The Lover Read online

  ‘Thought I’d walk you down,’ he said, turning and leading the way out of the gate as if there were no question as to whether she would follow.

  ‘I’m afraid…it’s awfully kind of you…but…’ Frances had to trot to catch him up. If he heard any of her feeble protestations he gave no indication of it.

  ‘A fine day. A fine day for a walk,’ was all he said, not even turning to acknowledge her arrival at his side. ‘We’ll go by the road. The river path is still water-logged. Nearly lost my boots this morning’

  They continued in silence for a few minutes, Joseph apparently studying the skyline while Frances tried to disguise her reluctance with a purposeful stride. A couple of hours at the most and she would be home, she reassured herself. A small endurance test, that was all. Be polite, but cool. Afterwards she could spin any number of lies to avoid repeating the experiment, say she was too busy, that she was commuting regularly to Paris, considering leaving the country for good, any story would do.

  They left the road and took the overgrown path which had once formed the main approach to Leybourne station. Up ahead a raised section of rusting track protruded from a small hill, sticking over one end like a diving board over an empty pool. The path continued through the hill itself, via a crude, low-arched tunnel edged with dank, grey-brick walls. Inside the air felt moist and chilled.

  ‘Walk near the edges, it’s drier there,’ commanded Joseph, continuing to make his own way down the sludge in the middle.

  It was a relief to emerge into the sunshine on the other side, to see the moth-eaten hedge exactly as she remembered it from her excursions to retrieve the children from their spying games a decade before. But the garden on the other side of the hedge was a revelation. Once a brambled wilderness, it had been transformed into an immaculate layout of lawn, bordered with shrubs and broken by a cobbled path that snaked its way up to the front door. In the far corner was a miniature rectangle of a vegetable garden, organised into weedless tidy rows by sticks and bits of string.

  ‘But this is lovely,’ Frances had exclaimed, admiration for a moment driving out all her apprehensions.

  ‘I like being outdoors. So does Ma.’ He led the way round to the side of the cottage and kicked off his boots before pushing open the door for her to step inside. The kitchen was dark and unbelievably cramped, every available surface piled high with an assortment of jars, papers and saucepans. In the midst of the chaos sat a small, weathered kitchen table, set with three bowls and three spoons.

  It was only after having successfully extracted the cork with his mouth that her host removed his hat. Not the hood of his anorak this time but a dark brown cap. Frances gave an involuntary flinch at the sight of the thick pink scar which had so impressed Sally, bulging high on his forehead near his hairline.

  ‘A set-to with a barbed-wire fence in the summer when I was full of this stuff,’ he said with a dark laugh, tapping first the scar and then the wine bottle. ‘Doctors say it will fade with time. Offered me plastic surgery, but I couldn’t be bothered with the fuss.’ While he spoke he poured out a glass of a greenish liquid, flecked with bits, like fish food. ‘Would you like me to put my cap back on?’

  ‘Of course not…I’m sorry I didn’t mean to stare.’ Frances wrenched her eyes away from the twist of flesh, inwardly cursing the ineptitude which had sent her scurrying after Joseph Brackman instead of making the getaway she had originally intended. He handed her the glass before turning his attention to a large, grime-encrusted black oven wedged between a cracked porcelain sink and an oak dresser, so laden with things that the shelves sagged in the middle. Using a flimsy grey cloth, he extracted a tray of brown rolls, each twisted into monstrous shapes and heaving with heat. He tipped them onto a plate in the middle of the table and motioned at her to sit down. Frances obeyed at once, taking a sip of her drink, which was faintly fizzy but not unpleasant. When she looked up she found Mrs Brackman glowering suspiciously at her from the doorway leading to the rest of the cottage.

  ‘Thank you so much for the jam,’ Frances blurted, remembering the gift with a flush of guilt.

  The old lady worked her jaw, looking anxiously at her son for some explanation.

  ‘You know Frances Copeland, Mother, don’t you, from the house up the lane? Lunch is ready.’

  ‘Am I late?’

  ‘No, no, not late.’ He put a bowl of soup down and pulled back a chair. The old woman began to eat immediately, messily spooning soup to her lips and making loud smacking noises between mouthfuls. Frances, faintly appalled but determined not to appear so, waited until Joseph had sat down before embarking on her own portion. A silence descended on the table, bringing with it, for Frances at least, a vivid sense of unreality, as if she had slipped into a parallel world.

  ‘This is very kind of you,’ she began, nodding appreciatively at the soup which was delicious, but very rich.

  ‘Is she staying long?’ Mrs Brackman pointed at Frances with her spoon, flinging a shower of green specks over the table.

  ‘Frances has come for lunch, Mother,’ Joseph repeated, adding in a quieter voice to Frances, ‘She has lost touch with the past, can only live in the present moment. It makes the world very threatening.’

  ‘Oh dear, how…’ Frances’s sympathy was interrupted by the screech of Mrs Brackman’s chair legs on the stone-tiled floor.

  ‘It’s time,’ she announced, tottering from the room, taking some bread with her but leaving her soup barely touched.

  Joseph leapt up and followed her out of the room. ‘She likes to watch the One o’clock News,’ he explained, returning a few minutes later. ‘Mainly because she’s got a soft spot for that Welsh news reader. Here, butter for your bread.’ He passed Frances an unwrapped half pound before resuming his seat at the table and continuing in the same tone of voice, ‘I know you did not want to come. Of course you did not want to come. Sometimes you have to go through the motion of things to remind yourself how to do them. Sometimes you have to pretend to do something and then suddenly, half-way through, you find yourself really doing it. I find that with writing poetry. I fear it, and yet I must do it. There is nothing that scares an idea away so much as the sense that it is being stalked.’

  ‘So you write poetry, how interesting.’

  He let out a sharp laugh. ‘Like now, you see. You are pretending to be interested, but you’re not really, not properly. You are a polite lady.’ He pointed his knife at her accusingly and then smiled, revealing an impressive set of large yellowing teeth. His hair which had been pinned to his scalp from wearing the cap, had gradually loosened, exposing unevenly cut layers of brown streaked with grey. The front portion was so long that it flopped right into his eyebrows, hiding most of the scar. He was younger than Frances had always imagined, maybe even still in his forties, but aged by self-neglect.

  ‘I am interested,’ she said faintly.

  ‘Sometimes I do translations too. To pay bills.’

  ‘Really? Into what language?’ she enquired, trying desperately after his comments to strike a note of genuine enthusiasm.

  ‘Russian mostly. More soup.’ It was a statement rather than a question. Frances watched helplessly as he ladled three generous spoonfuls into her bowl. ‘At least you never had to mourn your husband when he was alive,’ he remarked suddenly. ‘At least you lost him as he was.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ She dropped her spoon with a clatter of metal against china, the indignation blazing out of her, her sensibilities cringing at such unwarranted trespassing on such private ground.

  He looked crestfallen. ‘No, I didn’t mean…I was just thinking of my mother. I miss her already, you see. She’s gone from me. Alzheimer’s,’ he added quickly, seeing the look of enquiry on her face. ‘It has drained her life of meaning. Disconnected objects, nonsense, she lives a nightmare. The nightmare.’

  ‘Joseph, I’m so sorry, I…’

  ‘Coffee now I think.’ He quickly stood up and began clumsily stacking the bowls, leaving the sp
oons between them and pushing them to the furthest end of the table. ‘And sweets.’ He seized an enormous glass jar off one of the top dresser shelves, toppling a stack of papers and several other odd items to the ground. ‘Sugar makes my mother happy,’ he declared, kicking the papers out of his way and placing the jar next to Frances. ‘Like a child. Her teeth are rotten, but at eighty it doesn’t matter, does it?’ He grinned, his whole face creasing to reveal a fleeting glimpse of the more endearing boy version of the man. ‘I’m glad you came to lunch Frances. I know you did not want to. I see your sadness.’ He pressed the palm of his hand to the left side of his chest. ‘I feel it here.’

  ‘Thank you…’ she faltered, touched, but acutely embarrassed and desperate suddenly to get home.

  The heaviness of the soup stayed with her long into the afternoon. But so did a curious sense of satisfaction. She felt different, better. As if the lunch, for all its weirdness, had broken another small link in the chain of empty lassitude which had been binding her. She put on a half load of washing and then sat down with the sitting-room telephone in her lap. She told Hugo Gerard she would come to London when his letter suggested. She phoned Libby and fixed a date for lunch. She even phoned British Gas, hanging on through the maze of recorded options until a very amenable woman with a thick Scottish accent promised to send an engineer round the following day.

  Chapter Eight

  Libby was so entertained that Frances almost regretted telling her.

  ‘Feted by the recluse of Leybourne, Christ, you poor thing. But how terribly brave of you to go. Sally mentioned bumping into the pair of them the other afternoon when she was dragging Sheba round the countryside. She said the old dear looked quite out of it and that he had some terrible cut on his face…’ Frances opened her mouth to explain the entanglement with barbed wire, but Libby was in full flow. ‘Heavens, I’ve just had the most dreadful thought.’ She slapped her hand over her mouth. ‘You don’t suppose he fancies his chances, do you? I mean, as far as he’s concerned, you are a widow of substance…’ She quickly checked herself, watching Frances’s face for any indication that she had overstepped the mark.

  But Frances laughed easily. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t remotely like that. He was being neighbourly, like the vicar, trying in his own way to help. Besides, the poor man is chained to caring for a sick mother, I think he genuinely wanted some company. He writes poetry and translates Russian for a living. He’s nicer than I thought, but still utterly strange. There wasn’t the remotest suggestion of anything untoward.’

  Libby patted her hand. ‘I’m sure there wasn’t.’

  It was the end of the week after Frances’s encounter with the Brackmans and the two women were sitting having a sandwich lunch in the tea house opposite Libby’s gift shop, an overcrowded Aladdin’s cave of an emporium in the well-to-do northern suburbs of Hexford. Through the windows beside them, already frosted with festive drifts of polystyrene snow, pedestrians were walking with heads grimly bent against the horizontal cut of the November wind. As usual, cars were crawling down both sides of the high street, impeded by jay walkers and several sets of traffic lights. In spite of the numbers of people in the street, business was poor, as it had been throughout the dismally wet summer and autumn, adding fuel to Libby’s theory that the type of goods in which she traded were about states of mind rather than levels of financial solvency. If things did not pick up in the run-up to Christmas, she was going to have to have a serious re-think about the future. All she had sold that morning were two flashing pens and a couple of mugs.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying this,’ Libby continued, ‘and obviously it’s far too soon for anything yet, but I do hope that one day you might find someone else. I just mean,’ she surged on, seeing the rush of colour to Frances’s cheeks, ‘that Alistair and I will be the first to support you should anyone else ever appear on the horizon. You know we were both very fond of Paul, but it simply would not be right for you to soldier on alone forever.’ She posted a final mouthful of sandwich in her mouth and dusted the breadcrumbs from her fingertips, thoroughly enjoying the relief of being able to talk almost naturally again. Recognising Frances’s suggestion of lunch as something of a milestone, she was determined to make the most of it, to prove that the roots of their friendship remained intact. ‘We just would love to see you happy again,’ she added with a sigh, patting her lips by way of an apology for talking with her mouth full.

  ‘Well, thank you, Libby.’ Frances paused, picking her words carefully. ‘I must confess that I too hope that one day…’ She was prevented from completing the sentence by an involuntary sob.

  Libby, appalled and remorseful, quickly began thrusting paper napkins across the table. ‘Oh Frances, I’m sorry, what was I thinking – bringing up such a subject when – God, what a fool I am – saying the first thing that comes into my head…’

  Frances shook her head in protest, partly because of the inconvenience of crying and partly because she felt unequal to the task of explaining that what had triggered her outburst was not sadness so much as guilt, for having already arrived at the point where she felt able to discuss such things. Occasionally, in recent days, she had even caught a part of herself longing to be back under the safe crushing blanket of early grief. There had been a simplicity to it which she missed. Eleven weeks on there was still an inner emptiness to each day, a self-conscious sense of being acutely alone, but within that a renewed interest in the outside world was definitely beginning to assert itself. She had started watching television again and reading the papers. She had even bought a novel, a thriller about a murderer who cut up the body parts of his victims and posted them to relatives with boxes of Turkish Delight.

  ‘So have you seen Joseph Brackman since?’ enquired Libby gently, once Frances had recovered herself.

  ‘No,’ she replied firmly, ‘nor do I intend to. I know he meant well, but it wasn’t exactly the most relaxed lunch engagement I’ve known.’

  Libby raised her index finger and gave a knowing tap to the side of her nose. ‘Just you watch your step, my dear, that’s all. Don’t go letting him get any ideas…’

  Frances pretended to look offended. ‘Only a minute ago you were saying you’d support me if I fell for someone else.’

  ‘And so I would,’ she retorted, her grey eyes full of merriment once more, ‘just so long as it’s not a dishevelled, penniless poet on a hunt for rich widows.’ Their laughter was interrupted by a bleeping from Libby’s handbag. ‘Dramas back at base, no doubt,’ she muttered, rummaging for the mobile she had recently invested in for work, and craning her neck out of the tea-shop window, as if whatever problems her young assistant was encountering might be visible from across the street. ‘Jenny, I’m on my way…’ she began, before breaking off abruptly, the colour draining from her face.

  Aware from Libby’s altered expression that graver matters than stocktaking or recalcitrant tills were at stake, Frances discreetly signalled to the waitress for the bill.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked the moment Libby lowered the phone.

  ‘It’s Sal. Not in school. She has a load of free periods in the morning so no one realised. That was the head asking if she was ill. Jenny gave her the number. I suppose she could have gone home, the little…Christ what is that child playing at now? I tell

  you, I’ve had just about all I can take.’ She punched the digit pad on her mobile and embarked on a fraught rundown on the situation with Alistair.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on Jenny in the shop if you like,’ ventured Frances when she had finished.

  ‘Oh, would you Frances? Thanks so much. The poor girl is pitifully scatty, quite incapable of doing more than one thing at once…God, do you think I should call the police?’

  ‘Go home first. She may just have slipped out early. It’s not time to worry yet,’ Frances soothed, appearing calmer than she felt for Libby’s sake, while aware that some subterranean part of her was relishing the long forgotten luxury of
being useful.

  It was already getting dark when Sally got on the train. Forty minutes to Hexford, then a twenty-minute bus ride back to Leybourne. She closed her eyes in dread at the thought. At Felix’s insistence she had phoned from a call box and left a message on the answer machine at home. But there would be recriminations and hysteria nonetheless, for playing truant, for causing worry, for not being the kind of daughter they wanted. Sally slung her shoulder bag onto the luggage rack and slumped down in a seat next to the window. These days she felt increasingly as if her life had been reduced to a grisly game of charades, that all the things which mattered most to her had to be stapled inside for fear of causing panic amongst grown-ups. Not just about Felix, but everything else as well. Like the still undiscussed reality that she was going to flunk most of her GCSEs. Like the fact that she wanted to give up the violin, drama club and all the other petty activities into which she had been duped out of some misguided notion that she could emulate the effortless star qualities of her big sister. Whenever she dared to confront her parents about such things they had a cunning way of appearing to acquiesce, while at the same time making out that giving up on anything would constitute an admission of defeat from which the entire family might never recover.

  Sally dug her little finger into a cigarette burn in the navy blue velour of her train seat and sighed heavily. Her grand day out had not gone according to plan. She had been so hyped up about skipping school that it was really only after she had located Felix’s hall of residence that the potential for disappointment dawned. She had only the vaguest idea of how Felix spent his time, a blurred concept of lecture halls and libraries and things called seminars, which sounded like discussion groups with a fancy name. She hadn’t realised how spread out the university was, that to outsiders there was no obvious focal point for anything. After the minor triumph of locating Felix’s hall of residence, an ugly grey tower of a building with a flat black roof, she was brought to an abrupt halt by a security panel of numbers for releasing the lock on the door. She was staring at it, feeling deflated and hopeless when, to her utter astonishment and delight, Felix himself appeared, loping down the pavement towards her.