Deep Water, Thin Ice (35 page)

‘Because it’s true.’

‘Well not in this case. There was a new witness. Did you know about the appeal?’

‘No. No, of course not. Why are you asking me all this?’

She stood up, the poker still in her hand.

‘You seem to have taken his case very personally: going to see him, warning him off, then telling me not to go to the reserve.’ She waved the poker as she spoke and gave it a last flourish. ‘I don’t understand why.’

Theo took the poker from her hand, joked that she was looking dangerous with that thing and surely she wasn’t that cross with him. He laid it down on the hearth. She waited, watching him expectantly. She got the impression that he was buying time. Perhaps he, too, was choosing his words carefully, anxious not to cause a rift. When he faced her again, his expression was calm, reasonable.

‘I heard about him from that friend I told you about. Obviously I only heard half the story. But it doesn’t change the way I feel about him. I have taken it personally as you put it. I was jealous to know you spent time with him alone. And it worried me that you hadn’t told me. I suppose I’ve overreacted. I suspected he was up to no good. I can’t say that what you’ve told me makes me feel any better about it. To be honest I don’t trust the guy, but I’m sorry if you think I was out of line.’

‘You didn’t need to feel jealous. I told you: it wasn’t like that. Anyway, we’ve been all through that before. And I don’t see why you can’t trust him; you hardly know him.
I
trust him.’

‘Fine. That’s all right then.’ Theo gave her a hug but she barely responded. She was still taut with things yet to be said. She turned away, bent over to close the stove door and then wandered across to the window to draw the curtains. Theo went to the fireplace and put one hand up on the mantelpiece, gazed down at the stalking bittern and then looked across at Alex and smiled. ‘In any case I imagine he probably won’t stay here now. Things have got a bit hot for him. It’s difficult to shake off a past like that, whatever the truth of what happened.’

She registered the persistent suspicion in his words but decided to let it go.

‘Well I’ve been telling everyone I know in the village about his appeal and that he was declared innocent,’ she said. ‘I hope it’ll get easier for him soon. But in any case Mick said he had nowhere else to go, that he had no real money and that no-one would buy that land back; it’s too water logged to do anything else with.’ She gave the curtains one last twitch and turned to look directly at him. ‘I thought I could probably buy it from him with some of the money that’s going to come in from the house. But I’d rather he stayed…if that’s what he wants to do, wouldn’t you?’

Theo raised his eyebrows. A flash of surprise crossed his eyes.

‘Mm?’

‘Wouldn’t you rather he stayed?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘I don’t want to think that anyone is hounded out of a place, especially when they haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘Of course not. But I wouldn’t exactly…’

‘And I assume you wouldn’t mind if I went to the reserve again to help out? There’s no reason to stay away now. We’re not going to have the kind of marriage, are we, where you have to vet everyone I see?’

He looked offended then and she wondered if she’d gone too far. Was she being unfair? She recognised that from Theo’s point of view Mick would seem dubious company.

Theo crossed to her and put his hands on her shoulders.

‘Of course you can go to the reserve if you want to. I’m sorry. I was just being too protective. You can do whatever you want.’

Alex leaned forward and kissed him, then moved away again.

‘Good. I thought it was just a misunderstanding. Let’s forget about it.’ She turned her back to the hearth. ‘But there’s something else that I need to talk to you about and it’s better we do it now, isn’t it? Clear the air?’

‘Hell, Alex, what next?’ His tone was teasing but she thought he sounded worried – or perhaps cross? ‘I’ve just got back and now all this.’

‘It’s about your mother Theo.’

‘Ye-es. What about her?’

Alex hesitated.

‘She used the key I gave you to let herself into the house while I was out.’

‘Did she?’

‘Yes. She was sitting in the drawing room when I got back, with the fire blazing.’

‘OK. Er, sorry, I don’t see the problem.’

‘You don’t?’ Alex was thrown. To her, the issue seemed quite clear: it was an invasion of her privacy. ‘It’s a very uncomfortable feeling having someone let themselves in without you knowing it.’ Or perhaps, she thought suddenly, it’s just because it’s Sarah and she’s so odd. Not sure what to say, she added: ‘I mean I hardly know your mother…’ She’d intended to bring up the drinking, the incessant smell of whisky on Sarah’s breath, but Theo was looking at her stonily. She felt her courage waver and she abandoned it for another time.

He shrugged. ‘Well, perhaps that’s the problem: you don’t know my mother well enough. Give her time, you’ll get used to her. She doesn’t mean anything by it; she’s just trying to be neighbourly. I take it she didn’t do anything she shouldn’t?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Or say anything to upset you?’

‘No, no. We mostly talked about the wedding. I’m afraid she thinks it’s going to be a much bigger, grander affair than it is.’

‘She’s very excited about it. That’s probably why she came over. But I’ll talk to her about it again if you like and explain how intimate the wedding’s going to be.’

‘I wish you would.’

‘Fine. But hey, enough of this. You’re looking beautiful as always. Let’s go out and you can tell me more about what you’ve been planning and all about your dress.’

‘Absolutely not.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘You can’t know anything about it. It’s bad luck.’

‘No, no, I’m just not allowed to
see
it.’

‘Says you.’ Alex laughed and took his arm as they went out, relieved to have got the conversation over without a row. Of course it would all sort out.

*

Sarah was in the bathroom when Theo came home the next morning. A brief knock at the door signalled his entry and, as usual, he didn’t wait to be invited, but walked straight in. She was standing naked in the bath, drying herself with a large cream towel as the water drained away. He said nothing and sat down on the little wicker chair in the corner, watching her as she rubbed the towel over her sagging flesh and then bent to dry each leg and foot in turn before carefully stepping out of the bath onto the cork mat. He had done this ever since he was a child and she had never objected. Theo liked the intimacy of it, the feeling that he had this special privilege of being with his mother at her most vulnerable. As a child he’d considered himself her guardian against intruders and always moved the chair so that its back was to the door. No-one else would be allowed in, not even his father who, to Theo’s surprise and relief, had never shown any interest in sharing his wife’s bath time anyway.

Jealousy had always haunted Theo’s relationship with his father. As childhood moved into adolescence, he became convinced that his father didn’t treat Sarah well. There was no physical abuse as such but Richard Hellyon didn’t cherish her enough. Surprise turned to disappointment and then to frank scorn as Theo watched his father obsess over his china and pots instead of his wife. Ironically, he was also pleased and saw a kind of justice in it. He didn’t want to share his mother with anyone.

Now, watching Sarah, he remembered how pretty she’d been in her youth with her curvaceous figure, her smooth soft skin and her sleek blond hair. He didn’t really see the change in her: the slow corruption of her flesh as she aged. She would always be the same for him. Without success, he felt he’d spent his whole life looking for a woman who would compare with her. Every time he stole a woman from her husband, it was a notch in the tally against his father but the satisfaction was always incomplete.

Now, with her long satin dressing-gown tied and trailing out softly behind her, Sarah left the bathroom and Theo followed her through to her bedroom where she sat down in front of her dressing-table mirror and picked up her hairbrush. Standing behind her, Theo reached for the brush and, catching his eye in the mirror, she let him take it and sat while he brushed her hair.

‘Alex has seen that Birdman again.’ Theo brushed slowly and rhythmically as he talked. It was soothing, almost mesmeric. ‘He actually came up to the house. If I’d only been there…’

‘What did he want?’

‘He brought us a wedding present – one of those carvings of his. It’s as much as I can do to stop myself throwing it on the fire. But Alex seems to love them.’

‘Dear me, I can’t understand her letting him in.’ Sarah smoothed the satin gown out over her dimpled knees. ‘Especially after what you told me about him.’

‘I know. I went down to where he lives not long ago. It’s a filthy place.’ He brushed a little faster. ‘And he’s got a dog. A brute. You know how I hate dogs.’

Sarah reached up a hand to lay it on his.

‘Darling,’ she said soothingly.

Theo smiled at her reflection in the mirror but his expression masked his anxieties. Alex was becoming difficult to manage and her determined and controlled display of the previous evening had worried him. He hadn’t expected her to stand up to him in that way and it was proof, he was sure, of the bad effect Mick Fenby had upon her. He’d spent the rest of the evening attempting to smooth it all over and put it behind them. She’d seemed keen to do the same but still he was concerned.

‘I’m not sure what to do about that man.’ He stopped brushing her hair, laid the brush down and came to kneel down on the floor beside her. ‘I think he’s got some sort of hold over her. He influences her.’ He ran a hand up into his hair, leaving his curls sticking out at angles. ‘He bothers me.’

‘He should have had the decency to leave when all that information came out about him.’ Sarah reached across and patted his hair down and then ran her hand down his cheek. ‘Perhaps he still will. What on earth does it take to make someone like that realise they’re not welcome?’

‘Mm.’ Theo picked up a lipstick from the dressing table and repeatedly twisted it out and back. He smiled suddenly and Sarah smiled back at him indulgently.

‘That’s right darling,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’ll all be all right. It’s not long till the wedding. There’s no time for anything to go wrong, is there?’

Theo lifted himself up off his haunches, leaned over, and kissed her.

‘I won’t let it.’ He patted her hand. ‘I promise you. I know what I can do about Mick Fenby.’

It was the first Thursday in April when Alex visited London again. Completion was due for the house in Hampstead on the Friday and she told Theo she wanted to take all the keys back in person, check the place out and have a look round one last time. It didn’t feel right to dispose of somewhere which held so many memories without a personal witness to the parting. Theo had offered to come too, ‘to give you moral support’, but she’d insisted that it was something she needed to do alone. In any case, she’d rung in advance and arranged to stay with Erica, a chance for them to spend a little time together again before what her sister insisted on describing as ‘the big day’.

The visit to the house was a good excuse for a break anyway. The wedding was little more than three short weeks away. The arrangements, slow to get going, now seemed to have taken on a momentum which felt unstoppable. Alex recognised creeping cold feet, passed it off as wedding nerves, and was pleased to distance herself for a few days to clear her head. She stopped at Winchester to have lunch with her friend Catherine, and then idled her way on to London, a welcome distraction from the pressures of home.

Theo had already moved a few of his things into Hillen Hall, taking over one of the spare bedrooms as his study. ‘Somewhere to keep all my clutter out of your way,’ he’d said. He’d chosen the room he’d had as a child and had moved an old desk into it from one of the other rooms along the corridor. ‘My father’s,’ he’d declared, and had appeared particularly pleased to be using it. He’d brought books to fill the shelves, pictures for the walls and a pile of file boxes. ‘Paperwork. Things I need to keep on top of.’ There was a lot of it. Theo was a hoarder; he kept mementoes: tickets, receipts, wine foils, beer mats, leaflets – she’d seen him pocket them all. She viewed it as an engaging eccentricity. But it did seem strange to suddenly have Theo’s belongings in the Hall, a house she had come to regard as her own territory over the preceding year, and she recognised a deep-seated nervousness about sharing again and the threat to her independence.

Scared of another commitment would be more like it, she thought, as she negotiated the hectic traffic round London and wondered why she hadn’t come by train. The good times with Simon had been wonderful but she didn’t want a repeat of all that conflict, the jostling for position and petty jealousies. She’d convinced herself that there was no risk of that this time; there could be no clash of musical egos or artistic temperaments.
And
she had learnt from her mistakes. But with his personal belongings in the house, she’d already seen another side to Theo: possessive of his own space and not a little defensive of his privacy, character traits she hadn’t realised he shared with Simon. And there was something in his attitude to the house which occasionally jarred with her, something which seemed to have changed though she couldn’t quite say how. She reminded herself that it would shortly be his home too which made his behaviour only natural, but it was, perhaps, a warning sign of things to come. She remembered Erica once declaiming: ‘Compromise, that’s the key to a good relationship.’ Maybe, thought Alex with a wry smile, but, considering Erica’s success with men, the advice seemed out of place.