‘I’m glad your aunt is here,’ she says. ‘We wondered when we saw Jason whether he is quite well. He seemed very stressed.’
Mikey feels his face go hot and scarlet; he is ashamed and miserable.
‘I think it’s to do with Mum dying,’ he mumbles. ‘He has tablets for depression and sometimes he doesn’t manage very well. That’s why I phoned Aunt Liz because he was … well, like you said. That’s why she came.’
‘Jason doesn’t like me very much,’ says Evie, and he stares at her in surprise. ‘Well, he doesn’t, does he? Your grandfather and I were very close friends, perhaps too close, and your grandmother – Jason’s mother – wasn’t very happy about it. She was an invalid in a wheelchair and he probably still feels angry on her behalf.’
Mikey nods, still taken aback by Evie’s honesty. ‘He did say something about it.’
She looks so kind and understanding that he wants to tell her everything: about how Dad’s always been like a child, needing looking after, how he rages and loses it. But it’s being disloyal, which he knows is wrong.
‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘when people aren’t well, or grieving like your father is, they need something or someone on which to project their anger and grief and pain. It gives all those emotions a different direction and it can be a huge relief. Probably, seeing me again after all these years, that’s what’s happened to Jason.’
Listening to her Mikey is filled with a sense of understanding. Since Mum died he’s experienced all sorts of things: anger, fear, guilt, misery. It would be good, sometimes, to let it all out in a huge fit of rage.
He nods. ‘I get that. Even so, I wish it wasn’t you.’
She smiles. ‘So do I,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Will you write to me, Mikey, and let me know how things are with you? From school this time, perhaps?’
And then he smiles too, and nods, because it’s as if she really does understand what it’s like and how Dad watched him write the letters.
‘Good,’ she says. ‘Let’s have something to eat and drink, shall we?’
Later he walks back to the flat with a greater sense of security, believing that he has a friend who is grown-up, responsible, and asks for nothing but his friendship.
‘Come back and see us soon,’ Evie said, and he promised that he would. Some instinct tells him that this place will always be special to him.
Mikey glances at his watch and hurries his pace; they want to be off before lunch. He takes one long last look across the Boat Float out towards the river and turns back into the town. The holiday is over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
DURING THESE SHORT late autumn days that topple down so quickly towards the end of the year, the best time in the garden is in the morning. Low sunshine slants across the roofs, dazzles on the water, touches the untidy mop-heads of the hydrangeas. Evie leans against the table and wraps cold hands around her mug of hot coffee: even on the coldest day, as long as there is a gleam of sunshine, she cannot resist the garden. She hears the blackbird rustling amongst the ivy, foraging along the wall, swooping down to peck up some crumbs she’s provided for him. He has his gold-rimmed eye on the spring, protecting his familiar territory, which has provided such a perfect breeding site for his young.
As she looks around the quiet, sleeping garden, Evie finds it almost impossible to imagine it in blossom again, the borders full of colour, the scent of lavender drifting in the warm, still air. She and Claude have been happily settled in the Merchant’s House for several weeks, adapting to the change of routines, enjoying the novelty: it’s rather like being on holiday in familiar surroundings. After all, neither she nor Claude is a stranger to the Merchant’s House.
It was odd at first, though, to be back here without Tommy; odd to be using their bedroom and half expecting to see him coming out of the shower or propped up against his pillows in bed, reading. To begin with it was very painful, as if she were coming to terms with losing him all over again, but gradually she grew used to it. There were so many good memories, small things she’d almost forgotten. He was always the first up – all those years of being early at the office – dragging on his dressing gown and going downstairs to make coffee. In the kitchen he’d switch on Radio 4 so that by the time he returned, carrying the tray, he was able to tell her various items of the day’s news.
‘Do I want to know?’ she’d mutter, hardly awake, hauling herself upright. ‘Can’t it wait until after breakfast?’
He had an almost childlike fascination with disasters: tsunamis, hurricanes, floods. These terrible things gripped his imagination and occupied his mind.
‘Appalling,’ he’d say, sitting on the bottom of the bed, his face grave. ‘Simply awful. All those poor souls. We’ll need to get on to ShelterBox and see if they’re doing anything about it.’
On sunny summer mornings he’d insist that she had her coffee up in the garden.
‘Up you come. Up you come,’ he’d say, as if she were a recalcitrant horse, pulling back the bedcovers. ‘It’s a glorious morning. Much too good to be lazing in bed. You know you’ll be glad when you’re up there.’
And she usually was, though she was not by nature a lark; she was an owl: late to bed, late to rise. Before she moved into the Merchant’s House with Tommy after they were married, it was during those deliciously lazy hours between waking and rising that she’d think about her day’s work: plotting and planning, imagining scenes and conversations. Sometimes she did some work on her laptop before she got up; sometimes she’d make coffee and take it back to bed whilst she brooded on the story she was telling. Her life with Tommy changed things, she learned to adapt, and she never regretted those happy years with him.
She knows that Claude is remembering the past, too. They both are certain that Tommy would be pleased to see them all together here in his beloved Merchant’s House, planning for Christmas. Charlie will be coming for two nights just before Christmas, but there has been no question of Ange or the girls accompanying him and Evie is relieved. She thinks that Ange has accepted Ben’s rights to be here at the Merchant’s House and, even if she had any suspicions about Jemima, that extraordinary encounter in Alf’s went some way to allaying them.
Evie sips her coffee thoughtfully, thinking about Jemima and about Ben. Recently she has noticed a change – infinitesimal, carefully concealed, but a change – in their friendship: a new awareness flowing between them. There is something new, too, in the way that Jemima greets Evie: all the old affection, yes, but a new constraint as if Jemima fears a plunge into intimacy during one of their conversations. There is a brightness, lots of jokiness, a tendency to skitter away from more personal subjects. Evie watches this with interest – and anxiety: to her experienced eye Jemima looks like a woman who is having an affair. She remembers Jemima sitting on the balcony at the boathouse saying, ‘I always say I’m mistress material.’
Ben, on the other hand, is quieter. There is a physical wellbeing about him yet he too is slightly cautious with Evie, lest he might reveal something he wishes to keep hidden. He makes no secret of the fact that he spends time with Jemima, and she still drops into the Merchant’s House for a mid-morning cup of coffee or a cup of tea after work, but the old easiness between she and Ben has been replaced by something more knowing; a different level of intimacy that must be constantly monitored. The old innocence has vanished.
The blackbird swoops down to seize a crumb and Evie drinks the last of her coffee. She hears Claude calling to her from the house below and she goes down through the garden to meet him.
As Claude unpacks the shopping he gives thanks that Charlie is coming down by himself just before Christmas. Though Claude knows that Ange has never accompanied Charlie on the Christmas run there’s always the fear of hearing that this year she’s changed her mind. It was a huge shock to Claude when Evie told him she showed Ange the papers from the cartoons.
‘It was the only way to get her off our backs,’ Evie said. ‘I think you’ll find everything will be easie
r now.’
‘You make it sound like blackmail,’ he grumbled, trying to imagine the scene between the two women.
‘Oh, it is,’ said Evie blithely. ‘You see, she might have always thought that I’d invented them. There would have been that tiny doubt in her mind. So I showed them to her and told her how I’d left things in my will, whilst implying that it all depended on her behaving herself. She quite understood that, she’s not an idiot, but she’ll feel happier now that she knows that the Merchant’s House will go back to her children eventually. Though she nearly had a fit when I told her that you’d read them.’
‘You told her?’
‘Of course. You’re a kind of insurance policy. Don’t be so pedestrian, Claude. You simply can’t allow people like Ange to get away with things.’
‘You are so ruthless,’ he murmured.
She beamed at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Good, isn’t it?’
Now she comes into the kitchen, carrying her coffee mug, saying, ‘Did you remember the pains au choc?’
‘Looks like you’ve already had coffee without me,’ he says, slightly aggrieved.
‘Doesn’t mean I can’t have another,’ she says. ‘Not on ration, is it?’ And she gives him a hug and says, ‘I am so glad you’re here, Claude. I was just sitting up on the terrace thinking about Ben and Jemima.’
‘Yes,’ he says rather glumly. He’s been thinking about them too. He can no longer convince himself that everyone will be able to remain just good friends.
‘Do you think they’re sleeping together?’ she asks, filling the kettle, switching it on – and as usual he’s taken aback by her directness.
‘They seem … furtive,’ he replies reluctantly. ‘No, not quite that, but it’s like they know a secret that they’re keeping from us.’
‘Exactly,’ Evie says, collecting mugs, spooning coffee into the cafetiere.
He watches her: she seems so matter-of-fact about it.
‘Don’t you mind?’ he asks, almost indignantly. ‘It was you who said that they should contain their feelings and keep them under control.’
‘I didn’t quite say that,’ she answers. ‘I said that if they could then their love might become a positive thing for them. And I was talking about Charlie and Jemima. Not Ben.’
‘But where does this leave Charlie?’ Claude asks crossly. ‘I mean, if they’re having an affair, how does this work now? Isn’t Charlie going to be a bit put out to find that Ben’s stolen a march on him?’
‘The trouble is, he can’t really complain, can he? He has his own life going on in London. Perhaps you were right when you said that Charlie wouldn’t be able to cope with an affair and maybe Jemima has looked into the future and seen how bleak it might be, and that somehow she and Ben are comforting each other. Ben’s had a bit of a tough rejection with Kirsty so they’ve turned to each other. It’s understandable, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he says impatiently. ‘Yes, I can see why it’s happened, and I’m not judging them, but how does it go forward? Do we pretend nothing’s going on? Does Ben tell Charlie? After all, Jemima and Ben are free agents. It doesn’t have to be a secret. So why is it?’
Evie groans as she makes the coffee. ‘It’s not that simple, Claude.’
He gives a derisive snort: it never is. She can’t help laughing at his exasperated expression.
‘Well, it isn’t, is it? She’s in love with Charlie. You saw it yourself. We all know. How does she explain to us that she’s going to bed with Ben?’
‘OK, it’s embarrassing, but I say again: where is it going to end?’
Evie shakes her head. ‘I don’t know but I’m worried about them. I was naïve to imagine that it might work out, I suppose.’
Claude is seized with a fresh anxiety but any words of comfort seem empty so he says instead: ‘Well, pour the coffee. I’m dying of thirst after battling round M&S,’ and he roots in the bag for the pains au chocolat.
Jemima and Ben are driving back from a pretty, thatched cottage near Thurlestone. Ben has taken photographs and Jemima has been making an inventory prior to it being taken on as a holiday let. Jemima drives; she knows these lanes, the back ways and the short cuts, and Ben has grown used to being a passenger, allowing himself to relax and his brain to freewheel.
It’s odd, Ben thinks, that before half term, before that moment when Jemima arrived at the Merchant’s House expecting to see Charlie, these jaunts were free of any constraint. Often it seemed that Charlie might have been with them; as if they were both happy to keep him included in their friendship, as part of the group. Now, the mere thought of him seems to fill the car with a silence that is difficult to break. It’s as if they are both being unfaithful to him.
It’s a ridiculous idea. Ben shifts in his seat, stares out beyond the small, neat, sloping fields to the glimmer of the distant sea. Jemima slips him a sideways glance as if she’s read his thoughts, and he speaks quickly so as to deflect any suspicions she might have.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ he says at random. ‘Wherever you look it takes your breath away.’
‘The cottage was sweet,’ she says, diving into a gateway to allow a tractor to pass. ‘Would you like to live in a little house like that?’
‘No,’ he answers at once, thinking of the grace and elegance of the Merchant’s House. ‘No, I’m not a cottage man. Too poky.’
Too late he thinks of her little cottage and there’s a moment of silence whilst he tries to think of a way out. This new awkward dimension to their friendship immediately poses problems; doesn’t allow the old ease of honesty.
Does his remark indicate that he wouldn’t want to move in with her? Does it imply that at some point she might move in with him? He is filled with irritation and dismay. Nothing has changed – and everything has changed. Somehow on that first occasion, charged as it was with emotion, with the need to comfort, making love on Jemima’s big old sofa had seemed a natural conclusion; their mood, the wine, all conspired towards this act. It was a long moment of relief, release, pleasure, before the world clamoured in again and there was the difficulty of moving apart, getting dressed, without knowing what might come next. He tried to take his attitude from her affectionate warm reaction but it was clear that they both felt slightly awkward, at a loss as to how to go forward. The old familiarity was gone but there was nothing to take its place.
‘All those beams,’ he says now, trying for a light touch. ‘I’d have a permanent stoop. They must have been midgets in the old days.’
Jemima laughs, and somehow the tension breaks.
‘Shall we have some lunch at Stokeley,’ she asks, ‘before we go back to the office? It’s just about warm enough to sit outside so Otto can have a bit of a leg-stretch.’
‘Good idea,’ he agrees.
Jemima begins to talk about Maisie, about her next sleepover at the weekend, and Ben relaxes in his seat and tries to persuade himself that he is being oversensitive and that it will all work itself out.
All the while though, as she talks, Jemima is aware of Benj’s confusion. It matches her own. That first time was simple, arising as it did out of her sudden disappointed shock at Charlie’s departure; Benj’s readiness to console and comfort. It was later that the difficulties showed themselves. She guesses that Benj can see no way forward and is already regretting this impromptu love affair. And there is love between them, a very deep affection, but it is not the stuff of a long-term, full-on relationship. Jemima wonders whether Benj suspects he is being used as a substitute; whether he feels he is betraying Charlie. It’s odd that she doesn’t feel too badly about the physical side – she has no doubt that Charlie is sleeping with Ange – it’s something much more important; something to do with the recognition they share, which is so crucial to her. Nothing can alter that, nor take it away. What would hurt would be Charlie’s denial of it. It was reaffirmed briefly during that moment in Alf’s and she’d counted on seeing him again, needing her fix so as to get her through the days ahead witho
ut him.
But there’s something else here: the close relationship between Charlie and Benj that stretches back across their whole lives. How will Benj deal with what he might see as a betrayal? She would hate to be the instrument that might damage their affection for each other.
She turns off into the lane that leads to the farm shop, drives into the car park, manoeuvres the car into a space and switches off the engine.
‘Come on,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Let’s see what’s on the lunch menu.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
EVIE CROSSES THE road, opens the postbox fixed to the wall at the top of the steps and takes out her letters. She carries them down with her to the boathouse, lets herself in, throws the letters on the table and goes to open the sliding doors. She likes to come in on sunny mornings, to air the house, and to enjoy a moment of solitude.
Out on the balcony she pauses to look down-river but the wind is too cold to be able to stand for long and she comes back inside, glancing at the letters, shuffling them: two catalogues, a bank statement and another envelope, handwritten. She picks it up, filled with foreboding: the writing is familiar. This is the second letter that she’s had from Jason and quickly she tears the envelope open and draws out the sheet of paper.
His writing is uneven, almost illegible, unlike his first missive, which was almost childlike in its style. She read it many times and remembers it now.
Dear Evelyn Drake,
I need money to get the car through its MOT. If I don’t get it repaired I shan’t be able to bring Mikey home for his exeat. The trains are very difficult and expensive. I know how fond you are of him and that you would want him to have a good time. Could you send me a cheque for four hundred and sixty-eight pounds?
Please help us.
Yours sincerely,
Jason Dean
She dithered over it, but somehow hadn’t had the courage to show it to Claude. Of course, she knew how he would react – and she knew that she might be wise to listen to him as once she had listened to Tommy – but there was an element of authenticity about Jason’s request: the sum was so precise. At last, she’d written the cheque and sent it to the flat in Bristol with a little note; just a few words: ‘Here is the money, Jason. I’m glad to help on this occasion and I hope you both have a good exeat weekend. Evie.’
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