Lovers and Newcomers (39 page)

Nic said slowly, ‘You’re right. Thanks for the toast. I was starving.’ She blotted the tears, and folded an arm protectively across her bump. ‘Which treatment
would
you choose, actually?’

He gave the question proper consideration.

‘Shiatsu.’

Later, when it became clear that Nic had no intention of ever going back to the spa, and was only temporarily lodging with friends on their sofa bed in the flat in Kilburn, they conferred about what was to be done. The result was that Polly telephoned the course organizer, and gave herself some authority to speak for Nic by introducing herself as the mother of Nic’s boyfriend. Nic shook her head and spluttered
no
, but Polly held up her hand to silence her. It was finally agreed that under the circumstances Nic should take some time out, and come back to resume her coursework in the New Year.

‘Ben and I split. It’s totally finished,’ Nic snapped.

‘I know that. But you’ve got to help us to help you,’ Polly said.

Colin interceded. He pointed out that so far the only purchase they had managed was one small pot of Eve Lom eye cream. He said that he would take Nic back to the hotel and let Polly get on with buying her presents. Anxiety leaped up in Polly at the thought of allowing the girl out of her sight again, but it was clear to Colin that Nic couldn’t be coerced or captured.

‘If you don’t mind spending the afternoon hanging out with me, that is?’ he said casually to Nic.

It was evident that she had no objection.

‘Buy that T-shirt for Ben,’ Colin advised as Polly departed.

Room service brought up another pot of tea with a plate of tiny triangle sandwiches and miniature mince pies. While they talked, Nic devoured everything. Colin suspected that she hadn’t been taking proper care of herself.

‘Why are you all on your own like this, Nic? Where’s your own family? Is there anyone you can rely on?’

Her exact words, as he repeated them later to Polly, were that she didn’t want to rely on anyone, because no one was reliable, were they? Why place unreal expectations on the world?

Her mother was up in Liverpool, living with a boyfriend Nic didn’t like. She had left home at seventeen, to escape his predecessor, and there hadn’t been much communication since then between mother and daughter.

‘Does she know about the baby?’ Colin asked.

Nic shrugged. ‘No.’

‘Have you got any siblings?’

‘I had a younger brother. He was killed in a motorbike accident on the M56. He was on the pillion when he and his mate went straight under a truck.’

‘That’s very hard for you, Nic.’

She pushed the crumbs of the last mince pie into a heap in the centre of her plate.

‘Have you known anyone who was killed?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Well, then,’ she said. Her shoulders lost some of their rigidity. Colin lifted his arm an inch, and Nic slid a little closer to him.

‘So this will be your mother’s first grandchild. Don’t you think that will be important to her? You already know how much it means to Polly.’

She exhaled sharply. ‘My mother had me when she was sixteen,’ she said, as if this explained volumes. It told Colin enough for the time being.

He asked her about Ben, and why she had chosen to keep the baby but not the boyfriend.

‘I thought about having an abortion but I decided it was the wrong thing to do. Even my mother didn’t have one, which means I’m here now, doesn’t it? But as it is I’ll have the baby and myself to look after. I don’t need to add a third person to that list, do I?’

Knowing Ben Davies, Colin had to concede that this was a reasonable standpoint. In fact, Nic might currently be vulnerable and she might be neglecting herself physically, but she struck him as fundamentally a strong and determined young woman. Polly was quite lucky with the mother of her grandchild-to-be.

At the end of the afternoon, her arms stretched under a load of bright yellow and shiny purple carrier bags, Polly reached the suite again. Nic was lying on the sofa with her bare feet in Colin’s lap, fast asleep in front of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
on the film channel.

‘She’s never seen it,’ he said in astonishment.

He lifted the girl’s feet and replaced them on a cushion. They left her to sleep and went into Polly’s bedroom. As soon as she came in, Colin had seen her anxiety dissolve into relief that Nic was still there. In time Alpha and Omega would have their babies, of course they would, but Polly was fixed on this one with such tenacity probably because it was Ben’s, her hopeless, charming and favourite child’s, and Nic’s evasiveness only increased her resolution.

This was the future, he realized, with a sense of satisfaction. If Nic was going to stay afloat the child would probably need a grandmother, and for Polly a grandchild would be a welcome anchor.

Polly listened to Colin’s account of their conversation.

‘Ben’ll grow up. He’ll have to.’

She looked straight at Colin, defying him to mention Selwyn in the context of perpetual adolescence.

‘What do you want to do?’ he asked instead.

‘I want to take her home with us.’

Of course, Colin thought. For Christmas, Madonna and child. But this had been his thinking too – for a couple of weeks at least, he and Polly could look after this girl between them, and then maybe she would accept some longer-term help that would mean the baby could stay within Polly’s orbit. The barn was hardly the place to take a pregnant woman, though, even one who had until today been sleeping on a sofa bed in Kilburn. Besides, Ben might well also be at the barn and Nic wouldn’t want to be forced into such proximity with him. What Ben’s response might be to the arrangement would be for Polly to deal with.

‘Do you think she’d come?’ Polly mused.

‘Let’s try asking her if she’d like to stay with me and Miranda, at the house.’

‘Really? Would you do that for her?’

‘We’ll have to ask Mirry.’

They called her up.

‘Yes,’ Miranda said without a second’s hesitation, as they had both known she would. ‘The more the merrier, I say.’

When Nic woke up she looked disorientated, and then relief softened her face.

‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘About an hour,’ Colin told her.

‘I’m really sorry. I’d better go, hadn’t I?’

‘You don’t have to. There’s two beds in my room, or I can share Colin’s room, or one of us can sleep out here,’ Polly said. Her eagerness for the girl to stay was so naked Colin could hardly look at her. Don’t crowd her, he wanted to say. Let her come to the decisions herself.

Nic’s eyes slid to Colin.

‘I dunno,’ she murmured awkwardly.

Polly and Colin had tickets that evening for a sold-out new play that Polly was eager to see. Polly offered to take Nic along in Colin’s place, but the girl dismissed this idea with a short laugh.

‘Theatre? No thanks. I need to pee too often.’

‘But…’ Polly said, then stopped herself. Colin handed Nic the room service menu, the TV remote, a white bathrobe.

‘It’s lovely here,’ the girl sighed. ‘I can’t quite believe it.’

‘See you later, then,’ he said.

Suddenly it was Nic who looked anxious. ‘What time will you be back?’ she wanted to know.

In the taxi, Colin told Polly that if it was offered in the right way, Nic would be glad of their help. And as far as that evening went, he was proved right. When they got back to the hotel, Nic was a small, sleeping huddle under the covers of the second bed in Polly’s room.

I am so happy to be home.

Mead absorbs me and I feel that I never want to leave again, not for any reason that I could imagine. The old walls and the creaking stairs envelop me like a second skin, and the scent of cold stone, dust, wood ash and mould is as dear as a lover’s perfume. I love this place, even though it’s full of uncertainties. I am angry that there is no progress in the hunt for the princess’s treasure; as the time passes with no news the robbery feels more and more like a violation. I am torn between desire for Selwyn and guilt towards Polly, by sympathy for Amos and surprise about Katherine, and by a growing anxiety that I have brought discord instead of harmony to my friends and my house. But even so, in spite of all this, my spirits soar just because I am here.

We’ll have Christmas together, all of us. It will be a happy time, and I know that perspectives can change within days, even hours. Maybe the new Mead will succeed after all, and become the real Mead.

Already my quiet house is no longer quiet at all. My mother is physically frail and sometimes her mind is confused, but she is tough within. I’ve inherited that toughness, too, I realize. Joyce plays her radio at full volume because that’s the only way she can hear it, and shouts to me even when I’m briefly out of the room.

‘Barbara? I heard them giving a nice recipe for piccalilli. It said you could get it off the BBC website. You could ask Selwyn to show you how to do that. Do you know you’ve left that pan on the stove? Aren’t you afraid of the house burning down?’

Amos comes across and sits in the kitchen, positioning himself across the table from Joyce, and they watch as I ice the Christmas cake I made last month, and cut pastry circlets for mince pies. Amos confides, when Joyce is upstairs, that Katherine still isn’t answering her phone. She told him she was going away for a couple of days, what did I think that meant?

I assume that Katherine is with the bearded archaeologist, but I know little more than what she confided to Polly and me in the cocktail bar. She has turned out to be the darkest of dark horses, although when I think back over the time since she and Amos arrived at Mead I’m aware that she has acquired a glow, a positively sexy sheen, that I never saw in her before.

‘I don’t know,’ I have to say. ‘You’ve got to let her do what she wants, and hope that she decides to come back in the end.’

‘I want her to.’

‘I know you do.’

You can’t always get what you want. I feel sorry for Amos. Katherine has put me in a difficult position, but I can hardly criticize. My own behaviour is far worse than hers.

What has possessed us all?

Whenever I speak to Polly I can hear a note in her voice that’s the equivalent of a chill breeze on a summer’s day, just ruffling the surface of still water. She’s too astute and perceptive not to have picked up the changed nuance between Selwyn and me, but she can’t know – can she? – what happened that afternoon.

It was just once. It was wrong, and it was a shocking betrayal of Polly’s friendship, and it will never, ever happen again.

But it was also wonderful. I can’t erase the memory, and I wouldn’t even if I could. I keep coming back to it, in my mind and in my dreams.

And then there’s Selwyn himself. Even when he’s not actually in the house I can hear fusillades of drilling or hammering out in the barn, until the noise abruptly stops and seconds later he’s back here, bringing with him a blast of cold air and adrenaline. He grins at me, all red mouth and unshaven face, before sitting down knee to knee with Joyce to get warm in front of the range. He flirts with her as well as teasing, taking her Sudoku puzzle out of her knotty hands and filling in half the numbers for her. Then he says that she deserves a drink, and goes in search of the bottle of Baileys he has put aside just for her.

‘Here’s to you and me,’ he says, clinking his glass against hers.

‘Merry Christmas,’ Joyce answers, although she is usually less of an enthusiast for the season even than Colin. It’s mostly thanks to Selwyn that she has been so cheerful since I brought her back here.

The telephone rings a lot, adding to the noise. Polly and Colin want to bring Ben’s pregnant ex-girlfriend to Mead for Christmas. I tell them yes, of course she must come, while Selwyn semaphores at me, ‘
What?
Polly’s
mad
.’

Sam and Toby Knight call too, if they can’t reach their father at the cottage. I usually pick up the phone, and tell whichever one it happens to be that Amos is here with me, yes, and he seems all right, and reassure them that Mead is going to be home to everyone for Christmas this year. I am more and more excited by the prospect. As well as the big Christmas tree that stands in the hall, Selwyn has brought in another for the kitchen. We decorated it together, under Joyce’s orders.

‘It needs more tinsel. Load it on. I can’t be doing with your so-called good taste, Barbara. It’s plain dim.’

I found some more strands, not too tarnished, in a box in the cupboard under the stairs. The resiny scent of the two trees floods the house.

We are sitting in the kitchen again, Selwyn and Amos and my mother and me, as the thin light of day seeps away into twilight. It is almost the shortest day of the year. The four of us make a strange family. Joyce is nodding in her chair, Amos is reading, and I can feel Selwyn’s eyes on me. The two of us are in a state of suspense, waiting for I don’t know what. I do know that I love him and I push the certainly aside, brutally and deliberately, out into the darkness.

Headlights sweep an arc beyond the yard gate, and a moment later I open the back door to the vicar. He rubs his hands, blinking in the light and nodding affably. He doesn’t often call at the house, mostly because I haven’t encouraged him to. Of course he’s picked up that the household doesn’t consist of just unresponsive me any longer, but is now lively with people and interesting activity. As if to underline this the phone rings yet again. It’s Omie, asking to speak to her father. The vicar sits down with us while I take a batch of mince pies out of the hot oven. He wants to know whether he’ll be seeing us all at the Christmas services.

‘I’ll be at midnight communion,’ Amos says, unexpectedly. ‘I always like that one.’

‘Tea, vicar?’ Selwyn asks, coming back from the phone.

‘If you’re doing your parish visits, this is probably about your fifteenth mince pie of the day,’ I apologize, but he takes one anyway.

It turns out that he is actually here to speak to Amos.

‘How can I help you, vicar?’ Amos asks, with a flicker of his old, silky courtroom manner.

The vicar clears his throat and brushes pastry from his lapel. The Meddlett Princess people have enlisted his help. The torc and shield are out of reach, for the time being at least, although there is talk of staging a protest at the museum to demand that the treasure be returned to the village. He says that there is a strong current of feeling locally that the princess herself ought to be brought home, to be reburied in her proper resting place at Mead.