Sunrise

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘Hold on to your hat.’ Harry glanced at her and in the second as the engine roared into life she felt his eyes on her hair and the planes of her face. Then his hands were braced on the wheel and he was watching the road again. The car shot forward, squeezing a gasp of breath out of her. Angharad felt a flicker of fear as the road hurtled towards her and was swallowed by the car’s green jaws, but at the same time the warm wind raked her face and she felt the exhilaration of speed mounting within her.

  Harry swung the car into a sharp turn and they were speeding up an even narrower lane into a deep cutting between two steep hillsides. The sound of the car’s racing engines drummed back at her from the high banks and she found that her head was thrown back and she was laughing out loud. The road wound on, taking them with it as if they were part of it. Angharad saw how the hills curved round in front of them to meet, making a blind end to the little valley. Then they were slowing down, and slower, until they passed a white barred gate with the words ‘Llyn Fair. Private Road’ lettered in black on it.

  An avenue of trees closed overhead, amplifying the drumming of the car, then opened to the sky again and they swept into a wide sunlit space enclosed by the hills on three sides. Harry turned the car in a scatter of gravel and the engine purred into silence.

  Angharad looked around her. Her first impression was of the marriage of sunlight and dense shadow, the shimmering opacity of open water and the solid weight of dark pine trees against it. She heard the musical splash of water ahead of her and then louder, confused splashing as ducks rose from the surface of the water and soared overhead. The lake was a sheet of silver underlaid with jade green, protected from the hillside on two sides by the dense, mysterious trees.

  Llyn Fair House stood against the third slope. It was grey stone and blue-purple slate, but it was heightened and given elegance by the rows of tall Georgian sash windows, white-painted, and the intricate wood and wrought-iron verandah that ran along the lake frontage. The carving was smothered with creamy honeysuckle and with the opulent purple flowers of a clematis. On the tongue of gravel between the house and the arc of roses above the drop to the lake a tame goose waddled, honking derisively. Laura had been sitting in a white basket chair in the shade of the verandah with a black and white cocker spaniel asleep at her feet. She jumped up as the car stopped and sauntered towards them, hands in the pockets of her white tennis skirt.

  Harry’s hands dropped from the wheel and his eyes met Angharad’s.

  ‘Welcome to Llyn Fair.’

  ‘Thank you. And thank you for the ride. I enjoyed it.’

  Harry laughed, gipsyish again. Before her eyes turned to Laura, Angharad had the sense that she had met a challenge. The notion both pleased and irritated her.

  Laura bent over the low door to kiss her.

  ‘What kept you?’ she asked in her cool voice.

  ‘Kept us? We didn’t drop below seventy all the way. By rights, your friend should have been scared senseless. But she wasn’t.’ Harry leaned across to release her from the front seat. Angharad was intensely aware of the two dark heads close to hers.

  Then Harry was out of the car and strolling away towards the house. Laura linked her arm through Angharad’s and drew her to the lip of ground above the lake. Ten feet below a rowing boat was moored to a primitive wooden jetty. There was sunshine on crumbly grey stone, and a white-painted seat at the water’s edge with a straw hat hanging on one corner.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Laura said. ‘At last. You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to bring home, to this.’ The jerk of her chin took in the trees and the water, the grey house and the low green car in its own slewed tyre marks on the gravel.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Angharad said softly. The sheltered hollow cupped the light and warmth of the day, and the stillness radiating from the calm water seemed almost enchanted.

  ‘There’s just the three of us. You, and Harry, and me.’ There was an almost gloating light in Laura’s face. Angharad glanced involuntarily, but Harry had disappeared under the verandah, whistling. ‘Pa and Ma will be out until late tonight. It’s why I especially wanted you to come today, so that there would be just the three of us. Did you manage to escape all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Angharad was abrupt. ‘I don’t much like lying to Dad, but it’s done now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Laura responded in her cool voice. ‘It’s been done for almost three years, hasn’t it?’

  Angharad understood that the enforced secrecy of their friendship rankled with Laura as much as it troubled herself. Her father had never spoken of it again, and she knew that he assumed her complete obedience. She had held back from this visit because of the extra deception it seemed to involve, and because of her unwillingness to meet Laura’s father. The quarrels of years ago were nothing to do with Laura or herself, but she had no wish to encounter her own father’s enemy.

  Yet, in the end, her longing to see Laura’s home and her curious desire to meet her brother had overcome her.

  Laura laughed to dispel the shadow that threatened to fall between them and, taking her hand, led Angharad towards the house.

  ‘We can eat lunch out here in the shade, and then do whatever you like. Tennis?’

  There was a grass court beyond the house, spruce with fresh white lines.

  Angharad groaned. ‘What for, when you always beat me?’

  ‘Then we can take on Harry together. It’ll do him good to be trounced for once.’

  They passed in through the heavy front door and into the cool of the hall. Angharad had a brief impression of old stone floors and oak doors obscured by effects that were just a little too grand for the reserved simplicity of the old house. There was a heavy Persian runner on the floor, and an ornate polished buffet that drew the focus away from the tall window at the opposite end. Everything was surgically clean, and smelt of beeswax polish. Angharad could hear Harry still whistling somewhere and Laura followed the sound, her head cocked to it.

  ‘In the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Foraging for food.’

  The kitchen was terracotta-tiled, with a big square table and windsor chairs, and an Aga set under an arch hung with copper pans and a plait of garlic. Harry was standing at the open door of the largest refrigerator Angharad had ever seen.

  ‘No immediate inspiration,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Yoghurt with leftover green beans? Tomatoes in some of Mrs Parry’s ginger pudding?’

  ‘Mrs Parry usually cooks,’ Laura explained. ‘It’s her day off.’

  Angharad looked around Harry’s shoulder. ‘I’ll make something, if you like,’ she offered shyly. There were eggs in a basket, and from the kitchen window she could see across a little yard herringbone-paved in brick to a kitchen bed lush with herbs. ‘Omelettes fines herbes and a salad?’

  Laura was already waltzing to load a tray with cutlery and glasses. ‘Angharad,’ she said, ‘is the best cook in the world. She cooks like a composer … no, a painter, with a taste for chiaroscuro.’

  Harry bowed her to the big, round black plates of the Aga under their hooded lids. ‘If the best cook will tell me what she wants from the garden, I’ll be honoured to lay it before her.’

  He had blue eyes, very dark but perfectly clear. His face was quite serious but somewhere, belying the straight lines, he was laughing too. Angharad felt red-cheeked and gauche, and aware that much more than the two years in their ages separated them. She felt a sudden fierce desire for Laura’s brother to like her, as much as she knew Laura did. It was as if a piece of her knowledge of Laura, which she had denied until this moment, had slipped smoothly into place. The brother and sister were part of each other, opposite sides of the same coin, uniquely minted up here in this remote, sun-filled cup of valley.

  The kitchen was quiet except for the faintest ring of the glasses where Laura had set them on the tray.

  ‘Yours to command,’ Harry murmured.

  ‘Chervil,’ Angharad mumbled. ‘Basil, if you have it, and some parsley, and lettuce and a f
ew radishes …’

  When he was gone, Angharad bent hurriedly to crack eggs into a copper bowl. Laura stood with her fingertips resting on the oak tabletop.

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  There was a note in her voice Angharad didn’t understand. It might have been command, or warning.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered simply. ‘He’s your brother.’

  She had the impression that, behind her, Laura’s rigid shoulders relaxed a little.

  ‘It’s just that it feels strange, sharing. I’ve always had Harry to myself. And you to myself. I wanted us all three to be together. Yet now …’ She stopped, and then said much more softly, ‘I must be a very possessive person.’

  Angharad recognized the truth, and it failed to disturb her. She was sure of her loyalty to Laura, more confident of that than anything else. And it was a relief, no more, to discover that she was prepared to like Harry too, was even anxious for it, without the jealousy or resentment she had feared.

  There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to do at all, except to enjoy the perfection of today.

  Harry’s shadow fell across the floor, and then he was tossing the contents of his garden basket on to the table.

  ‘Is this enough of this feathery stuff?’

  They looked, and burst out laughing. ‘Enough for us and about forty others,’ Angharad told him.

  ‘Harry, you’re absurdly greedy.’ Laura’s voice was warm again.

  They ate lunch in the shade of the verandah, with the shadow tendrils of honeysuckle and clematis weaving patterns on the white table.

  Harry brought out a bottle of white wine, saying, ‘I plundered this from Joe’s cellar. To do justice to Angharad’s lunch.’

  ‘Plundered is right,’ Laura responded. ‘I bet he knows exactly how many bottles of that he’s got left.’

  ‘Too bad. I shall justify myself when the explosion comes by saying it was perfect for this food, and this sunshine, and the three of us. And that we enjoyed every mouthful of it. Which is no less than the truth.’ He filled their glasses with the pale gold wine and they raised them to one another and then drank.

  Angharad was unused to alcohol of any sort and she felt it beguilingly loosen her tongue. She leant comfortably back in her chair, smiling between the faces that were so similar yet teased her with their difference.

  ‘Tell us about Cefn,’ Harry said gently. ‘Tell us what you left behind this morning.’

  Laura knew everything already, but Angharad sensed that she wanted it repeated, shared with Harry.

  ‘It’s no more than a long, uneven street with a church, and a shop, and a pub. I know every crack in the paving, and the sound of everyone’s voice, and what they’ll say when you see them. I’ve lived there all my life and I belong to it in one way. But in another I don’t belong at all, any more. My Dad and Aunty Gwyn aren’t quite like everyone else. They haven’t always lived there, although I don’t know any more than that. And since I’ve been away to school I feel even less part of it. I go away, and come back, and everything goes on without me. And since I’ve known Laura …’

  Angharad flashed a glance from Laura to Harry. ‘You know about your Dad, and mine, and what he said?’

  ‘Just that,’ Harry said. ‘I can’t guess at why any more than Laura, or you. But it doesn’t surprise me.’

  The same words that Laura had used when she had first told her, Angharad remembered. But there was more bitterness, more resentment in Harry’s voice. Angharad guessed that Laura, cool and self-contained, simply turned away from her father, cutting him out of her life. But there was more heat in Harry, and less control. Angharad knew that instinctively. There would be open and probably dangerous conflict between Joe Cotton and his son. The thought of meeting the father cast a dark little finger of shade over the brightness of Angharad’s afternoon.

  ‘Cefn is my home, but yet it isn’t,’ she went on softly. Her eyes travelled over the expanse of lake, from the black water under the pine trees to the curve where it licked and splintered into a million points of light under the sun. Light and shade, brightness and secrecy. ‘I feel more at home here,’ she said, and the truth surprised her. ‘It must be because I’m with you.’

  She had meant to look at Laura, but it was Harry’s glance which held hers.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said. A second or two of silence ticked away. Then Laura stood up, scraping her chair as she moved. ‘But Llyn Fair’s very special. Isn’t it, Lolly?’

  ‘You haven’t called me that for years.’ Laura leaned forward now and put her arms around Harry’s shoulders. Her hair fell forward and as it mingled with Harry’s, Angharad saw that it was exactly the same shade. The blackness was almost blue, and where the sun caught it there were silvery lights. Laura kissed her brother’s forehead, and as if to answer her his hands closed over hers for a second.

  How close they are, Angharad thought.

  ‘It’s too hot now for tennis.’ Harry’s voice was light. ‘Shall we row on the lake instead?’

  They went down the stone steps to the little sloping jetty and clambered one by one into the rocking boat. There was a seat with a padded cushion in the prow, and Laura steered Angharad into it. Then she produced another cushion and settled herself amidships with her dark head resting in Angharad’s lap. Angharad stroked the fanned-out threads of hair back into a smooth cap and Laura sighed contentedly, letting her eyes close.

  Harry took up the oars and they slid away from the jetty. From under her eyelashes Angharad saw the spray from the blades refracting into tiny rainbows. In the dead centre of the lake, close to the wavering line between light and shade, he rested on his oars and they drifted, close to the margin and then away again. Once they slipped into the shade so that a dark line fell across Harry’s face. He smiled absently and paddled gently with one oar to take them into the sun again. Then he shipped the oars and lay back in the stern with his straw hat tipped over his eyes. Angharad listened to the splash of water over the dam at the end of the lake, and the faint breath of wind in the pines. Laura’s head was warm and heavy in her lap, and she saw that Harry’s tanned arm had dropped so that his fingers brushed against Laura’s bare ankle. She felt that the touch connected them all in their isolation on the lapping water.

  Dimly, she thought, I wish I could hold on to this moment. Keep it. But her own eyelids were heavy with sunshine and wine, and at last she let them close on the shimmering afternoon.

  When she woke up again it was with a start and the impression that everything had suddenly gone dark. But the sun was simply moving to the west and the shadowed arc of lake was beginning, slowly, to eat up the sunlit portion. Harry woke up at the same instant. He blinked, and then shot her his dazzling smile. Gesturing her to silence he picked up the oars and then whispered, ‘Ready … paddle.’

  The boat leapt forward across the water in a shower of spray. Laura screamed as the cold drops splashed over her skin, and flung herself upright.

  ‘You savage!’

  Angharad felt the cold, empty place where her head had rested. Laura lurched forward to grab Harry’s wrists. The boat rocked violently as they stood, wrestled briefly, and then, with a mocking shout from Harry and an anxious cry from Angharad, the brother and sister locked together for an instant before tipping in a flailing arc into the water.

  Angharad clung desperately to her seat as the boat bobbed like a cork, her heart in her mouth. But then she saw the sleek heads surfacing together in a plume of white water. They were choking with laughter and still struggling together, rolling over in the water like seals. Then Harry was gone, surging towards the jetty with a powerful crawl that left Laura trailing behind him.

  Angharad retrieved the splayed oars and clambered gingerly into Harry’s seat. Then, with the boat ploughing like a tub, she began to row ashore after them. They were dancing up and down on dry land, waiting for her, when the boat bumped the jetty. They were still laughing, but contrite too.

  ‘It was mean o
f us to leave you out there.’

  ‘But she does row like a pro.’

  ‘I’d rather row ashore than swim, thank you.’

  ‘Quite right. God, that water’s cold. I must have been in there a million times and I still forget.’

  The lake water, bubbling from an underground spring deep in the rock, was icy. Angharad had trailed her fingers languidly in it and had drawn them out numb. Something made her shiver, now.

  ‘Dry clothes then, and I’ll beat you both at tennis.’

  ‘You don’t stand a chance.’

  In fact they were only nearly a match for Harry. He was quicker, and much more powerful, and he made no allowances. Angharad’s game was by far the weakest and she hovered at the net, jabbing an occasional volley between the powerful shots that whizzed past her. Harry’s concentrated frown under his sweatband as he prowled on the back line waiting for her loopy service made her giggle, and Laura’s stern instructions made it worse.

  They took the game so seriously that it made Angharad see another side of them. They were competitive, but only with each other. The rest of the world was a sideshow. Angharad understood how the Laura she had first known had been so self-contained. She had needed no one to match herself against except Harry.

  In the end, after three close sets, Harry was the victor. He threw his racket in the air and crowed while Laura scowled and told Angharad, ‘I was sure with you I’d beat him. But you were no help.’

  ‘I know,’ she laughed. ‘I just don’t care enough about winning. How can I change myself?’

  Harry came up behind them and his arms dropped around their shoulders. The heat of his skin through his thin shirt struck through to Angharad’s. He kissed them both, laughing and still panting a little, and she recognized the same clean scent as Laura’s. Lemons and grass.