Beyond the Green Hills (17 page)

‘So who looked after all of you?’ she said quickly.
‘Did you stay together or were you shared out round relatives?’

‘Well, there were only four of us by then. My mother had ten children, yes, but some were born dead, some died as babies. My favourite sister died when I was fourteen. She was a year younger. She had tuberculosis, like my mother. It was very common in the countryside in those days.’

‘Yes, it was the same at home,’ she said, nodding sadly. ‘While I was at secondary school, there was a big tuberculosis campaign in Ulster. They checked out school children with reaction testing and we all had chest X-rays. About ninety per cent of children in our area had actually been in contact with tuberculosis. Some of them had developed a high immunity. I was lucky, I was one of those. But I must certainly have been with people who’d had it.’

He listened attentively, pausing only for a moment to acknowledge a tall, silver-haired man, a member of a small party settling at a table nearby.

‘It seems to have been a weakness in my family, but it may have saved my life!’

‘However did it do that?’

She had to wait for the answer while Robert immersed himself in the wine list that had just been handed to him.

‘You know a great deal indeed about the making of wine, my dear Clare, but will you allow me to instruct you in the drinking of it?’

She laughed and listened carefully to his discussion with the wine waiter. The name of the claret he chose to accompany the saddle of beef was
not one she’d encountered, but she’d read that its year had not been a good one. She smiled to herself as she listened. Typical Robert Lafarge. This particular vineyard had escaped both the late frost and the early autumn rains and consequently had had an exceptional year.

‘In 1939 when France mobilised, I failed the medical examination,’ he went on. ‘As a poor physical specimen with scars on my lungs, which I had not known about, I had to be given a task within my limits. I was made a Paymaster. Even armies require financial management,’ he said wryly. ‘So I was in Paris when the Germans made their advance. As you know, there was no fighting in Paris and it was not bombed as London was. I was quite safe. Unlike my wife and family.’

His tone was completely controlled, but she watched him carefully, nevertheless. For a moment, he paused, glanced briefly around the dining room with its panelled alcoves and brilliant chandeliers and seemed about to move on from what he’d hinted at.

‘What happened to them, Robert?’ she asked, gently, surprised to hear herself use his Christian name for the first time.

He smiled awkwardly.

‘I am not entirely sure, Clare, though I have tried for years to find out,’ he began, fidgeting slightly in his high-backed red and gold chair.

‘Because my wife was pregnant with our second child, she went to stay with her sister in one of the villages on the edge of the Ardennes when I was
called up. No one had thought an attack would come in that area. Some of those villages were destroyed by the Germans. There were, however, many refugees who took to the roads ahead of the advance. There is evidence that my wife and her sister escaped with their children. But, as you may know, the columns of refugees were strafed with machine-gun fire as they fled. My brother-in-law managed to trace some of the survivors from his village after the surrender. From all he could gather he was convinced his wife and mine died together with our children, and they were all buried together. The baby would have been only a few weeks old. Of it, there is no trace whatever, though one survivor insists my wife was carrying a baby in a sling before the Stukers came.’

‘So the child could have survived?’

‘Yes, he could. I had a letter months later that my wife had written, telling me we had a son. Someone must have found it tramped in the dust and put it in a post box after the surrender, but I was unable to trace them. I gave up hope of finding my son, if he survived, some time ago. Sometimes it is best to give up hope and get on with living. If hope is returned, well and good, but if not, one will not have spent time in vain longings. I think you may have already discovered that for yourself.’

Clare was completely taken aback. She’d been so absorbed in Robert’s story she’d not noticed until the end of it that he had addressed her as ‘tu’, a sign that their relationship had crossed the invisible line between acquaintance and intimacy. She’d felt just
the same surprise that second summer in Deauville, when, just as suddenly, dear Marie-Claude had said, ‘Do let’s call each other “tu”.’

‘Yes
,
I think you’re right,’ she said quietly. ‘But my loss seems small compared with yours.’

He shook his head.

‘That is a mistake so many good people make. They compare their loss with the loss of others and judge their own the less. It’s not a good idea. Loss cannot be measured by some objective scale. One must look at the person, the loss, and the resources they have to cope with it. Even then, it seems to me one cannot be objective. A loss that would cripple one individual serves only to challenge and enrich another.’

At that moment the soup arrived, forcibly reminding Clare just how hungry she was. She thought about what he’d said as he sampled it carefully, broke the crisp crust of a roll and settled back to enjoy it.

‘How did you lose your parents?’ he asked, without looking at her.

‘Typhoid fever in 1946,’ she said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as he had been about his family. ‘It was the last epidemic of typhoid in the
UK
. They died within two days of each other.’

‘And you were not ill?’

‘No. Like you, I was lucky. Pure chance. I didn’t like milk and milk was the carrier.’

‘And your brothers and sisters?’

‘I have only one brother. Younger. William. He has always been difficult. He still is. Because I didn’t
drink milk, he wouldn’t either. So we both survived. He lives with my father’s parents.’

‘And you went to your mother’s parents?’

Clare smiled as the waiter took away their soup plates.

‘No, it wasn’t quite like that. I went to live in Belfast with my Aunt Polly, who is lovely, but I was very unhappy there. When my grandmother died, I decided to go and look after my grandfather.’

She paused and shook her head.

‘Given that I was only nine, it seems an amazing decision to have made, but I was perfectly clear that that’s what I wanted to do.’

To her great surprise, Robert laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I am amused that the characteristics I so value professionally were already well developed at such a tender age.’

‘What characteristics?’

‘The ability to make up your own mind, which is a gift you have developed for yourself. And the gift of knowing who you can trust.’

He paused and considered.

‘Were I a religious man, which, alas, I am not, I would have to say that this particular gift is probably a gift of grace. One can develop shrewdness through experience, but what you have is an intuitive sense of what is right. In particular, as I say, you always seem to know who you can trust. I have never known you make a mistake yet.’

For a moment she was quite baffled, but before she could speak the waiter reappeared with the fish
course. She was grateful for the time it took to serve, for her mind had filled suddenly with the memory of a summer day.

She and Jessie had gone down the steep slope opposite Richardsons’ gates to their secret talking place by the stream. When they came back up to retrieve their bicycles, Andrew was there, bending over hers, fiddling with the valve caps. Jessie had been hostile and suspicious, thinking he’d let down their tyres, but she had simply looked at Andrew and knew he would be incapable of an unkind act.

It was very strange that a man like Robert should speak about a gift of grace. But it was stranger still that his words should call up a memory of Andrew on their very first meeting.

It was almost midnight when Clare arrived back at her apartment. Sitting over coffee, Robert had looked at his watch, spoken of the busy day she’d have tomorrow, asked if she were tired. It was perfectly obvious he’d no more wish to end the evening than she had, so she shook her head and scolded him gently for even mentioning work.

Only when the other diners disappeared and the waiters began to walk past their table, discreetly but a little more frequently, did they rise reluctantly and move out into the palm-filled foyer.

‘I should like us to dine regularly, Clare, if you are happy with the idea, but on one condition,’ he said, as her taxi drew up at the kerb.

‘And what is that?’

‘That we dine only when none of your admirers
are available. You have very few evenings at leisure in Paris.’

‘And what if I prefer to dine with you?’

He opened the car door, made sure the hem of her dress was well clear of the sill and stood looking down at her.

‘I should be honoured,’ he said, with a slight bow. ‘I fully intend to enjoy your company until I am forced to part with you. Sleep well, my dear.’

The lights on the river gleamed in the velvety darkness as Clare settled herself in her chair by the window. She knew she should be in bed, but it had been such a remarkable evening she knew she couldn’t possibly sleep. She would need to settle some of the thoughts whirling around in her head like the tiny moths circling the street lamp a little way along the quay.

How extraordinary it was that two people could get to know each other so well in one evening. Not only had they shared life histories, but they had spoken openly about even the most painful parts. They had moved on from the sadness of loss to her long relationship with Andrew and how the heartbreak of Edward’s death had changed everything between them. He listened with a kind of attention she had not encountered before, even with dear Marie-Claude. She felt almost as if she was talking about Andrew for the first time, seeing her experience through the eyes of someone much older, yet able to understand her feelings.

She’d been shy of asking him how he’d managed to cope after he lost his wife and daughter, but he
had been remarkably open and easy about it. Work, he said, was what had helped him through. Asserting his own right to life, despite his heartache.

‘I had one wise friend who had faced great loss many years earlier,’ he began. ‘It was he who told me I must act. He said I’d often feel that what I was doing was a waste of time, that it brought no pleasure, or joy, but nevertheless I must act, believing that it would make a difference. And it did. I was successful in the work I chose and he was right. From time to time, I have felt both pleasure and joy. But using action to shape one’s life does have its limitations. I’ve few friends, but those I have are mature enough to tell me the truth. They say I have become remote and unapproachable,’ he ended sadly.

‘I don’t find you at all unapproachable.’

‘I’m glad of that. Perhaps there is hope for me yet.’

‘Don’t you think perhaps your job requires you to be unapproachable?’

‘Yes, that is so. But perhaps I have allowed the demands of the job to shelter me from a proper engagement with my fellow creatures. What do you think?’

She’d been amazed he should ask her such a personal question. But then, why not? She’d already shared more with him than with most of her oldest friends.

‘I think it’s very easy to develop habits. When I was a student, I was often lonely. Yet there were people who would have been glad to see me, places I could have gone. I sometimes wonder if loss breeds
loss. That those who’ve lost loved ones expect to lose what they value. And because you fear loss, you defend yourself by trying not to be too involved.’

She’d been amazed to hear her own answer, but Robert had smiled gravely and said something complimentary about her seeing more already than many he had known who were twice or three times her age.

Beyond her window a couple strolled into view, arms entwined. They stopped, embraced and moved on. She wondered if they were lovers with a place to go to, or whether, like she and Andrew walking by the Thames two years ago, the choice was to walk all night or return to their respective hostels.

‘You ought to go to bed, Clare Hamilton,’ she said severely. ‘You’ll need more than a good layer of foundation and rouge if you don’t get some sleep.’

But she didn’t move an inch.

So much of their conversation had been thoughtful and serious and yet they had laughed often.

‘Say, honey, what did the man say?’

She’d looked around, startled, sure one of the nearby diners had spoken. But when she turned back, Robert was grinning broadly and looking pleased with himself.

‘Robert, I thought so,’ she said, moving to English. ‘I was sure you understood English far better than you pretended. So you speak it as well.’

‘Most, certainly not,’ he replied, returning to French. ‘There is a very good reason.
I worked with an American organisation at the end of the war. That’s when I learnt my English. I can follow a good
deal of what is said, but I have an appalling accent, probably a worse English accent than the French one your friend Andrew acquired in Brittany. It would be quite unsuitable in my position,’ he said, deliberately sounding pompous.

She laughed and shook her head.

‘Don’t you get bored, hearing everything twice?’

‘I even get bored sometimes hearing it once,’ he said abruptly. ‘But not when you are there. I see things differently when I look through your eyes. It is most illuminating. And very good for business. But that is a subject of which we may not speak. Have you forgotten our promise? Perhaps when we dine together in London next week, we may speak of business, but not tonight.’

Clare yawned. Suddenly, her tiredness had caught up with her. As she drew back the covers and slid gratefully into bed, she thought of that July day last year when he had asked her to read
The
Times,
and then offered her a job and a salary she couldn’t possibly refuse.

‘T
here is a telephone call for Mr Lafarge,’ said the waiter, as he stopped beside their table and caught Clare’s eye.

Robert lowered his newspaper and looked at her.

‘From Paris?’ she asked, as she put down her toast and wiped crumbs from her fingers on a large damask napkin.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. The young lady on reception asked me to come and tell you because she’s new and doesn’t know Mr Lafarge,’ he explained before he moved away.

‘I’ll go and see who it is,’ Clare said, getting to her feet. ‘If it’s Paris, I’ll ask them to call again in half an hour. If it’s about today’s meeting, I can take a message. All right?’

Robert nodded and retired gratefully behind
The
Times.

Clare moved quickly through the large dining room full of the smell of bacon and egg, the rustle of newspapers and the sound of well-bred English voices. Robert was not a morning person. Even in Italy, where he spoke not a word of the language and could only read the exchange rates, he still insisted on having his newspaper.

‘Good morning,’ she said, picking up the phone and trying English first. ‘This is Clare Hamilton, Mr Lafarge’s assistant.’

‘Clare! What a relief. I thought I was going to have to use my schoolboy French.’

‘Charles,’ she replied, laughing.

One of the things she liked most about Charles Langley was his disarming honesty.

‘Has something gone wrong?’ she asked quickly. ‘We were expecting you and John Coleman at nine thirty.’

‘Well, it’s good news in one way, but there
is
a real problem. I don’t know how Robert Lafarge will take it. John’s wife went into labour last night. It’s her third pregnancy, but they lost the first two. Naturally, she’s in a bit of a state. John’s even worse, but he’s trying to do the stiff upper lip bit. He’s with her at the hospital and he really can’t leave her at this stage.’

‘And he’s the one that’s worked out the growth projections?’

‘Absolutely. I’d have swotted them up if I’d been coming to Paris, but there was no point when you were coming here and I could bring him with me. Will your boss be furious, or can you charm him? I’ll turn up and grovel, but I can’t waste his time trying to have a meeting. Is there any hope we could have the meeting tomorrow, or were you flying back tonight?’

‘No, he’s booked on the evening plane tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘There’s nothing in the diary, but I think he wants to do some shopping.’

‘Sounds hopeful, if you can persuade him. I could take you both shopping today and then out to lunch. Do you think he’d like a Langley Town and Country Tour? I think it’s going to be a nice day. I really do feel bad about this, Clare, but poor old John is up to thirty thousand. Lafarge is a bachelor, isn’t he?’

‘No, Charles, he isn’t. He lost his wife and daughter during the German advance. There was a baby son that might or might not have survived.’

‘Oh lord, Clare, that’s tough,’ he said, with an audible intake of breath. ‘Makes one’s own problems seem pretty trivial,’ he added resignedly. ‘What shall I do? Give me good advice.’

‘Well, I think you should appear, but leave it till ten. I’ll tell him you’ve offered to take us shopping or whatever he wants to do. With any luck, he’ll suggest tomorrow. Can John get in touch with you?’

‘Yes, he’ll ring my secretary from the hospital as soon as there’s any news and I’ll keep in touch with her whenever I can get to a phone.’

‘Right, I’ll do what I can. See you at ten.’

The moment Clare sat down, Robert folded his paper and signalled to the waiter.

‘London or Paris?’ he asked, as the waiter set down a pot of coffee, a rack of toast and a well-polished cup and saucer bearing the hotel’s crest in gold.

‘Yours was getting cold,’ he said abruptly, as he poured her a fresh cup. ‘Now finish your breakfast,’ he added firmly.

‘It was Charles Langley,’ she began, as she buttered the hot toast. ‘John Coleman’s wife went into labour
last night. They’ve lost two babies already.’

‘So, no meeting today. Is tomorrow a possibility?’

‘Yes, distinctly so, if baby arrives today. Charles has offered to take us shopping and then to lunch. He thought you might like a tour of London or a drive out into the countryside. It looks as if it’s going to be a nice day.’

‘What time’s he due?’

‘I said ten.’

‘Good. I hate nine-thirty meetings.’

He stood up unexpectedly, paused for a moment.

‘I’ll meet you in the foyer at ten. I have some things to see to.’

He tramped across the dining room and disappeared in the direction of the lifts, a small, almost square figure with dark, thinning hair and a very determined set to both his face and figure.

Clare watched him as she ate her toast. In the two weeks since they’d first dined together, she’d discovered the second Robert in her life was often as silent and awkward as the first. The better he got to know her, the more he let it show. He was never bad-tempered, never discourteous, but he no longer concealed either his irritation at changed arrangements or his discomforts. This morning, his inside was playing up. She’d noticed the discarded foil of his indigestion tablets by his plate when she came down to join him. Eating breakfast usually helped, but until he’d been to the bathroom he wouldn’t feel much better.

She looked at her watch. It was only ten to nine. She sat drinking her coffee and watching people
standing up, collecting themselves and moving towards the foyer and their day’s work. Men in dark suits with loud voices and identifiable accents. Women, smartly dressed, up in town to go shopping. A handful of tourists in casual clothes being shepherded by their courier. A group of twenty men and women, who got up together and turned out of the dining room towards one of the smaller conference suites.

Clare thought of John’s wife lying in some labour ward. Poor woman. To lose two babies. She wondered if they had both been born dead or if they had simply not survived for very long, like Robert’s brothers and sisters. Robert’s wife had lost a child too before their daughter was born. Then Robert had lost them both and his son, whom he had never even seen.

Sometimes the world seemed such a cruel place. She couldn’t really accept that everything was the will of God, the way it had been put to her from the pulpit all through her schooldays. It just wasn’t logical. If God was all powerful, then why did he let it happen? And if he wasn’t all powerful, why did the Church try to insist that he was?

The image of Robert’s wife with her tiny baby and her five-year-old daughter haunted her. At Film Society, with Keith Harvey she’d once seen a newsreel about the fall of France. The sad columns of people trudging away
from burnt-out villages or fleeing before the German advance. Women and children and old men, carrying bundles, pushing prams stacked high with possessions, pulling carts
because all the horses and donkeys had been requisitioned for the army. Moving as quickly as they could, hampered by children who could walk no faster and cried in fright when the planes passed overhead. Diving for the ditch when they heard the rattle of their machine guns.

Suddenly, she realised she was the same age as Robert’s daughter would have been, had she survived. The baby boy would be William’s age. In her own mind, she’d always think of him as little Robert, calling him after his father, just as generations of women in her own family had named a son either Robert or Thomas.

Beyond the tall windows with their heavily draped velvet curtains, the traffic flowed down Park Lane under a bright blue sky dappled with small white clouds. If the weather were like this tomorrow evening when she flew to Belfast she’d be able to see more of the green hills and little fields than she’d ever seen before.

‘Can I bring you some more coffee, Miss Hamilton?’

The voice drew her back to the present. She smiled up at the waiter who’d served breakfast and brought them the message about the telephone call.

‘No thank you. That was splendid. It’s time I did some work!’

She went to reception, checked there were no letters or telegrams for Robert, collected her key and went up to her room. She couldn’t decide what was making her so sad, Robert’s loss, or the Colemans’ loss, or some loss of her own she could put no name to.

‘How do you do, Mr Langley?’ said Robert Lafarge, pronouncing each word slowly and carefully.

Clare smiled to herself. The words were fine, but the intonation was all wrong. It sounded more like, ‘How do you do a reverse turn, or a back flip, or a victory roll?’ She had a feeling he was teasing her, but couldn’t be sure.

‘Je suis très bien, merci, Monsieur Lafarge,’ replied Charles Langley, speaking French for some reason best known to himself.

‘Bon. Bon.’

Having shaken hands most cordially, Robert turned to Clare and addressed her at a speed she knew Charles couldn’t possibly follow.

‘You will explain to Monsieur Langley that I appreciate his difficulties. We will meet tomorrow at ten, all being well with the Coleman family. As for today, I would be grateful if he would entertain you. I have made my own arrangements, but will expect to see you at breakfast at eight thirty tomorrow.’

He turned away before she could protest and beamed at Charles Langley, while he waited for her to translate.

From the look on his face, it was perfectly obvious Charles hadn’t managed to catch so much as a word. She could do nothing other than give an exact translation.

It was now Charles’s turn to smile broadly. He assured Robert Lafarge, in English, that he would be most happy to entertain Miss Hamilton. He could rest assured that she would be well looked after.

Clare translated, they shook hands again,
exchanged good wishes in each other’s language. Robert wished ‘Miss ’Amilton’ a pleasant day, and went off looking pleased with himself.

‘Well then, what shall we do? Where would you like to go? Would you mind if we call in at my office on the way?’

‘No, of course not. I’ll go and get my coat. Is it as nice as it looks outside?’

‘Yes, it’s lovely, but there’s a chilly edge to the breeze. You’ll certainly need a coat over that suit. Unless you want to go shopping?’

‘No, definitely not. I was wondering if we could walk in a park. I have some flat shoes upstairs.’

He looked at the high heels that complemented her spring costume and nodded wisely.

‘Bring them with you and I’ll call a taxi.’

‘Haven’t you got your car?’

‘Oh yes, but it’s up in Covent Garden. You don’t think I’d turn up here in less than a Rolls, do you?’

Ten minutes later, as Clare settled back in the taxi, she felt her spirits rise. She was even prepared to be grateful to Robert for organising her day without consulting her. Charles was a nice man, too nice, perhaps, but she’d always liked him. They’d met several times now in the course of business and got on well. Once, when Charles had stayed an extra night in Paris, they’d had dinner together.

‘So which of the character-forming establishments
did
you go to?’ she asked gaily, when she stopped laughing at one of his stories about his school days.

The answer took her so totally by surprise, she felt the colour drain from her face.

‘You must have known Andrew Richardson,’ she said slowly, as she collected herself.

‘Goodness, yes. Richardson was my fag. Nice chap. Had relatives in your part of the world. Went to Cambridge. Law, I think. Or was it history?’

‘It was law.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Yes, rather well. We were engaged. But it didn’t work out.’

‘Oh, I
am
sorry. That makes two of us. My wife left me last year. We’d only been married two years. I came home one day and she was gone. Two lines on the back of a shopping list to say don’t try to find her, there was no point. She went off with a cousin of mine she’d known for years,’ he explained bitterly. ‘What happened with you and Richardson?’ he went on when he’d recovered himself.

She told him as honestly as she could.

‘Sounds just like him. Bloody fool. Pardon the expression. He always did what people wanted him to do, never mind what he wanted.
I’d
have taken you to Canada.’

She glanced away from the look he gave her.

‘If I’d been in his position,’ he added quickly.

The streets were full of people, the shop windows dressed with giant sprays of blossom, flourishing daisies and sprouting branches, a background for costumes in delicate pastels, soft leather shoes with very high heels, and summer dresses in linen and flowered cotton.

She registered the passing scene with a corner of her mind, but had not the slightest wish to be any
part of it. She was glad when the taxi turned away from the main streets she recognised and nosed its way down through a maze of side streets only just wide enough to drive through. It pulled up beside a pavement stacked high with boxes and the debris of the early morning market. Beyond, a tall narrow building still carried its rather old-fashioned sign, ‘Langley and Son, Fruit Importers’.

‘Sorry about this. You get used to it, but it’s hard on visitors,’ he said, drawing her gently away from a squashed tomato on the pavement. ‘It’s better upstairs.’

The stairs were steep, but at the end of a surprisingly broad landing he threw open a door into a large room, beautifully restored to its former elegant style, with moulded cornices and a plaster-work ceiling, full of light, and carpeted from wall to wall. The furniture was Scandinavian – a polished teak desk, leather swivel chairs, stainless steel lamps, polished metal filing cabinets. On the walls were photographs and etchings of early aeroplanes, biplanes and gliders.

‘What a lovely room, Charles,’ she said, as she slipped off her coat and gave it to him. ‘Do you fly?’

‘When I can. There’s a light-aircraft club down at Biggin Hill. I wanted to go into the air force when I left Oxford, but they wouldn’t have me. Low level of colour blindness. Besides, father wanted me in the business.’

One more of them, Clare thought to herself. Andrew does what his uncle wants, Charles does what his father wants. Men with offices keep their
secrets on the walls of their room. Robert’s horses, Charles’s planes. She wondered if Andrew would put pictures of prize cattle on his wall if ever he had a room of his own.