Memories of the Storm (19 page)

Oh, neither of them knows of the other's feelings
– they are both too cautious to let their love show –
but each of them grows more and more aware. It is
as if their nerve-endings have become abnormally
alert to each touch, however casual; their ears
attuned to any observation, however familiar. They
watch and listen hopefully, almost desperately,
but the family trait of detachment runs strong in
these two and in this instance it serves them both
ill: instead of trusting to intuition they stand off,
weighing up their emotions, dissecting and analysing
them until their true instincts are weakened by
lack of nourishment and smothered by denial.

To Blaise, the eldest of them all, the one who
tried to take their father's place when he died,
this love he is beginning to feel for Hester feels
perilously akin to incest. He has been a big brother
to her – he is thirty years old to her eighteen – and
it seems impossible, almost wrong that he should
have such feelings for her. Even though he tells
himself that they are cousins, not siblings, and
watches her hopefully to see if there is any sign that
she might be feeling the same way towards him,
nevertheless he is convinced that it would be quite
wrong to frighten or embarrass her with a declaration
of love; she depends on him and nothing
must be done to destroy her trust in him.

At the same time he is trying to discern whether
or not he has a vocation or whether it is some
trick of the imagination that gives him a sense of
Presence: as if someone is watching him, standing
just out of his own line of vision. His heart beats
hard, as if it might be some lover who is waiting for
him, and he tries to laugh off this new, strange
desire. After all, why should he be called?

There's nothing special about you, he tells
himself, half-mocking, half-longing for the slowly
growing awareness to be a true sign.

He tries to see himself as a priest, thinking
carefully about the dedication required, and once
again comes up against his love for Hester. He
knows very well that the majority of Anglican priests
are married yet he wonders how he would manage
if his loyalty were to be put to the test.

If I give myself wholly to God, he asks himself,
how would I react if something were to be required
of me that meant that my wife or children might
suffer? Or, put it the other way round: if I have a
wife and children will I be able to dedicate myself
wholly to God's will?

Yet each time he looks at Hester, his heart turns
over with tenderness for her and he longs to reach
out and gather her tightly in his arms; and each
time he resists lest he should frighten her. He feels
certain about one thing: if it is not to be Hester
then it will be nobody. He will remain free for
God's work . . . if that is what he is called to do. And
then it all starts up again: the uncertainty, the lack
of confidence in his calling, the longing for some
sign.

Hester too is guarding herself from any display of
affection that might be misconstrued. She knows
that to Blaise she is the youngest, little Hes, and
she fears that he might be shocked or even
disappointed to think that she feels such strong
love for him that it makes her tremble and burn.
These overwhelming physical emotions remind her
of Eleanor and she is afraid that there might be
something shameful about it all. She couldn't bear
to disgust Blaise, to have him turn from her in
disappointment, and she takes care to give no sign
of the heart-aching love that she bears him.

It doesn't help that Edward, who sees nothing of
this, has his own strong views on Blaise's future.

'He'll make a first-class priest,' he says to Hester
one morning as they walk beside the river. 'He'll be
completely dedicated. He's in love with God and
with God's creation and he will spend his life trying
to minister to it. I had a padre like Blaise, utterly
committed to service. He had no idea, of course,
the effect that he had on us. He'd achieved that
true humility that ceases to be self-aware, but I
imagine that none of us who survived will ever
forget him.'

The dim, winding path through the damp wood
seems to be lit by the golden flowers of the kingcups
that grow luxuriantly amongst the trees; the yaffle's
laughing call rings out, clear and high above the
river's crooning, watery chuckle. As they walk on a
little further, Hester screws up her courage to ask
Edward a question.

'So you can't imagine Blaise with a wife and
children?' she asks at last.

His derisive snort of laughter hurts her more
than he will ever know. 'Absolutely not. Or, if he
does marry then he'll never be happy. He'll be
constantly torn between his duty to his wife and
family and his duty to God. It would be hell for a
chap like Blaise. He's so whole-hearted, isn't he? It
would make him utterly miserable.'

This reminds her of what Blaise said about
Michael, being torn between two people and
two different kinds of love, and she sees with a
devastating clarity that she must never be
responsible for ruining Blaise's life.

'Some priests manage it,' she says lightly – almost
as if she is making one last desperate throw for
happiness.

'Some priests,' Edward agrees, 'but not Blaise.
Anyway, I'm not sure we make good marriage
material. We think too much. The passionate side
of it can make us obsessive and drive us mad, and
once that fades we're too detached to make good
spouses or parents. Yet at the same time we feel
guilty about it.'

Hester is taken aback by this declaration, anxious
lest the conversation might edge into dangerous
territory, yet fascinated by this view on their shared
characteristics.

'Patricia manages very well,' she ventures at last.

'Yes,' he agrees readily, 'Patricia manages. She's
very maternal, of course. I just think that the
men of our family aren't very satisfactory marriage
material, that's all. Maybe I'm biased. Father was
always very wrapped up in his work, wasn't he,
though Mother encouraged him. She was very like
him, actually, and I think we were lucky to have
Nanny. Father always tried terribly hard during the
holidays to make up for it, poor fellow, as if he felt
guilty for all the times we never saw him and
Mother was left alone. He drove himself too hard in
all directions and I often wonder if that's why he
had a heart attack whilst still quite young. He wasn't
much more than forty. Blaise is very like him – well,
that's not surprising, our father and his were very
much alike – but for a priest I should think that
kind of pressure would be frightful. That's another
thing about us. We don't seem to cope very well
with emotional pressure. Look at Mother when the
boys died and I was taken prisoner; you told me she
simply couldn't face it.'

His expression has become brooding and Hester
hastens to distract him.

'Can you reach those catkins?' she asks. 'Cut
them long enough. Thanks. It must be nearly
lunch-time. Shall we go back?'

As they retrace their steps, scrunching over the
beech mast and dead leaves, Hester knows that at
some level a decision has been made and, ever
afterwards, when she sees the kingcups blooming
along the riverbank and hears the yaffle calling in
the wood, she is filled with a strange sense of
melancholy and loss.

Duke Orsino: 'And what's her history?'

Viola: 'A blank, my lord. She never told her
love . . .'

Lizzie Blake came into the kitchen and paused for a
moment in appreciation. The big room with its two
windows, one looking west towards Dunkery hill
and the other into the sheltered garth, never failed
to give her a little thrill of pleasure. A slanting
beam of spring sunshine glanced off the toast rack
on the large square table and touched the old
Welsh dresser that held china belonging to four
generations of women – an eclectic display that
included Wedgwood and Clarice Cliff; art deco and
Royal Doulton. Lizzie had brought one or two
pieces of her own from her small house in Bristol to
add to the collection and she surveyed the effect
with satisfaction.

Lion rose from his bean bag near the Aga and
came to meet her, tail waving, and she bent to kiss
his silky head before slipping into her chair. She
smiled a greeting to Piers, slit open the envelope
that he'd put beside her plate and read the enclosed
letter with a growing impatience.

'Honestly,' she muttered. 'For goodness' sake!'
and, folding the paper, she put it on one side with
a smack.

Piers raised his eyebrows but remained silent
whilst Lizzie reached for some toast and buttered it
with irritated swipes of her knife.

'I'm beginning to lose patience with Jonah,' she
announced. 'You know how keen he was about the
film event with the sixth-formers? Well, first of all
he wrote to say that he couldn't get down for our
next meeting at the end of the month and now he's
saying that he might not be able to take any part in
it at all. His father is very ill so he's been trying to
spend time with his mother and now the work's
building up; unexpected rewrites and stuff.'

Piers put his own letters to one side, poured
coffee for her and refilled his large breakfast cup.
'Do I take it that you don't absolutely believe his
reasons?'

'Excuses,' said Lizzie crossly, 'not reasons.
There's something going on. Clio was saying the
same thing.'

'Clio?'

'Do you remember that she took him to meet
Hester last autumn? Well, they got on swimmingly
together. Jonah's mother stayed with Hester and
her family during the war and it turns out that
Hester knew Jonah's grandfather terribly well.
Something happened, apparently, some war-time
romance or whatever, and Jonah was fascinated by
it all and went down again to see Hester after Clio
had gone back to London. So, everything's going
fine, Jonah's even thinking of dramatizing the
story and then, suddenly, with no warning, silence.
Hester had a Christmas card from him and then a
little note saying his father was ill and something
had cropped up with his work – he script-edits on
one of the soaps – and that he'd be very tied up for
a while. Clio says Hester's really sad and worried.
She thinks she must have upset him but can't think
how. It was all so curt. You know, a kind of "Goodbye
and thanks for all the fish" kind of thing. And
now he's telling me much the same thing.'

Moodily she tore off a piece of toast crust and
passed it to Lion, who was sitting hopefully by her
chair.

'I
wish
you wouldn't do that,' said Piers, distracted
momentarily from her recital. 'I hate a dog who
begs at the table and salivates all over people's
shoes.'

'Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry.' Lizzie made a penitent
face, rolling her eyes guiltily at Lion, who crunched
appreciatively. 'I wasn't thinking. I'm just so upset
about Jonah. I mean, he's usually such a darling
and I can't think why he's behaving like this. Apart
from anything else, I
need
him. He's a rising star
and he'll draw the punters.'

'Well, why don't you ring him up and ask him
what he's playing at? Or why doesn't Clio?'

'That's what I said to her. She hasn't got a
telephone number or an address, apparently.
She
gave
him
her mobile number but that doesn't help
much.'

'Well,
you've
got his number and his address.
Ring him up and tell him everyone is worried. Tell
him he's vital to your event. You don't have to
submit to a secrecy and silence conspiracy.'

'That's very true.' Lizzie appeared to be much
struck by this approach. 'We won't let him get away
with it. I did telephone his flat actually after his
last letter but I just got his answerphone. That's
the snag, of course: we can hold people at bay
indefinitely these days with our voice mails and
answerphones.'

'Hound him,' said Piers brutally. 'You and Clio
take turns to telephone. Leave desperate messages.
Got his mobile number? Well, phone that too. Text
him.'

'I might just do that.' Lizzie finished her toast
thoughtfully. 'But I just wonder why he's taken such
a scunner to us all. He was so keen about it. What
could it be?'

Piers raised his eyebrows, his mouth turning
down at the corners, in a kind of facial shrug. 'Ask
him,' he said. 'We don't want him upsetting Hester.
I'm very fond of old Hes. They've got the fishing
rights along the river there and we used to look
after the letting of it all those years she was away. I
only really know Hester and Blaise, though I've met
Jack and Robin once or twice. Father knew the
family much better than I did.' He stood up. 'By
the way, has he had his breakfast yet?'

'Oh, yes. He was down early. He said you were
taking him to see a client today.'

'That's right. I'm going over to a farm near
Simonsbath and thought he might like the drive.
Old Hartley has been on our books for years. He
and father are old friends.'

'Felix will enjoy that,' agreed Lizzie. 'And I might
go and see Clio and Hester. Hatch a plot to deal
with young Jonah. Shall I take Lion or will you?'

Piers hesitated, looking at Lion who sat up, ears
flattened, tail beating expectantly on the flagged
floor. 'Could you manage? Hartley's collies are a
tad touchy. I know he likes to come with me as
a rule but he'll enjoy a walk by the river.'

'He likes to see St Francis,' said Lizzie. 'He's such
an enormous cat that Lion looks upon him as an
honorary dog. They go for walks together; it's
bizarre. He'll be fine once you've gone. Shut the
door as you go out and then he can't follow you and
I'll telephone Bridge House and see if they can
cope with us.'

Clio was almost as upset as Lizzie. The thing was, as
she'd said to Hester several times, it seemed so out
of keeping with Jonah's character. If he'd telephoned,
disappointed at not being able to go on
with his exploration of the past, they could have
understood it better. As it was, one Christmas card
and a short, unsatisfactory letter didn't offer any
kind of explanation.

'I don't think it was anything I told him,' Hester
had said anxiously. 'He went off perfectly happily
and planning to come down again soon.'

As much as anything else, as far as Clio was
concerned, it was seeing Hester upset that was so
distressing; she looked frailer, as if she'd been
diminished by Jonah's brush-off. Clio was cross with
Jonah, miserable by the break-up of her affair
with Peter, and anxious about the future.

Waiting for Lizzie – Hester had gone to Dunster
– Clio tried to recreate the peace and deep-down
joy she'd felt at the convent during Christmas,
especially in the chapel. At first it had taken some
adjustment: the general atmosphere of quiet,
the reflective silences between prayers and psalms
during the offices, the sense of reverence and awe.
She'd loved the chapel with its plain stone walls and
high, over-arching ceiling and the strong, simple
shape of the wooden altar table. A carved statue of
Mary, serene and patient, stood in an alcove, a
wide, shallow bowl at her feet filled with sand and
stuck about with votive candles that flickered
and streamed in the dusk-light when the office of
vespers was sung.

On the morning of Christmas Eve the chapel was
decorated: tall silver vases of evergreen and holly
were placed on the altar steps, and a sweet-scented
fir tree, dressed in silver and gold, twinkled in a
shadowy corner. At the midnight Eucharist as Clio
sat in her corner next to Hester, watching the faces
of the nuns in their stalls, she suddenly noticed the
crib and the Holy Family. The small figures were
placed on a low table, hardly distinguishable at a
distance; yet a hidden light shone upon them in
such a way that their huge shadows rose, clear and
dramatic, against the ancient stone wall beyond
them. It seemed to Clio that this was a paradox: this
small, homely event, hardly noticed by anybody
apart from a few shepherds, yet foreshadowing
something that would shake the world's foundations.

Celebrating with the community, sharing in their
joy at the birth of the Christ Child, being with
Blaise and Hester – all these things had distracted
her from her own desolation and she'd confidently
believed that she had found the strength to
go forward without fear. Each evening, sitting in
chapel during the hour of silent prayer before
compline, as the sanctuary light flickered in the
darkness and showed the dim, immobile shapes of
the nuns, her unhappy heart had been miraculously
filled with peace. This wordless sweet communion,
which exalted and expanded her heart with love,
drew her back to her corner time and again.

Once or twice she'd felt Blaise's eyes upon her,
calm and reflective, and she'd wondered if he'd
guessed. She was very slightly in awe of him here, as
she never was when he came on holiday to Bridge
House. There, his resemblance to Hester endeared
him to her at once, however long it was since she'd
seen him last. His self-contained quietness, his easygoing
readiness to fit in and accept anything that
might be going on, his way of looking at her
intently as if he truly wished to know who she was
but without any sense of intrusiveness on his part:
all these things allowed her to treat him as a
brother or some very special friend. She never
thought of Blaise in terms of age.

One morning after terce, finding him alone in
the flat, all her old affection for him had driven out
this sense of awe and she'd spoken impulsively.

'If someone had told me that I could spend an
hour sitting in silence in a chapel and loving every
minute of it, I'd have laughed,' she said. 'I've tried
meditation before but it's never really worked. I
can't clear my head properly and I get frustrated.
It's the same with prayer; you go rabbiting on but
it's as if you're talking to yourself. There's nothing
coming back. But these last few evenings it's as if
I've connected with something. Oh, I don't know
how to describe it but it's great!'

He'd probed her with his lancing look: not judgemental,
not tolerant, but looking right into her as
though he was greeting her from some place deep
inside himself. When he smiled she felt as if he'd
given her a present but he didn't speak, simply
touched her shoulder as Hester did.

Later she'd found a piece of paper on her bed: a
photocopy of a page from a book with some lines
underlined. She picked it up and read them with
curiosity.

Prayers like gravel
Flung at the sky's

window, hoping to attract
the loved one's

attention . . .
. . . I would

have refrained long since
but that peering once

through my locked fingers

I thought that I detected
the movement of a curtain.

'Something like this?' was written at the bottom in
Blaise's hand.

Finding him sitting at the table, drinking coffee,
she'd put her arm round his shoulder and kissed
his cheek.

'Just like that,' she'd murmured in his ear – and
he'd chuckled with the pleasure of sharing.

As the week passed, Clio felt that she'd discovered
a spiritual secret that would sustain her for
ever. She'd said as much to Blaise on the journey
back from Hexham where she'd driven him to do
some shopping.

'It won't last,' Blaise had answered.

So sure had Clio been of Blaise's approval and
delight that this display of pragmatism caused her
to swivel her eyes from the road to stare at him with
dismay.

'What do you mean?'

'I'm just warning you,' replied Blaise, 'because
after such an experience it can be terribly disappointing
when you find that these feelings can't be
enjoyed at will. You might feel that you're not
praying hard enough or in the right way and then
you might be so disillusioned that you give up any
attempt to pray or to listen, that's all. It's grace,
something freely given, not deserved or worked for;
it's a Gift. Never forget what you've experienced
but don't come to rely on it.'

They'd driven in silence for a moment then Clio
had begun to laugh.

'Thanks, Blaise,' she'd said wryly.

Blaise had smiled too, rather ruefully. 'I thought
it was best that you should be prepared,' he'd said.

And now, Clio told herself, she was glad that Blaise
had warned her, because once back at Bridge
House, aching for Peter, her future a blank, she'd
fallen prey once more to fear and misery. She
remembered what Blaise had said and tried to
persist with meditation, setting aside a short time
every day just to sit quietly in her room with the
candles lit, trying to recreate the atmosphere of
the chapel. Here, however, she found her concentration
wandering, and memories pressing
more closely upon her: Peter pleading with her to
give him time, telling her how essential she was to
him.

'But is this how you see the rest of our lives?'
she'd asked him angrily. 'Me just sitting here
waiting? All those weekends when I stay in, hoping
that you might manage a phone call; and outings
together that you've promised, cancelled at the last
moment because of some more important family
event? Can you imagine how awful Christmas
is? And bank holidays? Let's face it, Peter, you're
never going to leave Louise and I don't think I want
you to, not any more. I'd feel too guilty. Oh, I
fantasized about you splitting up, in a very amicable
way that didn't hurt the children, but it was
complete crap. It was never going to happen. And
now that Louise has been so ill, it's shown you very
clearly where your heart really is. Hasn't it?'