Caught in the Act (6 page)

‘All those false promises and false hopes you trotted out to keep me hanging on?' she said.

He visibly bristled. ‘I'm sorry?'

‘Oh, don't be so silly, George. I'm not totally stupid. I always knew that you would never leave Judy for me.'

He looked at her in astonishment. ‘re ally?' he said. He sounded genuinely amazed.

She laughed. ‘Of course. Don't sound so surprised. Hopeless, impossible, doomed love is a wonderfully dramatic thing—at least for a while. I was young and it all seemed terribly romantic.'

‘So what happened?'

Callista took a long pull on her drink. ‘Honestly?'

He nodded.

‘I grew up.'

‘Good God. How terribly pragmatic of you,' he said.

Callista stroked his hand. ‘Yes, that's right. Now eat your pie; you'll feel a lot better.'

‘But I've pined for you for…' George said. ‘If I'm honest I have pined for you for the last twenty years.' He looked pained and sounded quite cross now.

‘You silly man,' Callista said kindly, pulling
the knife and fork from his pocket and shaking out his napkin.

‘I've always suspected that Judy knew my heart wasn't altogether in it. All those years—' he shook his head—‘all those dreams wasted.'

Callista topped up her gin with the last of the tonic, and when it was obvious that she didn't plan to comment, George continued, ‘And how about you? How has life been with you?'

Callista smiled. ‘Me? Oh, I'm fine. We've been doing a production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
this year and our school has been selected for funding from Europe to improve the drama facilities, which is re ally exciting. We've put a bid in for a drama studio and—'

‘That isn't what I meant and you know it,' he said, cutting her short. ‘Didn't you ever miss me?' It was obvious from the tone he was hoping that she had pined for him just a little.

Callista stared at him. How could she possibly tell him that she hadn't thought about him for years? ‘You re ally did love me, didn't you?' she said in a low, even voice.

George nodded.

Callista set her hand down over his,
wondering what on earth she could say. ‘George, I am re ally sorry. If I'd known I might have been more determined to get you, made more of a fuss, fought a little harder, but I thought that you were just toying with me, that I was just a game. I thought maybe—maybe it was something you made a habit of. You know, new female teacher, straight out of college. Easy pickings.'

He winced.

Callista sighed. ‘Then again, if I'd known how you felt it would have been far more painful for both of us, wouldn't it? After I left Belvedere I went up to North Yorkshire, to a lovely school. I married a solicitor called Laurence—I was made head of department five years ago. We've got two daughters, Emma and Charlotte, they're fifteen and seventeen. We've got a nice house, a dog—a little summer place in France. We're very happy. I'm very happy.' She paused, seeing the pain on George's face. ‘Oh, George, I thought that it was just an affair.'

He pursed his lips, quite obviously struggling to keep his emotions under control. ‘You were the love of my life, Callista,' he murmured. ‘I have never forgotten you. Never a day goes past when I don't think about you and how it
might have been if I had been brave enough, strong enough, to walk away from my marriage, from Judy.' His bottom lip had started to tremble furiously. ‘Oh, Callista, I'm so terribly sorry,' he sniffled.

‘George, please don't. How is Judy?'

‘Oh, she's well. Well, I assume she is well; we barely speak at all these days. She has her friends, her interests, the choir and the reading group, and I have mine.' He paused. ‘It's been a lot trickier since I retired.'

The former Miss Callista Haze stared at George Bearman and wondered what on earth life might have been like if they had ended up together. How odd it was that she had had no idea how George felt about her, or was it that over the years she had become a fantasy that he had clung to, to keep him going inside a failing marriage? A magic might-have-been that had only just slipped through his fingers and helped him to sleep at nights.

‘So,' he said with forced joviality, ‘as you say, all water under the bridge now. Why don't you tell me all about this Laurence chap and your girls?'

Callista took a deep breath wondering how much she could tell George without breaking
his already battered heart, when a woman walking past the table caught her eye and as recognition dawned she stopped and turned.

‘Miss Haze?'

‘Yes,' said Callista, grateful for the interruption.

Carol grinned as she realised that Mr Bearman was there too, tucked up alongside Miss Haze, cradling a pint of bitter and the remains of a late lunch.

The two of them were sitting at a quiet table at the back of the Master's Arms, apparently deep in conversation. Miss Haze had a copy of
Macbeth
open in front of her. Even from where she was standing, Carol could see that the margins and every available glimmer of white space had been filled with tiny pencilled annotations around the main script; some appeared to have been overwritten.

‘How very nice to see you,' said Miss Haze, sounding very slightly uncertain who she was talking to.

‘Carol Hastings—well, at least I used to be Carol Hastings.' Carol held out a hand in greeting. ‘I'm here for the reunion as well.'

‘Oh, of course,' said Miss Haze. ‘It wasn't
that I didn't recognise you, Carol, but sometimes these days the names just vanish into the ether. I was trying very hard not to call you Lady Macbeth.' She smiled, her handshake strong and warm and confident. ‘You know I often thought that you could have gone on to a career on the stage if you had wanted to.'

Carol grinned. ‘That's very nice of you to say so, but if I'm honest I think I prefer to eat,' Carol said.

‘Well, there is that,' Miss Haze laughed, while Mr Bearman, a little stiffly, added, ‘How very pragmatic.' His handshake was cool and dry, his skin like old vellum.

Carol smiled. ‘You're early too.' She couldn't help wondering if they had turned up together. Maybe they were a couple, married now; maybe they had got together after all.

Miss Haze nodded. ‘Actually I haven't been here very long. The woman in reception at Burbeck House suggested I come down here. Apparently their kitchen doesn't open until later.' Her smiled broadened. ‘I did wonder whether she might be on commission.' Miss Haze glanced down at her watch. ‘Actually, I was just about to head back when—' she glanced
towards Mr Bearman—‘when George here showed up.'

Carol smiled; it seemed odd to think of Mr Bearman as having a first name but it had solved the couple question.

Mr Bearman beamed warmly in Miss Haze's direction. ‘Just like the good old days, back on the road again, eh, Callista?' And catching hold of her hand he lifted it and pressed it to his lips. Miss Haze blushed scarlet.

Diplomatically Carol looked away and said hastily, ‘There are a few of us in the front bar, if you would like to come and join us?'

Even after all these years it felt very odd talking to the teachers as if they were humans. Carol, who had been on her way to the loo when she spotted the pair of them, made a concerted effort to quell the little ripples of anxiety, which included the almost overwhelming feeling that she had forgotten to hand in a vital piece of homework and that by standing so close to them in a social setting she had broken an invisible inviolable rule about the relationship between teachers and pupils.

Across the table Mr Bearman smiled. ‘Thank you, Carol, that's very kind, but I think we'll probably stay here and catch up, won't we? We
haven't seen each other in…how long is it exactly, Callista?'

‘Rather more years than I care to remember,' she said casually. Carol noticed that Miss Haze had extricated her hand from his. ‘And besides, I'm sure we'd only cramp your style. You can be a lot more raucous without us there. And, as I said, I'm just going to finish my drink and then be off up.'

Mr Bearman nodded. ‘Excellent idea.'

Callista Haze smiled coolly.

‘It is re ally nice to see you both again. Diana's up there meeting and greeting people—presumably she's asked you to direct the read through?' asked Carol, pointing at Miss Haze's script open on the table.

‘Not exactly, although we were invited to. Mind you, Diana did add that we weren't to feel under any pressure,' said Mr Bearman.

Miss Haze laughed. ‘I think what George is trying to say is, try stopping us.'

Mr Bearman swung round and beamed at her. ‘I couldn't have put it better myself.'

Alongside him Callista looked heavenwards.

‘God, you'll never guess who I've just seen,' said Carol, slipping back into her seat.
Everyone looked up expectantly from the table, which was now covered with the fallout from their long late lunch. During the course of the meal there had been other people filing into the pub, saying hello and grinning madly as recognition dawned and friendships rekindled; the whole place was buzzing with conversation and half-familiar faces.

Netty pouted before slipping a final chip, haemorrhaging tomato sauce, into her mouth, and said, deadpan, ‘I thought Diana said that Gareth wasn't getting here until later this evening.'

Carol decided to ignore her. ‘Miss Haze and Mr Bearman, snuggled up over there in the snug.' She toyed momentarily with the idea of sharing the hand-kissing incident and then decided to leave it out on the grounds that she was trying to maintain some air of maturity.

‘Honestly, I used to have the hots for her something dreadful,' said Adie unexpectedly, pulling a lusty face and making smoochy sexy noises. ‘Double Drama, Friday afternoons—I'd got a permanent hard on. I had to get my mum to buy me a longer jumper. Can you remember she used to wear those little black ski pant things?'

‘Capri pants,' corrected Netty, picking through the remains of Jan's garlic mushrooms.

‘Very Audrey Hepburn. God, it was absolute agony,' Adie said in a wistful voice, gazing off unfocused into the middle distance.

‘re ally?' said Carol in amazement. ‘
You had the hots for Miss Haze?
'

‘Absolutely, yes,' he groaned.

She stared at him: apparently the struggle to stop slipping back into the agonies of adolescence was hers and hers alone.

Adie blushed. ‘Well, just a little bit. Do you remember those black leather trousers she had? They were like a red rag to a bull as well. Little white angora sweater, those trousers, highheeled boots—you'd have had to have been made of stone or been dead not to have thought the whole outfit was incredibly horny. I thought it was all so cute…'

Carol didn't say a word.

‘Maybe it was a leather thing, although you didn't know about that then,' Netty said.

Jan sniffed. ‘Lots of things you didn't know then.'

Carol looked at her. ‘What's with you two? Twenty years and you're still bitching? How about we declare a truce this weekend?'

Jan waved her words away. ‘What, and spoil all our fun? Besides, Adie likes that kind of thing, don't you?'

Adie grinned and then growled playfully.

‘I think we should be heading back to the hacienda,' said Carol, glancing at her watch; hadn't Miss Haze said that she was going up to the house too? They all looked at her. ‘Well, Diana
is
there all on her own,' she added weakly. ‘And I'd promised to help—and everyone else should be there soon.'

‘Yes, sirree, Mother Teresa,' said Jan. ‘And maybe Gareth's showed up already. Don't want you missing him now, do we?'

Carol reddened.

‘See,' said Adie triumphantly. ‘I told you that Jan's a cow. I'm not being singled out for any special treatment. It's just that I'm just an easy target. She may still look like butter wouldn't melt—but beneath that serene composed chic exterior beats the heart of Lucretia Borgia. I bet she enjoyed a bit of interior decoration as a way of unwinding between all the poisoning and torturing.'

‘Did Lucretia Borgia torture people? I always thought she was a straight-down-the-line poisoner—bit of a one-trick pony, re ally,' said
Jan conversationally, as if being compared to Lucretia Borgia was something that happened every day of her life.

‘I see you more as Cruella de Vil,' said Netty. ‘I watched that film and thought: finally somewhere Jan can put her talents to good use. Although I suppose Adie
is
the closest thing we've got to a poor defenceless animal.'

Jan, deadpan, said, ‘Nah, I've never liked spots. I think I'd prefer something with a little tabby in it, or maybe tortoiseshell.'

Everyone winced and without a word got to their feet.

Tongues loosened by alcohol and food and a sense of relief that things hadn't changed so very much after all, the four of them headed slowly back, laughing, teasing, still easy and connected up after all these years, meandering through the village, then in through the gates in Burbeck House's kitchen gardens. Although they could hardly say they'd caught up, Carol thought—it felt more like they had just scratched the surface.

‘So what about you, Netty?' asked Carol. They were walking side by side, Carol relishing the sound of their feet crunching over the fine gravel, the afternoon sun warming her face. It
was a glorious day. There was a sprinkler set up in one corner of the walled garden and where the water arced, rainbows filled the air as millions of tiny droplets refracted the sunlight. It was one of those perfect moments that would linger in the memory.

Ahead of them Adie and Jan were talking, laughing; Carol laid down the images like good wine. Espaliered fruit trees hung on tight to the old brick walls, creating a rich green backdrop to row after row of beautifully laid out vegetable plots, herb gardens and asparagus beds. Just past an old-style wrought-iron greenhouse, figs and peaches and grapevines settled back against a row of pan-tiled sheds and drank in the heat and light. You didn't have to be any kind of gardener to appreciate the tranquillity or beauty of Burbeck House's kitchen garden.