Golden Hour (42 page)

Look on your life not as a race which must end in victory or defeat, but as an adventure into the unknown. As long as you live there's more to be discovered, more to be enjoyed. The magical virtue called humility sets you free.

Henry knows this moment too won't last. The human condition is too volatile, too fickle, too vulnerable to gusts of self-doubt and envy of others. But for now he's experiencing a kind of tranquility, and he feels an overwhelming sensation of gratitude. He wants to say thank you for this home, for this family, for this life. For these rare few weeks of high summer. For the passing of regret. But who is he to thank?

He returns to the house. In the kitchen, Laura is chopping mint leaves with a mezzaluna and Roddy is sitting in the chair by the window, a newspaper unopened on his knees.

“Oh, Henry,” says Laura, “thank God you've emerged. Now you can talk to Roddy.”

“I was perfectly happy talking to you,” says Roddy.

“Yes, I know, but I don't really understand a word you say. Henry loves all that kind of stuff.”

Henry understands from this that Laura has a lot to do and Roddy is getting in her way.

“Come along, Roddy,” he says. “Laura much prefers to listen to Radio 4 when she's cooking. Come and tell me about stuff.”

Laura shoots him a grateful glance. Roddy gets up, newspaper in hand.

“Wrong moment,” he says. “I never seem to get it right.”

Laura turns on the radio and gets the start of
Money Box
. She switches to Radio 3 and the last few minutes of
CD Review
. Roddy follows Henry into the living room.

“Hasn't it been an amazing summer?” says Henry. “I suppose it'll all change soon, but really we should appreciate it while we've got it.”

“To be honest,” says Roddy, “I'm entirely indifferent to the weather. I'm just as content in a blizzard, so long as I myself am warm and dry.”

“Really?” says Henry. “That's very philosophical of you.”

Roddy settles himself down in the most comfortable chair in the room.

“Ah, well,” he says, “there is a philosophy behind what I say. Away with arrogance. The weather won't be commanded. The wind blows where it will.”

“I think I detect the stream of life,” says Henry.

“Let yourself be carried away by the stream of life,” says Roddy. “Let yourself be swept along, you know not whither nor why.”

There he sits in his cord trousers and brogues and his heather-green jumper, his squat and crumpled features earnestly asserting a freedom of spirit that is mocked by his mottled balding head, and Henry feels for him a grudging admiration. It can't be easy being married to Diana.

The doorbell rings. Henry is already out of his chair when Laura calls from the kitchen, “Get that, will you, Henry?”

Henry opens the door to see a Mercedes convertible with the hood down, and a woman standing not on the doorstep but on the gravel of the drive. She has her back to the door, a light cardigan over her shoulders, and one hand on her hip. He senses at once that this is an attitude assumed on purpose. He notes a slim figure, a full head of blond-streaked hair, tight jeans, stylish red trainers. Then she turns to greet him, and like one of those pictures of faces that changes completely when you turn it upside down, he sees an old woman.

“Hi,” she says. “I'm Toby's mother. Sally Clore.”

Unfair to call her an old woman: she looks about fifty, almost certainly younger than Henry himself, and was clearly once good-looking. But she has aged early, and the strenuous make-up is unable to disguise the brittle skin, the puckered lines. She wears dark glasses up on her forehead, holding back the mane of tawny hair. This hair, this slender body, by raising such expectations of youth, makes a sad mockery of the aging face.

“Henry Broad,” says Henry, holding out his hand.

“So good of you to put up with Toby. I'm sure he's made a perfect nuisance of himself.”

“No, not at all. Come on in.”

Sally Clore comes into the house, bringing with her a wave of expensive perfume. Henry calls to Laura in the kitchen.

“It's Toby's mum.”

He leads the visitor through into the living room. Roddy lumbers to his feet. Sally Clore doesn't notice him: her gaze has already discovered Toby out in the garden. As if drawn by a magnetic force, she goes out through the French windows onto the terrace.

“Toby,” she says.

Her voice is low, but it has immediate effect. Toby starts as though stung, and gets up off the grass. He turns toward Carrie, then back toward his mother.

“Hi, Mum,” he says.

She holds out her arms. He comes to her, bounding over the terrace wall, his expression suddenly that of a small boy who has stayed out playing too long.

She takes him in her arms and holds him close.

“Who's a naughty boy?” she says.

Carrie comes up onto the terrace after Toby. Henry looks on in surprise. The maternal embrace goes on. Toby, far from trying to hold back, seems content to remain like a child or a lover in his mother's arms.

Henry makes further introductions. Toby's mother doesn't even pretend to take these in. Her eyes are only for her son. She strokes his face, draws his long hair back from his cheeks, tugs at his beard.

“Still that horrible beard, darling? When are you going to get rid of it?”

Laura joins them.

“Toby's mother, Sally,” says Henry.

“Oh, I'm so glad Toby called you,” Laura says. “I gather he's been away for ages.”

“He has!” Sally Clore smacks her son lightly on the cheek. “He's so unkind to his poor old mama! I haven't set eyes on him for weeks and weeks!”

“Weeks?” says Carrie.

Toby turns his gaze on her and she says no more. His look is not a warning of any kind: it's the look of one who no longer knows her, and turns to hear what she has to say out of common politeness.

“I'd got the idea he'd been away much longer,” says Laura.

“It's been long enough, believe me,” says Sally Clore. “But we have a very special relationship, my bad boy and me. We know when we've been apart for too long. As soon as I start to feel it, he feels it too. Don't you, Boby?”

“Let's go home, Mum,” Toby says.

“Your carriage awaits, Master.”

She gives a silvery laugh, and holding Toby by the hand, leads him back through the house. The three members of the Broad family are too astonished to intervene. Mother and son seem to have lost all sense of normal social behavior. For a moment it seems as if they will go skipping out of the house together without a word of farewell.

“You're wearing Jack's clothes,” says Carrie.

“Give me a moment,” Toby says to his mother, and runs upstairs.

Sally Clore stands in the hall smiling at nobody in particular.

“Would you like a drink or something?” says Laura.

“No, thank you,” she replies. “I drink only water, and only a very particular kind of water. It's one of my silly little fads, and causes no end of nuisance, but if you knew what they put in the water you'd think twice too. I'm not just talking about human waste. I'm talking about male sex hormones.”

“Goodness!” says Roddy.

Toby comes back downstairs in his own clothes, swinging his backpack.

“Thanks for everything,” he says.

As he gets into the convertible beside his mother, Diana's BMW pulls into the drive.

“We must absolutely run!” cries Sally Clore. “Come along, Bobes. You've outstayed your welcome as usual.”

The Mercedes disappears in a screech of gravel as Diana gets out of her car. She stares after the convertible in awed fascination.

“Who on earth was that?” Then turning to the group on the doorstep, she issues a sharp command. “Roddy! Bags!”

Roddy unloads the car. Diana follows Laura into the kitchen, carrying a bottle of champagne. She puts the champagne in the fridge, her inquisitive eyes scanning the bright shelves.

“Summer pudding! Ooh, yummy. Have you tried making Jane Grigson's summer pudding? You line the bowl with sponge cake and mix the fruit with whipped cream. It's sensational.”

“Diana, I've already made it.”

“Oh, so you have. So who was the kept woman?”

“I don't think she is kept. She's the mother of a friend of Jack's called Toby. Toby's been staying here for a few days.”

“Ooh!” says Diana, ogling Carrie. “Nice for someone.”

Carrie turns and runs upstairs to her room.

“Honestly, Diana.”

“What did I do wrong?” cries Diana. “Doesn't she want a boyfriend? She must be getting just a little desperate. When Isla was her age she'd worked her way through half her year group.”

Roddy struggles across the hall and up the stairs with a suitcase and a heavily laden basket.

“Not the basket, Roddy! That's house gifts. What do we want with a bottle of olive oil in the bedroom?” To Laura, “Chance would be a fine thing!” Then, seeing Henry, she inclines her
cheek for a kiss. “Hello, Henry. How was the garden party? I felt for you on Thursday afternoon. Was it utterly ghastly?”

“No,” says Henry. “I loved it, actually.”

“You loved it?” Diana stares, incredulous. “You can't have loved it. I don't see how that's possible.”

“When did you last have an experience you loved, Diana?”

“Oh, heavens! Loads of times! I adored the Polly Morgan sculptures at the Haunch of Venison. Did you see them? Gutted animals and balloons. Incredibly powerful. And I'm wild about XX. I've been playing a download Isla got me all the way from town.” She looks at her watch. “I have to make a business call before lunch. I have one very rich but very elusive donor.”

She takes out her BlackBerry and heads through the living room onto the terrace.

“Drink,” says Laura. “Get me a drink.”

Henry pours them both a glass of wine.

“Should I find Roddy and offer him a glass?”

“He'll be lying down in the spare bedroom. Diana has that effect on him.”

“And Carrie.”

The phone rings. It's Maggie Dutton to say that she and Andrew will come this evening.

“That's wonderful,” says Laura. “Don't come too late, the early evenings are so lovely. Any time after seven.”

Carrie comes creeping downstairs, looking around warily as she comes.

“Where is she?”

“On the terrace. On her phone.”

“I'm starving.”

She goes to the larder.

“Can I have what's left of the ginger cake? There's almost nothing.”

“Yes, if you must,” says Laura. “But we'll be having lunch in an hour.”

Carrie comes out of the larder, cake in hand.

“What about Toby's mum?” Laura says to her. “Did you hear? She called him Boby!”

“Something very odd going on there,” says Henry.

“He's very, very screwed up,” says Carrie. “I mean, very.”

“Are you a bit relieved he's gone?” says Laura.

Carrie thinks about that, nibbling away at the cake.

“I think maybe every single thing he said was a lie,” she says.

“But I don't know. It doesn't seem to make much difference. He's not like any one else I've ever met. He told me when we were talking this morning that he thinks he has a demon inside him.”

“A demon? That's a bit worrying, isn't it?”

“It sort of made sense to me.”

Diana returns.

“Where's Roddy?” she says. “Has he come down?”

“No,” says Henry. “Not yet.”

“That means he's gone to sleep on the bed. Honestly! Take your eyes off him for a minute and he'll find somewhere to lie down and go to sleep.”

Roddy comes down a little later, holding a book he's found in the spare bedroom. It's Michael Cunningham's novel
The Hours
.

“I've just realized,” he says. “The river across the fields here. That must be where Virginia Woolf drowned herself.”

“That's right,” says Henry. “She lived in Rodmell, the other side of the river.”

“She just walked out of her house, across the fields, and into the river.”

“Yes, Roddy,” says Diana. “We know. It's quite well known, you know. We saw the film.”

But Roddy seems powerfully struck by the discovery.

“Just out there,” he says, pointing out of the window. “Just a short walk away. According to the novel, she didn't throw herself in, she just walked in.”

“She wasn't in her right mind,” says Laura. “She was terrified she was going mad again.”

“Does anyone know exactly where?” says Roddy.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Roddy!” exclaims Diana.

“Not exactly where,” says Laura. “Her body wasn't found for three weeks.”

“She left a note for her husband saying, I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.”

“Yes,” says Laura. “It's so sad.”

Henry hands Roddy a glass of wine.

“Here,” he says. And raising his own glass, “Moriturus te saluto.”

Cas sits very still, watching the old lady. They're in the garden, on green plastic chairs, in the shade of the magnolia tree, near the straw-littered run where the guinea pig is eating his evening salad. Cas likes Granny's garden, it's got a little patch of lawn, but beyond it's mostly wild. He imagines little creatures creeping about in the thickets of overgrown shrubs, making their homes there, though he's never actually seen any. They'd be much smaller than the guinea pig, of course. Tiny voles and field mice. Also beetles and spiders and woodlice and ants. If you lie with your face to the ground after a while you start to see them. There are little things living just about everywhere, some of them so small they can't even see you, you're as enormous and invisible as the sky.