The discreet advertisement in the local paper announced: ‘Unique opportunity for art lovers. Four nights at Castle Dove. Final week of Robert Hausmann’s retrospective exhibition. Somerset’s much-loved landscape artist will be in residence to talk about his work. Luxury mini-coach. All inclusive. Telephone …’
Judith squinted slightly as she printed the eleven digits on the side of the paper with a pencil she had dug out of the garden that Sunday afternoon; her glasses were probably upstairs. She dreaded Sundays: in spite of the supermarkets opening practically all day, Sundays still seemed shut down. Internalized. An exclusion zone around each household.
She spotted her glasses on top of the television, discovered that she had reversed the digits, scribbled them out and started again. Was there such a thing as dysnumeracy? Well, it was probably better than dyslexia anyway. She checked again, tore the edge off the newspaper, and stuck it behind the clock on the mantelpiece. Then she returned to the paper and her après-gardening cup of tea and read the local football results so that she could pass them on to the boys in Australia; then the obituaries.
Arnold McCready had died; she was shocked. He was a regular golfer, retired for some time, so older than Jack. She had met him in the clubhouse and had a nodding relationship with his wife. Beattie, presumably Beatrice. Called herself a golfing widow. Well, she was a fully-fledged widow now. Sympathy cards, flowers, lots of callers. Judith tightened her mouth against unexpected tears. He had been a nice chap. He had spotted her in the library a week ago and hadn’t pretended not to see her. He’d come up, half-a-dozen books under one arm, free hand held out. ‘Judith! How are you? Sorry, stupid question. Listen, if you’re stuck for a strong, long arm – light bulbs, exploding washing machine – you know the sort of thing, our number is in the book. I’m no do-it-yourselfer, but it’s worth ringing me before you go to the Yellow Pages. OK?’
She had smiled gratefully, knowing that she would not take advantage of the offer simply because Beattie wouldn’t like it. Surprisingly, other wives were highly suspicious of women who no longer had husbands. Naomi had told her that; she had known from personal experience.
She closed and folded the paper neatly, not allowing herself to think about Naomi. Death was so … final. At least Jack was alive, even if he had deserted her. And that’s what he had done. Incredible, really. Jack. A deserter. He would have been shot in the War. And serve him right, too.
She tried to whip up her anger. The divorce helpline had told her that anger was good at first, it was a source of energy. But underneath the whipped-up anger were other much less positive emotions. Bewilderment. Absence of confidence. A feeling of standing on the edge of a precipice. And now … these damned tears. For Arnold McCready, yes. But also for Jack.
She ripped off her specs and scrubbed her eyes with a tissue, then went to the kitchen for more tea. Dammit, she would go on this trip in this damned minibus. She’d always liked art exhibitions and had been within six months of completing a two-year course in visual art when she’d been nineteen. Then Jack had come along and a year later she’d been an old married woman with twin boys. And now she was forty-eight, both sons doing well in Australia, nice home, fairly new car, no husband.
She stared out of the window, waiting for the kettle to boil, admiring the long flower border she had spent the afternoon clearing. It was September, and she was already ‘putting the garden to bed’ as she called it.
Jack had not approved wholeheartedly of gardening as a hobby.
‘Too solitary,’ he had said – not long ago. ‘You should join something. Make friends.’
She’d had a good friend, Naomi Parsons. She allowed herself – just while the tea brewed and she refilled the kettle – to think of Naomi.
Naomi had been one of the local librarians, and had suggested books that Judith’s mother might enjoy. She had always been cheerful; she had made sure that the four high window ledges in the old-fashioned building had held fresh flowers. Judith remembered hearing her in the children’s corner, talking about a vase of cowslips she had picked and brought in that morning. ‘When I was a little girl like you,’ she’d been saying, ‘I used to pull out one of these tiny trumpets, very gently, and taste the nectar.’ She had laughed, lifting her head slightly. ‘Then I could understand just what the bees and other insects enjoyed for their breakfast every morning!’
Someone – the child’s mother probably – had laughed too, but said, ‘Don’t you try that, Beverley! You’re likely to poison yourself with all the traffic fumes we get these days!’
Judith had thought how much the twins would have enjoyed Naomi, had they known her when they were little. She began to notice little things about the tall, rather gangly librarian. Her laugh was infectious and bubbled somehow – she lifted her head to let it out; she wore a wedding ring and Judith had heard her turn down an invitation to attend a library meeting after-hours. ‘I’m really sorry – you know I have to get home for William.’ Was William the husband or a child?
Then two things had happened: firstly, Judith’s dearly loved mother had died, and then Judith had stopped going to the library for a whole month. Jack had said, ‘Listen, love. We have to do something to … to break through … this time. Let’s go off and see the boys. Or just have a holiday.’
She was surprised. ‘I’m all right, Jack, honestly. I need to be quiet—’
‘But you’re so rarely quiet! You’ve gone inside yourself somewhere – I can’t find you!’
She tried to grin. ‘So, I really am a dumb blonde, as you once so charmingly called me!’
‘I’ve never called you that!’
But he was right, she couldn’t talk about her mother to anyone, not even Jack. Everything she did emphasized the fact that her mother – Eunice Denman – was not there any more. She read articles, watched programmes, so many of which portrayed this remarkable closeness between mothers and their children. The awful thing was, she did not want it any other way. She did not want to leave the house where for so long she had nursed her mother; a holiday would be a penance not a joy. Of course she and Jack would go and see their sons; but not yet … not yet … it was too soon.
Then, when Judith finally went back to the library, because it was what she did each week, Naomi was not there.
One of the others said, ‘Dark hair – tall? Mrs Parsons, it must be. She’s lost her husband, I’m afraid. But she will be back next week, we hope.’
She had been. And Judith had asked her whether they could have a cup of tea together one afternoon.
Suddenly it was as if Naomi was there, in the kitchen, reaching for the biscuit tin. She turned to look at Judith and there was her long face framed in a marvellous hairdo rather like a black satin bonnet, the ends almost meeting beneath her chin. Brown eyes, clear as milkless tea, long uncontrollable legs that made her ungainly at times. Judith closed her eyes, opened them, poured the tea, and went back to the living room. She collapsed on to the sofa and stared out of the window. It was getting dark and the glass showed a shadowy reflection; not Naomi any more, just herself. Her stupid self. Because two months ago, at the beginning of July, Naomi had gone to London to meet someone – Judith never discovered who it was – and had come out of her hotel at exactly the same time as a car driven by a man over the limit had mounted the pavement. Judith dropped her head, held her cup in both hands, and squeezed her eyes shut.
Physically, they had been complete opposites. Judith was short, rounded, blonde and blue-eyed. She had hardly changed from the nineteen-year-old who had so very much enjoyed being swept off her feet by the visiting cartoonist, Jack Freeman. She sucked in a deep breath, opened her eyes and forced herself to drink some of the tea. She must let Naomi go. Jack had said that. He had encouraged her to make a friend, and then had told her to let Naomi go.
‘Let Mum go, too?’ she had asked without bitterness.
‘Yes. Otherwise you are blind to all the lovely memories you shared – we all shared.’
She had seen his point, of course. And she wasn’t blind to the fact that he was looking gaunt, almost haggard, himself. He was right: there had been lovely memories and they were being blocked by the bitterness.
She had made an enormous effort. In her mind she had cocooned both her mother and Naomi in a kind of silk robe, and said goodbye. Then she had suggested that they should have the whole of September with the boys in Perth.
Jack had stared at her, immobile, looked at her outstretched hand, then turned and walked to the window and gazed out at the garden. She joined him. She had no inkling that things were terribly wrong until she glanced up at his face. Tears were gathering along his eyelashes; even as she saw them they overflowed.
She made a choking noise and took his hand. Then he asked her to let him go, too. She waited for more: an explanation of what he had really meant. And, if he had meant what it sounded as if he had meant … some kind of discussion?
There was none. He withdrew his hand and went to their room. She discovered he had packed everything he needed while she had been in her mother’s old room, sorting through the bookshelves.
She followed him around while he gathered up some files. She kept asking why, what had happened? And eventually, was there someone else? He looked at her as if she had attacked him physically. He said, ‘Another woman? I don’t know. Yes, I suppose that’s what it was. It’s over, of course.’ Then he opened the front door. ‘I’m not worth anything, Jude. Just let me go. Forget me. I’m sorry.’
He had gone. But after the long bewilderment and sheer disbelief, the bitterness had come back. She could taste it in her mouth right now. Gall. Her memories of her mother, of Naomi, all tainted. She had not allowed herself to remember Jack.
She swallowed chokingly on the gall and looked again at the darkening window. Her reflection was blurred by the steam from her tea. But she knew full well what she looked like. She looked like Doris Day playing Annie in Annie Get Your Gun. Only her curly hair was no longer blonde, it was colourless, and her well-rounded figure would become plump if she so much as looked at chocolate. She had discovered that over the last two months, when her frantically busy life had slowed abruptly, and she really had not had enough to do. Jack had been gone for two months; she couldn’t believe it. No word, no divorce papers, no phone calls. He could be dead. Her heart twisted inside her chest cavity, and she gasped audibly. She put her cup on the floor, ready to leap to her feet and get on with something, anything. And then she subsided. Of course she would know if he were dead. She was being ridiculous. She forced a smile and caught sight of it in the window. And then, suppressing the bitterness with the cold dregs of her tea, she began to remember Jack.
He had come as part of their six-week taster course in graphic design. It was the first time her art college had ventured into any kind of pop art; they had looked at lampoons, and someone had asked about Andy Warhol, and the college had responded by inviting Jack Freeman to give the second-year students a lecture. His visit had been like a bomb exploding in the middle of the lecture room, where such names as Constable, Reynolds, even Picasso were spoken with reverence. This man had talked to the students about the imminent arrival of the graphic novel. He had used words like ‘vivid’, ‘vibrant’, ‘vivacious’. They had all been ‘fast words’. The vision, and the execution of that vision, had to be quick. Brain, eyes, pencil, paper.
Words came from him like bullets. Questions from the students flew around the room. He had a stack of their work on the table in front of him, and he picked out two or three and talked about less being more. ‘Never use two strokes of the pencil when one will do.’ By now, the students were almost at the end of their six-week taster and they all were hooked by what Jack Freeman was saying, all except for Judith Denman. She loved colour, consideration and then total immersion. Irony and satire had nothing to do with it. But she could not take her eyes off this lecturer. She had never seen anyone so … alive.
When the other students left at the end of the lecture she remained behind speechless, her eyes never leaving him. He flicked through the work on the desk and pulled out one of her watercolours.
‘Are you Judith Denman?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Do you know my name?’
She cleared her throat. ‘Of course. Jack Freeman.’
‘Interesting. We share the “man”. But I am “Free” and you are “Den”. That says something to me. Do you see it, too?’ She nodded. She had understood everything he had said. And more.
He persisted. ‘I mean, do you see it rather than hear it?’ She nodded again, and he said, ‘Tell me what you see.’
‘I see two birds in a nest. And one flies. Up and away.’ She almost choked with embarrassment, and thanked God that no one else was in the room.
‘I see that, too.’ He tapped a pencil on the pile of drawings. ‘How serious are you with your landscapes?’
‘Very. I love what I see out there.’ She shifted her eyes to the windows.
‘Do you want to produce them commercially? Postcards? Watercolours for tourists?’
‘Not really.’
‘That’s good. And you’re not interested in anything else – my stuff, for instance?’
‘Not really,’ she repeated.
‘OK.’ He sighed, replaced her painting and seemed to surrender to something. Then he lifted his head and looked at her as she had been looking at him all afternoon. It went on and on. At first she thought she might be going to faint; but she had never fainted, so wasn’t quite sure how it started. And then a calmness washed through her and she no longer tried to break away. He stayed where he was, hand on top of the stack of drawings, weight on his left foot, right leg slightly extended. He was nothing much to look at really; she realized that with surprise. Fair, just as she was, but his hair was like damp straw across his forehead and his eyes were a bit too solidly blue. His nose was too small for his long, thin mouth and – oh dear – his ears protruded.
He cleared his throat and she smiled slightly as some of the afternoon’s dynamism returned. She had not been mistaken, he was beautiful. Lit by fire.
He said, ‘I did not dare see you. But I must have perceived you somehow because I knew you were there. All the time. I could not pull out any of your work because it would have meant looking at you. And I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to look away. Do you understand?’
She did not have to clear her throat; she had been looking at him all afternoon. All embarrassment had gone now. She simply nodded. They were both on some kind of baseline where truth was the only language possible. It was so – so absolutely factual. Not even romantic then. Just plain and frighteningly honest.
He said, suddenly humble, ‘I’m sorry. You had more courage.’
‘I had no other options.’ She tried to smile. She wanted to reassure him. She was overwhelmed by an enormous tenderness.
He drew in his right leg and stood away from the desk.
‘Let’s look at this sensibly. I am twenty-eight. You must be still a teenager. I am a freelance political cartoonist. Your adult life, your career, is still to come. We are experiencing a rather strong physical attraction. I think it might be a good thing if you left. Now.’
She clenched her hands; she did not know whether she was courageous or not. She was terrible about all dental treatment. And heights. No, she wasn’t courageous at all. But … she had been strong when her father had died; her mother had said often, ‘I couldn’t do this without you, Jude.’ Anyway, now, at this moment, she had no choice because her legs would not move. She could not leave the lecture room. Not yet, anyway.
This time she did clear her throat before she spoke.
‘It’s not only physical attraction. You know that. Because of the birds in the nest. You said you saw the same thing.’
‘No, I didn’t see the same thing.’
‘You said you did.’
‘I saw two badgers in a sett. One of them stayed, one of them left.’
There was a pause; the almost-rhyme had been unintentional, their connected gaze changed slightly, and then they both started to laugh. They walked towards each other and reached out. His hands were warm on hers; rough, too. He was much more a badger than a bird.
He shook both her hands, and gradually they stopped laughing. She knew he was going to tell her to go away and ring him in three years’ time. She held on to his hands fiercely. She knew this had to happen. And then he knew it, too. He sighed.
‘So … you want a den. And I want to fly. I don’t see why it shouldn’t work. Anyway, let’s see how it goes. I’m going to Paris tomorrow. New exhibition on the Champs-Elysée, lots of interesting things. How would you feel about coming with me?’
She wanted to go, but she said nothing and went on looking at him. He shook her hands again, knowing.
‘Fine, I’ll see to your ticket now and pick you up at seven thirty tomorrow morning. We’ll fly together.’
He turned her around, put his hands on her shoulders and propelled her to the door. He did not ask her anything about her circumstances, and she asked him nothing about his. Just before the door closed between them she turned and said, ‘I live at forty-seven Meadow Road.’
‘Right. If you change your mind, don’t answer my knock.’
Her mother was appalled. ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure,’ she intoned like her mother before her. Judith could tell that – beneath the shocked surprise – she was intrigued.
All through their evening meal Eunice Denman voiced rhetorical questions and answered them herself with words like ‘unwise’ and ‘foolhardy’. Then she changed tack slightly and said that if someone was paying for him to lecture at the art school then he must have some standing, which of course he couldn’t afford to jeopardize with such an obvious seduction scenario.
Judith said nothing about his brief ‘let’s see how it goes’. Instead she reiterated her first argument: that he obviously thought the exhibition at such a prestigious gallery on the Champs-Elysée would be well worth her seeing. She began to believe it herself. He hadn’t been very complimentary about her watercolour, but now she said, ‘Perhaps he really thinks I’ve got something, Ma. Dad always used to say I was a natural-born painter—’
‘He said you were a natural-born woman, Jude. There was a song around at the time. Dad knew nothing at all about painting.’
Judith tightened her mouth with disappointment. Yes, that was what Dad had said; typically kitsch. She had loved him saying it, it had made her feel confident. It was the reason she had left off the gripper-knickers that Joyce Belling had said held in stomachs better than anything. She had been pathetic. Just pathetic.
She thought of Dad and his spurious charm, and said suddenly, ‘Actually, Mr Freeman reminds me of Dad. How strange. He’s not a bit like him really, no compliments – can’t imagine him bringing me any flowers like Dad did with you. But there’s just something.’
‘A dozen red roses, every day for a month. Until I said I’d go out with him.’ Mum’s eyes were watering and her chin was trembling.
Judith said quickly, ‘One of the things Dad used to say was about seizing opportunities. I think I should seize this one, Ma. I really do.’
There was a sniff, then a scrabbling up the cardigan sleeve for a handkerchief, then a mixture of sniffs and blows, and eventually Eunice sighed deeply and acknowledged it might be silly for Judith to miss ‘an outing with her teacher’.
So, on the basis of it being a school trip, Judith set her alarm for six thirty the next morning, packed the knapsack she had taken to guide camp five years ago, and was waiting by the gate at seven twenty. She never doubted he would turn up. She never ever doubted his wholehearted love for her; he felt as she felt. There were no options. Her mother stayed by the front door, as her dressing gown was not suitable for public viewing. She kept calling Judith back for yet another piece of advice, but when the Armstrong Siddeley appeared at the mouth of their cul-de-sac she closed the door to a mere crack and peered through it with one eye. She did not notice the rust, nor the fact that the rear of the car appeared to be used as a litter bin.
Judith noticed, but rather liked it. Even more she liked the way Jack shot from the driver’s seat, his face split by an enormous grin, grabbed her knapsack and hurled it in with the rest of the stuff, before handing her into the slippery polished seat as if she were royalty.
He settled himself next to her, did a noisy three-point turn, and they were on their way. She remembered very well what he had said.
‘My God, this is great. Never thought you’d come, of course. Never thought I’d go crazy for a girl like you – blonde bombshell. I don’t know how I’ll wait till we get to the hotel.’
She had suddenly felt the smallest affront. She translated the ‘blonde bombshell’ into ‘dumb blonde’ and saw them scurrying up a winding staircase in a rather seedy hotel in Montmartre. But the hotel was not far from the Tuileries, and only a walk from the gallery on the Champs-Elysée, and they had separate rooms, but with only a low rail between the wonderful wrought-iron balconies. And when he clambered over the railing he was suddenly diffident.
He said, ‘I should know how to go about this, Judith. I’m almost ten years older than you, and you’re so – so blessedly ordinary. Not edgy and clever-clever. You really are the nesting type, and here I am dragging you on one of my flights!’
And all doubts left her. She spoke calmly. ‘But now, at this moment, we are in my nest. And you are with me. If you weren’t, I would be terrified. When my father died he seemed to take away … so much. And you are giving it back!’
It was simple, direct. Afterwards he had cried and she had not. She remembered the passion, yes. But more she remembered the warmth and total safety of being with him.
He had always been with her. Through the birth of the twins … when Toby’s tonsillitis had proved to be meningitis … when Matt had won a scholarship to the grammar school and Toby had not … and then, when Jack’s brother in Australia had offered the boys ‘a kind of apprenticeship’ with his air-delivery service, Jack had gone with them to Perth to investigate the whole idea and had returned full of enthusiasm but without the boys.
That had been hard. She had pretended it was better that way, but she had felt she was making excuses for him. They had gone out with return tickets and should have come back to be hugged and instructed on every detail of life in the outback – she had read it up in the two weeks they had actually experienced it. And when he had grinned and said, ‘It’s one way of getting you to fly the nest, Jude! I’ve said we’ll go and see them in the autumn,’ she had managed a little smile and a nod. But somehow the safety net had suddenly revealed a small hole.
Jack was twelve years younger than Len. Their parents had died in a road accident when Jack was six and his brother was eighteen. Len had stepped into his father’s shoes; he had already been well into the third year of his engineering apprenticeship. With the help of his mother’s best friend he had provided everything Jack had needed, and had always recognized his young brother’s talent and fostered it carefully.
And then, when Jack was thoroughly enjoying his own training in a local newspaper group, Len took over the job of servicing a group of private helicopters stabled at Filton Airfield. One of the helicopters belonged to William Whortley, the owner of a prestigious weekly newspaper. Len labelled him ‘old-school-tie’ and found him easy-going and laid-back. One day, they shared sandwiches over the wonderfully intricate engine, which Len had winched on to the wide inspection bench. William Whortley seemed to understand Len’s ‘guided tour’. At the end of it he nodded.
‘You know, Freeman, what really interests me is that this is one of the many places where art and science meet. It’s the sheer precision, I think.’
Len was doubtful. ‘Yes … I know what you mean. Anything that is out of place or alignment would spoil it as a work of art. But also – as an engine – it might still work. The only trouble is, if it packs up mid-flight you lose lives.’
‘And a wrong line in a painting would not lose lives? Ah. I wonder. No statistics for it, but I think it could happen. I’ve seen one wrong line wreck the painter who made it.’ He peered down into the neatly packed cogs and levers. ‘I still think this is a work of art. There’s a sculptor I know of who works in small metal objects – intertwining angles all interdependent and evolving from a single cube.’ He looked up, smiling. ‘I reckon you’re an artist! Can’t remember the chap’s name, but he could easily have made this!’
Len laughed. ‘You should see some of my brother’s stuff – he’s the artist.’
The discussion went on amiably, and the next day Mr Whortley came again and brought with him the previous evening’s Bristol News. ‘Is this your brother’s work?’ he asked immediately.
When Len nodded cautiously, ready to defend Jack’s cartoon as a work of art, Mr Whortley said directly, ‘Would he consider coming to work for me?’
So, at the age of twenty-four, Jack had joined the staff of the Magnet, and Len, suddenly free, had gone to Australia and started a private rescue company with one helicopter and an emergency medical team. Twenty-three years later he had offered jobs to his two young nephews.
Jack had been over the moon. Judith had shown her surprise, and he had said straightly, ‘They don’t know what they want to do – all these odd jobs in the city are not taking them anywhere. Len is offering something special here, Jude. The boys will see it as an adventure – they’ll love it – well, they will soon tell us if they don’t! And we can visit them.’ He took her hand. ‘Darling, do you realize I am almost fifty?’ He enunciated disbelievingly, ‘Fifty years old, Jude!’
She remembered thinking that she would be forty soon. Forty years old. But what had that got to do with the boys being hijacked by Len?
They had gone to Australia together, and it had been wonderful. Two months later Eunice Denman had had her first stroke. It was Jack who had leaned over her in her hospital bed and whispered, ‘I can’t cope with all the housework any more, Eunice. You’ll have to come and live with us and take some of it off my hands.’ Judith had wept then, because it was the first time her mother had smiled since they had found her on the floor of her bathroom a month before. He had loved and helped to nurse Eunice over the next nine years; he had gone to Perth every year, and the boys had come home each year, too. Eunice could not be left, and Judith could not bear to send her to a nursing home, so Jack had looked after the ‘home front’, as he called it, while she went to see the boys. She always thought they would come back home, but they loved it in Perth. So life gradually shook into a new pattern; the good days were when Eunice managed to come and sit with them in the conservatory and look at the garden. Jack had always worked from home with forays to London to discuss his work. They were a tight-knit trio. Stupidly, Judith thought it would never change.
For some reason, Jack worried about her and could only explain it by saying she had ‘nothing for herself’. At his suggestion she took up her painting again and he refurbished one of the bedrooms, filled it with artists’ materials – even an easel – and called it ‘Jude’s stude’.
And now … Now he had left her.