Echoes of the Dance (36 page)

There is a faint narrowing about the eyes as she looks across the table at him but she holds on to her temper.

‘It wasn't easy to leave him, you know. I did what I thought was best for you. Your father let us down so badly, drinking, destroying our security . . .'

‘You've told me before.' He simply cannot bear to hear it all over again: having to protect himself from the damage she inflicts whilst trying to hold a balanced idea of each of them in his head so he can love them both. ‘Isn't it time to forget it now?'

Her look of patient suffering indicates that she can expect no more from a callow boy, yet she allows it to be clear that he has disappointed her.

‘I hadn't thought that you could be quite so insensitive,' she murmurs.

‘I don't think it's insensitive to want Roly to be happy. You've got Jonathan, after all. I don't see why Roly shouldn't be happy with . . .' he glances sideways again at the paper, ‘with Sophie Klein. She looks very nice.'

‘Let's hope you continue to think so if she becomes your stepmother.'

He takes a deep breath. ‘Is that likely, after all this time? Roly's always said that he'll never marry again.'

‘I know I hurt him terribly.' His remark is clearly to be taken as a compliment. ‘I didn't want to, you know, but I simply had no alternative.
You
were my sole concern, Nat. You mustn't imagine that I'd stopped loving your father. It wasn't easy, you know, just to walk away.'

She looks distressed and needy, and he pushes the paper aside almost violently as if subconsciously rejecting Roly and Sophie so as to be able to meet his mother's emotional requirements.

‘I know it wasn't. Don't think I'm ungrateful. Look, have some more coffee.'

He gets up, talking to her, comforting her, making plans for the day ahead, in his attempt to feed her terrible emptiness.

The bath water was cool. Nat climbed out, seizing a towel, rubbing his hair dry. He needed a pint and something to eat but, first of all, he'd phone Roly and accept his invitation to Sunday lunch.

Kate sat in the evening sunshine, watching long shadows stealing across the grass and wishing vaguely that she'd kept Floss with her. She felt terribly tired. The tensions of the day – Gemma first, then the cottage, and lastly Nat – all culminating in that last emotional outburst had left her without energy or will.

Earlier, standing beneath the apple trees with Daisy, she'd known quite suddenly and clearly that she would not buy the cottage. Roly was right to say that she was trying to invest it with some sense of happiness and security from the past. She'd faced the truth – that she'd been trying to airbrush David out of the picture so that she needn't face the emptiness of life without him – and, at that very moment of acknowledgement, all her panic had vanished and she'd begun dimly to see her way forward.

The first step was to resist the temptation to look back to the past for a solution to her loneliness. Before she'd gone much further than formulating that thought, another tempest had begun to break and, in her anxiety about Nat, she'd not had time to think about herself. All through tea-time she'd been aware that something was going to happen: it weighed on her spirits though she'd tried hard to disguise it.

Poor Roly. His expression when Daisy had lightly made her earth-shattering remark had been terrible to see. It was as if she'd been looking at him during an intensely private moment, seeing him naked and unprotected, and she'd had to look away quickly, pierced with pity and distress.

Kate straightened her back, leaning her head against the high stone wall behind the bench. The sparrows kept up a continuous twittering in the ivy and the scent of the climbing, tangling roses, pretty pink Albertine, lingered in the cooler air. The shadows crept closer as the sun sank, touching her foot, her knee.

She realized that she'd cherished a deep-down hope that Roly had long ago guessed that Nat, by some genetic accident or perhaps because of the emotional battering he'd suffered, was unable to connect in the normal sexual way with women. He simply wasn't interested. He had plenty of friends of both sexes but had no desire to advance these friendships. He was content to work hard, to see his friends, and remain unattached. At university he'd moved in the usual group of girls and boys, happy and casual, the perfect camouflage. More recently he'd found the cottage at Horrabridge, and Janna had become a regular visitor: another smokescreen.

Kate wondered whether Nat was, in fact, one of those people who had very little interest in the physical forms of love. He enjoyed his work, played rugby and cricket, and that was enough. Janna and he had connected in a particular way and it was sad that even this relationship should be edging into peril. It
was
perilous, she felt certain of it; to attempt to stabilize two lives at the possible expense of a third shouldn't be attempted.

She longed, suddenly and achingly, for David's company beside her on the bench, to hear his comforting – and often cynical and amusing – words of advice and to feel the solid bulk of his physical presence. This time, instead of denying it, instead of getting up and walking away from it, she continued to sit where she was, simply allowing herself to miss him. She let the tears come too, falling on her hands and into her lap: falling not only for David but also for other people she'd loved and lost, and for the failures and mistakes of the past.

The shadows had engulfed her, the birds had fallen silent, and at last she saw the real truth: that each one of us is alone. It seemed, after all, something she had always known but perhaps, now, it could be accepted without fear.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

From her window after Sunday lunch, Daisy could see Roly and Nat setting off with the dogs: she looked anxiously for any sign of tension between them, checking their body-language, but they seemed to be at ease with one another, rounding the dogs up, closing the gate, disappearing towards the ford. She turned back into the room, still not quite at peace with herself, longing to know how Nat had reacted to Roly's confession and remembering her own shock when he'd told her about Mim's accident.

‘Don't crucify yourself,' he'd said, driving home yesterday evening. ‘I think Kate's right and good will come out of all this. It has to. I must come to terms with it and somehow let Nat know that it doesn't matter.'

‘How will you do that?' She'd felt heavy-hearted with guilt, huddling in the seat beside him. ‘God, I'm just so
stupid
.'

‘I'm the stupid one for not seeing for myself. Stop it, Daisy. If anyone should be feeling guilty it's me. It's my fault that my marriage split up. Because of my weakness Nat was exposed to a great deal of emotional blackmail. He had to try to hold the balance between Monica and me, and nobody can tell what effect that might have had on him. It's possible that, now I know, things might be easier for him. I just need to let him know that I know.'

‘But how? I don't see how you can possibly begin that kind of conversation.'

‘I think I shall start by telling him why Monica left me. Kate pointed out, quite rightly, that it had a catastrophic effect on his life and it might be fair to give him an explanation.'

‘He doesn't know why Monica left you?'

‘He knows it was because I started drinking even more heavily so that I began to lose clients but he doesn't know why. Nobody except Mim knew until a few weeks ago. Then I told Kate: it was the most wonderful catharsis.'

‘That's what she meant when she talked about having secrets?'

‘Yes. Having a secret is a burden and it was a huge relief to shed it after all these years. That was thanks to you.'

‘To me?'

‘Yes. You said much the same thing during a telephone conversation; that not being open and honest, especially with people one loves, is bad for the soul. Kate was with me at the time and quite suddenly I was able to talk about it. It didn't absolve me – it's not that simple – but it's freed me from keeping such a shameful secret of it. Now it's time that I told Nat that my carelessness, due to the fact that I'd been drinking heavily, was the cause of Mim's accident.'

There was a short shocked silence before Roly recounted the scene almost exactly as he'd told it to Kate.

‘I shan't tell anyone.' It was the only thing Daisy could think of to say when he'd finished. ‘How awful . . . for all of you.'

‘Yes. And now it's time Nat knows the truth. That's how I shall begin, by telling him the truth about the accident. I shall ask him to lunch tomorrow and take it from there.'

‘I'll keep right out of the way,' Daisy promised – but Roly shook his head.

‘No, don't do that. Join us for lunch but find some good reason for leaving us together afterwards. I hope he'll be able to come down; I might lose my nerve if I can't do this quickly.'

Nat had accepted the invitation and the lunch had been fun. Afterwards Daisy merely said that she'd got a few ideas she wanted to get down on paper and, back in the stable flat, she'd played
The Starlight Express
CD, recently arrived from Opus, and tried not to wonder how the conversation was going between Roly and Nat. It was a relief to see them come out together, clearly at peace with one another, but she still longed to know if Roly's objective had been achieved.

The thought of his part in Mim's accident horrified her, and she'd tried to comfort him by pointing out that Mim's international contribution to the world of theatre and dance had been far greater than if she'd simply remained a famous ballerina.

‘She's inspired so many artists,' she'd said, ‘and touched so many lives through them.'

‘That's true,' he'd agreed. ‘Perhaps you should think about that aspect of it yourself.'

‘Oh!' She'd been disconcerted. ‘But then I was never going to be a famous ballerina.'

‘All the more reason, then, to think about it.'

Daisy couldn't help smiling to herself as she remembered this riposte. Roly was right, of course. She might do far more good encouraging other people's talent than trying to force herself on beyond these injuries into third-rate jobs: an offer like Mim's was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Suddenly the music swept her back into the creative world that had begun to construct itself in her mind: she saw shapes and images, characters and
enchaînements
. Who would sing the parts of the Laugher and the Organ-Grinder? Should they be dancers too, or set apart as narrators? Who would dance the roles of the children: Monkey, Jimbo and Jane Anne? She allowed herself to be drawn into the music and it seemed hours later that she heard the sound of the gate closing and Uncle Bernard barking.

She got up quickly, unable to wait a second before seeing how they looked. Nat was talking, describing something with gestures, and Roly was listening, amused. They both broke suddenly into great shouts of laughter and Daisy felt as if she might fall apart with relief. Roly glanced up towards the window, as if guessing that she'd be waiting on tenterhooks, and beckoned to her.

‘Tea,' he called. ‘Come and have some tea before Nat goes.'

Nat glanced up. His face was freed from that tight wariness and she knew at once that, somehow, his private burden was a secret no longer and that Roly had succeeded in his mission. Full of hope she went down the steps to meet them.

‘Did you do it? You must have done. He looks so . . . carefree.' Daisy could barely wait until Nat's car was splashing off through the ford before she asked the question. ‘Gosh, I've never been so strung-up in all my life, and that's saying something.'

‘I managed it.' Roly sat down on the bench and the dogs came to him, tails wagging, tongues lolling. He murmured to them mechanically, stroking them with hands that very slightly trembled. ‘I told him about the accident. He was very generous.'

Daisy sat down beside him. ‘He didn't blame you?'

‘No. No, he seemed much more concerned with how it had affected me than how it had damaged him. He was . . .'

‘Compassionate?' suggested Daisy as Roly cast about for an adequate description of Nat's reaction.

‘Yes, that's a good word. Compassionate. It made it very easy for me to take the same line with him.'

‘But what did you
say
? How did you let him know that you knew?'

‘I cheated,' admitted Roly. ‘I remembered how Kate had said that, once she knew, she allowed Nat to
see
that she knew and that a kind of complicit understanding began to exist between them. I decided not to be brutally honest but to imply that this was something I'd always suspected.'

‘But how?'

‘My confession led on to talking about Monica and her reaction, the difficulties that Nat had had to contend with always being between the two of us, and I said that it must be quite a relief to have someone like Janna who understood the truth and made no demands on him. He went rather quiet, and he coloured up, but after a moment he muttered something about him and Janna having a very particular kind of relationship that helped to cover up for him. Something like that. So I said I thought that was splendid and I only hoped that she didn't begin to think that he might be able to change. He asked me what I meant exactly and I said that, though I could well imagine the temptation it might be for both of them, it would be dishonest for him to commit himself to the role of husband and father. Not only that, but it would be wrong for him to pretend to be other than the person he is. He looked a bit shocked but I could see that he was struggling to come to terms with the fact that I actually knew the truth about him and it didn't affect the way I cared. He said that Janna was beginning to think they could make it together as a couple and that a baby would be the glue to help them stick to it. I'm afraid I
was
rather brutal at that point but it seemed to ive him confidence to hear me speak out so strongly against such an idea. He mumbled something like, “I wasn't sure you knew,” and I just clapped him on the shoulder and said, “It couldn't matter less to me as long as you're happy,” or words to that effect, and then he did an odd thing.'