Coming Home (159 page)

Bewildered by her outburst, his eyes moved from her face to the table-top, and he saw the book lying there, and the rubber band that had kept it shut, beside it. He said, very quietly, ‘You shouldn't have opened it.’

‘Well, I did. And I've looked. You oughtn't to carry it around with you, as though those were the only memories you've ever had. They'll always be there. They'll never disappear. But, one day, they'll fade, if you let them. And you can't do it on your own. You've got to
share.
It's no good if you don't come back with me. It's all wasted. I've driven all this way, and Biddy's car doesn't do much more than forty-five miles an hour, and I had to miss Diana's coming-home party for Jeremy Wells, and now I've got to drive all the way back again, and all you do is stand there like a mummified zombie…’

‘Judith…’

‘I don't want to talk about it any more. But for the last time,
please.
If I don't set off now, I'll never get home. Such a long way, and it'll be dark by four…’

Suddenly, it was all too much; her disappointment, his refusal to listen to her, the terrible contents of the sketchbook. Her voice broke, and she could feel her face crumple. Finally, she burst into emotional and exhausted tears. ‘Oh,
Gus
…’

He said, ‘Don't cry,’ and he came and put his arms around her and held her until the worst of the weeping was over. ‘Did you really give up a party, with Diana and Jeremy and all of them…for me?’

Searching for a handkerchief, she nodded. ‘That doesn't matter. It can happen another time.’ She blew her nose.

He said, ‘I don't like to imagine you driving alone, all the way back to Cornwall. At forty-five miles an hour.’

With her fingers, Judith wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘There's not much you can do about it.’

‘Yes, I can.’ For the first time, he smiled. ‘Just give me five minutes.’

They went west by way of Hammersmith and Staines, and so out onto the A30. Judith drove, because she thought that perhaps Gus might want to sleep, and anyway she was accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of Biddy's old car. Gus sat beside her and followed their route on a tattered road-map, and sucked boiled sweets because he said he was too well mannered to smoke cigarettes in somebody else's car. At Hartley Wintney, the last of suburbia slipped away behind them. After that the towns they drove through were country towns, with markets, and pubs called The Red Lion and The King's Head, and crooked red brick houses lining the main streets. Salisbury, Crewkerne, Chard, and Honiton. At Honiton they stopped the car, and while Gus filled the tank from the last of the spare petrol cans, Judith went in search of sustenance and returned with two dubious pasties and a couple of bottles of ginger beer. They ate this meagre picnic in the car.

‘Pasties,’ Gus said with satisfaction, and bit into his. He chewed for a moment, and then looked at Judith in some dismay. ‘This doesn't taste like a pasty.’

‘What does it taste like?’

He took another mouthful and chewed some more. ‘Mouse and mud wrapped in a face flannel?’

‘You can't expect a Mrs Nettlebed pasty. Not after six years of war. You need the best steak for a proper one, and most people have forgotten what steak even looks like. Anyway, this is Devon. In Devon, they're not called pasties. They're called tiddy-oggies.’

‘Where did you glean that bit of useless information?’

‘Anyone who's been in the Navy knows they're called tiddy-oggies.’

Gus said, ‘Well, shiver me timbers.’

They drove on. The London clouds had disappeared, and the evening was clear and cold. The winter sun, round and red as an orange, lay low over the hills of Dartmoor. Exeter. Okehampton. Launceston. Dark now, headlights full on, only the emptiness of the moor on either side of the narrow road.

Cornwall.

Gus fell silent. For quite a long time he didn't say anything, and then, ‘Did you ever have fantasies, Judith?’ he asked.

‘What sort of fantasies?’

‘Oh, you know. When you were a child, growing up. Galloping away through the desert on the saddle of a handsome sheikh. Or saving the life of a drowning yachtsman, only to discover he was your favourite film star.’

‘Not those, no. Not specifically. But I used to pretend that the
Cornish Riviera
was the
Orient Express,
and I was on my way to Istanbul with secret papers to deliver, and various sinister spies on my tracks. Agatha Christie stuff, frightfully exciting. How about you?’

‘Mine weren't nearly so adventurous. I don't think I was a particularly adventurous youth. But they were very real to me. There were three of them. Quite separate. One was that I would come to Cornwall, where I had never been, and embrace the life of a Bohemian painter. I would live in a white-washed fisherman's cottage with cobbles at the door, and grow my hair and wear a hat like Augustus John, and espadrilles, and a French workman's
bleus.
And I would smoke Gitane cigarettes, and have a studio, and amble down to some delectable pub where I would be so famous and revered that people would crowd around and buy me drinks.’

‘That's harmless enough. But why Cornwall, if you'd never been here?’

‘I knew it from pictures, paintings, works of art. Articles in
The Studio.
The Newlyn School. The Porthkerris School. The colour of the sea and the cliffs; the extraordinary quality of the light.’

‘As a painter you would have been a success. I'm sure of that.’

‘Maybe. But it was my little hobby. That's what my father called it. So it was Cambridge and engineering. A totally different direction.’ He paused, seeming to ponder something. ‘Perhaps ours is the last generation that will ever do what it is told.’

‘What were the other two fantasies?’

‘Pictures again. A Laura Knight, a print I tore from a magazine and framed, and took with me to school, home, University. A girl on a cliff. Wearing an old sweater and a pair of tennis shoes. Brown as a gypsy, and with a plait of russet hair falling over one shoulder. Beautiful.’

‘Have you still got it?’

‘No. Another Singapore casualty.’

‘And the third day-dream?’

‘That was less specific. Harder to explain. It was finding a place, a house; somewhere where I would belong. Be at ease with myself. Made welcome for no reason of background or affluence or reputation. Able to drop my guard and present my own face.’

‘I would never have thought that was a problem.’

‘It was, until I met Edward Carey-Lewis. After I met Edward, everything changed. Even my name. Before Edward, I was Angus. After Edward, I became Gus. We went on holiday to France together. And then he asked me to Nancherrow. And I'd never been to Cornwall, but I drove, alone, all the way from Aberdeenshire. And as I crossed the county border I was obsessed by this extraordinary feeling that I was coming Home. That I'd seen it all before. It was all entirely recognisable, and very dear. And when I got to Nancherrow, everything came together, as though it had been orchestrated. Contrived. Intended. At Nancherrow I found Loveday; and when Edward introduced me to his father, the Colonel said,
Gus, my dear fellow. How pleased we are to see you. How splendid to have you here,
or something like that. And they all stopped being fantasies and were real. All the dreams, just for a little while, were true.’

Judith sighed. ‘Oh, Gus. I don't know whether it's the house or the people who live in it. But you're not the only person who has felt that way about Nancherrow. And it's not
all
in the past. Edward has gone, I know. And I suppose, for you, Loveday has as well. But there's still the future. What is there to stop you becoming a painter? Living down here, getting a studio, working at a talent that you love, and perhaps should exploit. There's nothing now to stop you.’

‘No. Nothing. Except my own non-existent confidence. My lack of will. Fear of failing.’

‘That's just
now.
You've been ill.
Now
isn't going to last forever. You'll get better. Stronger. Things will change.’

‘Maybe. We'll see.’ He stirred in his seat, easing his cramped limbs. ‘You must be tired, poor girl.’

‘Not far now.’

He rolled down his window, and they were momentarily assaulted by a blast of cold, fresh air. He turned his face and took a huge breath of this. He said, ‘You know something? I can smell the sea.’

‘Me too.’

He closed the window. ‘Judith.’

‘What is it?’

‘Thank you.’

Holding a Wedgwood mug filled with strong, steaming tea, Judith knocked on the door of Biddy's bedroom.

‘Gus?’

She opened the door to a blast of icy-cold air. The windows were wide open, the curtains flapping in the draught, and the weight of the door was almost torn from her hand. She closed it hastily behind her, and the curtains subsided a bit.

She said, ‘You have to
be freezing?
’

‘I'm not.’ He was lying in bed propped up with pillows, with his hands linked behind his head. His pyjama jacket was blue, and the night's stubble showed dark on his chin.

‘I've brought you a mug of tea.’ She put it down on the table beside his bed.

‘You're a saint. What time is it?’

‘Half past ten. Do you mind if I close the window? The draught goes all the way through the house, and we're trying to keep it warm.’

‘I'm sorry. I should have thought. It was just so good to feel the fresh air on my face. The hospital was grossly overheated, and London air always feels a bit heavy and stale, to say nothing of the noise of the traffic.’

‘I know what you mean.’ She closed the old sash window and stood for a moment looking out at the day. The sky was watery and washed with clouds. There had been a shower, and soon there would be another. Puddles glittered on pathways, and the bare branches of the trees dripped onto the shaggy winter grass of the lawn. The wind whined, thumped against the house, rattled the window frame. She turned and came back to lean on the brass rail at the foot of Biddy's double bed.

‘How did you sleep?’

‘Not too badly.’ He had pulled himself up into a sitting position, his knees drawn up beneath the covers, his long fingers wrapped around the warmth of the mug, a lock of black hair falling across his forehead. ‘It was still dark when I woke. I've been lying here watching the sky fill with light. Should I have been up at sparrow-fart, for breakfast?’

‘I told you last night, no. I only disturbed you now because I have to go to Penzance to buy some food, and I wondered if you wanted me to get anything for you.’

‘Cigarettes?’

‘Sure.’

‘And some shaving soap…’

‘Tube or bowl?’

‘Can you still get bowls?’

‘I can try.’

‘I'll need a brush.’

‘Is that all?’

‘I think so. I'll give you some money.’

‘Don't worry. I'll bill you when I get back. I shan't be long. Home for lunch. Phyllis has made a rabbit-and-pigeon pie. Can you eat rabbit and pigeon?’

‘If I can eat a tiddy-oggy, I can eat anything.’

She laughed. ‘Get up when you feel like it. Have a bath if you want. The morning paper's in the drawing-room, and I've lit the fire.’ She went to the door and opened it. ‘See you later.’

‘'Bye.’