‘Rather too easily,’ she admitted. ‘She probably knew exactly where I was.’
Then a note of anxiety crept into her voice. ‘I’m a bit concerned.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t want to give her too much to take in at one go. And I suppose . . . if I’m honest . . . I don’t want her sitting in judgement.’
‘It’s going to be tricky, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so,’ she said forlornly. ‘But don’t worry – I’ll handle it. It’s my problem.’
He tried to say the right things. Make the right noises. Let her know that he knew how difficult it must be, and that he wanted to help her find a solution. Then she said, ‘Just give me a couple of days to sort myself out.’
They said goodbye fondly, but he felt uneasy. He told himself to give her time. To give them both time. This was something not to be rushed and, for him, there were few complications. True, he felt apprehensive and a little guilty at launching into a relationship so soon after the last one, but compared with what he felt for Alex, his relationship with Debs now seemed hardly like a relationship at all.
He got up and walked outside on to the veranda. Dusk was falling. Way below he could hear the sound of breakers on the pebble shore. In the far distance, through the rising mist, the green light of a container ship floated across the water. Another day, another night. He was alone with his thoughts – of Rosie, his father, wherever he was, and Alex. She had been here just twenty-four hours ago, and now she was on the other side of this stretch of water, seemingly as far away from him as it was possible to be.
He sat down and watched the sea until it was no longer visible. Then he went indoors and dreamed of her until morning.
23
Gloire des Rosomanes
. . . was important in the early breeding of the Bourbons.
Victoria gazed out of the window as her mother read aloud: ‘“By the side of the tall and bouncing young ladies in the establishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child. But she had the dismal precocity of poverty. Many a dun had she talked to, and turned away from her father’s door; many a tradesman had she coaxed and wheedled into good humour, and into the granting of one meal more. She sate commonly with her father, who was very proud of her wit, and heard the talk of many of his wild companions – often but ill suited for a girl to hear. But she never had been a girl, she said; she had been a woman since she was eight years old.” ’ Alex looked up. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I said are you listening?’
‘A bit.’
‘Well, if you’re only listening a bit I’ll stop.’ She closed the book.
‘I don’t like her very much.’
‘Who?’
‘Becky Sharp.’
‘Well, you don’t really know her yet. We’ve only just started.’
‘She sounds a bit scary. And anyway I don’t like this as much as Jane Austen.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of what it says at the top of the first page.’
Alex opened the book again and read, ‘A novel without a hero’.
‘Ah, I see. No Mr Darcy.’
‘No. And no Edward Ferrars.’
‘So you liked Edward Ferrars?’
‘Not at first, but in the end.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was nice.’
‘I thought you preferred Mr Willoughby. He was much more dashing. You said Edward Ferrars was a wimp.’
‘Well, he was, but he got better. And by the end I could see why Elinor loved him.’
‘And you think he was worth it?’
Victoria shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
Alex turned away and murmured to herself. ‘Who indeed?’ Alex thought.
Whatever else Nick expected to happen the following morning it was not Henry’s arrival on his doorstep. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ he asked. ‘Normally you never venture this far without your passport and immunization.’
‘There’s no need for that. I’m on an errand of mercy.’
‘That sounds ominous. Do you want some coffee? Even you can’t drink claret at this time of day.’
Henry glared at him.
‘Sorry.’ Nick felt he might have overstepped the mark. ‘What’s the errand, then?’
‘I went to see Rosie yesterday.’
‘That’s kind of you.’ Nick was busy with the coffee and didn’t look up.
‘She was talking about what will happen when she comes out of hospital.’
‘It won’t be for a couple of weeks yet.’
‘Three days, actually.’
‘What?’
‘I asked the nurse. The consultant had just done his rounds. They can get her a physio in her rest home and they reckon she’ll be fit to go there by the end of the week.’
Nick put down the kettle. ‘They didn’t tell me that. I haven’t sorted anything out yet. Barely had time.’
‘I thought that might be the case. Anyway, she’ll probably be happy to get out of the place.’
‘But she’s hardly mobile yet,’ Nick was worried.
‘Pressure on beds, apparently. Too many old folk falling over obviously, and they want to move out those who are likely to cope.’
‘And they reckon Rosie can?’
‘She’s probably done her best to persuade them.’
‘But it will be difficult to find somewhere at such short notice.’ He could hear the panic in his voice as he spoke.
‘I’d thought of that. I might be able to help.’
Nick sighed. ‘I’m not sure you can. I’d better get my skates on and scout round for somewhere. Damn! I should have thought of this before. I just thought I’d have more time. Are there any convalescent homes on this side of the island?’
Henry fished into his inside pocket. ‘My card.’
Nick took the small rectangular business card from Henry. It was a little crumpled at the edges. ‘Henry J. Kinross, MCSP, SRP’, it said, in minute copperplate.
‘Henry, why do I need this? I know where you live.’
Henry pointed to the letters after his name. ‘There.’
‘MCSP, SRP. What’s that? Some art-dealers’ organization?’
‘No. It stands for Member of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists. And SRP means State Registered Physiotherapist.’
Nick looked at him open-mouthed. ‘You’re a physiotherapist?’
‘Correct.’
‘State registered?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re an art dealer.’
‘The two are not mutually exclusive. And I wasn’t always an art dealer.’
‘But . . . how long is it since you practised?’
‘Ooh, about half an hour.’
‘What?’
‘Why do you think I open the gallery late every morning? It’s not because I have a hangover. I have a few private patients. Not many, just a handful who are prepared to pay well. It keeps the old skill going and it takes my mind off temperamental artists. I spoke to the consultant, and he agreed that Rosie could stay with me. I have a niece on the mainland who can come over and keep an eye on the gallery while I’m not there, and Rosie will recover more quickly than she would in some impersonal nursing home.’
Nick was stunned. The kettle whistled, and he took it off the hob. ‘You never said anything.’
‘Dear boy, if there is one thing in life that I’ve learned it’s that it doesn’t do for people to know everything about you until they need to.’
Nick handed him a mug of coffee. ‘You dark horse,’ he said.
‘Well . . .’ Henry grinned, ‘. . . it gives me an air of mystery.’
‘You know,’ said Nick, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I’m not sure I should trust you with my grandmother.’
‘Dear boy. I never mix business with pleasure.’
‘Good.’ Nick laughed.
‘But in the case of your grandmother I’m prepared to make an exception.’
Alex felt guilty at bei
ng a little cooler with Nick on the phone than she should have been. To make amends she had decided to do a bit of research – see if she couldn’t come up with some information about Rosie’s past that might reassure him that she cared.
She rang the Russian embassy, but they insisted they could offer no help over the phone, and probably not even if she came in. There were many millions of Russian subjects and they did not have the staff to attend to such requests. Did she realize how complicated this might be, and how much paperwork it would entail?
So, disheartened but not discouraged, and armed with her shorthand book and the snippets of information she had written down, she spent the afternoon in Portsmouth library. What she found there surprised her and gave her reasonable cause for celebration. It was nothing definite, but it had to be more than a coincidence.
Having checked with the hospital that Rosie was indeed being released in three days’ time on account of (a) Henry’s kind offer, (b) Henry’s acquaintance with the consultant and (c) Rosie’s insistence that she would be better off out of hospital, Nick drove back to the Anchorage determined to do the sort of things that a man does when his grandmother is about to be released into the care of someone like Henry. But as he had not the faintest idea what these things were, and as there was little point in packing her bags just yet (it seemed disrespectfully premature), he faffed about for an hour or so, said, ‘Damn it,’ a few times, then slung his painting bag over his shoulder and left the house.
He drove to Newport, then on through Blackwater and Godshill, took a right turn towards Wroxall and finally arrived at Appuldurcombe House. It had been a stunning Palladian mansion, but now it was just a ruin, though from a distance it still looked handsome and imposing, set in rolling folds of downland.
The sky was pale pewter grey, which offered a less than flattering light to the stately pile, but he made a start, and added a touch of Payne’s Grey to the clouds to make a greater contrast between sky and stonework. He tried to think of nothing but the Worsleys who’d owned Appuldurcombe for hundreds of years; several had been governors of the island. It had no governor now, just an MP, a lord lieutenant and a high sheriff. Maybe it no longer warranted the grandeur – last provided by Lord Mountbatten; it seemed to have died with him when that bomb exploded in Ireland.
He remembered how incensed Rosie had been. His grandfather, who had served with Mountbatten on HMS Kelly, had been silent. ‘Surely now they’ll do something about it,’ Rosie had said. She had never been able to come to terms with the fact that the atrocities continued. All her life Rosie had believed there was a solution for everything, if only the effort could be made to find it. The sentiment, he had to admit, had rubbed off on himself. There had to be a solution to his problem. He just had to find it.
He tried to concentrate on the ruined house, but Alex’s face kept drifting into his mind. He sat, motionless, brush poised above the paper, as if frozen in time. Was he imagining all these emotions? Was he just carried away in the heat of the moment? Perhaps it was just lust, pure and simple. Every time he thought of her naked it gave him deep pleasure. Maybe it was just the sex.
He found himself shaking his head. No. It was more than that – he was sure of it. And why had he never felt like this with Debs? It was a question to which there would never be an answer, however hard he strove for it. He had been prepared to settle for a comfortable relationship – but the relationship on which he had just embarked was anything but comfortable. It had complications – if Victoria could be called a complication. Yet it was somehow so straightforward. He had no option but to love Alex. It was easy, natural – and disturbing.
Once he had been able to concentrate on his painting, and had wanted little from life, except an easy ride. Now, none of that seemed enough. He was restless, discontented. Half of him was irritated by it. Could he not just call a halt and go back to the way things were?
Clearly not in the case of Debs – and he didn’t want to go back there. But couldn’t he regain his equilibrium, his comfortable state of mind? He could finish with Alex. It was not as if anything had really started. They had slept together, but that hardly constituted a relationship. Did Victoria like him? Did it matter? His relationship was with Alex, not her – so there was a relationship. He groaned, and washed his brush in the jam-jar of purple-grey water, then got up, stretched his legs and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. He strode up and down for a few minutes, then threw back his head and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. He was in this thing now, for better or worse, and the truth of the matter was, that he wanted to be with Alex more than he had wanted to be with anyone else he had ever met. Scary or not, he’d better buck up or back out. A blob of rain fell upon his face.
Alex had just got home from her trip to the library when there was a knock at her door. Whoever else she had expected to find when she opened it, it was not her husband.
24
Baronne Prevost
. . . coarse in growth and rather thorny . . .
‘What are you doing here? I thought you’d gone.’ Alex’s surprise was mixed with irritation. She had almost managed to get Paul out of her mind. It had been a struggle, not least because Victoria had kept asking about him, but she told herself that she needed to move on – that she was allowed to. Some days were better than others. But when pangs of guilt at being a single parent assailed her, she assuaged them by convincing herself that Paul had gone anyway. It seemed she had been fooling herself.
‘Not till tomorrow. I was delayed. I came to say goodbye to Vicks.’
‘She’s at school. She’ll be home any minute.’
‘Can I come in and wait?’
‘No. No you can’t. Look, we’ve been through all this. We’ve said all we had to say.’
‘I just want to say goodbye to her, that’s all.’
A woman walking down the street turned in their direction. ‘Look . . . oh, come in – but just for a minute.’
She closed the door behind him, then backed away to stand behind an armchair. She needed to distance herself from him, physically as well as mentally. ‘This really isn’t fair, you know.’
Paul nodded. ‘I’m sorry, but they delayed me for a couple of weeks and I didn’t want to leave without seeing her.’
‘But you know it will only upset her. Last time you saw her it was supposed to be for the last time. She had nightmares for days afterwards, Paul.’
‘Don’t exaggerate.’
‘I’m not. It’s not that she doesn’t love you, it’s just that . . .’
‘What? What is it then?’
‘She’s frightened of you.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. I’ve never touched her.’
Alex tried to sound sympathetic. ‘I know that, but she needs stability. She can’t cope with this whirlwind who descends on the house, rows with her mother, then takes off again. Can’t you see that?’
‘So it’s all my fault, is it?’
‘Of course not. But try to see it from her point of view. It’s taken me ages to get her settled. She’s only ten.’
‘Going on eighteen.’
‘That doesn’t mean she feels things like an adult. Just because she’s old for her age doesn’t mean that she’s emotionally equipped to handle it. It doesn’t mean that you can dump on her.’
‘I’m not dumping on her. I know she’ll understand that I need to say goodbye properly.’
‘You need to?’ His arrogance made her fume. She looked at him, standing there with his hands in the pockets of his well-cut suit. He was six feet three, darkly good looking and immaculately dressed. His self-assurance had once attracted her but now she found it repellent. Ridiculous, even. It wasn’t simply the old excuse that they had ‘grown apart’. They had grown to realize that they were, fundamentally, different in outlook, always had been, but they had put it to one side and allowed the physical attraction to carry them along. Now she could not imagine why she had thought it a good basis for marriage, but at the time she had b
een overwhelmed by it. More fool her. The similarity between her original physical attraction to Paul and now to Nick crossed her mind. But only fleetingly. There was no comparison between them. Not in the slightest. Where Paul was brutish, Nick was gentle. Where Nick was considerate, Paul was oblivious. She wasn’t imagining it, was she?
She shook her head and blurted, ‘No, I’m sorry, you’ll have to go. It’s really not fair on either of us.’
‘Can’t we be grown-up about this? Try to be reasonable.’
‘I’m trying to be both. But I don’t see why you should play around with our emotions – mine and Victoria’s.’
‘Oh, so it’s you as well now is it? Not sure that we’re doing the right thing?’
‘Oh, please! You really are the limit. Of course we’re doing the right thing. It’s over, you know it is. Don’t start those games again.’
Paul shrugged. ‘What games?’
Alex moved towards the door. ‘No. I’m sorry. I’m just not going to do this, Paul. It’s all been said and sorted. You’re going and we’re staying.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘No. There are no buts. I need a fresh start. You know you can see Victoria – we’ll arrange all that, she’s your daughter as well as mine – but right now she just needs to get her mind round the fact that her mother and father don’t live together any more. Just give her a bit of time.’
Paul leaned against the wall. ‘So that’s that, then?’
‘Yes. That was that three months ago – three years ago.’
‘Oh, don’t bring all that up again. She’s not coming with me.’
‘Only because someone else is.’
‘Who told you that?’
Alex shook her head. ‘You’re so obvious, Paul. And you should have known better than to tell your friends and think it wouldn’t get back to me. I wish you wouldn’t treat me as though I was stupid as well as unimportant.’
Paul looked away.
‘Go on. Go and bury your head in the sand. Go to America. You can see Victoria when you come back.’
He turned to face her. ‘It didn’t have to be like this, you know.’
Alex sighed. ‘Oh, it did.’
Rosie Page 16
