by CL Skelton
The driver was a pretty woman in her thirties, wearing a thick red woollen jumper that matched her little car, and a flat, peaked tweed cap. She had honey-brown hair, tumbling out beneath in a tangle of short curls, and a face of surprising strength in one so young. Her cheekbones were prominent, and her slightly stubborn jaw firm, over a long; graceful but strong neck. She was the sort of woman who improved with age, and was prettier now than she’d been as a girl.
Suddenly, she spotted a flash of colour on the road and drew the bouncy little car to a halt. A great bird, a peacock with trailing tail feathers, made a slow and deliberate progress across the road. The woman smiled. ‘Well, look at you,’ she said, and waited for it to pass. She drove forward cautiously, lest there were more. Ahead she saw a beech wood and, before it, a break in the trees and a broad, grassy field.
There were a horse and rider in the field, cantering easily across. They caught her eye, and she slowed the car again and brought it to a halt. She turned to watch. There are few more lovely sights than a fine horse, finely ridden. She smiled in appreciation. She’d loved horses, and riding, all her life, but it was a wealthy pleasure she had never remotely been able to afford.
The rider was a man, dressed casually, and hatless, and he rode beautifully, as one who has ridden from childhood. As the horse came into the thin November sun, beyond the shadow of the trees, she caught a flash of grey hair, incongruous with the lithe and youthful body of the horseman.
Abruptly the man reined the horse in and she realized he had seen her. He turned and trotted the horse towards the car, and she rolled down her window, suddenly nervous, expecting she was about to be sent away. However, as he came closer, she saw the rider was smiling, and he didn’t really look about to send anyone away. He rode right up to the fence and leaned down over the horse’s withers to see into the window of the little car.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked. The woman just stared, silent. He waited a moment, then kicked his feet free of the stirrups and jumped down from the horse, bringing the reins over its head. ‘Were you looking for someone?’
‘Sam?’ she said, and he just stared. She smiled shyly, and said, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Her voice was very low and soft, and rolled over her northern vowels in a surprisingly attractive way, making them a thing of some delight. Her smile broadened, became faintly mischievous and she added, ‘I thought you never forgot a female face.’
‘Mavis Emmerson,’ he said.
‘Thought it was time I came to apologize,’ said Mavis.
By the time she got the little car up to the great house at the head of the drive, he was waiting already for her. The gravel roadway was winding and narrow and she’d been afraid of hitting any of the beautiful peafowl or one of the pretty deer that wandered freely there. He had set off at a slightly hair-raising gallop, jumping fences and hedges in a short-cut across the grounds to get there before her. When she drove up to where he stood waiting, the rather well-sweated horse was being led away by a miffy-looking woman in jodhpurs. He ran forward at once to open her door.
She smiled, thinking it had been a while since anyone had done that for her. ‘You’ll stay to lunch,’ he said, as he helped her out.
‘Oh Sam, I couldn’t,’ she returned, at once, carefully dropping the keys of the Mini into her handbag. She had earned every penny of its price herself, and the car was a proud and precious possession. ‘I just came to say hello, honestly,’ she said.
‘After eighteen years,’ he said, ‘hello takes at least as long as luncheon. Maybe even all afternoon.’
She looked at him cannily, not quite sure if she was reading that familiar teasing smile correctly. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I expected to find you very changed, but I have this terrible feeling you’re exactly the same.’
She came shyly into the big house, at his side. She had been there before; with Peter Macgregor, during the war, but only once. Their life together, brief and fleeting as it was, was lived in the narrow world of the RAF, and blitz-bound London. There was little time for visits home, anyhow, even had Peter the inclination. And Peter, God rest him, she always knew had not too much of that. She didn’t blame him. She was a working-class girl from Newcastle and he was a Scottish lord. With due respect, she readily, gladly admitted that his family, and particularly his gracious mother, had made her most welcome. But it was wartime, and so many boundaries were stretched in those days. She could not have blamed him had he been slightly, so slightly, ashamed to bring her here.
‘Oh, Sam,’ she whispered, as he led her into the drawing-room. ‘It’s bonny.’
‘Do you think so?’ he said with delight, as if it were quite possible people often didn’t even like the magnificent place. ‘I’m so glad.’ He sounded so genuine that she looked hard at him in amazement. ‘Sherry, or madeira?’ he said.
She accepted sherry and waited quietly alone in the room while he went away into the house to speak to the cook about lunch. She still felt she should refuse, but he had been so insistent and, to be honest, she was very slightly afraid of him and not inclined to argue. As she had said, he had changed less than she had expected knowing, as she did, so much of what had happened in his life in the intervening years. The Hardacres were a well-known family, better known these days because of Sam himself, and Mavis lived, after all, only a relatively short distance away, in Halifax. But there was yet a mature assurance about him now that was slightly awesome.
She stood before the fireplace, which was bereft of fire and filled with white wood-ash, looking at the room reflected in the big mirror, and her own self contained so incongruously in the picture. Her eyes dropped to the framed photographs along the high mantel, falling first of all on a wedding photograph, unusual in that the bride was dressed in red, and she recognized the woman at once, as indeed anyone who ever went to the pictures would. She sighed faintly, studying that beautiful face. Who could have blamed him for loving that? Her gaze crossed the mantel, and suddenly struck Peter Macgregor’s RAF portrait. It was so strange to see it there; its identical companion sat on her worn old dresser at home, as it had for the past eighteen years. She smiled at it, and her gaze moved on, coming finally to the photograph of the twins in their Benedictine habits, at Ampleforth. Her eyes suddenly stung. They had been so beautiful together, so gay, so reckless, romping through wartime London as if the whole war were a vast joke. She had sat at her bench in the factory and shut away tears as one of the girls read that sad story aloud from the tabloids, with ghoulish outsider’s sympathy. She wouldn’t let them know she’d ever known the twins. They, and all the Hardacre clan, were a private part of her life, kept precious to herself alone. Still, though she had never expected to see any of them again, much less the twins, shut away in their monastery, the knowledge that they were there yet, and presumably, though amazingly, content, had always pleased her. Indeed, it had been hard for her to imagine one of them gone until, today, she had at last seen the other, alone.
‘Paying your respects?’ he said softly, and she turned, amazed and a little embarrassed, having not heard him enter. He was gently smiling. She did not know what to say, whether one talked to him or not about it, and remembered how, after Peter’s death, each meeting with an old acquaintance brought the whole thing back. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, knowing just what she was thinking. ‘I’ve made my peace.’
‘I was so sorry when I heard, Sam,’ she burst out, ‘I almost … I almost came to see you.’ He smiled again, and took her arm, leading her to a chair and seating her with a small table before her for her drink.
‘I wish you had,’ he said spontaneously, and then laughed. ‘You might have saved me from some chaos about that time. Who knows?’ Mavis nodded, uncertainly. She had a fair idea who that chaos was. That was all in the tabloids too, a great deal of the time. But she had no idea what it might have had to do with her.
She tilted her head suddenly sideways and nodded towards the mantel and the photographs with a wise smile, and said bol
dly, ‘She’s very beautiful, that chaos of yours.’
‘Oh, my dear, she is that.’
She suddenly wanted to know if he was still in love, and suspected he was, but she would naturally not ask. But she did say, in her candid way, ‘The wedding was here?’
‘Amazing, wasn’t it?’ he grinned. ‘Don’t worry, I was trying to talk her out of it right up the aisle, so to speak. Stabbing my best friend in the back with happy aplomb.’
He was laughing but she wasn’t precisely sure he was joking.
‘Sam,’ she said. He nodded, turning briefly towards her. He was on his knees before the huge fireplace, with kindling and newspaper, lighting the fire as if he did it all the time, and she wondered suddenly about all the staff she had remembered here. He was thinking that she pronounced his name exactly as his great-grandmother had, and he liked that.
He said, ‘What is it?’
‘Why’d you do that?’
‘What, the wedding?’ She nodded, and he saw she was perceptive, or his own romantic nature was easily read, or both. He laughed, ‘I never argue with Thomas a Kempis,’ he said.
Over lunch she was still considering that. ‘You always were mystifying. Who’s real, Sam, that playboy I knew, or the monk? Or whatever you are now?’
He looked away, slightly evasive and laughed lightly. ‘Monasteries are full of ex-playboys,’ he said. ‘Actors, all sorts of extroverts; the more contemplative the order, the wilder souls they draw. St Francis was a wealthy rogue once, too, you know.’ He sipped his wine again, studying her face. She had a way of tossing her chin up and flicking her beautiful eyes sideways as she spoke that put his mind in unseemly haste on the thought of bed.
‘And now?’ she said again.
‘Now?’ He smiled slowly, looking once quickly round the oak-panelled dining-room where they were seated, with delicious formality at opposite ends of the great long table. ‘Now I’m just a working man.’
She did end up staying for a long while after lunch, if not the entire afternoon. They’d sat for ages over coffee in front of the drawing-room fire, and then he had walked with her around the beautiful gardens, graced with the sad peace of autumn. They talked in the rambling, dissociated manner that one talks with friends absent for extraordinary lengths of time. She told him snatches of her life; that she had worked as a factory girl for years, but recently obtained a much better position managing a small canal-side hotel in Sowerby Bridge, which had even enabled her to buy the red Mini. She told him that she had lived in Halifax for some years in a rented house. She even mentioned the district and he remembered it as a worn and tumbledown neighbourhood of small two-storey brick dwellings with scraggly patches of garden. But she had not, in all that time, truly told him anything of herself.
Eventually she said she must, really, go. He walked her to her little car, and then said suddenly, ‘You haven’t done it, you know.’
‘Pardon?’ she said.
‘What you said you came to do,’ he reminded. He looked solemn. ‘You haven’t apologized.’
She was silent, and looked nervous. ‘I suppose I just meant that coming here was an apology.’ She looked down, drawing her keys from her handbag, and when she looked up her lovely eyes were quite defiant. ‘Do you want more?’
‘No. But I want an explanation.’ She looked away. ‘Why did you just walk out of our lives, Mavis? Why not even a telephone call to say goodbye?’ He was reproachful, but gentle, and he had been so gracious to her that she hated to leave him with no answer.
Still she just shook her head and said, ‘I’m really sorry, Sam. I have to go now. I’m late, you see. I have to meet my son at four.’ Her eyes came up suddenly to meet his, and were fiercely defensive. He had been leaning forward, his hand lightly on her arm, and he straightened and visibly withdrew from her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quickly, apologizing for thoughts he had entertained throughout the afternoon, thoughts that she didn’t even know about. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I had no idea you were married.’
He felt a total fool. He had addressed her by her maiden name and naturally she had responded to it, the only name by which he would know her. And from that alone he had drawn a simple, wrong conclusion. And yet he had been sure she’d not worn a ring. He was too much a gentleman to look, now, but she saved him the trouble.
‘Oh, I’m not, Sam,’ she said. And before he could make any more mistakes she added, with a feisty touch of annoyance, ‘and I never was, either. It’s quite possible to have children anyway, you know,’ she added. She got hurriedly into the car and slammed the door.
‘Mavis,’ he said urgently.
‘I have to go, Sam.’ She turned the key, and the little engine started like a puppy’s playful growl.
‘Wait,’ he said.
‘No.’ She gave the pudding-stirrer of a gearstick an angry shove, and cursed as the gears ground. It gave him time to run round the tiny vehicle and jump in the other side, folding his long legs awkwardly to fit himself in.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, less angry than amazed.
‘I want to see the peacocks. Drive me down the driveway. Go on.’
‘You’re mad,’ she said, almost laughing.
‘We’ve got to talk.’
‘Nothing to talk about,’ she said, suddenly stiff and cold once more. She started down the driveway. ‘I’ve never been married and I have a bastard son called Geordie. Curiosity satisfied?’
‘Named after your brother,’ he said.
‘Sam, you don’t usually name bastards after their fathers,’ said she. She slowed the car. ‘Now would you like to get out? I don’t think the peacocks will much care.’
‘I’ll get out,’ he said. She stopped the car staring straight ahead. ‘If you’ll come to dinner with me on Saturday,’ he said.
‘Impossible.’
‘Looks like I’m going to Halifax.’
She smiled slowly, switched off the engine, and turned to look at him. She looked very wise. She said, ‘You know, I’m really glad I came here. And I’m really glad to find you so much the same. And every bit as attractive, I assure you. But no, Sam, believe me. Leave well enough alone. We’re from two different worlds that never should meet. I know, I’ve been here before.’
‘I’ve always liked Halifax,’ he said.
‘You are stubborn,’ Mavis half-shouted, staring amazedly at him. ‘Anyhow, I’m not even going to Halifax. I’m going to Scarborough. That’s where my son is. He has a job. I’m meeting him for tea.’ Her son, and his job in a Scarborough hotel, were precisely the reasons she was over in the East Riding in the first place.
‘How old is he?’ said Sam slowly.
She got suddenly cagey and said only, ‘Old enough to work.’
‘Tea in Scarborough is such jolly fun. Particularly in winter,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked warily.
He was looking at her very, very carefully, and there was something new in his eyes, a wary calculation, and it wasn’t entirely friendly. When he spoke there was an edge to his voice that she found frightening.
‘I want to meet your son,’ he said.
She tried to get out of it. She even eventually, in desperation, agreed to dinner on Saturday, if he’d let her go now. But he only said, ‘And you’ll walk out like you did eighteen years ago, won’t you? You’ll not turn up and I won’t know where to find you. And then I’ll really not see you ever again.’
She was angry, nervous and frustrated. She asked him to get out of her car and he flatly refused and she said, ‘Are you always like this? Do you always pursue people like this?’
‘Almost never,’ he said. He was lighting a cigarette after having offered her one which she briskly refused. ‘Only when I really want something. That’s not very often,’ he added, ‘but right now I want to meet your son. And I want to see you again after I do.’
‘I don’t want you to meet him.’
‘I know that, Mavis. And I think I e
ven know why.’ He leaned back in the small seat and relaxed, as much as he could in the little car, and smiled slightly. ‘When you’re ready,’ he said.
She drove him to Scarborough. She really didn’t know what else to do. She supposed she could have screamed and made a fuss, but there wasn’t anyone to hear, and it wasn’t as if he were kidnapping or raping her, only coming along to where she was going anyway.
‘How will you get home?’ she said sharply. ‘I’m not going out of my way again.’
‘I’ll walk,’ he said, and she thought he meant it.
It was a moderately-sized, seafront hotel, facing the grey November water, not many doors from the one in which, not so many years before, he had taken his mother to lunch on the proceeds of his job in the chip shop.
As she parked the car outside, she said, ‘He isn’t expecting me to be with anyone.’
‘Just tell him I’m an old friend.’
‘Just now,’ she said angrily, ‘you’re not. And besides, he won’t be able to sit with us, he’s serving tea. It’s his first week. I’m giving him a little moral support.’
‘You’re a good mother,’ he said. ‘I’ll give some moral support as well.’
She looked down at her hands, ringless, and fiddled nervously with her keys. When she spoke, her voice was pleading, ‘Sam, he’s had a hard row to hoe. And I’ve had a hard row to hoe, as well. Folk where I come from don’t forget. And they don’t let us forget, either. Don’t make it harder for us. Please go away and leave us in peace.’ He was silent. He knew he was hurting her, and he did not enjoy it. But there was more at stake than his feelings, or hers.
‘I’ll be discreet,’ he said.
She turned on him, fiercely angry, ‘Discreet. Oh, your kind are so discreet. Damn you rich bastards, all of you. My brother’s right. I never thought so, but he is. He’s right.’ Sam only nodded, without emotion or expression. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said.
