Just Friends (41 page)

“Oh, that’s all over,” Freya said breezily.

“And now you’ve met Jack.”

“Yes.”

“And you like him,” her father prompted.

“Yes.” Freya squirmed.

“I suppose you must do, since you’re living with him. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Ye-es.”

“You don’t sound very certain.”

“Well . . . Jack’s a bit of a playboy.”

“Hmm. Perhaps he needs somebody fierce and sensible to sort him out.”

Freya ignored this. “Playboys are fun, in their way. At least Jack never bores me.”

“What, never? Darling, you must bag him at once!”

“For God’s sake, Daddy, it’s not a big thing. Not like you and Mummy. We quarrel all the time.”

Her father’s eyebrows soared. “Do you think Karina and I never quarreled? Good Lord, we’d hardly been married a month before I stormed out saying we’d made a dreadful mistake and might as well get divorced at once.”

Freya was shocked. “Why? What happened?”

“Heavens, I can’t remember now.” Her father laughed at the very idea. “People have to express their frustrations, you know.”

“But—but you loved her, didn’t you?” Freya faltered.

“Of course I loved her. And she loved me. Loving someone doesn’t mean that they’re perfect, just that you see them clearly, flaws and all, and love them anyway. Karina was fierce and impetuous and stubborn—like someone else I know. I loved her for being the way she was, and sometimes I suffered for it, too.”

Freya pictured Jack’s face last night, when she’d told him she was only pretending. For a moment her bravado wavered. What if she had made a mistake? What if he had spent as miserable a night as she had? She looked down at her plate and fiddled with her toast crumbs. “And if you’d had a quarrel—a bad one, I mean—what did you do?”

“Apologized. Forgave each other. Made up.” He grinned suddenly. “That was the good bit.”

Freya smiled back. With exactly that expression he’d told her that he was sneaking out to a casino to try his luck, or that this time they were taking a boat from Venice airport, straight across the lagoon, instead of that dreary old bus.

Now he leaned toward her eagerly, forearms on his bony knees. “It’s so lovely to talk to you, darling. I wish I saw you more often. I was thinking of coming to New York in the autumn. I think I could wangle the fare out of one of those marvelous American endowment funds. I’d love it if we could spend some time together.”

Freya frowned. “It’ll be the auction season.”

“Not the whole autumn, surely.”

“I suppose Annabelle wants to do her Christmas shopping.”

“Actually, I rather thought I’d come alone. It’s you I want to see—if you can spare the time.”

His humility made Freya faintly ashamed. Part of her longed for them to be together, but it wasn’t that easy. She couldn’t allow it to be that easy. She glanced back at the photograph of her father on his wedding day. He had chosen his life, and she had chosen hers. That’s the way it was.

“Well, think about it.” Her father, suddenly brisk, hauled himself out of his chair. He peered farsightedly at his watch. “Ah. Just time to take Bedivere for a run.”

Freya noted the time with a fresh spasm of panic. The wedding was due to start in two hours. Where was Jack?

CHAPTER 28

The tide was going out. Each wave slurped up a mouthful of shingle, then sprayed it back onto the beach in an undulating line. Jack had no idea how long he’d been sitting here: long enough for the sea to gurgle out of rockpools, leaving giant black noodles of seaweed whose ammoniac reek made him gag; long enough for the sun to rise over the far shore of the estuary and stab its brightening rays into his eyeballs; long enough for him to have reached a decision.

He was leaving. As soon as the wedding began, he would sneak back up to the house, gather his belongings, and go. Freya would make up some kind of story to cover his departure; she was good at deceit.

He didn’t want to think about last night. He wasn’t particularly proud of his antics in the library with Tash. But he’d been drinking, and she had come on strong. Anyway, what did it matter? In a couple of hours she’d be married. As for Freya . . . If she didn’t want him—and last night she had made it clear that she didn’t—she could do without him altogether. It was too painful to continue with this absurd charade as her partner, especially during the festivities of a wedding. He felt wrung out, hungover, pushed about, let down, and fed up. He was going home.

Jack let his collection of stones trickle through his fingers and struggled unsteadily to his feet. Even this small effort brought beads of sweat to his forehead. His legs were leaden. His stomach felt as if it had been suction-pumped, then washed out with vinegar. “A man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty”: thank you, William Faulkner. Jack looked about for a shady spot where he could lie low and recover. Behind him rose the lush greenery of the garden through which he’d plunged, on a steep zigzag path, to escape the waking household. The house was invisible from here; he could no longer remember where exactly the path had emerged. Trudging back across the shingle, he took the first opening he saw.

The narrow track climbed steeply. Jack could see that it had once been much wider, with broad steps carved out of the soil and shored up with logs. But the logs had crumbled; the vegetation pressed close, closer, until he could barely discern the path. Jungly leaves batted his face; brambles scratched at his trousers. Tiny insects rose in clouds and settled on his skin. He was wondering whether to retrace his steps when he heard a crashing noise in the undergrowth, like the sound of a heavy beast. He paused. It was coming nearer. Were there wild boar in England? Jack quickened his pace. The crashing got louder; he could hear fierce panting. The path ended abruptly, and he found himself teetering on the brink of a ten-foot drop, overlooking some kind of sunken pit. Then a black Labrador burst out of a thicket and cantered toward him, tail waving, and a voice called, “Ah, well done. You’ve found Lethe’s Leap.”

Jack turned to see Freya’s father striding toward him, swinging a stout stick. The tilt of his head and his amused half-smile were so like Freya’s that Jack suffered a wrench of recognition.

“Named, of course, after the river of forgetfulness in the Greek underworld,” Guy continued. “One leapt in and forgot all one’s responsibilities and the conventions of decent behavior. Where you’re standing is effectively the diving board.”

Jack stared down at the rough rectangle of weeds edged with broken stone slabs. Comprehension dawned. “It’s a swimming pool!”

“
Was
is the operative word. I shouldn’t think it’s been used since the fifties. No doubt Freya’s told you the colorful story of Annabelle’s inheritance?”

Jack frowned. “Freya tells me nothing.”

“I know the feeling.” Guy gave a wistful sigh. “Never mind. I’ll fill you in while we walk back.” He paused, and added courteously, “Unless you have other plans?”

Jack was suddenly conscious of his disheveled appearance and the oddity of his presence here, alone. “No, I was just—”

“Splendid.”

Guy set off at a brisk pace along a curving track that took them out of the garden and up into wilder woodland. Jack loped alongside him, only half listening to Guy’s history of the house and the Ashleigh family who had owned it for centuries. He was trying to figure out how to avoid being shepherded back to the house and into a confrontation with Freya. But gradually the story claimed his attention.

It seemed that in the 1920s the house had passed into the ownership of Frederick “Fruity” Ashleigh, a “confirmed bachelor” with a taste for lithe young men, whom he imported in droves for house parties of legendary debauchery. “He’s the one who had the swimming pool built,” said Guy, “presumably as an excuse to get his young friends to take their clothes off. The locals claim that the sounds of gramophone music and popping champagne corks could be heard on the other side of the estuary.” Fruity’s particular friend was a young man twenty years his junior, known as Bunny—“one of these eccentric chaps, liked to paint the doves in rainbow colors and serve his horse tea in the drawing room, that sort of thing.” Guy’s tone seemed to imply that every English family contained such a figure as a matter of course. “The two of them set up house together, spending half the year in Cornwall and half in London. Despite spectacular quarrels and rampant infidelity on Bunny’s part they were a devoted pair, and when Fruity died childless he willed the house to Bunny.
Stop that, Bedivere!
” Jack winced as Guy roared at the dog, who was rolling luxuriously in a gooey mess of feathers. Bedivere slunk over to them apologetically. Jack’s stomach heaved at the ripe smell. Guy carried on blithely. “After Fruity’s death Bunny promptly took himself off to London, where he behaved very badly in Soho, by all accounts, and left the house to crumble. In due course he died himself—keeled over in a pub. Not being the most practical of men, he had failed to make a will. After a great many months and an extortionate legal bill, it transpired that his nearest living relative was Annabelle.”

“I see.” Jack’s head was pounding. He wanted to lie down. He didn’t care dick about the Ashleigh family, but it seemed polite to make a contribution to this conversation. “So, uh, Annabelle is no relation at all to the Ashleighs?”

“None whatsoever. She’s an army captain’s daughter from Suffolk, and I’m a vicar’s son from Berkshire: not a drop of blue blood between us. We met shortly after she inherited the house. Her husband was dead, she’d a small child to look after and hardly any money. She’d tried putting the house on the market, but no one would touch it. So in the end we decided to take it on together.”

They had now arrived at a stile leading into an open meadow that sloped steeply upward. Guy looked a little wobbly as he climbed over; Jack stood unobtrusively close, anxious that he might fall. But he seemed very fit for his age, capable of walking uphill and talking fluently at the same time. Jack sweated his way after him, making interested noises as Guy recounted their struggles to renovate the property. Most of their achievements, he insisted, were due to Annabelle; his own work had kept him in London and abroad for long periods. It was she who had fought for grants, badgered local craftsmen, learned about lime mortar and roof-slates, researched the history of the gardens and labored to restore them until she could open them to the fee-paying public. There was a Plant Shop and small cafe, which now brought a trickle of income. They rented fields to campers, wings of the house to Buddhists and writing groups, the chapel for weddings, outbuildings for parties. “I’m afraid we’re dreadful tarts. Have to be. The house is still a bit of a muddle, as I expect you’ve noticed.”

“No, no. It’s very . . .” Jack trailed off as he saw Guy’s eyebrows rise in a skeptical expression that was extremely familiar to him. He gave a sheepish smile. He liked this man. “It’s delightful,” he said firmly.

At last they reached the top of the hill and paused to catch their breath. A magnificent view unrolled in all directions. Behind them, the sea was now visible in a shimmering strip beyond the trees. Across the valley, the house lay tranquilly in a green pool of mown lawns. Immediately below them, snug in a wooded dip, was a small stone chapel in a neat enclosure of iron fencing. Jack could see figures bustling in and out, carrying flowers and cardboard boxes. He remembered the wedding, and turned back to catch the freshness of the sea breeze in his nostrils.

“Yes,” Guy mused, “the house should see us out.” He paused. “Goodness knows what Tash will do with it.”

The mention of Tash sharpened Jack’s attention. He wondered if Guy’s inconsequential ramblings masked a subtle intelligence at work. He had the sense of being drawn along by an invisible thread. “So all this goes to Tash,” he said slowly, “not Freya.”

“Yes. That’s a bit of a problem.”

Jack scuffed the grass with his shoe. In what way was it a problem? Did Guy suspect him of being a fortune-hunter—after Freya for her inheritance—and was trying to warn him off? The thought made him angry. His Madison pride rebelled at the implication that he could covet someone else’s money. Or was Guy suggesting that Freya was envious of Tash? Jack felt a flash of indignation. Surely Guy knew his own daughter better than that.

“I don’t think Freya’s interested in the house,” he said coolly.

“Good Lord! Neither do I. I only mean that I don’t like her to feel excluded. She’s not, of course. In fact, the boot’s on the other foot. She’s the one who stays away.” Guy sighed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Freya is rather an independent sort of person.” Jack’s mouth twisted. Yes, he had noticed. “She doesn’t like to be helped. She wouldn’t take any money from us when she went to New York—insisted on making her own way. She’s made herself very tough. It’s as if she fears things will be taken away from her unless she controls them herself.”