Flightsend (14 page)

'I don't know,' Sean said.

He was going to give her up, she thought. He
wouldn't have time for her. Why should he, when her
mother had rejected him over and over again? She saw
the drab wastes of a Sean-less future stretching into the
distance, and felt a tug of misery deep in her chest. It
came to her, suddenly and disturbingly, that she didn't
want Sean to marry her mother, not any more. She
didn't want him to marry anyone. She gazed at him
hopelessly.

Then he said: 'I'll come and see you at Flightsend.
Kathy will have to put up with it.'

A Midsummer Night's Dream
was slick and funny. Charlie
sat in the audience with Rowan and Russell and
watched stern Theseus, resentful Helena and the
other Athenians unfold their story, alternating with
Peter Quince's bumbling crew, and ethereal Titania
and her fairy entourage.

From Angus' first entrance as Oberon, Charlie saw
that no one was going to make fun of him. There was
nothing half-hearted or self-conscious about his
performance. He strode on to the stage, swirled his
cape, brooded jealously over Titania and her Indian
boy and gave peremptory orders to Puck.

The play should have held Charlie's attention; she
tried to enjoy herself, and to stop reliving the conversation
with Sean. It was a clever, stylish production.
The cast had been well trained in covering up any
errors they made, so that when Puck entered without
his magical flower, one of the fairies clod-hopped on
to the stage and presented it with a twirl to him and a
curtsey to the audience, getting an unscheduled
laugh.

Charlie felt weird. Almost sea-sick, she could have
said. She didn't know quite when the ground had
shifted, but it had, and now she was feeling her way in
strange territory, sensing the unevenness, the tilting. It
was no use pretending that she wanted Sean back for
her mother's sake, nor even for his own. No use pretending
that she wanted him as surrogate father or
older brother.

She just wanted him.

She wanted him to want to be with her, and no one
else.

She glanced at Rowan, who was whispering something
to Russell, and thought: I can't tell anyone. Not
Rowan. Not Mum. Least of all Sean himself. He
mustn't know; it would spoil everything. Especially in
the light of what he'd told her. If she wanted to go on
seeing him, she mustn't give him anything to hide. In
any case, he'd be horrified. And he still loved her
mother; she had written evidence of that, from less
than a week ago.

'
Wake when some vile thing is near
. . .'

When Charlie had been about twelve, old enough
to take an interest in such things, she had asked both
her mother and Sean, separately, about how they met,
why they'd liked each other. She knew that their first
real conversation, soon after Sean joined the school,
had been at a staff social event, a meal at a restaurant.
Sean, arriving late, had sat at the only spare seat, next
to Kathy.

'I'd seen her at school and thought she was
attractive,' Sean said, 'but it never occurred to me that
we'd – you know – click like we did. She's older than
me and she looked sophisticated, intelligent, and I
knew she had a daughter so I just assumed there was a
husband or partner as well. And there was me, the new
boy, the clueless new teacher straight from college.
Well, we started talking and we could have talked all
night. Other people went home and the waitresses
were clearing up around us and we were still there
talking. We had about ten cups of coffee and then she
gave me a lift home. Even so, it was ages before I had
the guts to ask her out, and I thought she'd just laugh
and brush me off. But I'm glad she didn't.'

Mum, asked about Sean, had said: 'I'd got him all
wrong. Stereotyped him, really. I thought – young
man, good-looking, sporty, athletic – he's bound to be
arrogant. But he wasn't at all. I liked that.'

'
What thou seest when thou dost wake, Do it for thy true
love take
. . .'

Sean and Mum. Mum and Sean. Charlie had
thought they were a fixture. Sean's devotion to her
mother was constantly expressed in hugs, touches,
kisses; he was by far the more demonstrative of the
two. Newly-curious about adult relationships, Charlie
had learned to recognize the muffled sounds through
the bedroom wall which meant that Sean and her
mother were making love. Maybe she had even been
listening when the baby was conceived. Rowan,
currently engaged in a should-she/shouldn't-she
dilemma about whether to go on the Pill, couldn't
bear the thought of her parents having sex. 'I can't
imagine it! I mean, my dad, with his beer gut! Do you
think they actually still
do
it, at their age?' Charlie had
known that her mother and Sean did, even before the
pregnancy made it obvious; she didn't feel disgusted,
like Rowan, only rather intrigued.

Now she thought: I'm in love with Sean. With my
mother's ex-lover. She tried it out, hearing the way it
sounded. No, to explain would be to cheapen it, turn
it into a TV soap, a situation rife with conflict and
dramatic potential. Alternatively, she was a teenage
girl with a crush on a handsome teacher, like countless
others who drew entwined initials on their pencil-cases,
who batted their eyelids and flicked back their
hair. That, too, reduced it to cliché. And what she felt
wasn't just a crush, a temporary feeling for someone
she hardly knew. She knew Sean better than anyone
except her mother. They had walked up Lake District
fells together; they had played tennis; she had brought
him hot LemSip when he was ill with flu, and had
waited at the hospital when he cracked a bone in his
forearm. They'd made Mum's birthday cake together.
He'd mended punctures on her bike and had gone
with her on the sponsored ride for Oxfam. He and
Charlie had taken Conker to the vet to be put to sleep,
and he'd cuddled Charlie when she cried afterwards.
She knew his likes and dislikes, his favourite music, his
moods. She knew his irritating habits, like leaving wet
towels on the bathroom floor, and whistling the same
tune over and over again while she was trying to do
homework. Charlie and Mum would chorus, 'Oh,
Sean
,' but now she could only see these things as lovable.
She wanted to be with him. Hear his voice. Have
his attention.

'
Stay, though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius
. . .'

It felt wrong to be thinking of him in this new way.
Almost incestuous. She thought: if Rose had lived, I
wouldn't feel like this.
If
. Sean would be with Mum and
everything would be simple. It's all Rose's fault.

She couldn't help it. She sat in the welcome semidarkness,
watching the play at one remove, lost in her
thoughts.

'
What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
'

Titania, bewitched by the magic juice, was falling in
love with Bottom, who now wore a ridiculously hairy,
floppy-eared donkey's head. Bottom was led off by
bustling fairies; people were applauding, standing up,
dropping their programmes, as the interval music
began to play and the hall was flooded with light.
Charlie stood blinking and dazed, suddenly faced with
the need to make conversation, to say something
about the play.

'Come on, Charlie, you don't look quite all there,'
Russell said.

Rowan giggled. 'She's stage-struck. With Angus.
He's brilliant, isn't he?'

She'd have to do better than this. Besides, the play
deserved her full concentration. When the lights
dimmed for the second half, she made herself pay
attention. Angus would want her opinion, in detail.

The display of acting talent was formidable. All the
main players were good, especially Pippa Woodford as
Titania and a girl from year ten as a fiery Hermia, but
Angus stood out. There was an expectant focus each
time he came on stage; he could provoke laughter
with the lift of an eyebrow.

'He looked good, too,' Rowan said in her father's
car on the way home. 'Great costume, green tights and
all. And that make-up. It made him look – not evil, but
sort of dangerous.'

'Quite butch for a Fairy King.' Russell was next to
her in the back seat, with Charlie in front. 'Pippa
looked gorgeous, didn't she? And Hermia, in that
clingy dress – what's that girl's name?'

'Hey! Eyes off!' Rowan warned, and her father said,
'I'm glad you found it such an educational
experience, Russ. Never could get my head round
Shakespeare when I was at school but it sounds like I
should have come.'

Charlie said, 'Everything we saw – all those people,
the costumes, the set – it happens once more
tomorrow and then it's finished. All that effort, all that
energy, and suddenly it's gone. If you weren't there,
you missed it. They're taking the set down at the
weekend, Angus said.'

'Someone was making a video,' Russell said. 'Those
two blokes at the back. Didn't you see them?'

'But that's not the same at all,' Charlie said. 'And as
soon as you watch it, it's in the past. That's what makes
it a bit sad, really. I mean, never in their whole lives
will all those people get together like that again.'

'They've had a great time doing it, though,' said
Rowan's dad. 'Why be sorry because it can't go on for
ever?'

Charlie thought of the last time she'd been given a
lift home along these same country lanes. This time
she had a great deal more confidence that she'd arrive
home safely. It was a still, perfect summer evening, not
quite dark; she saw the graceful shapes of trees above
misted fields. Through the partly-open window she
could smell cut grass, and see the mown hay laid out
for drying. Suddenly she longed to be at home, alone.

'See you in a fortnight,' Rowan called as Charlie got
out at the end of her lane. 'And we'll send you a postcard.'

'Have a great holiday! And thanks again for the lift,'
Charlie said to Rowan's dad.

Kathy was reading in bed. Charlie went up, told her
briefly about the play, then went down again and let
herself and Caspar out into the garden.

She could smell the fresh dampness. In this still-not-darkness
the white flowers gleamed as if floating in the
dusk. She heard a fox bark and, in a field some way
off, the baaing of sheep. The night air was cool,
scented with grass and roses. Stirred up by the play
and the midsummer night and the disturbing
emotions that had got hold of her, she was reluctant to
go indoors. She walked slowly down the path, touching
the white phlox flowers, bending to breathe them
in; at Frühlingsmorgen she stopped, and touched one
of its fading blooms. She thought of Dietmar, and his
arrival in their lives so unexpectedly – as if their
discovery of his memorial rose had brought him here.
If only the power of thought, or of wishing, could
always be as effective. Quite what she wished for, she
couldn't have said. Not long ago, if a midsummer fairy
had appeared at the bottom of the garden and offered
to grant one wish, she wouldn't have hesitated. I want
everything back the way it was before, she'd have said.
I want our old life back, with our old house, and Mum
and Sean together. And the possibility of Rose, that
wouldn't be snuffed out in the world of dream-wishes.
But to wish for all that would be not to want
Flightsend, or Caspar, and she wanted both those
things.

'
Sean
.'

Caspar came bumbling up to her, leaning his weight
against her legs and waving his tail wildly, turning his
head to look at her. Only then did she realize she'd
whispered the name aloud. Sean. She wanted everything,
all ways at once. She wanted Sean as family and
as not-family. She even wanted the ache that tugged at
her now.

'Good boy. Let's go in.'

She gave Caspar a few biscuits, then went up to her
room. She thought: you can't call the past back, and
there's no point trying. You can only have it while it's
present. Like the play tonight, it happens and
then it's gone.

In the drawer where she kept her sweaters she had
hidden the florist's card retrieved from the dustbin.
She took it out, covering the top line of script with her
thumb so that it read:
I love you. Sean
.

She felt ashamed of herself for pretending.

'Don't be so
stupid
,' she told herself. Then she put
the card back in its place and got ready for bed.

'It was fantastic! Just amazing!'

Kathy was in her dressing-gown, putting croissants
to warm in the oven. She'd come in late last night,
having phoned to say that she and Dietmar, after their
flight in the Cessna, had decided to go to a restaurant
for dinner.

'That doesn't tell me much!' Charlie said. 'I want to
hear all about it. Were you scared?'

'At first. It was so bumpy, on the runway, and the
plane seemed so tiny and fragile, I thought it'd never
get up into the sky. I was thinking, Why did I ever say
I'd do this? And when it turned, it banked so suddenly
that my stomach lurched. I was terrified, to be honest!
And afraid of being sick. I mean, I've never liked flying
in passenger jets, and in the Cessna it's so different –
more obvious that you
are
flying. You're sitting in
the sky in a tiny box with wings, buffeted about by the
wind. But Dietmar was so good. All the time, he told
me what he was doing and why, and he was so relaxed
that I stopped shaking and started to enjoy myself.
And then I wasn't scared again till the landing, but
that was all right, too. I don't know how long we were
up, but it felt like hours – oh, it was wonderful,
Charlie! We flew over Northampton and all the lakes
and gravel-pits on the east side, and we saw Silverstone
racetrack, and Stowe gardens with the avenues of trees
– fantastic from the air. And we flew over here – did
you see us?'

'No, I was reading in the garden for a while, but
then I got engrossed and forgot to look.'

'We saw Flightsend, and the airfield, and the village
– it looked so peaceful down here, with the church
huddled into its trees, and the green, and all the fields
spreading out – grass, and wheat, all soft hazy colours,
and a combine harvester in one of the fields. Dietmar
said he'll take you up next time, if you want to go.'

'Will he? Next time?' Charlie looked at her mother.
'So there's definitely a next time, is there?'

'Oh yes,' Kathy said promptly. 'I won't be so scared
now I know what to expect.'

'I didn't mean that. I meant a next time for seeing
Dietmar. But obviously there is.'

'Yes. I like him, Charlie. I like him a lot.' Kathy
fetched the warm croissants and put them on the table
with the butter and apricot jam. It was Monday,
Charlie's day off from waitressing, although she was
going round to look after Rosie this afternoon. On
Nightingales breakfast mornings, there was barely
time for a quick mug of tea together before Charlie
got into her black skirt and rushed off. Monday
breakfasts, more leisurely, had acquired special status.

'The dinner?' she prompted. 'How was that?'

'Oh, it was lovely. We went to a country hotel near
the airfield. A quiet, elegant place, with a huge dining
room overlooking a lake. I felt really scruffy, coming
straight from the airfield, but it didn't matter. We just
talked and talked.'

Charlie said nothing. She wished she could raise
one eyebrow in enigmatic query, the way Angus could.
Talked and talked
. That was how it had started with
Sean.

'Don't start thinking I'm about to marry him,' Kathy
said, pouring coffee. 'I enjoy his company, that's
all.'

'
All
. That's quite a big
all
. A big, important one.'

'Yes. Well. He's thoughtful, intelligent, kind – I
know he's a lot older than me, nearly twenty years, but
it doesn't matter.'

'Why should it?'

'You've changed your tune.' Kathy looked at
Charlie, amused. 'You seemed horrified at first, when
I told you about seeing Dietmar again.'

'Yes, but not because of his age! Because of—'

'Because of Sean?'

Charlie thought: she actually said his name. But
Charlie didn't want to talk about Sean for fear of
giving herself away.

'No,' she lied. 'Because I thought it might be
dangerous, the flying. His
age
doesn't matter.
Marianne ends up marrying Colonel Brandon and
he's years older than her.' Charlie's English teacher,
a Jane Austen addict, had suggested
Sense and
Sensibility
for holiday reading; Charlie had just
finished it, and she and her mother had watched the
film.

'I can't quite see myself as Marianne,' her mother
said. 'She's nearer your age than mine.'

'Mm.' Charlie hadn't really been thinking of her
mother and Dietmar when she said that age didn't
matter. What had struck her about
Sense and Sensibility
was that the age difference between Marianne and
Colonel Brandon was bigger than the gap between
Sean and herself.

'As for Kate Winslet in the film,' her mother
continued, 'running over the moors in daft shoes – no
wonder she sprained her ankle. Anyway, she may have
married Colonel Brandon but that doesn't mean I'm
going to marry Dietmar or anyone else. Unlike
Marianne, I've tried it once and I've no great desire to
try again.'

Charlie saw that there
was
a parallel between
Marianne and Mum. OK, Marianne was much
younger, but had found happiness with Colonel
Brandon after having a breakdown and becoming
seriously ill when her first love affair ended. That part
fitted, anyway, sort of. The rest didn't. It was handsome,
dashing Willoughby who'd broken off with
Marianne, not the other way round. Charlie had
thought Willoughby was too good to be true, right
from the start, especially in the film. Marianne was the
loyal, faithful one, even if she loved the wrong person.
Charlie was reading
Emma
now, and was about to
suggest getting the film of that, but her mother wasn't
going to be distracted from the topic of Dietmar.

'I thought I'd invite him for lunch next Sunday. You
don't mind, do you?'

'No,' Charlie said. It came out on a doubtful note.

'Dietmar's a friend. A good friend. At the moment,
that's all I want. Him being so much older is fine. He's
mature, in charge of his life. He's been married, he's
got grown-up children. He doesn't make demands.
He's happy the way things are.'

'So that's OK,' Charlie said flippantly.

She didn't like the implication that Sean had been
unreasonably demanding, wanting to stay when everything
went wrong. But she wasn't going to argue today.

'Did he ever tell you why he left Flightsend, when he
liked it so much?' she asked.

'He was lonely,' Kathy said. 'He'd always lived in a
city till he came here. He bought Flightsend just after
his wife left him. But he realized it was a mistake to
bury himself in the depths of the country, when he
wasn't used to it.'

'Why did she leave?' Charlie asked.

Kathy looked at her. 'She left him for a much
younger man.'

It was August now, the summer holidays proper. Sean
was away in North Wales; Rowan, back from Tenerife,
was spending a few days with Russell and his Scottish
grandparents. Dietmar had been visiting family in
Germany since the week after the fête, which was why
the Cessna flight had waited till now. It was the time of
year when normal life was on pause.

Charlie missed Sean so badly that she felt ill. Sick,
dizzy, floaty, like having a high temperature. She
walked the footpaths with Caspar, she studied the map
and found new routes. She walked down by the river,
where the water slid darkly beneath overhanging
trees, between banks lush with reed and willowherb.
Sean, Sean
. His name throbbed in her head like a
pulse; it was in the rustle of leaves and the stillness of
the river and the whisper of her feet brushing through
grasses.

All the time, she stored things up in her mind to tell
him. Ordinary, everyday things; things to make him
laugh. She wasn't going to tell him how completely he
occupied her thoughts. They'd met once since the
end of term, just before he went away. He'd kept his
promise and had taken her and Caspar up to
Dovedale, in the Peak District. They had walked and
clambered over rocks and eaten a picnic, and Sean
started teaching her how to navigate with a map and
compass. Charlie knew that people who passed them
saw a young man and a girl, boyfriend and girlfriend,
out for the day together. She could pretend.

She kept replaying the day in her mind, holding on
to it.

She tried to draw him. Never before had she drawn
a portrait without the person sitting in front of her; it
was impossibly difficult. When she closed her eyes she
could see Sean quite clearly, could visualize a whole
range of his expressions; but when she tried to commit
any one of them to paper, Sean disappeared and was
replaced by a set of features that bore no resemblance
to his. She tried to draw him from the Great Gable
photograph, but that was too small and blurry. What
came from her pencil was a smiling face that could
have been anyone's.

Oliver Locke was staying in the Well House while he
completed the sketches for the Nightingales
brochure, and was running courses most weekends.
That afternoon, when Charlie arrived, he was carrying
a box of groceries into the store room. He told her
about his Watercolour group at the weekend, and
asked if she'd like to join in. Charlie thought she
would. At school they always used acrylics, and
she liked the delicacy of watercolours.

'Aren't you going on holiday?' she asked him. 'It
doesn't seem much of a break for you, all these
courses.'

'Can't afford it this year,' he told her. 'I've got
a lot of big expenses coming up. Next year, when
I'm settled, I'll go to Tuscany. Anyway, I like it here.'

Charlie collected Rosie, and took her down to feed
the ducks; afterwards they settled in the courtyard,
sitting together on the bench with Rosie's picture-book.

'There's Wosie,' Rosie said, prodding a damp
forefinger.

And then Charlie jumped as a shadow fell across the
book and a warm hand cupped her shoulder. Oliver,
again.

Rosie was delighted. 'Orriver! Orriver! We're having
a story!'

For the first time, Charlie felt a tremor of irritation.
He liked to do that, she realized; sneak up on her,
surprise her. How long had he been there? She felt
embarrassed at the thought of him listening while she
talked to Rosie about the pictures in
Rosie's Walk.

'You know,' he said abruptly, 'it looked so
picturesque when I came along. The two of you,
absorbed in the book. The sunlight on your hair. Like
a sentimental Victorian painting.'

Charlie looked at him, puzzled at his tone. It was
faintly sarcastic – his choice of words,
picturesque
,
sentimental
; but there was something else. Sadness?
Envy?

There wasn't room for him on the bench, where
Rosie sat next to Charlie with her legs spread out. He
sat on the arm, close to Charlie. A little too close. She
moved nearer to Rosie.

'I've seen your mother here a couple of times,' he
said. 'Talking to Fay about the garden plans. You know
when you mentioned your mum, and Sean Freeland –
you didn't tell me about the baby. I'm sorry.'

'Who
did
tell you?' Charlie said sharply. 'Not Mum,
surely?'

'No, it was Fay. She and your mum seem to be
getting quite friendly.'

They must be, Charlie thought, if Mum had talked
about Rose; usually she kept the subject tightly zipped
up inside. And to
Fay
, of all people, with Rosie around
. . . perhaps Rosie's presence had been the prompt.
But Charlie didn't like the idea of her mother being
gossiped about at Nightingales.

'
Fox
,' Rosie said, stabbing a finger at the picture.
Clumsily, she turned a page.

'That's right, Rosie,' Charlie said. She returned
her attention to the story, but Oliver spoke again.

'It must have been tough for you, as well as for
Kathy,' he said. 'So all this—' he waved an arm at
Rosie, the bench, the book – 'is sort of therapy?'

'For me, you mean? I don't know. I mean, it just
happened. Fay asked me, and I said yes.'

'You like coming here, don't you? As much as I do.'
Oliver bent to pick up her sketchbook from the
ground, and started to leaf through the pages. 'And
these?' He'd found the sketches of Rosie. 'Therapy?'

It had become a habit for Charlie to show him her
drawings, but this time she hadn't offered them.
These weren't for him. Charlie watched him in
silence. Rosie said, 'Tarm-yard.'

Oliver studied the drawings carefully, turned the
pages. 'These are nice – these quick little line drawings.
Catching the pose.'

'It's difficult, like you told me,' Charlie said.

'Mmm, I can see.'

'I was having a go at drawing in pen. I like it. You
can't fiddle about like you can with pencil.'

He continued looking. Too late, she realized that
he'd turned the page to her ineffectual sketches of
Sean. She went to snatch the book back, but he smiled
at what he saw, then said, 'You must let me return the
compliment, some time soon. I'd love to draw you.
Paint you, even better.'

Was there something suggestive about the way his
gaze swept down her body? And he thought—

'No. No,' she said, her cheeks burning. She didn't
want to explain that the drawings were of Sean, not of
him. Fortunately they were too bad for him to tell. She
tugged at the sketchbook and turned back to the
Rosie sketches. He liked to think she spent her time
dreaming about him; she saw that now.

He looked amused at her embarrassment. 'The pen
drawings are much better,' he said, as if she didn't
know. Then, 'You look after Rosie quite a lot now,
don't you? D'you think you might look after Kieran
for me, this Friday afternoon?'

'Kieran?'

'My son.'

She didn't know he had a son. They'd talked quite
often, but he'd never mentioned Kieran.

'Nice name. How old is he?'

'Seven.'

'It's a bit different from looking after Rosie.'