Relative Love (13 page)

‘Dinner?’ Stephen had indicated the tray of food and laughed. ‘I won’t need any dinner after all this.’

‘Food feeds the brain, doesn’t it?’ Pamela had replied, cutting three generous wedges of cake and a sliver for herself. ‘All those notes you’ve made – I should think you’re exhausted. John can’t sit in his study for more than ten minutes without needing fuel, can you, darling?’

‘That’s because I’m invariably responding to demands for money,’ John quipped, frowning momentarily at the recollection of his accountant’s proposal about cash gifts to which he had yet to reply.

‘And you are most welcome to stay the night,’ continued Pamela.

‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘Why ever not? It’s the least we can do. Besides, it’s far too late to start back now. John could drive you to the station in the morning, couldn’t you, darling? We’ve got a timetable for trains somewhere – I’m sure we could find one that would suit you.’

Stephen, pressing the last cake crumbs off his plate, had protested weakly, then given in.

The cloister lights illuminated little more than the near fringe of the garden. As he stared into the darkness, already dense at five o’clock, Stephen became aware of the layers of sound it contained: a wood pigeon cooing, the rustle of plants, stirring at the touch of the breeze, unseen animals, scuffling round the lawns and flowerbeds. He stepped off the veranda on to the lawn and inhaled deeply, savouring the damp, earthy smell of the air. The ground beneath his feet felt soft and heavy. It, too, was making a noise, he realised, listening hard, wanting to attune his senses to every detail; something between a click and a gurgle, triggered by the rainwater that was still seeping through the soil.

‘Hello.’

Stephen jumped. ‘Hi. I was just …’

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it? All fresh and sort of bursting. After London it’s like another world. Mind you, it
is
another world down here – bit like a time-warp. I think that’s partly why we all come back so much. I’m Cassie, by the way.’

‘I thought you were,’ murmured Stephen. She was standing on the veranda under one of the lights, her arms folded across her chest. Her hair, falling in curls round her face, looked almost gold. She was wearing a soft blue top and matching cardigan, a long wide-panelled skirt and brown suede boots with high fat heels. The echo of Pamela in her features – round blue eyes, firm cheekbones and a full, wide mouth – was striking, although the photo had prepared him for that. What it hadn’t prepared him for was her radiance – her eyes, her teeth, seemed to glow – and her size: she was so slender and small (a good few inches shorter than her mother), like a little bird. At the sight of her, shivering in her thin cardigan, Stephen’s initial instinct was to rush forward and press her into the warmth of his chest. ‘I’m Stephen Smith.’ He stepped back towards the cloisters, holding out his hand.

‘The biographer. I know.’ Her fingers were only in his for a second. They felt dainty and very cold. ‘You’re going to write about the dashing life of Uncle Eric, which is great because most of us have only ever known him as he is now, which is basically ga-ga – oh, God, that sounds so mean, doesn’t it?’ Cassie clapped her hand to her mouth. The exuberance of her day was still bursting out of her, impossible to control or conceal. For one wild moment she was even tempted to tell him all about Dan. It was awful not being able to talk about it, to have to pretend to family and friends that she was still getting over Richard, whom she had gladly discharged from her life and whom she only ever thought of these days with irritation, particularly when she saw the shapeless green anorak he had left hanging on a peg in her flat. Talking to strangers was easier,
safer
. But out of the question, Cassie reminded herself, grinning at Stephen and thinking that he was rather sweet-looking, as her mother had said, but also rather sad. ‘I came to tell you that dinner’s almost ready and to offer you a drink,’ she said. ‘We’ve got most things, I think.’ She turned back to the music room and let out a small involuntary shriek. ‘Fuck – I mean, Christ, sorry! Can’t stand the bloody things.’

‘What?’

‘Spiders.’ Cassie pressed one hand to her chest and pointed with the other at a creature, much bigger than the one Stephen had seen, enthroned in the middle of an intricate webbed metropolis above the door.

‘We have something in common, then.’ He laughed, unable to hide his pleasure at this small triumph of coincidence. ‘I hate them too. My sister used to collect them and put them in my bed.’

‘You poor,
poor
thing. How utterly vile.’ She looked genuinely appalled.

‘Yes, it was.’ Stephen followed her back into the music room. She wiped the soles of her boots on the small threadbare mat inside the door, so he did the same. ‘Who plays the piano?’

‘Oh, God, all of us at some stage, though mostly very badly.’ She paused in the doorway to the hall, winding a strand of hair absently round her fingers. ‘Mum was quite good once and so was Elizabeth, my elder sister. She’s a music teacher, but I don’t think she likes it very much. She never
says
, but you can tell things like that, can’t you, between siblings? There’s this huge invisible thing of knowing each other and not having to say things, don’t you find?’

Stephen, recalling his own sister as perpetually surly and disengaged, frowned. There had been invisible things in their family, all right, things to do with survival and pain. ‘My family was crap,’ he said, surprising himself – and Cassie, who let her hair fall and looked at him with an intensity that made his knees tremble.

‘Oh dear, I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Some families are – most, I think.’ He tried to sound breezy, wanting to avoid her pity. ‘What was that you said about a drink?’

‘A drink, of course.’ He was relieved to see the concern leave her face, but pleased that he had touched her in some way, made her notice him. ‘Let’s find Dad. He’s master of ceremonies in this house,’ she added, her voice light and playful now. ‘What else are you afraid of besides spiders, Mr Smith?’

‘Call me Stephen, please. Heights – I’m not too good up a ladder. And water, but only when it’s deep and there’s lots of it.’ He spoke in a rush, torn between presenting himself as a fool and a powerful urge to be totally honest.

Conflicting impulses remained with him throughout the evening, confirming the terrifying fact that he was falling in love, that he had been from the moment Cassie had appeared under the light in the cloisters. Stephen had been in love before, once with a friend’s mother, who, restless and disillusioned with her marriage, had taken it upon herself to seduce him in true Mrs Robinson style over several months. It had taken a while for the scales to fall from his eyes, by which time he could at least boast considerable proficiency as a lover. (She had been a good tutor, although it turned out he had been one in a string of eager students.) In Venezuela he had fallen in love again, with the raven-haired daughter of a local politician, who was far more eligible in terms of age but rather less so when it came to coping with the real world. Eventually Stephen had recognised that she was a spoilt little girl, incapable of forging a life of her own. So he knew about love. How it could strike unexpectedly. How it made the victim blind. How utterly untrustworthy it was. How usually a process of falling out of love ensued, in which all the ridiculous initial idealisations were slowly knocked on the head as the object of one’s passion revealed herself to be human and flawed like everyone else. As he watched Cassie across the dinner table, making them all laugh with wicked imitations of her most difficult clients, Stephen endeavoured to remind himself of this, but the light in her blinded him. It was the light, so rarely encountered, of a person with the gift of being happy, of losing themselves in the moment, of laughing at the world, of infecting a room with the sheer positive force of their personality.

After dinner, at Cassie’s suggestion, they played Scrabble. While Stephen slaved to prove his intellectual prowess by using as many letters as possible, she mounted a devious and infinitely more effective campaign involving cunningly positioned prepositions. The game ended when Stephen, after one of several lengthy contemplations, managed ‘dovetail’. Whereupon Cassie
used the last of her letters to form ‘love’, managing to make the
e
fall on to a square offering a triple word score.

‘Got you!’ she exclaimed, sitting back in her chair and slapping her thighs in triumph.

‘Yes … yes, you have,’ he murmured. ‘You really have.’

Lying in bed afterwards, in an L-shaped room with cornflower walls and dark roof beams the width of trees, Stephen found himself imagining what it would be like to feel the softness of Cassie Harrison’s skin against his. He had spent all evening absorbing the details of her body, the soft down on her cheeks near her ears, the blue vein running down the side of her neck, the ridge of her collar-bone, just visible over her top, the slender curve of her thighs pressing through her skirt, and felt as if he knew each part of her. He had absorbed every snippet of other, more practical information too: she was single and lived alone in Pimlico, she designed interiors, liked driving fast and her favourite colour was blue. She often skipped breakfast but couldn’t do without lunch. She preferred white wine to red, loved champagne (but only in small doses because it gave her a headache). She played a little tennis, hated football, but enjoyed cricket. She loved animals, especially horses and dogs. All of these facts glistened in Stephen’s mind. Nothing was too trivial to treasure. And he wanted to know more, much more. He wanted to climb inside her head and explore, with infinite tenderness, every corner of her mind. And he wanted, with equal ardour, to be inside her body, to push into her and feel her round him, her belly against his, her arms across his back, her legs round his thighs.

Wide awake, heavily aroused, it was impossible to sleep. Having been virtually celibate for almost a year Stephen was used to relieving the discomfort of his own lust. But he knew that tonight he did not want to, that his longing went beyond the simple release of ejaculation. Instead he put the light back on and got up to look out of the window. He drew the curtains, casting a small square of yellow onto the lawn below. Alongside it he could make out the ghostly frame of the pergola and beyond that the dark hunch of the boundary hedge. The land behind was a blur of grey and black, although from a walk with John late that afternoon he knew that it comprised four fields, a wood and a small muddy lake, which swelled and subsided according to some underground water source that nobody had mapped or understood. ‘Water finds its own way out,’ John had explained, his craggy face flushed with the pride of showing off the estate. Like feelings, Stephen thought now, remembering his host’s words, and wondering how on earth he could contain what he felt for John’s daughter. His gaze returned to the patch of yellow light on the lawn and his own, lone silhouette framed in the middle of it, and he was overcome by a sense of acute isolation and fierce hope. Maybe, he thought wildly, Cassie was awake too and thinking of him. She had liked him, he was sure of that. Maybe, if he focused hard enough, he could make her get out of bed and come to her own window, which he knew was on the same floor but several rooms away. She would switch on her light, see the reflection of his on the grass below and know that she was not alone. Stephen watched, willing this impossibility into being. He watched and watched, until his body was stiff with cold and the moon had withdrawn its glories behind a damask wisp of cloud.

Cassie, oblivious to the fire burning in the biographer’s heart, slept soundly. On the pillow beside her lay her mobile phone, which was both on and charging, the wire strung between the bed and the wall socket like a lifeline.

FEBRUARY

Alicia greeted the news of her imminent discharge from hospital with mixed feelings. She had missed the little routines of life in her cottage, but in her still-fragile state she feared returning to them. For several weeks yet she would be walking with two sticks, and the thought of it made her feel panicky inside. She saw, more painfully than ever, that getting old was about adjusting to a shrinking world: all the simplest things got steadily harder until even the body’s most basic acts – movement, passing waste, breathing – could not function without assistance.

Home help was being arranged on various fronts: Beryl Harper, who cleaned, was also going to do her shopping, and a physiotherapist would visit three times a week to put her through her paces. But Alicia only liked Beryl in small doses and had hated all the physiotherapy to which she had been subjected in hospital. The doctors said exercise was good, not just to prevent stiffness but because it improved the flow of blood, which would help her fracture to heal more quickly. But movement in almost any direction hurt and Alicia was no good at dealing with physical pain. Giving birth five decades earlier to Paul, who had taken thirty-six hours to emerge, remained the most traumatic experience of her life. People said women forgot about the pain of childbirth, but Alicia never had.

In hospital again, with all the white coats and antiseptic smells, she had found herself recalling the relentlessness of the contractions, how the pain had felt like a caged beast, tearing out her innards with its claws. Trevor, pacing impatiently on his own somewhere as men did in those days, had appeared afterwards, smelling of old tweed and nicotine, like some distant, unknowable relative. ‘All right, then?’ he had said, pecking her cheek and peering at Paul, with his pink scrawny limbs and monster head. When Alicia tried to tell him what she had been through, how endless it had seemed, how afraid she still was of the tenderness where they had stitched her, his eyes had glazed with incomprehension. It was a failure of intimacy from which they had never recovered.

‘How are you, dear?’

‘Mavis … I …’ From the bubble of the past, Alicia took a few moments to register the appearance of one of her bridge companions.

‘We’ve missed you.’ Mavis lowered her sizeable frame on to the chair next to the bed and folded her arms across her handbag.