Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Changing,’ she told him, and instead of going away again he sat down and watched her, his eyes unashamedly exploring her face. She saw that he had blue eyes, not shifting pools of different blues like Pansy’s, but solid and piercing.

  ‘You’re lovely, Chloe,’ he said abruptly, and then, ‘Do you think I’m an old man?’

  ‘No,’ she said, understanding him.

  They were both acutely aware of the blank rows of windows looking out over the court. Masefield lit a cigarette with exaggerated attention.

  ‘I’m often in London,’ he said. ‘Sometimes alone. Shall we meet there?’

  Their eyes met and the seconds of possibility ticked past, then Chloe looked down and away from him. As gently as she could, she said, ‘No, I don’t think that would be very clever of us.’

  ‘Pity.’ Masefield was crisp. ‘We might have enjoyed ourselves.’

  In the plane high over Switzerland, Chloe saw that Helen was watching her with surprise.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Oh, I turned him down, of course.’ Chloe’s smile was lopsided. ‘I’ve done enough tangling with married men.’

  That was all, but the insignificant little encounter had changed Chloe’s mood dramatically. With her refusal, self-confidence had flooded back into her, and a renewed sense of pleasure in controlling her own life. She was free again, and she would make the most of it. Oxford beckoned now, and the disciplines of work that she was beginning to enjoy for its own sake.

  Of the three of them, only Pansy behind her closed eyelids felt no pleasure at her return. She was winging away from the restrictions imposed by Masefield and Kim, but in his own way Stephen and his consuming passion for her was beginning to feel just as restricting.

  Impatience seethed inside Pansy, but she kept the muscles of her face slack and her eyelids firmly closed.

  Trinity Term

  Eleven

  Heathrow looked profoundly ugly.

  Confronted with the acres of orange and green plastic and submerged in the cacophony of noise, Helen felt depression folding around her. It affected Chloe and Pansy too, and they stood in a silent group at the baggage carousel during the interminable wait for their suitcases.

  When they came through the customs hall, Helen saw him at once. Darcy was there, anxiously scanning the crowd of arrivals. He was not as tall as she remembered, and the intent frown made him look short-sighted. A second later he saw her and his face split into a smile of pure delight.

  As he pushed against the tide of people towards her, Helen only thought No. I didn’t expect him to be here.

  I don’t want a reunion like this. I’m not ready.

  Then he was beside her, seizing her hands and looking expectantly into her eyes.

  ‘How did you know to meet this flight?’ was all Helen could find to say. Even in her own ears her voice sounded shamefully unwelcoming.

  ‘I’ve met every flight since I got your wire. Somehow I … thought you’d come home at once.’ Faint disappointment, and forgiveness, showed so plainly in his face that Helen had to bury hers against his shoulder. Her fingers felt the tense muscles in his forearms.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m just so surprised to see you here. You shouldn’t … no, I don’t mean that. Thank you for coming. I didn’t know you’d expect me right away.’

  At last she looked up at him and his face cleared immediately.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’

  Chloe and Pansy had gone their separate ways, so Darcy and Helen drove down from London alone together.

  As they went she tried to explain her love affair with Venice and the strange hold the city had taken on her, trying to justify her failing to fly home to him at once. Darcy listened, nodding, his eyes on the road.

  ‘Of course we’ll go together,’ he promised her, ‘for our honeymoon if you like.’ This time he snatched a sideways glance at her, ready to exchange a complicit smile, but Helen’s profile was turned a little away, watching the newly green countryside as it flashed past.

  When they reached Oxford, Darcy took the bypass instead of heading for the city centre. Helen turned to him, startled.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Home, of course. To Mere.’

  She sank back into her seat. She had been expecting Follies, looking forward to seeing the eccentric old house again, and the privacy of her own place. Instead they were heading for Mere. Darcy was bringing home his bride-to-be. It was all going wrong, she realised miserably. None of this was as she had imagined her homecoming during the last precious hours in Venice. There was nothing to be done about the grey opaque day or the hideous tangle of roads and service stations that fringed Oxford. But the scratchiness was coming from inside her, and it was her own fault.

  Darcy was exactly the same as always.

  He looked at her, kindly and puzzled, and she could have slapped herself for her perversity.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Let’s stop for a drink.’

  There was a tiny country pub not far away. Darcy was a connoisseur of the beer and Helen enjoyed watching the sparse mixture of car-workers and farmhands that made up the clientele.

  ‘The Wheatsheaf?’

  ‘The Wheatsheaf it is.’

  That was better, Helen thought. Neutral ground for just a little while longer. The bar was unusually crowded with the run-up to a darts match, but they found a table in a corner and sat facing each other. Helen tasted her hoppy beer and grinned at him. ‘The flavour of England. Home at last.’

  ‘To stay for ever, I hope. Helen, there’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  She shook her head. There wasn’t anything wrong that she could put her finger on. It was just irritation with the world, and with Darcy, and most of all with herself. She looked around the little room, at dark beams hung with pewter pots and at the polished brass handles of the beer pumps.

  This much she understood.

  ‘It’s good to think that we’ll go on sitting in pubs like this, together, for years and years. Watching the people and not saying much, but together.’

  It was the first time she had mentioned their shared future. They stared solemnly at each other, realising what they had promised.

  Darcy slid his hand into his pocket. ‘I want to give you this.’ A little blue velvet box sat on the table-top amongst the rings of spilled beer. Helen gazed at it, knowing and reluctant.

  ‘Go on,’ he ordered.

  Inside the box was a ring. It was an immense blood-red ruby in an old-fashioned setting of diamonds. ‘My God,’ she breathed, staring at the great jewel. It was so unlike her that she couldn’t conceive herself wearing it. She couldn’t even bring herself to touch it.

  Darcy took it out of its velvet nest and lifted her left hand. The ring, cold and massive, slid over her third finger and hung loose as she unwillingly held out her hand for them both to see it.

  ‘It’s the Viscountess’s ring,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know how many generations, but very old.’ And then, ‘How tiny your hand is. Such thin, little fingers. We shall have to get it altered for you.’

  Helen thought of all the proud, splendid women who must have worn this ring as their right, and her heart failed within her. ‘Darcy,’ she said miserably, ‘I can’t wear this.’

  ‘You must, as my wife.’ There was to be no argument, and it was the first time that Helen had glimpsed strength of will in him. Nor could she have guessed at the insistence on family tradition, but it was clear to her now. Darcy folded her hand into a fist. ‘Wear it for me today,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll get our jeweller to remake it. Don’t you see, my darling? I’m proud of you, Helen, and in my own way I’m proud of my family too. I want you to wear our ring. Do it for me.’

  She nodded dumbly, but there were tears in her eyes. She could feel the curious stare of the other drinkers on her back. ‘Do your parents know about this?’ She held up
her fist like a challenge.

  ‘Not yet. I want us to tell them together. And I want to talk to your mother first, of course. Or Graham, as the male head of the family.’

  He was making gentle fun of his own insistence on form, and she smiled with gratitude and felt herself relax a little.

  ‘Graham will want to make sure that you can keep me in the style to which I am accustomed.’ She drained her drink. ‘Let’s go back to Mere. Back home.’ The correction was quick. ‘If you’ve been hanging around Heathrow for two days you must have a lot of things waiting to be done.’

  The sight of Mere almost set things to rights again. The low grey house was as solid as a rock against its dense yew hedges. Darcy, with a brief murmured apology, was on his way to see his head man.

  ‘I’ll stay out here for a while,’ she told him, ‘and meet you on the way back.’ She leaned against the stone wall of a barn and looked out across the farm in the gathering dusk. The orderly yards were empty, but there was a low hum of activity from the long milking sheds.

  Helen half closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself crossing this yard in two or three years’ time.

  Perhaps she would have been to pick herbs in the kitchen garden, or visit a sick lamb with a bottle of warm milk.

  She would be waiting for her husband to come home, listening for the Land Rover or for the ring of his boots on the well-swept cobbles of the yard. Perhaps there would be a child, an heir for Darcy, with the look of his father and Oliver’s gold hair.

  No. That was all in the past. The inappropriateness of the thought frightened her. Darcy’s wife. The lady of the manor.

  Fear and uncertainty swept over Helen and she swayed giddily. At her back the stone barn was solid, but the rest of the world was terrifyingly distorted. Then, incongruously, she remembered her dream. The calm sweetness of it flooded back, exactly as she had felt it in Venice. With it came Tom’s face, sharp and clear. Helen was rigid. ‘What have I done?’ she whispered. ‘What am I doing?’ She opened her eyes to see Darcy coming towards her, on his way home to her as he would be all through their married life until they were old and tired. She reached out to snatch his hand and clung to the rough warmth of it. His arm came round her shoulders and he led her into the yellow lamplight inside the house.

  They ate a quiet, simple supper in the oak dining room. Mrs Maitland served it, correct and non-committal, and Helen kept her clenched fist out of sight in her pocket.

  After their meal they sat over their coffee in Darcy’s little sitting room. The silences between them were beginning to draw out. ‘Helen,’ he said at last, ‘will you stay here with me tonight?’

  She drew her breath in. She knew it was coming. Part of herself wanted to go to him, giving herself as the least she could offer in return for his wholeheartedness. But another, stronger part clamoured for time, and for a chance to think.

  She said, gently, with her forehead against his and her eyes lowered, ‘I’d like to wait a little. Will you mind that?’

  He smiled, but his face was wistful. ‘As long as you want. Until we’re married, if you need it to be like that between us.’

  Unspoken, but acknowledged between them just the same, was the fact that she had slept with his brother.

  He doesn’t deserve this, Helen thought, watching the tiny muscles move in his face, and his hands as they stroked hers. He’s good, and generous, and I’m not.

  ‘When will we be married?’ he asked.

  ‘After my Schools.’ She heard herself almost gabbling with anxiety. ‘When I’ve done my exams. Need we make any plans before then? It’s been three years of hard work you see, and I want to give them all my attention. Then after that …’

  ‘Of course. Of course you must do the exams first. Do you think I can’t wait until June? I love you and I want you, but I want you to be happy and sure, and I don’t want you to sacrifice anything for my sake.’

  Darcy took her face between his hands and kissed her eyelids. ‘You look so tired. Tomorrow we’ll go to see your family, but now I’ll drive you home to Follies. Don’t worry any more. Don’t worry about anything.’

  ‘Are you happy, darling?’ Helen and her mother were washing up the tea things together. Darcy was in the front room of the little house watching a television football match with Graham. He had displayed an unguessed-at interest in the game that delighted Helen’s brother.

  Helen stared out at the rectangular garden, less well kept now than when her father was alive. Her mind was blank. ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Yes, of course.’ It was so strange, Darcy being here, drinking tea out of the familiar cups and looking at the pictures of Graham and herself ranged on the piano.

  Darcy had been determined. He had insisted on coming, and as soon as he and Helen were seated side by side on the sofa, with her hand in his, he said, ‘Mrs Brown, I want to marry Helen, and I’m amazed to find that she wants me, too. Will you give us your blessing?’ Helen loved him for his simplicity and his will to do what was right, but she felt the lifelines being severed all around her.

  After her first stunned surprise, Mrs Brown had reacted just as Helen had imagined. Happiness was mingled with relief. Not only could she stop worrying about her daughter, but her daughter would be in a position to see that none of them had to worry any more. She was awed when she discovered who Darcy was, but she firmly believed that he was no better than her daughter deserved.

  Now, alone together in the kitchen, she hugged Helen. ‘I’m so surprised, but in a way I’m not, either. I knew you would be someone special. I’m so proud of you, Helen. Dad would have been too. If only he could have been here.’

  For a moment they held one another, unspeaking. Then Mrs Brown said cautiously, ‘What will it mean, the title and everything? What will you have to do?’

  ‘Just be a farmer’s wife, at first. Until he inherits, at least. After that, I suppose we’ll work together to keep Montcalm going. It’ll be a business, just like any other except for a few trappings.’ Helen thought her voice sounded hollow.

  ‘And there’ll be your children. They’ll expect children.’

  ‘Yes,’ Helen whispered. ‘Children too.’

  Mrs Brown put away the cups and saucers. ‘I just want to see you happy, whether you’re a countess or a cleaner. I’d rather you were a countess, of course.’ She giggled like a young girl, pink with pleasure at the resonant word. ‘Imagine it. But I couldn’t have hoped for you to bring home a nicer boy. He seems so gentle. And I can see how much he loves you just by looking at his face. I know he’ll make you happy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Helen said again, unable to escape her dismal sense of being cut adrift.

  Later, Darcy took them all out to dinner. They went to an Italian restaurant in the nearby shopping parade. The food was bad, a depressing travesty that still brought back Venice, and the erotic elation of her spirits there. Where has it all gone? Helen wondered, looking around her. No-one seemed to notice the inadequacy of her mood. Darcy was calm and fully at his ease, and her mother opened to his attention like a flower. Graham, owlish behind his spectacles with the effects of the wine, seemed already to regard Darcy as an unofficial elder brother.

  On the drive back to Oxford, Darcy said, ‘I like your family.’

  That’s because they’re not very demanding, Helen thought, and then recoiled from her own sourness. ‘They’re not very like yours,’ she answered.

  ‘No,’ he said carefully. ‘You’re rather lucky in that respect, aren’t you?’

  Helen suddenly understood how much happier Darcy would have been to be born ordinary instead of in the flare of family expectation and then under the shadow of golden Oliver. She reached out and squeezed his hand as it rested on the wheel. ‘Come and spend the day at Mere tomorrow,’ he begged.

  ‘Darcy, I must do some work. Sunday is the very best day, because it’s so quiet everywhere.’

  And he had acquiesced, so uncomplaining that she had almost told him that she would come out to Mere aft
er all.

  In the early evening Helen made her way back to Follies from the brown calm of her library. She felt reassured by the continuity of study, and more certain that the frightening new aspects of her life would all, at last, come right. She pushed open the door of her room at the top of the house, and then stopped short.

  Tom Hart was sitting in the window.

  ‘Back at last,’ he drawled.

  The muscles in her throat contracted so fiercely that she almost choked. There, flesh and blood, was her Italian dream. There was a shadow across his face but she still knew every line of it. She knew the easy sprawl of his arms and legs too, and the quick muscles of his shoulders, and the long line of his back.

  He was watching her, and under his dark eyes she felt herself, dream-like, naked too. Somewhere, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she glimpsed the lazy billow of a thin white curtain.

  ‘Why have you gone so red?’ Tom asked. The light, ironic voice was unbearably familiar. ‘I could have sat outside on the stairs, but it seemed a little pointless as the door was open. And you’ve been hours.’ He looked around the room and as he turned his head out of the shadow she saw the reality of the dark, handsome face and the sceptical downward turn of his sensitive mouth. ‘It’s quite respectable,’ he prodded her. ‘I don’t see any compromising bits of lingerie scattered around. And I promise I haven’t even glanced at your diary, or your letters.’ He smiled, teasing charm changing all the angles of his face again.

  ‘I don’t think you’d have found them very interesting in any case.’ Helen was stiff. ‘I lead a quiet life.’ Her instinct was to defend herself, and to shore up the walls of separateness that her dream had brought tumbling down.

  Tom’s eyebrows shot up in mocking peaks.

  ‘Quiet? And newly engaged to a viscount, no less? What would you call exciting, then?’

  Helen sat down as far from him as she could.

  ‘Who told you?’ she asked.

  ‘Pansy.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Helen felt uncomfortably that she was transparent, and that Tom could see right into her, more clearly than she could see herself.