Meadowland

We strolled on. My foot scuffed the ground sending a flurry of dust and small stones billowing ahead of us. A sudden commotion erupted in the undergrowth and a squirrel leapt towards a tree trunk and up it, bounding away through the branches.

We reached the end of the track. The gate, now, was shut. I leaned up against it, staring into the meadow.

‘It’s OK. Only horses. No bulls.’

‘What makes you think I’d be worried?’

Andrew laughed, steering me through and across to the base of a large oak standing on its own. I perched myself on a root, facing away from the rooftops of Cotterly. Andrew sank to the ground beside me.

I slid my legs out of the borrowed boots and wriggled my toes, relishing the coolness around my ankles. Picking nodules of dried-out earth from around the base of the tree, I crumbled them between my fingers. Two horses, one a deep brown, the other a mottled grey, cropped peacefully in a lower corner of the field. Every now and again they swished their tails at flies. At one point, the grey abruptly cantered forward a few paces, then stopped and dropped his head again to continue grazing. It was as though the moment of activity had never been.

I broke the silence. ‘Do you ride?’

‘Not any more.’ The answer rose lazily. ‘We had ponies as children. Mine was a skewbald. Stubborn as hell except when she was pointing for home.’ He laughed, and rose on one elbow. ‘Do you?’

‘Me? No. Unless you count donkeys on the beach.’ I remembered the occasions – two of them; Father hoisting me up …

‘I suppose we were pretty spoiled. Lots of freedom. We used to go off all day with a packet of sandwiches, build dens in the wood, fish a bit …’

‘My father fished.’

‘Not that sort of fishing. The trout stretches are all heavily controlled. Apart from anything else our pocket money wouldn’t have stretched to the fees. No, worms on bent pins, that sort of thing. Kept the cat supplied with minnows – and the occasional roach. I sometimes wonder about all those kids trudging along pavements …’

‘I was one of those kids “trudging the pavements”, as you put it.’

‘So is my sympathy wasted?’

I had to laugh. ‘Not entirely. But it wasn’t as dreary as you make it sound.’

I didn’t feel inclined to elaborate. Andrew lay back and closed his eyes. I hugged my knees and stared over the hedges towards the horizon. This was where Father had painted me, or rather his image of me. Sitting like this. But a little further over. I estimated the spot, then rose and padded across to it, the grass coarse against the soles of my feet. I squatted down, surveying the scene.

My nose twitched at the sickly-sweet odour of horse dung, a large dollop of which, disturbed by buzzing flies, steamed gently close by. The smell mingled with the scent of baked earth and grass, fine dust from which hovered in the air, tickling the back of my throat. A plane, jetting towards London, scored the sky, its slipstream flaking out into a cotton-wool trail. I could just make out the tiny silver shape at the head, winking the sun’s reflection. In less than half an hour its passengers would be disembarking at Heathrow; real people again with lives to lead, no longer cocooned in a sliver of metal suspended in mid-air.

I straightened up and strode back towards Andrew. ‘I really should be making a move,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry.’ He bounded to his feet. ‘I’ve kept you too long.’

‘It’s only that I’m planning to stop off overnight at my mother’s –’ I looked up from pulling on a boot – ‘and it’s a good hour and a half’s drive.’

‘Of course.’ He steadied me as I pushed my foot into the second one.

‘Pity you haven’t seen Flora,’ he said as we wandered back.

‘Why?’

‘Because you ought to talk to her, get to know her.’

‘How so?’

‘You tell me.’ He turned and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re kidding yourself, you know, if you pretend you don’t want to.’

I released myself and walked on quickly.

When he caught up, I said, ‘Will Ginny be back?’

‘Possibly. And the boys. Why?’

‘I’d like to meet her.’

‘She’d like to meet you.’ I felt him looking at me. ‘You’re changing the subject.’

I didn’t answer.

‘Oh, well,’ he said eventually, ‘it’s your life, I suppose.’

We’d reached the road. Ahead of us it dipped towards the village. As we turned off it to retrace our steps across the field and down the path to the house, I said, ‘I can’t see it would do any good to speak to her. It’s all in the past now.’

I marched on. ‘In any case,’ I said, as we descended to the garden, ‘Flora wouldn’t want to see me.’

‘You don’t think so?’

The house was empty. I retrieved my shoes and made towards the car. The Volvo stood next to it, the scrape disconcertingly visible.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, grimacing towards the damage. Then, unnecessarily formally, ‘You’ve been very kind, and I’ve enjoyed my afternoon.’

He held the car door open. ‘See you again perhaps.’

The revving of the engine drowned my muttered, ‘I doubt it.’

I was angry. I knew I was angry, for reasons I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and I drove badly, narrowly missing a grey Metro as I swooped round the corner and changed gear for the climb away from the source of whatever it was that was bugging me. Its driver was a fair-haired woman. Two smaller heads bobbed in the back. I guessed it was probably Ginny. If so, I was relieved to have left; I was in no mood for polite conversation with a stranger.

Would Andrew tell Flora of my visit? What did it matter? My stupidity in returning here at all was embarrassing anyway.

I didn’t stop at my mother’s. It was too late, I told myself lamely, knowing the real reason was that I wanted to be alone. Safely back in Fulham, I switched on the hi-fi as I started to fling the contents out of my suitcase. A recording of popular arias was, for some reason, already in the machine. As soon as the baritone came in, I lunged for the off-button. I threw myself down on the sofa and pulled the crocheted rug, still awaiting attention, up over me. Forty minutes later, the burning smell of a forgotten pizza drifted through from the kitchen.

I was only just beginning to feel more relaxed when, halfway through the following week, the postcard arrived. The handwriting was large and sprawling. I turned it over. The brief message filled the space. ‘I’ll be at home next weekend if you want to come. F.’ I didn’t really need to check the postmark, but I did and it left me in no doubt. How did she have my address? But then she clearly knew a great deal more about me than I her.

No, I didn’t want to go, damn her. Whatever gave her the idea I’d want to have anything more to do with her? In any case, I’d already arranged to spend the whole of the bank holiday with Mother.

I’d been neglecting her shamefully, I’d reminded myself again early on Monday when the need to replace laddered tights had me nipping into Selfridges, one of her favourite London shopping haunts. I’d said as much when, fortified by the normality of a frenetic day at the office, I rang her that evening.

‘It has been a while,’ she acknowledged. ‘But you mustn’t worry about me.’

‘But I do.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to feel you have to come unless you want to.’

‘Of course I want to. It’s just that we’re so busy at work at this time of year and I’m utterly exhausted by the time I get home.’

‘Then you need a break.’ She promised me roast pork with crackling, and a lazy time in the garden.

Mother’s idea of relaxing outdoors usually involved back-breaking weeding, but I said, ‘Lovely. See you on Friday, then.’ I sketched out plans in my mind. We would go into the town together on Saturday morning as we always used to – I might even pick up a bargain in one of those little side-street boutiques – and in the afternoon drive over together to Windsor or Henley. Mother would enjoy that.

Poor old Mum. She’d had it tough. She needed my support; deserved it. After all, who was it who, virtually single-handed, cared for me through my growing-up years? I was looking forward to doing what I could to cheer her up. Over a cup of coffee, I glared again at the postcard and thrust it behind the toaster.

And there it would no doubt have curled and yellowed until eventually I threw it out if Mother hadn’t opted to postpone our arrangements.

But she did. At mid-morning on the Friday. When I’d already watered the plants, packed a bag, and brought the car into central London ready for a quick getaway at the end of the day.

Aunt Leah, she apologised down the wire in that slightly off-key voice I recognised as meaning she had already made up her mind, was begging her to accompany her on that coach trip to Wales she was so looking forward to. ‘Harold was going with her,’ she continued as though, despite having made the booking for them, I didn’t know, ‘but he’s decided now – now, I ask you – that his tomatoes are at a delicate stage and he can’t leave them. She’ll be so disappointed if she has to cancel …’

At any other time, I’d have grinned to myself; Uncle Harold had built up a lifetime’s subtle resistance to being organised. With wry amusement, I’d have imagined him in his greenhouse conspiring with his plants to produce the necessary excuse.

Today, exasperated, I flung my arm out in a gesture of frustration. A plastic container rattled to the floor, scattering paper clips. ‘Damn,’ I said.

‘Oh dear, I’m sorry. Is that upsetting your plans?’

Clearly it was upsetting my plans. ‘No, of course not. I just knocked something off my desk.’ I bent to retrieve the half-dozen clips that had landed within reach. ‘That’s fine. Have a good time.’ I tried to sound cheerful.

Alone in the flat that evening, ensconced with an Indian take-away and a bottle of wine picked up on my way home, I attempted, without much success, to still the voice of self-pity. The room, despite my having flung open all the windows, was hot and airless. The sound of children’s voices, and of a mother calling them in to bed, hung on the humid air like a long drawn out echo. Everyone I knew had taken the opportunity to get out of London for the holiday. Somewhere on the M4 a coach – one of ours, just to rub salt into the wound – was heading towards the Severn bridge. I felt thoroughly abandoned.

I refilled my glass. The bottle, I noted, was already more than half empty. Looking into it, as I held it up to pour again, I could see the inside of the label. Where the wine level cut it, the image shifted sideways. Refraction of light, I murmured. For a moment I was back in the science lab at school. All those bunsen burners and rows of chemicals in glass jars with enormous stoppers. And the smell – musty, yet sharp and sickly at the same time.

I’d never been very good at science. But I did remember about refraction of light. Perhaps because my father, poring over that piece of homework with me, had cited fishing to illustrate its application.

‘Maybe you’d like to come with me sometime?’ he’d suggested.

But my mother, looking up from her embroidery, had shaken her head. ‘Don’t be silly.’ Then, to me, ‘You wouldn’t want to, darling, would you?’

I stared into the bottle again, twisting and turning it to first maximise and then eliminate the distortion. ‘Interesting,’ I announced a shade over-solemnly.

I woke next morning with a dull head, aware of having slept restlessly. I heaved the duvet, three quarters of which had ended up on the floor, back on to the bed and went in search of orange juice. I was out of it. I plugged in the kettle, reached for the coffee jar, then changed my mind and tore the cellophane off a box of teabags. The windows were still open from the night before. The day promised to be another hot one, but for now it was cooler and I shivered. Crossing to the kitchen window to close it, I saw a woman opposite shaking a tablecloth into the air above her half of the two small squares of garden that divided us. I smiled, but she turned back inside without acknowledging me.

I slopped water on to a teabag and thrust a slice of bread into the toaster. I pulled out the card from behind it. ‘Well, why not?’ I said.

CHAPTER 6

The temperature rose steadily as I drove, the early summer heatwave showing no signs of breaking. The heat pressed in through the wound-down windows whenever I was forced to slow.

The twists and turns of the last few miles were now sufficiently familiar to allow me to anticipate the road ahead. The feeling of confidence this gave me began to wane as I drove through the village, up the lane, and turned in through the gates of Wood Edge. I parked beside the yellow Citroën. The handbrake squealed as I pulled it on.

I eased myself out of the car, my crêpe shirt peeling away from the back of the seat and clamping itself in damp creases across my spine. I brushed back the wisps of hair sticking to my forehead.

‘You look as though the first thing you need is a shower.’ Flora had materialised behind me as I burrowed into the car to retrieve bits and pieces from the passenger seat.

I emerged and held out a bunch of irises. They matched the blues and yellows in her dress, which hung low necked and loose from comfortable shoulders. ‘Rather like bringing coals to Newcastle,’ I apologised, looking round at the garden about to burst into unordered bloom, ‘but I didn’t think chocolates would survive.’

She led the way into the house and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. ‘The bed’s made up. You remember where the bathroom is.’

The shower was a hand-held one in the cast-iron bath. I pulled the curtains round and doused myself. For a few minutes, everything but the blissful relief of tepid water on parched skin was drowned out. I towelled my hair, brushed it back loosely and, dressed in fresh cotton, slowly descended to the kitchen.

Flora had meanwhile prepared a tray – a pile of salad sandwiches and a large earthenware jug of juice in which segments of apple and orange floated.

I followed her outside and round to the back of the house. She placed the tray on the ground under the apple tree and I helped set up deck chairs in its shade.

‘I’m not at all sure why I’ve come,’ I said, having drained one glass of grape and pineapple and accepted another.

Flora acknowledged my statement with no more than the merest movement of her head. She leaned back, seeming in no hurry to press me to talk. In an odd way I found it comfortable sitting here with her, lunching companionably. Apart from the distant whirr of a tractor, there was no sound other than the discreet ones of our eating. But it was a deceptive silence. As my ears accustomed themselves to the quiet, I began to be aware of a background murmur: a flutter of wings; the protest of drying-out timbers as a bird landed on the shed roof; the sigh of grass under its feet as it hopped down, searching spy-eyed for insects; the click of its beak on the hardened soil. Bees, busy about their pollinating duties, strummed a steady harmony.

I put my plate down on the ground beside me. ‘That was delicious,’ I said. ‘Was the lettuce from the garden?’

She nodded.

She was watching my face and, with nothing to occupy me, uncertainty returned. ‘I thought it must be.’ I laughed awkwardly. ‘Lot more taste than those limp things one gets in London.’

I stared into the branches overhead. ‘Why did you invite me?’ I wondered what I was hoping she’d say – and what I was afraid she might say.

‘Andrew told me you’d been down. He got the impression you felt you wouldn’t be welcome. I thought you might appreciate reassurance.’

I lowered my gaze and tried to read her expression. It told me no more than the words themselves. ‘I think you’ve just put the ball back into my court,’ I complained.

‘Not really.’ Flora regarded me without rancour. ‘It’s always been there, hasn’t it?’

‘In my court?’

‘In the sense that it was up to you. You would have been more than welcome here at any time.’

I looked at her. Did she mean it?

‘It was hardly that simple …’ I said.

‘Your father and I both realised that.’ Flora picked up the jug, checked my glass, then refilled her own and sat back.

There was an extraordinary stillness about her. So unlike my mother who, even when she sat down, had to keep her hands busy. I wondered where she was now. Probably scouring some tourist attraction, determined not to miss any small corner on the itinerary. Just as she did with her duster; there was no place for cobwebs in her house. Everything clean and orderly.

Flora had been a particularly untidy item.

‘Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have come.’ I remembered my father’s one hesitant suggestion and knew it was true.

Flora’s hands cupped her glass. Her fingers were round and softly lined. An emerald gleamed on her right hand, its gold band nestling into the supple skin. ‘So why is it different now?’

I sipped my drink and wondered.

Flora rose to her feet; not particularly elegantly – I was beginning to realise that wasn’t her style. ‘I think I’ll clear these things away.’ She collected up the plates, leaving the jug and glasses.

‘Can I help?’

‘You stay there and relax. You’ve got things to think about.’ She brushed crumbs on to the grass and strolled off towards the house.

I was glad of the time to myself. My mind jumped and twisted; but came up with no satisfactory answers.

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