Breaking and Entering (23 page)

‘Shit!' he muttered under his breath, struggling to sit up and wincing at the pain in his knees. He was worse than just a pinprick in the universe – he was a clumsy, bungling idiot. If Alison could see him with mud all over his dressing-gown and a rip in one pyjama-knee, she would laugh in sheer derision, and not without some cause. He deserved to be cut down to size: a pretentious ass who indulged in high-flown converse with Unseen Presences.

Yet the voices were still there, chivvying and hassling – not just one, but several; all offering him conflicting advice, and all inducing guilt. And while he struggled to make sense of them, the rain continued to hammer down, soaking him to the skin; his saturated pyjamas clinging to his body, his mind a quagmire like the lawn.

Look here! he shouted silently to Nemesis, or Fate, or whoever, as he limped towards the shelter of the house, I'll really give up smoking this time, and I promise not to weaken over Juliet. I'll abandon any hope of Rome – museums, churches, galleries – I'll ditch the whole damned lot. I'll go serenely to the seaside, or plod through rustic lanes in a horse-drawn caravan. I'll even camp, or build a shack, but I will not, repeat
not
, ever set foot in Wales.

‘Welcome to Wales!'

‘See the red dragon, Pippa?' Penny said, pointing to the sign.

‘That's the Welsh emblem.'

Pippa didn't answer, but her face looked animated instead of listless and morose. She even opened her window and peered up at the dragon as Daniel slowed the car.

‘Let's get out,' he said impulsively. ‘Stop for a drink, to celebrate the crossing of the border.'

‘Celebrate?' Penny echoed. ‘I thought the whole of Wales was anathema for you.'

Daniel laughed. ‘Perhaps I'm ready for a truce, at last.' He pulled off the road on to a narrow rutted cart-track which led into an open field. He got out and stretched his legs a moment, then rummaged in the picnic box for the fizzy lemonade; poured three toasts in plastic cups.

‘To the land of bards and dragons,' he proclaimed, holding his cup aloft. ‘And a new start for us all.'

‘Wow!' said Penny. ‘You do sound high-falutin'. I feel we should be standing to attention.'

Instead, she sprawled out on the ground, her crumpled sundress riding up her thighs; her face framed by feathery grasses. Daniel squatted beside her, gazing at the landscape, which stretched away, away, until it blurred into a heat haze on the shimmering horizon. It
was
a new beginning – he was confident of that. He had watched the change in Pippa as they left the fumes and grime behind, and clogged roads gave way to free untrammelled countryside. When they'd set out in the morning, she had been huddled in the corner with her arms clamped tight across her chest (as if to force her breasts back inside her body, or at least prevent them growing any further), but now she was relaxing on the grass: stretched right out, with both her arms flung wide. True, she had hardly spoken on the journey, but once they had left the motorway in favour of a more scenic route, she had begun to follow the map and take an interest in her surroundings. And he too had felt the tension ease with each mile out of London; responding to the larger sky, the sense of prodigality. Everything was lush: the unstinting sun pouring down its munificence on to rippled fields of wheat; tangled hedgerows bursting with green life, the hills curving like voluptuous breasts. In the adjoining field, greedy lambs were suckling still, although they were now sturdy adolescents, pushing at their mothers' flanks with arrogant impatience. And beneath his feet was a luxuriance of tiny flowers: blue speedwell, yellow trefoil, fat pink honeyed clover. He picked a stem, sat chewing it reflectively. No one was about, no snorting tractors or sweaty farmhands labouring in the fields, just an air of peace and plenty, as if Nature's bounty made all such toil superfluous. He lay back and closed his eyes; let himself become part of the profusion – a carefree loafer ripening in the sun.

‘You won't believe this,' Penny said, reaching for her lemonade. ‘But I'm feeling rather peckish again, despite that whopping great lunch.'

‘It's the air,' he said, breathing in dramatically and imagining his lungs no longer blackened and polluted, but lovingly restored like some long-forgotten treasure salvaged from the rubbish heap. He hadn't had a cigarette for six weeks and a day; no longer even bothered to suck sweets. ‘Do you want some fruit?' he offered. ‘There's a good two ton of apples in the back.'

‘Yes, to last us the whole month,' grinned Penny. ‘Though at this rate we'll be running short on supplies before we even pitch the tents. D'you realize, Daniel, I've never pitched a tent in my life? I'm a complete novice at this camping lark!'

‘It'll take me back to my youth,' said Daniel, nibbling on the clover-head. ‘Except there won't be any hyenas prowling round the campsite, like we had in Lupande.'

‘Hyenas?' Pippa exclaimed.

He and Penny both looked at her incredulously. She had reacted with genuine interest, spoken almost eagerly for the first time in weeks. He willingly recounted his hyena story, adding a giraffe or two, a wildebeest – anything to extend this marvellous moment: his once indifferent daughter listening and involved. She had even taken off her funereal black sweatshirt, revealing, a sleeveless top in an upbeat shade of blue. He refilled her cup, wanting to rival Nature and heap her with largesse. He contented himself with passing her a harebell, a frail and faded specimen he'd found trembling in the hedge, and was gratified when she stuck it in her hair.

‘Let's push on,' said Penny. ‘We've still got quite a way to go.'

Daniel got up reluctantly. For once he was the layabout, content to sit and stare. Hyenas notwithstanding, the problems of suffering Africa had mercifully receded, now he was away from the pressures of work. He tightened the straps on the roof rack; rearranged some of the bulging boxes in the boot. When they went on holidays abroad, they usually restricted themselves to one small suitcase each, but for this trip they seemed to have accumulated trunkloads. Camping sounded marvellously simple – just a matter of a tent, some bedding and a few rudimentary utensils – but he and Penny had kept envisaging new contingencies which made it absolutely vital to pack a hacksaw or a double-boiler or his entire collection of nature books. Yet he had to admit he was secretly excited at the thought of camping again, returning to his early boyhood – sleeping under the stars, perhaps, if this kind-hearted weather held.

‘Are you sure you've got enough room, Pippa?' He watched his daughter clamber into the back and squeeze herself between the various bags and cartons on the seat. Despite the obvious improvement in her spirits, she was still looking pale and drawn, but then he knew she had her period. It had been something of a shock to him to discover just last night that she had actually started menstruating way back in April – the same month he'd met Juliet. What a fool he must have seemed, sitting in the surgery with Penny, playing the role of caring parent, yet ignorant of such a crucial fact. Penny had explained to him that Pippa had sworn her to secrecy, so upset by her first painful monthly bleed that she couldn't bear anyone discussing it. He was hurt at being excluded: he wasn't ‘anyone', for heaven's sake, but the second closest person in her life. And if only he'd known earlier, it would have spared him all those weeks of racking guilt. Her introverted silence was not, as he'd feared, the result of his affair, but due simply to her own resistance to becoming officially a woman. He wasn't exactly an expert on the female reproductive process, but he had heard it was not uncommon for girls to find their periods distasteful, and to want to retreat into a state of perpetual childhood.

He glanced in the rear mirror at his newly adult daughter with something approaching awe. Being female seemed a daunting responsibility – nurturing life for nine demanding months, then giving birth, giving suck. He looked out at the sheep again, their uncomplaining patience as they were butted in the stomach by dirty strapping offspring, jostling for the teats. His eyes strayed back to Pippa. Only a blurred strip of her face was visible in the mirror, but he was picturing her body, and particularly her breasts – more conspicuous than usual beneath the lightweight cotton top. He imagined himself a grandfather – some tiny, helpless infant latched on to those breasts; a child he'd be involved with and who would look to him for love. He felt the old familiar terror clutch briefly at his gut. He sympathized with Pippa. If
he'd
been born a girl, he was sure he would have panicked at the onset of his periods, and would have loathed the whole idea of giving birth.

‘Gosh! Look at those fields of rape,' said Penny, grimacing at the expanse of strident yellow which greeted them as they turned the corner. ‘It's such an acrid colour it sets my teeth on edge.'

And an acrid word, thought Daniel. If his daughter were raped, she would be capable of conceiving, bearing some vile yobbo's child. He felt an urge to protect her, to build a powerful barrier around her, an electric fence like the one enclosing the sheep.

He accelerated up the hill, leaving his dark thoughts behind. This was his long-awaited summer break, not a time to brood on rapists, or indulge in his own idiotic fears. He must look outwards, not inwards; make the most of the month that lay ahead. It was just as well they hadn't gone to Rome. They were all in need of an undemanding holiday, after the last few pressured weeks. He'd been sweating in his office up to eleven hours a day, trying to catch up with the backlog and also cover for a colleague in the throes of a divorce. And Penny too had been working all out, tackling a spate of commissions for a new mail-order catalogue.

He gazed at the play of light and shadow on a cornfield; the sudden jolting scarlet of ripe berries on a bush; the contrast of black rooks against white clouds. He had forgotten the simple pleasures of the countryside, the sense of things being firmly rooted and beyond mere human time-scales, like the ancient oak they were passing, or the squat stone church which grew like a natural outcrop from the hillside. The peace was like a tranquillizing drug, which had calmed them all already, even Pippa. Admittedly she wasn't saying very much, but the change was still impressive, and she would probably return to her old self again once she'd got more used to having periods, and had accepted them as an inevitable fact of life. It was a definite advance that she'd allowed Penny to confide in him, though he did feel rather awkward knowing how she felt, and he had found himself reacting with the same embarrassed shyness. But now even that was subsiding, as if the nature-drug was taking effect, flowing through their bloodstreams and removing the constraints.

‘Anyone object to Brahms?' he asked, rooting for the First Piano Concerto and slotting it into the tape-player. The first movement in particular was wonderfully exhilarating, and he wanted the sound to soar across the countryside, to match his exuberant mood.

‘No, fine,' said Penny, ‘but not too loud. You know what you're like with your music. You expect me and Pippa to put up with it full blast, and then get huffy when we listen to our own stuff at anything above the merest whisper.'

‘I
don't
!'

‘You
do
!' Penny and Pippa chanted in one breath.

‘Okay, I do,' he admitted. He'd gladly be accused of anything and everything for the sheer joy of having Pippa chiming in like that, following the conversation, rather than locking herself away in a mute world of her own. He switched on the cassette and savoured the titanic opening: a thunderous roll from the tympani, answered by impassioned strings. The heady combination of the music and the open road had affected his usually cautious style of driving, and he noticed that his speed was creeping up. He longed to swap his overloaded Vauxhall for a powerful Maserati, so he could really put his foot down and let rip; make the most of the intoxicating sense of space after the stop-start-stop of congested London streets. Everything seemed larger – the sky expanding to infinity, the horizon reeling back, the hills rising more majestically, and a giant pylon stretching strong steel arms across the widening shining landscape.

Penny was humming to the music – a habit he normally detested, though in his present genial humour it didn't bother him at all. He used one hand to conduct, urging on the woodwind, restraining the fierce brass. He'd love to be in charge of a huge orchestra, sweeping on to the podium to a tumult of applause. He and Juliet had often argued about this particular recording: she preferring the Ashkenazy version, while he championed Arrau for his well-nigh perfect balance of lyricism and bravura. No! He jabbed the stop button; the vigorous crescendo skidding abruptly to a halt.

‘Hey!' protested Penny. ‘I was just enjoying that.'

He mumbled some excuse about the tape being scratchy, then changed Brahms for Richard Strauss – the
Symphonia Domestica
. Juliet detested Strauss, but Juliet was history. He had received two letters from her in reply to his own, one blistering, one hurt, and though their astringent prose was etched into his brain, he had refused to write again.

‘Daniel, watch the road! You're driving like a maniac! What on earth's got into you?'

He slowed reluctantly, making a conscious effort to leave Juliet in London and focus on the scenery in Powys. He admired a clump of newly-planted conifers, their soft, young, springy green contrasting with the darker green of an ivy-clotted wall. There was no trace of brown or yellow in any of the trees. Summer was at its height – prolific, overflowing, blithely unconcerned with autumn's bleak decay, which seemed light years off, almost inconceivable. He felt rejuvenated himself; instinctively put his hand to his head, imagining his thin patch sprouting like ripe corn.

‘I wouldn't fancy living here!' Penny was saying with an exaggerated shudder. ‘These farms are so remote.'