The Swallow and the Hummingbird (40 page)

When Mrs Megalith heard about Trees she sank into a chair and stared ahead of her as if in a trance. The cats gathered around her feet, sensing her unhappiness, and one brave tabby crept onto her knee and nuzzled his face against her arm; but she sat quite still as if she hadn’t noticed him. She had been one of the few people in Trees’ life to understand him. She had loved him too, as a dear friend. They had talked endlessly about his walnut trees and he had consulted her about how best to nurture them. No one knew of the crystals he had planted or of the saplings he had brought to her greenhouse for special care. With her, he had had the confidence to talk with eloquence about everything, even Faye. Although he had never openly said it, she knew he feared she had a lover. That fear had driven him further into his obsession with his walnut trees for they were constant and responsive and kept his mind from the hollow reality of his marriage. As Faye withdrew, he showered on them the love and attention he should have given to his wife and they grew better because of it. She would miss him terribly and so would his walnuts.

Hannah drove over to Bray Cove that evening to tell Maddie and Harry the sad news. She found them at home with their children and Rita, but they had already heard.

‘I bumped into Reverend Hammond in town this evening and he told me,’ said Maddie. ‘Sad, isn’t it? Still, he had a good innings. Wasn’t he nearly seventy?’

‘Seventy isn’t old, Maddie, your father’s not far off.’

‘How has Faye taken it?’ Harry asked. ‘I had a lot of respect for Trees.’

Hannah breathed deeply and glanced at Rita. ‘She’s so sad,’ she replied, knowing she would have to break the news about George’s return.

‘Didn’t she find him under a tree?’ Maddie asked. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’

‘She did, but she’s dreadfully upset at not being there when it happened.’

‘Where was she?’ Rita asked, raising her chin.

‘She had to deliver a sculpture to Thadeus Walizhewski. You know, the old Pole who lives up that little lane.’

‘Really?’ said Rita, her voice suddenly turning hostile. ‘So, while Trees lay dying, his wife was with another man?’

Hannah straightened in amazement. ‘Rita! I think what you are insinuating is an insult to Faye,’ she retorted. Rita’s cheeks blazed with fury. ‘I have never seen her look so distressed,’ Hannah continued. ‘Her face was haggard and her eyes red from crying. She had sat with his body under the tree in the rain until the ambulance came. Alice said that the ambulancemen had to prise her away from him.’

‘How gruesome!’ Maddie gasped.

‘You know, she was wearing her hair down. I don’t think I’ve seen her with it like that in thirty years.’

Rita raised her eyes. ‘I have,’ she stated with studied nonchalance.

‘Really?’ said Hannah, raising her eyebrows.

‘Yes. Thadeus was very kind to me after George left and I went to visit him one day, but he was sitting with Faye in his garden so I left without being seen. She had her hair down then, too.’ No one spoke. Even Maddie remained silent as they all looked at each other in bewilderment. Not one of them would have suspected Faye of having an affair. Hannah took a deep breath and changed the subject to the one thing that would distract Rita from any more revelations.

‘George is coming home to take over the farm,’ she said, and watched as her daughter’s mouth fell open in a silent scream.

Chapter 26

George was out on the plains when the boy arrived on horseback from the post office in Jesús Maria with the telegram. Susan signed for it with some foreboding. She knew instinctively that it didn’t bring good news. The envelope felt heavy and formal, the kind of weight and formality that proclaimed the death of someone close. She longed to open it so that she could break the news to him gently and sensitively but she resisted, respecting his privacy.

The telegram sat menacingly on the table in the sitting room and each time she passed it she felt a strange sense of destiny, as if this small, ivory envelope contained news that would change the whole course of their future. In the afternoon Charlie and Ava returned from school with instructions for her to make them costumes for the school play. They dropped their satchels to the floor, hugged their mother, then ran outside in the direction of the
puesto
to where El Chino waited with a couple of glossy ponies to take them out across the plains, now flowering with the advent of spring. Susan watched them go and feared for them. If that telegram contained the bad news she suspected, their young lives would have to change, too.

Finally, George returned, dusty and weary from a hard day’s work. Ava ran up to him and threw her arms around his waist but Susan held back and bit her lip, holding the telegram in her hand.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, stroking Ava’s eager face.

‘It arrived this morning.’

‘And you didn’t open it?’ George looked surprised.

‘It’s addressed to you,’ she said, giving it to him. ‘Charlie, Ava, go and tidy the playroom, it’s time to change for supper.’

The children groaned for they couldn’t understand why Marcela didn’t tidy up after them like maids were supposed to. Once they had gone, George tore open the envelope. With desolation he read what was written there. Susan judged by the darkening of his features that it was bad news as she had feared.

‘My father is dead,’ he said, his chest growing tight with sorrow. Susan put her arms around him and felt his sadness penetrate her own heart. They would leave Argentina and build a new home in England. She had always accepted the idea of living in Frognal Point but now, faced with the reality, she was suddenly filled with dread. The children would see it as a great adventure. They would love the sea and the sand, the rock pools and caves, but she would be confronted with George’s past as well as her own, and the demons she had left there.

George sat down and put his head in his hands. ‘I never said goodbye,’ he said in a hollow voice. ‘I haven’t seen him for five years. Now I’ll never see him again.’ He rubbed his face in disbelief, suddenly bereft. It was unimaginable. His father had always seemed as sturdy and enduring as a walnut tree. ‘He wasn’t even old. Mother must be devastated. We have to go back.’

Susan felt her stomach churn. ‘Of course we’ll go,’ she said reassuringly, surprised how confident her voice sounded.

‘You don’t mind?’

She looked into his dejected eyes and felt her anxieties dissolve in the pity that his pain aroused. She kissed his temple. ‘My darling, of course I don’t mind. Home is where you are. We’ll adapt. You’ll show the children how to catch crabs and eat sandy sandwiches and we’ll make a new life for ourselves. Life is an adventure and as long as we’re all together we’ll be happy.’

‘You’re an incredible woman, Susan. You have no idea how much I admire you.’

She ran a hand through his dusty hair. ‘Oh, yes I do,’ she replied.

The children were excited about going to England. George made it all sound so enchanting and Susan encouraged them with her own enthusiasm. Charlie could think of little else than the promise of hours and hours of flying in an aeroplane, but for Susan and George the journey ahead held nothing but dread. Jose Antonio and Agatha were saddened that they were leaving. In the last decade George had become a son to them and his children as cherished as grandchildren. The farm would be quieter and less bright without their laughter and vigour and the evenings long and empty. Agatha consoled herself that George had only intended staying a year and had lasted more than ten, but Jose Antonio couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just go for a while to console Faye and then come back. ‘Their lives are here with us. They belong at
Las Dos Vizcachas
like we do,’ he growled angrily. When Jose Antonio was hurt he lashed out in fury.

Not even Jose Antonio’s rage, however, could persuade them to stay. Sorrowfully they packed up the house and the memories that would always remain tender and strong. Susan went for a last, solitary walk across the fields. She took a final look around at the place she had grown to love with such intensity. Now the outside world awaited her with challenges she’d thought she might never have to face. She hoped that Frognal Point would embrace her and forgive George for having left.

The night before their departure they dined with Jose Antonio and Agatha and then sat beneath the veranda on the swing chair as they had done over a decade before when Susan had just arrived. The air was sweet and balmy. They breathed in the smells of the countryside, the eucalyptus and jasmine, cut grass and honeysuckle, determined not to forget those things that they had taken for granted. Moths fluttered about the hurricane lamps and crickets cried out across the sleepy park.

‘We’ve been very happy here, haven’t we?’ George mused wistfully. ‘It’s an idyll. I should be pleased to be going back to Frognal Point, but I’m not. My home is here.’

Susan took his hand and stroked his skin with her thumb. ‘You’ll probably find that nothing has changed there either.’

‘Only Father’s gone.’ He dragged on his cigarette, contemplating Lower Farm without Trees. ‘It just doesn’t seem possible. He
was
home. It’ll be halved now, diminished in every way. He was a quiet man but he filled that house with his presence. I’ll always remember him in his boots and cap, striding around the farm with Mildred the sheepdog at his side. He loved the countryside, nature, trees and birds. He infected me with his passion. I grew up a countryman. He was wise too. He never said much. I think that frustrated Mother, she’s a warm, lively woman. But she loved him. We all did.’

‘He was a unique man. I’m so pleased I knew him. He was one of life’s wonderful eccentrics.’

George smiled. ‘He hated to spend money. Mother said that during the war he bartered with everyone. Eggs for clothes coupons, chickens for fish, pigs for fruit from Mrs Megalith’s magical greenhouses. He dug up half a field for a vegetable garden. They wanted for nothing. While the rest of the country suffered terrible rations Pa produced his own bread and butter, milk and cheese, cream and eggs. I tell you, when I returned from France they looked better and healthier than I had ever seen them. He drove everywhere in that truck of his because petrol for farm vehicles wasn’t rationed. He was a man of initiative and energy. He exasperated Mother with the buckets he put under leaks in the roof and the amateur way he mended everything himself. He was loath to pay for someone else to do it if he could do it on his own. Mother will cry over those buckets now, no doubt, because they’ll remind her of him. She’ll realize how much she loved all his funny quirks. She might even nurture his trees for him now that he’s not around to do it.’

‘If she doesn’t, you will,’ said Susan, leaning her head on his shoulder.

‘I always knew in the back of my mind that I’d take over the farm when Father died, but I never thought it would be this soon. Part of me dreads going back, Susan. I’ll be honest with you.’

‘I know,’ she replied softly, not wanting to enhance his fear with her own. ‘But you’re with me now. You have children, a family. Focus on all the things that you loved about the place. Like the sea and the beach, the farm where you grew up. You’re going to be running it now. You couldn’t really go on here, working for Jose Antonio, however much you enjoyed it. A man like you should be running his own business, calling the shots. It’s the right time for you to leave, trust me.’

‘Still, it will be hard parting, won’t it?’

‘We can always come back,’ she said. But she knew that once they were gone, they would be gone for ever.

The following morning Dolores burnt the bread, overboiled Jose Antonio’s eggs and spoiled the coffee. Pia and Tonito complained that the croissants tasted of charcoal and even Agatha had to agree that the milk was off. Then the disgruntled cook appeared on the terrace, wringing her hands and dabbing her tearstained face with the skirt of her apron. ‘I cannot work today,’ she declared melodramatically. ‘I am not well.’ And she left Agustina and Carlos to clear up what was without doubt the most unsatisfactory breakfast anyone had ever had at
Las Dos Vizcachas
. Agatha and Jose Antonio looked at each other in disbelief. Dolores had never shown the slightest affection for George, but it was obvious that his departure had upset her.

George, Susan and the children arrived at the house to say goodbye. They had little luggage, having sent most of their things ahead by boat. Agatha embraced them, drawing on her humour to see her through without tears. Pia cried uncontrollably, especially when she hugged Susan, whom she loved almost as much as her mother. Tonito’s bottom lip quivered, but it didn’t do for a young man to weep so he held his shoulders back and chin up as his father did. But Jose Antonio was devastated. He knew the seasons would come and go and that the cycle of life would continue to revolve as it always had done, but his world would never be the same once George and his family were no longer in it. He patted their backs too fiercely and made too many bad jokes and then, when their car had disappeared, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust and the silence of his anguish, he saddled his horse and rode out across the plains until nightfall.

It was well known that Mrs Megalith didn’t like church – no one in Frognal Point could forget the occasion she had attended with all those cats – but for Trees’ funeral she made an exception. She didn’t arrive late and stagger self-importantly down the aisle. She was careful not to make too much noise with her walking stick and she wore black from top to toe for the first time in her life. Accompanied by Max, handsome in a hand-tailored suit from Savile Row, and Ruth, she sat behind Hannah, Humphrey and Rita without uttering a word. Only her moonstone pendant glinted in the light as if warming up for sorcery.

The church was filled with berries and fruit and branches of crisp autumn leaves. On the top of his coffin, long and thin as he had been, sat a small basket of walnuts from the first tree he had planted. Reverend Hammond stood in front of the altar, his bulbous eyes discreetly scanning the area for cats. He had noticed Mrs Megalith and had shuddered for, although she was unusually subdued, she looked even more like a witch, dressed in black, her moonstone pendant winking at him menacingly. But Mrs Megalith was in no mood for trouble. She had loved Trees and had come to say goodbye although, at her advanced age, she was sure it wouldn’t be too long before she joined him.