He said, ‘It’s a good idea. I think you will be perfectly happy.’
‘Oh, John! Yes, you’re right, I will, I know I will. But I did want you to see it, I did want you to think so.’
He smiled, turned the door handle.
‘John – why did you go on to the beach? Was anything the matter?’ She had lowered her voice again, the old conspiracy, not to waken their parents.
‘Is it because you don’t want to go back tomorrow?’
‘No.’
He went back to his room and closed the window, to shut out the scent of the roses, he lay on the top of his bed, fully dressed, waiting for the first, thin light of morning.
His mother said, ‘I shall come with you to the station.’
‘NO!’ But seeing her face, he added more quietly, ‘I think I should prefer to go alone.’
For the truth was that he was leaving early, far too early. He could have caught an afternoon train from Hawton, for he did not have to embark until late that night, which should mean – even allowing for the crowds and the delays and the slowness of travel – not leaving Victoria until evening. But he had been up by seven with everything packed and ready. His room seemed once again as if it no longer belonged to him, the bed stripped, the top of the dressing table empty. He had looked into all the cupboards and drawers, and seen the things his mother had stored away – his school books and the shirts and trousers and socks he wore when he was twelve, the Meccano, the shells and stones he used to collect, cricket photographs: and, in one of his father’s old tobacco tins, the small, bleached bones from the owls’ pellets.
He wanted to be on his way.
‘I didn’t mean to come to London, John. But I would just like to walk with you down to the village, to see you on to the train.’
They were standing far apart from one another in the morning room. Constance Hilliard had her back to him, was looking out through the tall windows on to the lawn, baked and yellowing after the long weeks of summer. His father was becoming obsessive about the state of the lawns, pacing about them each morning and evening, poking with his stick, and holding, bitter, repetitive conversations with Plummet.
Once, his mother’s hair had been butter-coloured, but he could scarcely remember that, she had gone grey very early. Now, the sun made it glint with a curiously artificial light, like something concocted out of wire and floss by a theatrical wigmaker. She was a tall woman, tightly corseted, upright. But not graceful, though she always wore graceful clothes, which flowed and folded about her, she was fondest of silks and cashmere and lawn. Her dress today was of lawn, pale cream, with full sleeves and a high neck, bands of lace.
‘You look as if you were going to a wedding, mother.’ Though in truth she might always have been dressed for some wedding – or garden party or dinner or opera, she was a provincial woman who bought the type of clothes designed for some London society hostess. She said, ‘I do have standards.’ As a boy he had been embarrassed by the grandeur of her costume, when she came to see him at school. They said, ‘Who is she? Who is she?’
‘Hilliard’s mother.’
‘Only Hilliard? Good Lord!’
The sun shone, too, on the round walnut table which stood between them, on the Meissen figurine, and the copy of Blackwood’s and the bowl of roses. Roses.
‘I am dressed to come with you to the railway station.’
He was silent for a moment. Somewhere, around the side of the house. Plummet began to mow the lawn.
‘Look, actually I do have to go fairly soon, mother. I’ve got some things to do in London… shopping… and…’
‘You won’t be staying for luncheon?’
‘I – no. I’d better be off.’
‘Is there anything you like to have in your parcels? Anything in particular? It is so awfully difficult to know. Your father was asking.’
‘Whatever you like. Anything, thank you.’
‘Fruit? Sweets?’
‘Yes.’
‘You used to be fond of muscatels and almonds, as a small boy. Mary will bake you plum cakes, of course, they are so much better than anything we could buy.’
‘I don’t mind what you send, mother. Anything.’
‘Fortnum’s are very reliable, I think? You do get what we ask for? They send out things of good quality?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Now you are to complain, John, if anything is not quite right. We pay enough for the parcels, they should not put in substitutes, or anything which is not of the best.’
‘Mother, the parcels are perfectly all right, don’t go on about things. I’m grateful for whatever you send, that’s all. Don’t trouble.’
‘I like to trouble. That is the least I can do.’
He did not reply. Looking at his mother then, she seemed less of a stranger than she had ever been, almost closer, now, than Beth. He could hardly believe it. She had not changed, she looked no older. There had been no real communication between them since he came home, no more than throughout his life. Yet for this time, he loved her.
He knew little enough about her, however, did not even know tiny, factual things – as, what particular illnesses she had suffered in childhood, where she had first met his father, what she did in the mornings after breakfast, when she shut herself up in her sitting room overlooking the bay and would not see anyone, how much money she had to spend.
Her hands were folded together, palm to palm, in front of her. What kind of a woman? Would he be able to say anything at all about her when he got back to France?
From the bowl on the table in front of him came the terrible scent of roses.
‘I had better go. I really ought to leave quite soon.’
‘Is there a great deal you have to carry?’
‘Oh, no. Anyway, I’ve got used to lugging things about.’
‘Then perhaps we might walk. As it’s such a fine morning. As you are going before it gets too hot. Perhaps we could walk to the railway station?’
No, he thought, no. He wanted to leave Cliff House alone, to turn the bend by the blackthorn hedge and go out of their sight, he wanted to go.
He said, ‘All right, mother. If you feel like it. I’ll get my bags downstairs.’
Constance Hilliard nodded. And went to get ready also, to put on a huge, cream-coloured hat and pin it with pearl-headed pins, to change her shoes and take up the lace parasol, to look like a Queen, walking down the gravelled drive and along the lane and up to the main street of Hawton towards the station.
They said nothing. He saw that people looked at her, and he was no longer embarrassed by her extravagance of dress and her height and her coolness of manner, for he understood, suddenly, that she was obliged to make the best of what she had, here in this dull, restricted neighbourhood, and that she was perhaps unhappy, after all, bored with herself. He saw that she was beautiful.
By the time they reached the station he was sweating inside the heavy uniform, his shirt collar felt tight as iron. It was only a little after ten-thirty and already the sun was high and hot in a silvery sky. The awnings of the ticket office and the waiting room cast hard-edged shadows. On the opposite platform a young woman sat, nursing a child. Nobody else. They walked a little way up, beyond the buildings, towards a bench.
‘Off back then,’ Kemble said – Kemble who had seen the phantom Russian troop trains go through Hawton like thieves in the night, Kemble who remembered all the times he had waited here for a train to go back to school.
‘Kemble is letting this station go,’ Constance Hilliard said firmly, looking about her at the banks on either side of the line, where the grass grew tall and was seeding itself, with poppies and sorrel in between.