Echoes of the Dance (10 page)

‘Cool,' she'd say. ‘Brill. Have a whiff, Moniker.'

Monica would avoid the outstretched hand with its outrageous fingernails – purple or striped and sometimes a different colour for each one – and smile with a wintry disdain. Janna never took offence; she'd sniff her own fingers with a voluptuous delight, eyes closed with the pleasure of it.

‘Make yer mum a cuppa, Nat,' she'd say, yawning and pushing her hands through the great curly mane of hair – lion's hair, wild and tangled and the colour of pale marmalade – and Monica would feel a sense of outrage at hearing her son ordered about so casually.

‘I can make the tea,' she'd say, stepping pointedly across those bare sunburned legs, lifting her skirt an inch or so. ‘Nat's been working all day. I'm sure he's tired.'

‘I'm fine, Ma,' he'd answer irritably. ‘Quite able to make some tea,' and Monica would feel resentful at his rejection, disliking Janna all the more for being the cause of it. She'd store up the things she'd say later to Roly about her, hoping in some oblique way to wound him by deriding his son's choice of girlfriend. All her disappointments must be laid at Roly's door.

‘I'll have the raspberry,' Janna would call, all languid from the doorstep. ‘Not that smelly stuff yer Mum likes. Bring a chair.'

‘I'd rather have tea in the garden.' Monica's voice would be dangerously sweet. ‘I've never really been one for sitting in the street. Yes, the Earl Grey for me if you have it, darling.'

Sometimes, during these tiny verbal battles, Nat's face would break into such a smile: he'd laugh aloud as if quite suddenly the whole scene had simply spiralled out of control and was not worth taking seriously.

‘Hardly a street, Mum,' he'd say, ‘but why not? We're going into the garden, Janna. Tea's here if you want it.'

Mollified by her victory, Monica would ask questions about his day – trying not to sound critical – until Janna arrived, carrying her mug, hair like a wild springing halo round her small head. Wearing one of her outlandishly printed T-shirts – ‘Jesus loves you but I'm his favourite' – she'd yawn like a kitten, mouth open to reveal tiny pointed teeth, and pick the flaking black polish from her toenails until Monica wanted to scream.

‘And what have you been doing, Janna?' she'd ask, poisonously polite, and Janna would gulp some tea – ‘Exactly as if she were swigging beer from a bottle,' Monica would tell Roly later, outraged – and begin to talk about the local markets where she and someone called ‘Treesa' did face-painting and Indian head massage and sold strange leather objects that – to Monica – could serve no possible useful purpose. Monica would feign a deep interest that disguised the opportunity to ask questions that were deliberately framed to expose all the idle pointlessness of Janna's existence.

The queer thing was, thought Monica, still staring at the terracotta pots, that Nat never made any attempt to defend Janna. He'd listen and watch her with affection, totally unmoved by his mother's contempt. Suddenly, standing there in the little lane, she was reminded of Roly and Mim but, before she could pursue this train of thought, Nat appeared. Framed in the open upper half of the door he looked down at her.

‘How long are you going to stand there admiring the pots?' he asked. ‘I've just got back and I was changing but I saw you from upstairs. How are you, Mum?'

He opened the lower half of the door and came out to give her a hug. His hair was damp and he smelled of soap but his chin was rough and she drew back a little as it scraped across her cheek.

‘Fairly well.' She liked to keep some possible suffering in reserve in case she needed it as a lever – ‘Well, I've had this ghastly headache all day but I didn't want to make a fuss' – but she smiled at him quite brightly, assessing him carefully. ‘Dying for a drink, of course. Jonathan sent a couple of bottles of Merlot, knowing we both like it.'

‘I'll get your stuff in,' Nat said, holding out his hand for the car-keys, but she went with him anyway so as to direct the operations and help with a few smaller bags.

She followed him into the cottage, alert to any changes, noting that it was clean and unusually tidy. It was a few moments before she realized that it was Janna's clutter that was missing: no shawl flung on the chair, no shoes kicked off impatiently, no strange iconic pictures stuck up on the shelves or propped against unwashed coffee mugs on the table.

‘Janna not here?' she asked casually.

‘No,' he answered. ‘No, she's off for a few days.'

She noticed a hesitation, as if he were trying to decide what version of the truth to tell her, and her curiosity was roused.

‘Off with
Treesa
?' She emphasized the mispronunciation of the name, deliberately mocking Janna and inviting Nat into an amused little conspiracy against her.

Nat frowned – rejecting the move albeit absentmindedly. ‘I expect she's with Teresa,' he agreed coolly. ‘Shall I pour us a drink? I've made some pasta, not very exciting I'm afraid, but I managed to get into Crebers for a few treats. How's Jonathan?'

She submitted to the putdown for the time being, biding her time, and accepted a glass of wine. Just at the moment she was delighted to know that Janna was not around; later, when they'd eaten, she would find out what it was that Nat was keeping from her.

After supper, however, Nat said that he simply must get his accounts up to date; he cleared the table, spread out his papers and settled down to work. In the tiny kitchen Monica washed up, sipping thoughtfully from time to time from her glass. She noticed the absence of faddy (Monica's word for anything organic or vegetarian) food preparations from the fridge and cupboard and saw that a certain mug – a rather childish Peter Rabbit mug – was missing.

Mentally she raised her eyebrows: surely these were signs of more than just a few days away. She refilled her glass and went to sit on the rather lumpy sofa, refusing the offer of television or radio, staring at the little fire of cones and logs that Nat had made in the iron basket that stood on the hearth. Her reactions to Janna's possible departure were mixed: part relief that the wretched girl was out of Nat's life; part irritation that she, Monica, would be more anxious now that Nat was alone again.

She stirred rather restlessly – the sofa needed reupholstering – and tried to decide what she would say to Roly about it. It was clearly unreasonable to moan about Janna on the one hand and regret her going on the other. Nevertheless, despite her complete lack of practicality, Janna had been company for Nat.

Silently Monica rehearsed a few sentences: ‘If he can't keep someone like Janna, how can we expect him ever to find a decent girl?' Or: ‘I suppose we might as well accept the fact that he's never going to have the kind of prospects to attract a decent girl.'

She tried to find a substitute for ‘decent girl', knowing that this choice of words might lend itself to flippancy on Roly's part – ‘Surely an indecent girl is much more fun!' – and glanced irritably at Nat's back. With a little shock she realized that the sight of his bent head, the angle of his arm, reminded her of Roly: Roly when young, reading the paper, sketching some silly little cartoon, while she cooked supper and cleared the table, talking about her day. He'd stretch out his long arm to catch her as she flashed past, pulling her down for a casual kiss – except that none of his kisses was casual: his touch simply overwhelmed her senses so that nothing mattered but that they should go on kissing.

Caught off-guard by this evocation of passion that was like a blow to the heart, Monica sat stiffly. She stared unseeingly at Nat's back, conjuring up a quite different scene.

Oh, it's love, she tells herself; no doubt about that. It happens exactly how she knew it would: just as all her magazines and films describe it. One glance across a crowded room and suddenly everything goes kind of dim and hushed and out of focus; everything except this particular face that is special, different, and she knows nothing will ever be quite the same again. Except that he isn't looking back at her across this busy, noisy room, hasn't seen her yet: he's talking to David Porteous, her cousin Sara's husband, and he is utterly unaware of her existence. Well, perhaps not
utterly
unaware . . . David might have said: ‘Sara's got this little cousin coming to stay while she finds her feet with her new job. Rather quiet but quite sweet. Make sure you're nice to her.'

He might say something like that. To begin with, David is always very kind to her – too kind sometimes, judging from Sara's steely glances – but he frightens her. He surrounds himself with writers, artists, dancers and they talk and talk, and she feels gauche and ignorant. And bored.

‘Open your mind to new things,' David says impatiently to her one evening when he has seen her sitting silent, unable to join in.

‘I don't know anything about art,' she answers, resentful because it sounds as if he's criticizing her.

‘But you can learn,' he cries.

His enthusiasm frightens her; it demands a response that she is unwilling to make. Her parents and her school between them have framed a narrow little pattern of beliefs and expectations that is setting nicely into a rigid format by which she can assess life and judge her fellow men. She dimly realizes that any wider experience might disturb these pre- digested opinions – she might be required to think for herself – and something deep down inside her is fearful of smashing this comfortable, undemanding credo.

At the same time there is a neediness; an emptiness waiting to be filled. She waits passively, seeing no requirement to make any effort of her own. Once she meets Roly she knows that he is the answer: it is Love that will answer that aching neediness.

‘This is Roly,' says Sara, introducing them. ‘This is my cousin Monica. Roly's a photographer . . .'

The way her voice dies away, the tiny lifting of the brows – a kind of mental shrug – implies that Sara has as low opinion of photographers as she does of painters, but she is in thrall too. She loves David as possessively and fiercely as Monica will love Roly.

‘Oh, terrible, terrible love!' cries Mim – and Monica is shocked, for how can love be terrible? Mim frightens her too. When they first meet, Mim looks at her intently. She ignores Monica's polite formalities, as if to say, ‘Yes, yes. I can see what you are on the outside but where is the real you?'

Monica fears that Mim might see nothing inside except a reflection of Roly looking out; for it is Roly who is occupying every thought, every plan: nothing but Roly . . .

Nat stirred, as if suddenly conscious of the particular quality of his mother's silence. He turned in his chair, surprised by the expression on her face.

‘Are you OK?' he asked. ‘Sorry. I got a bit caught up with all this and I didn't notice the time. I'll make the fire up and then we'll have some coffee.'

CHAPTER TWELVE

High on Pew Tor, Kate stood staring across to the rocky mass of Vixen Tor towering above the Walkham valley. Thirty years ago she'd bought a little cottage on the edge of the valley – oh, how she'd loved it – and countless times since then she'd climbed these rocks to gaze in awe at this ancient land stretched in wild splendour below her. Today, away in the west, the hills and tors of Cornwall lay hidden in mist but she could see the silver glint of Plymouth Sound and the sinuous curve of the River Tamar. As a young naval wife she'd walked here, anxious about her deteriorating marriage with Mark Webster, sustained by the moor itself: the subtly changing landscape, combined with its quality of timeless infinity, never failed to calm her restless fears. Each season thrilled her: the sight of a twisty, wind-pruned thorn all newly covered with red may blossom or a hillside flowering with purple, bee-laden heather; the fiery, coppery gold of rusting bracken burning in the late autumn sunshine or a black, stark-etched Tor iced with snow. In all its moods she loved it.

In those early days her twins, Guy and Giles, would have been scrambling below her, playing war games and climbing the rocks, whilst the dogs scattered the grazing ponies as they raced through the bracken. Often her closest friend, Cass Wivenhoe, would have been with them, along with her own brood of children. From shared schooldays and as young naval wives their lives had been so closely linked; indeed it was Cass's father, the General, whose benign presence had held them all steady. Constant as the moor itself, his friendship had supported Kate through those difficult years with Mark, the final break-up of their marriage and her mother's death. Never judgemental, the General's own experiences had marked him deeply with compassion and humility; not odd, then, that she should still miss him.

A lark began its erratic skyward flight, its song spilling down through the soft billowy air. The warm west wind tugged at her clothes and, as she watched the cloud shapes fleeing across the distant slopes of Sharpitor, it seemed as if she heard their voices, the General's and Mark's, in the wind.

‘You must be very brave, my darling . . . Your mother died
this morning . . .'

‘I see no point to children until they're old enough to hold
an intelligent conversation.'

‘You are stronger than you can possibly imagine and I am
here. For the moment that will have to be enough.'