A Winter's Child (51 page)

‘We agreed not to go too deep – not yet.'

‘One seizes the moment. You, of all people, must know that. And you don't really want to end your days in the blue chintz room, do you Claire? I have nothing to offer you but that. At the moment I can still see how wrong it would be to impose such a future upon you. I may, eventually, lose sight of that.'

‘Not now, Benedict – please.'

‘No. Can you stay the night?'

‘I shouldn't.'

‘That means you can. And when you see your employer tomorrow tell him you need a holiday – a fortnight starting not later than Monday next. He owes you that.'

She sat up again. ‘Are we going away together?'

‘Yes. Shall I take you to France? No, no, don't wrinkle your nose. I'm not talking about the grand tour of the battlefields. I thought you might like to see where the
Vouvray
comes from.'

She clasped her hands around her knees, excited and apprehensive as a child at Christmas.

‘Oh yes. Yes please. Could we manage it?'

‘Of course. We have only to meet in London and then travel home to Faxby on separate trains. A reasonable amount of discretion covers the rest. I shall probably leave a day or two before you and stay in London a day or so longer. Quite simple.'

‘So simple that I am bound to think you have done it all before.'

‘Naturally.'

‘Oh – naturally.'

They smiled at one another as they had done at the beginning of the evening, acknowledging a closeness which had nothing to do with touch.

‘But not to Vouvray. The Edwinas and Elviras of my life have always preferred Paris or Cannes.'

Two weeks in France. The prospect shone before her like a guttering prize, filling her with the total, unmixed longing of childhood. And, as children feel, it seemed to her that if she could just get to it, touch it,
have
it, then she would be content. Nothing must stand in her way. She would give up anything for it and count her losses afterwards. And, sensing this, Kit Hardie bowed graciously to her demands. She had worked, after all, for eight months without a break. She needed a rest.

‘But why France?' asked Dorothy, who simply knew, without at all knowing
why
she knew, that her daughter was up to something. ‘I know people do keep going out there to look at the graves, but surely you must have had enough of that?'

‘Yes, mother.'

‘Then why not the south coast, dear? Edward and I stayed in a charming guest-house in Bournemouth – oh, some years ago. I'm sure to have the address somewhere.'

‘No thank you, mother. I'm going to France.'

Miriam, on the other hand, was all sweet encouragement.

‘My dear, how very nice. I have been thinking for some time that you needed a rest. Benedict is going away too. Oh – didn't you know that? Indeed – why should you? I am not sure where, of course. A mixture of business and pleasure I expect and one would really not care to pry. Perhaps you could travel together, as far as London, at any rate. Oh, I see. You are leaving on Monday and he is going tomorrow. What a pity. Perhaps you will run into him somewhere. Who knows? These odd little co-incidences
do
happen. Between ourselves –
strictly
between ourselves – Benedict often worries me.'

‘Oh –?'

‘He is far too solitary, my dear.'

‘Is he really?'

Miriam smiled fondly, a little archly. ‘Ah well, you naughty girl, I suppose you have heard whispers about him and his various
amours,
haven't you? Of course you have. And I shall shock you, I suppose, when I say they are all true. Why not? In view of Nola's sad experience I really don't wish to pass comment on the state of their marriage. Suffice it to say that when a man is less than satisfied at home he usually feels entitled to look elsewhere. Certainly my own husband, during his first wife's time, was exceedingly promiscuous. In fact, I was warned against him, my dear, in most explicit terms. Fortunately – young as I was – I understood how meaningless these fancies can become, how stale. Oh yes – a man can repeat himself so often with women of a certain type that in the end … Well dear, my husband who had a very direct turn of speech sometimes, told me that before he married me he had seen so many faces on his pillow that he could hardly distinguish them one from the other. It troubled him. I wonder if it is starting to trouble Benedict?'

‘I really – I couldn't say.'

‘No?' Miriam smiled again, very sweetly. ‘Of course not. I am trying to put old heads on young shoulders, aren't I dear? Never mind. Experience matures very slowly and I have really so little to do these days but sit and
observe.
You do know, of course, that Benedict is a very difficult man?'

‘Yes.' She could not have answered more than that one word no matter how hard she had tried.

‘Far more difficult than his father. Aaron was hard. Benedict is cold. By their own choice, of course. Hardness was the character my husband selected for himself and hard was how he wished to appear. Benedict is the same with his coldness.'

‘Oh – I see.'

‘Perhaps you do. You remember my theory, child, about the children of the seasons?'

‘Oh yes.' Could she possibly distract her? ‘You said because I was born in the summer I must be lazy and easy-going from having had nothing to do in infancy but bask in the sun. And that I must be inclined to give things away, because there would have been so much fruit on the trees and so many flowers.'

But Miriam was not to be distracted.

‘And are you not like that, Claire? Generous – even a little wasteful – of your summer bounty? Unguarded because no cold winds threatened you in your cradle, so that you never learned how to cover yourself, nor even saw the need for it? How very alarming all that must sometimes seem to a man like Benedict. He was born on a bitterly cold night, you see. His mother died. And no one had the time even to wrap him up. How very shivery and how very threatened he must have felt. Is it any wonder that he threw up so many defences? There was no one else, after all, who could be bothered to defend him until I came along. And by that time it was too late. He was already living behind a screen. I failed him. How sad.'

‘Yes-yes, quite-'

‘My goodness, what a pair they were, father and son. What they both needed was a sunny nature to warm them up – like yours dear, and mine – I could see that at once. Aaron was much simpler, of course. Solid rock. And what harm can the sun do to rock? None at all. It warms it. It makes things grow. And Aaron wanted to be warmed. One could see him, dear, positively basking – loving it. It did him immense good. Now think of Benedict.'

She was thinking fast.

‘Any man, Claire, who feels the cold must wish to warm himself. He may even long to do so. But think, dear, what the sun does to ice. And if he has used that ice, for so many years, as a protection … Well – in order to be warm he will have to watch his defences melt away. How that must alarm him. He may even bolt back under his glacier from time to time, don't you think? Wouldn't you? But perhaps he may meet a summer woman one day, with enough patience to keep on coaxing him out again. I do – hope so.'

‘Yes. That would be nice.'

‘Do have a pleasant holiday, Claire. It may help to settle your mind. And then, I have a little scheme afoot to persuade you to spend a week or two here, in your own little blue room. In May, I thought, to celebrate my birthday and Polly's – something rather special, since she's bound to be married next year with no time to spare for her mother.'

Nonsense, of course. And romantic, sentimental nonsense too, typical of Miriam. Yet Miriam, in fact, was shrewd, sharp as a razor, steely of purpose beneath all her frills and flounces, as Claire well knew. And there had been times – she could recall every detail in her memory – when Benedict had seemed to reach out towards her and had then retreated exactly – she could not help but see it – as if she had burned him. ‘I can do you no good,' he had told her often enough. The danger had seemed to be wholly hers. Now the possibility of harming him simply by loving him was presented to her forcefully, getting into her dreams where, for three uneasy nights in succession, she saw him evaporate in her arms, to be, most horrifyingly, not there. An addition to her stock of nightmares which she did not welcome, the more so since it had been conjured up by Miriam, whose sole concern was to secure a more agreeable companion for her old age than Eunice and Nola.

Yet the holiday in France still waited, just visible, just a little way ahead, beckoning and dazzling her like a pole-star. She would have just that much, then perhaps only a little more or nothing more, but at least
that.

They met among the indifferent, anonymous throng of Waterloo, seeing each other instantly as if by some magnetic empathy of thought and desire, which stopped Claire in her tracks and held her motionless as he came towards her. He was the tallest man in the crowd, his cashmere overcoat, woven in Faxby, tailored in London, swinging stylishly from wide shoulders, his hat tipped forward at a sporting, almost Newmarket angle, the same air about him of good quality, tip-top condition, the very best, which she had first noticed about his house at Thornwick. Had he been a complete stranger she would have been aware, at a single glance, that his shoes and gloves must be of the finest leather, his shirt and tie of silk, his cufflinks and and watch-chain of pure gold. She would have been happy to look at him – simply to look at him – all day, gloating with contented pride on his clothes, his air of authority and quiet elegance, the set of his chin, the dark hair curling very slightly into the nape of his neck, the black tilt of his eyebrows, a hundred more tiny, tremendous details which, as she stood there breathless and tremulous with a new emotion, had each one the power to turn her knees to water.

And it
was
a new emotion.

She loved him.

She had thought so before. But what she felt now, what seemed to have suddenly fallen full upon her, was not the same. Before – before what? – just
before
, love had come easily to her, a feeling which rose quite naturally and flowed quite smoothly and which she had experienced certainly once in the past. But this was serious. Terribly serious. She knew that one recovered, eventually, more or less, from that smooth, natural, free-flowing emotion which was undoubtedly a kind of love. She had no way, yet, of telling if one recovered from this.

‘Hello,' she said and could say no more.

‘Hello.' His eyes touched her and then his hands, drawing her towards him and holding her in what they both knew to be an act of complete possession, complete surrender. She was his now, absolutely; abandoning herself to his desire, his love, his need, without reserve or restraint on conditions. His – to have and to hold, in unstinting, unbounded bestowal. For as long as she could. For as long as it lasted. Until the week after next.

It was, from the start, a perfect experience. A life within a life, wholly apart from what – for as long as it should last – she was no longer forced to call reality. The sun shone. The sea was calm. And for two fine, dry weeks every train ran on time, every arrangement they made proceeded smoothly and without a hitch, every hotel was warm and delightful, every moment separate, distinct, acutely memorable.

France. The country where she had grown, by force, to womanhood, where she had first loved and suffered and where Paul was still lying in a neat grave set among tidy rows of others which she had no wish to visit, content to leave this ritual to his wife and mother. She had accepted, at once, for a hundred brutal reasons, the decay of his body, knowing too well how soon and how irrevocably death had eaten it away. But his spirit had remained for a long time at the edge of her vision, unreach-able of course but
there,
if only just, if beginning to fade mercifully from an almost visible presence to a memory. She had begun to release him, to allow him – and herself – to rest. Yet he entered her deeply dreaming mind that first night in Paris, gently and kindly, so that she knew he pitied her. Human emotion no longer touched him. Desire was over, and longing, all the frantic needs of one human body, one human heart, for another, the joy of a lover's caress, the warm handclasp of a friend in the dark.

For him all that was ended. Yet for her the rejoicing and the suffering was to do all over again.
Here,
in this land of France where she had learned to live only for the moment, to absorb the measure of happiness it gave with the gratitude and despair of a desert traveller tasting a raindrop, knowing there may never be another.

Live now, the dream told her, there's no time to spare. There never has been.

‘I love you, Benedict.' Had she really spoken? Or was it simply her arms, on waking, which had conveyed the words to him as they reached out to find him? And found him. Not only that morning but the next one and the one after, the sheer delight of such a little thing – such a miracle – colouring the day with gold and scarlet excitements, deep blues and lilacs of profound content.

She had everything she wanted. The whole of life's bounty. In one man. How perilous. But the peril was for tomorrow. Today was the leafy enchantment of the grand
boulevards
where she walked with him in a haze, a trance made up of the blissfully replete love of the body and the rich, deep-flowing love of the heart. It was the
cafés
where they sat under striped awnings, letting the world go gladly by, watching only one another. It was the smile always there to meet her smile, the hand always ready to clasp her own so that she could reach out blindly, eyes closed, confident of his touch. It was the constancy, the trust, so that she could have leapt out into space, knowing he would catch her.

That was today.

She knew tomorrow would come.

They took another train and travelled southwards to a gentle green velvet landscape threaded by the broad, pale ribbon of the Loire. A land mysterious with deep woods, generous with vines and vivid with flowers, set here and there, at sudden turnings, with gingerbread houses of story-book illustrations, Cinderella's palace glimpsed, delicate and magical, through a pattern of rich foliage, Beauty slumbering for a hundred fragrant years in every tall, enchanted tower.