Motherland (48 page)

To Geraldine he writes:

Pamela falls in love with La Grande Heuze at first sight. Larry watches her running from room to room, and out into the garden where the great forest begins, and sees in her wide excited eyes the same wonder that possessed him twenty-five years ago and more, when he first came here. That was the summer before his mother died. He was five years old, two years younger than Pamela is now. He has clear memories of his mother sitting in the shade of a giant parasol on the terrace, and walking rather too slowly down the long straight
allées
that cut through the endless world of the forest.

‘Is it your house?’ Pamela says. ‘Do you really live here?’

‘When I’m on holiday,’ Larry says, smiling down at her.

‘I love it!’ she cries. ‘It’s so beautiful. It’s a secret house in a forest. Can I come and live here with you?’

‘You are living here with me.’

‘No, I mean for ever and ever.’

‘I’m not sure your mother would approve of that.’

‘She could come too. But not the Monkey. She wouldn’t understand.’

In this way Pamela appropriates the house and its garden and its surrounding forest as her rightful domain. She announces that its name, La Grande Heuze, is a reference to herself.

‘It’s
hers
, you see, Mummy. That means it’s mine.’

‘Well, darling,’ says Kitty, ‘you’ll have to fight it out with Larry and Geraldine. I rather think they think it’s theirs.’

‘Geraldine!’ Pammy is indignant. ‘It’s Larry’s house, not Geraldine’s house.’

Geraldine is looking lovelier than ever. In her light cotton dresses, her sunglasses perched on her blond curls, she looks like summer itself. Under her management, the old house is filled with softly coloured light. She makes sure there are fresh flowers in the rooms every day, and fruit in shallow blue and white bowls, and a large glass jug of lemonade on a table on the terrace.

She asks Ed and Kitty for news of their neighbours in the big house at Edenfield.

‘We haven’t seen them in such a long time. How’s the new baby?’

‘Not a baby any more,’ says Kitty. ‘He’s walking now. But Louisa still isn’t right. I do worry about her. You remember how she was always so jolly? These days she seems much quieter. I don’t think she’s as strong as she should be.’

‘Why does everyone want babies so much?’ says Pamela, scowling at her little sister. ‘I don’t see the point of them.’

‘You were a baby once,’ says Ed.

‘
One
baby is all right.’

She jumps up and goes over to Elizabeth, who is toddling out through the open garden doors.

‘No, Monk. Don’t go outside.’

‘Leave her alone, darling,’ says Kitty.

‘That forest out there,’ says Ed. ‘How far does it go?’

‘A long way,’ says Larry. ‘You can walk for miles and see nothing but trees.’

‘It frightens me,’ says Geraldine. ‘I’ve been telling Larry we should sell this house and buy somewhere on the coast. Étretat, maybe, or Honfleur. I love to look out over the sea.’

Pamela stares at Geraldine in astonishment.

‘It’s not mine to sell,’ says Larry lightly. ‘Not for many years yet, I hope.’

Their guests have hardly been installed for a day before Ed finds his way into one of the forest paths. He’s gone for hours.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ says Kitty. ‘He’ll be back for dinner.’

Geraldine takes pride in her dinners; not just the food laid on the table, but every detail of the table settings. She speaks poor French and has difficulty communicating with Albert and Véronique, the young couple recently hired by Larry’s father to cook and clean and tend the garden. This produces many moments of frustration.

‘Larry, could you tell Albert not to put out bowls for coffee in the morning. Why do the French drink coffee from a bowl? When it’s hot you can’t pick it up, and before you know it the coffee’s stone cold.’

And, ‘When will Véronique get it into her head that I want the vegetables served at the same time as the meat? I told her, I said, “Toutes ensembles”, but she just gaped at me.’

The standard of service at La Grande Heuze, under Geraldine’s watchful eye, is in fact very high. The bread, crusty and fresh, arrives on a bicycle each morning from the
boulangerie
in Bellencombre. The coffee, made in a glass retort as if in a science lab, is dark and smooth and strong. The plain unsalted butter comes
in a large cake, white and creamy, too good to need jam.

‘You have no idea what a luxury this is for me,’ says Kitty to Geraldine. ‘It’s simply heaven.’

‘My mother always says guests are like horses. You have to keep them warm and watered and well fed.’

‘I’m a very happy horse. You think of everything.’

‘It’s all about putting yourself in other people’s place, isn’t it?’ says Geraldine. ‘I think that’s all that good manners comes down to.’

In the evenings the Monk is fed early, in the kitchen, where she is much fussed over by Véronique. Pamela is allowed to stay up to dinner with the grown-ups.

Larry can tell that this agitates Geraldine.

‘Shall I say we’d rather the children both ate in the kitchen?’

‘No, no,’ says Geraldine, giving him a quick guilty look. ‘If that’s what Kitty wants. I’m just worried she’ll find the food a bit much for her. Do you think I can serve
moules
?’

Pamela is aware that this privilege is also a test, and is undaunted by the
moules
.

‘I like this,’ she says. ‘I expect I shall ask for more.’

‘Oh, it’s too bad!’ exclaims Geraldine, taking her napkin out of its ring. ‘I told Albert the napkins must be clean each evening. What am I to do, Larry? They don’t pay any attention to a single thing I say.’

‘I’ll make sure they understand,’ says Larry.

Geraldine smiles at Ed and Kitty, and smooths the offending napkin on her lap.

‘I know it doesn’t really matter, but one might as well get things right. Otherwise why don’t we all sit on the ground and eat with our fingers?’

‘Like the Monk,’ says Pamela.

Kitty wants to know what’s happened to Larry’s painting.

‘I don’t have the time any more,’ says Larry.

She looks at him with a puzzled smile, trying to guess what he really feels. Returning her gaze, lingering on her long-loved features, he realises that there’s no one else who knows what this renunciation has cost him. Since that day he threw his canvases into the Thames, he has resolutely turned his back on his artist-self. He tells himself this is honesty, this is realism. But seeing Kitty’s troubled look, he remembers the pain of it.

‘To tell you the truth,’ he says, ‘I realised I just wasn’t good enough.’

‘But you sold your paintings! You told me so.’

‘To George, because Louisa made him.’

‘No. The others too.’

‘Yes, there was a genuine buyer. I never knew who. That was my moment of glory.’

Kitty appeals to Ed.

‘He was so good. Wasn’t he, Ed?’

‘I’ve believed in Larry since school,’ says Ed. ‘But we all have to live.’

‘Don’t you love his paintings?’

Kitty says this to Geraldine, innocently confident of support.

‘I’ve never seen them,’ says Geraldine.

‘What?’

Kitty’s bewilderment is devastating. Geraldine blushes, and turns to Larry.

‘Why haven’t I seen them, darling?’

‘Because there are none to see,’ says Larry. ‘I threw them all away.’

He speaks flatly, meaning to remove any emotional weight from his words. Instead he communicates to all of them how much he cares.

A silence follows. Véronique comes in to clear the plates. The clatter of crockery releases them.

‘Have you ever heard of a painter called Anthony Armitage?’ says Larry, his voice now bright again, conversational. ‘He’s younger than me, but he’s become quite a legend already. I knew him at art college, before he was famous.’

It’s clear from their faces that none of the others have heard of him.

‘It was my bad luck,’ Larry goes on, ‘to come up against a true talent. I looked at Armitage’s work, and I looked at mine, and I knew I was fooling myself.’

‘Oh, Larry.’ Kitty soft with compassion.

‘It’s not all bad luck,’ says Geraldine. ‘That’s one of the reasons why Larry came out to India.’

‘That’s quite true,’ says Larry, smiling at her.

‘This Armitage,’ says Ed. ‘Is he really so wonderful?’

‘You can see for yourself if you want,’ says Larry. ‘He lives not very far away. A little place on the coast called Houlgate.’

‘You never told me that,’ says Geraldine, caught by surprise.

Nor has Larry told her that Armitage lives there with Nell. There has seemed to be no point. But now he finds he wants to see Nell again, and Armitage, though for very different reasons.

‘And guess who he’s married?’ he says to Kitty. ‘Nell.’

‘Nell! Your Nell?’

‘Not mine for a long time.’

‘Oh, do let’s go and visit them!’

That night going to bed Geraldine is silent in the way she
goes when she feels ill-treated. This annoys Larry, but he also knows she’s right.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘Oh, you’re sorry. I wonder what for.’

‘I shouldn’t have sprung all that on you.’

‘So we’re going to go and visit them, are we? Your exgirlfriend who you asked to marry you, and her famous artist?’

Larry knows he should say that Nell means nothing to him, that of course they won’t go if she doesn’t want them to. Then she’ll cry a little and say she only wants him to be happy. But a stubbornness takes hold of him.

‘I think it would be fun,’ he says. ‘And Kitty wants to.’

‘Oh, well then, we must go.’

They lie down on the bed side by side, not touching, in silence. After some time, neither of them asleep, Geraldine wriggles close and kisses his shoulder.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m being silly. Of course we can go.’

*

The Monk is happy to stay behind and help Véronique cook. The rest of the house party set off, squeezed into the sand-coloured Renault 4CV usually driven by Albert. They drive through Rouen and Pont-Audemer, passing war-damaged buildings all the way. Larry tells the others how La Grande Heuze was occupied in the war first by German officers, then by Americans as the front advanced, and finally by former prisoners-of-war en route home.

‘There’s supposed to be compensation for all the damage,’ he says, ‘but I don’t expect we’ll ever see it.’

They look out for the sea all the way from the outskirts of Houlgate, but it remains out of sight until they’re winding their
way through the little town itself. Then all at once there it is, at the far end of the narrow street, trapped between the grey shuttered houses: a band of dull gold, a band of blue. They turn onto the Rue des Bains and drive slowly past the half-timbered houses, with the wide sands and sea stretching out to their left.

‘Oh, I do so love the sea,’ says Geraldine. ‘Why do we have to be shut up in a forest? Don’t you feel when you can see all the way to the horizon that anything is possible?’

‘Mere illusion,’ says Ed. ‘Very few things are possible. Most of the time we do as we must, not as we would.’

‘Pay no attention to him, Geraldine,’ says Kitty. ‘He’s a terrible Eeyore.’

The Armitages live on Rue Henri Dobert. Larry pulls up and asks a man pushing a bicycle for directions. Driving on, he finds the road and crawls along it hunting for the house.

‘Good God! I think that must be it!’

The house is high and narrow, stuccoed, with brick edging round the windows and ivy climbing to the second storey.

‘That’s not an artist’s house,’ says Ed. ‘That’s a bank manager’s house.’

They drive onto the forecourt. On closer inspection the house can be seen to be run down, with weeds fringing the paving stones and the paintwork on the door crazed and flaking.

‘They are expecting us?’ says Geraldine.

‘Possibly,’ says Larry. ‘If the post works.’

Larry doesn’t show it, but he too is nervous. They get out and kick their legs, stiff after the long drive.

‘What’ll be for lunch?’ says Pamela.

‘Hush, darling,’ says Kitty. ‘It’s rude to ask.’

‘Why?’ says Pamela. ‘Why can’t I ask?’

Those that don’t ask don’t get
. Larry’s mind echoes with the last words Nell ever spoke to him.

The door opens before they can knock, and there’s Nell.

‘You beautiful people!’ she cries, bounding out. ‘I’m going to kiss every one of you!’

She’s just the same as Larry remembers, perhaps a little plumper, her hair longer, pulled back and held under an Alice band. She’s wearing a bright check blouse and trousers. The same ease with her body, the same uncompromising meeting of eyes, the same lack of restraint.

‘So you’re Geraldine! Oh, you’re perfect! What did Lawrence do to deserve you?’

Larry sees Geraldine flinch in her embrace. Then it’s his turn.

‘Darling Larry. Don’t you look prosperous! My God, Camberwell feels like it was a million years ago. Come in and meet the monster.’

She ushers them in to a cluttered hall, and on to a big room at the rear of the house. Here windows open startlingly onto the sun-dazzled sea.