Echoes of the Dance (16 page)

‘Want a cuppa, Moniker?'

Janna's voice disturbed Monica's thoughts, recalling her to the present. Trying to shake off her preoccupation, she peered down the narrow staircase at Janna. It would be impossible in this mood, she decided, to sit drinking coffee with Janna. All conversations with this strange girl were fraught with difficulties and she simply didn't have the energy or the patience to expend on her.

‘No, I won't, thank you,' she answered. ‘I had a call from Jonathan last evening and I have to get back for a dinner party. You'll explain to Nat, won't you? I'll telephone him later.' And she went into her bedroom and began to pack.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kate picked up the telephone and put it down again. It was pathetic, this sudden requirement for company – or at the very least to need to hear a friendly voice. She missed David badly: his good-humoured take on life, his instinctive understanding of her character and the comfort he'd given her. She still half expected the telephone to ring and to hear his voice telling her that he was on his way to her or urging her to join him in London.

‘There's a party,' he'd cry – or a wonderful new play or an exhibition. ‘Do try to find someone for the dogs and come on up.'

She'd enjoyed the variety much more than she'd imagined: rarely in London for more than a few days at a time and always looking forward to the weeks he'd spend with her in Devon, sometimes doing some painting or perhaps getting together a portfolio for an exhibition, but much more likely simply having fun before hurrying away again. She'd been content knowing that he was there in the flat in London: so different from this sense of real aloneness. Bad luck, too, that at this time her closest friend should have recently departed for a three-month visit to friends in America.

‘It is utterly bloody,' Cass had cried. ‘But what can I
do
? It's been planned since the autumn and I simply can't back out.'

‘Don't be a twit, of course you can't. I shall be fine. Good grief, it's not as if I've never been alone before. Send me lots of cards.'

The first of the cards had arrived that morning. Kate picked it up, reread it and put it down again. She simply mustn't do that thing of wandering aimlessly about, staring out of windows, but neither must she give way to this terrible grief that was all stored up inside her. It occurred to her that, in the past, she'd never given herself the opportunity to mourn. There had always been some good reason for not giving way to grief, whether it was for her failed marriage or the death of her mother. It had seemed important to remain strong, either for the sake of the twins or simply because it was a sign of weakness to give way to tears. Now, with David's death, the weight of it was becoming difficult to bear.

Kate looked at the telephone again. It wasn't fair to ring Roly, feeling as she did; he'd guess at once that she was lonely and he'd either invite her down or suggest that he bring the dogs on a visit. Either way, she'd feel guilty; feel that she was using him in some way that wasn't quite fair to him.

It would be good to speak to one or other of her sons, although Giles might be out on some photographic assignment or shut up in his dark room in the converted boat-house in the cove. She was trying not to bother Giles and Tessa just at this time: with baby Charlotte, only a few months old, as well as coping with small Henry, who was not yet two, Giles and Tessa were very busy and very tired. As for Guy, he would certainly be at the chandlery at this time in the afternoon, which would make it impossible to have a satisfactory conversation with him – he had strict ideas about the work ethic – but perhaps Gemma would be at home with Ben and Julian, having fetched them by now from school in South Brent.

Kate thought about Gemma with a faint sense of anxiety. She was such a pretty, happy girl and so very much like her mother, Cass. There had been a moment a few years ago, after a holiday Gemma and Guy had taken up on Exmoor, when she'd wondered if all was well with them. Gemma had been rather subdued for a while and Kate had feared that there had been a clash between Gemma's light-hearted flirtatiousness and Guy's strict sense of propriety. As the time passed, however, Kate had stopped waiting for some kind of explosion to occur and was able to relax again. It would be good to talk to Gemma and perhaps to the children too. Kate dialled and waited. The ringing ceased and was replaced by Guy's voice, sounding rather bored, saying, ‘I'm sorry that Guy and Gemma are not here. Please leave a message and your telephone number and we'll get back to you.'

Kate hastily switched off. She couldn't think of a sensible message and she didn't want them to be worrying about her. She imagined Gemma saying: ‘Oh, by the way, darling, Kate rang earlier. I wonder if we should ask her over? She must be missing David and with my ma away in America she might be rather lonely.' Kate shook her head. No, no: she didn't want that kind of pitying anxiety and it wasn't fair to them. On the other hand Giles might be taking a break, wandering over to the cottage, having a cup of tea with Tessa. It was worth a try.

This time the telephone was answered at once.

‘Hel
lo
, hel
lo
, hel
lo
,' the voice shouted.

‘Hello Henry, it's Grannie.' Kate found that she was shouting too. ‘Is Mummy there? It's Grannie, darling?'

‘Grannie darling, Grannie darling,' the shouting continued enthusiastically. ‘Hel
lo
, hel
lo
—'

The voice was abruptly cut short and a loud buzzing followed. Frustrated, Kate switched off again. Henry would have pressed one of the keys, which meant that now she would not be able to reconnect and, meanwhile, Tessa wouldn't realize that nobody could contact her. Kate deliberately blanked out an immediate vision of Giles desperately needing to contact Tessa – a car accident? Sudden illness? – and went to find her mobile telephone. Tessa's answer mail told her brightly that no one was available to take her call but assured her that if she liked to leave a message she could rerecord it at
any
time.

‘Sorry, Tessa,' Kate said, after she'd waited for the tone, ‘I think Henry's been playing with the telephone. I hope you pick this up soon. Just a quick one to check that you're all OK. Love you lots.'

She tried the telephone again, but it was still buzzing, and she scrolled through the numbers in her mobile, remembering as she did so that she'd agreed with Nat that he and Monica could come to supper one evening. It wasn't fair to bother him while he was working but she might leave a message for him at the cottage. She was surprised to hear Janna's soft West Country voice at the other end of the line.

‘How nice to hear you, Janna. How are you?'

‘I'm OK, Kate. Nat's not here, though.'

‘I didn't expect him to be. I was going to leave a message. He suggested bringing Monica over for supper before she goes back and I wanted to say that tonight would be fine. I hope you'll come too, Janna.'

‘Thanks, Kate, that's really kind. Only Moniker's gone.'

‘Gone?'

‘She went off back to London just before lunch. Said she had a date.'

‘Oh. Well, then . . .'

‘Perhaps 'twas me being here. She just arrived back from seeing Nat's dad, packed her case and went. I came back yesterday but she wasn't here then. She was in Cornwall. Nat thought it was OK if I stayed.'

‘Well, of course. Are you sure you're OK, Janna?'

‘I'm a bit pissed off. My mum and stuff like that. What about you, Kate?'

‘I'm a bit pissed off too, to tell you the truth. Missing David and the dogs. Silly, isn't it?'

‘Course it isn't silly. Listen, come on over, why don't you?'

‘That would be very nice. I was overcome with self-pity and tried to speak to the boys but they're both . . . unavailable.'

‘So you tried Nat?'

‘Well, I knew he wouldn't be there but I'd promised to help him out with Monica.'

‘She doesn't like me. She thinks I'm bad for Nat. She worries about him, or so she says. Do mothers worry more about sons than they do daughters, Kate? Do they love their sons more?'

‘No . . . it's different, that's all. They know that one day they will lose their sons to another woman in a way they don't lose their daughters. Have you heard the old saying? “A daughter's a daughter for all of her life. A son is a son till he gets him a wife”? There's some truth in that. Instinctively mothers of boys know it and it colours their behaviour, that's all. I'm lucky with my sons' wives, they generously allow me to still be involved, but some women fear that they might lose their sons altogether.'

‘My mum loves me but she doesn't behave like Moniker.'

‘I think that you and your mother love each other in an unusually unconditional way. You give each other space. That's very good, very special, but it's not Monica's way. Monica . . . likes to be in control.'

‘D'you think I'm bad for Nat, Kate?'

‘No. I think you're very good for him. I think you're good for each other, a bit like you and your mum. You love each other but you give each other plenty of room to breathe. That's a very rare quality.'

‘I wouldn't want to be in his way . . . Listen, Kate, he's just come in. Hang on . . . he's saying he's off somewhere up on the moor near Cornwood and I can go along for the ride.'

‘That's wonderful. Of course you must go . . . I'm perfectly fine and I'll talk to Nat another time . . . I am absolutely sure, Janna. Enjoy.'

Kate pressed the button and put the telephone down, brooding on their conversation. She knew a little of Janna's background; enough, at least, to recognize that her mother's love was very important to her.

‘She didn't give me away,' she'd insisted, one afternoon when she and Kate had been together at the cottage while Nat was at work. ‘She loved me. 'Twas just a bit much for her, that's all. My dad going off soon as he knew she was pregnant and not having any money and stuff like that. But she didn't ever think of having me adopted. She loved me. 'Twas the authorities. She'd begun to drink a bit and she was living in a squat, then, and some of the others were, like, seriously off the wall. The authorities didn't ever understand that I'd rather've been with them, like that, than with neat, clean, ordinary people. They were
nice
people, my foster parents – nothing against them – but they weren't
my
people. We didn't speak the same language.'

Now, Kate thought about Janna with a sudden surge of protective anxiety. ‘Do mothers love their sons more?' she'd asked wistfully. ‘D'you think I'm bad for Nat?'

Kate hoped fervently that her answers had been the right ones. Nat and Janna were like the two babes in the wood: covering each other with leaves in an effort to camouflage themselves from a prying world. She loved them both but knew that there were issues that needed to be resolved. Monica was not necessarily helping that process.

She thought about Monica in Cornwall with Roly, remembering that odd look on her face – as if she were trying to recall something – and hearing her voice saying: ‘It was the cruellest thing I ever did, leaving him.' Perhaps, after all, Roly still loved Monica.

And what if he did? Kate stood up, as if to walk away from the question, thinking about the conversation she'd had with Monica and how she'd very nearly betrayed herself by talking about her own long-ago love affair with Alex. Thirty years on, she could still recall their last painful meeting and the words he'd used.

‘The point is that the twins come before me. You're prepared
to sacrifice me every time rather than upset them . . . If
you're not prepared to be open about our relationship then I
think we should call it a day . . . No, no. It's not how I want
it, Kate. You know what I want. If you're not prepared to
acknowledge my position in your life it's your decision not
mine.'

Well, she'd made her decision and she'd lost him and, less than a year later, her old friend and close confidant, the General, had died: then, as now, she'd felt very much alone. It was years later that Cass had given her one of his books: Julian of Norwich's
Revelations of Divine Love
in a version entitled simply
Showings
.

‘As a keepsake,' she'd said. ‘He used to quote from it. D'you remember? “All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” Something like that. He'd kept a postcard you sent him in it as a bookmark and I thought you might like to have it.'

From time to time Kate studied Julian's
Showings
, wrestling with the deeper truths of the text, gaining a measure of comfort and hope. Now, she took the book down from the kitchen shelf and opened it at random.

And these words: You will not be overcome, were said very insistently and strongly, for certainty and strength against every tribulation which may come. He did not say: You will not be assailed, you will not be belaboured, you will not be disquieted, but he said: You will not be overcome.

After a moment, Kate closed the book and put it back on the shelf. She took her keys, slipped on a jacket and went out, through the garden and across the paddock towards the moor.