Two Loves (27 page)

Joss couldn't help noticing the way his grandmother was ignoring Rosamund and made a bid to rectify it. ‘Grandmother, do you like the way my mother has her hair? Her friend, Ingrid, has been telling her to have a fringe and a bob, but I like it long and mussed-up. What do you think?'

Molly turned her head and fixed Rosamund with a steely glance. ‘It's very nice either way,' she told Joss, her voice revealing a massive indifference.

‘I think we ought to go now. Your grandmother is tired,' Rosamund said.

Joss sprang to his feet. ‘I do hope you'll be better soon, Grandmother,' he said. ‘And I really don't think you're too old to visit us. And if you do, I'll make you a meal in my microwave. You too, Great-Aunt Lorna. And you can see my new mountain bike and my four-man tent. And I'm soon having a black kitten, by the way.'

‘This is for you. And this is for your mother,' Molly told him, handing him two thick white envelopes. ‘I'm very pleased to have met you.' She turned to Rosamund, giving her another long, cool look. ‘Thank you for bringing him to visit me,' she murmured, before lying back on her pillows and closing her eyes again.

‘No kiss for me?' Lorna asked Joss at the front door. She was herself again; put-upon but forgiving, oppressed but unbowed.

He shot out his hand. ‘Goodbye, Great-Aunt. Thank you for the coffee.'

‘Mrs Gilchrist is not seriously ill, is she?' Rosamund asked.

Lorna Drew shrugged her large capable shoulders. ‘Who knows! She certainly doesn't like losing a battle.'

*   *   *

‘Shall we open our letters?' Joss asked his mother some time later when they were sitting in the tube. They'd hardly spoken on their long walk to the station.

‘Yes, I suppose we'd better. Though I don't think mine is going to be very pleasant.'

‘What's this?' Joss asked, handing her a large sheet of thick paper.

‘It's a family tree. Look,
Anthony Gilchrist m. Marjorie Spencer
at the top. That means Anthony married Marjorie, your grandmother, who's called Molly. And the vertical line from them leads to Alexander, who is Alex, their son and your father. And he married Selena Jennings and on the next line are their children, Jeremy and Harriet, who are your half-brother and sister. And the broken line from Alexander leads to you, Joshua.'

‘What a lot of new relations. A grandmother, a great-aunt, a father and a half-brother and sister.' He had another look inside the envelope. ‘No fiver, though. I was expecting at least a fiver. Mum, what would we do if Grandmother left us a million pounds?'

Rosamund opened her letter. A thick white envelope lined with green tissue, one large sheet of paper. A message which looked as though it was written in Indian ink.
‘For Joshua's sake, I forgive you. M.J. Gilchrist.'
She stared at it for a long time.

*   *   *

They had lunch with her father and Dora. A lovely summer lunch; cold salmon with avocado mousse and a salad of oranges, watercress and black olives. (‘Please may I have some tomato ketchup?' Joss asked.)

In the afternoon Paul and Dora had volunteered to take Joss to see the fire-eaters in Covent Garden while Rosamund visited Erica.

‘I'm still sorry you opted out of the book,' Dora said. ‘You'd have had such sympathy. You'd have done it marvellously, darling.'

‘All the same, I think Ingrid's getting on very well. Erica has found all the details she needs, dates and so on, and her memory is wonderful. She could have been a writer herself, she brings scenes to life so vividly. When I was with her last she told me about a country wedding she and Anthony had been to forty years ago. And I've thought about it ever since.'

‘Oh, darling,' Dora said when Joss had gone to watch television. ‘I do hope you'll find Daniel improved. Apparently there's a very good success rate. Once a person is determined to give it up, a cure is definitely on the cards.'

‘All the same, forty per cent of those cured have a relapse,' Paul said. ‘Let's not get carried away.'

‘Paul, you're such a pessimist.'

‘Anyway, people aren't getting married these days. And Rosamund's surely old enough to be over wedding fever.'

‘She's exactly the same age as I was when I married you. And I don't remember hearing you say that to me. You certainly seemed as feverish as I was.'

‘I can't help thinking that you were very, very lucky,' Paul said.

*   *   *

Erica looked almost as old and ill as Molly. Ingrid had talked of her being happy and in high spirits, so that Rosamund had expected to find her rejuvenated, but she was melancholy and in pain.

‘It's come too late,' she said, ‘my little share of fame and fortune. If I make it to next winter, I'll be in a nursing home, not a hotel in Florida.'

‘Everybody is entitled to bad days,' Rosamund replied. ‘I was terribly depressed a few days ago, but now I'm ready for more. You'll be better again when Ingrid's back.'

‘She's a good, cheerful girl, but she can't work miracles. I've got a weak heart and crippling arthritis, and today I'm suffering from both.'

‘Don't you have anything to take?'

‘Of course I have something to take. Like all healthy people you think pills and potions cure you. But all they do is confuse you and postpone your suffering.' She sat up straighter in her chair. ‘Tell me about Anthony's death,' she said.

Rosamund swallowed hard. It was the last thing she'd expected. She struggled to keep her voice steady. ‘He was ill for almost six months. Joss was still a baby and my mother came to look after him so that I could nurse Anthony at home. He hated hospitals, as you probably remember.'

‘Did he talk about me?' Erica's voice trembled.

Rosamund paused, but decided on the truth. ‘Often when he was well, but not during his illness. At the end he talked only about his childhood, about his parents and his nanny. Sometimes he didn't seem to know who I was. He'd smile very sweetly at me from time to time, but I don't think he recognised me. I'd hold his hand and stroke it and he'd look at me kindly but quite blankly.'

‘I've been thinking so much about him lately.'

Rosamund thought about him too; the bony, intelligent face, sharp blue eyes, slow sensuous smile, his kindness. And some other characteristic too; something childlike and dangerous. ‘Writing the book has brought him back to you,' she said.

‘Yes. And I've been wondering again whether these poems he wrote for me will harm his reputation.'

‘They won't, Erica. He wanted them published after twenty years. All we're doing is bringing that forward. Even Molly seems reconciled to it by this time.'

‘All the same, I've decided to postpone publication until the date he suggested. I've had my say, recalled my small part in his life, even mentioning that terrible abortion that shattered both of us. And in due course you can have it published. Ingrid and Ben will be disappointed by the delay; they've worked hard on it, but I've been able to leave their baby a little something in my will. Anyway, that's my decision. The book – and his poems – will remain in the publishers' hands until the time he mentioned.'

Rosamund realised that her mind was quite made up, that she intended to forgo the ready money and the longed-for luxuries which she'd surely deserved. ‘What will survive of us is love,' she said softly.

*   *   *

On the way back in the tube, she still felt awed by Erica's love and forgiveness. Anthony's love had wavered after the trauma of the abortion, Molly's had never been much more than pride and possessiveness, but Erica seemed to have asked nothing and given everything. In the crush of people around her, Rosamund felt she was celebrating something rich and rare.

*   *   *

‘You'll never guess what happened at Erica's,' she said when she got back to Dora and Paul's flat.

‘You'll never guess what happened here,' countered Dora.

‘Alex,' Joss said. ‘Alex came.'

Rosamund and Dora stared at each other carefully, their eyes expressionless. ‘My father,' Joss explained, disappointed at Rosamund's lack of response. ‘He was very nice, a bit old, but very nice. He's coming again when I'm sixteen, but till then he's not too sure about visiting because he's got to be in France a lot of the time. He said to give you his best wishes.'

Rosamund remained silent, so Joss turned back to his chess game with Paul, casting off a father as readily as he'd taken on a grandmother and a great-aunt.

Dora led Rosamund into the kitchen. ‘He phoned to ask if he could call. I told him you wouldn't be here and he said that might be for the best.'

‘Lorna asked for your telephone number this morning. I wondered why she wanted it.'

‘He was very apologetic about letting his mother blackmail you, but says he's completely in her power. He looked really old and sad; told us he'd had a nervous breakdown and lost his job. Nicely dressed, but with that sort of sloping figure you see on shuffling old men. There was something about him which made me feel very uneasy, perhaps because of what you'd told me about him. Oh Rosamund, I hope you don't mind that I let him come here without consulting you. He didn't have any time alone with Joss – in fact, didn't seem to want it. I chatted to him for a while, babbled on about nothing, you know how I do, and then gave him a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake. But Paul was rather rude to him, I'm afraid.'

Chapter Twenty-Three

Afterwards Rosamund remembered how apprehensive she'd felt before seeing Daniel that morning. She'd phoned the clinic the previous night but the nurse on duty had failed to bring him to the phone, which had often happened at the beginning of his stay, but not during the last two or three weeks. In itself that seemed a small thing; it was indeed possible that he'd gone for a stroll in the grounds as the nurse had suggested, but without the reassurance that he was coping with the treatment, that he was looking forward to seeing her, she felt a surge of unease which led to a restless night full of short, tormented dreams in which both Joss and Daniel seemed lost to her. By six o'clock she was sitting up in bed, determined not to fall asleep again and longing to hear the first sounds of Dora getting up for work.

She hadn't seen Daniel for almost six weeks. The doctor in charge had advised her not to visit him nor to phone more than once a week, insisting that he had to go through it on his own, that she could do nothing for him – indeed, might hinder his progress. But she was now afraid he might think she'd purposely neglected him during those long, painful, empty days.

She got up as soon as she heard Dora leave the flat. By that time the heat was already intense, the sky a blinding blue. She had a shower and washed her hair, and after much indecision, wore a new white dress, short and simple, and white sandals.

‘You look like a bride,' Joss told her when she came into the kitchen where he was already having breakfast.

‘No, you don't,' Paul said, seeing the startled look in her eyes. ‘You look quite ordinary. Someone off to play tennis or to the gymnasium.'

She smiled at both of them, hurried over her scalding coffee and left the flat before either of them could think of any other pleasantries.

Buses and tubes were stufty and crowded, and the half-mile walk to the clinic seemed endless; walking on hot, dusty city streets was very different from walking along tree-shaded country roads. Her head ached from tension and lack of sleep and the back of her eyes smarted. Two months ago she'd been eager to move to London, but now, whatever came of the meeting with Daniel, she realised she'd be very reluctant to leave the schoolhouse. She found herself sighing. What was the matter with her? Was it some premonition of disaster? Was she going to find that Daniel had had a relapse? Some serious illness? She sighed again; she couldn't seem to pull herself together.

She tried to turn her thoughts to Erica; her unwavering loyalty to a man who had been unable to respond to her when she'd really needed him. ‘My valiant heart' he'd called her in one of his last poems. And Erica was still valiant. The image of her disordered kitchen came to her; she was clearly not capable of managing alone any longer, but when she'd suggested that someone might come to live with her, she'd been adamantly against the idea, preferring discomfort, pain, danger, to the loss of dignity. Courage, it seemed to Rosamund, was the chiefest virtue. Courage, she told herself. She had the strongest feeling that she was going to need it.

The Cedars had once been a stately Edwardian residence, set in splendid isolation, but overlooking the main road to London. She could imagine a rich city gentleman with his family and retainers moving into the newly-built mansion with all its most modern features. Now though, it was very definitely a clinic or nursing home, far too big and impractical for even the richest family. It had white walls and a green-tiled roof, large curving windows, a round conservatory on one side and a turret on the other. Rosamund walked up the drive, her heart beating painfully against her ribs. She certainly wasn't expecting any fairy-tale ending. ‘If he's well, or even fairly well, I won't ask anything more,' she told herself. The black and white tiles of the porch were suddenly making a kaleidoscope of patterns in her head. It was the hottest day of the hot summer. She hoped she wasn't going to faint.

The nurse who answered the bell was the one she'd met when she and Daniel had arrived. ‘He's doing very well,' she said, smiling carefully. ‘I'll take you to his room. He's with the psychologist at the moment but he'll be finished by eleven.' She opened the door of a light, pleasant room on the first floor, a large semi-circular window in one corner, a tiny kitchen annexe in the other. ‘Help yourself to tea or coffee. There's milk in the fridge and possibly some biscuits in that tin.'