The telephone in the old-fashioned house stood in the hall. Isobel sat on the chest, and looked up the number of Antony’s office in Edinburgh. She could never remember telephone numbers and had to look up even the most day-to-day people, like the grocer, and the man at the railway station. With one eye on the book, she dialed carefully and sat waiting for someone to reply. Her thoughts, anxious, darted in all directions: the dahlias would be dead tomorrow; she must pick some more; would Antony have already gone out for lunch? She mustn’t be selfish about Tuppy. There was a time for everybody to die. If she could no longer work in her precious garden nor take Sukey for little walks, then she would not want to live. But what an unbearable void she would leave in all their lives! Despite herself, Isobel prayed wildly. Don’t let her die. Don’t let us lose her just yet. Oh, God, be merciful unto us …
“McKinnon, Carstairs, and Robb. Can I help you?”
She was jerked back to reality by the bright young voice. Feeling for her handkerchief again, she wiped her eyes and composed herself. “Oh, I am sorry, I wondered if it would be possible to speak to Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Antony Armstrong.”
“Who’s speaking, please?”
“Miss Armstrong. His aunt.”
“Just a moment.”
There came a couple of clicks, a pause, and then, wonderfully, Antony’s voice. “Aunt Isobel.”
“Oh, Antony…”
He was immediately alert. “Is anything wrong?”
“No. No, not wrong.” She mustn’t give a false impression. She must pull herself together. “Hugh Kyle’s been. He’s just left.”
“Is Tuppy worse?” Antony asked bluntly.
“He … he says she’s holding her own wonderfully. He says she’s as strong as an old heather root.” She tried to make it light-hearted, but her voice let her down woefully. She could not get out of her mind that deeply grave expression that she had caught on Hugh’s face. Had he really been telling her the truth? Had he been trying to spare her in some way? “He … he had a few words with Tuppy, though, and it seems that all she wants is to see you, and for you to bring Rose over. And I wondered if you’d heard from Rose—if she was back from America?”
There was only silence from the other end of the line, and trying to fill it, Isobel rattled on.
“I know how busy you always are, and I don’t want to worry you.…”
“That’s all right.” Antony spoke at last. “Yes. Yes, she is back in London. I had a letter from her this morning.”
“It means so much to Tuppy.”
Another pause, and then steadily, Antony asked, “Is she going to die?”
Isobel couldn’t help it. She dissolved into tears, furious with herself, but unable to check them. “I … I don’t know. Hugh tried to reassure me, but I’ve never seen him look so concerned. And it would be so dreadful, unthinkable really, if anything should happen to Tuppy and she had never seen you and Rose together. It meant so much to her, your getting engaged. If you could bring Rose, perhaps it would make all the difference. It would give her a reason…”
She couldn’t go on. She hadn’t meant to say so much, and she could see nothing through the tears. She felt defeated, at the end of her tether, and as though she had been alone for too long. She blew her nose again and finished helplessly. “Do try, Antony.”
It was a cry from the heart. He said, sounding almost as shaken as she did, “I didn’t realize…”
“I think I’ve only just realized myself.”
“I’ll get hold of Rose. Somehow, I’ll fix it. We’ll be over next weekend. I promise.”
“Oh, Antony.” Relief washed over her. They would come. If Antony said he would do something, he always kept his word, come hell or high water.
“And don’t be too worried about Tuppy. If Hugh says she’s as tough as a heather root, she probably is. She’ll run rings round the lot of us, and most likely outlive us all.”
Immensely comforted, Isobel raised a little laugh. “Well, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility.”
“Nothing is,” said Antony. “Anything can happen. See you next weekend.”
“Bless you.”
“Think nothing of it. And my love to Tuppy.”
2
MARCIA
Ronald Waring said, perhaps for the fifth time, “We should go home.”
His daughter Flora, bemused with sun and sleepy from swimming, said, “I know,” also for the fifth time, and neither of them moved. She sat perched on a sloping face of granite, staring down into the jewel-blue depths of the immense rock pool in which they had had their evening swim. The sun, sliding down out of the sky, poured the last of its warmth onto her face. Her cheeks were still salty from the sea; wet hair clung to her neck. She sat with her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin on her knees, her eyes narrowed against the dazzle of the sea.
It was a Wednesday, and the last of a perfect summer’s day. Or was September officially autumn? Flora couldn’t remember. She only knew that in Cornwall, the summer had a charming way of spinning itself out beyond the end of the season. Down here, sheltered by the cliffs, there was no breath of wind, and the rocks, soaked by a day’s sunshine, were still warm to the touch.
The tide was coming in. The first trickle of water had slid between two limpet-encrusted rocks and emptied itself into the pool. Soon the trickle would swell to a flood, and the mirror surface of the water be shattered by the vanguard of the long Atlantic rollers. Finally, the rocks would become engulfed, and the pool submerged and lost until the next low tide should set it free again.
She could not remember how many times they had sat together, just as they sat now, mesmerized by the fascination of a flooding September tide. But this evening it was even more difficult to drag themselves away, because it was the last time. They would go up the cliff path, pausing from time to time as they always did, to look back at the ocean. They would take the path that led across the fields to Seal Cottage, where Marcia was waiting for them, with supper in the oven and flowers on the table. And after supper Flora would wash her hair and finish her packing, because tomorrow she was going back to London.
It had all been planned, and it was something that Flora had to do, but at this moment she could scarcely bear to contemplate the idea. For one thing, she always hated leaving her father. She looked at him where he sat on the rock a little below her. She saw his leanness, the deep tan of his skin, his long bare legs. He wore a disreputable pair of shorts and an ancient shirt, much darned, with the sleeves rolled back off his forearms. She saw his thinning hair, tousled from the swim, and the jutting jawline as he turned his head to watch a cormorant skimming by just above the surface of the sea.
She said, “I don’t want to go tomorrow.”
He turned to smile up at her. He said. “Then don’t.”
“I have to. You know that. I have to go out into the world and start being independent again. I’ve been home too long.”
“I’d like you to stay for always.”
She ignored the sudden lump in her throat. “You’re not meant to say things like that. You’re meant to be brisk and unsentimental. You’re meant to push your chick out of the nest.”
“You promise me you’re not going because of Marcia?”
Flora was truthful. “Yes, of course in a way I am, but that’s not the point. Anyway, I adore her, you know that.” When her father did not smile, she tried turning it into a joke. “All right then, she’s a typical wicked stepmother, how’s that for a reason? And I’m escaping before I find myself locked in a cellar with the rats.”
“You can always come back. Promise me you’ll come back if you can’t find a job, or if things don’t work out.”
“I shall find a job with no difficulty whatsoever, and everything’s going to work out.”
“I still want the promise.”
“You have it. But you’ll probably regret it when I turn up on your doorstep again in a week’s time. And now”—she picked up her bathing towel and a pair of threadbare esp
adrilles—“we should go home.”
* * *
To begin with, Marcia had refused to marry Flora’s father. “You can’t marry me. You’re the senior classics master of a reputable grammar school. You ought to marry some quiet, respectable female with a felt hat and a way with boys.”
“I don’t like quiet, responsible females,” he had told her, slightly irritated. “If I did, I’d have married Matron years ago.”
“It’s just that I don’t see myself as Mrs. Ronald Waring. It doesn’t fit, somehow. ‘And here, boys, is Mrs. Waring, to present the silver cup for the High Jump.’ And there is me, falling over my feet, and forgetting what I’m meant to say, and probably dropping the cup or giving it to the wrong boy.”
But Ronald Waring had always been a man who knew his own mind, and he persisted, courting and finally persuading her. They were married at the beginning of the summer, in the tiny stone church which was older than time and smelled musty, like a cave. Marcia had worn a very fetching emerald green dress and a huge straw hat with a drooping brim, like Scarlett O’Hara’s. And for once Ronald Waring was coordinated and all of a piece, with matching socks and his necktie firmly knotted, not slipping down to reveal the top button of his shirt. They made, thought Flora, a wonderful couple. She had taken snapshots of them as they came beaming out of the church, the brisk sea-breeze playing havoc with the brim of the bride’s hat, while causing the bridegroom’s thinning hair to stand up on end like the crest of a cockatoo.
Marcia was a Londoner born and bred who had somehow reached the age of forty-two without ever having been married—most likely, decided Flora, because she had never found the time. She had started her career as a drama student, graduated to wardrobe mistress with a provincial repertory company, and from that inauspicious beginning had cheerfully barged on through life, apparently ricocheting from one unexpected occupation to another, and her final job had been sales manager in a shop in Brighton which specialized in what Marcia called Arabian Tat.
Although Flora had taken to Marcia from the very first and encouraged like mad the alliance with her father, there had been certain inevitable reservations about Marcia’s housewifely capabilities. After all, no girl wants to condemn her parent to a lifetime of bought pies, frozen pizza, and soup out of cans.
But even on that score Marcia succeeded in surprising them. She proved to be an excellent cook and an enthusiastic housekeeper, and was already developing all sorts of unlikely talents in the garden. Vegetables were already coming up in neat, soldierly rows; flowers bloomed if Marcia looked at them, and the deep windowsill over the kitchen sink stood two rows deep in the earthenware pots of geranium and Busy Lizzies which she had grown herself.
That evening, as they made their way up the cliffs and across the cool, long-shadowed fields, Marcia, who had been watching from the kitchen window, came to meet them. She wore green trousers and a cotton smock, heavily embroidered by some gnarled peasant hand, and the last rays of the sun lit her bright hair to a flame.
Ronald Waring, catching sight of her, lifted his head with pleasure and his footsteps quickened. Lagging behind, Flora decided that there was something special about two middle-aged people who shared a bond, not only of affection, but passion as well, so that when they met in the middle of the field, embracing without restraint or embarrassment, it was as though they were coming together after a separation of many months. Perhaps that was how they felt. Heaven knew, they had waited long enough for each other.
* * *
It was Marcia who drove Flora to the junction the next morning to catch the London train. The fact that she was actually able to do this was a source of great pride and satisfaction to Marcia. Because in attaining her great age, she had not only missed out on matrimony, but, as well, had never learned to drive.
When quizzed about this, she had a number of reasons to explain the omission. She was unmechanically minded, she had never owned a car, and there was usually someone around who was willing to drive her. But after she married Ronald Waring and found herself marooned in a small Cornish cottage at the end of nowhere, it was obvious that the time had come.
Now or never, said Marcia, and took lessons. Then tests. Three of them. She failed the first time because she ran the front wheels of the car over the booted toes of a constable. And the second time because, while backing the car into a tricky parking place, she inadvertently knocked over a perambulator which, fortunately, did not contain a baby at the time. Neither Flora nor her father imagined that she would have the nerve to try again, but they underestimated Marcia. She did, and finally passed. So when her husband regretted that he could not drive his daughter to catch the London train, owing to some educational conference which he was bound to attend, Marcia was able to say, with casual pride, “That’s no trouble. I’ll take her.”
In a way, Flora was relieved. She hated goodbyes, inevitably becoming emotional at the sound of a train whistle. She knew that if her father were there, she would probably weep all over him, which would make the parting all the worse for everybody.
It was another warm and cloudless day, the sky as blue as it had been all year, and the bracken gold. As well, there was a sparkle to the air which made the most mundane objects as clear-cut as crystal. Marcia, whose thought processes were comfortingly simple to follow, began to carol in her fruity contralto, “Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day…” and then abandoned her song and stooped down to feel for her handbag, which meant that she wanted a cigarette. The car, accordingly, weaved dangerously across the white line and over onto the wrong side of the road, so Flora said quickly, “I’ll get it,” and found the bag and the cigarette while Marcia got the car back on course again. Flora stuck the cigarette into Marcia’s mouth, and then held the lighter so that Marcia wouldn’t have to take her hands off the wheel.
The cigarette going, Marcia went on with her song.
“I’ve got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going…” She stopped again, frowning. “Darling, you do promise me you’re not going back to horrible London just because of me?”
This question had been asked every night at regular intervals for the last seven days. Flora took a deep breath. “No. I’ve told you, no. I’m simply picking up the threads of my life and carrying on where I left off a year ago.”
“I can’t get rid of this feeling that I’m turning you out of your own home.”
“Well, you’re not. And anyway, you can look at the situation from my point of view. Knowing my father has found a good woman to take care of him, I can go off and leave him with a clear conscience.”
“I’d feel happier if I knew what sort of a life it was going to be. I’ve got a horrible preconceived pictures of you in a bedsitter, eating cold beans out of a tin.”
“I’ve told you,” said Flora robustly, “I’ll find somewhere to live, and while I’m looking I’m going to stay with my friend Jane Porter. It’s all been fixed. The girl who lives with her is on holiday with her boyfriend, so I can have her bed. And by the time she comes back from her holiday, I shall have found myself a flat of my own and a fabulous job and I’ll be home and dry.” But Marcia continued to look gloomy. “Look, I’m twenty-two, not twelve. And a terribly, terribly efficient shorthand typist. There’s not a thing to worry about.”
“Well, if things don’t work out, promise to call me and I’ll come and mother you.”
“I’ve never been mothered in my life and I can manage without it.” Flora added, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t meant to sound quite so brusque.”
“Not brusque at all, darling, just plain fact. But you know, the more I think about it, the more fantastic it becomes.”
“I’m not sure what you are talking about.”
“Your mother. Abandoning you and your father, and you just an infant. I mean, I can imagine a woman abandoning a husband. At least, I can’t imagine anybody abandoning darling Ronald—but a baby! It seems so completely inhuman. You’d have thought that having gone through all the
business of actually having a child, you’d want to keep it.”
“I’m glad she didn’t keep me. I wouldn’t have had anything different. How Pa managed, I shall never know, but I couldn’t have had a more wonderful childhood.”
“You know what we are, don’t you? The Founding Members of the Ronald Waring Fan Club. I wonder why she went? Your mother, I mean. Was there another man? I’ve never liked to ask.”
“No I don’t think so. They were simply incompatible. That’s what Pa always told me. She didn’t like him being an unambitious schoolmaster, and he wasn’t interested in cocktail parties and the merry life. And she didn’t like his being vague and immersed in his job, and always looking as though he’d been thrown together out of a rag bag. And he obviously was never going to earn enough money to keep her in the style she fancied. I found a photograph of her once, in the back of a drawer. Very chic and elegant, and expensive-looking. Not Pa’s scene at all.”
“She must have been as hard as nails. I wonder why they got married in the first place.”
“I think they met on a skiing holiday in Switzerland. Pa’s a super skier—perhaps you didn’t know that. I imagine they were both blinded by sun and snow, and intoxicated by heady Alpine air. Or maybe she was knocked flat by the manly figure he cut as he swooped down the mountainside. All I know is that it happened, and I was born, and then it was over.”
They were on the main road now, approaching the little station where Flora was to catch the London train. “I do hope,” said Marcia, “that he doesn’t ask me to go skiing with him.”
“Why ever not?”
“I can’t,” said Marcia.
“That wouldn’t make any difference to Pa. He adores you, just the way you are. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Marcia, “and aren’t I the luckiest woman alive? But you’re going to be lucky, too. You were born under Gemini, and I looked you up this morning and all the planets are moving in the right direction and you’ve got to Take Advantage of Opportunities.” Marcia was a great one for horoscopes. “That means that within a week you’re going to find a super job and a super flat, and probably a super tall dark man with a Maserati. A sort of job lot.”