Alys, Always (25 page)

My life, the life I lead apparently independently of the Kytes, will be different too. Colleagues and acquaintances will find out and then there will be subtle adjustments in the way they think about and treat me. I will appear in the landscape of their thoughts more often. I may seem more of a puzzle, or possibly less of one. People will stop talking when I approach; they may also be more keen to find out what I have to say, the direction of my opinion.

I’ll have accumulated some light and shade. Some mystery.

I had none of these attributes when this enterprise began, over a year ago; I gathered a little over the months that followed; and now I will accumulate more.

Some people will say, ‘What does he see in her?’ but others will be able to glimpse it, even as they narrow their eyes and express themselves baffled. Some of his glamour will rub off
on me. It’s starting already. I can feel it settling on me like dust or pollen. I look at myself in the hall mirror, angling my head, wondering whether it has started to show.

‘Where is she?’ Polly is saying, and I retreat a little, as Laurence will expect me to, so I’m standing in the doorway of the cloakroom when she pushes past him and storms into the hall. Her eyes find me immediately.

‘I knew it,’ she says, almost triumphant. ‘You. Unbelievable. I knew it.’ She stares at me but I guess she’s not really seeing me at all: it’s Laurence she’s confronting, a new Laurence, a father she never imagined existed: a man violating the memory of his late wife, betraying the family. ‘How long has this been going on?’

Laurence is coming into the hall behind her, in front of Teddy, who holds himself back, his eyes taking me in. His gaze is as pale and chilly as hoar frost.

Polly turns to Laurence. ‘I said, how long—’

‘A few months,’ he says, coming towards her, his palms open, asking for calm.

She backs away. ‘Since when? When did it start? At the play?’

‘No … before then,’ he says, and she looks from him to me and then back again.

‘Jesus! How could you?’

For heaven’s sake
, I urge him silently, my hands still on the damp collar of my coat:
take control
.
Stop answering her questions
,
and just tell her what she needs to know before she has to ask it
.
Disarm her
,
you fool
. But Laurence is still on the back foot, trying to catch up. To be fair, I suppose he’s the only one of the four of us who hasn’t had time to prepare for this encounter. His disadvantage is also mine, but there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s not my place to speak. No one wants to hear what I have to say. Not yet, at any rate.

Polly has turned away from me. All her attention is
directed towards her father. She has dropped her voice quite low, as if she can hardly bear to say these things aloud. ‘It’s just like you, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘We’ve been hearing things, or rather Teddy has. People are talking about you. Your habits.’ She looks at her brother. ‘Tell him,’ she says.

Teddy murmurs, ‘There are some stories …’

Laurence glances between his children. I can see his mind whirring through various disastrous scenarios.
Exactly how bad is this
? he’s wondering.

‘Honor says you made a pass at her,’ Polly shouts at him, unable to wait any longer. ‘Here, that last evening in the summer – and that’s why she left in such a hurry. How
could
you?’ She spins on her heel to involve me, a vivid artificial grin on her face. ‘Did you know that?’

I nod. ‘Yes, I met Honor a little while afterwards, and she told me. I don’t believe it, I’m afraid. I saw how she was behaving that night—’

‘I’m sure you did,’ Polly is saying, bitterly, but I keep going. ‘I saw what happened that night, and Honor was the one making all the running.’ I look over at Teddy. ‘I’m sorry to have to spell it out, but that’s what I saw. I think she’s something of a fantasist.’

‘Bullshit,’ Polly says. ‘That’s bullshit. Why would she make it up? It doesn’t make sense.’

I shrug and look away, leaving the pause, hoping it’ll foster the germ of doubt. Laurence is still just standing there, wild-eyed, unsure of his strategy, but sensing perhaps that it’s not all that bad, that we might get out of this eventually. I wish I could go over and slip my hand into his, show some solidarity, but it’s too soon.

‘Well, and anyway …’ says Polly, a tiny bit thrown, returning to her mental checklist, stoking the fury again. ‘There’s something else. Someone you were involved with – before Mummy died. Oh yeah, we know all about her. Julia,
Julia …’ She looks at Teddy, who supplies it, a queasy expression on his face: Price.
Honor again
, I think.

‘Yes, Julia Price – whoever the fuck she is,’ Polly says. ‘Oh God, the thought of it makes me feel completely
sick
.’

Quickly, Laurence’s eyes dart to me, checking my reaction, and she notices, sensing another victim in all this. ‘Oh no, I see, Frances didn’t know about Julia Price, did she? You didn’t tell her about that one. But Mum knew. She’d found out, hadn’t she? That was why she wanted you to change the dedication on your bloody book, wasn’t it? That last night? I heard what she said to you: “It’s not a tribute, it’s an insult.” I heard her say it!’

‘Hey,’ says Laurence, shaping his face into a ghastly sort of smile. ‘Let’s all calm down. Let’s go through to the kitchen. I was going to make some tea—’

‘Tea?’ Polly throws back her head, laughing scornfully – channelling the young Judi Dench, I think. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad. You can’t just pretend this isn’t
happening
.’

I find I’m getting slightly bored with this already. No one’s saying anything that’s a surprise to me. The only danger is that somehow the debate will work its way round to me, and that Teddy will tell everyone that I exaggerated – or lied about – what Alys told me in the woods, not that in itself that’s really terribly incriminating. But my hunch is that they’re too focused on each other to turn on me right now. Laurence is bearing the brunt. I’m rather invisible in all this. I might as well extricate myself for the time being.

‘Look,’ I say, very quietly, humbly, appealing to them all. ‘I think you three have things to sort out. I’m going to clear off for a bit.’ I throw Laurence a quick muted smile of sympathy, and then I shrug myself back into my coat and start to move towards the front door. Teddy ignores me, but Polly’s eyes fasten on me, almost in wonder, as if she hasn’t
properly noticed me until this moment. ‘You,’ she says again, almost whispering it. ‘Where did you come from, anyway?’

I look down, modestly, discreetly –
this is really none of my business
,
I don’t want to make this more awkward than it already is
– and I walk away from the three of them, leaving them to it.

The brief shower has passed and as I come out of the front door the sun is shining, a million raindrops sparkling in the drenched lawn, and the sky is opening up, a perfect china blue. The wind is still fresh but the sun feels suddenly hot on my shoulders as I pass through the arch and walk round on to the back lawn, past the copper beech, which is just coming into leaf. I don’t look back at the house, but I feel it behind me, the correctness of its proportions, its pragmatic expanses of flint and brick, its dark windows reflecting back the rippling new foliage and the movement of the clouds.

I walk on as I walked in the early mornings in the summer, down the lawn, skirting the humped disorder of Alys’s borders, and crossing into the orchard where the trees are knotted with buds. My feet leave a ruffled trail in the long sopping grass. I go to the door in the wall and open it and look in. The sun terrace is empty – the loungers and chairs have been taken away – and the pool has been drained: a grubby turquoise box in the ground. Where the tiles slope down beneath the metal ladder there’s a long brackish puddle, too congested with leaves and twigs to capture the sky.

There’s something so sad and sordid about an empty pool out of season, I think. No magic, no illusion. I remember floating in there between the heavens and the earth, part of neither; and then I close the door and walk on.

At the end of the orchard a gate leads into a narrow green lane that hems the garden belonging to the house next door, the house owned by Colonel and Mrs Williams. I push the
gate open and walk along the lane and distantly I hear the murmur of Radio 4 coming through the hedge, and then I see a woman in a headscarf and dirty corduroy trousers, tethering plants to stakes. This must be Mrs Williams.

She notices me and calls out a greeting. As she speaks, I recognise her: the woman who did a reading at the memorial service. ‘Are you staying at Nevers?’ she asks, coming down the bank towards me, dusting the soil off her hands, and when I say yes, she says, ‘Oh, lovely. How are Polly and Teddy?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I say, ‘I’m a friend of Laurence’s.’ And I introduce myself.

The look she gives me then – curious, frankly appraising – allows me a twist of satisfaction.

We exchange a few pleasantries about the garden and the weather, and then I say goodbye and walk on along the shady green lane, thinking of the news beginning to filter out through the neighbourhood.

When I come to the road I turn in the direction of Biddenbrooke. In the village shop I select some postcards and the local paper, and then I sit at an outdoor table at the King’s Arms in the fits and starts of sunshine, writing to Hester and Naomi. ‘Down here for the weekend,’ I write. ‘Started seeing someone who has a place near by. Happy! All love, Frances.’ I sip my lemonade and flick through the paper, which is full of WI tabletop sales and RNLI fund-raisers, and when I look at my watch I see enough time has passed, so I cross the green to the postbox, and then I start to walk home, towards Nevers.

Polly’s Mini has gone when I come down the drive. I go into the cold hall, calling his name. He’s in the sitting room, hunched on the edge of one of the gold sofas, looking into the remains of a small fire. The table in front of him is a jumble of cups, teaspoons. Some cigarette stubs have been
ground out into a saucer. Quickly I go to him and put my arms around him. ‘What happened?’ I ask.

At first he doesn’t respond to me, and then I feel him adjust his position, stiffly submitting to my embrace. ‘Oh – it’s a bit of a mess,’ he says. Next there’s a moment when he relaxes, almost reluctantly, as if accepting there’s no point in holding back. ‘It’s a nightmare.’

‘Are they very angry?’ I say.

‘I wish they hadn’t found out in the way they did,’ he says. ‘You were right. I should have told them ages ago. The shock of it, on top of everything else … well, let’s say it hasn’t done me any favours.’

‘How did they …?’

‘Too absurd,’ he says. ‘I didn’t lock my phone, I must have knocked it, it dialled Polly’s number, she overheard us. And then she found a scarf of yours in London.’

‘Oh, Christ. I am sorry,’ I say, putting my hand over my mouth.

‘Polly’s so disappointed,’ he says, in a voice that sounds as if it’s on the point of defeat. ‘She thinks – she’s having to revise her view of me; she says I’m not the father she thought I was, and evidently I wasn’t the husband she thought I was either.’

I lean my head against his shoulder, waiting. We sit like this for a few moments, in silence. I feel the sigh come and go.

‘Polly was right. I was unfaithful,’ he says, moving so he can look into my face. ‘I’ve got to tell you, I want you to know everything now. I’ve had enough of keeping secrets from the people who matter. There’s this woman, Julia Price – you probably know her. I … We just fell into it. We saw each other every so often. It wasn’t going anywhere, I was never going to leave Alys for her. That’s no excuse, I know. Then Alys found out, just before the accident; Jo Azaria told
her we’d been seen together. She’d had her suspicions anyway. Naturally, she was furious – so furious she wanted her name taken off the book which I’d dedicated to her, as I had most of the others – though in the end of course I didn’t change the dedication, I kept Alys’s name on it. I think that was right, don’t you? I’m sure it was. In any case I’d said I’d end things with her, with Julia Price, and that’s what I did, it was the last thing I promised Alys just before she died. It was the correct decision, I’ve never doubted that.’

‘Go on,’ I say.

‘Anyway – when Teddy saw Honor earlier this week all this came out, and then Polly put the whole thing together, and that’s why they both came up here, to confront me. I really can’t imagine them forgiving me, you know. Polly was boiling over with it, of course you know what she’s like, and Teddy was so withdrawn, very cold … I think he’s even angrier than she is.’

‘Sweetheart …’ I say.

‘I don’t know how to handle it,’ he says. ‘What a mess.’ He pulls away from me, running his hands through his hair. We sit side by side as the fire crumples into itself a little more, dislodging a few dusty trickles of ash.

I choose this moment to make my own confession. ‘I’ve lied to you as well,’ I say. ‘I need to be frank with you. I expect you’ll be very angry with me.’

After an introduction like this, and in the context of this afternoon, the story of how I twisted (though naturally I’m careful not to use that term) Alys’s final words seems like a very little thing, barely even a mischief. Laurence hears me out with a distracted look on his face. When I ask him whether he can forgive me, he pats my wrist absently. ‘I see why you did it,’ he says. ‘You were being kind. You thought it would help us. You were probably right.’ And then he lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it, and lets it go.

I stay with him for a few more moments and then I put some more wood on the fire and start to collect up the things on the table in front of us: the cups, the saucer, the spoons and the milk carton. I carry them into the kitchen and stack the china in the dishwasher. It is starting to get dark now and a scattering of rain strikes the window. There’s a big jar of bouillabaisse in the larder which will do for supper, with some bread and salad.

We eat quietly in the kitchen and afterwards I hear him on the phone, leaving messages for both children, asking them to call him. Later when the phone rings, he answers it eagerly, but I see him shrink a little once he puts the receiver to his ear; and then he says, ‘Ah, Malcolm,’ and moves into the study and closes the door so I can’t hear anything more.