‘She said that her mother had just died and that she’d only just heard the news. About us, I mean. She wanted to see the photographs.’
‘And did she?’ George asked after a moment. He cleared his throat. ‘Did she see them?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Thea was pouring the thickened custard into a jug. ‘Yes. She knew some of the people. Well, obviously. She said that you and her husband were old friends before he died.’
Tell her, said a voice in George’s head. Tell her now and get it over with. Now is the moment.
He stared at Thea, at her supple movements and long legs, and thought of the open loving way she took him to her heart and the way she treated him with caring and even gratitude. He swallowed again and his heart raced.
Do it now, said the voice, before someone else does. Felicity perhaps?
His heart turned to jelly, quivering in the cavity of his chest and making him tremble. He had so much to lose and, after all, if Felicity hadn’t mentioned it . . .
Thea approached the table, her clear gaze untroubled and warm. ‘Just between you and me,’ she said confidentially, ‘I felt that she was capable of being a bit of an old bat.’
She smiled at him with an intent look, almost as if she were waiting for something. George looked back at her, willing himself to meet her eyes.
‘Yes,’ he mumbled at last. ‘She does have that reputation.’
Thea sat down in her place looking rather thoughtful and started to cut the pie. George shifted a little and watched her hands. It seemed, after all, as if the moment had passed.
Five
HERMIONE SHUFFLED HER PATIENCE cards and, turning a thin wrist, peered at the tiny gold watch whose face she could barely see. As she reached for the spectacles that hung on a chain round her neck, the door opened and Thea came in.
‘Thank goodness you’ve arrived,’ said Hermione, receiving Thea’s kiss. ‘What a dreadful day. I nearly telephoned to tell you not to come. It must be thick across the moor.’
‘Terrible,’ said Thea cheerfully. ‘It makes you think of the Hound of the Baskervilles leaping out of the mist with slavering jaws. Or homicidal maniacs escaping from the prison.’
‘I was thinking more of car accidents,’ said the prosaic Hermione. ‘And now that you’re here, have you told Mrs Gilchrist?’
‘I have indeed. She’s bringing coffee.’ Thea looked round appreciatively at the familiar scene: Hermione at her card table, the lamp lit against the dreary February day; the log fire, its flames licking and the wood settling gently into ash; the parrot in his cage on the table in the corner. She went across to him and looked in. ‘Hello, Percy. How’s tricks?’
The parrot was manipulating a grape which he held dexterously in one claw. ‘A trick that everyone abhors in little girls is slamming doors,’ he quoted and dug his beak into the grape.
Thea laughed and went to sit on the fender. ‘Tim and I taught him that one,’ she said. ‘It was that summer we discovered Hilaire Belloc. We’d take it in turns to recite it to Percy. It was the only sort of poetry Tim liked. It was a very wet summer and I used to read him The Hobbit while he made those endless model planes. His bedroom was like a continual Battle of Britain.’
She stood up again as Mrs Gilchrist, Hermione’s housekeeper, came in with the coffee tray and various pleasantries passed whilst it was placed on a low table and Thea’s bunch of violets, which Mrs Gilchrist had put into a miniature vase, were admired. When she had gone, Thea lifted the elegant silver Georgian coffee pot and poured hot black coffee into fragile cups. The delicious aroma filled the library and Thea sniffed luxuriously as she placed Hermione’s cup and saucer on her table and took her own back to the fender.
‘And how is George?’
‘George is . . . well.’ Thea seemed to hesitate and then make up her mind. ‘George is very well.’
Hermione dealt the cards and waited.
‘George is very fit.’ Thea seemed anxious to establish the fact of George’s physical well-being. ‘But he’s been rather quiet lately. Everything’s fine between us. No problems. It’s just that I sense something. And he’s . . . Well, he’s quiet.’
‘Quiet.’ Hermione repeated the word, not as a question but rather as though she were brooding over it. ‘And have you drawn any conclusion that might explain it?’
Thea sipped some coffee and then turned a little and stared into the fire. ‘There’s this woman who keeps popping in to see me.’
Hermione sat so still that only the flashing and glittering of the stones in her magnificent brooch, pinned casually to an ancient jersey, showed that she was still breathing.
‘It seems that her husband was one of George’s best friends. He’s dead now but the odd thing is that George shows no interest. He doesn’t want to know how she is or how she’s coping. It seems so odd.’
Hermione took a deep breath and the cards went down, flick, flick, flick.
‘G.A.?’ Thea had turned back again. ‘Do you remember telling me that George had been involved with a married woman?’
Hermione hesitated. ‘I think Esme did mention something in passing,’ she said lightly at last.
‘Can you remember what her name was?’
Hermione stared at her cards. Her thoughts doubled and twisted, raced and turned. She knew only too well how doubt and jealousy could corrode a relationship, how fear and guilt could destroy. It was plain that George wanted his past affair wiped out, forgotten. Was it possible? Of course, he should have told Thea everything at the beginning. It is so much easier to forgive in the first flush of passion and it could be argued that what happened before she met him was none of Thea’s business. On the other hand, if Felicity had taken to popping in, George would have been wise to tell Thea at once about their affair before Felicity did or, indeed, any one of their acquaintance. What would happen if, at this late date, she, Hermione, were to let the cat out of the bag? Might Thea go back and confront George? Would there be arguments and recriminations? And might not that be just the chink that Felicity was waiting for, hoping for? How could she take that responsibility to herself? Hermione became aware of Thea, watching her from across the room.
‘D’you know, I don’t think it was ever mentioned.’ For the first time in their relationship Hermione lied and as she turned a card her hand shook.
‘Oh, well, I’m probably imagining things.’ Thea stood up. ‘More coffee?’
She went to the table and glanced at Hermione. She was struck by the stillness of the old lady’s posture. Her face looked drawn and brittle, the bones pronounced, the eye sockets arched and cavernous, and Thea glimpsed the fact of her mortality. She went to her and knelt beside her and Hermione looked into the eyes now level with her own and suffered herself to be hugged. She was not an emotional or tactile woman but she understood the needs of others and knew that she owed Thea this reaffirmation of her love.
‘Don’t worry. I have no idea of dying yet,’ she said with remarkable acumen as Thea scrambled up. Her smile dismissed the emotion and sent Thea’s fears back to the shadows. ‘Certainly not before I’ve had that cup of coffee.’
Flick, flick, flick went the cards: a five on a six, a two on a three, a jack on a queen.
‘I think I’m going to get this one out,’ said Hermione.
Thea laughed and carried her cup back to the tray. Perhaps, after all, that foreshadowing of death had merely been a trick of the firelight.
FELICITY WAGED HER WAR with patience and finesse. She felt quite sure that her visits to the Old Station House must be causing George all sorts of anxieties. She knew that Thea told George that she popped in and the fact that Thea continued to treat her with openness and growing friendliness indicated quite plainly that George was keeping quiet. But what was he thinking? Felicity hugged herself when she imagined George’s thought processes. He must surely be waiting for her to strike and yet he did nothing. Was it possible that he assumed that she had forgiven him and accepted the present situation to the point of befr
iending Thea? Felicity smiled incredulously and shook her head. After twenty years George must know her better than to imagine that to be the case. She remembered the hard time she’d given him after he’d strayed with Cass and knew that he couldn’t possibly be hoping for any such thing. Much more likely that George was living by his favourite maxim: let sleeping dogs lie. He was keeping his head down and praying that something would prevent the blow from falling.
Meanwhile, she and Thea were becoming quite friendly. It was almost bizarre. Felicity knew that Thea was the innocent party and some days she felt almost sorry that she would suffer as much as George, who deserved everything that was coming to him. Unfortunately, the innocent had always suffered with the guilty and this would be no exception but, just occasionally, Felicity wished that Thea could be spared. Sometimes, when she sat at Thea’s kitchen table, drinking Thea’s coffee and listening to her stories of village life in the Shropshire hills, she had the feeling that she’d like to throw the whole thing up and make a real friend of this unusual girl who seemed to own something, some inner peace, some strength, that she, Felicity, did not.
Back in her own home, alone and lonely, the feeling faded and she fed upon her ideas for revenge and knew that the time was very near now to advance the second part of her plan.
ON A BLOWY DAY in early May, Thea drove across the moor on her way to have lunch with Cass at the Old Rectory.
‘It’s a girls’ get-together,’ she’d told Thea on the telephone. ‘I think you know most of them now. Come early, in time for a drink.’
Thea had taken a very firm liking to Cass and, since she had moved to the Old Station House, had seen a great deal of her. Cass had introduced her into her circle of friends and had made her feel at home at once. She’d met Kate, Cass’s oldest friend, who was divorced, had twin boys and bred dogs; Abby Hope-Latymer, who lived up at the Manor with her husband William and three children. There was Harriet Barrett-Thompson, whose husband Michael was an estate agent in Tavistock, and Liz Whelan, who was an accountant and whose husband was sharing a flat with Tom in London. These and a few others Thea had met at the Rectory but she had never seen Felicity there. When she’d mentioned to the group at large that Felicity had come to introduce herself, she was aware of a slight frisson that passed over the assembled company. Asked if they knew her, there had been a momentary silence before everyone had started to talk at once and somehow it was implied that they knew her but that she wasn’t popular or part of their group. Well, that was reasonable enough. Even her short acquaintance with Felicity had made Thea realise that she and Cass were probably incompatible. Nevertheless, there’d been a little something, a constraint, a reluctance to elaborate, that had puzzled Thea. She had mentioned it to George, who said at once that Felicity and Cass were old enemies but, when Thea asked why, George had become inarticulate and confused and she had let the matter drop.
Thea slowed the car so that she might have a moment to gaze out over the moor, which was becoming as important to her as the Welsh mountains had been, and watched the cloud shadows hurrying across the short turf and the stony-sided tors. The glossy, golden gorse glowed in the intermittent bursts of sunshine and the bracken sprang up, green and bright, from tightly balled brown fists. Thea made a tiny prayer of thankfulness and drove on.
She was the last to arrive and was pleased to see the usual little group with the addition of a friend of Harriet’s, who was staying with her for a few days: Polly Wickam. She and Thea shook hands and liked the look of each other. Polly was younger than the others, more Thea’s age, and her husband, Paul, was a research scientist at Exeter University, where Polly had met him when she was taking her degree. She had married him on graduating and had lived a rather solitary life ever since, Paul being deeply attached to his microscopes. Polly was rather amusing about it and by the end of the lunch the two girls were well on the way to friendship. Thea suggested that Harriet should bring Polly to lunch before she went back and Polly accepted with pleasure.
As usual, Kate remained after all the guests had gone and she and Cass wandered back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Cass took an apricot from the bowl and dug her teeth into the furry skin whilst Kate poured the remains of the coffee into her cup.
‘So when is someone going to tell her?’ Kate tasted the coffee, made a face and pushed the cup away.
‘Tell who what?’ Cass got up to fill the kettle.
‘Thea. About Felicity.’
‘Oh, that. Bit late now, don’t you think? We’ve all had the chance and missed it. Felicity obviously isn’t going to do it. George certainly won’t.’
‘Soon it’ll be too late.’
Cass came back to the table and sat down again. ‘Who do you suggest? Why don’t you do it yourself if you think it’s the right thing to do? The question is: is it? I think it’s already too late. I must admit that I’m amazed at Felicity, though. Popping in and out, all jolly chums together. I’d never have believed it.’
‘I still don’t believe it.’ Kate frowned. ‘It simply isn’t Felicity. I have a horrid suspicion that she’s simply biding her time.’
‘And then what?’
Kate shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But I have this awful feeling that it’s all going to end in tears.’
GEORGE MADE HIS WAY back to the flat wishing that Thea had stayed up for an extra night. He had wanted terribly to persuade her, to beg her, even, to stay. He’d had no idea that he could come to need anyone as he needed Thea. He loved her and longed for her and yet he had been unable to ask her to stay on in London. Felicity’s shadow had slid between them and he could no longer be open and honest with her. He felt that he had no right to ask for favours whilst he was deceiving her. And he was deceiving her. All the time that he let her receive and entertain Felicity in her home without knowing what he and Felicity had been, she was being deceived. He longed to tell her, longed to unburden himself and pour it all out. What, after all, should prevent him? It had all happened before he and Thea met. Was it because Felicity had been married and he had been abusing his friendship with Mark? Or was it merely the fact of Felicity herself, who seemed so second-rate beside his new young love? George knew that this was an unworthy thought. If Felicity had been good enough for him then, he should not despise her now. The trouble was, he knew quite well that he should have told Thea right at the beginning. By putting it off he had made it seem bigger, more important than it was, and with each day that passed it became more and more difficult. Each weekend he geared himself up to tell her. Each time she said, Oh, Felicity popped in again,’ he tried to bring himself to the point. He tried to frame the words and couldn’t even begin, despite his rehearsals in the silence of the flat. He imagined her look of shock or, worse, disappointment. He saw that look of love fading and his heart failed. Even supposing she took it well, then what? He would have to forbid Felicity the house. He imagined Felicity’s reaction, and despair washed over him. What a fool he was, allowing this wonderful, golden experience to be tarnished because he was a coward.
This weekend, he vowed as he let himself into the flat. Come what may, this weekend I shall tell her.
He had just changed into cords and a jersey when the doorbell rang and for one glorious moment his heart leaped up. Could Thea possibly have come back unexpectedly? He hurried out into the tiny hall and flung open the door.
‘Hello, George,’ said Felicity. ‘How nice to see you again. May I come in?’
She stepped past him, across the hall and into the living room, gave a swift glance round and turned to him with a smile.
‘Felicity . . . ’ George, recovering from the overwhelming shock, gestured awkwardly, shrugged helplessly and then shook his head.
‘Sorry to take you by surprise.’ She was still smiling at him. ‘I missed the four-thirty-five train and the next one is always so crowded that I decided to catch a later one. And it occurred to me that it would be nice to see you. It’s been a year, George. Do you realise that?’ She laug
hed at his expression. ‘I see that I’ve rendered you speechless. May I sit down?’
‘Of course. Yes, do. Would you like a drink?’ George was galvanised into speech and action. The friendliness of her smile and the calm tone of her voice disarmed him and he smiled back tentatively.
‘I should love one.’ She sat down on his sofa, crossed one bony knee over the other and turned slightly to watch him pour the drinks. ‘Thea told me about your little hideaway—you know I’ve been over to introduce myself?—and I decided to come and see for myself. I like your wife, George. You’re a very lucky man.’
George felt faint with relief. It looked as if, after all, everything was going to be all right. He handed her a gin and tonic, overcome by her generosity.
‘It all just swept me off my feet, you see,’ he began and then hesitated a little. He didn’t want to be tactless.
Felicity raised her eyebrows and took a little sip. ‘I’m not a bit surprised. She’s a real sweetie.’ She looked at him as he sat opposite her, a more measuring glance, and he began to feel uncomfortable again. ‘You could have told me, you know, George.’
Her voice was reproachful, hurt, and George experienced a wave of guilt.
‘It was all so quick . . . ’ Once again he hurried into speech but she shook her head, made a negative gesture with her free hand and grimaced a little.
‘Let’s forget it, shall we? All over now. But I’d still like to be friends. We don’t have to lose twenty years of friendship just because you’re married, do we? After all, I was married for all those years.’
George glanced at her sharply. Was she implying that he could deceive Thea as she had deceived Mark? But Felicity was looking round the room, her expression unreadable.
‘Perhaps we could all get together?’ he suggested cautiously. ‘You must come over for supper.’
‘I should love to!’ She took him up on it at once. ‘In fact I hoped to be invited before now. Thea and I get on very well, you know. Oh, by the way, I don’t think we should tell her, do you? About us, I mean. No need to hurt her. She’s so young and innocent.’
A Friend of the Family Page 5
