Lovers and Newcomers (44 page)

Polly put away a pile of plates. ‘Anyone hungry again?’

They all groaned.

Polly left them to the game. The fire was banked up so high and glowing on Selwyn’s vast hearth that the room actually felt stuffy. That was a first.

She put on a coat over the vast, multi-striped, multi-coloured, exuberant chunk of mohairy knitwear that had been Selwyn’s gift to her, and slipped out into the yard. The stillness descended, cooling her hot cheeks. She could hear the creak of a rising breeze in the branches, and knew that it would chase away the last pockets of fog. There was even a single star showing over the square shoulder of Mead’s tallest chimney. She walked through the gate and took a few steps along the path that led to the wood, but then slowed and hesitated. She knew what she really wanted to do. Why not? Everyone else was occupied. She turned back again.

The idea that was steadily taking shape in her mind was a big one, and she was grateful and intrigued by the way that it occupied more and more of her thoughts. I must have been so mentally disengaged, she reflected. What did I think about?

The kitchen of the main house was deserted, although there were pans and dishes and the signs everywhere of a large meal prepared and served. The remnants of Colin’s extravagant present wrappings spilled out of a bin liner, jumbled up with more humble crimson or Christmassy prints. The dining room was empty too, the table scattered with nutshells and the debris of crackers. It was a sweet thought, the idea of her grandchild’s mother pulling crackers with Colin and Joyce. With Miranda, too.

Polly walked along the passage that led to Jake’s study. From the drawing room she could hear the television, turned up loud for Joyce’s benefit. She opened the study door and clicked on the light. In the grate lay a pile of grey ashes, but Polly hardly noticed that the room was cold. She pulled her coat more closely over the billows of knitwear, and took from an old box at the back of the shelves a bundle of letters. They were all in brittle brown envelopes, addressed in black handwriting to Mr and Mrs G. H. Meadowe and stamped with a crimson triangle enclosing a crown and the words ‘Passed by Censor’. Very carefully, so as not to crack it along the folds, she took a sheet of lined paper out of the top envelope and settled down to read.

Miranda didn’t want to move. It was warm and comfortable on the sofa. Beside her Colin was watching television and Nic was curled up on the other side of him. In the armchair next to the fire, Joyce had fallen asleep again. She dipped in and out of her dozes, often resuming her monologue from five minutes or half an hour earlier without being aware of any interval. Her cough was almost gone, and with Colin’s teasing and Nic’s treatments she had acquired a haphazard sparkle. Colin was in good spirits too. His decorations and extravagant gifts to each of them and his ironically camp spun-sugar or savoury-torte elaborations on Miranda’s straightforward cooking had all been a big success.

‘This food,’ Nic had said thoughtfully as she dipped her spoon, ‘makes me want to write a poem.’

‘You should have done this years ago,’ Joyce said to her daughter, over the Christmas pudding.

‘Done what?’

‘Had a family.’

Colin and Nic smiled. They were all used by now to Joyce’s tangential pronouncements. Whether Joyce was confused about whose daughter Nic might be, or was mixing up Colin with Jake, there was somehow a zigzag of truth in what she meant to say. Colin silently raised his glass to Miranda, and Nic followed suit.

It had been a remarkably happy day, Miranda thought.

‘Are you asleep?’ Colin murmured now. ‘Nic is. She’s like a puppy that’s overeaten.’

‘No, I am not. But I might as well be. Why are we watching
The Vicar of Dibley
?’

‘Because it’s Christmas Night. And I fancy Hugo.’

‘What’s this? You told me you didn’t fancy anyone these days.’

‘I know. I find I suddenly do. Rather good, isn’t it?’

Desire
was
good, Miranda thought. But – unless attached to television actors, made safe by sheer distance – at this time of life it came shot through with so much danger and discomfort that it was more like an affliction.

She slid away from Colin and stood up.

Christmas was almost over. The holiday had been a barrier between herself and Selwyn and the future, and now that barrier was slowly lifting on a landscape that seemed to contain all their small figures, heading in uncertain groups towards an unfamiliar horizon.

She piled two unnecessary logs on the fire. The fir garlands on the mantelpiece were beginning to droop and spill their needles.

‘Where are you going?’ Colin lazily asked, his eyes still on the television.

‘I’ll be back,’ she said.

The kitchen was a mess. She began the washing up, thinking mundane thoughts. There was Boxing Day’s big dinner to consider. Dinner for everyone at Mead; the Knight boys were leaving the day after tomorrow for a ski trip, Alph and Omie were returning to their boyfriends. Most of the cooking was done already, thanks to Colin. A huge ham was resting in the larder, the fat honey-glazed and carved into diamonds studded with cloves. There were sweet and earthy root vegetables to be roasted, a pair of sharp lemon tarts to offset all the richness, a whole Stilton. People would be hungry. Sam, Toby and Alpha were all determined to enter the village charity run. Selwyn was making claims on it too. There had been talk of everyone else walking to Lockington, where the route would finish, to greet their runners as they came in.

At the end of the afternoon once the daylight had gone there would be candles lit, glasses filled, the gathering at the table. Afterwards they might even play charades, Miranda thought. She bent her head over the sink, scrubbing hard at the pan that had held the turkey.

Polly stood in the doorway. With her back turned, Miranda could have passed for a girl in her twenties. She was dressed in a wide-necked short top that fell off her shoulders, a full skirt of some pinkish diaphanous stuff sprinkled with sequins, thick ribbed tights and her well-worn cowboy boots. As always, Polly noted, Miranda’s ensemble was theatrical, but it fell somewhere on the right side of fancy dress.

Miranda must have felt watched because she spun from the sink.

‘Polly, it’s you.’ There was a catch in her voice.

‘I’m sorry, lurking about your house, tonight of all nights. I don’t mean to intrude.’

‘What? It’s not an intrusion at all.’ Miranda’s voice was warm, she had recovered from her surprise. ‘Is everything all right?’

Polly nodded. ‘They’re playing a game.’

‘Highly commendable. It’s telly, across here.’

‘Mirry, can we talk?’ It was crucial to ask Miranda, Polly acknowledged, before the idea took such a firm hold of her that she would be unable to let go.

Miranda dropped the pan scrubber into the bowl of greasy water. Slowly she peeled off the washing-up gloves. Her heart seemed to leap into her throat.

‘Of course. That’s an amazing coat of many colours. Would you like a drink?’

Polly compressed her lips. ‘God, no. Thanks, though.’

They sat down at opposite sides of the table. Miranda piled up plates, sweeping debris away from underneath. From the pantry, she could hear the shudder of the fridge motor starting up.

‘I should have asked before…’ Polly began.

Miranda waited, the same feverish brightness in her eyes.

‘…but the more I got involved, the more superstitious I felt. I had to go on reading, in case I was overestimating it all. Then I saw this.’

Polly unfolded a sheet of lined paper. She was about to smooth it out on the table but the surface was too greasy and sticky. She held it awkwardly in midair, not quite handing it over.

‘What is it?’ Miranda asked in bewilderment.

‘A letter. From Jake’s great-uncle, in France. Christmas 1915.’

The shelves and cupboards of Jake’s study held a jumbled cache of letters, diaries, account books, estate papers, bills and farm records that went back almost two hundred and fifty years, that was what Polly had discovered. They were mixed up, incomplete, some of them barely legible, others in a language almost forgotten. But none of that daunted her. She was a historian, and a trained researcher. As she had burrowed deeper into the records, her conviction grew that here was a story that had been waiting generations for her to arrive and unravel.

It was the story of an English house, not a great aristocratic residence, not even a country manor house, but a small estate and a farm building that grew with a family’s fortunes and changed with the changing times. She had found a bill of sale dated 1759 for a pair of plough horses, the record of a daughter’s dowry at her marriage in 1820, love letters from Mr Edwin Meadowe to his sweetheart before he married her in the 1850s, bills from Victorian tradesmen in Meddlett, folded up and stuffed away, quite possibly never paid. Edited, annotated, properly arranged, Polly was certain that all this material could make a sensational book.

A sensational book meant money, of course, and the Davieses seriously needed funds.

But Polly was also aware that Mead was Miranda’s house. The Meadowes were her family even if only by marriage, and she was the last to bear the name. Nothing more could be done with any of the records without Miranda’s consent, and Polly knew just how jealously Miranda guarded her privacy and her husband’s legacy.

Then two days ago she had uncovered the box of First World War letters, written from France by Second Lieutenant George Meadowe to his parents and elder brother at home.

Miranda looked bewildered. ‘A letter? I don’t know where I’ve put my glasses. Is it important?’

Polly faltered, ‘Yes. Well, not this instant, of course…’

‘Read it to me,’ Miranda said quietly.

Polly pushed her own glasses up to the bridge of her nose.

My dear Governor, Muth and Eddy,

Well, we had our Xmas day, the best we could do, because it rained like Hades and the men and horses were sliding like poor amphibians through the mud. We had our company service at 11.30, the men somehow under shelter in a barn, the padre did it very nicely, and we sang ‘While Shepherds Watched’ and other favourites. Sergeant Gillings has a very fine bass, it was touching to hear such a man giving voice to the familiar words, but I have to confess that I felt more than a tremor of longing to be with you all, listening to the Governor reading St Matthew in church and afterwards Muth complimenting the Misses Cooper on their new tippets before returning to the warm fire at Mead. After service we had our Christmas dinner, there was ham and plum pudding so we did very well, and all the time the Boche less than a mile away and ourselves within range of the damned field guns. They have been quiet today, for which we thank God or the generals. Then there was more singing, this time the men inclined not to carols but less suitable songs, however it being Christmas I did not feel it right to reprimand them. So now the day is ended, I hope and pray that there has been some cheer for you and that Muth especially has not felt my absence too keenly. It will not be for ever, my dear beloved family, and until then my love to you all,

Georgie

As Polly finished reading and refolded the sheet of paper, Miranda looked towards the window, and the yard and the outbuildings invisible beyond it.

‘I’ve never seen that one,’ she said.

‘There’s a box full of them.’

‘Jake was always saying he would sort out the family papers. I’m glad you’re doing it, Poll, he would have been grateful. I think that must have been George Meadowe’s last Christmas.’

Polly nodded. In the same box she had found the pale buff-coloured Post Office Telegraph message, dated six months later and beginning with the terrible words, ‘Deeply regret inform you’.

Miranda added, ‘I do know that George was the late, unexpected baby of the family, fifteen years younger than his only brother, who was Jake’s grandfather. Edward, Eddy, had what was probably rheumatic fever as a child. He was always a semi-invalid, and he couldn’t have hoped to go to France. Naturally their parents were deeply proud of their strong, heroic second son. It was ironic, wasn’t it, that it was Edward after all who lived on finally to marry and father a boy of his own?’

Polly nodded. The threads of all these stories woven around Mead tugged so insistently at her that she almost lost her balance. A historian’s giddy omnipotence briefly possessed her and she speculated on how thrilling it would be if she could just find the evidence and follow it back further and further, digging deeper into the past until she arrived at the princess of the Iceni herself, not just her sad uncovered bones, but the real woman, long before the time of any Christian festival, dressed in her leather cloak and protected by her great shield, heading her tiny army out of the settlement under the sketched-out margins of Amos’s house.

That
would be a narrative trajectory.

When she came back to earth it was with a sense of fragility – Miranda’s, her own and Selwyn’s, and the rest of them who were temporarily anchored at Mead this Christmas – as against the absolutely steady continuum of life itself.

Polly had not concerned herself much with the taboo about mentioning age, or the threat of the ten-pound box. If she thought about it at all it was to reflect that Amos and Selwyn went on far too much about getting old, and it was men in their vanity and vulnerability who were more concerned with ageing than any woman could be.

But now it came to her. The magnificence of the continuum itself was the best corrective to fears of enfeeblement and death.

Miranda was still sitting opposite her. She was resting her chin on one hand, half-turned to stare into the square of blackness beyond the kitchen window.

Polly began, rotating the letter in her fingers as she spoke, ‘I was going to ask you, how would it be if I were to catalogue the Mead papers properly, perhaps with a view to arranging them for publication?’

Miranda lifted her head from her hand. Polly could clearly see the inward reckoning she was making: Miranda was nobody’s fool. Polly bit the inside of her lip as she waited, and then winced from the pain. She wanted
so much
to write this book. Nothing had stirred her so deeply since – well – perhaps since Ben was born.