Echoes of the Dance (19 page)

She leaned closer, her shoulder pressed against his, his hair touching her cheek; the picture seemed less clear and she closed her eyes for a moment.

‘That's an Iron Age fort on Bathampton Down and the scene of the last duel on English soil in 1778,' he was reading, ‘between Colonel Rice of Claverton Down and Vicomte Du Barre of France.'

He glanced up at her, amused, and her hand gripped his shoulder for a second as they stared at each other, the amusement dying from his eyes. The silence lasted just too long – she willing him to make a move whilst he seemed incapable of action – and before it could become embarrassing she turned away.

‘I'll get that coffee,' she said.

‘Is she OK?' Kate was asking Roly. ‘Do I gather from your conversation that Daisy is in love?'

‘Yes, I think that's a fair deduction.' Roly wondered what had moved him to speak so openly to Daisy about her symptoms in front of Kate. Up until that moment he'd been very careful to avoid the subject, always anxious lest she should suspect how he felt about her, yet Daisy's words – ‘
It
isn't good for the soul to hide one's true feelings
. . .' – had given him a jolt. ‘She's got it bad, by the sounds of it, poor darling. Even worse, he's married.'

‘Oh, no. Are there children?'

‘I didn't ask but she didn't mention children. From what I can gather, the marriage is over and he's on his own. I guessed there was someone special when she was staying here. Well, it's not an easy thing to hide, is it?'

He was surprising himself – going straight at it like this – but Kate merely shook her head almost wistfully; sitting there on the sofa with Bevis and Floss vying for attention, thinking about Daisy. Roly remembered what Monica had said: ‘
Did
you
know that Kate never really loved David and that she'd had
some fantastic affair with someone else?
' Impossible to believe that Kate had been unfaithful to David – and who could the man be?

‘Poor Daisy sounds like someone who's been hit by a truck,' he said, unable to prevent himself going in even deeper. ‘Probably the first time too, by the way she's speaking about him.'

‘Should we be saying “Poor Daisy”, though? Shouldn't we be thinking how wonderful it is for her to be in love?'

‘I think that depends on whether this fellow loves her in return. She sounds as if she's in the first throes: agonizing and divine in turns. Can you remember feeling like that?'

Kate laughed and then frowned, sitting back on the sofa as if to concentrate better. The dogs lay down, resigned.

‘When I first met Mark it was like that, I suppose. Obviously you don't marry someone unless you think you're in love with them . . . do you?' She glanced at him but he remained silent. ‘I was nineteen and the whole thing was a whirl of ladies' nights and summer balls and parties. Cass and Tom, Mark and I. We hardly spent a moment alone together before the wedding. Wildly romantic, of course, but no preparation for reality.'

‘So you got divorced?' he asked after a lengthy silence.

‘Yes,' she said rather bleakly. ‘We got divorced when the twins were ten years old.'

‘Well, you did better than I did.' He hated to see the expression in her eyes and now wished he hadn't begun the conversation; yet a new inner conviction drove him onwards. ‘Nat was two when Monica left me.'

‘I'm so sorry.' It was Kate's turn to remember Monica's words about Roly: ‘
It was the cruellest thing I ever did; leaving
him, I mean. He never got over it
.' She thought of the other things that Monica had told her but when she spoke it was as if she knew nothing of his past.

‘Personally, though, I find it impossible to believe that she left
you
for that dried-up stick of a man. She must have been out of her mind. I said so to David the first time I met Jonathan.'

‘Did you?' He smiled at her partisanship but this same conviction compelled him to be truthful. ‘I married Monica because she was pregnant with Nat. We were in lust, but not in love, and she left me because I'd begun to drink too much.' He came to sit beside her on the sofa so that he didn't have to see her face. ‘It was just after Mim's accident and I wasn't handling it awfully well.'

‘What a terrible time it must have been,' Kate said when Roly fell silent. ‘I can understand that it must have been ghastly for both of you. Mim's career in ruins, not to mention the pain she must have been suffering. You knowing what she was going through . . .'

‘And knowing, too, that I was the cause of it.'

‘
You
were the cause?'

‘I met her from the station with the car, you see. Our father was ill and I'd driven down to Cornwall from London to see him. I had an old station wagon in those days and I'd chucked the big metal box that held two of my cameras and some lenses in the back on top of everything else. A heavy old thing it was – you don't see them much nowadays – but it was built to protect the equipment. Mim was arriving next evening by train and I'd arranged to pick her up from Bodmin. I was running late because I'd stopped to have few pints with a friend of mine. I'd already been drinking before I left home. I drank far too much in those days, but nobody bothered too much about driving while being the worse for wear. I'd had to brake a bit sharply on the way to the station when something ran across the road – a fox or a cat, perhaps – and the box banged back against the tailgate and started sliding about. I hadn't taken the trouble to make it properly secure, you see. Mim was waiting for me so I didn't bother to park; I just pulled in beside her. As she lifted the tailgate, to put her case in the back of the car, the box simply slid out on to her foot and crushed it. I can still remember the noise she made.'

His face was taut with anguish; Kate watched him, unable to think of any single thing to say that might comfort him.

‘I drove her straight to the nearest hospital and at some point – I can't remember now – we agreed that nobody would know exactly how it had happened. Rumours began to circulate, of course, but we were a long way off, down here in Cornwall, and by the time we got back to London the myth had already grown of its own accord. Even Monica never guessed the truth. But I couldn't handle it, you see. I couldn't get over the harm I'd done in destroying Mim's career and I simply drank more in an effort to stop going over and over it in my head: if only I'd secured the box properly; if only I hadn't stopped for that drink; if only I'd been on time and had opened the tailgate myself. The truth of it is that I was drunk: I shouldn't have been driving that car. My guilt made my drink problem worse but the odd thing is that you never actually see yourself as an alcoholic. I was never uncontrollably drunk but I was never quite sober either and my work suffered as a result. Monica, understandably, lost patience with me and after a few months she left, taking Nat with her. Losing Nat brought me to my senses. Monica said that I could only see him again if I stopped drinking completely. It took a year. I lost a whole year of him but at the end of that time Monica agreed that he could visit me. God knows what damage I did to him. By then Mim was settling down at the stage school and we were sharing a house again. I managed to pick up some of the pieces of my life but they never fitted together quite the same ever again.'

Kate sat in silence. After such a confession no remark seemed appropriate; every observation must be trite. He passed his hand across his lips and turned to look at her. With a shock he realized that all the romantic emotions he'd cherished about her for so long had vanished along with the weight of his secret guilt. Staring at her he simply saw a very dear, close friend; his old, unhappy passion for her was spent at last, and if he felt a sadness at its passing he was also aware of relief.

‘I've never told anyone,' he said. ‘I can't imagine why now except for something Daisy said earlier.'

Kate, longing to reassure him, wondered anxiously what might be the next step after such a momentous happening – any reaction must surely be anti-climatic – yet she was conscious of some healing quality of deep-down peace stealing through him. Instinctively she reacted as she always did in such circumstances by suggesting some kind of action, out- doors if possible. Movement through the landscape, connec- tion with the natural world, inevitably brought its own kind of healing.

‘Come on,' she said, putting an arm through his. ‘Let's go up on the moor. We'll give the dogs a walk. That's what we need right now.'

They smiled at each other, easy with one another, freed at last into uncomplicated friendship. Roly lifted Uncle Bernard from his drawer and they all went out together into the mild spring evening.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Discovering that Paul was going away for the half-term week had come as a disappointing shock to Daisy – a shock she'd been unable to disguise – and each time she remembered the little scene she felt hot with the shame of her transparency. She'd become too confident, too sure that their friendship was beginning to develop into an intimacy that would allow certain things to be taken for granted. It was not, she told herself firmly, that he was playing hard to get, or deliberately keeping her wrong-footed, but that he simply wasn't ready to let himself relax into complete trust and openness. She believed that he'd been badly hurt and she was determined not to force the pace. At the same time, she reminded herself defensively, they were so happy together that it was difficult to refrain from making certain assumptions about their relationship.

The boat trip on the River Avon, for instance, had been such fun, Paul spotting a kingfisher that he insisted was the grumpy one pictured on the leaflet and, afterwards, buying Cornish crab sandwiches that they'd eaten sitting on a bench by the river just like two carefree holiday-makers. Then, a few days later, they'd met by chance in the town and his expression of delight when he'd first seen her had lifted her heart up into the seventh heaven of joy. She'd been wandering up New Bond Street, pausing to gaze longingly into the windows of Jigsaw and Laura Ashley, and as she'd passed on into Milsom Street she'd seen him coming towards her.

Her answering smile must have been just as pleasing to him because he took her arm, in that wonderfully informal way he had, and said: ‘I was thinking about having some lunch. I'm sure you must be hungry, so where shall we go?'

She laughed – her rapacious appetite was now a standing joke between them – and replied: ‘Oh, let's go to the Café Rene in Shires Yard. I just adore their ciabattinas.'

Crossing the road, still arm-in-arm, they turned in, between the flower shop and the wine shop at the entrance of the precinct, and went down the stairs. They paused to look at a display of delicious hand-made chocolates but hurried past some very expensive boutiques, so that Daisy should not be tempted, and out into the yard where Café Rene's tables stood with their gay red and blue umbrellas.

Paul ordered Provençal mussels served with French bread and Daisy asked for a hot goat cheese ciabattina, and they'd squabbled amicably over the dish of curly fries.

It seemed quite natural and easy for Daisy to say to him: ‘Shall we go to the French market next week?' and it was a shock to see the cheerfulness fade so swiftly from his face.

‘I shall be away,' he said, almost sharply, as if to imply that she might have guessed as much. ‘It's half-term. I'm going down to South Devon to stay with friends at a holiday cottage near Salcombe. It's been booked for ages.'

She tried not to let her disappointment show but the sense of intimacy was utterly shattered and she felt oddly fearful at that veiled look that made his face wary and cool. She managed to pull herself together sufficiently to say quite casually: ‘Oh, I'm going away too, back to Cornwall for a few days,' and he, recovering his natural ease and good-humour, said, ‘To those people you were telling me about? Roly and Mim, is it, and all the dogs?'

She was foolishly pleased to think that he remembered the conversation, comforted by the fact that at least he wouldn't be spending the week with his wife in London, but, once again, she experienced that same sense of loneliness that pierced her each time he left her abruptly in the hall or, as on this particular occasion after lunch, in Milsom Street.

‘Back to the daily round,' he said – but then he hesitated for a moment and, taking her face in his hands, he kissed her on the lips. ‘Enjoy your shopping,' he said, and hurried off towards Union Street.

She made some jolly farewell reply and swung away, head high, a smile on those same burning lips, seeing nothing until she found herself on Grand Parade, staring down into the waters of the fast-flowing Avon as it passed under Pulteney Bridge and cascaded noisily over the weir. She tried to control the dark negative thoughts that beat around inside her head like unruly black bats. Paul's volte-face from warm easiness to cool wariness had been so unexpected that she knew he'd seen her unguarded expression of disappointment and surprise. She had been surprised that he'd never mentioned that he'd be going away. In fact, so sure had she been that they'd be spending much more time together during the half-term week, she'd half considered cancelling the trip to Cornwall.