The Sea House (23 page)

32

Elsa, I am ordering you back to London. I need you here and I don’t see what can be keeping you so busy? Surely Kett doesn’t need you
every
day to oversee the house. I have a note from him which says the work goes on, all is satisfactory, and he has been given the most detailed plans. Mendels are proving impossible over their loft, and Greenbergs – well, ‘Greens’ I should say – want to change almost everything that has been decided, the kitchen at the front, a living area upstairs… Mrs Benson at least is happy with her chairs and has asked if I would design a cabinet for the doctor. I thought I might make a stack of sliding drawers to keep the more grisly utensils out of sight, and with a shelf, wide and strong enough to pull out and examine babies on when they come in for their first checks. I enclose a rough sketch which you might comment on when you ARRIVE.

Yours, without you, L.

Lily ran her fingers along the inside of the envelope, hoping to find the sketch welded to the seams, but there was nothing there.

Elsa, I am NOT trying to distress you. Surely I should be allowed to mention the word ‘child’ without an outcry, and I drew the infant bawling so that you could only be relieved that this was not your lot. So now I will have to come and comfort you, is that what you planned? You are cleverer and more deceitful than even I suspected, although of course my mother warned me all those years ago. ‘A girl as beautiful as that…’ So, I concede defeat. If you are too melancholy to travel, then I will come to you. Until Friday then, and just wait and see what I will do to cheer you up.

Yours, in anticipation,

My dear, of course, I will be careful of the floods. Unless you are suggesting that I shouldn’t come? I won’t risk the train, but will leave here early on Saturday, so that at least I can see what is happening when the car is swept away by a typhoon. Then, as you say, I shall park up by the Ship and if you have to, you can row over to collect me. Is there a boat tied up under the house? Can it really be that wet? It has been nothing more than overcast here, and as we know our little strip of Ost sea always has better weather than anywhere else. I can hardly wait to see the Hut. Has there still been no news from Mrs Bugg about her husband? Do you intend to keep it on for the rest of the year? Kett should be finished by Christmas and then we can move back in to Hidden House. If the sea comes in over the river you could fish me some flounders from the bottom step. Or pull up a catch of tiddlers and fry them up with butter and flour. Take care and don’t let yourself be so unhappy. I was thinking how recently you’d stopped dwelling on old sorrows and I was congratulating you in my heart. I should have spoken these thoughts out loud.

With love, as always, L.

Lily slid the letters back into their envelope, the envelope with her address in A. L. Lehmann’s writing stamped neatly on the side. ‘
Sorry, sorry
’, Nick had scrawled along one side,
I won’t make it this weekend
. But today Nick was speeding his way towards her, would have crossed the border into Suffolk by now. He’d be flying up and over the hill of the Orwell Bridge, suspended for a moment, surrounded by nothing but sky. Would he notice that the bridge was like a dinosaur, its grey legs squat, its head so meek and narrow, the curve of its backbone ridged into a road?

Lily poured crumbs out of the bread bin, rinsed clean the sink. She opened the back door and looked out at the garden. Weeds were tangling through the flowerbeds and the grass was long. Was it her responsibility to tend it? she wondered, and she tugged at a trail of convolvulus, heard it rip as it clung on. She picked two yellow roses and put them in a bowl, and then, her stomach tightening, she went upstairs. There were the twin beds, modest and divided, and she placed the roses on the table in between. A lamp stood there already, its shade flounced with caramel-coloured flowers – the head of an aged aunt, still in her bath hat, intent on keeping the two beds apart. Lily plumped each pillow, straightened the sheets, and then as if she were simply tidying, she flung a dress over the wardrobe mirror, obscuring the glass.

When there was nothing more to do, she took her notes and letters out into the garden. She carried out a blanket and a heap of cushions, a cup of tea, so that when Nick arrived he could surprise her, studiously at work.

My dearest, yes, I think we should accept supper with Jilks. Is Meyer STILL there? And how very amusing that Gertrude has a friend. Is Meyer not offended? And has he finished his watercolour project? I shall arrive only hours after this letter and you can give me your answers then.

I have just looked at The Times and seen the obituary of Ronald Wilberforce (Sir!), who was my boss at the S.O.E. It made me think that it is eight years now and I’m still waiting to be debriefed. If anyone at all from the Special Forces had shown interest, what a difference that would have made. It may even have saved the life of our good friend Joseph Feuer. Never debriefed, never asked for his account after six months in solitary confinement, it still hurts me to know it, to feel him so unthanked. Could it have stopped him, do you think, from taking his own life? My girl, when you are a widow of eighty-five, I give you permission to accept a medal on my behalf. Not for my houses, all overrun and spoiled by those who took them as their own, but for the moment when my parachute opened and I floated down behind enemy lines.

My El, my sweet, sweet wife, wait for me, I will be with you soon. L x

Lily was startled by the hooting of a horn. She jumped up from her cushions and ran round to the gate.

‘I can’t park.’ Nick was leaning from his open window, looking at the space she had left free for him. ‘Whose car is this?’

Lily stared at the dust-black bonnet of Grae’s Renault 5. The two Renaults were so close, parked so exactly at the same angle that they looked like twins.

‘Your car has cloned,’ Nick said drily and Lily glanced round wildly for another space.

‘You could go down to the ferry,’ she suggested. ‘Drive past the pub and there’s a car park straight ahead. I’m sorry,’ she called after him as he began to turn. ‘Just keep going straight.’

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ she murmured, and she was almost knocked over by a family of cyclists freewheeling round the bend.

She waited for Nick on the Green, sitting on the bench, expecting him to appear at any moment. Where was he? She strained awkwardly round, and unable to sit still, she walked down to the harbour to meet him. She passed The Ship, scanning the wide stretch of the car park, irritation and anxiety beginning to mix. How could he be lost? And then she saw him standing at the Mr Whippy van, gazing at the illustrated lollies and cornets, oysters and 99s. Just before him in the queue were Em and Arrie. Lily stood in shadow by the wall, watching as the girls ordered, paid and turned away, licking the sticks of orange ice.

‘Lily.’ He was waving to her, a bottle of water in his hand. ‘Two hours, twenty-seven minutes. Is that a record or what?’ He strode over to her and kissed her. She couldn’t help it, she looked round to check if they’d been seen. But Em and Arrie had their backs to her, were nothing more than two brightly coloured dashes climbing the white slope of the dunes.

Lily led Nick into the garden.

‘This is nice.’ He stood still, surprised, and she explained that now the other cottage was empty the shared garden was all hers.

‘I expect it’ll be rented out to someone else soon,’ she said and to avoid drifting on to the subject of the ‘wife-beater’ she asked how his work was getting on.

‘Not bad,’ he sighed. ‘But there are always so many things that can go wrong. All of a sudden it doesn’t seem possible to get the beam flat against the ceiling, so now the clients…’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘You know what?’ He sat down on her mound of cushions. ‘It’s fine. At least we’ve got the work.’

‘And Holly?’

‘Holly?’ For a moment they both looked at each other, shocked.

‘She’s doing fine, Yes…’ He was tugging and tearing at the grass. ‘We’re lucky to have her.’ And when he looked up, his face was calm.

‘So you’re still working?’ he asked, nodding towards her sheaf of papers. ‘Wasn’t this all meant to be handed in by now?’

‘It was, but they said if I really needed an extension, I could give it in at the beginning of next term.’

Nick lay back, his head on a cushion, and examined his mobile phone. He moved it through the air, backward, and forwards. ‘Isn’t it possible to get a signal here?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe in the house?’

‘Even less likely, I’d have thought.’ Nick stood up and walked around the garden, into the kitchen and out into the lane.

‘You could try using the phone box,’ she said, following him, and she bit her lip to stop her smile.

Nick stood in the middle of the Green still scrutinizing his phone.

‘Was it a very important call?’

Nick looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘All right, you win,’ he said. ‘I’ll try the phone box. Do you have change?’

Lily ran into the house. She was grinning so hard it shocked her. She hadn’t realized quite how frantically she’d been at war. She scooped up change, reaching into the lining of her bag, tipping up her purse, until her hands were jangling with tens and twenties, the weightless silver fish scales of fives. When she got back, Nick was already on the phone.

‘Sure, sure.’ He was drawing the real world towards him, ‘Tell them we will.’ She piled her change on to the ledge beside him, and as she did Nick’s arm moved round her and he scooped up the phone box note. ‘Yes, I know that, of course,’ he said more softly, and she watched him as he read.
Call 999. Wait by the wall
… She stood beside him as he tried to decipher it, and then she saw that it had been altered, had been added to since she last looked. The cross she’d made was circled, the L, proceeded by an R. Lily took a pen out of her pocket and wrote ‘Hello’ along the top, and Nick, still talking, raised his eyebrows at her as she pinned it back down under its stone. ‘Tell them that we have a contractual agreement.’ Nick turned away. ‘They should read it again if they’re confused. Look, Tim, for God’s sake’ – the fivepences were being eaten as fast as he could pay – ‘I’ll be back in the office on Monday morning, and you can call me any time… Look, if I don’t answer, leave a message and I’ll drive out of the village and pick it up. Yes… There’s some interference here, probably the power station… Yeah, Lily never mentions it, but there’s a bloody great nuclear reactor just along the coast…. She’s in denial, only sees areas of “outstanding natural beauty” everywhere she looks.’ He began to laugh, his shoulders shaking with mirth, and she imagined the rest of the weekend spent driving up and down to the A12 to pick up messages from Tim.

‘You know what I’ve been craving?’ Nick curled one arm around her waist.

‘What?’ Lily swallowed as he whispered in her ear. ‘My visit just wouldn’t be complete without a pint at that fantastic pub.’

They took their drinks out into the garden where even the dogs were lolling in the last of the day’s sun. There was some kind of game being played in a pebbled corner, men and women cheering and laughing, behind a square of fence.

‘What are they doing?’ Lily asked.

The landlord, in his corset, was leaning up against the fenced-off pitch, a row of dark brown pints of bitter lined up behind him on the wall.

‘They’re playing boules.’

There was a hush then as a tall man stooped to throw. He swung his arm low three times and then let the silver ball arc and land and roll. There was a low murmur of approval and shouts of ‘Well done, Alf.’

‘That’s Alf.’

Lily craned to see. Without his hat, Alf looked strangely dashing, his hair shock-white and springy on his head.

‘Who’s Alf?’ Nick asked, but the barman was wheezing out a taunt. ‘Those balls look a bit rusty to me,’ he said, and Alf caught at the words like a boy. ‘Rusty balls?’ He straightened up. ‘Been a martyr to them all my life.’ And the others gave a great cheer of a laugh.

Lily and Nick sat at a wooden table, the garden hedge cut back so that they could see the sea. They smiled at each other and touched glasses and then carried on watching the game. ‘Can you shove that in a bit further?’ Alf gave orders to adjust the marker, and right on cue another man turned to the woman beside him. ‘I expect that’s something you’ve had to say more than once, eh, Cassie?’