And I’d never again risked telling anyone, not even Clare, about Flora. With a sudden start it dawned on me that it wasn’t just men I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust anyone. Not even my mother? I certainly didn’t trust her to understand about my visit to Cotterly. A wave of loneliness engulfed me.
‘Shit!’ I said it aloud, but there was no-one to hear.
I stood up and, grasping my briefcase, marched back into the hotel.
I dreaded the moment when I would be faced with the decision whether to head straight back to London or to turn off and take the valley road.
As I drove, I resorted to a game of counting red cars – why red ones? – as they passed me heading back the way I’d come, like plucking petals from a daisy: I will turn off, I won’t turn off, I will … In the event, it was a grubby blue Volkswagen trundling along at a steady thirty that fate commissioned. Several times I prepared to overtake, only to drop back hastily as a van or lorry appeared over the brow of a hill or round a corner. Distracted by the frustration, I lost track of my counting game, relaxing my consciousness of precisely where I was even. As I flicked my indicator yet again, the junction sign loomed at the roadside. I glanced in my mirror at the line of vehicles holding back behind, anticipating my pulling out. The indicator ticked remorselessly … and obediently I allowed the Astra to follow the grid markings on to the centre of the road. On the passenger side, the queue ground past as, committed, I waited to cross the oncoming traffic.
It was madness, of course. I regretted the impulse as soon as I’d acted upon it. Even now I should have been half a mile further along the main road, heading sensibly back to London. If I’d kept going, I’d have been back by late afternoon, in time to arrange to meet someone later for a Chinese or even to change and wander over to the South Bank to pick up a last-minute ‘return’ for tonight’s show.
Oh, well, instead – the thought restored me – I could call on my mother and drive up to town early the next morning. I should have thought of it anyway. After all, I hadn’t really given her as much time as I might have done these last couple of months. Not that she’d complained. That wasn’t her way. ‘You have your own life to lead,’ she’d said. ‘I can manage.’
She had certainly shown herself wonderfully resilient in the face of widowhood. ‘At least,’ she’d confided with a brave smile on the day of Father’s funeral, ‘black suits me.’
The weekend after my mission to return Flora’s books, when guilt prompted a visit home, she ran out to greet me as I pulled up in the driveway, sheltering us both from the rain under a huge golfing umbrella. She was wearing a black and silver polka dot blous.
‘New?’ I queried as we settled round the fire and Mother poured tea. Flames hissed quietly around the artificial coals.
‘Why, no. I’ve had it quite a while.’ She leaned across, proffering cake. ‘In fact I discovered I had quite a number of suitable bits and pieces tucked away at the back of the wardrobe.’ Almost – I tried to suppress the thought before it could surface – as though she’d been waiting for this day. Not that anyone, least of all me, would blame her if she had. It had hardly been – I searched for the right word – a satisfactory marriage.
Even so, it was not like my mother to let an opportunity for a new outfit pass. Surely she wasn’t needing to economise? Whatever else, Father had always provided amply. An image of Flora loomed up as an appalling possibility struck me. Casually, helping myself to a piece of Battenberg, I asked, ‘Has Father’s will been sorted out yet?’
Her answer was reassuring. It would all take time, but according to the solicitor, ‘such a nice young man … taken over from old Mr Robinson who retired last year…’, everything was very straightforward. ‘He’s left everything to me, of course.’
I breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Apart from some small bequest to – what was it now? – some wildfowl trust, I believe. Wildfowl, I ask you!’ She picked up the teapot, nodded towards it and looked questioningly at me.
‘Oh. Yes please.’ I passed my cup and saucer.
‘Eventually it will all come to you of course …’ Mother transferred her attention to the milk jug. Then she looked up brightly. ‘If you need anything at the moment …?’
‘No, no. I’m fine.’
The telephone rang – someone checking the Meals-on-Wheels rota, it became apparent. Mother could oblige on Tuesday, but Wednesday was her library run, and Friday … She certainly kept herself occupied, I reflected. What with her good works and her keep-fit classes and her keen membership of the local fuchsia society. I’d asked her once whether she’d ever considered taking a part-time job; like so many other mothers, I’d suggested. She’d stared at me in bewilderment. ‘But how would I ever find the time? And in any case there’s no need.’ There wasn’t, of course. Feminist ideas, I reflected, hadn’t percolated through to Mother – not as far as she personally was concerned anyway.
She was still chatting. I leaned back, idly surveying the room. The furniture was arranged as it had always been, each chair and table nailed by habit to its decreed position. The usual pile of magazines sat to attention on the shelf beneath the occasional table, and my parents’ wedding photograph, set at its precise angle, continued to grace the top of the bureau. It was all comfortingly familiar and reliable. In contrast, the gap where my father’s pipe-rack had always stood seemed, as soon as I identified it, as substantial as the physical object itself.
‘You’ve made a start on sorting Father’s things, then?’ I observed when my mother eventually replaced the receiver.
‘I’ve done more than that. I’ve been through the entire house. Easier done straightaway. It’s all in the garage waiting to go down to the charity shop or be collected for the Scouts’ jumble sale.’
I nodded. ‘Well done.’
She looked at me doubtfully. ‘I can’t imagine there’s anything you’d want? I told Harold to take anything he could use …’
‘Quite right.’
I took my bag upstairs and dumped it on the bed. The bedspread was the one I’d so painstakingly crocheted with oddments of wool while I was still at junior school. I’d resisted regular suggestions by my mother that it was about time to throw it out. The colours had faded and in places the wool had worn thin, springing into holes. Gingerly I fingered them. They could be darned – if I was prepared to take time and trouble.
‘I think,’ I said to my mother before I left on the Sunday, ‘I’ll take that old bedspread back with me. If that’s OK with you?’
‘I’ll be glad to see the back of it.’ She laughed. ‘You are funny. Is there anything else you want?’
I lied. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ For some reason I didn’t feel inclined to own to having already stashed three fishing rods and a red tin box in the boot of the car.
They were still there, wedged against the slope of the back seat; offering, in some way, an excuse for the route I was now taking. All I needed – I grinned wryly – was a pair of green wellies and a Barbour. I indulged the entertaining image of myself so dressed; standing by the open boot, rods in hand – smiling for a cameraman from one of the up-market glossies. I laughed aloud. My mother would love that. Her daughter: ‘… relaxing at the weekend on Lord Whatsit’s estate,’ she’d read out delightedly from the blurb alongside.
‘And you could have had it all,’ I mentally parodied her, ‘if you’d married Mark.’ Yes, well, I didn’t.
There was a sweep of bare earth to the side of the road where it curved to approach a bridge. I pulled on to it and wound down the window. The silence flowed in, cocooning me more effectively than pressed metal and