‘And what is the alternative? We have to make a decision now, Alec. There can be no question of putting it off. That’s why I came to see you this evening. She has to know what is going to happen to her.’
‘I won’t let her go.’
‘All right, so what do you want? To keep her for yourself. You couldn’t look after her, Alec. You haven’t the time to give her. Even if she stayed at boarding school in this country, there are still the holidays. What would happen then, when you’re working all day? And don’t tell me you could leave her with Mrs Abney. Gabriel’s an intelligent child, and nobody could say that Mrs Abney’s the most stimulating company. She’s only got two topics of conversation: one is last week’s installment of “Crossroads” and the other is that damned canary of hers. And what would you do with Gabriel when you have to leave on business for Tokyo or Hong Kong? You can hardly take her with you.’
He said, ‘I can’t just give her to you, Erica. Like some material possession I no longer have any use for.’
‘But don’t you see, if we do it my way, you aren’t giving her to me. All right, so we are splitting up and it’s a terrible thing to do to a child, but it’s happened before and it will happen again, and we have somehow to decide on a course of action that will hurt her the least. I think that my plan is that one. She comes with me next week. That way the cut will be quick, the break clean, and before she’s had time to turn round, she’ll be caught up in a whole new life, going to a new school, making new friends.’ She smiled, and for the first time he saw a glimpse of the old Erica at her most charming, sympathetic, and persuasive. ‘Don’t let’s fight over her, Alec. I know how you feel about Gabriel, but she’s my child too, and it’s I who brought her up. I don’t think I’ve done such a bad job, and I do think I deserve a little credit for that. Just because you’re not going to be there doesn’t mean I won’t go on bringing her up. And Strick is devoted to her. With us, she’ll have the best of everything. A good life.’
He said, ‘I thought that was what I was giving her.’
‘Oh, Alec, you are. You have. And you can go on doing it. Whenever you want, she can come and see you. We’ve agreed on that. You can have her all to yourself. You’ll love that. Agree to it. For all our sakes. Let her come with me. It’s the very best you can do for her. I know it is. Make the sacrifice … for Gabriel’s sake.’
* * *
He said, ‘I know your mother’s told you what’s happened, what’s going to happen. But I wanted to talk to you myself, so that if there was anything you were worried about…’
Even as he said this, he knew that it was ridiculous. Gabriel’s world was falling apart, and he was speaking as though it were some small domestic difficulty that, in a matter of seconds, he could put straight for her.
‘I mean … it has happened fairly suddenly. There hasn’t been time to talk anything over, and you’ll be leaving in a week. I didn’t want you to go without thinking that I hadn’t … made some effort to see you. I would like to have had more time to talk things over … with you. Were you hurt that we didn’t discuss it with you?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t have made much difference.’
‘Were you surprised when your mother told you about herself and Strickland?’
‘I knew she liked him. But she’s liked lots of horsey people. I never thought she’d want to go and live with him in America.’
‘She’s going to marry him.’
‘I know.’
They walked, together but apart, slowly around a deserted games field. It was a horrible day, English winter weather at its worst. Cold, still, raw, misty. No breeze stirred the empty trees, and only the cawing of the rooks broke the foggy silence. In the distance stood the school buildings. Once they had been an elegant country house, with wings and stables, but these had been converted into gymnasiums and classrooms. Indoors, lessons were in progress, but Gabriel had been allowed to miss a biology lesson in order to speak to her father. Later, no doubt a bell would ring, and the place would erupt with girls dressed for hockey or netball, bundled into sweaters and striped scarves, running and calling to one another and complaining of the cold. Now, except for a few lighted windows that shone through the murk, the place looked deserted, stripped of life.
‘It could be an adventure, going to America.’
‘That’s what Mummy says.’
‘At least you won’t have to play games in weather like this. It makes a difference if you play games in the sunshine. You might even become a tennis champion.’
Gabriel, with her head drooping and her hands deep in the pocket of her coat, kicked at a stick. So much for tennis. Alec was chilled, disorientated by her lack of response, because it was so out of character. He liked to think that he had always been able to talk to her. But now he was not so sure.
He said, ‘I wouldn’t have had this happen for anything in the world. You must realize that. But there’s nothing I can do to keep your mother with me. You know what she’s like once she’s made up her mind about something. Wild horses couldn’t make her change tracks.’
She said, ‘I never never even thought about you and Mummy divorcing.’
‘I’m afraid it happens to a lot of children. You must have a lot of friends with divorced parents.’
‘But this is me.’
Once more, he was lost for words. In silence they paced on, around the corner of the field, passing a pole with a sodden red flag.
He said, ‘Whatever happens, you know, you’re still my daughter. I shall pay your school fees and give you an allowance. You won’t have to ask Strickland for anything. You won’t ever have to be beholden to him. You … like him, don’t you? You don’t dislike him?’
‘He’s all right.’
‘Your mother says he’s very fond of you.’
‘He’s so young. He’s much younger than Mummy.’
Alec took a deep breath. ‘I suppose,’ he said carefully, ‘if you fall in love with a person, their age doesn’t matter.’
Abruptly, Gabriel stopped walking. Alec stopped too, and they stood facing each other, two solitary figures in the middle of nowhere. Not once during this afternoon’s encounter had her eyes met his, and now she looked angrily straight ahead, at his coat buttons.
She said, ‘Couldn’t I have stayed with you?’
He was invaded by an impulse to embrace her, pull his child into his arms, break down her reserve with a demonstration of love that would somehow convince her that this ghastly separation that they spoke of was as abhorrent to him as it was to her. But he had promised himself on the way down to the school to see her that he would not do this. You mustn’t upset her, Erica had begged him. Go and see her and talk things over, but don’t upset her. She’s accepted the situation. If you start getting emotional, then we’re all back where we started and you’re going to break Gabriel into little pieces.
He tried to smile. He said evenly, ‘There’s nothing I wanted more. But it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t look after you. I have too many commitments. I’d be away so much. You need your mother. For the time being, you should be with her. It’s better that way.’
She set her mouth as though, faced with the inevitable, she was gathering courage to accept it. She turned from him, and once more they walked.
‘You’ll come back to see me,’ Alec told her. ‘We’ll go to Glenshandra again next summer. You could maybe try your luck with the salmon this year.’
‘What’s going to happen to Deepbrook?’
‘I suppose I shall sell it. There’s not much point hanging on to it if your mother isn’t there.’
‘And you?’
‘I shall stay in Islington.’
She said painfully, ‘My bedroom in London…’
‘It’s still your room. It always will be.…’
‘It isn’t that. It’s just some books I’d like to take with me. I’ve … I’ve written down the names.’ She took her hand from her pocket and brought out a piece of lined paper t
orn from an exercise book. He took it from her and unfolded it. He read,
The Secret Garden
Adventure of the World
Gone with the Wind
There were other titles, but for some reason he couldn’t go on reading them.
‘Of course.’ He spoke gruffly, pushing the piece of paper deep into the pocket of his own overcoat. ‘Is … is there anything else?’
‘No, just the books.’
‘I don’t know if your mother told you, but I’m going to drive you both to the airport to catch your plane. I’ll bring the books with me then. So if you do think of any more things, let me know.’
She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing else.’
Now, the mist had turned to rain. It beaded her hair and the rough surface of her navy-blue coat. They had rounded the field and were headed back towards the school buildings. They left the grass and walked on gravel, their footsteps crunching. There did not seem to be anything else to talk about. At the foot of the steps that led up to the imposing front door, she stopped and turned once more to face him.
She said, ‘I have to go and get ready for games. You’d better not come in.’
He said, ‘I’ll say goodbye now. I won’t say goodbye at the airport.’
‘Goodbye, then.’
Her hands remained firmly deep in her coat pockets. He put his hand under her chin and lifted up her face.
‘Gabriel.’
‘Goodbye.’
He stooped and kissed her cheek. For the first time that afternoon she looked straight at him. For an instant their eyes met, and hers were filled with neither tears nor reproach. Then she was gone, walking away from him up the steps, beneath the pretentious colonnade, through the door.
* * *
They left for America the following Thursday, his wife and his child, on the evening flight to New York. As he had promised, Alec drove them to the airport, and after their flight had been called, and he had said goodbye, he made his way up to the observation lounge. It was a wet, dark evening, with much low cloud, and he stood, staring through the streaming glass, waiting for their plane to take off. On time the great jet thundered down the runway, lights flashing through the gloom. He watched it lift off, but seconds later it was lost to sight, swallowed into the clouds. He stayed until the sound of the engines died into the darkness. Only then did he turn away, making the long walk across the polished floor towards the head of the escalator. There were people everywhere, but he did not see them, and no head turned to watch him go. For the first time in his life he knew how it felt to be a nonentity, a failure.
He drove himself back to his empty house. Bad news travels with the speed of light and by now it was common knowledge that his marriage was finished, that Erica had left him for a rich American and had taken Gabriel with her. This, in some measure, was a relief, because it meant that Alec didn’t have to tell people, but he shied from social contact and sympathy, and although Tom Boulderstone had asked him around to Campden Hill for supper this evening, he had refused the invitation, and Tom had understood.
He was used to being alone, but now his solitude had a new dimension. He went upstairs, and the bedroom, stripped of Erica’s possessions, seemed empty, unfamiliar. He had a shower and changed, and then went downstairs again, poured himself a drink, and took it into the sitting room. Without Erica’s pretty ornaments, without any flowers, it looked desolate, and he drew the curtains and told himself that tomorrow he would stop off at the florist and buy himself a potted plant.
It was nearly half past eight, but he was not hungry. He was too exhausted, too drained, for hunger. Later, he would go and investigate, and see what Mrs Abney had concocted and left in the oven for his supper. Later. Now, he switched on the television and collapsed in front of it, his drink in his hand, his chin sunk on his chest.
He stared at the flickering screen. After a moment or two he realized that he was watching a documentary, a programme dealing with the problems of marginal farming. To illustrate the problem, the presenters had chosen a farm in Devon. There was a shot of sheep grazing the rocky slopes of Dartmoor … the camera panned down the hill to the farmhouse … the lush green slopes of the lower land …
It was not Chagwell, but it was a place very similar. The film had been shot in summertime. He saw the blue skies, the high white clouds, their shadows racing down the hillside, to where sunlight sparkled on the waters of a bubbling trout river.
Chagwell.
The past is another country. A long time ago Alec had been conceived, born, brought up in that country; his roots lay deep in that rich red Devon soil. But over the years, diverted by his own success, his own ambitions, and the demands of family life, he had almost totally lost touch.
Chagwell. His father had died, and Brian and his wife, Jenny, now ran the farm between them. In the space of seven years Jenny had borne Brian five blond, freckle-faced children, and the old house bulged with their pets and prams and bicycles and toys.
Erica had no time for Brian and Jenny. They were not her sort of people. Only twice during the whole of their married life had Alec taken her to Chagwell, but the two occasions had been so uncomfortable and so little fun for everybody concerned that, as if by mutual consent, they had never been repeated. Communication dwindled to an exchange of cards at Christmas and the odd letter, but Alec had not seen Brian for five years or more.
Five years. It was too long. Bad news travels with the speed of light, but it would not yet have reached Chagwell. Brian would have to be told about the pending divorce. Alec would write tomorrow, losing no time, for it was unthinkable that Brian should hear about the breakup of his brother’s marriage from some other person.
Or he could telephone …
The telephone, at his side, began to ring. Alec reached out and picked up the receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘Alec.’
‘Brian here.’
Brian. He was visited by a sense of blinding unreality, as though his imagination had reached out beyond the limits of his own despair. For a moment he wondered if he was going out of his mind. Automatically, he leaned forward and switched off the television.
‘Brian.’
‘Who else?’ He sounded his usual cheerful, breezy self, his voice as clear as a bell. For whatever reason he was calling, it was plainly not to impart bad news.
‘Where are you ringing from?’
‘Chagwell, of course, where else?’
Alec saw him sitting at the battered, roll-top desk in the old study at Chagwell, that dusty, book-lined room that had always been used as the farm office. He saw the piles of government forms and dog-eared files, the proud photographs of prizewinning pedigree Guernsey cows.
‘You sound astonished,’ said Brian.
‘It’s been five years.’
‘I know. Far too long. But I thought you’d like to hear a fairly surprising piece of family news. Uncle Gerald’s getting married.’
Gerald. Gerald Haverstock of Tremenheere. Adm. G. J. Haverstock, C.B.E., D.S.O., D.S.C., R.N., once known as the most eligible bachelor in the Royal Navy.
‘When did you hear this?’
‘This morning. He rang up to tell us. Sounds over the moon. Wants us all to go to the wedding.’
‘When’s that?’
‘Weekend after next. In Hampshire.’
Gerald, finally, getting married. ‘He must be sixty now.’
‘Well, you know what they say, the best wine comes from old bottles.’
‘Who’s the bride?’
‘She’s called Eve Ashby. The widow of an old shipmate. It’s all very suitable.’
Still, Alec found it hard to believe, for it was indeed an astounding piece of news. Gerald, of all people, the career sailor, the perpetual bachelor, yearned after by countless lovelorn ladies. Gerald, with whom Brian and Alec had spent one blissful summer holiday, the only youngsters in a wholly adult house party. Running wild on the Cornish beaches and playing cricket on the lawn in fr
ont of the house, they had yet been treated—for the first time in their lives—as grown-ups. Allowed to stay up for dinner, drink wine, take the sailing dinghy on their own. Gerald became their hero, and they followed his meteoric career with proprietary pride.
Gerald had been best man at so many weddings that it took some imagination to see him as the bridegroom.
‘Are you going to the wedding?’ Alec asked.
‘Yes, we all are. Kids and all. Gerald wants the lot of us. And you as well. It’s not that far from Deepbrook. You could drive over in the afternoon. I don’t suppose Erica would particularly want to come, but perhaps you and Gabriel…?’
He paused, waiting for a reaction to this suggestion. Alec’s mouth was suddenly dry. He saw again the transatlantic jet, taking off, lifting, disappearing into the darkness of night and cloud. She’s gone. Gabriel’s gone.
After a bit, in a totally different voice, Brian said, ‘Is everything all right, old boy?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, the last few days, I’ve been thinking about you … had the feeling you were a bit under the weather. In fact, I’ve been meaning to ring you. Had this urge to have a word. Telling you about Gerald’s wedding was just a good excuse to pick up the telephone.’
Had this urge to have a word.
They had, as boys, been very close. The barriers of distance, the passing years, the two incompatible wives, the lack of communication had not destroyed their closeness. They had always been in touch, linked by a strong, invisible cord of blood and birth. Perhaps this unexpected telephone call, for whatever reason it had been made, was a sort of lifeline.
He clutched at it. He said, ‘Yes, everything’s wrong,’ and told Brian. It did not take very long.
When he was finished, Brian only said, ‘I see.’
‘I was going to write tomorrow and tell you. Or telephone … I’m sorry I didn’t get around to telling you before.’
‘That’s all right, old boy. Look. I’m coming up to London next week for the fatstock show at Smithfield. Would you like to meet?’
Voices In Summer Page 6
