Coming Home (62 page)

‘Perhaps I
should
come back.’

‘You're absolutely not to. I forbid it.’

‘All right. But I am sorry for you all. Send my love to everybody. Give your father my love.’

‘I will. Try not to worry.’

‘And love to you.’

‘The same, by return.’ She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘'Bye, Judith.’

Gus Callender, at the wheel of his dark-green Lagonda, left Okehampton behind him and roared up the steep hill which led out of the little market town and into the high country beyond. It was a bright and breezy August morning, and all about him was pleasingly new and unfamiliar because he had never come this way before. A verdant countryside of pasture and stubble fields, lying gold in the late-summer sunshine. In the distance, friezes of ancient elms marked the boundaries of the hedgerows.

He had been driving for two days, taking his time, relishing the freedom of being on his own, and the satisfying surge of his powerful car. (He had bought the Lagonda a year ago with the money he had been given for a twenty-first birthday, and it was just about the best present he had ever had.) Leaving home, of course, had been a bit of a facer because his parents had thought that, having had those two weeks in France, he would be content to spend the rest of his vacation with them. But he had explained, and cajoled, and promised to return before too long, and his mother had made the best of it, and bravely waved him off, flapping her handkerchief like a little flag. Despite all his resolutions he had, momentarily, been consumed by a ridiculous guilt, but as soon as she was out of sight he was able, without too much difficulty, to put her out of mind.

He drove from Deeside to Carlisle, then Carlisle to Gloucester. Now he was on the last leg of the long journey. After Scotland (wet) and the Midlands (grey), it felt like arriving in a totally new world, sun-washed and pastoral. At the summit of the long hill, Dartmoor came into view, the deserted miles of tor and bog subtly changing colour as billowing cloud shadows rolled across, blown by the western wind. He saw the curving shapes of slopes that seemed to lean up into the sky, the emerald green of bogland, the cairns of granite, carved by the wind into primeval, yet oddly modernistic, sculptures. And his painter's eye was caught, and his fingers itched for pencil and brush, and he longed to stop, then and there, and somehow try to capture, on his sketchpad, this place and this light forever.

But if he stopped, he knew that he would be there for the rest of the day, and he was due, expected, at Nancherrow sometime during the course of the afternoon. Painting must wait. He thought of France and the picture he had done of the Beaths' delectable villa. Thinking of the villa, he began to sing the song that would always be the theme of the holiday, heard on the radio, or played on the gramophone, while they sunbathed by the pool, or sat on the terrace in the blue-scented evenings, drinking wine, watching the sun slip behind the mountains of the Midi, and the lights of Sillence come on one by one, spangling the opposite hillside like Christmas decorations on a dark tree.

La mer

Qu'on voit danser le long des golfes clairs

A des reflets d'argent

La mer

Des reflets changeants

Sous la pluie.

Launceston. He recalled a small bridge, and realised that he had already crossed the county boundary. He was in Cornwall. Ahead lay the wastes of Bodmin Moor. Somewhere there was a pub called Jamaica Inn. It was half past eleven, and for a bit he debated with himself as to whether he should stop there for a drink and something to eat, and then decided against it. Instead he would press on to Truro. Before him the road lay empty. He accelerated and allowed himself to revel in an unaccustomed and uncharacteristic elation.

La mer

Au ciel d'été confond

Ses blancs moutons

Avec les anges si purs

La mer bergère d'azur

Infinie.

Truro drowsed in its valley in the noonday sun. Approaching, he saw the spire of the cathedral, the silver glint of tree-fringed water. He drove into the town, into the wide main street, parked outside The Red Lion, went inside and found his way to the bar. It was very dark and wood-panelled, smelling beery and cool. One or two old boys sat around reading newspapers and smoking their pipes, but Gus settled himself at the bar, and having ordered his half-pint of bitter, asked the barman if it was possible to have something to eat.

‘No. We don't do meals down here. Have to go up to the dining-room for something to eat.’

‘Do I have to book a table?’

‘I'll send word up to the head-waiter. On your own, are you?’

‘Yes, just myself.’

The barman drew his half-pint and set it down on the counter. ‘You travelling, are you?’

‘Yes. I've got my car outside.’

‘Come far?’

‘Yes, actually. From Aberdeen.’

‘Aberdeen? That's up in Scotland, isn't it? Some drive. How long's it taken you?’

‘Two days.’

‘You've come a long way. How much further have you got to go?’

‘Right to the end. Beyond Penzance.’

‘Good as John o' Groats' to Land's End, isn't it?’

‘Just about.’

‘Live in Scotland, do you?’

‘Yes, born and bred.’

‘You haven't got no accent, if you'll excuse me saying so. We had a Scotsman in here a month or two ago, from Glasgow, and I couldn't make out a word he was saying.’

‘Glasgow's a tricky accent.’

‘Tricky all right.’

A couple of new customers came through the door and the barman excused himself, left Gus and went to serve them. Alone, Gus felt for his cigarettes, took one and lit it. At the back of the bar, behind the shelves of bottles, the wall was lined by a mirror. In its murky depths, beyond the bottles, bits of his own reflection stared back at him. A dark young man, looking, he decided, older than his years. Dark-eyed, dark-haired, pale-skinned, clean-shaven. He wore a blue cotton shirt and had knotted a handkerchief around his neck in lieu of a tie, but even this informality did nothing to dispel the image of a dour fellow. Sombre, even.

Cheer up, you gloomy sod,
he told his reflection.
You are in Cornwall. You've made it. You're here at last.
As though his reflection didn't already know.
You've come a long way
, the barman had remarked, but he had spoken a subtler truth than he realised.

Gus raised the glass to himself.
You've come a long way
. He drank the cool, woody beer.

It was Edward Carey-Lewis who had first started to call him Gus, and the nickname had stuck. Before that, he had been Angus, the only child of two elderly parents. His father, Duncan Callender, was an astute and successful Aberdeen business man who had pulled himself up, from humble beginnings, by his bootstraps, and by the time Angus arrived on the scene had already amassed a tidy fortune in the ship's chandlery business. As well, over the years, his interests had diverged to include a wholesale ironmongery business and large chunks of city property; tenement blocks and terraces of low-rent housing.

Angus's early childhood had been spent in the heart of Aberdeen, in a solid granite town house set in a small walled garden. The garden had a front lawn and a back green for the washing line, and a small patch of earth where his mother grew runner beans and cabbages. A small world for a small boy, and he was perfectly content.

But Duncan Callender was not. He had got where he was by his own hard work, honesty, and fairness, and so had earned the respect of both his work force and his colleagues. But that was not enough. For his only son he had ambitions, and was determined to raise and educate him a gentleman.

Accordingly, when Angus was seven, the family moved. From the comfortable, unpretentious house that had been home, to an enormous Victorian mansion in a village on the banks of the River Dee. From here, Duncan Callender commuted each day to his office in Aberdeen, and Angus and his mother were left to make the best of it. After the city streets, the shops, and friendly rattling trams, the majestic hills and straths of Deeside were both strange and overwhelming, and their new abode only slightly less so, with its plethora of fumed oak and stained glass, tartan carpeting and fireplaces large enough to roast an ox if one felt so inclined.

As well, a large number of servants had to be employed in order to run this massive establishment. Where, before, Mrs Callender had managed very nicely with a cook and a housemaid, she now found herself expected to give orders to a resident indoor staff of six and two gardeners, one of whom lived in the lodge by the entrance gate. She was a devoted wife and mother, but a simple soul and found it a sad trial to be always struggling to keep up appearances.

In Aberdeen, she had felt comfortable; knowing her own place in the world, and safe in the dignity of a modest, well-run home. But on Deeside, she was totally out of her depth. Neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring. She found it almost impossible to communicate with the village folk, and became convinced that their dour faces and monosyllabic responses to her tentative advances proved that they thought little of her, and were not impressed by the wealth and style of such newcomers.

Her other neighbours, the old noble families who had occupied their castles and estates for generations, were even more terrifying, alien as creatures from another planet. Lady This and the Marquis of That, with their beaked noses and their lanky tweeds. Mrs Huntingdon-Gordon, who bred Labradors, and reigned like some all-powerful warlord, in an archaic keep on the hill. And Major-General Robertson, who read the lesson in church on Sundays rather as though he were barking out orders for battle, and never bothered to lower his voice even when he was being rude to the minister.

It was a very difficult period, but for Angus did not last long. At eight years old he was despatched to boarding-school, an expensive preparatory in Perthshire, and his childhood was virtually over. At first he was teased and bullied. Because of his Aberdeen accent; because his kilt was too long; because he had the wrong sort of fountain-pen, and because he came top of his class and was dubbed a swot. But he was a well-muscled boy and good at football, and after he had bloodied the nose of the lower-school bully, in full view of everybody who happened to be in the playground, he was left alone and swiftly settled down. By the time he returned to Deeside for the Christmas holidays, he had grown two inches and his accent was a thing of the past. His mother secretly grieved for the child she knew she had lost, but Duncan Callender was delighted.

‘Why do you no' ask some of your new pals home?’ he asked, but Angus pretended not to hear him and went out of doors to ride his bicycle.

Finished with prep school, he went on to Rugby, where he earned the reputation of a reliable all-rounder. It was at this period that he discovered the joys of the Art Room, and a latent ability to draw and paint that he had never even suspected he possessed. With the encouragement of a sympathetic art master, he began filling a sketch-book, all the time developing his own style. Pencil drawings, tinted by a pale wash of colour…the playing fields; a boy working at a potter's wheel, a master striding across a windy quad on his way to class with an armful of books and his black gown billowing like fat black wings.