Song at Twilight (13 page)

"Well," she said, "I must be off now and find my little boy. I'm taking him out to lunch. So nice to have met you Miss Fishbourne." She laughed her silly, tinkling laugh again and was gone.

Although I suppose that good manners should really have prompted me to accompany her, I allowed her a moment or two to get away before leaving the sitting-room myself.

The first person I met as I made my way down the passage was one of the Spanish teachers with whom I was friendly.

"Good Lord, Prudence!" she exclaimed. "What on earth is the matter with you? You look as if you've seen a ghost. Are you feeling all right?"

I felt as if I had seen a ghost, too.

"You need a break," she went on. "Perhaps you need someone to talk to." She looked at her watch. "Come home with me," she said, "there'll be no one there. We can have a bite of lunch and a chat."

Her husband, who was a civil engineer and whom I didn't like very much, was away, but even so and although I was touched by her kindness, I didn't feel very much like accepting her invitation. I wanted to be alone, and I wanted the security and comfort of my own house.

*

Eric has been home for about ten days now and Laurel who has finished her exams has gone to London with a girlfriend to celebrate and to attend some, no doubt dreadful, pop concert.

Leo telephoned on Thursday to say that he is staying with his parents for a few days and would I come over for lunch.

So yesterday I went to lunch with Victor and Patricia. They are about to go on holiday but are in a shared fever of anguish about what Laurel will get up to while they are away. She refuses to accompany them to the Lake District and has renounced her own plans to go hitch-hiking on the Continent. She intends to spend the summer at home disseminating her new religion throughout the West Country and awaiting her exam results. She doesn't know what she is going to do after that.

Meanwhile Victor is persuaded that she will forget to feed the goldfish and that he will return from the North to find it floating, belly-up in a bowl of fetid water. He does not want to come home to that.

Patricia begs me to keep an eye on Laurel. I am the only person with any control over Laurel. The only one she will listen to.

I am not so sure about that.

Patricia doesn't count Eric because, with all due respect to me and to my own friendship with Eric, Patricia does not at all approve of his association with her daughter.

I wish we didn't have to talk about Eric and Laurel like that. It makes me feel uncomfortable.

After lunch Leo suggests that he and I and Pansy go for a walk. I am glad to get out of the house.

There is a pretty walk which takes us up the lane, through a wood, across a field and back through the churchyard. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it is a warm day.

Leo is in tremendously good form despite his father's attempts to cast him into a Stygian gloom.

"I've got this part in a film," he says as we walk. "It's a great part but I cannot discuss it in front of my parents. The very thought of it upsets Father even more than the prospect of finding a dead goldfish when he comes back from his ludicrous holiday."

Leo is walking with a spring in his step.

"What is it?" I ask eagerly, so happy to think that success may be coming his way at last.

It is absolutely wonderful this film. A contemporary adaptation of
La
Dame
aux
Camélias
in which the consumptive Marguerite Gautier is replaced by an AIDS-stricken boy called Martin and played by Leo. The part of Armand Duval is to be taken by a great star. Leo names a really famous actor.

Filming starts next month on location in Romney Marsh where Martin and Armand are living out their country idyll. Leo is very, very excited. It is hardly surprising that he can talk of little else for most of the duration of our walk. After all I cannot remember when Leo was last in work and nothing he has ever done yet has been remotely important. He has had the occasional walk-on part in a television play, but nothing more.

I rejoice for Leo and, somewhat maliciously, laugh to myself at the prospect of Victor's discomfort. He, I know, will find it very difficult to hold up his head in his office when it becomes known that his son is playing a homosexual hero in a feature film.

"Do you think your father will ever see the film?" I ask Leo.

"Good Lord, no!" Leo exclaims. "He will never dare."

"Poor Victor," I say, "he should be delighted by your success."

"Mother's no better," says Leo. "She is so upset because she thinks I'm forever and ever doomed to be type-cast as a beautiful young man." He twists his body dramatically and flings back his head. "Which is of course exactly what I am. An amazingly beautiful young man." He laughs almost hysterically.

Suddenly he becomes serious and quite changes the tone of the conversation.

Then we were walking through a wide green field where a herd of lazy brown and white cows stretched out their long necks and swayed their heads from side to side as they gazed at us with mild curiosity. Pansy trotted along at my heels, too old and too wise now to care about cows.

"I think someone ought to speak to Laurel," Leo said, "before she does anything too, too drastically silly."

I wonder what he means.

"She is," he says, "potty, quite potty about that old man of yours."

"What old man of mine?" I replied foolishly and indignantly.

"Your Eric," he said.

"Hardly
my
Eric," I replied tartly.

"Oh come along dear Auntie…" Leo said, "
plus
ça
change
…," and he jumped, elfin-like, over a small branch blown down from some tree, which lay in his path.

"Last time it was you and me and Timothy," he said. "You and me and Timothy, and I suppose Marietta; and now it's you and Laurel and Eric.
Plus
ça
change
…
plus
ça
change
…," he chanted.

"Come along Pansy," I said sharply, turning to look at my dog. "I don't know what you mean," I said rather savagely, "about you and me and Timothy. Nor do I see what Timothy and Laurel and Eric can possibly have to do with one another."

"Ah, but I can," Leo sighed languidly. "And of course, if you are honest with yourself, you too will see what I mean."

I honest with myself? I have always prided myself on being honest with myself. I have, as I have already explained, done my best throughout my life to be honest with myself, to examine my motives and to understand my actions.

At a remarkably early age I recognised the role which I was destined to play in life. It is not an exciting one but I have done all I can to adapt to it, to face up to it and to be content with it and yet there I was, only yesterday afternoon, being confronted by my nephew with the suggestion that I delude myself.

"Now come on, Leo," I said, half humorously, half sharply, "I am not the kind of person who goes around fooling herself. I hardly think you can accuse me of that."

"Don't be offended," said Leo, taking hold of my hand and giving it a friendly squeeze. "But do avow that you were a tinsy-winsy-winsy bit in love with Timothy." Then he added, "I certainly was and, what is more, I owned up at the time."

I didn't know where to look and yet as he spoke I admitted to myself for perhaps the very first time that although I could not have been really, truly in love with Timothy since he was only a child then and I was an adult woman, well into middle age, I had perhaps been bordering on that condition. Suddenly I was quite indignant. I had not felt about Timothy the way I now feel about Eric. Surely not.

And then I was overcome with embarrassment. What on earth was I doing having such a conversation as this with Leo? What was my private life to do with him? And why was he still holding my hand?

I disentangled my hand and quickened my pace. We were about to enter the churchyard and would soon be back at the house.

"You shouldn't be so embarrassed/' said Leo, turning and walking backwards so that he could look straight at me.

"If you walk backwards like that, you'll fall over and hurt yourself," I said as though I were talking to a child.

"Well, let's forget Timothy for the moment," said Leo, still walking backwards. "Let's forget his beautiful green eyes and his golden hair and his whole sweet self and let's think about Eric instead." He laughed. "He's quite good-looking you know." Then he added cruelly, "and your age-group too, for a change."

As soon as he had spoken he regretted what he had said, rushed to my side and put both arms round me.

"Darling Auntie," he said, "that was beastly. I'm so, so sorry." And he planted an awkward wet kiss on my cheek.

I pushed him away crossly.

"Come on Leo," I said, "stop being so silly and let's get on with our walk."

But he insisted. He had to talk about Eric and Laurel. He knew that I loved Eric. Of course I did not admit as much but I wondered how on earth he had guessed.

"It's perfectly obvious that you love Eric," he said. "It's obvious from the way you talk about him and from the way you behave when he's around."

I did not demean myself to enquire exactly how I behave when Eric is around which in any way differs from how I behave when he is not around.

"It is also perfectly obvious that Laurel is equally in love with Eric. She is quite, quite besotted about him."

I cannot say that I cared for the comparison between myself and Laurel.

'What on earth Eric feels about Laurel, I have no idea," said Leo.

We were walking through the churchyard by then.

"Perhaps he loves her too," he went on. "Stranger things have happened. Stranger things indeed." He slipped his hand through my arm and said, "Please don't be cross with me. You see I am on your side this time. Really on your side. Laurel is a reckless girl. She would do anything. Anything. I just wanted to warn you that's all, because you see I'm fond of you and I would like you to be happy."

We walked on for a moment in silence until we came out at the other side of the churchyard into the village street.

Then Leo said, "You know neither of us behaved particularly well last time."

"I don't know why you should say that," I snapped. But I did really, and for the first time I felt a little ashamed and also suddenly amazed by Leo's honesty with himself. From start to finish, throughout the whole Timothy episode, he had never denied his motives, however vile. And at times they had certainly been vile.

"Anyway, this time it's all different," he said. "This time you're going to be happy and I'll see to it. Last time we were responsible for what happened. Entirely responsible. Both of us. Well, let's just be responsible again. After all, this time it's in a better cause." He turned to look at me. "You have to admit that."

I would admit nothing.

"Well, if you refuse to talk to Laurel, I shall have to take the child in hand, though I sometimes doubt that she has a proper respect for her brother," he said.

By the time we reached the house, Leo was talking about prisoners of conscience.

How he got on to them, I have no idea. In any case I was barely listening to what he was saying. I was thinking about Eric. And missing him. Laurel, I thought, was not really a problem.

Leo doesn't know about Morag. 

Chapter 13

July 3rd

On Saturday night I lay awake for hours going over and over in my mind what Leo had said.

I was and am still quite appalled by his suggestion that I was 'in love' with Timothy, a suggestion which I regard as totally absurd although I do admit, and always have done, that I was exceptionally fond of him. A little fonder even than I should have been. But 'in love'? No. That cannot be right.

For the past few months I have been writing this memoir as much as anything in order to sort out my emotions about Timothy and somehow to put the whole episode into perspective. As I say, I have never denied my fondness for Timothy, a fondness which probably prevented me from seeing things in proportion at the time.

Afterwards I tried to put the whole matter out of my mind although I know that it was and always has been there, never far from the surface of my consciousness. To think about it was to induce sleepless nights, embarrassment, hurt, humiliation. But in the quiet of my retirement cottage, I decided that the time had come to put the record straight. Did I behave as I should have done at the time? If not, where did I go wrong? I sometimes feel slightly uncomfortable at the memory of my responsibility for the part played by Leo, but I did then think that I was only acting for Timothy's good. Perhaps, indeed, I have nothing to reproach myself with.

Be that as it may, the writing has clearly been cathartic as, until Saturday when Leo started talking to me about being 'in love', I have been feeling so much better about the whole incident, almost as though it didn't really matter to me anymore.

Until Leo turned up with his rude reminders of the past, it was as though it only ever existed in my imagination. It had at least, or so I thought, lost its power to hurt.

Perhaps my new life, the move away from the school with all its associations and my friendship with Eric have all played a part in truly relegating my anxieties about Timothy to the past.

And yet, that night as I lay in bed, thinking of my walk with Leo, the whole thing once again began to assume gigantic proportions in my mind so that for the time being, I even forgot to worry about Eric and Morag.

Of course Morag is still safely in Canada at the moment. Long may she remain there.

*

The very next day after Mrs Hooper came to Blenkinsop's I was taking Pansy for a run around an icy rugby pitch when I met Timothy and Natalie. It was a Sunday morning and Pansy, who was a good deal younger then and who has always liked the cold weather, was bounding along ahead of me.

As I walked, my thoughts were entirely concerned with Timothy. I could not imagine how he would possibly pass any exams at all if he left school in the middle of the 'O' level year. His mother was behaving in a very irresponsible fashion, and, as for his father, he apparently showed no interest whatsoever in his son's education.

Timothy, I knew, would hate to live with his mother all the time and I wondered how he would react to her sudden decision to remove him from the school.

I wondered too in what way I would be able to help him and how I could manage to get up to London often enough to keep an eye on him. As for Leo keeping an eye on him – well, that hardly seemed suitable to me.

So I was thinking along these lines when suddenly there was Timothy walking towards me across the frozen grass with Natalie at his side.

My heart missed a beat and I felt myself grow very tense. They must have seen me, and within a moment or two we would come face to face with each other and someone would have to say something.

Timothy stopped in front of me and stood there looking at me solemnly from under a red-gold lock of hair. Natalie stood two steps behind him. She had bright red gloves on and the tips of her fingers only were stuck into her blazer pockets. She wore an extraordinarily tight skirt and had wound round her neck a long, long scarf striped with every colour of the rainbow. She just stood there with one knee bent and stared at me coldly.

There was a slight pause before I said, brightly,

"Hello you two," and then added fatuously. "Out for a nice walk then?"

Natalie said nothing.

Timothy seemed to put his shoulders back and raise his chin.

"You have been talking to my mother," he said in an angry voice. "You had no business to talk to my mother…"

"Timothy!" I tried to interrupt him to say that it was his mother who had asked to see me, not the other way round, but he went on speaking.

"You and Leo," he said, "between you, you have done nothing but interfere. And between you, you have tried to wreck my life, and all because you are both jealous of my friendship with Natalie."

I was appalled at what I heard and opened my mouth to interrupt again, but no words came out and Natalie still stood there staring.

"And now," he went on, "just when I'm happy, my mother plans to take me away from here and away from Natalie. She wants me to live with her as a live bait for Leo. And it's all your fault."

I could not believe that Timothy was talking to me like that. Surely he must have known that I, who had cared so much for him, would never act without having his best interests at heart. 

The idea that I had connived with Leo was quite preposterous. I wanted to put out my hand and touch him, to wipe the anger from his face.

'Timothy,' I said, "I love you, how could I want to 'wreck your life'?"

Natalie's lip curled in a sneer.

"I used to think you were quite decent," said Timothy, reverting to a childish idiom. "But I was wrong. And my mother needn't think I'm going to do what she wants because I'm not." He half turned towards Natalie, jerked his head in an uncharacteristically arrogant fashion, and said,

"Come on Natalie, we're going." And they both turned and walked away without another word, leaving me there on the frosty grass with my mouth hanging open.

All I could think as they strode away, was how magnificent Timothy looked when angry, with his shoulders back and his green eyes flashing.

When they had gone I began to worry about the incident and decided that before the end of term I must see Timothy alone. He and I had some talking to do.

The following day, which must have been a Monday and only a week or ten days before the end of term, I was suddenly called out of class in the middle of the morning to see the headmaster. I could not imagine what on earth he could want me for so urgently.

This time he was not in his sitting-room, but in his office and he had abandoned his suave social manner for a more formidable, dominating one.

"Come in and sit down, Prudence," he said curtly, as I entered the office.

I sat down in the chair he indicated which faced his desk and he sat at the desk, leaned back in his swivel chair, crossed his legs, folded his arms, put his head back and stared at me hard and in silence for a moment or two. This, I supposed, was the treatment which he gave to recalcitrant teenagers. I felt somewhat indignant. I was no recalcitrant teenager, but a respected member of staff. 

"So what,' he eventually enquired, "precisely what do you know about the whereabouts of Timothy Hooper and Natalie Knight?"

I was completely taken by surprise.

What, I wondered, should I know about their whereabouts? As far as I was concerned they were probably attending some class or other. Or perhaps the approach of the Christmas holidays had made them think that they could begin to slack off. If so they were making a great mistake and would surely find themselves in trouble.

"So you haven't heard," said the headmaster, leaning forward now with his left fore-arm on the desk, and with his right hand holding the corner of his spectacles as he glared over them stilly at me.

"Heard what?" I asked.

"I am amazed that you should be the last to hear," he said settling back in his chair again. "I had imagined that you might have been able to help." He looked very angry.

"I have no idea what you are talking about," I said, getting angry myself. Neither had I any idea why he continued to treat me as a recalcitrant pupil.

"Well then, I had better tell you," he said, removing his spectacles and twirling them around in the air with affected nonchalance.

He was beginning to annoy me.

"If you go on doing that you'll break those spectacles," I wanted to say. But I held my tongue.

"Timothy and Natalie have run away," the headmaster announced. "They were discovered this morning to be missing, but on further investigation it transpires that they were seen boarding a train yesterday afternoon. We have of course contacted both Mrs Hooper and Mrs Knight. They have heard nothing and are quite understandably deeply distressed."

The headmaster paused and then, with his middle finger and his thumb, he slowly and carefully moved a stone paperweight which lay on his desk, a fraction of an inch.

"You, Prudence," he said, "were seen talking to Timothy Hooper and Natalie Knight on the rugby pitch at 10.30 a.m. yesterday morning. What was the subject of your conversation?”

I was amazed at the headmaster's impudence.

"They were not so foolish as to tell me that they were planning to run away," I said.

"I asked you," he said, moving the paperweight another quarter of an inch, "what was the subject of your conversation."

I could have lost my temper, but decided instead to say, "Timothy told me that he was beginning to be happy at school and that he did not want to leave. I assumed that he intended to persuade his mother to allow him to stay here."

The headmaster had to believe me, and in effect, what I had told him was the truth.

Nothing more was heard about the whereabouts of Timothy and Natalie that term. Rumours flew around the school proclaiming that they had gone to Gretna Green or America or Bali, but in fact no one ever discovered where they were.

The headmaster was very, very angry indeed particularly when a tabloid newspaper printed a double page spread on 'how top people learn about sex at exclusive (£2000 a term) public school'. No doubt he was initially charmed and lulled into a false sense of security by the bright young girl who had been asked to do a piece for the woman's page of her newspaper.

As a result of all the drama and of the uncertainty which surrounded Timothy's and Natalie's disappearance, an atmosphere of impending doom hung over the school for what remained of that term.

The police came and almost everyone who had spoken to Natalie or Timothy during the last weeks was questioned. No one knew anything. Only Natalie's mother had received a card from her daughter, posted at the station on the Sunday she left. Apparently it merely said something along the lines of 'Don't worry, we are all right and will be in touch soon.' That was all. They both had a little bit of money which they had taken out of their banks, so they might have gone almost anywhere.

Leo telephoned me, distraught, but I had nothing to tell him, nor did he have anything to tell me. 

Eventually the term ground to a close and we all dispersed for Christmas with an immense feeling of relief.

Which is not to say that I didn't continue to worry myself sick about what had become of Timothy. I dreamed of him at night and, by day, could forever see him in my mind's eye as I had seen him on that last Sunday morning, striding angrily away from me across the frozen rugby field.

It was some time before I discovered what eventually became of him.

And still to this day the vision of him striding across that rugby field with Natalie at his side is as vivid to me as it was then.

*

Eric and I have been having a lovely time for the past two weeks. We have seen each other nearly every day and have enjoyed a variety of outings. Picnics, walks, concerts. We even went to the cinema one evening.

Despite his gloomy prognoses, his garden is overflowing with vegetables and I have bought a cookery book full of wonderful ideas for serving peas and beans and fresh young spinach.

We have been very happy and are strangely relaxed in each other's company. I have even come to treasure the inevitable soothing clichés, and no longer mind how slowly he eats.

The weather has been fine and we have sat on the beach or in each other's gardens admiring the birds, the butterflies and the flowers. It has been a very peaceful time interrupted only occasionally by Laurel barging in with pamphlets about her new religion in which God walks the earth masquerading as an okapi or some such nonsense.

Why an okapi? I haven't bothered to ask her as I have no time for such gibberish. But Eric is so kind that he listens to her patiently and gently advises her that her religion is not really likely to take a hold despite the fact that she spends all day pushing advertisements for it under the wipers of the cars in all the town car parks. 

I am surprised at Eric's patience with Laurel who has been told by Leo to stop making such a nuisance of herself. Sometimes I do still wonder if he hasn't a slightly indelicate weakness for her. But that seems impossible so I try to put the idea out of my mind and I like to think instead that perhaps Eric is kind to Laurel out of deference to me. After all I am beginning to think that Eric must be quite fond of me. If he isn't he would surely not want to spend so many hours in my company.