Falling

I am here at last. Anna brought me down as I am not able to drive yet. She said that she would stay the weekend and made me promise beforehand that I would not stay on alone if she, Anna, thought that I would not be able to cope. I told her that Katya had said she’d been down and met Mr Kent, who seemed to be most handy and willing. I did not tell Anna that Katya had also said that she thought he was rather an unusual man to be a gardener: ‘Very odd, Ma, not like anyone I’ve ever met before.’

I asked if she had not liked him, and after a moment’s silence I said, ‘You didn’t. I don’t mind, darling, I was only asking you.’

Then she said, no, it wasn’t that at all. She had liked him. He was rather charming, she had said, and actually quite bright. ‘A bit mysterious, though.’

I was very touched that she had taken the trouble to drive all that way to see the cottage.

When Anna came to fetch me, she brought mail that had been forwarded from the studio and the hospital. Among them was a letter from Mr Kent. I had a momentary urge to open it at once, but desisted. For some reason I did not want to be with anyone else while I read it.

Anna was marvellous – as always. I had laid out my things to take to the cottage, but my cases had been in a top cupboard above my wardrobe and I simply could not get to them. Just as well. I had left out half a dozen vital necessities – socks for my wellingtons, a winter dressing-gown, more jerseys, and my anorak with a hood. I had become so used to warmth that it was hard to imagine what late spring in a damp cottage might turn out to be.

By the time we had packed and shut up the flat and loaded up the car, I was exhausted. Everything tires me – suddenly – and I find this curiously depressing. It is as though in return for my bones and tendons healing, I leak energy or use it all up on that – I don’t know. Anna says anaesthetic takes a great deal out of one and that it can take months to recover. It has certainly played havoc with my sleep. I told the doctor in London all that: Anna made me go and see him; she actually took me although I could perfectly well have got a taxi. She nannies me; I told her it was bad for both of our characters, and she said that it was very good for hers.

The doctor, who had been sent my X-rays, said that the Americans had done a marvellous job, but I couldn’t expect to recover from such injuries overnight at my age. I pointed out that it was three months. Anyway, he gave me a prescription for sleeping pills and told me to come back in a month. I may not do that, at least, not until I can drive again.

On the way down, she asked me whether I intended living at the cottage. I wasn’t sure; I would spend a summer there and then decide. It will be expensive to have two places; on the other hand I don’t want to live in London any more.

‘It’s quite charming, but not very convenient,’ Anna remarked.

I remembered that she had already seen it, and felt childishly disappointed.

‘I think you might find the winters rather lonely.’

I did not say that I found the winters lonely in London. Ever since Jason, I have been extremely bad at meeting people. I loathe large parties and they tend to be what one gets asked to if one is single and no longer young. I did have a few friends who had been mine before I married him, and a couple I liked very much whom I met after he left – but they have gone to live in Australia. The others have married, had children who take up all their time, and then there is Anthony, a really close friend who has fallen in love with a man who can’t stand me. There is nothing that makes no difference to friendship. I think everything does – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But the chief enemy is time, or the lack of it. I have time, too much, and, it seems, more than most of the people I know.

Why on earth am I writing this? Because, I suppose, I’m beginning to feel the itch again; the curious, restless, wasted-time feeling that starts me writing. And this scribbling is a sort of cop-out.

She shut the notebook and put the cap on her pen. They had arrived in time for the picnic lunch that Anna had prepared.

The place had a delightfully lived-in feeling. The tea chests were gone and she noticed at once that their contents had been neatly stacked on the shelves. On the kitchen table was a jam jar filled with primroses.

Later, Anna said, ‘Katya must have told him that your return was imminent when she came down – and that was about ten days ago.’

When she came down from carrying the bags upstairs, Anna said, ‘Did you leave the beds unmade?’

‘Possibly. A bit intrusive. Gardeners don’t make beds as a rule, do they?’

‘Oh, Anna! I think he just means to be kind. Don’t be against him. I’m sure he means well.’

She noticed that Anna did not answer. She had been about to tell her that she knew more about him than she did, that he wrote interesting letters that revealed him to be someone with an unusual and subtle mind, but she didn’t. She did not want to argue – let alone quarrel – with Anna over him, and decided to shut up at least until she had read his forwarded letter.

This she did in her bedroom after they’d eaten, when Anna decreed that she should have a rest. ‘I haven’t even looked round the garden yet!’

So she lay down on her bed and when Anna had gone downstairs, she read the letter. Again she was struck by his capacity to make her see whatever scene he was writing about. When he described his Charley’s death, she felt tears hot in her eyes. At least the poor girl must have died happy, and she was touched that he was able to be grateful for the time with her rather than simply lamenting its brevity. She was also struck by his truthful account of his marriage – no sentimentalising or absconding from blame. She liked him from that letter, but she also realized that he was clearly extremely lonely and that he might become – as Anna had said he was – intrusive.

It did also cross her mind that he seemed to be rather disaster prone. But then she reflected that she’d only had two letters with accounts of his life and that there must be much of it that had been happier. He had, and really at her request, given an account of some salient events, and if she were to do the same to anyone, she would have to say that her parents were killed when she was three, that she’d lost her beloved Jess at a time when it seemed she most needed her – after the break-up with Stach and Katya to bring up on her own. (But, of course, she would always have loved and needed her.) Then – Jason. Yes, it would certainly sound disaster prone to an outsider – and, indeed, perhaps it was, although she suspected it was more like the wear and tear that are most people’s lot: the most cruel moments blurred and distorted by the repetition of memory, which meant for her that she could not remember exactly how she felt because an element of shock was not there; it too was a memory, no longer an ambush, but the recollection of one.

She put away the letter and began to imagine her life in this cottage after Anna had gone back to London. She would walk every day to strengthen her leg. She would get the cottage really comfortable and pretty. She would read; for her next piece of work she had it in mind to attempt a series of plays about the Brontës, the only play she had read seeming not to be comprehensive enough. And so she must read not only all the novels again but Clement Shorter, Winifred Gerin, Margaret Lane, Mrs Gaskell, etc. She fell asleep in the middle of a mushrooming crowd of biographies.

After tea they made a tour of the garden, which surrounded three sides of the cottage. There had been a shower – single drops sparkled in the grass and the air smelt of moss. There were two clumps of narcissi, forsythia, and a dark red polyanthus against the end wall of the cottage. Roses had been planted and manured, and six small lavender bushes were in place each side of the cottage door. The beds were clear of weeds, and looked orderly and bare. It was clear that Mr Kent had done his job well.

Then it began to rain again and they went in. Anna lit the fire and opened a bottle of wine, and they listened to Chopin mazurkas while the stew was heating in the oven, and she watched the sky fade to an aqueous dusk. Supper was to be by the fire, and while Anna, refusing all help, was getting it, she suddenly realized the extraordinary luxury of lying with the firelight and hearing someone else, this loved and loving friend, making ordinary kitchen noises next door. This was what loneliness was not; or, rather, what much of it was about. It was not necessary – or, for her, necessary any more – to be wrapped in someone’s arms: friendship, living with a companion, would be a living contentment. And Anna was also alone.

Before they went to bed, she opened the door to smell the garden once more and heard the soft seductive hoot of an owl.

‘You know I’m a London bird. And, anyway, I have to work. But I’ll come and visit you regularly. Tomorrow morning we’ll make a list of all the things you need and I’ll find out how practical it is for you to be here when you can’t drive.’

But as they parted on the landing, Anna said, ‘Mind you, I can see that this place could be very good for work. As long as you don’t get too lonely.’

When she opened her bedroom window, she heard the owl again, and stood waiting for him to hoot, breathing in the sweet dark air. She looked towards the wood where the owl must be: the high branches of the trees were black against a sky that was, as she watched, momentarily illuminated by the appearance of a half-moon emerging from small scudding clouds, then fitfully obscured by more of them. She thought for a moment that the blackness of the wood shifted, but when the moon went out, there was no way of telling.

Before she slept, it did occur to her to wonder why she had been so sure that she wanted to buy this particular place. It had been the first that she had seen. It had not looked especially promising: a smudged black-and-white photograph photocopied with its ill-typed details before it. ‘Detached period cottage with three-quarters of an acre of garden. Large living room 28ft x 15ft, kitchen and toilet on ground floor. Three bedrooms (one of good size, 16ft x 13ft, with double aspect. Bathroom and toilet on half-landing. Garage; garden shed. Village V mile. Nearest market town 10 miles approx. The building has a slate roof. The front facade is of plaster over brick and the other three walls of brick and flint. Mains electricity and water. Open fireplace in living room.’ Oh, yes, and ‘small larder off kitchen’.

This description, which she did not remember in the right order, contained no sales hype: no ‘beautifully presented’, no ‘wealth of period detail’, no ‘mature and well-stocked garden’. And yet she had picked it as the first to see and, having seen it, saw no point in looking further. It was an honest, unremarkable little building, but it was all of a piece: had not been corrupted by louvred doors, open risers on the staircase, the dreaded brown windows or nasty little front door with ersatz fanlight. It was on a road, but a minor one and she liked the proximity of the wood, which edged one side of the garden and was clearly a good protection against an east wind.

She had gone straight back to the agent in Banbury and offered the asking price (which Anna told her afterwards was mad. ‘You could at least have tried to negotiate’). But she had the money saved from two films and had not thought. ‘And if I do decide to live here, I can sell the flat in London, or perhaps buy a one-room flat and still have something to live on if work goes badly.’ She had the inside walls painted, and some bookshelves made for the sitting room, and had pillaged the London flat, bought some stuff at an auction and moved in. She had the bare essentials, but it would be enjoyable to hunt for the right pieces, as much as making a pretty garden would please her. Aunt Jess had taught her to use her eyes in junk shops, and she would learn about gardening from Mr Kent. She began to make lists in her head as she drifted into sleep.

Anna woke her with tea and toast on a tray, saying that she was going on a preliminary exploration of shops. ‘I’ve made a list of what it is plain that you need, although Katya did a pretty good job, and we can always go out later for anything else that occurs to us. You take it easy; the water is hot if you want a bath.’ She was lying in the bath when she heard the latch of the front door click and then the door shut. She had not bothered to shut the bathroom door so these sounds were clearly audible. Perhaps Anna had come back because she had forgotten something – her purse or the list.

There was no reply and she was suddenly unnerved. She got out of the bath and wrapped her towel round her. She could hear someone moving about below. ‘Who is it?’

She stood on the landing outside the bathroom looking down the stairs: she was hardly dressed for confronting a marauder. Then she saw him, looking up at her from the bottom of the stairs.

‘I do beg your pardon. I didn’t realize you were back. I come in most mornings to check that everything is all right.’

Henry Kent. It was odd: she had almost forgotten what he looked like. But seeing him, his appearance seemed oddly familiar – familiar and unremarkable; memorable chiefly for the thick, brindled hair, a lock of which lay across the right side of a forehead that was otherwise enlarged by a receding hairline. He was clearly looking up at her, but with his back to the light she could not see his expression.

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you. I’ve got some seeds in the shed. I’ll be watering them and then I’ll be off.’

As she dressed, she was conscious of confused, distant but unusual feelings: some excitement, curiosity and a certain embarrassment. The letters he had written were full of revelations not normally divulged between one stranger and another. And she had replied to them; not, she was sure, with the same intensity of intimacy, but still certainly more than she would have expected. She remembered her conclusion the night before, that he was obviously lonely and that therefore he might become intrusive. It was a fine line, she thought, as her own loneliness obtruded, between being isolated and being thought intrusive. He might, she might, anyone might be thought to be that when they were simply making efforts to communicate to another person in order to put an end to their isolation. But supposing I don’t want to know anything more about him? What happens then? He could be sent away; he could stop being her gardener. It was rather ridiculous to have a gardener with such a small garden – particularly if she did decide that she wanted to live here. Then she remembered that Jason used to tease her about getting worked up over meeting strangers. ‘You’re the most secretly shy person I’ve ever known.’ She had asked him what he meant. His reply: ‘Oh! You get all uptight and queenly and everyone runs a mile.’

This apparently careless remark had caused her further anxiety, and knowing that Jason had no difficulty in meeting people – never had a second’s anxiety about whether he would get on with them or be liked by them – she had begun watching to see how he achieved this. But she learned nothing, or nothing that she felt able to apply to herself. He had only to walk into a room for everyone to become more animated, to gravitate towards him, and his apparent unselfconsciousness about the effect he had on people merely increased it. He was never beset by her doubts – about whether he could think of anything interesting to say, or, she now discovered, if she did manage that part of it, whether it would involve her more deeply with the recipient than she felt inclined. She didn’t take risks with people; she didn’t go for it; she wanted both insurances and assurance that an intimacy would have happy consequences. No way to live, she thought now, as she brushed her hair, and ridiculous at my age not to have acquired these essential skills for friendship – which, after all, could exist at varying levels. Wholeheartedness, perfection, was not by any means the only thing to seek. She had had that, after all: she’d had Jess and Jason and Anna. And perhaps with time she’d have Katya as well.

She had thought much about Katya that morning: the rails in her bath, the telephone in her room, the banister down the stairs that she was now gratefully clutching, the stores in the cupboard – all that was Katya.

It was a beautiful, milky morning; still, cloudless, the sun quenching the dew on the lawn, the hedge each side of her garden gate glistening with new leaves, budding may and diamond-encrusted cobwebs. The stone path was slippery, and she had left her stick upstairs. As she turned back to the house to fetch it, he came round the corner from the back. He hastened towards her, almost bustled, and held out his hand and she found herself giving him hers. His hand was damp and she felt that he, too, was nervous.

‘It’s wonderful to see you,’ he said. ‘You can’t imagine how anxious I have been about you. Such an awful thing to have happen. And here you are – walking without a stick!’

Before she could either stop or thank him, he had gone. She remembered his eyes now – a light hazel; she remembered that he had looked at her in the same way the first time that they had met, and she had felt really seen by him, and that the experience had been unnerving.

‘Here it is. Oh, and I’ve made a very rough sort of garden seat in case you get tired walking about.’

‘Well, if the weather stays fine you might want to be out without being about, mightn’t you?’

‘It’s just a plank with two tree stumps. If I had known you were coming I would have done so many things.’

‘I think you’ve done a lot. The garden is almost unrecognizable. Oh, and thank you for the primroses.’

‘I’ve been putting fresh ones in every day. And your daughter came and we made a few alterations inside to suit you. Did she bring you down?’

‘No. Anna brought me. Miss Blackstone. She’s gone shopping. I can’t drive yet.’

‘Well, I can drive you anywhere you want.’ There was a pause. He stood in front of her and then, in a voice that sounded as though it was a joke against himself, he said, ‘I have no precious time at all to spend – but of course you know that.’

And then, before she could respond, but she didn’t know how on earth to respond, there was the sound of Anna returning with the car.

Had he meant that she would recognize the quotation, or had he meant that she would know that he had nothing else to do but look after her? Or perhaps both? It was silly to feel uneasy about someone simply because they were wanting to help. Why should kindness make her feel shy? It doesn’t with Anna and nobody could be kinder than she. Then she thought that it probably (and drearily) had something to do with sex: no man had been more than indifferently kind to her for a very long time. And, anyway, it wasn’t exactly kindness – attentive was more what he was being.

‘It looks as though you’re preparing me for a siege,’ she said later, as the kitchen slowly filled with carrier-bags and cardboard boxes.

‘Well, it seems sensible to stock up. I shan’t be able to get down for a few weeks. I was thinking that it might be a good idea for you to get a deep freeze.’

‘I should think straight into the garden. The cushions come off, but I shouldn’t think we need do that today. I thought you’d want somewhere to sit outside. I got a small table as well in case you want to work out there. Or eat things.’

‘He turned up pretty smartly, didn’t he?’ she added, when he had gone to fetch chairs.

‘Oh, Anna! He means well. And if I do stay here I shall need someone to fetch and carry things for a bit.’

He returned to say that everything was now out of the car, and that he would be back in the early evening to put the seed trays back in the shed. ‘I’m hardening them off, but there can always be a frost until the end of this month.’ He smiled at her and turned to go.

By mutual unspoken consent, they did not mention Mr Kent for the rest of that day. The sun became deliciously warm; they had lunch in the garden with the new chairs and table. There was even some shade; an oak tree from the wood overhung a corner of the lawn. Anna described the town.

‘It’s nice. A small market town, but with most of the shops you’ll need. There’s no fishmonger, but apparently a van comes once a week to the market and has a stall on Fridays. There’s a butcher and grocer, and an acceptable small supermarket run by an Asian family with an incredible range of stuff. One rather haughty little delicatessen – the kind that explains sun-dried tomatoes to you – and even a cobbler. A lovely sweetshop with huge jars in the window and a greengrocer with pots of herbs outside. No bookshop, of course. And I don’t think you’ll get papers delivered.’

‘I shan’t mind that at all. I can have the Literary Review and the Spectator sent by post.’

‘Yes. And you never really read newspapers, do you? There’s a bank – two, actually, and a post office and what looks like a promising junk shop. And, of course, there are pubs. I didn’t count them, but three or four, and one off-licence where I got the wine. There’s a square in the middle where they have the market. Just a pity it’s ten miles away, really. The village has nothing but one shop and a pub. Poor old people. What a time they must have – having to find buses to collect their pensions and get meat and things.’

After lunch, Anna read a manuscript and Daisy slept. After tea, they went for a walk – up the lane to the bridge over the canal. From the bridge the canal stretched north, straight for the half-mile to the village. She remembered driving back that first weekend, and Mr Kent kissing his hand to her. She walked to the other side to look south. But here the canal curved rather sharply with a steep wooded bank on one side, which more or less concealed the towpath on the other. His boat must be on that side since there was nothing to be seen on the straight stretch. Anna suggested that they walk beside the canal, but she said she was tired and they retraced their steps. She was reluctant to encounter him in his boat with Anna or, indeed, to talk about him with her.

The subject did come up on Sunday morning, after Anna had rung to find out about trains.

Anna agreed to this. ‘But we ought to find out about local taxis. You might need one.’

‘I expect Mr Kent will know. I hope he does come about his seeds or we won’t be able to ask him to take you.’

But he had thought of that. He turned up in the morning and asked when Miss Blackstone would want to be taken to the train.

‘I’m going to ring up every day to see how you are getting on,’ Anna said, as she left. ‘And I’ll go to the London Library with your list to be sent.’ And as she kissed Daisy, she said quietly, ‘And don’t be proud. Come back if you get too lonely.’

While she was being taken to the station, Daisy wrote her a letter saying all of her grateful acknowledgements of the layers of Anna’s affection and friendship. Kindness always made her want to weep.

For the rest of that month – for over three weeks – she settled with increasing enjoyment to her country life. May was providing a beautiful end to the spring; she was astonished by how much she had forgotten, how much she remembered and how much she had never known of the country at that time of the year. The different ways in which trees became green; the suddenness of blossom; cherry, may, lilac, chestnut, bluebells in the wood, celandine everywhere. A peaceful, pleasant rhythm developed. She would wake early to the dawn chorus and sleep again in the ensuing silence, then wake again from the sun streaming through her small casement window. She would make tea in her room and drink it in bed while she read Gerin on the Brontës. Then she would bathe and dress and make coffee and toast. At ten the postman would appear; at eleven Henry. He had become Henry the day after Anna had gone when he had arrived earlier than usual in the morning with the car keys. ‘I didn’t like to bother you late in the evening with them.’ And she had said, ‘How thoughtful, thank you, Mr Kent.’

‘Oh, please call me Henry. Mr Kent sounds as though you disapprove of me. But perhaps you do.’

‘Well – I was afraid that my last letter to you may have . . . annoyed you in some way. Or perhaps you never got it?’

‘I did. But not until I came back to England. It was forwarded on to me from the hospital.’

‘I thought, as you never answered it – but then you didn’t get it. But it has not been mentioned between us, so I couldn’t help wondering . . .’

There was a silence. Then he said, ‘You cannot imagine what a relief it was even to write about it to you. My last wife was so jealous that even the mention of Charley’s name sent her into a furious sulk. It was only possible to co-exist with her in artificial silence. Not my line at all. You need more wood.’

Later that week it was decided that they needed more plants for the garden, and he drove her to, not the nearest, he said, but the best nursery garden. He drove rather slowly and with a concentrated attention that precluded talk. It was a hot day and she had asked him to put the roof down. It was wonderfully peaceful simply to watch the country at this stately pace, time to see white cascades of flowering may, the buttercups, the hay meadows, the lilac and tulips in gardens, fields full of large lambs all bathed in soft golden sunlight that she could feel warm on her bare arm. At some point during that drive she experienced the almost forgotten sense of pure happiness – a weightless, contented warmth that permeated her entire being so that there was no room for anything else at all . . .

The nursery was nearly empty of customers. A weekday morning, Henry said, was always the best time. Except for one visit years ago with Jason to buy houseplants from a London nursery, she had never been to one. At first she was disappointed. She had been expecting masses of plants flowering away rather than the rows and beds of plastic pots showing anything from a few sprigs of green to almost nothing visible at all. The trees looked more interesting, and the shrubs certainly had more to show, which made her want them.

‘A blue flowering tree or shrub.’ She couldn’t think of what they could possibly be – it was rather a test to see how much he knew.

‘Ceratostigma willmottianum,’ he said instantly. ‘A wonderful blue shrub that flowers late summer well into the autumn.’

‘Well, ceanothus is about the only one, but there are two good varieties, Gloire de Versailles and Trewithen Blue. They might have one of them.’

They found the ceratostigma, but the varieties of ceanothus were not to be had. He fetched a trolley and deflected her to herbaceous plants. She chose phlox in several colours, some white lupins, a white Japanese anemone, some asters – or Michaelmas daisies, as she called them. She began to want everything she saw; his suggestion that they get some thyme and camomile to put between the cracks of the new stone path led to a dozen plants; pratia, dianthus, rock roses, besides the several kinds of thyme. Herbs, she said, she must have herbs for cooking, so mint, dill, sage, parsley, basil and tarragon were bought. But he pinched a leaf of the tarragon and said it was not the French variety and would be no good to her. ‘It looks the same,’ she said.

‘It is your garden,’ he answered, in tones of such amused benevolence that she turned to look at him. ‘I can’t help smiling,’ he said. ‘It is like taking a very nice child to a toyshop.

‘I know you are not a child,’ he said, before she could, ‘and I love your excitement about the garden, I really do. We’ll make it the best garden in the county. Of course it’s exciting. You can have no idea how exciting it is for me to have the prospect of making a good garden again – especially for someone as appreciative as yourself. Miss Langrish,’ he added, as an afterthought.

She felt that this was a covert invitation to her to invite him to use her Christian name and sensed a shadow – the faintest warning signal. If she was not on her guard he would somehow worm his way (why had she put it like that?) into an intimacy with her that she most certainly did not want.

She said that they had bought quite enough and that she wished to pay for the plants. ‘You can load up the car while I’m doing that.’

On the way home she played a tape of a Haydn quartet to preclude any conversation.

When they got back, he came round, opened the car door for her and handed her her stick. ‘I’m sure you’ve had enough for the day. Would it be satisfactory if I unload the plants, put them on the beds where I think they will look best, and then you can walk round tomorrow and see whether you agree about where I’ve put them? I’ll give them a good watering, so they’ll be perfectly all right.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said; he seemed subdued. ‘I don’t want to interfere, but would it be a good thing if I made some tea and you put your feet up?’

She was about to say no, she could do it for herself, but then she thought that he must have a mug as well, in which case it would be easier if he made it and took his into the garden. So she thanked him and went to lie on the sofa under the open window with a book, which would show that she did not want company.

He was good. He made the tea and brought it to her, drawing the low table within her reach.

‘I hope you’ve made yourself a mug to drink while you are dealing with the plants.’

‘Thank you. I will.’ She looked up and he was still standing there, looking down at her with an expression of such gentle anxiety that she felt touched.

‘It won’t happen again. I’ll let you know when I’ve finished with the plants in case there is anything you want before I go.’

She fell asleep on the sofa, and when she woke it was dark dusk. She was not cold: a blanket had been carefully laid over her and tucked in over her bare feet, and as she sat up and put on the lamp she saw the piece of paper.

You were sleeping so well that I could not disturb you. I do hope this was right. I must apologize for today. I know you thought me impertinent. The trouble is that I feel most awkward – well, shy with you, because I have told you so many intimate details of my life. I think of them sometimes when I am with you, and blush – inwardly, of course. I have noticed as I grow older that although my emotions remain as fresh and as deep as they have ever been, the outward signs of them fade. I no longer change colour, or tremble, but inwardly I’m shaking and red. I am in awe of you for two of the best reasons in the world: your appearance and your work.

Henry.

She read the note twice and was still unable to sort out the confusion of feeling that it induced. He was smitten by her (what a horrible way of putting it), he was being intrusive; he was an acutely sensitive man with a long track record of being made unhappy and bereft. He was extraordinarily good at expressing himself on paper, although his conversation was unremarkable. The short note was charged with feeling. He was getting old; he was clearly an incurable romantic. There seemed to have been little or nothing going for him (beyond the acrimonious ending of an unsatisfactory marriage) before she came into his life – well, coming into his life was putting it far too strongly: he had turned up just when she needed some help, and because she had been unexpectedly away for so long, communication had perforce been by letter. He was not your run-of-the-mill idea of an odd job man; he was not a run-of-the-mill man at all, come to that. She read the last sentence again, ‘I am in awe of you for two of the best reasons in the world: your appearance and your work’, and could not resist the small frisson of vanity that recurred. It was a long time since anyone had referred to her appearance; indeed, she had ceased to expect anything of the kind, and to have her work mentioned in the same breath was certainly a boost for self-esteem. To be seen in these good lights made a change from her private nervous and usually deprecatory estimation – she was slipping into old age; she was nothing like the writer she had hoped and dreamed she might be . . .

Goodness – how ridiculous this was! It was just as well there was nobody to witness these girlish ruminations – certainly unbecoming in a woman of over sixty. But what was it he had said? ‘I have noticed as I have grown older that although my emotions remain as fresh and as deep as they have ever been, the outward signs of them fade.’ How true she was finding that was! She could be quietly getting on with or through her life and then the simplest remark could hurtle her back to echoes of the confusion and excitement of being young.

Well, she would be calm about it. It was a small thing; an oldish man who was palpably lonely attempting to draw her towards him. Perfectly reasonable on his part, and even more reasonable that she should quietly discourage him. If they talked at all, it should be about the garden and books, and if he pushed further, he should go.

When she got off the sofa, she saw that her shoes were neatly arranged at the end of it. The stick lay beside them. He must have put them there, she thought, as she went to the kitchen for something to eat. She felt faintly irritated: echoes of Jess saying, ‘You want to be waited on hand and foot,’ triggered it. She did not the least want to be beholden to Henry Kent. She made herself a large mug of hot chocolate and took it to bed where she rang Anna and they had a long cosy chat about the Brontës. After she had been enthusing about Gerin’s Anne Bronte, Anna said, ‘Don’t you think you’re reading the wrong way round?’

‘Oh. Yes, it might be better. The snag to that is that the London Library didn’t send Gaskell – said it was out. Do you think that means that someone else is doing them?’

‘Not necessarily. The other books would probably have been out as well if they were. Anyway, it’s unlikely that anyone is wanting to write a play. I’ll see if I can find a copy somewhere. Everything else all right with you?’

‘Fine. We went to a nursery garden this afternoon. I bought an enormous amount. It was fun.’

‘Oh, Anna! There you go – sniping at him. He’s quite harmless. And most considerate. I certainly couldn’t stay here without him anyway.’

‘You know, if you do decide to stay there, you’ll probably make friends with the natives.’

‘Well, at least one chum or two. Somebody who likes gardening and that you can talk about books with.’

‘One more thing. Don’t count on it at all, but there has been a faint flicker of interest in your Orpheus play. I’ll keep you posted.’

As she fell asleep – or just before it, the thought occurred that Henry was somebody who liked gardening and who wanted to talk about books. But somehow she knew that Anna would not consider him to be a suitable chum. Could Anna be a snob? And would she, in fact, think of Henry in the way she had been thinking of him, if she did not share this prejudice? Class, like equal opportunities for women, was something it was generally pretended was on the wane, if not actually dissolved. For countless years the innumerable exceptions had been proving the rule. One should take each person as one finds them, she thought – very sleepy now – and that is what I am going to do with Henry Kent.

In the morning, another brilliant day, she thanked him for putting the blanket over her, and for bringing her tea. ‘And for the note,’ she added, ‘which you need not have written. But thanks all the same.’

This was while they were walking round the garden and he was explaining the position of the plants in order that she should agree to him planting them. She noticed that he took his tone from her; was merely practical and made no attempt to talk of anything other than gardening.

She had decided to spend the rest of the day looking through the Orpheus play. Her scripts had all been arranged neatly on the bottom shelf of the long bookcase: they had been laid out on their sides because the shelf was not high enough for them to be upright. Beside them, lying wedged between a box of typing paper and a box containing cartridges of ribbons and correcting tape, was a rather dirty white envelope tied with white tape. She had not remembered packing it – knew that it contained letters – and as she pulled it out saw that her red leather diary had been laid beneath it. When she picked that up, she saw that the frayed strap that had held the lock snap had finally broken. Henry Kent had unpacked these things: she had asked him to, but she had entirely forgotten that she had packed the diary and the envelope. Now she examined them carefully, to see whether either had been tampered with. The envelope seemed intact: the tape, which had faded at the point where the knot had been tied round it, was still tied in exactly the same way. But the diary – the strap was broken, and she could not remember when this had happened. It could easily have occurred when she wedged it into the packing case. She picked it up, and as she opened it the thin piece of airmail paper slipped out. It fell from pages that were the same date as the letter: she remembered putting it there because it had seemed too awful to her to be put with anything else. Even now, the sight of his writing caused pain. She put the letter back in the diary, and carried it with the envelope upstairs where she put it in a drawer under some clothes. Doing this she knew was because she did not want Henry – or anyone else, come to that – reading the contents. She tried to dismiss the uneasy feeling that he might already have done so, but although this seemed unlikely the unease persisted.

He disappeared at lunch-time, so she ate bread and cheese in the garden and read her play.

When he returned in the early evening to water – he had been putting out small plants he had grown from seed – she decided to test him. The sun had gone, it had become very grey and still, and the air was sticky and warm and crowded with minute flies. She made tea and called him (it was now established that he got a cup of coffee in the mornings and tea if he was there later in the day). He came in, she noticed, by the back or kitchen door. He looked very hot.

When she had fetched him a towel, she said, ‘By the way, when you were unpacking the tea chests, did you by any chance come across a leather diary?’

He had been laving his face under the running tap and now enveloped his head in the towel before replying.

‘Red leather – rather battered. It may have been inside a large envelope full of papers.’

He said at once, ‘Oh, well, if it was in an envelope, I wouldn’t have seen it, would I? I was particularly careful to see that the chests were empty before I took them out to chop up for kindling. Of course, there was such a mass of papers – scripts and stationery and such – that I might not have noticed a diary when I was putting it all away. If it wasn’t in the envelope, I mean. I put all those sort of things on the bottom shelf because it was the only one wide enough to take them flat. Do you want me to have a look for it?’

He had finished drying his face, and now picked up his mug of tea off the table. He began to drink standing. There was a faint but unmistakable feeling of tension. It was almost, she thought, as though she had accused him of losing a diary of which he knew nothing. Usually he sat at the table and asked her if she would mind his having a cigarette.

‘I’m sorry if you feel I’ve lost your diary or papers or whatever,’ he said. ‘I do assure you that I took the utmost care of all your things.’ It was uncanny – the way in which he seemed to know what she was thinking.

‘Of course you didn’t lose it. It’ll turn up. I may even have left it in London. Please don’t think I was accusing you or anything like that.’

‘It’s the weather,’ he said, looking at her with concern. ‘There’ll be a thunderstorm tonight and that should clear the air.’ A moment later he said, ‘You’re not afraid of thunder, are you?’

‘Because if there is a storm, I could keep you company till it was over. You could tell me about Chekhov. I would really like to know why you think he is the second greatest playwright in the world. Not because I disagree, I just don’t know about playwrights as you must do.’

‘Not this evening. I think I’m going to bed early. But you can borrow the plays if you like. They are in three volumes.’

‘I’ll put it in a carrier-bag in case it starts to rain before I get home. Good night. I do hope your headache will go. And thank you for this.’ And then he made the same gesture with his fingers to his lips that he had made on the bridge on the evening when she had been driving to London.

She went to the front door, which she had propped open to get more air into the cottage. The sky was leaden, there was not a breath of breeze and the birds were silent. It was a relief to be alone. She looked at the garden, so neat and promising now, the lawn mown, the hedge each side of the garden gate freshly trimmed. In the sunniest corner against the cottage, he had made her a herb bed, the mint planted in a large pot stood beside it – he had told her that otherwise it would invade everything. He was a good gardener, an interesting and unfortunate man, but she did not want his misfortunes to prevail in her life. It was, undoubtedly, a piece of luck that somebody so knowledgeable and reliable had turned up; in fact, his presence made it possible for her to live in the cottage in her present state. It was odd how quickly he had divined that she thought he might have done something with her diary but, then, people of that sort were always touchy or sensitive about whether those employing them considered them honest. She remembered, years ago, an extremely nice, hard-working Portuguese woman, who had cleaned her flat and done her ironing – and indeed anything else she was asked. When one day Daisy had exclaimed that she could not find her cheque book and wondered aloud where on earth it could have got to, the woman had given her one look, taken off her apron, put on her coat and hat and left. Two days later she had received a stiff little note saying that the woman was unaccustomed to being accused of thieving, and would therefore not be returning for work. Daisy had gone to her flat with the money owed, had apologized, explaining that it had not occurred to her that Maria would take her cheque book (what use could it be to her?) but that had proved to make matters worse. So she might take other things. Folded arms, a refusal to take the notes owed and offered.

Yes, no doubt Henry had a bit of that attitude in him, and if he was smarting from being dispossessed of his home – and, she supposed, his local friends – not to speak of the sense of bitterness and failure that an acrimonious separation or divorce so often induced, then he was all the more vulnerable. Well, she was vulnerable in some ways (although, of course, only until her leg was entirely healed) and he in others. She made herself an omelette and a green salad, and opened a bottle of Macon, before she remembered that, with a headache already, drinking any of it might start a migraine.

The air was so oppressively hot that she had a tepid bath before going to bed. When she opened her windows wider for the night, she saw a split-second streak of lightning racketing across the sky and counted. The thunder was far away, but the storm had begun. The beginnings of a thunderstorm always reminded her of Rigoletto and when she turned on her radio there was the quartet from the last act in full voice. This coincidence was curiously comforting. By the time it was finished the storm was well under way – with lightning that briefly illuminated her room and louder and far more immediate rumblings from the crashing clouds. She fell asleep as the audible, heavy rain began.

She woke early. The rain had stopped, but the sky was not clear: it was as though there was a pause before more thundery weather. The air smelt fresher, but it was still oppressive. She put on a sleeveless denim dress and sandals, and went downstairs and into the garden. The stone of the path glistened and the little plants that had been put between the cracks all looked wonderfully revived by the rain. She went out of the gate. She would walk up the lane as far as the canal bridge, something she had meant to do for several days. They had told her that she must walk every day, and she resolved now to do this before breakfast every morning and then again if she felt like it later. But as the bridge came in sight, the rain began again – unspectacular steady stuff that did not feel like a shower at all, more like the beginning of a downpour. So she turned back, and as she neared the cottage, heard her telephone ringing: an unusual hour for anyone to be calling her – unless it was some calamity.

She opened the gate and began to run up the path, but halfway there, she slipped on the stone and fell, heavily, awkwardly, striking the side of her head as she hit the path. A misty, random thought, Why do I keep falling? and then she could remember nothing. Nothing until someone had taken her in his arms and in a voice full of tender anguish was saying, ‘My darling – my dear love, my darling Daisy. What have you done to yourself?’

6

DAISY