Meadowland

‘He’d have got round to it … He adored you …’

I couldn’t tell her what had sparked our break-up.

We’d been lazing in bed – his bed – one Sunday morning, debating how to spend the day.

‘Let’s go and visit your parents,’ he’d suggested. ‘Wouldn’t mind doing justice to a traditional Sunday lunch.’

I hesitated. I’d taken him home several times during the fifteen months I’d known him, usually choosing a weekday evening when the Market was quiet and he could get away promptly. We’d reach the Surrey dormitory town at about a quarter to eight, earlier if the A3 traffic was light, and drive back, fortified by my mother’s cooking, in time to fall into bed at around midnight. ‘It suits my parents better,’ I’d explained. ‘They tend to be busy at weekends.’ I’d elaborated this excuse to explain my father’s absence on the one or two occasions I hadn’t been able to avoid our calling in on a Saturday or Sunday.

I stroked the soft hair on Mark’s forearm as he put it round my bare shoulders and pulled me towards him. ‘Or, of course,’ he teased my ear with a flick of his tongue, ‘we could just stay here …’

I snuggled up to him. Then I pulled away.

He reached out for me again. I resisted. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

He grinned up at me.

‘Seriously. It’s about my father,’ I said. ‘And my mother too, I suppose. And –’ I took a breath – ‘someone called Flora.’

I expanded, Mark prompting me with the occasional question; when I’d said as much as there was to say, I drew up my knees and rested my chin on them. ‘I’ve never told anyone before,’ I said.

In the silence, I could hear two people calling to each other in the street below. Suddenly Mark flung back the sheet and leapt out of bed. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. I turned my head; and giggled. Standing there stark naked, he looked, I decided, like some indignant Greek god straight out of a Renaissance painting.

I waited for the declamation.

It came. But not in the form I was expecting. ‘Why the hell didn’t your mother let him have a divorce?’

I sagged, staring at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What sort of bitch is it that …’

‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

‘The hell I have.’

‘But …’ I felt my tongue on my lips. My mouth was dry as ice. I got up, enfolded myself in a dressing gown and tied the belt. In the kitchen I automatically flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Coffee?’

‘No! Well, yes. Please.’

He followed me and put his arms round my waist as I reached up into the cupboard. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Milk?’

He loosed his hold and fetched the bottle from the fridge.

We carried the coffee through to the sitting room. I took the big easy chair while Mark fetched a towel and wrapped it round himself, sarong-style. He perched on the edge of the sofa, leaning towards me, his broad bare feet planted squarely on the thick-pile rug.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘So that’s not how you see it?’

‘Of course not!’

He raised his arms in mock surrender. ‘All right. All right. Have it your own way.’

‘I should never have told you.’

‘Whyever not! It explains a lot. I mean, why your parents are so … polite with each other.’ He hesitated. ‘Some of your attitudes too, perhaps?’

‘My attitudes! What are you talking about?’

‘Forget it.’

But I wouldn’t. I made him spell it out. Challenged him. Provoked him. I was aware of what I was doing but unable to stop myself. It was a blazing row, with no holds barred on my part. Every last thing I could find to throw at him, real or imaginary, I flung in an oral stream of rage that seemed unstemmable.

On a tide of exultation, I stormed through to the bedroom, threw on my clothes and, gathering up what possessions of mine I could carry, swept out, crashing the door behind me.

Frigid, he’d called me. Distrustful of men. Well – I waved away a fly that had settled on my notepad – I supposed he was right. About being distrustful anyway.

Clare, good old Clare, robust as ever, had scorned the accusation of frigidity when I confided a vetted version to her. ‘That’s what all men say when they can’t have things their own way.’ It made me feel better – a bit. But there was a nasty, logical little corner of my mind whispering that if you don’t trust someone entirely, then maybe you do hold back. And that – I swiped angrily at the fly again – was no doubt what I’d been doing ever since. Attempts to patch things up with Mark hadn’t worked; nor had any relationship since then progressed beyond the first few dates.

And I’d never again risked telling anyone, not even Clare, about Flora. With a sudden start it dawned on me that it wasn’t just men I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust anyone. Not even my mother? I certainly didn’t trust her to understand about my visit to Cotterly. A wave of loneliness engulfed me.

‘Shit!’ I said it aloud, but there was no-one to hear.

I stood up and, grasping my briefcase, marched back into the hotel.

I dreaded the moment when I would be faced with the decision whether to head straight back to London or to turn off and take the valley road.

As I drove, I resorted to a game of counting red cars – why red ones? – as they passed me heading back the way I’d come, like plucking petals from a daisy: I will turn off, I won’t turn off, I will … In the event, it was a grubby blue Volkswagen trundling along at a steady thirty that fate commissioned. Several times I prepared to overtake, only to drop back hastily as a van or lorry appeared over the brow of a hill or round a corner. Distracted by the frustration, I lost track of my counting game, relaxing my consciousness of precisely where I was even. As I flicked my indicator yet again, the junction sign loomed at the roadside. I glanced in my mirror at the line of vehicles holding back behind, anticipating my pulling out. The indicator ticked remorselessly … and obediently I allowed the Astra to follow the grid markings on to the centre of the road. On the passenger side, the queue ground past as, committed, I waited to cross the oncoming traffic.

It was madness, of course. I regretted the impulse as soon as I’d acted upon it. Even now I should have been half a mile further along the main road, heading sensibly back to London. If I’d kept going, I’d have been back by late afternoon, in time to arrange to meet someone later for a Chinese or even to change and wander over to the South Bank to pick up a last-minute ‘return’ for tonight’s show.

Oh, well, instead – the thought restored me – I could call on my mother and drive up to town early the next morning. I should have thought of it anyway. After all, I hadn’t really given her as much time as I might have done these last couple of months. Not that she’d complained. That wasn’t her way. ‘You have your own life to lead,’ she’d said. ‘I can manage.’

She had certainly shown herself wonderfully resilient in the face of widowhood. ‘At least,’ she’d confided with a brave smile on the day of Father’s funeral, ‘black suits me.’

The weekend after my mission to return Flora’s books, when guilt prompted a visit home, she ran out to greet me as I pulled up in the driveway, sheltering us both from the rain under a huge golfing umbrella. She was wearing a black and silver polka dot blous.

‘New?’ I queried as we settled round the fire and Mother poured tea. Flames hissed quietly around the artificial coals.

‘Why, no. I’ve had it quite a while.’ She leaned across, proffering cake. ‘In fact I discovered I had quite a number of suitable bits and pieces tucked away at the back of the wardrobe.’ Almost – I tried to suppress the thought before it could surface – as though she’d been waiting for this day. Not that anyone, least of all me, would blame her if she had. It had hardly been – I searched for the right word – a satisfactory marriage.

Even so, it was not like my mother to let an opportunity for a new outfit pass. Surely she wasn’t needing to economise? Whatever else, Father had always provided amply. An image of Flora loomed up as an appalling possibility struck me. Casually, helping myself to a piece of Battenberg, I asked, ‘Has Father’s will been sorted out yet?’

Her answer was reassuring. It would all take time, but according to the solicitor, ‘such a nice young man … taken over from old Mr Robinson who retired last year…’, everything was very straightforward. ‘He’s left everything to me, of course.’

I breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Apart from some small bequest to – what was it now? – some wildfowl trust, I believe. Wildfowl, I ask you!’ She picked up the teapot, nodded towards it and looked questioningly at me.