Echoes of the Dance (11 page)

‘Children are much more likely to wreck a marriage. You
know my views about that.'

‘. . . and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be
well.'

Kate pushed her hands deep into her pockets: she felt afraid. The past with its failures and mistakes pressed upon her and, with David gone, she was rootless; there was no framework now to keep her centred. She had her family, of course, and many friends, but it was a mistake to depend too heavily on other people – however close – in an effort to fill this emptiness. During the last terrible year of David's illness there had been hardly any time for anything except the care of him at the London flat; their world had shrunk to the small round of special diets, regular injections and then hospital visits. Oh, back then . . . how she had longed to walk here in the clean air; to hear the sound of clear water bubbling up from the thousand issues that drenched the peaty earth or watch the buzzard suspended high in the milky-blue dome above her head. Now she had all the time in the world, the freedom to do as she pleased, and the knowledge of the empty hours filled her with a kind of panic.

Other voices, human ones, were carried up to her, and the sound of a dog barking. Instinctively she glanced about, ready to call the dogs to her – but she was quite alone: no Megs or Honey; no Oscar or Felix. Pain squeezed her heart and she turned away abruptly as a party of people climbed up towards her. Blinking away tears she stared across Walkhampton Common towards Sharpitor.

There – how many years ago? – she'd stood with Alex Gillespie, shivering under frosty stars, blind with moonlight, taking the first steps away from an empty marriage into her one true love affair.

‘. . . I think I love you. I know you're not free. I know there
are all sorts of problems. But do you want to try to resolve
them . . . ?'

‘I'm afraid. If I start, I'm afraid that I shan't know how to
stop.'

The climbers were beside her now, exclaiming at the view and beaming at her, including her in their pleasure. She smiled back at them and paused to speak to the dog – a large boisterous person of an indeterminate breeding – before beginning the descent to the car.

Halfway home she remembered that Monica was coming to tea. Kate cursed briefly and glanced at her watch; she'd spent much longer on Pew Tor than she'd realized. Yesterday she'd met Nat and Monica at the pub for Sunday lunch and, hearing that Nat had arranged to keep the following morning free but would be working in the afternoon, she'd invited Monica to tea. The invitation had been accepted readily enough but Kate had noticed a preoccupation that seemed to be exercising an unusual restraint on Monica's typically sharp observations regarding Nat's work or Janna's shortcomings. Only when Kate began to talk about Floss did Monica begin to look more alert; asking how Roly was and saying that she intended to visit him.

‘We thought we'd go down one evening,' Nat had agreed, ‘if I can finish early . . .'

‘Oh, don't worry about that,' Monica had interrupted rather vaguely. ‘I'll just pop down on my own. After all, you can see him almost any weekend. I'll go down on Tuesday, perhaps.'

Nat's look of surprise hadn't escaped Kate and she'd turned the conversation away to her own dilemma of whether or not to sell her house, hoping that this would keep them on less controversial subjects until lunch was finished.

As she parked the car and hurried into the house, Kate gave thanks that she'd got into the habit of keeping a few emergency supplies in readiness for the arrival at short notice of Guy and Giles with their young families: scones and cakes in the freezer; baked beans and pasta in the larder. Monica certainly wouldn't want baked beans but perhaps some scones with crab-apple jelly followed by a slice of Victoria sponge might be acceptable. She hurried about, putting out her prettiest china, knowing that Monica would notice – would
expect
a certain amount of effort to be made.

That air of expectation was odd; a belief in some kind of divine right that other people should put themselves out on her behalf.

And the really odd thing, thought Kate, was that this absolute sense of what was due to her was so strong that you found yourself dashing about finding long unused tea-sets and linen napkins. If it had been Cass, say, you wouldn't have hesitated to give her a perfectly ordinary mug and a piece of paper towel. It was even worse than that. You found yourself responding to some deeper need in Monica, an emptiness that was so intense that you actually
wanted
to fill it in some way.

‘Which is crazy,' muttered Kate crossly, scooping butter from the carton into a dish. ‘What can she possibly need? She has a devoted husband and a villa in Portugal; a lovely son and loads of money. Even Roly can't bear to upset her . . .'

Washing her hands, drying them on the roller towel, she found that her momentary irritation had passed and she was smiling a little. The thought of Roly and Bevis, and Uncle Bernard in his drawer, brought her some measure of calm: imagining them in that strange barn of a house by the ford soothed her. Ever since David had died she was becoming aware of the quality of Roly's undemanding constancy and unconditional friendship. It was this aspect of him that had begun to remind her of Cass's father, the General. He, too, had been unobtrusively available to listen to her woes, to show her a perspective. For her, for Cass, and for their children, he'd been an irreplaceable support and comfort. It was not odd that she should think about him – he'd played such an important role in her young life – but it was unsettling that, just lately, her memories of him had brought along other remembrances that were less happy. It was as if in grieving for David she had opened the floodgates to a more widespread mourning: for the failures and mistakes in her relationships with Mark and Alex, for the death of her mother, and even for the General himself. Oh, how she'd missed him after he'd died: that aching loss for someone who had always been on her side. Roly was just such another. He ignored his private feelings for her so as to be able to give her what she really required at this time.

Kate remembered Monica's expression when she'd mentioned Roly at lunch in the pub: an inward, straining look as if she were attempting to see something just beyond her vision.

‘Monica's like the black widow spider,' David had once said. ‘She sucks people dry. Luckily Roly got away in time.'

Kate had chuckled at this observation but, once she'd met Jonathan, she'd wondered if David hadn't had the right of it. There was a dried-out, bloodless look to Monica's husband, thin and light as an autumn leaf. It seemed as if one breath of wind would whirl him away.

‘I don't like him much,' she'd admitted. ‘He's such a stick. It seems so odd, David. I mean how could she, after Roly . . . ?'

He'd made one of his distinctive grimaces, mouth pulled down at the corners. ‘He was convenient, d'you see? Solved all the problems.'

‘What problems?'

But if David knew why the marriage had broken up he wasn't telling, and Kate still did not know the reason why Monica had left Roly.

Monica's car could be heard coming slowly up the drive. Kate pushed the kettle on to the Rayburn's hotplate and went out to meet her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘I hate Jonathan sometimes,' Monica said. She stared at Kate; her eyes, wide and dark, pleaded for understanding. ‘I just hate him.'

The time had marched slowly beyond the hour for tea and was now dragging its feet towards dinner. Since Monica showed no indication to leave, Kate suggested a drink. The idea was a good one. The slight awkwardness that exists between two people who have very little in common was dispelled by the cheerful ceremony of getting two tumblers ready, a panicky hunt for the lemon – ‘I know I've got one somewhere' – and the comforting sizzle of tonic water. Quite suddenly, halfway through her gin and tonic, Monica kicked off her shoes and became confidential. Kate watched her rather anxiously, fearful lest her measuring of the gin had been too generous. She was not startled by Monica's revelation but rather by the unexpected change from the brittle and sharp-tongued to the emotional and soul-baring. She did not know this side of Monica's character, though Roly and Nat would have recognized it at once, and it caught Kate off balance.

‘I've shocked you.' Monica spoke flatly but with just a suggestion that Kate had disappointed her. ‘I can't help that. It's the truth. There are moments when I can't bear the sight of Jonathan.'

‘I'm not shocked. I should think it's pretty common, isn't it? To tell the truth, I find it amazing that relationships work as well as they do. I've always considered that men and women are two quite different species. Totally incompatible really. How odd.' She frowned, remembering. ‘I said that to . . . someone else once.'

Monica watched her eagerly; there was something mesmerizing about her stare. ‘To David? Did you feel like that about David? That you hated him sometimes?'

‘Oh, no, not David. After all . . .' She paused, confused.

‘What?' Monica was as alert as a spider that feels the faintest vibration of its web.

‘I was going to say that it wasn't like that with us.' Kate spoke almost reluctantly, thinking it through. ‘We'd both been married, made mistakes, but we saw an opportunity for happiness together and decided to try to make it work. Our children were grown up – well, my boys were at university and Miranda was married – so we decided we could con- centrate on each other. I loved David very much but it wasn't one of those madly passionate affairs. This was different.'

‘Different?' Monica seized greedily upon the word and Kate felt a very slight twinge of revulsion: she sensed that Monica wanted something from her – some intimacy or collusion, perhaps – that Kate was unprepared to give.

‘Different,' she said carefully, ‘from other love affairs. Anyway, I should think that to feel an emotion as strong as hate for someone really close to you then you'd have to feel an overwhelmingly corresponding depth of love.'

‘Oh, no.' Monica shook her head decisively. ‘I don't agree. After all, I never loved Jonathan like that either.'

She sat back in the corner of her chair, self-absorbed again, and Kate breathed more freely as if unexpectedly released from a trap.

‘I thought . . . well, because you left Roly, I'd imagined . . . Sorry. It's none of my business.'

‘You thought I left Roly because I fell madly in love with Jonathan?' Monica laughed with genuine amusement and, just for a brief moment, Kate could see a glimpse of the pretty girl she must have been. ‘Oh, no. Jonathan was what we used to call “sound”. He was steady and that appealed to me when Roly was drinking so heavily after Mim's accident. Of course, he'd always liked his drink too much – they all did in that crowd – but I hoped that the shock of leaving him, taking Nat away, would make Roly get a grip and we could get back together again but it didn't work out like that. After he'd stopped drinking I allowed him to see Nat but everything was different between us. I tried to show him that we could make it work again but he wasn't having any of it. I decided to stick with Jonathan but I was passionate about Roly. He was the biggest thing that ever happened to me.'

‘Well, now you
have
shocked me,' said Kate lightly. It was true: Monica's cold-blooded description of her relationships, both with Roly and with Jonathan, shocked Kate far more than her asseveration of hatred of Jonathan. Suddenly she knew that she didn't want to hear any more. ‘Relationships are such private things, aren't they?' she said. ‘No-one knows what goes on inside a marriage.'

‘I left Roly because he changed.' Monica wasn't taking the hint. Her look was inward, her voice hurt and sad; she'd been the one who'd suffered. ‘He was brilliant, you know. You'd be surprised how many photographs that became icons in the sixties were taken by Roly. He'd have been just as great as Bailey or any of them if he hadn't lost it.'

‘Lost it?'

Monica sighed. ‘Like I said, Roly always drank too much but he'd kept it under some sort of control and it never affected his work. After Mim's accident he became an alcoholic. He was unreliable and his clients couldn't trust him. He'd turn up late or forget about a shoot. It was Mim's fault. She relied on him too much. They'd always been so close, you see, and he felt responsible for her. Of course it was terrible. Ghastly. But he had me and Nat to worry about and I resented the fact that Mim had to come first.' She stared appealingly at Kate. ‘That was natural, wasn't it? You'd have felt the same way about your twins. Of course, she was incredibly famous – Fonteyn's natural successor and all that – and the shock of her career being wiped out overnight was cataclysmic. Even so, Roly had other responsibilities. We used to have terrible rows about Mim. It was humiliating having to watch him disintegrate. Shameful.'

There was a little silence.

‘I had no idea,' said Kate at last. ‘Although I've often wondered why he never touches alcohol.'

‘You mean David didn't tell you?'

‘Did he know?'

‘Of course he knew. It was David who introduced me to Jonathan. He was their accountant, you see: David's, Roly's, Mim's and the rest of them. He specialized in artistic people and he looked after them all. David said, “You'll like Jonathan, Monica. He's much more your sort than the rag, tag and bobtail you meet in my studio.” He never wanted me to marry Roly.'