Touched (14 page)

Douglas, white-faced, crashed down the stairs. Rowena tried to hold him, but he was stiff, and she fetched him another drink. He swayed slightly. She could smell the alcohol on him and see the beads of cooling sweat on his forehead.

‘It's
obscene
,' he said. ‘Like a cluttered – coffin.'

‘I know, darling, I know.'

‘Revolting. Poor Mother. Oh Jesus, Ro.'

‘Darling, I'm sorry.'

‘Yes, well. Poor old— But Eva? Ro, it's covered in dust and cobwebs. No one's been there for months, years. Let's shut it up and forget it.'

‘Yes, darling. I think so too.'

‘Later we could get it cleared and use it for suitcases or the like,' he said, sweeping his fingers wildly through his hair. ‘But I'm going to get the rest of the bloody house done first. The infernal damp.'

‘I agree,' she said.

That night they tried to make love without success, but she felt relief that she had done her duty for a while in at least attempting it.

In the early hours of the morning, Rowena woke up, restless. She was overheated, her nightdress sticking to her as fantasy after fantasy about Gregory Dangerfield ballooned through the summer stillness. She seemed to pour her desire like a thick black rope through her window and through the night garden to where he lay sleeping less than a hundred yards away. One moment she thought she could meet him the following morning; the next, she was shocked at her own foolhardiness.

She thought about Lady Chatterley's Mellors in the garden, trying to recall every scene she had read. As she lay there kissing Gregory, she heard footsteps. They were not like the rustling and murmuring layers of sound she thought she heard near Bob's room. Distinctly, she heard footsteps. She rose and glided across the room in her pale blue lawn nightdress, and Gregory was watching her, pulling back her hair in one hard cool movement and taking her to him to kiss her; then she opened her bedroom door, and there was Jennifer in her clothes, descending the stairs.

Rowena followed her out of the house, and into the garden.

‘Jennifer!'

Rowena yanked her shoulder as she started along the garden path.

Jennifer turned to her quite calmly. ‘I couldn't sleep,' she said.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I was taking some air.'

Rowena frowned at her: even the phrase was not her own.

‘Were you going to go out of the gate?'

Jennifer hesitated. ‘No, Mummy,' she said.

‘I think you've started lying to me,' said Rowena, suddenly uncharacteristically angry. She took both Jennifer's shoulders and shook her slightly. ‘Haven't you?'

Jennifer widened her eyes.

‘No, Mummy.'

‘You are just thirteen. It is not safe at night out there. There are sometimes gypsies about, foxes . . . That strange sect nearby with all the long-haired people . . .'

Jennifer smiled. ‘I'll go back to bed.'

Rowena caught her hands. ‘Where is Eva?' she said.

Jennifer gazed up at her. In the light of the moon meeting the street lamp, she looked like a film star, illuminated by a glow as she had so singularly not been on screen. She wrinkled her brow. ‘I don't know,' she said.

As the birds began their chaotic chorus, Rowena finally slept.

‘The children need their breakfast,' said Douglas, shaking her awake two hours later, and she groaned and staggered downstairs in a daze of head pain and fatigue. Dully, she cooked Ready Brek on the new hob.

‘You look peaky,' said Douglas. ‘Wretched.'

‘I feel wretched,' she murmured.

‘Church in an hour,' he said. ‘People don't miss it here.'

‘I . . .' she said. ‘I need to get some sleep.'

‘I woke Mummy in the night,' said Jennifer suddenly.

Douglas nodded. He looked round, then clapped his hands. ‘Come on, kids. Get to your posts. We're going to church on our own. Chop chop.'

 

Rowena spotted him from the bedroom at the end of his garden as she had in the tumble of her fantasies, though in the night he had been in a white shirt as though dressed for work. She raced to the bath, visibly shaking under the shallow water, pulled in her stomach, re-shaved her legs and cut herself, wincing as she applied antiperspirant; she dressed in her new pedal pushers, knotted a shirt at her waist, and inspected her face, hiding from her window and slapping a little colour into her cheeks. Freckles danced across her nose over a tan from her perambulations about the green in his absence, rendering her instantly more youthful after so much time in which she had felt merely hag-ridden. She decided to keep her hair loose beneath a wide band so it fell with a bounce at either side of her face. She glanced out of the window again, glimpsed patches of white moving behind the foliage, and emerged on the garden path. She heard a low whistle. She walked slowly to the laurel.

‘I am flying, allegedly,' Gregory Dangerfield said, his eyes catching hers through the leaf-shade. ‘But I fear the plane will have developed a fault. And you are . . .?'

‘Sleeping,' said Rowena, blushing.

He was wearing a T-shirt, like Marlon Brando, and the contours of his chest were visible as never before beneath the cotton, the muscles on his arms almost, she thought, like sexual organs – too frank, too male. Her mouth was slack. She was aware she must look half-witted.

‘Come round the front,' he said. ‘They're all at church. Hasten, Lady Crale.'

‘You know I mustn't, I mustn't . . .' she said, trailing off.

‘Do you wish to talk, walk, drink elderflower cordial?' he said and took her by the waist, his hand a light pressure on its curve, and automatically the desire for him to want her grew, the longing for him blotting her vision.

She hesitated. He smiled, reading her.

‘Come and see the children's tree house,' he said, almost laughing, and her heart accelerated alarmingly, weakening her legs as she climbed the small ladder to the tree house that sat brightly in a cage of oak. She crouched down to enter it. It was uncharming, paint-new, and appeared almost unused by those spoilt children with their own swings and bars, their many pets and Wendy house. The church spire was visible, roofs, hedges and fences. Motor cars in many colours were converging by the green for a rally that was being held that day.

‘Do sit, Lady Crale,' he said, and they lowered themselves and sat in a tangle of limbs on the floor with its rug and cushions, their legs almost reaching the other end.

There was a hooting on the green as the car rally gathered momentum. ‘Ignore them,' he said, and he flipped her on to her back, skilfully in that small space. ‘Ingenuity is required,' he said as he unhooked her bra, that beautiful gingham patterned object she treasured, that she could wear now she was no longer required as a dairy cow, and he was above her, the oak leaves patterning the corners of her vision as she pulled him to her, their legs at odd angles and their clothes tangled ridges as they laughed at themselves. She kissed him rapidly all over his cheeks, chin, mouth: fast kisses everywhere, until he shifted his position and stilled her, slowed her, kissed her with great tenderness. He faced her, his hair falling forward, his expression intent and focused and almost brutal as she had never seen it before, so she momentarily wanted to escape, but he whispered to her and she needed him, so needed him, and he was above her and inside her and she shuddered as cars hooted and voices began sounding from the green as the congregation left the church.

‘WHERE IS JENNIFER?'
said Rowena when Douglas returned.

She had changed into her weekend drainpipes and a checked shirt; she was sore, her thighs tender and her head light, almost stupefied in her distraction. The clamour of motors and voices above them bounced in through the windows in a constant stream as though a wireless were on.

‘She must be behind us,' said Douglas. He was not cross and overheated as she had expected, but pleased with himself, calling Bob ‘old man' and praising the behaviour of the girls. He even ruffled Caroline's downy hair, making her cry.

‘Good, good,' said Rowena, smiling. ‘
Lunch!
' she said suddenly. She had not given it a moment's consideration.

‘I thought, I thought—' she said hastily. ‘We would have a summer salad.' She snatched eggs in a dangerous fashion from the fridge and put a pan on to boil. ‘I have been asleep, not much time . . . beetroot salad, egg, lettuce . . .' she said, hiding behind the fridge door.

Douglas darkened. ‘I'm peckish,' he said. ‘When will we eat?'

‘Soon,' said Rowena, searching for crackers as the bread was stale. Cars were revving and hooting. ‘And . . . sausages,' she said brightly.

‘Dreadful racket. How
long
did you sleep?'

‘Oh, ages,' said Rowena. ‘Silly me. When Jennifer woke me in the night, I couldn't . . . Where
is
she, Douglas?'

‘Where's Jennifer?' he said to Rosemary, not turning.

‘I don't know,' said Rosemary. ‘Shall I go and look, Daddy?'

‘Yes. She's probably being chatted to by the vicar's wife,' he said. ‘You know how a certain kind of silly woman seems to dote on Jennifer.'

‘It's the ones without their own children,' murmured Rowena, scooping mayonnaise in a daze. She boiled eggs and laid the table, waiting for Rosemary and Jennifer to return.

Rosemary ran in, out of breath. ‘She's not there,' she said.

‘Who is still at the church?' said Rowena.

‘No one now,' said Rosemary.

‘Oh,' said Rowena. Faint anxiety started fanning through her distraction.

‘No one?' said Douglas.

‘They've closed the church now. The vicar is gone, Daddy. The people were all watching the motor cars.'

‘Some terrific marques,' he said. ‘Well, she must be amongst them.'

‘I didn't see her, Daddy,' said Rosemary.

‘She didn't go home with a friend?' said Rowena.

Rosemary shook her head. ‘She wouldn't on a Sunday lunchtime without asking you. Would she?'

‘I'll pop out and have a look for her. But oh, lunch.'

‘Honestly,' said Douglas, opening a beer and running his hand through his hair. ‘Can't it wait? I'm famished.'

Rowena ate virtually nothing. The beetroot was watery, the cubed cheese hard, the lettuce sparse. Douglas was openly disgruntled, but she barely responded. Her breasts had been touched. Her nipples were hard at the memory. She swayed very slightly.

‘I am going to find Jennifer,' she said, standing up.

‘I think I'll go to the pub for a ploughman's,' said Douglas in a tight voice.

‘Look after the babies,' Rowena said to Rosemary, and ran out to the green, where she cast her eyes around for Evangeline even as she looked for Jennifer, and Freddie seemed to follow her out there too. He was clinging to her skirt; she felt it, a child in the bright sunshine tugging at her impatiently, but then he was gone, his presence only a shadow by the stream, if at all, and the green rippled in a heat haze, and she was furious with herself for such arrant stupidity.

The rally was now thinning, and Lally Lyn, who was signing an autograph through a car window, waved.

‘Have you seen Jennifer?' Rowena called, but Lally was still chatting to her fan. She stood in the girlish knock-kneed pose she used in photographs. ‘Sorry, duck,' she mouthed, then made her way in a swirling blouse that looked to Rowena like the Pucci she saw in magazines, and was approached by another driver.

Rowena clicked her tongue in impatience. ‘Please,' she asked anyone she saw, ‘have you seen Jennifer?'

She knocked on a few doors. She tried houses where the twins knew the children. A cloud of panic was rising inside her.

‘Lost another bairn?' said the small Scottish man who lived in a tiny house divided into two behind the pub.

Rowena gasped. She lifted her hand, and without hesitation she slapped his face. Then she gaped at him.

‘Sorry,' she said, widening her eyes. ‘I'm most awfully sorry.'

He stared at her, his mouth tightening.

She backed off, apologising, and ran around the village. Eventually, she made herself approach the Dangerfield house. She stood on the step, quite dizzy with dread. As she lifted her hand to the polished brass knocker, she had to steady her breathing.

There they all were, at lunch in their large dining room, the remains of a Sunday roast on the table as they tucked into a trifle. Gregory visibly tensed as he saw her. Her hair was ragged; she was perspiring; her casual outfit was infinitely less appealing than the clothes she had worn when he had made love to her. Lana Dangerfield was somewhat reserved.

‘I've not seen her,' she said in her careful tones. ‘I'm sorry.'

Peter and Jane gazed silently.

 

The police searched everywhere that day, bringing in a larger force and scouring and interviewing the village. Locals joined them in the evening, searching the outlying fields and woods. The reaction to the disappearance of Jennifer was in sharp contrast to that of Eva, who was clearly considered a lost cause and prone to wandering. The police announced that by the following day, they would release the news to the public.

‘If this pack of rural bobbies doesn't find her,' said Douglas, ‘I'm thinking we need to hire a private detective. Get a proper chap up here. It will cost us, Ro.'

‘They're already bringing in a bigger force,' she said. ‘But yes. Yes. Please let's do that.'

‘If you get the press on to it, lie low, darling,' Gregory murmured to Rowena over her garden gate. ‘You'll have to gag Lally Lyn, otherwise she'll be offering up quotes about how “fabsville” it was playing Jennifer's sister to the
Herald
. I'll have a word with her,' he said, swinging his work jacket on to his shoulder. ‘You don't want the press getting hold of the – two . . .'