‘Much too late,’ said Matt firmly.
She nodded. Accepting the answer for what it was. Defeat. It had been an heroic, selfless, last-ditch attempt to save her son, and suddenly, in spite of myself, my heart went out to her. She was that desperate. And she’d tried everything now. She’d lied in court, disfigured herself, and now grovelled and humbled herself in front of her son and an audience. But that was what love did to you. Particularly the maternal kind. And as Matt had said, what if it were Flora?
‘When will you go back?’ she said, raising her chin, collecting herself. ‘To the States. Tomorrow? Will you use those tickets?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Matt. ‘I haven’t thought. Don’t know what we’ll do. Tod?’ He turned to his son, but Tod had felt the full force and pathos of his mother’s last desperate plea, and was staring miserably at the ground, his courage momentarily deserting him. Matt sensed it ebbing away and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Say goodbye to your mom, Tod.’ He gave him a little push and Tod went over. I had to turn away. I couldn’t bear it.
‘Come on, Flora,’ I muttered, and we went into the house.
I headed for the kitchen where, strangely, I often found myself in times of emotional crisis, and more particularly the sink, which naturally was full of washing-up. Turning the taps on full blast and squirting liquid over the greasy pans, I silently handed Flora a tea towel. Out of the corner of my eye, through the window over the sink, I saw Tod and his mother hug each other hard. Heard her weeping loudly, her head on Tod’s shoulder, then Louise’s sensible voice.
‘She can’t possibly drive all the way back to Cambridge now. She can come back with me. Spend the night, and then go home tomorrow. She’s all in.’
‘That would be kind, Lou,’ said Matt, discussing his ex-wife over her head as if she wasn’t there.
I wondered if it had always been so in that marriage. If he’d always looked after her, guided her, arranged things for her, because that was the nature of his role when they’d met; he’d been her doctor, her protector, just as David had been mine, I realized with a start. Had Matt recognized the parallel, I wondered? When he’d advised me to break the link myself? Recognized the similarly paternal ground he and David occupied?
After a while, when I’d scrubbed the living daylights out of those pans, I realized the garden had gone quiet. Glancing out of the window, I saw that Louise and Madeleine had gone, and, in the distance, heard the crunch of gravel as two cars purred away in tandem. It was almost dark now, but down at the bottom of the garden, silhouetted against the trees, Tod’s hunched figure was walking fast, heading for the gap that led to the creek. I turned to look at Flora drying up beside me, but she was already putting her cloth down. The next minute, she was walking slowly down the garden, biting her thumbnail. She turned and caught my eye through the window. I shrugged uncertainly. I don’t know, darling. I really don’t. She hesitated, then carried on walking, letting me know with one eloquently raised hand that she knew he needed to be alone, but that perhaps he wouldn’t mind someone hovering in the shadows, should he need to talk eventually?
Quite grown-up, I decided. Much more so than me. Because frankly, I felt like picking one of these coffee cups out of the sink, hurling it at the wall, and bursting into tears, which was, of course, monumentally selfish, because I should be so happy for Matt and Tod. So happy that they could carry on fishing and surfing and being a father and son team back home in Massachusetts, with Tod going back to his old school and skateboarding in the street with his friends. How selfish would it be of me not
to want it to be so? Of course I wanted it.
Miserably, I pulled the plug in the sink and felt a strand of something revolting wrap itself around my little finger in the depths. I shook it off and wiped my hands. Suddenly I didn’t want to be alone in this house. I needed the night air as much as anyone else who was fighting with their emotions around here. I pushed open the back door and walked outside, gulping back the tears as I went. There was no sign of Matt, and my heart ached for him in a way that it had never ached for anyone, I realized; neither Adam nor David. And up until a few minutes ago, I’d never actually considered his going, but of course he would now. Now he’d got what he wanted, what he’d come for. What was there to keep him?
I headed down the lawn past the summer house, the scene of yet another recently fostered dream that had come to nothing. The lady novelist. A deep and profound melancholy rose within me. So strange, I reflected, when only weeks ago I’d been so happy. A woman on the brink of getting married, writing her book, about to become a doctor’s wife, a large house in Hurlingham, more babies planned: all gone. And even though I knew it was right that it had gone, the fact that there was nothing to put in its place was hard. Real tough, as Matt would say in his dark brown accent. A ball of tears scuttled up my throat at the memory of his voice and I swallowed it down, walking quickly down the sandy path through the woods.
When I reached the river bed there was no sign of Tod or Flora. They must have gone on around the headland. I walked along the bank, and stood in the spot where Matt and I had sat that night, around the dying embers of the campfire, tingling with longing for each other – or so I’d thought – love and firelight racing in every vein. I raised my face to the heavens; they were clear, dark and relentlessly deep, and now with a smattering of stars. I had a horrid feeling I was really going to howl now, shed hot tears of self-pity, and that with Tod and Flora lurking around somewhere, either separately or together, this wasn’t the place to do it. Instead, I turned a sharp right and headed uphill for the cliff path. The wind was strong now, buffeting my face, which was strangely comforting, and, as I went up, I had to reach out and hold on to tufts of rough grass to support me as I climbed. The light was very dim too, so that when the track finally plateaued out at the top and I came across a tall figure blocking my path, I shrieked.
It was Matt, leaning back against a tree, one leg propped up. He glanced round at my cry and hurriedly stuffed some bits of paper into his pocket. The moonlight just caught them though. It was the airline tickets, being tucked furtively away. And suddenly I was enraged. The brimming tears of self-pity turned to ones of fury and sprang from my eyes.
‘Going to use them?’ I cried bitterly. ‘Tomorrow, isn’t it?’
‘Sorry?’ He blinked in my face.
I wiped the tears unceremoniously from my cheeks with the back of my hand.
‘Well, that’s when they’re for, isn’t it? Tomorrow afternoon, Heathrow to JFK. I’ll pop you up there if you like. Give you a lift to the airport. Wave you off, even.’
‘What d’you mean?’ He straightened up from the tree. ‘I’m not going anywhere tomorrow. I was looking at those tickets thinking: How extraordinary. All this time they’ve represented Tod for me, and now they’ve actually become a reality. But I’m not going anywhere.’
‘But you will, won’t you?’ I said brokenly. I was horrified at myself, but I couldn’t help it. My voice cracked. ‘You’ll go back to America, and Flora and I will become something that happened on a cute little English fishing holiday, a diversion while you got custody of Tod. My God, you even apologized for kissing me back there, as if that was completely abhorrent, a complete aberration. Well, I have no such regrets, Matt.’ I was shaking now, possibly even slightly out of control. ‘I enjoyed every minute of it, and was looking forward to more of the same, maybe even something of a more permanent nature, but then I haven’t had the luxury of a string of affairs like you have since the end of my marriage. Add me to your list, why don’t you? Pop me down as number three, straight after the radiologist with the great legs and the neighbour with the inconvenient cat: the eccentric Englishwoman! The divorcee who threw her clothes away and wrote cheap books, with the screwed-up child with obsessive behavioural problems. The one who threw in her chance to administer to famine victims in – in war-torn Africa, in a war-torn tent in a Red Cross uniform –’
He blinked. �
�Red Cross?’
‘Yes, why not!’ I shrieked. ‘Christ, I could be rivalling Florence sodding Nightingale, making the world a better place! I could be handing out rice, digging wells –’
‘Wells? Where?’
‘In the ground!’ I yelled. ‘For the starving millions!’
‘What, in a long white dress?’
I stared. ‘What?’ I panted to a standstill. ‘You’ll be digging wells in a long white dress?’
I shook my head, rubbing my wet nose with my fist. ‘What dress?’
‘The one you’re getting married in in five weeks’ time. The one that’s being specially made for you in London. You’re gonna sink wells in that? After the reception at Claridge’s? With your mother and sister in grey and pink respectively, both with new shoes and bags purchased from Bowman’s of Exeter?’ He shook his head. ‘Get real dirty.’
I stared, flummoxed. ‘Wha – What d’you mean?’
‘I called the farm this morning. I wanted to check you were OK. You took off so suddenly yesterday, like a bat out of hell. I spoke to Clare, who’d just woken up. She said there was no sign of you, but she yelled downstairs to your mom who said you’d gone to London to see David. “Ah,” said Clare, back down the phone to me. “A little romantic tryst. Honestly, Matt, in a few weeks’ time that girl’s gonna be with that guy for the rest of her life, but she still drives four hours to see him for ten minutes. Can’t keep her hands off him!” How we chuckled. And then I got the whole low-down on the wedding, right down to the colour of Flora’s bridesmaid dress and the ushers’ buttonholes. Oh and, incidentally, your ma’s shoes and bag are from Bowman’s, but the suit itself is from an exclusive little boutique round the corner. She’s gonna be in dove-grey silk.’
‘But – but I’m not!’ I said, horrified. ‘Not in silk?’ He scratched his head dubiously. ‘A mistake, I fear. It’s very à la mode for brides this season.’
‘No! I mean I’m not getting married! It was all organized like that, just as you’ve said, all planned without me by David, but – but, Matt, the engagement’s off! I split up with David today in London. He’s going away, to Nicaragua. We’re not getting married.’
There was a silence. ‘You’re not … getting married?’
‘No. I’m not.’ I squinted in the dusk. Looked at him incredulously. ‘You didn’t know that?’ I whispered.
‘Do I look, or sound, like a man that knows that? No. As a matter of fact, I didn’t. How could I have known it, Annie, when you neglected to tell me?’
My mind spun. Had I? Had I neglected to tell him? ‘So – so all the time, when you were wriggling and apologizing and –’
‘Trying to behave like a gentleman and do the right thing because I realized you were still getting hitched and hadn’t changed your plans on account of me, and that the evening we’d shared together had clearly meant precisely nothing to you – yeah. Yeah, that’s what I was doing.’ He scratched his head. ‘Felt a bit of a heel, as a matter of fact, for trying to talk you out of your big day. It occurred to me you might actually love this guy, and there I was, selfishly trying to turn things to my advantage, and all because …’
‘Yes?’ I hung on. ‘Well, all because … I wanted you.’
‘Oh!’
There was a silence. We gazed at one another. He went on in a low voice.
‘I love you, Annie, you must know that. And I want us to be together, you, me, Tod and Flora. But I had an awful surge of guilt there that I was prising you away from another life you’d planned and wanted for a long time, and that even though I could see it was wrong, that he was wrong, you couldn’t. You see, I’ve done that masterful role before, Annie, the one David was doing, and it’s a mistake. You don’t need anyone to look after you. You need someone to look you in the eye.’
‘I know,’ I whispered, moving closer, holding his eye. ‘I know that now, and, Matt, I love you too, so much. I just don’t know how on earth we’re going to … well …’ I hesitated.
‘What?’
‘I mean, you live in America and I live here, and this isn’t even our house! We’re just playing at living in it and –’
‘Details,’ he murmured, pushing his fingers up through my hair and stopping my lips with a kiss. ‘Let’s worry about the details later.’
A second later I was in his arms and he was kissing the life out of me. And he was right. Nothing mattered. Nothing, except that here I was, right where I wanted to be, his lips on mine, his hands strong and warm on my back, the wind in my hair and my feet – well, was it my imagination or were my feet just slightly off the ground? And with a glorious, glorious feeling flooding through every vein that if this moment were to go on for ever and nothing practical were ever sorted out, well, then that would be fine too. I wouldn’t object. And perhaps it would have done, if a startled voice behind us hadn’t said quite clearly and shrilly:
‘Mum!’
We parted, panting. Swung around breathlessly. A few feet away, Tod and Flora were staring at us.
‘Oh! Darling.’ I hurriedly smoothed down my hair, flushing madly. ‘There you are. Matt and I were just …’
‘Your mother and I were getting some details sorted out,’ said Matt as the children continued to boggle, their eyes and mouths wide. Matt took my hand. ‘And, as it happens, we’re not through yet; we have way more to discuss. Way more. Like who gets to take the garbage out and who does the dishes and – oh boy, all manner of things. So, here.’ He reached into his back pocket and drew out a wad of tenners. ‘You guys eaten yet?’
‘Er, no,’ muttered Flora, dazed. ‘Tod.’ He turned to his son. ‘Take Flora over to Pad-stow on the ferry, and have yourselves a pizza. Then take yourselves off around the town and spend the rest on mindless junk like CDs and T-shirts, and anything over-priced with a logo on it.’
‘Cool!’ Tod’s eyes lit up as he took the money. ‘What’s the catch?’
Matt put his arm around my shoulder and led me away, walking me firmly down the cliff path and away from them, towards the house.
‘The catch is,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘that you’re back at ten o’clock, and not a moment before. I don’t want to see your horrible inquisitive little faces back here until precisely then, when you creep straight to your bedrooms. Deal?’
We couldn’t see their faces as we marched away from them, grinning like children, but we could hear the glee in their voices.
‘Deal!’
Chapter Twenty-nine
‘Call that rowing?’ I murmured, leaning back in the bows of the boat and letting the sun play on my eyelids as it flickered lacily through the dappled shade of the trees. ‘I’ve had better galley slaves.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ Matt said, pulling hard on the oars in his dark suit, his white rose bobbing in his lapel. ‘And one of the first things we’re going to address, Mrs Malone, is the question of slaves. I sure as hell ain’t cleaning the bath tub every day, and knowing you as I now do, I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to either, so my mind flies naturally to housekeepers.’
‘Housekeepers?’ I opened one eye. ‘To keep some kind of order around the place while I’m away in Exeter curing the sick and you’re penning your Emily Dickinson biography. Believe me, honey, the dust will gather.’
I sat up a bit. ‘You know what Quentin Crisp said? After the first four years, the dust doesn’t get any thicker.’ I giggled.
Matt grimaced. ‘Happily, I’m not sharing a house with the self-appointed last-of-the-stately-homos, and frankly the detritus two kids make – not to mention one very shaggy dog we seem to have acquired – is more than mere dust.’
I half closed my eyes into the sun, letting my fingers drift languidly in the cold, clear water, being careful not to let the scalloped edge of my lace sleeve get wet.
‘I have to admit the whole idea of staff has always made me rather nervous,’ I murmured. ‘I’m too middle class to know how to deal with them; I haven’t the natural authority to tell
them to plump the cushions and get right in those corners, and would probably let them shake a duster around ineffectually before sitting down at the kitchen table to eat me out of chocolate biscuits. But if that’s what you want, I’ll happily go along with it.’ I slipped a satin shoe off and put my foot in his lap. ‘Frankly, my darling, today I’ll go along with anything.’ I wiggled my toes, watching his face.
Matt let the oars go limp in their rowlocks for a moment. He leaned forward on them, regarding me. ‘Well, we sure aren’t going to make it back before the guests drive round inland if you carry on like that,’ he said softly, his mouth twitching. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m tempted to undo all those pearl buttons which I noticed in church go right the way down the back of that dress, and let it fall in a heap in the bottom of the boat, along with that shoe.’
There was silence for a moment, while our eyes feasted and we rashly considered this option. I sat up hastily.
‘If you think I’m arriving at my reception looking like a girl who’s just been ravished in the bottom of a boat, you’re wrong. Row on, my man.’
He grinned and picked up the oars. ‘Who said anything about ravishing? Just wanted to see you in a rowing boat in your smalls. And incidentally, why can’t I use the outboard motor on this thing? Get us there a whole lot quicker.’
‘Ah, but it wouldn’t be romantic, would it? No no, the idea is that you row me from the church across the creek like something out of a Milk Tray advert, while I languish in the bows like this.’ I threw my head back dramatically and let my hair fall Pre-Raphaelite style over the side.
He laughed. Shook his head. ‘Just so long as everything’s going according to plan, Mrs Malone.’
‘Oh it’s going perfectly, Mr Malone,’ I beamed, sitting up again. ‘Just perfectly.’
I twisted around in the boat and gazed wistfully back at the little stone church we’d just left on the opposite shore. Its cool grey façade and slate roof glinted in the sunlight as it nestled in the soft green lea of the land.
The Wedding Day Page 38