‘I’m thinking of coming down,’ said Monica – and Roly’s heart sank. He readjusted his grip on the telephone, trying to keep calm.
‘It’s difficult just at the moment,’ he said. ‘Mim will be home at the weekend and she’s invited one of her ex-pupils to stay.’
‘Don’t worry,’ – Monica’s pinched voice implied that this was exactly the reaction she’d expected from him: an excuse – ‘I’m not asking you to put me up.’
Roly resisted the temptation to justify his remark and remained unhelpfully silent.
‘I shall stay with Nat,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘That’ll be nice for both of you. In that case you’ll see for yourself how he is and you won’t need the usual sitrep now. How’s Jonathan?’
‘Busy.’ Her tone was sharp but with a subtle hint of wistfulness. ‘I hardly see him. He’s started work on this accountancy textbook. And the wretched clients are always wanting something.’
‘And to think that you wanted that for Nat.’ He couldn’t resist he little snipe. ‘He’s very contented with life. Still, you’ll see that for yourself.’
‘I only want his happiness, Roly.’ Suddenly she was quiet, dignified. ‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’
He deliberately hardened his heart against the instinctive compassion that she would immediately exploit as weakness.
‘I wonder what it is that makes us all feel that happiness is some kind of divine right,’ he answered lightly. ‘After all, we only have to look around us to see that it’s such a difficult state to achieve. Contentment, possibly, but happiness . . . ? Do you remember those lines by Alexander Pope? “Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never Is – but always To be blessed.”’ He chuckled. ‘A bit of a cynic, would you say?’
‘I’ve never understood poetry,’ she answered rather coldly. ‘I don’t think it’s cynical to hope that one’s child will be happy.’
Roly sighed silently and rolled his eyes.
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But it depends on how you define it, doesn’t it? Clearly Nat’s idea of happiness wasn’t bound up in being a junior partner in Jonathan’s accountancy firm. Anyway, let’s not go along that path. When shall you be down?’
‘I shall have to check with Nat. Some time next week, if he can put me up. I’ll come over and see you all.’
The wistful note was back in her voice: that familiar intimation that nobody behaved quite fairly towards her and that, in some indefinable way, life owed her.
‘That’ll be good,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait to hear from you. Must go: the dogs are asking to go out. See you soon.’
He put the telephone back on the windowsill and looked guiltily at the dogs: they lay stretched out, peacefully asleep after their long walk. With Monica – as with the heron – his feelings always tugged in direct opposition: guilt combined with the need to appease her fought against an instinctive requirement to resist her implacable will.
‘Deep inside Monica there’s an emptiness,’ Mim had said once. ‘It’s terrible. We feel a compulsion to fill it with presents, kindness, ourselves even. And Monica absorbs all of it and wants more because, however much you give, it will never be enough. She’s insatiable. Be very careful, Roly.’
He’d tried to laugh it off – it sounded rather dramatic – but part of him knew it to be a truth. Mim had shrugged – she never nagged or hammered home a point – and had gone away as light and graceful as she always was, even after the accident. She had such elegance and style, nothing grasping or possessive about her, driven only by a striving for perfection in her work. She was like their mother: imaginative, impulsive and gifted with the kind of spiritual quality that had made Mim such an outstanding ballet dancer and had drawn people to their mother, Claire.
It was Claire who had seen the potential in the big barn by the ford. John Carradine had saved it, with the stable and the few acres surrounding it, from the sale of his father’s farm. His plan had been to knock it down and build a smart little house for his pretty new wife but Claire had been shocked.
‘Knock it down, Johnnie?’ she’d cried in horror. ‘But it’s so beautiful. Can’t we simply live in it?’
She’d dragged him through the huge doorway, her imagination already seething with ideas, and rather reluctantly he’d gone along with her suggestions: putting in the kitchen at one end, with steps down into a big central dining area that led down in turn to the great slate fireplace at the further end. She’d refused to employ an architect, preferring to spend hours discussing her ideas with the local builder. It had been a long battle with the puzzled workmen but she’d persevered – charming them, inspiring them – and the result was everything she’d dreamed of: a big living space, full of light, but warm and friendly. Her London friends came in a never-ending stream, to sit round the massive rectangular table or on deeply cushioned sofas before the big log fire, and they repaid her hospitality by working in the wild area behind the house: damming the stream to make the big ponds, planting bulbs and shrubs.
Roly had heard the story many times; he could remember ‘the chums’ – as his parents called them – arriving, sometimes by car, sometimes having to be collected from the train at Bodmin. If they wondered why Claire had given up a promising stage career to settle on the edge of a wild Cornish moor with a young veterinary surgeon they’d ceased to mention it by the time Roly was old enough to understand.
He settled himself more comfortably in the wicker chair, remembering the way she was then.
If he half-closes his eyes he can see her dancing over the flagged floor with baby Miriam in her arms; he can hear her voice – ‘Begin the Beguine’; ‘These Foolish Things’. Mim leans out from her mother’s arms, willing her to go faster, to twirl around, and Roly laughs as he watches them, his crayoning forgotten. He twists round in the Windsor chair to see them as they go waltzing past. Father’s fat Clumber spaniel, Claude, barks encouragingly as Mim screams with delight at the movement. The wireless is tuned to the Light Programme and the dance music goes on and on, seamlessly swinging from one tune to the next. Mother sinks down at last, out of breath, her face flushed with exertion, but Mim’s mouth turns down at the corners.
‘Dance!’ she cries imperiously. ‘More dance!’
‘Tyrant,’ says Mother, laughing at Mim. ‘I can’t manage another step. You must dance on your own if you want to dance,’ and she sets Mim down upon the floor, where she stands for a moment, getting her balance, her eyes wide as she listens to the music. Then she is off, staggering a little but turning and hopping, arms held high, her face rapt with the joy of it.
‘Don’t you want to dance?’ Mother leans across the table to him, her fair hair falling all about her face, and he shakes his head.
He doesn’t want to dance but he wishes that he could make a picture of her just as she is looking at him now, with her hair anyhow and her eyes glowing. He wants to capture that look and keep it for ever. Instinctively he reaches for his crayon but she smiles and turns away, laughing at Mim’s antics, so that he has to try to remember exactly how it was with her face and hair, and the shining look that seems to come from inside her.
Roly jumped awake as Bevis nudged gently at his knee.
‘Good grief!’ he muttered. ‘Sorry, old boy. Was I nodding?’
Floss was watching him from her rug and he felt a pang of sympathy for her. What must it feel like to be suddenly taken from your home and put amongst strangers? It was a fine balance, making fostered dogs feel welcome but not allowing them to bond with him or with his own dogs: they needed to be ready to move on to new homes. He bent to fondle her ears and she sat up, tail wagging hopefully. He glanced at his watch: another hour at least until Mim was due to telephone.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a walk up to the farm and see if they have any cream.’
He picked up Floss’s lead, lifted Uncle Bernard from his drawer, and they all went out together into the warm spring sunshine.
Later, after Mim’s telephone call, he had a more complete picture of Daisy Quin. It had been clear from the beginning, Mim told him, that Daisy’s career was more likely to be bound up in dancing than in acting or singing, yet she’d been the best all-rounder the school had ever had. It was Mim herself, once so single-minded, who had encouraged Daisy to extend her talents: to develop a wide area of expertise to fall back on if something should go wrong. Nobody knew better than Mim how very vital it was to be flexible in the precarious world of dance.
After the accident, a friend who ran a successful stage school persuaded Mim to join her. She knew that Mim’s name would attract even more pupils and she promised that the dancing classes would be Mim’s own special province.
‘You can see for yourself,’ Jane West had said bluntly, ‘how important it is to be versatile.’
Now it seemed that Daisy might have to be versatile too. Roly had said as much to Mim.
‘Yes . . . ’ she’d answered – but she’d sounded vague, as if she was searching for something just below the surface of her thoughts. ‘There’s an idea – nothing I can quite grasp yet. Daisy was different: rather special. I need to see her again.’
Roly had made no attempt to press her – he knew Mim in this mood – yet the conversation increased his curiosity and he realized that he was looking forward to meeting Daisy Quin.