Secrets of the Heart

by Elizabeth Buchan

  Poppies and cornflowers, whispering grass, herbs… Agnes cupped her chin in her hands and, voluptuous and life-enhancing, the sun warmed her. The canvas outside the window was a dialogue between man and nature. A clever con trick, for what was artificial had become natural. A master craftsman – no, an artist – had created such a wild and joyous sight. Andrew was the artist.

  He came into sight round the corner of the house and, leaning out of the window, Agnes called to him and told him so.

  16

  Friday.

  Kitty waited in her cottage until, one by one, the lights flooded through the rooms at Cliff House and slipped through the warm, late evening to join Julian. Her feet hurried along the cliff path, still treacherous from the spring rains, and the sea roared below. In her haste, she hesitated and stumbled as if the path were virgin territory instead of a route as familiar as the lines on her face.

  He was already in bed, surrounded by papers, a sign that the week had been a bad one. ‘Darling, is everything all right?’ She cast her cashmere cardigan on to a chair and bent over to kiss him.

  He looked up from his laptop. ‘Hallo, Kitty. Nice to see you.’

  ‘Bad week? The market seems quite buoyant. FTSE up at the close and the shares are holding.’

  The corners of his mouth tightened: the bear-market expression. ‘There are the glitches I mentioned. Actually, Kitty, a bit more than glitches. Quite serious, but I think, I hope, I can sort them out.’

  She was conscious of a little glow of triumph that she had netted his response and sat down on the bed. ‘Tell me.’ On money, their talks were usually good, the exchanges easy and productive.

  ‘I think we have over-extended ourselves on the projects in the north and I can’t quite see how to limit the damage.’ He leaned back on the pillows and smiled at her with sufficient steel to inform her that he was angry with himself. ‘My mistake, Kitty. I was over-ambitious and bullied the others into agreeing. Classic stuff.’

  Kitty turned over in her mind what she knew of Portcullis. ‘Can’t you transfer the profit centre? Or carry it over to the next year?’ She ran a mental check through the summer schedule. ‘Some serious entertaining of the big shareholders?’

  He considered. ‘No, I don’t think so, but I’ll look into it.’ He leaned over and kissed her lips. ‘Keep thinking, please.’

  She picked up the file nearest to her and opened it. Her glow of triumph vanished. It was a copy of Jack Dun’s letters. Inside was a sheet of Portcullis headed paper scrawled over in Julian’s handwriting. ‘Agents given a poem to help them memorize their wireless codes. Each radio operator’s touch – the radio fingerprint – on the keys was unique and easily identifiable. The listeners at the home station were taught to watch out for the characteristic touch. Like handwriting?’

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked.

  ‘Some research I’ve been doing.’

  ‘You mean, Angela has been running round.’ She tapped the paper with a leaden finger. ‘For… Agnes Campion?’ Kitty closed the file and held it tightly against her knees.

  ‘Yes. But the funny thing is I’ve got quite interested in the subject. Radio codes, living undercover, all that sort of thing.’ Julian snapped his laptop shut and shuffled his papers into order.

  ‘I bet.’ She hated herself for sounding bitter but she could not help it. ‘Glamorous documentary-maker. Etc., etc. You might even get a credit if you’re clever.’

  She had spoilt things.

  ‘For God’s sake, Kitty.’ Julian swung his legs out of the bed and made for the door.

  She clasped the file so tight that her knuckles went white. ‘Julian, is this woman going to be one of those… She is already – sometimes-we-go-our-own-way?’

  He turned to face her. ‘Yes.’

  Kitty bent her head so the pain on her face could be private, known only to her. ‘I thought so.’

  She heard him go downstairs and into the kitchen. Kitty opened the file again and riffled through it, desperate for clues. She stopped at a letter dated 15 July 1943. ‘You have been gone over a year and I confess that I am growing frightened. When you left, I was half mad with craving the physicalness of you. I bit on nothing and swallowed draughts of burning jealousy. I dreamed incessantly of your softness and silkiness…’ Kitty’s stomach lurched. That was what it would be like if Julian left her. She leafed further through the file. The letter of November 1943. ‘You have done a terrible thing, Mary. You have taught me how to hate wastefully…’

  Kitty shut the file as Julian reappeared with a couple of glasses and a bottle of wine. He stood for a moment in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry, Kitty.’

  She sprang up, divested him of the wine and the glasses, pulled him awkwardly into her arms and ran her hand over his face. ‘This is my radio imprint on you,’ she whispered, pressing her fingers into his temples. ‘No one else has this touch, have they?’ Her hands slid down his body and came to rest. ‘Have they?’

  ‘Oh, Kitty.’

  ‘It’s fine. Let’s go to bed,’ she said softly.

  Saturday.

  As usual, Julian was up early for a pre-breakfast walk, leaving Kitty in bed. She stretched luxuriously, sated and at peace. Perhaps they should get a dog. Then they could walk it together and it would keep her company during the week. Julian planned to sail, as he did at every available moment during the season. Kitty hated sailing but perhaps in future she should make an effort to go with him. Make that a statement of commitment.

  Yesterday she had purchased the crushed raspberry linen suit that she had had her eye on for some time, and Julian had paid for it. They often exchanged presents – a feature of their arrangement. But as soon as she had carried the monogrammed carrier-bag into the cottage, Kitty had lost interest in it. She had chucked it on to the kitchen table where it remained. Theo had thrown her a knowing look. ‘Retail therapy, Kits?’

  Kitty closed her eyes. Am I unhappy because I am powerless?

  But that was not true. She had the power to ask for expensive clothes from her lover. She had her own money and managed it. She had a certain routine and a relationship – of sorts. Looks excepted, from unpromising material she had made something of her life. It was not to everyone’s taste but she had chosen it, worked for it (my God, she had worked for it) and it kept her in the manner she wished. But she had not expected the goalposts to shift quite so radically at this stage. When she had been young, she kept her emotions in a pretty little box into which she looked from time to time but which she kept securely locked. Now that she was older, she had become a neglectful concierge: she had dropped the box and spilled its contents for all to see.

  She turned her head to check the time and encountered the wretched letters file on the bedside table where she had placed it the previous night.

  Oh, Kitty, Kitty. By now she knew enough to understand that the body was not so very important in the long-term and to share it was not so very significant either. But she did not know enough not to let it hurt her.

  Kitty embarked on her increasingly lengthy morning routine. Cleanse, tone, nourish. A little massage on the neck. Cold water splashed on the eyes. She sighed. Years of this ritual lay ahead. Years of fighting, dodging, manoeuvring around age, of outwitting its incursion into her body, and of never giving up. Years and years – and the result would be defeat.

  What did it add up to?

  She looked up from the basin to the image in the mirror. Mouth slightly agape, hair lank in the steam, skin shinily nourished. A fish out of water? Automatically, she adjusted her expression into an acceptable one, reached for the towel and patted until the shine was dulled. Then she massaged cream into the base of her neck, where it was beginning to fold and thicken. A fragrant, feminine, highly constructed, accommodating Kitty took shape in the mirror.

  That was better. The wild, panicking figure had been smoothed out of sight, and she recognized herself again.

  Downstairs, she made breakfast and carried it into the conservat
ory. Later, she would make a picnic and wait on the shore for Julian to return from his sail. They would eat it tucked under the fossil cliff: good friends and companions with the memory of the fervent, burning, slow-motion sensation-seeking and -giving of the night still fresh.

  After dinner, Kitty came into the study where Julian was wrestling with the Portcullis problems and shut the door.

  He looked up. ‘When you look all pink, soft and gold like that,’ he said, ‘it usually means business. The Kitty paradox.’

  ‘It does.’ In a waft of scent, she trod across the carpet towards him in her high heels and stood over him. He put down his pen but did not meet her eye. He’s thinking I look older than last week, she thought, in sudden fear, and twisted the ruby and diamond ring he had given her round and round the finger on her right hand. He’s comparing me. ‘I know we’ve discussed this only quite recently but I want to talk about it again. I want to thrash it out.’ In the silence that fell, she felt a prickle run over her flesh. ‘Julian, please, I have some rights in this too. After all this time, I am entitled to make my demands.’

  He pushed back his chair and got to his feet and she hoped, desperately, that it was to touch her. But he moved towards the window. ‘Do we need to go into this again, Kitty?’

  ‘I’ve had enough of being unsecured. I want an anchor. I can’t explain it very well. Oh… I don’t know. I would like to be invited to the social events in the area without being labelled the scarlet woman.’

  He seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘What on earth -’

  She cut him off. ‘You wouldn’t understand because it isn’t your world, and you don’t think about anything except your own world, but it means a lot to me. Or it’s beginning to. It’s about belonging.’

  He turned his face towards the sea. ‘The weather’s getting up,’ he remarked – he was cruel, so cruel – and the wind’s mutter could be heard through the window. It was a long time before he asked, ‘Do you want the truth, Kitty?’

  Too late to scuttle back into harbour: she had launched her boat. Kitty searched Julian’s face for a clue, for a positive sign from which she could take heart, and found nothing worthy of interpretation. She summoned courage. ‘Yes. I do.’

  He seemed to be making up his mind to say something. ‘Kitty… I think…’ Terrified, she gave an involuntary little cry. At the sound, he stopped, appeared to change his mind, and began again. ‘We’ve had ten years. Are you telling me you’ve had enough?’

  She bit her lip. How like him to throw the question back. Always resisting confrontation. He was like a piece of galvanized iron, smooth and impervious, which over the years she had sought to pierce and never succeeded. ‘I don’t think you’re being honest. Is it…’ Kitty forced her mouth to stop trembling. ‘Is it… my age? You’d better say if it is.’

  He flinched. ‘Kitty, do you think you should tear yourself apart like this?’ He looked straight at her. ‘If you want a change…’

  And Kitty wished, wished, that she had never opened her mouth and, at the same time, she knew that it was impossible for her not to try to discover the truth. She longed to know how thin and insubstantial was the ground on which she stood but was terrified to look down. And yet she had come up against the limits of what she was prepared to suffer in silence. ‘Go on, Julian, we’d better get the age question out into the open.’

  ‘All right, your age might possibly have something to do with it.’

  ‘Why… why?’ She heard herself dart and jab like a stinging insect, a useless, irritating thing. ‘Tell me.’

  He looked troubled. ‘Lately, I have considered the idea of children.’

  ‘How strange. How very strange. I never imagined that lack of children would ever be an issue between us. We were both… so set. We agreed…’ she gave a short laugh ‘… that we were always too self-absorbed.’

  ‘You were always adamant that you never wanted them.’

  ‘True.’ Kitty twisted her ring and fumbled for the advantage, the light of battle still not quite extinguished. ‘If – if you feel strongly, Julian, there are clinics and things that can sort things out.’

  At last, he touched her. He slipped an arm around the doll-like waist and barely curving hips. Passionless and without curiosity, it was the gesture of a man who had been familiar with a body for a long time.

  ‘I think I have my answer. But…’ Kitty could not finish the sentence. She slipped from his grasp and left the room.

  The door clicked shut.

  Sunday.

  He was finding it hard to look Kitty in the face, a trait he despised in others and particularly in himself. Kitty’s haunted eyes, which shuttered briefly at the moment of passion, only to open to tell him she loved him. He had grown to dread the scrape of their flesh as they willed a response from each other.

  Nor did he want her exquisiteness, which she presented to him like an expensive gift. Or the Kitty of the pale blue jacket who waited on the roaring, spitting shore with a perfectly planned and packed picnic. Waiting for him. Always waiting. And he hated himself for his unfairness and cruelty, but not sufficiently to do something about them.

  Julian picked up the fossil and traced the rough undulations. Inside it, the separate chambers of the shell would have been divided by thin septa and connected by a tube, which was used for buoyancy control, like the air tanks in a submarine. Thus, each chamber was connected, each contributing to the life of the animal, and activated at different times and different situations.

  The Kitty chamber? Did he regret falling in lust with her sexual poise and sophistication, with the delicate face and sensual body? No, he could not do that. In their way, he and Kitty had grown into each other. But tonight, for the first time, he had noticed a flush layered at the base of her neck and a crêpiness, which he was sure had not been there the previous week. The discovery hurt. Not so much that the signs were in place but, rather, that he had noticed them.

  Time was folding, telescoping and vanishing.

  Julian owed Kitty much. And more, he was responsible for her. But the variables of their life together were altering in a manner that startled him. His meeting with Agnes had changed him. Air was slipping from one chamber into another and, having made the mistake of forgetting that the condition of life – and business – was constant evolution, he felt helpless, and stupid, in the face of these forces. Temporarily, he hoped. The knowledge that the levels of his life were shifting flooded him with a mixture of exhilaration and despair.

  17

  Gordon ‘The Gladiator’ Rice lived in deepest Croydon where, for a fee, he masterminded guerrilla activities -’nationwide’ – to foil road- and house-building. As soon as the filming had finished, Andrew got up at dawn and drove up to see him, explained that the planning inquiry was in June and he needed a bit of advice on tactics.

  The Gladiator was not good in the early mornings, but he pulled himself together sufficiently and said he was happy to oblige. He was sorry about the charge, he explained cheerfully to Andrew, but social security wasn’t enough to fund his activities. If a top-up was on offer, he would nip down to Devon and teach the citizens of Exbury the art of civil unrest. After a lifetime of being a problem statistic, he could spot at once where the flanks were weak. His arsenal of ideas included sit-downs on major roads, living barriers stretched across the routes of heavy machinery, and digging tunnels through the foundations of the proposed houses.

  ‘You must hit them.’ He smacked a fist into his cupped hand, and Andrew was forced to take a step backwards: it was all too apparent that the Gladiator had philosophical objections to – or perhaps did not have time for- laundry arrangements. He smelt of earth that had turned rank, of gas mains, sulphur and sweat. But above the filthy anorak and jeans his countenance seemed to show content with his role in the world. It was an expression that Andrew knew he had yet to find in his own face, search as he might.

  The Gladiator gave full value for money, and issued a stream of advice and instructions.
‘They scream if their budgets are affected, and if their name is branded in the press it’s a bull’s eye. You must make them scream. I love to make them scream. Are you on the Internet? No? Fix it up. That’s how we pass information. That way, we can duck and weave past them. Meanwhile,’ he shoved a heap of paper at Andrew, ‘read these, but don’t let the pigs in blue get their hands on them.’

  The top sheet of roughly printed paper read: ‘DON’T MUCK WITH OUR FUTURE.’

  ‘One thing,’ added the Gladiator.

  ‘What?’

  The truth dragged itself out of him. ‘They win. They always do. But we have to keep on. Never, never give up.’

  Anger hissed in Andrew. These days, he was surprised at the intensity of his feelings, sometimes rather frightened by them. After years of nothing, of no real change in how he perceived and reacted to his surroundings, his decision to fight his landlord and forge the letters, then the departure of his wife had wrought in him a sea-change. Very quickly, he had become this person with powerful feelings and the urge to act. He hoped that he would recognize himself.

  The Gladiator shrugged. ‘We outsiders,’ he said, ‘we know’

  Andrew thought then of Agnes, and of her hair tangled across the pillow. The intimacy of seeing her asleep had been erotic and dangerously satisfying, its secrecy thrilling.

  It was a glimmer of hope for the farm. Agnes understood the situation. With her film she had taken on the role of keeper of Tithings. Its messenger, perhaps even its saviour.

  The fact that he was deceiving her was something he felt she would understand when the time came to be transparent.

  On the way home he stopped, on impulse, phoned Agnes at Flagge House and asked if he could look in.

  The van bounced up the drive and the soft beaten colour and shape of the house was framed in his windscreen. At the sight of it, Andrew suddenly felt happy and in communion with Agnes. His meeting with her had been more than a professional one: it had ensured new connections. Unsure where to park, he drove round to the kitchen yard at the back. As luck would have it, Agnes emerged with a bowl of wet lettuce from the back door, looking strained and preoccupied. ‘Good Lord, Andrew. I didn’t expect you quite so soon.’ But a smile lit her face and he felt better.