The Partridge and the Pelican

by Rachel Crowther

  “Is it broken?” Mandy asked.

  “Sprained, I expect,” said Liz. “God, Sarah, you couldn’t have done it much further from the car park.”

  “I’m fine,” Sarah said. “I’ll be fine.”

  She could feel Harry’s hand, its warmth too comforting. She shut her eyes for a moment, marshalling her strength.

  “I can carry her,” she heard Harry say.

  “No,” she said, more vehemently than she intended. “You go on. It’s your first run; there’s no need.” She looked up at Mandy, hoping her appeal would be understood. Mandy’s face was a benign moon against the dark sky and the tangle of branches flanking the riverbank.

  “We’ll help her back,” Mandy said. “Won’t we, Liz? We can always join in again on the next circuit.”

  Sarah didn’t want to look at Harry. She knew he’d be hurt, that he wouldn’t understand – or worse, that he would.

  “Thank you,” she said, as he stood up. “It’s nice of you to offer.”

  Hobbling back across the field between Mandy and Liz was a heavy price to pay: the pain in her ankle was worse by the minute. Even if there was no fracture, she thought, it was a bad sprain.

  “When’s the wedding?” Liz asked. “You’ll be okay by then, won’t you?”

  “I’m sure I will,” Sarah said, although she wasn’t sure at all. “Six weeks still. Ow!” She squealed as the bad foot was jolted by an awkward step, and Mandy and Liz tightened their grip on her.

  “What do we look like?” Mandy said. “Limping across some field in the pouring rain like a bunch of drunks. Lucky there’s no one to see us.”

  But there was. The runner who had passed them earlier approached, slowed down; the man in the blue and yellow running gear.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “She slipped,” said Liz. “Sprained her ankle.”

  “Can I help? I’m a doctor.”

  “We just need to get her back to the car,” said Mandy.

  “Let me carry her,” offered the man. “It’s a long way.” He smiled as they hesitated. “Compulsory NHS training: manual handling and lifting. I knew it would come in handy one day.”

  Sarah was in too much pain to object. He wasn’t young, the man, but he was tall and he looked fit. He hoisted her into a fireman’s lift and set off for the car park. Her foot dangled painfully, but it was better than trying to walk. To her relief, Mandy and Liz followed.

  “We should call your fiancé,” Mandy said. “You’re not going to be able to drive home.”

  “He’s away,” Sarah said. This fact, forgotten until now, came as a tremendous, guilty relief. She didn’t want to set Guy any more tests, she told herself. “He flew to Prague this morning.”

  “Men,” said Liz. “Where are they when you need them?” Mandy sniggered. “Present company excepted, of course,” Liz added.

  When they reached the car park, her rescuer set Sarah down on the edge of the capacious boot of Mandy’s Discovery. Carefully, he removed her running shoe and felt the swollen joint. Sarah wondered if she ought to ask his name, mention her own professional credentials, but instead she sat still and let him examine her foot.

  “It needs an X-ray,” he said. “Is there someone who could take you up to A and E?”

  There was a tiny pause. “I could,” said Mandy. “I could ring the babysitter and ask her to stay on, then if we dropped Liz …”

  “No,” said Sarah. “Really. I’ll call my friend Olivia. Can you – her number’s in my mobile, in the car. Under C. Olivia Conafray.”

  She was looking in the other direction, passing Mandy her car keys, but she couldn’t miss the man’s reaction. Not unlike hers when Harry showed up, she thought. Curious.

  “Do you know Olivia?” she asked.

  He smiled, composure restored. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Now …” he checked his watch, frowned slightly, “if you’re okay here, I should really be getting back.”

  “Sorry,” said Sarah. “I’ve held you up.”

  “Don’t even think about it. Hope the ankle’s better soon.” He held out his hand, and then he was off towards the black Mercedes parked by the gate.

  “Well,” said Liz. “He was in a hurry, suddenly.” She raised her eyebrows at Sarah. “Do you know that other bloke?” she asked. “The one who was running with us?”

  “Not really. His mother was a patient. I just – you know, it’s awkward when people feel some kind of obligation.”

  Sarah blushed; she’d never been a good liar. Then, alarmingly, she felt tears starting in the corners of her eyes. Her ankle hurt; she wanted to be at home in bed with a hot water bottle. She wanted a mother who’d come and look after her.

  “Sorted.” Mandy jogged back towards them. “She’s coming. Should be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you.” Sarah tried to smile. Fifteen minutes sounded like a long time to wait, but she knew she should be grateful, and that she had no one to blame but herself. The thought crossed her mind – another guilty, welcome thought – that she wouldn’t be able to run again for a good few weeks.

  “We’ll wait with you until she gets here,” said Liz. “Have you got a spare coat or anything, Mand? She’s shivering.”

  “Only a dog blanket.” Mandy reached into the car for a rug to drape around Sarah’s shoulders. “Bit hairy, but better than nothing, eh? Did he go, your knight in shining armour?”

  “Took off in fright.” Liz laughed. “Anyone want a polo? Only three calories.”

  Sarah shut her eyes, adjusting her mind to the rhythm of the blood throbbing in her ankle, and to the prospect of a long evening in A and E. Was she right to have called Olivia, she wondered? Martin and Philippa would have come, or her downstairs neighbour. Perhaps she presumed too much on Olivia. It was sometimes hard to tell what she was thinking, whether she was enjoying herself or just going along with things.

  And what about her, demanded her conscience, seizing this unguarded moment: was she enjoying herself, or just going along with things? Was it right that she should be pleased Guy was away when she’d hurt herself? Was she so sure that Guy was her true love and Harry a threat to her happiness?

  She groaned; a protest as much about the torrent of questions as about the pain in her ankle, but Mandy and Liz leapt to attention, rubbing her shoulders and finding another rug to cover her legs.

  “Poor you,” said Liz. “Is it very painful? I’m sure your friend will be here soon.”

  Sarah mumbled thanks, and they chattered on, asking questions about the wedding that they clearly didn’t expect Sarah to answer coherently. She felt another stab of gratitude. It was dark and late and cold; it was very nice of them to stay here with her when they could have been running, or getting an early night.

  By the time Olivia’s car turned into the car park, the other Striders were trickling back. Sarah caught a final glimpse of Harry Matthews as Mandy slammed the passenger door and Olivia slipped the car into gear, and then they were off towards the hospital.

  Chapter 23

  As the weather got colder, Olivia was reluctant to leave the comfort of her bed when she woke in the night. The radiators were stone cold by midnight, and the loose window frames admitted tendrils of chilled air that spread and bloomed in the still rooms.

  But in the second week of November, Benjy had a bout of tonsillitis. He was too old, really, to need his mother in the night, but the fact that he’d been so fragile as a baby had been significant, perhaps even serendipitous, for Olivia – confirmation of her identity as mother-protector – and she was still quick to respond to any suggestion of need. She trudged up and down to Benjy’s room for several nights in a row, bringing him hot lemon and cold squash, extra pillows and a thinner duvet. Unnecessary fuss, she knew that, but however much she loved her protomen with their cricket bats and computer games, this was the kind of mothering she knew best, and she was happy to throw herself into it.

  Benjy knew it too, savouring the comfort of being l
ooked after. Olivia sat on his bed and read to him in the dead of night: fairy tales he hadn’t heard for years, and ghost stories that made Olivia reluctant to brave the stairs again. He laid his head on her shoulder, and the rest of the world receded into the shadows beyond the bright circle of the bedroom. It felt to Olivia like one of those vivid moments before the end of an era: the summer before war breaks out; the fin de siècle brilliance of a doomed society. By rights this time should be past, and it soon would be, but its last vestiges were precious. For a few days and nights, nothing else mattered very much.

  On the fourth night, Benjy fell asleep before the story was finished. The penicillin Olivia had coaxed out of the GP was working at last and his fever had almost gone. Olivia was tired, her head buzzing with sleeplessness, but back in her own bed she lay wide awake. There was plenty to occupy her thoughts once they were let loose at this hour of the night; plenty of anxieties to loom large in the dark. Olivia curled her legs up, letting the latest note from school about Angus’s behaviour, the latest argument about who was old enough to opt out of family holidays, filter through her head. The orthodontist, the problematic piano pupil, the PTA meeting, the leaking dishwasher. The ordinary flotsam of her life, tedious but familiar.

  But there was more than that on her mind at the moment. She wriggled deeper under the duvet, keeping her feet away from the recalcitrant chill at the edge of the sheets. All these ghosts, she thought, coming back to trouble her with their stories.

  She’d done nothing more about Georgie since her meeting with Mary Bennett. Georgie was still vague and distracted, and Olivia was fearful of interfering in her life. Perhaps the vagueness was welcome, she thought; perhaps the past was drifting out of focus at last. But there was a nagging sense that Mary expected something of her. Every week at the Wednesday Club, Olivia felt a stab of guilt and of cowardice.

  Then there was Eve. A few weeks after Sarah had first mentioned her name, Eve had rung one evening, out of the blue. The preliminaries had passed surprisingly painlessly, and then, in a small silence, Eve had cleared her throat.

  “Perhaps we should have lunch one day,” she’d said, her voice stilted, as though Olivia was a stranger whose standing she wasn’t sure of.

  Olivia had replied enthusiastically, the way she’d always replied to Eve’s suggestions.

  “Next week?” she’d said.

  “The week after would be better.”

  Eve’s tone was measured, restrained, and Olivia kicked herself for her eagerness. The same mistakes, always.

  The whole conversation had lasted only a few minutes; there was far too much to say on the phone, or far too little. And now the prospect of the meeting hovered in Olivia’s mind like a mirage. Most of the time she wished fervently that Eve was still in Australia with her flying doctor husband, but some small, incautious, fatalistic part of her was counting off the days. Almost, she thought, like waiting to meet a lover wounded in battle, unable to bear the suspense before seeing his injuries for herself.

  Olivia awoke to daylight and noise downstairs, the clatter of plates and the raising of voices as her sons ate their breakfast. She pulled the duvet up around her and lay still for a few more minutes, then she rolled out of bed and went down to the kitchen to dispense lunch money and arbitration.

  Benjy was better this morning. After his brothers had left for school he stumped downstairs, wrapped in his duvet, and settled in front of the television. Standing in the playroom doorway, watching him absorbed in a re-run of Friends, Olivia felt suddenly fretful and airless. Cabin fever, she thought: she’d been cooped up for too long this week. It was the morning her Polish cleaner came, and when she’d made Benjy a jug of honey and lemon and kissed him on the forehead (something she knew would be forbidden by tomorrow), Olivia left him in Agata’s care and slipped out of the front door.

  The morning was cold and damp, but it felt good to be outside. Out of habit, she made for the canal, and followed the tow-path down to Port Meadow. The ground was too wet to stray from the path today. She crossed the river and turned north through the boatyard before halting to survey the view, her view, back towards the city, breathing in the raw freshness of the beginning of winter.

  As she stood there, a solitary figure came in sight on the far side of the river: a man, moving steadily across the northern stretch of the meadow. He was too far off for Olivia to see him clearly, but she recognised the colours of his running suit: dark navy and paler blue, with a strip of yellow across the front. For a few minutes she stood and watched, aware that her position gave her the freedom to observe unseen. The river separated them, and the willows along the bank would block her from view if he happened to look her way.

  After a little while the man stopped abruptly, hesitated for a moment or two, then turned sharply left and headed directly away from her. The mud flat, she realised. He’d reached the other side of the mud flat that she’d floundered into a few weeks before, and was circling around it, making for the Trap Grounds.

  The contours of the common soon swallowed the man’s retreating figure. Olivia looked at her watch and then, reluctantly, she turned round. As she crossed the river again a jumble of thoughts filled her head, triggered by threads of connection: men half-recognised, ghost stories and seascapes and the cries of seagulls, sharp as labour pains. Was it James, across the river? How could she imagine she’d recognised him at that distance when she hadn’t been sure of him close up?

  She was almost home before she saw him again. She was approaching the bridge nearest her road when he came into sight, running south from Wolvercote. Olivia spotted his outfit first, but as he came closer she saw his face clearly. It was definitely the same man who had helped her the day she was attacked. And unmistakably James. She waited in the middle of the path, wondering what they would say to each other, and in those few moments Shearwater House came vividly back, along with all the muddle of regret and nostalgia that had smudged its memory afterwards.

  As the man approached, Olivia was sure he’d seen her too. There was a second, no more, when it was inevitable that they would meet, and then James ducked away from her, up the slip to the bridge from the far side, and before she could call after him he had sprinted away along the road.

  Chapter 24

  As she waited for Eve, Olivia had the strange feeling that she was at a funeral – sitting not in a restaurant but in the corner of a church, with an organ playing discreetly and the whisper of voices just loud enough to assert that they were alive, still. Waiting for a coffin, the creak of the door and men with expressions carefully contrived to reassure the congregation that they do this every day, it’s nothing to them, but even so a particular occasion. A particular grief to be marked.

  But instead there was the rustle of lunchtime conversation, the swish of waiters, the bottle of water on the table in front of her. A different kind of expectation.

  Olivia had arrived early. Despite herself, she’d been anxious not to keep Eve waiting, or to imply that she wasn’t keen to see her. Eve, apparently, was not anxious about these things. The clock on the wall was moving towards ten past one, and Olivia thought about ordering a glass of wine. A gin and tonic, even: when did she last have a gin and tonic at lunchtime?

  And then there was Eve, unmistakably Eve coming through the door, her skin showing the evidence of years in the Australian sun. Blonde still, but a harder shade, a touch of auburn, and wearing clothes Eve would never have worn: gold and flowing, like expensive curtains you might marvel at in a colour supplement.

  Olivia half-stood, began to wave, but a waiter had pointed towards her and Eve was already heading her way.

  “Well.” They both spoke together, grinning sheepishly, like schoolgirls brought to the Head’s office to make up after a fight.

  “You haven’t changed,” said Eve, and she laughed briefly.

  “I was just going to order some wine,” said Olivia.

  Eve lifted her hands. “Not for me. No good at that any more, I’m afraid.”


  Olivia blushed, flustered. Had she missed something in Sarah’s briefing, some medical detail?

  “Not at lunchtime,” said Eve, sliding onto the seat opposite Olivia. “Or I’ll misbehave.”

  “Pact.” Olivia felt stupidly relieved. “Stay sober and behave.”

  She couldn’t find anything else to say, for the moment. Through all those sleepless nights, all that anticipation, she hadn’t really thought about meeting a flesh-and-blood Eve. Someone with the old Eve inside somewhere.

  Eve had suggested this place, on the river near Marlow. Halfway between us, she’d said. Not too expensive. She knew the menu, and knew what she wanted to eat already. Olivia pointed to the first thing her eye lit upon. Choice, she felt, was altogether too complicated for today.

  “So, reunited by the inimitable Sarah.” Eve raised her eyebrows, and Olivia caught her twitch of amusement. Sarah’s plump, determined figure came into her mind’s eye, and she felt a flicker of the old conflict between the pleasure of mockery and the proscription of her conscience.

  “Her leg’s in plaster,” she said. “Poor thing, she’s broken a bone in her foot.”

  “Lord – is she going to hobble up the aisle in a cast?”

  “She’s hoping not. But you know Sarah, never daunted.”

  “And you’re miles ahead of all of us, I gather. Four sons.”

  Olivia felt wrong-footed, briefly, by the change of direction. “If you call that miles ahead.”

  “How old?”