‘What you have to bear in mind,’ he said once, way back, when she was exasperated on his account, ‘is that Mother and Al were so alike. They were cut from the same cloth. I think she found him easy because she couldn’t hurt him. He was tough and confident, and whatever happened he’d simply bounce straight back. Just like she does. Sensitive, needy people irritate her. She can’t bear to look on the wounds she inflicts upon them and she simply hasn’t got the patience to be kindly and thoughtful. She’s always said that the worst trait anyone can have is a need to be loved.’
Sophie knew that he was touched by her partisanship but slightly amused by it, and she soon realized that, in his own way, Johnnie was just as tough as his mother. He managed it without putting backs up or alienating people but he was no pushover. Nevertheless, Johnnie, and his father before him, had a deep-down kindness, a generosity of spirit, that was missing in Rowena.
‘And after all,’ Freddy said, when she talked to him about it, ‘Johnnie’s still here, isn’t he? And his children and their children. All able to enjoy this glorious place. Poor old Al didn’t win in the end, did he?’
Thinking about Freddy, Sophie reminds herself that she must phone and invite him over to supper when Tom and Cass Wivenhoe and the Mortlakes and Kate Porteous come for the great reunion that Rowena is planning. She’ll need two extra men, and Freddy’ll want to meet Jess, too. Anyway, it’ll be good to have him here; he’s always such fun to have around.
She picks up the tray and carries it out to the sea garden.
* * *
The summerhouse doors are open to the sunshine, and Johnnie has already unloaded the contents of his tray onto the table. He’s set a canvas chair for his mother outside in the sunshine and Jess is putting out another.
Rowena leans on her stick, watching them. She doesn’t sit down just yet simply because she knows that Johnnie is anxious that she should do so.
As if, she thinks irritably, I’m too old to remain upright for more than five minutes.
She stares away across the river, towards Cargreen, but superimposed upon the granite walls of the cottages and the pub she sees Jess’s face. Truly, it is as if Juliet has come back to them and Rowena’s heart aches for Al – to see him just once more, strolling towards them with his sexy slouching walk and his wicked grin. Her longing is so great that, when Johnnie gently touches her elbow and says, ‘Why don’t you sit down, Mother?’ she snaps at him, ‘Don’t fuss!’ shrugging her arm away and nearly toppling over.
She turns quickly, hoping that Jess hasn’t seen her flash of temper, but the girl is in the summerhouse with Sophie, sorting out the food.
‘Are you hungry, Rowena?’ Sophie calls, and this gives her the opportunity to go across to them. She’s not hungry but she’ll make a pretence of eating something. Jess smiles at her so sweetly that she longs to touch the girl’s hand, to stroke that long dark red-brown hair. How attractive she is; no wonder all the boys fall in love with her. For a moment Rowena is confused; looking around for the boys, for Al and Mike and Stephen. And then she remembers that this is Jess, not Juliet, and she feels rather weak, and her heart beats unevenly in her side.
Johnnie is beside her again. ‘I’ll carry your plate,’ he says.
He helps her to her chair and gives her the plate and, as usual, his kindness irritates her and she longs for Al to be there, to make some witty, acerbic comment in her ear that only she can hear.
At last they are all gathered around, eating, talking. Johnnie is telling Jess the family history, about the book he is writing, and Sophie is planning for this weekend when Will comes out for his exeat.
‘If the weather stays like this we’ll get some sailing in,’ she says. ‘Will always loves to get out on the river. Lucky the tides are right.’
Rowena makes some reply but all the while she is planning for that moment when she and Jess will be alone so that together they can look at the photographs and reassemble the jigsaw of the past.
* * *
Jess refuses when Sophie suggests that she goes with her to fetch Will.
‘He might be a bit shy,’ Jess says. ‘And three-handed conversations are always tricky. Anyway, it’ll give you a chance to warn him I’m here and he can ask questions about me without feeling embarrassed.’
She remembers her own journeys to and from school and how it was so much nicer if she had one of her parents to herself; sitting in the passenger seat, feeling grown up. She doesn’t want to take that away from Will although, as soon as he makes his way to the sail loft to find her, she realizes that she probably needn’t have worried. He is a poised, confident little boy with the occasional faraway expression of someone who lives in other worlds; he is thin, with fragile wrists and bony knees, a mop of blond hair and a serene look in his blue-green eyes: Johnnie’s eyes. Jess falls in love with him at once.
‘I wish I could sleep in the sail loft,’ he tells her enviously, ‘but I’m not allowed. We do in the hols when my sisters come over from Geneva and my cousins come to stay, but I’m not allowed on my own. Mummy says I can when I’m twelve.’
He gazes at her with his amazing eyes and Jess stares back at him; she feels an odd desire to fulfil his every wish.
‘Perhaps,’ she begins tentatively, ‘since I’m here, you could stay tonight in the sail loft with me?’
The small thin face lights up. ‘Could I?’
‘Well, I don’t see why not.’ Jess glances round for Sophie or Johnnie, anxious lest she is breaking some kind of rule. ‘Shall we ask Johnnie? Your grandfather. What d’you call him?’
‘Grando,’ says Will at once. ‘Grando’s cool. He’ll be OK with it but Sophie might not.’
‘Well, we must go with what Sophie says,’ Jess tells him firmly.
‘OK,’ he says cheerfully. ‘It’s good out on the balcony, isn’t it? I took some really cool photos this summer from the balcony.’
‘I take photos, too,’ says Jess. ‘I like to draw from them.’
‘D’you upload them onto your computer?’
She nods. ‘You can blow them up to a good size so that you can really study them.’
He gazes at her, impressed. ‘Sophie says you’ve won a really cool award. Have you got any of your work with you?’
‘No. I’ve left it all with a friend in Bristol. I’m hoping to start something fresh but really I’m having a holiday.’
‘D’you like sailing?’
She nods, and he looks away, slightly shy for the first time.
‘I could take you out if you like,’ he says casually. ‘I’ve got a Heron dinghy in the boathouse. It’s my own.’
‘Wow? Your very own?’ It’s her turn to be impressed. ‘I’d love it.’
His gaze swivels back to her, bright, almost mischievous. ‘Would you? The tides are good this weekend.’
‘You’ve got a date,’ she tells him. ‘But had we better check with…’ She hesitates, can’t quite bring herself to call Johnnie ‘Grando’, ‘… with Sophie? I’m a guest, you know. I have to play by the house rules.’
‘OK,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Shall we go and ask if I can stay here tonight? I can bring my stuff over.’
He pauses at her table to look at her camera. ‘I’d like one like this,’ he says wistfully. He peers at the little painting. ‘Did you do this?’
‘No. It was done by the artist whose Award I won. David Porteous. Do you like it?’
He bends nearer, studying it. ‘Mmm. It looks real, doesn’t it? Like you could pick the flower, and the water actually looks wet. What does the writing say?’
Jess hesitates. It is odd to be in a position to explain the words to this little boy whose gaze is fixed so intently on the painting. She almost feels as if she is betraying a confidence.
‘It says, “Thanks for everything. It’s been perfect.” David Porteous gave the painting to a very close friend who died not long afterwards.’
The sea-green stare is turned upon her and she feels faintly unnerved by its
focus. ‘And did the friend give it to you?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, she – it was a woman – left it when she died with lots of other things to a friend of hers called Kate, who later married David. Kate gave it to me because I won his Award, in the hope that it would inspire me.’
His eyes widen, drift, as if he is imagining the story she has told him, seeing the characters in his mind’s eye.
‘That was nice of her,’ he says. ‘And it must be very valuable too, so it was generous as well. You’ll have to get it insured.’
‘Yes,’ says Jess, slightly thrown by the practical turn to the conversation. ‘Yes. I must. Let’s go and find Sophie and see if you’re allowed to spend the night here.’
* * *
Rowena decides to wait a few days before she makes her little test with the photographs. Though she finds it almost impossible to contain her impatience, some instinct warns her that it will be wise to let the girl settle in. She knows that her own excitement has communicated itself to Jess and made her slightly wary. There must be no tension when Jess sees the photographs; no suggestion of a hidden agenda; simply a happy moment looking at old snapshots in order to put some meat on the bare bones of the past.
Carefully she plans it. Sitting there in the sunny morning-room, she shuffles the photographs, opens albums, peers into big brown envelopes bursting with snapshots. Ever since that day in the Bedford, when Kate told them that Jess was coming to stay, Rowena has been planning. She hasn’t much evidence to support her long-held suspicion but such that she has she marshals; pieces of the jigsaw. She can see these pieces clearly before her as if they were laid on the table with the photographs: each piece represents a small scene that plays and replays itself in her mind’s eye.
Once again she sees Al dancing with Juliet at the Christmas Ball on HMS Drake, holding her too tightly, his eyes closed, whilst Mike watches from the bar. She hears Juliet’s voice, strained and desperate, whispering just outside these morning-room windows: ‘I should never have married him, I know that now. I thought I was in love with him. I really did. How was I to know? What shall we do?’ and the low, murmuring response: ‘We must be very careful.’
She remembers Juliet as a house guest, staying for a week whilst Mike is at sea. Juliet, slipping away to the sail loft, along the river bank, and, after a while, the shadowy figure of Al following her.
Last and most important: the Midsummer’s Eve party. The sea garden is a magical place: reflections jitter and dance on the smooth black surface of the water; shadowy figures dance or lean against the balustrade beneath Circe’s imposing figure. The tall lavender hedges are pale, cloudy shapes, their scent still lingering on the warm air.
And the voices, whispering: the first is urgent, demanding; the other is frightened. Juliet’s dress is in disarray, her hair loosened. Al’s face is buried against her throat but her face is twisted away from his, her hands on his shoulders.
‘Listen,’ she is saying, still in that desperate whisper. ‘Please just listen to me. I’m pregnant, Al. Just for God’s sake, listen…’
And now, as the weekend passes, Rowena waits. She watches Jess and Will: sailing in his little dinghy, joking together at lunch, in the sea garden. Now, as she glances from her bedroom window, Will perches on the balustrade with his back to Circe, explaining something to Jess, his arms gesticulating wildly; Jess leans beside him, listening. Popps is with them, playing with an old tennis ball. Its yellow coat is torn, ragged and discoloured, and she seizes it in her teeth and tosses it into the air as if it were a rat. Suddenly Will leaps from the balustrade, catches the ball and goes racing over the grass with Popps behind him. Jess turns to watch them, resting her elbows on the balustrade, laughing as the boy and the dog wheel round and round the sea garden.
Jess’s likeness to Juliet is so strong that Rowena half expects to see Al and Mike coming across the lawn to join her. Her heart hammers too fast for comfort and she sits back in her chair, taking deep breaths, willing herself to be calm. Now is not the moment for one of her tiresome little attacks. She must be ready, strong. After tea Sophie or Johnnie will take Will back to school and then she must decide whether or not to show Jess the photographs. Part of her longs with such intensity to do it that she feels quite ill; part of her hesitates, draws back from it, fearing terrible disappointment.
Yet she feels the significance of Jess’s readiness to feel at home here; her easiness with Johnnie and now with Will. Already she is part of the family. The girl’s vitality makes her, Rowena, feel young again; the spirits of the past press in around her: officers with their girls, Juliet and Mike – and Al. If she closes her eyes she can see him: dark brown eyes, black hair, strong, athletic. Dickie, Johnnie and Will are all cut from the same genetic cloth: blond, blue-green eyes, not much above average height. Al and she were alike. They’d chuckle together at the same jokes, he encouraged her to be outrageous, whispering in her ear and egging her on.
She smiles, eyes still closed, feeling him near.
‘Mother,’ he says. ‘Mother…’ and she feels his breath on her cheek as he touches her arm.
She gasps, eyes flying wide open, her knuckles against her mouth, as Johnnie bends anxiously over her.
‘Mother,’ he says again anxiously. ‘You were asleep. Sorry to wake you, only tea’s ready and we have to get Will back. Are you all right?’
‘Of course I am,’ she says crossly, her heart still crashing in her side, furious at his foolishly concerned expression, resentful that he isn’t Al. ‘And I wasn’t asleep. Why are you creeping about? What? Oh, wait, I haven’t got my ears in.’
She fumbles impatiently on her table for her hearing aids and snaps at him again when he attempts to help her. Feeling ill, but refusing to show it, she goes downstairs with him to have tea with her great-grandson before he returns to school.
‘Jess is coming with us,’ Will tells her gleefully. ‘I’m going to show her my dormitory.’
She smiles at him, and at Jess, and her heart aches with hope – and disappointment. The photograph session must be postponed after all.
‘That’s very nice,’ she says to him; she’s very fond of the little fellow. ‘Boiled eggs,’ she says to Jess. ‘It’s a tradition. The boys always had boiled eggs and soldiers for tea at the end of an exeat and now we do the same for Will.’
‘So did I,’ says Jess. ‘So it must have been a tradition in my family, too.’
‘And,’ says Will, leading the way into the kitchen, ‘Jess is coming to watch me play rugby.’
‘Is she?’ Rowena smiles at Jess. ‘So it sounds as if you won’t be leaving us just yet?’
‘Not quite yet, if it’s all right with you.’ Jess looks slightly embarrassed. ‘I’d love to stay for a few more days.’
‘Well, you’ve certainly got to be here for the reunion supper,’ says Sophie firmly. ‘Johnnie says Freddy must come over for it, and he’s trying to think of anyone else apart from Kate and Tom and Cass and the Mortlakes who will remember Mike and Juliet.’
Rowena sips her tea and watches Will eating his egg: she wonders, for the first time, how Jess might react to the bombshell that could be waiting to explode.
* * *
‘You could invite Oliver,’ Jess says when Sophie says that she needs an extra man for the reunion supper party. ‘Cass and Tom’s son. Do you know him?
‘Oliver?’ Sophie frowns, shakes her head. ‘Rings a bell but I don’t remember him.’
‘I think he’d be great at a party,’ Jess says. She feels that it would be good to have Oliver there; he is her friend, someone apart from all these people who know each other and share a history. She really likes Tom and Cass, and Kate, of course, but she’s beginning to feel very slightly overwhelmed by the thought of being the focal point at the reunion supper. She is certain that Oliver will take the pressure off somehow.
Sophie is watching her curiously. ‘Oliver,’ she repeats. ‘Good. We’ll invite him too. Anyway, it’ll be rather nice for yo
u to have somebody of your own age around.’
‘Oh, but he isn’t,’ Jess says quickly, anxious lest Sophie should leap to the wrong conclusions. ‘He’s not that young, he’s more your age,’ and flushes furiously. ‘Not old,’ she adds quickly, whilst Sophie bursts out laughing. ‘I didn’t mean that. Oh hell.’
‘Forget it,’ says Sophie, amused. ‘I shall look forward to meeting him.’
Presently she seeks Johnnie out in the Growlery: his little den, which is lined with his Patrick O’Brian and C. S. Forester books, and an astonishingly vast collection of sailing manuals. He sits on a small folding chair, frowning at the computer screen.
‘Is this a bad moment?’ she asks, head round the door.
‘Mmm? No,’ he mutters. ‘What is it?’
‘Oliver Wivenhoe. Have I ever met him?’
He turns on his chair to look at her. ‘Oliver? He’s the older son, isn’t he? A rather clever sort of fellow, if I remember. Went to Cambridge and got a First. You might have met him when you first arrived but I’ve only seen him once or twice since he went to university. He lives upcountry. Why?’
‘It seems that Jess has met him and is rather taken with him. She’d like to invite him to the reunion thrash. Is that OK?’
‘Why not? Sounds a good idea.’ He turns back to the screen, stares at it grumpily.
‘Writer’s block?’ she asks sympathetically.
‘Ridiculous idea, this book,’ he says. ‘Writing the family history. I mean, what’s the point?’
‘It’s fascinating,’ she tells him. ‘Your merchant forebears and those wonderful ships and the Tamar when it was a real working river. There must be hundreds of photographs you can use. Rowena’s got stacks of them. She’s having a session with Jess in the morning-room, actually. Come and have some coffee in the kitchen.’
He saves the document and turns round in relief. ‘I think I will,’ he says.
* * *
When Jess woke that morning she had the strangest sensation that there were other people with her in the sail loft. She pulled on a long woollen cardigan and thick socks over her pyjamas, and went out onto the gallery-landing and down into the big room, staring about her in amazement. Thick clouds of white mist curled and lapped at the windows; the light was eerie and cold. The sail loft felt isolated, cut off, and she shivered and hurried into the small kitchen to fill the kettle and switch it on.
The Sea Garden Page 11
