Someone Special (70 page)

They drove home almost in silence, but when they reached the flat Dan said, ‘Shall I come in? Or do you want to tell your mother you’re getting married without me to mess it up?’

‘I’ll tell her myself,’ Anna whispered. ‘Oh Dan, we shouldn’t have done what we did, should we?’

‘No, we shouldn’t have,’ Dan agreed seriously. ‘But I didn’t seem able to make you see how I loved you – you don’t doubt me now, do you, darling?’

‘No. It’s me I doubt.’ Anna got quickly out of the car, before he could kiss her again, then leaned in through the window. ‘Goodnight, Dan. I’ll give you a ring in the morning.’

He laughed and chucked her under the chin, leaning across the passenger seat. ‘No; I’ll give
you
a ring in the morning! Goodnight, sweetheart. Dream of me.’

She ran away, of course. What else could she do? Dan thought she was someone special, but she knew herself to be ordinary in the extreme and difficult to love. It had taken Constance years to learn to love her plain daughter; her father had stopped loving her as soon as she became a young woman instead of a child, and these were people of intelligence, people who knew her well.

Marriage was a lottery, people said. Well, she liked to choose her own path, not have it chosen by chance or luck. And she
knew
she wasn’t in Dan’s league, not really. Even the thought of seeing his loving look change hurt her like a sword in the soul. He would be better
off without her, better off choosing someone else who wouldn’t disappoint him.

She wrote him a short letter, then told her mother she had been recalled to Paris and left at once.

She did wonder, but he didn’t follow her. She went back to her apartment and her friends at UNESCO, to her trips to the cinema and her letter-writing, her study to improve her German and her classes to learn Italian. She tried very hard not to think of Dan and often succeeded for several hours together.

She was deeply unhappy.

Dan Clifton, on the other hand, was not unhappy at all. It was true that when he rang Mrs Radwell’s flat the next morning and was told that Anna had gone back to Paris unexpectedly, a pang of pure dismay had pierced him, but almost in the same breath he thought, yes, she would do that, run away. He acknowledged that Anna was distrustful of happiness, expected disappointment, disillusion. How strange it was that he, who had been brought up piecemeal by a mother who had never really wanted a child and a grandmother who resented the burden his presence put upon her, was a self-confident and well-adjusted person, whereas Anna, who’d had a stable, happy childhood in a beautiful home, was so insecure that she could not even acknowledge her own desirability.

The things parents can do to the children they love without any malice aforethought beggar description, Dan mused, walking across his grandmother’s small, oak-panelled hallway and climbing the stairs two at a time. He knew all about JJ Radwell’s infidelities, almost more about Constance Radwell’s carrying-on. Unkind rumours in the village blamed Jamie’s simpleness on an attempt by Constance to put an end to her pregnancy and every amateur psychologist – or was it psychiatrist? – for miles
around put the blame for Anna’s shyness and lack of self-confidence on parental attitudes.

‘She’s a lovely gel, but you won’t ever get her to believe it,’ Dan’s grandmother had said only the previous day when he had told her he was taking Anna out that evening. ‘Gels like Anna accept the value their parents put on them, more’s the pity.’

So all he had to do, he told himself, opening his bedroom door and going across to his small wardrobe, was get himself packed and back to France, where he could take Anna in hand and make her see that love like theirs was not something to be lightly cast aside. He got his suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and took his blazer off its coathanger. Then the telephone rang. Dan cocked his head; it rang three times, four times …

Cursing, he descended the stairs like a boulder rolling down a hill. His grandmother was out shopping; he remembered her saying she was going to catch the ten o’clock bus into the city. He snatched the telephone off its hook, full of hope. It would be Anna; she had rung to say she had changed her mind, was still in the city … wanted him as badly as he wanted her!

It was not Anna; it was the Foreign Office.

Half an hour later, when Mrs Lucas returned from her shopping trip, it was to find Dan packed and ready to go.

‘Sorry, Gran,’ he said, kissing her cheek and holding her close for a moment. ‘I’ve just had a telephone call from my masters in Whitehall. I’ve been seconded to London for six weeks or so – it’s to do with the coronation in June, they need my languages, apparently. So I’ll have to go off now and get my orders, arrange somewhere to sleep while I’m in London. But I’ll see you again on Friday evening, because I’ll be spending my weekends here, naturally.’

‘You look quite pleased about it,’ Mrs Lucas said,
smiling up at him. ‘What about the little Radwell girl, though? Going to be able to see her again before she leaves?’

Dan chuckled and shook a reproving finger under his grandmother’s nose. ‘Can’t keep anything from you, can I? Actually, Anna’s gone back to Paris, so I won’t be able to see her for a couple of months. But sometimes things work out for the best, and this may be one of them. Take care of yourself, Gran; I’ll give you a ring from London, get you up to date with my whereabouts as they say. See you on Friday evening!’

Mrs Lucas followed him out and watched him heave his case into the boot of the car and climb into the driver’s seat.

‘Don’t forget to telephone, dear,’ she called as he started the engine. ‘I’ll be waiting for your call.’

Driving along with the hood down and the roar of the wind in his ears, Dan considered the hand fate had dealt him. In one way it was a great shame that he could not return to Paris and Anna but, having thought about it, he believed it was probably for the best.

She would have time to decide whether she could be happy without him or whether she would take a chance. Knowing how he felt, he could not believe that she would throw away what they shared. As he drove he hit the horn softly with the heel of his hand,
parp parp de parp parp
, and he found himself singing Anna’s little song of the previous evening.

Rockabye baby in a sports car, Daniel and Anna how lucky you are
! He sang it over and over, accompanying himself on the horn, and he wondered how he would get through the next weeks. For four years he and Anna had seen one another a couple of times a month, sometimes more but rarely less. He could see her now in his mind’s eye, the thick, golden-brown hair which refused to curl
but was cut in the popular gamin style and showed to perfection the beautiful shape of her head. And the blue eyes with their long, slightly slanted lids, the delicately pointed chin, the body, slim yet rounded, which had fitted into his arms last night as though it had been designed for them. He thought about her efficiency at work, which went so strangely with a deep distrust of her ability to handle her personal life, and the sense of humour which could bubble up one moment and disappear the next, so that she was solemn, anxious not to offend.

Anna, Anna, Anna! I can’t wait to see you in the flesh … but wait I must, he told himself, because every instinct shouts out that it’s only Anna who can choose now. I’ve got to let her make this choice. But oh, God, don’t let her choose wrong!

19

IT WAS HALF-PAST
nine on a fine spring morning and Nell, who had finished her household tasks betimes, was in the wild garden, weeding, tying back and generally tidying. The tourist season would soon be upon them and she wanted to get off to a good start; once people began to come down to the coast Pengarth would be busy from morning till night, except for June the second – Coronation Day for the new queen.

There would be no visitors at the castle then. On such an important day the public wouldn’t be interested in going round Pengarth, in seeing the East Tower which was now known as the Haunted Tower, the Long Gallery, the owls and bats and kestrels which had made their homes in the roofless Great Hall. But the day following that, and all the days thereafter until they closed once more in September, the visitors would be coming up the drive again, on foot and on bicycles, in cars and buses, in the big motor coaches which could hold fifty people.

This year, for the first time, they intended to open the converted stabling to the left of the front door as a restaurant so they had moved Matthew’s herd of pedigree Herefords into a new milking parlour which the men worked together to build. The milking parlour was nowhere near the house so the cows did not need to cross the courtyard, which, in its turn, meant that visitors need no longer be warned not to tread cow-dung into the front hall. The farming side of the business could now be kept separate from what Snip referred to as ‘the show’, though Matthew said this sounded a bit cheeky, somehow.

‘It’s a stately home, and don’t you forget it,’ he had
kidded Snip. ‘
The Show
indeed – good thing Mr Geraint can’t hear you!’

‘Good thing he can’t see all this,’ Hester had said, as the four of them stood in the middle of the large, airy room, viewing the new restaurant with open delight. ‘He’d be back here like a shot, interfering, taking the biggest share of the profit, trying to bend us all to his will.’

‘He’s not bothered,’ Nell said. ‘At first we wrote every time we did something new, and he never so much as replied. Odd, that. You’d think he would have shown some interest, wouldn’t you? His new woman must be hot stuff, don’t you think, Dad?’

Matthew grinned and looked self-conscious.

‘He’s probably had half-a-dozen since Dolly Frost,’ he pointed out. ‘And if they keep gettin’ younger, the way they did, the latest is probably still in junior school.’

‘She’ll be wearing him out, that’s why he don’t reply to his letters,’ Snip said with a grin. ‘Like you wear me out, young Nell. Ah, us older men suffer for the delights of young and pretty wives; we’re worn out before our time aren’t we, Matthew?’

‘It’s a good way to go, though,’ Matthew said, leering at Hester. ‘Mind, you’re slowin’ down a bit now, aren’t you, my love? Over forty you are – and you still don’t look a day older than Nell here.’

‘I feel nearer sixty when I’ve been sat in the box by the drive selling tickets from dawn to dusk,’ Hester said. ‘But I’m going to help to cook for the restaurant, aren’t I, Nell? Some fancy stuff, but lots of good home cooking, my own bread, apple cake and meat pies. I’ll enjoy that once in a while.’

‘Don’t forget we’re only opening the restaurant at weekends, for a while,’ Nell said hastily. ‘I always thought selling tickets was a nice, easy little job personally. Nothing like the sheer slog of taking parties round.’

‘Aye. And telling all them lies must be exhausting, too,’ Matthew said genially. ‘When I heard you the other day talking about the ghost in the Long Gallery and the forty water-colourists who’d all seen her and painted her into their pictures … well, I’m surprised your nose didn’t grow six inches, young Nell.’

‘It has,’ Snip said, catching his wife’s arm and swinging her round and pretending to scrutinise her small, smiling face. ‘Yes, your nose is definitely longer, just like Pinocchio’s. You’d better watch out, Nell, or we’ll have our own freak show – see the woman with the longest nose in Great Britain …’

‘Watch her wrestled a full-sized python to earth using only her large and sinewy conk,’ Nell had replied, giggling. ‘You’re a born showman, Snip – that’s why this place is so successful, because you don’t tiptoe round talking about antiques and history, you know how important it is to interest people. But we’d better stop gloating and start working, or we’ll never be ready when the season starts.’

So now, tidying the garden, Nell was looking forward to the official opening of the restaurant. They meant to have a bit of a party and combine it with her birthday and, although Hester would help, they had engaged a permanent cook, a Miss Lily Jones from the village, who had been in service with a family in London until homesickness had driven her back to Wales.

It was a pity, in a way, that the wild garden wouldn’t be at its best for the opening. Nell, Hester and Snip had worked terribly hard to make it beautiful without losing the wildness, and in June it would be stunning, with roses, wild and cultivated, climbing up walls, rioting over pathways, clambering up rustic trellises and spilling on to the more formal beds which edged the garden. Still, it was nice in April too, though gentler, not quite so striking. There were thousands of primroses and violets, lots of the tiny,
wild daffodils and a bed of lilies of the valley which could be smelt halfway up the drive when the wind was blowing in the right direction.

On her knees, Nell picked a bunch of the tiny blue violets, added some pale primroses, and sniffed her small bouquet luxuriously. The soft, subtle fragrances are best, she decided, feeling the rain-washed petals touch her cheek. Primroses smell of spring, of dew, of newly turned earth and moss – who could ask for a lovelier scent on their birthday? And the primroses would still be at their best a couple of days from now, when she would be twenty-seven.

‘Nell? What on earth are you doing down there on your knees? Do get up and come into the kitchen. I’ve got something to show you.’

‘Oh, Mum!’ Nell scrambled to her feet, scattering spring flowers, and bent to pick them up. ‘I wanted these for the room over the gatehouse; it’s a real attraction you know, with everything just as Mr Geraint left it when he went. Only I always put flowers on his desk and on the windowseat behind it, it just adds that final touch.’

‘So you say. I don’t think … but come into the kitchen, please. Matthew and I have had a letter. We think you ought to read it.’

Scooping the last violet from the ground, Nell turned obediently and followed her mother along the winding little path, under the arch, and into the kitchen courtyard. A couple of hens were picking at cracks between the paving stones and the back door was open. Through the doorway Nell could just see Snip, standing on a stepladder, trying to whitewash the last section of the stained ceiling. He turned as they entered the room.