Just the same, successive vicars had made it clear that, no matter what one’s shortcomings were, God would forgive. Also that he would answer the prayers of even the most unworthy supplicants ‘as would be most expedient for them’. She closed her eyes and prayed, urgently and straightforwardly. She didn’t ask for guidance, which was too complicated, but for deliverance.
But, even as she beseeched, like a child, ‘please God make it stop’, there was a part of her – her heart? her memory? – that hummed, like a long note stroked on a violin … its soft vibrato stirred her hair and stippled the smooth skin of her forearms. Her desires and petitions were not straightforward.
After leaving the church, she pushed her bike back down the path and through the lychgate. She set off home via a longer route, taking in the hamlet and the stretch of main road, as far as the turn off at Keeper’s Cottage. By the time she reached the house she was hot, her legs were tired and her bottom sore. The physical discomforts provided a distraction. She would leave her bike in the porch and go straight to the larder for a glass of homemade lemonade, a recipe that always reminded her of her mother. Maureen had finished for the morning and would be back for two hours in the late afternoon to help with supper and any other odd jobs. Barbara decided not to seek out Ron, who would be having his sandwiches in the shed. She found herself praying for the second time in one day, this time that everything would have been sorted out in her absence. That the problem would have gone away.
The house was cool, a little dark on this sunny day and smelt of polish. The copper jug, full of rhododendrons on the oak blanket chest in the hall, seemed to give off a soft, pink light. Everything was quiet. She could hear the glutinous tick of the grandfather clock in the dining room and the gentle insistent ‘Croo-croo’ of the wood pigeons. Was the upturned bucket still beneath the window? She had to brace herself to go into the larder and moved so quickly with the jug, that she slopped some of the lemonade on the stone floor.
She returned with her glass to the hall, and hovered cautiously for a moment before stepping out into the loggia. This was her favourite place in the summer; the sense of being neither indoors nor out, but both at the same time, was agreeable to her. You were sheltered from rain, wind and sun, and also largely from view, while commanding a wide prospect of the garden, where the rough, sloping lawn was surrounded by towering rhododendrons in full red, pink and purple bloom. To the right of it was the Fort, with its ragged coronet of scots firs. On the far side of the low wall, which separated loggia from lawn, was an unpruned fuchsia, now a haze of scarlet and blue, around which a hummingbird hawk moth shimmered and darted in the sunshine.
She set her glass on the bleached wooden table and unfolded a canvas chair, disturbing a long-legged spider that scuttled away into the wigwam of old racquets and golf clubs. Stanley had been an orderly man, but the orderliness did not extend to sports equipment, which he clung to as a parent might have clung to pictures by, or of, their children. Perhaps the kit reminded him of a different younger self, one Barbara had never known; there were even two ancient ski poles among the clutter. She could have got rid of it all, but had never been able to bring herself to. Everything else – his clothes, hairbrushes, uniforms, even his cufflinks (with the exception of a pair she had made into a brooch) – she had disposed of. Yet to throw out these things would have been callous, a violence; so here they stood, as a ramshackle memorial and home for spiders and woodlice.
She did not at first take in what she saw on the Fort. The image touched her retina without registering. When realisation came it was swift and scalding. There was a figure in one of the trees. The firs with their long, bare trunks weren’t easy to scale without a ladder, but one of them stood next to a broken stump. This made the lowest branch accessible and it was on this branch that Johnny stood, with one arm round the trunk, leaning out and gazing upward, like a jack tar in the age of sail, inspecting the rigging. He did not look in her direction and she remained very still, sure he hadn’t seen her. After a few seconds, Ron Dexter appeared from behind the Fort, took two long, rising strides to the foot of the tree and stood there, also looking up, giving the bark a slap as he did so. The two men were in discussion.
Barbara sat motionless, but the inside of her head swarmed like a bell jar full of flies. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her palms were dank and the tendons in her neck taut. Johnny raised an arm, caught the branch above his head and hoisted himself up, his feet scrabbling for purchase on the trunk, his free arm flailing. What did he think he was doing? He was going to fall and he wasn’t supposed to be here anyway, how could Ron have been so stupid as to let him? But then that’s what happened to people under his influence, they were not themselves. Who knew that better than her? She was ashamed of her relief when he was safely perched on the higher branch. Now, he lowered his head to say something and pointed in her direction. Dexter nodded and began making his way towards the loggia. So, Johnny had known she was there all along.
It was too late now to scuttle, like the spider, for cover. But neither could she stand, her legs wouldn’t support her. Johnny sat there, a shadowy figure, legs dangling, watching. He raised a hand slightly, though whether it was to shift his position or to acknowledge her, she couldn’t tell.
Dexter stood just beyond the fuchsia’s soft burst of colour.
‘Sorry madam, I didn’t realise you were back. I didn’t spot you there.’
‘Who is that on the Fort?’
He glanced over his shoulder. ‘That’s Mr Eldridge madam.’
‘I thought, I said, I don’t want him here.’ Her voice shook. ‘We don’t need him.’
‘He wanted to have a word with you in person, because of knowing the Brigadier, I think. I was just showing him a few things that needed doing.’
‘I see.’ It appeared the other way round to her, as though Johnny were showing off, pointing things out, leading the way. ‘That doesn’t look very safe.’
He chuckled affably. ‘I told him that, but he would do it – swarmed up it like a monkey.’ He looked over his shoulder again and this time when Johnny raised his hand there was no doubt that it was a wave. Her own hand twitched in her lap, she clasped it tight in the other and the skin stretched white.
‘He asked me to say he’d be over in a minute.’
‘If he must. Ron, I’m not terribly pleased about this. My husband didn’t care for him.’
Again the chuckle. ‘Oh, he told me and I can well believe it. Chalk and cheese, eh?’
Of course, Johnny would have made a joke of that, putting himself in the role of the likable ne’er do well and Stanley the slightly stuffy, retired officer. He didn’t even need to lie to get people on his side.
‘He looked up to the Brigadier though, Madam. Respected him I think.’
‘Perhaps.’
She watched Dexter walk back to the Fort and say something. Johnny replied, then stood unsteadily on the branch, clasping the trunk and craning to look at what was over his head. He was too high, it made her head spin, but then he knew she was watching. He looked down and spoke to Dexter again and, once again, Dexter laughed. Johnny lowered himself on to the next branch and jumped the rest of the way, landing with bent knees and arms stretched out. Part of her had wanted him to miss his footing and make a fool of himself, but another, greater part was relieved at his clean landing. He walked towards her, head lowered as he dusted the seat and knees of his trousers and the palms of his hands. She felt almost faint, as if time were folding round her, squeezing the breath from her body.
‘Hello Barbara.’
He stood at the entrance to the loggia, below the shallow step, one hand resting on the wooden upright. Still, she couldn’t summon the strength to rise. The powerful strangeness of the moment threatened to overwhelm her. The garden was quiet and sunny, Dexter had discreetly disappeared, but she sat there, buffeted by a storm no one could see.
The years had scribbled lines on Johnny’s face, grizzled his hair and he was thin –
too thin. But the essence of him was the same, and there.
He said her name softly again, ‘Barbara, I’m sorry if I frightened you the other night.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ Her own voice sounded childish and sharp.
‘I know and I apologise.’
She was gripping the arms of the chair. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here now.’
‘I came back to make my peace and fell into conversation with Ron.’
‘We don’t need any work doing.’
He tilted his head, ‘We?’
‘Mr Dexter and I.’
‘Ah. Actually, he seemed to think there were some jobs I could do.’ He glanced over his shoulder, then back. ‘There’s quite a bit of dead stuff up there and on those silver birches over by the path at the back and the sweet chestnut by the gate.’
‘Goodness, you have been looking around.’
‘Ron showed me. He’s a nice chap.’
She didn’t answer, but now she managed to stand. She felt more in control, firmer.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Oh Barbara …’ He took his hand from the wooden upright and rubbed his palm roughly over his face. ‘Can’t you guess?’
‘No.’ What she couldn’t say was I don’t want you here.
He looked at her. ‘Honestly? I think you do. Do you mind if I sit down?’
She glanced round at the other folding chair, but he was already sitting on the step fishing cigarettes and matches from his pocket.
‘This – do you mind this?’ She shook her head. ‘I remember you didn’t often smoke.’
‘Never, these days.’
He lit a cigarette and put the dead match back in the box and turned sideways to lean his back against the wall, one knee bent up. She was left stiffly standing.
‘I don’t want paying,’ he said, ‘if that’s what’s worrying you. I just need something to do. Healthy outdoor work isn’t going to wreck me more than I’m already wrecked.’ This last sentence was said without self-pity.
Her feelings were hurt by his reference to payment. Once again she might have said I don’t want you here, paid or unpaid.
She sank back on to the chair. ‘Are you wrecked?’
He pulled a crooked smile without looking at her. ‘No of course not, I’m being dramatic to attract your sympathy.’
‘You don’t look very well.’
‘Ah, but that’s easily corrected. I’ve always been a scruffy so-and-so. As I say, I need something to do and, Barbara, if that something brings me close to you that would be my whole happiness, complete.’
My whole happiness, complete. The words’ direct simplicity unmanned her. She felt the sweet sting of tears. To cry would have been a relief, to touch him …
He continued mildly, as if thinking aloud. ‘All these years I’ve thought about you, wondered how you were and how I could have been such a bloody fool as to lose you. You’ve been the one shining thing in my squalid mess of a life.’
Hearing him say this was like watching him deliberately cut himself, she couldn’t bear it.
‘Don’t say that!’
‘I’m not after your sympathy this time. I have to remind myself why you’d be entitled to send me packing. I was chancing my arm coming here, but I had to try. I had to. You’re my redemption, Barbara.’
‘That can’t—’ Her voice snagged. ‘That can’t possibly be true.’
‘But it is, beyond question, I know it. I’ve always known it. How could I have let my chance go like that …? Not just let it go, but sabotage it in that mean, stupid, shameful way …’ He pressed his cigarette into the ground next to the step. ‘I suppose I was afraid.’
‘Afraid? Of what?’
‘Of you.’ He tilted his head her way, without looking at her. ‘Of change, of the opportunity to be better. Take it from me, that’s frightening. If I’d won you, I’d have had to deserve you and that was going to be beyond me. So I blew it all up, didn’t I? Lit the blue touch paper and ran for cover.’
‘You stole!’ she cried and felt the scar tissue in her heart crack. ‘From my parents! My parents who’d been so good to you.’
He dragged the heel of his hand over his eyes. ‘There’s scarcely any point in my saying how sorry I am.’
‘No, Johnny, no!’ This was the first time she’d used his name. ‘You hurt us all! What you did was mean, and wicked, and destructive—’
‘You’re right. I was destructive, self-destructive mainly. I hurt other people but the worst injury was to myself.’
‘Really? Is that what you think?’
‘Molly pointed that out.’
Molly. She had all but forgotten her. Molly, who she’d cut adrift when Johnny had gone, who she could not have faced. Reflexively she asked the polite, routine question.
‘How is Molly?’
He shook out another cigarette. ‘She died.’
Barbara gasped. She wanted to say, but Molly wouldn’t die, she wouldn’t do that!
‘Hard to believe, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice didn’t work, she tried again. ‘Yes. How? What did she die of?’
‘She had a fall, broke a lot of bones. She was laid up for months, then she got pneumonia, the old man’s friend and apparently hers too. She was always a skinny creature, like me, but the difference was she put up a helluva better show.’
Now Barbara had a reason to weep, she did so freely, dragging her hankie from the pocket of her skirt and pressing it to her nose and mouth. She was glad Johnny didn’t come over to comfort her.
‘Poor Molly …’ she said when she was able to.
‘Yes. Poor Molly. She took up with a rich bastard who admired her and then was jealous of her. She was loyal of course, always loyal, but take it from me that fall was no accident.’
‘But that’s terrible.’
‘Isn’t it? Brave, beautiful Molly who could spit in the eye of the devil himself, but she let that pig push her around without a word of complaint. A lot of what she gave me must have been his.’
‘I can’t even imagine—’
‘You don’t want to. She wouldn’t have wanted you to, she’d have said she made her bed and must lie on it. All through that she was my friend. I’ve only had two and neither of them are here any longer.’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘I don’t count you.’
‘I wasn’t your friend?’
He shook his head. ‘Something more and – different. You have to understand, Mol and I were practically the same person.’
It was strange hearing him say this. She knew so much more than he realised. This thought, the small advantage she had over him, stiffened her spine.
‘Was there a funeral?’
He nodded. ‘She wouldn’t have cared for the vicar, but she’d have been delighted with the attendance. She had a lot of friends.’
‘I wish I’d known. I’d have come.’
‘She’s not holding it against you.’ He smiled briefly, sweetly. ‘Take it from me.’ There followed a pause. Barbara mopped her eyes and face and thrust her hankie back in her pocket. Johnny ran his hands over his head – those thin, long-fingered hands with pronounced joints and almond-shaped nails, like those of the doe-eyed Jesus in the church window.
‘One thing people didn’t realise about her, about Mol, was how kind she was.’
‘She was always nice to me, I don’t know why.’
‘That’s different,’ he said almost brusquely. ‘She knew how I felt about you. But she was kind to people for no reason, people who didn’t deserve it.’ He turned to look at her directly. ‘Me especially, I’m only here now because of her.’
‘How is that?’
‘She had the sense not to marry and no dependents. She had a good job and her own flat when she died, plus a little that her mother had left her. She wasn’t badly off and she left it all to me.’
‘She thought the world of you,’ Barbara said quietly.
‘It was mutual. I’d have gone do
wn the drain but for her, I know that. For the first time in my life, I’ve got money in the bank.’
‘But not enough to live on, surely?’
‘For a while. I’m not expecting to make old bones and I’ve been doing odd jobs. The less I can touch what she gave me, the more there is for a rainy day. And now—’ he leaned forward, put out his hand and brushed his fingertips against her skirt, so lightly that the fabric didn’t touch her leg ‘—as the song goes, that rainy day is here.’
Her heart was in her mouth.
‘So.’ He stood up, pushed his cigarettes into his pocket. ‘Is it all right if I do some work here?’ For the first time she detected a hint of anxiety, of need. ‘Ron seems agreeable. I promise I shan’t be any trouble.’
‘Johnny, what do you want? What’s going to happen?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing that you don’t want to happen.’
‘All right,’ she whispered.
‘Thank you.’ He turned towards the Fort, where now she could see Dexter, raking pine needles. ‘Better get my jacket. I didn’t come dressed for work.’ He began walking away. ‘But tomorrow, I shall.’
Eighteen
That evening Barbara was so agitated she couldn’t eat. To say she regretted her decision would not have been accurate, because she had made no decision, not really. Something had happened, some mysterious, ineluctable process which meant Johnny would be here in the garden of Heart’s Ease, tomorrow. At eight o’clock, unable to settle to anything, she rang Edith but there was no reply. She wasn’t entirely surprised. Edith often went to bed early with a good book and the Home Service. As she sometimes did herself, she reflected, though she was not much more than half Edith’s age.
The Rose in Winter Page 18
