‘Coffee?’ She shovelled Andrew’s hospital-smelling pyjamas into the machine.
He was watching her. ‘Why are you doing this, Penny?’
‘Because…’ she straightened up ‘… we’re in this together.’ She held her breath against what he might say next.
The machine whirled and clicked. ‘You mean for better and for laundry.’
It was an appalling joke, but she was so thankful that he had made it that she could not speak. It was so much better than nothing. Much, much better. Screwing up her courage, Penny pushed her husband’s hair away from the features that were settling back into their proper focus. ‘I know I’m not what you want…’
He arrested her hand. ‘You don’t know what I want, Pen, so you mustn’t worry.’
In the past, she might have said something brisk or cutting, or resolutely practical, but Penny had learned the value of silence. And she had also learned that it was impossible to be the companion to the inner life of your spouse. That was hard. Even so, she could not prevent herself saying, ‘After all these years I have some idea.’
The washing circled and recircled on its cycle. Unexpectedly, Andrew slid his arm around Penny. ‘Yes, of course you do, Pen. I was wrong.’
Penny followed Andrew into the sitting room. He looked at the chair. Sitting down was risky, for his skin was still broken and weeping. What the hell? He lowered himself into the seat. Penny bustled around, drawing curtains and serving the coffee.
She brought his mug over to him and knelt down. ‘One of the things I found so difficult was that you never told me what you were feeling.’
It was an uncharacteristic pose for Penny, and it would have cost her to make it. Andrew’s deflated sausage fingers lifted and dropped back on to the arm of the chair. ‘I don’t like to think I drove you to his… bed. But I obviously did.’
He was sorry for a lot of things. The poetry he had once meant to write. His failure to rout Stone at the first hurdle. His failure to make his marriage a success. To have snapped up Agnes and taken her away. To accept that he had to move on.
Penny got up, went to sit in the chair opposite and crossed her legs in the manner that reminded him of when, young and slim, they had begun their married life and each had seemed complete.
‘Would you like to look at the telly?’ Her tone was light and brisk.
He shook his head.
‘Radio?’
‘Nope.’
‘Andrew, don’t go all dreamy on me. Smile.’
He turned his head away: his longing for what had never been, and would never be, was a physical hurt.
‘Andrew. Please smile.’
How is it possible to gather in a harvest from barren land?
‘Andrew…’ Penny’s eyes had filled with tears.
Summoning his resolution, Andrew did as he was asked for it was the only thing possible, the only route left. He turned back to face his wife, and the image of a girl with flowing blonde hair, dressed in green and white, shimmered through his vision with the shock and pain of the dead.
Obediently, he smiled at the anxious but loving woman who shared his real life.
Julian drove over to Kitty’s cottage and parked. It looked odd, unfamiliar, for the windows were bare of curtains and large for-sale notices decorated the drive.
It was even odder to walk up to the front door, to knock and to wait. But wait he did. Kitty called to him to come in, and he discovered her kneeling on the floor of the sitting room by a large packing case, surrounded by objects. Julian recognized the Staffordshire figurines and the glasses he had given her. Every object was being wrapped with the exquisite care and attention to detail that Kitty took with all her things. Tissue paper, bubble- wrap, a label, neat blue lettering: ‘Jacobite Spiral Stem, circa 1740’.
This was Kitty’s fingerprint. The radio operator’s ‘fist’ transmitting codes from the field. And, if luck held and your agent was a brave and resourceful spirit, its stream of Morse could be heard welling up through the betrayals and deaths. Reliable and strong.
Kitty did not look up. ‘What do you want, Julian?’ To keep up her courage, she wrapped a second glass and bedded it down in the packing case. Packing was easy. Laying up difficult memories was less so. But she was getting better. Every day was a little easier.
‘I’ve brought over some of the things you left behind.’ Julian held up a couple of bags.
Kitty did not stop what she was doing. ‘Could you put them over there? I’m afraid I’m a bit pushed so I can’t offer you anything.’
He did as she told him. Covertly, she cast him a quick look. Just to see. Just to remember. He seemed… troubled.
‘Kitty, are you sure you’re doing the right thing? I’m very grateful you’ve bought one of the houses. But to live there?’
She hunkered back on her heels. ‘Did I hear that right? From the great proselytizer for Homes for People?’ She resumed her wrapping. ‘That house will be perfect.’ Another object was placed in the packing case. ‘For what I have in mind.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
She did not answer directly. ‘Did you know that there are beaches up in Lincolnshire that are famous for their samphire? But only those who belong know which ones they are. Not many outsiders are told. I shall be very pleased if, one day, I am invited to go and collect samphire.’
She could tell that Julian was at sea. He gestured at the object-strewn room. ‘It’s all happened very quickly, Kitty.’
‘On the contrary. It’s taken far too long.’ A china plate was next on the pile and she picked it up. ‘As you well know, the house is empty and waiting in Tennyson Court and I’ve had two offers already on this one. One of them a cash buyer.’
She saw the flare of admiration light up his eyes. ‘But are you really, really sure?’
The tissue paper rustled softly. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Julian, it’s none of your business.’
There was just room for the plate and another vase in the case and she stowed them skilfully even though her hands were trembling. She was holding on. Just. ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
With a swift movement, he bent down and took her in his arms. ‘I’m sorry, Kitty,’ he breathed into her hair. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’
Safe in his embrace, she closed her eyes and, to her surprise, thought, Truly, I don’t want this back. I have been released.
Julian let her go and stood back. ‘Kitty, I know that I took ten years of your life.’
She snatched her trembling hands behind her back to hide them and lifted her chin. ‘I chose my life,’ she said. ‘That’s something.’
When he had gone, Kitty sank down on the floor and pressed her head against the buckled surface of the packing case. The air vibrated with her loss.
Think of the flat sheet of fen. The light. The raven, and seals in the grey sea. Think of the smells of dark earth and of harvest.
She would learn, she must learn, to be tough, spare, not made-over, the reverse of the image she had constructed so ardently over the years.
Eventually, Kitty climbed to her feet and went upstairs to the bedroom. For a long time, she looked at the bed she had shared with Julian. One by one, she recalled the sensations: sweet, slippery desire. And the ache of a throat gripped by passion, the deep, deep happiness of love that was going well.
But time went on. Change. Decay. The flesh that had so tormented and pricked must drop away. She would let it go, stepping into a land where she would no longer hear its moist, insistent murmur. There she would live, her bones whitening and ageing until, dry as summer dust, she would be laid in the flat earth.
The extinction of desire.
One by one, Kitty opened her drawers, shook out their tenderly folded contents and strewed her burden of cashmere, linen and sea-island cotton around the room, until it flowed with grey, white and écru. Then, she stepped out of her high-heeled shoes, bent over, picked them up, he
ld them over the wastepaper basket and dropped them in.
A new pair of shoes lay in the cupboard. Flat and inexpensive. Kitty put them on and, treading experimentally, went downstairs, leaving behind her shipwrecked room.
Goodbye, to this part of her life. She neither wanted nor desired anything more.
Theo was cleaning the hall and tut-tutting – the pictures had left dark rims on the paintwork. Kitty held out a foot, which already ached a little. ‘Do you like my shoes, Theo? Say you do.’
Late that afternoon, Julian pulled into the drive of Flagge House and rang the doorbell. Maud answered it, seized on Julian and demanded that he take a glass of sherry with her.
‘Agnes has gone to Exbury,’ she said. ‘Something to do with that farmer. Was she expecting you?’
Unused to jealousy, he tensed but made himself step into the hall. Then he sniffed. ‘Have you had a fire?’
Maud’s eyes widened. ‘My fault, I’m afraid. I had a go at burning down the kitchen.’ She led him into the drawing room. ‘I was trying to exorcize Bea. She’s run off, you know, with that Freddie person, and I wanted to tidy up after her. But it got a bit out of control.’ Maud fiddled about with glasses and the bottle. ‘Agnes dealt with it. Insurance and all that sort of thing. She was very cross.’ Maud fiddled further. ‘Why did you want to see her?’
Julian ignored the question. ‘How are you managing without a kitchen?’
‘This and that. We boil a lot, Mr Knox. You can probably smell the fish from last night.’
‘A little,’ he admitted.
Maud wiped the bottom of the glass and handed it to him. ‘Agnes has been in hospital. Badly burnt fingers. Rather apt, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t.’
Agnes was everywhere in the room. A new cushion on the sofa, a re-covered stool, a row of invitations on the mantelpiece, mostly to media parties, a copy – of course-of the Hidden Lives script on the peeling veneered table. She had tried, she was trying, pasting over the cracks and brushing out the spiders.
‘Do you have any views on what Agnes should do with the house?’
‘Yes, I do, but I don’t think they would interest Agnes.’
‘How very safe you are, Mr Knox.’ Maud sounded disappointed. ‘I hate it,’ she said, apropos of the house.
‘Yes, I know you do.’
‘We’ve had a bit of trouble with flooding as well as fire,’ said Maud. ‘It’s a nuisance, this river.’
Julian glanced out of the window to the water-meadow, where little flashes of light were trapped on the river’s surface – a code flashing information to the aqueous life under its surface.
‘Yes. It must be.’
‘Do have any messages for Agnes?’
He smiled his professional smile ‘No, I haven’t, and I think I’d better be going. I just thought I might catch her, that’s all.’ He picked up the script. There was a typed list attached to the first page: ‘Uprooted Apple Orchards and the Death of the English Apple’, ‘Death in Life: The Orphans of Eastern Europe’, ‘A Whaler’s Defence’. Underneath, Agnes had written, ‘Confirm Andrew, parish records?’
He frowned.
Agnes’s work. Agnes’s world. In this room, he could hear her inveighing against the developers’ skilfully thrown lure and against the concrete rolling over water-meadows and apple orchards.
Maud had tackled the sherry yet again. ‘In the stories, Jack always gets his Jill, but it isn’t true, is it?’
He put down the script. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t,’ he said bleakly. ‘I don’t think this Jack did. I think it all went wrong.’
‘So why did you come here, Mr Knox?’
In the flat autumn light, every wrinkle on Maud’s face was emphasized – indeed each shadow and plane in a face that regarded the world with parsimonious optimism. It was a selfish face, and it was possible that his own was set in a similar cast. He hoped not.
Love should be unselfish. Yet it was far more complicated. Love was unselfish – but it was also unutterably selfish. He needed Agnes and a future, and it was a desire that was both fierce and passionately egotistical. He needed to find the new continent.
He heard himself saying, from a long way away, ‘I came because I wanted some comfort.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Maud, giving him one of her madder looks. ‘We don’t have any of that. Dear, no. None at all. If there was any lying around, I’d want it for myself.’
31
‘Maud,’ Agnes trod warily, ‘Bea has sent us a letter.’
The two women were in the drawing room and both were swathed in sweaters. The atmosphere was both stuffy and cold and, in the cornice above them, the spiders moved through the webs with complete freedom.
‘I suppose you had better read it to me.’
‘“Dear Ones,”’ began Agnes experimentally, ‘“Freddie and I are positively frisking around Egypt. The Isabella is very luxurious and the food gorgeous. Dancing most nights. The Nile is warm and mysterious and we surge up it like a great white swan…”’
Sailing across deep, transparent water, lit by the reflection of glowing lamps. New land. Enchantment. Magic. Mystery. Love.
Agnes winced.
‘“… We’ve been to see the tombs with their beautiful wall paintings. Freddie is very dashing in his whites. In fact, I call him my Captain von Trapp…”’
To her surprise, Agnes felt indignant on Maud’s behalf, for that last remark was cruel.
‘I hope she breaks her hip.’ Maud knitted away furiously at a fluffy blue garment, destined for the children’s hospital.
‘She’s enclosed a photo.’ Agnes examined it. It was of the group, assembled by the ship’s rail. They were all in evening dress, and most of them held a glass of champagne.
Maud dropped her knitting and peered at it uncertainly. ‘Where’s Bea? Can’t see her.’
Bea was standing at the back of the group, and it took a moment or two to pick her out. There she was, smiling gently, in a long green dress. In the picture, her waist appeared as slender as a young girl’s.
Agnes got up and propped up the photograph on the mantelpiece. She tapped Bea with her fingertip but of course the figure did not respond. Funny old Bea, she thought. Running off with Freddie, pinching the Jane Austens. Lifelines, perhaps, in a bumpy sea.
After a moment, she slid the photograph behind an invitation.
‘By the way,’ Maud was uncharacteristically subdued, ‘did you send that property developer packing?’
One hand on her aching back, Agnes bent down to throw another log on the fire. Dislodged, yet another spider crept out from the basket and Maud put out her good foot and crushed it.
‘In a manner of speaking. He lives with someone else.’ Agnes hesitated for Kitty was owed her name. ‘She’s called Kitty.’
‘What a useless name.’
Agnes sifted through the rest of the post and listened to Maud, who had launched an offensive against unmarried mothers and the selfishness of Agnes. While she was ranting, the knitting was shaping up into a matinée jacket of the kind that had gone out of fashion. Angrily, Maud delivered her valedictory shot. ‘I’ve held back from asking, but are you ever going to grace us with the name of the father? Or perhaps you don’t know.’
Agnes was taking a long time to read the single sentence on a postcard. In fact, she read it over and over again, just to be sure. She said quietly, ‘I will ignore that remark, Maud.’
‘Maria would never have got herself into such a hole. No husband. No money. No prospects.’
Agnes turned over the card and examined a photograph of Lincoln cathedral. ‘No doubt, but it’s different these days.’ She put the card to one side then picked it up again and held it, as if it was of utmost preciousness. ‘Maud, I’ve arranged a small loan from the bank for the kitchen and I’ve worked out a timetable for the most pressing repairs, which can begin next year in the spring. In the end, the bank was helpful but not generous. If we go carefully
they might stump up more.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Maud interjected. ‘Even I know there’s no collateral and we need hundreds of thousands.’
Agnes could not bring herself to reply.
Again Maud opened her mouth, and out issued the jangled, dissatisfied spirit that dwelt in her. ‘How are you going to manage? What are you going to put on the birth certificate?’ The voice cracked. ‘Don’t expect me to help. I don’t know what to do with babies?’
The words flowed on but Agnes was not paying attention. She was thinking of how inadequate some words were. Some like ‘snazzy’ and ‘perfumed’ did a good job. But ‘joy’ and ‘surprise’ and ‘indebtedness’ only performed half their function. In no way could they match the feelings behind them.
‘I never told you he turned up here the other day when you were in Exbury.’
Agnes looked blank. ‘Do you mean Mr Harvey?’
‘Don’t be witless, Agnes. The property developer.’
Agnes dropped the postcard and retrieved it. ‘Julian? Here?’
In the study, which was stacked with videos of her work, including the orphanage programme, and an emergency spare of The Sound of Music, Agnes was going through her papers.
This much she knew. When Thomas Campion had returned from the Armada in 1588 and, with his companions, looked down from the ridge to the water-meadow and made his plans to build his ‘bigge howse’, he had not been thinking of the past, but of a future.
In the records, it was set down that he spent £550 on wood and, since oak was becoming scarce, he had ordered it from the wrecked ships on the shoreline. He had paid £37 12s. for the marble fireplace, £50 for the tapestries, stripped from a Catholic house in the next village. Finally, £100 had been paid over to the sovereign for the rights of ‘assart’, the holding of private property within the boundaries of a royal forest.
The records told the story of Thomas’s fine burial stone, of his son’s extravagances, of his son’s marriage to Agnes and her goodly portion. She knew of Agnes’s great-great-granddaughter’s unwise decision to build a folly on the marshy land by the river, and she knew, too, of Gervase Campion’s passion for flowers and his death in the Himalayas on a bulb-hunting expedition. She could read of the remodelling and adapting of the house to accommodate new ambitions. A second staircase. The Victorian kitchen. How one member of the family had decided on change because the old ways had run out. How they shifted, adapted, expanded… and, finally, the story reached Maud and Agnes.
Secrets of the Heart Page 27