Learning to Dance (9 page)

‘Robert? I thought that. But no. He paints dreams of the past – yes, they are there before him, but they are already in the past simply because he puts them there for the future!’ She spread her hands. ‘You know what I mean.’

Judith nodded. ‘But I see that as a gift for the future. Not all horror and despair, but beauty. Everywhere.’ She was suddenly invigorated. She saw a solution for Robert and Sybil. They must be together. It was so obvious. So entirely destined.

She brought her hands together as if closing a book. ‘Would you like a pudding? No? Then we had better start back. We can have coffee down at the inn if there’s time.’ She was already planning a talk with Robert Hausmann. He would leave the castle before high tide. When was that, exactly? Probably the shock of knowing that Esmée Gould was back would decide him to give up his nightly carousals down at the Dove Inn.

She asked for the bill and insisted on paying it. Some of her energy spread to Sybil, who leaned forward, backtracking on the last half an hour of high emotion.

‘Listen, Judith, I should not have let my hair down quite so far!’ She smiled wryly. ‘All that business about my background – you will keep it under your hat, won’t you?’

‘Well … all right.’ Judith was sure there was a way of telling Hausmann without actually telling him. She bit her lip, already wondering how to go about it. She said lightly,
‘But why are you embarrassed by it? It’s rather marvellous, surely? Especially your decision to come here and meet your childhood friends.’

‘Well, I must have thought so, but now … I don’t want them to know, Judith. I must have changed amazingly and … it’s digging up bad memories. For them as well as me. I’m pleased I came, of course. It made me face up to certain … things. I shall go back to Surrey and perhaps keep in touch with you now and then. And – well, make a new life, I suppose.’

Judith hesitated. ‘Yes. All right. If that’s what you want. Of course.’

‘Thank you.’

They started back down the combe.

The bus was late. The traffic in Exeter had been appalling. The Markhams had dallied in the shopping centre, and the others had gone on to the minibus and had to wait almost an hour until Jennifer and Stanley arrived, dishevelled, hot and bothered, and without the interesting bags of lingerie Jennifer and Margaret had bought between them.

‘We just had to see the cathedral!’ Jennifer explained. ‘We must have left the bags in that little chapel – was it the Lady Chapel?’

‘Almost three hundred of our precious pounds!’ Sven said, his benevolence deserting him. ‘Just so that you two idiots can clock up another venue!’

Margaret held his arm and said warningly, ‘You know very well Stanley is interested in churches, and he trailed with us through the shops long enough! We can go back via the cathedral – the bags will be there.’

Amazingly, they had been. But the detour added another twenty minutes to the delay, and even Nathaniel’s patience was thinning by the time they pulled into the lay-by.

Judith and Sybil settled into their front seat. Sybil whispered, ‘Stanley looks like a cat who is very well pleased with himself!’ Judith glanced back and saw the tiny grin
on Stanley’s normally expressionless face. The two women started to giggle.

It was good to trundle over the causeway and take the much shorter flight of steps up to the big front door. Nathaniel said loudly, ‘It’s like coming home. Imagine that. Coming home to a castle.’

‘An Englishman’s home is his castle,’ Sybil put in unexpectedly, smiling at him without irony. ‘A castle for the master and a nest for the mistress.’

‘Wonderful, dear lady!’ He took her arm and piloted her towards the sitting room. ‘And how did your day go?’

She began to tell him. She was unbuttoning. Before Judith’s very eyes, she was doing exactly what she should be doing. Nathaniel would pick something up, surely … and he would pass it on to Robert. Judith climbed the stairs slowly, the muscles in her legs protesting vigorously. The sheer rightness of Robert Hausmann and Sybil Jessup was incredible. For once, the right time, the right place and, above all, the right people. The others were still in the lobby, milling around ordering trays of tea to be sent upstairs. She would make her own and lie down. Behind all the thoughts that had possessed her today, she knew that the ache was still there, between her eyes. But it had been so worth it.

She saw from the first landing that Hausmann was waiting for her outside her room, and her heart sank a little. It would be best if she did not see him until Sybil had been unmasked, as it were. She did not quite trust herself to keep Sybil’s secret. She trudged on, smiled as she came to the top step, spoke as normally as she could.

‘Lynmouth was wonderful. You should go and look at it.’

‘I painted Lynmouth some years ago.’

She tried to gauge his mood from his face, but it was
difficult. Unless he actually smiled he looked perpetually grim. Something else was added now; was it nervousness?

‘It is a gem. Your sort of gem.’

‘I want to talk to you. This morning I told you.’

She knew already that his tone was not meant to be peremptory, but she was tired and some of the afternoon’s euphoria was wearing off. And perhaps he was already suspicious about Sybil and wanted to sound her out. Besides all that, she was emotionally drained and exhausted.

‘Not now, Hausmann. I must lie down.’

He nodded once, turned round, opened her door, went through and held it open for her. She was astonished.

‘Hang on. I locked that door this morning!’

‘I borrowed the master key once more.’

She went into the room and looked around. Her thermos was on the table. The bed had been beautifully made, but it was evident someone had since been lying on it. He followed her outraged gaze.

‘I, too, was tired. I was out all morning and a coachload of people were here to see my work when I returned. They tried my patience, and eventually I turned them out. Your room is just the other side of the gallery doors. I am sorry, Mrs Jack. I can see you are annoyed. I did not go through your things.’

She stood by the bed, her back to him. What was this Mrs Jack stuff? It side-tracked her fury slightly.

She said, ‘So. There has been a row? More ammunition against you, Hausmann?’ She turned round. ‘When are you going to get it together? Bart would let you use this venue permanently, you know that. Irena’s OK really. She just doesn’t want you to drag your brother down too far – natural, surely?’

He said nothing; stood in front of her, arms hanging
helplessly, his dark face darker still, with what she took to be a hangdog expression.

She sighed theatrically. ‘Listen. Make some tea, will you? I have got to lie on this bed even if you had dirty boots when you did so.’

Before she had scuffed off her trainers, he was at the kettle. She lay down, adjusted the pillow, sniffed suspiciously, closed her eyes.

‘There is a smell of paint, yes?’

‘That’s what it is. I don’t mind that. Two sugars. A dash of milk.’

‘A biscuit?’

‘No. You can have both packets. I had mussels at the hotel and a cake with my cup of tea at the Lantern Inn.’ She relaxed. ‘Oh, Hausmann, it was beautiful. You should have been there.’

‘If you had asked me, I would have come. And then there would have been more trouble still. Apparently I had promised to do the exhibition and be nice to everyone.’ He mimicked Irena’s voice and Judith laughed.

She heard him put two teacups on the bedside table, and opened her eyes a slit. He drew up a chair and sat down.

She said, ‘Well?’

‘Drink your tea first. It is difficult.’

She pushed herself further on to the pillows and reached round for her cup. The tea was as she liked it: fairly strong and very sweet. She held it between both hands and let the steam soothe her eyes. The knot between them began to relax very slightly. If only he would leave quickly she knew she would sleep until their evening meal. The silence stretched out.

He said abruptly, ‘That idiot driver, Martin Morris, he
told me you were Jack Freeman’s widow. I did not know he was dead.’

It was as if he had hit her in the stomach. She leaned over, holding the cup so tightly she thought it might break.

He said, ‘Don’t speak. I knew Jack for a time. I went to Australia two months ago. Got lost in the bush. Jack’s brother came and found me. Jack was visiting. I saw his stuff, he saw mine. I loved him and I thought he loved me. He did in a way. He kept calling me a “poor bugger”. If anyone else had called me that I’d have done them an injury. But not Jack. Whatever he thought of me, I still loved him. I had some kind of fever, and he sat with me all one night and talked about you.’

She straightened her back slowly; her eyes were wide.

He said, ‘When I saw you first I didn’t realize … He didn’t describe you very well at all. But he told me – when he said goodbye – that he had been talking about his wife.’ He looked up from his own cup. His eyes were full of tears.

‘He was a marvellous man. I’ll always love him. I knew him for just over a week and saw that he too was as sick as I was. We helped each other. If there is anything – anything at all – I would be honoured to help you, Mrs Jack.’ He stood up, put down his cup, walked to the door, and left.

She watched him go. He was slightly crouched and looked like a bear. When the door closed she watched that too, and in her mind she saw him shamble down the landing and into the gallery. Jack had sat with him all one night, and because he was a stranger and probably delirious, Jack had talked to him. About a woman.

At last she put her cup next to Hausmann’s, turned carefully, and lay on her side. After a time she began to weep.

Everyone was very quiet that evening. Nathaniel expounded on the cathedral and its golden colour and Sybil mentioned a train journey from London to Penzance when the red sandstone became very obvious along the Dawlish coast. Martin Morris joined them and told them about the Dorset coast and its plethora of fossils. Judith noticed that when he said that word – plethora – his top denture fell slightly. She would have glanced at Sybil except that she was no longer certain how she could help her. When the trolley came round Judith was conscious that Sybil glanced at her, and she wondered why. Then she realized. The starters were mussels in white wine. She gave a brief upward smile.

At the other table almost total silence prevailed. Jennifer and Margaret did their best discussing the relative merits of shops in Bristol and Exeter but this came to an end when Margaret said very definitely that Stockholm beat both places for shopping.

‘I just wish you two would come and stay with us for once,’ she said. ‘Especially at Christmas. It’s magical. And of course the people are wonderful.’

‘We couldn’t possibly Christmas anywhere except home!’ Jennifer looked at Stanley and he smiled. Yes, that was how the Cheshire cat did it – a disembodied smile. She smiled back. Intimately. Margaret looked annoyed and Sven put his arm across her shoulders. Judith wondered fleetingly and without much interest what on earth was going on there.

After the meal they congregated in the sitting room at Bart Mann’s request. Judith almost excused herself on the grounds of her headache, but then the thought of her room and its solitariness on that second landing made the sitting room full of disparate people seem attractive.

She sat in a corner of the sofa and Sybil joined her. For
a few minutes they were alone while the others found seats and Bart set up a sort of screen next to the television. Under cover of the general settling-down, Sybil said, ‘I don’t know what has happened, Judith. You were so different this afternoon. Now you are not. Are you sure you’re not ill?’

‘I’ve got a nasty nagging pain between my eyes. I get it when I am tired and, lately, I seem always to be tired.’ She smiled as she spoke. She wondered whether Sybil had guessed at Judith’s wild and stupid plans to act like some old-fashioned matchmaker – she despised herself. Oh God, who was the woman Jack had described to Hausmann? If it had been her he would have started off with, ‘She doesn’t like being called a blonde bombshell but …’ Her heart started to pound; was this the beginning of madness?

Nathaniel came and sat next to Sybil, and Martin Morris squashed in beside him. Sybil whispered, ‘Just stay for this, there’s a dear. It’s the talk that Robert was meant to do this afternoon in the Long Gallery, and apparently he made a mess of it. Give him a chance now. Can you manage half an hour?’

So Sybil had definitely come to see Robert Hausmann. Perhaps to pick up on their shared memories of the past? With a view to a relationship? Judith nodded but closed her eyes as she pushed herself against the arm of the sofa.

When she opened them the screen was lit, the other lights dimmed and Hausmann was skulking behind the television, using it as a surface for some notes. He clicked a switch and the screen was filled with a view of Lundy Island.

‘Historically, this was a vital defence site for the West Country, and indeed for Wales.’ His voice took on a certain drone. He ran through a list of events obviously taken from a guidebook, but included exciting stories of pirates
and sieges and royal edicts. Unfortunately, without any expression in his voice, it remained just a list of events. After a full ten minutes of this, he paused, switched again and they were confronted with a scene of a Welsh castle. He started droning once more.

The slide lecture lasted an hour. There were no personal reminiscences of the work behind each painting. When he paused for questions, Sven said, ‘Was it raining when you painted the Devon seascape? I could see no horizon.’

‘I can’t remember. But if there had been a horizon I would have painted it.’

‘Then I will assume it was raining.’ Spoken in Sven’s very precise English, the words sounded heavily sarcastic. Sybil’s hand, which was suddenly covering Judith’s, tightened convulsively.

Hausmann clicked back to the painting, looked at it and droned, ‘A realistic assumption.’ Then clicked off.

Nathaniel said, ‘What makes these paintings so amazing is their attention to every detail. I wish you had talked us through some of that, Robert.’