A Summer in the Country (20 page)

The house looked just the same and yet she might have been seeing it for the first time, so unfamiliar was it. No, not unfamiliar, that wasn't quite accurate. It was, rather, something glimpsed in a dream—or so long ago that it aroused curiosity rather than any deeper emotion.

Louise thought: It's unreal. Smugglers Way is real. Foxhole is real. But this place no longer seems to have any importance for me.

She was confused: disorientated. On the journey back to London she'd imagined several reactions but not one of curiosity. Three years of her life had been spent here yet the events of the last six weeks had cut down like a bright sword, dividing her from her previous existence; but not from all of it. Just as she had cut herself off from her life with Rory and Hermione, denying its existence, so now it was her time with Martin which seemed to have happened to someone else. It was a different Louise who had stood here in the kitchen, climbed the stairs, worked in the garden. She stared around at objects which had once formed the backdrop of her life; a well-known tapestry of belongings which set the scene for her life with Martin. Where was the Louise who had lived among them? Who was she?

The front door opened and closed with a bang. She stood quite still, waiting. His footsteps, muffled by the rug, thudded quickly along the hall and he came briskly into the kitchen, his arms full of carrier bags, his face creased in a faint frown of abstraction. The change of expression was ludicrous. He almost jumped away from her with a gasp of shock.

“Sorry,” she said quickly, automatically. “I'm a bit early. Of course, you wouldn't have recognised the car.”

“I thought you were coming by train.” It was an accusation. “You said you'd telephone from the station.”

“Yes, I did.” How strange to be here with him again. “But I decided to drive, you see. Does it matter?”

Watching him, she could almost read his thoughts. He'd been expecting her to arrive by taxi, giving him time to prepare himself, and he was wondering if she'd seen anything of an incriminating nature.

“You'd forgotten that I have a key. Well, I
do
live here.”

Not any more, sweetie. He might have spoken the words aloud, so clearly were they written in his narrowed, unwelcoming eyes. He turned from her, dumping the bags on the table, giving himself time.

“How brown, you are,” she said lightly. “You're looking tremendously well.”

He sighed. “OK. Let's not do the subtle hinting bit, shall we? No, I didn't pick up this tan on the golf courses of Great Britain. But you knew that, didn't you?”

“Not at first,” she said slowly. “I suspected things but it wasn't until I met the man on the train …” And I saw the woman with the child, she thought, her heart quickening.

“What man?” He was staring at her impatiently. “What are you talking about?”

“It doesn't matter.” Suddenly she didn't want to be here. Slowly, painfully, she'd regained her grasp on reality and she didn't dare let loose her hold. “Honestly, Martin, it really doesn't matter.”

“Oh, please.” He closed his eyes. “Don't talk yourself into being a martyr.”

“I'm not. At least, I don't think I am. It's just that things have changed. I know I haven't been able to explain to you yet—”

“I know, I know. I should have come down to Devon again but to tell you the truth, sweetie, it wasn't exactly my scene. The erring bastard giving his faithful beloved a nervous breakdown and a built-in audience watching the reconciliation scene.”

“Frummie's not a bit like that.” Louise stopped abruptly. “Look, Martin, I just want to tell you how I feel.”

“Oh, I'm sure. Well, let me do it for you. I shouldn't have slipped off to the Med. I shouldn't have been touchy on the telephone; I shouldn't have been so lazy about coming down to Devon to visit you more often—”

“You shouldn't have been having an affair with Carol in the first place.”

His eyes snapped wide open with shock. “You
did
know, then?'

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Did you really imagine I was taken in by your slagging her off all the time?”

“But you said you only suspected.”

“So I did.” She shrugged. “I imagined you had better taste.”

He flushed a dark, patchy red and she looked away from him, shocked by the surge of fierce pleasure she felt at this cheap hit.

“She's young,” he said, wanting to hurt; to retaliate. “Twenty-three.”

She looked at him compassionately. ‘Well, that's great, then,” she said. “If that's what you want, Martin—”

“Don't be so bloody patronising,” he shouted. “I picked you up from nothing. Just remember that. You didn't know what day of the week it was. Your life had collapsed and you were nothing.
Nothing!
All you had were your clothes. Even your mother had given up on you.”

'That's absolutely true,” she answered. “You were very good to me, Martin. You looked after me.”

'Too right, sweetie. And a lot of looking after it was, in the early days, I can tell you.”

“Martin, let's not do this. I'm grateful for all that you've done for me but I want to say that it's finished. No, wait. Not because of Carol or anything you've done or haven't done but because I've been able to come to terms with what went before. You protected me from all that but now I need to face it and I can't do that here or with you.”

He stared at her, puzzled, suspicious. “So what brought this on?”

Louise, hesitated. No point is telling him that his infidelity had begun the process: he wouldn't understand and he would see it as an accusation. After all, it wasn't important any more.

“I think it was simply time,” she said slowly. “The shock of Hermione's death numbed me. I couldn't face it. Maybe I've been protected from it until I could bear it. I don't know. The point is that it's happened and things are different.”

“You mean you don't care about me any more?”

He'd seen his advantage and seized it quickly. Now it could be all her fault.

“I'm still very fond of you,” she said levelly. “Do you want me back?”

His face was a study of conflicting emotions: irritation, anxiety, caution. She laughed suddenly.

“Can't we be honest? I want to go and you want to be free of me. Does there have to be blame? Condemnation? I don't know what I shall do but I think I have to be alone.”

“You're not staying at that setup in Devon?”

“I can't stay with Frummie indefinitely,” she said. “I'm thinking of taking a winter let. I don't like to look too far ahead at the moment.”

His expression softened, responding as always to need. “Will you be OK? Look, you don't have to worry financially just yet. You'll need a car, for a start. It's expensive to hire long term. I'm sure we can sort something out between us.”

“That's very good of you, Martin,” she said sincerely. “I might need a bit of a loan to start me off but I shall find a job as soon as I can.”

“Are you fit enough to work?”

She shrugged. “Depends what the work is. But I shan't be a burden on you for any longer than is necessary.”

“Oh, honestly, sweetie. As if that matters. I don't want you to be silly about this.”

'Thanks.” She smiled at him. “If we can be friends that's what really matters. I'm not out of the wood yet.”

Quite suddenly the old current of ease and familiarity was flowing between them again. He came swiftly across to hug her. “Friends,” he said warmly. “Now tell me how you really are.”

“Y
OU'RE LOOKING
better,” he told her later.

He'd made tea for her, properly, in the blue flowered teapot. Martin hated mess and was not a natural kitchen dweller. They sat in the sitting room, with the French doors open to the small, pretty garden, amongst the elegant comfort of Rose and Hubble choir covers and curtains, rosewood furniture and his precious pieces of Meissen. His mother had left him some property, along with a comfortable amount of money, and he would wait months for the right painting or figurine or bureau with which to complete his setting. He was fastidious, careful in his choice, and yet his generous warmth lent life to the otherwise sterile beauty of his rooms.

Louise, smiling at him, was remembering the married quarters at Smugglers Way: the flat-roofed blocks, rendered with grey, pebble-dash concrete, the uniformity and lack of imagination of the decoration and furnishings. She had a mental picture, suddenly, of the Fablon tacked to the side of the bath and was pierced with an anguished longing.

“What is it?” He was refilling her cup, watching her with his old, familiar tenderness.

“Oh, Martin.” She shivered a litde, responding almost unconsciously to his sympathy. “It's so hard, this going back.”

“My poor girl.” He sat beside her, putting an arm about her, rocking her slightly.

She leaned into him, comforted by his warmth and strength. At this moment it seemed that it might be easy to let it all go again, to turn blindly into this protection; to cocoon herself from the painful, prising fingers of memory. He too might be drawn back to her, his love roused again by her new dilemma. Sitting there together, she knew that they were both aware of the faint
frissons
of passion which speeded her breathing and tightened his embrace. She longed, suddenly, for the simple, uncomplicated release of tension which love-making would bring: the insistent, thought-denying excitement and the peaceful aftermath of spent emotion. Yet, even as she imagined it, she knew that it was no longer an option. This moment of tenderness between them was only possible because each of them had tacitly withdrawn: they were both emotionally free and so could now meet in this uncomplicated atmosphere of affection. They could not go back and any future relationship they might forge must remain uncomplicated by physical attraction.

She leaned away so as to be able to look up at him. “It must have been very difficult for you, Martin, at the beginning. Yet you handled it all so well. How did you know what to do for me? No one else did. Not even my own mother.”

He was distracted from his growing sexual need by the question, releasing her, moving away slightly as he considered it.

“The one thing that was clear to me,” he said, “was that you needed time. The shock was cataclysmic. People with horrific physical injuries are given plenty of time for their bodies to recover and it seemed that you needed the time for your emotional and spiritual side to heal. I think that it was probably wrong of me to encourage you to ignore it so completely but then I wasn't certain what was happening inside your head, you see. I never quite knew whether you were coming to terms with it in your own way but I felt that you needed to be given the chance to be quiet.”

“Dear Martin. I
did
need space. I couldn't …couldn't bear to think of it. Of Hermione. I was mad, Martin, mad with grief and guilt and… I couldn't bear the emptiness. The reason for living had gone and the world was … just nothing. If Rory had been there … No.” She shook her head. “I don't mean that. Not that it was his fault. I've done that bit too: blaming him for not being there. I mean that if he had been there, so that we'd been dealing with it together, then it might not have felt so empty and I might have thought I could go on living for him. But he wasn't there. For three weeks I was all alone with this terrible aching emptiness and when he got back it was too late. I was set in despair. Rock hard. Impermeable. He couldn't get through to me. My mother could see that I was simply destroying everything around me and she was terribly angry. I can see why she was so desperate but she and I never could communicate properly.”

“She was … not particularly wise or tactful.”

Louise gave a short laugh. “No. Tact was never her strong suit but she was upset too, so I suppose we mustn't be too harsh.”

“I could never quite understand why she simply left you at Faslane alone after the funeral.” He looked at her quickly. “Can you talk about this now?”

She nodded. “I think so. You have to grasp the fact that we just didn't get on. She desperately wanted a son, you see. It was years before she conceived and then, after all the excitement, I was a girl. Later she had a miscarriage. It was a boy and I think she never quite forgave me for living whilst he had died. My father died in his forties and she and I simply drifted apart once I went to university. It was very sad but we had nothing in common. Not until I met Rory. She adored Rory. In her eyes he could do no wrong and he was very sweet to her but she was disappointed that Hermione was a girl. ‘A man like Rory needs a son,' she said, as if I'd done it on purpose to thwart him—or her—and she never really cared much for Hermione. When we moved up north to Faslane it was a long trip for her to make and, since Rory was at sea so much as well, we hardly ever saw her. She came to the funeral, of course. ‘You can have more children,' she said, and I knew she was still hoping that one day I would produce a grandson for her. You can understand her fury when it seemed that she would lose Rory. He was the nearest she'd ever got to a son of her own.”

“I have to admit,” said Martin, after a short silence, “that I never really took to your mother.”

Louise smiled. “I think the feeling was mutual,” she said.

“So what happened, down there in Devon, to bring all this to a head?”

“I met a child,” she said slowly, “a little girl called Hermione.” She felt him stiffen beside her. “I think that the floodgates were already beginning to give way and she was the weak part in my defences. Through her, everything else came flooding back.”

“And the final breakdown? I thought it was me. That awful telephone call—”

“No,” she said quickly. “It was a part of the process, I suppose, but it wasn't that simple, Martin. What happened was that Hermione became ill. The symptoms sounded just like meningitis and quite suddenly it was like history replaying itself. It was the last straw.”