Indian Summer

by Marcia Willett

  She probably wouldn’t mind, she’d probably be totally cool with it. Unexpectedly he thinks of Ralph and a title for his memoirs occurs to him: Entre deux lits. He gives a little snort at the thought. Still smiling, he falls asleep quite quickly, one arm across his eyes to shut out the moonlight.

  Archie is in bed first. Once he’s filled the dishwasher Camilla likes the kitchen to herself to do the last of the clearing up. He takes the dogs out for a last stroll, locks up and goes upstairs. He is pleased with the success of the evening and the prospect of a day on the river with Kit. He makes a little murmuring, humming noise, like a contented bee, as he prepares for bed and by the time Camilla comes upstairs he is already deeply asleep, lying half on his side with his book, Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander, on the floor.

  She puts a glass of water on the chest beside Nigella’s Forever Summer recipes, turns off the light and slides in carefully beside him though she knows that he won’t wake. He’s always had this gift of sleep; dropping off suddenly, relaxed and peaceful, nothing to trouble his conscience or his dreams. It is in the early hours that Archie’s demons gather to torment him. Then he will lie awake, his worries refusing to allow him to sleep, and often he will slip out of bed and go downstairs to read, leaving her to lie awake in his absence, prey to her own anxieties.

  Now she curves herself against him, so that she can feel his comfortingly familiar bony warmth, and she thinks about the evening with a sense of satisfaction. There is simply nothing she enjoys more than friends or family – or both – gathered around a table laden with delicious food and good wine. Just two extra people can make the act of eating and drinking a celebration; even if it’s only dear old Mungo and Kit. And Kit was in good form, making them laugh about some of her clients’ requirements and a trip to a reclamation yard in Gloucestershire to find some particular kind of tiles. There had been a rather sombre note when Mungo suggested that they should raise a glass to Izzy ‘for her birthday yesterday’, but the moment passed.

  Camilla shifts a fraction closer to Archie, disturbed as always by the memory of Izzy’s death: the sudden collapse brought on by an overdose of some medication she was taking. Nobody knew if it was by accident or design, but the public version was that she’d been struggling with a debilitating illness: ‘Dame Isobel Trent died yesterday. She had been in poor health for some time …’ Something like that.

  Poor Mungo was devastated but, in another way, relieved. He’d been so afraid that she’d give herself away. Camilla could hardly believe it when he told her some of Izzy’s problems.

  ‘But she was always such fun,’ she protested. ‘The life and soul of the party. I know she loved attention and craved approval but she was the one who cheered us all up. She should have put all that business with Ralph behind her and married some nice fellow …’

  Now, lying against Archie’s back, she remembers Mungo saying earlier: ‘I regret Ralph.’

  Camilla gives her head a tiny shake. It’s all too complicated to worry about now. Instead she begins to think about the picnic she will make for Archie and Kit to take on the river tomorrow. Smoked salmon sandwiches, perhaps. And egg mayonnaise; Archie loves egg mayonnaise sandwiches. A little salad with tiny yellow tomatoes, and some of her cherry cake. Camilla drowses; Archie shifts a little and begins to snore.

  Billy Judd cries out in his sleep. His bed is washed in moonlight, adrift on a white flood of light that drips from his pillow and pours across the blackened oak boards of the floor.

  ‘Put ’un in deep, boy,’ he says. ‘Foxes’ll get ’un else.’

  He turns restlessly, muttering.

  Philip watches him from the doorway. He wonders what Billy might say to the ferret woman, or what she might hear when he dozes in his chair.

  ‘Got something on his mind,’ Mags said, jerking her head back at Billy, sitting staring out into the orchard. ‘Saying all sorts, he is.’

  ‘It’s all that television,’ Philip said. ‘Those Midsomer Murders and God knows what. Gives him strange ideas.’

  She raised her eyebrows at him, pursed her lips, and he wanted to pinch her, like when they were children; give her a slap.

  He moves closer to Billy, picks up the book he’s been reading to him. Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile. Way back it was Billy who’d be reading to him.

  ‘Come on,’ he’d say, when their mother had gone downstairs, leaving them in the dark, calling back threats should they stir from their beds. ‘Where’d we get to?’ and he’d fish under the pillow for his torch and make a tent of the sheets with his knees for the book. Even now it seems that Philip can hear his big brother’s husky twelve-year-old voice reading to him by torchlight – The Secret Seven, Biggles, Jennings. He outpaced Billy in the end, passing the eleven-plus, going to grammar school, but Billy didn’t care. How proud he’d been of his small brother in his smart school uniform, how ready to defend him from teasing, and how quick to get him out of any kind of trouble. It would be a pity if Billy were to be the one to drop them all in it at this late date: himself, Billy, Archie and Camilla, Sir Mungo.

  As he stands looking down at Billy, watching the fluttering eye movement behind the closed lids, the clenching and unclenching of his large hands, Philip wonders how he can now protect them all.

  He remembers another moonlight night – but cold, cold. The cobbles were like glass beneath his boots, light streaming from the kitchen window where Mungo and Ralph were framed with Izzy between them. He sees again her hands fly to her face and her rush from the room, the sudden stretch of Mungo’s arm and the connection of his fist to Ralph’s face and his stagger backwards …

  Billy cries out, startling him, and struggles to sit up, and Philip kneels on the edge of the bed, taking him in his arms as though he were still a child.

  ‘There now. There now. It’s me, Billy. It’s Philip. Hush, boy. Hush.’

  He holds the big, helpless, trembling frame and his eyes fill with tears. Billy rests against him.

  ‘I didn’t say nort,’ Billy says at last.

  ‘’Course you didn’t. Not to old ferret woman.’

  Billy starts to chuckle. He wheezes and gasps for air. ‘Used to walk all over her,’ he says. ‘Remember? And then she walked all over him.’

  Philip laughs too. Suddenly, they’re both young again: invincible.

  ‘How about a cuppa?’ he suggests. ‘And another chapter? Like that, would you?’

  And Billy nods and settles himself contentedly to wait.

  James is also awake. His head seethes with ideas, scenes, fragments of conversation, plots and counterplots. He was right to come to this valley where nothing has happened for a thousand years; where people live in simple contentment. It is the perfect place to enact his own drama, to allow his thoughts to spill out and take form. There is no noise, nothing to interrupt the process. He can’t decide what kind of woman his main female character should be; he can’t quite pin her down. He watches women, trying to fit them into his book, making up a history for them, but he can’t always hear their conversations in his head when it comes to writing about them. Women are so difficult to portray. Yes, he’s got a mother – but no sister – and had girlfriends, and he lives with Sally and knows how she thinks (up to a point) but even so, it’s almost impossible to imagine what’s really going on in women’s minds. To be on the safe side he makes sure that Sally reads everything he writes.

  ‘You can’t have that,’ she’ll say sometimes. ‘No woman would ever think like that. No way.’

  Often this irritates him – how does she know how every woman thinks? – but mostly he’s too unconfident to ignore her. He tries to read women’s fiction, chick-lit and stuff like that, but it does his head in; he simply can’t hack it.

  ‘You’re not in touch with your feminine side,’ Sal tells him – and she’s probably right though he always remembers Valentine’s Day and her birthday so she can’t complain. Anyway, characterization isn’t so important. It’s the plot that’s cruc
ial. It’s good to have the love interest as well as the suspense, though, but by writing this book in the first person it’s letting him off the hook of having to record the thoughts of the female character in any great detail.

  James turns on to his back wondering if he should get up and make himself some coffee or a mug of tea, but he knows it will merely keep him awake longer, so he resists the temptation. Nevertheless, he slides off the bed, goes down to the big living-room-kitchen and switches on his laptop.

  A quiet night in the valley, Sal. Everyone asleep but me. None of the locals will be troubled by tiresome characters and difficult plots. I can imagine them sleeping peacefully. Camilla and Archie, those two old boys next door at the farm, and Sir Mungo. Sir Mungo has a visitor who drives a yellow drop-head Beetle. A fellow thespian, I suspect. They waved to me as they drove by and I waved back but I didn’t want to encourage them to stop. Too much tied up in my head. Hope I didn’t offend them. And I’ve had another glimpse of the family in the cottage next door. Friendly woman, early thirties, I’d say, but very much occupied with her kids. The baby’s a bit noisy from time to time but the boy is quite a quiet little fellow. I don’t want to encourage them either, to be honest. I don’t need a small kid poking about in here and fiddling with my laptop. She’s an army wife, I think Camilla said, so I expect she’s very competent and tough. You’d need to be, wouldn’t you? Not much copy here but I don’t need copy. I’m getting to know the area really well and everything’s falling into place.

  I was looking for a village for a bit of the action for the subplot this morning. Somewhere for a liaison between the lovers, out of Totnes, just for a change, where the main action will take place. Difficult to know where they might meet. I suppose you might say the bigger the better – Exeter, perhaps – but then I decided that an element of risk ought to come in here. I mean it would be a bit edgy, wouldn’t it, to be meeting under your husband’s nose? Or wife’s, for that matter. Remember we talked about it and we agreed that the woman would be divorced but the man has a wife and kids? The woman’s got nothing to lose so maybe she’s hoping they get caught out so as to speed a separation? Anyway I decided that I needed somewhere not as big as Ashburton or Totnes, but not as small as say, Dartington. I drove about a bit and found myself in South Brent. I parked in the old station yard and wandered round the village and I think it might come in very useful. Went into the deli and had a coffee, chatted to the locals as they came in and out – a very friendly bunch of people – and then on the way back to the car stopped off at the pub for a pint and a snack. Walked down by the church and out to the river and I think it will do very well as the place where my two lovers meet clandestinely. In the car park, perhaps, huddled in one car? In the pub more openly? Where would you meet your lover if you had one? Don’t answer that! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this book made the big time and we could buy a little weekend cottage like this and live the good life? I’ve got really good vibes about this book, Sal. Perhaps Sir Mungo and I should get together. I suppose it would be crazy not to take advantage of such a connection, wouldn’t it, even if he is a bit past it? He seems very friendly. You’ll have to chat him up when you come down.

  Better try to get some sleep. Goodnight, my love. J xx

  He closes down, goes back upstairs and gets into bed. He makes himself comfortable and picks up his book: Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘IT’S CRAZY,’ SAYS Emma, keeping her voice down, glancing at the group at the next table, ‘but he makes me feel alive, if you see what I mean. I’m beginning to realize now just how really dull and empty my marriage has become.’

  She’s driven into Totnes with Dora, leaving Joe with Camilla, and is now in Rumour meeting a very old friend. Emma stirs her coffee, looks at Naomi – dear, gentle, rather plain Naomi – and experiences this odd desire to burst out laughing, to dance and sing and jump up and down. Deliberately she schools her face into a more serious expression. How could earnest, sensible Naomi begin to understand these wild, mad emotions? This sudden flowering of love?

  ‘Are you sure,’ Naomi asks quietly, ‘that you’re not just talking about sex?’

  Emma puts down her spoon and stares at her.

  ‘You know?’ says Naomi gently, as if Emma is about ten and has yet to understand anything about sexual urges. ‘It can be such a powerful feeling, can’t it? But it would be disastrous to confuse it with the real thing.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asks Emma. Her excitement has diminished a little in the face of Naomi’s pragmatism. She thought Naomi might be rather envious, might want to know a few details of this rather thrilling love affair that seems to be burgeoning between her and Marcus, but Naomi seems remarkably unimpressed.

  ‘Meaning that your marriage is under strain with Rob being out in Afghanistan. He’s operating on his friends who have been blown up and he’s watching others being flown home in body bags. Not easy for him. Not easy for you. It’s no wonder if your marriage is a bit stressed.’

  Emma is silent. This isn’t what she expected from Naomi, whose husband is a junior doctor at Derriford Hospital, and she’s rather wishing now that she hadn’t told her. It’s just so difficult keeping these exciting emotions to herself and she certainly can’t tell her other close friends, who are not only military wives themselves but very fond of Rob. She’d rather counted on Naomi being a bit sympathetic, a bit impressed.

  ‘Well,’ she says lightly, leaning over to check on Dora, ‘it’s just rather nice to be seen as a woman again, I suppose. Actually noticed and appreciated.’

  She knows that Naomi will make some banal remark assuring her that Rob does all those things but that just now life is a bit tough for him. Naomi does exactly that.

  ‘You know,’ she says, when she’s finished reassuring Emma about Rob’s love for her, ‘my old mum used to say that all marriages have a funny five minutes at some point. After all, you have to think about Dora and Joe, too, don’t you? Does Marcus have children? I know you said he’s separated from his wife. Where does she live?’

  ‘In Sidbury,’ says Emma. She feels a bit sulky now. She doesn’t want to discuss Tasha or her two sons. They aren’t really part of this. ‘He goes to see them regularly.’

  ‘Hmm,’ says Naomi. ‘Well, just don’t do anything crazy, Ems. There are a lot of lives involved. Not just yours. Look, I’ve got to get going. See you soon.’

  She gets up, gathers bags together, gives Emma a kiss, touches Dora’s head with a light caress. Emma waves as Naomi goes out, drinks the last of her coffee. Her high spirits have evaporated and she feels flat and rather irritable. It was foolish to imagine that Naomi could possibly understand and she wishes now that she hadn’t told her. At the same time, she’s got a point: there are a lot of lives involved. She looks down at Dora, who has fallen asleep; how vulnerable she looks. And suddenly Emma thinks about Rob, so quiet and withdrawn during that last leave, and she wishes that she’d been more perceptive, kinder. Those odd meetings with Marcus, so charged with excitement, made Rob seem very dull in comparison. Guilt and anxiety threaten these more recent feelings of euphoria and she slumps in her chair, thinking about what Naomi said.

  A figure appears from behind her and slides into the chair opposite. Emma gasps with surprise and then beams with delight.

  ‘Marcus! I didn’t see you there.’

  ‘You were occupied with that rather severe-looking woman so I thought I’d take a back seat. How are you?’

  ‘But what are you doing here? I can’t believe it.’

  ‘When you texted you said you’d be coming into Totnes to meet a friend so I thought it might be worth the trip to get a glimpse of you.’

  His smile makes her gut churn so that she feels embarrassed and excited and happy all at once. He leans across and strokes the back of her hand with one finger. As usual she feels a kind of shock when he touches her, but instinct makes her snatch her hand away and she glances round quickly and loo
ks down at Dora as if to reassure her. She notes that he regrets his gesture – he sees that it was mistimed and she isn’t ready for any kind of public display – but he has no intention of giving way.

  ‘Have you thought any more of my plan to have some time on our own?’ he asks. His gaze is so keen, so alive, that she feels her willpower beginning to dissolve in its laser-like beam.

  ‘I can’t get my head round it,’ she says. ‘Not yet. It’s a bit difficult with the children.’

  ‘Where’s Joe?’

  ‘With Camilla. She came down this morning and asked if he’d like to go up and play. She’s got loads of toys up there and, of course, he loves the dogs.’

  ‘Would she have Dora, too?’

  ‘I’m sure she would.’ Emma hesitates; she feels the least bit as if she’s being stampeded. At the same time it’s very flattering and exciting. Marcus is so vital; so charged with power that you feel he might explode with it. He’s smiling at her again and she finds that she’s responding, weakening.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ she says. ‘It’s just … I have to be careful. I have to think about Joe and Dora …’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘Of course I do. I understand. But I’m not going to give up either, Emma. I think we would be so good together.’

  ‘It’s just that there are so many lives involved.’

  He laughs and she feels a fool. It’s as if he knows that she’s been influenced by Naomi.

  ‘Is that what that boot-faced female said?’ he asks. ‘Come on, Emma. It’s your life.’

  ‘I know it is,’ she says quickly. ‘I know that. But it’s not just my life. I have to think about Dora and Joe. And Rob. This will change everything.’

  As soon as she says it she knows it to be true and panic flutters just beneath her ribcage. Marcus continues to watch her with that cool grey stare, as if he is assessing the level of her feelings for him: his power over her. He has picked up the spoon – one of Joe’s with a pirate on its blue plastic handle – that she used earlier to give Dora a little snack and he is turning it and turning it in his hand with a little tap on the table between each turn. There is an oddly controlled rhythm to his action and, just for a brief second, she almost feels frightened of him. Then he leans closer, though he doesn’t touch her, and speaks gently.