Roly and Daisy, with all the dogs, went to collect Mim from the train. It was a blowy evening with showers of rain, but nothing could dampen Daisy’s high spirits. Mim was quite as excited, sitting with her head turned sideways whilst Daisy talked in her ear. There was so much to report, so many new ideas to convey and quite a few questions to ask. As far as Daisy was concerned, a discussion about her biggest problem simply couldn’t be postponed for a moment longer though: before they’d been in the car ten minutes she brought up the subject she’d already talked through with Mim a few days earlier. She wanted to use the students to their full potential, of course she did, but she was now convinced that the roles of the Organ-Grinder and the Laugher should be sung by professional adult singers.
‘Darling Daisy,’ said Mim, when she could get a word in, ‘I don’t quite see your problem with this one. Nobody’s arguing with you. After all, this is not an end-of-term concert to show the parents how well their children are progressing. The Charity Matinée is a very different occasion. It’s a showcase for the school. As you well know, we always invite guest artists to perform. I’ve already been thinking about this particular point since you talked to me on the telephone and I quite agree with you. I have a plan about whom I shall invite to sing the parts.’
The names of the two famous singers made Daisy gasp and stretch her eyes.
‘I have to say that sometimes even I forget how very powerful you are, Mim,’ she said humbly. ‘Do you really think they’ll accept?’
‘My ex-students are very kind to me,’ replied Mim contentedly. ‘They’ll probably manage to spare a few hours if I ask them nicely.’
For once Daisy was silenced: she sat staring out at the passing scene, seeing nothing but the images of her own creation, forming and re-forming in her mind’s eye. Mim’s suggestion made her suddenly fearful: how could her own puny efforts of creativity match the quality of such stars? Presently, however, she recovered her confidence and began to tell Mim about her ideas for one of the scenes outside the Star Cave where the children and Cousin Henry are waiting for the stars to appear in the night sky.
‘They each have their particular constellation, you see. Jane Anne’s is the Pleiades, Jimbo’s is the Pole Star and Monkey’s is the Great and Little Bear. When Cousin Henry arrives and they make him a member of their Star Society he tells them that his constellation is Orion. I love the idea that the Starlight Express is actually a Train of Thought, don’t you? I’ve been wondering if we might make something out of the constellation idea. Actually have children on flying equipment, like in Peter Pan. Did I tell you that I thought there might be a love interest with Jane Anne and Cousin Henry? I really think it would work but then I have this terror that I’m being rather too conventional.’
‘This is a children’s matinée,’ Mim reminded her. ‘It’s not an avant-garde dance company performance.’
‘That’s the conclusion I’d come to,’ agreed Daisy, relieved. ‘And I know how you like to bring in one or two of the small ones if you can. Now, “The Waltz of the Blue-Eyes Fairy” absolutely lends itself to being used for that.’
‘So,’ said Mim to Roly, when they’d arrived home and Daisy had dashed away to find her notes, ‘no more terrible, terrible love? She seems quite recovered.’
‘I think she is,’ answered Roly. ‘Though I suspect she still has the odd painful twinge.’
‘Oh, darling,’ said Mim sadly, ‘we all have those. Yes, please, I’d love a drink. And now tell me how Kate is. I see Floss is still with you.’
‘Poor Kate is in a bad way.’ Roly passed Mim her glass and poured some more wine for Daisy, who had just appeared, clutching her notebooks. ‘She’s finally decided against the cottage but her agent has persuaded her to sell the house anyway because the offer is so good and Kate needs the money. Apparently she’s looked at several cottages this week but she simply can’t find anywhere she likes so she’s decided that, instead of being panicked into buying the wrong house, she’ll simply have to rent until the right place turns up. On top of that, she’s just been told that Guy and Gemma and the twins are emigrating to Canada. So, as you can imagine, she’s struggling a bit.’
‘Poor Kate,’ agreed Mim, shocked. ‘She simply adores those children. Oh, what a blow for her. Have you offered her the stable flat, Roly?’
‘Yes, of course. I knew you’d want me to do that. She was very grateful, and I think in the last resort she’d be glad of it, but for various reasons I think she’d rather be more independent. She likes to have friends and family to visit and it’s a bit difficult here.’
‘Yes, I can quite see that. There’s not much privacy and Kate would be anxious that she might be intruding. How difficult it is.’
‘If it were the autumn she’d pick up a winter let quite easily but in the middle of June it’s a much more difficult proposition.’
‘What about Bruno’s cottage?’ Daisy had been sitting quietly, listening to the interchange. ‘Wasn’t he telling us that the people are leaving and he’s very anxious to find some- one who fits in with everyone at St Meriadoc? It must be tricky, actually, when it’s such a family community. He was wondering whether they ought to do summer lets.’
She realized that Mim and Roly were gazing at her as though she’d said something extraordinary and she looked anxious.
‘What?’ she asked defensively. ‘What did I say?’
‘You are amazing, Daisy,’ Roly said at last. ‘When did Bruno tell you all this?’
‘You must remember, surely,’ she answered impatiently. ‘We were looking out of his big window and I asked who lived in the little row of cottages. They looked so pretty, right against the sea wall, and those great towering cliffs kind of sheltering them. He said that his cousins live in two of them – well, you both know that, of course – and then he was saying that the one on the end was rented out but that the couple were having to leave and he was wondering what to do with it. You <W0I>must<D> remember, Roly. I joked that if you got tired of me I’d go and live at St Meriadoc. Would Kate like it, do you think? Does she know Bruno?’
‘Yes, she knows Bruno,’ answered Mim thoughtfully. ‘David and Bruno were very good friends and David loved the north coast. Go and telephone her, Roly. No. Wait. Speak to Bruno first to make certain that the cottage is still available.’
Roly went upstairs and into his study to look up Bruno’s number, leaving the two women considering this new idea.
‘Can you imagine Kate there?’ Daisy asked Mim rather anxiously. ‘She loves Dartmoor so much, doesn’t she? Would she be happy by the sea?’
‘There are the cliffs, so very wild and beautiful, and Bodmin moor is not far away.’ Mim closed her eyes so as to see Kate in the setting. ‘I think that this might be just what she needs: a complete change just for a while.’
‘And she could have Floss there,’ said Daisy, pleased at this new thought. ‘Floss and Bruno’s Nellie would be great friends.’
‘The cottage is still available,’ Roly was leaning over the gallery, ‘and Bruno says that he’d be delighted to let it to Kate for as long as she needs it. I’m going to try her number now.’
He went back into his study and paused for a moment, glancing down through the feathery branches of the cherry tree into the deep, dark waters of the pond, but there was no gleam or glint of gold. Half hidden by the tall yellow irises and green willow, the silver-grey form of the heron was barely distinguishable: he waited motionless in silent contemplation, one foot raised, the great spear of his beak poised in readiness. Roly watched, fascinated as always by this living symbol of paradox: beauty and violence. As he stared down into the shadowy garden he remembered his mother reading to him about the heron.
They sit beside the fire, listening to the wind in the chimney, watching the flames leap up, blue and orange and yellow, whilst Claire reads the books by ‘B.B.’ to them. They are on to the second book about the Little Grey Men now, and in this chapter the gnomes are sitting on the river bank when the heron arrives. Roly always imagines the scene is set in his own garden: the dark green shining water beneath the silvery tangle of willows, the low beams of sunshine gilding the feathery tops of the bushes, and the fish darting below the big flat leaves of the water lilies. It is nice to know that the Little Grey Men revere the heron, calling him Sir Herne, and he likes to hear how the old heron gives one of the gnomes, Dodder, a lift up the Folly stream on his back.
‘Could the heron carry me on his back?’ he asks, kneeling up to see if there is a picture of Sir Herne.
‘Oh, no.’ His mother shakes her head. ‘You’re far too big. Gnomes are tiny people. Look at the picture on the front of the book. Baldmoney is hardly bigger than the owl, d’you see?’
‘Could he carry Mim?’
They both look at Mim, who is engrossed in removing the jacket from her doll and humming to herself: she likes the stories but is easily distracted. The thought of Mim riding on Sir Herne’s back makes them both laugh. They can imagine how she would wriggle and scream with fear and pleasure, her small hands gripping his feathers.
‘I like Sir Herne,’ says Roly. ‘Even if he does sometimes catch one of the fish.’
‘Clever old Mother Nature holds a balance between all the creatures. He has to feed his babies just as I have to feed you and Mim. Listen, is that Daddy coming home?’
They hear footsteps crossing the yard, stamping mud off at the door.
‘It’s Giant Grum the gamekeeper with his big boots,’ grins Roly – and he runs to open the door for his father. ‘We’re reading about Sir Herne,’ he tells him. ‘You’re just in time to hear the end of the chapter.’
Roly moved, so as to see the heron better, and he rose at once, long legs trailing, the feathered edges of the great wings stretched, fingerlike, as he climbed steadily, turning downstream where his fledgelings waited, perched amongst the tallest branches of the heronry high above the river.
Kate put down the telephone and stood for a moment, trying to put her thoughts into some semblance of order. All through this last week, whilst she’d been trying to come to terms with Gemma’s news which had been followed so closely by Nat’s crisis, she’d been viewing cottages in the hope of finding one that she might love. She’d trailed round with Michael, longing for both their sakes to find the one special place, only to return home each day, dispirited and frightened.
She knew that this was foolish: so many people – Giles, Harriet, Roly – had offered her a temporary roof over her head, and she knew that Cass would insist that she must move into the Rectory until she found somewhere of her own to live, but so far she’d been able to believe that something would turn up. Kate loved her family and friends but she couldn’t quite imagine herself living with them. And then there was Floss. Ever since Roly and Daisy had come to lunch, and they’d been to see the cottage, she’d wished that she’d kept Floss with her. She’d begun to see that Floss was a perfect answer to her need and there were moments when she longed to jump into the car and drive down to fetch her. Each time, however, some instinct had warned her against this hasty action, cautioning her to wait just a little longer.
Could this be the answer for which she’d been waiting: the cottage by the sea wall in St Meriadoc? She remembered The Row, their sturdy stone backs turned to the Atlantic storms, and the impression that the high cliffs curved protectively round the cove so as to hold it in their rocky embrace.
‘You’d be among friends,’ Roly had said encouragingly, ‘but you’d be self-sufficient with plenty of privacy.’
Kate thought that he’d sounded the least bit wistful – she knew that he’d hoped she might accept his offer of the stable flat once Daisy moved to London – but she knew too that he genuinely thought that it was a very sensible plan.
‘And it isn’t furnished,’ he’d added, ‘so you could have quite a lot of your own things with you. Not so much to put into store, which is another bonus.’
Kate stared around her wondering how on earth she would decide which of these pieces of her life, and her children’s lives, she would keep: how did one begin to make such heart-breaking decisions? There were so many things that she’d hoped that Guy and Giles would be able to have in due course – books, furniture and even toys that would give a sense of continuum to their families, passing on to their children. Well, at least the twins wouldn’t be worrying about their playroom any more: they were much too excited about their great new adventure and all the wonderful things that they would see and do.
She turned her thoughts quickly away from the twins, ignoring the sickening stab of misery, and instead considered the cottage in The Row. If it was about the size of house she was looking for then, once it was furnished, a lot of her furniture could be sold. As she brooded over what she couldn’t bear to part with, and what she might be prepared to let go, it occurred to her that for the first time she would be choosing a house simply for herself. It was an odd idea and one to which she needed to give some thought.
David and she had never bought a house together. This house had remained very much the family base that she and her brother Chris had chosen and shared when the twins were growing up: David’s flat too had retained the impression of his first wife and their daughter. After their marriage, each place had adapted slightly to accommodate the changes but neither she nor David had been inclined to stamp their own personalities particularly strongly so as to mark the new territories as their own. David had always been sensitive to the fact that the Whitchurch house was Guy and Giles’s home and had seemed perfectly happy to fit in to the existing scenario. Whenever David had been here on Dartmoor, there’d been an air of cheerful impermanence, of holiday: London for work, the West Country for holidays, he’d say. He’d loved the moor but he’d equally loved the north coast and he’d often woken early with a desire to go dashing off to the sea. She remembered that once, after a lunch with Bruno, he’d taken her to see the house his family had once owned at Polzeath where, as a child, he’d spent his summer holidays; St Meriadoc wasn’t far from Polzeath.
‘How would you like to live by the sea?’ Roly had asked her.
‘Oh, I’m no stranger to the sea,’ she’d answered. ‘Apart from all those naval ports, my family moved to St Just when I was quite young and I was at school at St Audrey’s, up on the north coast of Somerset. I love the sea. It’s just so difficult to imagine leaving Dartmoor, especially just now. It’s always been such a strength and comfort to me.’
‘I know.’ His voice was gentle. ‘But it’s not for ever, Kate. Just to give you a breathing space. Anyway, perhaps it will give you the opportunity to find another source of comfort and strength.’
She remembered that, all the while they’d been talking, she’d been fiddling with the book of Showings, turning it round and round, flipping through the pages. Now, some touch of grace, a new hope and confidence, unexpectedly sprang up in her heart. With a kind of wordless supplication, she opened the book, turning the pages as if seeking for guidance.
‘God of your goodness, give me Yourself, for You are enough for me.’
To Kate the words were surprisingly apt. Julian’s simple little prayer seemed like a starting place: a point from which she might begin a new and exciting journey.