Ashes In the Wind (21 page)

‘So did mine,’ says John. ‘How did you meet Mr Vincent?’ He doesn’t feel on Billy terms with Mr Vincent.

‘At a London dance. I did the season, and he was this older, confident man, quite different from the rest of my weedy dancing partners. And he decided to marry me, and eventually he did. He doesn’t give up easily. He’s a good husband. Shall we finish with a brandy?’

‘Absolutely not. Look outside at the snow. We need to leave now if we’re going to get back tonight.’

Two or three inches of snow have settled, and it continues to fall in big, heavy flakes. They set off, John driving with the caution that a strange car, a heavy snowfall and several glasses of wine deserve. The snow whirls in the car’s headlights; there is almost no traffic on the road. The snow has already blotted out the tracks of any cars in front of them.

‘I hope Knocknarea has got home safely,’ says John. ‘He did have a three-hour start on us. But I’m glad we celebrated. It’s not often you get as good a win as that.’

‘Or in as good company, you were about to say.’

‘I was too nervous to say that.’

There is a long silence, and John wonders if he has been too bold. The snow is falling in thick flakes. As they pass the pub at the bottom of the steep hill that rises to the top of the Cotswold escarpment, John says, ‘I’m not sure we’ll make this. Look ahead. Everything’s white.’

‘We’d better try.’

‘It’s your car – I’d hate to damage it.’

John drives slowly and carefully up the beginning of the hill; the windscreen wipers are barely keeping pace with the snow. As the hill steepens, the wheels begin to lose traction and spin and John has difficulty keeping the car straight. Up ahead he sees a lorry that has skidded diagonally across the road on its way down, its lights still blazing.

‘Glad we didn’t meet that. We’ll not get past him tonight. Best if I back slowly down to the Crown and see if they’ve got rooms.’

‘Well, you did try. And it’s my fault for lingering over dinner.’

‘It takes two to linger.’

They make it in reverse back to the Crown’s car park. Inside, they shake off the snow in the little lobby and go into the bar. The bar is already crowded with refugees from the snow. Steaming bodies and plenty to drink have created a cheerful atmosphere.

John asks the landlord if he has two rooms for the night.

‘Only the one left,’ he says. ‘It’s at the back at the top of the stairs. Thirty pounds, cash in advance, if you don’t mind.’

John pays and tells Chantal, ‘I’ll find a chair in the bar.’

‘Don’t be silly. Look around you. Standing room only. Let’s get in the queue for the phone box and then inspect the room. It may have twin beds or a sofa.’

The room has a small double bed and an armchair. There is a gas fire, unlit, coin-operated. John uses his last half-crown to get it going, and immediately the room is transformed by the reddish-orange light and the comforting hiss of the fire.

‘You’ll need a supply of half-crowns. I’ll go down to the bar and get some change.’

‘Plenty of cash tonight,’ says the landlord. ‘You get about an hour for two and sixpence.’

John takes twenty to be on the safe side, and then orders two glasses of brandy.

‘Tumblers OK? We’re out of brandy glasses.’

The coins clink in John’s pocket as he goes back up the stairs, feeling suddenly brave. Chantal is sitting on the side of the bed, wearing only her slip.

‘Here’s the brandy we missed,’ John says. ‘Here’s to Knocknarea.’

‘Here’s to the snow,’ says Chantal.

They both take a long swallow. John leans across and kisses her warm, soft mouth, tasting of brandy. She reaches over, turns off the light, pulls John to his feet and helps him out of his clothes. When he is naked, she sits down on the bed, unclips and unrolls her stockings and shrugs herself out of her suspender belt and underclothes.

‘It would be a waste if you spent the night in that armchair. You wouldn’t get much sleep.’

It would have been a terrible waste, John thinks the next morning, although I might have got more sleep. He looks at Chantal’s head on the pillow next to him, kisses her gently on the cheek. She wakes up, stretches herself, smiles and says, ‘I suppose I hope the snow has gone.’

John goes to the window. It has stopped snowing, but the road is still white and unmarked. No cars have been brave enough to leave the car park.

‘We’ll not leave for a while,’ says John. ‘The snowploughs and the grit haven’t reached this part of the country yet. I’ll go and see if there’s any breakfast about.’

‘Not yet you won’t,’ and Chantal pulls him back into bed. ‘The only sensible thing to do,’ she says, and then she stops talking as John does the only sensible thing.

It begins to thaw at eleven, and by noon it has started to rain. John and Chantal leave at two, without breakfast or lunch, as the pub has run out of food. Braver drivers have left clear tracks on the still snowy road, the hill has been gritted and last night’s stranded lorry has gone. The road is still treacherous and John has to concentrate to keep the car on the road. They are both thoughtful about what has happened between them, and hardly talk. After a while, Chantal’s head tilts sideways onto John’s shoulder and she falls asleep.

She wakes up not long before they reach the yard.

‘We’d better tell the same story, I suppose,’ says Chantal. ‘I don’t plan to make a full confession to Billy.’

‘Well, they already know we were stranded and spent the night in the same pub. The sleeping arrangements...’

‘...are nobody’s business but yours and mine.’

They pull up outside the yard. John hands over the car keys to Chantal and tries to kiss her.

‘That’s not a good idea, especially here,’ says Chantal, pushing him away.

John looks disappointed. ‘When will I see you again?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve got some thinking to do.’

John goes into the yard. Was that it, he wonders, a single accidental night, thanks to the snow and a stranded lorry? In the office Tom jumps up and shakes his hand.

‘A great win, a great win. George has taken me through it fence by fence. Knocknarea has trotted up sound this morning and eaten everything he’s been shown. You must have had the devil of a journey. How was the pub?’

‘Uncomfortable. Mrs Vincent got the last room,’ says John, truthfully enough. ‘The roads were pretty bad.’

‘What do you think about Cheltenham?’

‘He’ll have a good chance. Same distance, stiffer test up that hill. Maltese Cross’s connections are sure to let him run.’

John slips quickly back into the yard’s routine. He hears nothing from Chantal. He tries telephoning her one evening, but hangs up when a man’s voice answers.

He feels guilty – this is, after all, what the Bible and the law call adultery. Does he love Chantal? He’s not sure. He loves her body, her sense of humour, her sudden, genuine passion for steeplechasing. But he doesn’t feel that lacerating pull at the heart that he has felt once before in his life. Perhaps that’s a relief.

A week later, still with no contact from Chantal, he meets Robert in the Mitre.

‘Well done. I hear Knocknarea won, and you got snowed in with Chantal Vincent for a night at the Crown. Did anything happen?’

John goes red. ‘What do you mean, anything?’

Robert says nothing, waits until John fills the silence.

‘All right, I have to tell someone. There was only one room, and one bed, and it was wonderful. She’s a lovely woman, but that, it seems, is that. No word for over a week.’

‘Ring her to talk about the horse, you idiot. The Cheltenham plans for Knocknarea. And if that’s all she wants to talk about, that’s up to her.’

‘I suppose you’re right. Look, I could do with another drink. How are the manorial rolls?’

Robert launches into an impenetrable account of the relationship between rising rents, the price of corn and security of tenure in 1300. John is happy to let this flow over and around him.

‘You haven’t listened to a word, have you?’

‘Of course I have. You’re on to something, I can see that.’

‘Ha!’

A day later John takes Robert’s advice and calls. Chantal answers the phone.

‘Knocknarea’s very well after Chepstow; we’d like him to run at Cheltenham,’ says John.

‘That’s good – of course I’d love him to run. Keep me posted on how he gets on. I don’t know whether I’ll have time to watch him on the gallops again.’

‘That’s a pity. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

John hangs up, a sick feeling in his stomach at the stilted conversation. Why didn’t I say something more, like I miss you, or I must see you again. It was the neutral, almost unfriendly tone in Chantal’s voice that held him back. This, and a real fear of rejection.

You were brave enough at the Crown, he thinks, but perhaps that was the drink talking. He sits there for a few minutes, then gets up to go home, when the phone rings again.

‘John? I’m glad I caught you. It’s Chantal.’

‘I recognized the voice.’

‘Thinking it over, I’m not absolutely certain about Cheltenham. Could I talk it over with you and Tom? Tomorrow afternoon?’

‘Fine. Four-thirty?’

‘Four-thirty it is.’

John is even more confused by this second call. There’s not much to discuss, so why does she want to come over? She was very careful to say she wanted Tom there.

Chantal arrives the following afternoon and John’s heart stirs as she comes into the room. She is wearing a blue and green tweed coat and skirt and a cream polo-necked sweater, completely out of place in the scruffy office and muddy yard, but she carries it off. She’s a beautiful woman, John thinks, as she shakes first Tom’s hand, then his own.

The conversation about Cheltenham is short and straightforward. She wants to be reassured that Knocknarea is up to it, that it’s not too soon after Chepstow, and that he will come to no harm.

‘It’s not too soon; he plainly belongs in that class,’ says Tom. ‘He’s no more likely to get hurt at Cheltenham than at Chepstow. Michael will look after him.’

‘Fine. We’ll run. Can I see him in his box?’

To John’s disappointment, Tom comes too. Knocknarea has his head in his manger when they look at him – after a couple of minutes John says, ‘I’m off home. I’m glad he’ll get a run,’ and shakes Chantal’s hand.

He goes out to his Alvis. Chantal’s Rover is parked next to his car. He thinks for a moment about leaving a note, decides against it and drives slowly home.

Once inside his cottage he lights the fire; Bella jumps into his lap when he sits down. Somebody loves me, he thinks. He gets up to pour himself a drink, and hears a car outside. There is a knock on the door. He opens it and there is Chantal, holding out his blue handkerchief.

‘I forgot to return this; I washed it myself.’

John puts his arms around her as she comes in, his chin on top of her head, and kisses her. He pulls up her skirt and pushes her back onto the kitchen table.

‘Gently,’ Chantal says, but John isn’t gentle.

When he has finished he says, ‘I wanted you badly,’ and Chantal laughs.

‘So did I, but I’m not sure you noticed.’ Then she says, ‘I must get home – but I want to see you again. If we can manage it. And I’m sorry I was so distant. I didn’t know what to do.’

‘You can always come here. No one else does, except me and Bella.’

‘Bella?’

‘She’s my regular girl,’ says John, and quickly adds, ‘my cocker spaniel.’

J
OHN
AND
C
HANTAL
meet in John’s cottage whenever Billy Vincent is away.

‘Billy’s a creature of habit; he’s always in London for meetings on Wednesdays or Thursdays. But I have to be back before the housekeeper comes in from the lodge at eight o’clock.’

‘Won’t she see you coming and going?’

‘I use the back drive. There’s no lodge there. And besides, she likes me, she’s frightened of Billy.’

‘Are you frightened of him? He seems formidable to me.’

‘Formidable is right, partly because he’s rich, used to getting his own way, used to people agreeing with him. If I’d agreed to marry him straightaway he’d soon have lost interest. No, he doesn’t frighten me, but I don’t want him to know about us. I’ve no idea what would happen, and I don’t intend to find out.’

They are sitting over supper in John’s kitchen; John has provided the food, Chantal the wine. It’s her second visit to the cottage; Chantal has brought, along with the wine, a large cardboard box.

‘Open it. It’s a present for you, for us.’

John opens the box; inside is a new HMV gramophone.

‘It’s lovely. But I don’t have any records.’

‘The records are in the car. I’ll show you there’s more to music than the Light Programme.’

Chantal goes out to the car and comes back with the big brass horn that fits onto the turntable and a box of fifty records.

‘All jazz and blues. I fell in love with the blues in Paris – and there’s no point playing a Beethoven symphony when you have to change the record and the needle seven times. Listen to this – it’s Bessie Smith singing “St Louis Blues”.’

Chantal fits a needle carefully onto the arm, winds up the gramophone, and John hears the blues for the first time.

‘It takes you a long way from the English countryside.’

‘I first heard Josephine Baker sing “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” at Blacktop’s in Paris when I was seventeen. This is her singing “Ain’t Misbehavin’”.’

‘I suppose we are,’ says John.

‘We’re giving pleasure to each other, and we’re not hurting anyone.’

‘Not Billy?’

‘Not Billy. Unless he finds out, and he won’t. I’m very careful.’

Chantal changes the record to ‘Tishomingo Blues’, and when it finishes they go upstairs.

‘She always gets up at six to go back to the manor,’ says John to Robert Keen a few weeks later over dinner at the Randolph.

‘What are you grumbling about? You get up then anyhow to see your horses on the gallops. You don’t know how lucky you are. Sex, wine, a musical education. I suppose jazz counts as music, can’t see it myself. And no responsibilities. I’d love to be in your shoes – although she’d have to be out of Christ Church by ten o’clock sharp.’