Magnus Ballater. The last person she had ever expected to see. Not forgotten, but out of mind for longer than Claudia cared to think about. Magnus, in dark corduroys and a hugely patterned sweater; taller and more heftily built than she remembered, with a head of unfashionably long, dark, thick hair, and that old irrepressible grin on his sun-tanned, weather-seamed face.
“Claudia.”
She knew that she was gaping, and had to laugh at her own amazement. “Magnus. For heaven’s sake. What are you doing?”
“Come to meet you. Jennifer’s been held up at Inverloss. Something about the boiler. She gave me a ring and asked me to come and collect you.” He stood there, looking down at her. “Do I get a kiss?”
Claudia reached up and planted a peck on his cold cheek. “I didn’t know you’d be around.”
“Oh, yes, I’m around. A local inhabitant now. Is this all your luggage?” He swept it up. “Come along now.”
She followed him, almost running to keep up with his long legs, through the gate, and out into the station yard, where a large battered car awaited them. A dog looked out of the back window. Its nose had made smeary marks on the glass. Magnus flung open the boot and tossed Claudia’s suitcase in with the dog, and then came around to open the front door for her. She got in. The car smelled of dog, and the inside looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned out for months, but Magnus made no apologies as he settled himself beside her, slammed the door and started up the engine. Gravel shot from behind the back wheels and they were away. She remembered that he had never been a man to waste time.
She said, “But what do you do here?”
“I run my father’s old woollen mill.”
“But you always swore you’d never do that. You were going to be independent, go out on your own.”
“And so I was for a bit. Worked in the Borders, and then Yorkshire. Then I went to Germany for a couple of years, and ended up in New York as a wool broker. But then my father died, the mill started running down, and it was going to be sold, so I came home.”
There was an air of tremendous confidence about him. She said, and it was a statement and not a question, “And pulled it all together.”
“Tried to. At least we’re out of the red now, and we’ve got some important orders coming in. Doubled the work-force. You must come and see it. See if you approve of our end product.”
“And what is that?”
“Tweeds, but much finer than the ones my father used to make. Closer weaves, lighter weights. Hard-wearing, but not hard. Malleable, I think the word is. And some amazing colours.”
“Are you designing?”
“Yes.”
“And where are the important orders coming from?”
“All over the world.”
“That’s marvellous. And where do you live?”
“In Pa’s old house.”
Old Mr. Ballater’s house. Claudia remembered it, built high on the hill, above the town. It had a large garden and a tennis court, and many energetic afternoons had been spent there, for Magnus, a year or so older than Claudia and Jennifer, had been one of a pack of youngsters who had spent all their time together. Leaving school, he had studied textile design, and that last summer of all, he was already a first-year student.
That had been a special summer, for a number of reasons. The weather was one of them, for it had been exceptionally warm and dry, and the long, light northern evenings had seen many fishing expeditions, walks up the river bank, and quiet hours spent casting for trout. The social life was another. They were all grown up now, and never had there been such an endless round of picnics and golf matches and tennis tournaments and reel parties and midnight barbecues on the beach. But Magnus, perhaps, had been the most important reason of all, for his enormous energy and his appetite for new diversions had swept them all up in his wake. A young man who never tired, was never bored nor out of humour, who owned his own car, and generally gave the impression that never for one moment did he doubt that life was living and every day to be filled with enjoyment.
“But tell me about yourself.” Driving at an alarming rate, they were already through the little town, and out into the countryside beyond. “Jennifer says you haven’t been north for twenty years. How could you stay out of touch for so long?”
“We weren’t out of touch. We’ve always written to each other, and telephoned, and every now and then Jennifer comes to London for a day or two and stays with me, and we go shopping and to the theatre…”
“But twenty years. So long since we were all together. What times those were.” He turned to smile at her, and Claudia prayed that a car was not bombing towards them around the curve of the road. “Why didn’t you come? Were you too busy?”
“Like you. Learning a trade. Getting experience. Starting a business.”
“Interior designing. Jennifer told me. Where do you operate?”
“London. The Kings Road. I’ve got a shop, and my own work-rooms. Lots of commissions; too many sometimes.”
“Who runs it while you’re away?”
“I have an assistant.”
“You sound successful.”
Claudia thought about this. “I suppose I am.”
His eyes were back on the road. He said, “You never married.”
“I suppose Jennifer told you that as well.”
“Of course. I found it hard to believe.”
Claudia knew a stirring of feminine irritation. Her voice was cool. “I suppose you imagined that my only potential was a house, a husband, and children.”
“No,” Magnus replied calmly, “I didn’t imagine anything of the sort. I was just surprised that a girl so beautiful hadn’t been snapped up years ago.”
He spoke so naturally, so reasonably, that Claudia was ashamed of her own thoughtless words. She said, “I’m doing what I want to,” but thought of Giles, and then did not think of Giles, because Giles was in America, and this place and this moment and this man beside her had no part of Giles. “I am being independent.”
“May I say that it suits you?”
She was touched. “Yes, I should like that very much.” She smiled, and smoothly changed the direction of the conversation. “And you, Magnus? A wife?”
“Still unresolved.”
“What does that mean?”
“That I never actually gathered up the courage to make the great commitment. A certain amount of dabbling has taken place, of course, but not the dreaded plunge.” Once more, he turned his head to look into her face, and his blue eyes gleamed with amusement. “It would appear that we are birds of a feather.”
Claudia turned away, making no comment. She knew that he was mistaken, and they were not birds of a feather, but she wasn’t going to tell him so. A certain amount of dabbling has taken place. It was not difficult to imagine the extent of these dabblings, for he was, and always had been, an extremely attractive man. But she had not followed suit. Since meeting Giles eight years ago, she had remained constant to him; seen him through an unsatisfactory marriage and an acrimonious divorce, and, staunchly, been around ever since. And Magnus’s dreaded plunge, the final commitment of marriage, she did not fear, but longed for.
Inverloss lay back from the road, reached by a rutted track, and sheltered by a stand of ancient beeches and oaks. Bumping down the lane, Claudia looked for change, and was grateful to see little. A new barn had been built, and there was a cattle-grid between the road and the garden, but otherwise all was just the same. Beyond the cattle-grid, sea pebbles did duty as gravel, and approaching the house had always sounded just like driving across a beach. Magnus put the heel of his hand on the horn in a long blast, and before Claudia could open the door of the car, Jennifer was there, erupting out of the house with dogs at her heels and a toddler on her hip. She wore jeans and a sweat-shirt, and her freckled face shone with good health. Her hair was a curly mop, and she looked no different from the tomboy teenager she had once been.
“Oh, Jennifer…”
J
ennifer set the toddler down, and they hugged. All the dogs, including Magnus’s, began to bark, and the child’s face crumpled and he began to howl, so Jennifer picked him up again, and he gazed at Claudia with baleful, tear-brimmed eyes.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get to meet you, but Ronnie’s fishing, and the man came to see about the boiler. We’ve been waiting for days, and he had to come on a Saturday!”
“No problem. I’m here.”
“Magnus, you are a saint. Stay and have lunch with us. It’s such a gorgeous day, we’re going to go blackberrying. We decided this morning that this is going to be our blackberry day. Jane and Rory are riding their ponies, but they’ll be back soon.”
There had always, every year, as far back as Claudia could remember, been a blackberry day. A traditional expedition to pick the dark fruit for a twelve months’ supply of jellies and jams.
She said, “Are we going to Creagan Hill?”
“But of course. Where else. Do come, Magnus. We can always do with an extra pair of hands.”
“All right. But I have to go back to the mill first, there are a few things I have to sort out. What time’s lunch?”
“Around one.”
“I’ll be there.”
* * *
The inside of the house was no different. Such comfort. It smelt the same, a little musky and smoky and peaty, and there were worn bits on the carpets, and grubby marks on the wallpaper, just the height of children’s hands.
“Isn’t it great that Magnus has come back to Lossdale to live? It’s like old times. He and Ronnie are tremendous buddies, and he’s doing wonders at the mill. Were you surprised to see him?” Jennifer, hefting her baby, led the way upstairs, and Claudia, carrying her suitcase, followed. They crossed the wide landing, Jennifer flung open a door, and they walked into the sunlight beyond.
“I put you in here, it’s the room you always had…” Claudia went to lay her suitcase across the seat of a chair. “Don’t you adore the new bedspreads? I found them in a trunk in the attic. You must be longing to get out of your trainy clothes. I can’t wait to introduce you to Ronnie; I can’t believe you’ve never met him. And Jane and Rory. This one’s called Geordie.” She set him on his feet and sat herself down on the edge of the bed. Geordie, tottering slightly, made his way to the chest of drawers, thumped down on his bottom, and began to play with one of the brass handles. “He’s such a love.”
Claudia was at the window, standing with her back to her cousin, looking down over the fields to the distant sea. She said, “I was so afraid everything would be changed, but it isn’t.” She turned back to smile at Jennifer. “Nor have you. You never do.”
“You’ve changed,” said Jennifer bluntly. “You’ve lost weight. You’re dreadfully thin.”
“That’s just London. And we’re both thirty-seven now. Not girls any longer.”
“I didn’t say you looked old. Just thin. And sort of polished.” Jennifer’s gaze was steady and unblinking. “Why did you suddenly decide to come, at a day’s notice? Or don’t you want to talk about it?” There had never been secrets between them. Claudia lowered her head and began to unbutton the jacket of her suit. “It’s Giles, isn’t it?”
And it was a relief to hear her say his name; to have it said, so that it did not have to hang, like a spectre, between them.
Jennifer knew about Giles. Had gleaned what she could from letters, and had met him once in London, when Giles took the pair of them out for dinner. At that time he had been divorced for nearly a year. “Is he going to marry you?” Jennifer had asked, but Claudia had laughed, and told her that it was not like that at all, they were simply good friends.
Giles. Handsome, successful, charming, but paranoiacally elusive. He and Claudia each kept their separate establishments, but they were lovers. They were a pair, accepted as a couple, and when asked away for country weekends, went together and stayed together.
But Giles’s job as a money-broker was far-reaching. Much of his time he spent in New York, where he had an apartment in the city, and often he was away for three or four months at a time. She did not know when he was returning until he called her. “I am back,” he would say. “I am here.” Whereupon, as if their separation had never taken place, the pattern of a shared life was taken up again: the dinner party in Giles’s house, which Claudia was glad to organize; the contacting of mutual friends; the intimate evenings in their favourite Italian restaurant; the magic nights, their love shared in Claudia’s huge, downy bed.
And life changed colour, and became vital, with energies to spare so that the day-to-day demands of home and job and business presented no problems, rather were a challenge that Claudia gladly met. She felt fulfilled, each tomorrow bright with promise—so much so, that it was hard to believe that it was not the same for Giles. One day, she told herself, tomorrow, he will discover that he cannot exist without me. But then that tomorrow would bring a telephone call to let her know that Giles was once more on his way, his flight dictated by the vagaries of his job. And he would be gone, across the Atlantic, leaving her alone, to get on as best she could with her single, lonely existence.
Jennifer was waiting. She said at last, “Yes, it’s Giles. We were going to Spain with a party of friends. Everything booked. But he’s been held up in New York and we had to cancel. I could have gone, but it would have been pointless on my own.”
“How long has he been away this time?”
“A few months. He was due back three days ago.”
“How mean.”
Claudia sprang to Giles’s defence. “It’s not his fault.”
“You make excuses for him. Does he ever write to you? Is he ever in touch?”
“He telephones. Sometimes. He’s a busy man.”
“More excuses. I suppose you love him. Would you marry him?”
“I…” Claudia sought for the right words. “Yes. Yes, I do. I mean, I want to be married. I want to have children. Everybody thinks I’m a dedicated career woman, but I would love to have children. Soon I’ll be too old.”
“Are you certain,” Jennifer asked with disconcerting frankness, “that you are not simply his London lady?”
The feared, unacknowledged suspicion. As she had always done, Claudia shrugged it away. “There’s a possibility, I suppose.”
“Do you trust him?”
“I don’t think about trust.”
“But Claudia, trust is the most important thing of all. Don’t waste your life.”
“How could I walk away from Giles? It’s too big a decision. I can’t handle it. He’s part of me now; I’ve loved him for too long.”
“Yes. Too long. Cut loose.”
Claudia said, “I can’t.”
* * *
They fell silent. This silence was shattered by doors opening and slamming shut, footsteps, high-pitched voices calling up the stairs. “Mummy! We’re back. We’re starving.”
Jennifer sighed. She got to her feet and went to gather Geordie up into her arms. She said, “I must go and see to lunch. We’ll talk some more.”
She went. Claudia, alone, unpacked and changed into old jeans and trainers. She cleaned her face, brushed her hair. As she did this, she heard a car drawing up outside the front door, and looking from the window, saw Magnus, returned from his mill. He got out of the car and started towards the house. Claudia watched him, but as though she had called out his name, he suddenly stopped and looked up and saw her there, framed in the upstairs window.
He said, “Are you not ready yet, for lunch?”
“Yes, I’m ready. On my way.”
* * *
Creagan Hill lay three miles from Inverloss, on the far side of the little town. From a rounded summit, crowned with scree and rock, it swept down, heather-clad, to the coastal plain, there giving way to a scattering of small drystone-diked fields, where bracken grew and sheep grazed. Narrow lanes wound around the margins of these fields, sheltered from the prevailing wind and in the full face of the sun. Here were the b
ramble thickets, and the fat, dark blackberries, clustered, ripening, upon the thorny stems.
The prospect of the expedition filled Jennifer’s children with unsophisticated anticipation.
“We go every year,” Jane explained through a mouthful of cottage pie. “And we get absolutely filthy, and the person who’s picked the most gets a prize. I got it last year…”
“You stole some of mine,” Rory pointed out. He was a stolid child, with blue eyes and his mother’s hair.
“I didn’t, you gave them to me.”
“I’d filled my bucket. I didn’t have any more room.”
Magnus tactfully intervened. “Never mind. Perhaps this year everybody will get a prize.”
“Even Geordie?”
“Why not?”
“He’ll just be a nuisance and get under everybody’s feet, and eat berries. He’ll probably make himself sick.”
Geordie banged a spoon on his high chair, and when they all looked at him, dissolved into delighted laughter.
“In fact,” Jennifer said, when they had all stopped laughing at Geordie, “Jane’s got a point. Geordie certainly won’t last the whole afternoon. So I think we should take two cars, and then I can bring him home when he starts to flag.”
“I want to go with Magnus,” Jane announced. “I’m going in his car.”
Rory was not to be outdone. “Me too.”
Their mother sighed. “I don’t mind who goes with who, but how about getting the plates into the dishwasher, and then we can make a start.”
* * *
And so Claudia found herself once more seated beside Magnus in his car, with Rory and Jane on the back seat, and Magnus’s dog in the boot. The expression on the dog’s face was long-suffering, and Claudia did not blame him. Jennifer went ahead, the baby strapped into his chair behind her, and Magnus, at a more prudent speed than their drive of the morning, brought up the rear of the little procession.
The afternoon fulfilled the promise of the early morning and remained incredibly bright and clear and warm. Once they had left the town behind them, Claudia saw the shape of the hills, the brilliance of the sea. Sunlight streamed down over tawny bracken and the plum-bloom of the heather. They turned off the road and plunged into a maze of small lanes, headed away from the sea. Creagan Hill reared up before them, so steeply that the summit was lost from view.
Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories Page 11