“But I can go some way to doing that myself.”
“I know. And I’m grateful. But we don’t want to have to rely on the evidence of a stranger, do we?” She caught my eye and blushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean- Well, you were a stranger to Mummy, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said thoughtfully, my mind casting back to the glaring brightness-the dazzling unknowingness-of that day on Hergest Ridge. And to some lines of Thomas I’d read only recently. Which Sarah, if I’d spoken them aloud or even referred to the poem they occurred in, would have understood completely. As I couldn’t allow her to-under any circumstances.
The shadow I was growing to love almost,
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought never to see, once lost.
At the end of the meal, over coffee and petits fours, Sarah announced that Sir Keith was taking her and Rowena abroad for Christmas and New Year. It made good sense, with too many reminders of family Christmases past waiting for them in Gloucestershire. Biarritz was ruled out on the same grounds. So it was to be Barbados, where none of them had ever been before. Perhaps the novelty of the location would restore Rowena’s sense of proportion. I endorsed the hope, though with little confidence. We parted on the pavement outside, in the icy splendour of a starlit winter’s night. With a fleeting kiss and an awareness on my part that no recital of seasonal good wishes could strengthen the chances of a happy new year for Sarah or her sister.
Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more,
Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.
CHAPTER SIX
The Timariot family celebrated Christmas 1990 much as we’d celebrated every Christmas since my parents’ move to Steep. A festive gathering at the home of Adrian and his wife, Wendy, had become customary, if not obligatory. They lived in a large detached house on Sussex Road, overlooking Heath Pond. Large it needed to be, since they shared it with four children-two sons and twin girls-plus an overweight labrador. The rest of us were expected to revel in the resulting chaos. My mother certainly appeared to. As did Uncle Larry. But Jennifer’s impersonation of a doting aunt was never convincing. And Simon, depressed at not spending the day with his daughter, tended to decline into drunken self-pity. Which left me to pretend I enjoyed listening to the wartime reminiscences of Wendy’s father, interrupted as they frequently were by his grandsons’ temper tantrums.
I’d always admired the way Hugh and Bella handled the ordeal. Hugh would inveigle Adrian into an intense shop-talking session, while Bella spent half her time in the garden, wrapped in a fur coat and puffing at a cigarette. Wendy had banned the practice indoors on account of the danger to the children from passive smoking. Which I thought mighty ironic, since I’d never known the horrors to do anything passive in their lives.
This year, of course, Hugh was missing. So was Bella, whose links with us continued to grow more tenuous by the day. Superficially at least, it didn’t seem to make much difference. Nor, I recalled, had my father’s absence the first Christmas after his death. A family is more resilient than any of its members. It persists, amoeba-like, in the face of loss and division. It is infinitely adaptable. And therefore prone to change. At its own pace, of course. Which is sometimes too gradual for those it most affects to notice.
A straw in the wind came that afternoon in the form of a conversation I overheard between Wendy and her mother. The Gulf War was imminent and flying was suddenly considered a dangerous way to travel because of the supposed threat of Iraqi terrorism. But Adrian, it appeared, was planning to visit Australia. And Mrs. Johnson was worried about her son-in-law’s safety. If she was worried, I was puzzled. Adrian had said nothing to me about such a trip. Nor would he now, when I tackled him. “Just an idea at the moment, Rob. Rather not elaborate till I’m clearer in my own mind. Sure you understand.” I didn’t, of course. Nor did he intend me to.
By the time the first board meeting of the New Year took place, however, clarity of mind had evidently descended. Adrian wanted to take a close look at Timariot & Small’s marketing arrangements in Australia. He reckoned there was scope for expansion. Maybe we needed to ginger up our agent there. Or find a new one. Either way, he and Simon ought to go out and see for themselves. Simon was all for it, naturally. And even if I suspected it was just an excuse for a holiday, I wasn’t about to object. It was agreed they’d be away for most of February.
In the event, they had to come home early, for the saddest and most unexpected of reasons. It was the coldest winter Petersfield had experienced for several years. But my mother made no concessions to the weather. She took Brillo for a walk every afternoon whatever the conditions. On 7 February it snowed heavily. And out she went, despite a touch of flu which I’d advised her to spend the day nursing by the fire. She took a fall in one of the holloways and limped back to Greenhayes wet and chilled to the marrow. By the following evening, I had to call the doctor out, who diagnosed pneumonia and sent her off to hospital. Some old bronchial trouble and a latent heart condition caught up with her over the next few days. On 12 February, after a gallant struggle, she died.
I could have predicted my reaction exactly. Guilt at all the unkind words I’d ever uttered. Shame at my neglect of her. And a consoling grain of relief that, as exits go, it was swift and merciful. “How she’d have wanted it to be,” as Uncle Larry said at the funeral. Which enabled Mother to infuriate me even from the grave. Charming as some people thought him, Brillo had never seemed worth sacrificing a life for to me. Had he tangled his lead in his mistress’s legs-as so often before-and tripped her up in the snow? Mother had denied this when I’d suggested it and, for her sake, I tried not to believe it. But I wasn’t sorry when Wendy volunteered to add him to her crowded household.
This left me alone at Greenhayes. It was now jointly owned by Jennifer, Simon, Adrian and me. But to sell straightaway, with the property market in such a parlous state, would have been perverse. From their point of view, I made an ideal tenant. Somebody they could rely on to keep the place looking presentable until the time came to cash in. The arrangement suited me too, so I went along with it, forgetting that it would work only so long as all our interests coincided.
I suppose the truth is that I chose to forget. My earlier dislike of the house had diminished as my enthusiasm for Edward Thomas’s poetry had grown. I’d come to relish its proximity to his favourite walks and to follow them myself. After the blandness of the Belgian countryside, I’d returned to the sights and scents of rural England like a reluctant teetotaller to strong drink. All in all, it suited me far better to stay at Greenhayes than I cared to admit.
On the Sunday after the funeral, I was surprised by a visit from Sarah. She’d heard about my mother’s death from Bella and wished to offer her condolences. There was no comparison between the circumstances of our bereavements, of course, but still they drew us briefly together. It was a cool dry cloudy day, with the snow long since washed away. We took a circular stroll up onto Wheatham Hill, passing one of Thomas’s former houses in Cockshott Lane and another in Ashford Chace on the way back. We talked about the poems I’d come to know nearly as well as her. We discussed the bewildering consequences of death-the clothes parcels for Oxfam, the redundant possessions, the remorseless memories. And then, inevitably, we spoke of Rowena and the coming trial.