Relative Love (49 page)

‘You’ve been silent, Theo,’ cut in Peter. ‘What are your views on the subject?’ He turned to his son. He didn’t want a Tina conversation. Not for himself and certainly not for Helen, who was quite fragile enough without finding something extra to be upset about. He was desperately worried about her. Never one to make a fuss, she was, he could tell, doing her best to carry on as normal, going to work and keeping order at home. But there were dark shadows under her eyes and deep lines round her mouth that belied the pain which had taken residence inside her head. It was odd to worry about her, and in many respects he resented the way it clouded his concentration at work and pricked his conscience about things like the time at which he got home and whether he could justify a game of squash or a drink
en route
. Just that Friday he had refused a late-in-the day offer to meet Hannah, although when her voice tensed at his explanation he had been thoroughly pleased he had. Clearly she didn’t like him giving precedence to his wife, which meant the suspicion that had tripped across his mind at Cassie’s had been well founded and he shouldn’t see her again, even if his own intentions remained innocent. A yet more drastic sign of the extent to which his wife’s state of health was preying on Peter’s mind was that he had even found himself encouraging a get-together with the dreaded Kay, who’d hardly crossed their threshold since she had returned from France. Wary as he was of the woman, Peter guessed that in this limbo time before consulting a doctor, Kay might be able to offer just the sort of soothing reassurances that Helen needed. Instead of leaping at the idea, as he had expected, Helen had merely muttered that her friend was snowed under with a pile of editing work and not in a position to see anyone.

Theo took a few moments to answer his father’s question. He ran one finger round the rim of his beer glass, wondering what his parents would think if he told them about the amount of secret drinking that went on at school. To worry about Christmas when they were still only in July felt pointless. He loved Ashley House but had also felt on recent visits that he was growing out of it. ‘The Caribbean would be cool. Would we eat roast turkey on the beach like they do in Australia?’

‘Would Father Christmas still come?’ blurted Chloë, looking up from her pile of sticks, her trim bob of black hair swinging, her blue-black eyes wide with concern.

Peter and Helen exchanged looks and laughed. ‘Of course. He’s magic, remember? He goes everywhere.’

‘He’d be hot, though, wouldn’t he, in his big red coat?’

All three members of the family were still pondering how to respond to this most reasonable observation when the doorbell sounded. A few moments later Peter, disgruntled in spite of himself, was ushering Kay through their glass-domed conservatory and out on to the patio. She was wearing a black tent of a dress and a chunky amber necklace. Her hair, which hung loose, was topped by a curious skullcap of grey where the regrowth of natural colour was pushing into the red. She looked hot and wheezed audibly as she moved round the table issuing greetings.
‘I’m so sorry to barge in like this on a Sunday evening – Lord, you haven’t had pudding yet, have you?’ she added, winking at Chloë.

‘Where’s Toffee?’

‘He’s at home asleep, lying on his tummy with all four legs splayed out, and his tongue hanging out too. He hates it when it’s hot.’

‘We were going to have ice-cream. Would you like some? And a glass of wine, perhaps?’

‘Thank you, Helen, but, no, I really just popped in because —’ Kay broke off, clearly troubled. ‘I need to talk to you.’ She looked at Peter. ‘Both of you … that is, if you had a minute or two.’

‘Er … of course. Take a seat and perhaps the children could …’ Peter looked to Helen for inspiration, which she supplied at once by suggesting that they could have their pudding on their laps in front of the television. Theo and Chloë, needing no further encouragement, fled from the table, and a moment later Helen heard them arguing about which channel to watch. The age-gap, once relatively manageable over such things, had recently become hopelessly unbridgeable. It wouldn’t be long, she knew, before one of them was back, whining about the other.

‘What is it, Kay? You look upset.’ Her friend had wedged her sizeable frame on to the section of bench vacated by Theo and was fanning her face with one hand while rummaging in her holdall of a handbag with the other. Helen poured her a glass of water and pushed it across the table, apprehension stirring. Her headache was galloping and Peter, she could tell, was annoyed at the intrusion. Yet Kay had been a comfort to her on so many occasions that it would have been churlish to be anything other than welcoming.

‘Oh dear, I don’t know where to start.’ She sipped the water, then pulled out a thick file of papers from the side compartment of her bag. ‘It’s all to do with this. It’s a manuscript I’ve been editing – portraits of war heroes, unsung war heroes …’

‘Goodness.’ Helen turned to Peter. ‘You don’t suppose it could be the thing that man went to see your parents about, could it? That was going to be called
Unsung Heroes
, wasn’t it? The one with the chapter on Uncle Eric? What was he called, the biographer? It was something simple.’

‘Stephen Smith,’ said Peter, clamping his mouth round the syllables.

‘That’s it,’ put in Kay, ‘that’s the name exactly. Stephen Smith. And there’s a chapter on Eric – Eric Harrison.’

‘But how extraordinary. Peter? Don’t you think that’s extraordinary?’ He was looking so unresponsive that Helen felt the need to prod him.

‘Most extraordinary.’

Now throughly enthused, Helen returned her attention to Kay. ‘Talk about a coincidence. Is it any good?’

‘Yes … that is, it’s quite well written.’ Kay drank more water, casting, as she did so, a somewhat anxious glance at Peter, who was staring stony-faced at the manuscript and tapping one finger on the table, very evenly, like a pulse.

Although she didn’t know it, it was what he always did when he was thinking furiously, weighing up options of defence and attack. For Peter feared he knew what Kay was about to say. At the same time, he was aware that he might not – that their neighbour might have called on them merely to share the exhilaration of a small coincidence. Hope with regard to this latter scenario kept him silent.

‘The chapter on your uncle – quite a man, wasn’t he?’

‘Isn’t,’ growled Peter.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You should have said
isn’t
. Eric is still alive.’

‘Oh, heavens – oh, Lord.’ Kay pressed a hand to her chest, gripping the chunky segments of her necklace. ‘Of course – I’m so sorry.’

Helen felt the need to make up for what she regarded as unnecessary hostility from her other half and reached eagerly for the manuscript. ‘I’d love to have a look —’ She was prevented both from completing the sentence and fulfilling the intention it expressed by Kay, who rooted the folder to the table with a firm slap of her hand. ‘There’s an Appendix, I thought you ought to know, a whole page of extra notes relating to – oh dear, I hope I’m doing the right thing here – relating to —’

‘An affair. Between Eric and my mother.’ Peter wanted to be the one to speak the dreadful truth.

‘What?’ Helen let out a laugh of disbelief, looking from one to the other.

Kay looked merely relieved. ‘So you
did
know. Well, thank goodness for that. I just wasn’t sure and having something like that coming out suddenly in a book would be the most dreadful shock for any family, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well,
I
didn’t know.’ Helen, still shaking her head in wonderment, hardened her gaze at her husband. ‘Darling, why didn’t you —’

Peter thumped his fist on the table and stood up. ‘Bloody Cassie! I should have known I couldn’t rely on her.’

‘Cassie? What on earth has Cassie …’ Helen looked helplessly at Kay, who shrugged. She would have repeated the question had not Peter, now pacing up and down the patio, his hands rammed into the pockets of his shorts, looked so distracted. ‘These extra notes don’t include a letter, do they, by any chance?’

‘No, but there’s a reference to one, if I remember correctly.’ Kay rummaged in the folder. ‘Why not have a look at what it says yourselves? I brought it so you could, although it’s probably unethical or something. But it is about a member of your family, isn’t it, which must make it okay? Here we are, it’s this bit.’ She tapped a page of close writing and handed it to Peter.

At which point Chloë came running through the conservatory to announce that Theo wouldn’t let her watch
Nickelodeon
and they both wanted more ice-cream. While Helen sorted out the problem – by shooing Chloë upstairs to bed – Peter read what Stephen Smith had added to the manuscript he had shown Cassie, then handed it back to Kay to take home. On the doorstep she paused, clutching her handbag under both arms.

‘I’m sorry, Peter, I really am, if this is going to cause upset.’

He laughed sharply. ‘Upset? You could put it like that, yes.’ He looked over Kay’s shoulder at a swarm of gnats hovering at head height by the front gate. ‘We’ll just have to see what we can do.’

‘In my experience,’ she ventured, ‘truth invariably finds a way of coming out in the end.’

‘Really? In mine it doesn’t. Not necessarily.’ He spoke brusquely, still seething inwardly both at the naïve trust he had placed in his sister and at Stephen Smith’s meddling into deeply private affairs. The gnats were drifting closer, a little grey cloud. He swiped at one with his hand, catching nothing but air. ‘What happens next – to the manuscript, I mean? What’s the routine after you’ve done your editing?’

‘I send it back to the publishers. They make a proof copy, which is checked again for errors. A jacket gets designed and then —’

‘And how long does all that take?’

‘A few months. I think it’s due for publication early next year – February or March.’

‘Right. Good. Thank you.’ Peter began to close the door, then paused to add, ‘It was good of you to come round, Kay, I’m most grateful. And Helen, she … You’re a good friend to her and I’m grateful for that too.’ He scowled. ‘Even if I’m not very good at demonstrating it.’

Kay smiled. ‘Thank you, Peter, that’s very sweet.’ She leapt on to the step and kissed his cheek, then trotted out of the gate and across the road, the wide hem of her black dress swirling round her ankles.

Helen came down the stairs as he closed the door. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I should have.’ He put his arms round her and sighed. ‘I should have. I thought the fewer who knew the better.’

‘Cassie knows, does she?’

Peter nodded. ‘Cassie got on well with the man – thought she’d talked him out of using the information. The bastard clearly decided to go ahead anyway. So now, I fear, the time has come to tell the others – Elizabeth and Charlie. We need to get together and decide what to do. A family consultation. But not just yet. First, I need a little more time to think, to work out a strategy, consider all the options.’

‘Pamela and Eric,’ murmured Helen, ‘unbelievable. I wonder if your father knew?’

‘Of course he didn’t. Your own brother – you couldn’t forgive that in a hurry, could you? But if we don’t do something he’s going to find out soon enough, isn’t he? Christ, what a mess, what a bloody mess.’

The heat lingered even in the wide high-ceilinged ground-floor rooms of Ashley House. Pamela, unable to share her daughter and husband’s professed enthusiasm for an early night, had stayed downstairs after supper, first with her eyelids drooping in front of the ten o’clock news and then, with slightly more vigour, writing letters in John’s study. She was exhausted, but knew she would not sleep until the stuffiness, which gathered each day like an invisible cloud in the upstairs rooms, had eased. The spell of hot weather, at first such a joy, was wearing her out, slowing her down and wringing the life from her bones. In spite of Sid’s noble attempts with the hose, the garden, too, was withering: the lawns were yellowy and sparse like thinning hair, the beds lumpy and cracked, while the vines of clematis running round the arches of the cloisters, usually in their second bloom by now, had, as if in some sort of consensual suicide, metamorphosed into a tangle of twiggy shrivelled brown. John kept saying it was great weather for the roof. Which, of course, it was. The workmen, shinning up and down the ladders and scaffolding, shirtless and with burnt chestnut torsos, were clearly enjoying themselves, commenting each day that they’d never had a job so blessed by the elements. Pamela, however, found it hard to feel blessed by them or anything else. Ashley House, its roof a balding pate where the old tiles had been stripped away, its walls caged by metal poles, looked to her both trapped and suddenly fragile. Every time she saw it, when she looked up from cutting flowers, or from sewing in the shade of the apple tree guarding the furthest end of the pergola, one eye on Roland sketching or practising handstands, she felt profoundly disturbed, as if something much more than the state of the roof was at stake. The presence and predicament of Elizabeth, Pamela knew, lay at the heart of this new unease. Everything about her elder daughter jarred on her nerves, from her stubbornness over the unmended state of her marriage to the ridiculous heavy yellow canvas shoes she had acquired in Chichester. How typical: the wrong cream and some silly shoes. At the time, she had been so maddened that she had to leave the room to prevent some expression of her fury exploding out of her. Trying to explain to John how she felt did no
good at all. He simply blamed the household’s general tetchiness on the weather and said that – like their daughter’s marital troubles – it would all blow over with time. On the day of the cream incident Pamela had retreated to the TV room for some peace, only to find herself assailed by the sound of Elizabeth playing the piano. The strains, drifting through the wall and down the hall, were faint but clear. It was a sonata Pamela recognised from her grade-eight days. A Beethoven sonata with a tricky third movement. Elizabeth played it with flair but badly, a combination of lack of practice and lack of application. Trying to sew, her fingers sliding on the needle and sticking on the threads, Pamela had closed her eyes at the familiar but painful recognition of wasted potential. She had eventually given up on her tapestry and mused upon the unremitting difficulty of loving someone who set no store by her talents, who dabbled and bungled, getting by with the least rather than the most of what she had to offer.