It had been impossible, until now, to grieve for his father. Nor could he grieve, exactly, now. Yet Joe was as much a part of the memories that were unravelling today as anyone, and the absence of his commanding bulk struck at his son for the first time.
Harry picked up his case again and walked to the door. ‘How long is your gay friend staying?’
Laura chuckled. ‘If you think he’s gay, why are you jealous of him? He isn’t, as it happens. And he’s staying until we’ve finished decorating the house, then we’ll sell it for a huge price and have a wonderful spree afterwards.’
‘How enticing.’ He hadn’t come to Llyn Fair for anything of the kind. He realized that he had been hoping for an answer to something, an answer to a question that wasn’t even formulated. Instead, now that he was here, he felt that the same old restless tides were threatening to submerge him again. Joe, and Laura, fascination and repugnance. The house and the lake, light and shade. He had escaped once and had stopped the water flooding out of the breach with work, too much of it, and with Bibi and her chain of successors.
Yet he was back again, with nothing to show for the intervening years except material success. Perhaps he had been wrong to come. Or perhaps he should see the sale through, sever the links finally, and go back to where he didn’t belong for good.
‘I need some sleep,’ he t
old Laura abruptly.
Laura sat on the bed, unmoving. She listened carefully until his steps had gone away, and then she pressed her hands to her eyes. Her face was haggard.
‘You want to do what?’
Jamie’s voice crackled out of the receiver. In spite of the difficulty of what she had to say, Angharad smiled. She could see him so clearly, sitting at the desk in their drawing-room, blond eyebrows drawn together in a frown, running his free hand through his hair so that it stood on end.
Angharad took another deep breath. ‘I want to open a restaurant in Gwyn’s schoolhouse.’
As she spoke she turned to look through the dusty panes of the public telephone kiosk down the village street. Two or three people were standing with baskets outside the village shop, waiting for the bus. Gwyn was perched on a step ladder, cleaning the windows of William’s house. Everyone who passed her stopped for a word. Angharad knew that they were all saying, ‘You can come and do mine next,’ and it made her smile to think how much it would once have irritated her. Now it merely seemed friendly and natural. She felt that she could follow the conversation outside the shop simply by watching the nods and smiles. Two children were playing a complicated ball game against a house wall, and she knew the half-Welsh, half-nonsense words as well as they did, although she hadn’t thought about the game for fifteen years.
Guto benfelyn, O dyddyn y celyn …
The pips went, and she crammed some more money into the slot.
‘And why in God’s name can’t you use a proper telephone? Haven’t they invented them up there yet?’
‘There’s one in Dad’s house,’ Angharad said mildly. ‘I just feel more … private, here.’ I really mean anonymous, she told herself. More London-like.
The two halves of me are drifting further and further apart.
‘Listen, Anne,’ Jamie said. He was clearly trying, with some difficulty, to be patient with her. ‘Don’t make any more crazy decisions between now and the weekend. I’m up to my eyes in this pharmaceuticals case and Pierre and Maurice are threatening suicide, but I’ll try to get up and see you. I’m missing you, Anne. I love you.’