A Winter's Child (52 page)

And here she dreamed no dreams of any kind.

They visited the castles of France's kings at Chenonceaux and Chambord and Amboise, and strolled in the soft air through royal forests. They stood for the whole of one afternoon beside a cháteau the colour and texture of white smoke, rising spire upon fairy tale spire from a lake of pale green water. They climbed the steep medieval streets of Chinon, topped by its battlements, once the court of England's Henry Plantagenet, where his lion-hearted son Richard had made himself a lair in which to die after his last crusade. They followed the course of the river, finding it placid, at this season, its surface the texture of silk scarcely ruffled by an almost amorous, lemon-scented breeze. They inspected the vines at Vouvray and the
caves,
cut into the earth beneath the vineyards, an ice-cold, rough-hewn womb where the wine lay maturing in giant casks and miles of dusty bottles. And, emerging from the chill dark of the cellars into the trumpet blare of light and heat, they sat in the sunshine tasting a wine that placed all the flowers and spices of the region, all the green enchantment, the silken beauty of the river and the fine fragile romance of those enchanted castles, on Claire's tongue.

A life within a life. A green glade in the dust-bowl that was often reality. From the moment of setting foot in France they had not spoken one word of Faxby or anyone connected with it. It had seemed unnecessary. Nor did the necessity arise on their return to Paris. Not immediately. But on the last morning but one she went alone to the
Galeries Lafayette
to buy presents for Dorothy and Edward to ease her conscience, thereby creating the necessity of taking something for Miriam, something for Polly, something for Eunice who could hardly be left out. And, since she was buying for everybody else, could she forget Nola? Or Kit? Or Mrs Tarrant, the housekeeper at the Crown, who had always been so kind to her. Or Adela Adair, the restaurant pianist, who always hung around, sad-eyed and dejected like a hungry dog at a banquet, when other people were unwrapping presents? And if she included Adela Adair and Mrs Tarrant, then what about MacAllister who was a rogue, of course, but would usually change shifts with her when she wanted to get away early? And Mr Clarence?

It took longer than she had expected and hurrying down the
rue de la Paix
and across the
Place Vendome
to the hotel she saw Benedict walking towards her. Nothing more extraordinary than that. Yet it stopped her in her tracks, her heart and her pulses leaping from sheer delight in him, and a great and wonderful surge of pride and pleasure.

She loved him.

She told him so.

‘Thank you,' he said. An odd reply. And then ‘So you'll do something for me, will you?' That was better.

‘Yes.' Whatever he wanted, no matter how immense, her answer, at that moment, would be yes.

‘Well – since you're in a shopping mood – I want to buy you something. Something expensive and very extravagant. Will you accept it?'

‘Oh no,' she said, ridiculously disappointed. ‘Why should you want to?'

‘Because it would please me. Don't you want to please me?'

How could she deny that?

‘Then listen. A woman can express her feelings by giving her body. It's what the world sees as her greatest asset, after all. A predatory male can hardly do that. So, when he wants to make a gesture of affection, he can only give
his
greatest asset. Money, if he has any. Preferably money he's worked for. Earned with the sweat of his brow if possible. That makes the gesture particularly tender. And I'm not twenty-five any more, you know, and short of cash.'

Her throat, for just a moment, was too tight to speak and then, sounding gruff and uncertain, she said, ‘What do you want to buy?'

‘Anything you like. With the
rue de la Paix
just there, behind us, it shouldn't be difficult.'

They took a great deal of time in the choosing, for she knew it was something she would treasure for the rest of her life and he stipulated only that she must be able to wear it openly and often; something, in fact – although he did not say this – which she could explain to her mother and to Miriam. A ring, therefore, of the value he insisted upon, would have caused too much comment. Several of the necklaces and bracelets which pleased her were, on reflection, too elaborate for Faxby. Earrings she already had. In the end, without daring to convert the francs into pounds, she chose an oval ruby, her birthstone, on a gold chain sprinkled with diamonds like tiny stars.

A lovely thing.

‘It suits you,' he said, fastening it around her neck that night as she was dressing for dinner. ‘I'm just sorry I couldn't bring it to you in some spectacular manner – like walking through the snow. As you did.'

She felt his hands tighten on her shoulders, sensed a corresponding tautness in his chest as he suddenly pulled her hard against him, holding her from behind so that she could not see his face.

‘I can't forget that night, Claire. Have you any idea how terrible it was for me?'

‘Darling –?'

‘I was forty and falling in love –. It was like the onset of a disease I'd believed myself immune to. I didn't want it. God help me, I want it now.'

‘You have it. I love you, Benedict.'

‘Hush,' he said, ‘In my better moments I know. In my better moments it's not what I want for you.'

They had dinner in a silence which became tender and afterwards, walking through the evening stillness of the
Tuileries
Gardens to the
Place de la Concorde
and the leafy beginnings of the
Champs Elysées,
she became aware of a feeling of shared sadness, a regret so gentle as to seem sweet and which settled around them like mist. It entered their bedroom that night, hovering over the luggage already packed and labelled ‘Mannheim Crescent', ‘High Meadows'. It sat, visible as a heavily-veiled mourner, between them as they took that last, painfully cheerful breakfast before hurrying to the train. It seeped into the empty compartment and sat down before them, easily distinguishable from all the other mournful steams and vapours of the
Gare du Nord.
It accompanied them on board the channel steamer, wrapping itself around them like a sorrowful caress as they stood on deck, close together, in the sharp wind. It grew heavy, and thick, the mist becoming a fog through which they smiled at one another. And as the coast of France melted into the haze and the chalk cliffs of Dover gracefully emerged from a separate haze of their own, he took her hand and pressed his mouth very briefly against it.

‘Are you saying goodbye to me, Benedict?'

‘It would be sensible.'

‘Yes. Wouldn't it.'

It seemed pointless to say more than that.

She was to go directly to Faxby. He was to stay the night in London. She thought it likely that he would then go down to Eastbourne to see Nola. She had no reason and no right to object. But when they reached the impersonal bustle of the city their plan to separate at once no longer suited him.

‘I shall take you to King's Cross.'

‘There's no need.'

‘I didn't say that. I said I'd come with you and put you on the train.'

‘Benedict – the Faxby train. With the Leeds train on the next platform, I shouldn't wonder. Dozens of people could recognize you.'

‘Yes. They'll see me putting my sister-in-law on the train. What of it?'

‘Just take me to the station then. Don't come on the platform.'

But at King's Cross, having commandeered a porter and selected the first-class compartment into which he wished her luggage to be placed, they remained together, not saying a word, waiting with the dense melancholy of partings which may or may not be final, for the train to pull away, so that the slamming of the doors, the shrilling of the whistle, was both a relief and an agony. She had parted in this way from Paul. Only two years ago this station platform and every other had been taut with partings such as this, hands clasped tight through the carriage window, the silence vibrating and choking with the things one had left unsaid and which could hardly be called out now above the racket of the engine, the callous conversations of passers-by. Things which would sound small and foolish anyway to young men and women facing death.

It was not death this time. Unless it was the death of a future which had been forced as stillborn into the world as Nola's child.

‘Are you going to Eastbourne now?' she said.

‘Yes.'

It was as if she had asked him if he was on his way to Passchendaele.

‘I thought you would.'

‘Yes. She is my responsibility.'

‘And you're also quite fond of her. So am I.'

He smiled and lifting her hand pressed it again to his cheek. ‘She would give up nothing for either one of us you know.'

‘I know.'

‘So – it seems we have turned out to be rather nicer than we thought.'

The journey was over-familiar, very long, not particularly cold although, having begun to shiver, she found she could not stop; no more tedious than usual except that she came to believe it would never end. The last time she had travelled alone to Faxby on this train Edward had been there to meet her, peevish, unwilling, self-obsessed. Now there would be no one. Never mind. She would be better, tonight, on her own. Far better. And tomorrow she would go and make her peace at Upper Heaton, bearing gifts, telling lies, being pleasant to Edward for her mother's sake. She took a cab from the station, knowing she was lucky to get it, and let herself into the empty flat. Home, How ridiculous. She had better unpack, light the fire, read some of the letters which had been pushed under her door. All that seemed ridiculous too. Perhaps she should go over to the hotel and get drunk, which seemed marginally more appealing. But, instead, she lay down, not even taking off her shoes, and smoked a cigarette, utterly disconsolate, watching the evening draw in.

There was no need to be alone. But, nevertheless, she lay there for a long time accustoming herself to the fact that ‘alone'now meant to her the condition of being, not without company, but without Benedict. Once it had meant being without Paul. But Benedict was alive. Not far away. She had wanted to make him happy. She understood that she had not, could not. Of what use was it? None whatsoever.

She dreamed for three nights of his face as it had been at the station, taut, grim, grey as dark skin can appear under stress; just his face, disembodied at the train window, the train hurtling through blank darkness at perilous speed. Her own fear, for herself speeding down that aimless track and for him, outside in the cold. And then the fourth night she dined at High Meadows, finding him there brisk and cool and sardonic as she had always known him, back from his unexplained journey about which no one had thought to question him.

‘Shall I take you home, Claire?'

‘Yes please.'

‘Early?'

‘As early as you can.'

The cold dream was over.

Even so, loving Benedict could not, and would never be easy, the difficulties lying not only with his closed, intensely separate nature but in a new and often fierce reaction of her own. She had once found it easy to accept his dual identity, to watch him playing his various roles at High Meadows without any particular pain or confusion in her own heart. But now, as the spring weeks tripped by, sparkling, insouciant, thinking only of their own brief, never-quite-to-be-repeated loveliness, she found it hard indeed to tolerate not only the deceit they were obliging themselves to practise, but the waste of their time, the draining away – to suit the convenience of Miriam and Eunice, the follies of Nola – of this precious substance which was their most certainly unrepeatable life.

What prevented her from leaping to her feet one stifling ‘family Sunday'and stating, loud and clear ‘I am in love with Benedict. Why should I sacrifice that love for any one of you? You don't deserve it. And since we shall all be dead in ten years, twenty years, even tomorrow, then none of you have the right to interfere.'? Several times she dreamed that she had done exactly that, towering over them, six feet tall, eight feet tall, shooting upwards like an underground torrent suddenly released from bondage, as they sat mute and astonished at their dinner-table, until, rising as one body – Miriam and Dorothy leading them – they had smothered her with quilts and eiderdowns and soft, clinging blankets, pressing her down –‘For your own good, dear. Because we need you. Because we love you. Because what will people say?' – into the earth again. A terrible dream from which only the fight for breath, the struggle to unclog her nostrils and her eyes from cold earth, the wholly primitive fear of burial alive, awoke her.

To begin with High Meadows had bored her. Now she hated it with a passion that was almost juvenile in its ferocity. If High Meadows should burn down, she would dance on its ashes. Yet, occasionally, and then rather more often, Benedict allowed her to see his desire that she should join him there.

The blue chintz room.

‘We have one life,' he said. ‘That is
your
philosophy, my dear. I was quite patiently and not unpleasantly getting through mine until you began to worry me about wasting time – about seizing what one can, while one can. And we are wasting a great deal of time, you know. The solution is in your hands.'

‘Benedict – I can't breathe at High Meadows.'

‘How unfortunate. I would like to look after you, Claire. Is that wrong?'

‘What you mean is that you would like me to depend on you.'

‘Yes. That is just what I mean.'

‘To give up –'

She had intended to say ‘To give up my independence. My individuality. Many things.' But he cut her short with an impatient exclamation, an irritable clicking of the tongue.

‘To give up what? A menial job in a seedy hotel with a man who used-'