He whispered after we made love that night, ‘Jenny, I have loved you since the moment you walked into that restaurant with Danielle.’
I lifted his beautiful square hand and kissed the palm, then turned my cheek into it. It was a large, safe hand. Antonio was special, but wonderful sex was one thing, love quite another.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Ruth was away doing business in Berlin when Jenny flew back to London. Both Danielle and Flo saw an immediate change in her. She was hot and weary but she exuded a glow. Her eyes and body were alight with her old vivaciousness.
Danielle, watching her, saw that Jenny had regained her relaxed, languid, catlike little body as she stretched tiredly on the sofa and in a flash suddenly knew why. She remembered that look on Jenny’s face after an afternoon in bed with Tom; an irrepressible sexual smugness that was quite unconscious. Danielle wanted to laugh. Jenny was like a small, replete cat.
Antonio! How extraordinary. Anyone less like Tom was hard to imagine. Then, when she thought back to her one night with him, it wasn’t so extraordinary. He was a warm and sensual lover who had obviously regretted accepting an invitation to her room. He had with tact and flattery told her gently that attractive as he found her, he always kept business and pleasure separate. Danielle grinned to herself—not always, it seemed.
She longed for Jenny to say something, but she didn’t oblige and returned to Cornwall without divulging anything.
‘What do you think?’ Danielle asked Flo breathlessly.
Flo laughed at her. ‘None of our business, young lady; but my word, lovey, she was almost the old Jenny with her infectious happiness.’
Danielle nodded. She prayed that the tension between Ruth and Jenny over Adam would not resurface, because it was a huge bore and threatened to spoil everything.
Back in Cornwall I found it hard to settle back into a routine. I felt strangely restless and found I could only concentrate for short stretches at a time. I wanted to go out and walk, lie on the beach or the grass in the summer sun. I wanted to close my eyes and let the images of the places I had seen filter through my mind like sunlight through leaves.
The sounds and smells of a different life lingered: church statues and coloured windows; the deserted cove near Antonio’s villa; sprawling white bungalows with tumbling bougainvillea; the smell of spices and olive oil and tomatoes; loud cicadas.
Adam noticed my restlessness and asked me questions about my trip as we sat in the garden and barbecued sausages in the evenings. I had got some Moroccan architectural books out of the library and I tried to explain some of the influences I was bringing to my work. When I could work.
Speaking to Tom’s mother on the phone about Adam’s love of music, she had told me all of a sudden that she had won a music scholarship but had not been allowed to take it up by her mother and father. She had been living in Kuala Lumpur and, at seventeen, her parents had considered her too young to go off on her own to live in London.
‘That’s bad,’ Adam said when I told him. ‘Poor thing, she must have been gutted.’
‘You said you didn’t know where your love of music comes from, darling. Now you do. When I told her how talented you were she was thrilled, because neither Tom nor his brother were musical.’
I was pretty sure Tom had not known about it, but he had questioned her passivity sometimes and her willingness to submerge herself totally in her sons and husband. It made me feel intensely sad. She could have been someone quite different.
Adam said, ‘As soon as I’m old enough, Jenny, I’ll go and see them. I hope I see them before they die. I’ve never had grandparents. I’m going to travel the world. I shall definitely take a gap year.’
I laughed as the misty garden filled with birdsong; his enthusiasm for life was catching. I hoped he would become something gentle, like an anthropologist or ornithologist. But if I was changing, Adam was too.
I sensed his musical enthusiasm waning. He joined the rifle club, loved the treks to Dartmoor preparing for his Duke of Edinburgh award. His binoculars and bird books were used less frequently. He fished less. He brought friends other than Harry home. He went further afield with a different set of boys. He went on early morning runs to keep fit; shadowboxed in the garden when he thought I wasn’t looking; groaned more loudly when he had music practice and piles of homework.
I was delighted. He was secure and content, and so was I. I could tell Bea and James had stopped worrying. BothAdam and I had moved imperceptibly on. It was as if we both viewed life simultaneously from a shifted perspective. The spell of our isolation within the small house was broken as we looked towards the windows and saw different horizons beckoning. Yet nothing had changed between us. It never would.
Adam was very excited about his trip to Israel to see Peter and he brought home copious numbers of books from the school library. He seemed preoccupied with the military situation out there and the plight of the Palestinians, and constantly e-mailed Peter about the injustice of Israeli politics.
‘You might have to be a bit careful about voicing your views while you’re there,’ I warned him.
‘Peter’s told me that already!’ He grinned at me.
Cleaning Adam’s room one day I was dismayed to find that he still had a secret hoard of military magazines under the bed. I realised his interest in Tom and his army life were not fading as I hoped it would. The magazines were well thumbed and it disturbed me. I wondered suddenly how healthy Adam’s preoccupation with war and weapons was. I looked around his room at all the photographs of his father: Tom for ever smiling down at his worshipping son; a man in uniform with no faults, seducing Adam with a way of life Tom had had no illusions about. Adam had not hidden those magazines from me, but he hadn’t read them in front of me either. I heard the St Ives train and decided I must talk to him.
At supper I said, ‘Did I tell you that Tom thought he might come out of the army and join his father’s firm in Singapore?’
Adam looked at me. ‘No. Why would he leave the army? He was a professional soldier. It was his job. It’s what he did.’
‘Yes. It is what he did, but that doesn’t mean he might not have become disillusioned…’ I hesitated. ‘Adam, I saw all those military magazines in your room. I wondered if I had given you an idea of Tom that was wrong. He was a committed soldier, but constantly seeing horror and destruction and violent death in places like Bosnia and Iraq takes its toll. It wore him down. He often felt extremely low and became critical, like you, of political situations. He saw the way military life was going for the next generation: long single tours fighting terrorism, fighting insurgency in bleak hostile places; very little home life. There is no glory in war, in violence or in seeing innocent civilians mown down.’
Stupidly, I realised too late that my words were having the opposite effect on Adam. Until a young boy had seen someone blown up before his eyes or a life taken in a second, it was not possible for him to appreciate fully the horror, only the drama of imagining himself a hero.
Adam surveyed me gently. ‘You sound like Peter. Of course I’m interested in wars. I’m adolescent. When you’re my age wars are grimly exciting.’
I stared at him and burst out laughing. I went round behind his chair and hugged him. ‘Darling boy, you’re quite right. You’re a revolting adolescent.’
He leant against me. ‘Don’t worry that you’ve made me interested in wars because of Tom. I always knew when I was old enough I would go and find my father, so I would have found out he was in the army anyway. I thought he must be a bad sort of person because Mum wouldn’t talk about him and I was never allowed to ask questions. So when I found out who he was and what he did it was such a relief. It was so great. He was a really brave person and I don’t want anyone ever to tell me any different.’
He was suddenly anxious and I sat in the chair next to him. ‘Adam, there is nothing I could say that could be remotely critical of Tom. I think he was a pretty wonderful person too, but I loved him because he was T
om. Not because he was brave or a soldier, that’s all I’m trying to say. His uniform did not define him. He doesn’t have to be in uniform for you to admire the person he was.’
‘I can’t ever know the person he was, but I can learn everything about what he did as a soldier. It was his career and a good one. There’s nothing wrong in that, is there?’
‘No, darling. Just don’t neglect your other interests. Your music and your birds. Don’t remain obsessed with Tom because he was your father and because he is dead. I was in danger of doing that, you see.’
Adam looked at me. ‘I’ll always play an instrument. I’ll always love music, but I don’t want to be a musician. I’m not dedicated enough to put in the practice and there are too many other things I want to achieve.’ He swung round in his chair and eyed me closely, then he said doubtfully as if it had suddenly occurred to him, ‘Maybe you should have another husband. You’re pretty and not old. Someone to look after you when I’m at university.’
I laughed. ‘I can look after myself!’
He grinned. ‘Or you could wait until I grow up and then I can marry you.’
I ruffled his hair. ‘Eat, you silly boy. Your supper’s getting cold.’
That night, as I lay in the bath, I longed for Antonio beside me. He was not a beautiful man, but God, was he sexy. It had taken me days to admit that I missed that slow early waking beside him. It was shocking how quickly I had become used to another body, even if it was only a casual sexual thing between us.
He rang me as I climbed into bed. He sounded faraway on a bad line from Paris. I felt a lurch of pleasure on hearing his voice. ‘I am missing you, Jenny,’ he said wistfully.
‘That’s nice, Paolo Antonio. I miss you too,’ I said, but lightly.
He laughed. ‘Ah! Both my names now, is it?’
‘Well, you never seem to use your Christian name, so I thought I’d give it an airing.’
‘Do I look like a Paolo?’
I giggled. ‘No!’
He talked for a while about his day, then he said, ‘I will say goodnight, my very dear Jenny.’
‘Goodnight, Antonio. Take care.’ I didn’t say more and I felt his disappointment. I felt guilty. I did not want to hurt him. He was a sweet man and a good lover, but that was all.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
It was early September and Bea and James were in Italy with Antonio. I caught the train to London the day before they were due back. Adam and Ruth had left for Israel to meet Peter. When I put Adam on the plane at Newquay, he had been high with excitement.
‘Just watch what you say, you. I don’t want to have to bail you out of an Israeli jail.’
He grinned. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…’
I wondered if Ruth and Peter would somehow get together again. Danielle told me that although Ruth did go out with men occasionally, she seemed more interested in work. ‘As most of our male friends and colleagues are gay, it is not so easy for us single women.’
I saw she was laughing. ‘Well, you never seem short of men, darling.’
‘My boyfriends are not the sort of men that Ruth would go for.’
‘You’ll meet someone stimulating, arty and heterosexual one day, Elle, and fall like a stone, as we all do.’
‘Do not hold your breath, chérie.’
I got to the London house and found Flo in an unusual state of panic. She was not good at delegating and she was displacing her anxiety about her hip operation into work. We had purposely limited our commissions over the summer, knowing that Danielle would be busy in Italy, Ruth in Israel and Flo out of action. I had left the retired cobbler in charge of the unit in St Ives. So far, it seemed to be working well.
It was only when I made Flo come down from the workroom and sit and have tea with me that I understood what was disturbing her: ‘An Inspector Wren rang. He tried to get hold of you in Cornwall. He wants us all to look at some photographs of men they suspect could be responsible for various terrorist activities. He says it’s a long shot but he needs to know if we recognise any of the faces they’ve compiled of possible suspects for Tom’s killing.’
My heart thumped in shock. ‘It’s all right, I’m not going to go to pieces. Is the inspector coming here, or does he want me to ring?’
‘He wants you to ring. He would prefer it if we went to him. He said they have this machine that magnifies photographs, which makes it easier for us to identify faces.’
‘OK. It’s a bit late to cross London now. Let’s do it tomorrow before Bea and James arrive.’
Flo nodded. ‘It’s unlikely we’ll be any help, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ I felt sick and tried to hide it from Flo. ‘I guess they have to go through the motions. Maybe it’s just a way of showing us they haven’t given up.’
Flo and I went into the police station the following day. Some of the staff remembered us and got up to greet us.
‘I’m sorry to ask you to do this,’ the inspector said as he shook my hand. ‘But we are grateful. It is worth you both looking carefully. You should know that I will be asking all your staff to look at these photographs too.’
The photographs were magnified, accentuating every feature, pockmark and scar. There were different shots in black and white and long-lens coloured photographs on a desk.
Flo was asked to wait until I had gone through all of them first. I supposed it was so that we both concentrated. I had somehow thought all the terrorist suspects would be black or Asian, but they weren’t.
The inspector watched me carefully. I couldn’t recognise anyone. No one’s face was remotely familiar. I went through all the photographs minutely, again and again.
I began to feel dizzy and nauseous. I realised that I desperately wanted to reach out with my hand and pin the man who wiped out my family.
‘Why do you keep going back to that photograph?’ the inspector asked me abruptly, pointing down at a man.
I looked at him, startled. ‘I don’t. I’m just going through them all in the same way. I don’t recognise anyone.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m just going outside for a moment. Please look at them all once more to be very sure. Take your time.’
I did. I looked at the close-ups and at the long shots. I leant back in the chair and blinked, then focused again. Something niggled right at the back of my mind. I tried to conjure it. I closed my eyes. I put my head in my hands. It wouldn’t come. It would not come.
I needed to get out of the airless room or I was going to pass out. Hoping and wanting to recognise a man or men who might have killed Tom and Rosie wasn’t the same thing as actually recognising him.
We got a taxi straight home. Flo poured me a stiff gin. ‘You’re a terrible colour, Jenny. I wish you hadn’t had to do that.’
‘I so wanted to be able to point my finger and say, “That’s him. I’ve seen him before”. The feeling was overwhelming. I don’t think they’ll ever be able to prove who did it now. He’s living somewhere. He’s living his life…’
‘Maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s already dead or maybe he’s behind bars for another atrocity. Please, don’t…’
‘I’m not going to dwell. I promise you that.’ I stood up, holding the brown envelope with the photographs the police had given me for Danielle to look at. ‘I’m going to put these in Danielle’s flat. I don’t want to think about them any more. If I let them undermine me, they are still hurting us.’ I lifted Danielle’s key off the hook. ‘Then I’ll have another gin.’
‘Good girl,’ Flo said.
While Flo rested, I slid out with half a dozen of my belts, which I took to some select shops I knew near Kensington. They had all sold my work before and happily took the lot. By the time I got home on the tube two shops had rung and placed orders. I felt almost ashamed that it had been so easy.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Flo said. ‘You’ve always had the knack of knowing what will sell at any given moment.’
I went up to the top of the house to the girls in the workroom and left
them sketches and samples of materials, in case the demand grew bigger than I could manage in Cornwall.
Flo and I did some paperwork in the conservatory and then, unable to concentrate, I went and wandered around the garden.
It had been spruced up but had no real life yet. Someone had planted some sweet peas and they flowered vividly against the fence. I sat on the lawn, idly pulling daisies, but the ghosts of Rosie and Tom did not come.
I thought of Antonio. I was treating him badly. He did not deserve my cold shoulder or my polite retreat with no explanation. I thought, with a guilty pang, of all the little things he had sent me during the summer: poetry books, flowers, photos and travel books of places we had visited, all so carefully thought out to please me. He was, at this moment, treating my parents like royalty. He deserved better from me and I knew it. Yet would he retreat? Not he.
Flo watched Jenny from the kitchen window. She was glad she was old when she saw the painful working out of relationships in Ruth, Danielle and Jenny, relieved that it was all behind her.
She was afraid of this coming operation going wrong, but had told no one. It seemed feeble. She wasn’t afraid of dying but of being incapacitated, unable to do a job she loved. She could not even think of retirement without an inward scream. This was her life, this her family.
She longed, as she saw Jenny struggling, to remind her not to waste a moment, but something in Jenny’s restless mood prevented her trying. If she was having an affair with Antonio Flo had seen no sign, except something brooding in her.
James and Bea flew into London that night. Jenny was completely thrown by Antonio flying back with them. Bea and James had had the most wonderful time and Antonio’s pleasure in their obvious delight in the holiday was transparent.
As soon as Flo saw Jenny’s face, she knew that Danielle was right. Jenny was trying to be distant with Antonio and it wasn’t in her nature. Flo saw the surreptitious looks she shot at him when she thought no one was looking. She was overwhelmed with gratitude for the holiday he had given Bea and James. She’s afraid of loving him, Flo thought suddenly. Oh silly girl. She’s fighting it. Did Jenny feel she was being disloyal to Tom’s memory? Or was she afraid to love again with all the inevitable pain?
Come Away With Me Page 36