A Winter's Child (64 page)

She thanked Parker for his trouble, told him there was no reply and, without even opening the door of her flat, went straight back to the hotel and informed Kit Hardie, in a manner which greatly alarmed him, that she must get out of Faxby for a while. Personal troubles, she said, family troubles at High Meadows and with her mother at Upper Heaton, Polly's wedding taking everything over and getting on everybody's nerves, Miriam commandeering every minute of her free time to match samples of taffeta for bridesmaids' dresses and go looking for lost garters. And she was tired. The hotel was busy, she knew, but surely no crisis was brewing? John David, in his morose ‘neurasthenic'fashion had settled down well enough, and if he
did
have a tendency to upset the kitchen maids, more by what he did not say than by anything he said, so that they became nervous and dropped things and then burst into tears when he ‘looked'at them, only two of them had actually left and had been easily replaced. And Amandine Keller, who could be morose and difficult herself, was still there, putting up the price of her lover's fish, one noticed, but turning out her full quota of cakes and pastries, more delicious than ever since she had fallen in love. Nor had Aristide Keller proved much of a threat since his release from gaol, his plans to open a restaurant in Town Hall Square having run into trouble due to objections from the Town Hall itself about the conversion of the premises he had chosen for culinary use. Had Kit had a hand in that? Possibly, since the Crown had seemed unusually full of Redfearns and Greenwoods lately. But she had no time to wonder about it now.

‘You could spare me, Kit. Just a week or ten days at the most would put me right.'

‘You're wrong. I can't spare you at all,' he said. But for ten days he would let her go.

She told no one else but Euan to whom all departures seemed quite natural and her mother who, sitting in Feathers'Teashop the next morning, aware that her daughter's bags were already packed, raised an immediate and entirely predictable objection. Edward would not like it. Miriam Swanfield had already mentioned – just a hint, really, without the least wish to cause any trouble – that Claire had been neglecting her lately. No, she hadn't been angry, nothing like that. Sad. And disappointed. And Edward had taken it very much to heart.

‘She wondered if you weren't well,' said Dorothy fiercely. ‘And then – I could hardly believe it – she suddenly looked quite shy and timid and asked us if we thought she'd done anything, unwittingly, to upset you. One could see she was really worried about it. Just imagine – Mrs Miriam Swanfield upsetting herself over
my
daughter. Edward was badly shaken.'

‘Yes, mother. He would be.'

‘And he's not well at all – really not.'

‘No, mother.'

‘He can't seem to shake off that cold. And his digestion of course is terrible.'

‘And his temper?'

Dorothy flushed, bit her lip and then, deciding there was no time to argue, shrugged her still handsome shoulders.

‘I don't like ingratitude that's all, Claire –
we
don't like it – and the very least you could do for Mrs Swanfield, in return for all her kindness to you, is to give her a hand with the wedding. It's only three weeks away.'

‘Five, mother.'

‘Five then. And a million things to do. Weddings don't arrange themselves, you know.'

Dorothy was fond of weddings, had dreamed in her youth of a white satin crinoline of her own and had had to make do, at her first hasty, romantic marriage to Claire's father, with a party-dress she had worn twice before, and for Edward, a sensible, matronly outfit of dark blue. And Claire, her pretty daughter – for Claire
was
pretty, she had always thought so – had rushed to church like a schoolgirl in flowered summer muslin and a graduation day straw hat with long, pale pink ribbons.

Remembering it, and the new white gloves left in the taxi, the posy of lilies-of-the-valley which had shaken a little in Claire's pale, young hands, her pale, young face above them, so serious, so very determined to do her best – so young – she smiled at her daughter.

‘I'll be back in plenty of time, mother,' said Claire, instantly responding, ‘and then we'll have a morning together – or even a day in Leeds if you like – to choose your wedding hat.'

‘That would be lovely, dear.' So it would, except that Edward would probably not allow it, finding, just as Dorothy had put on her coat and gloves, that some new pain had developed, or that he could feel one of his old and various attacks just coming on. No, no. He didn't wish to alarm her. If shefelt it necessary to go off to Leeds then of course she must go. Perhaps if she left his study window slightly ajar and then, should he have cause to cry out for help, somebody – although, of course, one wondered just who – might hear. And Dorothy would buy her wedding hat in ten minutes, the day before the wedding, at the far from fashionable little shop in Upper Heaton or would ask Claire to fetch her whatever seemed suitable from Taylor & Timms.

‘Edward,' she said, by simple association of ideas, ‘has ordered a new morning suit. I just hope he will be well enough for the fittings.'

‘I expect he'll manage it. What have
you
ordered, mother?'

‘Oh – don't worry about that. I suppose you'll look very smart.'

‘I doubt it. Polly won't let anybody outdo her. So she's wearing encrustations of pearls and floating panels of lace and chiffon and yards of embroidered net in her veil, and the poor bridesmaids have to make do with skimpy little frocks in sweet-pea shades of taffeta. Mine is lilac and hideous. I shall give it to a jumble-sale afterwards.'

Dorothy was horrified.

‘Claire – everybody who is anybody in Faxby will be able to recognize those dresses. Everybody will be at the wedding. And if one of them turns up at a church bazaar then they'll
know.
And if each dress is a different colour they'll know it's yours, too. What an insult to Mrs Swanfield and to Mrs Timms.'

Edward, clearly, would be
very
upset about that.

She left that same afternoon for Scarborough where MacAllister's sister had a boarding-house, a small, unpretentious establishment in the old town with no particular view of anything but a row of houses like itself, and into which she was ‘squeezed' good-humouredly, the month being August, simply as a favour to MacAllister. Her room was small and clean, a slope-ceilinged attic painted a pretty rose pink with the kind of narrow, decidedly single bed she had not slept in since her schooldays. The food was simple, ample, appearing regularly and piping hot. Her landlady was pleasant, incurious, had her own life to lead and wanted nothing from Claire but payment in full at the end of ten days. And by then Benedict, and presumably Nola, would have left for three weeks in Italy. Time – her ally now she hoped – would have passed; enough of it to enable her to follow him calmly down the aisle when he gave Polly in marriage to Roger Timms; enough of it to wish him well, with all her heart, if it turned out that he had found a way to live on easier terms with Nola.

She took long walks on the cliffs above a grey, northern sea shrouded more often than not in mist like a finely-beaded curtain, escaping the August crowds and setting her mind in order, coming to a halt only when she realized, with love and pain and a certain amount of wry amusement, that everything she did and said, her attitudes and postures, the way she smiled or held her head, her manner of walking, were being played out, each and every one, before an imaginary audience that was Benedict. And she was glad therefore, on the seventh of her ten days, to see Euan Ash, his kit-bag on his shoulder, standing at her lodging-house gate.

‘Thought I'd have another crack at getting to Edinburgh,' he said. ‘I've left you my canvases and most of my stuff like last time. If I get there I should be back in Faxby in a few days. If not, I'll let you know.'

He left his bag with MacAllister's sister who had a fondness for soldiers, and they walked out onto the cliffs as high and far as they could go, moving at their leisure through grey air above grey water until the town disappeared and they were enclosed in a cloudscape of mist, patterned by the swooping and crying of the gulls.

‘Look –' he said, and for an hour or more he showed her, as he had once promised, the enchantment of a puddle,' the patterns made by rainwater in soft earth, the textures and colours, the rich variety of pebbles, a leaf like a star of pure amber floating beside a tiny white feather tipped with black and streaked, so minutely one had to
think
to see it, with gold.

They looked at tree roots, tangled and thirsty in the salty air; stirred through a windfall of broken branches to release the crushed face of a small blue flower; stood quietly, hand in hand, to observe the comings and goings of a mouse, a frog, a ladybird. They came down from the cliff and looked at the sand, a universe of seaweed and shells, each one with its own face he told her, each bird with its own voice, the sky and sea, which she had thought simply and starkly grey, revealed by his artist's eye as muted layers and shadings of a dozen colours.

‘Don't you see the pink and the primrose?'

‘No.'

‘Look – and think. You'll see.'

She saw.

They walked back towards the town along the beach, wet and no longer very clean, streaks of damp sand on her skirt from kneeling down to acquaint herself with the mayor and corporation of a rock pool, her shoes never to be the same again, her nails grubby from scratching under rocks for the pleasure of holding a probably indignant shellfish in her hand. Saddened and contented both together. At peace with his companionship yet knowing that when he turned the next corner or the brow of the next hill she might never see him again.

‘Are you staying a day or two, Euan?'

‘No. I just wanted to tell you I was off. I can get to Carlisle tonight. And from there it's a straight run.'

‘Euan!' She stopped in her tracks so that he walked a step or two ahead of her. ‘Don't just try to go this time. Get there. Resolve it.'

She could not bear to think of him for what could be his lifetime hesitating at that hospital door, his life's energy absorbed by the need and the fear of going in. Or skulking for ever – and how long could that be? – through northern winters, eternally ‘on his way', eternally impeded, eternally caught in the nightmare of running without moving, of tunnels leading to blank walls.

‘Euan!
Please.'

And, to the consternation of several plump young matrons surrounded by infants and sandcastles and small dogs, he turned, came back to her, put his hands on her shoulders and drew her towards him, watching her come to him, his face intent, engrossed,
looking
at her in depth, in total, in keen, clear-sighted pleasure as he had looked at the pebbles and the grasses. And she let him take her and hold her as if they had been standing not on a beach but a battlefield, a welcome and farewell both together.

‘You have to go, Euan, and get it settled. Otherwise I think you'll die of it.'

‘Yes. Kiss me goodbye.'

The plump mothers, to whom sex happened quickly if regularly in the dark, gathered up their children and their yapping little terriers and herded them away, looking back over scandalized shoulders at this odd couple, the tall, young man in the shabby trenchcoat – a gentleman of course, one could always tell – and the brazen hussy – they knew the type at once – with her short hair and her indecently exposed legs, so busy plying her sinful trade that she had not even noticed them.

‘All right,' he said, having claimed his kiss and several more for good measure, ‘that's me sorted out. What about you?'

‘Something will turn up.'

‘I don't doubt it. But listen, Claire, could you – well, not
promise,
of course, I wouldn't go so far as to ask that – could you just hold on a bit? Not make any decisions – of a fairly permanent nature, I mean – until you see me again?'

‘And if I don't see you?'

‘Lord – don't worry about that. I may be asking you to wait for ever but with a chap like me one can count for ever in months, you know – not years. I just have this uneasy feeling that I might get back to Faxby one day, all eager and bright-eyed and fighting fit, and find you gone.'

‘I'd leave an address, Euan. Plenty of people would know.'

‘I dare say. But it wouldn't be much good to me, would it, if you'd just walked down the aisle with some worthy chap – or done something final with your brother-in-law?'

‘I suppose not.'

He smiled, failing for the first time since she had known him, to produce quite the degree of dazzling waywardness he had intended.

‘All I can say just now, Claire, is that I
would
like to see you again.'

‘That's a lovely thing to say, Euan.'

They had a good Yorkshire high tea with MacAllister's jubilantly Irish sister – cold ham and tongue with mustard pickles and salad, pork pies with brown sauce, currant teacakes, malt bread thickly buttered, custard tarts, several pots of strong tea; Euan, who put down an enormous meal to settle his nerves rather than fill his appetite, affording great satisfaction to black-eyed Teresa MacAllister who liked nothing better than to see men eat.

He got his bag.

‘I'll be off then.'

He knew better than to ask her to come with him to the station. There had been too many trains, too many desperate last embraces for both of them. He would not put her through that again.

‘I'll be seeing you – I expect.'

‘I expect so.'

She smiled, very calm, very steady, nothing on the surface to betray the sudden re-emergence of an old superstitious dread which had filled her, flooded her, every time she had said goodbye to Paul. ‘If I keep on smiling he won't get killed.' It had become a jingle, repeated over and over in her head as she had watched all those trains pull hideously away, tapping it out with her heels as she had made her way alone through those identical, heart-rending station yards. She had kept on smiling. He had died.