by Mary Wesley
In the dusk a policeman flagged him down. There were fallen trees blocking the road; it would be best for Cosmo to take the main road to Plymouth. Cosmo said, “I will wind my way round by the lanes.” The policeman remarked that the lanes were tricky, it was easy to get lost. Cosmo replied jauntily that he was in the mood to get lost and turned the car.
Quite lost some ten miles on, rounding a bend, he found cars parked by the side of the road and jamming a disused quarry. Groups of people were straggling up a moorland path. Reaching for his binoculars, Cosmo focused them on a bonfire on top of the hill, a frieze of happy and skipping children. On impulse he got out of his car and started walking towards the fire. As he climbed he smelled roasting lamb on the damp wind and heard harsh shouts above the cries of children. He overtook a wheelchair pushed by two boys. The woman in it ordered them to make haste; she had an authoritative voice. Cosmo said, “Can I lend a hand?” and, pushing, asked, “What’s the picnic in aid of?”
“It’s not a picnic, it’s a ram roast,” said the woman in the chair. Cosmo felt snubbed.
One of the lads pushing said, “Some would call it a barbecue. You all right there?” He shot off at a gallop, leaving Cosmo to push.
“You shouldn’t have given him the chance, he’s a lazy bugger,” said his mate.
Cosmo said, “I’m sorry.”
“So long as you get me up there,” said the woman. “I don’t want to miss anything.”
“What are you celebrating?” Cosmo ran through a few historical dates in his mind.
“We are not celebrating anything,” said the woman in the chair. “It’s her idea, ‘A bit of fun at the end of the season,’ she said. She gave the lamb.”
“Celebrating the end of the grockle season,” said the boy.
“Tourists, trippers,” explained the woman.
“I know what grockles are.” Cosmo was tempted to stop pushing. When they reached the top, he wondered what had possessed him to get involved. He was out of breath. He went and sat on a rock apart. He would not stay long. The woman in the wheelchair had barely said thank you.
As well as the bonfire proper there was a second, more seriously built fire, where men were turning a sheep on a spit. Fat dribbled into the fire which flared up, illuminating the men’s faces. Young women held babies in their arms and small children by the hand; the larger children and adolescents chased each other, shrieking. A group of older women, taking orders from the woman in the wheelchair, tried in the wind to anchor a tablecloth onto a trestle table under which crates of beer were stacked. The wheelchair woman cried, “Not like that! Do it the way I tell you.” Dogs ran about, getting in people’s way. Some of the men in charge of the roast had started on the beer. Cosmo thought, This might be a scene from Breughel. Then, unhappily, My thoughts are unoriginal. He felt he should leave, but if he was seen leaving it would look ill-mannered; he sat on.
The sheep was presently removed from the spit amid bonhomous shouts. The woman in the wheelchair screamed shrill directions but the men paid scant attention as they began to carve. Soon the men were handing out chunks of meat to the crowd. One detached himself and came towards Cosmo with a helping on a paper plate. He looked hard at Cosmo as he gave him the plate, but did not speak. Cosmo felt he should offer some explanation of his presence, but the man carried a second plate which he was taking to someone behind Cosmo, beyond the firelight.
Cosmo had not known that there was anyone behind him he had thought himself outside the circle. He felt self-conscious, exposed, afraid to look round. He thought, This is ridiculous. I am fifty years old, what have I to fear?
A considerable amount of drinking was now going on. Round the fire some of the shouts had an anarchic ring and the laughter was raucous. Cosmo thought again that he should leave; he had not been invited. Should he thank somebody? Say goodbye politely? Should he slink off? He could perhaps thank the woman in the wheelchair. Had he not helped push her up the hill? Was she the host? Standing up, he felt a cramp in his leg. Stamping to rid himself of it, he turned about and saw the person behind him who had received the plate of lamb.
A woman sat on a rock dressed in anorak and jeans and Wellington boots. She had a dog at her feet. The dog was watching its mistress, who was watching him. Cosmo could not see the woman’s face but he thought, She will do. I can thank this woman, apologise for gatecrashing, be on my way, make a lame explanation, sound courteous. As he stepped towards the woman the bonfire crackled up and he recognised Flora.
He must have been standing there some little time when three men detached themselves from the festivities and closed in. They carried mugs of beer; he could smell their breath. One of the men, pressing close to Cosmo, said, “You all right, Flora? Making a nuisance of himself, is he? Shall us sort him out?”
Flora said, “It’s all right, Jim. I know him.” Then she said to Cosmo, “They think you may be a man from the Ministry; we have not got permission to have the bonfire on this hill. Are you from the Ministry?”
Cosmo thought her voice had not changed at all. He said, “I am not from the Ministry.”
The man called Jim said, “Not a snooper, then,” and laughed. He seemed a friendly sort of fellow.
Cosmo said, “But I gatecrashed your party. I wanted to say goodbye and thank you, to the lady in the wheelchair perhaps? She seems to be in charge.”
Flora smiled and the men burst out laughing. Cosmo saw he had been mistaken. He said, speaking at last to Flora, “I’ve forgotten her name.”
Flora said, “Everybody called her ‘The Natural Leader.’ It’s a type.”
A little puzzled, the man Jim said, “Right then, we are going to see about the music.” He drifted away with his friends. Flora called after him, “Thanks, Jim.”
By the light of the bonfire he could see her hair was still thick and dark, her teeth when she had smiled at Jim white and even. He had not particularly remembered her teeth. He said, “Portable gramophone, squeezebox?”
Flora said, “Pop. They run it off one of the land rover’s, batteries, I think. I don’t understand these things.”
Cosmo said, “Nor do I. May I sit down for a minute? I think my legs are giving way.” Flora made room for him on the rock. The dog sniffed Cosmo’s trousers. Cosmo said: “Is she called Tonton?” He stroked the dog.
Flora said, “No.”
Presently Cosmo said, “There’s nothing wrong with my legs, I’m as strong as a horse.”
Flora said, “Good.”
Cosmo said, “The fact is they were shaking. I thought, too, that I might have a coronary.”
She said, “Please don’t.”
Flora’s dog leaned its chin on her knee and groaned. Flora said, “She’s terrified of the bonfire, that’s why we are sitting here.”
Some of the party had managed to get a land rover up the hill. A voice said, “Testing, testing,” and there was a burst of the Everley Brothers.
Cosmo said, “When those friends of yours closed in on me just now I realised what a stranger I am. I was quite scared.”
She said, “They’d love that.” She laughed.
The Everleys sang “Come Right Back,” the volume wobbling in the wind. Flora put her mouth close to Cosmo’s ear and asked, “And how is Joyce?” Her breath tickled his neck.
He said, “We were only married about five minutes. Didn’t you see our divorce in The Times?”
“I gave up reading The Times,” she said.
Cosmo said, “I have wanted to find you, but I hadn’t the nerve. I knew I might be able to trace you through Irena Tarasova. Once I went to backtrack in Brittany, but it was horrible. There wasn’t a sniff of you. Then I thought if I did find you, you would give me the brush-off.”
“You brushed me off when you went to Algiers.” She was furious.
Shouting above the Beatles, Cosmo yelled, “That was a bloody stupid mistake, you must have known it was.”
Flora’s dog jerked itself up and bared its teeth. Flora said, “I tho
ught you were going off to get killed and wouldn’t want an involvement,” gentling the dog.
“Christ!” Cosmo shouted. “Any chance of my getting killed was long gone. I was on my way to a desk job.”
Flora thought, We are grown people, adults. We should be managing better than this, and was silent.
Cosmo said, “I remember you coming up out of the sea with that dog, carrying your clothes in a bundle. You were pretty stroppy then.”
He had shouted, “Espèce de con, idiote!” She remembered that.
The younger people were dancing round the fire. The men who had managed the ram roast drank and laughed in sharp claps of sound. They could see Flora from the corner of their eyes; she was all right. “She’s away,” said Jim, and his voice was caught by the wind.
Mothers with children began to leave. A group of older women disappeared suddenly over the brow of the hill, pushing the woman in the wheelchair in a flurry of precautionary shrieks. Flora said, “I hope they don’t tip her out.”
Cosmo said, “D’you like her?”
“She’s kind.”
“Rather interfering?” he suggested.
“Qualities which run in tandem,” she said.
Cosmo thought of his mother; he must not talk of her yet. What was safe? “All those years in London when you say you were working as a maid, what did you do?” He had asked this before when they sat side by side in the train.
“I went to the theatre; the pit cost very little. Museums, galleries.”
Who had gone with her to the galleries, who had shared her enjoyment, who had had a part in those lost years? “Alone?” he asked dubiously.
“Usually.” It had been safer, less trouble to be alone. Childhood habits die hard.
“Do you still prefer living and working in the country? Are you content? You told me in the train that you were content.” It rankled that she should be content. He was resentful of such a state.
“You will run out of innocuous questions soon.” Flora stroked her dog’s ears, looking straight ahead. Her voice was steady.
“All right. Are you married? Are you living with somebody? Have you had many love affairs?”
Flora said, “Phew, how brave.”
Cosmo said, “Well?”
“Are you like this in court?”
“Much better. The wig gives presence, the gown threatens.”
“Ah.”
“So?”
“Not married. Not living with anyone. Yes, I have had affairs.” It would be peculiar, she thought, watching the men stamping out the remains of the fire, if I had not. The affairs, such as they were, had been ephemeral, pleasant; there had been no risk of hurt. “You did not ask,” she said, “whether I have children. I haven’t.”
Cosmo thought, I don’t believe I have ever been alone with her; there have always been people. Oh yes, that time I found her by the river and muffed it in some way. God damn all those people. He remembered the French officer and the Colonel from Texas in the train. But we were alone, he remembered, that first time on the beach.
The bonfire was dying, and people dribbling away. The men had finished stamping out the fire and others loaded the trestle tables onto the land rover. There were shouts of, “Night, Flora,” “Night,” and, “Thanks a lot, see yer.” Somebody started the engine and the land rover tipped out of sight down the hill.
Cosmo, watching it go, said, “Were you the host?”
It was almost dark but the rain was reduced to a drizzle.
“I gave the ram. It was a communal do. A bit of fun for the village.” As they sat she too thought back, remembering the picnic and her terrible despair the following day. “I went back to the beach,” she said, “the day after the picnic. There was a circle of black where the fire had been; that was all.”
She had written their names in the sand: Cosmo, Felix, Hubert. The sea had washed them away.
Cosmo said rather crossly, “Well, I’m here now.”
The wind which had dropped now gustily renewed its energy, bringing with it rain. Flora’s dog whined and shook herself. Flora said, “If we go on sitting here, we shall get the most awful rheumatism.”
“I am afraid,” said Cosmo, turning up his coat collar, “that if I ask you to marry me, you will refuse.”
“You could always ask me again,” said Flora, getting to her feet, “when we have got into the warm and dry.”
Getting to his feet, Cosmo was annoyed to find he was stiff.
Flora’s dog sneezed and started off down the hill at a joyful canter. Flora followed at a half-trot.
At the foot of the hill the last of the ram-roasters were piling into their cars, switching on headlights, revving their engines, shouting goodbyes before driving off. Flora, cantering sideways down the steep slope, thought, If I put on a spurt I could join them, get away, leave him behind, go back to my cottage, light the fire, have a hot bath, put the cat out, and go to bed with my book. Then she thought, He is not someone to be remembered with amused affection like Hubert, or with regretful pity like Felix who, for all his heroism, failed me. Cosmo is here, behind me, trying to keep up, he is real. Then she thought, He doesn’t know this path as I do, he may trip in the dark and fall, and she slowed her pace. She heard Cosmo slip and curse. He yelled angrily, “Don’t run away from me, damn you. Wait.” And, catching up with her, he said, “I nearly went to Pengappah to spend the night, but there are unfortunate memories.” Flora’s laugh was snatched by the wind. “And as I began my drive from Bodmin to London I resolved to take a pull on myself and be sensible.”
Flora said, “Wouldn’t that be rather risky?”
The last of the cars had gone as they reached the road. Cosmo said, “Where’s your car?”
She said, “I walked.”
He said, “Get into mine,” and unlocked his car door.
Flora said, “My dog is muddy.”
Cosmo said, “Stop quibbling.”
The dog leapt into the car and sat on the back seat. Cosmo said, “That animal has a lot more sense than we have,” and put his arms round Flora and, holding her close, hugged her. Then he said, “Let me kiss your eyes,” and, “Don’t tell me you are crying.”
Flora said, “It’s the rain.”
Cosmo said, “First time I’ve come across salt rain.”
Flora said, “Why don’t we get into the car, which is dry?”
Cosmo said, “I’d better warn you, I’ve given Coppermalt to my nephew, Mabs’ boy.”
Flora said, “I’m not marrying you for Coppermalt.”
Cosmo said, “Oh, darling, what a lot of time we have wasted. How shall we ever catch up?”
Flora said, “There will be less time for squabbling.”
About the Author
Mary Wesley (1912–2002) was an English novelist. After she published her first novel at age seventy, her books sold more than three million copies, many of them becoming bestsellers. Her beloved books include Jumping the Queue, The Camomile Lawn, Harnessing Peacocks, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, Not That Sort of Girl, Second Fiddle, A Sensible Life, A Dubious Legacy, An Imaginative Experience, and Part of the Furniture, as well as a memoir, Part of the Scenery.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1990 by Mary Wesley
Cover design by Linda McCarthy
978-1-4804-4994-7
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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