Meadowland

by Alison Giles

  I sagged, staring at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What sort of bitch is it that …’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘The hell I have.’

  ‘But …’ I felt my tongue on my lips. My mouth was dry as ice. I got up, enfolded myself in a dressing gown and tied the belt. In the kitchen I automatically flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No! Well, yes. Please.’

  He followed me and put his arms round my waist as I reached up into the cupboard. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘Milk?’

  He loosed his hold and fetched the bottle from the fridge.

  We carried the coffee through to the sitting room. I took the big easy chair while Mark fetched a towel and wrapped it round himself, sarong-style. He perched on the edge of the sofa, leaning towards me, his broad bare feet planted squarely on the thick-pile rug.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘So that’s not how you see it?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  He raised his arms in mock surrender. ‘All right. All right. Have it your own way.’

  ‘I should never have told you.’

  ‘Whyever not! It explains a lot. I mean, why your parents are so … polite with each other.’ He hesitated. ‘Some of your attitudes too, perhaps?’

  ‘My attitudes! What are you talking about?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  But I wouldn’t. I made him spell it out. Challenged him. Provoked him. I was aware of what I was doing but unable to stop myself. It was a blazing row, with no holds barred on my part. Every last thing I could find to throw at him, real or imaginary, I flung in an oral stream of rage that seemed unstemmable.

  On a tide of exultation, I stormed through to the bedroom, threw on my clothes and, gathering up what possessions of mine I could carry, swept out, crashing the door behind me.

  Frigid, he’d called me. Distrustful of men. Well – I waved away a fly that had settled on my notepad – I supposed he was right. About being distrustful anyway.

  Clare, good old Clare, robust as ever, had scorned the accusation of frigidity when I confided a vetted version to her. ‘That’s what all men say when they can’t have things their own way.’ It made me feel better – a bit. But there was a nasty, logical little corner of my mind whispering that if you don’t trust someone entirely, then maybe you do hold back. And that – I swiped angrily at the fly again – was no doubt what I’d been doing ever since. Attempts to patch things up with Mark hadn’t worked; nor had any relationship since then progressed beyond the first few dates.

  And I’d never again risked telling anyone, not even Clare, about Flora. With a sudden start it dawned on me that it wasn’t just men I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust anyone. Not even my mother? I certainly didn’t trust her to understand about my visit to Cotterly. A wave of loneliness engulfed me.

  ‘Shit!’ I said it aloud, but there was no-one to hear.

  I stood up and, grasping my briefcase, marched back into the hotel.

  I dreaded the moment when I would be faced with the decision whether to head straight back to London or to turn off and take the valley road.

  As I drove, I resorted to a game of counting red cars – why red ones? – as they passed me heading back the way I’d come, like plucking petals from a daisy: I will turn off, I won’t turn off, I will … In the event, it was a grubby blue Volkswagen trundling along at a steady thirty that fate commissioned. Several times I prepared to overtake, only to drop back hastily as a van or lorry appeared over the brow of a hill or round a corner. Distracted by the frustration, I lost track of my counting game, relaxing my consciousness of precisely where I was even. As I flicked my indicator yet again, the junction sign loomed at the roadside. I glanced in my mirror at the line of vehicles holding back behind, anticipating my pulling out. The indicator ticked remorselessly … and obediently I allowed the Astra to follow the grid markings on to the centre of the road. On the passenger side, the queue ground past as, committed, I waited to cross the oncoming traffic.

  It was madness, of course. I regretted the impulse as soon as I’d acted upon it. Even now I should have been half a mile further along the main road, heading sensibly back to London. If I’d kept going, I’d have been back by late afternoon, in time to arrange to meet someone later for a Chinese or even to change and wander over to the South Bank to pick up a last-minute ‘return’ for tonight’s show.

  Oh, well, instead – the thought restored me – I could call on my mother and drive up to town early the next morning. I should have thought of it anyway. After all, I hadn’t really given her as much time as I might have done these last couple of months. Not that she’d complained. That wasn’t her way. ‘You have your own life to lead,’ she’d said. ‘I can manage.’

  She had certainly shown herself wonderfully resilient in the face of widowhood. ‘At least,’ she’d confided with a brave smile on the day of Father’s funeral, ‘black suits me.’

  The weekend after my mission to return Flora’s books, when guilt prompted a visit home, she ran out to greet me as I pulled up in the driveway, sheltering us both from the rain under a huge golfing umbrella. She was wearing a black and silver polka dot blous.

  ‘New?’ I queried as we settled round the fire and Mother poured tea. Flames hissed quietly around the artificial coals.

  ‘Why, no. I’ve had it quite a while.’ She leaned across, proffering cake. ‘In fact I discovered I had quite a number of suitable bits and pieces tucked away at the back of the wardrobe.’ Almost – I tried to suppress the thought before it could surface – as though she’d been waiting for this day. Not that anyone, least of all me, would blame her if she had. It had hardly been – I searched for the right word – a satisfactory marriage.

  Even so, it was not like my mother to let an opportunity for a new outfit pass. Surely she wasn’t needing to economise? Whatever else, Father had always provided amply. An image of Flora loomed up as an appalling possibility struck me. Casually, helping myself to a piece of Battenberg, I asked, ‘Has Father’s will been sorted out yet?’

  Her answer was reassuring. It would all take time, but according to the solicitor, ‘such a nice young man … taken over from old Mr Robinson who retired last year…’, everything was very straightforward. ‘He’s left everything to me, of course.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Apart from some small bequest to – what was it now? – some wildfowl trust, I believe. Wildfowl, I ask you!’ She picked up the teapot, nodded towards it and looked questioningly at me.

  ‘Oh. Yes please.’ I passed my cup and saucer.

  ‘Eventually it will all come to you of course …’ Mother transferred her attention to the milk jug. Then she looked up brightly. ‘If you need anything at the moment …?’

  ‘No, no. I’m fine.’

  The telephone rang – someone checking the Meals-on-Wheels rota, it became apparent. Mother could oblige on Tuesday, but Wednesday was her library run, and Friday … She certainly kept herself occupied, I reflected. What with her good works and her keep-fit classes and her keen membership of the local fuchsia society. I’d asked her once whether she’d ever considered taking a part-time job; like so many other mothers, I’d suggested. She’d stared at me in bewilderment. ‘But how would I ever find the time? And in any case there’s no need.’ There wasn’t, of course. Feminist ideas, I reflected, hadn’t percolated through to Mother – not as far as she personally was concerned anyway.

  She was still chatting. I leaned back, idly surveying the room. The furniture was arranged as it had always been, each chair and table nailed by habit to its decreed position. The usual pile of magazines sat to attention on the shelf beneath the occasional table, and my parents’ wedding photograph, set at its precise angle, continued to grace the top of the bureau. It was all comfortingly familiar and reliable. In contrast, the gap where my father’s pipe-rack had always stood seemed, as soon as I identified it, as
substantial as the physical object itself.

  ‘You’ve made a start on sorting Father’s things, then?’ I observed when my mother eventually replaced the receiver.

  ‘I’ve done more than that. I’ve been through the entire house. Easier done straightaway. It’s all in the garage waiting to go down to the charity shop or be collected for the Scouts’ jumble sale.’

  I nodded. ‘Well done.’

  She looked at me doubtfully. ‘I can’t imagine there’s anything you’d want? I told Harold to take anything he could use …’

  ‘Quite right.’

  I took my bag upstairs and dumped it on the bed. The bedspread was the one I’d so painstakingly crocheted with oddments of wool while I was still at junior school. I’d resisted regular suggestions by my mother that it was about time to throw it out. The colours had faded and in places the wool had worn thin, springing into holes. Gingerly I fingered them. They could be darned – if I was prepared to take time and trouble.

  ‘I think,’ I said to my mother before I left on the Sunday, ‘I’ll take that old bedspread back with me. If that’s OK with you?’

  ‘I’ll be glad to see the back of it.’ She laughed. ‘You are funny. Is there anything else you want?’

  I lied. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ For some reason I didn’t feel inclined to own to having already stashed three fishing rods and a red tin box in the boot of the car.

  They were still there, wedged against the slope of the back seat; offering, in some way, an excuse for the route I was now taking. All I needed – I grinned wryly – was a pair of green wellies and a Barbour. I indulged the entertaining image of myself so dressed; standing by the open boot, rods in hand – smiling for a cameraman from one of the up-market glossies. I laughed aloud. My mother would love that. Her daughter: ‘… relaxing at the weekend on Lord Whatsit’s estate,’ she’d read out delightedly from the blurb alongside.

  ‘And you could have had it all,’ I mentally parodied her, ‘if you’d married Mark.’ Yes, well, I didn’t.

  There was a sweep of bare earth to the side of the road where it curved to approach a bridge. I pulled on to it and wound down the window. The silence flowed in, cocooning me more effectively than pressed metal and reinforced glass ever could. Two children, glancing sideways in momentary curiosity, rattled past on bicycles. They paused on the hump of the bridge and, standing astride their crossbars, peered over its low parapet. Their voices piped towards me, then wafted away into the stillness. When I glanced again, they were weaving their way up the hill beyond. And were gone. The occasional car swooped or, according to its driver’s temperament, drawled past – like flies across the pages of a book. I lit a cigarette and leaned back. There was no hurry.

  No hurry for what exactly? What was I planning; what did I expect to happen? It was as though the valley were a stage and I a member of the audience – the sole member of the audience – waiting for the curtain to rise. Had I come to observe, or – as at the pantomime so many years ago – to take part?

  I jerked round in my seat, for a split second experiencing the almost physical presence of my father beside me – his smiling warmth, his bulk. The vision melted and I shivered, turning back and trying to ignore the sense of Mother behind me frowning disapproval.

  Abruptly I switched on the ignition and, pausing only to grind out my cigarette, pulled the wheel sharply over as the car moved forward. I was going home; the time for fantasy was long gone.

  The screech of brakes as I nosed at right angles on to the road was real enough though. I slammed on my own and watched helplessly as the other car veered towards the hedge opposite and buried its bonnet in the branches ten yards or so further along.

  Somehow it didn’t surprise me at all that it was a familiar figure who clambered out across the passenger seat of the Volvo. Father, I reflected later, could be said to have had his way this time too. There was no opting out of this scene.

  Still clutching the wheel, engine running, I watched as Andrew peered across the bonnet of his car at the offside wing. I wondered, guiltily, how much damage had been done.

  He shrugged, then turned and walked unhurriedly towards me. ‘Could be worse,’ he announced. He bent to peer in. ‘Good God, it’s you.’ His eyebrows lifted, and he laughed. ‘You’re an absolute menace with this thing, aren’t you?’ He patted the roof just above my head.

  I shifted in my seat. ‘I’m terribly sorry …’

  The grin was still there. ‘Don’t worry. I doubt there’s anything a bit of touch-up can’t put right. In any case, I was probably driving too fast.’

  ‘Even so …’ I reached for my bag, intent on producing insurance documents.

  He cut across. ‘Been to see Flora, have you?’

  ‘No.’ I kept my tone carefully neutral. I produced my wallet, opened it and took out the certificate. ‘You’ll want to make a note of this.’

  ‘I doubt it. Here, let me get the thing off the road-’ he straightened up – ‘and then we can consider.’

  He bounded across to his car, climbed in and reversed. Branches sprang back into place; uprooted strands of grass clung to his front wheels. He steered the car efficiently on to the rough beside the Astra and crunched up the handbrake.

  I got out and went to meet him. Together we surveyed scratches to the paintwork and an ugly three-inch-long dent just behind the headlight. I ran my hand over it. ‘Soon knock that out,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I looked at him uncertainly. He stood there, as relaxed in a suit by the side of the road as in a pullover lounging in Flora’s kitchen.

  ‘It’s honestly not worth making a thing about. Can we drop it?’

  I gave in – gracefully, I hoped. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But I owe you.’

  ‘Good. Then come back and have a cup of tea.’ He waved his arm towards a boxful of files on the back seat of the car. ‘Help me put off the evil moment when I have to start wading through all those.’

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘My curiosity,’ said Andrew, leaning back and crossing his legs, ‘is getting the better of me. If you didn’t come to see Flora …?’

  We were sitting in his garden, the sun throwing a patchwork of light through the branches of a horse-chestnut on to our afternoon-tea scene. It was all very Rupert Brooke somehow – fine china set out on a silver tray, garden trestle and chairs casually occupying an oasis of close-mown grass bounded by flower-beds and an orchard.

  I’d had time, as I followed the Volvo along the route I’d taken in February, to prepare myself for the inevitable question. By the time we reached the T-junction, turning right rather than left this time, I’d decided to be honest. More or less.

  I explained my visit to the hotel; and the start of my drive back to London. ‘I suddenly saw the sign,’ I said. ‘It was just one of those spur-of-the-moment things.’

  ‘But you didn’t go to Wood Edge?’

  ‘No. Where you “found” me –’ I grimaced at the euphemism – ‘was as far as I’d gone. I was turning to go back.’

  ‘Why?’

  I shrugged and reached towards the table. ‘May I help myself to a biscuit?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He leaned forward and passed the plate. I selected a Bourbon. Andrew picked out one with a dollop of jam at its centre. ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, pausing to swallow, ‘you probably wouldn’t have found her at home anyway. I’ve an idea this is her week for going to see Donald.’

  ‘Donald?’

  He threw his last piece of biscuit to a blackbird that had been eyeing him hopefully, and watched as it scooped the titbit up and flew off. Then he glanced across at me. ‘Her brother.’

  ‘Oh.’

  In the silence that followed I smoothed my skirt and tried not to consider that I could, and should, have been halfway back to London by now. Andrew, sitting sideways on to me, appeared totally at ease. He’d taken off his jacket and tie as soon as we arrived. One arm was flung over the back of the garden chair; with the other hand he balanc
ed his cup and saucer on his thigh.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, bringing myself back to the moment, ‘that I had any idea of calling on her anyway. I think I might have gone up to the meadow. The one above the village. You know, the one at the end of the track.’

  ‘Where I nearly ran you down.’

  I smiled. ‘Hardly. But yes, that one.’

  Andrew put his cup down and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He passed me one. I held the end to the flame as he flicked the lighter. Settling back, I watched the fronds of smoke rise and waft gently towards the house.

  It had, I remembered Flora saying, been built as a dower house. Not that long ago, maybe seventy years or so by the look of it; but long enough for the bricks to have mellowed to a deep golden grey, to unstripped parts of which ivy clung; like old memories, I thought. Inside, as Andrew had proudly shown me when we arrived, the place had been totally redecorated and the kitchen gutted and fitted with modern units. ‘Ginny says,’ Andrew had laughed, ‘that if she’s to be deprived of a big kitchen, at least she’ll have an efficient one.’

  I remembered Flora’s kitchen. And Andrew in it.

  ‘Did Flora give you the painting?’ His voice, against the stillness of the summer air, startled me.

  I swivelled my attention back. We both knew which one he meant. I pictured it, still propped at the back of the hall cupboard; thrust there in discomfort that first evening back at the flat. ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘I thought she might.’

  I brushed a leaf from my skirt and squinted up at the sky. ‘So Flora has a brother?’ I said eventually.

  Andrew accepted the change of subject smoothly. ‘She doesn’t talk about him much,’ he said.

  I took a sip of tea and raised my eyebrows politely.

  ‘Visits him every month, though. He’s in some sort of a home in Sussex.’

  ‘Really’

  ‘Caught by a sniper in Malaya. Brain damage. That’s about all I know.’

  ‘And he’s been like that for … what … forty years?’