The Lover

by Amanda Brookfield

  She wrestled free and began peeling off the wrapping on the packet of raisins. ‘We’ve been through all this. You don’t have to say any more. I was dumb too. It’s all right now, that’s what matters.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ He snatched the box from her and took both of her hands, pressing them between his palms. ‘I want to tell you. I’ve been useless, I know. I was just so fucking scared at the thought of you being pregnant, I sort of couldn’t be nice about it. And before all that, at Christmas I…well I was unhappy because of hating my course so much and not knowing what to do about it, and I suppose I wasn’t over Dad – I’m still not probably – and…there was this woman.’ He broke off, his face burning.

  ‘Now he tells me,’ murmured Sally, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

  ‘No,’ he continued urgently, seeing what she was thinking, ‘it wasn’t like that – nothing happened. When I was hitching she gave me a ride home, after that guy I told you about the one who was going out with Mum—’

  ‘Go on.’ Sally’s eyes were unblinking and dark.

  ‘This woman, she was quite old, late forties, tarty and…up for it…I think. And…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, nothing. I – we – did nothing. But afterwards –’ he gripped her fingers hard – ‘I kept wishing that I had and that made me feel guilty because since we started I’d never wanted anyone else.’

  Sally let out a whoop of laughter. ‘So you’re, like, confessing to a fantasy? Oh Jesus. I have them all the time. If you knew the things I get up to in my head.’ She collapsed into giggles.

  ‘I won’t tell you next time,’ said Felix, pretending to sulk. ‘What things anyway?’

  ‘My business,’ replied Sally primly, her expression clouding at the sight of an approaching doctor, surrounded by a cluster of medical students. Felix was banished to the cafeteria where he ate a pot noodle and a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps. He was on the point of going back up to the ward when Libby Taverner appeared through the doorway on the far side of the room. She saw him at once and came hurrying over.

  ‘The doctor’s still with her – doing a few last checks – but it’s all good news, I think.’ She set her handbag down on the table together with a pair of old woollen gloves and a black hat. ‘Sally has told me about the pregnancy scare, by the way.’

  Felix bit his lip, feeling his ears turn crimson, inwardly cursing Sally and waiting for recriminations to be heaped on his head.

  ‘I’ve booked an appointment with family planning. I didn’t go on the pill till I was twenty but I’m well aware that things happen earlier these days. Beth, for some curious reason, hasn’t discovered the joys of sex, yet, but no doubt she will in her own good time. I do think it’s made it harder for Sally, having such an unnaturally angelic older sister leading the way. I’m going to get some tea, do you want anything?’

  ‘Er…coffee – great thanks,’ muttered Felix, his ears still aflame.

  ‘And she’s agreed to see a counsellor,’ continued Libby, matter-of-factly, setting down the cups and saucers. ‘Alistair and I think it will help – to have someone who’s nothing to do with the family to talk to. Sal does tie herself in knots about things…’ She broke off with an uncertain laugh, ‘..but then I’m sure you of all people know about that. The thing is, Felix, I think it’s important that you’re on board so to speak – about the counsellor – if she thinks for one minute that you’re making light of it, thinking it’s a waste of time, she’ll probably give up.’

  Felix murmured assurances, unsure whether he was being insulted or flattered, but taking heart from the directness of her tone. ‘I’ll do all that I can, I promise and I’m sorry for…if I’ve…’

  ‘We’ve said all our sorrys,’ said Libby smartly, ‘no point in looking back. Now that you’ve packed in university have you any ideas what you want to do instead?’

  Felix swallowed, feeling suddenly like a suitor being grilled by a prospective parent-in-law. ‘Travel…I want to travel. I was thinking maybe I’d wait and set off in the summer, then Sally could come with me for a couple of months.’

  ‘Did you indeed?’ remarked Libby, who had already heard as much from Frances on the telephone that morning. ‘Presumably you’re going to require funds for this adventure?’

  ‘Yes, I was going to sign on at the job centre.’

  ‘What I would like to suggest is that you work in the shop for a while instead. Frances – your mother has decided to give up. She’s going to concentrate on her drawing. We’ve had a long chat this morning. And I think she’s quite right. I’ve always said she was sitting on a great talent.’ Libby paused to swig her tea, watching Felix carefully over the rim of her cup and musing upon the awkward pride of teenagers. She was certain Sally had only agreed to the counsellor thing because the young nurse with studs in her nostrils had helped break the idea, giving it a credence that she and Alistair never could.

  ‘That’s very kind Mrs Taverner,’ said Felix slowly. ‘I would like that a lot.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, call me Libby, please. And it’s not kind, it’s practical. Business, for some unfathomable reason, seems to have picked up. You’ll be working hard – and if things carry on as they are it won’t be for just three days a week either – though we’ll begin like that.’ She drained the last of her tea. ‘I’ll see you Monday then, shall I?’ She smiled, pitying all his youthful uncertainty and thinking suddenly of Frances’s young friend and what a world of changes occurred between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  White ash dusted the surrounding trees and grassland like apple blossom. In the heart of the blackened skeleton of the cottage, the grey rubble was still smoking. Only a scattering of objects was identifiable, an old glass sweet jar, a charred broom handle, the remains of a toilet, saved by the haphazard intensity of the fire and the eventual success of the hoses in stamping it out. Unfolding her stool, Frances set to work, her pencil making short strong movements across the page. By the end of two hours she had the makings of three pictures; not the pretty, faint sketches which she had done to date, but dark, stark impressions, full of a smouldering intensity that went far beyond the wisps of smoke curling up from amongst the ruins. Frances frowned at her handiwork, aware that she was harnessing some of her sadness over Daniel and wondering whether this was something of which she should feel proud or distrustful.

  Gathering up her things, she set off home, going the short route via the fields down which she and Felix had run two days and a lifetime before. She walked slowly, feeling stiff from sitting for so long, the weight of the stool and her drawing box numbing her fingers. The day was bright and mild. The dense cloud of the morning had shifted off-stage, leaving a broken jet stream of white along a backdrop of hazy blue. The daffodils, sprouting in clusters along the grassy bank lining the edge of the field and river, were already looking weary, their faded yellow heads swinging low under the burden of their own weight. Spring was in full flow, Frances realised, pausing to look around, drawing reassurance from the familiar landscape, unchanged in spite of the human dramas recently enacted upon it. Tired suddenly of the tight tugging of her ponytail, she pulled out the clasp and shook her hair free, relishing the tingle of fresh air on her scalp. She would be all right, she realised, her heart flooding with a wonderful and wholly unexpected surge of self-belief as she turned to continue her walk up the narrow muddy path.

  She rounded the final bend in the path to see Daisy sitting on the garden fence, her hair sticking up in glossy white tufts, her bony knees showing through the slits in her jeans. She was wearing an enormous black jumper and one ear-ring the size of a small bird. Frances stopped and smiled, somehow un-surprised that her daughter should be perched at the end of the garden, shining and smiling like a skinny angel.

  ‘I got your message – about Felix and the fire and everything – and I just thought I should be here. I flew over this morning. Is he all right? Is Sally? Are you?
’ She hopped off the fence and ran towards her mother.

  ‘We’re all fine,’ Frances reassured her, putting down her things so they could exchange a proper hug. ‘It was awful, but everything is all right now. Apart from poor Joseph of course. Everybody feels terrible about him –’ She broke off and took a step back. ‘I’m so pleased you’re here, darling – and Felix will be too. I think he’s still at the hospital with Sally – I lent him the car.’

  ‘Was that wise?’

  ‘Almost certainly not.’ They both laughed.

  ‘You’ve been drawing. Can I look?’

  Frances stood awkwardly while her daughter examined her morning’s output, screwing up her eyes because of the glare of the sun on the large white pages. ’It looks like a battlefield,’ Daisy said at length, ‘a brilliant battlefield.’ She carefully closed the folder, biting her bottom lip. ‘Mum, I’ve left Claude. And I think I might have fallen in love with someone else – someone completely unexpected – though in some ways I feel I’ve known him all my life—’

  Frances could feel the colour drain from her face. She gripped the stool with white knuckles, waiting to hear that all her terrors about the evening in Paris had been justified after all. It took a few moments to register that Daisy was talking not about Daniel but the man called Marcel who employed her at the gallery. ‘It’s grown slowly, sneaked up on me, so gradually that I’m not yet completely sure. Love is hard isn’t it? I mean, knowing when it is and what it is.’ She paused, frowning. ‘It’s weird, but I think the turning-point was you coming to stay – it kind of helped me realise how bad things were. And I had that long talk with your friend, that Daniel guy, which helped too. Afterwards it sort of came home to me that the only person with the power to change anything for the better was me.’ She stopped again, digging deep inside herself for the courage to tell the whole story. ‘The truth is, Claude was getting kind of violent and I was scared what he would do if I tried to leave—’

  ‘Violent?’

  They had got as far as the garden gate. Frances leant on it, staring at Daisy in horrified disbelief. ‘Why – for God’s sake why didn’t you say something before?’

  ‘I was scared of you too,’ Daisy confessed in a small voice, ‘first of how sad you were over Dad and then of how…sorted…you had suddenly become. I didn’t know how you had got from one state of mind to the other. I guess I felt sort of left out of the loop.’ She threw up her hands helplessly, causing Frances’s drawings to ripple along the edges of the folder like the pages of an enormous book.

  ‘Oh darling, I’m so sorry. So that horrible bruise on your face…’ Frances reached out and pressed her palm to Daisy’s cheek. ‘I could see you were sad, I thought it was over Dad.’ The feel of the soft, girlish skin, without make-up, she noticed suddenly, twisted the knot of guilt inside. ‘God, I’ve been so hopeless. Absolutely bloody hopeless.’ The tears were out before she could stop them.

  Daisy flung both arms round her shoulders. ‘Oh Mum, you haven’t. It’s not your fault, that’s the last thing it is. It was me – my mess – something I had to work through myself. And it was tied up with Dad. Not just missing him, but because of how he used to spoil me, giving in to me over things he would never have dreamed of with Felix. Inside I think a part of me was still trying to be a little girl…and that…sort of made it harder to stand up to Claude.’ She dropped her arms, shaking her head ruefully. ‘In Paris, I knew you were trying to get me to talk, but I also knew I had to sort it out on my own.’ She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sniffed. ‘Besides, you don’t tell me everything about you do you? I mean, we all have a few secrets.’ She smiled weakly, relieved to see that her mother had stopped crying.

  ‘Yes, I suppose we do,’ murmured Frances, managing to return the smile, but inwardly still reeling from the shame of having seen Claude’s handiwork at first hand and not recognised it. Another near disaster inadvertently caused by her self-absorption over Daniel Groves, she reflected bitterly, feeling a fresh burst of conviction that splitting from him had been the only way to bring her to her senses.

  ‘Marcel wanted me to move in with him right away,’ continued Daisy, taking charge of the fold-up stool as well as the folder of sketches, ‘but I said I needed a break, a pause between the paragraphs of my life –’ She broke off, laughing. ‘I’m going to work full time which means I’ll be able to rent a small place on my own. I found somewhere last week, just a five–minute walk from the gallery. The most bizarre thing was that when I finally plucked up the courage to tell Claude he watched me pack my bags like a lamb, on his knees most of the time, begging me not to leave. I had Marcel on standby outside, just in case, but there was no need. It was like showing him my inner strength totally put paid to his. Weird.’ She shook her head.

  ‘You poor darling,’ murmured Frances.

  ‘I’m not poor at all,’ retorted Daisy, leading the way into the kitchen and taking charge of the kettle and coffee pot. ‘I feel better about myself than I ever have. I’d like to stay for three, weeks if that’s all right. Marcel claims he can’t manage the gallery without me, but he’ll be fine. Do him good to miss me a little,’ she added sounding pleased.

  ‘Stay as long as you need.’

  ‘And now I want to hear all about Felix,’ she began, only to be interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.

  ‘That’ll be him now. He’s lost his keys.’

  ‘Typical Felix,’ mumbled Daisy, smiling to herself as she opened the cupboard to get out another mug.

  Frances hurried into the hall, feeling a sudden rush of satisfaction at the prospect of having the three of them back round the kitchen table, regrouping properly at last.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  There was a surprising turnout for Joseph’s funeral, organised jointly by Libby and Frances once the various authorities had completed their investigations into the fire. Two weeks of deliberations resulted in a verdict of accidental death, a conclusion based on the evidence of Joseph’s Heath Robinson wiring efforts with the fuse box in the cellar. The service was very simple, the twenty-third psalm, a few stirring hymns and – thanks to some last minute inspiration from Frances – a reading from Joseph’s slim anthology of poems. After considerable debate as to who should undertake such a challenge, Felix surprised everybody by volunteering his services, preparing for the ordeal with lengthy private rehearsals in front of Sally and his bedroom mirror.

  It was the first time Frances had been inside the church since Paul’s funeral. Though she made a point of sitting on the opposite side of the aisle in a different row, there was an inevitable poignancy to the occasion, intensified by the stirring voluntary of St Martin’s new organist, a choral scholar from Cambridge whose recent appointment at the Taverner girls’ school had caused a flood of applications for GCSE and A level music. When Felix slid from the pew to take his place behind the lectern, Frances instinctively braced herself, not just mentally but physically too, tucking her legs tightly under the seat and clinging to the handles of her bag with both hands.

  Seeing her son standing before the congregation, pausing at the heavy silence of the church, she had the strongest impression of a wheel turning full circle, the sense that life was not a linear process at all but a series of repeating patterns.

  Felix had chosen a poem called ‘The Deep’, a particularly dense concoction of adjectives of which even the most skilful actor would have had trouble making any sense. Seeing how earnestly he tried, Frances was surprised and a little appalled to find herself repressing not sorrow, but the most unforgivable urge to laugh out loud. Only the severest inward reprimanding and a lot of hard staring at stained-glass windows allowed her to maintain her composure; a process unaided by the realisation that Daisy, madly chewing her lips in the seat next to her, was combating similar urges of insubordination.

  Outside in the sunshine, standing amongst the semicircle of mourners as the pot of ashes was buried up against the church wall, France’s mood reverted to a more co
-operative sense of solemnity. As the final prayers were still being said, she tiptoed down the gravel path and threaded her way through the heaving green sea of tombstones. The bulbs she had planted on Paul’s now grassy plot a few months before were pushing up nicely, many of the buds already unfurling to reveal glimpses of the velveteen gold and purple inside. Probably the most fitting tribute she had managed yet, mused Frances, smiling wryly to herself at the sight of this small horticultural triumph and pondering the fact that if Paul hadn’t seized quite so many initiatives in their married life there might have been room for her to show a little more resourcefulness of her own.

  ‘We only knew bits of each other,’ she said quietly, not to the grave, but to the air in general, which seemed to hum with purity and promise. ‘But it was enough and we did our best.’ As she turned away she spotted Felix and Sally, hand in hand, heading, by a more circuitous route in the same direction. Not wanting to intrude, she hurried to catch up with the tail end of mourners wending their way back down the path towards the main gate. As she did so, a glimpse of metallic grey caught her eye through the thicket separating the graveyard from the road. The date and time of the service had been announced in the local paper; it wouldn’t be beyond the bounds of possibility for Daniel to have seen it and decided to come. Though why he should was hard to imagine, Frances reminded herself, nonetheless craning her neck through the tangle of branches for a better view of the road. Apart from the spitting phone message responding to her letter, he had acceded to her plea for silence with impressive co-operation. In the intervening weeks, Frances had made the unhappy discovery that applying herself to the mislaid art of mothering her children had proved neither as time-consuming nor as efficacious in forestalling other emotions as she had hoped. As a result she had not only continued drawing with frenzied determination, but also embarked on a picture-framing course in Hexford and water-colour lessons with an eccentric acquaintance of Alistair’s. As if such diversions were not enough, she had that week resurrected Alistair’s drawing plans for converting the upper storey of the garage, not to guest quarters as had originally been intended, but into a studio for herself, together with a small adjoining bathroom. The money, already set aside, would be the same Alistair assured her and the layout much more simple. Both the Taverners had been wonderfully supportive about the idea, which like the funeral, had called for many telephone calls and sorties into each other’s houses.