The Carousel (8 page)

"No. As a matter of fact, I was meant to be going to Scotland."

"Scotland? For heaven's sake, what were you going to do there?"

"Stay with people."

"Have you ever been to Scotland?"

"No. Have you?"

"Once. Everybody kept telling me how beautiful it was, but it rained so hard that I never found out if they were telling the truth or not." He took another mouthful of pasty. "Who were you going to stay with?"

"Friends."

"You're being cagey, aren't you? You might as well tell me all, because I'll just go on asking questions until you give me some answers. It's a boyfriend, isn't it?"

I would not look at him. "Why should it be?"

"Because you're far too attractive not to have some man languishing with love for you. And you've got the most extraordinary expression on your face. Confused nonchalance."

"I'm sure that's a contradiction of terms."

"What's he called?"

"Who?"

"Oh, stop being coy. The boyfriend, of course." "Nigel Gordon."

"Nigel. Nigel's one of my most unfavourite names." "It's no worse than Daniel."

"It's a wet name. Timothy's a wet name, too. So is Jeremy. And Christopher. And Nicholas." "Nigel is not wet." "What is he, then?" "Nice."

"What does he do?"

"He's an insurance broker."

"And he comes from Scotland?"

"Yes. His family lives there. In Inverness-shire."

"What a frightfully good thing you didn't go. You'd have hated it. A great unhealed house, with bedrooms cold as refrigerators and baths encased in mahogany, like coffins."

I said, "Daniel, you make more ridiculous sweeping statements than any man I've ever met."

"You won't marry him, will you, this Highland insurance broker? Please don't. I can't bear the thought of you in kilts and living in Inverness-shire."

I very nearly laughed but managed to keep a prim face. "I wouldn't be living in Inverness-shire. I'd be living in Nigel's desirable residence in South Kensington." I threw what remained of my pasty to the gulls and helped myself to an apple, rubbing it to a shine on the sleeve of my sweater. "And I wouldn't have to work, either. I wouldn't have to go trudging off to Marcus Bernstein's every morning. I could be a lady of leisure, with time to do all I want to do, which is paint. And it wouldn't matter if nobody bought my pictures, because my husband would be there, ready and willing to pay all the bills."

He said, "I thought you thought like Phoebe. I'm disillusioned."

"Perhaps sometimes I think like my mother. She likes life to be neat and squared off and conventional and safe. She adores Nigel. She's longing for me to marry him. She can't wait to start planning a wedding. St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and a reception in Pavilion Road . . ."

"And a honeymoon at Budleigh Salterton, with the golf clubs in the boot of the car. Prue, you can't be serious."

I took a great bite of the shiny apple. "I might be."

"Not about a man called Nigel."

I was beginning to feel irritated. "You know nothing about him. And anyway, what's so bad about getting married? You think the world of Phoebe, you thought the world of Chips. But, you know, they would have been married, years ago, if only Chips could have gotten a divorce. But he couldn't. So they compromised, and made the very best of their life together."

"I don't think there's anything wrong in getting married. I just think it's insane to get married to the wrong person."

"I suppose you've never made that mistake."

"No, as a matter of fact, I haven't. I've done just about everything else. Made every other sort of mistake, but getting married wasn't one of them." He appeared to be considering this state of affairs. "Never even thought about it, as a matter of fact."

He smiled at me, and I smiled back, because for no particular reason I was filled with gladness, simply because he had never married. And yet I was not surprised. There was something nomadic, free, about Daniel, and I found I was envious of this.

I said, "I wish there was time in life to do everything."

"You've got time."

"I know, but already I seem to be in a sort of rut. I like the rut. I like my job and I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I love Marcus Bernstein, and I wouldn't change my job for anything in the world. But sometimes, on a certain sort of morning, I drive to work, and I think, I'm twenty-three and what am I doing with my life? And I think of all the places I long to see. Kashmir and the Bahamas and Greece, and Palmyra. And San Francisco, and Peking and Japan. I would like to have been to some of the places you've been to."

"Then go. Go now."

"You make it sound so simple."

"It can be. Life is as simple as you make it."

"Perhaps I haven't got that sort of courage. But still, I would like to have done some of the things you've done."

He laughed. "Don't wish that. Some of it was hell." "It can't still be hell. Everything's going so well for you now."

"Uncertainty is always hell." "What are you uncertain about?" "About what I'm going to do next."

"That shouldn't be too frightening."

"I'm thirty-one. Within the next twelve months I've got to make some sort of a decision; I'm frightened of drifting. I don't want to drift for the rest of my life."

"What do you want to do?"

"I want . . ."

He leaned back against the knobby granite of the harbour wall and turned his face to the sun and closed his eyes. He looked like a man who longed for the oblivion of sleep. "When this exhibition at Peter Chastal's is over and finished with, I want to go to Greece. There's an island called Spetsai, and on Spetsai there is a house, square and white as a sugar cube. And there's a terrace with terra cotta tiles on the floor, and geraniums in pots along the tops of the wall. And below the terrace there's a mooring and a boat with a white sail like the wing of a gull. Not a big boat. Just large enough for two." I waited. He opened his eyes. He said, "I think I shall go there."

"Do that thing."

"Would you come?" He held out his hand to me. "Would you like to come and visit me? You just told me you wanted to go to Greece. Would you come and let me show you some of its glories?"

I was very touched. I laid my hand in his and felt his fingers close about my wrist. How different this was, how frighteningly different, from the invitation Nigel had painfully offered me, to visit his mother in Inverness-shire. Two different worlds. The insecurity of two different worlds touching. I wondered if I was about to burst into tears. 

"One day," I told him, in the voice of a mother placating an insistent child. "One day, maybe, I'll be able to come."

The sky clouded and it grew cold. It was time to stir ourselves. We gathered up the picnic rubbish and found a little bin by a lamp post, and threw all the trash into that. We walked back to where I had left Phoebe's car, and there was the smell of rain in the air and the sea had turned angry and leaden.

Red sky at morning, shepherd's warning. We got into the car and slowly drove back to Penmarron. Phoebe's heater did not work, and I felt cold. I knew that there would be a fire ablaze at Holly Cottage, and possibly crumpets for tea, but I wasn't thinking about these things. My mind was filled with images of Greece, of the house above the water and the boat with a sail like the wing of a gull. I thought of swimming in that dark Aegean sea, the water warm and clear as glass . . .

Memory stirred.

"Daniel."

"What is it?"

"That night I got off the train from London, I had a dream. It was about swimming. I was on a desert island, and I had to walk a long long way through shallow water. And then all at once it was deep, but so clear I could see right to the bottom. And once I had started to swim, there was a current. Very fast and strong. It was like being swept down a river."

I remembered again the sensation of peace, of blissful acceptance.

"What happened then?"

"Nothing. But it was nice."

"Sounds a good dream. What brought it to mind?" "I was thinking about Greece. Swimming in Homer's wine-dark seas."

"All dreams have meaning." "I know."

"What do you think that one signified?"

I told him, "I thought perhaps it was about dying."

But that was before Daniel had come into my life. Now I was wiser, and I knew that the dream was not about dying at all but loving.

When we got back to Holly Cottage, there was no sign of Phoebe. The firelit sitting room was empty, and when I called up the stair, thinking that perhaps she had spent the whole day in her bed, there was no reply.

But sounds of clashing crockery and opening drawers came from the kitchen. I went down the hall with Daniel behind me to open the door and investigate, only to discover Lily Tonkins engaged in whisking up a bowl of batter.

"You're back then," she said. She did not look too pleased to see us, and I wondered if she was in one of her cross moods. Lily could get very cross. Not with us in particular but just with the world in general, which included her morose husband, the cheeky girl who worked in the grocer's, and the man in the town hall who dealt with Lily's pension.

"Where's Phoebe?" I asked.

Lily did not look up from her task. "Gone down to the water."

"I hoped she'd stay in bed today."

"Stay in bed?" Lily set down the bowl with a thump and faced me with her arms akimbo. "Some chance she's had of staying in bed. We've had that little Charlotte Collis here all day, ever since ten o'clock this morning. I'd just taken Miss Shackleton a nice cup of tea and was polishing up the brasses when I heard a ring at the bell. Dratted nuisance, I said to myself, and went to the door, and there she was. And been here ever since."

"Where's Mrs. Tolliver?"

"Gone over to Falmouth for some meeting—Save the Children or Save the Church or something. Seems funny to me. I mean, I can understand some people don't like looking after children. There are some that do and some that don't. But she's that little girl's granny. No business to be up and about all the time, playing cards and saving things. Somebody's got to look after the little girl."

"Where's Mrs. Curnow?"

"Betty Curnow, she's there all right, up at White Lodge, but she's got her own work to do. Mrs. Tolliver can't be bothered to look after the child, then she should pay some other person to do the job."

"So what happened?"

"Well, I let her in, poor little soul, and I said Miss Shackleton was still in bed and you were out, gone for lunch. So she went up the stairs to see Miss Shackleton, and I heard them talking together. Talk, talk, you'd think that child had never had a soul to talk to the way she carries on when she's here. Then she came down, the little girl, and said Miss Shackleton was getting up and getting dressed. And that vexed me because I knew she needed a good rest. So I went up and gave her a hand with her clothes, and then down she came and phoned Betty Curnow and said that we were keeping Charlotte here and giving her lunch. Luckily there was a bit of cold lamb, and I peeled a few potatoes and made a custard, but it's not right Miss Shackleton being landed with the child to take care of, and her with that bad arm and everything." 

I had never seen Lily so loquacious or upset. She was concerned, and naturally so, for Phoebe. But, as well, she had a kind heart. The Cornish love children, and Lily was no exception. She had decided that Charlotte was being neglected, and all her hackles were well and truly up.

I said, "I'm sorry. I should have been here to help you."

Daniel had listened to all this in silence. Now he said, "Where are they?"

"Went down to the shore to do their drawing. That's what they like to do when they're together, like a pair of old women." She turned from the table and went to the sink to peer out the window. Daniel and I followed her. We saw the empty estuary, the deserted sands. But at the far end of the seawall we could discern the two distant figures: Phoebe, unmistakable in her hat, and the child beside her, wearing a scarlet anorak. They had taken camp stools with them and sat side by side, very close. There was something touching about the pair of them. Oblivious to the rest of the world, they looked as though they had been washed up by some unimaginable storm and forgotten.

As we stood there, there came the first sharp rattle of raindrops against the glass of the window, and Lily said, "There now!" as if she had forecast this very thing happening. "That's the dratted rain come on. And Miss Shackleton won't even notice. Once she starts her sketching, that's the end of it. Might as well shout your heart out, and she'd never take notice. And her with that cast on her arm, poor soul . . ."

The time had obviously come to intervene. "I'll go and get them," I said.

"No." Daniel laid a restraining hand on my arm. "It's pouring. I'll go."

"You'll need a mackintosh, Daniel," Lily warned him, but he found an umbrella in the hall and set off armed with that. I watched his progress, the umbrella held high over his head, as he walked down across the lawn and disappeared through the gate in the escallonia hedge. Moments later he came into view once more, making his way along the edge of the seawall towards the two unsuspecting artists.

Lily and I turned away from the window. "What can I do to help you?" I asked.

"You could lay the table for tea."

"Let's all have it in here. It's so nice and warm."

"I'm making a batch of pancakes." She picked up her bowl and started whisking again. She looked more cheerful, having aired her grievances, and I was grateful for this.

I said, "Tomorrow I'll do something with Charlotte. Take her somewhere in the car, perhaps. She's been on my conscience ever since I arrived, only there doesn't seem to have been much time to arrange anything."

"Mind, she's a nice enough little girl."

"I know. But somehow that only makes it worse."

The table was laid, the drop scones made, and the kettle boiling, and still they had not returned.

"That Daniel," observed Lily. "He's as bad as the rest of them. Probably forgot what he went for, and he's sat down with them to paint a picture for himself . . ."