Circles of Time (26 page)

“I wouldn't put it that way. He was utterly horrid.” She took a sip of her brandy and stared at the fire. “It was being in the house all day. He wanted to go up Burgate Hill and see the aeroplane. I told him the plane didn't fly in the rain, but I don't think he believed me.”

“Just temper, then?”

“Not temper so much as pure frustration. He's big for his age and simply bursting with energy. He wears poor Mary out.”

“It's not my business, of course—not yet, anyway—but it appears to me that the boy requires stricter disciplining. You should hire a nanny who won't tolerate any nonsense.”

“Mary's a good soul.”

“It's not her soul that concerns me. The child must learn to be a gentleman. If he doesn't learn now, he's going to find himself in a great deal of trouble when he begins school. I don't believe this nanny is capable of giving him the type of early training he needs. With your permission, I'd be happy to interview some women when I get back to London.”

“Leave it for a while, Noel. I'll have a long talk with Mary.”

“Whatever you wish.” He drained his glass and set it on the table. “He's really a fine little man. We can't permit him to turn into a larrikin, now can we?”

He sensed that he might have upset her, and when he took her in his arms he did so with particular tenderness. Her reaction surprised him. She clung to him fiercely.

“Darling …” he whispered.

She lay back on the couch while he kissed her throat and the deep, hollow between her breasts. Turning her head, she watched the fire burning gently in the grate and heard the rain on the terrace stones. A feeling had come over her while Noel had been talking—an odd, elusive sensation that had nagged like a half-forgotten memory. It had come and gone in an instant, leaving her with a thought that stunned her. It was an image of Saturday afternoon, of Colin perched on the shoulders of Ross. The sensation she had felt at that time and only thought of now was … pleasure. The pleasure she had always felt with Robbie, a pleasure that went far beyond what Noel was attempting to give her with his lips—a pleasure of the heart.

C
OLIN WAS A
trial all day Monday as the rain continued to stream down. He drove his nanny to despair and his mother to numbness. It was one of his “backward” days. He would not walk forward—even the stairs had to be climbed backward. He would not put things
into
his toy box, only take things out. He insisted, with shrieks of determination, that he must sleep with his head toward the foot of the bed. When he had won his battle to do that, he was as exhausted as his nanny and dropped off to sleep as though hit on the head—an action contemplated by many during the long, wet day.

Tuesday dawned clear and fair, with only a few ragged tails of cloud as reminders of the storm. Colin was awake at cockcrow, stole silently out of the nursery, and then ran down the hall to his mother's room and plopped noisily into bed beside her. She tried to calm him back to sleep, but he teased and fretted until she had promised to take him up to Burgate Hill—“But not one second before lunchtime.” It satisfied him. He lay quietly beside her while she slept on, staring up at the sun-specked ceiling and making barely audible motor sounds through pursed lips.

The plane came over twice during the two hours they were on the hilltop. In both cases it flew very low, circling the hill three times, the pilot waving at them, his white silk scarf fluttering behind him in the slipstream. Colin waved back with both hands, leaping and screaming in a paroxysm of joy.

“Jamie! Jamie! See! See! Jamie! …”

“That's not Jamie,” she told him. “Jamie doesn't fly aeroplanes, he builds them.”

“No, Mama—no! Jamie! Jamie!”

She let it go at that. When she brought him home he was soaked to the skin from the wet grass and so tired and content that he fell asleep in the hot bath and Mary had to hold his head above water while she soaped him.

She waited until after six o'clock and then asked the Guildford exchange for his number—Abingdon 314. The phone rang six times before he picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” He sounded concerned.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Did I disturb you?”

There was a long pause. “Mrs. Mackendric?”

“Alexandra. I called to thank you for what you did. The pilot waved, Colin waved back—and a very happy boy is sound asleep.”

Ross laughed softly. “I told Gerald to come in low over Burgate and, if he saw two dots, to wave. He enjoyed doing it. Came back on the second flight, I understand.”

“Oh, yes. Two delightful performances. Colin was convinced it was you. I didn't have the heart to remind him you said you were afraid of heights.”

“Tell him only people with feathers can fly.”

“I don't think he would believe that.”

“I
know
he wouldn't. A very clever lad, your son.”

There was a sudden silence. Her hand began to tremble as it held the receiver. “Are you sure I'm not interrupting anything?”

“No … no. I was expecting a call from London and jumped out of the tub.”

“I'd better hang up then.”

“No,” he said quickly. “If the line's busy, he'll ring back.”

“You'll catch cold.”

“I have a dry towel. I'm glad you called. I wasn't sure if I told you how much I enjoyed the other day—showing you and the nipper about. It—it was a pleasure.”

“For—us, too.”

“Good. Perhaps …”

“Yes, certainly,” she said quickly.

“Saturday, then?”

“That would be difficult, I'm afraid. I have a guest coming down from London for the weekend.”

“Tomorrow? I'm at loose ends. We could make a sort of day of it. Go by the field so Colin can watch the plane take off, and then drive up to Dorking and have lunch at Burford Bridge.”

“That sounds wonderful. I'll have cook fix up a hamper. Colin loves picnics.”

He cleared his throat. “How—I mean to say—”

“We could come to your place about ten o'clock and go on from there in your car. It would be—easier that way.”

“Yes—very much easier. Tomorrow, then.”

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

She hung up. Her heart was thumping and she could do nothing for a moment but stare at the black instrument as though in disbelief that she had actually been speaking into it—to Jamie Ross of all people.

H
E HAD A
good face—honest, open, easy to smile and laugh. The freckles and sandy hair gave him a boyish look. And he had a boy's enthusiasm for life, chatting away as he drove the car, holding Colin spellbound with stories about seaplanes, about kite-flying from the cliffs at a place called La Jolla, about swimming in the ocean at Christmastime, fiestas in Mexico.... She looked away from him and gazed at the woods and meadows beyond Dorking, not really seeing anything. He was in no way similar to Robin Mackendric. Robbie had been outwardly grave and taciturn. Only she—and his patients—had known the warmth and compassion beneath the shell. And yet he reminded her strongly of Robbie. She felt at ease with him. She felt—happy.

They found a stand of horse-chestnut trees near the top of Box Hill—a long, hard climb up from the road. She rested, spreading a plaid blanket on the grass, while Colin and Jamie Ross searched for the spiny green pods which, when opened, revealed large shiny seeds.

“Lord,” Ross said, flopping onto the grass near her, “that lad could wear a stevedore down to his knees.”

“Yes,” she said, sitting up and undoing the straps on the hamper. “And he can eat like one, too.”

“So can I, if it comes to that.” He watched her remove a cold roast chicken, hard-boiled eggs, celery, cheeses, and a bottle of cider. “The Grevilles always were good providers.”

She gave him a thoughtful look. “Do I make you think of those days, Jamie—of servants' hall?”

He frowned and plucked at a piece of grass. “I'm not unaware of having been—your man Ross … but I'm not uncomfortable with you, if that's what you mean. I'm not the same bloke, am I? Or, anyway, I keep telling myself I'm not. But if I hadn't been His Lordship's chauffeur, I wouldn't have thought twice about driving to the Pryory this morning and picking up you and Colin.”

“Yes, I know.”

“But I don't look at you and say, ‘My God, I'm having a picnic in the woods with
Lady
Alexandra.' I just see you as—well, as a beautiful and charming woman who's easy to be with.”

“Thank you, Jamie. That was a nice thing to say.”

Colin saw the food and hurried over, his pockets filled with horse-chestnut seeds. After eating, he wanted to go for a walk, or a roll down the hill, or to climb a tree if Jamie would lift him up to the branches. But his frenetic burst of energy dissipated rapidly and he rolled onto his stomach on the blanket and fell instantly asleep. Ross covered him with his sweater.

“Out like a light.”

“He likes you, Jamie. So do I.”

He stared down at the boy for a moment and then looked at her. There was no mistaking what he saw in her eyes. As he took her in his arms—the softness of her body against him, her lips against his own—his thoughts whirled off in all directions. It wasn't possible—it wasn't
right
—and yet, in this world—topsy-turvy—upside down—everything changing, spinning toward unthought-of horizons—could he? Could she? And then he gave up thinking altogether, lost in the fever of their embrace.

J
ACOB
G
OLDEN BOUGHT
a copy of the
Daily Post
outside Victoria Station and scanned through it as his taxi crawled through the West End traffic toward Soho. He found what he was looking for on page six, the editorial page, and was wryly amused by what he read there.

Jacob smiled, folded the newspaper into a tight square, and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. He turned his head to look out of the window at Piccadilly.

“Hypocrites,” he murmured.

He was thirty-two and looked much younger, a tall, thin, dark-haired man with a face of almost feminine delicacy. The female quality was enhanced by large, soft brown eyes, a complexion of olive-hued ivory, and his curly hair. The mouth saved him from prettiness. A taut slash, the lips usually curled in mockery.

He went up the stairs to his flat lugging a heavy leather suitcase. He smiled when he went inside and looked around. Martin's presence in the place was obvious by the neatness. After dumping his suitcase in his bedroom, he opened a cold bottle of champagne and stretched out on the parlor sofa. He was still there, drinking champagne, smoking cigarettes, and reading back issues of
The Times
, when Martin came home. Martin eyed the sea of tossed away newspapers littering the floor.

“Well, I can tell
you're
back.”

Jacob raised himself and grinned. “Is that all the welcome I get, old boy? Sarcastic chastisement?”

“Of course not,” Martin said wearily. “It's damn good to see you. Any champagne left?”

“Bottles and bottles. Do join.”

Jacob Golden had few friends—his choice. People, he had once said to Martin, are too pathetic to be taken seriously and far too devious to be befriended. His caustic aphorisms tended to infuriate and had done so since he was a boy. His father had unwittingly placed him in a renowned and ancient preparatory school whose boys had dismissed Jacob instantly as “that thin Jew.” A school of such stupefying snobbery and random cruelty that his only defense against it had been his withering tongue. He would have been in for severe physical reprisals by enraged peers if an upper-form boy, captain of his house and the school eleven, had not come to his defense and made it known that Jacob was to be left alone. Fenton Wood-Lacy had not so much befriended Jacob as he had placed him under the wings of his protection, the way he might have protected a wet and starving cat from mindless cruelty. That singular act had made Fenton a friend for life—an honor that, at times, Fenton could gladly have done without. Jacob's friendship with Martin was less easily explained. Their very oppositeness had something to do with it—light and shadow, mirth and grief, faith and despair. Martin viewed mankind with compassion, tolerance, and hope. Jacob viewed its dark underside and saw no hope for it at all.