Swimming Pool Sunday (32 page)

As he neared the vestry, he heard the sound of animated voices. He paused outside the door.

‘I’ve no idea where she gets it from,’ a woman’s voice was saying. ‘Not me, certainly.’ She laughed gaily.

‘Well, it was really quite a staggering performance,’ said a man’s voice. ‘I bet the Academy can’t wait to get its hands on you.’

‘Well, I don’t really know about that.’ Daisy’s gentle voice floated hesitantly through the door of the vestry, and Alexis felt a gnawing yearning pain in his chest. That was his Daisy.

He put his eye to the crack of the vestry door. In front of him, standing in an admiring circle round Daisy, were her parents, the conductor, the lady who had given her flowers, and another woman whom Alexis didn’t recognize. Over in the corner, leafing abstractly through an old copy of
Church Times
, was Daisy’s brother.

‘Anyway,’ Daisy’s mother was saying, ‘unfortunately we have to go back to London tonight.’ Daisy looked up.

‘I thought we were all going out to supper?’ she said. ‘With Alexis.’ She frowned. ‘I must find Alexis.’

‘Yes,’ said her father, ‘where is this famous Alexis? We’d like to meet him.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Daisy. ‘I expect he’s waiting somewhere.’ The conductor grinned.

‘Boyfriend?’ he asked in perky tones.

‘Sort of,’ said Daisy shyly.

‘You should have told us,’ said the conductor, winking at her. ‘We would have got him to present the flowers to you, wouldn’t we, Maureen?’

‘Oh, yes,’ exclaimed the lady in the black dress. ‘That would have been really romantic! To have a handsome young man, instead of an old crone like me!’

‘Nonsense!’ said the conductor gallantly. ‘You did the job beautifully.’

Alexis moved away from the vestry door, leaned weakly back against the stone wall and closed his eyes. The gnawing pain in his chest grew stronger. What he wanted to do was rush into the vestry, take Daisy in his arms, cover her with kisses, and ignoring everyone else, tell her how proud he was of her, how beautiful she was and how much he loved her. But when he imagined pushing the vestry door open and seeing all those faces turning enquiringly towards him, a paralysing dread came upon him. He took a deep breath and stared up into the lofty roof of the abbey, willing himself courage, trying to summon up some confidence.

And then, suddenly, he heard Daisy’s voice, raised in distress.

‘But you can’t go yet,’ she was saying. ‘You haven’t met Alexis.’

‘Well, darling, that’s hardly our fault, is it? If he’s gone home …’ Daisy’s mother’s voice was crisp and efficient, and made Alexis wince just to hear it.

‘He hasn’t! He wouldn’t just go home like that.’

‘Well, then, where is he?’

‘I don’t know where he is.’

Daisy sounded desolate, and Alexis had a sudden vision of her standing, like a forgotten child, with a drooping lip and her flowers dragging sadly on the floor. He simply couldn’t bear it. With a sudden burst
of passion, he strode forward and pushed open the vestry door.

‘Hello,’ he said in a slightly trembling voice. ‘I’m sorry I took so long, my darling.’ He smiled tenderly at Daisy, then held out his hand to her mother. ‘How do you do,’ he said, forcing himself to meet her gaze. ‘You may have heard about me. I’m Alexis Faraday.’

Louise and Barnaby were sitting in the garden of Larch Tree Cottage. Louise had poured out two glasses of wine and Barnaby had unfolded a couple of garden chairs. He now sat on one of them, cradling his drink in his huge hand, leaning forward and frowning. Louise clenched her own glass and said nothing. They had walked back here from Sylvia’s party almost in silence, and all the while there had grown inside her a strange, almost heady tension.

Now the tension was even stronger. She didn’t dare to speak; inside her was an unarticulated obscure conviction that this moment was an important one; that to speak might ruin it – and her chances – for ever. Her chances of what? She didn’t know. Neither did she know why this moment should be so important, nor why her heart started beating painfully every time Barnaby raised his head as though to speak. She felt as though she didn’t know anything any more.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Barnaby abruptly, in a gruff earnest voice.

Louise jumped and stared down at her drink. Please, she found herself thinking.
Please
. And suddenly she realized what was wrong with her. I know what I want him to say, she thought, trying to keep her breathing steady. And I’m terrified that he won’t say it, and if he doesn’t say it, then neither can I.

‘About the case,’ continued Barnaby. ‘You’ll probably think I’m crazy,’ he added. Louise’s heart gave another little leap, and she gazed at him, holding her breath, half
willing him to continue, half dreading what his words might be.

‘But you know,’ he said, ‘sometimes I start to have my doubts.’ He paused. Louise exhaled slowly. ‘Serious doubts,’ he added, gazing at her intently, trying to judge her reaction. Louise stared back at him, not daring to move a muscle of her face, not daring to risk throwing him off course before he’d even begun. ‘I know I’ve always said it’ll be worth it in the end,’ he said in a defensive apologetic voice. ‘But now … I’m not sure.’ He frowned deeply. ‘Hugh’s heart attack really put things into perspective for me.’

‘Wh-what are you saying, exactly?’ said Louise. Her voice was trembling, and she took a deep shuddering breath. Barnaby leaned back in his chair.

‘Last night’, he said slowly, ‘I was getting really depressed. I sat there, thinking about Hugh, who’s in hospital, and Katie, who’s out of hospital and doing fine, and the case, and all that money, and everything seemed all wrong, but there didn’t seem to be any way out. I was going round and round in circles and feeling more and more miserable.’ He paused and took a slug of wine. ‘And then’, he said, ‘it suddenly occurred to me. We’re
choosing
to go to court, we don’t have to. No-one’s forcing us. And …’He paused and looked uncertainly at Louise.

‘What?’ prompted Louise, falteringly.

‘And, if we wanted to, we could …’ He stopped, then continued in a rush. ‘We could just call the whole thing off.’

There was a long shocked silence. Louise stared at Barnaby. She could feel her face turning pink and her breaths coming in short sharp gasps.

‘I know,’ exclaimed Barnaby, ‘I’m crazy. You don’t have to agree with me.’

‘But I do!’ cried Louise suddenly, her voice ringing through the garden. ‘I do agree with you!’

To her astonishment a tear began to roll down her cheeks, and she gave a sudden involuntary sob. Barnaby stared at her in alarm.

‘I’m the same as you! I don’t want to go to court any more!’ she wailed. ‘I just want to get back to normal life. I just can’t stand it hanging over us all the time …’ She tailed off and broke down into shuddering sobs.

‘Lou!’ said Barnaby. He sounded shaken. ‘Lou, are you all right?’

‘Don’t worry,’ she spluttered, ‘I’m fine. It’s just …’ She looked up at him through teary blue eyes. ‘It’s just … I don’t know … the relief …’ And she broke down again.

For a few minutes she sat with her head buried in her hands, rocking slightly in her chair, weeping uncontrollably. She was oblivious of anything except the hot redness in front of her eyes and her panting breaths and the wetness which coursed through her fingers. But gradually, as her sobs began to die down, she began to feel a gentle lifting in her body. The strains and tensions which seemed to have been building up inside her for months, very slowly started to ebb away. She felt her shoulders begin to loosen and her neck begin to relax and her taut constrained brow gently begin to expand. And inside her mind she began to be aware of a gradual lightening, an easing, a slipping away of the shadowy, looming, permanent edifice that had been part of her every thought and dream since the whole thing had started.

‘It was just there all the time!’ she suddenly wailed. ‘It spoiled everything. All we could think about was the case! Oh God, Barnaby! What were we doing? We were mad!’

Barnaby’s head jerked up.

‘Do you mean …’ he said hesitantly, studying Louise’s wet, red, tear-streaked face. ‘Do you mean you definitely want to call it off? I mean … I mean, a minute
ago you were all in favour of it. You can’t have changed your mind that quickly.’

Louise took a couple of slow shuddering breaths and rubbed her cheeks. Then she looked up at Barnaby.

‘I haven’t changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I’ve just opened it up and looked at what’s really inside.’ She paused. ‘If you hadn’t said anything, then, yes, I would have gone along with the case, but only because I didn’t see any other option. I felt trapped. I just sort of assumed we had to go to court, whether we wanted to or not.’ She gave a shaky laugh. ‘As though it wasn’t up to us all along. And now …’ She pushed her hair off her wet face. ‘Now I feel as if we were mad to keep going with the idea for so long.’

‘But what about …’ Barnaby shrugged helplessly. ‘Oh, I don’t know … the money?’

‘The money,’ said Louise flatly. ‘No amount of money would make me go into a witness box and tell the world that Katie’s a walking disaster.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what they said, those lawyers. They said’, Louise’s voice trembled, ‘she wasn’t injured enough. They said we’d have to play up the personality changes; make her sound like a monster; unbearable to live with.’

‘Bastards!’ Barnaby stared at Louise.

‘Either that or forget about half a million,’ said Louise. She looked down. ‘And anyway,’ she added softly, ‘what do we really want with half a million pounds of Hughs’ and Ursula’s money?’

There was a long pause.

‘We don’t,’ said Barnaby.

‘No,’ said Louise, ‘we don’t. We don’t want any of it. I can’t even bear to think about it any more. I suddenly feel …’ She ran her fingers shakily through her hair. ‘I feel liberated. As though I’ve got rid of a disease that was poisoning me and making me sick.’

‘That’s a bit how I feel, too,’ said Barnaby.

Louise smiled tremulously at him. For a few moments they looked at each other silently in the still garden air. Then Barnaby took a deep breath and said, ‘What about Cassian?’

For a moment Louise stared at him, as though she didn’t know who he was talking about.

‘Cassian,’ she echoed weakly. ‘Oh, God. I don’t know.’ She took a sip of wine and winced. ‘He’ll be furious; he’ll be absolutely furious.’ Suddenly she gave a strange, almost hysterical little giggle. ‘He’ll go completely mad,’ she said and giggled again. ‘He’ll probably explode.’

Barnaby stared at her. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

‘I don’t know how I’ll tell him,’ said Louise. Barnaby licked his lips nervously.

‘Do you think …’ he began. ‘Do you think he’ll try and make you change your mind?’

‘Never,’ said Louise determinedly. ‘Let him try.’ She sighed and sipped at her wine. ‘The trouble with Cassian’, she said in an almost conversational tone, ‘is that he takes everything so bloody seriously. I don’t think he even knows what a sense of humour is.’

Barnaby stared at Louise, unable to reply.

‘All he thinks about’, continued Louise, ‘is his career, and his political prospects, and winning this stupid case. He wants to move to London, you know.’ She looked up at Barnaby. ‘He wants us to move there with him; the girls, too.’

Barnaby felt a jolting pang in his chest.

‘To London?’ he said weakly.

‘Yes,’ said Louise airily. ‘That’s what he says.’

‘And …’ Barnaby swallowed. ‘Are you going to go?’

Louise put her drink down and looked straight at him.

‘Barnaby,’ she said gently, ‘do you really think there’s any future for me and Cassian now?’

Barnaby stared back at her for a moment, then he
looked down and shrugged. He felt unhappily confused. Louise drew breath to speak again, but she was interrupted by the sound of the telephone ringing.

‘Oh, God,’ said Louise. ‘That might be about the girls. Hang on a minute.’

She hurried into the house and Barnaby leaned back heavily in his chair, trying to make some sense of this conversation; trying not to let himself draw the wrong conclusion; trying not to allow the insidious, corrupting, unstoppable emotion of hope to take root in his chest.

As Louise came back again he was frowning hard, and he looked up to speak. But she spoke first.

‘It was …’ Her voice was trembling slightly, and Barnaby felt a sudden thumping panic. He stared anxiously at her. Had something happened to the girls? To Katie?

‘It was Cassian,’ said Louise. ‘His meeting was cancelled.’

The fearful beating in Barnaby’s chest began to subside and he gave a small sigh of relief. Louise licked her dry lips.

‘I told him we were calling off the case,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be easier that way. I thought he was miles away.’ She gave a strange giggle. ‘But he was calling from his car. He’s going to be here in about five minutes.’

Daisy and Alexis stood at the corner of the square of grass in front of Linningford Abbey and waved. On the other side of the Crescent a gleaming red BMW signalled, then smoothly turned and disappeared through the narrow stone gateway. Daisy dropped her arm and sighed.

‘I’m so glad you’ve met my parents,’ she said happily. ‘I think they really liked you.’

Alexis looked down at her innocent face and recalled,
in spite of himself, the expressions of suspicion and incredulity which had greeted him in the vestry. The mistrustful probing questions from Daisy’s mother; the alarmed frown on her father’s forehead; the looks of surprise from the others. All covered in a civilized veneer of friendly politeness.

The only one who had completely failed to conceal his hilarious astonishment had been Daisy’s brother. He had stared agog at Alexis, then at Daisy, then back at Alexis. Then he’d sidled up to Daisy and said in a penetrating whisper, ‘This your fella, then?’ Daisy had blushed and smiled. ‘Isn’t he a bit past it?’ continued her brother cheerfully, and Daisy had blushed even harder, and her mother had hastily asked Alexis, in a loud distracting voice, a question about his work.

Now Alexis smiled at Daisy and said, ‘I hope they did. They certainly seemed very nice people.’