It was only when I was sitting with Sarah in the airport coffee bar an hour before her flight, in fact, that I thought to ask what life-what immediate future-she was going back to in England. And only when I heard her answer did I realize that keeping in touch with her needn’t be so difficult after all.
“A year at law college before I take articles. I’d thought of postponing, but… what would be the point? Life, so they tell me, must go on. So, I’ve enrolled to start at Guildford next month.”
“Guildford? But that’s not far-”
“From Steep? No. Not a million miles. Actually, it’s why I chose it. I didn’t realize then, of course…”
“Will you commute from London?”
“Ideally, no. I really want somewhere local to stay during the week. But… it’s been hard to concentrate on practicalities like that recently. By now, the best places will already have been snapped up.”
“If they have…” I hesitated, then decided it was just a suggestion she might find helpful. Nothing significant hung on whether she did or not. How could it? “My sister-in-law-my brother’s widow, that is-has a large house with plenty of room to spare in Hindhead. It can’t be more than twelve miles from Guildford. And she’s looking for a lodger. She told me so herself. You’ve both suffered a loss recently. Perhaps… Well, it might be worth considering.”
“Yes,” said Sarah thoughtfully. “It might.”
When she left, ten minutes or so later, it was with Bella’s address and telephone number recorded in her diary.
The following day, at Brussels’ largest stockist of English language books, I bought a collection of Edward Thomas’s verse. I soon found the poem Sarah had recited and others too to haunt me with their resonance of things half seen and understood but never grasped or named or known for precisely what they are. Whether because I’d ignored them before or simply not been ready for them, his poems came to me now with a sort of revelatory force. How could they fail to, when so much of my own experience seemed embedded in the verse? And how could I not think of Louise Paxton-or her daughter-when I read such lines as:
After you speak
And what you meant
Is plain,
My eyes
Meet yours that mean,
With your cheeks and hair,
Something more wise,
More dark,
And far different.
Especially when Thomas seemed to have foreseen even our meeting on Hergest Ridge.
It was upon a July evening.
At a stile I stood looking along a path
Over the country by a second Spring
Drenched perfect green again. “The lattermath
Will be a fine one.” So the stranger said.
But there he’d erred. Or the stranger had. Our lattermath wasn’t to be a fine one.
A week or so later, I had a telephone call from Bella. She wanted to thank me for finding her a lodger. “One of your better ideas, Robin,” she said. “Sarah and I hit it off straightaway.” This I found hard to believe. But if Bella wanted to believe it, who was I to argue? “I think we could turn out to be rather good for each other. Don’t you?”
CHAPTER FIVE
The powers that be couldn’t in the end be persuaded to release me early. In fact, somewhat to my surprise, they didn’t want me to go at all. Phrases like “sadly missed” and “hard to replace” were bandied about. It was rather like reading your obituary without actually being dead. Gratifying in one sense, but also frustrating. Not least because it meant I had to see out my notice to the bitter-sweet end: 31 October 1990. For me it turned out to be an anti-climactic date, since my farewell bash got tacked unsatisfactorily onto an office Hallowe’en party. I left uncertain whether my colleagues’ gift to me-a Timariot & Small grade A cricket bat signed by them in the style of an England touring team-constituted trick or treat.
Either way, a chapter of my life had belatedly closed. I flew home to England and took up my post as works director of Timariot & Small the following Monday. Reminding my mother at regular intervals that it was only a temporary arrangement until I had time to find suitable accommodation of my own, I moved into Greenhayes. I meant what I said, even though the U.K. property market had risen way beyond my reach during the twelve years I’d been complacently renting bachelor apartments in Brussels. But, for the moment, there was so much to be mastered and assimilated at work that I was grateful to have Mother cooking and washing for me. Even at the expense of her remorseless chatter and Simon’s satirical remarks. I promised myself I’d sort something out in the New Year.
By then, for all I knew, Shaun Naylor’s trial would be upon us. While I was still in Brussels, I’d received a conditional witness order from the Crown Court stipulating that I might be required to appear at the trial, a date for which hadn’t yet been fixed. The Kington killings had dropped out of the papers altogether, vanishing into the limbo of judicial delay. The thousands who’d read and speculated about them at the time had probably forgotten them altogether. But for those who couldn’t forget-for the Paxton family-it must have been like waiting for Louise’s funeral over again, on and on, as the months passed. A cathartic moment indefinitely postponed. As far as they or any of us knew, Naylor was still planning to plead not guilty. Eventually, he was bound to be given his moment in court.
I tried to contact Sarah on several occasions during my first few weeks back in England, but without success. If I was busy getting to know the workforce at Timariot & Small and imposing my authority as firmly but gently as I could, no doubt she was equally busy absorbing contract, tort and criminal law while trying not to brood on the experience she’d soon have of the real thing. I only ever seemed to get Bella on the telephone, which I couldn’t risk doing too often without her putting two and two together and making five. And Sarah simply didn’t return my calls. I began to suspect she might want to discourage my attention. I began to think how understandable it would be if she did. There’d be boyfriends on the scene. Half a dozen men closer to her own age and interests than me. Who exactly was I kidding? And why? The attraction I’d felt in Brussels wasn’t really to her, was it?
My mother was certainly curious about the arrangement. Why had Bella taken a lodger? And why that lodger? But her attempts to engineer a meeting came to nothing. Even her curiosity faltered with so little to sustain it. And our contacts with Bella had become fewer as Hugh’s death receded into the past. Events and emotions drifted. As they’re bound to, I suppose. As they’d have gone on doing-but for the trial.
I got home earlier than usual one evening in the first week of December to find Brillo and my mother sharing the fireside at Greenhayes with Bella. Tea and cake were being consumed, the family photograph albums-all four of them-keenly examined. And Bella was giving a good impression of the indulgent daughter-in-law happy to take a stroll down memory lane. Which might have fooled Mother. But not me. Not for an instant. Bella wanted something. The question was: what?
I wasn’t to be kept waiting long for the answer. As soon as Mother left the room to make fresh tea, Bella said to me: “We’ve seen nothing of you since you came back, Robin. It’s really not good enough.”