Encounters (10 page)

She saw him several times after that; sometimes in the distance when he would lift a hand and stride on, making no effort to come over to talk and sometimes they would meet and would smile and walk together, falling naturally in step and talking of plants and birds and painting and sometimes of farming, but never of themselves. She thought he must be a farmer of some kind, but she never asked and he never told her what he did.

Nor did she see at first the quiet contentment in his face when he glanced in her direction as they walked together down the mossy tracks. When, almost imperceptibly, their hands touched she didn’t draw away.

Then, once, turning to him, her face full of laughter as they talked she glimpsed suddenly the warmth in his eyes and the smile that was especially for her. Her laughter died for a moment on her lips and then she found herself smiling again, at him.

‘It’s good to have someone to walk with, Jacie,’ he said quietly. That was all. But she understood.

It puzzled Jacie that she was at ease with him. One night she sat down in the dim light of her bedroom and tilted the flower-painted plastic shade on her dressing table lamp to throw a clear unflattering light on her face and gazed earnestly at herself in the mirror. It was an old glass, black-speckled with the image distorted slightly on one side, making her temple and hair ripple and move oddly. She smiled involuntarily and was amazed at the vivacity which suddenly lit her face.

Why, she was asking herself, was she not shy and embarrassed with Brian? Why should this man be the only man with whom she had never felt afraid – save her father, who had gone away so long ago and left an aching void in her life? She leaned forward to look more closely in the mirror, remembering suddenly how he would swing her up in his arms so she could wind her legs into the small of his back and bury her face in the strength and security of his chest. Always he had been there and she had known that he always would, until the day she came home from school and found her mother crying bitterly, face down on the bed. She knew now that her father had no strength, no security to offer and that he had made her mother miserable till the day he left, but rational adult explanations could not dispel that secure safe feeling which he had engendered and which lingered in her longing.

Brian seemed to have that feeling about him too. She knew instinctively that his were the kind of hands in which a wild creature would lie without fear and so – if ever he should ask it – would she.

She shook her head wearily and picked up her hair brush. It wasn’t as though he were that much older than she either. Ten years? Probably less; automatically she ran her fingers over the tiny web of lines beneath her eyes, gently easing them flat. Then slowly she began to brush her hair.

‘I hear you were talking to Brian Dexter up on the moors yesterday,’ Mrs Finch commented as she fed Jacie scrambled eggs next morning. Who had told? The rocks? The lonely gossiping buzzards? ‘He’s a nice man, he is; but that wife of his … no better than she ought to be that one – Ann, she’s called – having an affair with young Jim Lloyd like that! Serve her right that he’s divorcing her. Divorce is too good I reckon. And he still loves her, you know; they say he still loves her. Some say he nearly went out of his mind when he found out and now he spends all his time alone on that moor, brooding. It’s a wicked, wicked shame. And he’s worth a hundred Jim Lloyds any day of the week.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Jacie was gazing fixedly at her eggs. There was a pause and then she went on quietly, ‘He never talks about himself.’ Nor of course did she.

She stared at the coffee pot as Mrs Finch picked it up, conscious of a sudden weight of sadness. It threatened her, this new intimate detail of Brian’s life. She wished she didn’t know, although it explained perhaps the nature of the bond between them now. For he too must mistrust the world, he too find himself apart …

That day, consciously, Jacie looked for him on the moors, but she didn’t find him there and she didn’t dare go back to the abbey. It belonged to Brian and his pair of kites. He would take her there in his own time to see his birds if he wanted and she must wait. For the first time since she had begun sketching the moors she found them lonely and a little melancholy as the warm summer wind rippled the heather and the green bracken and stirred the thorn bushes clinging to the scattered outcrops of rock.

He found her when he chose, which became more and more often as the weeks wore on. She never mentioned what she knew. She put the knowledge behind her as being part of his life which must never come between them, never spoil their careful impersonality. They talked though, all the time, and went for long walks across the countryside, climbing the hills and sitting on the edge of the river watching for kingfishers and laughing at the antics of the dipper as it plunged from its rock to walk beneath the water on the bed of the stream. And stealthily they went to visit the eyrie in its tall tree within the ruined walls of the abbey and Jacie saw the three ridiculous bald-fluffy heads of the young craning for their food as the parents swept down out of the sky.

They would picnic together, she and Brian, sharing her packed lunches which, though nothing was said at the farm, had mysteriously doubled in size and it seemed to Jacie that for the first time in her life she was almost happy.

‘You must sketch the birds for me when they’re flying,’ he murmured as they crouched side by side behind the abbey wall watching the nest.

She nodded, her fingers gripping the cold crumbling stones which sheltered them. ‘How long will it be now?’ To her, the gaping beaks and the long necks visible in the nest seemed enormous already.

‘Not long. Look! The hen bird.’ His whisper made her look automatically up, but all she noticed was the firmness of the hand he had laid upon hers on the stones of the wall.

For a moment they forgot the birds and looked at one another and she saw the unspoken emotion in his eyes. Then he had turned away and abruptly releasing her fingers he raised his field glasses once more to the tree.

It was Brian who taught her, after he had teased her for huddling habitually under a scarf, to walk fearlessly in the rain, throwing back her head to feel the cold freshness of it on her skin as he made her shake out her hair to the damp and the fresh soft-scenting drizzle. And it was in the rain that he first kissed her gently, holding her against him and kissing her again as the cool drops ran down her upturned face, before he turned sadly away.

Summer grew heavy and languid and fearfully she began to count the days which remained of her holiday, willing time to slow down. In the abbey the young tested their wings and jumped up and down on the edge of their untidy nest high in the tree. They were ready to fly – and Jacie knew she was in love. But it was a humble, sad, compassionate, half fearful love that could not declare itself and dared not hint at its existence before the pain of the man at her side who still loved his Ann with such despair.

When at last the nest was empty they went more often to the abbey, walking up the cart track through the waist high ripening corn; they explored the woody valley in which it lay and the dark stone walls which so easily evoked an echo of pure voices sadly intoning the plainsong down the centuries. Jacie loved it there in spite of – perhaps because of – its sadness. It was Brian’s place more than any other.

And there it was that she broke the spell of the summer. ‘I have to go home soon, Brian. I hate to leave, but I must. I have to go back to work.’ They were standing in the long seeding grasses in the chapter house of the nuns.

Silently he took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’ll miss you, Jacie.’

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Brian, I shall come back. Next year.’ And then it had happened. Her love and anguish had betrayed her and she had rushed on: ‘By then the divorce will be over and you’ll be free … I know you’ll be free. You’ll forget her one day.’

He didn’t question how she knew. He said nothing, but his face tautened with pain and she saw misery and memories where only a moment before had been clear happy laughter.

In silent despair she walked away from him then, and there in the corner of the lichen-powdered wall she saw the neat intricacies of the spider’s web looped across from stone to stone. She gazed at it for a moment and then bitterly swept her hand up through the threads, watching them snap and coalesce and cling fragmentarily to her fingers. That easy it was to break something fragile and beautiful. She could feel the childish tears welling under her eyelids. Then Brian was beside her. He said nothing, but she saw him looking at the ruin of the web and she felt desperately guilty and ashamed. She wanted to help him, to stand by him, to give him strength. But she did not know how. She wanted to be with him, but she didn’t dare remain. Instead she walked away.

That was the last time she saw him. Two days later she packed and went home, her shell once more tightly and protectively around her.

Mrs Finch sent her the notice of the divorce from the local paper. There was no editorial comment, just the bland headlines ‘
Well-known local farmer divorces wife
’ and a few lines giving the names and addresses of the three people involved. So few words to cover so much that had happened.

She started to write to him then. But what do you say to a man in his position, when you ache with love and dare not say it? She tore up the half-written letter slowly and regretfully and let it fell, piece by piece, into the waste paper basket.

It was Brian who wrote in the end. A short note: ‘Any chance of you getting up here in the New Year? You’d enjoy sketching the hills in the snow. The kites are still here.’ That was all.

And so she went, and walked in the early dusk down the cart track to the abbey and found the frosted web which meant so much to her. She didn’t find Brian that evening, but she didn’t worry. She knew he would be there somewhere, and perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, as she sketched in the snow on the moors he would come and find her, as he always had before.

T
he bedroom was high ceilinged and cool, lavishly furnished with a wealth of eau-de-nil silk.

‘Well?’ My sister was watching me closely as I threw my bag down on the double bed and looked round.

‘Davina, it’s lovely. Quite the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen.’

She looked pleased and for the first time since she and I had been alone together we exchanged a real smile.

I wasn’t exaggerating. It was all quite fabulous: the room, the villa, the gardens which I had glimpsed as Tim and I left the car and walked up the broad flight of shallow stone steps to the porticoed front door. Everything.

I crossed to the windows and pushed back the shutters. Outside the Florentine sky was a blinding blue over the hazy valley. The shimmering afternoon heat hit into the room and I realized why every shutter on that side of the house had been closed. The view was breathtaking. If Tim and I could cement our love and happiness again anywhere it would be here.

Our marriage had not been happy. Perhaps I had been too young. Perhaps I had not realized what living with a brilliant but temperamental man would mean, especially when he was a man whose career as a sculptor brought him into intimate contact with so many beautiful women – and this while I had to keep on teaching to provide us with a steady income. Whatever the reasons, life had been hard for us. But now Tim was beginning to find recognition; I had given up my job and we had begun again.

Davina joined me on the balcony and we stood for a moment in silence. She was looking down the valley and I studied her surreptitiously. It was a year since we had met. That had been at her wedding to Simon Delacourt when I, her junior by five years, had already been married for eighteen months. Simon was rich, charming, clever; exactly what Davina had wanted. And who could blame her, with his country house in Sussex, his yacht, his executive jet and this fabulous villa in Tuscany?

We had always been close, but in her relationship with Simon she had been secretive; I had felt excluded, and wrapped up by then in my own unhappiness I had not paid my sister much attention, assuming that she had everything she wanted.

So why did she look so strained now? I studied her profile. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and between nose and mouth I did not remember.

She turned suddenly, groping in the pocket of her loose jacket and produced a pack of cigarettes and a small elegant lighter. ‘Want one?’

‘You know I don’t. And you never used to, Davina.’

Her eyes met mine and she smiled again. This time it was brittle and automatic. ‘You have to do something to occupy yourself.’ She inhaled deeply on the cigarette and turned abruptly back into the room. ‘How are things between you and Tim? Are you still supporting him while he lays every female in sight?’

I caught my breath. She hadn’t used to be a bitch either.

I followed her back into the shadowy room, carefully pulling the shutters closed behind me. ‘Actually he’s becoming quite well known, so I don’t have to support him any more,’ I said. My voice was shaking slightly and I steadied it grimly. ‘And we’re happy now. Very happy.’ We were also very hard up and praying that Simon might commission some work.

‘Good.’ She was studying her face in the lovely Florentine mirror over the dressing table and for an instant our eyes met in the glass. ‘Let’s go down and get a drink shall we?’ she said tautly. ‘I want to meet our other guests and well see where Simon and Tim have got to.’

Almost as soon as we had arrived Simon had whisked my husband away leaving us girls, as he put it, to get to know each other again. I could see why he thought we needed the time alone. Davina was a different woman.

The drawing room was rich and elegant, furnished in pale green and gold and it looked out across the formal gardens at the back of the villa. The line of tall windows shaded by ivory silk stood open. On the terrace outside I could see three figures reclining in the shade while beyond them in the sunlight the spray from an ornamental fountain hung like a rainbow in the still air. The two men stood up as we stepped out to join them. Both were casually dressed and wore dark glasses.

‘Jocelyn and Maggie Farquer,’ Davina introduced us offhandedly, ‘and Nigel Godson – my sister Celia Armitage.’

Nigel Godson reached out a hand. ‘Ah at last. The wife of the famous sculptor. I’ve heard so much about you both from Davina.’ His grin robbed the words of some of their irony but nevertheless I felt a small flicker of warning. I had to be nice to these attractive rich strangers who came from a different world, for Tim’s future success depended on the patronage of people like them.

Maggie Farquer patted the seat beneath the fringed awning near her. ‘Come over here, darling and have a drink. You must be parched.’ She was a woman of about fifty, tanned, coiffured, jewelled, in Dior slacks and a crimson silk shirt. I smiled at her uncertainly as I accepted the tall frosted glass from Davina and felt myself grow suddenly shy.

My sister did not join us. She began instead to pace slowly up and down the terrace and I watched her as I answered Maggie’s lazy questions about our trip through France in the car. I saw her stub out her half smoked cigarette in an urn full of tumbling pink geraniums and reach for another, then as I watched I saw her stiffen and return the cigarette to the pack. She was staring down the garden. I followed the direction of her gaze and saw Tim and Simon approaching slowly across the parched grass.

When the introductions had been made and Tim given his glass he sat down beside me on the seat. ‘There’s a cottage in the grounds I can use as a studio, Celia,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll show you later.’ He reached across and touched the back of my hand gently with his finger tip. It was a very private sign and I leant back against his shoulder sipping from my glass, happy and relaxed for the first time since I had sat down.

Davina was standing about three yards from us and I noticed suddenly that she had crushed the cigarette carton in her fist. Her eyes were fixed on the seat between Tim and myself where our hands touched on the cushion.

Tim was smiling later when he came back into our bedroom from the shower naked but for the towel knotted around his waist.

‘What do you think of this set up?’ he said softly. He put his arms around me and pulled me close. His hair was damp and he smelled of cologne.

‘I love the villa.’ I looked up at him.

‘Not the people?’

‘Not the people. Even Davina has changed.’

‘We have to be nice to them, Celia.’ He frowned. ‘I hate to say it, but we need them.’

‘Even men like Nigel Godson? I thought you said dealers were parasites and we could do without them.’

He laughed softly. His lips were in my hair. ‘We can do without them only if we get the commissions direct.’

‘And you think Simon will commission something?’

‘Could be.’ He sounded excited. ‘He’s had this cottage cleared of furniture so I can use it as a studio and work in peace while you’re sunning yourself by the pool.’ He grinned. ‘He took me to see that too. You wait till you see it. Do you think I should suggest I do a head of Davina?’

‘Do you want to?’ My arms were around his neck and I could feel the towel slipping.

‘Could do worse. She’s very beautiful. I could tell the truth without offending.’ He grinned again, reaching up for the zip at the back of my dress, beginning to slide it down. Reluctantly I wriggled away from him and went to sit out of his reach at the dressing table. I picked up my hairbrush.

‘She is different, have you noticed?’

‘A year older and wiser. So are we.’

‘No, it’s more than that. She’s grown hard and neurotic.’ I put down the brush and turned to face him. ‘I think she’s unhappy.’

He laughed. ‘With all this?’

It did seem hard to believe, but as I watched her at dinner I became more and more certain I was right.

We sat at a long elegant table lit with candles in silver candelabra, waited on by the villa servants. Beside me Nigel Godson was attentive. Without his glasses he was also very attractive for his eyes were a warm hazel and they were without doubt fixed exclusively on me.

At the other end of the table my sister was dressed in white which against her tan looked quite stunning and she in her turn had eyes for no one but my husband.

He was studying her. I knew that look; I had seen it often and in the beginning I had resented it bitterly as beauty after beauty disappeared into his studio; I still found it hard to believe he was studying his subjects dispassionately and that he treated men to the same intense scrutiny. Davina had sensed his interest at once and was responding with an arch awareness which bordered on flirtation, looking up at him under her eyelashes as her fingers toyed with her wine glass. I felt a quick surge of hurt anger at her as I watched.

I dragged my attention away from the cameo at the end of the table to find that Nigel Godson was speaking to me again. ‘Perhaps if your husband is going to work while he’s here you would allow me to drive you down to the city to explore a little?’ He smiled and I saw Maggie Farquer watching us through the candlelight from across bowls of stracciatella. On my left, sitting at the head of the table was Simon, a large florid man in his early forties. He was busy eating and did not appear to be listening. Nor had he noticed his wife flirting with my husband.

Maggie caught my eye and smiled. ‘That’s a splendid idea,’ she murmured. ‘I shall beg a lift down with you, Nigel. No –’ she made a deprecatory gesture with her hands. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to play gooseberry. I want you to drop me off somewhere on your way. A dear friend of mine has rented a house there for the summer and I’ve been dying for the opportunity to look her up. More than a friend actually, my erstwhile partner in crime.’ Her smile had not faltered but I sensed she was no longer speaking to Nigel and myself any more; she was watching Simon. I glanced at him as well. He had laid down his soup spoon and was sipping from his glass. ‘I believe you know her, Simon sweetie.’ She was speaking to him directly now. ‘It’s Sarah. Sarah Cummins.’

Later we took our coffee and liqueurs out onto the terrace. An enormous orange moon hung above the cypress trees and the darkness had the quality of rich stifling velvet. I felt lost and a little miserable. Tim was still talking to Davina. They were sitting on the rim of the fountain together and she was stroking the still water at its edge into gentle ripples with the tip of her finger. Jocelyn and Simon were talking together as they wandered up and down the garden smoking cigars, tiny points of burning light in the night. Whatever reaction Maggie had expected from her host at her announcement at dinner, Simon had obviously disappointed her. His bland face had remained unruffled and he had merely smiled, rather bored, at her disclosure. She was talking now to Nigel, discussing people I did not know, laughing, touching his arm. I was sitting with them but I was an outsider, an observer who did not even speak their language and before long I rose with murmured excuses and tiptoed up to bed. I must have been asleep when Tim came up, for I never heard him.

When I awoke the room was cool and silvery with early morning light. Tim was already up and dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt. He grinned when he saw me awake and came to sit on the bed beside me.

‘Hi. Did you sleep well?’

I stretched in the soft silky sheets, my forebodings of the previous night forgotten, and nodded, holding out my arms as he bent to kiss me. But a moment later he was sitting up again. ‘I’m going down to the cottage, Celia. I want to begin work at once. You don’t mind, do you? Make the most of the sun and get a lovely tan beside their pool.’ He ran his finger slowly down my breast.

I felt my nerves tighten. ‘You’re going to do a head of Davina?’

It wasn’t really a question. I already knew the answer.

He nodded. ‘She says Simon will pay for it for their anniversary and she can spare me a bit of time later this morning for a preliminary sitting so I thought I’d get straight to it.’

‘Tim …’ I reached out again and he caught my hands gently. Last night had been the first time we had not made love since our reconciliation, but what was the use of saying anything? It had all been said so often in the past. I just smiled at him, reached up to give him a kiss and lay back to watch him as he slung his denim jacket over his shoulder, winked at me and was gone.

Nigel Godson drove a British registration Lancia. I sat beside him in the front with Maggie Farquer, resplendent in a magenta jumpsuit, behind us, leaning forward with her forearms across the back of the seats as she directed us. She smelled faintly of gardenias.

We found it at last, a fourteenth-century farmhouse converted into a luxury holiday home. Sarah Cummins was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Elegant, ash blonde and charming she ushered us into the main room of the house and produced coffee and ricciarelli – delicious little almond biscuits – and it was only two minutes before I discovered that she knew Nigel as well as Maggie. It was an hour before Nigel and I could extricate ourselves from her hospitality and leave. I had not liked her; she was hard and I suspected clever, but with a hint of ice in her which touched us all. Even Maggie, who was effusive and voluble as she sat back on the Louis XVI sofa seemed a little uncomfortable.

Florence was hot and dusty and by mutual consent Nigel and I agreed to forgo a trip to the Uffizi which we had planned and wander instead around San Lorenzo and down the Via Calzaioli towards the Ponte Vecchio. I had begun to like Nigel. He owned a smart gallery in Chelsea dabbling in art and antiques and was exactly the sort of man Tim resented, but he was also kind – a quality conspicuously lacking at the villa – strong and quiet and nobody’s fool. And I sensed that his interest in me was real.