Meadowland

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, bringing myself back to the moment, ‘that I had any idea of calling on her anyway. I think I might have gone up to the meadow. The one above the village. You know, the one at the end of the track.’

‘Where I nearly ran you down.’

I smiled. ‘Hardly. But yes, that one.’

Andrew put his cup down and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He passed me one. I held the end to the flame as he flicked the lighter. Settling back, I watched the fronds of smoke rise and waft gently towards the house.

It had, I remembered Flora saying, been built as a dower house. Not that long ago, maybe seventy years or so by the look of it; but long enough for the bricks to have mellowed to a deep golden grey, to unstripped parts of which ivy clung; like old memories, I thought. Inside, as Andrew had proudly shown me when we arrived, the place had been totally redecorated and the kitchen gutted and fitted with modern units. ‘Ginny says,’ Andrew had laughed, ‘that if she’s to be deprived of a big kitchen, at least she’ll have an efficient one.’

I remembered Flora’s kitchen. And Andrew in it.

‘Did Flora give you the painting?’ His voice, against the stillness of the summer air, startled me.

I swivelled my attention back. We both knew which one he meant. I pictured it, still propped at the back of the hall cupboard; thrust there in discomfort that first evening back at the flat. ‘Yes, she did.’

‘I thought she might.’

I brushed a leaf from my skirt and squinted up at the sky. ‘So Flora has a brother?’ I said eventually.

Andrew accepted the change of subject smoothly. ‘She doesn’t talk about him much,’ he said.

I took a sip of tea and raised my eyebrows politely.

‘Visits him every month, though. He’s in some sort of a home in Sussex.’

‘Really’

‘Caught by a sniper in Malaya. Brain damage. That’s about all I know.’

‘And he’s been like that for … what … forty years?’

‘Coming up for. He was there towards the end of it all, I think.’ Andrew took a final pull on his cigarette. ‘Almost died twelve or so years ago. Pity he didn’t, poor fellow.’ He leaned sideways and pressed the butt into the flower-bed, sweeping the earth over it. Sitting up again, he looked across at me. ‘That was how Flora and your father met, of course.’

I stared. ‘Go on.’

‘You don’t know this?’

‘I don’t really know anything.’

I flinched slightly under his gaze as he breathed in and paused.

‘They phoned through to the Horse and Dragon. Typical Flora. Wouldn’t have a telephone then – and still won’t. Just one of her quirks,’ he explained in response to my raised eyebrow. ‘Making some sort of statement about her space, I guess. Anyway –’ he returned to his tale – ‘your father happened to be downing a half of Guinness at the time, grasped the situation and, having driven round to Wood Edge with the message, offered to drive her over.’

‘All the way to Sussex!’ I shot upright.

Andrew surveyed me calmly. ‘I wasn’t there so I can’t recount the tale blow by blow. But yes, he certainly – so I understand – ended up taking her the whole way.’

‘And, I suppose, held her hand through it all.’

‘He was that sort of man.’

I subsided. ‘But that,’ I said after a moment or two, ‘doesn’t excuse his … getting involved with her.’

‘No …’ Andrew spoke slowly. ‘I don’t imagine it does.’ He reached up and took a considering swipe at a trailing branch. Changing patterns of sunlight waved across his arm and face. ‘I hadn’t realised how angry you were with him,’ he said.

‘Are you surprised?’ I demanded.

‘I don’t know. I take people at face value. If they’re pleasant to me, I’m pleasant back.’

‘And if they’re not?’ I made the effort to calm down.

He grinned. ‘I walk away.’

‘Does that apply to your clients?’

He considered. ‘No. But that’s different. I’m talking socially. Bit of an emotional coward, I expect that makes me.’ He eased forward and cupped the teapot in both hands. ‘Stone cold. Is it too early for a drink, do you think?’

‘I won’t, thanks.’ Suddenly restless, I rose to my feet. ‘I know what I should like to do.’

‘Go up to the meadow?’ Andrew leaned back and regarded me lazily. ‘Shall I come with you?’

I wandered across to the flower-bed, ostensibly inspecting a clump of marigolds. I’d rather he didn’t. One of the heads came off in my hand as I stroked it. Guiltily I leaned down and placed the circle of orange petals carefully on the earth. ‘Sorry,’ I said. The apology dissipated among the scents rising from the border. I turned. ‘What about your paperwork?’

He waved it away.

Squeezed into a pair of the older boy’s rubber boots – Ginny’s flatties had turned out to be even smaller – I clumped after him up a narrow path behind the house.

‘Watch the nettles,’ he called, too late, as I sucked my wrist. At the top he waited, holding out a hand to steady me over the stile. We skirted the upper part of a crop field. ‘Oats,’ he announced over his shoulder.

I feigned interest. But as we approached the ridge, I felt my spirits lifting. Up here the as-yet-green heads swayed delicately and a light gust lifted my hair almost imperceptibly from my scalp. As I straightened up from a stumble across a crumbling clod of grey-brown earth I instinctively halted, raising my face to the sun and breathing in – and in some more, until my rib cage felt it would burst.

‘Are you all right?’ Andrew was silhouetted twenty yards further on, staring back at me.

I let the air go. ‘Fine.’ I hurried to catch up. ‘You forget …’

‘Forget what?’

We’d reached the gate. Ahead a broad swathe through trees led to the road.

‘Now I recognise where we are,’ I said.

The hardness of the tarmac under my feet, as we strode left along it, restored a sense of reality. I clung on to it as we turned off along the track I’d walked before. The primroses were long over, their leaves, together with last year’s mulch, buried under a tangle of fresh greenery. Further into the wood, in the shade of branches locked overhead, bluebells sheltered from the sky, radiating their own deep indigo.

‘Forget what?’ Andrew and I had been walking side by side in companionable silence.

I blinked. ‘Oh … I don’t know. Everything I suppose.’

I was aware of his glancing at me. Then, as though having considered, he said, ‘I love this part of England.’