Memories of the Storm (20 page)

He hadn't looked at her; he'd stood with his back
to her, staring out of the window and jingling the
loose change in his pockets. Then, just briefly,
she'd relaxed her guard and allowed herself to look
at him – his fair crisp hair, the length of his back in
the well-cut jacket, his long straight legs – and had
felt the utter anguish of love and longing. If he'd
turned at that moment and seen her face, she'd
have been lost.

Instead, still looking out of the window, he'd said:
'What happened down there on Exmoor? Did you
meet someone else?'

She'd almost smiled. How much easier for both
of them if she could use such a reason but, 'No,'
she'd answered. 'There is no-one else. It simply
removed me from your magnetic field, that's all. I
realized that I've been in thrall, Peter.'

'And you're not now?'

He'd turned to look at her, then, and it had
required an enormous effort to stare at him coolly
and reply, 'No, not now.'

'Damn all godmothers,' he'd said, characteristically
and matter-of-factly, and when she'd
laughed he'd sent her a quick, sly glance, wondering
if he'd detected a slight weakening.

She'd continued to watch him steadily but her
heart had ached: at no time had he suggested any
changes for the future. He'd pleaded for her to be
patient while Louise was still ill, told her that he
needed her, but he'd made no promises of more
time together or hinted that he might one day leave
Louise, and, in playing it brutally straight, he'd
given her the courage to stand firm.

Back at Bridge House it was easier to bear the
pain, and there was the prospect of the future to
distract her, but it was Jonah's defection, she told
herself, that was really upsetting her; though sometimes
she wondered if she were simply projecting
all her own troubles onto him.

She nearly said as much to Lizzie when she
arrived with Lion, but Lizzie was chuckling at the
sight of St Francis and Lion greeting one another.
Lion bowed down before St Francis, large and
peaceful in his basket chair, as if at first honouring
him and then inviting him to play. He gave one or
two tentative barks, and his plumy tail wagged
encouragingly, but St Francis simply stared at him
imperturbably, showing a benign and friendly indifference
to his antics before embarking on a long,
thorough wash.

'I know that people talk about growing like their
dogs,' Lizzie said, 'but doesn't St Francis remind
you of Hester? There's that same delightful detachment.
I just love it.'

'She's not feeling very detached about Jonah,'
said Clio crossly. 'She'd grown really fond of him
and now he's made her miserable, Lizzie. She
seems anxious in case she told him something that
might have upset him. About his grandfather or his
mother or something. I can't believe she has but it's
really eating her up.'

'That's why I've come, sweetie.' Lizzie gave Clio
her attention at once. 'Piers says we simply mustn't
let Jonah get away with it. We mustn't let him
impose his will on us. He says that we must hound
him.'

Clio frowned, puzzled. 'But how do we do that?'

'I've got his telephone numbers, you see, and we
must take it in turns to ring him up and leave
messages. You must say that Hester is pining away
and I shall say that he's letting me down over the
film event. We can text him too. What do you
think?'

Clio nodded cautiously. 'It might work. Sorry,
Lizzie, I wasn't thinking. Would you like some
coffee?'

'Do you mind if we give Lion a walk first? He
hasn't had a run yet and I promised Piers.'

'OK. We'll go along the river. It looks wonderful
in the woods at the moment. The marsh marigolds
are out and the ground is positively golden with
them. Hester calls them kingcups and says that they
make her feel melancholy.'

'Oh, poor Hester,' said Lizzie. 'I hate her to be
miserable. Honestly, I could
murder
Jonah.'

Hester was sitting in Cobblestones café, staring out
at the early March sunshine, thinking about Jonah.
Although she was aware of a sense of loss – of
missing him – her concern was not simply connected
with the fact that she might never see him
again. What primarily concerned her was the fear
that, at some point in her recounting of the past,
she'd touched upon some aspect that had caused
Lucy so much pain that further contact was now
impossible. Hester was convinced that it was during
Jonah's reporting back to Lucy that the trouble had
arisen and she cast her mind back again and again
over the conversations she'd had with him.

Blaise's warning that it should be a truthful
history haunted her, though she could think of
no point where she'd dissimulated. Perhaps, in
trying to defend Michael from his grandson's
judgement she'd made an error in playing down
the after-effects of the fight, yet she'd hated the
thought of Jonah seeing his grandfather as
vacillating and weak: forced to flee the house with
his mistress and child. Had the very thing that
she and Blaise feared actually happened? Had
the heroic figure that Jonah had built up over the
years crumbled to dust in the light of reality? As
Blaise had observed: 'The young can be so
puritanical.' Perhaps it was this aspect from which
Lucy had never been able to recover: seeing her
father with Eleanor in London. Away from the
family, Eleanor would have made her relationship
with Lucy's father brutally clear and Hester
wondered how the sudden flight had been explained
to the child.

At Christmas, with Blaise, Hester had not yet
been aware of Jonah's reaction. She'd received a
postcard just after his visit, thanking her and telling
her that he'd gone straight to Chichester because
his father was ill; nothing more except a Christmas
card. It wasn't until they'd returned from the North
that she'd begun to expect another visit. As the
weeks passed she'd grown concerned – perhaps
his father's health had deteriorated – yet both she
and Clio were surprised at Jonah's silence: it wasn't
in character. Then they'd heard through Lizzie
that Jonah was back in London, his father was
much better, but he was too busy to make the
journey to Exmoor.

Hester was glad now that Clio was with her.
She'd begun to suffer from anxiety attacks that she
seemed unable to control; first thing on waking, or
if she was disturbed in the early hours, her gut
would churn and her heart would pound with unnamed
fear. She tried to rationalize these attacks by
reminding herself that added to her anxiety about
Jonah was the pressing question as to whether she
should sell Bridge House. It gradually occurred to
her that she was waiting for some move from Jonah
before she committed herself: that, in some way,
Jonah – and Lucy – were involved in this decision.
She told herself that such an idea was foolish yet
she couldn't dismiss it from her mind. There was
something more to be resolved at Bridge House.

At Christmas, Blaise had asked her if she'd
decided what to do and she'd admitted that she had
no idea.

How good it had been to see him, to spend such
a special time with him! Even Clio, usually so busy
and vital and restless, had been calm and quietly
happy.

'This reminds me of that year we spent together
after the war,' he'd said one evening as the three
of them had eaten supper together, discussing
the poetry of R. S. Thomas. 'D'you remember, Hes?
You, me and Edward.' He'd smiled at Clio, including
her. 'We were preparing Hester for
Cambridge,' he told her. 'Edward was a very hard
taskmaster and we didn't stop for a second, even
when we were eating. There were books everywhere.'

'Rather like here,' Clio had said, nodding towards
the shelves and piles of books, and they'd all
laughed.

'That was a good time, wasn't it?' he'd asked
Hester when Clio went to make coffee and they
were alone together.

'The best,' she'd answered simply.

He'd stared at her, his eyes seeming to question
her, as if surprised at the speed and directness of
her reply.

'What was the play we were reading at nights
round the fire?' he asked. '
Twelfth Night
, wasn't
it?'

She'd allowed a tiny pause. 'That's right. You
were Orsino and I was Viola, amongst other
characters. Edward was Malvolio with his yellow
stockings.' Then Clio had come back in and she'd
changed the subject.

'Clio's been happy here,' he'd said on the eve of
their departure. 'I feel confident that she's taken
the right path. It's good to think of you together
just at the moment.'

Now, Hester sipped at her coffee and thought
about Clio. On their return to Bridge House, Lizzie
had greeted the news of Clio's decision to stay for a
while with delight.

'You shall plan the nuts and bolts of the film
event,' she'd cried. 'Where the tutors and the
students stay and how they get here and all that
nightmare. Oh, what a relief. You must be paid the
proper rate, of course, just as anybody else would
have been. You will do it, won't you? Wonderful!
This is brilliant.'

It was evident that Clio was thrilled to be asked –
and very grateful to be paid – and was now busy
organizing the event. She was extremely businesslike
and very efficient, and Hester was relieved to
see that some of Clio's pain and fear was alleviated
by this distraction. This was another reason for
staying at Bridge House for the present: she wanted
to be able to give Clio space to find her feet again.
She could see how much Clio was missing Peter and
how hard she was trying to come to terms with a
huge loss: Peter and her work had been nearly
all of her life and now she had lost both. Hester
knew the overwhelming attraction and the danger
of being involved with someone who understood
your work. Twice she'd had affairs with men with
whom she could share mentally as well as
physically, a delightful combination – until the
relationships fractured and there had been nowhere
to go to recover.

She knew that Clio was in that position now
and she wondered what the future held for her
god-daughter. Hester hoped that Clio wasn't
programmed to be attracted only to older,
successful men. This had been her own downfall:
her upbringing, influenced first by her father and
then by Edward, Michael and Blaise, had made
the men of her own age seem rather callow. She'd
been drawn to mentor-figures, imagining that by
drawing them into her life, even physically into
herself, she would be imbued with some measure of
their wisdom and wit and knowledge, much as
Nimue had sucked out the essence of Merlin's
magical secrets drop by drop with her kisses.

The detached part of her character had saved
her, enabled her to survive the break-ups and
betrayals, and watching her friends' relationships
had strengthened her growing belief that marriage
was not necessarily the answer to loneliness or hurt:
often quite the contrary. For herself she'd deemed
it wisest to stay unattached, remembering Edward's
warning words: 'We don't make very good marriage
material.' Reflecting again on Clio, wondering how
best to assist her, Hester was suddenly distracted by
a child's voice raised in frustration and a scene
unfolding beyond the window.

A young man pushing a double baby-buggy had
paused outside the toyshop on the far side of the
road. The older child was gesticulating, demanding
to be taken into the shop, struggling in his seat
whilst his father remonstrated firmly.

'Not now,' he was saying. 'We're waiting for
Mummy. Perhaps later.'

The child's voice rose even higher in protest.
'Now,' he cried. 'I want to go
in
.'

One or two passers-by glanced at the father
sympathetically but others shook their heads disapprovingly.
He was clearly discomfited and spoke
to his son more sharply, putting him back into his
seat very firmly. This caused a further uproar, the
child wept as if he'd been badly hurt and the baby
began to whimper. Hester felt a pang of compassion
for the young father, who now crouched
down beside the buggy in an attempt to calm his
children. Sensing a weakening of resolve, the older
boy sobbed harder, begging to be released, and the
man reluctantly began to undo the straps, enabling
the boy to climb out. At this point the whole
episode might have been resolved except that
the mother now appeared around the corner and,
seeing her, the boy began to cry hysterically and
run towards her. As Hester finished her coffee and
went to pay, she saw the boy's mother drop rather
theatrically to one knee, taking him to her bosom,
ostentatiously comforting him.

'See,' she seemed to be saying. 'I am only away
for a few minutes and harmony disintegrates.'

Hester was interested to see that the young man's
face grew dark with various emotions: annoyance
that he'd been disobeyed; embarrassment that
his failure had been witnessed so publicly; and
indignation at the child's defection – after all, he
had been neither harsh nor cruel. The mother's
face wore a different aspect: a faint air of triumph
that the child had run to
her
; it was
she
who had
comforted and quieted him. The father turned
abruptly and began to push the buggy across the
road, mother and son following. Their car was
parked outside the café and now, as Hester came
out on to the pavement, she could hear them
arguing, quietly but bitterly, as they folded the
buggy and put the children into their seats.

'You always give in to him.'

'I do not. You're just too stern with him, that's all.
He's not three yet.'

'I thought we'd agreed that when either of us
made a stand we'd support each other. We agreed
that discipline is important.'

'You're just a control freak. He's always OK with
me.'

'Only because you're so scared of losing his affection
that you give him what he wants . . .'

What a pity it was, Hester reflected, that two
people who had presumably once been lovers
should descend to this level of bickering and
fighting over their child. At what point did gentle,
kind, loving conversation morph into tiny bitter
remarks, deadly verbal battles for control, insults
disguised by forced laughter bandied publicly
across dinner tables? How soon did the language of
lovers become an ongoing slanging match where
it seemed that one or other must be defeated,
controlled by jibes and cruel asides?

Saddened by these reflections, she crossed the
road, heading for Shakespeare and Hall, the bookshop
at the top of the street, where Dawn had
several books and some CDs that Hester had
ordered.

Books and music, thought Hester with relief,
her spirits rising as she waved cheerfully to Dawn
through the window. So much more reliable than
people.