Running to Paradise (31 page)

‘
What went wrong, then, about Patsy and the flat?’

‘
Actually, it was rather traumatic. Alexander and I arrived there around lunchtime today in a taxi from London Airport. That cost a fortune, but I couldn’t think how to get there otherwise, saddled with Alexander, and luckily I had some spending money from Daddy. Anyway, I kept on ringing and ringing and there was no reply. Then the lady in the flat next door appeared and said Patsy had left. She’d walked out a couple of days ago, taking the baby with her, and Peter — that’s her husband — had gone to stay with his parents. That’s why poor Alexander was so hungry when I met you. I just couldn’t find anywhere to feed him.’ Alexander stirred in his sleep. ‘Christ, Uncle Guy, you live a long way out. Aren’t we nearly there yet?’

‘
Only just over the river,’ I said, ‘not far now.’ Pip leaned back and rested her head on my shoulder; a strand of her hair tickled my face. ‘I’ll cook supper tonight, if you like,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty good, you know, and I’ve got this marvellous recipe I want to try...’

And
she could cook, too. The dinner was damned good. While she prepared it I was left to see to Alexander, coping as best I could with the help of her shouted instructions and a dog-eared manual on bringing up baby (American style) I found wrapped in a pair of knickers in the hold-all.

On
our arrival earlier, her initial reaction to my flat had been damning. ‘Christ, Uncle Guy, isn’t this a little bit on the drab side?’ was her comment after a lightning tour of the premises. ‘All this porridge and beige? I mean, don’t you ever long for a splodge of something else?’

‘
I’m an insurance man,’ I said tartly. ‘We’re supposed to be colourless, didn’t you know?’ She gave me a long, appraising look through half-closed eyes; it was a look so familiar, I almost cried out. I didn’t, of course. I propelled her firmly into the spare room — her grandmother’s trunk and its contents were safely under lock and key; I didn’t want her rummaging through that, not yet anyway — and told her to make a list of what she needed, and I’d nip out to the shops before they closed. I left her sitting on a chair by the window, the orange sweater on the floor at her feet, Alexander hanging greedily on to one perfect, pearl-coloured breast. The evening sun caught the lights in her hair: she was reading my copy of De Quincey’s
Confessions
of
an
Opium
-
eater
.

That
night I was woken around two a.m. by the click of my bedroom door. We’d gone to bed early: Pip said she was beginning to suffer the effects of jet-lag, and I felt as though I’d been pulled through a mincer. I opened my eyes to find her naked, standing beside my bed.

‘
Uncle Guy, I’m frightened; my room’s full of the wrong sort of vibes, and I can’t get to sleep.’

‘
Well, I’m sorry about that, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. It happens to be the only spare room I’ve got,’ I said crossly, ‘unless you want a sleeping pill?’

‘
Of course I don’t,’ she said. ‘Are you daft, or something? I want to come in with you.’

I
was trying to keep calm, but it wasn’t easy. ‘Look, Pip, do I have to spell it out to you?’ I said, sitting up. ‘I may be your Uncle Guy and thirty years your senior, but if you get into my bed, I cannot possibly guarantee I won’t make a pass at you. Anyway, what about Alexander?’

‘
Alexander’s very good at night,’ she said, climbing over me and squirming down between the sheets. ‘I see you even go in for beige in bed.’ She was looking disparagingly at my newly laundered sheets and matching duvet cover.

‘
Go to sleep,’ I said stiffly, and leaned forward to switch off the bedside light.

‘
If you fuck me,’ she whispered in my ear, ‘I’ll never, ever call you Uncle Guy again. I promise...’

20

‘Look, if you’re going to keep fussing, don’t come; you can stay behind and look after Alexander. It’s just it’s such a worthwhile cause, that’s all, and if everybody was put off by a spot of rain from making a stand for their principles, we’d all still be jellyfish.’

‘
I sometimes wish I were,’ I said, and for a moment meant it.

Pip
put on her cross face and started being efficient: cutting the crusts off our sandwiches, wiping over the worktops, organising Alexander: a sure sign she was angry. I decided to ignore the danger signs and wandered into the sitting room.

It
was Sunday; chill, December rain poured down in torrents outside. I was dead beat after a heavy week at the office and evenings spent coping with a teething Alexander. The last thing I wanted to do was to go on some damned march.

‘
You’d have done it for Char, so why not me?’ Suddenly, she was behind me, her arms round my waist, rubbing her face against my shoulder.

‘
I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Char would never have wanted to do anything so dotty.’

‘
It’s not dotty, you bloody well know it’s not. You’re just lazy, that’s all, and frightened your stupid chairman might see you. Char would have done it. You’ve only got to read her diary to see that. It was just in those days things were more difficult for someone like her, she—’

‘
You don’t have to defend Char to me,’ I said stiffly. ‘And incidentally, I’m not in the least afraid of being seen by the chairman. It’s just I’m tired, and I’m not all that sure I agree with the issue anyway. It may well be that nuclear power is the best thing after all.’

‘
Don’t
be silly!’ She spun me round so that I faced her; her green eyes looked into mine: angry, passionate and quite desperately sincere. ‘You can’t mean that. What about poor Alexander and all the others?’

I
gave in; it had only been a token resistance, anyway. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘you win, but I doubt whether I shall ever make it to Trafalgar Square.’

Later,
as I drove through the wet streets to the pick-up point where we were to join the march, Pip and Alexander suitably enveloped in mackintoshes in the back, I found myself reviewing, as it were, the six months that had elapsed since Sophia’s wedding. Officially, Pip was my lodger, but no one believed that. I’d had petulant phone calls from Paula Holloway: ‘My dear Mr Horton, you surely must see how unsuitable the whole thing is. My husband and I...and threatening ones from ‘Daddy’: ‘Look here, Horton, haven’t you caused enough trouble already? If you don’t send my daughter and her son back to me forthwith, I’ll have no alternative but to put the matter in the hands of my lawyers.’

After
the first few weeks, the phone calls ceased, but were followed by a spate of pompous letters to Pip, the last of which had arrived only yesterday. The final paragraph read: ‘You and my grandson, as I’m sure you know, will always be welcomed by both Paula and myself, but in saying this, I must make it quite clear your ‘companion’ will never, at any time, now or in the future, be welcome in any house of mine.’ And that was that. As for myself, I’ve lived from day to day, I think. To be with Pip is both exhausting and a bit of a trial, but always a joy and never, ever dull: she has so much of Char in her I don’t know where one ends and the other begins. It’s odd, but she scarcely knew her grandmother. All she can remember of her is a birthday party in the garden at Maple, when one of the dogs ate her slice of birthday cake. She’d cried a bit, and her grandmother had ordered her to stop: there were more important things to cry about in life, she’d said, than the loss of a piece of birthday cake. And she’d once overheard Char say to her father: ‘That child’s got my Pa’s eyes, so watch out.’ And she’d wondered who on earth Pa was and why he was so dangerous.

Pip
appears to have no inhibitions about my love for her grandmother; indeed, seems fascinated by it, and has read her way steadily through the green trunk. Sometimes, when we’re making love, she’ll whisper: ‘Did Char do that?’ or ‘Was this better with her?’ but she never waits for an answer. How long she will stay, I don’t know. I only know that her presence in my life seems, quite simply, right, and that’s really all I can find to say about it.

‘
Here we are; there’s Julian waving. Christ, we’re going to get wet.’ A tall, bearded, young man, encased in oilskins, was flagging us down. I parked the car, at his instructions, in the yard of a warehouse, and we hurried to the shelter of a nearby doorway to await the arrival of the procession.

‘
I think it’s best if you have Alexander on your back and I carry the banner,’ Pip said. I nodded miserably; rain was dripping down the neck of my anorak. I put the hood up and a shower of water sprayed into my eyes. Carefully, Alexander was fixed into a sort of cocoon thing on my back. I could hear him bubbling and crowing somewhere just below my left ear, a not unpleasant sound. Pip picked up the banner, and we waited. At last, after what seemed hours, but was in reality about five minutes, from somewhere up the street we heard the sound of beating drums.

‘
They’re coming,’ the young man in oilskins shouted excitedly. ‘Ready everyone?’

Pip
twitched my sleeve. ‘Guy, I meant to tell you before, but you’ve been in such a mood this weekend, and I only heard on Friday; I’m going to have another baby. Now you see why this march is so important.’

But
I was unable to answer her; at that moment the marchers burst upon us, and banner held high, Pip dived in amongst them. I hunched my shoulders, looked furtively round for any rogue TV cameras — in spite of my brave words, I’d no desire to be spotted by the chairman — took a deep breath, and with Char’s great-grandson on my back, I followed her granddaughter out into the rain.

If you enjoyed
Running to Paradise
you might be interested in
An Affair to Forget
by Evelyn Hood, also published by Endeavour Press.

Extract from
An Affair to Forget
by Evelyn Hood

One

R
ain rattled at the windows with agitated fingertips and the wind hurled itself across the wide, shallow valley to batter against the grey stone walls of the house.

The
doors and windows were all locked against the stormy night, the fire glowed and the kitchen was softly lit by a few candles that Morrin had found in the cupboard when the lights first went out. The room was cosy and all she had to do, she told herself as the trees in the garden croaked and rustled ominously, was sit tight and wait. The storm would pass, and if the worst came to the worst she could always spend the night in Mrs Plover’s comfortable armchair by the fire.

She
wished that the elderly housekeeper hadn’t decided to visit her new grandchild on that particular day, but when Mrs Plover went off to catch her bus, overnight bag in hand, there had been no storm and Morrin hadn’t intended to work so late.

Normally
the house was filled with noise – the dogs barking, the phone ringing, Mrs Plover singing in the kitchen, Gareth’s presence crackling through every room. Now, with the place silent and the wind moaning outside, Morrin was so nervous that even her own reflection in the dark window as she filled the kettle was enough to make her jump. Setting the kettle hurriedly on the gas cooker, she went back to pull the curtains closed, then paused, staring at her reflection in the dark glass. Candlelight brushed her long, softly curling hair with gold, framing her oval face softly and giving her usually serious dark blue eyes a sparkle. For a moment she looked, then twitched the curtains together, saying aloud, “Don’t get any ideas, my girl… you’re very ordinary when the electric light’s working!”

The
sound of her own voice was cheering, but as she went back to her seat by the fire silence crowded in on her again. It was her own fault… she shouldn’t have decided to type the final chapters of her employer’s latest novel before driving back to her bedsit in the nearby town. But with Gareth and Mrs Plover both away for the night there had been nobody to remind her of the time, and she had worked on, unaware of the approaching storm until sudden, strong gusts of wind slammed against the sturdy stone house, the computer screen went blank, and the lights flickered and died. It was only then that she realised how lonely the house was, with its nearest neighbours almost a quarter of a mile away.

In
the few months since she had started working for Gareth Sinclair, Morrin had come to love his home in the Yorkshire Dales, a solid stone two-storey structure built into a wooded hillside with large front windows overlooking the valley below and the magnificent sweep of hills opposite. There was only one problem –  as well as loving the house, she had come to love its owner with a passion that could never, ever, be resolved, for she was not the sort of woman who appealed to Gareth Sinclair.

It
was part of Morrin’s job as Gareth’s secretary to book tables in the best restaurants, organise cosy weekends for two, and order flowers for these escorts who, like Sinclair himself, were cool and sophisticated, adult enough to indulge in affairs then say goodbye gracefully when the time came, as it always did.

It
hurt, being a conventional love-and-marriage person in love with someone like that. In her fantasies Morrin pictured herself dining and dancing with him, sharing a secluded hotel room with him – but her dreams always floundered then foundered when it came to the sophisticated goodbye. Gareth wasn’t a forever man.

Wrenching
her mind away from the yearning that only depressed her, Morrin heard rain spattering against the curtained windows and the boom of the wind rushing across the valley to throw itself against the back of the house. As it retreated, thwarted, the trees sighed and bushes near the back door shushed them nervously.

All
at once the sturdy, safe stone walls of the house seemed to be a prison, trapping her within its depths. If only Gareth hadn’t taken the dogs with him, if only…

“
Oh, stop moaning,” she said aloud, half to herself and half to the wind. She reached for the little transistor radio Mrs Plover kept on the window sill, then froze. Above the noise of the storm she could hear another sound, a scratching and scuffling from the big front hall.

She
swallowed her fear, fingers tight against her mouth. She could jam a chair beneath the front door knob, she thought, though it was probably just a window rattling anyway. Then, realising that her fear of the unknown was worse than anything she might have to face in real life, she picked up the heavy hearth poker and eased herself silently through the kitchen door.

As
she inched her way through the dark hall, trying to remember where its few pieces of furniture were situated, the noise came again. This time there was no mistaking the sound of someone trying to get in through the front door. Morrin’s mind worked frantically, but it was difficult to work out a plan when her heart was hammering against her ribs and the breath was catching in her throat.

There
was a telephone in Gareth’s study and another in the sitting-room, but none in the hall. She was trying to decide which phone was the nearest, and wondering if they were still working, when the door crashed back on its hinges and a gust of wind surged in. Morrin scarcely had time to register its icy touch on her cheek before the hall was filled with movement and panting and the skitter of claws against the parquet flooring. The poker flew from her hand as a muscular tail whipped against her legs. As it clattered to the floor a torch beam flicked on and found her.

“
Who the… Morrin? Polly, Daniel – get out of the way!” Gareth Sinclair roared, then, as the dogs obeyed, “What on earth are you doing here at this time of night?”

“
Oh Gareth, thank goodness it’s only you!” She flew to him, clutching at the sleeve of his wet coat for comfort.

“
Well now. Mrs P never throws herself into my arms when I come home to her. I could grow to like this, with a little encouragement,” Gareth said, sliding his arm about her with an ease born of years of practice. For a luxurious moment she allowed herself to relax against him, then common sense jangled alarm bells through her mind and she pulled back. As far as girls like Morrin were concerned, men like Gareth Sinclair wore ‘Don’t Touch!’ notices.

He
gave a dramatic sigh. “I thought it was too good to be true. Where did we go wrong?”

“
The lights have all gone out – the storm – ” As he released her she tugged her sweater straight and smoothed her skirt.

“
So I gathered as I drove along the road. Not a light to be seen anywhere. Hang on,” he said as rain spattered through the open doorway on to the polished wooden floor.

Once
the door was closed, the storm, denied entry, beat sullenly against the walls and rattled at the letter box for admission. Gareth, ignoring it, returned to Morrin.

“
What are you doing here at this hour? Where’s Mrs P? Don’t we have cand– Good Lord, what’s that doing there?” he interrupted himself as the torch beam teased an answering gleam from the heavy ornamental poker. “So that’s what caused all the noise? You weren’t really going to hit me with it, were you?” There was a note of awe in his voice.

“
I thought you were a burglar.” She rushed to justify herself. “You weren’t supposed to be coming back tonight and I was alone with all the lights out–”

“
I decided that a long drive was better than spending the night as my brother’s guest.” He picked up the poker. Even in his large hand it looked menacingly heavy. “Do you realise the damage you could have done with this? And don’t bother explaining anything until we’ve got some light – and some food.”

“
There are candles in the kitchen,” she volunteered, and the torch was thrust into her hand.

“
You take that and I’ll keep the poker. I feel safer that way,” said Gareth. “Lead on.”

In
the kitchen the two dogs, an Old English sheepdog and a black poodle, were already settled before the fire. Gareth took off his coat, dropped it on to a chair, and ran a hand through his storm-tossed hair. “Sit down,” he commanded, then, as Morrin sank into Mrs Plover’s chair, “Where’s Mrs P – and why are you here at this time of night? Begin at the beginning.”

Her
earlier fears seemed ridiculous now that he was here, filling the house with life, making it friendly and safe again. As she explained the housekeeper’s absence he unbuttoned his pale grey suit jacket, pulled off the green tie that matched his eyes and opened the top button of his white shirt. Gareth hated formal clothes.

“
You idiot,” he said in the indulgent older-brother voice that made her squirm. “Didn’t you see the storm coming?”

“
I was too busy.”

His
shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “I don’t know – most secretaries go off on a spree when they’re left on their own, but not you. I thought you’d have wanted to go shopping or get your hair done or meet someone. That’s what most women like to do, isn’t it?”

The
implication that she was like his empty-headed girlfriends stung a sharp note into her answer. “I’m not most women. And your book’s supposed to be finished and sent to the publisher this week.”

“
It will be,” he said easily. “Still plenty of time. What would you have done if I hadn’t decided to come home tonight?”

“
I’d have spent the night in here.” She felt more foolish by the minute, especially when he threw his head back and laughed.

“
Oh yes? Curled up in a chair with the poker clutched in your little fist? Lucky for the burglars that I came home when I did,” he said, then, “Can you cook as efficiently as you can type?”

“
As long as you don’t want anything elaborate.”

“
Good. We’ll eat in the sitting-room and let those two have this fire.” He nudged the dogs with the toe of his polished shoe and the sheepdog raised his head, yawned, thumped his tail on the carpet, and settled down again.

“
Lazy beasts,” Gareth said affectionately, and picked up his torch. “I’ll find more candles and get changed. By the way–” He turned at the door and grinned, his green eyes mocking her in the candlelight, “If you think you hear intruders just scream and let me deal with them. I don’t want you to go splashing their blood all over the house.”

Camilla,
Morrin thought with resentment as she gathered eggs and cheese and milk and butter together, wouldn’t have made an idiot of herself. Camilla, a leggy, lovely blonde, was Gareth’s current escort. Whipping eggs into a froth, she decided smugly that Camilla probably couldn’t even boil water.

“
I found plenty of candles,” Gareth said cheerfully from behind her.

“
Does Camilla cook?” Morrin asked without thinking, then blushed.

“
Like a dream; she took some special course in Paris. What made you ask?”

“
She phoned today – several times.” It had only been twice.

“
Why?”

Morrin
began to grate cheese. “I don’t know. She wants you to call back.”

“
She can wait until tomorrow. Right now I’m hungry. What still needs doing?”

Setting
him to making the toast, Morrin thought to herself that Gareth’s indifference to his latest girlfriend’s phone calls was a clear indication that whether she knew it or not, Camilla was on her way out of his life.

When
the food was ready he led the way into the living-room, carrying a loaded tray. He had already coaxed the fire into a blaze and arranged candles so that the hearth rug, one sofa and a chair were in a pool of golden light, with the rest of the room in shadow. Setting the tray down on a coffee table before the fire he dropped to the rug, propping his shoulders against the sofa, and proceeded to open a bottle of wine. He had towelled his damp hair and left it to curl about his face, and had changed into a bulky black sweater and jeans.

Morrin,
unused to being alone with her employer in such an informal setting, perched on the edge of the armchair. “How did your meeting go?”

He
wrinkled his nose. “Same as always. Brother Tom reported on t’mill, sister Kate tried to argue with him on every point that was raised, and I signed a few things. Try this.” He handed her a glass of wine.

Gareth
always referred to the family business as ‘t’mill’ and he always, when speaking about it, lapsed into a Yorkshire dialect, though years in boarding school had left him with only a faint touch of the Dales where he had grown up and still lived. He and his sister were sleeping partners in the business, which was controlled by an older brother who had worked his way up through every department.

Morrin
sipped at the wine. “It’s nice,” she ventured, then flushed as Gareth said, “I’m glad that moddom approves. It’s one of my best bottles.”

“
No sense in wasting it on me, then,” she said defensively. “I hardly ever drink wine.”

“
If you like it, it’s not wasted,” he told her briskly. As they ate, the wind continued to moan outside, but to Morrin it had lost its mournful wail, and the tapping of the rain’s skeletal fingers on the windows sounded almost cheerful now that Gareth was there.