Learning by Heart (17 page)

He stood very still, almost to attention. He looked like his photograph on the wall of the house, in the passageway to the kitchen, in his uniform. An age seemed to pass. He glanced back once into the cathedral and then he said, ‘Follow me
.’

We went home
.

I was ready to tell him all about you, that I wanted to marry you, that I loved you, that you had only gone home with Richard for six months, and that you would come back to me. He listened without a word, and I thought he would understand. I have always been my father’s favourite, his only son. He has indulged me, I suppose, and now I thought I would have the indulgence of his understanding. What made me think this, truly, I don’t now comprehend
.

He hit me with the flat of his hand first, and then he hit me with his fist. That was his answer
.

But it’s not true what my father says. He tells me that women are one thing, but honour and the family another, that the love of a woman is secondary. It is something that is swept away by time, obligation, work, necessity, duty, boredom and familiarity. That love is a story for the movies, books and songs. It doesn’t last the heat of the day. It is a pallid lie that children believe, but not men
.

When he had finished beating me that Sunday morning, he told me that I could never go to England. I told him I would. I told him it was necessary because Richard already knew
.

I told him that Richard is a good person who would not stop you coming back to me, if is was what you really wanted
.

But you have not come back, so I am guessing in the dark. Anything could have happened. Perhaps none of my letters has reached you because you no longer live there. Or perhaps you left of your own accord, because you felt that was the right thing to do. These two, frankly, I have hoped for, expecting a message from you daily, saying what has happened and where you are, when you are coming back to me
.

But there has been no letter and no message, only my own letters returned. So I know. I think that perhaps you and Richard have come to some sort of compromise, that he has persuaded you to stay for good, and that part of the compromise is to return my letters, and never contact me again
.

But that isn’t an answer, either. Because I can’t believe you would be as cruel as that: I believe that even if you had come to such a decision, you would at least write and tell me
.

So I have no real answers, Cora. I go round and round in my head until the horrible circularity kills me. We are both imprisoned in our separate lives. Perhaps that is the truth, after all: the truth of us
.

I wish you would send me just one line
.

I feel the imprint of you in my heart and I think that it will never be whole again, never lie quiet. My father says that I have made my name unclean, but that isn’t true
.

If I had the choice, I would do it again
.

I would choose you, over and over and over again
.

Ten

It was a piece of her childhood.

Zeph stood at the fence to the field, with Joshua balanced on one hip. The little boy’s face was turned into her shoulder. ‘Look, darling,’ she cajoled him, ‘the horse is coming. See him?’

The gelding was crossing the grass, a chestnut, moving its head from side to side against the cold morning breeze.

‘He’s exactly the same colour as a horse that Mummy used to ride,’ she said. ‘He used to be in this field, too. My own horse, a pony. Aren’t you going to stroke him? Look, he likes you. He’s come to talk to you.’

‘No,’ Joshua insisted, his voice muffled.

The gelding lowered its head.

‘You are beautiful,’ Zeph murmured to the animal. She reached out her fingers to touch him.

Her father had taught Zeph to ride. He had brought her to these stables, although they had not been so upmarket then. There had been no expensive horseboxes parked in the yard, and the place had been virtually run by girls like Zeph, all horse-mad, all coming after school, changing out of their uniform in the tack room, slinging their clothes in untidy heaps, pulling on the jeans and sweatshirts that smelt so alluringly of saddles, feed and ponies. From eight to fourteen, Zeph had lived for those hours. She didn’t care what job she did, so long as the day finished with the ride out.

The place was run then by a Miss Grady, whom Zeph had never seen out of her layers of dog-hairy sweaters and padded anoraks. Miss Grady had lived in the comfortable squalor of a run-down cottage next to the stableyard; she had habitually carried a mug of tea in one hand and a rein in the other, as if she had absentmindedly misplaced the horse to which the rein had been attached. She must have been seventy-five or eighty even then, Zeph thought.

Where Miss Grady had gone, she had no idea. It had been quite a shock to drive along the road this morning, turn in at the stables and see the perfectly painted fences, the scrubbed yard and the new row of loose boxes built alongside the old.

‘Is Miss Grady still here?’ she had asked a girl, who was grooming a little cob pony.

‘Chloë’s on the phone,’ the girl said, ‘if that’s who you mean.’

Chloë wasn’t Miss Grady, or anything like her. Chloë turned out to be a smart woman in her twenties.

‘I used to ride here,’ Zeph told her, ‘fifteen years ago. I would like my son to learn.’ And she indicated Josh, who was staring wide-eyed and mistrustfully at the woman.

‘Never too young,’ Chloë had said.

‘He’s a little bit wary.’

‘That’s fine,’ Chloë had responded. ‘We’re used to it. We’ve got a toddler class on Saturday morning. Bring him to that.’

Zeph turned Joshua’s face to hers now with the tip of her finger. ‘Going to ride a little pony on Saturday?’ she asked. ‘Just a little one, with Mummy here holding him for you?’

‘Daddy hold him,’ Josh replied. And he suddenly tried to scramble up from her hip, throwing his arms round her shoulders, pushing with his heels against her stomach.

‘Ouch, Josh,’ she remonstrated. ‘Don’t do that. It hurts.’

He ground his feet into her and she tried to hold him away from her. ‘Josh,’ she said. ‘Stop it.’

‘Daddy hold him,’ her son muttered. ‘He hold him.’

They got home at eleven. As they crossed to the house, Joshua sat down in the yard. ‘Come inside,’ she told him. ‘Please, Josh.’

He didn’t reply. He began the complicated private game he had been preoccupied with yesterday: arranging the small rough stones of the driveway in lines, then balancing them on the edges of the puddles.

Zeph watched him for a second. ‘Don’t get wet,’ she said resignedly. ‘I can see you from the window so I’ll know if you do, OK?’

Joshua didn’t answer. His head was bowed. Rejection forming a knot in her throat, Zeph wondered if her son would ever again look her in the eye. ‘I didn’t choose it,’ she whispered, ‘if that’s what you think.’

She went inside, carrying the shopping she had done for her mother on the way to the stables. ‘Where are you?’ she called.

‘Here,’ Cora replied.

There was something odd in her mother’s tone. As Zeph came into the kitchen, she saw her closing a drawer in the oak dresser.

‘They didn’t have wholegrain,’ Zeph said, tipping out the shopping on to the table and holding up the bread. ‘It’s wheatgerm. That’s the same thing, isn’t it?’

‘More or less,’ Cora answered.

Zeph paused. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ Cora replied. ‘I’m waiting for the man from Chalmers.’ She started to busy herself with the shopping.

Zeph came round the table to Cora’s side. ‘You’ve been crying,’ she said wonderingly.

‘No.’

‘You have. You’ve been crying,’ Zeph insisted. She gazed at Cora in disbelief. It was years since she had seen Cora’s tears; the last time was when her father died. She touched her mother’s arm briefly. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

Cora picked up the kettle and filled it from the cold tap. ‘It’s just these bills,’ she said, nodding at the table end, where a stack of invoices and the farm accounts were strewn.

Zeph looked at the books, then at the drawer Cora had closed. ‘That’s all?’ she said.

‘Isn’t that enough?’ Cora responded.

‘When the Chalmers man has gone, sit down and tell me,’ Zeph said.

‘I’ll find a way round it,’ Cora said.

‘I want to help.’

Cora glanced at her. Then she bent down with her back to her daughter, taking out plates and cups from the bottom cupboard.

At the same time they heard a car in the lane.

Cora put down the plates and went to the window. ‘It’s him,’ she said. She walked over to the door and took her coat from the hook on the back.

Zeph watched her mother cross the yard and lean down to talk to her grandson. To her surprise, he got to his feet and took his grandmother’s hand. Cora spent a moment or two brushing down his coat, then straightened to greet the man who had come from the cider factory in the next county. Last night, she had told Zeph that he would be coming to tell her what was needed in the harvest that year, and what chemicals they would allow to be sprayed, and to give his opinion on the state of the Dabinetts and Yarlington Mill.

‘Don’t you wish you didn’t have all this to do?’ Zeph had asked. ‘Why don’t you give it up?’

Her mother had stared at her. ‘Because it’s what your father would have wanted,’ she had said. ‘He planted all those trees.’

It was almost lunchtime when Cora got back to the house. Zeph had been waiting for her to return for almost an hour. Joshua ran in ahead of his grandmother. Zeph could hear her mother calling, ‘What would you like to eat?’ Joshua’s footsteps resounded on the stairs: two up, two down, a familiar game from home.

‘Go and get your soldiers,’ Zeph heard Cora say, as she took off her coat. ‘In the cupboard, here.’ There was the sound of the door opening to the understairs cubbyhole, where Cora had put his little bike, his football, his Lego. Zeph heard her son scramble down the stairs as Cora walked into the kitchen.

Zeph was sitting at the table, a cup of cold coffee in front of her.

‘Do you think he would eat soup?’ Cora asked. ‘What shall I make for him?’

When there was no reply, Cora glanced at her daughter. ‘Zeph?’

Josh came into the room with a box of plastic figures.

Cora put her head on one side, frowned a little. She changed the subject. ‘The rep thinks there might be enough yield,’ she said. ‘I asked him what the minimum would be this year.’

‘How long did it take him?’ Zeph asked, in a low voice.

Cora nodded towards the window, in the direction that the Chalmers van had driven away. ‘An hour,’ she said, puzzled. ‘You saw him.’

‘I don’t mean the Chalmers man,’ Zeph said. ‘How long did it take Daddy to plant the trees?’

‘How long?’ Cora echoed.

‘He told me months.’

‘Yes,’ Cora said, wavering. She couldn’t read the complicated expression on her daughter’s face.

‘When you first moved here.’

‘Yes,’ Cora agreed.

‘Did you help him?’

Cora paused. Her gaze ran swiftly over the table, then back to Zeph’s face. ‘Of course,’ she answered.

‘Planted them?’

‘Brought them on the trailer. Staked them, all kinds of things … Why, darling? You know how long it took. You know what we did.’

‘Working with him. Weeks and weeks.’ Zeph put her head on one side speculatively. ‘I don’t see why you bothered.’

‘Well, he thought that an orchard would be a good business.’

‘And all the years after that,’ Zeph said. ‘All those harvests.’

‘Yes …’ The two women stared at each other. In the frigid atmosphere, Cora faltered. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘But why bother to help him at all?’ Zeph asked. ‘Wouldn’t you rather have been in Sicily?’

Cora put her hand behind her, and leaned on the edge of the stove. She saw Josh squat down on the floor, and empty the box of his toys on to the flagstones.

‘It’s you,’ Zeph said. ‘You’re the woman, aren’t you?’

Cora couldn’t reply. Her eyes rested briefly on the chair six feet away from her, but she couldn’t cross the floor to it.

Zeph reached behind her and slowly took out from the dresser drawer the brown-paper parcel with the Italian postmark. She placed it square on the table. ‘Do you think I don’t know who Pietro Caviezel is?’ she asked, in a quiet, even voice.

‘That was addressed to me,’ Cora told her. Hot colour flooded her face. ‘It’s private.’

Zeph ignored her. ‘The novelist,’ she said. ‘The poet. Even I know who Pietro Caviezel is. He won some sort of prize, didn’t he?’ she asked. ‘Three or four years ago. He came to this country.’

‘That parcel was private,’ Cora repeated.

‘And you are the woman he wouldn’t name in
The Light
.’

‘No,’ Cora said. ‘That’s not true.’ And she made a move to take the package from the table.

Zeph leaped to her feet. She snatched up the journal. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ she demanded, in a voice like murder.

‘You don’t understand,’ Cora whispered.

‘It’s here in black and white!’ Zeph cried. She tore open the envelope, scattering the journal and all its contents over the table. She picked up the covering letter from the solicitor, and waved it at Cora. ‘This is addressed to you!’ she said. ‘He’s died, and he left instructions. It says it right here. It’s for you.’

‘But the novel’s not about me,’ Cora protested.

Zeph shot her a look of unparalleled venom. She snatched up the journal.

‘Mummy!’ Josh said, frightened by Zeph’s shouting.

Neither woman looked at him.

‘Don’t,’ Cora said. ‘Please don’t.’

‘Not about you?’ Zeph was leafing rapidly through the journal. She stopped at a page, stabbing the text with her finger. ‘What does all this mean, then?’

‘You had no right to look at that.’ Cora was angry now. ‘How dare you?’

‘Mummy!’ Josh repeated.

Cora looked at him. His mouth was open in a little circle of shock.

Zeph took several deep breaths. ‘Is it you, or isn’t it, in
The Light
?’

‘It’s none of your business.’ Cora’s eyes darted about in a feverish, distracted fashion.