Permissible Limits (30 page)

‘
I hope they’re OK,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, they’re going back.’

I drove Jamie to the nursery. The azaleas were part of a big display in a cavernous growing house around the back, and he left me to make my choice while he inspected a stand of young saplings in the yard outside. Having a tree surgeon at Mapledurcombe was already proving an unexpected bonus. Not only had Jamie pruned our modest stock of fruit trees but he also had plans for something exotic to soften the view as our guests turned in at the front gate. In this respect, Jamie was an odd mixture - enormously capable, fearlessly hands-on, yet sensitive as well, with an almost feminine eye for colour and texture. To find such delicacy in someone so young was, in my experience, practically unheard of, though Andrea - as usual -had a blunter way of putting it. ‘He’s a hunk,’ she said. ‘He’s practically bloody edible.’

While I signed the bill and gossiped with the woman who ran the nursery, Jamie carried the trays of azaleas to the estate car. It was lunchtime, still gloriously sunny, and I was starving.

‘
Let’s have a pub lunch,’ I suggested. ‘My treat.’

We went to a place I knew near Arreton. We ordered salads at the bar and sat outside at one of the garden tables. The tables were hard up against the back wall of the pub and I could feel the warmth of the bricks through my T-shirt. We talked about Mapledurcombe for a bit and Jamie told me how much he was enjoying it. Early on, he’d tested the relationship between myself and Andrea and he knew he could trust me with the odd indiscretion. Like the afternoon Andrea had suggested they both try out the newly filled swimming pool, only to insist on a lengthy back rub in the gazebo afterwards. Given that Andrea was nearly twice his age, Jamie could easily have been quite unkind about her but he brought a wry sense of affection to the telling of each tale, and I liked that. He had immense patience, as well as a thousand and one other virtues, and when he departed for another round of drinks I found myself marvelling at how much he resembled his grandfather.

Ralph, oddly enough, was the name on his lips when he came back. He passed me my orange split. He was on Stella.

‘
He asked me to give you a message,’ he said. ‘I think it’s to do with that money he sent you.’

I felt a rush of instant guilt. I’d been meaning to return the cheque he’d sent over. I was eternally grateful for the gesture but just now money was the least of my problems. He must have the £5,000 back.

‘
He won’t take it.’ Jamie shook his head. ‘I know he won’t.’

‘
Why not?’

‘
Well, that’s the point really. I don’t quite know how to put this.’

For once, he looked embarrassed. I sipped my drink, letting him take his time, only too aware of how little I’d seen of Ralph recently. He’d come to the memorial service, of course, and back to the house afterwards, but most of the time he’d been locked in conversation with Harald and I hadn’t had the chance for a proper chat. One of the things I badly wanted to say was thank you. His introduction to Douglas, the miracle vicar, had been invaluable.

‘
It’s about flying,’ Jamie ventured at last. ‘He seems to think it might interest me.’

I looked at Jamie. We were sitting side by side on the wooden bench.

‘
And is he right?’

‘
Yes, definitely.’

‘
And?’

Jamie was blushing now, or at least I think he was. He had a wonderful complexion, weather-roughened, bursting with vitality, and it was hard to tell.

‘
Well…’ he began to trace the grain of the table with his forefinger, ‘… he thought that if you had no better use for the money, then maybe…’ he glanced sideways, ‘… you might teach me how to fly. He seemed to think that might make it easier for you. You know, tendering a service and all that.’

I nodded. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Why had it taken this gentle, unassuming youth to voice something that - God knows -Ralph might have intended all along?

‘
I’m thick,’ I said. ‘I’m really stupid. Of course I’ll teach you to fly.’

‘
You will?’

‘
Yes, it’ll be a pleasure. Strictly speaking, I’m not supposed to, but no one need know. My first pupil. When do you want to start?’

Jamie was grinning now. I could see the child in him, the young kid waking up on Christmas Day to a sackful of presents.

‘
You mean that?’

‘
Of course I do. We’ll have to use the Moth but that’s no problem. In fact it’s a bonus. Real pilots learn on tail-draggers. Spam cans are for wimps.’

‘
Spam cans?’

‘
Modern planes. Nose-wheel jobs. Tomahawks. Cessnas. I picked up the phrase from Adam, actually. He’s the one who taught me.’

‘
To fly?’

‘
Yes. And we used the Moth. Not mine. That came later. He borrowed one from someone or other, and just told me to get on with it.’

‘
And what was it like?’

‘
Brilliant. Wonderful. Life wasn’t so great at the time and it was just what I needed. Clever man, my husband.’

I found myself telling Jamie about our time up in Aberdeen, and those dark, cold, everlasting months when Adam flew away to Africa. He was a good listener, one of Ralph’s gifts again, and at his prompting I carried the story forward to our early days on the Isle of Wight and the tumbledown manor house that was to become Mapledurcombe. The list of things we’d had to do, first to the house and then to Adam’s precious aeroplanes, fascinated Jamie. He wanted to know more. He wanted details. How had we fixed the roof? Why hadn’t we gone for solar heating? Whose idea had it been to terrace the garden? I fed his curiosity as best I could, salting the raw information with little anecdotes, and the longer the conversation went on, the stranger the experience became.

It was like opening the door to a long-forgotten boxroom, somewhere way up in the eaves, somewhere remote and unvisited and somehow no longer part of me. One or two of the memories I was sharing with Jamie were - at most - a couple of years old, but already they seemed to belong to another life. The events of the last month or so - Adam’s death, the visits to Jersey, Steve Liddell and Michelle La Page - had fenced me off from the marriage that had kept me so secure. I was someone else now. I was out on my own. The past, though busy and colourful and full of incident, was no longer of the slightest relevance.

It was late afternoon by the time we left the pub. On the long valley road down to Shorwell, Jamie touched me lightly on the arm. He’d had at least four pints of Stella.

‘
Do you mind me asking you something?’ he said.

‘
Not at all.’

‘
Do you regret not having children, you know, now Adam’s gone?’

I thought hard about the question. In reality, of course, having kids was a non-starter. But say I hadn’t had a problem? Say I was as fertile as the next woman? What then?

‘
I’d have loved children,’ I said. ‘And so would Adam.’

‘
But it never happened?’

‘
No.’ I glanced across at him. ‘We tried and tried but you’re right. It never happened. There was a reason. I won’t bore you.’ Jamie shook his head.

‘
I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was none of my business.’

‘
That’s OK.’ I was still thinking of the countless monthly waits, the endless disappointments. ‘We might have adopted but I don’t think it would have been the same somehow. Adam wasn’t the adopting kind. Neither was I. We were too selfish, I suppose. And in too deep.’

‘
Into what?’

‘
The house. The business. Each other. And the planes, of course. They all take time. And energy…’ I trailed off. Jamie was still looking at me, still waiting.

‘
But you loved him,’ he said at last.

It was more a statement than a question. I sensed he wanted me to say yes. I sensed he wanted whatever image he had of us as a couple to be confirmed. It seemed to matter to him. A lot.

‘
Adam’s dead,’ I said simply.

‘
But you loved him.’

‘
Yes, I loved him.’

‘
And he loved you back.’

The phrase made me smile. It was so sweet, so innocent. Who knows, I thought, maybe he’s right. Maybe Adam really had loved me back. Maybe the other adventures - Michelle, God knows who else - belonged in some other bit of his body, not in his heart at all. Maybe he was one of those emotional junkies you read about in magazines, addicted to risk, determined to pile all their chips ever so briefly on a single number. Not because it matters, or because there’s any real affection, but simply for the thrill of it. Thrills had certainly figured near the top of Adam’s list of priorities. Of that, I was absolutely certain.

Jamie was talking about his own mother. Her name was Ruth. His father’s name was Gordon. He’d been the only child. The marriage, superficially so calm, so stable, had been shattered one winter afternoon by the arrival at the front door of another woman, a gypsy-looking creature, dark-skinned, vivacious and very, very angry. With her was a child, a little girl. She’d had long blonde curls, Jamie said, and he remembered the badge pinned to the chest of her dungarees. Comic Relief.

‘
So who was she? This child?’ I was still thinking about Adam.

‘
My sister.’ He corrected himself. ‘My half-sister. Her name was Angelika.’

‘
And the woman?’

‘
My father’s mistress. They lived about a mile away. I must have passed the house a million times on my way to school. My dad was a travelling salesman. He repped for a pharmaceuticals company. He was always on the road.’

‘
And you never knew?’

‘
Never had a clue. He’d been leading two lives all the time. One with us. One with them.’

‘
So how old were you? When all this happened?’ ‘Sixteen.’

‘
Sixteen?
As recent as that?’ Jamie forced a smile.

‘
It seems yonks ago,’ he said. ‘Some other life. Do you know what I mean?’

He looked across at me, plaintive, and I nodded, only too aware of the tricks a sudden shock like this can play with time. Then I thought about Ralph and the story he’d told me about his own wife. The American flyer she’d lost in the B-17 crash and the affair she’d had with another American much later. Betrayal’s a gene, I thought, passed down from generation to generation.

I could see the turning for Mapledurcombe way up ahead. I slowed the car.

‘
What happened to your mother?’ I asked.

‘
She committed suicide.’

‘
She
killed
herself?’

‘
Yes. She said she was going to London. I remember her leaving for the station. It was raining that morning. Tipping it down.’

He shuddered and I pulled the car to a halt. Minutes later, in my arms, he was still crying. At length, I gave him a tissue and he dried his eyes. I was half-expecting embarrassment, some kind of apology, but he just sat bolt upright in the passenger seat, staring ahead.

‘
Funny,’ he said at last, ‘I half-thought Grandad might have told you.’

‘
He didn’t.’ I took his hand, squeezing it softly. Jamie cleared his throat and then shook his head several times as if he was trying to dislodge the memories.

‘
She jumped in front of the train,’ he said, ‘She was in pieces.’

‘
You had to identify her?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Where was your father?’

‘
He’d left. He’d run away. He couldn’t cope.’ I could hear the bitterness, the raw anger, in his voice. ‘Bastard sneaked back months later for his suits and his pipe. Can you believe that?’

‘
What about the other woman? And the little girl?’

‘
He left them, too.’ He nodded slowly, his mouth a thin, tight line across his face.

I wound down the window. I could hear skylarks and - much further away - the drone of a circling aircraft.

‘
And you were sixteen,’ I said quietly.

‘
Yeah, going on six.’ He looked at me at last, then down at his hand as if it didn’t belong to him. His fingers tightened between mine.

‘
I’ve never told anyone that. That’s a first. I’m sorry.’

‘
Don’t be.’