Learning by Heart (18 page)

‘And did he know?’ Zeph asked. ‘Did my father know about this man?’

‘You don’t understand,’ Cora said.

Zeph put a hand to her head. ‘Well, I’m trying to,’ she said. ‘First Nick, now you …
you
, of all people!’

‘It was a long time ago,’ Cora whispered.

‘But that doesn’t matter,’ Zeph snapped. ‘He’s left you all this. He sends you this journal—’

‘Addressed to
me
,’ Cora reiterated. ‘To me, not you, Zeph.’

Zeph blushed. ‘I was looking for the bills,’ she replied hotly. ‘I wasn’t snooping. I looked in the drawer for the bills that you said were worrying you.’

‘So you opened this.’

Zeph turned away, closing her eyes to the journal on the kitchen table.

‘I loved your father,’ Cora said quietly, ‘and he worshipped you.’ She made a move to grasp the letter that her daughter was still holding.

Zeph took a sudden step backwards. ‘How often did you see him, this Caviezel?’

‘I never saw him.’

Zeph laughed disbelievingly. ‘Oh, I suppose if I read on, I’ll find out that you never went back?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t met up with him somewhere?’

‘Never,’ Cora said.

Zeph held out the journal. ‘This is thirty years right here.’

‘But I never saw him again. Never.’ She sat down at the table, and put her hands over her face.

Zeph was silent for several seconds. Then she said, ‘He was eleven years younger than you. Nineteen! A boy of nineteen. And you were my age,’ she added. She looked down at the book and up again. ‘You were like me,’ she murmured. ‘My age exactly.’

‘It’s not …’

‘You were married. You were
married
.’

‘It’s not what you think at all,’ Cora said, in a quavering voice, the voice of an old woman, bereft.

‘You’re just like Nick,’ Zeph whispered in horror. ‘The two of you are the same.’

She stopped. She didn’t know, didn’t recognize this woman. This was the woman in an intimate journal kept by a stranger. This woman was public property.

She couldn’t speak to Cora any longer. She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stay in the room a moment longer.

Josh had backed against the wall, and was sitting crouched there, his knees drawn up, his elbows on his knees and his hands over his ears. He was singing to himself, a song from a television programme he loved, the theme song. ‘Carry all the bits and bats,’ he mumbled. ‘Carry this and carry that.’ It came out in a jumble, overlaid with his lisp on the letter
r
.

She put a hand to her mouth. She thought for a moment that she was going to be sick.

She walked over to Joshua. She heard her mother start to cry.

‘Carry this, carry bits and bats,’ Josh sang to himself uncertainly. His gaze flickered from Cora to his mother.

‘Get up, darling,’ Zeph told him.

He hesitated.

‘Do as you’re told!’

‘Don’t bad shout,’ he said. ‘Please,’ he blurted out, repeating the code that he knew deflected Zeph’s disapproval.

Mortification churned through her. What was she doing? What had she already done? Everything was messed up beyond repair. She would never get anything straight again. She would never trust anyone else. She snatched at her son’s wrist, as if to pull him back from the distance that might unravel between them.

Josh’s eyes filled with tears and he began to wail.

She hauled him to his feet, picked him up and, holding him tightly to her, closing her ears to his cries, she walked out of the house.

Eleven

Richard always said she was a good woman. ‘The love of a good woman,’ he would joke.

Cora had never expected to be happy, only secure, so happiness, when it came, was the best of surprises.

On the day that she was married, in a simple dovegrey suit – in deference, she told everyone, to her mother’s death, and yet, in her heart, because she could not bear the private hypocrisy of wearing white – her father told her she was the loveliest girl on earth. ‘You’re just like your mother,’ he said, full of pride, as he handed her out of the car at the steps to the abbey. She had, in addition to the soft silk suit, a flattering little hat, all froth and feathers, pale grey silk shoes, and she carried a posy of the Cussons rose, whose scent surrounded them as they waited in the porch for the organist to play the Wedding March.

Sun poured into the little space; she saw her foreshortened silhouette on the ground, arm in arm with her father. It was he, rather than she, who was nervous. Instead of passion, she simply hoped. She didn’t want to let Richard down; she prayed that no word of her relationship with David Menzies would filter back to him via Jenny or one of the other girls from London, who were in the small congregation. She wanted to work hard and help Richard flourish in whatever he chose to do in the future. It was her job, she knew, to support him. To honour and obey him. She would do so: she had no other expectation.

They had not invited many people to the ceremony, only their immediate neighbours, whom her father and Richard knew far better than she did, a few relatives, her aunt and uncle with their two teenage children, and her three London friends, all of whom arrived alone, even the now-engaged Jenny. Richard’s side of the church was empty. He had no family, his parents having died some years before, and he had been an only child. Smiling, and joking afterwards that they had looked like Richard’s harem, her friends had stood on Richard’s side of the church; their faces, as she entered and the Wedding March struck up, were a picture to see. She, the least likely, was the first to be married.

Richard did not turn to look at her: he stood with his hands clasped, his eyes on the floor, his back rigid. He told her afterwards that he had been afraid she would not come.

‘Why would I not come?’ she had asked him, astounded.

‘Because I don’t deserve you,’ he had replied.

Everyone approved of him. ‘He’s an awfully good catch,’ Jenny told her at the reception. ‘A gentleman-farmer in the making. You’ll soon be lady of the manor.’

‘He strikes me as more interesting than that,’ her aunt opined. ‘And a war hero, I gather. Your father tells me he has the DSO.’

‘He rarely talks about it,’ Cora told her.

‘Good,’ her aunt replied, nodding in approval. ‘Modesty and dignity. Everything you could want in a man. Someone mature and respectable. He will do you very well, dear. A very good choice.’

He had hired a car for the honeymoon, and booked a passage to France. It was an unusual and imaginative idea: no one that Cora knew had ever been to the Mediterranean and, in Jenny’s eyes, Richard gained a whole new perspective when she was told where they were going just before Cora and Richard left. ‘Oh, that’s racy of him,’ she had said, smiling broadly over her fifth glass of champagne. ‘Is he racy, Cora? How fascinating. You are a dark horse.’

They left Sherborne at four; the September weather was perfect. They drove through the lanes and, after an hour, he pulled into a driveway, and along it, under alternating limes and sweet chestnut that formed a dense green tunnel, into the courtyard of a country house.

‘This is an hotel,’ he said, turning off the engine. ‘Do you like it?’

She looked at the lawns on either side of the L-shaped seventeenth-century house, and at the huge herbaceous borders, still full of colour. ‘It’s very pretty,’ she said.

‘We could stay somewhere else, if you’d rather,’ he told her. ‘One of your father’s friends recommended it to me.’

‘It looks lovely,’ she said.

‘And we’ll drive on in the morning,’ he said. ‘It’s just two hours to the ferry.’

‘That seems perfect,’ she told him.

He got out their bags and she followed him to the door.

Inside, the owner was waiting for them: a large woman poured into a vivid floral frock, a broad smile on her face. ‘Ah,’ she beamed, ‘my newlyweds. Lovely.’

Richard signed the register; Cora stared down at the names, Mr and Mrs Richard Ward. It felt comforting. She had ceased to be Cora. She had ceased to be single and alone. I will never make another journey without him, she thought.

Their room was like the owner: a vast sea of chintz hung with frills. The woman opened the windows. ‘Now, make yourselves at home,’ she was saying, as she fussed with the curtains. ‘The bathroom is along the corridor. There’s only one other couple staying. Dinner is at eight.’ She turned to them. They were standing in the centre of the room ‘like two soldiers to attention, and she was clutching her handbag, poor dear! And he looking petrified!’ the woman would tell her husband later. ‘Now, would you like some tea out in the garden?’ she asked.

Richard looked questioningly at Cora.

‘Yes, please,’ she said.

The owner bustled out, and, when the door was closed behind her, Cora made herself busy unpacking her overnight things. She shook out the nightdress she had bought in town, a modest broderie-anglaise affair that she folded and put under her pillow, smoothing it flat.

When she turned back, Richard hadn’t moved. ‘I can’t believe we’re here,’ he said.

‘It’s very nice,’ she told him, smiling.

He walked over to her, picked up her hand and looked closely at it. ‘You don’t think the ring is too narrow?’ he asked. He had chosen them himself, and she had been surprised, at the ceremony, that there were two, a matching pair. It was not usually done, and he had not told her beforehand. ‘I wanted us to be the same,’ he murmured, as if reading her thoughts.

‘It’s not too narrow,’ she said.

‘Too plain?’

‘Not too plain.’ In truth, she didn’t mind what it was like.

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. His eyes closed as his mouth brushed her skin. ‘I want to make you happy,’ he said, gazing at her.

‘I know, dear,’ she replied. ‘I know.’

After dinner, they walked along the garden path. There was a lake beyond the trees; they stood at the fence and listened to the water running softly through the weirs further upstream. Occasionally, they heard a faint ripple as a fish surfaced. The country here was really dark, far from any town, and the sky was cloudy.

‘No stars,’ Richard said. ‘No moon.’

‘You might have ordered them,’ Cora joked.

‘I shall complain to the management,’ he said.

They walked back to the house, and climbed the stairs. As they reached the first floor and the door to their room, Cora felt numb. She watched Richard’s hand as he turned the key in the lock. This is something I must do, she told herself.

They went inside. He walked to the dressing-table, and put down the key.

‘Might I use the bathroom first?’ she asked him.

‘Of course.’

She took her wash-bag and went back along the corridor. Inside the room, she stared down at the rolltop bath, the claw feet, the old Victorian shower above it bordered by a glass screen etched with geometric patterns. She sat down on the side of the bath and waited to see if her heart would stop beating so sickeningly. She wiped her palms on her flannel, then got up, washed her face vigorously and combed her hair. She pulled at her dress: she looked like a schoolteacher in its utilitarian blue. She frowned at herself in the mirror. She ought to have worn something more romantic with a lower neckline for dinner. Not this day dress. A hot wave of embarrassment poured over her. She was no good: she would not know what to do. Or she would betray herself, make it obvious that she had had a man before. The thought appalled her; she experienced a moment of real terror.

He would know.

He would know
.

Perhaps she could go. Perhaps she could feign illness. She couldn’t even sleep in a different bed because there was only one: the double bed and the double bedroom were reserved for a honeymoon couple.

There was nothing for it. She must go back and she must go in to him and she must do whatever he wanted. He wouldn’t be like David, she told herself, eyes closed, heart aching against her ribs. David had been cruel and selfish. Richard wasn’t the same.

She opened her eyes and stared at herself in the mirror. ‘He isn’t the same,’ she told her reflection. ‘He is not the same.’

When she got back to the room, Richard excused himself, holding his own wash-bag. He had taken off his jacket and tie, and when he had gone, she saw that he had neatly stacked the loose change from his pockets on the table. The car keys and his wallet lay alongside in a perfectly precise row. She got undressed quickly, hanging her dress in the wardrobe, and hiding her underclothes in her case. She got into bed and lay there looking at the open window; after a moment, she turned off the light.

When she heard his hand on the door handle, she closed her eyes.

There were a few seconds of silence as he walked across the room. ‘Shall I leave the window open?’ he asked softly.

‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

She heard him close it.

She had avoided thinking of what it would be like to be near him, and when he got into bed next to her, it felt strange to have another body in the space where she lay. She, too, was an only child, and had never shared a bed or a room; she had never gone camping with the Girl Guides and slept in a tent with others, or in a hostel. The invasion of another person was startling.

Richard lay perfectly still for a moment, then turned on to his side, and put his hand on her waist. ‘Darling,’ he murmured. He kissed her. There was no insistence. He moved back from her. ‘Are you comfortable?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied. She moved into his shoulder, and he put his arm round her. She lifted her face to him. His hand moved to her breast. The material of the nightdress lay thickly under his touch. He was wearing pyjamas; they had a starchy smell, a new smell. There was a slight growth of beard on his face; she tried not to mind it. There was the greasy odour of the cream on his hair. She tried to concentrate on other things: the vows she had made in the church, the flower arrangements on either side of the aisle, the food they had eaten, the journey in the car, the route they would take in the morning.

‘Cora,’ he said.

She thought that the nightclothes got in the way, the bedding stifled her, the air in the bedroom was close and humid. She tried to breathe evenly, slowly, lying still. She put her hands on his back, in the centre. She neither helped him nor obstructed him. When he had finished he lay for some time with his head in the crook of her shoulder and neck, and she liked that very much, the nearness of him, that he didn’t move away from her, and that he seemed to need her.