I could feel myself becoming reclusive, lost in the past, so I accepted an invitation to an old friend’s birthday party. By the time I arrived, guests had spilled into every room in the house. My host shrieked at me, pressed a glass into my hand, and then disappeared to welcome more guests. I saw a couple I knew from university and pushed through the crush towards them. They’d just had their first child and the conversation revolved around disposable nappies and organic baby food. I retreated and curled up with a bottle of champagne on the window seat.
I drank, and became more sociable. I talked to a dancer who’d worked with my sister and then to a beautiful actress who knew Charles Lightman. I found myself chatted up by a man in a blue jersey who worked for the National Rivers Authority. With a couple of sticks of celery and a bowl of pistachio nuts, he demonstrated to me how a lock works. The pistachio nuts rolled onto the floor and we scrabbled about, picking them up, and he became quite pink and flirtatious. Then, as I stood up, a hand touched my shoulder and a familiar voice said, ‘Rebecca?’
My knees wobbled. I looked round. Toby.
He wore a blue silk suit and his brown hair was cropped closer to his head than I remembered. ‘You look well, Toby,’ I said. ‘Terribly … successful.’
During the months since we had parted, I had had time to work out that, to Toby, success is the most important thing. Money and power are part of it, of course, but recognition is paramount.
‘You’re looking good, Rebecca. I like the hair.’
‘You used to prefer long hair.’ My voice was sharp. ‘You must have changed, Toby.’
He said, ‘Perhaps I have,’ and I wished I hadn’t drunk so much. I wanted to be cool, detached, in control, but it’s hard to manage that on half a bottle of Bolly.
He glanced round. ‘Hell of a crush in here – shall we go somewhere quieter?’
I mumbled something about needing the loo, detached myself from him and ran upstairs. When I looked down over the banister, Toby was talking to the tall actress who knew Charles. I found my coat on a bed and escaped, ducking through the crowds in the kitchen, stumbling over the dustbins and empty wine bottles that cluttered the back yard. I blew the last notes in my purse on a taxi to take me home, falling drunkenly out of the cab just after one o’clock.
I didn’t even attempt to go to sleep. Instead I heaved out a cardboard box that Tilda had given me the previous day and began to go through the contents. It was mostly press cuttings, in no particular order, the paper yellowed and torn at the edges. Recognition was obviously of little importance to Tilda. I wondered, as I flattened out strips of newsprint and stuck Scotch tape along the fragile folds of magazine pages, what it was that she most cared about. Family, perhaps. Words and phrases from the cuttings seized my attention. ‘Dame Tilda Franklin attends the opening ceremony of a hostel for the young homeless in London …’ ‘A lifetime devoted to children …’ ‘You cannot learn before you have loved, and you cannot love until you know that you yourself are lovable …’
I felt safe again. The distant past was controllable and unthreatening. With the exaggerated care of the rather drunk, I sorted the cuttings and photographs, trying to establish a chronological order. By half past two I had reached the late Seventies, when Tilda had supposedly retired. I had the beginnings of a headache, but I felt rather pleased with myself.
I searched in the box again to check that I had not missed anything and discovered an envelope wedged between the overlapping slats of cardboard. I drew it out and glanced at the address. Daragh Canavan Esq., it said, in round, loopy handwriting. It was addressed to the Savoy Hotel. For the second time that night my heart began to beat very fast. There was that strangely exciting sense of the past – which in spite of everything always seems more closely allied to fiction than to reality – touching the present. The envelope was already slit open; I took out the single sheet of paper.
It was not from Tilda, but from Jossy. My darling, I read, You have been away four days, and it seems like four years. I miss you so much – everything is dull and pointless when you are not here. More in the same vein, and then, as if an afterthought, Caitlin misses you too.
There was no date on the letter. What a tiresome man you were, Daragh Canavan, I thought. Beautiful, but tiresome. And what a slavish, degrading letter to write. Had Jossy realized by the time she had written that letter that Daragh did not love her, had never loved her? Did she believe that her devotion would ultimately secure his love when, of course, that sort of unreturned passion is more likely to repel? Did she write that last, desperate ‘Caitlin misses you’, guessing that it was the child who brought her errant husband home?
I shut the letter away in a drawer in my desk. When finally I slept that night, I dreamed of Toby, but he had Daragh Canavan’s face.
I spent Sunday nursing my hangover, finishing organizing the cuttings and listing by date the achievements and incidents described in them. I was aware of the telephone lurking ominously in the corner of the room, but it did not ring. On Monday morning, I telephoned Oxfordshire to speak to Tilda about a gap of a few years I had discovered in the press cuttings. Was there another box, or had she disappeared from public life for a while?
A voice I did not recognize answered the telephone. ‘Melissa Parker,’ it said briskly. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’d like to speak to Tilda Franklin,’ I began. ‘I’ve the wrong number, perhaps—’
‘I’m afraid Tilda isn’t well. She’s in hospital, actually. I’m her daughter. Can I help you?’
The shameful thing was that my first emotion was one of disappointment and frustration. I’d wanted to find out what happened next. But almost immediately following came concern, and a measure of guilt.
I explained who I was, and Melissa Parker told me that Tilda had angina, but was not thought to be in any danger. She gave me the name of the hospital and the ward number, and when I put the phone down, I stood uncertainly, staring at the heaps of notes and files I had amassed over the weeks. Then I grabbed my jacket and my bag and left the house.
I bought narcissi, tulips and freesias from the florist at the corner, and put the bouquet in the back of my car. The poor thing didn’t want to start, which should have warned me. Although it was April, the temperature had plummeted, and the roads that were in shadow were still glazed with frost. I made it most of the way along the motorway before the Fiesta’s engine began to stutter and cough. I cursed and begged, but it made no difference, and I just managed to swing onto the hard shoulder before it died completely. I’d given up my AA membership a few months ago, in a ruthless economy drive, and though I opened the bonnet and peered inside, the blackish mass of tubes and wires told me nothing. Trying not to think of maniacs attacking lone women drivers, I walked the quarter mile to the nearest telephone. Then I waited for what seemed like hours, becoming colder and colder, for the breakdown truck. Eventually it came, and the mechanic muttered about blocked fuel lines and towed me away. At the garage, peering in my purse, I discovered that I had two pounds and fourteen pence. The mechanic looked at the car and sucked his teeth and directed me to the bus stop. The bus lurched and rumbled along country lanes, so by the time I reached Oxford I felt sick as well as frozen. I found a cash machine and drew out some money, but I was so cold it was a struggle to punch in the buttons of my pin number. I stuffed the cash into my purse, and went to the tourist office to ask directions to the Radcliffe Infirmary. It was only then that I remembered I’d left Tilda’s bouquet on the back seat of the Fiesta.
It was four o’clock when I reached the hospital. The place was huge and confusing, like all hospitals. My brain, still numbed by cold, lost me three times on the way to Tilda’s ward. When I got out of the lift, carrying the rather pathetic bunch of daffodils I’d bought in the market in Oxford, I saw a middle-aged woman standing beside the drinks machine. Patrick Franklin stood beside her. I remembered sewing the prawns into the hem of Toby’s coat, and my heart sank and I knew that my face was fiery red.
I wanted to go straight back into the lift, but it was too late, Patrick had already seen me. A small, mocking smile played around the corners of his mouth. I ignored him, and held out my hand to the middle-aged woman.
‘Mrs Parker?’
Melissa Parker was in her late fifties, smartly dressed, her greying hair smoothly waved. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m Rebecca Bennett. We spoke on the phone this morning.’
‘Miss Bennett! How good of you to come.’ Melissa’s voice was Home Counties, with none of Tilda’s gentle East Anglian lilt. She shook my hand.
I took a deep breath. ‘Patrick,’ I said, and he nodded to me. I had been mistaken about the smile, I thought; he was glowering.
‘How is Tilda?’
‘A little better. My daughter’s with her.’ Melissa glanced at her watch. ‘I must go – we really should try to contact Josh, though no doubt he will be maddeningly unavailable, as usual.’ She looked flustered.
It clicked, then. Patrick’s father – Tilda’s son – was Josh Franklin, the travel writer. Every now and then one sees an article by him in a colour supplement, accompanied by a photograph in which he is pounding across salt flats or squatting in a tent, surrounded by nomads in exotic rags.
‘Matty!’ called Melissa suddenly. ‘Matty! Over here!’
I looked around but could see only a couple of nurses, bustling purposefully down the corridor, and a girl in black leggings, black top, and DMs. She had a nose-ring and little purple plaits in her chestnut hair, and couldn’t possibly be related to smart, conventional Melissa Parker. Yet she strode across the lino towards us.
‘Grandma’s asleep,’ said the girl with the nose-ring. ‘Can I have a Coke, Mum?’
Matty Parker looked about sixteen. She was several inches taller than her mother, and she had, beneath the thick kohl and mascara, clear grey pellucid eyes, just like Tilda’s.
‘We haven’t time,’ said Melissa. ‘Your father will be home.’
‘I’ll drink it in the car. Go on, Mum.’
‘Have you an address for Josh, Patrick?’
‘There’s a twenty pence in your coat pocket. Can I have that?’
‘I’ll phone Laura, in Delhi.’
‘I only need another fifteen.’
‘She should be able to get a message to him.’
‘So thirsty—’
‘Mother will not be sensible. She is eighty, Patrick. She really – oh, Matty, do be quiet! And why you had to wear that – that thing …!’ Melissa’s voice wobbled.
I said, ‘Here you are,’ and fished in my pocket and found some change. Melissa said tearfully, ‘There’s really no need,’ and Patrick explained to me that he’d used up all his change in the car park. The coins clanked inside the drinks machine.
Matty said, ‘Mum doesn’t like my nose-ring, Patrick. Or my tattoo. Have I showed you my tattoo?’ She pulled aside several layers of black T-shirt to reveal a skinny arm ornamented from shoulder to elbow with a jade-green Celtic knot.
‘Delightful,’ said Patrick.
‘I’m going to sue.’ Melissa dragged Matty to the lift. ‘She isn’t eighteen. It’s against the law, isn’t it, Patrick?’
I heard Matty’s, ‘Grandma likes it,’ and Melissa’s final despairing, ‘Just too bad—’ as the doors closed, swallowing them. Then I was alone with Patrick.
I waved the daffodils at him and said quickly, ‘I’ll leave these with the nurse,’ and headed up the corridor. Tilda was asleep behind green flowered curtains; I left her to what peace and privacy can be had in a hospital, and deposited the wilting flowers and a scribbled note with the sister. I’d hoped that Patrick would be gone by the time I came back, but he was standing opposite the lift, lolling against the window sill, hands in pockets.
He asked me whether I was driving home straight away, and I had to explain what had happened to my car. ‘Pig of a day to break down,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a lift. I must go back to London tonight.’
I couldn’t think of a polite way of refusing him. We left the hospital and walked to his car. I’d expected something macho in British Racing Green, but Patrick drove an oldish Renault. He drove fast and skilfully, though, and the silence was deafening. He still seemed cross and brooding, and dark shadows were smudged under his eyes. I was aware of his hands, resting lightly on the steering wheel, and the small golden hairs on the backs of his wrists. The silence was intolerable: I had to speak.
‘About the prawns – you must think me mad—’
Again, that twist to the corners of his mouth. ‘Not at all. It brightened a very dull evening.’
‘I don’t usually do things like that—’
‘No?’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘How disappointing.’
I could think of nothing to say to that. I gave up attempting to explain, and voiced my other worry. ‘I hope I didn’t upset Tilda. I mean – I hope that it wasn’t what we talked about that made her ill.’
Patrick changed down a gear to take a tight corner, and shook his head. ‘It was to do with you, but only very indirectly. She was sorting out material to give you, and she came across some pictures – sketches, watercolours, that sort of thing. So she went into Oxford to buy frames – at least she didn’t drive, thank God, she took the bus – and then she got out the stepladder and hung the pictures.’ His voice was grimly amused. It was dark outside, and the treetops linked together overhead, their branches briefly golden as the headlamps lit them. ‘She was taken ill overnight. Just wore herself out, the doctor thinks.’
Silence seized us again as he drove onto the motorway. I was exhausted; it had been a long, tiresome day, and I could have fallen asleep. He’d offered me a lift, though, and I felt that I should make an effort.
‘I thought that Melissa’s daughter was rather … surprising.’
Patrick gave a crack of laughter. ‘Aunt Melissa had everything just right until Matty came along. Married the right husband, lived in the right house, had two daughters who were credits to her. Then – wham – Matty, the troublesome late baby. Tilda adores her, of course.’
Very late, I thought. Melissa must have been well into her forties when Matty was born.
I wanted to ask him about his father, the illustrious Josh Franklin, but the humour had gone from his eyes and his mouth had settled back into grim lines. I didn’t even attempt conversation for the remainder of my journey. I let my eyes close, wishing I could sleep yet unable to relax because of his nearness. I wandered into that state between wakefulness and sleep, where the bleep of the indicator whenever Patrick changed lanes mingled with a patchwork of random and disjointed thoughts. When we reached my flat, I asked, certain that he would refuse, whether he would like coffee.
He glanced at his watch. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
Hell, I thought, as I unlocked the door of the flat. I realized how hungry I was. I’d had a cup of tea at the garage and a Mars bar in Oxford, that was all. I peered in the fridge.
‘Would you like an omelette?’
He blinked. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble—’
‘It’s no more trouble to make two than one. And I’m starving.’
I beat eggs in the kitchen while he prowled around my front room. The egg mixture bubbled pleasingly in the pan – one of my better efforts – and I took the plates and cutlery through.
‘You don’t mind eating here, do you? Only the kitchen’s rather cold.’ I put his plate on the arm of my one comfortable chair.
‘I’d eat on the pavement if someone else cooked for me.’
I put on a CD, as a precaution against silences. I guessed that Patrick, like Max, would like Bach. He sat down at last, and seemed to relax a little.
‘Tilda’s illness must have been very worrying for you.’
He tore his chunk of bread in half. ‘Aunt Melissa phoned in the middle of the night.’
‘It’s what might have happened,’ I said.
‘Quite. I was working late anyway, so I just drove down to Oxford straight away.’ He grinned, and the smile lightened his face, making him look more approachable. ‘God – when I was twenty I used to be able to miss a night’s sleep and hardly feel the worse for it. I must be getting old.’ He finished his last piece of omelette and stood up. ‘Thank you, Rebecca, that was just what I needed. I must go, I have to be in court tomorrow.’
After he had gone, I could not, to my surprise, settle to anything. I’d thought to have a hot bath and collapse quickly into bed, but though I soaked for half an hour in the Chanel bubble bath that Lucy Lightman had given me for Christmas, I no longer felt sleepy. So I cleaned the kitchen with untypical thoroughness, handwashed some clothes and flung them over the rack in the bath, and looked through bank statements and cheque stubs to make sure I had enough cash in my current account to pay for the repair to my car. And all the time I thought not of Toby, but of Patrick. I couldn’t work out why I was thinking of Patrick – he was, after all, morose, unwelcoming, and sarcastic, and I still couldn’t recall the episode with the prawns without doubling up with embarrassment. He was physically attractive, it was true, but though it was six months since Toby and I had split up, I did not yet feel ready for another relationship. I had no idea what Patrick thought of me, but I guessed that he had been reasonably pleasant tonight because of my professional relationship with Tilda. Yet whenever I closed my eyes I saw his face, and I struggled to find a comfortable position for my hot, aching limbs.
I fell asleep eventually in the early hours of the morning. I was woken by the sound of a footstep on the stairs. I opened my eyes. The room was a complete, velvety black. I wanted to reach out and light the candle on my chest of drawers, but I was unable to move. A creak as the door opened, and then a rustle of fabric told me that he was in the room. I wanted to scream, but could not. I lay very still, eyes shut, praying that if he believed me asleep he would go away.
I felt the bedclothes peeled off me, one by one. The coverlet, the scratchy blankets. Outside in the night, an owl hooted. I was shivering violently, and though I tried to whisper No, no sound came out. He lifted my nightgown, bared my body. Then he lay on me. His weight suffocated me; I tried to struggle, to scream, to push him away, but I was paralysed. He was forcing the breath from my lungs. I tried to move my head from side to side, to make even the small movement of opening my eyes, and as I found my lids and prised them apart, I felt tears slide from my face. My sobs repeated the rhythmic movement of his body. I gasped for breath.
When I awoke, he still lingered. There was still the weight of his body on mine, an incubus. I didn’t know whether I had cried aloud, but I reached up my hand and touched the tears that beaded my lashes. It was only when I fumbled for and found the light switch, rather than a candle, that I convinced myself that it had only been a dream. Light flooded the room, extinguishing the ghost of Edward de Paveley, who belonged, after all, to another time. Yet the image of the servant’s attic remained with me, and I focused on the television, the laptop, the CD player, as if to reassure myself that it really was 1995, and not 1913.
I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. My hand shook as I filled the kettle, and tea leaves scattered from the spoon to the work surface. But I took my mug and sat down at my desk, and switched on my laptop. I had left Tilda in the London of the early 1930s, trying to forget Daragh Canavan. Though Tilda’s ghosts might now haunt me, they compelled me too, drawing me into their story.
The train lurched into Liverpool Street Station. Out of the clouds of white steam a small figure appeared, screamed, dropped her suitcases and ran down the platform.
‘Roland! Tilda!’
Tilda hugged Emily as Roland dashed up the platform to collect his sister’s cases. ‘Em, you look marvellous. It’s been so long. I moved into the new room yesterday.’
Celia had married, and Emily’s letter telling Tilda that Mrs Potter had at last agreed to let her work in London had arrived the day that Anna had offered Tilda Celia’s old room. It was a large, spacious room, easily big enough for two, at the front of the house.
Roland hailed a taxi to take them back to Pargeter Street. After he had hauled his sister’s suitcases upstairs, he glanced at his watch.
‘I’ve to work this evening, I’m afraid, Em. The theatre critic has appendicitis.’ He stooped and kissed Emily. ‘Tilda has something organized, haven’t you, Tilda?’
‘Max is taking us to the theatre and to supper.’
‘Terrific. I’ll be off then.’
Tilda helped Emily unpack. ‘I’ve simply masses to tell you,’ said Emily, flinging stockings into a drawer. ‘Oh heavens, what shall I wear tonight? You look so chic, Tilda. I’ve my old blue thing or my old red thing. I’m going to buy a black dress – Mummy won’t let me buy black. And I’m going to sign up at a secretarial agency, and find a boyfriend. Who’s Max, Tilda?’
‘I wrote to you about Max.’ Tilda arranged Emily’s dresses on hangers, suspended them from the picture rail, and considered them. ‘The red, I think, Em. The navy blue is rather—’
‘It makes me look like a parlourmaid,’ said Emily glumly. ‘A rather fat parlourmaid.’
There was a knock at the door. When Tilda opened it, Max, outside, tapped his watch.
‘We ought to go.’
‘Roland can’t make it. He has to review a play.’
Max grinned. ‘I know. A left-wing prose-poem in a church hall in Brompton, poor blighter.’
They went to a musical and then to supper afterwards. Emily howled through the play, Max slept. Since the previous September, Max and Tilda had been to a play or concert almost every week. Max chose the programmes: part of Tilda’s education, he explained. He took her to Shakespeare and Shaw, Bach and Mozart. She discovered that the more you educated yourself, the more you realized you didn’t know. Max made her book lists, which she ploughed through, abandoning the dullest with a howl of rage but entranced by the best, turning page after page, falling asleep over the book in the early hours of the morning. At first, Tilda’s discussions with Max had sometimes degenerated into argument: Max exasperated by what he saw as her contrariness, Tilda provoked by his lack of patience. But almost imperceptibly their quarrels had lessened, animosity replaced by mutual respect, and then by friendship. Occasionally when the weather was fine they went for walks in the countryside, taking the train and hiking over field and coast. Max was good company and utterly unforthcoming, which suited Tilda. She did not enquire about his family because she did not want him to enquire about hers. There was a skin of pain and shame that she could not slough off.
After supper, Max escorted Tilda and Emily back to their room and disappeared up to his attic. Tilda made cocoa in the kitchen and she and Emily drank it in bed, huddled in sweaters and dressing gowns because it was January, and the room was cold.
Emily said, ‘Are you in love with Max?’
Tilda laughed. ‘Of course not.’
‘I don’t see why not. He’s rather good-looking and frightfully intelligent.’
Tilda dipped a biscuit in her cocoa. ‘Then you may fall in love with Max, Em.’
Emily shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. He’s just the teeniest bit terrifying. And he thinks I’m trivial – no, Tilda, he does, I can tell. Some men do. I don’t care, they’re probably right. I’m looking for a man who’ll worship me. Could you recommend anyone?’
‘Well …’ Tilda considered the other occupants of 15 Pargeter Street. ‘There’s Michael. He’s great fun. And Fergus – sweet, but a bit – well, passionate.’
‘Yum,’ said Emily. ‘I like Fergus already.’
‘And Stefan, though he’s rather odd. And Giles, but he prefers men. I think, to be realistic, Fergus and Michael are your best bet.’
‘And you?’ Emily clutched her hot-water bottle. ‘How many lovers have you had, Tilda?’
Tilda shrugged. ‘None.’ She wrapped her eiderdown around herself. The window panes were opaque with frost, though it was not yet midnight.
‘Because of Daragh?’
Tilda did not reply. She was friendly with all the male residents of 15 Pargeter Street, but she wasn’t in love with any of them. She would never again experience the same exhilarating delight that she had known with Daragh. She simply wasn’t capable of it. If she married, then she must settle for less.
‘I saw him,’ said Emily, ‘in Ely. I was walking home from my awful job. Daragh was coming out of the draper’s.’
‘Did you speak to him?’ Tilda’s voice was a whisper.
Emily nodded. ‘I was going to tear him off a strip, tell him how awful he’d made you feel, but somehow …’ She shrugged. ‘You know what Daragh’s like, Tilda. You just look at him and you melt, somehow. All your good intentions go. I told him that you were in London staying near my brother, and having a terrific time. I didn’t want him to think you were pining for him.’
‘I’m not,’ said Tilda sharply.
‘Of course not. Anyway, he told me that he has a baby daughter – Kathleen or something – so I suppose he’s a respectable family man now.’ She frowned. ‘He seemed different. I can’t quite … Smarter, of course … and more sure of himself. But – well, colder, and rather …’
‘What?’
‘Rather unhappy,’ said Emily.
Tilda had not only worked longer for Professor Hastings than any of her predecessors had, she had also taken on new responsibilities. As Professor Hastings’ work with the Academic Assistance Council had increased, so had Tilda’s. She spent much of her time on the telephone or writing letters, finding homes and funding for exiled students. She had one day charmed a crabby acquaintance of Professor Hastings’ into providing books and stationery for one of the refugees. The professor, impressed, had called her into his study the following day, given her a battered address book and a box of scribbled notes, and told her that she would now be responsible for fund-raising. The job involved everything from organizing jumble sales to accompanying Professor Hastings to the occasional college dinner – all to further the cause of academic refugees in Britain.
Tilda discovered that she was good at persuading people to donate money, time or help. To the maternal she described the loneliness of the young people who arrived penniless in Britain; to the practical she emphasized the skills and talents that the refugees could offer to their adoptive country. In February, she visited Liesl Toller in the children’s home in Oxford in which she was living. The institution had agreed to take Liesl if funds were provided. There had been no other solution. Tilda herself raised the money by a combination of coaxing and nagging. The institution, which housed over a hundred physically and mentally handicapped children, appalled Tilda. None of the children were addressed by the staff by name, only by the number assigned to them. Though they were fed and bathed and kept reasonably warm, they were given no affection and were allowed no toys. Tilda brought with her a teddy bear for Liesl, but it was confiscated by the matron. Friends and relatives were allowed to visit only twice a year, so although Gerd Toller lived in a college only a few miles away, his sister rarely saw him. On the journey back to London, Tilda stared out of the carriage window, seized by a mixture of anger and grief. There are some children that nobody wants.
And for the first time in a year she found herself thinking of Aunt Sarah without anger and bitterness. Aunt Sarah had taken her from the orphanage when no-one else had claimed her. Without Sarah Greenlees, Tilda knew that she too might have become one of those silent creatures she had seen in the institution, rocking herself back and forth, banging her head rhythmically against the wall, twisting her hair into mad spirals.
Max was cooking eggs and bacon when Emily Potter came into the kitchen. Emily was small and noisy and inquisitive, and made Max think of a mosquito. He nodded to her, and continued to read his newspaper while cooking.
Emily peered into the frying pan. ‘Bacon – yum,’ she said. ‘Is there any going spare?’
‘No,’ said Max repressively. There were only three rashers, and he had thrown up his lunch somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, on a choppy Channel crossing.
‘We’ve been shopping.’ Emily wore a low-cut, close-fitting black dress that emphasized her magnificent bosom. ‘Tilda and I haven’t eaten all day.’
Max remembered picking Tilda up from the kitchen floor, when she had fainted. She had been impossibly light, her bones delicate, like a bird’s. He said, suddenly worried, ‘Tell Tilda she can share this, then.’
Emily leaned against the table, her bosom displayed to its best advantage, looking at him, her dark little eyes bright with her discovery.
‘Oh, Max. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.’ She tore off a crust of bread, and dipped it in his egg yolk. ‘And I’m not heartbroken, either. You and I would never do. I’ve learned to leave the dark, sultry men to Tilda.’
She swayed seductively out of the kitchen, and Max cursed her under his breath. He had acknowledged several months ago that he had fallen in love with Tilda Greenlees. The realization both irritated and amused him. It had changed nothing, though, and never would. He was old enough and experienced enough to avoid the more risible symptoms of lovesickness, and responsible enough to take the relationship no further than friendship. He would not make love to Tilda, even if she wanted him to. He liked her too much. Anna’s summation of the way he separated his emotional and physical needs rang horribly true.
He had just returned from Germany again, having stayed a month with his friends the Hansens. He had realized, whilst witnessing the changes in both Munich and Berlin, that he missed Tilda. He refused to allow himself the pleasure of imagining taking Tilda to a foreign city, though, and made himself concentrate on his work. He had been commissioned to write a series of articles for the Manchester Guardian, one of the few daily papers to come anywhere near to understanding the implications of Hitler’s rise to power. In Berlin, a fight had broken out in a nightclub. His overriding memory of the evening was of garishly made-up men in evening dresses and cocktail gowns exchanging blows with brown-uniformed Sturmabteilung. Breaking his own rules, Max too had joined in, and had been hit over the head with a chair for his trouble. At night, unable to sleep, he had prowled round Gussy Hansen’s kitchen, a tea towel filled with ice cubes clutched against his head, thinking of Tilda. He thought of it as an illness that must eventually pass.
Provoked, perhaps, by her difficult birth, Caitlin Canavan continued to disrupt the Hall. At three months old, she was still unable to tell the difference between night and day, and never slept more than a few hours at a time. Jossy had been too ill to breastfeed her, and Nana was too old to cope with endless night feeds, but Daragh insisted on taking over, sleeping in the night nursery on a little put-down bed, warming Caitlin’s bottles and spending hours gently coaxing the baby to take an extra half-ounce. Looking out of the window to the grey, frosty lawn, his daughter sleeping against his shoulder, Daragh was happy. He had found love again. He was a passionate man, and he needed love. Though this was a different sort of love from that which he had felt for Tilda, it recalled to him the depth of feeling that they had shared.
Around her fourth month the miracle happened, and Caitlin changed from a little, red-faced, screaming changeling to a bonny, well-grown baby, sometimes capable of contentment. When Daragh put her to bed, she slept through the night. When Jossy or Nana tucked her up in her cot, she’d refuse to settle, or would wake a few hours later, howling. Daragh comforted Caitlin when her first tooth came through; Daragh showed her off to admiring visitors. When the weather grew milder he wheeled Caitlin around the garden in her pram, watching her laugh at the pattern of the windswept leaves, or reach out her tiny hand towards the sun.
Daragh’s love for his daughter initially distracted him from a problem that grew more troublesome as the months went on. He and his wife no longer made love: Dr Williams’ prohibition had been confirmed by the expensive Mr Browne. At first, when Jossy had been ill and Daragh himself had been tired by the demands of the child, it had not distressed him. But as his natural urges had returned and as Jossy had recovered and begun to shuffle clumsily round the house, Daragh had realized the implications of the situation. Jossy herself asked him back to her bed. He agreed, for a night or two, but found it a torment. She insisted on cuddling and caressing him, yet he was denied the relief of finishing off what she had begun. He was not a eunuch or a priest. It was not that he found Jossy particularly attractive – since Caitlin’s birth she had not regained her figure – but he needed a woman, any woman. He even found himself looking at the dimwitted nursery-maid with desire, or wondering whether any of Jossy’s horse-faced schoolfriends had grown bored with their husbands. Daragh removed himself to another bedroom. Jossy wept great, globby tears that patched her pale face with scarlet. Daragh, in desperation, went to see the priest.
The priest was sympathetic, but to Daragh’s tentative and guilty suggestion that they employ mechanical means of avoiding another child, was adamant. God would give him strength, said the priest, and Daragh walked gloomily out into the early spring sunshine, a lifetime of celibacy stretching greyly in front of him. Choices bleakly offered themselves to him. He could go against the teachings of the church and use a French letter, and burn in hell. He could take his wife, regardless of the frailty of her body, knowing that to make love to her could kill her. He could continue, guiltily and furtively, to give relief to himself. Or he could take a mistress.
Daragh buried his face in his hands. The conviction, born on his wedding night, that he had, because of Sarah Greenlees’ interference and Jossy’s infatuation, stepped on the wrong road, grew stronger. He had imagined a lifetime with Tilda. The physical and emotional longing he had felt for her was still vivid and painful. He knew that Tilda was living in London, in a room in the same house as Emily Potter’s brother. Daragh clenched his hands and rested his chin on his fists, thinking. Emily’s brother had been called – God, he could almost remember it – Ronald. No. Robert? Richard?
Roland. Daragh smiled.
Anna dropped the letters into Max’s attic before she went to lunch. ‘Bills, darling, always bills.’ Max inspected his post. Three bills and a letter. The letter had a Brighton postmark.
The single sheet of paper told him that his mother was engaged to be married to a man called Leslie Bates. He is a retired businessman, and was once a captain in the Guards, wrote Clara Franklin proudly. Max grabbed his coat and hat and dashed to Victoria Station to catch the Brighton train.
He reached his mother’s flat by three o’clock. She was dressed in a new outfit, and the glossy dress boxes scattered around the apartment told him that her spending spree had been thorough. He made tea, and tried to coax Leslie Bates’s address out of her. ‘You’re not going to be horrid to him, are you, Max?’ said Mrs Franklin, cautiously. He tried to reassure her, but was unconvincing and succeeded in reducing her to tears. He had the address, though.
Leslie Bates wore a houndstooth suit and an Old Harrovian tie, and lived in a depressing room in a back-street hotel. He had false teeth and thinning hair, but maintained the upright stance that Clara Franklin was so often attracted to, and which was, presumably, evinced to support the Harrow and Guards fiction. He offered Max a Scotch and a seat in a greasy armchair, both of which Max refused. Max knew that Leslie Bates understood perfectly why he was there.
Max made clear the reality of his mother’s financial situation, but Mr Bates did not, like some of his predecessors, immediately and embarrassedly withdraw from the engagement. Instead, eyeing Max’s old but good shoes and shabby Burberry, he said, ‘But there is money in the family, I assume?’
Max groaned inwardly. ‘My father’s investments lost most of their value in ‘29. And you must take my word, Mr Bates, that I have no private income. If you marry my mother, then you must expect to be responsible for some fairly substantial bills.’
Bates twiddled his moustache. ‘Clara is very attached to me. To break off the engagement would distress her. But an unhappy marriage might, don’t you think, cause her greater pain in the end.’
Max wanted to seize the fellow by his horrible dog-tooth lapels and shove him through the window to the pavement below. Instead, he took out his cheque book and said, ‘How much, Mr Bates?’
He paid one hundred and fifty pounds so that his mother might continue to live as a single woman and Leslie Bates might leave Brighton. When, an hour later, he explained to Clara Franklin that the wedding was not to take place, she wept and would not be consoled. During the night, Max’s fitful sleep on the sofa was interrupted by his mother’s prowling footsteps, and the sound of bottles clinking in the kitchen. She took the glass and the gin bottle into her bedroom, where she wept again.
In the morning, when his mother rose at eleven, Max made her tea and gave her aspirins. She looked old and fragile, her dark, lovely eyes swollen by tears. She drank her tea and said shakily, ‘I’ve been very silly, Max. I am so sorry.’ He took her hand, and then she dressed and they took the dog for a walk.
He caught the late afternoon train back to London. The compartments were full, so he stood in the corridor, looking out of the window, smoking. He was very short of cash – the cheque to Leslie Bates had cleaned out his savings account – and he was aware of a weight of depression that he did not seem able to shift. He knew that his mother was just looking for love. What love his father had been able to give her she had long ago destroyed. She wanted too much, and was constantly disappointed.
Back at 15 Pargeter Street, he was unpacking his overnight bag when there was a knock at the door. He had forgotten that it was Wednesday, and thus Tilda’s German lesson. The sight of her made more raw the pain that he felt. He glanced at the exercise she had prepared, stabbed several red lines through it, and said shortly, ‘If you can’t cope with the past tense of “to be”, then you’re going to find German conversation rather limited.’ He saw her flush.
They were reading Emil and the Detectives, chapter by chapter. Tilda read, Max corrected her pronunciation and helped her translate. As she turned the pages, he prowled restlessly around the room, straightening ashtrays, replacing books on the shelf. Her mispronunciations jarred him, and after he rectified them she immediately made the same mistakes again. He said impatiently, ‘For heaven’s sake, Tilda – did you leave your brain at Leo Hastings’ house?’ and he saw her rise from her seat, and begin to pick up her books and pens.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to my room.’ She glanced at him. ‘You’re obviously not in the mood, Max.’
He almost let her go, but realized just in time that if he did he would hate himself. He stopped her before she reached the door. ‘Tilda – please.’
She paused, indecision on her face. ‘You’re right, Max – I can’t concentrate. Let’s forget it.’
He had the suspicion that if he let her walk down those stairs, she would not come back. He saw suddenly how empty his life would become. He ran his hands through his hair, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Tilda – I’ve had a bad day. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, though.’
She hugged her books to her chest. Her grey eyes studied him, waiting for an explanation.
‘I’ve been in Brighton, paying a very large sum of money so that some cad would not marry my mother.’
‘Oh, Max.’ Tilda’s expression altered.
‘I think I’ll just shoot the next one,’ he said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Borrow a rifle, and shoot the blighter. I’d hang for it, but it would be cheaper.’
She didn’t laugh, but dumped the books on an armchair, and put her arms round him. ‘Poor Max.’ Because he couldn’t have borne just to stand there like a dummy, he hugged her back and stroked her hair. In that moment of contact he made the discovery that the touch of someone you love is in itself a comfort. Her touch healed him, it was as simple and as miraculous as that. It was not something he had known before, and because the realization unnerved him, he pulled away from her.
The attic – the bed visible through the adjoining door – seemed just then too small, too full of risk. He said, ‘Shall we give up on the German and go out for a drink?’ and was relieved when she agreed. They went to a pub at the end of the road, with little patched velvet-covered seats in the saloon bar, and a barrage of noise from the adjoining public room.
He told her about his family. It was as though a gate had opened and all his customary reticence had been drowned by a stronger emotion. ‘I was at school when my parents were divorced. It was a very stuffy school – my father was quite well off at that time. The divorce was in some of the papers. Some of the other boys read about it, and they … well, you can imagine. I thought of running away, but I knew that they’d just haul me back. I learned to pretend that it didn’t matter. I got quite good at that, and after a while, of course, they stopped ragging me. The funny thing is …’ Max stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray ‘… the funny thing is that was when I started thinking about journalism as a career. I saw the power of the press, I suppose. Before the newspaper articles, I’d just been boring Max Franklin, who played a reasonable game of cricket for the House and won the odd prize on Founders’ Day. Afterwards, I was the Max Franklin whose mother was a drunk and a tart. Much more interesting.’
She put her hand on his. ‘Max.’
He smiled. ‘Another drink?’ He rose, and went to the bar. He thought, savagely, waiting in the crush, how dull, to talk so endlessly about yourself. He pushed forward and ordered two more halves. Back at the table, he gave Tilda her glass of cider.
‘Roland told me that your parents are dead, Tilda.’
She nodded. ‘I was brought up by my aunt.’
‘And she died …?’
She shook her head. ‘Aunt Sarah’s still alive, as far as I know.’
He frowned. ‘You don’t write home?’
Her eyes were wide and dark. ‘We haven’t spoken for a year and a half. I had a letter from home this morning. Not from Aunt Sarah, though. She doesn’t know my address.’
He said nothing, just looked at her. After a few moments, she fumbled in her pocket and drew out a folded piece of notepaper. Though he could not read it, Max glimpsed the writing: strong and black and undisciplined.
‘It’s from Daragh Canavan. I never thought I’d hear from him again.’
The naked pain in her voice seared him. He remembered, a long time ago, Anna saying, She has a broken heart.
‘You are in love with him.’
She looked up, and shook her head again. ‘I was in love with Daragh. Not any more. He married someone else. My aunt helped to arrange the marriage.’
The journalist in him was curious to ask more, but he sensed how much pain the subject caused her. ‘I suppose the fear that lingers,’ he said tentatively, ‘is that you’ll make just as much of a mess of things as your parents did. Marriage, I mean. Family life … all that.’
‘I sometimes imagine having a family,’ said Tilda. She smiled. ‘A real family. Lots and lots of children and a big, rambling house … and a garden with little paths and ponds with tadpoles.’
‘And bonfires in the autumn. Roasting chestnuts in a log fire.’
She laughed. ‘Max. You old romantic. I’d never have guessed.’
He said, ‘Perhaps if you know what not to do, then you can make a better job of it.’ Another great leap of understanding, he realized. The second in one evening. Max, you old sod, he thought, maybe you’re learning at last.
The light that filtered through the frosted window glass gleamed gold on Tilda’s shoulder-length hair. Her lids were lowered over her calm grey eyes. He would have liked to be an artist, to draw her. He would have liked to caress with his hands, his mouth, his tongue her translucent skin, dusted with tiny golden freckles.
Yet there was the letter, bunched in her hand. ‘What did he want?’
‘Oh.’ She glanced down. ‘To see me. I won’t, of course. I won’t reply.’
Max was aware of a deep and drowning relief.
Jossy liked to watch Caitlin as she slept in her cot, but her daughter’s furious bouts of crying produced in her feelings of panic and inadequacy. She was never sure that she was holding Caitlin the right way, or feeding her the right way, or even talking to her the right way. Caitlin herself reinforced all Jossy’s doubts. In the baby’s rare moments of contentment, Jossy was aware of a pleasure in her company; too often, though, Jossy found herself howling with her daughter, or simply handing over the red-faced, furious thing to Nana or the nursemaid or Daragh. They all seemed so much better at it. She knew that she was failing again, failing in something a woman was supposed to find easy and natural.
She did not at first mind that she and Daragh could not make love. The process of childbirth had been so much worse than her most nightmarish imaginings that, when she had eventually been capable of coherent thought, she had known that she could not bear to go through it again. The brief conversation she had with Dr Williams produced a mixture of embarrassment and relief. But as she recovered, she began to remember, and to miss, what she and Daragh had shared. Before her marriage, she had regarded her body and its mysterious female workings with shame and distaste. Daragh had changed that: he had coaxed such joy from her.
When she was able to squeeze herself back into her evening dresses, Jossy accepted a few invitations out. She and Daragh went to a theatre in London and a restaurant in Cambridge, and then to a cocktail party hosted by an old schoolfriend of Jossy’s. Elsa Gordon was tall and slim and blonde and, although she had two children, her stomach was as flat as a board. Jossy introduced Daragh to Elsa. Elsa, shaking hands with Daragh, registered admiration. Then she turned to look at Jossy, her pale blue eyes inspecting her from top to toe, and she drawled, ‘My, what a frock, Joscelin. So original.’ Jossy, hooking her arm through Daragh’s, felt proud.
Somehow, though, in the course of the evening, her pleasure dissolved. She kept finding Daragh and then losing him. She’d turn aside to accept a cocktail or receive introductions, and when she looked back he’d have gone. Without Daragh at her side, she felt lost, gawky, uninteresting. She saw that Daragh, unlike her, revelled in these occasions. He moved from group to group, always welcomed, never at a loss for words. He never seemed to scrabble around for a topic of conversation as Jossy did; never seemed to find himself, like Jossy, pinned to the wall by a red-faced colonel, and forced to endure a long monologue about hunting.
Eventually, glancing out of the window, she saw a flicker of movement. Daragh and Elsa Gordon were walking through the moonlit garden. Anger gave her strength, and Jossy said a loud ‘Excuse me’ to the colonel and pushed past him, heading through the crowds to the French doors.
They were standing beside the rose bed. She thought that Elsa’s hand was resting on Daragh’s arm, but in the poor light she could not be sure.
‘I’m tired, Daragh,’ said Jossy.
He looked round. ‘It’s only’ – he glanced at his watch – ‘half past nine.’
‘I want to go home.’
Daragh frowned. Jossy began to march back to the house. When he drew level with her, he hissed in her ear, ‘You’re making me look a fool!’ but she kept on walking.
In the hall, waiting for their coats, she caught sight of their reflections in the looking-glass. Daragh’s good looks were only heightened by anger, but she—
She wore a black lace dress that had been part of her trousseau. Yet she seemed to have changed shape since she had bought it: her bust had flattened and her stomach protruded in spite of her corset, so that her figure was pear-shaped. And she must have caught a heel in the hem, because a length of lace trailed, fraying, at the back of the dress. Her hair had frizzed in the heat of the room. How original, Elsa had said, and smiled.
Driving home, leaving the town for the flat, raised roads of the Fens, Jossy said, ‘You were with that woman for hours.’
‘We were talking about the children, that’s all. Elsa has a little girl the same age as Caitlin.’
‘Elsa!’ she shrieked. ‘You’re on first name terms, are you, Daragh?’ The car swerved.
He yanked the steering wheel, straightening the car. ‘God, you’ll have us both killed.’
‘She was laughing at me, Daragh. Did you realize that?’
‘Then you shouldn’t have given her cause to laugh. Running around after me as though I was a puppy-dog and you were tugging the lead.’
Jossy accelerated down the long straight road that led to Southam. ‘I have a right to your company. Elsa Gordon doesn’t. I’m your wife!’
‘I suppose so,’ he muttered. ‘Of sorts.’
She gasped. The lights of the Hall grew out of the darkness. Daragh’s handsome profile was outlined by moonlight. Jossy swung the car up the drive, and parked in front of the house. Her anger dissolved, and tears stung her eyes. She whispered, ‘I know we can’t do that any more, but we can still kiss and cuddle—’
‘Mary mother of God. I grew out of that at sixteen.’
She stared at him. He climbed out of the car and slammed the door. Then he looked back at her. ‘Jesus – you didn’t think that you were the first, did you?’
Her silence answered him. He laughed as he strode towards the front door. ‘I’m twenty-six, Jossy. Did you think that I was saving it for marriage?’
‘I did.’
‘It’s different for a woman.’ He unlocked the front door and started up the stairs.
She wanted to say, How many? Who? but he had gone ahead of her. She ran to catch up with him, and at the top of the stairs she put her arms around him, and pressed her body against his. ‘I love you, Daragh,’ she murmured. ‘All I want is to be with you.’ The warmth of him, the scent of him – a mingling of the slight salty smell of sweat and the cologne that he wore – made her drunk with delight and despair. Sometimes, when he was away, she went to his room and opened his wardrobe, and clutched the lapel of an overcoat, or the sleeve of a cashmere sweater, breathing in his familiar perfume.
When he pulled away, she followed after him, her high heels clacking on the floorboards, the fallen hem of her dress picking up dust. At the nursery door he turned back to her. ‘I’m going to London for a few days.’
‘I’ll pack some things.’
‘No, I’m going on my own, Jossy. Business. It’ll only take a day or two. One of us needs to be here for Caitlin.’
In the nursery, she saw the expression on Daragh’s face when he looked down at the sleeping child in the cradle. She realized with a sudden stab of pain that he had never looked at her like that. Never.
He came to her, as she had known he would. When she arrived home one day after work, Emily intercepted her and hissed in her ear, ‘Daragh’s in our room! I gave him a cup of tea. I couldn’t think what else to do.’
Daragh was now a married man. They would be friends. Tilda pushed open the bedroom door. He was standing at the window. When he turned to her she knew, in one small, crushing moment, that they could never be friends. That his presence allowed her at the most only the pretence of composure.
Yet she went to him, smiling, and kissed his cheek. ‘Daragh. How lovely to see you. Are you well?’
‘I’m fine. And you look marvellous, Tilda.’
She wondered whether he, too, pretended. Or whether the acquisition of Southam Hall had deadened his capacity for passion. She said smoothly, ‘And Jossy and Caitlin? Are they well?’
‘They’re both grand. Tilda, I’m in London for a while. I thought I’d look up some old friends. Are you free tonight?’
‘It’s not a good time for me, Daragh.’ Her voice shook a little, betraying her.
‘Tomorrow, then.’
‘I’ve an engagement, I’m afraid. I’m learning German. It helps me with my work.’
He fell silent. She moved around the room, tidying shelves, straightening the bedspread. ‘We’ve a busy week, haven’t we, Em?’
‘Just a hectic social whirl.’ Emily smiled brightly.
He just stood there, watching her. When Tilda took off her hat and slid her hands from her gloves, she felt as though she was naked. Her skin burned. He said suddenly, ‘If you should change your mind … I’m staying in the Savoy Hotel.’ Then he smiled, and left the room.
She went to the window and watched him walk up the street, his hands in his pockets. She guessed that he was whistling – ‘Galway Bay’, or ‘The Star of the County Down’. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back.
‘The Savoy,’ said Emily enviously. ‘Lucky him. Better than this dump. You won’t go, will you?’ She glanced at Tilda. ‘Tilda, he’s married, for heaven’s sake.’
Daragh was tenacious and he had a streak of self-interest that Sarah Greenlees had taken advantage of. Tilda imagined him sitting in his room in the Savoy, waiting for her day after day. Or she might come home from work and find him on the doorstep of 15 Pargeter Street. She imagined the letters that he might send, the telephone calls that he might make when he discovered where she worked. She wondered how long it would be before her will dissolved, before she let him take what he wanted. There was a way, she thought, of sending him away for ever. Daragh, after all, did not know everything.
‘I might go.’
Emily closed the door. ‘And what about Max?’ she hissed. ‘You know that he is in love with you. They are all in love with you, of course – Michael, Fergus, Stefan – which is an absolute bore for me, but Max is different. You know that, Tilda. You shouldn’t flirt with someone like Max.’
She said calmly, ‘I never flirt.’
‘No. You don’t have to, do you?’ Emily scrabbled in her bag for cigarettes. ‘Tilda, stop being so bloody … unreachable.’
Tilda took her knitting from the drawer and sat on the end of the bed, picking up stitches. The yarn was a fine, silky blue, the colour of the sky.
Emily lit her cigarette. ‘Daragh’s no good for you, Tilda. I know that he’s terribly handsome and that one just wants to die for him, but you mustn’t go to him. He wants to make you his mistress.’
Tilda had begun the complicated bit around the neckline. ‘I know.’
‘Then you won’t go?’
She was counting stitches. ‘I might, Em.’
‘You won’t be able to resist him. You think you will, but you won’t. Daragh won’t ever leave his wife for you, Tilda. He’s a Roman Catholic and they don’t allow divorce. Then you’ll have lost Max, who’s worth ten of Daragh.’
When she looked up from her knitting, Tilda saw that Emily was furious. Yet she could not explain: the sense of shame persisted, marking everything she did.
Emily stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer. ‘You are so obstinate!’ The door slammed as she left the room. Tilda began to knit again, but she had lost count of the stitches.
Two days later she went to the Savoy Hotel. Daragh had a large room on the second floor, overlooking the Thames. There, he poured two glasses of sherry, handing one to Tilda. Tilda broke the tense silence. ‘Tell me about your daughter, Daragh.’
He smiled at last and took an envelope from his pocket and spread out a handful of photographs on the table in front of her. ‘This is Caitlin.’
She looked down at the pictures. A dark-haired baby laughed back at her. ‘She’s beautiful, Daragh. How old is she now?’
‘Seven months,’ he said proudly. ‘She can sit up all by herself.’
There was another silence. Tilda, cradling her sherry glass between her fingers, said suddenly, ‘Why did you come here, Daragh? Why didn’t you leave me alone?’
‘I wanted to explain to you about Jossy.’ He rose and went to the window, his hands on the sill, looking out. ‘I wanted you to understand how it was.’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I know how it was.’
‘Tilda.’ Daragh’s voice, and the expression in his eyes, pleaded with her. ‘Tilda, please try to understand. I was nothing in Ireland, and nothing still when I came here. I came to England to make something of myself, but I hadn’t realized how hard it would be. I didn’t propose to Jossy – she proposed to me. I had no idea. I thought she was going to offer me a job …’ The words trailed away. Then he said, ‘Your Aunt Sarah. It was her fault.’
‘Sarah pulled the strings,’ said Tilda bitterly, ‘but you jumped, didn’t you, Daragh?’
‘Oh, I jumped.’ There was self-disgust in his smile. ‘Like a marionette. But to own that land, that house – have you any idea what that meant to me? I’d been shut out all my life, not even allowed to look. And then, to have all that offered to me – mine, and not a soul to take it away. How could I refuse?’
She said coldly, ‘I was born with nothing, Daragh. I had you, though, for a while, and that meant more to me than all the fine houses. But you threw it away.’
‘Yes, God help me.’ There was pain in his eyes.
She could not stop herself asking. ‘Do you regret it?’
‘I regretted it the day I married. I regretted it as I stood at the altar.’
Another long silence, and then Tilda pointed to the photographs. ‘And now, Daragh?’
‘I’ll not lie to you, Tilda. I love my little girl. She is the light of my life.’
She whispered, ‘And Jossy?’
‘I feel nothing for her. I never have done. I can’t breathe, sometimes. She is … possessive.’
She thought that he was telling the truth. She felt a flicker of pity for Jossy, who loved Daragh. He sat down beside her again. She heard him say, ‘I know I’ve nothing to offer you. But love is something, isn’t it?’
‘But you haven’t love to offer any more, have you, Daragh? Don’t you see?’
He closed his eyes very tightly. ‘Tilda, I loved you the moment I set eyes on you, and I’ve never stopped loving you. I’ve made a mess of things, I’d be the first to admit. But for God’s sake … I’m not entirely to blame, am I?’
He seized her hand. His fingers curled round hers, his thumb caressed her palm. She whispered, ‘No. You are not entirely to blame.’ She had forgotten everything except the proximity of him, the warmth of him. When he drew her to him, she rested her forehead against his shoulder, and her eyes closed as he stroked her hair.
‘You haven’t asked me why I came here, Daragh.’
He was caressing the small bones at the top of her spine.
‘I came here to say goodbye,’ she said, and she felt his fingers, stroking the back of her neck, stiffen. ‘To say goodbye properly this time.’
Sitting up, she saw the mixture of disbelief and hurt on his face. ‘Is there someone else?’
She thought of Max, but she shook her head. ‘No. No-one else.’
‘I’d leave Jossy if I could, Tilda. You have to believe me.’ But she put her fingers against his mouth, silencing him. He drew away from her and they sat side by side on the sofa, no longer touching. Daragh looked down into his glass. ‘Love fades, I suppose. Just – dies. I killed it. I was angry and I was greedy and I killed it.’
‘No. No.’ It would have been better to lie, perhaps, but she would not. ‘It’s because of what you are, Daragh. Who you are. Who Jossy is.’
‘Jossy?’ He looked bewildered. ‘What has Jossy to do with this?’
‘Oh, Daragh.’ She felt at that moment terribly tired and terribly sad. ‘Jossy is my sister.’
A voice called out her name as Tilda ran down the stairs and across the foyer.
‘Max …’ His face was blurred by her tears.
‘Emily told me where you were.’
She glanced at him sharply. ‘Oh.’ She stood still in the middle of the foyer. Guests in evening clothes jostled her.
Max’s expression was grim. ‘I was concerned about you.’
‘A fate worse than death?’ Tilda laughed unsteadily. ‘You needn’t have worried.’
He watched her for a moment. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘No. I hate this place.’ She shuddered.
‘Then shall we go somewhere else?’ He offered her his arm.
They walked to the Embankment. The evening sunlight glittered on the waters of the Thames. Barges and pleasure boats jostled on the river, their brightly coloured pennants caught by the breeze.
‘Has he gone?’ said Max eventually.
‘Daragh? I’ve no idea.’
They had reached the river. They leaned against the railing. ‘I would imagine,’ said Tilda, ‘that he’ll get very drunk and then sleep it off and go home tomorrow.’
They were both silent, watching a dinghy row out to one of the larger vessels. Tilda said softly, ‘I wish that I was on one of those boats and that I could sail away and never come back.’
‘That bad?’ asked Max.
She rubbed her eyes, and leaned her head against his shoulder. The sailor in the dinghy threw a rope up to the boat and was lifted aboard.
Max said, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
She thought that perhaps she could tell him. That maybe she owed him something. For bothering about her. For picking her up off the floor, actually and metaphorically, more than once.
‘I’ve no intention of becoming Daragh’s mistress, Max.’
‘Which is why, presumably, he’s getting plastered.’
She shook her head. ‘Not quite. I told him that his wife is my half-sister. Which makes Daragh my brother-in-law. It would have been almost incest to sleep with him, wouldn’t it?’
He didn’t say anything, just looked at her.
‘It’s true, Max. I found out eighteen months ago. That was why I came to London.’
He gave her his handkerchief and she dabbed her eyes. Then she told him the whole story: Daragh and Aunt Sarah, and the letter that Aunt Sarah had written to Joscelin de Paveley. And, lastly, about her mother, and what had happened to her.
‘Are you shocked?’ she asked, when she had finished.
He shrugged. ‘It’s a rotten, pitiless law, the one that put your mother in the asylum. And the rape laws, too – not much better.’
‘I sometimes wonder,’ said Tilda thoughtfully, ‘which one of my parents I take after. The mad one or the wicked one.’
‘The beautiful one,’ he said.
‘Max.’ She turned away. The boat set sail along the Thames; Tilda watched it decrease in size until the dinghy, towed in its wake, was no longer visible. ‘When I came to London,’ she said slowly, ‘I tried to pretend that I hadn’t a past. I thought that I could start again, remake myself like an old dress – shorten bits, sew on new buttons, make it look different.’
‘You’ve done pretty well.’
‘I am ashamed,’ she whispered.
‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said gently. ‘You’re neither the mad one nor the wicked one. You are Tilda, and you are beautiful and clever and delightful, and you can make of your life what you wish. You can work – or you can have a family—’
‘I think I should like a family.’ She needed lots of people, she thought. Lots of people to fill up the gaps.
‘Yet no-one but Daragh will do for you?’
She glanced sharply at him and shook her head. ‘I’m through with that sort of love, Max. It’s like – oh, riding one of those fast, noisy motorcycles. Exciting, but exhausting.’
He said bluntly, ‘You haven’t said that you don’t love him.’
‘No.’ She pressed her fisted hand against her heart, as though it hurt. ‘I will be able to one day, though. It’ll just take a while.’
‘Then … would you consider marrying me?’
She heard her own quick intake of breath.
‘I never thought I’d ask anyone.’ He grimaced. ‘I’d planned on becoming a revolting old bachelor – you know, a dreadful maroon dressing gown, and not doing the washing-up for a week. But you seem to have distracted me, Tilda. I love you. I can’t think of anything nicer than spending the rest of my life with you.’
‘Max – dear Max—’
‘You are conscious of the honour I do you, but you must regretfully etcetera etcetera?’ There was pain beneath the flippancy.
She walked away from him, sitting down on a bench, trying to think. When he called back to her, ‘Tilda, I’m not asking you to say that you’re madly in love with me—’ several passers-by turned and stared, and she shook her head again.
‘I enjoy your company.’ She made a list on her fingers. ‘You make me laugh, and you’re good to talk to. You’re kind—’
Oh God!’ He bent his head in mock despair. ‘How crushing—’
‘Don’t be silly, Max. We like the same sort of things. We think the same way about things. We’re both running, I think.’
‘But …?’ he said.
‘You’re rude and arrogant and difficult, of course.’ But she stopped teasing him, and said simply, ‘Max, I don’t want to be madly in love with anyone. Not ever again. If you’re prepared to accept that, then – yes, I think that I might marry you.’
She saw him close his eyes for a moment, and then he straightened, and walked over to the bench. She stood up, and he put his arms round her and kissed her. She thought that if it hadn’t been for Daragh, then it might never have come to this. They’d have circled each other for months or years, both too bruised by the past to admit a desire for a common future, drifting apart eventually, need and liking killed by hesitancy and lack of trust. He kissed her again, and then held her for a long time, her head cradled against his shoulder.
She heard Max say, ‘I’m not asking for all of you. I’m not asking you to give me what you gave to Daragh. If you still love him a little, in your heart, then I can live with that. But I couldn’t bear that you should cheat me, Tilda. I couldn’t bear that you should betray me. You have to understand that I couldn’t live with that.’
She thought that she had made a good bargain. She had exchanged passionate love for something gentler and more reasonable, less liable to give pain, and perhaps more enduring.
She made her promise easily. ‘I won’t betray you, Max. I’ll be a good wife to you. I’ll never hurt you.’ She kissed him, and felt the tension fall away from him.