Some Old Lover's Ghost (44 page)

‘I have a puncture,’ she said, flicking a strand of blonde hair out of her eyes, the corners of her mouth bending down. ‘Such a nuisance. Could you look at it for me, monsieur?’

Max upended the bicycle and removed the tyre. A long rose thorn stabbed the inner tube. He found her a chair to sit down on and a glass of water to drink while he patched the tear. The heat had lingered into the evening, melting little black pools on the tarmac road.

‘You should buy a new tyre – this one’s almost worn through,’ Max said, when he had finished.

‘How much do I owe you, monsieur?’

Max shook his head. ‘A rubber patch and a piece of chalk? Nothing.’ He wiped his hands on a rag and held the bicycle while she climbed onto it. He found that he was watching her as she cycled away.

Although the next day was Sunday, Max decided to strip down the Citroën’s engine. He was unclogging the carburettor when he heard the whirr of the bicycle. She was wearing a smart black dress, and he guessed that she had come from Mass. She unhooked the bicycle basket.

‘Where is your kitchen?’

When he gaped at her, she smiled patiently and repeated her question. ‘Where is your kitchen, Monsieur Franklin? I have come to cook for you.’ She walked into the house, peering into the rooms. ‘Ah – my grandmère has a stove like that. It will do very well.’

She cooked roast lamb and vegetables followed by an apple tart. Max opened a bottle of red wine. She told him that her name was Cécile Ferry, and that she worked in a dress shop in Saintes. Her parents were dead, and she lived with her grandmother. She had been engaged, but her fiancé had been killed when France had been invaded in 1940. She did not ask Max any questions in return. After they had eaten, she washed up, and cycled away again. Then they went back to waving and calling greetings in the mornings and evenings.

In Saintes, Max bought a bicycle tyre, and slung it over the petrol pump so that she would see it as she rode past. ‘For me?’ Cécile called, smiling, and braked. He replaced the worn tyre, and on Sunday she turned up with her basket again. He had hoped that she would. Coq au vin, this time, followed by cherries.

After they had dined, they sat in the scruffy garden with the overgrown fig and the steps that led down to the
cave
where Max stored wine. Max put out an old blanket on the grass. Cécile told him about the small vineyard she had inherited from her father. And about the woman who owned the dress shop in Saintes, and about her cousin who was to be married in
July. And the schoolteacher’s fondness for wine, the tobacconist’s affair with the wife of the
pâtissier
, and the long-standing feud of the owners of two adjacent vineyards.

‘Lord,’ said Max, eyeing her. ‘I had no idea there was so much going on.’

She smiled, but did not comment. Then she said, ‘And you?’

‘Me?’ Max looked away. ‘I run this decrepit garage, that’s all.’

‘You are English?’

He nodded. ‘Born and bred.’

‘Your French is very good for an Englishman, Monsieur Franklin.’

‘I lived in Paris for several months.’ A sudden snapshot of himself and Tilda walking along the banks of the Seine, wondering what the outbreak of war would mean to them.

‘But you haven’t always repaired motor cars and bicycle tyres, have you, Monsieur Franklin?’

‘How can you tell?’

She shrugged. ‘You are a gentleman. An English gentleman.’

A crushing judgement, he thought. He said, ‘I used to work for a London newspaper. That’s why I was in Paris – as a foreign correspondent.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘But …?’

‘But I stopped enjoying it,’ he said flatly.

‘You prefer your oily engines … your petrol pump …’

‘Much.’

She stood up. ‘I shall wash up now.’

‘Not at all. I’ll do it later.’

She looked down at him. ‘Only if you let me cook lunch for you next Sunday,’ she said.

She was wearing a straw hat, and she had brought a picnic. Max had fixed up a battered Peugeot for himself, and they drove down to the mouth of the Gironde, with its marshes and mud flats and oyster sheds on delicate stilts, suspended over the water. Cécile
laid out cold chicken and salad and bread and raspberries on the rug, and Max cooled a bottle of white wine in the river. While they ate, Cécile told him the names of the birds that haunted the silvery fringes of the Gironde.

When there was only one raspberry left in the bowl, Cécile picked it up and put it in Max’s mouth. Then she kissed him. Her lips tasted of raspberries and wine, her skin smelt of almonds, and her hands, resting on his shoulders, were cool and soft. He drew away from her. She looked at him enquiringly.

‘Just friends, Cécile,’ he said. ‘Please?’

‘Max.’ She smiled. ‘So English.’

Tilda knew that she must take stock, accept that she had lost Max, start again. She had thought that by moving away from Southam she would be able to forget the past. She had done so before, fleeing to London after Sarah had told her that she was Edward de Paveley’s daughter.

This time, though, she kept remembering. Remembering herself and Daragh, making love. Remembering Max’s face as he had said to her,
You promised me
. Remembering Jossy in the old Bentley, her unborn baby trapped inside her lifeless body. Domestic work did not blot out the memories. Scrubbing floors, she remembered; hoeing the garden, she remembered. She told herself that she needed something to occupy her mind, and attended a Women’s Institute meeting, but the other women, enquiring about her husband, looked at her curiously. Dreading questions about the past, she used the excuse of her work to turn down friendly invitations to tea. And besides, the domestic minutiae, the competitions for new ways with eggless cakes, were not enough. Her mind wandered, cluttered with guilt and shopping lists and concerns about the children.

She saw an advertisement for Workers’ Educational Association lectures in Oxford, and signed up for a series about the United Nations. One of the lectures was about the work of UNICEF, the international children’s emergency fund set up at the end of 1946 to help mothers and children in need after the war. Afterwards,
during the discussion that followed, Tilda mentioned the work of the
Kindertransporte
. Then she glanced at her watch and, seeing that it was already half past nine, grabbed her bag and ran for her bus.

She was running along the pavement when she heard footsteps behind her. A voice called out, ‘I say! I say – do slow down a little—’ She paused, and glanced back.

Gasping for breath, the young man held out his hand. ‘Archie Raphael. I was at the lecture. A few rows back.’

Tilda shook his hand. ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Mr Raphael, but I have to dash, or I’ll miss my bus.’

‘I’ve a motor car. I’ll give you a lift.’ He scurried along beside her. ‘I just wanted to say – you’re that woman who rowed across the North Sea, aren’t you?’

Tilda stopped suddenly. A man cannoned into her and apologized, raising his hat. She started walking again, very fast, and said, ‘It wasn’t a rowing boat, it was a sailing boat. And Felix did most of the work, not me.’

He didn’t listen. They never did. ‘I remember your face from the newspaper. I never forget a face. And you were talking about the
Kindertransporte
just now. And I know Harold Sykes – well, his daughter, Lottie, actually. Sees herself as Ginger Rogers, but obviously
not
, I’m afraid.’

Archie Raphael was about Tilda’s height, tow-haired, and, she guessed, about twenty-five. ‘I really do have to go, Mr Raphael.’ Looking up, she saw her bus approaching, so she ran to the roadside, signalling for it to stop. It lumbered on unheeding, standing passengers spilling out on the platform.

‘Oh,
blow.’

‘I say, I am most terribly sorry. My fault for holding you up. But you’ll let me drive you home, won’t you?’ Archie added, ‘I am frightfully trustworthy, in case you’re concerned. Never drive above thirty miles an hour, and I’m the soul of honour—’

She didn’t seem to have much choice. ‘You are very kind, Mr Raphael. I hope you don’t regret your kindness when I tell you where I live.’

He grinned. ‘Edinburgh?’

‘Woodcott St Martin.’

‘Almost as bad. Come on. My car’s parked at the college. I’ll drive you home in no time, Maud … no, that’s not it.’ He screwed up his face. ‘Don’t tell me, I’ve almost remembered. Mary … Millicent …’

‘Matilda,’ she said, putting him out of his misery. ‘Matilda Franklin. But everyone calls me Tilda.’

Driving home, he tried to talk to her about 1940. She watched the countryside ebb past, the headlamps of the car picking out the heavily leaved trees and drenching them with gold, and said, ‘It was a silly thing to do, and it was a very long time ago. I don’t want to talk about it, Mr Raphael. I’ve never talked about it.’

‘But Mr Sykes—’

‘Harold made most of it up. You know what journalists are like.’

Yet when they arrived home, Rosi was sitting on the verge outside the house. Tilda opened the car door.

‘Rosi …?’

‘I had to see you, Tilda! I had to come home! I hate Richard! I never want to speak to him again!’ Rosi, howling, launched into a torrent of German.

Archie Raphael looked interested. Tilda climbed out of the car and, turning back to him, said firmly, ‘Rosi is a
Kindertransporte
child, Mr Raphael. Ferry to Harwich, train to Liverpool Street. Nothing heroic. Thank you so much for the lift.’ She shut the car door.

Waiting at the bus stop after school, a boy from the neighbouring grammar school asked Caitlin out.

She shrugged. ‘If you like.’ It was the first time a boy had asked her out; she felt a rush of triumph, and turned to Melissa. ‘Tell Tilda I’ve tennis practice or something.’ Caitlin heard Melissa’s wail of protest as she walked away down the pavement. Neither she nor the boy, whose name was Charlton, spoke for a while, and the pleasurable feeling began to fade. She glanced at him,
all her old dissatisfaction and boredom returning at the sight of his greyish shirt collar and scruffy blazer.

Then he said, ‘You look stunning, Kate. Did anyone ever tell you you look like Vivien Leigh?’ and she felt better. When they walked past some girls from her class, Caitlin noticed their envious glances. Charlton was, after all, a fifth former, and she was only in the third.

‘What’s your name?’ she said suddenly. ‘I can’t call you Charlton. It sounds silly.’

‘Leonard,’ he said. ‘My friends call me Lenny.’

He took her to the new milk bar that had opened in the town centre. The strawberry milk shake was pink and frothy and delicious, and Caitlin drank it slowly, enjoying the fact that she was certainly the youngest girl there, and that Lenny was one of the best-looking boys.

‘You don’t live in Oxford, do you?’ said Lenny.

‘I’m staying with some people in Woodcott St Martin. My father’s working abroad. When he comes home, we’ll go back to my old house.’

When, later, he suggested a walk in the park, Caitlin almost refused. She wasn’t sure that she could bear any more long silences. But he coaxed her. ‘Come on, Kate. I’ll make sure you don’t miss your bus,’ so they walked through the park, past the mothers pushing prams, past the old people sitting on benches, to where sycamores shaded the lawn. The grass was like straw-coloured raffia. There, he bent and kissed her, his mouth wet and soft, his nose colliding with hers.

It wasn’t like in the films. But she let him do it because she did not want him to guess that this was the first time she had kissed a boy, and because it was good to know that someone wanted her again.

Erich, walking to the dairy to buy milk for Tilda, discovered The Red House. The old, gabled building lay to the far side of the village, beyond the shop and the post office and the green and the duck pond and all the smart houses with big cars in
their drives. The men who washed and polished their big cars each Sunday afternoon sometimes stared suspiciously as Erich clumped past in his shabby clothes and muddy gumboots, but there were no eyes to watch him from The Red House. It was deserted, unoccupied; he watched it for ages before he was sure of that, before he screwed up the courage to push open the creaky wrought-iron gate and step inside.

The first time, he walked along the path, with its huge dark box trees that seemed to push in on him, to the front of the house, and then he darted back to the road, frightened. After a couple more visits, he realized that the trees were there not to keep him out, but to guard the house for him. The watchers could not follow him here. At The Red House, he was free. Glancing through dusty window panes, Erich saw huge empty rooms carpeted by the dried leaves blown through gaps around windows and doors. He concluded from the empty packets of Lucky Strikes and discarded gas masks that the house had been used by servicemen in the war.

It was not the house, though, that fascinated him: it was the garden. The garden was glorious, magical, entrancing. In an old shed he found a fork and spade, and dug and pruned and weeded whenever he had the chance. He intended to reclaim The Red House’s garden. To find out what it was meant to be. To bring it back to life. At first, the area behind the terrace seemed a senseless muddle of bramble and old man’s beard, but then, as he pulled away the strangling creepers and clumps of weed, Erich realized that it had once been carefully laid out, an intricate weaving of path and plants. The old brick walkways were greened by velvety moss, and shattered by frosts. He made a map, sketching in fragments of path, trying to work out how they had once joined up. Hacking at bramble shoots, Erich discovered evidence of flowerbeds: yellowed, wizened flowers, starved of light by the overgrown shrubs, old-fashioned tulips and primulas and auriculas. In spring, the small dark ponds were alive with tiny, half-formed frogs and newts. Erich watched them for hours.

When he found the marble statue, covered with dead leaves, beneath the willow tree, he thought at first that it was a fallen log. Then, kicking aside a clump of sticky fungi, he saw the small, graceful white hand, the delicate fingers curved as if beckoning him. Erich knelt in the leaf-mould and lifted the statue upright. He knew by its weight and coldness that it was made of marble. He brushed the soil and cobwebs from the face with his fingertips, and the girl looked back at him, cold and beautiful and perfect.