Lovers and Newcomers

by Rosie Thomas

  Nic returned a weary smile. She hadn’t anticipated quite how hard it was going to be, looking after Leo on her own whilst trying to please her first couple of clients and sell herself to new ones, even though Polly was so good to her and Leo was easy compared with some of the babies she saw at the clinic. Kieran kept offering to help out too, but she was afraid that if she just let him, all the props of survival determination that held her up would collapse and she and Leo would be submerged in dependency. She was prickly towards Kieran as a result, but he refused to be discouraged and so she was coming to count on his constancy anyway.

  There was no way out of this, she had to acknowledge.

  ‘Why do you need a way out of everything?’ Jessie frowned. ‘It’s not difficult, is it? He fancies you, inexplicably you fancy him back. You’re both free. Straightforward, or what?’

  That might have been the way, before Leo, but not now. She had to be careful for both of them. Of course Jessie had nothing to do but put in her shifts at the Griffin, and the rest of her time she could spend sleeping or smoking dope or pretending to talk about philosophy with Amos Knight.

  Kierkegaard, that was what she was reading now.

  Nic sighed for the lazy days of pre-motherhood, gone for ever, and then worked up a warm but professional smile as she drove to the client’s house.

  Polly took Leo out for a walk in the turbo pram. Her hip didn’t hurt too much today.

  When she leaned over to look at him she saw that his dark blue eyes were wide open, fixed on the branches and clouds as they slid overhead. It was hard to separate now from then, a generation ago, when she had walked the twins down country lanes in Somerset. It felt as though the only difference apart from her ageing bones was Leo’s tranquil nature, whereas the twins had operated a 24-hour rota. If one was asleep, she remembered, the other was awake and screaming.

  How Selwyn would have loved this new baby, once he had held him in his arms.

  Damn you, Selwyn. Why did you have to go, and miss everything?

  She was walking back down the driveway to Mead when she heard a car. She stood aside as Katherine lowered the window and beamed out.

  ‘Hello, Granny,’ she called.

  ‘Come over to the barn right now,’ Polly ordered.

  Katherine and Miranda passed the baby between them. He reclined on one lap and then the other, enjoying the attention.

  Katherine said, ‘It must be wonderful being that age, don’t you think? All you ever see is huge melon smiles, looming over you.’

  ‘I’m not so sure Nic’s always smiling,’ Polly said. ‘I’d forgotten all about how relentless living with a baby can be.’

  Katherine couldn’t help glancing at Miranda, and Miranda returned her look.

  ‘Yes, I do wish I’d had a child,’ she said with simple candour. ‘Do you think all childless women imagine their might-have-been children, waiting in the wings somewhere but never hearing the cue to take the stage? I’d give anything for a grandchild now, to see him growing up at Mead the way Jake did. But all the same, I’m trying not to be jealous of you two. You’ll have to share yours. I should think there will be plenty to go around, in a few years’ time.’

  It was the only time either of them had ever heard her say even this much about having no children of her own. Miranda leaned down and pressed her nose against the baby’s boneless button one, and the short wings of grey hair swung forward to hide her face. There was less hectic rush and sparkle to Miranda these days, and she took more time over what she said.

  ‘There won’t always only be just you to admire, Leo Selwyn,’ she whispered.

  Polly made tea, and then they agreed that it wasn’t too early for a glass of wine. She warmed the bottle of milk for Leo, and Katherine fed him. He fell asleep after taking half of it, a bubble of milky drool swelling between his lips.

  The new angle of the sinking sun threw different shafts of light across the room, probing the corners where floorboards didn’t meet the wall and the angles under the stairs where leftover planks were propped against bare plaster, already gathering their own layers of dust. The barn was just as Selwyn had left it, and whilst it had looked good enough in the candlelight at Christmas, the citric glare of a spring day showed up all the rough edges. Polly had made no changes since the day he died. Some day she might, she told herself, but in the meantime she was settling into the fabric of the place just as it stood, laying down her own tender nacre in the abrasive new shell. In a way, Polly thought, she and Miranda might be domestic opposites but they both lived like molluscs within the pre-existing confines of their houses.

  Katherine felt the difference between herself and her two friends particularly sharply today.

  Coming back here to Mead was a reminder of how a predictable life could change in a mere six months. The shell she had occupied back in September had smashed, leaving her exposed to the tides. She was in no doubt that she was in love with Chris Carr, but loving a divorced man with two daughters was a series of questions, not an answer. The days and nights that they spent together made them both happy, but these were hours that had to be set aside from two lives based in two different cities, revolving around two different jobs, and partly forfeit to four children and two ex-spouses. Every week was different. Every day, even. She was surprised to realize what a creature of routine she had once been, and how much store she had set upon order in her life with Amos. Nowadays even the simplest processes, like getting dressed or cooking a proper dinner, had become fraught with difficulty. The shoes or belt vital to complete an outfit were always in London or still at Mead, and however hard she looked in the cupboards of whichever kitchen she was in, there were no vanilla pods or fenugreek.

  ‘This is how life is,’ Chris murmured to her.

  They stood in each other’s arms, and he rocked her on the hearth rug beside their joined reflection in the mantelpiece mirror. He was a sanguine, optimistic, organized person compared with her. Sometimes she felt frightened by her own rampaging disorder. Who was she, nowadays, who had once been Katherine Knight?

  She had tried to make friends with his two girls. She was surprised by her own surprise at discovering that they had pierced ears, and wore pale pink hooded tops and big white trainers with grey marl leggings. They hadn’t responded to her friendly overtures with any enthusiasm, and she knew within the first half-hour that she had struck the wrong note with them.

  ‘I’m afraid they haven’t taken to me,’ she said to Chris.

  ‘Yes, they have. You’ve got to remember they’re loyal to their mum, and as far as they’re concerned you take up my attention, which should rightfully be theirs.’

  ‘I understand that. But they don’t like me.’

  ‘Yes, they do. They think you’re a bit posh, that’s all.’

  She stared at him, swallowing a hiccup of dismay. ‘Is that better than too old for you, do you think?’

  Chris laughed. ‘Neither objection, if that’s what they are, matters in the least. They’ll come around. We have the right to our own lives, Kath.’

  He was the only person who had ever called her Kath. The only one she had ever allowed to do so. Polly poured each of them a second glass of wine. The baby obligingly slept.

  ‘What about you, K?’ she prompted.

  Katherine looked from one to the other. Polly managed her loss, talking about it when she could and keeping quiet when she couldn’t bear it. Katherine loved her and admired her bravery. But Miranda, she thought, had almost the harder time.

  Compared with her friends’ lives, her own happiness seemed intemperate, too vivid and insistent, as if at any minute it might explode inside her.

  With precise, quiet articulation she told them, ‘I am fine. Everything has changed so much, but I wouldn’t change it back again.’

  They waited, looking at her.

  ‘I love him,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know how it has happened, but I do.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Polly said, in her brisk way.

>   The pressure of their different circumstances seemed to ease as they all laughed.

  ‘Here we are then, the three of us,’ Miranda said. ‘After all these years.’

  Colin helped Katherine to take down a pair of English watercolours that had hung in the small hallway of the cottage. Amos had given them to her one Christmas. They sealed them in bubble-wrap and placed them beside the front door with a suitcase and a couple of packing cases. They worked quickly, without saying much, and were relieved when the job was done and Katherine’s belongings had been transferred to her car.

  Stripped back to its holiday-rental bareness the place echoed as they closed doors and clicked off lights. Katherine was reminded of the fenland cottage where she had stayed with Chris that first time, and without warning found herself blushing. Colin glanced at her with amused speculation. He had woken up again to sexual nuance, Carlos in New York had done that much for him, and he saw that Katherine’s sheen suited her.

  There was no such thing as too old, he acknowledged. Only too sad, or too afraid, or too lacking in self-belief.

  ‘Are you happy, K?’ he asked.

  ‘I believe I am,’ she said. ‘But I feel guilty about it.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he advised.

  They were in the kitchen, confronted by the blameless pine cupboard fronts and furniture.

  ‘Are you really going to live here?’ she asked him.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. It’s not really gay enough, is it?’

  Colin had thought hard about it. If Miranda would sell the place to him, he would have an investment at Mead that would draw him back and help to keep him anchored here. It wasn’t to do with money or property, but with physical commitment to a place and people.

  ‘I can change things, of course. Rip out the pine, bring in the granite and my Basquiat.’

  The places he had lived in since breaking up with Stephen had been just the sort of settings you would expect for a gay, middle-aged set designer. He saw them now as superficially glamorous but fundamentally un-homely, and he was not at all sentimental about leaving the current one. Nothing could be more different than this little house attached to Mead in its landscape of fields and copses, with Polly living opposite and Miranda next door. He had asked himself if this was a final camouflage act, another way of hiding rather than of coming home at last, but he knew that he could conceal himself from just about anyone anywhere in the world, except from his oldest friends, who were right here.

  ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ he said.

  Katherine glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go, Col.’

  Chris was waiting for her.

  Colin walked with her to her car. She didn’t look back.

  ‘Have you seen Amos’s new place?’ he asked, putting the last of her boxes into the boot.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  Katherine got in and started the engine.

  ‘Needs a woman’s touch,’ she said.

  Amos was too busy even to find a builder to improve the Georgian house, let alone worry about soft furnishings. There was a series of meetings to negotiate, with a variety of people and organizations ranging from the parish council, English Heritage and the county planning authorities, to the vicar of Meddlett and his own wife’s lover. But Amos was single-minded. He reported back after each session to Vin Clarke and the customers in the Griffin, Roy’s wife whose name was Patricia, Mrs Spragg in the shop, and anyone else in Meddlett who was interested or had an issue, which turned out to be most of the population.

  At a public meeting held in the sports pavilion he said, ‘We’re not talking the curse of crop failure or foot and mouth if we don’t bring the princess home, of course not, let’s not be superstitious, although I have heard such things mentioned. It’s a matter of doing the proper thing by her, according her the respect her position and her history deserves.

  ‘It was my excavations that disturbed her rest, and although we as a community as well as the archaeologists and prehistorians have all benefited from a great discovery, I take responsibility for that original disturbance. That’s why I’m standing here in front of you this evening.’

  There were various murmurings in response to this, not all approving, but Amos took disapprobation in his stride.

  ‘This is an occasion for Meddlett, present-day modern Meddlett, to show the county and indeed the whole country what we can do. We should make it a solemn day but a splendid one.’

  ‘What does that mean, exactly?’ someone called.

  ‘Fundraising, mate, as per,’ someone else shouted back.

  ‘I believe we shall get some funds for the purpose from the county archaeologist’s department, and I will also be supporting the event personally,’ Amos purred.

  ‘You can afford it, can’t you?’ said the same heckler.

  The meeting broke up on a positive note, however. To the general approval of the village, there would be a Meddlett Princess Day in June.

  Amos relayed this news to Jessie when she called at his house at the end of her shift. Jessie seemed to prefer to spend her time at his place. Not that he objected to that, particularly. Gulliver busily sniffed around the margins of the kitchen.

  ‘This is my dream house, you know. I’d never even been inside before you bought it,’ she sighed. ‘Hey, Gully. Oh God. Sorry, Amos.’

  ‘Use this.’ He threw her the kitchen roll. ‘What’s wrong with your own home these days?’

  ‘Bloody Kieran and Nic, sitting on the sofa with cups of cocoa, watching romantic DVDs and having a bit of a kiss when I’m not looking, that’s what. It’s like living in an old folks’ home,’ she complained.

  ‘That’s not my impression of how old people’s homes are run.’

  ‘So it’s not like that up at Mead, eh?’ Her smile could take on a flicker of gleeful cruelty.

  ‘Not at all.’ He laughed back, in spite of himself. Jessie was always good company. He went on telling her about Princess Day, and the more elaborate plans that he was beginning to formulate.

  ‘One thing I’d like to know,’ he concluded.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Who was it who stole the treasure?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Why do you think I’d have any idea?’

  ‘Damon?’ Amos suggested.

  His own theory was that Jessie had told Damon about the find, and Damon had then passed on the information, for a consideration. But he had no way of knowing this for certain and Jessie was much too smart to let on. He hoped she wouldn’t, in any case.

  What Amos did know, because the police had told him so, was that a likely set of suspects had been identified, but by the time their premises were raided, just before Christmas, there was no sign of any of the stolen goods. None of the recovered items had borne any trace of a fingerprint, or any evidence that would link the suspects to them. Amos was also fully aware that unless a new lead should present itself, police time was too valuable to be expended on a hunt for thieves of goods that had all been found, or even for the attackers of a guard who was now fully recovered and back at work.

  ‘Why Damon?’ Jessie wondered, glancing up from a prolonged examination of her Golden Virginia packet.

  ‘All right, let me put this another way. If I were able to persuade the authorities to let us put the treasure on temporary public display at Mead, what’s the likelihood of persons you may or may not know mounting an all-guns-blazing assault on the treasure for a second time, and whacking another innocent security officer over the head in the process?’

  She thought about this. ‘How would I know? But my guess would be, people around here are such losers, if there was, like, proper security, they wouldn’t be able to do anything much, would they?’

  ‘I see. Good,’ Amos answered.

  He would go ahead and make the arrangements.

  The white surplices of the clergy fluttered in the June breeze, a string quartet stopped playing and the expectant crowd fell silent.
The only sound was the calling of wood pigeons in the tall trees and the creak of canvas from the marquees.

  Miranda watched a small procession making its way from a line of vehicles drawn up at the margin of the field, where the wood opened up to the broad plateau and its view of pastureland. The bishop’s chaplain bearing the crozier led the column, followed by the bishop himself in cope and mitre, the vicar of Meddlett, and then Kieran and Christopher Carr, both dressed in dark suits and ties. The archaeologists each carried a casket woven from willow branches. Behind them walked more county officials, one wearing a mayoral chain, and bringing up the rear of the procession came the Meddlett Brownie pack, with the tallest two children carrying the poles of the St Andrew’s church banner. A local television camera crew, a radio team, a group of press photographers and the accompanying journalists moved alongside the official procession, jockeying for the best angle. Behind Miranda the crowd of onlookers pressed forwards to the white ropes that marked off a square of ground and a deep trench. Joyce’s wheelchair was positioned at centre front, and Miranda moved her slightly so she maintained the best view.

  Patches of shadow swept over the fields and then sunlight blazed again. Cabbage white butterflies wove exuberant patterns over campion and oxeye daisies in the long grass.

  The Meddlett church choir was drawn up inside the rope square. When the bishop and his retinue reached the edge of the trench, the choir mistress lifted her hand and the string quartet’s violinist drew out the note.

  Miranda smiled to think that the form this brief service was to take had caused more debate than any other aspect of Amos’s glorious Princess Day celebration plans. It was a pre-Christian interment, one faction declared. The opposition insisted that there must be a religious aspect to it, the bishop could hardly be asked to preside over a pagan ceremony.

  In the end, the bishop himself had settled the matter. He had a keen interest in archaeology. There would be a single hymn, a short and wholly ecumenical prayer, and then the committal.

  The choir sang, And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green. Miranda heard her mother’s quavering soprano as the crowd joined in, more than three hundred people raising their voices to the summer air. Looking along the line she saw Amos singing lustily, flanked by his sons. Nic carried her baby in a sling against her chest and sang, with her eyes on Kieran. Alpha Davies slipped her hand with the new diamond on the third finger through Jaime’s arm, Jessie somehow sang without moving her lips, Polly and Katherine stood shoulder to shoulder singing, and the hymn rolled out over the decorated marquee and faded away into the grass-scented breeze.