Windfallen (53 page)

Lottie had arrived to fetch Ellie at nine. She was not coming to the party (“Can’t stand the things”) and had offered to take the baby home with her instead. “But Camille’s coming, with Hal and Katie. And Mr. Bernard,” said Daisy. “Ellie would be quite happy with you here. Go on. You’ve done so much here.”

Lottie shook her head mutely. She looked pale, her usual bite subdued by some unspoken internal struggle. “Good luck, Daisy,” she said, and her eyes had met Daisy’s with a rare intensity, as if there were more to it than several hours apart.

“There’s always a drink for you. You can always change your mind,” Daisy had called. The figure pushing the pram resolutely down the drive did not even turn.

Daisy had watched her until they both disappeared, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun, feeling inexplicably sad. Trying to persuade herself that, given Lottie’s decidedly ambivalent reaction to the mural and her acid responses to everything else, perhaps, just perhaps, it was a good thing she wasn’t coming after all.

D
ANIEL WALKED UPSTAIRS, AWAY FROM THE RELENTLESS
noise and activity that conspired to make him feel like even more of a spare part and into the room that held his things. He had decided not to stay for the party; even if it had been possible for him to spend time around Daisy today, it would be too complicated, too humiliating, to explain his presence to those people he once thought of as contacts. He needed to be alone: to grieve, to think about what had happened and what he was going to do next. And possibly, once he got home, to get very, very drunk.

He walked along the corridor, dialing his brother’s number on his mobile phone, leaving a message to tell Paul to expect him to be back that evening. He stopped in the doorway, midsentence. Aidan was standing on a stepladder in the center of the room, his hands fixed on a fan above his head.

“Hi there,” Aidan said, one hand reaching down for a screwdriver on his belt.

Daniel nodded a greeting. He was well used to the lack of privacy imposed by living in a work in progress, but just at this moment it didn’t make Aidan’s presence any easier to bear. He picked up his overnight bag and began collecting his clothes, folding them, and thrusting them deep inside.

“You couldn’t do me a favor, could you? Just flick that switch there? Not yet—just when I tell you.” Aidan was balanced precariously, easing a fitting back into place. “Now.”

Daniel gritted his teeth, crossed the room, flicked the switch on the wall, and the fan eased itself into a blur, audibly cooling the room with a soft hum.

“Your woman there said it was making a noise. Seems okay to me.”

“She’s not my woman.” He had not brought a lot of stuff. It was almost pathetic the length of time it took to pack it away.

“Youse two had a row?”

“No,” said Daniel, more calmly than he felt. “We’ve split up. I’m leaving.”

Aidan wiped his hands together. “Well, now, I’m sorry about that. You being the baby’s father and all.”

Daniel shrugged.

“And you’d only just got back together, hadn’t you?”

Daniel was already regretting saying anything. He bent down and scanned the space under the bed for stray socks.

“Still,” came Aidan’s voice from above, “can’t say as I blame you.”

“Sorry?” It was hard to hear him from under the coverlet.

“Well. No man wants to think of another man staying nights, does he? Not even if he is the boss, know what I mean? No, I’d say you did the right thing altogether.”

Daniel froze in place, his ear still pressed to the floor. He blinked several times, and then he stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was viciously polite. “Can you repeat what you just said?”

Aidan took a step down on the ladder, looked at Daniel’s expression, and glanced sideways. “The boss. Staying with Daisy there. I mean, I assumed you . . . that that’s what you . . . ah, hell. Forget I said anything altogether. No doubt I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.”

“Jones? Jones was staying with Daisy? Here?”

“As I said, it was probably my misunderstanding of the situation.”

Daniel looked at Aidan’s awkward expression and smiled, a tight, understanding smile. “No doubt,” he said, hauling his bag to him and pushing past. “Excuse me.”

N
O MATTER HOW SMART THE OCCASION, IT USUALLY TOOK
Camille a matter of minutes to dress. She would feel her way through her wardrobe, her touch acutely attuned to which fabrics denoted which clothes, pull out the chosen item, and, with a quick brush of her hair and a slick of lipstick, she would be ready. It was almost indecent, Kay would say, a beautician like herself taking so little time. Gave them all a bad name.

Today, however, they were almost forty minutes in and so late that Hal was pacing the floor along the length of their bedroom. “Let me do something,” he would say periodically. “No,” Camille would snap. And with a sigh as loud and heartfelt as Rollo’s own, he would begin pacing again.

Part of it was Katie, who had insisted on helping choose her mother’s outfit, and who, to Camille’s thinly disguised annoyance, had piled up so many clothes on their double bed that it was hard for Camille, whose cupboards were militarily ordered, to tell what was what. Part of it was her hair, which had for some reason decided to stick up in a decidedly odd manner around her hairline. But most of it was that she knew her mother was likely to be there, and her own indecision over whether she wanted to see her was making Camille fractious and unable to make even the most mundane decision.

“Shall I get your shoes out, Mummy?” said Katie, and Camille could hear the sound of her shoe boxes, all carefully labeled in braille, collapsing into a disorganized heap.

“No, sweetheart. Not until I’ve sorted out what to wear.”

“Come on, love. Let me help.”

“No, Daddy, Mummy wanted
me
.”

“Oh, I don’t want bloody either of you!” shouted Camille, her hands lifting to her face. “I don’t even want to go to the stupid thing.”

Hal sat down with her then and pulled her to him. And somehow the fact that even after all this her husband still had the ability not just to understand her but to forgive her made Camille feel the tiniest bit better.

They had finally left shortly after 2:00
P.M
., Camille secretly suspecting that Katie had her done up like a dog’s dinner, but trusting that Hal wouldn’t let her go out in anything too outrageous. They had decided to walk to Arcadia, Hal reasoning that the drive was likely to be blocked in with visitors’ cars and that even in summer one should enjoy a day like this as far as was possible. Camille wasn’t so sure. Katie’s hand sweated gently into her own, her other already sliding on Rollo’s harness, strapped on to help her negotiate any crowds.

“I should have put sunblock on Katie,” she said aloud.

“Already did it,” said Hal.

“I don’t know if I locked the back door,” she said sometime later.

“Katie did it.”

Halfway across the park Camille stopped completely. “Hal, I’m not sure I’m in the mood for this. It’s just going to be loads of people making small talk, and I think this heat is going to give me a headache. And poor old Rollo’s going to boil.”

Hal took hold of his wife’s shoulders. When he spoke, it was quietly, so that Katie wouldn’t hear. “She probably won’t even come,” he said. “Your dad told me she thought she wouldn’t bother. You know what she’s like. Come on. Besides, Daisy will probably be leaving straight after, and you want to say good-bye, don’t you?”

“The things she said about Dad, Hal . . .” Camille shook her head, her voice still trembling with the emotion of it. “I knew it wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven, but how could she say she never loved him? How could she do that to him?”

Hal took her hand and squeezed it, a gesture that spoke of comfort and a certain futility.

They walked on, Katie skipping in front, toward the house.

D
AISY STOOD OUTSIDE THE KITCHEN IN THE MIDST OF THE
group of elderly men and women, smiling as the fourth photographer catcalled them into some new arrangement, whispering under her breath to some of the frailer among them to find out whether they were bearing up, whether they might want a drink or something to rest on. Around them white-clad sous-chefs rushed around clattering plates and metallic pans, arranging savory confections on oversize platters. Julia, catching her eye across the crowd of people, waved, and Daisy smiled back, wishing it felt like less of an effort. It was going well, really well. The woman from
Interiors
had already translated the house into a four-page spread, with Daisy featured prominently as its designer; several people had asked for her number, leaving her wishing she’d thought to make up cards. She’d been so busy that she’d barely had time to think about Daniel, other than being conscious of a fleeting gratitude that he had not decided to stay. Jones she saw periodically in glimpses across the crowded rooms, always talking, always surrounded by people. The host, in a set of rooms he barely even knew.

But Daisy felt miserable. This was always the hardest bit of a job. The vision you had striven to create, had lost nights of sleep for, had worked on with dust in your hair and your fingernails caked with paint. It finally came together, colored with pain and draped with exhaustion. And then, when it was perfect, you relinquished it. Except this time it was harder to let it go. This time it had been Daisy’s home, her refuge, her daughter’s first months. There were people she had made her own and whom, despite best promises, she would probably never see again.

And where was she leaving it for? Weybridge.

Across the terrace Julia’s smile beamed out at her from under her perfectly frozen hair, proud, well-meaning, completely misunderstanding everything Daisy now knew she was. I thought I’d made it, she realized in a burst of clarity. In fact I have nothing. When she arrived at Merham, she’d had a home, a job, her daughter. Now she faced the loss of all of these, even if the last was only part of the time.

“Cheer up, darling.” Carol appeared at her elbow, perennial champagne bottle in hand, topping up drinks, posing for photographs, exclaiming at how perfect everything was, laughing off the chanting villagers outside on the drive. She had sent a tray of drinks out to them and made sure the newspapers had seen her do it. “Why don’t you head off to the ladies’. Perk yourself up a bit. I’ll handle things out here.” Her smile was kind, her tone unarguable.

Daisy nodded and fought her way through the chattering groups toward the lavatories. She passed Jones as he talked, so close she could smell the scent of the mints on his breath. Her head was down, so she couldn’t be sure, but she thought he hadn’t even noticed.

H
E HADN’T REALLY EXPECTED TO ENJOY HIMSELF, BUT,
Hal told Camille repeatedly, he was. Endless people had sought him out to congratulate him on the mural, including the elderly Stephen Meeker, who had asked him to visit later in the week and take a look at a couple of Arts and Crafts chairs that needed some work. Jones had told him there would be a bonus on top of his check. “It’s made all the difference,” he said, his dark eyes serious. “We’ll have a talk later. About some other work I might have for you.” He’d met a number of local businessmen, cannily invited by Carol, who didn’t seem to care much about the mural but thought the new hotel was “just the job.” It would attract, they said, the “right sort of people to the town.” Hal, thinking back to Sylvia Rowan’s comments, had fought the urge to laugh.

Camille, he told her, looked beautiful. He kept catching sight of her talking to people, her hair luminous under the sun, her face relaxed and happy, and his heart would constrict, sentimental and foolish with gratitude that they had survived. Katie, meanwhile, darted fleetingly in and out of the house with other children, like brightly colored sparrows in and out of hedgerows.

“Thanks,” he said, catching Daisy as she exited the ladies’. “For the work, I mean. For everything.” She nodded her response as if only half aware of him, her eyes apparently casting about the room for something, or someone, else.

It was a big day for her, he told himself, turning away. The kind of day on which it would be churlish to take offense. If he’d learned one thing, it was not to look for meanings where there were none.

He accepted two glasses of champagne from a waiter and stepped back into the sunshine, his heart lifting on the sound of the jazz string quartet, feeling his first real sense of ease and satisfaction for months. Katie ran past him, squealing, a quick tug on his trouser leg, and he walked on, to relocate his wife on the terrace.

He was halted by a light tap on his shoulder.

“Hal.”

He turned to see his mother-in-law, standing very still behind a pram. She was wearing her good gray silk blouse, her one apparent concession to partygoing. Her eyes, wide and unusually wary, bore into his almost as if she were going to accuse him of something.

“Lottie,” he said neutrally, his sunny mood evaporating.

“I’m not stopping.”

He waited.

“I just came by to say sorry.”

She didn’t look herself. As if she had somehow lost some of her armor.

“I shouldn’t have gone on at you the way I did. And I should have told you about the money.”

“Forget it,” he found himself saying. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. I was wrong. I meant well, but I was wrong. I wanted you to know that.” Her voice was tight, strained. “You and Camille.”

Hal, who had, especially on recent occasions, felt less than charitable toward his mother-in-law, suddenly found himself wishing for some waspish comment, some sharp observation to break the silence. But she said nothing, her eyes on his, searching for a response.

“Come on,” he said, moving toward her, his arm outstretched. “Let’s find her.”

Lottie placed a restraining hand on his arm. “I said some awful things,” she said, swallowing.

“Everyone does,” he said. “When they’re hurting.”

She looked at him, and some new understanding appeared to pass between them. Then she took his proffered elbow, and they walked across the terrace.