by Rosie Thomas
‘Look,’ he said, to the air between them, ‘it’s late. I’m going to bed with an ice-bag on my nose. Tomorrow, you’ll see, we’ll be the pattern of a perfect family. Angharad?’
She understood that he was making the effort to put the ugly little scene behind them, and she wondered how many times a similar something had happened before.
‘Yes,’ she said, as normally as she could, ‘Yes, of course.’
‘You can’t escape now, can you?’ Laura said. ‘You’re really part of the family. You belong to us.’
Escape, she had said. It was an odd word to choose. She wanted to belong to Laura and Harry, but the thought gave her none of the uncomplicated happiness that it would have done that afternoon.
They said their subdued goodnights to Harry and walked down to the dark house together in silence.
In her bed in Laura’s room, Angharad stared up into the blackness, thinking about Joe Cotton. How well must he have known her mother, to see her features in a strange girl fifteen years later? Cheat, her father had said. And what was Harry’s word? Profiteer. What had he done, so long ago?
Angharad shivered in spite of the warmth of the night. The primitive bluntness of Joe Cotton’s features still frightened her, and gave rise to speculations that she had no wish to entertain in the darkness. But there was a kind of weariness and bafflement too, when he looked at his son, that triggered different feelings altogether.
Angharad turned her head on the pillow, heavy with anxiety and puzzlement. However tightly she screwed up her eyes she couldn’t rid herself of the sight of Harry, white-faced and with blood dripping, and Joe rocking over him with his fists still clenched.
Then a small sound in the blackness made her eyes snap wide open again. It was a single sob, muffled at once. Laura was crying.
‘Laura?’
No answer.
Angharad slid out of bed and crossed to Laura’s side.
‘Don’t cry.’ She put out her hand to touch her friend’s shoulder and felt that it was rigid, rejecting her.
‘Oh, don’t.’ Unthinkingly Angharad lay down beside her and put her face close to the dark blur of Laura’s head on the pillow. She stroked her arms and shoulders and felt Laura shiver under the thin sheet. Angharad was murmuring meaningless, disjointed words of comfort, not knowing what else to say or do. It was utterly unlike Laura to break down, and yet so like her to go on trying to keep it to herself.
‘Tell me. I’m part of the family. We belong together,’ Angharad reminded her gently.
Suddenly Laura turned to face her and Angharad felt the warmth of her breath on her cheek.
‘Harry,’ she said, as if that explained everything.
Angharad tried to read her expression, but it was too dark.
‘I know,’ she whispered back. ‘I understand.’ I do, she thought sadly. There could be nothing more natural in the world than loving Harry. And nothing more complicated.
At once she had the illusion that it was Harry and not Laura lying beside her. Dark blue eyes wide open and watching, and the pulse beating in his throat as she had seen it across the dinner table. Harry and Laura. So alike and so different. Two halves of one whole.
Angharad lay very still, afraid of something that was hidden close at hand, afraid that even the slightest movement might reveal it. Beside her Laura’s breathing slowed, barely perceptibly, and at last it sank into the even rhythm of sleep. Angharad went on staring at the two faces beyond the blackness until they blurred, and dissolved into one.
She hadn’t expected to sleep, but the warmth of Laura beside her was soothing, and she felt her eyes and limbs grow heavy. The fear of moving a single muscle drifted away and she rolled over to her side. Her cheek fell against the softness of Laura’s hair and she dropped into sleep.
When Angharad opened her eyes once more it was with a jolt of disorientation. It was broad daylight, and she could see the sky through the open curtains. It was pale unbroken grey, and the air was cool.
The confusion of her dream world left her.
The warm weight beside her had gone, and Laura was singing and splashing in the shower. Angharad groped her way out of bed and wrapped herself hastily in her dressing-gown.
When Laura came back she was sitting on the window seat staring out at the lake. Ducks were trailing long, rippling Vs in the water. Laura touched her shoulder.
‘Breakfast time. Come down soon.’ She was smiling quite naturally, last night’s tears apparently forgotten.
Angharad said, ‘Your father, and Harry …’ The smoothness with which his name came out surprised her. ‘What will happen after last night?’ If there was going to be any hint of any more violence, Angharad thought, she couldn’t bear to see it. She would start out for her bus now, at once, regardless of what they might think of her.
Laura shrugged airily. ‘Nothing. Until the next time. Just like always.’
She waited while Angharad dressed, and they went down the wide stairs together. Angharad’s fingers lingered on the polished wood of the old banisters as if she wished it could hold her back. The colour was high in her cheeks at the thought of seeing Harry in this new, garish light. And she had no wish to encounter Joe at all.
The dining-room was airy and fragrant with the honeysuckle wreathing the windows. In the daylight it looked quite different from the dim grandeur of the night before, with Harry lounging in his white jacket across the candlelit table.
Monica Cotton was reading a magazine at one end of the table, absently stirring her coffee in slow circles. She was chic in a neat silky suit, and perfectly groomed, but there was an extinguished air about her, as if she had long ago given up an unequal struggle. She greeted the girls faintly and went back to her fashion pages.
Out of the corner of her eye Angharad saw the dark height of Harry, turning at the sideboard. Her neck felt stiff, unable to carry her head, and a humming in her ears almost deafened her. She groped to her seat and when the mist cleared she saw him, in a frayed grey sweater and an open shirt that showed the hollow at the base of his throat, more clearly than she had ever seen anyone else. Every line of his face, from the straight black eyebrows meeting over his unusually clear eyes, to the full top lip and square, set chin seemed precious to her. She wanted to reach out and touch the blotched bruise spreading across from the wing of one nostril to the corner of his mouth.
She had never felt so physically, electrically aware of anyone.
Harry was saying something to her, and she nodded, not trusting herself to speak. In response he handed her a plate of food, but all she could see was the bone at his wrist and the sinews running along the back of his hand.
Last night he and Laura had blurred together. Now she knew that there was no chance of ever mistaking him again. Beside him Laura seemed pale, and abstract.
Harry was warm, solid and vibrating with life, and she wanted him to wrap his arms around her, she wanted to feel his mouth against hers, and she wanted him to look at her the way he had looked at his clever, possessive sister.
I love you, Harry.
Angharad tried out the words in her head, and felt the colour hot in her cheeks. She sat down quickly opposite Monica.
Harry and Laura were talking in light voices when the door opened. In a grey, wide chalk-striped suit, Joe’s bulk seemed even more formidable. His silvery hair was brushed flat and sleek, and his colour was normal again. He was every inch the prosperous businessman as his glance flicked over them. He sat down carefully, as if the chair was too small for him. ‘Good morning,’ he said deliberately, so that the Midlands twang in his voice sounded clearer. His children murmured, and Angharad stared miserably. Harry’s face was neutral, but with her tense sensitivity to him Angharad could feel the anger and confusion within him as clearly as if they were her own.
Joe unfolded his napkin and touched the Financial Times beside his plate. But clearly he was making a fumbling attempt at reconciliation.
‘Well, then. What have you all got pl
anned for today?’
‘Hairdresser. And some shoppng,’ Monica said. Joe’s glance swung to the three of them.
‘Angharad has to go home this morning. We’ll take her to the bus.’ Now Joe’s flat, expressionless eyes were fixed on Angharad.
‘Does your father know where you are?’
‘No,’ she whispered through dry lips.
‘I thought not. Well, that’s something. It’s not just my own kids who don’t know how to behave.’
Harry made a tiny start, but under the table Laura’s cool hand restrained him.
They finished their breakfast in uneasy quiet, painfully aware of Joe’s blunt head behind the newspaper. At last he drained his cup and stood up.
‘Car going OK, son?’
Angharad understood that he was asking, not about the car, but Harry himself. She wondered if Harry knew that too.
‘Yes. Thanks.’
‘Take mine this morning if the three of you want to go somewhere. I’ve only got the office and a round of golf later. I’ll go in the station wagon.’
The peace-offering hung between the two men, and Angharad saw Harry struggling with it. He’s cleverer and prouder than his father, she thought, and just as difficult. I wish … But she shut off her wish, and swallowed back the love for him that rose chokingly inside her.
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t forget we’ve got dinner tonight with Lloyd-Jones the Bank,’ Monica said.
‘Aw, Christ.’
As soon as Joe was gone, the wheels of the station wagon crunching roundly on the gravel, the atmosphere lifted like a blanket.
Harry tipped back in his seat and ran his fingers through his crest of black hair.
‘Joy-riding in the Jag for us this morning, then. Angharad, darling, we’ll take you all the way home.’
Darling. He was jokey, unaffected, yesterday’s frivolous boy again. He wouldn’t think about it, she was sure, so he would never guess how potently he had struck through to her.
‘Just to the stop for the other bus,’ she murmured. ‘My Dad’ll be waiting to meet me off it.’
An hour later they waved to Monica who was ensconced in her chair on the verandah. The big white car rolled forward, and Angharad turned for a last look at the lake, lying like a sheet of mirror glass under the dull sky. It needed the sun to bring back the dazzle and the seductive shade of yesterday.
The arch of trees closed over the car and then opened out again. They were at the white gate, and nosing down the valley road. Harry gave a whoop of pleasure, the engine snarled, and they shot away from the secret hollow of Llyn Fair.
In her place beside them, with their bare brown arms brushing hers, Angharad felt happiness flowing back. Warm smells of hay and tar swept in through the open windows, and with Laura’s fingers on the dial the car filled with bouncy, cheerful music.
I’m glad, she thought. I’m glad all of it happened. I wouldn’t want anything to take it away. She swayed against Laura, and then as the car cornered again, she felt the opposite prickle of Harry’s touch, and saw his sidelong grin at her. Nothing can happen if I just think about him, she told herself. Nothing can take the memory away.
She smiled at the hurtling road in front of her, and heard the words of the radio song bubbling out of her mouth.
At the bus stop Harry lifted her bag out of the car and he and Laura stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling at her.
‘’Bye, kid,’ he said, and she accepted it meekly, concentrating on the graze of his mouth against the corner of hers. He was so vividly, physically real to her that at that moment she felt no anxiety at leaving him.
It was Laura who wrapped her arms around her, and kissed her properly. She whispered under the bell of Angharad’s hair, ‘Until next term. I’ve never looked forward to school before, but I will now.’
Her words touched Angharad with a tiny shadow. It came to her that she was a little afraid of Laura, and all her cool possessiveness. Did she belong to Laura now, just as Harry did?
The bus came, and they stood to wave to her. Laura had moved in front of Harry, half shielding him. She didn’t move until the bus had trundled away again, and they had waved Angharad out of sight.
Four
Angharad put her book down for the dozenth time.
She looked around the room, seeing how small it was, and how shabby it had grown. Beside her chair the grandfather clock measured the slow minutes with its infuriatingly steady tock, tock. Angharad jumped up and and went to the window, but the street outside looked narrow and dull, without even a prowling cat for her eyes to follow.
‘What’s the matter with me?’ she asked herself, also for the dozenth time. School was behind her now. She was grown up, she told herself, and the longed-for time had come at last. She had come home, but instead of feeling free and triumphant, she was chafed with boredom and irritation. The summer stretched ahead of her, three long months of it before she could escape to university, and even that escape would be to a safe, redbrick foundation which had seemed a sensible choice when she applied to it, but which now threatened to be no more than lacklustre.
Angharad moved away from the window, turning her back on the lifeless street. It was uncomfortable to be bored with Cefn, and bored with the prospect of her neat future running on well-oiled, unassuming tracks into the dim distance.
‘What’s the matter with me?’ she repeated, and the lack of an answer drove her upstairs, for the fourth time in an hour. Impatiently she saw that her bedroom still looked like a child’s, with its pink bedcover and row of children’s classics ranged on the shelf over it. There was another book on the table, the general history book that had topped the reading list sent by her college. Angharad picked the book up quickly, opened it and looked down at the fading photograph tucked inside.
The snapshot crackled faintly in her fingers. They were sitting on the wooden steps of the school games pavilion. Angharad was in front on the lower step, with Laura behind her, higher up, her forearms resting on Angharad’s shoulders and her hands stretched out as if to ward off the photographer’s unwelcome intrusion. Angharad was laughing, but Laura’s face was serious, her dark eyebrows drawn together.
The picture had been taken at the beginning of Laura’s last school term. Angharad had pinned it up in the senior room they had shared, and she remembered exactly how Laura had leaned over to watch her.
‘It makes me look like Harry.’
Yes. Their two faces stared out challengingly over her own happy one. She kept it because it was secretly a picture of both of them.
Laura and Angharad had drawn closer together after Llyn Fair. Laura had let her friend feel that she was an initiate, and Angharad had seized upon the deeper intimacy gladly, for Laura’s own sake and for Harry. The two girls hadn’t wanted or needed anyone else in their senior years. Their friendship had flowered in their shared room, and the irksome boundaries of school had mattered less. It had been easy to create their own world, reading and talking through the nights, making grandiose plans for the future which suddenly seemed close enough to reach out and touch, or weaving hilarious fantasies about the mistresses and other girls. They had worked too, long hours at the desks placed side by side under the window.
Although, separately, they thought of Harry constantly, they spoke of him very little.
‘I’ve had a letter,’ Laura would say brightly, and then she would fold it away in her pocket. Angharad knew that he had gone to college, leaving Llyn Fair and his Morgan behind him.
‘And Joe,’ Laura told her. ‘Joe wanted him to join the business, but Harry would never, ever do that. Joe tried to force him to, but Harry wouldn’t.’
Angharad wondered what kind of force Joe would have applied, and shivered for Harry.
After the next letter Angharad learned that he had given up college and was setting off to hitchhike across America, aiming for Los Angeles.
‘Films. He’s dreaming about films,’ Laura said.
It seemed so far
away from the set school routines that he might have been embarking for another planet. Angharad had not seen him again, but the memory of him stayed with her as vividly as if he was her constant companion, rather than Laura.
Nor had they tried to repeat the stolen day at Llyn Fair.
Laura had left school two terms earlier than Angharad, after her successful Cambridge scholarship papers. Joe Cotton had sent her to be finished at an exclusive establishment in Switzerland. Her letters, crackling with satirical descriptions of her new companions and their expertise at spending money, had been Angharad’s main lifeline in the dull intervening months. Angharad had longed to get home to Cefn, believing that Laura would be home from Switzerland at the same time, that somehow they would meet, and the world would come alive again. Perhaps, even, Harry might come home again too.
Angharad looked down at the photograph again, at the two faces in one, and felt the disappointment afresh. The news had come almost as an afterthought in Laura’s last letter.
‘Remember me telling you about Gaby d’Erlanget? Whose papa is head of the Académie Française? Or editor of Le Monde, or President of France, I forget which. Well, Gaby and I are to spend a sybaritic few weeks at her family holiday home on Cap Ferrat. I gather that it is only a little smarter than the heyday of Villa Mauresque. I must go, of course. It means that I can’t see Llyn Fair, or Cefn, or my lovely Angharad before September. Will you wait for me? Adore you. L.
‘PS. Harry has disappeared. He did have a job as assistant to somebody’s assistant at a studio in Hollywood, but he got into a fight and was drummed out. Méchant fils.’
The brittle tone was new. Angharad wondered if it was an essential requirement for someone who had been ‘finished’.
Frowning, she put the photograph carefully back between the pages of her history book.
No Laura, and no Harry, and no prospect of seeing them.
Laura was probably drinking champagne amongst the bougainvillaea, sparring wittily with rich, clever people against the background of a postcard-blue sea. While Angharad was alone in Cefn, with only her books for company. Angharad had never been abroad, and it was impossible not to feel jealous and abandoned.