Where Earth Meets Sky (54 page)

She’s burying the last remaining member of her family, Lily thought. And the memory came to her of them all that day in Mussoorie when they picnicked under the deodars amid the sweeping mountain peaks with their waterfalls and meadows of flowers, when Isadora had been in love with horses and Charles and Susan seemed relaxed together and Cosmo . . . But of course by then the circle had already been broken. Cosmo had been sent away: banished from the family, as it had always felt to him. Her eyes filled with tears again. The poor little mite, she thought. He had never really recovered from that.

Piers held her arm as they processed out of the church after the coffin. Cosmo was to be buried on the estate, close to the track where he had so loved to drive. Lily and Piers walked behind Susan and her family and Lily knew Sam and some of the other men were walking behind her. She knew with great clarity then that she needed to be walking on Sam’s arm, that that was what was right and that nothing else ever had been or ever would be.

Once they had left the church she turned, looking for Sam with a sudden desperate need, but he had peeled off and was some distance away among the old graves, as if he needed to be alone. He stood looking across at the elms bordering the field beyond the churchyard, a slender, lonely figure in his dark overcoat, and in that glimpse, amid the desperate sorrow of the day which had somehow made everything clear, Lily knew how much she loved him. She longed to go to him, to pour out everything she felt to him.

Instead she walked obediently on Piers’s arm to the convoy of cars which would follow the black-plumed horses carrying Cosmo’s body to its resting place at the edge of the fields where he had reluctantly spent so much of his boyhood.

It was only once she was in the privacy of her room at Cranbourne that Susan allowed her grief to surface, and then it seemed to come over her with the impact of a heavy blow. Lily was with her as she wept, becoming utterly distraught, and in the end Lily was frightened by the force it. Not knowing what else to do, she went to Mrs Rainbow.

‘I’ve been with her for an hour or more,’ she said shakily, ‘and she’s more and more hysterical.’

‘I’ll send out for the doctor,’ the housekeeper said. ‘I expect ’e’ll give her a little summat to sedate her.’

Whatever it was they gave Susan worked very effectively and by nine o’clock that evening she was in a deep sleep. Waiting by her bedside, Lily felt waves of exhaustion rolling over her, but she was not sleepy. She felt as if she needed hours to unwind and to think before she could relax enough.

Once she was certain Susan would not stir for some time, she crept from the room, closing the door very softly. She had barely got any distance away when she met Piers in the passage and realized that he had been on his way to her room. Immediately she felt resentful and hemmed in. Poor Piers, how kind and thoughtful he was! But just at present she ached to be alone in order to let the great void of Cosmo’s death open within her. She did not want Piers’s sexual advances, however much they were dressed up as offering comfort.

‘Darling,’ he said gently. ‘Oh, my poor little girl, what a tragic time it has been. Come to me, my love.’

He went to take her in his arms in his kindly way but Lily, though not wanting to hurt him, found she simply could not bear it.

‘Piers.’ She stood her ground, resisting him. ‘Dear, would you mind letting me be alone for a time, please? It’s been such a terrible day.’

‘Let me come with you, darling girl. I won’t talk, I’ll just be beside you . . .’

‘No!’ she said, more adamantly than she really meant to. Trying to soften the message she said, ‘No, Piers. Do go and get some rest. It’s been a very tiring day, but I do just need some time alone tonight. Please don’t worry about me.’

‘Of course, my dear.’ She could not tell if his feelings were hurt. He was always so courteous. He kissed her and she watched him go towards his room, turning to raise a hand in affectionate parting to her.

Lily slipped down the stairs and let herself out into the enclosed garden at the side of the house. It was still warm and that lovely space between the walls seemed to distil the early autumn scents: the velvet sweetness of the last roses on the darkening air mixed with the more pungent smells from the herb garden. It was the time of night when the light is so uncertain that she began to imagine she was seeing shapes moving the other side of the garden, then realized that the dark, moving shadow she had seen was a tabby cat which lived in the wake of Mrs Rainbow, and it came up and miaowed at her.

‘I haven’t anything for you,’ she said, bending to stroke it. ‘It isn’t any use carrying on at me like that.’

She left the walled part of the garden, remembering the loveliness of the smooth expanse of lawn beyond, its scent and the sense of space and freedom it gave her. For the time being her emotion was spent. The day had focused so intensely on Cosmo, on loss and tragedy, that now it was as if her mind had closed down and she could not think, or feel, any more about it. She felt scoured out and blank, needing simply to be quiet and be cradled by the gentle greenness of the place. She bent down and unbuttoned her shoes, slipping them off to feel the cool grass between her toes.

As she walked she saw another shadow moving where the edge of the lawn met the long grass and margin of trees. This time it was far too big to be a cat and she assumed it was one of the gardeners. She prepared herself to say a polite goodnight, but in a moment she knew who it was and that he had seen her.

‘Lily?’

Sam stepped forward a few paces, then waited as she moved towards him. The memory of hearing him, here in the clearing with Susan, hardened her towards him, made her try to hold aloof from her need of him. Would this be another fight? she wondered. Another time when they just could not say what needed to be said? She stood barely more than a yard away, hardly able to see his expression.

‘Last time we were here,’ she said, hardly knowing what would come from her lips, ‘I heard you down here with Susan. You were kissing her, were you not?’

There was a silence in which the gaze of each of them met somewhere in the dark space between them.

‘Lily . . .’ His voice was low and she knew immediately that now nothing would be hidden. ‘You can’t have forgotten. Please tell me you haven’t. I don’t know why you decided not to meet me in Mussoorie. I’ve wondered and agonized about it ever since, about your silence, even after I wrote and wrote. It was so cruel, so impossible to understand . . .’

‘You wrote?’ she burst out. ‘You never wrote! I never heard a word from you. And I was . . .’ She stumbled over how to explain about Ewan McBride and the crazed strangeness of those weeks.

‘My employer wouldn’t let me out. I couldn’t get to you, I didn’t hear from you . . . I thought you had left without saying goodbye, without trying . . .’

‘But you never came! Not a word! I sent notes to the house – nothing back! What was I supposed to think? Lily . . .’ He moved closer, but she stepped back, still terribly afraid of him.

‘What about your wife? And what about Susan? What
were
you doing out here that night, Sam?’

‘Oh God, Lily . . .’ Sam made a despairing sound. ‘Susan was . . . We just . . . I don’t know. We were both lonely, taking comfort in each other for a few moments. It was no more than that. I like her – I never thought I’d say that, for a start! And I feel for her. She’s had a rough ride. But we don’t want each other, not really – you must know that! I’m not her sort – wrong sort of class altogether. When we came across each other in France, in that hospital, after the captain had been killed, it sort of ironed things out, made us more equal, and I liked her better . . . But that night here – it was just a thing of the moment . . .’

‘And your wife?’

Sam sighed. ‘I married Helen when we were far too young. Even back then I knew I’d made a dreadful mistake, that first time in Ambala, when I’d met you . . . I didn’t know, not before then, what it could be like. I got married, thinking that was the done thing, and soon there was a baby on the way. But that second time, in the hills – God help me, if you’d turned up that night, I would have left her and stayed with you. I’m not proud of that, but that was how it was – how it is. You’re the one, Lily. There’s never been anyone anything like you – nothing’s touched it. That week in Mussoorie . . .’ He paused, shaking his head.

‘God, woman, I was ill when I got home to England, just being without you, thinking I’d never see you again and never understanding why you . . . I suppose I was pining for you. I was thin as a railing . . .’ He looked up at her. ‘But you weren’t there, you didn’t want me. You’d made that clear enough. And I had to go on and do the decent thing for Helen and find other things to occupy me – to
console
me . . .’

Lily stood quite still, letting the wonder of his words sink into her.

‘What about Piers?’ he said miserably. ‘He’s married as well.’

‘They’re only married under the law,’ Lily said. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything else left.’

‘He’s a thoroughly decent man, Lily, and a wealthy one. Do you love him?’

‘No,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t.’

He waited a long interval for her to find words, until at last she spoke into the darkness.

‘Sam, I’ve been and I’ve done a lot of things I’m ashamed of. I’ve been what people – what men, especially – have wanted me to be. You’ve probably heard things about me which must disgust you. I’ve been Piers’s mistress – for a living, yes, for money when you come down to it, almost like a woman of the streets only more respectable, of course – because I couldn’t seem to find any other way to be. I forced myself not to remember you and how it was in Ambala and in Mussoorie because I didn’t think I could ever have that again, not with anyone. It frightens me even saying anything now . . . And after you’d gone . . . Oh, Sam . . .’

As the memories came she started to weep, but he did not dare move forward to touch her yet.

‘You left me your child . . . When you left I was . . . I was . . .’ The sobs interrupted. ‘I was expecting and I didn’t know what to do. I knew you didn’t want me. I went to the nuns on the mountain . . .’

She told him then, about the laundry and the Bethel Home and about walking out that winter morning and shutting away any thoughts of their baby, of closing her heart down and training it to be a cool, calculating place where there were exchanges and bartering of services but no love. As she talked she realized gradually that he was weeping as well.

‘Our child,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘Was it a boy or a girl?’

‘A little girl,’ Lily told him. ‘I called her Victoria.’

The tears came then, a crying like none she had ever managed for the grief of Mussoorie, for Victoria, or now for Cosmo, the pain of it all tearing at her inside until she was on her knees, felled by it. Moments later she realized that Sam had come to kneel beside her, holding her head close to his warm chest, saying soft, loving words of comfort while he cried with her.

When she was a little calmer they stood up and held each other close, not speaking for a long time, as the darkness thickened and a night bird shrieked somewhere in the distance. And his body felt so familiar, so lovely against her and she breathed in the smell of him. Their lips found each other’s and she remembered the feel of his kisses and the tears ran down her cheeks again at the joy of the memory.

‘God,’ Sam said, awed, ‘I’ve found you again. Lily – my Lily.’ He looked down into her eyes. ‘I thought life was going to be the same now until I died, or Helen did. That there’d be nothing, no love. Nothing real that I could call mine.’

‘And I thought I’d always look after other people’s children, their houses and marriages – that I’d never have my own.’ She gazed seriously at him. ‘I love you, Sam and I always loved you and I wanted to come to you that afternoon, I honestly did, and I couldn’t . . . I’ll explain to you properly what happened, but I want to know that you believe me.’

‘I do,’ he said seriously. ‘And I always wanted to. I didn’t want to doubt you but I didn’t know what else to think. Oh, Lily – there’s no one like you, my dearest love. No one in this world.’

They stayed in the garden a long time, walking arm in arm round the margin of the lawn, Lily carrying her shoes in one hand, beginning to tell each other what had happened in these years of separation and all that they had felt and done. Sam told her about Joe, the words pouring out.

‘We managed to rub along until he happened to us, Helen and me and the girls. I had my work, of course, kept busy and tried to keep on the straight and narrow. And then Joe came . . . when he died, well, that was truly the end of it. Helen and I just couldn’t seem to get on after that, not even on the surface, the way we’d managed before . . .’ He gave a deep sigh. ‘You keep telling yourself things will be all right. They have to be because you’re married, children, responsibility, and that’s that. And I do feel responsible – I’ll see she’s all right. But, oh God, Lily . . .’

He stopped to hold her, kiss her again and she closed her eyes, her head pressed to his chest. She loved this man, how she loved him! It was such a relief, a miracle to know she had not imagined it, all those years ago, that she could love like this and be loved in return.

The moon was high in the sky when they crept up to Lily’s room, arms round each other, the stair carpet feeling dry and rough under her feet after the night grass. They knew without saying anything that they could not be separated tonight, or ever again, and closed the door of her room behind them with a sigh of relief and a feeling of complete rightness. They had found each other again.