Homecomings

by Marcia Willett

  This could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if something were not done about it. Each might lose confidence, grow doubtful, let the moment pass. He’d seen them together: the spark was there. It needed to be nurtured not extinguished.

  And so he took the decision, grabbed the moment, and went to see her.

  ‘My God,’ she said, when he explained about Emilia and her bombshell. ‘Good grief.’ And later, ‘Does he know you’re telling me?’

  ‘No,’ said Hugo. ‘I know. It might seem disloyal, or as if I’m breaking a confidence, but I’m worried about him. It’s “taken him aback all standing”, as Uncle Ned would say, and he’s not quite thinking straight. You need to know this. You need to behave with him in the old way. Just … Oh, just crash on, making jokes, sending texts, inviting him over. Once you become anxious, wary, the dynamic changes. Trust me, Doss. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve known Jamie all my life. Cut him some slack while this is going on but just act like nothing’s happened. The thing is, I didn’t want you to think that there might be anything else …’

  She looked at him then, smiled a very small smile. ‘You mean someone else. Another woman?’

  ‘Yes. That’s just what I mean. You hardly know him, his past, his friends. I do. Trust me.’

  ‘It did cross my mind a few times.’ A pause. ‘Am I allowed to tell Adam?’

  ‘Yes, I don’t see why not. It’s not so much a secret, as Jamie finding the right moment to mention it to you. And the thing is …’ He hesitated. ‘I’m hating this,’ he suddenly burst out. ‘But I just am so afraid of a misunderstanding between the two of you and I’m sure that we can support him better this way. Anyway. He’s had a text from Lucy.’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Yes. Just saying that she and Tom and Dan will be at the cottage for a fortnight at the end of June. Nothing else.’

  ‘What did Jamie do?’

  ‘He showed me his answer. It said, “I’ll be here.” So we’ll just have to play it by ear. But it’s going to be a difficult time. For all of us.’

  Dossie crossed her arms, head bent. ‘Poor Jamie,’ she said at last. ‘It’s a lot to handle … But then it could all be so good, couldn’t it?’

  And at that moment Hugo knew his gamble had come off, that Dossie was equal to Jamie’s disability and to the prospect of a family he hadn’t known he had. Hugo let out a huge breath of relief.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘It could all be so good. Bless you, Doss. Let’s have that tea.’

  But, now, driving home, he knows that nothing is certain. Jamie is at a crossroads: who knows what direction he might take?

  After he’s gone, Dossie walks back into the garden and sits down on the seat on the terrace outside the drawing-room windows, looking south-west across the garden and the fields to the low line of hills behind St Austell. In the escallonia hedge a robin is singing. A small part of her mind registers that the long border beneath the stone wall needs weeding, and that she ought to cut the grass, but really she is thinking about what Hugo has told her and is trying to remain unaffected by it. She knows that he has come in order to reassure her, to explain why Jamie might be behaving oddly, but instead he has made her very nervous. Her experience, except with Mike, has given her no cause to be confident in her relationships and she can’t prevent herself from imagining the worst. After all, Jamie was once married to this woman; this Emilia. He must have been in love with her back then, and it was she who left him. So this indicates that he was still in love with her when they broke up; he hadn’t tired of her. Supposing that those old emotions should reignite, especially now that she has his daughter and his grandson to add weight? It’s fine for Hugo to imply that this won’t happen but how does he know that? How can he be so certain?

  Surely, in this new relationship, Jamie’s ex-wife is bound to play a part? There will be family moments, intimate moments, and Jamie and Emilia would be a natural pairing. And they are all going to be just down the road at Rock. Dossie groans in despair. Just when it was all being so good; such fun; what Sister Emily always describes as ‘lovely joy’. And now this happiness is threatened. After all, why did Hugo come to see her, to tell her all this, unless he feared that there actually might be some complication?

  Dossie hears the sound of an engine, a car door slams, and Adam walks round the side of the house. She’s lost track of the time and feels guilty that his interview in Truro has slipped to the back of her mind since Hugo’s visit.

  ‘Hi,’ Adam says. He looks happy, confident. ‘All good?’ He frowns as he comes closer. ‘Are you OK? I texted you but you didn’t reply. What’s happened?’

  She shakes her head, pulling herself together. ‘Nothing,’ she answers. ‘Honestly. How did it go? Tell me all about it.’

  He sits at the end of the seat, still watching her. ‘Doesn’t look like nothing to me. It went well. Job’s mine if I want it. So, what’s up, Doc?’

  She smiles reluctantly at the old childhood expression.

  ‘I’m being silly, that’s all. That’s great news, Adam. Well done. But I knew that they’d leap at the chance. When can you start?’

  He looks pleased at her enthusiasm, though not convinced by her denials, and she wills herself to greater self-control.

  ‘Next month,’ he answers. ‘But I’ve got to sort things out in London and they are quite happy with that. It’s a huge stroke of luck.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she says at once. ‘They know a good thing when they see one.’

  He gives a little involuntary laugh, as if her words remind him of something else, and heaves a great sigh of relief and pleasure.

  ‘So then,’ he says. ‘That’s that. Now tell me, what’s bugging you?’

  She turns away from him and stares down the garden, pulling her heels up on to the edge of the seat, wrapping her arms round her legs and resting her chin on her knees. Presently, she begins to tell him about Hugo’s visit, what he’s told her and why. There’s a silence when she’s finished and she wonders what Adam might be thinking.

  ‘It’s good rationalization, isn’t it?’ he says after a while. ‘Silly misunderstandings can cause such huge problems. We’re always needing a response, aren’t we, and we panic when we don’t get one?’

  ‘You mean to a text?’ she suggests, thinking of her caution in contacting Jamie.

  Adam shrugs. ‘Or to a present, or to an offer of love. The trouble is, our timing isn’t necessarily another person’s, so we’re left thinking “If they really loved me they’d have responded by now,” because that’s what our time frame would be. But everyone has a different way of receiving acts of love and generosity, depending on character, history.’

  She laughs. ‘But we continue to watch our email inbox or our phone and doubts creep in.’

  ‘Exactly. And I guess that’s what Hugo was worrying about.’

  ‘Yes, I get that,’ she answers. ‘But why did he feel the need to mention it at all?’

  ‘Because Hugo is observant, aware, and extremely fond of his cousin. And of you. He can see that with this huge shock Jamie might be thrown off balance and, because you have no idea what is going on, you might misread certain things. Is that a possibility?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admits reluctantly. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Well, there you are. Hugo is used to dealing with people. Camera crews, assistant producers, actors, presenters. It’s his job to keep everything running smoothly and get a result. He’s always one step ahead. It’s good advice, Doss.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ she says frankly, ‘that it’s made me anxious in case Jamie and Emilia decide to get back together again. She left him, you know, not the other way round. Supposing it all starts up again? Especially now there’s a daughter and a grandson. Part of me wants to be happy for him. After all, I’d hate to be without Clem and Jakey.’

  ‘And did Hugo give the least impression that you should be fearful of this woman? What did you call her?’

  ‘Emilia.’ Dossie
shakes her head, wondering why she finds it hard to say the name. ‘No. In fact he said something like: “You hardly know him. I do. Trust me.” And that I should go on in the same way as if nothing has happened.’

  ‘Sounds pretty good advice to me,’ Adam says. ‘And he said it was OK to tell me?’

  ‘Yes. I asked him. It’s not a secret, it’s just a difficult thing to explain to people, isn’t it?’

  ‘Poor bugger,’ says Adam feelingly. ‘As if he hasn’t got enough on his plate. And now he’s got a whole new family just suddenly out of the blue.’

  ‘Yes,’ agrees Dossie, rather bleakly. She rather resents this ready-made family turning up, if she’s honest.

  ‘But then,’ says Adam, ‘Jamie has to learn to cope with Clem and Jakey. And Tilly. And me.’

  He looks sideways at her and she makes a face, shrugs.

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘You’ve made your point. I’m over it now. So, new readers start here. How did it really go in Truro? Tell me everything.’

  ‘I enjoyed that,’ says Ned, as Jamie comes round to haul him up out of the passenger seat of the MGB. ‘Took me back a bit. Made me feel young.’

  Jamie passes him his stick, waits until Ned is steady on his feet. He sympathizes with that sense of imbalance and insecurity.

  ‘Looks like Hugo’s off somewhere,’ he says. ‘I wonder if he’s taken the dogs.’

  But the house is empty when they go in and Ned pauses at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘I’m not allowed to eat or drink for a couple of hours after that filling,’ he says. ‘So I think I might go up and have a zizz. See you later. Thanks, Jamie.’

  ‘I’ll go out for a walk,’ Jamie tells him. ‘Will you be OK?’

  Ned nods, almost impatiently. ‘Of course I shall be OK. It’s only a filling. See you later.’

  Jamie watches him mount the stairs and then goes into the kitchen and scribbles a note for Hugo on the pad kept on the kitchen table. He pauses in the hall, takes Ned’s shooting stick from the stand and goes out into the increasingly hazy sunshine. The stick is heavy but it has its uses and slowly he climbs the path out of the village to the clifftop. When he reaches the spot where they’d met Lucy at the edge of the cliff he drives the metal point into the earth, opens it up, and sits on the seat looking out towards The Mouls. The clouds have thickened during his walk, the visibility is falling and the misty white light merges with the silvery sea. Legs braced, arms folded across his breast, Jamie stares out beyond the rocks below him towards the obscured horizon. The sea’s skin is stretched smooth as aquamarine silk, lifting and falling as it breathes, reflecting eternity: calm, untroubled, utterly ambivalent.

  ‘Eternity’s a terrible thought. Where’s it all going to end?’

  Who had said that? Jamie shakes his head. He can’t remember and he doesn’t want to think about it. All he can think about is the text from Lucy: not exactly an invitation but an opening gambit in an encounter that will be as complicated as a game of chess. Luckily, he’s very good at chess.

  How on earth, he asks himself, does this work? How do I integrate a grown-up daughter, her husband and her child, into my life? How is it to be done?

  Jamie is fearful and exalted at the same time. He has a child, a daughter: a beautiful, brave young woman. He longs to see her again yet he can imagine all the pitfalls, the wrong moves, the possibility of failure. A mental picture of his old enemy, Nigel, comes back to arouse his antagonism and jealousy: this man for whom he was abandoned, who was a father to Lucy for more than twenty-five years. Anger pulses in him, he feels the tension in his body rise inexorably, and braces himself more firmly on his stick. A gull swoops low, screaming overhead, and instinctively he ducks and almost loses his balance. At once the awareness of his disability swamps him; makes him unable to face the prospect of having to explain it all to Lucy; to Daniel. How are they going to view him?

  His fists clench, he looks down at his feet and, at that moment of vulnerability, of self-pity, he hears the familiar thrumming of aircraft engines. Quickly he raises his head. His eyes scan the horizon, looking for what he knows is there. The engine note is unmistakable but against the gloomy sky it is difficult to see his target. He stands up, his eyes sweeping from sea to sky, starting to his right and scanning left. A flash of white and red anti-collision lights and he has them; two of them. His aircraft, the Hercules, at low level, is almost head on to his position, seeming stationary in the sky as they both close in. He has a momentary sensation of childish glee, that same sensation that led him into the air force all those years ago; that overwhelming need to be there, that desire to fly, to be in one of those machines. They are closer now and he can see the four turbo props on each aircraft. The lead ship begins to climb for the coastal crossing, gaining height to avoid the gulls that always gather at cliff edges. But Jamie is puzzled. Only two ships? Where is the third? And then he has it, line astern from the leader, even lower to the sea, and coming directly towards him. The first aircraft coasts in above him and, to his left, the second aircraft, drifting back from echelon to line astern, passes further away. But the third seems to aim straight at him so that, momentarily, he fancies that he can see into the cockpit before the pilot pulls back hard on the stick and the aircraft climbs rapidly to roar over his head.

  Even as he turns to track it, the reminder of that controlled, precise atmosphere, the difference between the purposefulness of his past life and the aimlessness of his present one, overwhelms him with bitter regret. And worse, he has not paid attention to his limitations, and he realizes that he is dizzy; severely dizzy. He reaches out for the shooting stick but his hands cannot find the handle. Involuntarily he stumbles and steps backwards. He is acutely aware of the closeness of the cliff’s edge, of the sound of the sea on the rocks below. He wants to fall to the safety of the ground but he is struggling to orientate himself, struggling to discern which way is safety and which way oblivion. The earth seems to heave and spin, as if it were trying to throw him from the cliff and, as he drops to all fours, he feels the turf under his left hand give way and he is sure that he is falling. He doesn’t hear the flurry of barking or the pounding of paws, he just feels his arm seized, his coat pulled firmly to the right, and he topples in that direction on to solid ground. The tugging is insistent and he half crawls, half scrambles in the direction in which he is being pulled until his arm is released and the dog, flesh and blood and bone and fur, is beside him, butting him with his head and whining joyously.

  ‘Brioc,’ he says. He wraps his arms around the dog, burying his face in the warm coat. And then Hugo is there, and Mort, and he is surrounded by them, being helped away from the edge of the cliff to safety.

  ‘Good grief, Jamie,’ Hugo is saying. ‘What the hell were you doing?’

  Jamie lies back on the ground, letting the spinning slowly reduce, feeling the solidity of the earth stabilizing him, beginning to restore his equilibrium.

  ‘Lost my balance, got too close to the edge. Did you see them?’

  ‘See them? Bloody hooligans. What were they doing here?’

  Jamie grins. ‘Low-level training. Might be going into St Mawgan. I came down here once. Thought I’d have a look at the old place from the air.’ He laughs. ‘Perhaps the lazy sods were following my route – it’s probably still on the database. Gave me quite a turn, I can tell you.’

  Gingerly he sits up, using Brioc for support. He roughs the dog’s coat.

  ‘Thanks, old boy,’ he murmurs and then looks at Hugo. ‘What were you lot doing up here?’

  ‘Saw your note,’ Hugo answers. ‘Skiving off as usual instead of getting supper ready.’ But his look is anxious. ‘Do you think you can make it back?’

  Jamie nods and holds up his hand in an unspoken request. Hugo steps in and grips Jamie’s arm, helping him as he stands up cautiously. Hugo hands him the shooting stick, putting his arm around his cousin’s waist.

  ‘I’m OK,’ Jamie says, almost defensively.

  ‘Sure yo
u are,’ agrees Hugo, but still he keeps hold of Jamie’s arm, steering him away from the edge of the cliff. ‘Let’s go home.’

  Hugo follows Jamie down the cliff path, shaken by the sight of his cousin out of control, so near the edge of the cliff. Oddly he feels angry, as a parent might when a child avoids danger after some foolish prank.

  Ned is in the drawing-room when they arrive back.

  ‘Go and play to him,’ says Hugo, ‘while I feed the dogs. He’s still recovering from that injection. It seems to have been a particularly unpleasant filling.’

  He watches Jamie climb the stairs, clinging to the banister, then turns back into the kitchen. He’s still mad with Jamie, mad at him for taking such a risk just to watch an aircraft. As he apportions food into the dogs’ bowls and freshens their water, he still can’t get the scene at the edge of the cliff out of his mind; the way Jamie was staggering, toppling to the ground. Hugo knows that it had been a very close-run thing.

  ‘Thank God for Brioc,’ he murmurs, and leans to put an extra spoonful of food into the dogs’ bowls.

  He leaves the dogs to their suppers and goes upstairs and into the drawing-room. Ned glances up at him as he comes in and then nods towards Jamie at the piano.

  ‘What’s he playing?’ he asks.

  Hugo looks at his cousin; Jamie grins at him. It’s a grin that contains both contrition and humour, and Hugo breathes in deeply through his nose and then reluctantly begins to smile.

  ‘It’s an Elton John number,’ he tells Ned. ‘It’s called “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word”.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE DAY OF the party dawns warm and still. Mist, grey and luminous, lies on the sea, drifts along the river and dims the brightness of the sun. All morning, Dossie and Adam work together, prepping supper, choosing wine, taking cakes from the freezer. Adam has arranged that he will fetch Janna and Sister Emily, although Clem and Tilly and Jakey will be coming from Chi-Meur.