‘All right?’ enquired Libby, who had been watching with some curiosity as Frances disengaged herself from the hedge.
‘Fine – caught my skirt,’ muttered Frances, hurrying up to her. The car had been an old grey Jaguar with a dented boot. After a brief announcement about the split, the subject of Daniel had been declared strictly out of bounds, both because she knew it would help her to move forward and because enduring Libby’s I-knew-it-would-end-in-tears wisdom on the matter was more than she could bear. Libby had readily acquiesced, but not before a startling announcement-cum-apology that any manifestations of unfriendliness on her part towards Daniel had almost certainly derived from jealousy. ‘The middle-aged cow in me took over for a while, sparked into being by the realisation that if Alistair popped his clogs I’d never find anything so handsome to take his place, let alone one that’s youthful and intelligent into the bargain. Not the most worthy of emotions, I’m afraid. Took a while to admit them to myself, let alone Alistair—’
‘You told Alistair that?’ Frances had exclaimed, appalled. Libby smiled ruefully. ‘Yes and all he did was laugh, which was very smart of him, because it made it not matter and me love him all at the same time. He’s rather cunning like that,’ she had added proudly. ‘And it helped that he thought Daniel was rather charming—’
‘Yes, well, it’s all in the past now,’ Frances had interrupted, unwilling to hear any more of her ex-lover’s praises sung at a time when she was trying so earnestly to forget them.
‘I thought it went very well,’ said Libby now, referring to the funeral.
‘So did I.’
‘And Felix was a star. He’ll go far that boy, though I’m not yet sure in what direction.’
Frances laughed. ‘I hope so.’
‘Beth and Daisy are off to find a Sunday afternoon movie. Do you want to come back for a bite with us?’
Frances opened her mouth to refuse but then changed her mind. Making a conscious effort to fill her time had once more become something of a burden. ‘Thanks that would be lovely. If you don’t mind me popping home first to get the plans. I’ve had a thought about the loo.’
Libby groaned good-humouredly. ‘Funnily enough, so has Alistair. That should make for scintillating conversation. What about those two?’ She gestured at Felix and Sally, now sprawling on the grass next to Paul’s grave.
‘Looks like they’ve got other plans. Let’s leave them to it.’ ‘God, all that pain and aggravation of Young Love,’ declared Libby with a sigh, ‘I wouldn’t go back to it for the world.’
Frances laughed quickly in response, not quite able to agree out loud.
Felix broke off the most fully bloomed of the crocuses and stuck it behind Sally’s ear. ‘Dad won’t mind. He could be a pain, but he won’t mind one flower.’
‘All parents can be pains,’ she groaned, rolling over onto her back and blinking at the sky. ‘Like Mum with this therapist I’m seeing. She pretends like she’s not interested – because she knows she’s not supposed to be – but she’s always dropping these heavy digs about what we talk about and stuff.’
‘What do you talk about?’
Sally threw the clump of grass stems she had been picking at his head. ‘You’re just as bad.’
‘Do you talk about me?’
‘Amongst other things.’
‘Like?’
‘Like, the fact that I think Joseph Brackman might have been trying to get inside my knickers.’
‘Jesus, you’re joking.’ Felix sat up, shaking the grass from his hair and eyebrows.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Sally mildly. ‘All I can remember doing was giggling and then he fell asleep. And then he saved my life. Which is a pretty fair return if you think about it.’ ‘The fucking pervert.’
‘I don’t think so, Felix.’ Sally sat up and put her face close to his. ‘He was very sad and a little mad. He’d had a crap life. He had no friends. I think he knew his poetry was rubbish too, but he like, pretended it was special because it was all he had to believe in. That book – the one you read from – he had it published himself, he told me, five hundred copies, it took all his savings. If that isn’t sad I don’t know what is. So don’t go telling anyone will you, ’cos he’s dead anyway and I’d go fucking mad if you did.’ For a moment her eyes glittered with a resolve that Felix was learning to respect.
‘OK.’
‘Would you like me to leave you alone for a bit, so you can be with your dad or something?’ Sally had stood up and was twirling the crocus Felix had picked for her between finger and thumb.
‘Nah.’ He leapt nimbly to his feet. ‘He’s not here anyway. And if I ever start behaving like he is, I want you to promise to shoot me.’ He brushed the grass off his trousers. ‘Like I told you, I don’t feel so messed up about him these days. I think Mum was probably right – getting on would have come back to us in the end, a bit anyway. I mean, everybody goes through phases with each other, don’t they?’ he added, peering at Sally from under his fringe, hanging more persistently in his eyes as it always did when it was freshly washed. ‘Sometimes without knowing why.’
‘I guess.’ Sally held out her hand and then snatched it away as he tried to take it, skipping off between the gravestones, her long black skirt whirling round her ankles.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘While you were shopping a man called James Harcourt phoned.’
Frances, whose loading and unloading of supermarket produce had managed to coincide with two torrential downpours, hurried out of her bedroom with a hand towel across her head and a wet sock in each hand.
‘Why ever didn’t you say so sooner?’
Daisy, kneeling next to an open suitcase, surrounded by piles of freshly laundered clothes, looked up in surprise. ‘Because I didn’t know it was urgent.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Oh. So that’s all right then.’
‘Yes. What did he say?’
‘Just asked you to call. Left a phone number. I wrote it on the back of an envelope on your bedside table…’ She would have carried on, but Frances had already retreated, closing the door behind her. Daisy shook her head, tutting to herself as a mother might at the inadequate communication skills of a teenage child.
Frances took a few moments to compose herself before picking up the receiver. She closed her eyes, trying to recall the attractive voice, the tone of mature assurance which had given her the nerve to hurl herself into the unknown three months before. With hindsight she felt all the more keenly the rudeness of having failed to deliver a proper explanation for her behaviour.
The phone was picked up at once, the voice initially sounding so formal and brusque that she wondered for a moment if she had dialled the wrong number.
‘It’s Frances Copeland, returning your call…I…I just wanted to apologise properly for what happened, for not having got in touch before…I mean after…’
‘Frances.’ There followed a sigh of what sounded like relief. ‘I am so very glad to hear from you.’
‘I had this accident,’ she burst out, ‘on the way to meet you’ – an image of Daniel bobbed obstinately inside her head, where it hovered like an unwanted guest. ‘Not a serious one as it turned out, but I simply could not get there and then…I did try to ring you a couple of times, but – I’m so sorry – goodness knows what you thought of me.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I was disappointed, of course. I wasn’t sure what to think at first. And then I got called away on business – to sort a small problem that turned out to be a hornets’ nest.’
‘Oh dear, poor you,’ Frances murmured, vaguely recollecting a profession to do with running hotels.
‘Fortunately the problem was in San Francisco, which is one of my most favourite cities. But I thought of you often,’ he added, in a tone of voice which made her blush in spite of being quite alone.
‘But I only rang to make a belated apology, I—’
‘Oh no, don’t back out now we’ve got this
far. Let’s get together as soon as we can. We’ve nothing to lose, surely. You promised to meet me once – unless of course, in the meantime, you’ve met…’he coughed.
‘No, no, I’m still on my own,’ Frances assured him hastily, the image of Daniel ducking out of her mind at last.
‘How about tonight then?’ he pressed. ‘We could try the Dancing Bear again, unless you’ve any strong objections.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ she whispered, terrified, but a little enticed as well.
It wasn’t until Frances put the phone down that it occurred to her that succumbing to such an invitation on Daisy’s last night at home was not only rash but also in keeping with the very brand of selfishness which she had so recently vowed to avoid. She was toying with the daunting idea of retracting her acceptance, when Daisy herself knocked quietly and came in.
‘Oh darling, I’ve gone and done a silly thing – agreed to go out tonight, of all nights.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Daisy slung one leg over her mother’s dressing-table stool and leant forward to inspect her eyebrows. ‘I wanted an early night anyway. And Felix is bound to be with Sally. Who is this James Harcourt anyway?’
For a moment Frances struggled to think of a suitable reply. ‘If you must know, he’s a blind date that never happened. A moment of madness a few months back.’
Daisy let out a low whistle.
‘It is, as they say, a long story,’ added Frances wryly, ‘but he does sound extremely nice and having let him down last time…’
Daisy now busy at work with a pair of small tweezers she had found in the dressing-table drawer, frowned, whether at the conversation or the pain she was inflicting on herself, it was hard to be sure.
‘But now, what about you?’ urged Frances, eager to change the subject. ‘Do you have money, passport—’
‘Mum, I’m completely sorted. It’s only Paris, remember? If you can get me to the airport by ten thirty tomorrow, that would be great.’ Daisy returned the tweezers to the drawer and spun round on the stool. ‘So Daniel Groves is out of the picture completely then?’
‘Daniel?’ Frances shook out a pair of dry socks and sat down with her back to Daisy to put them on. ‘I suppose Felix has been talking to you, has he?’
‘No, these days Felix talks to no one but Sally. It was Daniel who told me actually,’ she confessed after a brief pause. ‘That night in Paris. Swore me to secrecy – said you would go mad if you found out he’d told me without your agreement.’
‘Oh he did, did he? And quite bloody right.’ A sock snagged on the sharp edge of one toenail. ‘I don’t expect you to begin to understand—’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ retorted Daisy archly. ‘For your information, I thought I understood rather well. I also thought he was very nice, a good laugh, clever—’
‘And young enough to be your brother,’ snapped Frances hurling both socks in the air and spinning round to face her daughter. ‘You might as well say it, because it’s what you’re thinking. And with an age gap like that I can see nothing but problems ahead. So I had the sense to pull out. Do you understand that too?’
Daisy nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ she said quietly, crossing to the door and tugging it open. ‘As it happens, it’s a subject on which I could be said to have more understanding than most. Marcel is forty-two.’ She cast a defiant look at her mother. ‘And it doesn’t stop me adoring him.’
By six o’clock that evening Frances was back in her bedroom addressing the problem of what to wear for James Harcourt. To opt for the blue trouser suit which she had selected on their previous attempt at a rendezvous would feel too unimaginative and even faintly sinister, she decided, longingly eyeing the casual outfits draped around her chair and battling with the vague sense that such an occasion demanded something more dramatic. After various prolonged tussles in front of the mirror, pulling so many articles back and forth over her head that her freshly coiffured hair degenerated to a frantic mess of static electricity, she settled upon a mustard wool skirt suit with gold buttons, which Paul had bought her a few years before. A little staid, but close-fitting and definitely classy, she decided, performing a last turn before the mirror, her high-heeled shoes creaking from lack of use. The adornment of a pair of large gold earrings had just completed the picture when Felix appeared in the doorway behind her.
‘Daisy says you’ve got a date,’ he said, breaking off to roll his eyes at her appearance. ‘Wow. Smart or what. Hope he’s worth it.’ He threw himself across her bed, grinning mischievously.
‘So I’ll do, will I?’ remarked Frances dryly, aiming a light cloud of hair spray in the direction of the French bun into which she had coiled her hair and pressing her lips together to spread the colour of her lipstick.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ He frowned, punching all four of the pillows into a back rest and crossing his arms on his chest. ‘Look Mum – I wanted to tell you – I think I might have changed my mind about university.’
Frances, inwardly congratulating herself that a sustained and at times taxing policy of non-intervention on the subject should have reaped so spectacular a reward, managed to contain her response to raised eyebrows and a cool smile. ‘Have you now?’
‘I’m going to take the rest of the year off and reapply to read Politics and History. Daniel says—’
‘Daniel?’
‘Yeah, he’s been brilliant. We’ve talked about it a lot and—’
‘You’ve seen Daniel?’
Felix’s face creased with sudden concern. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ He had been altogether too preoccupied by the flourishing state of his own private life to give much thought to his mother’s. The fact that she had embarked on and then terminated a relationship with a man who was not only agreeable but many years her junior had been judged by him and Sally – in the brief time they had devoted to discussing the matter – as an achievement worthy of considerable respect. ‘He came into the shop this week – stayed for quite a while – had me and Libby in stitches—’
‘What about?’
Felix broke off, both puzzled and somewhat annoyed at so many interruptions to the flow of what he was trying to say. ‘Can’t remember now. Anyway he invited me out for a drink and sort of helped me through my options. He says there’s no guarantee, but still a good chance of getting on the course. He’s going to put in a word. I’m still going to travel – Sal’s got a Saturday job in a shoe shop to help save. We’d both really like to go to India but then neither of us are that keen on curry and Sal says she’s got a godfather in Canada and we’ve got those friends in Toronto or somewhere, haven’t we? Mum, are you listening?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Frances sat on the bed, her skirt making a soft shushing sound as it rode up her new tights. ‘I really am very pleased that you’ve decided to try to go back to Sussex. I think it’s very brave. And Dad would have liked it too,’ she added quietly.
‘Yeah, I know.’ Felix picked at some dirt under his thumbnail. ‘Everything felt wrong for ages, but now it’s all going right again. Funny how stuff works out in the end, isn’t it?’
‘Some things are just meant to happen, I suppose,’ Frances agreed, thinking with a lurch of terror about James Harcourt and wondering whether she could possibly be about to embark on a journey towards something more significant than a one-off encounter.
A few minutes later she was driving slowly on the now familiar cross-country route towards the Dancing Bear, studiously looking away at any signposts to Farley. It had been a typical April day, patches of brilliant sunshine interlaced with squally downpours. With the turning back of the clocks the weekend before, the extra hour of daylight still felt like a gift. Thanks to the rain and the force of the evening sunshine, there was a silvery sheen to the surface of the wet road and a bejewelled look to the fields and trees. Glimpses in the rearview mirror of a confident, attractively made-up woman whom she hardly recognised, provided a welcome bolster to Frances’s courage. There was a creature she wouldn’t mind getting to know
, she told herself, feeling suddenly very positive about the encounter ahead of her and letting the ever-present awareness of Daniel slip to the back of her mind. His evident determination to remain on the fringes of her life was a setback, but by no means an insurmountable one. Hard though it was to reproach him for helping Felix, she felt sure that part of his motive was to hurt her, to parade his own independence in the expectation that she could manage nothing so strong in return. Well she could, Frances told herself, gripping the steering wheel and making a firm arc across the intersection where Daniel Groves had catapulted into her life twelve weeks before.
To remove the possibility of making anything like a grand entrance, Frances entered the pub by a side door, getting to the main bar where they had agreed to meet through an obstacle course of pool tables, phone booths and cigarette machines. She saw the rose in his lapel at once, a red one, its petals only half unfurled, surrounded by a pretty sprig of white. That she had forgotten to fill her own buttonhole granted her the luxury of a little time in which to admire the profile, stronger and more handsome than she had dared imagine, lightly tanned, graced with a thick, beautifully groomed head of steely-grey hair.
Relieved and terrified in equal measure, she somehow propelled herself across the room, sticking out her hand in greeting long before it was necessary and clearing her throat several times in preparation for the ordeal of articulating her own name.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
‘You will come and visit, won’t you?’
The Lover Page 25
