‘Mattie,’ he had said to her, ‘don’t change. Be true to yourself, lass, and use those qualities you have. It’s pretending to be what they’re not as makes fools and villains of folk.’
Remembering this, she knew what she could do. She drew a deep, ragged breath, and felt the grimy air of Marsdyke rush into her lungs. It was a while since she’d sung, and the first couple of notes came out rather thin and faint. But as she grew in confidence so her voice grew in resonance and volume, and by the time she reached the line ‘And was the holy lamb of God/On England’s pleasant pastures seen’ other voices were joining hers. By the time they got to ‘Bring me my bow of burning gold’ the whole crowd was singing, their faces sombre, but their voices full-throated and thrilling. Mattie knew it wasn’t much, but it was a way of binding them together, and so easing the terrible tension of this long and fearful wait.
It was as they finished ‘Jerusalem’, with the final ‘green and pleasant land’ hanging in the cold air, that she heard the clatter of hooves and looked over her shoulder to see Oliver Challoner dismounting from his horse on the fringes of the crowd.
He tied Lucifer to a railing and began to make his way through the throng towards the mineshaft. His face was grey and strained. He looked, Mattie thought, almost vulnerable. A hiss of resentment marked his path through the crowd of women. When he reached Mattie’s side she did not realise he had seen her until he said, in a voice devoid of all expression: ‘How long has it been?’
‘Two hours now.’
‘A rescue party has gone down?’
She nodded. ‘But the air must be getting short.’
Oliver glanced at her face. ‘Seth is there …?’
‘Yes. He could have come out, but chose to stay.’
‘Your husband is a brave man, Matilda.’
Mattie met his gaze, those blue eyes which had always had the power to unsettle her, and saw that for the first time he was using her full name not to tease or censure her, but as a mark of respect – and something else. But before she had time to respond he added almost brusquely: ‘Here, wear this for me,’ and removing his heavy topcoat he placed it over her shoulders.
She was about to say that she did not need or want his coat, but he was already striding away from her towards the pithead, his black hair plastered to his skull by the insistent rain.
A woman standing near Mattie gave her a sharp, vindictive look.
‘I hope that Challoner’s no friend of yours, Mrs Barlow,’ she said, ‘and you with your man stuck in t’pit like a rat in a hole.’
Mattie felt a clean, reviving flame of anger leap up in her. Fiercely, she rounded on the woman.
‘My friends are no business of yours! And as to my husband, if more pairs of hands will help to save his life, and your son’s too, then I’ll not complain whose they are!’
It was as she turned away from the woman’s gaping face, her own heart racing, that Mattie realised she had championed the man whom for her entire adult life she would have sworn was her enemy.
At this point I heard a small sound downstairs. One of the advantages of writing by hand was its quietness – one was alert to every sound. I let a few seconds elapse and then got up and went to look over the balustrade. An envelope lay inside the verandah door.
It was quite a dignified note under the circumstances.
‘Dearest Harriet,’ he had written. ‘I have to move on this morning – a couple of properties near Torcheron need my attention. When I get back you will have left, and anyway I shall be staying in the town to be with Pru. I do hope you don’t think badly of me. I was being such a good, about-to-be-married chap until I bumped into you. You always did bring out the beast in me. However, this little episode with de Pellegale has shown me the error of my ways. It’s clean living for me from now on.’
I gave a snort, and as I did so the MG started up in the drive.
‘I really can’t thank you enough for your help in ridding me of the old boy. The creative imagination is indeed a wonderful thing. And you still have the best legs in the business. Read this In Loving Memory. K.’
I finished the note as the MG left, sending a spattering of gravel on to the kitchen window. Without hesitation I screwed up the piece of paper and dropped it in the pedal bin.
Back upstairs I crouched down next to The Building of Stonehenge. There were only about twenty pieces left to put in. The queue of ancient Brits scowling beneath the stormy skies of Salisbury Plain reminded me of the women gathered round the Marsdyke pithead. For a moment I saw myself as part of a great tradition of British popular culture, beginning with Druid monuments and reaching all the way to twentieth-century schlock fiction.
Infuriatingly, there was one piece missing. The head of the Arch Druid, bearded, open-mouthed and with eyes rolled heavenward (if the box lid was to be believed) was simply not there. I searched around for a few minutes, but in the end I had to admit defeat and went back to Down Our Street.
For another hour I wrote. I described both Mattie’s attempts to rally the forlorn womenfolk, and Oliver Challoner’s heroic leading of the rescue effort below ground. I winched the tension up till I reached the really poignant part. Now only Seth Barlow remained imprisoned by the rock fall. Oliver had stretched his arm out to him to help pull him through the single narrow aperture. I was engrossed. This was real action: these two men locked together by need, circumstance, rivalry and mutual respect. For once the period didn’t matter. Human drama was everything. Oliver did all he could, but a final flurry of stones broke his arm and separated him from the wretched Seth for ever.
When the first rescued man appeared at the pithead, I wrote, it was gathering dusk, and only a few storm lanterns illuminated the cluster of dark figures. The women peered, then gasped and surged forward. Mattie remained very still as other women clasped their loved ones, or wept bitter tears as they realised their wait had been in vain. A sharp wind had arisen and the icy rain was thrown in handfuls against her face. She stood like a statue, with Oliver’s coat pulled tight around her. On every side, families she had known for as long as she could remember were experiencing a grief or a joy they would never forget, and from which she was excluded. For the past hours they had looked to her for leadership, and had drunk deep of her spirit, pride and courage, but now she was forgotten in the tumult of their private emotions.
As they had surged past her when the men had come up, so they began to drift back through the dark and rain towards the small, mean houses of Marsdyke, to evenings of celebration or weeping according to their fortunes. Exhausted children were dragged by the hand or clasped in fathers’ arms. The elated comforted the bereaved. Injured men leaned on their womenfolk. And still there was no one for Mattie.
At last she stood alone. A single storm lantern, bobbing in the wind, lit the pithead. The last few rescuers came up and moved away from the black mouth of the shaft with the heavy tread of defeat. As they passed her she felt their beaten glances slide across her face like the touch of so many cold hands.
He came last of all. He seemed to have aged twenty years in the two hours since she had last seen him. His face was scored by tiredness and despair, and his right arm was in a sling made from a bloodstained scarf.
‘I’m sorry, Mattie,’ he said. And his voice was so low she could only barely hear it for the noise of the wind and rain. ‘I’m so very sorry. There was nothing we could do.’
He didn’t touch her nor she him. For a moment she struggled to master her emotions. When she had done so, she said: ‘You did all you could. Thank you.’
Then she removed his coat from her shoulders and placed it around his, whose trembling she could feel. His eyes were dark with pain.
When they reached the place where Lucifer stood, head drooping in the rain, Oliver looped the reins over his good arm and continued to walk with Mattie, back to the house where now she must learn to live alone. As she stood on the step her heart was full and she saw from his face that his was also.
‘Farewell, Matilda Barlow,’ he said. ‘I should like to do what I can to help. Seth was a man I admired – more than any.’
‘I shall manage,’ she said, not meaning to be sharp, but fearful of her feelings.
‘Perhaps I might call from time to time. To see how you are.’
‘Please do. And now you must go. You should have your arm attended to. I would do it myself but—’ Tears threatened her, and he had the grace to turn from her and heave himself, with a ragged intake of breath, into the saddle.
They exchanged a last look, and then he rode away, slowly, down the street. Mattie opened the door and entered the house where she must mourn her husband, and bear his child, which only yesterday had stirred in her for the first time.
And where she must wait, perhaps years, for the man she truly loved.
I wrote the words ‘The End’, and went downstairs to wake the girls.
While they used the call box in the square to tell their fathers we’d be home next day, I went for a quick citron pressé at Priscilla’s. A handful of regulars were obviously in the throes of some kind of celebration at the bar, and it was plain from her manner that Kostaki had not begun the great clean-up of his act by telling her about me. Thank God.
She was back in her Peace and Love get-up, and her appearance contrasted strangely with the manner in which she wagged a huge hand over the bar at me.
‘Clock this,’ she said. ‘Constantine’s making an honest woman of me at last!’
‘This’ was a very nice, very solid, diamond cluster.
‘Congratulations.’ I kissed her warmly, to moist chuckles of approval on all sides.
‘Aren’t you going to miss all this?’ I asked, waving a hand at the faded posters, the oil-drum barbecue, the dogs heaped on their lopsided bench in the sun.
‘Not a bit. As a matter of fact I’m really looking forward to getting a place down in Dorset with some land for a couple of decent horses.’
What a turn up for the books! Kostaki the media doc, the meanest, moodiest thing in jockey shorts, scourge of the surgery, Casanova of the couch – buried in Dorset with big Pru and her hunters.
‘Au revoir, Priscilla,’ I said. ‘I hope you’ll both be very happy.’
The afternoon was for packing, so on the way back from Lalutte we dropped in to say goodbye at the château. For the first time we rang the bell at the front door. Isabelle answered, and indicated with upraised finger that we should wait there while she consulted her husband.
We were in a long, dark hall stretching from the front of the house to the back. I dimly remembered having crossed it en route from the drawing room to the dining room. As we waited I wandered up and down. About halfway along there was a large framed jigsaw of a Brueghel painting – dozens of chunky figures in a snowbound landscape. I switched on the small strip light above it. The girls joined me and we peered at it together.
‘What a basket case,’ murmured Clara in awe.
Naomi said: ‘There’s a piece there that doesn’t belong.’
‘Surely not.’ I looked more closely where she pointed. She was right. On the body of a stubby youth in well-filled yellow tights and a padded jacket was the head, unmistakably, of the Arch Druid. It had been cut about a bit to fit – the Stonehenge pieces were bigger – but there was no mistaking what it was.
Naomi got a nail beneath the piece and prised it out.
‘Ooh look,’ said Clara, ‘a peephole.’
It was, too. The girls looked first, and their gloating expressions as they drew back gave me a pretty fair idea of what to expect.
‘It’s the Count’s playroom,’ said Naomi.
It wasn’t large, but it was well appointed, and the Platfords were enjoying themselves in it. Against the red wall opposite, framed by black laquer dragons, stood Keith ( naked but for his car keys on a thong) holding a video camera to his left eye. Among the scarlet satin cushions on a black futon Denise, also naked, was indulging in the sort of behaviour that made one glad their house was so well insulated.
I drew back, stunned.
‘Not a word,’ I said. ‘Not one, single word. Ever.’
‘Look out!’ hissed Clara. ‘She’s coming back!’
We reassembled by the front door as Isabelle returned with a politely regretful expression. It was so sad, she said, but her husband was indisposed. He was désolé that he couldn’t bid us farewell in person, but she was sure we understood … Oh dear, I said, and what could possibly be the matter?
He had a bad back, apparently. A bad lower back. In fact – Isabelle indicated the exact location of the indisposition by placing one hand on her generous buttock. But everyone was so kind – why even now M’sieur and Madame Platford were round with a quiche.
Trying with my stern tone to stifle the girls’ snorts and squeaks I expressed our distress at the news, and begged Isabelle to give Guy our regards, and our thanks for his hospitality.
As we returned to the car we could hear Asti and Obi baying wildly in some distant chamber of the Château Forêt Noir.
On the way down the hill we had to pull on to the verge to make way for a dilapidated tractor coming in the opposite direction. When it was almost level with us, its ancient mechanism creaking and growling with the effort, I saw it was Farmer Rindin at the wheel. I jumped out and flagged him down.
I had only ever seen him as a vaguely sinister figure in the middle distance, or in the twilight of the château garden. Today, in full sunshine and at close quarters, he looked perfectly unexceptionable.
‘Bonjour Madame, ça va?’
I told him we were going tomorrow morning and he extended a calloused blackened hand and wrung mine as if I were his dearest friend. I suppose in some odd, tangential way our presence in the Villa Almont had assisted his revenge on de Pellegale. He fished a couple of melons from a box at his feet and pressed them on me.
I explained that we had paid a farewell visit to the château. At once his face darkened. He informed me in a splenetic snarl that the so-called Count de Pellegale was a pervert of canine ancestry who should perform the physiologically impossible without delay. Shamelessly I nodded, and asked why he felt so strongly. He at once produced a dog-eared snapshot from the pocket of his overalls and held it before my face, tapping it energetically with his finger. ‘Voici ma fille! Ma petite fille!’
His daughter she may have been, but she was far from petite. If Guy de Pellegale had indeed corrupted this tasselled and feathered houri with her cantilevered chest and merc-radiator grin, then it had not been an arduous or unrewarding task. Still, poor Rindin wiped away the suggestion of a tear as he replaced the photograph and confided, lest I had missed the point earlier, that the Count was an evil pile of excrement which he spurned beneath his heel and spat on. Illustrating, he hawked with a sound like paper tearing and sent a large gob of viscous yellow matter zooming past me to land with a splat and a sizzle on the bonnet of the car.
Back at the villa I went up to the atelier and gave the Chief Druid his head. As I was standing back to admire the completed picture Royston appeared.
‘Harriet? Hope you don’t mind me coming on up. The girls said you were here. Just wanted to wish you bon voyage.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I say, you found it!’
‘Yes. Guess where.’
‘Guy’s been using it to cover up his peephole. Before that he was using a bit of the Queen’s Coronation regalia – the orb, I think. He likes to have something different to mark the spot. He pinches them when he comes down on visits.’
‘He’s laid up today,’ I said. ‘Rindin gave him a backside full of shot last night.’
Royston chuckled. ‘Really? Good show. Speaking of spyholes, that was an inspired idea of yours.’
This knocked me back a bit. ‘You knew about it?’
‘Why not?’ He winked. ‘Liberty Hall, Harriet, you know that. Besides, it’ll be great material.’
‘Material?’
‘For my novel. My roman à c
lef. About expatriate life in France. I’ll be finished soon.’
The can of worms opened up by this revelation was almost too appalling to contemplate. ‘You never said!’ was all I could manage.
Royston patted my shoulder. ‘Now come on, Harriet. We writers don’t want to go giving away our trade secrets, do we? I shouldn’t have to tell you that.’
Later on that evening, when we were packed and had drunk the last of the wine, I went upstairs to collect Down Our Street. I switched on the light over the table and re-read what I had written that day. Aurora notwithstanding, I was suddenly riddled with insecurity. Damn Royston. The signs had been there and I had not noticed.
I read, at first only scanning, but with increasing absorption. As I did so I was overcome with a sort of tenderness. My throat filled. I was choked. I saw that somewhere in Down Our Street, which had begun so inauspiciously as an exercise in genre-production, there was a decent story struggling to get out. At some point a conversion had taken place. I cared about Mattie and Oliver. And I was sad for poor Seth. I had always known that I was no more than a mediocre writer, but I was a story-teller. And soon I would have the capital to enable me to write what and how I wanted.
I scooped up the pages and ran down the stairs.
‘Come on, girls!’ I shouted. ‘Let’s head for home!’
Chapter Eighteen
‘S tay calm,’ I said, patting George’s knee.
‘What’s the worst that can have happened? A mess, that’s all.’
‘You think so?’ said George.
‘Of course. And if there’s anything structural—’
‘Jesus wept!’
‘—if there is anything structural, so what? It’s only bricks and mortar. And we’re not short of a bob or two, remember?’
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