Echoes of the Dance (31 page)

As she unpacked the delicious cheese and jam she'd bought at Crebers, and shook out the soft silky dress that she and Brigid Foley had selected so carefully together, Kate was conscious that she was waiting.

Waiting was something that had always played a major part in her life: waiting for the boat to come in, waiting for the leave to start, waiting for the shore job. Later, she'd waited for the twins to come home for the holidays: home from boarding school, home from university. Later still she'd waited to hear that the babies were born and that all her children were safe – and so the cycle had begun again. Most recent of all had been the waiting through David's last long illness.

Kate shook her head: best not to think about David. Perhaps she should never have married, never had children; loving people was simply so painful and the worrying never seemed to cease. She picked up the book of
Showings
, still lying on the kitchen table. Maybe Dame Julian might have a word for her.

Peace and love are always in us, living and working, but we are not always in peace and love; but He wants us to take heed that He is the foundation of our whole life in love and that He is our everlasting protector . . .

Peace and love: Kate sighed longingly. Of course, she might do better if she were to actually sit down and read the book instead of snatching sentences and phrases at random, hoping for a signpost to point her forward. She leafed idly through the pages. Peace and love. Perhaps, after lunch, she'd sit down quietly and concentrate on Julian's
Showings
: rejecting worrying and waiting, learning instead how to exist in love and peace . . .

The telephone bell made her jump.

‘Kate, it's Michael. I've got a couple here with me in the office. Mr and Mrs Burns. They'd like to come and see the house. I know it's rather short notice but they're only down for two days. Could you manage it if I were to bring them round at three o'clock?'

‘Yes. Yes, of course. Three o'clock? That will give me time to dash round and tidy up.'

‘Three o'clock then?'

‘Yes,' said Kate. ‘Absolutely. I'll be waiting for you.'

PART THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The dogs sat in a semicircle staring at the newcomer. He bounded to and fro excitedly, pausing to bow down on his front paws with his back end stuck in the air, inviting them to play. At intervals he barked encouragingly, hoping for a reaction. Bevis flattened his ears uneasily, though his tail thumped once or twice, and Floss sat up straight as if poised for flight; only Uncle Bernard barked back. He stood foursquare, legs stiff, and told the newcomer exactly what he thought of him. The new arrival, Flynn, sat down abruptly and stared at him in amazement.

Sitting on a bench in the yard, watching the proceedings, Roly laughed out loud.

‘Good old Uncle Bernard,' he said to Daisy, who was sitting beside him. ‘He reminds me of my regimental sergeant-major: small and dapper but when he opened his mouth, my God, how we jumped to it!'

‘It's funny, isn't it, how Flynn knows that though Uncle Bernard is so much smaller he's definitely top dog?'

‘He's hardly more than a puppy, poor fellow. Here! Good boy then, Flynn.' He closed his eyes, bracing himself as Flynn, whining with excitement, licked his face enthusiastically. ‘You'll have to watch yourself with this one, Daisy. We don't want any more accidents. Luckily we've got someone very interested in him. They'll be over later to see him. I don't think he'll be with us for very long.'

‘Poor Flynn.' Daisy watched his antics compassionately. ‘It must be horrid to be taken away from your family, however unsatisfactory it's been. Terribly unsettling for everyone. It was rather different for Floss, with her owner dying, although I suppose she doesn't know the difference.'

‘Flynn's been brought up in a very small flat with only a tiny yard and his owners at work all day. They admitted they simply had no idea how much work a puppy would involve or that he'd get so lonely. They're very sad to lose him but they want what's best for him and we all think that he's young enough to settle down with a new owner.'

Flynn dashed away again, circling the yard several times before sitting down suddenly, panting with exertion. Ears cocked and tongue hanging out, he stared hopefully at his audience as though awaiting their approval. Uncle Bernard yawned contemptuously and strutted away into the house but Bevis wagged his tail tolerantly as if he understood Flynn's boisterous behaviour: he'd been young once. Floss stood up and came to lean against Daisy's knee, as if seeking reassurance, and Daisy put an arm around her neck.

‘You'll find it difficult to part with her if she stays much longer,' she said to Roly. ‘Do you think Kate will take her?'

‘Oh, I shall keep Floss if Kate doesn't have her but it's such an obvious solution,' he answered almost impatiently. ‘The whole situation is very frustrating. I wish Kate could see her problems as two separate issues. Where she lives is one thing and having a dog is another but I think that she's using them so as to postpone facing her real grief. She needs unwumbling.'

Daisy laughed. ‘You used that word before but it was about me, then. Wumbled. Worried and jumbled, I think you said. I'm looking forward to seeing Kate's cottage, aren't you?'

‘Yes. Yes, I am.'

‘You don't sound too sure.'

‘I just don't want her to make a mistake, that's all. Is it a good idea to buy a cottage simply because you were happy in it when you were young? Isn't it going backwards instead of forwards? I simply don't know.'

‘But you've come back here,' Daisy pointed out. ‘This is where you lived when you were a child. What's the difference?'

‘I'm not sure there is a difference.' Roly frowned, thinking about it. ‘Except that we never really left here. Not completely. When our father died we kept the house as a retreat and let the stable flat to holiday-makers. We'd come down with friends at regular intervals and for holidays so, you see, it's always been a part of our lives; a kind of continuum. I think that Kate is trying to recreate some kind of happiness that happened years ago. She's relying on building a new life around a memory, probably not even a very reliable one, to assuage her loneliness. I'm not sure it's going to work.'

‘And you think that having Floss would unwumble her?'

‘She's been in a state of shock, losing David and then Felix so quickly afterwards. First of all she was too numb to think too much or do anything apart from surviving day to day. Now she's in that state where she feels that she's got to do something: anything to prevent her from contemplating the loneliness and grief. Moving house is such a tempting option, isn't it? Lots to think about, lots to do: a new life opening up and so on. Floss would keep her busy but give her time to grieve properly.'

‘So you think she's in denial about David?'

‘Something like that. It's as if suddenly she's remembering people and things much further back in time, as if he didn't exist.' He paused, as if hesitating whether to speak his thoughts. ‘Monica said something once. She said that Kate had hinted at a passionate affair and implied that she'd never loved David and he was, well, very second-best.'

‘She said Kate said that? I don't believe it. I don't know her very well but you have an instinct about people, don't you? I can't imagine Kate marrying someone she didn't love.'

‘Can't you?' He sounded relieved. ‘I must admit I had difficulty with it too. They were always very happy and easy together. I think Monica misunderstood and Kate was talking about an affair she had way back before she met David. She was alone for a long time after her marriage broke up.'

‘But that doesn't mean she didn't love David, does it? You can fall in love more than once. Actually . . .' she cast a quick sideways glance at him, ‘I wondered if you and Kate might have a future together.'

He smiled. ‘I wondered that too. I had a private passion for Kate for a very long time, and she was very tactful and patient about it, but I'm glad to say that the fever has passed and we can be very close friends, which is a great deal more comfortable if slightly less exciting.'

There was a short silence whilst they watched Bevis and Flynn indulging in a wrestling match.

‘I envy you,' Daisy said at last, rather bitterly. ‘I think I'm still infectious.'

‘It's early days,' Roly said comfortingly. ‘Poor old Bevis is getting rather the worst of it, isn't he? He's showing his age. Come on. Let's take this lot for a walk.'

Later, sitting by the pond, half hidden by the graceful branches of the weeping almond, he watched the fish as they surfaced: first one and then another with soft, gaping mouths snatching at the food. They swirled in an ever-changing pattern of gold whilst, deep down amongst the drifting weed, the shadowy carp waited their chance. In the muddy shallows, sheltering beneath the crimped-leaved ferns, a frog hopped. Roly smiled to see him.

‘A frog he would a-wooing go. “Heigh-ho,” says Rowley.' He could remember his mother singing the rhyme and his own delight in it: possibly because he and the frog shared the same name. ‘The Rowleys' his mother named them. Each spring the frogs came to do their wooing in the pond and, during the chill, lengthening evenings of February, he listened for the sound of their urgent, thrumming serenade as eagerly as he waited for the cuckoo-call in April.

‘Listen,' says his mother, lingering at the open window one cold, sweet spring evening. ‘Can you hear them?'

She watches his face, laughing at his puzzlement, and his father gets up and joins her at the window.

‘Frogs,' he says. ‘Incredible sound, isn't it?'

It is indeed an incredible sound: a deep, throaty, rhythmical purring that fills the quiet dusk.

‘Where are they?' asks Roly. ‘What are they doing?' and his mother laughs again.

‘Wooing,' she answers. ‘You know the nursery rhyme. “A frog he would a-wooing go. ‘Heigh-ho,' says Rowley. Whether his mother would let him or no . . .”'

She sings the first verse and he nods, saying some of the words with her, but he is not concentrating properly because he is impatient to have a proper answer.

‘But what does it mean? Wooing?'

‘Come and see.' She holds out her hand to him. ‘But you must walk very carefully. They can hear your footsteps vibrating through the ground. Bring the torch, Johnnie. Softly, now.'

They creep quietly, the three of them, across the grass, where the first crocuses are flowering, and beneath the arching branches of the cherry tree. As they approach the edge of the pond his mother's hand restrains him and he stops, peering into the darkness, straining his eyes. Suddenly the torchlight flashes over the surface of the water and there, caught in its beam, are the frogs: supported by the weed their heads emerge from the oily blackness and all the while their croaking song ripples through the garden.

‘See them?' She bends down to him. ‘Lots of Rowleys come to do their wooing.'

‘I can see them.' He is enchanted. Some pop their heads out of the water whilst others simply sit, their hooded protuberant eyes glassy in the sudden brightness. ‘And look, that one is having a piggyback. And so is that one. Is that what wooing is?'

‘It's love.' She chuckles again. ‘That's what it is. They're calling to the lady frogs because they want to make love and have lots of dear little babies.'

‘Honestly, Claire.' His father's voice is shocked. ‘You are the limit. The boy's far too young.'

‘Too young for the truth?' She is teasing his father, and Roly sees her slide her arm around him, but he is too fascinated by the scene in the pond to take much notice. ‘Don't you think this is a rather nice way to show him, Johnnie? Much better than all those birds and bees! The Rowleys are having lovely fun and in the morning there will be babies.'

The Rowleys
do
seem to be having lots of fun: apart from the singing they embrace each other with thin arms and clutching, slippery fingers and, here and there, a long leg extends languorously from an amorphous, fleshy bundle. It's fun but, somehow, odd and frightening and fascinating too, as if there is something more than fun happening: something that he cannot understand but which is slightly threatening. He holds her hand more tightly and she bends down to him.

‘This is the way the Rowleys do it,' she says. ‘Nothing to be worried about. Wait until the morning and you'll see the babies.'

And, in the morning, all over the pond is the evidence of the wooing: a glistening, gelatinous, slippery, wobbling mass.

‘Lots and lots of jelly babies,' says his mother triumphantly. ‘They'll grow up into tadpoles and then they'll become frogs. It's a Rowley nursery.'

Roly stirred. She'd died when he was ten and Mim was eight yet his mother's capacity for love, her ready humour and particular grace had already informed their lives. He wished he could have thanked her, acknowledging her vital presence that hovered even now so many years later. He'd been reminded of her earlier, whilst talking to Daisy in the yard. Something had ignited an idea that had flared up briefly and then vanished before he could catch its spark; something that was tied up with Daisy. Frustrated, he cudgelled his memory.