Absent in the Spring (22 page)

‘I hope you will be happy.'

And she had answered quietly, ‘I shall try to be happy.'

That was Averil – no heroics, no dwelling on the past – no self-pity. A disciplined acceptance of life – and the ability to live it without help from others.

He thought, They're out of my hands now, the three of them.

Rodney pushed back the papers on his desk and came over to sit in the chair on the right of the fireplace. He took with him the Massingham lease and sighing slightly started to read it over.

‘The Landlord lets and the tenant takes all that farmhouse buildings lands and hereditaments situate at …' He read on and turned the page. ‘not to take more than two white straw crops of corn from any part of the arable lands without a summer fallow (a crop of turnips and rape sown on land well cleaned and manured and eaten on such land with sheep to be considered equivalent to a fallow) and …'

His hand relaxed and his eyes wandered to the empty chair opposite.

That was where Leslie had sat when he argued with her about the children and the undesirability of their coming in contact with Sherston. She ought, he had said, to consider the children.

She
had
considered them, she said – and after all, he
was
their father.

A father who had been in prison, he said – an ex-jailbird – public opinion – ostracism – cutting them off from their normal social existence – penalizing them unfairly. She ought, he said, to think of all that. Children, he said, should not have their youth clouded. They should start fair.

And she had said, ‘That's just it. He
is
their father. It isn't so much that
they
belong to
him
as that
he
belongs to
them
. I can wish, of course, that they'd had a different kind of father – but it isn't so.'

And she had said, ‘What kind of a start in life would it be – to begin by running away from what's there?'

Well, he saw her idea, of course. But it didn't agree with his ideas. He'd always wanted to give his children the best of things – indeed, that was what he and Joan had done. The best schools, the sunniest rooms in the house – they'd practised small economies themselves to make that possible.

But in their case there had never been any moral problem. There had been no disgrace, no dark shadow, no failure, despair and anguish, no question of that kind when it would have been necessary to say, ‘Shall we shield them? Or let them share?'

And it was Leslie's idea, he saw, that they should share. She, although she loved them, would not shrink from placing a portion of her burden on those small, untrained backs. Not selfishly, not to ease her own load, but because she did not want to deny them even the smallest, most unendurable part of reality.

Well, he thought that she was wrong. But he admitted, as he had always admitted, her courage. It went beyond courage for herself. She had courage for those she loved.

She remembered Joan saying that autumn day as he went to the office:

‘Courage? Oh yes, but courage isn't everything?'

And he had said, ‘Isn't it?'

Leslie sitting there in his chair, with her left eyebrow going slightly up and her right eyebrow down and with the little twist at the right-hand corner of her mouth and her head against the faded blue cushion that made her hair look – somehow – green.

He remembered his voice, slightly surprised, saying:

‘Your hair's not brown. It's
green
.'

It was the only personal thing he'd ever said to her. He'd never thought, very much, what she looked like. Tired, he knew, and ill – and yet, withal,
strong
– yes, physically strong. He had thought once, incongruously, She could sling a sack of potatoes over her shoulder just like a man.

Not a very romantic thought and there wasn't, really, anything very romantic that he could remember about her. The right shoulder higher than the left, the left eyebrow going up and the right down, the little twist at the corner of her mouth when she smiled, the brown hair that looked green against a faded blue cushion.

Not much, he thought, for love to feed on. And what was love? In Heaven's name, what
was
love? The peace and content that he'd felt to see her sitting there, in his chair, her head green against the blue cushion. The way she had said suddenly, ‘You know, I've been thinking about Copernicus –'

Copernicus? Why in Heaven's name, Copernicus? A monk with an idea – with a vision of a differently shaped world – and who was cunning and adroit enough to compromise with the powers of the world and to write his faith in such a form as would pass muster.

Why should Leslie, with her husband in prison, and her living to earn and her children to worry about, sit there running a hand through her hair and say, ‘I've been thinking about Copernicus'?

Yet because of that, for always, at the mention of Copernicus his own heart would miss a beat, and up there, on the wall, he had hung an old engraving of the monk, to say to him, ‘
Leslie
.'

He thought, I should at least have told her that I loved her. I might have said so – once.

But had there been any need? That day on Asheldown – sitting there in the October sunlight. He and she together – together and apart. The agony and the desperate longing. Four feet of space between them – four feet because there couldn't safely be less. She had understood that. She must have understood that. He thought confusedly, That space between us – like an electric field – charged with longing.

They had not looked at each other. He had looked down over the ploughland and the farm, with the distant faint sound of the tractor and the pale purple of the upturned earth. And Leslie had looked beyond the farmland to the woods.

Like two people gazing at a promised land to which they could not enter in. He thought, I should have told her that I loved her then.

But neither of them had said anything – except just that once when Leslie had murmured, ‘
And thy eternal summer shall not fade
.'

Just that. One hackneyed line of quotation. And he didn't even know what she had meant by it.

Or perhaps he did. Yes, perhaps he did.

The chair cushion had faded. And Leslie's face. He couldn't remember her face clearly, only that queer twist of the mouth.

And yet for the last six weeks she had sat there every day and talked to him. Just fantasy, of course. He had invented a pseudo Leslie, and put her there in the chair, and put words into her mouth. He had made her say what he wanted her to say, and she had been obedient, but her mouth had curved upwards at the side as though she had laughed at what he was doing to her.

It had been, he thought, a very happy six weeks. He'd been able to see Watkins and Mills and there had been that jolly evening with Hargrave Taylor – just a few friends and not too many of them. That pleasant tramp across the hills on Sunday. The servants had given him very good meals and he'd eaten them as slowly as he liked, with a book propped up against the soda water syphon. Some work to finish sometimes after dinner, and then a pipe and finally, just in case he might feel lonely, false Leslie arranged in her chair to keep him company.

False Leslie, yes, but hadn't there been, somewhere, not very far away, real Leslie?

And thy eternal summer shall not fade
.

He looked down again at the lease.

‘… and shall in all respects cultivate the said farm in due and regular course of good husbandry.'

He thought wonderingly, I'm really quite a good lawyer.

And then, without wonder (and without much interest), ‘
I'm successful
.'

Farming, he thought, was a difficult, heartbreaking business.

‘My God, though,' he thought, ‘I'm tired.'

He hadn't felt so tired for a long time.

The door opened and Joan came in.

‘Oh, Rodney – you can't read that without the light on.'

She rustled across behind him and turned the light on. He smiled and thanked her.

‘You're so stupid, darling, to sit here ruining your eyes when all you've got to do is just to turn a switch.'

She added affectionately as she sat down, ‘I don't know what you'd do without me.'

‘Get into all sort of bad habits.'

His smile was teasing, kindly.

‘Do you remember,' Joan went on, ‘when you suddenly got an idea you wanted to turn down Uncle Henry's offer and take up farming instead?'

‘Yes, I remember.'

‘Aren't you glad now I wouldn't let you?'

He looked at her, admiring her eager competence, the youthful poise of her neck, her smooth, pretty, unlined face. Cheerful, confident, affectionate. He thought, Joan's been a very good wife to me.

He said quietly, ‘Yes, I'm glad.'

Joan said, ‘We all get impractical ideas sometimes.'

‘Even you?'

He said it teasingly, but was surprised to see her frown. An expression passed over her face like a ripple across smooth water.

‘One gets nervy sometimes – morbid.'

He was still more surprised. He could not imagine Joan nervy or morbid. Changing the subject he said:

‘You know I quite envy you your journey out East.'

‘Yes, it was interesting. But I shouldn't like to have to live in a place like Baghdad.'

Rodney said thoughtfully, ‘I'd like to know what the desert is like. It must be rather wonderful – emptiness and a clear strong light. It's the idea of the light that fascinates me. To see clearly –'

Joan interrupted him. She said vehemently, ‘It's hateful – hateful – just arid nothingness!'

She looked round the room with a sharp, nervous glance. Rather, he thought, like an animal that wants to escape.

Her brow cleared. She said, ‘That cushion's dreadfully old and faded. I must get a new one for that chair.'

He made a sharp instinctive gesture, then checked himself.

After all, why not? A cushion was faded. Leslie Adeline Sherston was in the churchyard under a marble slab. The firm of Alderman, Scudamore and Witney was forging ahead. Farmer Hoddesdon was trying to raise another mortgage.

Joan was walking round the room, testing a ledge for dust, replacing a book in the bookshelf, moving the ornaments on the mantelpiece. It was true that in the last six weeks the room had acquired an untidy, shabby appearance.

Rodney murmured to himself softly, ‘The holidays are over.'

‘What?' she whirled round on him. ‘What did you say?'

He blinked at her disarmingly. ‘Did I say anything?'

‘I thought you said “the holidays are over.” You must have dropped off and been dreaming – about the children going back to school.'

‘Yes,' said Rodney, ‘I must have been dreaming.'

She stood looking at him doubtfully. Then she straightened a picture on the wall.

‘What's this? It's new, isn't it?'

‘Yes. I picked it up at Hartley's sale.'

‘Oh,' Joan eyed it doubtfully. ‘Copernicus? Is it valuable?'

‘I've no idea,' said Rodney. He repeated thoughtfully, ‘I've no idea at all …'

What was valuable, what was not? Was there such a thing as remembrance?

‘
You know, I've been thinking about Copernicus …
'

Leslie, with her shifty jail bird of a husband – drunkenness, poverty, illness, death.

‘
Poor Mrs Sherston, such a sad life
.'

But, he thought, Leslie wasn't sad. She walked through disillusionment and poverty and illness like a man walks through bogs and over plough and across rivers, cheerfully and impatiently, to get to wherever it is he is going …

He looked thoughtfully at his wife out of tired but kindly eyes.

So bright and efficient and busy, so pleased and successful. He thought, She doesn't look a day over twenty-eight.

And suddenly a vast upwelling rush of pity swept over him.

He said with intense feeling, ‘Poor little Joan.'

She stared at him. She said, ‘Why poor? And I'm not little.'

He said in his old teasing voice, ‘
Here am I, little Joan. If nobody's with me I'm all alone
.'

She came to him with a sudden rush, almost breathing, she said:

‘I'm not alone. I'm not alone. I've got
you
.'

‘Yes,' said Rodney. ‘You've got me.'

But he knew as he said it that it wasn't true. He thought:

You are alone and you always will be. But, please God, you'll never know it.

‘A satisfying novel.'

New York Times

Vernon Deyre is a sensitive and brilliant musician, even a genius. But there is a high price to be paid for his talent, especially by his family and the two women in his life. His sheltered childhood in the home he loves has not prepared Vernon for the harsh reality of his adult years, and in order to write the great masterpiece of his life, he has to make a crucial decision with no time left to count the cost …

‘When Miss Westmacott reaches the world of music, her book suddenly comes alive. The chapters in which Jane appears are worth the rest of the book put together.'

New Statesman

ISBN 978–0–00–649945–9

‘Quiet and intelligent, with class distinctions which motivate its characters.'

Books

Everyone expected Isabella Charteris, beautiful, sheltered and aristocratic, to marry her cousin Rupert when he came back from the War. It would have been such a suitable marriage. How strange then that John Gabriel, an ambitious and ruthless war hero, should appear in her life. For Isabella, the price of love would mean abandoning her dreams of home and happiness forever. For Gabriel, it would destroy his chance of a career and all his ambitions …