The Other Half of My Heart (16 page)

‘Tina Randolph! You haven't changed a bit!'

‘Aurora.' Bettina can't manage to get the exclamation mark on the end, although she can't imagine that Aurora is any more surprised than she is. They stand back and look at each other.

Aurora is dressed with the same careless expense as ever. She wears navy linen trousers, a white linen shirt and a long silk scarf with what might be a horse print on it. She's heavier but not overweight, and looks better for it, her angles softening. Her jewellery is gold, heavier too than the delicate chains and bangles she used to wear. Sunglasses pull her hair, which is longer now, back out of her face on to the top of her head. Her skin is smooth, smoother than Bettina's, who doesn't think of herself as vain but nevertheless despairs at the sight of her face in the mirror in the mornings.

Bettina doesn't know what to think. One of the words she only ever heard her father use comes back to her: ‘poleaxed', as in, your mother was absolutely poleaxed when she found out that Roddy Flood had given you a horse.

The thing she has dreaded for all these years is happening, right this minute, and she's in it. She doesn't know what to do, even though she's been braced for someone who knew her as Tina Randolph to crash through the undergrowth and into the quiet shelter of Bettina's life now.

So, here's the moment. Bettina's brain is an empty barn, nothing in it but cold air and waiting. Aurora hasn't noticed.

‘It's so good to see you!'

‘Yes,' Bettina gets out.

‘My ma-in-law told me about meeting you, and your little horse bronze, and of course that put me in mind of the Floods, but she said “Bettina” and I didn't make the connection. We never called you Bettina, did we? Roddy didn't, I'm sure.'

‘Your mother-in-law?' Bettina's brain has chosen those words to repeat, but she knows it could have been any of them. Little horse bronze? In mind of the Floods? Never called me Bettina?

‘Verity Ross. She works for the
Throckton Warbler.
She's been there thirty years and we can't get her to stop,' Aurora explains, then adds, ‘I'm married to her Patrick. Didn't you know? I thought everyone knew.' She looks perplexed. Bettina, who knows she ought to be annoyed by such assumptions, wants to laugh. Or perhaps cry, if she were more of a crier. She remembers how Aurora can draw the world to her and in doing so make the ground under everyone else's feet unsteady.

‘I was in France for a while,' Bettina says. ‘I didn't really keep up with things.' She could add: just the mention of your name, Roddy's name, was enough to make me sick.

‘Ah. Well,' Aurora says, with the kindly expression of one explaining the homework to someone who's missed a lesson, ‘I met him when I bought my little cottage. After the Olympics, you know, when I decided it was time to stop. And I settled a little way away from Missingham, because then I knew I could stable Medusa with the Floods, and I'd always loved that part of the world, and I knew that my folks would find a way of keeping me at it, with the horses, if I stuck around their place. So, I bought the cottage, and I wanted the garden done but I didn't really have the time, and it all takes so long, not just the digging and whatnot but waiting for the wretched stuff to grow, and so I picked a landscape gardener out of the Yellow Pages and it was Patrick!'

She pauses to look at Bettina, who arranges her face into something approximating delight at the way the universe had delivered Aurora's husband to her.

‘And we were married within a year, and then we had our children – Patrick said that we should stop at four, but then along came Tilly,' she makes a ‘what can you do' face, as though her endless fecundity, another whole human being brought to life, is just one of those things, ‘and so we stopped at five, and here we are.'

‘Well,' says Bettina, ‘good.' She tries to think of more to say. Her brain won't supply anything. Her tongue won't move in her mouth. Her feet have grown weights.

‘It's a bit of a trek for us to get over here, a good couple of hours, but we like to support Verity,' Aurora says, then, as though it's a continuation of the same thought, ‘Who was that you were with?'

‘Ah, that's Rufus,' Bettina says, then in desperation to keep the conversation away from her own life, now or then, adds, as though continuing the story of the years since she saw Aurora last, ‘My father died a few years ago, and I came back. My mother has dementia. She's in a nursing home.' It's a small truth, offered up as a way of avoiding other, bigger ones.

‘Ohhhh,' Aurora says, ‘how awful for you. My folks aren't slowing down any. Still, they have eleven grandchildren to keep them busy!'

‘Well,' Bettina says, ‘that's a lot.' She has, occasionally, wondered whether her own bolted-together pelvis could really have carried a child if she had ever tried to have one – her surgeon had reassured her that it would – but by and large children are something that belong in other people's lives.

And then Rufus's hand is on her back, making her jump. She finds the words to deflect the conversation before she can be drawn into introductions, explanations, ‘And these are your ponies? You're still involved?'

‘Yes, well,' Aurora says, ‘they are two of ours, but we only keep them as a hobby, really, for the sprogs to ride. Horses to hormones to horticulture, that's me. Now we have some garden centres. Patrick's thing, really, but you know, stand by your man and all that.'

Her smile takes in Rufus now, and Daisy, who looks curiously at Aurora, then at Bettina, as though she can feel that there's something new in the air. Cautiously, Bettina puts out her arms; if she is holding Daisy and then she walks away, Rufus will have to follow. Daisy responds by stretching hers out, and now Bettina is holding Daisy against her hip, raising her free arm to shield her eyes from the sun so she can see Aurora properly.

‘Well, it's lovely to see you, but we've promised this little one a toffee apple. Then maybe an ice cream.'

Daisy, in a move that guarantees her a batch of mini-croissants just the right size to fit in her hand every time Bettina makes them, claps and nods and chants: ice cream! ice cream!

‘Isn't it just? Let's keep in touch.'

‘It's amazing to bump into you, Aurora!' Bettina says, finding an exclamation mark now that the end of this encounter is in sight, and it's starting to feel like an unfortunate incident rather than a disaster. It's a broken rein rather than a broken clavicle.

And then, in another cloud of perfume, it's over. Aurora turns away. Bettina breathes, breathes, makes herself breathe. Daisy stretches her arms out to Rufus again. ‘You can walk, Daisy,' Rufus says. ‘You know your mummy will tell me off if I carry you everywhere.'

‘I need to check in on Angie,' Bettina says. ‘I'll meet you at the ice-cream van.' She watches them go; turns the other way to check that Aurora has gone. And is horrified to see her coming back.

Aurora's face has a quieter look now. She might even have a tear in her eye. ‘I don't want to rake over the past …' she says.

‘No,' Bettina replies. It's a hope, a plea, that Aurora will stop talking. But Aurora doesn't stop talking.

‘And I'm not going to hold you up,' she says, ‘but I just wanted to say that I've often thought about you – well, about the whole thing, really. We were all so sad about – what happened. Your handsome brother. And Roddy, of course. Poor Roddy.'

‘Yes,' Bettina says. The sun is out again. She raises a hand to protect her eyes. She never thinks to take sunglasses anywhere. She imagines that Aurora sleeps in hers. Maybe that's it, she thinks, and gets ready to walk away. But then Aurora puts her hand on her arm. Bettina turns towards her. She's moved away from the sharpness of the sun and there's nothing to protect her from the seriousness, the genuineness, shining out at her from Aurora's eyes.

‘I just want to say. All of that silly business with me teasing Roddy all the time. We were all silly then, weren't we? We didn't really know how lucky we were.'

‘I suppose not.' Bettina is beyond uncomfortable now: even Aurora looks as though she doesn't quite know what to say, or how to say it. But she ploughs on.

‘You probably don't remember what I was like,' Aurora says, ‘but I was an awful flirt, really. Roddy never took the blindest bit of notice, of course.' She laughs, as though she's about to share a slightly amusing memory, which Bettina, afterwards, supposes that it is, to her: ‘I remember one morning at my parents' place. I knocked at his bedroom door in nothing but my knickers. Roddy looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I can't wait to see Tina”.'

‘Oh.' Aurora releases Bettina's arm, and nudges her sunglasses down to cover her eyes. Bettina closes her eyes: tries to find a place of balance, of calm.

‘I suppose I was jealous of you,' Aurora shrugs, ‘because I wasn't used to taking no for an answer. But he was never interested in me, you know.'

‘I know,' Bettina says. And she thinks of how she wishes that she had.

 

THERE'S NOTHING QUITE
like being away from home, Roddy thinks, to make you want to be back there. He likes Missingham, his parents and their set-up. He always has. That's not to say he won't do things differently, when it's his turn. But he has no doubt as to which corner of the world fits all of his corners.

Still, Roddy has learned a lot with the Fieldens. They run a tight, commercial operation – not that the Floods are exactly sentimental – and they treat their horses, their competitors and their clients all with the same businesslike affability. Edward and Arabella were both products of the boarding school system that Roddy managed to avoid, by virtue of there being a good private school close enough to Missingham for him to attend as a day boy. Edward and Arabella, though, seem to have enjoyed boarding school so much that their home is run along similar lines. They are fond of timetables and order, and impervious to noise.

The dining table seats twelve and is usually full to capacity, with two parents and four daughters, at least two of whom would have a boyfriend in tow, and the others likely to have at least one giggling friend, any visitors to the yard, plus Roddy. (It had taken a while for Roddy to understand that he was the cause of much of the giggling: in fact, Arabella calling ‘will you girls please stop talking about poor Roddy like that, he does have ears, you know' had made it all much worse for him, although the girls had only giggled more.) If the table looks as though it will run out of elbow room, Arabella will call the names or catch the eyes of her younger daughters and, with a jerk of her head, dismiss them, chattering and laughing, to eat in the living room, where they are allowed to sprawl and watch television as they eat.

‘I bet it's not often that you can't get a word in edgeways!' Aurora says one morning as they walk across from the house to the stables. Foxglove and Bob will already have been groomed and tacked up – something Roddy can't get used to. Riding without the preparation feels like cheating.

‘True,' he says.

‘I bet you can't wait to get back.'

‘No, not at all.' Roddy hates the idea that he might be showing his occasional annoyance, his tiredness, his wish for Tina's quiet hands working next to his. ‘It's just different.'

‘You must miss Tina, though.'

‘Yes,' he says firmly. Because all the rules seem to be different here – especially the ones about manners and personal space – it has taken Roddy a while to get wise to Aurora's attempts at – well, seduction is too sophisticated a word for it, really. He often finds Aurora wandering around the kitchen in the morning in only knickers and a T-shirt that barely covers her midriff. She knocks on his door when wearing nothing but a towel, looking to borrow a magazine, or something else that she could easily ask for when fully dressed. And as if Aurora's advances weren't enough to contend with, there's Anastasia, Aurora's next sister down. (He thinks she's next anyway; they all begin with A, all have dark hair and green eyes, all smell of peach soap and heavy perfume and illicit cigarettes, so although he's sorted out the names, he isn't completely clear on ages.) It had begun with friendly questions about Flood Farm, but ended with a hand on his thigh and an inept reference to loneliness. There had been a time when Roddy would have taken up such offers – although only from one of the sisters, he wasn't an idiot. Or rather, there had been a time when the memory of a girl he liked a hundred and fifty miles away would have faded with the distance, and left him free when he arrived at his new destination. Roddy has never cheated on a girl, never would; instead, he's remained uncommitted, unpromised, and no one has ever been surprised when he's moved on.

The frustrating thing is that now he can't manage to have a decent conversation with Tina. The distance has confirmed the way he feels about her, even though she seems to have absolutely no idea of how special she is – to him, and in her own right, someone who is self-possessed and steady, who knows how to work and who is thoughtful and honest and direct. He has a mobile phone but the Fieldens' place is too far away from anywhere to get reception. Tina doesn't have a mobile – she says she has more important things to spend her money on, and she sees everyone she needs to talk to most days – and the phone at her house is in the corner of the living room, so there's no privacy for her. He calls home to Flood Farm on a Friday night, when he knows that she will be there, and she carries the phone to sit on the stairs and talk to him, and he sits on the stairs at the Fielden place, but all they can manage to discuss is their horses. Tina's tongue is loosened by the mention of Snowdrop, and so Roddy questions her about him, asks about progress with Perry, and laughs at things that aren't really very funny, just for the relief of talking to her.