Helena could hardly bear to see Mike leave. It was not that she felt any sense of desertion. She was just reluctant to admit that the evening had arrived. Mockingly reminding herself of the dangers of self-delusion, she waved him off as cheerfully as possible and went upstairs to change. Then, dressed in a pair of straight black silk trousers and a loose, silver-grey silk and cotton sweater, she locked up the house and set off westwards towards Gray’s Inn Road and on to John Street.
The walk took her twenty minutes and carried her from the lively scruffiness of Clerkenwell to the much more rarified atmosphere of Bloomsbury. John Street itself was an admirable example of Georgian town architecture with elegantly austere brick houses on either side of the broad road. Plane trees grew at intervals along the pavement and many of the buildings had neatly planted window boxes in the ground-floor windows. Most of the houses were used by lawyers or as the head offices of commercial companies, but a few were still privately owned.
Helena stopped outside one of them, noticing that the window boxes had been replanted since she was last there. They had stiff little miniature standard rose trees rising out of a sea of grey-green ivy, which she thought suited the straight lines of the building and added an unusual gaiety.
Even though she despised herself for bothering about how she looked, she smoothed her hair back with both hands and brushed some street dust off the knees of her trousers. When she could not put it off any longer, she went up to the front door and knocked. There was a longish pause, which she understood easily. It meant: I do not mind that you are half an hour later than you said you would be; I have not been watching out for you; I have plenty of other things to do; I do not depend on you. Nor am I angry. I do not expect anything and will make no demands.
The door opened at last and her mother stood there, politely smiling.
‘Hello,’ Helena said, throwing back her head as though she were facing a threat of some kind.
Miranda Webton nodded, still smiling, but she did not lean forward to be kissed or even hold out her hand.
‘Hello, Helena,’ she said calmly. ‘Do come on in.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s so hot,’ Miranda said, standing aside so that Helena could walk past her into the shadowed hall, ‘that I thought we might have a glass of wine in the garden. Would that be all right for you?’
‘Yes, thank you. I’d like that.’ Helena smiled then, too, relieved not to be faced with the drawing room again.
She had been shocked the first time she had visited the house – only a few months earlier – to see how like her own it was. Somehow the pale-walled room, which was sparsely furnished with exactly the sort of chairs, tables and paintings that she herself most liked, had been even worse than the familiarity of her mother’s looks. The shape of their small-boned, freckled faces, the unruly fineness of their hair and the soft greeny-blue colour of their eyes had clearly been dictated by their genes, and that did not seem either odd or difficult to accept; but Helena had still not properly come to terms with the fact that her tastes and character might also be like Miranda’s.
They walked through the house into the small garden. That, at least, was not at all like Helena’s, which, apart from the clematis near the iron steps, was a relatively hard-edged affair of paving and shrubs in large terracotta pots. Miranda’s was much more romantic, with small fruit trees and drifts of late-flowering narcissi naturalized in the long grass, climbers winding through the trees and the painted trellis that topped the low walls. Scents of a whole range of aromatic herbs reached Helena as she stood on the threshold.
There was an expensive-looking teak table and comfortably cushioned chairs near the house with a bottle of white wine waiting in a terracotta cooler beside some glasses and a plate under a stiffened muslin cover.
‘Do sit down, Helena,’ said Miranda, who had never yet used any kind of endearment. ‘And tell me how you’ve been.’
‘Quite well, thank you.’
‘Busy?’
‘Yes, I am quite.’ Helena made a greater effort. ‘Which is nice and reassuring, too. Being self-employed can be so worrying when one’s clients go quiet.’
Miranda looked as though she might laugh. Helena, who loved laughter and would usually do anything to bring it out of anyone, nodded stiffly.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I always forget that barristers are self-employed, too.’
‘And we often don’t get paid for years, which makes it all the more frightening. I’m glad you’re doing all right.’
‘What about you?’
‘Oh, there’s plenty of work these days, but it wasn’t always like that,’ said Miranda, picking up the tall, brown bottle. ‘Is this all right for you? It’s a hock, dryish.’
‘Lovely.’ Helena could not think what to say next. It seemed absurd.
‘I know,’ said Miranda, pouring the wine before taking the cover off the plate, which proved to contain some highly professional-looking canapés. ‘Have one of these.’
‘What do you know?’
‘How difficult it is. There’s so much to say and yet none of it can be said at all easily. We’re complete strangers to each other and yet we’re not strangers at all. I look at you and see myself at your age. I want to know all sorts of things and yet I couldn’t possibly ask them.’
‘What sort of things? If I can, of course I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Answering questions is somehow easier than …’ Helena could not finish the thought even in the privacy of her mind. It occurred to her worryingly that she was already older than Miranda had been when she ran away. She wondered yet again why Miranda had got in touch with her after so many years’ silence and what – exactly – she wanted.
‘I couldn’t possibly ask.’ There was a pause. Then Miranda said: ‘Why not tell me something about whatever you’re working on at the moment?’
Helena took a deep breath and described the girandole, which belonged to her oldest and most faithful client, Katharine Lidstone, who had recently suffered an appalling burglary. Helena spoke more easily as they got further away from the brink of the emotional chasm that lay between them. Miranda asked a series of sensible questions about the gilding technique Helena was using and the materials it involved and whether the restoration would enhance the value of the girandole or not, but eventually even they ran out.
‘And Ivo, my brother, has asked me to work on the most glorious desk he’s just acquired,’ Helena went on in order to prevent a difficult silence.
‘Ah, Ivo,’ said Miranda. ‘What a charmer!’
Helena put down her glass with extreme care and looked at her mother in surprise.
‘I didn’t know that you knew him,’ she said, remembering Irene’s dry comment that she could always tell when Fin had encountered his first wife in court – or outside it – because he was more than usually prickly and difficult when he came home afterwards. If Miranda were moving in on Ivo as well, Irene might be seriously hurt. That could not be allowed.
‘Did I never tell you? He came to see me a day or two after last Christmas,’ said Miranda. ‘He rang the bell one Sunday morning and introduced himself, saying that he thought it was time he met the person whose ghost was so strongly alive in his home.’
Helena breathed in so deeply and so fast that her chest hurt. She put a hand to her breastbone.
‘You mind that, don’t you?’ Miranda showed no emotion at all in spite of having just made the most personal comment of their short acquaintance. ‘Why?’
‘No, of course I don’t mind. It just seemed strange, that was all. I mean a strange phrase for Ivo to have used.’ Helena tried to pull herself together. At least Ivo was a relatively easy topic for conversation. ‘And it’s odd that he’s never told me he’d met you.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Miranda, not looking at Helena. ‘Anyway, it’s thanks to him that we’re here now.’
‘Really? Why? I mean, how?’
‘The way he talked about you undid all my good resolutions about not bothering you, and I realized I had to get to know you.’
‘Oh,’ said Helena, feeling even more at a loss than usual. She could not think what to say and after a moment went back to Miranda’s first comment about Ivo and said: ‘You’re right, though. He does have charm.’
‘He certainly does; and he knows exactly how best to use it to get what he wants and how to hide behind it.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ said Helena at once. ‘He doesn’t hide. Why should he? He doesn’t have any reason to hide.’
‘Are you quite sure of that?’
‘Absolutely.’
Helena hoped that her tone would make it clear to her mother that there was no more to be said on the subject of Ivo, but it could not have done, for Miranda went on: ‘He seemed to me to be one of those people who is capable of projecting an air of openness and generosity that is quite at odds with his real character.’
‘That’s outrageous,’ said Helena, completely forgetting that she disliked criticizing people or finding herself in conflict. ‘I’ve known Ivo all my life and you’ve hardly met him. You can’t possibly know anything about him, and you’ve got no right to say things like that. What kind of axe can you have to grind that you have to slander someone who’s done you no harm?’
‘I’m sorry if I sounded critical,’ said Miranda in a completely passionless voice. Helena noticed that all the character had disappeared from her eyes. There was no expression in them at all and very little light. ‘I know you’re fond of him. And he certainly cares about you. That was very clear.’
Helena, who was already regretting her outburst, did not consciously decide to punish Miranda, but before she could stop herself she said: ‘I’m not surprised. He’s never been afraid to show his feelings. He must get that from Irene. After all, no-one could pretend that Fin was demonstrative – or had the sort of feelings one might want to have demonstrated.’
Miranda frowned and Helena wished that she had thought before she spoke. It looked as though she had hurt Miranda and she did not want that; she did not want to hurt anyone.
‘Fin can be remarkably charming too, and kind.’
‘When he bothers to think about it and when it isn’t inconvenient to him or in danger of giving encouragement to someone or something of which he disapproves.’
Miranda laughed then, sounding almost normal again. ‘He’s right when he says you’re not stupid.’
‘And what does he say after that?’ As she spoke, Helena recognized the expression in Miranda’s face and guessed that she was about to come in for a little punishment herself. That was fair enough.
‘Merely that it’s odd that with your brains and all the genes you must’ve inherited from us both, you should have chosen to become a glorified carpenter.’
Helena laughed. It had not been nearly as bad as she had expected – or deserved; and it was something she had heard often enough before. She picked up her glass again and raised it in a small toast to her mother. Miranda watched her with an enigmatic expression in her eyes.
‘Of course I didn’t point out to him why you might have chosen to spend your life mending things,’ she said at last in an unusually gentle voice.
Helena shook her head. It was much easier to take verbal punishment from Miranda than kindness. They did not know each other well enough for anything so personal. Helena swallowed some wine and leaned forward to take a canape off the plate so that she could hide her face. When she had eaten it, she said: ‘What’s your current brief? There hasn’t been anything about you in the Law Reports for a while.’
She saw Miranda register the fact that she bothered to read the Law Reports for news and wished she had not given herself away so clearly.
‘I wasn’t in court today. I spent the afternoon in a conference, working out the best defence for a young man alleged to have broken into a house in Kent last year and beaten …’
‘Not one of the ones who nearly killed that couple by trying to get them to say that they had a safe?’ Helena was too appalled to wait for her mother to finish. ‘Tied them up and tortured them and then left them for dead? Those two?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re going to defend them?’
‘One of them, yes.’ Miranda’s expression had not changed, but her voice was quite cold as she added: ‘And please don’t ask me how I can bring myself to side with people you consider to be so vilely beneath contempt. Brought up in a legal household, you ought to know better than that.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But don’t you mind having to deal with people like that?’
‘Sometimes. But there’s no option. It’s one of the costs of the job.’
Thinking of what Katharine Lidstone had suffered – and was still suffering – as a result of the burglary that had taken place when she was not even in the house, Helena could hardly bear to think what the couple in Kent must have endured.
‘I know it is. I’m sorry. I’m not rational on the subject of burglars – any burglars, not just the violent ones.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Miranda. She looked up at the clouds. ‘I think it’s going to rain. We’d better go in. Would you like to stay for supper? There’s plenty of food.’
‘Actually, I think I ought to get back,’ said Helena quickly, trying to sound just as casual and not managing it as well.
‘Fine,’ said Miranda before Helena could embark on any kind of excuse. ‘It was sweet of you to come this evening.’
‘I’ve enjoyed it,’ said Helena with a tight smile. ‘Thank you very much. Shall I give you a hand in with the cushions and things?’
‘No, don’t worry about that. I’ll ring you in due course, next week, perhaps, or the one after. Good luck with Ivo’s desk.’
‘And you with your case.’
At the front door, Helena turned back to look at her mother. She wanted to make some kind of gesture that might express all the things that she did not know how to say: I’m sorry it’s so cold and difficult; I’m sorry I’m going; I want very much to find some way of communicating with you, but I don’t know how. There are a million things I want to know, but it’s impossible to ask the questions. I know that we should be able to like each other, but I don’t know how. I want, very much, for you to touch me.
Miranda stood courteously waiting. Helena took a deep breath and leaned forward. For an instant her cheek brushed Miranda’s and then they both pulled back.
‘Goodbye,’ said Helena, wrestling with the front door latch.
‘Goodbye,’ said Miranda from behind her, sounding almost as shaken as Helena felt.
Helena walked slowly towards Doughty Street, feeling as though she had just run a marathon. She wondered whether it would ever be possible to ask the crucial question that had been in her mind ever since she had been old enough to understand what had happened in her family.
She had been home for only ten minutes, pottering about the house to re-establish herself in it and deal with what she considered was the melodramatic silliness of her emotions, when the buzzer went. Since there was no monitor in the drawing room, she looked out of the window.
‘Irene!’ she called, knocking on the glass, and saw her stepmother look up and wave.
Helena ran into the hall and flung open the door. ‘Come on in. How lovely!’
Irene, whose mind had been full of her own affairs, stepped over the threshold, took one look at Helena and said quickly: ‘You’re all of a dooh-dah, Helena. What is it?’
‘Nothing important now.’
Without any difficulty at all, she stepped forward into Irene’s soft, safe embrace.
‘But what was it?’
‘Nothing important.’ Helena stepped back. ‘It was all nonsense. I’m perfectly all right. Come in and have something to eat or drink. You’re looking pretty wild yourself. What have you been doing?’
‘Sure you’re OK?’ said Irene, not wanting to pour out her news if Helena were as distressed as she had seemed. Irene owed her far too much for such selfishness.
‘Positive. Come on. What’s been going on?’ Helena concentrated on Irene’s life instead of her own. ‘You had your meeting with Richard Orleton today, didn’t you? How was it? Was he terrifying, or glamorous – or both?’
‘Much as I remembered him actually,’ said Irene, childishly screwing up her face.
Helena laughed and felt as though she were slotting back into her real self instead of the idiotic, shamingly agitated person she had let herself become again after John Street.
‘I didn’t realize you’d ever met. You’d better tell me all about it,’ she said. ‘D’you want a drink?’
Irene shook her head. The coils of black hair were beginning to collapse down the back of her neck. She looked gloriously happy.
‘I’m so high on excitement that drink might make me do something really weird,’ said Irene. ‘D’you really want to know all about it?’
‘Of course I do. But perhaps not in the hall. Come into the drawing room, put up your sore feet and disgorge.’
Obediently Irene followed her into the long room, which still looked light, in spite of the increasingly dingy-looking evening. Irene kicked off her shoes, which were indeed tight, and thought that it was typical of Helena’s practical kindness to have noticed that through whatever it was that had been upsetting her. Irene lay on the chaise longue and poured out everything she had been feeling all afternoon.
Helena was the most marvellous listener, Irene thought as she described her first few encounters with Richard at the Theatre School, and all the fears that had turned out to have been unnecessary.
‘It was a tremendous day. I sort of feel as though I’ve put myself right with my own past,’ she said at last, ‘if you see what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Helena with feeling. ‘I’m really glad.’
‘And you?’ Irene said, remembering the trembling body she had held only half an hour earlier. ‘What was the matter?’
‘Perhaps not having put myself right with my past,’ said Helena reluctantly.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Irene, looking less confidently happy than she had. ‘Am I being extra thick?’
Knowing how much Irene hated it when Fin saw Miranda, Helena did not want to mention her mother’s name or admit that over the past five months they had been meeting at least once every fortnight.
‘You’re never thick,’ she said quickly, deciding to sacrifice Mike in the interest of not upsetting Irene. ‘You couldn’t be. And it’s lovely to see you so happy. You deserve it. No, I was just a bit stirred up because I had a smashing afternoon with my … my paramour until he started talking about wanting to meet the family and things like that, and it went a bit sour.’
‘And you still don’t want him to meet us?’
‘Not terribly.’
‘Ashamed of him or of us?’ asked Irene lightly. Her black eyes were glittering with interest.
‘Neither.’ Helena laughed with difficulty. ‘It’s just something separate. I don’t want to muddle the two. It’s too new. It may never … It might stop tomorrow, and then I wouldn’t want everyone else to have had a piece of it. D’you see what I mean?’
‘Not really, but don’t worry about it. I’m just glad that it’s going well in whatever way it is.’
‘Thank you, Irene,’ Helena said, determined to get quickly away from the subject of her own emotions. ‘Now, when are you going to let me read the play?’
She was amused to see her confident stepmother looking almost nervous. After a moment Irene shook her head decisively.
‘I don’t think that I’m ever going to let you read it. I’d much rather you saw it on a stage with actors. Honestly, as it stands on the page, you might not … It’s not…’
‘You’re not really worried about what I might think, are you?’ asked Helena in amazement.
‘Of course I am. Your good opinion is crucial,’ said Irene in surprise. ‘You must know that by now.’
‘Well, I … Goodness! I’ve come over all unnecessary, as Mrs Clark-the-Char used to say. If it is important, I’m glad, but I do want to know about the play, you know. It’s such a big part of you that I hate being kept out of it.’
Irene’s expression of surprise was taken over by pleasure.
‘Really? I never meant to exclude you. I just thought it would be tempting fate to let anyone read it before I was sure it was going to be staged.’ More hair slipped out of its pins and down her back as she laughed. ‘I see what you mean about your young man. It’s the same sort of thing, isn’t it?’
‘Sounds like it. But come on: tell me a bit about it.’
‘It’s a sort of crossover kind of a thing,’ said Irene as self-consciousness made her unusually inarticulate. ‘About this girl, Maria, who’d been incredibly happy in the house where she grew up. Then, because of outside circumstances, she became less happy, but she couldn’t do anything about it because she was trapped. When a possibility of escape appeared, she took it without understanding what it would cost her. Later she discovered that it meant she had to be exiled from the only place where she might have been all right if she’d been let alone. So half the play is about her, leading up to the moment when she left the house on the canal, and the other half is her thirty-odd years later, trying to get back there and being stopped by all sorts of things. So, you get the two sorts of tensions leading up to the two crunchpoints at the crossover at the end. D’you see?’
‘Not altogether,’ said Helena truthfully, ‘but I think I get the drift. It sounds interesting. Where is the house on the canal?’
‘Well, I’d thought Venice because I love it so much and so does almost everybody else, and it would look so nice, but Richard and the set designer want it to be Amsterdam. In fact …’ To Helena’s amusement, Irene was blushing. ‘In fact, Richard wants us all to go there next weekend to see it and talk about the play and work out some of the bits of staging that he says my directions are too fuzzy about.’
‘What a brilliant idea! And it should be fun, too.’
‘D’you think so, Helena? That’s what I wanted to ask you about. Is it decent for me to go? I never have taken a private holiday; I mean without Fin, and I can’t see him enjoying a weekend like this even if Richard were prepared to have him tagging along.’
‘Of course it’s decent and it isn’t a holiday at all. It’s like the old days when he was on circuit. It’s your work. You don’t think he’d object or try to stop you, do you?’
Irene shook her head and yet more hair collapsed. ‘He’s always been good about my writing. It’s the one thing he’s never narked at me about. You know that. It’s just that going off with Richard … I suppose I feel a bit nervous because I like the idea of it so much.’
‘Then go ahead and do it – not that you need my permission.’ Helena was amused and felt fully restored to adulthood and confidence. Irene had always managed to do that for her, too. ‘You deserve a treat and if it’s going to make the play better then go for it.’
Irene kissed her.