The Things You Do for Love

by Rachel Crowther

  The Things You Do For Love

  Rachel Crowther

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part II

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part III

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part IV

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part V

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Part VI

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Clemency, Katie, Toby, Daphne and Rowena with love and thanks

  All the things you do for love –

  Are they the things you do for pleasure?

  All the things you do for love –

  I’ve got to ask you whether

  All the things you do for love –

  Are they the things you’re gonna treasure?

  Mia van Arlen, ‘Tough Love’

  Prologue

  London, May 2014

  Face to face with the statue, Kitty felt the air in her lungs turn to stone. Half human and half rampant vegetation, this figure was utterly different from everything else in the exhibition. One hand clasped a staff wound with ivy that snaked up his arm and around his neck; the other held a pitcher overflowing with grapes. Kitty recognised the trappings of Bacchus, a haggard and ramshackle Bacchus, but she recognised something else too in this representation of him. The wild tangle of his hair was dismayingly familiar, but it was his face, the curl of his mouth and the line of his nose and even the trace of a teasing glint in his eyes that triggered such a jolt of disbelief.

  As Kitty stared, the noise of the crowded gallery dropped away. Somewhere in the room were her mother and her sister, other people she knew, who should see this, but she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the sculpture. The carving was exceptionally delicate, the marks of Alice’s chisels and rifflers polished away until the texture of the marble was as smooth as skin, the features all-but alive. Vines spiralled from his shoulders and leaves furled across his chest, but the foliage drew back from the shocking lesion near his heart: a crusting, carbuncular mass that thrust up through the skin and sprawled across the broad ribcage.

  Kitty felt the floor lurch beneath her feet, the solid world turning suddenly treacherous. Somewhere in the ether she heard someone say, ‘Are you all right? You look terribly pale, can I . . .?’

  At the same time a woman’s voice cut shrilly across the buzz of concern.

  ‘Good Lord,’ she said, ‘it’s Henry Jones. Look at Bacchus’ face: he’s the absolute image of Henry Jones.’

  PART I

  Greville Auctioneers, Friday 12th December 2014

  Paintings and drawings by Nicholas Comyn, from the collection of the late Henry Jones

  Lot no. 1: Family Portrait, 1995

  This sketch represents something of a mystery. Donated anonymously, it is the only work in this sale that does not come from Henry Jones’ personal collection. It has the appearance of a preliminary study for a painting, but it is not known whether the finished work was produced before Comyn’s untimely death in May 1995.

  According to the donor, the family depicted here is Henry Jones and his wife, the surgeon Flora Macintyre, with their two daughters Louisa and Kitty, but the figures are not drawn in sufficient detail to make it possible to identify them. The background is barely sketched in, giving only a vague impression of an interior space in which the four figures stand in a somewhat uncomfortable relationship to each other and to the viewer. The younger child is in her father’s arms, while the older one is placed between her parents. The mother’s hand rests on her daughter’s shoulder, but her face is turned slightly towards a window which can just be seen on the left hand side.

  The composition does not appear to be a formal pose, but neither is it entirely naturalistic. The subjects seem almost to be on the move, as if this were a still from a film sequence that has caught them in a brief, artificial moment of proximity and stasis: it begs the question of what might have happened in the moment after this scene was captured. If this were a preliminary study, it might well be one of several needed to shape the artist’s conception of the planned work and of his subjects. Nonetheless, it has considerable emotional power.

  Despite the questions surrounding its provenance, this sketch is certainly by Comyn: it bears his signature, and his style is readily detectable in the clean lines and deft shading. Given that the Jones family were on intimate terms with Comyn, it seems likely, too, that they are the subjects. The viewer can draw their own conclusions about the resemblance between these figures and representations of the Joneses in other pictures in this collection.

  1

  English Channel, May 2014

  Leaning over the rail that bounded the grimy strip of deck, Flora watched the miles disappear in a hurtle of grey water past the bows of the ferry. It was the middle of May, and despite the heavy clouds the scent of summer was discernible in the air. Salt spray speckled her face and she could hear the distant squeal of children, raucous and cheerful above the noise of the engine. This was a moment, Flora thought, when she should feel glad to be alive.

  But almost in the same instant, it occurred to her that it would be quite possible to manoeuvre herself over the side of the boat and into that churning sea. Quite simple, in fact: it was a short drop to another strip of deck below, and beneath that nothing but water. There was no one else about and she was lithe enough to manage the vault easily. If she wanted to, she could be gone before anyone noticed.

  For a few moments Flora stood very still, letting the throb of the engine rise through her body like a thunderous heartbeat. The idea of simply disappearing had never occurred to her before, and it shocked her, but she could see that it would be a logical solution – one logical solution – to the problem posed by her situation. And it could feasibly be passed off as an accident, sparing others the guilt or regret they might otherwise feel obliged to bear. She gripped the rail tightly, feeling a surge of emotion too complex and contrary to disentangle. Grief, fear, exaltation – even amusement, a shred of it, at the pickle she found herself in.

  It would take time, peopl
e said, to adjust to all that had happened in the last six months. She should give herself time. But it seemed to Flora that it was time itself she couldn’t adjust to. The sudden having of time: the way it stretched before her, empty and expectant and oddly unyielding. It was as if she’d stumbled into one of those echoing Elizabethan galleries where ladies could walk and talk to pass the idle hours. Not the kind of place she was accustomed to, Flora Macintyre the surgeon-mother-wife-authority. The do-er of good, mostly: the do-er, at any rate. What on earth was she to do in this unfamiliar territory?

  She was on her way home, just now, after spending a week in Alsace with a well-meaning cousin of Henry’s who’d guessed that she had few people to offer her this sort of reprieve after the funeral. That was exactly what the week had provided, Flora thought – a reprieve, but nothing more. She could hardly say how she’d filled it, even. She’d got through it, but it was only a week, and there were hundreds more of them to come. She was only sixty; she might reasonably expect to live another twenty-five years.

  She gazed out, marvelling at the emptiness of the horizon. The ferry seemed to be trundling through nothingness: an unrelenting grey stretched in every direction. But then, as she stared, something appeared in the distance – something she couldn’t make out at first, but which took shape gradually as a boat. Straining her eyes, she could see it bobbing and swaying in a way that suggested there was no one on board to steer it. A tug, perhaps, that had broken free of its moorings and drifted out to sea.

  Her attention was so absorbed that she didn’t hear anyone approaching.

  ‘Do you think it’ll hit us?’

  Flora turned. She recognised the young woman who’d climbed the stairs ahead of her half an hour before, between a pair of blonde children already red-faced with unsatisfied demands. She was alone now, holding a cigarette awkwardly as though she wasn’t accustomed to smoking. Like a child pretending, Flora thought, and the image caught her interest.

  ‘Do you think it might?’ she asked.

  The woman lifted the cigarette to her lips and sucked at it briefly, blowing the smoke out almost at once.

  ‘It looks out of control to me,’ she said. A pleasant Scottish accent, mixing consternation and amusement.

  They stood side by side, gazing at the approaching tug. Its course veered steadily towards the ferry, as if drawn by the magnetic pull of the larger vessel.

  ‘They’re not built for collisions, these,’ the woman said. ‘Do you remember one nearly sank a few years ago?’

  Flora didn’t remember, but she could be persuaded that she did. She glanced again at her companion – a striking face, she thought, despite the weary lines beneath her eyes. For a moment it seemed possible that this was some younger version of herself, an alter ego conjured from the emptiness of sea and sky to share this drama with her.

  The tug was small, but the ferry certainly wasn’t capable of deft avoiding swerves. Any moment, Flora thought, a warning siren would sound and instructions would come over the tannoy. But there was silence, apart from the chug of engines and the whisper of water – as though there were no one else on board, no one but the two of them to witness the unfolding scene. As the tug came inexorably closer, Flora’s mind filled with an exhilarating sense of disbelief: the terror and release of an impending crisis she could do nothing to avert. Like being a passenger on the Titanic, she thought, watching the iceberg loom into view.

  And then at the last minute, almost in slow motion, the danger receded. The tug seemed intent on its course until it was nearly upon them – until it was lifted by the rush of water down the side of the larger boat, hesitated for a moment with its nose in the air as though appraising the situation, and finally, quietly, ducked away. Nudged aside, Flora thought, by a great metal whale, gently insistent, and too vast to brook dissent.

  As the tug made its giddy escape and the ferry sailed on with majestic indifference, Flora’s first thought was that she had been cheated of the thrill of calamity. But her second, insinuating itself before she could stop it, was that she was glad to have survived unscathed. The flame of life, she thought, selfish and indomitable or simply bloody-minded, was not to be extinguished so easily.

  ‘Well,’ said the woman. She threw her cigarette over the side of the boat. ‘That was exciting.’

  Her voice had the same quality of eager flatness you might use to conceal from a child the scale of a crisis narrowly avoided. Flora glanced at her, and she laughed suddenly.

  ‘I really thought it was going to hit us,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘So did I.’

  ‘A folie à deux,’ the woman said. ‘How funny. What’s your reason for courting disaster?’

  Caught off balance, Flora smiled. ‘I’m not sure how to answer that.’

  The woman looked at her with a curiosity Flora found she didn’t mind. It was easier with strangers, she thought. There was no obligation to dissemble – and still less to tell the truth.

  ‘Are you travelling alone?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Been on holiday?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Her smile banished the shadows around her eyes, and Flora saw that the cigarette and the attempt at raffish gaiety had been misleading: this woman was a provider, well versed in service to others. Even the peculiar circumstances of the last ten minutes couldn’t deflect her from making pleasant conversation with a stranger.

  ‘I’ve retired,’ Flora said. ‘I’m . . . I have plenty of time to travel now.’

  ‘How lovely. Lucky you.’

  How lovely, Flora thought. Lucky you. She felt once more the twitch of readjustment that caught at her sleeve several times a day. She was fortunate, that certainly seemed beyond question. She was a member of the last generation who’d be able to retire at sixty. She’d have enough money, even if Henry had left less than she’d expected: her NHS pension was more than adequate. Certainly there were blessings to count as well as losses – and yet; and yet.

  As she hesitated, her companion grasped abruptly at the railing.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘That cigarette was a mistake. I thought it might help.’

  Flora looked beyond her to the sea. It was rougher than it had been a few minutes before, the waves surging and billowing.

  ‘Serves me right,’ the woman said. ‘I shouldn’t . . .’

  She groaned as the boat dipped and lifted, and Flora saw her shoulders tense. She felt a wave of sympathy, and with it a whiff of consolation, the sense that there was some reassurance in suffering among others – but it was followed by something exactly opposite: the familiar surgeon’s instinct to distance herself; to rise above sickness and misery.

  And then, out of the blue, another thought: Henry was always a bad sailor. Henry would have been out here looking green, too.

  Watching this stranger gasp in lungfuls of salty air, Flora was assailed by a dizzying spasm of grief. She stared at the horizon in an attempt to steady herself, but the blankness around her seemed overwhelming now. Nothing to cling on to, she thought; nothing to navigate by. The moment when she’d seen her way clear to clambering over the side of the boat came back to her vividly, and she felt a flash of regret. Might she have done it, if this woman hadn’t come along?

  ‘I was never like this before the children,’ the woman said. ‘I was terribly sick with both of them, and it’s as if . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Maybe it’ll get better again,’ Flora said. Not a Flora thing to say: she despised such platitudes, as a rule. She looked again at her companion, young and healthy despite her current affliction. When they reached Dover she would rejoin her family and disembark, pink-cheeked with relief. She didn’t need the pity of a stranger.

  Flora pushed herself back from the rail. Perhaps she’d go and see what the café had to offer, she thought. But then the woman spoke again.

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked.

  ‘I beg you
r pardon?’

  ‘You said you’d retired.’ She looked very pale still, the attempt at conversation an effort.

  Flora hesitated. ‘I was a doctor,’ she said. ‘A surgeon.’

  ‘Goodness.’

  There was usually something more at this point – the story of a relative’s operation, or an apologia for full-time motherhood – sometimes a half-hearted display of interest in Flora’s field. Perhaps it was only the clutch of nausea that prevented the woman from taking any of these courses, but Flora was grateful, nonetheless.

  ‘I retired in January to look after my husband,’ she heard herself saying. ‘He died six weeks ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry. And that’s why you’re . . .’

  Flora nodded. Despite the urge to escape, to forget all about the imagined collision and the indignity of seasickness, something held her back. This encounter, the drama of the tug, seemed – oh, a test case, she thought, for what anything might amount to now, for her. Was that mere superstition, a foolish falling-back on signs and coincidence, or was she opening her mind – as she should, as she must – to a different way of doing things: a new kind of life?

  ‘I wonder what I’d do in your position,’ the woman said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Flora turned sharply. It occurred to her, with a jolt of chagrin, that the woman had been watching her earlier and might have guessed what had been on her mind.

  ‘I don’t mean to – but the idea of being able to do anything . . .’ Her companion smiled, sheepish now. ‘You could turn round and go back to France if you wanted to. I can’t imagine that.’

  ‘No.’ Not the right answer, Flora thought. She felt unaccountably shaky; partly with relief, but there was something more painful too.

  ‘I mean, not that I don’t want to go home, but . . .’

  The younger woman fell silent. Flora remembered the children flanking her an hour before, the patience of her voice. She wished she could think of something to say, but she couldn’t. It was surely too late now to acquire the habit of small talk, or the kind of empathy other people seemed to find so easy. Glancing up, she saw that the first streak of land had appeared: the chalky Dover cliffs, symbol of home even to those who’d never seen them before. The other woman looked at her watch.