Sunday — Early Evening — Charlotte
‘I wish I had a brother or a sister. We’d be a real family then,’ Vicky said, without warning, on the way home from James and Audrey’s.
‘Aren’t we already?’ Dan said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road.
‘Families have to have four people, don’t they, otherwise they don’t count?’ she persisted earnestly.
‘Don’t count for what, darling?’ I said. ‘A family can be just two people and anyway, if you count grannies and people like that we are more than four.’
‘I didn’t know that grannies counted. I still wish I had a brother. Can’t I have one? Couldn’t you make one for me? You said you and Daddy made me.’
‘I don’t think so, darling. It’s not as easy as that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It just isn’t.’
‘Why isn’t it?’
‘Please don’t start “whying”, Vicky. Not now.’
‘When can I?’
‘Vicky, will you stop it,’ I snapped and she went quiet for a moment before starting to cry.
The car crunched on the gravel in front of the house. Dan switched off the engine and got out. He opened the back door and Vicky, her arms stretched out, scrambled into his, burying her face against his neck as he lifted her against him and carried her towards the house.
I followed them but inside I went through to the kitchen while Dan carried Vicky up to her room. An interminable half hour went past before he came down again and I heard his footsteps coming through the house. I waited for him to come into the kitchen where I sat in the silent stillness, a feverish expectancy burning inside me as if Dan could somehow put everything right, as if it wasn’t up to me any more.
‘Is she all right? Did you say anything to her?’ I asked him quickly when he appeared.
‘She’s asleep. I think she was overtired. All the excitement over the weekend,’ he said wearily. He went across to the window, his hands in his trouser pockets as he stood with his back to me, looking out over the garden.
‘You didn’t say anything to her then?’ I repeated.
‘No,’ he said, the word sounding a little constricted in his throat.
We were silent for a few moments as he remained by the window. I was frightened of him, unable to continue with all the things that needed to be said and sorted out because I feared any manifestation of emotion from him; that he might break down terrified me more than his anger. Dan angry would be strange enough but emotional, that I could not handle. Everything seemed to depend upon his strength; even now, when I had no earthly right to expect or demand anything from him, I was still relying on his wisdom and understanding, his friendship.
I pictured Vicky, asleep in the bedroom that had been empty the night I had come home. Dan could always soothe her, soothing was a gift. Dan, the comforter, the soother, with no one to soothe him. The poignant thought welled up in me.
‘Oh Dan, why does life have to be so difficult?’ I said. ‘So complicated?’
‘It doesn’t have to be, not for everyone,’ he said. He coughed, a pretence of a sound followed by a muffled sniff that nearly broke my cold, selfish heart.
He turned then, to face me, and came across the kitchen to where I was sitting at the table, but the daylight was fading and he appeared shadowy so that I could not properly see his eyes and expression.
‘Shall I turn on the light?’ I said, stupidly, against my will, as a sort of diversion, something positive to do.
‘No, not at the moment. Leave it for a bit,’ he said, sitting down heavily.
‘And you’re sure Vicky’s all right?’ I said.
‘She senses that something’s wrong.’
‘Do you think I should go up and make sure she’s asleep?’
‘She was exhausted. Leave her. She’s all right. Children are very resilient.’
‘I wasn’t when I was a child.’
‘Yes you were. I remember.’
‘All those years ago. We’ve known each other so long.’
‘Do you really want to leave?’ he said then and I recognized it as the question behind my fear.
‘No, not at this moment,’ I said.
‘But you will tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you’re making a terrible mistake.’
‘It’s a risk.’
‘If you stayed things would have to change. We’d be together more. Do things. Maybe we should sell this house and move back into Cambridge.’
‘What about Nick?’
‘Ah, Nick.’ Dan paused for a moment. ‘What worries me, Lottie, is that you are using him as a catalyst.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’re fed up with your life here … Oh, I don’t know. I suppose what I’m saying, asking, is would you want to leave me anyway?’
‘I don’t know any more. I might not have had the courage to leave by myself.’
‘I see.’
‘Please don’t say it like that.’
‘Do you think you ever loved me?’
‘Of course. Of course!’
‘But not as you do Nick?’
I did not reply. At that moment I could see the worthiness of Dan and the unworthiness of Nick so clearly, and of course I identified with Nick.
‘Why couldn’t we have talked about it sooner?’ Dan was saying.
‘I don’t think it would have made any difference.’
‘You know, I had my suspicions but I hoped it would pass, that you’d get it out of your system.’
‘I think I felt the same at first. I know it was wrong but I thought I could have an affair with him and nobody would know or get hurt.’
‘The worst part, Lottie, the bit I find hardest to take, is the sense of waste.’
I got up then and went across to the window. The house was so terribly still and dead and I wanted to see something move to break the intensity. I looked out across the familiar scene, bathed in the eerie light of dusk, making it look somehow remote and unreal. The sky was darkening but still coloured by the sunken sun with a violet sadness that seemed to throw a shroud over the land. An emotional scene, that it had always been. I had gazed out at it with my head full of bitterness and resentment, depression and despair, excitement and hope, the episodes of my life daydreamed over against the backdrop of trees and grass, flowers and field beyond, the horizon blurred one day and clear another. Tonight I could not see it at all.
‘Let’s go out in the garden,’ I said on impulse.
Outside the air was still warm but a shiver ran through me and instinctively I moved closer to Dan, putting my arm through his and a hand down into his pocket. I went to withdraw but he put his other hand across and held it against mine. We started across the grass, walking slowly, as if to eke out the time. At the far end of the garden we stopped and leant against the gate that led into Tamara’s field. The sweet smell of grass cuttings pervaded the night air, fresh and pungent so that you wanted to breathe it in to keep and savour.
‘I didn’t notice you’d cut the grass this weekend,’ I said, finding refuge in the mundane.
‘Yesterday, while you were out. It didn’t really need it. I’m afraid the lawn is almost bald in parts.’
‘Never mind. It’ll recover.’
‘I expect so.’
‘Can you see Tamara? She normally knows when we’re here and comes over to the gate. Tammy — Tamara,’ I called out. The field remained still. ‘She’s not there, Dan. She must have got out again. We’ll have to go and look.’ I scrambled over the gate, stumbling the other side. My heart was beating wildly, out of all proportion to the disappearance of the donkey.
‘Tamara!’ I yelled. An awful sense of doom had come over me. Perhaps she had been stolen. Guilt raged in me. Somehow it was my fault Tamara wasn’t there.
‘Easy does it, Lottie,’ Dan breathed in my ear. I had not heard him behind me, had not realized he was so close. ‘She could be in the next field but if you yell like that she’ll run off. You know how contrary she is.’
We hurried across the uneven grass but it had become too dark to see into the next field which dipped at the far side anyway.
‘She’s probably hiding down by that hawthorn hedge that runs this side of the brook,’ Dan said comfortingly.
‘Do you think she could be?’ I said without much hope.
We went down the length of the boundary with the dipping field searching for a gap in the hedgerow but the light was going so quickly we could barely see and had to get out on to the road which skirted both fields and led down to the ford a few hundred yards on. And then a car came by and the murkiness of the lane was dispersed in its headlights. The unnatural sound of Tamara’s bray hooted nearby. The car veered, its lights sweeping across Tamara who stood, stock still in the immediate line of its swerve.
‘I’ll be good, God, if Tamara can be saved,’ I thought with the simplistic clarity brought on by panic.
Dan had run forward, through the lights. The car careered off down the lane and I heard it splashing into the ford and then the sound of its engine pulling away and up the hill the other side.
The lane had gone dark and silent again. I stepped forward, my arms and legs trembling.
‘Come on, you ridiculous creature. Let’s get you back where you belong,’ I heard Dan say. He was leaning against the donkey on the other side of the road, his back pushing her up against the thick hedge.
‘It didn’t even stop,’ I said, crossing the lane. ‘Dan, you could have been run over.’
‘But I wasn’t,’ he said and for a moment we stood facing one another but just out of reach. I couldn’t go any nearer, an overwhelming hollowness that was lack of generosity and an uncompromising, heartless sort of honesty, held me where I was. I heard Dan take a sharp intake of breath.
‘Fate got it wrong again,’ he murmured with a bitterness I had never heard before.
He set about manoeuvring Tamara.
‘Dan, no,’ I pleaded, going forward now to help him with the pushing and shoving. ‘However would I have managed without you, I just can’t imagine …’ I trailed off.
‘You will,’ he said, breathless with the effort of moving Tamara. ‘You’ll have to manage, Lottie. People do when they have to.’
‘You want me to leave?’ I said, an unreasonable desolateness running through me.
‘I think you’ve already left.’
*
Tamara bit me before we got her back to her field. Her teeth didn’t break the skin but I could feel the heavy bruise threatening in my arm. Cantankerous creature that she was I couldn’t feel angry, only sad at her perception. She had bitten me before but never Dan. Dan she recognized as good.
‘Silly old girl,’ he said, kissing her big heavy head and patting her neck as we left her for the night. We walked back across the field and through the garden to the house. It was earlier than it seemed, still only eight o’clock. ‘What do you want to do?’ I asked Dan.
‘Have a bit of time to think.’
‘Yes, I feel the same. I don’t think I can bear to stay in the house. If you don’t mind I’ll go out for a little while.’
‘Take the car,’ he said. ‘It’s too dark to go wandering about in the lanes.’
I glanced up at him in the bright light of the hallway. ‘Ah, I see,’ he said, reading my intention.
I drove the car into the village and went to the public phone box outside the post office. I dialled Nick’s number and after a moment heard his voice, strong and positive, the slight hint of northern accent more noticeable down the phone.
‘It’s me. Can you talk?’
Yes.’
‘I want to be with you, Nick. Soon.’
‘Is it bloody your end?’
‘Yes, but not in the way you mean.’
‘I’ll meet you somewhere. Say twenty minutes.’
‘Nick, do you wish we had never met?’
‘No. Do you?’
‘No.’