The Sea Garden (14 page)

‘Her brain is as sharp as a razor,' says Sophie, ‘but I can see that she might want to rewrite history a bit in an attempt to remember happy times as she would have liked them to be. I suppose even Rowena might be capable of the odd attack of romantic nostalgia, though it seems rather out of character.'

‘They
were
happy times.' Johnnie sounds as if he is trying to convince himself. ‘Al and Mike were great oppos but they were competitors too, and Mike got Juliet. Al was certainly very taken with her. Anyway, I think Mother wants to think of them when they were all very young together. Like you said, she's airbrushing out what she doesn't want to remember.'

‘Odd, though, in a way. If Juliet came between Al and Mike you'd think that Rowena might resent her and not want to meet her granddaughter, let alone be so friendly. It would be a fairly normal reaction, wouldn't it?'

Johnnie frowns, as if he is trying to see it from his mother's point of view.

‘I told you, I think it's just a question of Mother seizing a chance to talk to anyone who has any kind of relationship to Al, however distant. It gives her a chance to live things through again, to talk about the parties and the dancing and the fun. She's going to show Jess the old photographs and do all that stuff. It's doing her good, I'm sure of it. Look, we'd better crack on or they'll wonder where we are.'

He takes the tray and goes out. Sophie begins to stack the second tray: a loaf of new bread, cheese and butter, pâté. As she washes some cherry tomatoes she thinks how typical it is of Johnnie not to be resentful of this streak to the past that doesn't seem to include him. His and Freddy's exploits are not referred to when Rowena talks of the past: there is only one Golden Age in Rowena's memory.

‘What you have to bear in mind,' he said once, way back, when she was exasperated on his account, ‘is that Mother and Al were so alike. They were cut from the same cloth. I think she found him easy because she couldn't hurt him. He was tough and confident, and whatever happened he'd simply bounce straight back. Just like she does. Sensitive, needy people irritate her. She can't bear to look on the wounds she inflicts upon them and she simply hasn't got the patience to be kindly and thoughtful. She's always said that the worst trait anyone can have is a need to be loved.'

Sophie knew that he was touched by her partisanship but slightly amused by it, and she soon realized that, in his own way, Johnnie was just as tough as his mother. He managed it without putting backs up or alienating people but he was no pushover. Nevertheless, Johnnie, and his father before him, had a deep-down kindness, a generosity of spirit, that was missing in Rowena.

‘And after all,' Freddy said, when she talked to him about it, ‘Johnnie's still here, isn't he? And his children and their children. All able to enjoy this glorious place. Poor old Al didn't win in the end, did he?'

Thinking about Freddy, Sophie reminds herself that she must phone and invite him over to supper when Tom and Cass Wivenhoe and the Mortlakes and Kate Porteous come for the great reunion that Rowena is planning. She'll need two extra men, and Freddy'll want to meet Jess, too. Anyway, it'll be good to have him here; he's always such fun to have around.

She picks up the tray and carries it out to the sea garden.

*   *   *

The summerhouse doors are open to the sunshine, and Johnnie has already unloaded the contents of his tray onto the table. He's set a canvas chair for his mother outside in the sunshine and Jess is putting out another.

Rowena leans on her stick, watching them. She doesn't sit down just yet simply because she knows that Johnnie is anxious that she should do so.

As if, she thinks irritably, I'm too old to remain upright for more than five minutes.

She stares away across the river, towards Cargreen, but superimposed upon the granite walls of the cottages and the pub she sees Jess's face. Truly, it is as if Juliet has come back to them and Rowena's heart aches for Al – to see him just once more, strolling towards them with his sexy slouching walk and his wicked grin. Her longing is so great that, when Johnnie gently touches her elbow and says, ‘Why don't you sit down, Mother?' she snaps at him, ‘Don't fuss!' shrugging her arm away and nearly toppling over.

She turns quickly, hoping that Jess hasn't seen her flash of temper, but the girl is in the summerhouse with Sophie, sorting out the food.

‘Are you hungry, Rowena?' Sophie calls, and this gives her the opportunity to go across to them. She's not hungry but she'll make a pretence of eating something. Jess smiles at her so sweetly that she longs to touch the girl's hand, to stroke that long dark red-brown hair. How attractive she is; no wonder all the boys fall in love with her. For a moment Rowena is confused; looking around for the boys, for Al and Mike and Stephen. And then she remembers that this is Jess, not Juliet, and she feels rather weak, and her heart beats unevenly in her side.

Johnnie is beside her again. ‘I'll carry your plate,' he says.

He helps her to her chair and gives her the plate and, as usual, his kindness irritates her and she longs for Al to be there, to make some witty, acerbic comment in her ear that only she can hear.

At last they are all gathered around, eating, talking. Johnnie is telling Jess the family history, about the book he is writing, and Sophie is planning for this weekend when Will comes out for his exeat.

‘If the weather stays like this we'll get some sailing in,' she says. ‘Will always loves to get out on the river. Lucky the tides are right.'

Rowena makes some reply but all the while she is planning for that moment when she and Jess will be alone so that together they can look at the photographs and reassemble the jigsaw of the past.

*   *   *

Jess refuses when Sophie suggests that she goes with her to fetch Will.

‘He might be a bit shy,' Jess says. ‘And three-handed conversations are always tricky. Anyway, it'll give you a chance to warn him I'm here and he can ask questions about me without feeling embarrassed.'

She remembers her own journeys to and from school and how it was so much nicer if she had one of her parents to herself; sitting in the passenger seat, feeling grown up. She doesn't want to take that away from Will although, as soon as he makes his way to the sail loft to find her, she realizes that she probably needn't have worried. He is a poised, confident little boy with the occasional faraway expression of someone who lives in other worlds; he is thin, with fragile wrists and bony knees, a mop of blond hair and a serene look in his blue-green eyes: Johnnie's eyes. Jess falls in love with him at once.

‘I wish
I
could sleep in the sail loft,' he tells her enviously, ‘but I'm not allowed. We do in the hols when my sisters come over from Geneva and my cousins come to stay, but I'm not allowed on my own. Mummy says I can when I'm twelve.'

He gazes at her with his amazing eyes and Jess stares back at him; she feels an odd desire to fulfil his every wish.

‘Perhaps,' she begins tentatively, ‘since I'm here, you could stay tonight in the sail loft with me?'

The small thin face lights up. ‘Could I?'

‘Well, I don't see why not.' Jess glances round for Sophie or Johnnie, anxious lest she is breaking some kind of rule. ‘Shall we ask Johnnie? Your grandfather. What d'you call him?'

‘Grando,' says Will at once. ‘Grando's cool. He'll be OK with it but Sophie might not.'

‘Well, we must go with what Sophie says,' Jess tells him firmly.

‘OK,' he says cheerfully. ‘It's good out on the balcony, isn't it? I took some really cool photos this summer from the balcony.'

‘I take photos, too,' says Jess. ‘I like to draw from them.'

‘D'you upload them onto your computer?'

She nods. ‘You can blow them up to a good size so that you can really study them.'

He gazes at her, impressed. ‘Sophie says you've won a really cool award. Have you got any of your work with you?'

‘No. I've left it all with a friend in Bristol. I'm hoping to start something fresh but really I'm having a holiday.'

‘D'you like sailing?'

She nods, and he looks away, slightly shy for the first time.

‘I could take you out if you like,' he says casually. ‘I've got a Heron dinghy in the boathouse. It's my own.'

‘Wow? Your very own?' It's her turn to be impressed. ‘I'd love it.'

His gaze swivels back to her, bright, almost mischievous. ‘Would you? The tides are good this weekend.'

‘You've got a date,' she tells him. ‘But had we better check with…' She hesitates, can't quite bring herself to call Johnnie ‘Grando', ‘… with Sophie? I'm a guest, you know. I have to play by the house rules.'

‘OK,' he says cheerfully. ‘Shall we go and ask if I can stay here tonight? I can bring my stuff over.'

He pauses at her table to look at her camera. ‘I'd like one like this,' he says wistfully. He peers at the little painting. ‘Did you do this?'

‘No. It was done by the artist whose Award I won. David Porteous. Do you like it?'

He bends nearer, studying it. ‘Mmm. It looks real, doesn't it? Like you could pick the flower, and the water actually looks wet. What does the writing say?'

Jess hesitates. It is odd to be in a position to explain the words to this little boy whose gaze is fixed so intently on the painting. She almost feels as if she is betraying a confidence.

‘It says, “Thanks for everything. It's been perfect.” David Porteous gave the painting to a very close friend who died not long afterwards.'

The sea-green stare is turned upon her and she feels faintly unnerved by its focus. ‘And did the friend give it to you?'

She shakes her head. ‘No, she – it was a woman – left it when she died with lots of other things to a friend of hers called Kate, who later married David. Kate gave it to me because I won his Award, in the hope that it would inspire me.'

His eyes widen, drift, as if he is imagining the story she has told him, seeing the characters in his mind's eye.

‘That was nice of her,' he says. ‘And it must be very valuable too, so it was generous as well. You'll have to get it insured.'

‘Yes,' says Jess, slightly thrown by the practical turn to the conversation. ‘Yes. I must. Let's go and find Sophie and see if you're allowed to spend the night here.'

*   *   *

Rowena decides to wait a few days before she makes her little test with the photographs. Though she finds it almost impossible to contain her impatience, some instinct warns her that it will be wise to let the girl settle in. She knows that her own excitement has communicated itself to Jess and made her slightly wary. There must be no tension when Jess sees the photographs; no suggestion of a hidden agenda; simply a happy moment looking at old snapshots in order to put some meat on the bare bones of the past.

Carefully she plans it. Sitting there in the sunny morning-room, she shuffles the photographs, opens albums, peers into big brown envelopes bursting with snapshots. Ever since that day in the Bedford, when Kate told them that Jess was coming to stay, Rowena has been planning. She hasn't much evidence to support her long-held suspicion but such that she has she marshals; pieces of the jigsaw. She can see these pieces clearly before her as if they were laid on the table with the photographs: each piece represents a small scene that plays and replays itself in her mind's eye.

Once again she sees Al dancing with Juliet at the Christmas Ball on HMS
Drake,
holding her too tightly, his eyes closed, whilst Mike watches from the bar. She hears Juliet's voice, strained and desperate, whispering just outside these morning-room windows: ‘I should never have married him, I know that now. I thought I was in love with him. I really did. How was I to know? What shall we do?' and the low, murmuring response: ‘We must be very careful.'

She remembers Juliet as a house guest, staying for a week whilst Mike is at sea. Juliet, slipping away to the sail loft, along the river bank, and, after a while, the shadowy figure of Al following her.

Last and most important: the Midsummer's Eve party. The sea garden is a magical place: reflections jitter and dance on the smooth black surface of the water; shadowy figures dance or lean against the balustrade beneath Circe's imposing figure. The tall lavender hedges are pale, cloudy shapes, their scent still lingering on the warm air.

And the voices, whispering: the first is urgent, demanding; the other is frightened. Juliet's dress is in disarray, her hair loosened. Al's face is buried against her throat but her face is twisted away from his, her hands on his shoulders.

‘Listen,' she is saying, still in that desperate whisper. ‘Please just listen to me. I'm pregnant, Al. Just for God's sake, listen…'

And now, as the weekend passes, Rowena waits. She watches Jess and Will: sailing in his little dinghy, joking together at lunch, in the sea garden. Now, as she glances from her bedroom window, Will perches on the balustrade with his back to Circe, explaining something to Jess, his arms gesticulating wildly; Jess leans beside him, listening. Popps is with them, playing with an old tennis ball. Its yellow coat is torn, ragged and discoloured, and she seizes it in her teeth and tosses it into the air as if it were a rat. Suddenly Will leaps from the balustrade, catches the ball and goes racing over the grass with Popps behind him. Jess turns to watch them, resting her elbows on the balustrade, laughing as the boy and the dog wheel round and round the sea garden.

Jess's likeness to Juliet is so strong that Rowena half expects to see Al and Mike coming across the lawn to join her. Her heart hammers too fast for comfort and she sits back in her chair, taking deep breaths, willing herself to be calm. Now is not the moment for one of her tiresome little attacks. She must be ready, strong. After tea Sophie or Johnnie will take Will back to school and then she must decide whether or not to show Jess the photographs. Part of her longs with such intensity to do it that she feels quite ill; part of her hesitates, draws back from it, fearing terrible disappointment.