The Peacock Summer

by Hannah Richell

  ‘Hello there, dear,’ says a grey-haired woman who has appeared at Lillian’s side. ‘I was just telling your grandmother how lovely it is to see her out and about. I can’t remember the last time we saw her at a village event.’

  ‘I couldn’t keep her away,’ says Maggie, giving Lillian a wink.

  ‘We heard you were in hospital,’ says the woman. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

  ‘Oh no, still very much alive, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh,’ says the woman, startled, ‘I didn’t mean . . . yes, well . . . I’m sure we’re all delighted to see you up and about. There were rumours you might be thinking of selling Cloudesley now. Unless of course Albert is back to take the place on?’ the woman asks slyly.

  ‘Albie’s away on business.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ says the woman in an overly understanding tone that makes even Maggie bristle.

  ‘Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one in the village who would love to see the house returned to her former splendour,’ continues the woman. ‘It’s been years since you opened up the gardens or hosted an event. It used to be de rigueur.’

  ‘Yes, and didn’t it also used to be de rigueur that you’d throw yourself at any new man who arrived in Cloud Green?’

  Maggie stares at her grandmother, unsure whether to laugh or reprimand her.

  The woman seems to take the insult on the chin. She turns to Maggie. ‘And how are you getting on, dear? It’s good to see you back in Cloud Green, holding your head high. I know there are some round here who didn’t think you’d have the gall to show your face after that sad business with the Mortimers, but I knew you’d return. Nerves of steel, you Oberon women.’ The elderly lady smiles sweetly, as if she has just delivered a generous compliment.

  ‘Oh, be off with you, Susan,’ says Lillian impatiently. ‘Go and bother someone else with your sly gossip and nasty digs.’ She waits for the woman to huff away across the tent before she turns to Maggie. ‘Always was a terrible busybody, that Susan Cartwright.’

  They drink their tea in silence, Maggie feeling a dreadful anxiety well up. This is exactly what she’d been afraid of, everybody knowing her business. Glancing about the tent, she’s certain she can see furtive looks and stares, nudges in her direction. Then she realises why. Mary and David Mortimer stand across the tent, deep in conversation with friends. Sweat trickles between Maggie’s breasts and she wants to reach up and remove the hat that had felt stylish earlier but now makes her feel like a try-hard, drawing attention in a way that she’d rather it didn’t. ‘Are you still hungry?’ she asks Lillian.

  ‘A little slice of cake wouldn’t go amiss.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ says Maggie, grateful for the opportunity to move, even if it does mean circulating through the crowds again.

  She skirts her way around the edge of the tent, head down, taking a circuitous route to avoid the Mortimers, then waits in the cake-stall queue to order two slices of chocolate cake. As she turns to leave, she crashes into someone crossing her path. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, realising she has smeared chocolate icing on their white shirt, then lets out a long breath. ‘Oh God,’ she says, pulling back. ‘It’s you.’

  Gus stares at her, equally confounded. ‘Hi,’ he says, after what feels like a very long time.

  ‘You’re here.’

  ‘Yes. So are you.’

  She shrugs, the flimsy paper plates wobbling dangerously in her hands. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’ He looks fine. Very fine, with his tanned skin and his brown hair shaved close to his scalp. She’d forgotten how blue his eyes are, piercingly clear like a calm sea on a summer’s day. ‘You?’ he asks, though she can tell from his darting eyes that he’d rather be anywhere but standing there with her.

  ‘Yes, fine. I’m here with Lillian,’ she adds, gesturing towards the corner of the tent.

  He nods but his gaze still can’t quite seem to settle on her face. ‘Nice hat,’ he says after another moment. ‘Suits you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She clears her throat. ‘I saw your mum.’

  ‘She said.’

  Maggie chews her lip. ‘Listen, do you think we could perhaps sit down sometime and talk about everything? I’d like to try and expl—’ She stops, suddenly aware of the petite woman in a pretty lace dress sidling up behind Gus and sliding an arm about his waist.

  ‘Look what I just bought,’ she says, holding up a crocheted dream-catcher dangling brightly coloured feathers. ‘There’s a truly ancient gypsy woman selling them at a little caravan over there. She offered to read my palm but I’m not sure I’m up for that.’ She turns to Maggie with a bright smile, awaiting an introduction. ‘Hello.’

  Gus clears his throat. ‘This is Camilla. Cam,’ he says, gesturing towards Maggie, ‘this is Maggie.’

  It takes a moment, but Camilla’s eyes widen so suddenly it’s like the aperture of a camera adjusting. Yes, Maggie wants to say: that Maggie. ‘I’d shake your hand but . . .’ She gestures unnecessarily towards the two paper plates. ‘Nice to meet you.’ She wishes the ground would open and swallow her whole.

  ‘Oh, yes . . . Maggie. Hello.’ Camilla turns to Gus. ‘Gosh,’ she stutters, ‘you two must have a lot . . . would you . . . I can go—’

  ‘No,’ interjects Gus. ‘Maggie was just leaving.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, shrinking even further into herself. ‘That’s right. I should get back to Lillian.’ She begins to back away. ‘I’m so sorry – about your shirt,’ she adds, though they both know the apology she owes him is for things far greater than a little icing smeared on a shirt.

  Maggie turns and darts away through the crowd, her cheeks burning, hoping that the sudden burst of laughter erupting from a nearby group isn’t at her expense. She finds her grandmother exactly where she’d left her, slumped in her chair wearing a pained expression. Maggie dumps the cake on a nearby table and reaches up to pull the hat from her head, barely feeling the hairpins as they wrench through her hair.

  ‘Oh good,’ says Lillian. ‘You’re just in time to save me from a slow and painful death by school choir.’ Lillian is smiling, but her eyes narrow when she sees Maggie’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Gus is here . . . with his girlfriend.’ She grips the back of the chair beside Lillian and lets out a long breath.

  Lillian purses her lips. ‘I see.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

  Lillian shakes her head. ‘Nonsense. You can’t stay shut away at Cloudesley for the entire summer.’

  ‘It might be for the best.’

  Lillian eyes her sternly. ‘How long are you going to punish yourself?’

  Maggie doesn’t answer.

  Lillian sighs. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my eighty-six years, it’s that there’s a time for tea and cake, but this, my dear, is most certainly not it. Come on.’

  ‘What? Where are we going?’

  ‘Stop talking and start pushing.’

  Maggie studies Lillian. ‘If I’d known getting out of the house would revitalise you like this, I’d have insisted we do this weeks ago.’

  They take a haphazard route through the various fete stalls, Maggie muttering and cursing and bumping the wheelchair over the rutted grass, until they come to a halt outside a smaller tent. ‘In here,’ says Lillian.

  ‘The beer tent?’

  ‘Yes. I happen to know they sell some of the very best elderflower wine. We’ll consider it medicinal.’

  Maggie queues up at the trestle table masquerading as bar for two glasses of elderflower wine. She hands them to Lillian, intending to push the wheelchair over into the shade where they will be partially hidden from the crowds, but Lillian has other ideas, pointing to a row of striped deck chairs lined up along the main thoroughfare. ‘Just there.’

  ‘I don’t think—’ begins Maggie.

  ‘We’re going to sit here and hold our heads high. Take a sip,’ she orders. ‘You’ll feel better.’

  Maggie puts the plastic cup
to her lips and drinks. The wine is cold and sweet, fizzing slightly on her tongue.

  ‘Good.’ Lillian nods approvingly. ‘We’ll sit here, where we can see everything. We’re not going to hide.’

  ‘But I feel like the most loathed person in the village,’ says Maggie in a small, self-pitying voice. ‘You heard Susan Cartwright. No one thought I’d have the “gall” to return.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk rubbish. I doubt most people know or care what happened between you and that young man last year. And even if you do provide a flutter of interest today, my dear, come tomorrow they’ll have moved on to the next tidbit. You think all these people here don’t have their own messy lives to worry about? Besides, you’ll find people are a little less quick to judge when they have to look you in the eye.’ As if to make her point, a small child with his face painted in tiger stripes wanders past with a helium balloon. He stares at Lillian and her extraordinary feathered hat and she stares back; eventually the little boy smiles and gives her a pretend roar before being dragged off into the crowds by his mother.

  ‘You’ve had that look on your face ever since you returned home.’

  ‘What look?’

  ‘That frown. It’s that same look you got as a child when you knew Albie was about to leave.’

  Maggie pulls herself up. ‘I’m not frowning.’

  ‘My eyesight may not be the best, but I can still tell a frown when I see one.’ Lillian pats Maggie’s hand, softening slightly. ‘Tell me, what was the worst thing that could have happened today?’

  ‘Bumping into Gus was probably right up there.’

  ‘And did you survive it?’

  Maggie nods. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Well there you go. Most anxiety is the fear of something that hasn’t even happened yet, and it’s usually over something we can’t control. The older I’ve grown, the more I’ve realised what a waste of energy it is. We’re sitting here, on this beautiful day, the sun overhead and the grass under our feet, drinks in hand. Let’s enjoy this moment, shall we?’

  Maggie looks at Lillian and smiles. ‘I hardly recognise you today. Are you feeling all right?’

  Lillian shrugs. ‘You get to my age and you realise all the more keenly how precious are our days. I don’t want you to waste a single one.’

  They sit together in the sunshine and sip their wine, Maggie trying to relax. She understands Lillian’s point, but it isn’t that simple. Gus. Will. Her stalled career. Lillian’s health. Saving Cloudesley. There is so much to worry about. She closes her eyes and tries to do what Lillian has suggested; she tries to concentrate on the plastic cup in her hands, her feet resting on the grassy earth, the sound of children laughing and shrieking, the far away strains of the band. She opens her eyes and sees children with painted faces running squealing towards the bouncy castle. A red helium balloon floats away into the blue sky.

  They take another quick turn around the fete before Maggie drives them home, the sun a golden orb flickering behind the trees as it sinks towards the horizon. Beyond the church, a swallow swoops from the trees and soars ahead of the car, as if pulling them in its wake. Maggie smiles at the sight of it and turns to point their escort out to Lillian, but Lillian isn’t looking at the road. Her face is tilted towards the open window, the afternoon sun playing on her face, her arm resting upon the window ledge and her fingers splayed as if to catch the passing breeze. Maggie smiles at the sight of her grandmother’s neon-pink fingernails, aware that wherever Lillian is at that moment, she isn’t in the car beside her. She is like that red balloon, cut adrift, floating somewhere far away, lost in a memory.

  Maggie thinks of this place – the village, the hills, the house and grounds. She thinks how they echo for her with the ghosts of her own memories. All the places she has lived and loved. The dell where she sledged with Will and Gus as teenagers in winter; the woods where she walked and talked with Gus after their first kiss and they decided to give it a proper go; the village hall where they had officially ‘outed’ themselves as a couple at a Christmas fair. Each passing place connects with a moment from her past, bringing it into the light.

  It must be the same for Lillian, she realises, but tenfold. Perhaps one day Maggie will take a car ride beside a grandchild and find herself transported back to a memory of this day with Lillian. And for the briefest time, Maggie sees her life clearly: all the moments, large and small that have been, and all the ones yet to come, connected by some long, silvery thread, strong yet invisible, like a spider’s web. She feels this singular moment joining to all the rest and finds the thought strangely comforting.

  Chapter 19

  ‘I wonder where he went,’ says Lillian, gazing around at the flower-show crowds, searching for Albie. She can feel Jack standing behind her, a warm presence at her back. Somehow, amid the jostling crowds, it feels safe to press closer. They are hidden in plain sight.

  ‘He’ll be off with friends. Getting up to mischief. Doing whatever boys his age should be doing. Albie doesn’t need his step-mother fussing over him.’

  ‘I’m not fussing. I just feel awful leaving without letting him know.’

  ‘Bentham can take him home. And if not, it’s only a mile or so to walk back to Cloudesley.’ The heat of his breath on the back of her neck sends a pulse of desire through her body. ‘Let’s go. Now, before anyone notices.’

  ‘Where?’ she asks, still refusing to turn around, but suddenly breathless at the idea.

  ‘I have an idea . . . My car’s in the next field.’ His hand lightly skims the curve of her hip.

  ‘You go. I’ll follow in a few minutes.’

  He slips away into the crowd and Lillian counts to one hundred, resisting the urge to turn and watch him go.

  A husband and wife walk past, both dressed in their Sunday best, the man’s hat cocked on his head and two well-turned-out children trailing behind looking pleased as punch with their sticks of spun sugar. She smiles at them as they pass. The scene is so wholesome, so respectable. What would they think if they knew what she was doing? Mrs Charles Oberon up to no good.

  She finds him perched on the hood of his car smoking a cigarette, one foot resting on the bumper. His hair is slicked back off his face, still a little damp from the sponge throw.

  Neither of them says a word as Jack throws his cigarette into the grass before opening the passenger door for her and sliding into the driver’s seat.

  He bumps the car out of the field and onto the lane that will take them away from Cloud Green and deeper into the Chiltern Hills, leaving the flower show and the milling crowds, the wilted bunting and the litter-strewn grass far behind. Lillian removes her straw hat and gloves and places them on her lap, unwinding her window to allow the warm, summer-scented air to rush into the vehicle, trailing the ribbon from her hat over and over through her fingers.

  The further they get from Cloud Green, the more she feels her shoulders relax and her jaw unclench. Away from the flower show, she can feel the mantel of her public self being cast off like a scarf tossed to the wind. It is a relief to be free from the intense scrutiny of the village. Here in this car, with its torn leather seats and its faint scent of tobacco and leather and mints, the glove compartment spilling papers and maps and Jack at the wheel, the road stretching endlessly before them, it’s as though Charles, Cloudesley and her duties as a wife and step-mother no longer exist. It’s as if she has woken from a dream. This is reality, she thinks, not the other. This is what it means to be alive.

  When they are some way from the village, Jack pulls up onto the grass verge and turns off the engine. He pulls her into his arms and kisses her. Lillian feels something like sunshine spreading in the pit of her stomach. She pulls back and studies him for a moment; there are a few freckles emerging across the bridge of his nose and flecks of sapphire-blue paint caught in his hair. ‘I’ve been wanting to do that all afternoon,’ he says, turning the key in the engine. ‘Now, about this idea of mine,’ he adds, turning to her with a smile.

&nbs
p; Lillian is expecting him to suggest a secluded picnic spot, or perhaps an early return to Cloudesley so that they might be alone together in the house; so it comes as some surprise when he says, ‘I thought we could visit Helena.’ He watches her carefully, as if trying to gauge her reaction. ‘Of course, only if it feels right to you,’ he adds. ‘I bought some flowers from a stall.’ He indicates that she look in the back seat with a gesture of his head. ‘We could take them to her?’

  Lillian looks round and sees the bunch of roses, lavender and ox-eye daisies tied with twine lying on the leather seat. Jack has bought flowers for Helena.

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  She swallows and turns back to Jack, feeling terribly torn. ‘She . . . she can be quite . . . difficult.’

  He places his hand on hers. ‘I’d like to meet her.’

  Lillian bites her lip, then nods. ‘All right then. Yes, I’d like you to meet her too. Very much.’

  She leads Jack into The Cedars and signs them both into the visitors’ book. ‘Hello, Mrs Oberon. Lovely day out there,’ says one of the nurses as she passes them in the entrance hall, a bundle of white, folded sheets in her arms. ‘I think Miss Helena’s in the conservatory. They’ve got the turntable out.’

  ‘Thank you, Diane.’

  The high operatic sound of a woman’s voice pulls them down a corridor until eventually they reach a bright, sun-drenched conservatory. Lillian spots Helena right away, sitting in the far corner, her face turned to the window, eyes closed. There are two other residents in the room, an older man nodding in appreciation at the music and a sleeping lady, snoring softly, mouth slack, beads of drool falling onto her chest. Another nurse Lillian recognises, sits beside the record player, sliding a disc back into its sleeve. ‘Hello, Mabel,’ says Lillian, greeting the nurse. ‘What a beautiful song.’