The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  He stiffened but met her challenge steadily. “No.”

  She still didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but it was no use, she wasn’t going to get any further admission from him, that much at least she did know. A lifetime lay between them – of love and misunderstandings, of hope kindled, and hope unfulfilled, but the shutters had come down between them as, eventually, they always had.

  Defeated, she had left to return home, her doubts still not satisfactorily quelled, but another one at last understood: after she’d severed her relationship with Kit there had, later, been another man, who hadn’t been free to marry her, but with whom she’d been happy for over fifteen years, until he had died. A good, kind and loving man with a wonderful sense of humour. She had been grateful for what he’d given her. It was more than many women had. But she had always, at the bottom of her heart, believed that no matter what, it would always be Kit. The one and only. And that whatever he had done it could, ultimately, make no difference.

  But now, at last, she knew she had been chasing shadows.

  15

  The note propped against a jug of bronze chrysanthemums on the mantelpiece said that Harriet had gone up to London. Nina frowned, asking herself what could have prompted this sudden decision, when Harriet had allegedly been up to her eyebrows in work. The note went on to say she should be home by late afternoon but in fact, barely had there been time to read it before she followed close on their heels. Looking very elegant in her moss green suit and a smart hat, she came in, saying, “Good thing I gave you a key, Nina,” before registering the presence of a visitor, the explanation for the unusual occurrence of the car parked in the lane outside.

  “Rose Jessamy’s son? Good heavens!” she repeated, taking the large hand of the battle-scarred young man Nina had brought back with her. Could it be possible? But of course! Scanning his face with a shock of recognition and understanding, she realised there was no mistaking that smile. And though he appeared loose and relaxed, underlying it was a sense of controlled energy and determination, no doubt inherited from his mother. No one who’d known Rose Jessamy and seen her work could doubt that she had been possessed of a great sense of life force. “Well,” she said, taking off her hat, shaken despite herself, “since I don’t believe in coincidences, tell me how you came to find us. Did the police send you?”

  “No. But it was through them I found Mrs Tempest, your sister.”

  “Daisy? She must have been so pleased to meet you. She was very taken with your mother.”

  Harriet didn’t as a rule warm quickly to new people. Instant rapport with strangers always seemed slightly suspect to her, but she was very conscious that this often made her appear distant at the beginning of an acquaintance. Tom Verrier, however, didn’t seem intimidated by her, as people often were, mistaking her reserve for coldness, and she soon felt her wariness dissolve and, as he talked about his mother, she relaxed. “We only knew Rose briefly,” she commented, noting en passant how his eyes followed Nina as she went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. “But I’m sorry to learn she died so young. She became a restorer, you say? I hope she kept on with her own work as well, it’d be a great pity if not. Those frescoes at Charnley-”

  “Yes, she left a lot of paintings and stuff, and that’s one of the things I was hoping to do in London … to try and arrange some sort of retrospective, and perhaps one later in France as well. She was beginning to make quite a name for herself over there before she died. Maybe it’ll have to wait until the art world gets back on to a normal footing, but I’d like to put out a few feelers. It seems the least I can do for her.”

  It was warm in the room, with the late afternoon sunlight slanting in through the windows, lighting up the copper jug of glowing, bronzy-gold garden chrysanthemums on the mantelpiece, filling the room with their bitter-sweet tang, the essence of autumn. They were almost exactly the colour of Rose Jessamy’s hair, something she hadn’t passed on to her son. Any legacy from her seemed to be in the readiness for action Harriet sensed in him, pleasing her, coinciding as it did with her own inclinations. “That’s a splendid idea,” she said. “My sister Vita’s husband may be able to help you there – he’s quite famous, knows all the right people in the art world.”

  “I’d be glad of an introduction to him. Have I heard of him?”

  It seemed that he had, and was very impressed when Harriet explained who he was. At the same time, she wondered, if Rose had been making something of an impression with her work in France, why Wycombe, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things in the art world, had never heard of her. Perhaps he had, but had chosen to say nothing. With his rigid sense of propriety, she didn’t doubt he might well have felt it was inappropriate to mention the name of one so closely associated with a time of tragedy for the family.

  When Nina returned with the tea, Tom got up from his chair with only a slightly awkward movement of his left leg, hardly even a limp by now, due to some excellent physiotherapy. Moving aside the magazines on the coffee table to make room for the tea things, his hand brushed against hers as he took the tray from her. He felt her awareness of it, but she didn’t look up, busying herself with the cups and saucers, her movements neat and economical, just the slight flush on her cheeks betraying her. He waved away the milk as she held up the jug, glad that the tea seemed stronger than Daisy’s coffee.

  “Hope these biscuits are all right, Harriet,” she remarked doubtfully, “they were the only ones I could find.”

  “Heavens, they’re as old as Adam! They were slipped into my basket as a favour so I couldn’t bring myself to refuse them, though biscuits aren’t my thing.”

  Nor mine, either, thought Tom, observing with resignation that they were rich tea again, but he took one and pretended there was nothing wrong with it, though it tasted like a mouthful of soft chalk.

  She sampled one herself and pulled a face. “Eat them at your peril, Tom. Good thing we have some hungry sparrows around here.”

  As they drank their tea, he was amused to feel both women watching him, Harriet especially. He felt her summing up this person, this Tom Verrier who’d been catapulted into their lives, possibly trying to absorb him as she would a new mathematical concept. On the way here, Nina had told him about this formidable aunt, who had been a don at London University, her subject mathematics, who’d worked during the war as a boffin on some highly secret work that she was forbidden to talk about, even yet. He’d expected a frumpish intellectual and was relieved to meet a mature woman, attractive and smart, and with a sense of humour, whom he immediately liked.

  He was at ease with her from the word go, in pretty much the same way as he’d been at ease with Nina. When they’d set out from her father’s house, Nina hadn’t seemed to feel the need to keep up a stream of endless chatter, unlike most young women he’d known, and since he’d needed to concentrate on finding his way out of the city, that had suited him pretty well. He’d no intentions of letting the silence continue, however – but in fact it was she who had put the first question, as soon as they were clear of the city and driving through the grimy, run-down suburbs that reflected a war-weariness more apparent there than in the reawakening city centre. When she’d seen he was free to give his attention, she’d begun by asking him what he did for a living in civvy street. “Are you an Egyptologist, too – or a painter like your mother?”

  “God, no, I can’t draw a straight line! And as for Egypt and all that – too familiar, I guess.”

  “All that? Too familiar? Egypt! Dear me.” He grinned, pleased that she could tease him, which boded well. “I spent some time there when I was in the WAAF,” she offered, quickly adding that it hadn’t been for long, only a brief tour of duty. It soon became obvious that she really preferred him to do the talking. He noticed she slid away from personal issues and felt that perhaps he was not the only one with scars; only hers might be emotional ones. It had made him feel surprisingly tender towards her.

  “Egypt has a lot to offer,” he
’d said, “maybe too much for me – perhaps that’s why I set my horizons further.” And then, he was telling her about his journeys of exploration and how he financed them by writing travel books. “Is that so funny?”

  “Not at all, it’s just that—” Rather diffidently, smiling, she mentioned that she, too, wrote books. “Nothing much, just a couple of light historical romances.”

  “Now isn’t that amazing?” He beamed. “As if it had been meant. And more amazing that we’ve never heard of each other before.”

  “Well, I haven’t exactly made it to the bestseller lists!”

  “Nor me. One day, though.” Was he sounding brashly overconfident? He hadn’t meant to, but if determination was all that was needed to turn the possibility into a certainty he’d do it, and hopefully in the not too distant future.

  Once started, conversation was easy: Egypt, and his childhood there; thumbnail sketches of the remote places which he’d explored before the war and talk of those countries even more distant where he hoped to go in the future. She was a sympathetic listener and he was aware, with a perception that didn’t always characterise his dealings with the opposite sex, of an underlying depth to her. She wasn’t as young as he’d first thought. He’d had a notion, curious to him who’d always regarded himself as self-sufficient, that one might lean on her in a crisis.

  “More tea?” asked Harriet now.

  “Please.” Maybe it would take away the taste of the stale biscuit, and the three, possibly four more, he’d eaten without realising what he was doing.

  “You’ll stay for supper, I hope?”

  Lord, did he seem that hungry? “Thanks, but I’ve already stayed too long. I must get back.”

  “Nonsense, after bringing Nina all this way.”

  Nina added her persuasions. “We can have a pie. I’ve brought this tin of meat with me that my landlady got for me - it’s a sort of Spam, but it has a thick layer of fat at the bottom of the tin that you can make pastry with.”

  This had to be the British sense of humour. He said hastily, “No, no, I can’t expect you to provide for unexpected guests, taking your rations.”

  “It’s very tasty.” Her eyes danced. She was making fun of him.

  “I believe you. So why not save it for a treat? Tell you what - isn’t there somewhere around here where I can take you two ladies out to eat? Or even buy some fish and chips? I’ve become positively addicted to them.”

  Nina laughed. Heavens, they’re more than half in love already, Harriet thought. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, and though she wasn’t actually blushing, she looked warmed, as if she was lit from within. It made Harriet feel old, and for a moment, the memories the afternoon had brought back choked her. She too had felt that once, that lightning bolt, that certainty. Which reminded her that she’d have to find a suitable moment to say why she’d rushed up to London like that. After reading those notebooks of hers, Nina must be bursting with curiosity about Kit. It would be an exercise of the imagination, finding an explanation as to why she’d broken the non-communication of years.

  Tom was disappointed to hear that Garvingden didn’t run to a fish and chip shop.

  “There’s always the Lamb, I suppose,” Harriet said. “They’ll find us something, if the landlord’s in a good mood – not by any means certain – but it might even be something nice if his wife has anything to do with it.”

  “She’s a wizard cook,” Nina said. “Shall I ring up and see if they can do anything?”

  Love is a winged chariot, and sped her to the telephone and back in a moment with the news that Mrs Binns could accommodate them at seven thirty.

  In Tom’s opinion, the Lamb & Flag provided every attraction anyone looking for a quaint English pub could wish for. Low pantiled roofs, ivy-wreathed walls, and an interior like a stage set: roaring fire, smelly old dog snoring in front of it, shining horse brasses, spittoons, old codgers in the inglenook, ceiling pickled in tobacco smoke. It also boasted a new-fangled jukebox, which Binns had acquired from a now-defunct American air base.

  “Seeing as it’s you, Miss Jardine,” said Mrs Binns in a stage whisper, “I’ve found you a bit of something tasty. Have to have it in the back, though. Gets noisy in here later on.”

  Eating in the Binns’ private parlour would be a positive advantage in view of the jokebox, as the landlady insisted on calling it. It might draw in the younger element, as Binns claimed, but its repertoire consisted of all the newest, rowdy records from America and she never tired of pointing out how many village regulars were dropping off … if it was one of they amusement arcades folk wanted, why, they could take theirselves off to the seaside, not look for it in the Lamb! The odds on Mrs Binns winning the argument were long in the village, but at the moment, the jokebox remained.

  After the warmth of the snug, where they’d waited for their meal to be prepared, the parlour felt cold. The fire had only just been lit, and smoked. The room was stuffed with old fashioned furniture and kept ferociously clean, though it was used only on high days and holidays. But Mrs Binns had spread her best crotcheted tablecloth on the highly polished Victorian table, and presently there appeared large, hot, plates of home-cured ham and sizzling eggs, accompanied by succulent field mushrooms, as well as home-baked bread and a large pot of tea, to murmurs of pleasure and appreciation all round.

  The chimney belched more smoke, whereupon the landlady knelt and gave the coals a vigorous poke. “Drat this old fire! It’s not been lit since we had Grandpa’s funeral tea in here, six months gone, but it’ll be all right, directly, when it gets a blaze on.”

  “Never mind the fire – this is a feast,” Tom said, tackling the ham and eggs.

  “Get it down you and don’t ask no questions. And mum’s the word. I’ll have ’em here from all round the Wrekin, else, though it’s all from my own pig and my own hens. There you are, what did I say? It’s going nicely now.” Mrs Binns nodded encouragingly and left them to it.

  Wine was as unheard of in the Lamb & Flag as champagne at a teetotal wedding, but the local beer was good, and conducive to conversation. By the time the ham and eggs had been disposed of and the rhubarb pie was but a memory on the tongue, Harriet felt able at last to broach the subject that was uppermost in her mind. “I don’t know what the police have said to you, Tom, but at least I hope they’ve abandoned the ridiculous idea that your mother may have been responsible for my mother’s death.”

  “They haven’t ruled out the possibility.”

  “Then they’re bigger fools than I thought.”

  “I have to say they didn’t impress me overmuch,” he agreed, laconically enough, but not fooling Harriet. So he had a capacity for anger, beneath that easy manner. Kept under control, directed properly, she’d never thought that was a bad thing in anyone.

  Nina, who’d held back her impatience long enough, broke in, before she’d time to weigh up whether or not she’d been indiscreet, “I hope I haven’t talked out of turn, Harriet, but I’ve told Tom about the boxes of papers found at Charnley, and your mother’s Egyptian journal. And would you believe – he knows Professor Iskander.”

  “Do you really, Tom? Professor Iskander, you say?”

  Tom explained how Iskander had first been an outstanding pupil of his father’s when Michel had lectured in Egyptology, had later assumed his mentor’s profession, and how their acquaintance had developed into an old and valued friendship. Harriet supposed, recalling the passages in the journals where Beatrice had talked of the young Egyptian’s enthusiasm for his country’s history and traditions, its ancient civilisation, that it was almost inevitable he should have chosen the subject as his life’s work.

  “Since you mention the police–” began Tom, “I’ve only a week or two before I go back to East Grinstead for my last treatment. After that, it’s back home. I thought events moved slowly in Egypt, but this lethargy …”

  “It’s not lethargy,” said Harriet, “it’s British gamesmanship. Keep things off the boil long enough
and they’ll go away.”

  “Not gamesmanship, either, it’s inertia. If they’ve discovered what Tutankhamun ate for breakfast, surely to God — ?”

  Harriet laughed. “Inspector Grigsby—”

  “The hell with Grigsby! Excuse me, but I’m not prepared to sit back and let justice take its own course – not if it’s going to take another thirty-seven years! That was the impression they gave me – it’s already waited nearly forty years, so what’s another few weeks? Or years? Makes me want to light a squib under them. Time’s a commodity in short supply with me at the moment, but at least I have the next few weeks to see what I can come up with, and I’m damned if I’m going to leave without at least trying to clear my mother’s name.” He eyed them speculatively. “Trouble is, this isn’t my line of country — and on top of that, I’m coming to it cold, without any prior knowledge, so–”

  “You want us to help,” said Nina.

  “I can’t even begin without you.”

  Harriet’s eyebrows rose. “Your grasp of essentials does you credit.”

  “Yes, well, I do have a sort of vested interest in sorting this thing out. And not only because of my mother.” He hesitated, looking from one to the other. “I guess I ought to have told you sooner, but you’ll have to know who I am, sooner or later.”

  Harriet said, “I already know who you are, Tom. I knew from the moment I walked in through the door that you were Marcus’s son.”

  They looked at each other. The same identical crooked smile lit both their faces.