Lovers and Newcomers

by Rosie Thomas

  Knowing Ben Davies, Colin had to concede that this was a reasonable standpoint. In fact, Nic might currently be vulnerable and she might be neglecting herself physically, but she struck him as fundamentally a strong and determined young woman. Polly was quite lucky with the mother of her grandchild-to-be.

  At the end of the afternoon, her arms stretched under a load of bright yellow and shiny purple carrier bags, Polly reached the suite again. Nic was lying on the sofa with her bare feet in Colin’s lap, fast asleep in front of Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the film channel.

  ‘She’s never seen it,’ he said in astonishment.

  He lifted the girl’s feet and replaced them on a cushion. They left her to sleep and went into Polly’s bedroom. As soon as she came in, Colin had seen her anxiety dissolve into relief that Nic was still there. In time Alpha and Omega would have their babies, of course they would, but Polly was fixed on this one with such tenacity probably because it was Ben’s, her hopeless, charming and favourite child’s, and Nic’s evasiveness only increased her resolution.

  This was the future, he realized, with a sense of satisfaction. If Nic was going to stay afloat the child would probably need a grandmother, and for Polly a grandchild would be a welcome anchor.

  Polly listened to Colin’s account of their conversation.

  ‘Ben’ll grow up. He’ll have to.’

  She looked straight at Colin, defying him to mention Selwyn in the context of perpetual adolescence.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked instead.

  ‘I want to take her home with us.’

  Of course, Colin thought. For Christmas, Madonna and child. But this had been his thinking too – for a couple of weeks at least, he and Polly could look after this girl between them, and then maybe she would accept some longer-term help that would mean the baby could stay within Polly’s orbit. The barn was hardly the place to take a pregnant woman, though, even one who had until today been sleeping on a sofa bed in Kilburn. Besides, Ben might well also be at the barn and Nic wouldn’t want to be forced into such proximity with him. What Ben’s response might be to the arrangement would be for Polly to deal with.

  ‘Do you think she’d come?’ Polly mused.

  ‘Let’s try asking her if she’d like to stay with me and Miranda, at the house.’

  ‘Really? Would you do that for her?’

  ‘We’ll have to ask Mirry.’

  They called her up.

  ‘Yes,’ Miranda said without a second’s hesitation, as they had both known she would. ‘The more the merrier, I say.’

  When Nic woke up she looked disorientated, and then relief softened her face.

  ‘How long have I been asleep?’

  ‘About an hour,’ Colin told her.

  ‘I’m really sorry. I’d better go, hadn’t I?’

  ‘You don’t have to. There’s two beds in my room, or I can share Colin’s room, or one of us can sleep out here,’ Polly said. Her eagerness for the girl to stay was so naked Colin could hardly look at her. Don’t crowd her, he wanted to say. Let her come to the decisions herself.

  Nic’s eyes slid to Colin.

  ‘I dunno,’ she murmured awkwardly.

  Polly and Colin had tickets that evening for a sold-out new play that Polly was eager to see. Polly offered to take Nic along in Colin’s place, but the girl dismissed this idea with a short laugh.

  ‘Theatre? No thanks. I need to pee too often.’

  ‘But…’ Polly said, then stopped herself. Colin handed Nic the room service menu, the TV remote, a white bathrobe.

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ the girl sighed. ‘I can’t quite believe it.’

  ‘See you later, then,’ he said.

  Suddenly it was Nic who looked anxious. ‘What time will you be back?’ she wanted to know.

  In the taxi, Colin told Polly that if it was offered in the right way, Nic would be glad of their help. And as far as that evening went, he was proved right. When they got back to the hotel, Nic was a small, sleeping huddle under the covers of the second bed in Polly’s room.

  I am so happy to be home.

  Mead absorbs me and I feel that I never want to leave again, not for any reason that I could imagine. The old walls and the creaking stairs envelop me like a second skin, and the scent of cold stone, dust, wood ash and mould is as dear as a lover’s perfume. I love this place, even though it’s full of uncertainties. I am angry that there is no progress in the hunt for the princess’s treasure; as the time passes with no news the robbery feels more and more like a violation. I am torn between desire for Selwyn and guilt towards Polly, by sympathy for Amos and surprise about Katherine, and by a growing anxiety that I have brought discord instead of harmony to my friends and my house. But even so, in spite of all this, my spirits soar just because I am here.

  We’ll have Christmas together, all of us. It will be a happy time, and I know that perspectives can change within days, even hours. Maybe the new Mead will succeed after all, and become the real Mead.

  Already my quiet house is no longer quiet at all. My mother is physically frail and sometimes her mind is confused, but she is tough within. I’ve inherited that toughness, too, I realize. Joyce plays her radio at full volume because that’s the only way she can hear it, and shouts to me even when I’m briefly out of the room.

  ‘Barbara? I heard them giving a nice recipe for piccalilli. It said you could get it off the BBC website. You could ask Selwyn to show you how to do that. Do you know you’ve left that pan on the stove? Aren’t you afraid of the house burning down?’

  Amos comes across and sits in the kitchen, positioning himself across the table from Joyce, and they watch as I ice the Christmas cake I made last month, and cut pastry circlets for mince pies. Amos confides, when Joyce is upstairs, that Katherine still isn’t answering her phone. She told him she was going away for a couple of days, what did I think that meant?

  I assume that Katherine is with the bearded archaeologist, but I know little more than what she confided to Polly and me in the cocktail bar. She has turned out to be the darkest of dark horses, although when I think back over the time since she and Amos arrived at Mead I’m aware that she has acquired a glow, a positively sexy sheen, that I never saw in her before.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I have to say. ‘You’ve got to let her do what she wants, and hope that she decides to come back in the end.’

  ‘I want her to.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  You can’t always get what you want. I feel sorry for Amos. Katherine has put me in a difficult position, but I can hardly criticize. My own behaviour is far worse than hers.

  What has possessed us all?

  Whenever I speak to Polly I can hear a note in her voice that’s the equivalent of a chill breeze on a summer’s day, just ruffling the surface of still water. She’s too astute and perceptive not to have picked up the changed nuance between Selwyn and me, but she can’t know – can she? – what happened that afternoon.

  It was just once. It was wrong, and it was a shocking betrayal of Polly’s friendship, and it will never, ever happen again.

  But it was also wonderful. I can’t erase the memory, and I wouldn’t even if I could. I keep coming back to it, in my mind and in my dreams.

  And then there’s Selwyn himself. Even when he’s not actually in the house I can hear fusillades of drilling or hammering out in the barn, until the noise abruptly stops and seconds later he’s back here, bringing with him a blast of cold air and adrenaline. He grins at me, all red mouth and unshaven face, before sitting down knee to knee with Joyce to get warm in front of the range. He flirts with her as well as teasing, taking her Sudoku puzzle out of her knotty hands and filling in half the numbers for her. Then he says that she deserves a drink, and goes in search of the bottle of Baileys he has put aside just for her.

  ‘Here’s to you and me,’ he says, clinking his glass against hers.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ Joyce answers, although she is usually less of an
enthusiast for the season even than Colin. It’s mostly thanks to Selwyn that she has been so cheerful since I brought her back here.

  The telephone rings a lot, adding to the noise. Polly and Colin want to bring Ben’s pregnant ex-girlfriend to Mead for Christmas. I tell them yes, of course she must come, while Selwyn semaphores at me, ‘What? Polly’s mad.’

  Sam and Toby Knight call too, if they can’t reach their father at the cottage. I usually pick up the phone, and tell whichever one it happens to be that Amos is here with me, yes, and he seems all right, and reassure them that Mead is going to be home to everyone for Christmas this year. I am more and more excited by the prospect. As well as the big Christmas tree that stands in the hall, Selwyn has brought in another for the kitchen. We decorated it together, under Joyce’s orders.

  ‘It needs more tinsel. Load it on. I can’t be doing with your so-called good taste, Barbara. It’s plain dim.’

  I found some more strands, not too tarnished, in a box in the cupboard under the stairs. The resiny scent of the two trees floods the house.

  We are sitting in the kitchen again, Selwyn and Amos and my mother and me, as the thin light of day seeps away into twilight. It is almost the shortest day of the year. The four of us make a strange family. Joyce is nodding in her chair, Amos is reading, and I can feel Selwyn’s eyes on me. The two of us are in a state of suspense, waiting for I don’t know what. I do know that I love him and I push the certainly aside, brutally and deliberately, out into the darkness.

  Headlights sweep an arc beyond the yard gate, and a moment later I open the back door to the vicar. He rubs his hands, blinking in the light and nodding affably. He doesn’t often call at the house, mostly because I haven’t encouraged him to. Of course he’s picked up that the household doesn’t consist of just unresponsive me any longer, but is now lively with people and interesting activity. As if to underline this the phone rings yet again. It’s Omie, asking to speak to her father. The vicar sits down with us while I take a batch of mince pies out of the hot oven. He wants to know whether he’ll be seeing us all at the Christmas services.

  ‘I’ll be at midnight communion,’ Amos says, unexpectedly. ‘I always like that one.’

  ‘Tea, vicar?’ Selwyn asks, coming back from the phone.

  ‘If you’re doing your parish visits, this is probably about your fifteenth mince pie of the day,’ I apologize, but he takes one anyway.

  It turns out that he is actually here to speak to Amos.

  ‘How can I help you, vicar?’ Amos asks, with a flicker of his old, silky courtroom manner.

  The vicar clears his throat and brushes pastry from his lapel. The Meddlett Princess people have enlisted his help. The torc and shield are out of reach, for the time being at least, although there is talk of staging a protest at the museum to demand that the treasure be returned to the village. He says that there is a strong current of feeling locally that the princess herself ought to be brought home, to be reburied in her proper resting place at Mead.

  ‘Whereabouts, exactly?’ Amos wonders.

  ‘Well…I suppose, I imagine, somewhere close to the original grave site. I know of course that your house will be built over the grave itself…’

  ‘I’ve heard mention of the idea,’ Amos continues. Probably in the Griffin, I think. Apparently Amos has taken to going there in the evenings. He has joked about integration and how one or two of the friendliest patrons no longer actually turn their backs on him. Then he adds abruptly, ‘The fact is, I don’t know if the house will even be built.’

  Selwyn and I turn to stare at him. This is the first we have heard of it. There is a silence, prickly with embarrassment.

  ‘Who is this?’ Joyce suddenly wants to know. The vicar was introduced to her fifteen minutes ago, but she has had one of her forgetful moments. He reminds her, and they shake hands all over again.

  ‘Never a one for church, my daughter,’ Joyce puts in.

  The vicar turns back to Amos. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve put my foot in it by asking. If there’s anything I can do to help, either in pastoral or spiritual matters, you can always find me at the vicarage.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll remember that.’

  After he’s gone, Joyce dozes off again. Selwyn has been too generous with the Baileys.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d decided not to go ahead,’ I venture to Amos.

  He jumps up, scattering newspapers and sending his book flying.

  ‘I don’t want the bloody house if I can’t have Katherine there with me. What am I supposed to do with the place?’

  He swings away from us and blunders out into the darkness. We see the lights in the cottage flick on. Selwyn doesn’t say anything, let alone try to make a joke of it. Joyce sleeps soundly through all of this.

  I wash up the teacups, dry the teapot and put it back on the dresser shelf, then store the remaining mince pies in an airtight box in the larder. These won’t last long with the Knight boys and all the Davieses and Ben’s girlfriend here. I’ll make another batch tomorrow, I decide. These small decisions help to keep at bay a rising tide of dismay. There will be no glass and steel house on the violated site. The community is breaking up, piece by piece, before it has even properly established itself.

  I don’t know even what the next days will bring, let alone another year.

  Selwyn has taken to following me through the house. I tell him not to do it, intending never to be alone with him, even for one minute. But how are you supposed to make convincing an order that is the opposite of what you really want?

  After I have helped Joyce up to bed, I’m sitting in Jake’s old study. Selwyn told me as soon as I came home that he had shown the old letters and estate records to Polly. I expressed mild surprise and he said defensively, ‘Why not? Are they so private? I thought it would interest her, and I was quite right.’

  She must have spent hours in here. Some of the books and papers are set out in orderly rows, under notes and dates in her familiar handwriting. The room is cold without a fire lit, and I pull my layers of cardigans tighter. Now, precisely on cue, Selwyn appears in the doorway. He closes it behind him and then leans against it. He looks tired.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ he says.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I want to leave her.’

  I am appalled by his flat certainty. Genuinely, to the core of my being. I manage to stammer, ‘No. Not because of me, or to be with me. I won’t have that, or you.’

  He marches at me, grasps me by the elbows, kisses me as if that will work in a way that words don’t. He is so warm, vital, and as our bodies fuse together I feel rather than think the words, I saw you first, you were mine first and Polly has had you all these years, don’t we deserve our time together now?

  But I have known his intention, haven’t I, ever since that snatched afternoon? Maybe, even, the possibility has been in the back of my mind from the beginning, when the great plan for the new Mead was first conceived? Where Selwyn is concerned my capacity for self-delusion, deception and denial is apparently limitless. I shrivel within myself in shame and confusion.

  ‘I’m going to do it anyway. After Christmas. I can’t stand living like this.’

  I shout at him now, ‘Can’t you see what’s in front of your eyes?’

  I gesture through the thick wall, towards Amos’s cottage. ‘The misery these things cause?’

  He comes to me again, takes me in his arms, rests his face against mine. ‘There are levels of misery, Barb. Trust me, won’t you?’

  We’re standing there, locked together, when the door suddenly opens. We jump apart like criminals and I see Joyce standing there in her dressing gown.

  She has only been in bed for an hour, but probably isn’t aware of that.

  She says plaintively, ‘Barbara, have you seen my book? I want to read. I can’t find my book anywhere.’

  There’s no doubt she has seen us. I can’t attempt an explanation, or an excuse, and now none of us will know when or how a
reference to this little scene will spill out of her. I go to her and take her arm, leading her out of the room.

  ‘Let’s see if we can find it,’ I say.

  CHRISTMAS

  TWELVE

  Meddlett church and its land are familiar in all seasons, but I love this stark midwinter version. In the very depths of the year, the world seems spun out of threads of black and white. The massive yew by the churchyard gate is a black shape snipped out of a pearl-white sky, the tower stands like a flint bulwark against the wind, and the ranks of gravestones are set in steely grass that holds only the vaguest memory of green. There are flowers on some of the graves, but cold has nipped the glow out of the petals.

  My breath smokes ahead of me as I cross the path leading from the south door and head for the Meadowe plot. I have made a little wreath of ivy and holly from the Mead woods, as I do each year, and I place it against the simple headstone that marks Jake’s grave. Then I rest my hand on the shoulder of stone, rubbing the coating of loose grit and lichen with my fingertips as if to coax it into life. I’m telling Jake in a wordless rush of a confession that time has looped and doubled on itself, that I love Selwyn but I can’t allow him to turn his back on his marriage, and I’m not sure how at our age we can resist the turbulence that threatens us all.

  A temporary peace descends, at least.

  Christmas is nearly here. It’s not taking shape in quite the way I had planned and imagined, because no one seems to know quite who will be coming, and if they do appear what frame of mind they will be in or how they will all respond to each other. It’s probably a good thing that I can’t influence any of this, because in my eagerness to have it turn out well I might try to over-choreograph everything. The uncertainty is novel, after all the Christmases that Jake and I spent here together when our routine never varied. He liked to dip into the new books that were all the presents he ever wanted, to open up one of his bottles of good claret so that it had plenty of time to breathe, and then drink it quietly with our dinner.