Wish Her Safe at Home (24 page)

But roger—when he came on his own that evening—was more than just upset and disappointed. He was extremely angry.

Not one second of charm wasted on either congratulation or compliment. His anger blazed in the hallway. I hadn’t time even to take him into the breakfast room, where in the morning I had entertained his wife.

“Look here, Rachel! What
is
all this? I can’t believe what Celia told me.”

“About my marriage, you mean?”

“About your marriage—about your extraordinary change of heart—about every single damned thing!”

“There’s been no change of heart. Simply a change of mind.”

“Do you realize we shall soon have to be out of our flat? Do you realize we shall soon be homeless and probably living on the street because we shan’t be able to find anything else we can afford? Do you realize this is all your fault?”

“Please, Roger, there’s really no need to shout! And no need to be ridiculous! Can’t you simply tell them you’re sorry but that you’ve made a mistake?”

“Oh, don’t be stupid! Weren’t you listening when Celia told you the flat’s already taken? That contracts have been signed?”

“Stupid,” I felt, wasn’t quite the word for somebody who had bought you caviar and duck and champagne, had had silver christening gifts engraved, had made your son her only legatee. (I had kept my promise and directly after lunch had returned to Thames & Avery.) This house—together with its contents—was absolutely everything I had.

And possibly on reflection Roger began to feel the same way. He was certainly impulsive but he wasn’t unfair. He had a mercurial and passionate nature—and wasn’t that at least a part of what I loved him for?—but there was no real meanness in it. He started to cool down.

“Look, Rachel, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean all that! I’m worried about my exams, as well as about providing for my family. Couldn’t we just talk this through?”

“Of course we could, my darling. First tell me that you like my dress.”

“Yes,I...
I like your dress.”

“Now come and sit down and we’ll have a glass of sherry and you can say it with a bit more conviction! For after all”—and now I felt confident enough to make a joke—“nobody in his right senses could fail to like the
dress
even if he didn’t think so much of the woman who was wearing it!”

He gave a sickly smile but wasn’t yet sufficiently recovered to join in with my laughter.

“I bet you lead that poor girl one fucking hell of a life,” I said companionably, as we sat down. (I forgot to fetch the glasses and decanter.) “Do you flare up like that
very
often?”

He only shrugged. He still looked rather sullen.

But I met him halfway. “I have to say, though, I can see why she might irritate you. She sometimes does me. I’m not implying she hasn’t got character—oh, no, not at all! Yet she
can
be bland, I do admit that. Also just a bit colourless.”

“Celia? Bland? You must be dreaming! Oh, I can assure you she has character, all right!”

He actually sounded a mite more bitter than partisan. As though you’d mentioned to Macbeth that you thought his wife was charming—but hadn’t anyone told her about those female assertiveness courses she could enroll for?

“Really?” I said. “Well, you should know best—and we’re all such a mass of contradictions, aren’t we? This morning, for example, she didn’t sound half as desperate as you do.”

“Then she should have!”

“Yes, I see. Oh dear. But couldn’t you go to stay with her parents for the time being? They’ve a large enough house and possibly Mrs. Tiverton doesn’t get chased around it naked any more. (One wonders if she ever did?) And I could come as often as you liked
,
to take young Tommy out on treats.”

There! It sometimes took outsiders to hit on the really obvious solution.

“In fact, come to think of it,” I said, “I can already see a certain similarity between Celia and her mother. But please don’t get me wrong: I
do
like Celia. How could I not, indeed, as the mother of my first godchild?”

I tried another little joke.

“To tell the absolute truth I occasionally like her a little more than I like you!”

I don’t know if he appreciated that. It seemed to me he hadn’t quite—not
altogether
—recovered from his sulks.

Of course I had to remind myself that he was still extremely young. Men matured so much slower than women.

But he did have a lovely body.

“It was that which I first admired about you,” I said.

“What was?”

“The way you looked without your shirt. All those muscles!”

He didn’t even say thank you. I really feel that people should be taught—and at a suitably early age—how to respond to compliments.

“For, in some ways, I
do
prefer you in your jeans. I’m glad you’re wearing jeans now. It would even give me something of a thrill, you know, if you were to take off your shirt again tonight. I should really like to sit and gaze—as on some splendid piece of statuary! Or do you think I’m being too forward? But why not say what’s on your mind when it’s only something nice and almost certain to give pleasure? It’s such a pity to be shy!”

He was staring at me but still not speaking. It sometimes appeared to me—particularly of late—that my conversations were getting progressively one-sided.

“However, going back to this business of your raising Cain? Celia, at any rate, can look after herself...
whether she’s Lady Macbeth or Little Nell. But I won’t have you giving my young godson a hard time. I just won’t!” As I had done before, I admonished him with a forefinger that was only partially humorous. “Otherwise, my good man, you’ll find you have
me
to deal with!”

“Rachel,” he said. He appeared now to have relinquished all his anger. A well-timed compliment can often help.

“Yes, my dear?”

“I...
”

“Don’t be afraid to say it, whatever it is. For all my present fierceness, Roger—not so
enormously
fierce, I think you must agree—I’m still extremely fond of you. Why! You should only have heard me taking up arms on your behalf when...
! But no—I shouldn’t be saying that. I’m so much hoping that you and Horatio are going to become friends!”

“Mr. Gavin?”

Yet it wasn’t truly a question. It was more in the nature of a world-weary comment—as though a vain and incredulous lover were at long last being forced to acknowledge the existence of a rival.

“Yes, sweet, you and Mr. Gavin.”

“Your husband?”

“Oh, such jaded resignation!” I smiled.
Dear
Roger. He was just a disappointed little boy who had never been meant to have his nose put out of joint. A little boy who was now discovering that life could occasionally be hard. I so much wanted to reassure him.

Yet how ironic it was. He and I: two pilgrims. Both looking for paradise; for meaning, for fulfilment. The universal quest. But one of us still only at the beginning of
his
journey, whilst the other had almost reached the end of hers.

One...
very young in lifetimes. The other...
maybe at last about to leave the wheel. But not on her own. That was the blessed wonder of it all: one of God’s most infinite of mercies. When the time came I’d be stepping off it hand in hand with the man who had returned to claim me. To love me. To lead me.

And therein, evidently, lay the germ of the great comfort I could bring to him, my disappointed little boy.

“Darling, don’t you see, that’s how it works! And I wonder if one day (though possibly not for some time: let’s say in another century or so?) I shall be the one true love returning to take care of
you
.”

Such momentous words. I knew he couldn’t grasp them for the present.

I smiled. “My real name so far as I know—my previous name, anyway,
so far as I know
!—in this life it seems you can’t be sure of very much; and there could so easily have been others in between...
Is it already getting complicated?”

I felt it probably was.

“Well, anyhow, let me get straight to the point. Perhaps it will make things clearer if I explain it to you like this.” Now I gave a laugh. “Miss Anne Barnetby—meet Mr. Roger Allsop!”

I held out my hand. He didn’t take it. I wasn’t offended. I understood precisely what he was going through.

“Indeed,” I said, “Miss Anne Barnetby (possibly this will be a little easier; are you beginning to catch on?), Miss Anne Barnetby—meet Miss Rachel Waring! Or should I say—meet the
former
Miss Rachel Waring.”

I paused.

“But
now
Mrs. Gavin, Mrs. Horatio Gavin. Proof that I’ve fulfilled my destiny, my ultimate and oh so lovely destiny! No, forgive me:
our
ultimate and oh so lovely destiny! Dear Anne, we didn’t make it
then
—we were still so silly, headstrong and misguided, still such a
painfully
immature young person (not unlike a certain somebody not a million miles away from us right now!) but just look at how it’s all turned out! Bingo! You must be every bit as pleased as I am to find that we’ve finally come home. Relieved and proud and thankful. Oh, yes! I think we’ve changed a bit during these past two hundred years!”

“Rachel...
?” He hadn’t spoken for a long time. His voice was almost an intrusion.

“Yes, sweetheart? Your Rachel is still here. So is your Anne. So, perhaps, your Ariadne, your Penelope, your Jane. Who knows...
possibly your Christopher, your Julius, your John? I always liked the name Penelope for some reason. Maybe that means something?”

Leaning forward he placed a hand upon my knee.

“Rachel,” he said, “I think that you’re not well.”

His charm may have lost some of its usual dynamism but none of its usual potency.

“Darling,” I said, “I never felt better in my life. As if I’d just come home from a long sea voyage.”

I giggled.

“Or as if my husband had!”

“I think you need someone to look after you.”

“Oh, I do! I do! Don’t we all?”

I lifted his hand off my knee and held it lovingly in my own. I kissed the back of it.

“And I can’t tell you how colossally blest I feel!” I shook my head in happy disbelief at what had just occurred: the kiss on the back of his hand: a kiss which had said so much and which—
clearly—
he had warmly and sincerely welcomed.

There was a silence. No longer an angry or resentful silence. Just an intensely companionable one. Two kindred spirits, kindred pilgrims, who would valiant be.

“But why are we talking about
me
? It’s you and Celia and the baby, you’re the ones we should be talking about! Where are you going to find a place to lay your heads?”

“Not here?”

How could I resist a tone so wheedling and seductive? But I knew that I had to.

“It wouldn’t work, my darling. Horatio was absolutely right. At least...
well, I think he must have been. He’s had so much experience. I trust him implicitly.”

“We could look after you,” he murmured.

“That’s very sweet, Roger, but as I’ve just said...
” I fondled his hand some more. “What about
your
parents if not Celia’s?”

“They live abroad. In any case we don’t get on with them. And Celia’s mum and dad—we’d all be at each other’s throats before we’d closed the front door.”

“But they were all right at the christening...
and, surely, just while you’re on the lookout for somewhere...
?”

“What about here, just while we’re on the lookout for somewhere?”

“Oh, Roger, you do make it hard for me! What about a cheap hotel? Couldn’t both sets of parents agree to club together?”

“No, I couldn’t take it from them!”

“Well, I can certainly understand that. Taking money from anyone at all, it puts you so completely under their thumb, doesn’t it? Yet even so...
?”

“It would only be for a week or two,” he said. “A month at the outside. And we’d make very sure we didn’t get in the way.”

“Yes but on the other hand...
You know what it’s like to be on honeymoon? You surely can’t have forgotten already...
?”

I was aware that I might be sounding coy. It didn’t suit me.

“Even though it was only with Celia,” I added.

But he must have sensed that I was weakening.

“
Please
, Rachel. Anne. Jane. Penelope. Remember the Co-Optimists? ‘All for one and one for all’? Our commune? Our sharing? My singing to you from the bath?”

Oh, Roger the Troubadour. Roger the Fearless. Roger the Bold. How are the mighty fallen!
Troubadours
don’t beg!

“Yet what if you saw me skipping through the house in the...
in the altogether?” I laughed. “I mean
me
in the altogether, not you! Skipping through the house in my birthday suit? With flowers entwined in the tresses of my maidenhood? Marigolds, scarlet pimpernels, forget-me-nots? Whatever was in season, obviously.”