They got on so well together that night and for most of Sunday that it was not until Mike had gone home to sort himself out for the week that Helena remembered her promises to Katharine Lidstone. Full of compunction she went across the tiny garden to her workshed, stopping for a moment to pick a deadhead off the climbing rose by the steps.
The withered petals felt like loose clammy skin between her fingers and she shook them off irritably, disliking the way they clung to her. When she had got rid of them at last, she saw that there was a minute black beetle under one of her nails and picked it out. Then she stood for a moment longer, breathing in the scent of the still-living flowers. Smelling a different, even richer, scent than the roses’, she realized that the honeysuckle growing against the far fence must have come into flower as well.
Who, she asked herself, could possibly want to live like Ivo in the middle of messy fields when they could have a neat, protected little garden with no cowpats or agricultural machinery clanking away in the background, or even leering countrymen attended by dogs of unknown savagery.
She unlocked the workshed and went up the creaking stairs to the top floor, where she kept all her archives and the back numbers of sale room catalogues and trade magazines. The filing cabinets were neatly labelled, and she found the photographs and survey sheets for Katharine’s various pieces of furniture without difficulty and laid them in a heap on the top stair. The copies of Find were in a tall stack that leaned precariously against the wall.
Tempted simply to take a few copies off the top, Helena decided that they were too recent to send away. If she were given something to restore by an unknown client, she might well need to check through the previous few seasons’ copies to make sure that the piece was not one that had been advertised as having been stolen.
Bending down, she put her fingers around a bunch of about eight magazines three-quarters of the way down the stack and pulled. The ink on the glossy paper must have melted or amalgamated with the paper or something because the magazines were stuck to each other. As she pulled, the whole stack teetered and then fell on top of her.
The pile of paper was nothing like heavy enough to do her any damage, but it was uncomfortable and clouds of dust came down with the magazines. Choking, she pulled herself away from the slippery heap of glossy paper and set about sorting the copies into date order again and repiling them. It was surprisingly tiring work, bending and stretching uncomfortably.
By the time it was finished she was both irritated with herself and stiff. She took the copies she had set aside for Katharine out of the shed, shook the dust off them, and carried them into the house with the survey sheets and photographs.
She poured herself a glass of fruit juice and took it upstairs to drink in the bath. When she had finished washing off all the dust and anointed her various scrapes and bruises with TCP and witch hazel, she had got over her rage at having been so lazy and hamfisted. Wrapped in a dark blue towelling dressing gown, she went back downstairs, refilled her glass and leafed through the magazines, planning to point Katharine in the direction of the most suitable advertisements to copy.
Half an hour later, Helena was still sitting there, reading and re-reading a displayed paragraph put in by an anonymous owner who had listed only a box number for replies. The pieces that had been stolen from him or her included a Queen Anne walnut kneehole desk with three drawers on each side, and three across the top.
The more often Helena re-read the description, the more it sounded like Ivo’s desk. She had listed the marks and flaws so scrupulously and so recently that she could not help matching every one in the advertisement to those she herself had assessed. The lists were almost identical. She could not persuade herself that Ivo was not in possession of stolen property.
Racking her brains to think of ways to protect him from the possible consequences, Helena went to her bookshelves in search of something that might tell her exactly where he stood in law. Her various layman’s guides did not help much. There was one that explained in detail the principle of nemo dat quod non habet, that a buyer cannot acquire a better title to something than the seller has, which she knew already and which was precisely what had been worrying her. The book also included a chapter on the old markets overt, in which a purchaser, providing he was acting in good faith, could acquire clean title to something even if it had just been stolen. Having existed for centuries, such markets had been outlawed only in 1994.
Helena had always hated them since they meant that stolen antiques could be quickly passed on into the legitimate trade without the real owners having any right to get them back even if they appeared in a respectable shop as little as twenty-four hours after the burglary, but for once the idea was comforting.
The sound of the telephone ringing broke into her thoughts. Reluctantly, walking sideways, she went to pick up the receiver, telling herself it was absurd to imagine that the caller would be someone in authority demanding to know what she was doing with stolen antiques on her property.
Trying to laugh at her silly fear, she could not help wondering where she would stand in law. Someone had once told her that a householder whose guests consumed illicit drugs on her premises would be breaking the law, even if she had no idea what they were doing. She had never known whether that was true or not, but even the possibility that it might have been meant that there were people she would not allow through her front door because they occasionally smoked cannabis. Once or twice she had thought of asking Fin what the law really was so that she could stop worrying, but she knew that he would start asking questions and probably demand the names and addresses of her drug-taking friends. She did not want to risk that either.
‘Hello?’ she said warily into the telephone.
‘Helena? It’s Miranda here.’
‘Oh, how wonderful!’ she said on a long, deep breath. ‘Thank you very much for ringing.’
There was a short pause before Miranda said: ‘Is there something the matter?’
Helena realized that she had never sounded so pleased to hear her mother’s voice before.
‘I’m fine. I’ve had a curious couple of days one way and another and the prospect of talking to you is – appealing.’
‘Well, how very nice, Helena. Thank you. I was in fact simply telephoning to ask whether you might like to come and have supper with me one night next week, bringing your friend if you’d like or coming on your own if you’d prefer that.’
‘I think I would rather come on my own,’ said Helena without stopping to think about it at all, ‘but, look, are you very busy at the moment or might you feel like coming to have some scrambled eggs or something this evening?’
‘In your house?’
‘Yes, would you mind that? We could always go out if you’d prefer. There are lots of places round here where one can eat reasonably well and quite quickly even on a Sunday.’
‘I’d love to see your house. How very kind! When shall I come?’
‘Why not straight away? There is in fact something I’d like to ask you. Not that I’m trying to get free legal advice or anything; well, not really.’
Miranda laughed and said easily enough: ‘You’d be surprised how many people think they have a right to that. But if anyone does, it’s you, Helena. I’ll help in any way I can. It’ll take me about twenty minutes to sort things out here and drive over.’
Gathering up all the copies of Find, Helena bundled them into the cupboard under the stairs with the survey sheets clipped together on top of the pile. Then she ran for the Hoover to pick up any dust that might have sullied the polished wooden floor. Plumping up the cushions took only a moment and she thought she would have plenty of time to dress when she caught sight of a vase of dead flowers. They had to be flung onto the compost heap behind the workshed, the vase washed out and refilled with fresh roses and two of the loose heads of yellow and white honeysuckle, which left her only four minutes to stuff a very expensive bottle of white wine in between the packets of food in the freezer and then run upstairs to rip off her dressing gown and pull on the first thing that came to hand in her wardrobe: an unyielding denim dress she had bought in a sale and never worn. She might have changed it for something she liked more had she not heard the front door bell ring. Barefoot, she ran down to let her mother into the house for the first time.
‘Come in,’ she said, still breathless from dashing about.
Miranda walked across the threshold without fuss and took off the loose beige linen jacket she was wearing over her charcoal linen culottes and striped shirt. Helena took the jacket from her and hung it over the end of the banister.
‘This way,’ she said, sounding irritatingly young to herself, as she pushed open the drawing room door. She watched her mother’s face registering the similiarity of their rooms. For once it did not seem threatening.
‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Whatever you’re having.’
Helena went to retrieve the expensive white burgundy from the freezer, held the bottle against her cheek for a second to check that it was cold enough and decided that it would just do. Having opened it in the kitchen and poured some wine into two glasses, she rammed the cork back and stood the bottle upright in the milk rack of the fridge.
‘I hope this is all right,’ she said, handing a glass to Miranda.
‘Thank you.’ She sipped it, looked at Helena over the rim and then laughed.
‘What is it?’
‘You didn’t have to bribe me with a Montrachet, you know. I told you, if anyone has a right to free legal advice from me, it’s you.’
‘It wasn’t that,’ said Helena, hoping that she did not look as pouty as she felt.
She was also intrigued to learn that her mother could so quickly identify the wine. Irene drank whatever she was given, enjoyed some wines more than others, but was not interested enough to distinguish between them.
‘I wanted to give you something that would mark the occasion. You see, it is quite an occasion, for me anyway.’
‘And for me,’ said Miranda. ‘That was kind. I shouldn’t have teased you. What’s the problem?’
‘I so much didn’t want to sound as though I …’
‘… was only asking me here because you needed help? I know that. Don’t worry about it.’ Miranda saw that Helena was finding it hard to begin and put her glass down. ‘Listen: whether you realize it or not, it is a source of satisfaction that you thought of turning to me.’
‘Really?’
Miranda nodded.
‘That’s generous,’ said Helena. ‘All right. Let me tell you and then we can forget it and just talk about ordinary things afterwards.’
‘Fine.’
When Helena still did not say anything, Miranda picked up her glass again, took another sip, and leaned back against the carefully plumped sofa cushions.
‘Is it that you’ve done something that’s bothering you?’ she asked, not looking at her daughter.
‘Me? Good heavens! No. Nothing like that.’
‘Well, then,’ said Miranda, showing distinct signs of relief. ‘There’s no need to be so coy about it. Out with it.’
‘A client has left a piece of furniture with me that they bought recently. I have discovered quite by chance that a piece which sounds exactly like it was stolen some time ago. I wanted to find out, if it is the same piece, what position – legally, I mean – my client is in.’
Miranda had been listening carefully, as though well aware that she was hearing only a small part of the story. She nodded as Helena finished speaking and sat up to say: ‘I’m no specialist in the law of title, but I probably know enough. Is there any possibility that your client bought the piece at a market overt before 1994?’
‘No. I thought of that, too. But I’m fairly sure that he – they – acquired it only in the last month or so. It’s obviously possible that at least one previous owner got it in a market overt, which would make it all right, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes. How long ago was it stolen?’
‘I’m not sure. But I can find out. Hang on.’ Helena put her own glass down on the table beside the sofa and went to fetch the relevant copy of Find from under the stairs. ‘At least six years and two months,’ she said as she came back, having checked the date on the front of the magazine.
‘Then I think your client probably is in the clear as far as the law is concerned. If he bought it in good faith, and it sounds as though he did, then six years is probably enough to give him reasonable security. As far as I can remember the wording of the Act is quite tricky, and whether it’s six years from the theft or six years from the first sale to a real purchaser, I’m not sure. But your client’s probably safe enough if he has only just acquired it.’
There was a strange expression in Miranda’s eyes, which for once Helena could not interpret at all. She frowned, trying to understand it.
‘I take it,’ Miranda said after a while, ‘that this is the desk Ivo bought, the eighteenth-century one that you told me about before?’
‘What? Well, yes, actually it is. That’s why I mind so much. I mean, I’d be concerned for anyone who might have taken on a stolen piece by mistake, but this is family. That makes it much more important.’
‘I can see that. But from everything you’ve told me, I think Ivo’s in the clear. On this at least. Anyway, none of it’s your responsibility. Do you really need to worry so much about it?’
Wanting to say, ‘Of course I do’, Helena wondered whether she could be reverting to the panicky self she thought she had outgrown.
‘I think so,’ she said reasonably calmly. ‘He’s my brother, my younger brother. He might find himself in serious trouble over this. Having discovered that, surely it’s my responsibility to do anything I can to protect him? Isn’t it? Am I being completely neurotic?’
Miranda laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing. Except that I’m the last person to ask that sort of question.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m like you, Helena: always on the lookout for the next disaster and convinced either that I’ve caused it or that I ought to have done something to prevent it. I knew you’d inherited my freckles and my taste in interior decoration, but I’m sorry you should have got the angst as well.’
Helena stared at her. Miranda looked back with eyes that seemed to hold an almost equal measure of amusement and pain.
‘Hasn’t Fin ever told you that? It used to drive him mad.’
Reluctant to say that Fin had rarely mentioned Miranda’s name, Helena shook her head.
‘I’ve sometimes wondered whether Irene’s attraction for him was her amazing insouciance. It makes his teeth ache these days, but I can see that it could have been very appealing in contrast to my endless twitters.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Helena, frowning. ‘What insouciance, and why does it make him ache, and how do you know anyway?’
Miranda stood up.
‘Didn’t you say something about eggs? Should we go and cook them? It’s getting quite late, Helena.’
‘In a minute. This is important. What did you mean about Irene?’
‘It was silly of me to say it. I know you don’t like discussing her with me.’
‘Unlike my father, it seems.’
Miranda sighed. ‘He needs somewhere to blow off steam, Helena. Don’t grudge him that. He has quite a hard time with her, you know.’
‘I don’t think you can have any idea how he treats her. If you’d heard the sort of things he says to her, the endless bickering she has to put up with, you wouldn’t …’ Helena turned away, unable to be fair to both women and reluctant to be unfair to either.
‘It takes two to bicker,’ said Miranda gently from behind her.
Helena looked round. ‘You mean that she’s not doing her duty by him unless she takes everything he says with a simpering smile and lets him do exactly as he pleases?’
She did not add the other words in her mind, which were: how can you criticize her for the way she behaves to him? She puts up with it and you weren’t prepared to do that. You have no right to judge her.
Miranda shook her head. Her face was full of pity, which seemed even harder to take than her criticism of Irene.
‘No, that’s not what I meant. One of the many things I’ve learned is that if you choose to, you can always fight your corner without bickering. Come on: eggs. Or shall I take you out to eat?’
Helena shook her head. ‘No. I’ll go and cook. Which do you like: omelette, scrambled, fried, poached, boiled, coddled?’
‘Omelette, since you ask.’
‘OK. There are some chives and parsley in the garden beyond the compost heap behind the shed. Could you bear to go and pick some?’
Without a word, Miranda went down the iron staircase between the roses to fetch the herbs. Helena was left to assemble the things she needed to make the omelette and sort out her reactions to what had just been said.
‘What a gorgeous garden!’ Miranda was standing in the doorway with a bunch of greenery in her hands. She seemed to be signalling a return to their usual civilized chat.
‘I’m glad you like it.’ Helena smiled as she started breaking eggs. ‘I don’t have much time to deal with it – or, frankly, much tolerance for upending myself and stuffing my fingers into what passes for soil in London – hence the pots.’
‘They’re nice. If I couldn’t have afforded a gardener once a week, I don’t know that I would have gone for the labour-intensive sort of garden I have. Where did you find that big, garlanded pot?’
Grateful for the unemotional subject, Helena talked easily about all the terracotta tubs she had bought and where she had found them and what she had planted in them. Later, halfway through answering a question of Miranda’s about the climbing roses, she suddenly stopped talking and rested her hands on the worktop for a moment.
‘None of this is at all important,’ she went on as she picked up the fork to whisk up the eggs. ‘I’m sorry. I …’
‘It may not be important, but it’s a way of getting round the difficult things. As I said, I know that you don’t like talking about your stepmother,’ said Miranda. ‘I’m not sure that I do either, but sometimes I can’t help it; just as I can’t help defending Fin when you automatically take her part. He isn’t happy either.’
‘Well, he could be. If he wasn’t so horrible to her, she would be fun and good company, and … He must have loved her once. He must have.’
‘Yes.’ For a moment Miranda looked as Helena imagined someone might after being shot. Then she smiled again. ‘I think that pan is hot enough.’
Helene belatedly became aware of a burning smell. Cursing herself she took the omelette pan off the gas and ran it under cold water before wiping it out with a cloth and starting again.
The omelettes were good and went well enough with the Montrachet. They had finished the bottle before Helena took away the empty plates. Having put a bowl of grapes on the table and an old Delft dish of dried apricots and sweet almonds, she squatted down in front of her wine rack to choose another bottle. Looking round, she said: ‘What would you like now? More of the Montrachet or something red or some pudding wine? I’ve got some Barsac here, which is quite nice.’
‘I’m not too keen,’ said Miranda frankly. ‘I find them all a bit sickly. But, you know, I’m not sure we need any more wine at all.’
‘No. Perhaps not. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?’ Helena put another bottle of the Montrachet in the freezer and took from the fridge below it the half-drunk bottle of fruity Australian white that she had had there for several days. ‘But we can have this while the other’s getting cold.’
Miranda looked at her for a moment and then smiled and pushed her glass forward. ‘That’s lovely, Helena. You are very generous.’
They picked at the grapes and apricots and drank the rest of the bottle, talking all the time. They avoided the contentious subjects, but both knew that they were all still there and that at some stage they would have to be thrashed out.
‘Tell me about Mike,’ said Miranda when Helena poured the last of the Australian wine into her glass.
Helena wondered whether her mother was feeling as weird as she was herself. It was not just the drink, although her head was swimming in a way she had not felt for years. It was also the sensation of several different conversations taking place at once. There was the one they were conducting in words, but there seemed to be several others too, silent communications in which the two of them were suggesting that the past was important but that it might be over, that all sorts of uncharitable things they had felt were no longer quite the same. It was all most peculiar.
‘Mike’s a banker,’ Helena said aloud, hearing the s sounding very sloppy. She articulated more clearly as she added: ‘He’s four years older than me; tall; good company; I like him.’
‘Has he ever been married?’
‘I don’t think so. But there are all sorts of things I keep discovering that he’s never told me, so I suppose it’s possible.’ She frowned and wondered if it really was possible. Shaking her head, she got up to fetch the Montrachet from the freezer, looked at her mother, and then opened the bottle and poured some wine into their glasses.
‘I don’t think he can have been. He’s talked about relationships that went wrong, and I’m sure he’d have said if any of them had included a marriage. I’m sure he would.’
Helena drank and noticed that the wine tasted almost metallic. She had had far too much already, but it seemed important to go on. She was not sure why. As she settled herself, one elbow slipped off the table and she almost fell into her lap. She straightened up with as much dignity as she could achieve.
Miranda sipped her wine. ‘I can’t think of any reason why he wouldn’t tell you something like that.’
‘Nor can I. What about you? I mean, are you in the middle of something – you know, a relationship – at the moment?’
Looking amused, Miranda said: ‘I’m practically sixty. It’s been a good year or two since I had the energy or the desire to be romantically involved with anyone.’
‘But you’ve got lots of friends, haven’t you?’
‘Plenty.’ Miranda looked at her daughter for a while. ‘That’s not why I wanted to get to know you, Helena.’
‘Would you like some coffee or anything?’ Helena got to her feet, kicked the leg of the table and steadied herself with difficulty.
‘That would be nice. But not coffee or I’ll never sleep. Some tea, if you’ve got some.’
‘OK.’ Helena filled the kettle, feeling dizzy but not caring about it. That seemed the least of her problems. She sloshed some water onto the worktop as she plugged in the kettle and looked very carefully to make sure that the lid was properly on. She had once burned her hand quite badly when the lid slipped off the kettle and she was not prepared to risk that again, however tight she was. Fumbling in the china cupboard, she took out two bone china mugs and put a tea bag in each.
‘Then why?’ she asked, quite without meaning to. ‘I mean, why did you suddenly want to get to know me after all this time?’
‘Because of something Ivo said.’
‘Ivo?’ Helena frowned. ‘What did he say? Anyway, I thought you didn’t trust him.’
‘Not exactly, although …’ Miranda broke off, took another small sip of wine, smiled and said more firmly: ‘He talked about you in a way that made me realize how much you and I might have in common and how much I might like you.’
Helena risked a glance at her. Miranda was looking gravely back, slowly tilting her wine glass this way and that.
‘And he also made it quite clear that you were a thoroughly effective, well-rooted person, about whom I might not have to feel as devastatingly guilty as I had been feeling.’
‘Guilty?’ said Helena quietly while her mind was yelling with a fury of which she had not known herself capable: of course you ought to feel guilty: you dumped me; you left me; you abandoned me; you made me terrified of caring about anyone else in case it happened again; if it hadn’t been for Irene, what you did to me would have made it impossible for me to have any kind of normal life at all. And then you wonder why I always defend her and try to make me feel ashamed of it.
‘You must have known I’d feel guilty,’ said Miranda.
The crucial question was almost askable, but in spite of the untying of several of her mental knots, Helena found she still could not quite do it.
‘Are you feeling all right, Helena?’
‘I think that I must be rather drunk.’ She smiled and felt her lips slacken more than she had meant. Trying to look and sound sternly in control, she added: ‘D’you mind?’
‘Not at all. Tell me: are you happy with your Mike?’
‘Yes. Most of the time it’s wonderful. Goodn’t – no, couldn’t, sorry, couldn’t be better. Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Not at all, but you’re beginning to look very tired.’
‘Tactful.’
‘I think I’d better get out of your hair and let you get to bed. Shall we wash up before I ring for a taxi?’
‘Didn’t you come in a car?’
‘Yes. But I can hardly drive like this. I’ll pick the car up tomorrow, if that’s all right with you?’
Helena nodded and got up to dial the number of the local minicab firm. For the first time, she could not remember it and had to scuffle around for the telephone book. She found the number at last, dialled, got through and ordered a cab for Miranda.
‘Now, let’s wash up before he comes.’
‘No. Don’t let’s bother.’ Helena tried to think of a reason. ‘I’d only drop something.’
She needed space and time to think on her own. Even the prospect of having someone else – anyone else – in her kitchen doing anything at all was agony.
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll just stack them in the dishwasher, the plates, I mean, and deal with it all tomorrow. Thank you for coming and telling me about the desk. I’m sorry I got so drunk.’ Helena swayed and had to hold on to the wall.
‘It’s fine. You’re well within the bounds of decency. But you ought to go bed soon. Drink plenty of water first and then you won’t have too bad a head in the morning. Will you be all right?’
‘Yes.’
Hearing the peremptory sound of a car’s horn outside, Miranda collected her jacket and handbag from the hall and reminded Helena to come for dinner on Wednesday. Miranda put her hand on the latch. Helena looked at her, longing to say something to show she had understood the silent talk. Miranda looked back at her and then, as the car horn sounded again, dropped her bag and jacket on the floor and held out her arms. Helena walked forward without a word and felt herself tightly held.
The embrace could not have been more different from Irene’s. There was no softness, no comfort. As Miranda held her, Helena could feel only bone, but the tightness of her mother’s arms was extraordinarily important. It told Helena that she was not the only one to have dropped her guard, to have been unable to say aloud the things that really mattered. It also told her, as her earlier words had not, that Miranda might not need to be told what her daughter had thought of her desertion.
The car’s horn sounded again, longer and more angrily than before. Miranda let Helena go, collected her things and left the house without a word.
Helena stood in the empty hall, leaning against the door and beginning to feel very unwell. She could not distinguish between the effects of the wine and her emotions. With great care, she walked back into the kitchen, ran cold water over the plates and pans, put away the bread and butter, checked that she had turned off the gas and the lights and went upstairs.
Later she had to go back to the kitchen to make absolutely certain that the gas was off and stood in the darkness, holding on to the cooker and saying aloud: ‘There’s nothing clever, or interesting, or in any way admirable about being anxious. It‘s silly and wasteful and crippling. You knew you had turned it off. You’ve grown out of obsessive panics. You’re not like that any more. Get back to bed and control yourself.’
She went and lay down again, hardly noticing that Franny and Jack had started up another crashing row next door. The pillow swung beneath her head like a hammock in a storm-tossed boat. She tried to pretend that it was an exhilarating sensation and, later, that she was back at the funfair with Irene on a Saturday afternoon in summer, revelling in being whirled around and upside down and back again.