by Anne Mather
‘Sorry to be so long. All the phones were occupied.’
Carne spoke right behind her, his breath stirring the strands of hair moistened by the anxious dampness at her nape. Lesley swung round, impatient that she had not seen his approach, aware that his presence was still too much of a liability to give her any peace of mind.
‘I was beginning to think you’d had cold feet,’ she declared through tight lips, and the corners of his mouth curved down.
‘Like you, you mean?’ he countered, and her nerves stretched.
‘Did you make your call?’ she asked, determining not to rise to his baiting, and after a moment he nodded.
‘Eventually,’ he agreed, and she realised he was not going to tell her to whom he had been speaking.
Looking away from his mocking countenance, she encountered the gaze of a woman who was regarding her with apparent recognition, and who now took the opportunity offered to approach them.
‘Mrs Radley?’ she queried politely. ‘It is Mrs Radley, isn’t it?’
Lesley cast a swift awkward look at Carne and then agreed. ‘That’s right.’
‘I thought so.’ The woman, who appeared to be in her early thirties, included Carne in her encompassing smile. ‘I remember seeing you here in March. My son pointed you out to me. Mark Morrison.’
Lesley cleared her throat, thinking furiously. ‘Mark? Mark Morrison? Oh—oh, yes. Mark.’
‘I thought you’d recognise the name,’ said the woman comfortably, obviously unaware that Lesley was still as confused as ever. ‘Mark and Jeremy are such good friends. Mark’s always talking about him.’ Her gaze fastened itself on Carne’s lean face. ‘And you must be his father. I believe Jeremy’s always talking about you.’
Lesley only just managed to disguise her gasp of amazement in a cough, but Carne weathered the shock with remarkable composure. His politely controlled features registered nothing but interested approval, and only his eyes narrowed perceptibly, the short thick lashes concealing his true feelings.
‘Indeed,’ he replied now. ‘Good things, I trust.’
‘Well, of course …’ Mrs Morrison appeared flustered. ‘I mean—well, naturally Jeremy’s very proud of you.’
‘Is he?’ Carne remained amazingly unruffled. He smiled. ‘You know how boys exaggerate.’
Mrs Morrison flushed. ‘Boys of any age like to feel proud of their fathers,’ she averred. ‘And naturally, as you haven’t been present at any of the school functions, Jeremy wanted to make it clear that you weren’t neglecting him.’ She tempered this rather veiled criticism with another ingenuous smile. ‘But I understand. It isn’t always possible to plan ahead in your business, is it? I don’t expect your schedules can be organised to include school speech days and sports days, can they?’
Carne exchanged a look with Lesley, and then shook his head. ‘No.’ His faint smile was exactly right, showing suitable satisfaction, yet gently appealing for sympathy. ‘Nevertheless, I do know—Jeremy’s propensity for over-dramatisation …’ He paused and looked at Lesley with lazy eyes. ‘That’s one characteristic, however, I can’t take the credit for.’
His smile took the sting out of his words so far as Mrs Morrison was concerned, but Lesley gritted her teeth as the other woman’s laugh tinkled lightly. ‘Oh, Mr Radley!’ she exclaimed coyly. ‘You’re so modest!’ Then she sobered. ‘But I wish my husband had been here to meet you. He adores flying, and meeting a genuine airline captain …’
This time Lesley’s gulp of disbelief would not be denied, but she quickly changed it to a hoarse: ‘Isn’t this the train?’ and to her relief the Taunton express rumbled slowly along the platform.
‘Oh, so it is!’ Mrs Morrison sounded almost disappointed, but the sight of her son hanging dangerously out of one of the carriage windows sent her hastening away with only a brief word of farewell.
Left alone with her husband, Lesley felt totally incapable of handling the next few minutes, a feeling which was not tempered by Carne’s rasping: ‘Did you tell him to say that?’
‘No!’ Indignation came to the rescue once more. ‘Good lord, as if I would!’ She made an impatient gesture. ‘Don’t be so silly!’
Carne frowned as the train squealed to a halt. ‘Don’t you think you ought to go and look for your son?’
‘Oh! So he’s my son now, is he?’ Lesley tossed her head, but she soon gave in as a stream of boys, both large and small, began to swarm past the barrier, lugging heavy suitcases behind them.
As she moved forward, she was aware of Carne behind her, tall and attractive in his mud-coloured Levis and matching shirt. She wondered what Jeremy would think of his father, and wished with all her heart they had never encountered Mrs Morrison, with her predispositions of his character.
She saw him almost at once, a smaller boy among a group of taller ones, tugging his suitcase with evident difficulty, his cap stuffed carelessly into the pocket of his blazer. Her present involvement with Carne made her see him with new eyes, she realised reluctantly, and while Jeremy might never have recognised his father, his father could not fail to recognise him. Apart from the fact that his school-cut hair was much shorter than Carne’s, their features and colouring were so similar. The same dark hair and eyes, the same easily tanned skin. Where Carne was lean and muscled, the boy was almost slender, but he was tall for his age, and moved with the same light athletic tread. Unlike his father, he was not particularly clean, she noticed impatiently, and his tie was half unfastened and twisted round his neck. The uniform grey shirt had collected a number of smutty marks en route, and the creases in his grey-and-purple striped blazer were not enhanced by the fact that the sleeves were already short on him. Another new blazer, thought Lesley anxiously. However would she afford it?
Jeremy had seen her and was waving energetically, apparently taking no notice of the man behind her. He probably thought it was some other boy’s father, Lesley fretted, glancing round at Carne and noticing the unusual lines of strain around his nose and mouth, and then Jeremy had handed in his ticket to the collector and was reaching up to give her a swift, half embarrassed peck on the cheek.
‘’Lo, Mum,’ he grinned, handing over his suitcase with his usual disregard for her femininity, and then jerking it back again as Carne’s hand came to take it. ‘Hey …’
‘Jeremy, this is your father!’ Lesley burst out recklessly, and then wished she hadn’t as Jeremy stopped dead and stared up at her disbelievingly, while the waves of schoolboys continued to wash about them.
Carne took the suitcase from Jeremy’s now-unresisting hand, and urged the boy forward. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The car’s outside. We’re creating an obstruction.’
He strode ahead, making a way for them to follow, and Lesley took Jeremy’s hand and pushed him forward. ‘My father?’ he said, almost to himself, and then looked at the man ahead of them. ‘My father?’ He transferred his attention to his mother. ‘My real father?’
‘Yes. Your real father,’ declared Lesley shortly. ‘Do hurry up, Jeremy. People are trying to get home.’
Jeremy obediently quickened his step and they emerged into the sunlit station yard. Carne had managed to park in a side street just a few yards from the entrance, and he was already turning the corner as they appeared.
But Jeremy let him get out of sight and then turned to Lesley urgently. ‘What is he doing here? Mum, why has he come to meet me? You didn’t tell me he was staying with Nanna.’
‘He’s not,’ said Lesley, choosing her words with difficulty. ‘Oh, love, I can’t explain now. It will all come right, you’ll see.’
Jeremy hesitated. ‘Has he come back to live with us? Are we going to be a proper family again?’
‘Well—no.’ Lesley sighed, and as she did so Carne reappeared, standing at the street corner, regarding them impatiently. ‘Darling, come along. Daddy’s waiting. He’ll tell you what it’s all about.’
‘But I don’t want him to tell me,’ objected Jeremy. ‘I want you.’
The station wagon was hot after standing in the sunshine for almost half an hour. Carne had left the doors and windows open as he waited for them to join him, but still it was unpleasantly stuffy inside.
‘Why couldn’t we have taken a taxi to Nanna’s flat?’ asked Jeremy mutinously, pulling his tie into an even more untidy corkscrew. ‘I like riding in taxis.’
‘You’ll get used to riding in this,’ retorted Carne, speaking to his son for the first time. Then: ‘How are you, Jeremy? Have you had a good term?’
Jeremy didn’t immediately answer, and Lesley, seated in the front beside Carne, glanced round encouragingly. ‘Have you, darling?’ she asked, forcing a smile, and the boy hunched his shoulders.
‘It was all right,’ he muttered, clearly not happy about this new state of affairs, and Lesley’s heart bled for him.
The congestion of the traffic was such that for a time Carne was occupied in negotiating the maze of one-way streets and traffic signals. Lesley kept giving Jeremy encouraging smiles, but his face remained mutinous and sulky, and she guessed he was as anxious as she was about the future. But what else could she have said? she justified herself. To introduce Carne any other way would have only made for complications later. Even so, she sensed Carne was not pleased either, and she wondered if he was letting what Mrs Morrison had told them reflect on his opinion of his son.
St Anne’s Gate was blessedly quiet and as soon as the car had stopped, Jeremy had the door open and had hopped out on to the pavement. But as he darted away towards the doors of the apartment building, his father’s voice stopped him:
‘Jeremy! You’ve forgotten your case!’
The boy turned, obedience to the tone of voice stronger than his desire to escape. ‘Mum will bring my case,’ he muttered in a low voice, but Carne shook his head.
‘Women don’t carry cases,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘But if it’s too heavy for you, I’ll carry it.’
‘I can manage,’ mumbled Jeremy, and came and pulled the case out of the back of the station wagon.
Lesley looked angrily at Carne as Jeremy struggled up the shallow steps, but her husband’s expression was bland. ‘Isn’t that rather childish?’ she demanded in an undertone, as Carne closed and locked the car. ‘I always carry his case.’
‘I know,’ he said flatly, and followed his son up the steps.
The journey up in the lift was the most uncomfortable Lesley had ever experienced. Even travelling alone with Carne had not been as tense as this, and Jeremy’s pursed lips could not disguise the fact that his chin was wobbling.
Mrs Matthews had seen the station wagon from the windows and opened the door as they came along the corridor. This time Carne had taken command of the suitcase leaving his son free to go and meet his grandmother. ‘Jeremy!’ she cried, hugging him warmly, and watching the rapturous welcome her mother gave him Lesley felt an angry pang. It was as if Mrs Matthews was disclaiming all knowledge of the arrangements her daughter had unwillingly made with her husband, as if the decision to involve Carne had been Lesley’s alone, and she had played no part in it.
In the flat, it was almost as stuffy as in the station wagon. It was a particularly hot day, but windows created draughts, or so Mrs Matthews always maintained, and in consequence the dining room was rather unpleasantly redolent with the smell of the pickled onions lying in their dish of vinegar. A special tea had been prepared by Mrs Mason, but the housekeeper’s culinary skills never ran beyond ham and salad, squashy sponge cakes and plates of tinned fruit and jelly.
Even so, Jeremy was pleased, and his automatic: ‘Ooh, butterfly cakes!’ more than made up for the housekeeper’s lack of imagination.
‘Won’t you sit down, Carne?’ Mrs Matthews ushered her son-in-law to the head of the table, and Jeremy’s brief excitement died beneath childishly lowered brows.
Mrs Mason, a matronly woman in her early fifties, brought in the teapot and they all seated themselves. Lesley, examining the fatty ham on her plate with a jaundiced eye, wondered what the housekeeper thought of this unusual little gathering, and then her mother’s words brought her head up with a snap.
‘And has Mummy told you you’re going to stay on Daddy’s farm these holidays, Jeremy?’ she asked pleasantly, chasing a pickled onion round her plate with her fork, only to have it fall unheeded to the floor as the boy sprang up from his seat in alarm.
‘No!’
‘Mother!’ Lesley was on her feet too, but it was Carne’s arm that prevented Jeremy’s headlong dash from the room, and his handkerchief that was pushed without compromise into his son’s tearful face.
‘Mum …’ Jeremy turned appealing eyes in his mother’s direction and Lesley gave him a sympathetic look before turning to her mother again.
‘How could you?’ she exclaimed. ‘How could you blurt it out like that?’
‘You did much the same,’ retorted Carne without emphasis. ‘And besides, it needed to be said.’
‘But not yet!’ protested Lesley, with Jeremy’s reproachful gaze upon her.
‘Why not?’ Carne was merciless. ‘For God’s sake, he’s not going to the stake! I’d hazard a guess that he may find it more enjoyable than listening to you two arguing all day long!’
‘Carne!’ Mrs Matthews sounded most offended, and it gave Lesley a rather cheap sense of satisfaction to know that her husband was not entirely deceived by her mother’s air of aggrieved innocence.
Jeremy blew his nose on the handkerchief, and then said tremulously: ‘What’s going to happen to me, Mum? Why are you sending me away?’
‘Oh, Jeremy …’ Lesley felt near to tears herself, and it was again Carne who squatted down beside the boy, holding him gently but firmly between his hands.
‘Listen to me, Jeremy,’ he said, as the boy tried to squirm away, ‘you knew you had a father, didn’t you?’ The boy nodded unwillingly, and he went on: ‘So you must have thought that some day you might see him again.’
‘Mum said you hadn’t—hadn’t time for—for us,’ stammered Jeremy resentfully, and now it was Lesley who bore the brunt of Carne’s angry gaze.
‘Oh, did she?’ he said at last, controlling his feelings with admirable restraint. ‘Well, that wasn’t entirely true. We just felt—your mother and I—that having two homes might be too confusing to a small boy.’
‘Two homes?’ Jeremy looked already confused, and Lesley exclaimed: ‘Let me tell him!’
Carne’s glance was denigrating. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had long enough to do so?’ he demanded, his voice roughening for a moment. Then, when she made no immediate reply, he returned to the boy. ‘So—I’m here to take you to my home now. For a visit. To meet your other grandmother.’
‘My other grandmother?’ Jeremy looked anxious.
‘My mother,’ explained Carne patiently. ‘Nanna is your mother’s mother, isn’t she?’
Jeremy digested this slowly. Then he said suddenly: ‘Why haven’t you come to see us before? Don’t you like us?’
Carne sighed. ‘I’m trying to explain,’ he said, straightening to stretch his long legs. ‘Like I said, Mummy and I didn’t want to make things difficult for you.’
‘But you’ve got time for us now?’
‘I always had time,’ retorted Carne thinly, then, seeing Jeremy’s distrust reappearing, he added: ‘Yes, I have time for you now.’
‘And—and Mummy, too?’
Carne inclined his head. ‘And Mummy, too,’ he agreed dryly.
Jeremy’s face cleared a little. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded of his mother now. ‘Why didn’t you say you were coming?’
Lesley forced a slight smile. ‘You didn’t let me,’ she murmured reluctantly, ignoring Carne’s faintly triumphant air.
Jeremy turned to his father again. ‘And you have a farm? A real farm? Does it have cows
and horses and pigs? Things like that?’
Carne’s features softened. ‘Well, it doesn’t have planes and hangars,’ he remarked dryly, and Jeremy’s brightening face suffused with hot colour.
‘Why did you say that?’ he demanded doubtfully, and Carne raised his dark eyebrows. ‘You don’t know?’
Jeremy rubbed his nose with his forefinger and shook his head.
‘Okay.’ When Lesley would have protested, Carne silenced her with a look. ‘Now, shall we finish our tea?’
Mrs Matthews was still looking more than a little put out by what had occurred. ‘I think I’d like to go and lie down,’ she declared, dabbing her lips with a scrap of lace. ‘This—this has all been too much for me.’
‘Mother …’ Lesley turned to her helplessly, unaccountably feeling that all the people she loved were drifting away from her. ‘Mother, please don’t get upset.’
‘Let your mother lie down if she wants to,’ remarked Carne, opening the door for his mother-in-law. ‘We’ll be leaving soon anyway. She knows that.’
Now it was Lesley’s turn to look put out. ‘Leaving?’ she echoed. She shook her head as if to clear her brain. ‘I thought we were leaving in the morning.’
‘We were,’ said Carne easily. ‘But I decided the journey would come easier in two parts. That’s why I made that phone call this afternoon. I’ve booked us into an hotel just off the motorway, near Leicester. That way the boy and I will have more time to get to know one another before we get to Raventhorpe.’
