Second Chance (12 page)

They went soon afterwards. Grace kissed me but Rhydian only looked at me – oh, that lingering look – and smiled his crooked smile. He didn't seem the sort who'd kiss unless it meant something. Unless it meant everything.

But I could do nothing about it, shouldn't even be thinking about it at such a sad time.

I'm too old for this sort of nonsense, I told myself when I was in bed, too old to be having this stupid adolescent fancy for another woman's husband. It isn't love, it isn't that great shining thing, it's merely desire, an agitating physical attraction, flawed and tarnished and rather shameful. I'm in lust with my beautiful cousin, I told myself, plagued again by what Jonson called the loathsome itch.

Come off it, I said later, sitting bolt upright in bed and turning on the light again. I know lust pretty well. I succumbed willingly enough to several bouts of it at university and drama school and during my early career. A typical young woman of the seventies, I had many affairs, in fact with practically every-one who suggested it: Jack Yarborough who kept me awake for nights on end, Chris Matthews who taught me some sweet perversions which still make me giggle and blush to think
of them, Alain something, a very hairy Frenchman who shouted out Baudelaire as he rode me. Perhaps those encounters could have developed into deeper relationships but they didn't because there was something missing. They all had built-in obsolescence.

I could never understand how some of my friends, starting off with the same excitement, the same ‘falling in love', managed to salvage something good and lasting from it. Was it a matter of luck or were they more easily satisfied than I was? If one starts with physical attraction, and surely one has to, what else does one need? If physical attraction is only lust, is it lust plus knowledge, plus experience, plus instinct?

Whatever love was, I was suddenly sure I'd found it. It wasn't only Rhydian's physical presence, but also a mysterious and quite overwhelming affinity I'd never known before. The fact that I loved him with all my instinct and all my experience fitted into my mind like a key into a lock and lodged there. I'd never felt so sure of anything.

For a time the absolute certainty comforted me. Soon though it seemed huge and inescapable. I became far too restless to sleep.

At about three o'clock, I went downstairs, put on the electric fire and made myself a cup of tea. There were a few magazines on a stool near the fire and to escape my thoughts, I picked up the top one. And as I opened it, I came across a letter my mother had been writing to me.
My dear Katie
… At one time, she used to write to me every Sunday morning, but for the last ten or fifteen years I'd been phoning her once or twice every week, so that her letters had become less frequent.

…This is to tell you something I didn't manage to say on the phone though I planned to. As you probably know, I've got a friend called George Williams and I think it's time for us to get married as he's been asking me for years now and I'm not getting any younger. To tell you the truth I often wish I'd married him when he first asked me and I was about seventeen, and then I would have been happier in the long run and how different your life would have been, but you wouldn't have been you, would you? But saying that, I can't forget how I felt about your father and how that was my life's great moment and I couldn't miss that, could I, in spite of all that happened after? And your poor Auntie Jane too suffered and I think it killed her in the end. But I'm trying not to think about that terrible time when you and I were like little rabbits in the headlights of a car. And now I want to tell you that...

That was the letter. That was the letter she was writing to me on the morning of the day she died. Why had she stopped when she did? What else had she wanted to tell me? A
nd now I want to tell you that
... Had the stress of writing the letter brought on the massive stroke that killed her? Or was it some doubts she'd had about what she intended to do.
And now I want to tell you that
... that I love you. Oh, why hadn't she written that?

I re-read the letter. I read it so many times that I had it by heart in no time. And I knew it would remain with me, though not to my comfort, not to my comfort. I was more than ever aware of the distance I'd allowed to grow between us. And I her only child, who'd slept with her through all her tormented years.

It was already light before I went back to bed, but I did manage to sleep for an hour or so. When I woke, though, I was immediately aware of all the pressures on me; the sadness of my mother's death at a time when her life should be starting a new and happier phase, the guilt I felt at being so distanced from her, the knowledge of Paul's anguish about his daughter. This isn't a time for falling in love, I told myself, there's no space in my brain for any other emotion. I have to forget Rhydian. It simply didn't happen; that shock of recognition, that lurch of the heart, that terrifying moment; it didn't happen. I'm going to get up, have breakfast and think sanely and positively about getting through the next few days. Only of that.

The phone rang as soon as I got downstairs; another pang of guilt as I recognised Grace's voice asking how I'd slept. I swallowed hard, unable to tell her what a frightful night I'd had, how I was even now finding it difficult to keep my eyes open.

‘A silly question,' she said. ‘You couldn't have had a good night and I'm sure Rhydian and I didn't help, inflicting our worries on you. Anyway, we want you to come over to us tonight. Yes, we've got it all arranged. Bleddyn is arriving from London in time for supper so Rhydian will come over to fetch you at seven o'clock. No, I won't take no for an answer. You'll have a hard enough day tomorrow and having a bit of company tonight will be some help and you'll be able to see our boys as well, before they go to bed, and Gwyn, he's the eldest you know, almost nine now, he's really excited because he's seen you on the telly in that Shakespeare thing, what was it now? He'll remember. And I've asked Edwina and David over as well. By the way, Edwina says that the flowers will all be in place by ten tomorrow morning, so no worries on that score.'

‘Grace, you're very kind, but I really can't come this evening. Please forgive me, but I feel I must have a quiet time on my own this evening. I've really appreciated your company for the last two nights, but...'

I tried to go on, but felt my words being pushed back at me. Grace was at Gorsgoch, I told myself, eleven miles away at Gorsgoch, but I could still feel the force of her determination.

‘Rhydian said you wouldn't come. He said we'd upset you by our quarrelling.'

But I was stubborn, too. I had to be. ‘It's not that, Grace. I enjoyed last night, you were both so open and friendly. I really enjoyed feeling a part of the family and I shall remember it. But tonight I have to be by myself and that's that.'

I recognised her kindness as well as the steely determination to have her own way, but knew I had to ignore both. ‘So I'll see you tomorrow,' I said. And put the phone down feeling dazed and foolish.

For almost an hour I sat at my mother's table with a cup of weak tea in front of me, too listless even to re-read her last sad letter. I looked forward to Lorna calling, to her loud, harsh voice and her gossip about her bossy mother-in-law and the chapel and the red-haired minister. But she didn't come. There was obviously no post, not even a brochure from a Friendly Society offering a five percent bonus on a once-in-a-lifetime saving scheme or from
The Reader's Digest
announcing you'd already come halfway to winning a million pounds.

At least my headache and extreme lethargy gave me an excuse not to go to the hairdresser in town. I might wash my hair and curl it a bit tomorrow morning before the funeral, but no more. I had a gorgeous black velvet hat at home, but hadn't had time to plan what to bring. All I'd done was throw a few essentials into a bag and take a taxi to Paddington.

After sitting still for about an hour, I managed to muster enough energy to go upstairs to see if my mother had any sort of half-decent hat I could wear; even in my present low state, I still had that craven desire to create something of an impression. The grey suit I'd bundled into my suitcase wasn't new but had cost a fortune and so had my grey suede shoes. But they had three-inch heels and I'd done nothing about getting a car to fetch me; I certainly couldn't walk a mile and a half in them – couldn't even walk a hundred yards in them if I was honest. If Paul intended to get to the chapel by eleven, he could surely call for me by half ten. Oh, why hadn't he left me a phone number so that I could contact him?

I opened my mother's wardrobe. No hats – I hadn't really expected any – the dresses and suits I remembered, most of which we'd bought together during her visits to London, but also a sky-blue suit I hadn't seen before, swathed in plastic and carefully hung up on a satin hanger. Her wedding suit, of course. She'd already bought her wedding suit, a young style, a young colour, a row of mother-of-pearl buttons. If I'd needed another jolt to the heart, I'd certainly got it. She'd always pretended to admire my taste in clothes, but when something was important to her, she'd gone to town on her own without even consulting me. I hadn't been necessary to her.

I closed the wardrobe door and lay back on the bed and cried. Not only because she'd been so late telling me her plans, even buying her wedding outfit before I'd been told, but for the sheer sadness of it all; the pale blue suit she must have bought with such pleasurable anticipation, and would never wear.

What I felt was more than sadness, it seemed almost an amputation. Something was gone from me, something which was a part of me, something I still needed.

The wind seemed to be weeping in the stunted trees outside the window. I remembered the sound from my childhood. It seemed the same wind, draining out my life, dragging it out of the window, leaving nothing behind but an empty husk.

The next thing I remember was waking up. It seems insensitive to have fallen asleep at that bleakest moment, but that's what had happened. Now it was almost midday; the wind had dropped and I felt calmer. And as I sat up in bed I realised that someone was tapping at the front door, that it was probably that sound which had woken me.

It was Lewis Owen, the minister. ‘I'm sure I'm the last person you want to see,' he said.

It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. His words were so delightfully uncharacteristic of his profession. When the Reverend William Pierce, former minister of Horeb, used to call on my mother, he'd stand, large and stern, on the doorstep saying, ‘Mrs Rivers, I've come to bring you words of comfort from Our Lord.'

‘Do come in,' I said. ‘You've cheered me up. Religion has always seemed rather pretentious and turgid, but you seem... so ordinary. That sounds rather unflattering, I know. What I mean is, well... you're not at all the last person I want to see. Not at all. Will you have a cup of tea?'

‘No, thank you. I have to drink too much religious tea.'

‘What about a small whisky? Or a large whisky?'

‘Perhaps a small one would help.'

‘Help? That sounds ominous. Do you intend to talk to me about religion? The afterlife? Something like that?'

‘No, but, you see, I don't even know how to talk to you about anything. I'm not sure whether you're making fun of me or trying to flirt with me. I don't know how to take you. You seem determined to undermine whatever confidence I have.'

‘I'll get us both a whisky.' On my way to the kitchen, I turned to look at him. ‘You're wonderfully different,' I said, ‘but please don't spoil it by being... hard.'

‘Do you mean rude? I'm often accused of being rude.'

‘It's not rudeness exactly, it's just a lack of courtesy. Of course that's much better than having too much, which leads to obsequiousness. You know, like the Reverend Collins. Hard is like the craggy old pastors in Ibsen. Don't get like them.'

I brought in whisky and glasses and a jug of water. He took a very small whisky and a large amount of water. I did the same.

‘Are there any decent priests or ministers in literature?' he asked me. ‘Or are they all fools?'

‘Of course not. On the whole they're extremely interesting and intelligent.' My mind was a complete blank. ‘Trollope,' I said after a moment or two. ‘The Warden is a wonderful man and I must say I have a sneaking admiration for the Dean as well. In Welsh literature, they're a bit too saintly perhaps, but certainly not fools. I think books are always more interesting as soon as the priest is introduced.'

‘I never find that. Anyway, I shouldn't have said you were flirting with me. It was presumptuous. I say something and think afterwards.'

‘No need to apologise. If I were twenty years younger I probably would be. Are you married?'

‘No, not married.'

His eyes warned me that I was stepping out of line again. Blue-green eyes, pale as water.

‘So what did you want to talk to me about?'

‘George Williams came up to see you, I believe.'