The Birdcage (15 page)

Piers turned to study his daughter-in-law: her white shirtsleeves were rolled up over bare brown arms, her startlingly blue eyes were fixed on the winding lane ahead: she looked so young and strong but he knew very well how vulnerable she was. As usual he was filled with a brew of conflicting emotions: joy and grief; happiness and pain.

‘I'll phone Adrian when we get home,' he said. ‘It's not a problem.'

‘That's OK, then. And don't forget that I shall be going down to the cottage later on to see if Gemma and Guy have settled in. I've asked them over to Michaelgarth tomorrow evening for supper. Remember?'

Piers, who had completely forgotten that these friends had taken their cottage just outside Porlock for a week, wondered how much Tilda suffered when she was in the company of young couples. Surely it must remind her of all that she'd lost: or perhaps their company and the links they'd had with David comforted her?

Words filled his mouth, meaningless placebos that seemed to coat his tongue and paralyse it. He sighed with frustration and she glanced sideways at him, smiling as if she recognized his dilemma.

‘How was Felix?'

Piers shifted slightly, shrugging a little. ‘He's looking pretty good. A bit frail, of course. I said that one of us would pick him up tomorrow at about half-past two. Of course, he wanted to drive himself out to Michaelgarth but I put my foot down. A hip replacement is no small thing at his age.'

‘He shouldn't be driving yet,' agreed Tilda, ‘but it must be awful to have to be so dependent. Especially for someone like Felix.'

‘He certainly enjoys being driven around by you – but then . . .'

‘But then?' Tilda prodded. ‘Then what?'

He gave a little self-mocking snort. ‘I was going to say that my father has always enjoyed the company of a pretty woman but I can't really blame him on that score, can I?'

‘It's hardly an uncommon tendency, given your average bloke,' conceded Tilda. She grinned at him, liking him even more when his sense of fairness conquered his occasional flashes of bitterness. ‘You're dead spoiled, of course. What with me
and
Alison dancing attendance on you . . .'

Piers looked embarrassed but was saved from answering by a sudden wail from the back seat; a pause and then another longer, stronger howling began.

‘Shit!' said Tilda, putting her foot down a little on the accelerator. ‘I was hoping he'd stay asleep until we got home.' She raised her voice above the now rhythmic shrieking. ‘It's OK, Jake, we can all hear you.'

The drive wound away from the lane, across a wild open heath on which gorse bushes and bracken grew, and finally led through an archway into the old garth. High walls connected the house to the stables and barns opposite, so that the ancient cobbles were enclosed. Tilda drove her small hatchback into the open-fronted barn and parked neatly beside the rather battered four-track which belonged to Piers. As she hastily pulled the Tesco carrier bags from the back of the car, Piers lifted his screaming grandson from his bucket seat and rocked him comfortingly. Jake's fists thrashed the air, his face was puce, and Tilda chuckled as she slammed the hatch and they set off over the cobbles towards the scullery that led into the house.

‘You look just like your father when he needed a drink,' she told Jake.

Piers held the child closer, smiling, touched as he always was by Tilda's courage. He knew how much she missed David, how hard she was finding it to accept the bleak fact of his death, yet she kept his presence alive with these little references to him. It wrung his heart when he heard her speaking to Jake of his father as though David were still watching over them, caring about them, but from some remote place. Helplessly watching her struggle, he'd been both glad and grateful when Tilda had accepted his offer of a home whilst she came to terms with her terrible loss.

Several of his friends – and Alison was the foremost amongst these – had not hesitated to tell him that it was a mistake.

‘A young woman and a child,' she'd said, almost disbelievingly. ‘Can you imagine how they will disrupt your life?'

‘We're talking about Tilda and Jake,' he'd pointed out. ‘David's wife and child. They can't continue to live in their married quarter now. Where would they go? Her mother is about to move north to join her husband, and their house in Taunton is up for sale, and Tilda and her sister have never seen eye to eye. Not that there would be room there for Tilda and Jake. There's plenty of space here for them and, after all, Michaelgarth will be Jake's one day.'

‘I think it's a most unselfish gesture.' A pause. ‘If foolhardy. After all, Tilda has to come to terms with this somehow. She's only . . . twenty-six, is it? Twenty-seven? She can't spend the rest of her life at Michaelgarth.'

Looking at Alison, Piers had recognized signs of that jealousy which had destroyed his mother's life.

‘I'm sure she won't want to do that,' he'd answered gently. ‘Nevertheless, it is her home for as long as she and Jake need it.'

Now, as he passed Jake to Tilda, Piers wondered what she thought about Alison and, as if on cue, a step was heard crossing the flagstones of the scullery and Alison's voice could be heard calling, ‘Anyone about?' She must have almost followed them home.

Bending over her baby, Tilda made a rude face. She knew exactly how Alison felt about her arrival with Jake at Michaelgarth – tiny hints about Piers' privacy or small indigestible gobbets of advice were handed out at discreet intervals – but, even if this had not been the case, Tilda would have still been concerned about Alison's growing relationship with Piers. Alison was a very possessive woman and Tilda longed to see Piers free, for once, and in control of his own life.

Tilda, who had grown up a few miles away across the moor, remembered his mother, Marina, as a distant, unemotional woman, rarely showing her feelings to either her son or grandson, and distinctly offhand with her daughter-in-law. Piers' wife, Sue, was a strong, capable, managing woman; great fun but with a very low tolerance of boredom. She'd organized Piers and David for more than twenty years with the same good-humoured efficiency with which she'd run her thriving business, selling reproduction country furniture in Taunton. Having seen her son safely through university and into the army, she'd waited until he was happily married before announcing that she was leaving. By this time her company had several outlets on the Continent and now she intended to expand it into the United States whilst her business partner continued to run the British end of the operation. She'd flown back for David's funeral, received the news of her expected grandchild with a quite remarkable lack of interest, and had hurried away again.

‘It's over, you see,' she'd explained privately to the numbed Tilda. ‘You mustn't be hurt. We'll stay in touch, of course, but my life here has come to an end. Can you understand that? Not especially now, because of David, but long before that. Once he was settled I was able to look to pastures new. I was never a maternal woman, Tilda, but I did my best. The business has been just as much a part of my life as Piers and David, you know, and I'd given them all I had to give. During all those years I never put them second for a moment; my family was always my first priority, but time moves on.'

Tilda had frowned, swallowing down her grief, trying not to feel hurt. ‘All those years,' she'd repeated, groping towards some kind of perception of Sue's feelings. ‘But you seemed so happy. You and Piers and David. And Michaelgarth . . .'

‘Well, we were, my dear. Of
course
we were. But things come to a natural ending, if you see what I mean. Life goes in phases and this phase has finished.'

‘Does Piers feel that too?' Tilda, her hands clasped across her unborn child, wondered if she could really be having this conversation with David's mother less than half an hour after he had been committed to the earth.

Sue had glanced across the room at her husband, deep in conversation with the vicar and one of David's fellow officers. She'd smiled, eyes narrowing in a kind of amused assessment of Piers' needs. ‘Don't underestimate your father-in-law, Tilda. He'll be fine, my dear, simply fine. He's used to tough women, first Marina and then me, but it's time he had a break. You'll find that he's a very self-sufficient character.'

Now, as she listened to Alison talking to Piers, Tilda felt she agreed utterly with Sue. Once she'd moved to Michaelgarth she'd had the opportunity to observe Piers at close quarters. Allowing for his grief – and he missed David a great deal – nevertheless it seemed that he managed extraordinarily well without Sue. Once or twice it was as if she could feel him stretching, breathing deeply, so as to fill this space that he was experiencing for the first time in his life. On these occasions she'd feel guilty that she and Jake had arrived to cramp his new-found style. Yet Piers remained very much himself; it was as if she and Jake did not impinge on his freedom.

‘But then I would say that, wouldn't I?' she muttered to herself – and smiled at Piers and Alison, who were struggling to make themselves heard above Jake's roars. She could see Alison's disapproval – the little frowns directed at Jake, and a kind of proprietorial anxiety for Piers – all very slightly exaggerated for Tilda's benefit.

‘Well, there's nothing wrong with his lungs!' she cried with a rather forced jollity above the row.

‘Nothing at all,' shouted Tilda cheerfully. ‘Chip off the old block is Jake. He likes to make his presence felt, especially when he's hungry. Why don't you give Alison a drink, Piers, while I sort him out and get some lunch on the go?'

Piers took the hint at once. ‘Good idea. Come on through to the drawing-room, Alison.'

They disappeared whilst Tilda, heaving a sigh of relief, sat down beside the kitchen table and began to unbutton her shirt. She put Jake to her breast and instantly his shouts were stopped and a glorious silence filled the room: Tilda settled him tenderly, closed her eyes and began to think about lunch in an effort to distract her mind from the persistent, painful longing for David.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The stone cottage, built into a fold of the hill on the toll road out of Porlock, faced out across the small chequered plain of neat, tidy little fields towards Hurlstone Point. Guy Webster, standing at the window and watching the dazzling golden light on the calm waters of the Channel, was filled with a familiar longing to be out there on the water: to feel a boat's keel lifting under the tide, a cat's-paw of wind dimpling the surface skin of the sea and filling the sail . . .

‘Did you put the kettle on?'

His wife's voice brought him back to the needs of the moment but he did not turn quickly or offer any kind of apology, for that was not his way. He would make her some tea but in his own time and not because she'd made him feel guilty.

‘I wish we could afford a place like this,' he said, still staring out. ‘To see the sea when you wake up each morning . . .'

Gemma heard the yearning in his voice and rolled her eyes but she did not hurry him, nor did she make some veiled complaint about having to deal with the unpacking while he stood about doing nothing, for that was not her way either.

‘I should think that you spent enough time on the wretched stuff without wanting to live by it.' She went to stand beside him, slipping an arm round his waist. ‘It must be really grim here in the winter when it's pouring with rain.'

He shrugged. ‘No worse than Dartmouth.'

‘Darling, there's nothing
here
– or haven't you noticed? Oh, I know Porlock's just down the road . . .'

He turned from the window almost as if he hadn't heard her, examining his surroundings, crossing the room into the kitchen, whilst Gemma watched his tall lean shape, bending to peer into the fridge, reaching for mugs from a shelf.

‘If you feel like that about the place,' he said, filling the kettle with water from the tap, ‘why were you so keen for us to come? You know what it's like here; after all, you were at school just up the coast.'

‘You know why.' She leaned on the wide pine counter, which separated the kitchen from the rest of the room. ‘We came because you found yourself with a free week, Ma said she'd take the twins and the Hamiltons had had a cancellation. Of course Matt offering you some sailing hadn't anything to do with it.'

He grinned then, his thin dark face lighting with amusement, and she laughed too.

‘I'm looking forward to sailing on this coast,' he admitted. ‘I suppose you and Sophie have plans?'

‘Oh, you needn't worry about me,' she said lightly, lighting a cigarette. ‘I always have plans.'

Their golden retriever, Bertie, wandered in from the garden, where he'd been carrying out an inspection of his new territory, and Gemma bent to stroke his smooth head. Guy glanced at her, perched on a high stool, elegant and pretty, her short fair hair sliced through with tawny, amber colours and cut with a casual cunning. The raspberry pink, scoop-necked cotton vest and her stone-coloured shorts had a stylish flair and there was an air of relaxed expectation about her that had nothing motherly about it. Guy suspected that he should feel excited by the fact that they were alone for a week without the interruptions and distractions of two fifteen-month-old boys: instead he had an odd stabbing longing for his children. It was selfish to feel that he wished that the twins could have come with them, knowing, as he did, that the break would do Gemma good. He was the first to admit that he didn't find parenthood easy – his short fuse was easily ignited – yet he loved his boys and would have liked to have seen them in this big, light room, set down upon the floor with their toys or hauling themselves up and staggering from chair to chair. At the same time, he knew that he would enjoy sailing with Matt, and wandering down to the pub with Gemma in the evening, and that it would have been unfair to expect her to have all the worry of them.