Summer on the River (2 page)

And so she did. Like Marianne before her, she knew the right people, made the right kind of friends and was good with the clients, though she lacked Marianne's generosity. Nevertheless, the business continued to flourish, and Charlie's prospects with it.

So what did I know? Evie asks herself, closing the front door behind her and crossing the road. Tommy was right and it was none of my business.

But it is her business now: Tommy has made it her business. Charlie has inherited the house in Kensington, the wine import business, the assets; but the Merchant's House has been left to Evie. Charlie is puzzled but courteous; Ange is furious.

‘Rather unusual,' she said to Evie after the will was read. ‘The house has been in the family for generations.'

‘Evie is family,' Charlie reminded her gently, and Ange flushed that unbecoming red that flows up from her chest and over her face each time she is annoyed.

‘You know what I mean,' she muttered.

Evie wanted to agree but was obliged to remain silent: she was as shocked as Ange. It never occurred to her that Tommy would do such a thing.

Clutching the bowl, Evie descends the steep flights of steps that lead down to the shared paved area behind the boathouse and lets herself in. River-light flows across the polished wood floor, trembles on the white walls, washes up into the high-raftered roof of this huge living space. She sets the bowl down beside the Belfast sink, crosses the length of the room to the big glass doors, which open on to the wooden balcony, and steps outside. If she turns her back on the river and looks up she can see the Merchant's House standing in its elegant row across the road high above her. All around her are other converted boathouses, jumbled amongst fishermen's cottages built below the level of the road, backed into the rock and huddled above the river. Some have ports with heavy wooden doors that can be closed against the tide and where small boats can be kept. A few owners have built tall stone columns into which lifts have been installed to avoid climbing steep steps to the road above. Some of the cottages have tiny courtyards surrounded by high stone walls. These walls are bright with flowers: valerian, feverfew, mallows, lacecap hydrangeas spring from the crevices in these stones and flourish in the salty air.

If she looks across the river Evie can see Kingswear with its tier upon tier of houses stacked on the hill above the marina: narrow terraced houses the colour of ice cream: mint, vanilla, bubblegum, coffee.

The sun has slipped away behind the hill and the balcony is in shadow. This is when she misses Tommy most: early evening when work is done and it's time to light the candles, to prepare supper, to talk over the events of the day. In the winter she will pull down the pretty hand-painted blinds over the windows that face northwards upriver and south to the sea, and close the curtains across the big glass doors. She will go through the connecting door from the utility room behind the kitchen, into the small adjoining fisherman's cottage where she works and where there is the den, cosy and warm, sheltered from winter storms and the high spring tides that race in from the sea. The bedrooms are here, too: not very big but quite adequate. The contrast is extraordinary: the higgledy-piggledy cottage with twists and turns and unexpected steps, and the huge light-filled space that feels like an extension of the river.

Evie opens a cupboard and finds a vase for the sweet peas; she empties the loganberries into a smaller dish. The bowl must be returned to the Merchant's House. She is always most particular that there should never be any muddle.

‘It's yours too, now,' Tommy would say after they were married, but she'd shake her head.

‘It belongs to your family, not to me.'

‘But you are my family,' he'd protest. ‘This is our home, darling Evie. Relax into it. Don't be so independent. You are happy, aren't you? I know you love your boathouse but you like this old place, too, don't you?'

And she did love it: the Merchant's House was graceful, elegant, and yet warm and friendly. She loved the big comfortable breakfast room, which led off from the kitchen, and the bright, sunny drawing-room on the first floor with its big sash windows looking across the river. She loved the sheltered terraced garden, with its amazing views, the fruit trees growing against the high stone walls, and the scent of the lavender hedge at the end of a hot day. It was a family house, but it wasn't
her
family, as Ange always made sure to underline. Whenever she and Charlie visited, with Alice as a tiny baby – and later with Millie, too – Ange took opportunities to assert her position as Tommy's daughter-in-law, wife of his beloved son, mother of his adorable granddaughters. She'd visited Dartmouth when Marianne was still alive, knew the house intimately, and never missed the chance to make Evie feel that she was an outsider. Not in front of Charlie or Tommy – she was too clever for that – but by subtle hints and actions Ange indicated her rights of possession.

Of course, she never dreamed that Tommy would leave the house to Evie.

Now, as if she is casting off the problem – or running away from it – Evie picks up her bag and goes out again. She crosses the paved area, which her neighbour has made delightful with terracotta pots full of bedding plants, and climbs the flight of steps to the road above. She will go down to the Embankment, watch the boats and the people, maybe have something to eat in the Royal Castle Hotel. This evening she doesn't want to be alone. Tomorrow Claude will be back: Tommy's oldest, dearest friend. Boys together at boarding school, holidays at the Merchant's House with the aunts, jaunts in London – throughout their lives their friendship remained strong, surviving marriage, babies, distance. Claude has been a widower for nearly four years and now he spends a great deal of time with Evie in Dartmouth. A retired naval commander, he likes to be here in the town, remembering his days as a cadet at the Britannia Royal Naval College, watching the new young intake out on the river.

Evie feels a special affection for Claude. He was the only one of Tommy's friends who knew about their affair. He never judged, never criticized, welcoming her warmly into the relationship he shared with his oldest friend.

‘He doesn't get on very well with Marianne,' was all Tommy said. ‘I'd like you to be friends.'

And so they are; and tomorrow morning she will go to fetch him from the train at Totnes. Claude is always here for regatta.

She wanders along the Embankment where visitors linger by the river, then turns into the town, past the Boat Float where small boats are moored. She crosses the road and pushes open the door of the Royal Castle Hotel. It's quiet in the long, low bar with its large oak beams, rather too early for visitors or locals, and she is able to bag her favourite table by the window. She leaves her jacket on the chair and goes to the bar to order some supper and a glass of Pinot Grigio. A group of cheerful, noisy people come crowding in and she smiles at them as she squeezes by, carrying her wine back to her table.

Evie relaxes in her chair, gazing out at the Boat Float, wondering how often she has sat here with cups of coffee or glasses of wine and thought about the current novel.

‘Do you get lonely?' Tommy would ask just occasionally, his arms tightly around her, his voice anxious lest she should say ‘Yes', and accuse him of leaving her alone, of using her.

She'd laugh, mocking his fear. ‘With my head full of all my people?' she'd ask. ‘Are you joking?'

And it was partly true: fragments of conversation, threads of plots, odd connections crisscrossing the relationships of the characters, continually jostled her thoughts.

Here, in the Royal Castle, she's watched people eating, drinking, laughing, talking; she's observed expressions, gestures, body language, and while she's making mental notes she's also conscious of long-gone generations inhabiting this old medieval port, from which merchant-venturers sailed out to find their fortunes and where the Pilgrim Fathers anchored for a while on their way to America.

As she sips her wine, she gradually becomes aware that this time it is she who is under observation: someone is watching her. An odd sensation, like a light current of cold air, seems to brush against her skin. She glances round quite casually and sees a thin, fair man in the far corner at the table by the door. He is watching her with a cool stare, his face inscrutable but certainly not friendly. She has grown used to a certain amount of attention. People recognize her from the photographs on the dust covers of her books, from literary festivals, from local television – she often encounters a ‘Don't I know you from somewhere?' glance – but what is not familiar is this sense of hostility; of active dislike.

She looks back at him, tries a little friendly smile, but the inimical stare doesn't change and she turns again to look out of the window. Oddly, she feels unsettled. People are friendly in this small town, locals and visitors alike, and she is unnerved. She wonders if he might be a descendant of one the great West Country families that she has written about and that has appeared in an unfavourable light.

Her supper arrives and the jolly group of people come to sit at the tables near by, shielding her from her observer. She eats quickly, prey to foolish fears. Supposing he should follow her when she leaves? Perhaps she should return to the Merchant's House and find company with Ben? But when she's finished her supper, and glances into the corner with a nicely simulated mix of friendly indifference, she sees that the watcher is gone.

Her relief is shot through with fantastic and fearful ideas – she is, after all, a novelist – which she thrusts impatiently aside. However, she doesn't stroll around the Boat Float or along the Embankment but walks straight home, through Fairfax Place to Southtown, glancing from time to time behind her.

Once inside the boathouse, she laughs at her fears. Nevertheless she is glad that Claude will be here in the morning.

EVERYTHING LOOKS DIFFERENT
from the train. Secret places far from roads and villages; glimpses of other worlds. Scrubby trees crowding round a dark pool, their feet in the brackish oily water, and a heron standing watchful in the reeds. Swans, breast to breast with their pale elegant reflections, drifting across flooded lowland. An unexpected rectangle of allotments, productive and untidy, and a brightly painted narrowboat called
Bess
moored alongside a canal path. And now, in the distance, there are the round small hills of Devon and neat little fields – emerald green, corn gold, dusty pink – looking like crumpled rugs laid out to dry in the sun.

Claude loves this train journey to the west, so familiar from his childhood, still retaining its sense of magic and promise. Going to Dartmouth for school holidays with TDF, returning to the Naval College from leave, travelling down from Hampshire annually for regatta, he feels that this journey marks the stages in his life. He'd loved TDF, and envied him. He was everything Claude was not: tall, good-looking, socially at ease, popular. Claude was a short, chunky, red-headed boy who looked – in his own eyes – as if he'd been taken apart and reassembled in a hurry and who, as he grew older, felt defensive in the presence of girls. Yet he never resented TDF for all these gifts with which he was endowed. The darling fellow had drawn Claude into his magic circle. He'd sprinkled the glitter of his own popularity over his friend and lent him grace. Claude misses him but is grateful for Evie, who made TDF so happy.

As the train leaves Exeter Claude leans forward ready to gaze out at the estuary, where boats rest on the shining mud and egrets strut long-legged behind the receding tide; and then he turns to look inland, to the parkland of Powderham Castle, to glimpse the shadowy shapes of deer grazing in the dappled shade of the trees.

He settles back in his seat as the train travels onwards to Dawlish and Teignmouth. If he's honest, he never liked Marianne much, though he tried not to show it. She was too organized, too sensible. TDF guessed, of course, and saw to it that the Merchant's House was where he and Claude would meet for an occasional weekend when Marianne was busy with her endless social engagements or her plans for Charlie's advancement. Claude's own wife, Jilly – generous, warm-hearted, used to the separations and vagaries of naval life – was perfectly content to see him off to Dartmouth for an occasional run ashore with TDF, though even she didn't know about Evie. To be honest, Claude had enjoyed his position of privilege; the only one taken into their confidence. Despite the huge success of the television series and her books, Evie kept a very low profile and they both welcomed him as the one friend with whom they could share the happiness of their unusual relationship. He liked her at once; she was amusing, laid-back, independent. He could see the point of Evie. Even after she and TDF were married, Claude remained special to them. Jilly, busy with her family, had been surprised and interested that TDF should remarry – and especially the well-known writer – and delighted that Claude should retain his friendship with his childhood friend, but was much more focused on their new grandson and her garden. When their son-in-law got a teaching post in Winchester, and their daughter was expecting their third child, it was Jilly who suggested that the growing family should move into the main house whilst she and Claude took up residence in the annexe. It had always been the plan but now, Jilly said, the time was right and so the move was made. Five years later Jilly was dead and, as Claude combats his grief and loneliness, he is glad and grateful to be close to his family whilst retaining a measure of independence. Nevertheless, these trips to Dartmouth are a treat. Here he sheds his responsibilities as father and grandfather and is simply Claude.

The train passes above a smooth sandy beach where a dog runs, scattering the gulls that perch on the rotting wooden groins that stride out into the sea; it dives through rocky tunnels formed by red sandstone, stops at Newton Abbot, then heads off again towards Totnes.