Alys, Always (14 page)

I think of Alys whenever I help myself to the hand cream which she kept in a bottle by the kitchen sink.

Some mornings, everything I look at seems to refer backwards, to the past, to her.

I spend some time going through the photograph albums, which are kept behind the piano. The story is incomplete – I imagine the rest of the archive is stored in London – but the plot is clear enough. Laurence and Alys sitting at tin café tables or goofing around Roman ruins or walking along coastal paths; with a newborn over a shoulder and shell-shocked wondering expressions; with another newborn and a little blond boy, looking as if they know what they’re in for
with this one. There are shots of Laurence creased up with laughter or caught mid-anecdote, his hands blurring in front of him as he gesticulates. Looking at Alys’s pictures of her husband, I see how old he has become.

The snaps of Alys peter out around now. It’s mostly Teddy and Polly from here on – paddling, learning to ride bikes, ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center, on the front step in school uniform, dressed up in Hallowe’en outfits. Now and again Laurence edges into focus, supervising an Easter egg hunt or having his legs buried in sand on a beach somewhere. Alys, who has stepped behind the camera, becomes more or less invisible.

I put the albums back on the shelf, ensuring they are arranged in the correct order.

One morning I find myself walking on the dewy lawn wrapped in a thin grey shawl which I pulled off a hook in the hall without thinking about it. It’s hers, of course; it belongs – belonged – to Alys. I glance anxiously back at the house, apprehensive about being caught. But there are no faces at the windows. No one is watching me wearing her shawl, stepping where she stepped.

I try not to show Teddy and Honor that their company makes me uneasy, and I think I’m managing it pretty well. Neither of them takes much notice of me, in any case. Teddy is interested only in Honor, and Honor is interested mainly in herself. I hear them talking in other rooms or out on the terrace or under the copper beech, about people they know and places they have been to, but if I join them their conversation often dwindles away or abruptly changes direction, as if I’m not entirely fit for it. When I speak, I feel their attention drifting elsewhere, not quite held by my delivery, and once or twice – when he yawns or wanders off – I find myself wondering whether Teddy might be making a point;
but I tell myself I’m probably imagining it. Why would he bother to dislike me? I doubt he has the energy.

In general, I’m content for them to think I’m dull. It’s safer that way.

If Polly is hot, Teddy is cool; watchful where she wants to be watched; guarded where she is exposed; assessing where she is all impulse. He talks knowledgeably about collectors and collections, about New York and Berlin, and his gossip is adept, circumspect, never spiteful. Money impresses him, I hear that in what he says, but otherwise he’s good at disguising his weaknesses.

And then there are moments when he forgets himself and all his precious dignity.

When Polly cuts her foot on a piece of glass – a beer bottle which she dropped on the terrace and failed to clear up properly – he goes very pale at the sight of all the blood. But while she panics, he fetches a clean teatowel and binds it around her foot to staunch the flow, and somehow tricks her into telling me the story of how as a child she once crept up behind Sidney Poitier and, wanting to know what it would feel like, surreptitiously put out a hand to touch his hair. By the time the story is over she is laughing and the blood, forgotten, has clotted.

One evening, quite out of the blue, he starts to talk over dinner about Alys and how last summer she lost track of who was coming to stay when, so that the Crewes turned up just as Clive Dawson and his boyfriend were unloading their car, and how Laurence had come into the kitchen and leaned against the door, biting his knuckles and saying it was an absolute fucking disaster, they’d be throwing punches by six o’clock, and Alys had said rubbish and sent him back out with a jug of Bloody Marys, and within an hour or two both parties were all over each other, sharing gossip about advances and flinging around invites to the Lot willy-nilly.
Halfway through the story I see his eyes are shining very bright and I think he’s about to lose control, it’s about to overwhelm him; but he keeps going and the tears retreat. I’m not sure whether anyone else notices.

But for the most part, Teddy and Honor are one unit, and Polly and I are another. Polly shrinks away from Honor and cleaves to me. She’s restless, self-absorbed, tiring, sometimes amusing, constantly needing an audience, as children do. As long as you pay her attention, I find, she’s happy enough. She makes very few demands otherwise. She doesn’t want wit or insight or affinity or a glimpse of a different sort of life, the sort of thing that most friendships are built on; she just wants company, the reassurance of being looked at, the consolation of not being alone.

I adjust quickly to the rhythm of the days – the short cool mornings, the scorched afternoons, the drawn-out evenings – and as they pass I almost forget myself. I begin to feel as if I really am on holiday here, as if relaxation is appropriate rather than dangerous. I’ve never volunteered any information to any of the Kytes, but a few evenings after I arrive I nearly make a mistake.

We’d just come back from an afternoon at Welbury. The beach was fairly crowded, but we’d walked to the far end of the shingle and set up camp against a groyne. The sky was full of seagulls and diamond kites: someone was selling them on the common. Along the curve of the shore, the distant dome of the power station’s reactor gleamed like an ornament.

We all swam, wading out over the sharp points of the shingle, enduring the waves; and then, once clear of them, floating off out into the chilly grey swell, the endless rise and fall of the sea.

When we came back to Nevers I switched the kettle on to make a pot of tea but before it had time to boil Polly opened a bottle of wine and rolled a spliff. We forgot to eat.

And then later someone put on Lou Reed and I lay on the grass watching the light fading out of the copper beech while Polly danced on the terrace singing along to ‘Satellite of Love’.

Dusk fell. The moon rose. Honor picked her way around the lawn and orchard, putting out brown paper bags weighted with handfuls of gravel, then dropping in tealights. As the house sank into darkness behind us, the orange glow from these little winking beacons seemed to stretch on, intermittently, for ever. It seemed like the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.

My heart felt full of it, full of the sun, of the moon, of the garden, of these hopelessly spoilt creatures who asked so few questions of me and, as a consequence, were such easy company. I lay back and stared at the stars coming out. Then I twisted my head sideways and looked over at Polly, lying a little distance away with her legs crossed at the ankle, an unlit cigarette stuck to her lip.

‘Pol,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely to be here. With you, I mean. It means a lot.’

‘Mmm,’ said Polly, not very concerned.

I rolled over on to my elbows and watched her profile in the darkness: the tangle of hair, the straight nose, the definite sort of chin. I wanted to ask her a question about Laurence, and then maybe another one about Julia Price, and I was just about to put it into words when suddenly I saw what I was about to do, how close I was to showing my hand.

From that moment on I am careful not to forget myself. I keep an eye on what I’m drinking, and I don’t smoke anything, and I make sure that the questions I ask are the usual ones. Shall I cook tonight? How much do I owe you for that? Red or white?

Don’t mistake them for your friends
, I tell myself, again and again.
Watch them. Watch yourself
.

Watch yourself
, I tell myself, as I wander through Alys’s garden, cutting roses for the bowl vases in the sitting room;
watch yourself
, I tell myself, as I lie by the pool, my face tilted to the sun.
Stay on your guard
.

For three, four, five days, it’s just our little group and, although I’m still conscious from time to time that Polly finds Honor hard work and that Honor is less keen on Teddy than he is on her, it’s still a lazy, peaceful sort of coexistence. We wake late and go to bed late. We make sorties to the beach, the off-licence, the local farm shop, but otherwise stay close to the house. Mrs Talbot comes quietly and tidies up after us.

Then on Friday evening, or maybe it’s Saturday, the phone rings in the hall. No one ever rings the landline. Polly looks at Teddy and they both say together, ‘Dad.’

‘You get it,’ says Polly, but Teddy is playing Racing Demon with Honor and won’t put down his cards.

When Polly comes back she says, ‘He’s coming down tomorrow. He says he can’t work in London, it’s too hot. He promises to keep out of our way.’

‘Is he writing again?’ Honor asks. It’s the first time I’ve heard her express curiosity about anyone else. ‘I didn’t know he was writing.’

‘I guess he must be,’ says Polly. Then she goes off to put the garlic bread in the oven.

Laurence arrives the next day, in the late afternoon. I’m lying on my bed reading when I hear wheels on the gravel. I edge myself over the bed and peer through the window as he parks the Volvo next to my Fiat. Then he gets out and opens the boot and reaches in for his bags. One’s a slim briefcase, a
laptop probably. The other is a small canvas holdall, just big enough for a washbag and a few shirts. I remember the wardrobe in his room: of course, he doesn’t need to bring much down, it’s all here waiting for him.

He stands there on the gravel, stretching, looking around. I can see him feeling the sun on his face.

The others have gone next door to use Colonel Williams’ tennis court. I’m alone in the house. As I hear him shutting the boot and moving off towards the brick arch, I slide off the bed and go to the mirror hanging over the chest of drawers, running a hand through my hair so it doesn’t look too tidy. These last days of sun and sea salt and chlorine have shot it through with a few colourful streaks and my skin is flushed, sprinkled with freckles. My eyes look bright. I smile at myself experimentally. Then I wait, standing by my bedroom door, listening to his footsteps on the parquet, his preoccupied whistle.

‘Oh, goodness, Laurence, it’s you,’ I say as he walks into the hall. I’ve come out of my room and I’m leaning over the balustrade on the landing. He spins around, looks up at me, smiling. I place my hand flat above my heart, expressing relief.

‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Did I frighten you? Did Polly forget to tell you I was coming?’

‘No, she told us, I just forgot,’ I say.

He’s coming up the stairs towards me now, step by step, still smiling; as if I’m the new arrival, rather than it being the other way around. The cool, airy expanse of the hall starts to reduce in scale as he approaches. I feel the walls sliding a little closer, the ceiling lowering, so we’re enclosed in a more intimate, almost secret space. As he comes on to the landing, the air between us starts to shimmer faintly. I wonder whether he’s experiencing this too.

‘They’re all next door, playing tennis,’ I say. ‘Shall I go and fetch them?’

‘Oh, no, let them play,’ Laurence says. He stands in front of me, then puts down his bags. We kiss, formally. ‘You’ve caught the sun,’ he says.

‘We’ve been so lucky with the weather,’ I say.

Yes
, I think.
He does feel it
.
He’s just starting to feel it
.

‘You have family around here, don’t you?’ he says. ‘I suppose you must know Biddenbrooke quite well.’

He picks up his bags and carries them into his room, looks out at the view. I follow him but halt in the doorway. Mrs Talbot has removed the coverlet and set a small bowl of roses on the dressing table. ‘Would you like some tea?’ I say, and he says he would, he’ll be down in a minute.

In the kitchen I make a pot and put some almond biscuits on a plate, and then I carry the tray out to the terrace. Far away, drifting on the breeze, I can hear the pock-pock of the tennis game, the occasional shout of irritation. Then the wind changes direction and I can hear nothing but wood pigeons.

‘I wanted to congratulate you on your plan,’ Laurence says, coming out of the house behind me.

I look at him. For one vertiginous moment, I’m not sure what he’s talking about.

‘Your plan. About Polly and the course,’ he says kindly. ‘The idea of the sabbatical.’

‘Oh yes,’ I say. All that seems very far away. We haven’t really talked about real life for the last few days. I meant to ask Polly lots of questions about her future but somehow once I’d arrived at Biddenbrooke the time never seemed quite right. And, just as importantly, I didn’t want to bore her.

‘She probably told you,’ he says. ‘About Mr Bamber. He was very understanding, actually, when I spoke to him. And
now that Sam’s production has fallen apart, I rather suspect she’ll be rejoining the course in the autumn. Not such a disaster after all.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ I say doubtfully, because somehow I don’t share his confidence.

He tilts his head. ‘You think she won’t go back?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I say.

He puts down his tea, reaches for a biscuit and crunches it, staring out at the copper beech. ‘Oh, I thought we were over the worst,’ he says, wearily. ‘I don’t think I can cope with another of Polly’s little … indecisions. Although of course “indecisions” is entirely the wrong word. The whole problem is her cast-iron will. And whatever I say seems to make her dig in just a bit deeper.’

There’s silence for a moment. The trees move almost imperceptibly. The sky is covered with tiny distant herringbone clouds, so gauzy they’re barely there.

‘Could I enlist your support?’ Laurence asks. ‘She does seem to listen to you. You have a knack … Of course, I don’t want to put you in a difficult position, but—’

‘I could try,’ I say, and then there’s the sound of a gate opening, and the other three come across the orchard, whey-faced and damp from the exercise, shouting out greetings when they see him.