All My Sins Remembered (93 page)

‘Morning to you,’ the man said.

‘Good morning,’ Clio said wonderingly.

‘This here’s Mr Hirsh’s dog, see?’

The black-and-white collie sat beside him, held on a makeshift leash of the same hairy string. It whined a little and then yawned, lapping its chops with its tongue.

‘My brother’s dog?’ As she spoke, Clio remembered. Julius had written about a dog. His name was Gelert. She stooped down and patted its rough coat and the dog whined again in response. ‘Good boy,’ she said softly.

‘You must be the farmer?’ She looked up at the little man.

He jerked his head sideways towards the marsh. ‘Sheep.’

‘Won’t you come in? I know you … found my brother. I’d like to say thank you for what you did for him.’

‘Only what anyone would have done, isn’t it? Sad thing. I liked what I seen of him. Which wasn’t much, mind.’

Clio held the door open wider. ‘Please won’t you come in?’

The farmer shook his head. ‘Weather,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘What about the dog, then?’

The dog had been Julius’s. The rough black-and-white bundle was another link with him. Clio held out her hand for the loop of string.

‘Here, Gelert. Come on, boy.’

The dog needed no second invitation. He bounded over the threshold and made for the space in front of the hearth.

‘Thank you.’ Clio turned back to the farmer, but he had pulled at the greasy peak of his cap and was already trudging away down the track towards the gate. Clio shut the door against the wind and saw that the dog was settled in what must be his accustomed place. He rested his head on his paws and watched her.

The time passed slowly, marked by a just detectable strengthening of the light outside that almost immediately began fading again as soon as she had noticed it. In the early afternoon Clio realized that she was hungry. As soon as she went to the door the dog sprang up and followed her eagerly. She let it out and it ran in circles around her as she walked to the barn. The keys of Julius’s Morris Eight were still in the ignition. The dog jumped in with her and sat in the passenger seat.

The cottage was less isolated that it seemed. A mile or so inland past the farm there was a struggling village of grey stone houses strung out along the road. The mountains were more clearly visible from here, a strong dark rib of them rising out of the coastal plain with the higher peaks like shadows cast behind the foothills. Clio went into the village shop and bought provisions for herself and food for the dog. As she was driving back the rain doubled its intensity. The single wiper could not cope with the force of it and she had to drive with her face almost pressed against the streaming windscreen.

When she came out of the barn with her arms full of shopping, wind and salt-laden rain beat into her mouth and eyes. Clio ducked her head and ran for the cottage. The sea seemed much closer; she supposed it must be high water. The thunder of the waves against the sea-wall was clearly audible.

Clio was sitting in the armchair again, in front of a fire that she had lit with dry wood from the barn, when a sound made her lift her head. The dog sat upright, its muscles quivering.

There was a car coming down the track. They could hear the engine, and the wheels sending out arcs of spray from the huge miry puddles. The car stopped, close to the house. For all the noise of the weather, a silence seemed to descend.

Clio went to the window, and saw Grace. Her white Aston Martin was slewed off to the side of the track with mud splashed over its long bonnet. She came through the rain towards the house, with the sea swelling behind her like a great grey bruise.

A moment later she was on the threshold, holding up her gloved hand to shield herself from the weather.

‘Aren’t you going to let me in?’ Grace said to Clio.

Clio wanted to answer,
No, never
, but she stood aside and let the door open just wide enough to admit her.

‘Why are you here?’ Clio asked her. Her voice sounded as it had done when they were children, quarrelling on the beach or in the Stretton schoolroom.

Grace turned. There was rainwater shining in her hair, and when she shook off her coat dark drops spattered over the stone floor.

‘For the same reasons as you,’ she answered.

‘
No
.’ Clio had shouted before she even realized that she was going to. Her body shook with the intensity of her denial. ‘I don’t want you here. You don’t belong here, this is Julius’s place.’

Grace’s clothes were crumpled from the long drive. She took off her suede gauntlets, very slowly, revealing her scarlet-painted nails. ‘And so, therefore, I do belong in it. You are not the only claimant to his memory, Clio.’

Clio saw a red haze of anger and hatred, netted with the dark patterns of veins like a tree against a sunset. Her fists clenched and the nails bit deep into her palms.

‘It is because of you that he is dead.’

Grace paused. It struck her suddenly, as it had not done for a long time, how Clio’s features mirrored her own. It was like talking to a reflection of herself, only her face looked back at her full of hate and rage.

‘No, I believe that Julius is dead because of Julius. I never lied to him, you know. I never promised that I could give him any more than I actually gave. And I loved him, whatever you may choose to believe.’

‘Oh Grace, I know that. And I know the destructive power of your love because I have seen it all my life.’

Clio went back and hunched beside Gelert in front of the fire. She threw two more logs on to the flames, and a shower of sparks whirled in the black mouth of the chimney.

‘Is there anything to drink?’ Grace asked.

‘Water. Milk.’

‘I’ve got some whisky in the car.’

She went out, letting a whirl of cold air into the room, and came back with a bottle of Vat 69. Clio heard her rattling in the kitchen. When Grace leant over her shoulder with a cup she reached up automatically and took it. The spirit burnt in her throat and made her cough. She sat on the floor and drew up her knees, resting her head on her folded arms. The rough knit of Julius’s sweater scraped her cheek, and she caught the faint smell of him lingering in its folds.

Behind her, she sensed Grace prowling through the room with her own cup of whisky cradled in her hand. The thought of her touching Julius’s belongings, even moving through the place where he had been, made the hair at the nape of Clio’s neck prickle with cold. She gazed into the flames and at the faces they revealed while Gelert stirred next to her and stretched his paws voluptuously to the warmth of the fire.

Grace stood at one of the tiny windows and stooped to look out. It was dark, and there was nothing to see of the marsh and the sea-wall or the clouds and the incessant rain. The roar of the waves seemed to fill her head out of nowhere. She broke away from the window and dragged an upright chair from its place against the wall so that she could sit down in front of the fire.

Grace and Clio sat in silence, not looking at one another, drinking their whisky out of Julius’s cups. The wind and the rain locked them into the close space together.

Grace tipped back the last of her whisky and reached for the bottle again. Clio heard the little snick of her lighter as she lit a cigarette. Grace asked harshly, ‘Why did you tell Cressida that Pilgrim is her father?’

Clio did not lift her head. The pictures in the fire hypnotized her. ‘I didn’t tell her. Pilgrim did.’

‘When?’

‘When we were in Berlin. The last time. When you were with Julius, before Alice died.’

Grace considered.

‘You seem to be a part of it, just the same. The conspiracy with Cressida, against me.’

‘There is no conspiracy.’

‘She asked me if she could come to Oxford and live with you, because you love her.’ Grace blew a plume of smoke between her teeth, tasting the bitterness. ‘As if
I
did not, do not.’

‘She asked me too. I told her that she must stay with you, because you are her mother. She also asked me about her father, because Pilgrim had told her and she did not know whether she could believe him or not. She needed the truth, and I confirmed it.’

Grace exhaled again, a long breath. ‘So.’

It seemed that there was nothing else to say. The hostility between them yawned, dark and ugly as an open wound.

The fire burnt low and Clio threw more logs on to the red embers. The wind sank to a single note that blew through the crumbling slates overhead.

Julius seemed close to each of them, a troubled shadow, fretted and made restless by their division.

At last, Clio went into the kitchen and put together the elements of a rudimentary meal. She took Julius’s books off the table and laid two places, facing each other, the parody of a domestic tableau. She set out the cold food, and went to the dresser for two plates. As clearly as if it was still propped up where he had left it, she saw Julius’s letter, and Grace’s name on it. She took the plates from the shelf and they rattled in her shaking hands.

Grace watched her.

When they sat down facing one another Grace said, ‘You can read the letter if you want to. It’s here in my handbag.’

They were like Eleanor and Blanche now, looking into one another’s heads without the need for words, but the visions that danced and sprang before their eyes were neither benign nor reassuring.

Clio took the letter and unfolded it.

Jake had forwarded it to Grace, unopened and without comment. When Grace slit open the plain envelope and read Julius’s words, she was powerfully reminded of the letters that Jake had written to her long ago, from the field hospital in France. There was the same eloquence. The fear came from deep within him, and he was unable to express it in music or in words. The brief sentences were disjointed, barely making sense. Except for the last line.

Julius had written, ‘I love you, Grace. Remember this.’

Clio read in her turn:

I can hear music and it makes me afraid.

This was once my language, and I can no longer understand it. I see holes and spaces where there were once pleasant structures. Is this what it means to reach an ending?

I am afraid of solitude and I am alone.

I can see absence and darkness, nothing else. Shall I be forgiven for my quietus?

The bare bodkin.

The music goes on, on and on, unstoppable. Silence is welcome.

At the end of the page she saw,
I love you, Grace. Remember this
.

Clio folded the thin sheet of paper and put it back into the envelope. Jealousy bit her for the last time. She had always wanted Julius’s love for herself. He was her twin, the good half, and now he was gone for ever.

Grace had taken him away.

It was her final act of malice and destruction to come here, to the place where he had died. While she was alone Clio had dreamed for herself out of the marshes and the old stone walls an image of Julius calm and at peace. Now, because of Grace, she had to see the truth. He was lonely and tormented, and he had preferred to die.

The cottage was filled with the memories of him, and with loss and grief.

Grace took the letter back and the jaws of her handbag snapped shut on it.

Clio stood up abruptly, the legs of her chair making a harsh scrape on the stone floor. She carried her untouched plate back to the kitchen and dropped the contents into Gelert’s bowl. Grace sat on in her place, smoking her long cigarettes and drinking whisky.

The evening had drained away. At the foot of the steep stairs Clio said, ‘There is only one bedroom here. One bed.’

Grace did not look round. ‘I will sleep in the armchair. Just for tonight.’

Clio went up the steep twist of the stairs and lay down again with the blankets wrapped around her. This time she did not sleep so easily. She listened to the wind, and imagined Grace in the chair downstairs, smoking and staring into the dying fire with the dog at her feet.

Grace sat, with her head thrown back and her hands loosely dangling over the arms. She was full of memories. She thought of Berlin, and the heat of Julius’s body joined to hers came back to her.

They woke to a world that swelled with water. Rain leaked and dripped and bubbled all around them. The sea had darkened from grey to almost black, and the greasy crests of the waves whipped sullenly into the sea-wall.

The two women were stiff and cold but still the little cottage held on to them. They stalked each other through the tiny rooms, held captive by the weather and by their jealous guard over the shadows that remained.

Clio went carefully about the task of packing Julius’s belongings. She ran out into the rain with the small bundles in her arms, and stowed them into the back of the Morris Eight. She laid the bust of Mozart, wrapped in Julius’s coat, in the passenger seat.

‘I’ll be going this afternoon,’ Grace said watching her. ‘I’m at Stretton tonight, and seeing constituents all day tomorrow.’

Clio nodded. She longed to have the house to herself again, for the few hours before she must leave in her turn.

She left Julius’s music to the last. She came back from her final trip to the barn and the car and shook the rain out of her hair, just as the dog had done when she let him out earlier. He sat beside the door now, sniffing the wet air and swishing his tail over the flagstones. He had been restless all day.

‘Gelert, boy.’ Clio bent to soothe him. She was reconciled to the idea of taking him back to Paradise Square; she had already imagined how she would lead him up to the front door and surprise Romy.

The sound of the piano made her head jerk up.

Grace was standing with her back to her. She had lifted the lid to expose the yellowing keys, and the sheets of Julius’s music were spread out around her. She was following the lines of his notation with one red fingernail, and idly picking out the chords with her left hand. The notes stretched and faded in the thick air.

To Clio it seemed that Grace was picking for amusement in Julius’s exposed heart.