Before the afternoon was out, Julian together called his young, trendy, socially aware team and gave them a rundown on the situation. Then he dispatched some of them by helicopter to reconnoitre twenty acres of farmland near Bath being sold by its broke owner – land so expensive that the margins might prove impossible. He also called in Harold, who was wearing yet another variant of the crumpled linen suit but whose trendiness was cancelled out by his ashen face. Again they went over the figures.
By mid-morning on Tuesday, the crisis was full-blown. None of the banks had shown any interest in putting together a rescue package and the share price was on the slide. Worse, Legatt’s, the rival firm, had sniffed what was in the wind and was hovering, ready to launch a hostile takeover bid.
Harold was white to the gills and shaking. Julian took pity on him. ‘This won’t be your last crisis, or your worst.’
Harold closed his eyes for a second. ‘If you say so.’
They were standing together by the office window, overlooking the clogged street below. Julian punched the younger man’s shoulder gently. ‘Use your wits to think up something, but don’t worry too much. The Somerset deal might come through.’
He knew, and Harold knew, that it was touch and go.
Much depended on the Somerset deal, and on Wednesday morning Julian helicoptered down to the area. It was land owned by a farmer who, as soon as the subsidies came in from Europe, had abandoned mixed farming in favour of turning specialist cereal grower. But his profits had been eaten into by the variety of diseases that tend to attack monocultures and, despite huge applications of pesticide, the farm had failed to thrive. Now, the soil was dead and the farmer wanted out, to retire to France.
Julian walked the bare fields, the dry chalky soil crumbling under his feet. It offered the sort of opportunity on which Portcullis thrived, and Julian returned to London feeling marginally more positive, especially as the share price had steadied.
He returned to the Barbican in the late summer twilight, in the cusp before the razzle of lights took over from the dusk, through a city rattling with discarded polystyrene, and clotted with commuters.
The following morning a phone call from Harold woke him at seven thirty. ‘Legatt’s have launched their bid,’ he reported.
Julian swiped a finger across his throat. ‘That’s that, then.’
23
Some people reckoned their fifteen minutes of fame was their due and, if he ever thought about it, Andrew imagined he could be one of them. Yet when faced with notoriety, he discovered it was a dangerous thing. Too close to the bone of exposure. He did not like the questions it made him ask himself, and he hated the reminder that he was fraudulent and might be exposed as such.
After pictures and a report of his fiery protest appeared in the local press, he was besieged by the media and by phone calls. From being a case that had been virtually ignored, it now excited local interest, with supporters and detractors hurling insults at each other on the letters page of the Exbury Herald. A regional television company arrived to film the field of charred circles with Andrew and the Gladiator, who had hastened down from Croydon declaring that he would waive his fee for the sake of some action.
It was the lovely, somnolent moment of high summer. In the daytime, the calves slept, hidden by the grass in the meadows, their secret couches betrayed only by their flapping ears. In the evenings, the cows, weighed down by milk, soaked up the evening sun while their offspring, tails at full mast, capered in gangs.
The idyllic pastoral scene whipped up the film crew into excitement, and they responded with the delight, reverence even, usually aroused by great artefacts. They could not believe how perfect it was, they told Andrew, how marvellous, how picturesque. And they regarded him with the quizzical gaze of travellers in a foreign land.
‘I am proud of my farm.’ Andrew permitted himself a rare moment of satisfaction.
He looked out of the window. With their summer foliage, the oaks made a stately clump. If Stone got his way, they would be the first to go under the bulldozer. His mouth tightened.
Enough. The tasks for the day needing checking. Flora and Gudrun were due at the abattoir. Afterwards there was hay and sugar beet to pick up from Exbury, then the orders for the meat delivery to be worked out.
Before he could get going, Penny rang. ‘Listen, love, there’s a story being put about that you’re burning carcasses illegally.’
‘You know me better than that.’
‘I do. But they don’t.’
He glanced at his opened post. ‘I’ve had a letter from the Meat Marketing boys. They want to inspect the farm.’
Andrew, that’s no coincidence.’ Penny sounded troubled. ‘There’s something going on. Stone wants the money, and us off the land, and he’s using tactics. You wouldn’t listen because you’re too stubborn. But it’s true.’
Penny was probably right. She had an ear to the ground and a practicality that enabled her to put two and two together and reach the correct conclusion.
‘I wish I was there to defend you.’
He cocked his inner ear. If he was not mistaken, Penny was angling for an opening. To come back? The thought made him recoil. The shock waves from her departure had ebbed, and he had moved on in all sorts of surprising ways. Penny had chosen how it was to be and they had all better get on with it.
‘Good Lord,’ he said. The sound of his own laughter was increasingly foreign to Andrew but Penny’s stout defence struck him as funny. ‘I’d better warn Bob.’
He wished he had kept his mouth shut. With a little gasping sigh, Penny said, ‘I suppose I deserved that.’
Bea waited up for Agnes, who returned to Flagge House in the late evening from a London trip. Maud was having an early night, she explained, adding, ‘So should you be, but I’m afraid you’re due a visitor.’
‘Who?’ Agnes dumped her rucksack on the table in the hall. In the evening sun, the glass ship lamp on the table glittered and rode through the crystal water.
‘Andrew Kelsey. He was most insistent. He said that he wanted to ask you a question.’ Bea looked puzzled. ‘Does that make sense, dear?’
‘Oh, yes, it makes sense,’ said Agnes. To her horror, she felt tears spring into her eyes.
‘Agnes, dear,’ Bea looked concerned, ‘you must stop this at once. It won’t do in your condition.’ Agnes gave a visible start. ‘I am told, but I agree I don’t have firsthand experience, that it is not a good thing to get upset while having a baby.’
Agnes was forced to lean on the table. ‘How long have you known? Does Maud know?’
‘No, dear, she doesn’t. But you’ve had a funny white look about your lips. Very tell-tale. Could I say…’ Bea was hugging the news as a personal affirmation of joy ‘… I’m so excited, and I’m so glad you haven’t got rid of it. I was rather frightened – well, I said a little prayer. But it is bad timing. Babies always happen when one least wants them. Or when one thinks that’s the case.’
‘Good God,’ said Agnes. ‘I should have talked to you earlier.’
‘You could get rid of it,’ Bea was handling this delicate topic with the fluency of the worldly woman she was not, ‘but you might end up living with a ghost.’
‘Goodness,’ was all Agnes could think of to say. ‘I had no idea you had views on this subject. Aren’t you shocked or upset?’
‘Don’t be silly, Agnes. We’re not living in the Stone Age. Everyone welcomes the future generation.’ She placed a small, dry hand on Agnes’s shoulder, indicating that she forgave the younger woman’s patronizing tone. ‘Goodness is such a funny thing, isn’t it? In my day, goodness meant you gave your baby away if you were unmarried. Now you can be unmarried, have a dozen babies, keep them and be considered a woman of principle.’
That made Agnes laugh.
Bea looked very earnest. ‘Things have changed. Your generation is freer than we were. I expect that makes it harder.’
Agnes reached out her hand and touched the ship’s
crystal sail. ‘If I need my head put in order I must remember to come and consult you.’
She went out on to the terrace and settled in one of the rusting iron chairs to prepare for Andrew’s arrival. It was hot, with just a hint of thunder to the north. Then, as the static settled, the sky cleared and darkened and the stars began to make their appearance. A large August moon bellied up into the sky. The shadows over the water-meadow deepened, dimmed and vanished.
Once upon a time, a posse of men – for it would have been men – among them a Campion, rode into the village. They saw the potential of this site, struck the first spade into the earth and built the house. They had taken wives, had children, added wings, demolished others and, for a time, thrived. Unlike Agnes, they had not imagined that time and money were finite.
When Andrew stepped through the window, Agnes was sitting quietly, with a glass of water in her hand, staring over the water-meadow. ‘Hallo, Andrew,’ she said.
He walked across and raised her hand to his cheek, awkwardly but with a fervour that touched her. ‘Here,’ he said, and shoved a bag on to Agnes’s lap. ‘Honey this time.’
She exclaimed in delight. ‘From your bees, I take it?’ She kissed him back. He smelt of sunburn, straw and feed. ‘I put a bottle of white in the fridge. I’ll get it.’
When Agnes returned, Andrew had settled himself on the top step of the terrace and she dropped down beside him. The stone was warm and flaky dry. Andrew was hot from his drive and the sun had tanned his face and a deep V beneath his neck.
‘Any news?’ she asked.
‘Good and bad. The anti-Arcadian lobby is growing in Exbury, and they’ve been forced into having a public meeting to try to show how much they’re going to contribute to the town. It’s delayed the results of the inquiry. The bad is that Arcadian are thinking of funding a sports centre as a trade-off.’
Silently she filled his glass.
He rolled it between his fingers and put it down on the step. ‘I can’t stay very long, but I think you know why I’m here.’ There was no point in pretending and Agnes nodded. ‘I’m not very good at this sort of thing or with words but I wanted to stake my claim… if you’ll have me.’
She shifted on the hard stone and her sandal dislodged a shard of it, which bounced down the steps.
‘I like you very much.’ He gazed down to the grass that lapped the bottom of the flight. ‘I imagine it’s significant that you haven’t been in touch since my rather bald request when you came down, so I came to put it right.’
Knowing what was coming, she stirred herself. If she had decided to have this baby, then she had to do things properly. Square the circle. Face up to the confrontation. ‘Andrew… there is something…’
Andrew was in too much of a hurry to listen. ‘I’ve no idea what the future holds but Penny has gone.’ The blue eyes narrowed – stormy, chilly waters. ‘I may lose the farm. But I may not. I may have to start again. Even if I keep Tithings, money is going to be a problem. Always. Farming does not buy luxuries. At least, my version.’
‘If you lose Tithings, you’ll be due a reasonable compensation?’
‘I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘And I suppose I would accept it. But I can’t accept that because I’m small I have no rights.’
‘Andrew. I’ve got something I must tell you but I’ll find it easier if we’re moving.’
He followed her down the steps, their feet swishing through the grass. The downy whisper of seed-heads shivered over Agnes’s bare legs. She halted by the river-bank and drank in the familiar beauty. The façade of Flagge House was pitted in a dreamscape of light and shadow – a moment of lush, dreamy, sensual exchange between deep evening and night, accompanied by the sound of running water.
‘Andrew,’ she said, ‘I’m pregnant.’
Andrew exclaimed, a sound full of anger and frustration, and swung on his heel away from her. A second passed. Two, then ten, twenty. ‘I needn’t ask whose it is?’
‘As a matter of fact, no.’
‘Does he know?’
‘No.’
‘Will you tell him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because…’
‘You are sure you want it?’
‘Yes…’ She took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s spoilt, then,’ Andrew said bitterly, and abandoned Agnes on the riverbank. Conscious of the weary drag of her body, she lowered herself to the grass, listened to the water and watched him go.
The dusk intensified.
If she remained quiet and concentrated, her reward might be a fox’s bark, the rustle of a tiny rodent in the grass, even the slither of a grass snake cooling after the heat of the day. She undid her sandals and wriggled her feet in the cool, sappy grass – the action reminding her of the early years at Flagge House when her body had been wild and uncontrollable in its growths and surprises.
She had been solitary then, so why should she be surprised at her solitude now? No one held a blueprint for anyone else’s well-being, and at least – at the very least – the tiny beating heart tucked under her pelvis gave her an entrée into another kind of love.
She was a professional, used to coping, and she would cope. Register at the hospital, move her bedroom upstairs to the nursery floor, find someone in Charlborough to look after it when she was away… Agnes ticked off a list in a dreamy fashion. She felt her mind shift into another gear, a certain pride that she was going to take control, a curiosity as to what was going to happen to her body.
The heat was sucking up the air and lowered over the water-meadow. Agnes dipped her feet into the water and her toes knotted up with cramp.
Then there were footsteps behind her. Heavy, circling. Andrew loomed out of the dark and dropped down beside her. Agnes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I came here to sleep with you. To make you give in. I wanted an affair.’ He put his face close to hers. ‘I still do.’
For a second, she heard an elusive echo… tap, tap… and the flight of anguished footsteps, the sound that an agent on the run, like the Mary of Julian’s imagination, might have made. ‘Do you?’ she replied, and touched his cheek. ‘Even now?’
He kept his lips close to her ear. ‘Listen to me. It changes things, but not entirely. Perhaps it’s a good thing’
‘Why?’
‘We have no secrets. The worst has been done. I had Penny. You have a baby. You will need support. I can offer it. Come and live with me. I’ll divorce Penny and we could get married. Think about it. We can pretend the baby is mine. It’s happened before. Often, in fact. In lots of families. I can adopt it. Actually, no one need know.’
‘I had decided that I could cope on my own.’
‘No. Listen.’ Andrew placed his hands at either side of her face. The pressure made circles dance in front of her eyes. ‘It came to me in a flash. You’ll need help when you have your baby.’
His hands moved down to the neckline of her linen blouse, sought entry and found it. ‘Could you love me? Now, in the future, sometime? I could love you. Very much.’ Gently, he caressed the skin at the base of her throat. ‘I don’t mind about him.’
His touch neither stirred nor alarmed her. It was a pleasant physical sensation, reliable and male, and she could live with it. Then, without warning, her pulses quickened and she was pierced by a longing for Julian so acute and anguished that she almost gasped. Why? she cried, in silent despair. Why?
The feeling vanished. Andrew drew her closer and she closed her eyes.
Moonlight and heat rising from the ground. The sensation of skin slicked with sweat, an ever-present hint of nausea, the harvest dusk… These increased Agnes’s sense of unreality. Andrew both unsettled and reassured her, and she yearned to yield to the drifting, drowsy persuasions of pregnancy. Her hands slid down her body and touched the tiny swell of her belly. Perhaps it would be better. A calm, considered partnership where there were no secrets, where the partners had looked at each other, dispa
ssionately and without heat, before they had made the choice.
‘You must take time to think about this, Andrew,’ she said. ‘And I shall too.’
He leaned back on his hands and watched the water. ‘I don’t have to. I like the idea of a family. But you must promise one thing.’
‘What?’
‘That he never knows.’
She turned her head away.
‘You will think about it?’ He leaned forward in a swift movement and cupped her chin so that her face was turned towards him.
‘Of course… And, Andrew, thank you.’
Cloud had smeared itself over the sky and it had grown insufferably hot. Agnes could smell thunder rolling in from the west. ‘Let’s go inside,’ she said, and with Andrew’s arm now lying as heavy as wood across her shoulders, they left the shadowy water-meadow.
Before he left, Andrew asked Agnes, ‘Could you come and live at Tithings?’
She thought of the lanes banked high with dog-rose and honeysuckle, of ancient oaks and the sweep of the moor, of Andrew’s pastures threaded by wild herbs and dashes of shimmering colour. Beside this was the picture of her own house, so steeped in history, its foundations eroded, its structures brittle with age and disrepair, its significance dimming and the prospect of an extended, tortured struggle to preserve it.
Agnes promised him she would think it over.
After he had driven away, she pushed heavy iron bolts into place and turned the huge old-fashioned key in the lock. Then she switched off the lights, and the spun-glass ship was instantly extinguished.
24
Clutching her knitting-bag. Maud collared Agnes in the kitchen after breakfast. ‘Was someone here last night?’
Agnes explained that it had been Andrew.
‘Tiens. What the neighbours must think with all these men popping in and out…’ Maud peered at her. ‘You don’t look as though you enjoyed the visit.’
Secrets of the Heart Page 21