I managed to keep the situation on an even keel for a month. The afternoon I’d spent in bed with Lucas helped; it seemed to have reassured him that I still wanted him and he relaxed, which made things easier. I think it also helped that I didn’t speak to him about Danny or the move to Stoneborough again. It was pointless, anyway: nothing I could say could convince him that Danny was anything other than a good friend – albeit a feckless one – and carping on about it only made me look bad. Also, if Danny suspected I was talking about him, he might retaliate and I didn’t trust him not to tell Lucas about my watching Greg and Rachel or to concoct some even worse lie about me. Lucas interpreted my new silence on the subject as my coming to terms with the situation and was grateful to me for it, so I accepted that as the best of a bad lot.
The other thing was that he appeared to be getting on well with his writing. When we spoke on the telephone in the evenings, he told me the number of pages he’d done and often asked my opinion on a description or image that he was considering. I had to admit it looked as if I’d been wrong to think that he wouldn’t get anything done at the house. There were only two or three occasions when he sounded a bit drunk when we spoke or the music had been too loud in the background or Danny had kept interrupting and made it difficult for us to talk.
Nonetheless, weekends at Stoneborough had become the opposite of what they had promised to be at the beginning of the year. Instead of a place to spend relaxing time out of town, the house had become the ground for a fraught carnival of watching. I was constantly on my guard. I knew that Danny was watching me, waiting for me to slip; I knew, too, that he derived continued satisfaction from my embarrassment at having seen Greg and Rachel. Several times it happened that I glanced up to find Greg looking at me: our eyes would lock and I would find myself in a paralysis of shame until the further weight of Danny’s amused stare compelled me to look away. I was aware, too, of Michael’s eyes following Danny, although he did his best to conceal the hunger in them.
There were also the films, which Lucas and Danny were watching avidly. It was obvious why Lucas was so interested in them: they gave him access to Patrick and his mother. Why Danny should be fascinated wasn’t as clear to me, although I suspected that Elizabeth’s appearance in them was a significant factor.
By the second week in March, winter was loosing its grip. Outside the French windows, the kitchen garden was coming alive. The earth was still heavy with rain but new leaves leavened it, in the rhubarb patch and on the gooseberries and the raspberry canes. The new foliage on the espalier trees on the back wall was as bright as freshly made glass. On Saturday afternoon I sat at the table drinking a pot of coffee and reading the paper. To my relief, Danny had announced earlier in the day that he was taking Elizabeth for lunch in Oxford and Lucas had given him a lift down to her cottage. We’d eaten lunch ourselves and then Lucas and the others had embarked on another of the epic table-tennis championships that were becoming a part of the weekend routine. They’d been playing for well over an hour. At intervals I could hear a shout or cheers of encouragement from down the hall. For the most part, the final round was an increasingly aggressive stand-off between Lucas and Danny but Greg had improved dramatically since the first time we’d played and now reached the finals himself from time to time.
I was thinking about work. I’d just turned in what I hoped would be my first front-page story, a piece about a local councillor who I’d discovered was awarding contracts for borough events to his wife’s catering business. It would be good for my cuttings file. I was still resolved to leave the Gazette this year. More than anything, I wanted a job on a national, or the Evening Standard. It had to be possible, even if I started as the very lowliest of researchers or junior reporters for the gossip column. For the first time I was beginning to feel as though the lack of progress I’d made with my career during my twenties had a bearing on other issues. For years Martha and I had worried that we would never want children and I still didn’t know if I did. But if it happened, I needed to make sure I had a career at a stage that I could return to; I knew that wasn’t the case as things stood. I also felt I would have work to do on Lucas if marrying him was even to be a possibility. Although I was trying to explain it to myself as the mistake of someone searching for a quick answer to a tricky situation, his suggestion that I move to Stoneborough still rang a note of alarm.
There were footsteps in the corridor and Lucas appeared. ‘Greg whipped my arse,’ he said, sitting down.
‘Coffee?’
‘No thanks.’ He waved the pot away. ‘Can I show you something?’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘Upstairs. One of the cines.’
‘What’s this one?’
He frowned. ‘It’s one with my mother.’
The picture projected on to the wall of the room is a picture of the room itself: Patrick’s study. It is the same room but different. For one thing, there’s no furniture: the huge roll-top desk is absent, as are the two armchairs in front of the windows and even the long window cushion. There are no curtains nor is there any art on the walls. Instead, as it pans round, the camera takes in a couple of canvases leaning against the far wall, their blank backs presented to the room. Further along, a large wooden easel has been folded up and laid on its side. The rich yellow light falling through the long sash windows puts the time somewhere in the late afternoon. The floorboards are covered with heavy white sheets that wrinkle here and there and with the play of light and shadow give the impression of a sea ruffled by a light breeze. On the window-seat sit a large tin of paint, a roller and a tray filled with white emulsion.
The camera flicks back across the room. Standing on either side of the fireplace with their elbows resting on the mantelpiece are Patrick and Lucas’s mother. They are smiling at each other, big smiles of the sort that follow laughing. At first they are unaware they are being filmed: they haven’t heard the cameraman enter the room, his footsteps on the boards deadened by the sheets. Lucas’s mother is wearing old dungarees and one of the straps has come undone so that the front of the trousers hangs down on one side. A patterned headscarf holds her hair back from her face but a lock of it has escaped and fallen across her cheek. Patrick takes a step forward and tucks it back into place. She leans in and kisses him softly on the lips. In doing so, she notices the camera and smiles again, shyly this time. It is obvious that she doesn’t enjoy being filmed: all her ease of movement of the previous six or seven seconds is gone. She puts her hands into the pocket of her trousers and goes over to the window, out of the shot. By contrast, Patrick faces the camera with a grin and waves his hands at the walls before bending down and sweeping the sheets up into his arms, revealing the dark-stained boards. Da-da, you can imagine him saying, it’s finished.
‘Well?’ Lucas snapped on the light.
I hesitated. ‘It looks like they were making it a painting room, with the easel and the canvases and all that white – some kind of studio. Did your mother paint?’
‘I certainly never saw her. But I didn’t know that she and Patrick had a thing either, which is the real issue here.’ Lucas’s face was hard. He switched off the projector and yanked the curtains open.
‘How do you mean?’ I said, stalling.
‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re clearly together. Would you kiss your brother-in-law like that?’
It was true: the film had captured an exchange between lovers, a casually intimate moment. ‘Was he her brother-in-law? When this was taken?’
‘Who the fuck knows,’ he said. ‘I just hope it was before I was born.’
‘It must have been. Your mother wouldn’t have had an affair, especially with Patrick.’
‘How can you know that?’ he said, his face suddenly right up in mine. ‘How can you know?’
I wasn’t sure what to say. He was staring as if he were trying to drag something out of me. ‘Lucas, please …’
The door opened. Danny, back from town. ‘Ah, there you are. I wondered where you were both hiding.’ He saw the look on Lucas’s face. ‘Oh no. Have you been watching that cine again?’
‘I wanted Jo to see it.’
‘You’re obsessing over it. You’ll drive yourself mad.’ He went over to the projector and took out the reel. He replaced it carefully in the box and put the lid on.
‘I’m not obsessing, Danny. I just want to know the truth. Surely that’s understandable?’ Lucas slumped backwards into the other armchair.
‘Why don’t you ask Elizabeth?’ I said. ‘She’d be able to tell you what happened. She was there.’
‘I think that’s an excellent idea. It’ll stop you stewing once and for all. I’ll ring her later and ask her for supper in the week,’ said Danny.
‘I can ring her myself.’
Danny noticed his tone. ‘What? I was only trying to be helpful.’
‘I don’t need help. Anyway, how come you’re so buddy-buddy with Elizabeth all of a sudden?’
‘Lucas, she worked with some really interesting people, as you already know. I’m just trying to learn. Anyway, she’s good fun. I like her. That’s all right, isn’t it?’