Beyond the Green Hills (18 page)

‘Can I leave you to look round while I check with Julie? There may have been a call from John.’

‘Yes, surely. Can I look at your books?’

‘At anything you like,’ he said easily, as he strode across the room and out on to the landing.

She was still looking out of the window at the pavements below when he came back only minutes later.

‘Good news?’ she asked as she swung round and saw the huge grin on his face.

‘Absolutely great. Little boy arrived half an hour ago. Bad moment with cord round the neck, but they were more than half expecting it. He’s absolutely fine. They haven’t even weighed him yet, but he’s at least seven pounds. Poor Jane can’t stop crying, but John says she’s all right, no stitches or anything nasty, just pure relief.’

‘How wonderful. Isn’t it lovely when things work out right?’

‘Yes, wish it happened more often. How shall we celebrate? Town or country? I can do better than a park: I can take you to Ashdown Forest, on to the Downs, perhaps, show you my home at Penshurst. There’s a good pub near there called The Spotted Dog, if you like traditional English pubs.’

‘Charles, I’ve never been in
any
kind of English pub. I would love that, if it’s not too long a drive. My geography of Kent and Sussex is a bit hazy now,
though I think I could still draw the sketch map of the Wealden Dome with the centre eroded out.’

‘More than I could. I was lousy at geography. You can look at the road atlas if you want, but the nicest little roads aren’t on it. They’re in my head. Right, let’s go.’

‘Can I leave a message for Robert Lafarge? I don’t know what he’s planning to do, but he’ll be pleased when he hears about the baby.’

‘Yes, of course. Dial nine for an outside line. I’ll go and bring the car down. Probably take me about five minutes. Sometimes the phone plays up. If it does, go and use Julie’s.’

Once free of the traffic in central London they moved speedily through the suburbs, and within half an hour were driving in rich, green countryside with half-timbered houses and villages already bright with summer flowers. Newly leafed trees, almost touching across the narrow roads, filtered the bright sunlight into dappled shadows as stretches of woodland alternated with small hamlets, clustered groups of older houses and a few recent developments of bungalows.

‘I used to wonder if stagecoaches outside hostelries really existed,’ Clare said, as they passed yet one more Old Coach Inn. ‘They used to appear every Christmas in the box of cards, but we haven’t got anything like that in Ulster. I thought perhaps stagecoaches and oak beams were like Santa Claus, purely for the festive season.’

Charles laughed and nodded towards the view as
they crested one of the higher hills.

‘Is Ireland really so different from this?’ he asked.

‘Can’t speak for Ireland,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I only know Armagh and bits of County Down and the north coast of Antrim, but they’re very different from this. Not so many trees. Little green hills, but lots of them. Tiny fields compared to these,’ she began, scanning the well-cultivated lowland spread out below the steep hill they’d just climbed.

‘Go on,’ he said, not taking his eyes from the narrow road. ‘Tell me more. I’ve never been to Ireland. Is it really greener than this?’

She laughed.

‘Yes, it is actually. But the main difference is that Ireland is shaggy. This is all so tidy. Those fields look as if they’d been vacuum-cleaned after they were harrowed. The bits of Ireland I know are more unkempt, more unruly, I suppose. But then, this land has been cultivated for such a long time in comparison.’

‘Domesday Book and all that?’

‘I wish we had a Domesday Book for Armagh. I’d love to know exactly what was going on in my small corner. I doubt if much of the land was cultivated before the seventeenth century. Mostly, it was pasture for cattle. According to my grandfather’s great friend Charlie Running, Armagh was settled by planters from Warwickshire. That’s why there are so many apple orchards and why we have a Shakespearean turn of phrase.’

‘I haven’t noticed that,’ he said, glancing at her as the road straightened out.

‘But I haven’t lapsed into dialect yet. I’m still speaking standard boardroom English.’

‘I’ll keep listening. I could listen to you all day.’

Clare was delighted by The Spotted Dog, and amused by Charles’s practised stoop as they came into the bar with its huge oak beams close enough to touch, sporting prints and well-polished brassware.

‘It appears that true-born English men were smaller in days of yore,’ he said, sitting down beside her on a bench, well polished by generations of bottoms. ‘We can eat here or go through to the dining room,’ he said, nodding towards an almost empty room, laid out with pink table linen and white napkins folded in stemmed glasses.

‘I like it here,’ she said promptly.

‘Good. So do I,’ he said, picking up the handwritten menu and glancing at it. ‘Daisy does a good cottage pie. Steak and kidney pudding is splendid if you’re really hungry and the fish and chips is the best in Sussex, so my father says. Though that’s probably because he knows Fred goes up to Billingsgate in the middle of the night to choose his own fish.’

‘I’d love fish and chips. I can’t think when I last had any.’

‘No, the French don’t seem to have the knack of it. I can’t imagine a pomme frite ever tasting like a good old English chip.’

The landlady herself came to take their order and welcomed Charles like a long-lost friend.

‘Daisy, this is Clare,’ he said, when she paused for
breath. ‘She works in Paris and hasn’t had fish and chips since she went.’

‘Well, we’ll soon put that right, won’t we?’ said Daisy, shaking Clare’s hand and smiling at her. ‘You must be dying for a bit of good English nosh,’ she said, winking at them.

The food was as good as Charles had promised and Clare hungrier than she’d imagined, given the full English breakfast served in Park Lane. Although it was now the middle of May, a pleasant wood fire burned in the huge fireplace, filling the whole room with the scent of its fine bluish smoke. She looked around as they ate, taking in the details of the comfortable and welcoming room, the small tables, the cosy alcoves. How strange it was to step into someone else’s world, full of the people they knew, the places dear to them.

It was as if you made a picture of the world through what you did, what you saw, the people you knew well. And yet, living in the very same place, whether it was Armagh, or Penshurst, or Paris, another person could make a totally different picture. She glanced towards the two women at the nearest table, clearly old friends. They were talking about their girlhood in Simla and mutual friends who had just gone back for the first time since ‘the old days’. They knew Daisy, so presumably they lived here, somewhere among the leafy lanes, the sudden steep hills and the wide views over almost flat lowland. She wondered how those early years fitted into the picture they’d made.

‘Have your parents always lived in Penshurst?’

‘Mm,’ he nodded, as he demolished the last of his chips. ‘I was actually born there, though that wasn’t planned. I had the bad taste to arrive early. Fortunately, the midwife lived just round the corner and had a phone. My poor father hadn’t the remotest idea what to do, so he made a cup of tea.’

‘At least he could manage that,’ she said, laughing. ‘Where I come from, some men would think that was letting the side down. Teamaking is woman’s work.’

‘You get over that in the army,’ he said, leaning back comfortably. ‘Two years away from home and no one to do things but yourself. Unless you get a commission, of course. Even then you learn all the practical things in basic training, bed making, sewing on buttons. If your kit’s not up to scratch you’re up on a charge.
CB
and all that.’

‘What’s
CB
?’

‘Confined to barracks. Fate worse than death. You die of boredom.’

‘And a commission?’

‘That’s when they think you’re officer material. They put a pip on your shoulder and call you a soldier of the Queen, or King, as it was in my case. Poor man died while I was in Egypt and we had to put on a grand parade for the Accession.’

‘So you went into the army?’ she asked, surprised.

He laughed wryly.

‘No, my dear Clare. I didn’t
go
in. I was called up. National Service.’

‘Yes, of course. I’d forgotten. We don’t have National Service in Ulster. It sounds like a good idea.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a good idea while you’re doing it, but I think I agree with you. Very character-forming and all that. Caroline used to appreciate my domestic skills.’

The bitterness broke through every time he mentioned her. She wondered if she sounded as bitter when she spoke of Andrew.

‘Why do you think she married you?’

‘I’ve asked myself that one too. Sometimes I can’t think why anyone would want to marry me.’

‘Oh Charles, don’t be silly,’ she said, laughing. ‘You’re terribly marriageable. Surely the problem was that a lot of women wanted to marry you, but not always for the right reasons.’

‘What are the right reasons?’ he said promptly.

‘Well it’s not about domestic skills, or good looks, or entry to a particular social milieu, or money, or position. I think it’s about being able to make a life together. Supporting each other. Accepting the weaknesses as well as the strengths.’

‘But aren’t men supposed to be unfailingly strong?’

‘Only in certain women’s magazines,’ she said crisply, as Daisy reappeared to take away their empty plates.

‘Not much for Fido,’ said Charles, as she picked them up.

‘Good. That’s just what I like to see. Apple crumble, blackcurrant tart or jam roly-poly with cream or ice cream?’

After their meal, they walked through to the minute garden at the back of the pub. Perched on a narrow ledge, above the steep drop of the hillside, a few tables with furled umbrellas were surrounded by a mass of green foliage and terracotta pots filled with geraniums.

‘The hollyhocks are marvellous in July,’ Charles said, as he saw her eye the tall stems already stretching higher than her head.

‘I used to embroider hollyhocks and crinoline ladies with watering cans under trellised arches. But I’ve never seen a real hollyhock before. Bit like stagecoaches and hostelries. You really are completing my education,’ she said, laughing, as they moved to the edge of the terrace and gazed out over the sunlit countryside beyond.

‘I haven’t finished yet,’ he said, smiling with pleasure. ‘Next comes the cultural bit of the tour. Have you read
Winnie
the
Pooh
?’

‘Yes, I have indeed,’ she replied, surprised he should even have heard of one of Aunt Sarah’s children’s books.

‘Good. Well I shall now take you to the Top of the Forest. It’s actually called Caesar’s Camp, but Milne lived close by so everyone knows that’s what he used. We can walk off lunch there. And the view is good. On a clear day, you can see for miles.’

‘Sorry about the smell,’ he said, as he pushed open the front door of his house in the Cromwell Road and waited for Clare to go ahead of him towards the open door of the sitting room. ‘It’s Mrs M. Her
passion for lavender polish is exceeded only by her passion for Dettol and Vim. I drew the line at Jeyes Fluid. Here, let me take your coat.’

‘What a lovely house, Charles,’ she said, as she handed the coat to him. ‘And a garden as well?’ she added, as she moved toward the french windows.

‘More a large back yard really, but I’ve a friend who specialises in town gardens. Amazing what you can do when you know how,’ he said, as he dropped his briefcase and turned towards the kitchen.

‘I can make tea, but there may not be any cake,’ he said seriously. ‘Make yourself at home.’

He waved a hand at the sitting room, a light airy room with the same spare furnishing as his office, but a more lived-in look.

She took him at his word, slipped off her high heels and went straight to the french windows. Immediately outside, a small cobbled area had a pool at its centre. The old walls were draped in climbers. One of them, a pink clematis, was covered in bloom. Raised flowerbeds had been shaped to make the whole space look larger and longer than it really was.

She stared at the rich greenery, the varied texture of shrubs and the patches of colour and thought about the long day they’d spent together, the continuous play of sunlight on the rippling countryside that ran, ridge upon ridge, till the chalk finally met the sea.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, across all the years, the back yard in Edward Street came into her mind: the single flower bed made of old bricks, carefully
draped with trailing lobelia; the honeysuckle growing up the wall of the outside lavatory; her mother picking a posy to put on the table.

‘You’re in luck, Clare. Mrs M. left me a lemon drizzle. She sometimes does if …’

He broke off and put the tray down hastily, as she turned towards him, her eyes bright with tears.

‘Clare, what is it? What’s wrong? Have I said something? Done something?’

She shook her head helplessly, quite overwhelmed by his concern. He came and put his arms round her, held her close, fished out his handkerchief and gave it to her.

‘I thought of the garden at home … before my parents died. I suddenly felt so lonely. Does that ever happen to you?’

‘Yes, yes it does,’ he said, holding her close and stroking her hair distractedly. ‘What can I do to help?’

‘It’s been such a lovely day. I can’t think why I should feel so sad.’

‘Has it really been a lovely day?’ he asked, looking down at her.

‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed every bit of it,’ she said, sniffing, and trying to mop up her tears.

‘You’ve shrunk,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn you came up to my shoulder just a little while ago.’

She giggled and looked down at her stockinged feet.

‘All part of trying to be sensible and grown-up when sometimes I don’t feel it,’ she said, looking up
at him.

He kissed her gently. When she didn’t move away,
he took her more firmly in his arms and kissed her passionately.