I Remember You (30 page)

‘I bet you have.’ There was laughter in his voice, but a note of sympathy too. She heard it. ‘I was just off for a walk,’ he said. ‘Got some reading to do.’

‘Oh, me too,’ she said airily. She patted her coat pocket.

‘What’s in there?’ he asked, leaning forwards.

She was instantly embarrassed, as if he had caught her in
a lie, or exposed a secret part of herself. ‘Get off,’ she said, wriggling away, but he pulled the slim volume out of her pocket and held it above her head. He grinned.

‘Love poetry!’

‘It’s not,’ she said, though she was blushing. ‘All sorts.’

‘I know, I know, my little Atalanta,’ he said.

‘Don’t call me that,’ she said, though actually she liked it.

He jabbed a finger. ‘Look—Atalanta the swift-footed huntress, who rejected all men and wouldn’t get married until whoever it was dropped the golden apples and distracted her. Second poem.’

‘That’s not true!’ The stain on Leonora’s cheeks deepened; marriage, indeed any relations with the opposite sex, had never occurred to her, raised as she was in the oppressive atmosphere of the Mortmain home. Never—until recently.

‘Oh, come now,’ he said, slightly wolfishly. But then, seeing her embarrassment, he softened instantly. He patted her arm and she relaxed. ‘I was heading down to the water meadows. I wanted to see you, wanted to talk to you about something.’ He shifted on his feet. ‘Um—fancy coming with me?’ He looked down at her. He was so tall these days, and she felt so little; when had he grown so much, outstripped her, turned into this tall, broad-shouldered man? Where had the eight-year-old Philip who could fit into her pink silk party dress gone? Who was this stranger, almost a man, in front of her?

She was suddenly shy, which was ridiculous. ‘Of course,’ she said, drawing herself up to her full height. ‘I was intending to go that way, anyway.’

‘Really?’ He smiled. ‘We are of one mind, then.’

‘Absolutely,’ she said, and they set off together as the morning sun crept up and over the rooves of the town, flickering through the silent streets.

She shouldn’t have let him. But the truth is, she wanted to. Wanted to feel his arms around her, his body on top of her. They were close, always had been. She sometimes hugged
her maid, Eleanor, the person to whom she was probably closest other than Philip. But no one else in young Leonora’s life hugged her, touched her, was physical with her, and so it was easy, really, to move to that stage, since he was the only one she had ever spontaneously thrown her arms around, tripped over and wrestled to the floor, kissed.

And so when they were lying side by side, on the rug he’d brought with him, in silence, listening to the wood pigeons coo dolefully in the trees at the edge of the park, feeling the blazing, lazing summer warmth steal over them, she did not move when he leaned over her, nor was she wholly surprised. Leonora Mortmain was an impeccably brought-up young woman. She would simply not have known how such things should be initiated. She only knew she was terrified for a second, and then completely happy, when he leaned up on one arm and stroked her shoulder, kissed her cheek.

His hair flopped into his face, shading his features as he hung over her.

‘Are you all right?’ he said, his hand stroking her leg. She could feel the warmth of his palm on her skin, through her thin cotton dress.

She wiggled a little, her hair fanning out behind her, and smiled up at him. ‘Of course I am. Are you?’

‘I am now, Rara.’ His fingers moved more slowly, he was staring down at her. ‘I missed you. It’s been a long term. Christmas seems like a lifetime ago.’

At Christmas, at a party, she had kissed him, or rather let him kiss her, in a dark corner of a house filled with old men and women, the people who had been left behind. It was just the two of them in the study, as music blared out from a wind-up gramophone in the drawing room. He had pressed up against her, his hands clutching the back of her head. She had enjoyed it, even though it should have felt wrong, this boy who was now a man, her oldest friend, doing these things to her.

The next day, he had met her, walking along the lane back to the Hall, on the way back home, and he had kissed her again, pushing her gently against the old oak that had stood for centuries at the crossroads. His body was warm against hers in the cold, his tongue in her mouth alarming at first and then exciting. This time they had both wanted it, and it only stopped when they heard the uncertain roar of a motor engine coming towards them. They had broken apart, and it was only then she realized his hand was inside her dress, on her breast, and that she liked it there.

Now, here in the fields, Leonora didn’t know what they were doing; she wasn’t sure he knew either, only that it felt right. And that’s when Philip kissed her. He undid the buttons on her delicate lawn cotton dress, gently kissing the skin each button revealed, one by one, and parting it until she was almost naked. He took off his trousers and shirt, and then he removed her starched, semi-corseted brassiere, draping it gently over the high grass; it bobbed as if held up on stilts.

‘Do you remember coming here in the summer, when we were little?’ He pushed her hair off her face, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. ‘Just the two of us, down here?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Leonora shyly. Her fingers beat a light motion on the back of his neck. She stroked his skin, it was smooth, it smelt comforting, of hay and incense and—oh, of Philip, her oldest, most beloved friend, and being naked with him, which should have felt so extraordinarily strange and wrong, felt wonderful, delicious, right.

‘When I was at school, when I was utterly miserable, I’d close my eyes and think of you, of us, here, in the summer, and it would all seem manageable suddenly.’ He moved her arms so they were above her head, pinning her hands there, so he could run his hands over her body, over her breasts, kissing her stomach, her breast bone, her nipples—she could feel the scratchy hairs on his face, rasping against her skin. She smiled, looking down at his soft hair, his hands on her
body, then she looked up, to the sky above her, the trees around them, and breathed in. She was happy—a little scared, but happy. She kissed the top of his head.

‘It’s all right, now,’ she said softly. ‘You’re back here. And so am I.’

‘I know,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘Oh—Rara.’ He kissed her passionately, and she him, and he wouldn’t let her move until he came up for air and they moved together, and she took him in her hand, instinctively, curious, and stroked him till he groaned. He was quiet for a moment, and she nodded up at him, and his eyes were enormous, his face serious.

When he finally pushed slowly, carefully, into her it hurt, but only for a moment, and then it felt strange and wonderful. As if he was plugging something, filling her up. They hardly made any movement in the field; he rocked his hips urgently against hers, and she welcomed him in, till he came inside her, his cry strangled, as if she was hurting him. Then silence.

And then it was as if she was snapped back to reality and they were two teenagers again, one in a half-undone dress, her knickers in the grass, the other with his trousers discarded, his pants around his knees, breathing heavily against each other, rocking again, just the two of them, as his breathing subsided and she stared up at him.

‘Hello,’ he said, pushing the hair off her forehead. ‘My little Atalanta.’ He smiled, blinkly heavily at her.

‘Oh—hello,’ she answered. ‘Oh, Philip—’

‘I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now,’ Philip said, with an attempt at composure, and then a smile broke out over his face, the one she knew so well, and he shifted his weight from on top of her, and covered her mouth with kisses.

It was scorching hot, deadly quiet in the grass where they lay. She was silent, wondering what they had just done, amazed at how powerful it felt, knowing it was right.

‘I’m going away,’ Philip said after a while, his breath in her hair. ‘Next week, I’m going.’

He rolled off her, and fiddled with his trousers. She lay there, not sure what to say, his sweat drying on her, cold in the heat. Wetness slithered between her legs. She felt suddenly grubby, there in the dusty grass.

‘Where?’

‘To the barracks, I suppose.’ He cleared his throat.

She still didn’t understand. ‘Barracks?’

‘Local barracks, over in Thornham. Mum was hoping my eyesight’d stop me from enlisting. But I went yesterday. The sergeant-major said it was fine.’ She stared at him, aghast. He said, almost proudly, ‘There’s no way I’d stay at home like a lily-livered little snake, not like Roger Bowen, getting his daddy to get him off the hook. There’s a war on and I’m eighteen now.’

‘Philip—you’re not going to fight,’ she said, sitting up, clutching his jacket. He turned to her in surprise. ‘You can’t!’ she said, her voice sounding weak and silly, even in her own ears. ‘You—’

‘I’ve got to, Rara,’ he said, looking puzzled. ‘How can I not?’ He smiled at her gently, smoothing her hair off her forehead again. He caught her to him, and held her, still naked, against his chest. She could feel his heart, hammering inside him, the cooling sweat on his strong body. ‘What would you think of me if I didn’t go and fight? Listen to me. It’s a dirty fight but we’re going to beat Hitler. You’ll see, I’ll be home by Christmas, and we’ll be married, and your father can go to hell. I wouldn’t have—I wouldn’t have taken you like this, if I wasn’t sure.’ He looked down at her fiercely. ‘D’you hear me?’

His hand enfolded hers, caught between their bodies, as he cradled her.

‘Don’t go,’ she said, realizing now the severity of what they had done, and of what he had always meant to her. She pulled away from him. ‘How can you go? How can you say we’re going to be together? We can’t be!’

‘Yes, we will,’ he said, and it was almost as if he were laughing at her, which only made her more furious. ‘Everything’s changed, Rara. The world has changed. This war is changing it.’

‘Not with my father,’ Leonora said. ‘Philip, they won’t ever let us, ever…It’s not the war, it won’t change anything. Oh, my God—you shouldn’t have…’ Emotion overwhelmed her; she picked up her shoes, a sob catching in her throat. ‘I hate you!’ She scrambled in the grass for her underthings, pulled her dress on over her shoulders, her fingers trembling on the buttons.

‘Leonora!’ he said in surprise as she stood up, stumbling away from him. ‘Leonora, come back!’

She ran through the heavy lush fields, the morning dew drenching her bare feet, her hair flying behind her, and when she stopped at the bridge over the stream to gather her breath, he caught up with her.

‘I love you,’ he said furiously as the water rushed beneath them. ‘I don’t care that you’re a Mortmain, that I’m the vicar’s son. It doesn’t matter, can’t you see? Everything’s changing. I love you, Leonora, and it’ll all be wonderful when I’m back. This war’s nearly over. It’s got to be for the good. We’re going to lick the Germans.’ His hand ran down to her stomach, almost as if he knew, and he kissed her. ‘It’s just you and me after this. I promise. I’m offering you a future. Not the past.’ She clung to him, sobbing a little, her hair falling around her face. He smiled. ‘Now kiss me again.’

She kissed him, even as she tasted the salt of her own tears in her mouth. He cupped her chin in his hand, and with his other hand pushed her thick, golden hair behind her shoulder.

‘You are such a beautiful girl,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t it feel right?’

‘Yes,’ said Leonora, because it did. It honestly did, no matter who her father was, who Philip was. She had never, ever felt more alive than she did at that moment. ‘Yes, it does.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said, as she turned to run back
to the town. She nodded, smiling at him, though it gave her pain. ‘And the day after, and the day after that. You and me, Rara, just you and me. Promise me you believe me.’

‘I believe you,’ she said, poised for flight, but she turned and kissed him just once more, feeling deliciously wanton as she lifted her face up to his, feeling her hair fall between her shoulder blades. ‘I love you,’ she said, no longer timid.

‘I love you too,’ he whispered, as they kissed on the bridge. It felt so private, just between them. She couldn’t have imagined, have foreseen, the result of that one spring day.

Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

All things change, and we change with them.

Roman proverb

When Mick Hopkins first moved to Langford in 1970, to take up a job as barman at the Feathers, the local pub was a very different animal. Mick, who was no innovator, but a keen, if impassive, observer of human nature, liked to compare it—only to himself—to a ham and cheese sandwich.

As the years went past and Mick eventually became the landlord, he noticed the change, but it wasn’t until the nineties that it was obvious. In 1970, not only was the price of a pint after decimalization just eleven pence, but the customers he served were mainly men, all locals, all born and brought up within a mile radius of the pub. The food was sandwiches: ham, cheese and pickle. In the thirties, the ham would have been local, the cheese proper, creamy, sharp Somerset cheddar, the pickle made in the kitchen by the landlord’s wife, but by the mid-seventies, the ham was processed and reshaped into shiny, slippery slices, the cheddar was pre-packaged and plastic, and the pickle from a jar, with a faint taste of washing-up liquid about it.

Mick just kept on serving pints, and emptying the ashtrays, bringing out plates of food, and listening to his customers as they complained about the weather, about the strikes, about the cost of living, the government…And as the seventies
turned into the eighties, and Langford tidied itself up a bit, the number of tourists increased tenfold, and Mick, who was by then the landlord, opened up the garden at the back, which had been a concreted-over space where the bins were kept. He put some benches down, a couple of potted plants, and a couple of spaces for cars, and started serving cream teas, with synthetic whipped cream in a can, as well as ham, cheese and pickle sandwiches. Janey, his young, nubile barmaid, was dispatched to Bath to buy some Laura Ashley curtains and duvet covers, fake plastic flowers in vases, and pale blue and pink towels, for the four bedrooms upstairs. The tourists loved it.

Then, in the late eighties, someone on the council suggested Langford enter the Britain in Bloom competition. Mick didn’t mind: he could see it would be good for business. So the Feathers was festooned with purple anemones, coral geraniums, Busy Lizzies and the like, every available windowsill and patio square given over to bumptious boxes of colour. The car park was turfed over, made into grass, and patrons were allowed to use the town hall car park. A play area was erected, and the denizens of Langford brought their children there on summer’s evenings, at the weekends, and for parties. The ham and cheese sandwiches came with a frothy lettuce garnish, and were cut into triangles. They started serving Pimm’s.

When the Jane Austen Centre won a fairly substantial Lottery grant in the nineties, the town seemed to think this was confirmation of what it had always known: Langford was a cut above other places, a classy step back in time. It conveniently forgot that it had made its money from the now-defunct coal mines ten miles to its west, and from farming. It only remembered—and saw—the golden stone, the Beau Brummell connection, the high-end visitors, the Mortmains, the glamorous bits. When Jacquetta Meluish arrived from Chelsea in 1997, and opened her tasteful gift shop on the high street, Mick knew things were changing.
Within five years there were two more shops of its ilk: a delicatessen and a glamorous off-licence that specialized in Spanish wines. They were soon followed by the world-renowned Mr Dill’s Cheese Emporium, and Vistas, an art gallery specializing in insipid watercolours of the surrounding countryside, which always made Mick feel a bit nauseous. He loved the countryside around Langford, it was dramatic and full of surprises, whether it was the lush, almost tropical greenery of summer, or the shocking colours of autumn, or the stark, black beauty of the hills and hedgerows in the depths of winter.

Now, the cream teas they served at the Feathers had local clotted cream from George Farm, jam made by the long-suffering Janey—now married with three grown-up children—and the cheese was proud Somerset cheddar again, the hamfrom local pigs. But the pickle was still out of a jar, the fish and chips were still from the freezer, and the deep-fried brie was still the most popular starter on the menu. Some things you could change and you should, some you couldn’t and you shouldn’t, Mick reasoned. He was getting old, now, he knew it, and some might say forty years was a long time to be serving drinks to people, but he still loved it.

This summer, though, things were different. It was odd being in Langford these past few weeks. June had passed, and it had become hotter and hotter, the roads dustier than ever, the usually sweet air of Langford—which, unlike Thornham, was high on a hill—became still and oppressive, with no wind to blow through the town. It hadn’t rained for over a month by the time July was over. In cottages and houses built to keep the warmth in across town people sweltered, babies cried and didn’t sleep, the inhabitants tossed and turned, praying for rain.

Mick had his rooms above the shop—that is, at the back of the courtyard of the pub, overlooking the valley, where the
oldest part of the town spilled down the hill, down towards the water meadows. On summer’s nights, he slept with the tiny casement window open, so he could hear the wood-pigeons cooing in the trees below, the blackbird singing loud in the dead of night.

Once, a wasps’ nest camped out in the eaves by his shutter, and he had come in one afternoon, looking for his glasses, to find the room black with hundreds of swarming creatures. It wasn’t a humming sound, either, it had sounded like an approaching storm. He had shut the door behind him, standing in the centre of the room, dumbstruck for what seemed like an eternity, until common sense got him out of there. Adam had been downstairs, behind the bar. ‘Oh, my God, what happened?’ he’d said, as Mick had stumbled into the pub again, and it wasn’t until he’d looked down at his arm and seen three angry red marks, that he realized he’d been stung. He’d had to go to hospital.

That, he thought, was the ugliest invasion he’d had to deal with since he’d been here. For the most part, Langford was a lovely place to live and—after only forty years here—some people had let it be known that they regarded him as as good as local, now. Of course, that meant less and less now the place was increasingly full of tourists and DFLs (down from Londoners), but it was still nice.

On this particular morning in August Mick was up and about early, though he hadn’t slept well. Even opening the windows wide late at night out onto the valley had not brought any wind in. Mick was a quiet-tempered man, but even he was feeling a touch out of sorts. His bones seemed to ache more than usual and, as he lifted the old blackboard with the day’s specials out onto the high street he paused for a moment, enjoying the cool of the narrow road where the morning shadows were still long. As he always did he looked over at the house opposite, but Leda House was shuttered up, as it had been since Leonora Mortmain died. Mick shook his head
as he stood up, wiping his hands on his apron, and went back inside.

It wasn’t right, he told himself. The woman had been dead for nearly two months now, and no one knew what was happening. They hadn’t even had the funeral yet, for God’s sakes. She was still in Rome, in some freezer there, waiting for clearance to come back—because of red tape, they said. It wasn’t good for anyone, especially Adam, and Mick didn’t like it. He hesitated in the corridor by the courtyard as he fumbled with the keys, and unlocked the door to the bar.

Now, Mick had been no fan of Mrs Mortmain’s, but he wasn’t the type to take sides, either. Do as you would be done by, was his motto. So he had always smiled and greeted her politely, even if she’d ignored him, these forty years and even if, over the past decade, she’d grown more and more unreasonable, even a little crazy, he thought. He was, Mick told himself as he let himself into the warm, dusty bar, old enough to remember her when he’d first come to Langford, and he remembered things that other people—like Ron, or Clive, or Diana or even Adam—might have forgotten. But he remembered she wasn’t always that bad. She’d been in her late forties, then.

Though Mick was fastidious about keeping a clean bar, and though Janey, and Janey’s daughter Kirsty, now part-time and looking suspiciously like Mick, had cleaned up the night before, the old room still smelt close, yeasty, a little sweaty, in the heat. Still moving slowly, Mick went over to the leaded windows that gave out onto the street and opened them. He stared at the house for a moment again, and then nipped behind the bar.

He’d often thought to himself that Leonora must have been a fine-looking woman, in her day. She had dark, dark eyes, pale skin, cheekbones that stuck out a mile, gave her an Audrey Hepburn kind of look. She wore headscarves and a lot of black, and she had an angular, almost tomboyish way of moving.

Mick started checking the barrels, letting his mind run along. That was the trouble, he’d always known it. Thin women, they all too often turn scrawny. It happened to Audrey Hepburn, didn’t it? Mick liked them with a smile on their face and some meat on their bones. He couldn’t say that out loud, of course, it wasn’t right to say it out loud, but in the course of his rich bedroom life at the Feathers, it was the Janeys of this world who still brought a smile to his face. And that had been the trouble with Leonora Mortmain, as the years passed and he settled into his life as her neighbour. She grew thinner, seemed to shrink before his eyes, as if something was eating her up. Before, she’d had a bit of spark. But these last few years she’d become downright scary, always twitching those curtains, always scowling, rarely venturing outside, preferring to keep her world within those four gloomy walls. It was a big, lovely house, that one. A real shame.

No visitors, either. Apart from Jean Forbes, of course, and a couple of others. Solicitors, men from London who looked after the estates. Mick didn’t pass judgement, so he made no comment when he saw Adam slip across there, after his day shift was over, once every few months. He liked the boy, and he had loved his mother—everyone had. In fact, after she’d moved to Langford, Mick had enjoyed a brief affair with Philippa, one summer when Adam was a toddler. It had ended amicably on both sides, though Mick carried a small torch for Philippa thereafter—she really did look like Audrey Hepburn too, and though she was a bit too thin, she was lovely, she smiled and laughed an awful lot. He felt protective towards her son ever afterwards, especially when she died. He didn’t know where she’d come from, but from a few things she’d said, he wondered. He saw how Philippa never had any new clothes, how Adam didn’t have a lunch box for school, how sparse their house was, and he wondered. And when Philippa died—well, he’d often thought they looked alike, but it was clear that was where the similarities between them ended.
Even Mick would never have guessed what they were saying in Langford now. That not only was Philippa the old woman’s daughter, but that she’d refused to speak to her after she came to Langford, heavily pregnant, reluctantly looking for her mother. She was given the cottage, that was it. Mick didn’t understand it. Philippa—how could you not love her? She’d been the kindest, warmest woman in the world…

Mick shook his head, surprised to find himself thinking about all of that, of Philippa’s lovely face, her wild hair, her beautiful naked body straddling his, her big generous smile as she leaned forward to kiss him…He leaned against the bar, breathing heavily, not knowing why today, of all days, this memory should upset him so much.

“Ullo Mick!’ came a voice out at the back. Flustered, Mick jumped out of his reverie.

‘Oh,’ he said, turning round slowly. ‘Oh. It’s only you. Hello, Ron.’

Ron Thaxton came sloping into the pub, and put his elbows wearily up on the old bar. ‘All right there, Mick.’ He blew air out of his bottom lip onto his forehead. ‘Oh, it’s hot. Isn’t it.’

‘Certainly is, Ron.’ Mick turned back to the bar. ‘Only nine o’clock, though, I can’t serve you yet,’ he said with an attempt at humour that, even to him, sounded pretty weak.

‘I don’t want a beer, don’t you worry,’ said Ron. He sighed. ‘When we were in Italy, Andrea and I both developed something of a taste for Campari, you know. Campari and sodas. In a nice square, of an evening. Quite delicious, I must say. Slice of orange, some ice.
Andrea
—’ he emphasized her name again, heavily—‘she sometimes preferred hers with orange juice, and then you say “with
sugo d’arancia
”. You know.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Mick. He wiped a cloth over the wooden surface of the bar. ‘Never got a taste for Campari, myself. I like a whisky with water now and again, though.’

‘Whisky’s nice too, yes,’ said Ron. He paused, and exhaled loudly again. ‘Oh, dear.’

‘What’s up, then, Ron?’ said Mick patiently. ‘You all right?’

‘I dunno,’ said Ron. He clambered wearily up onto a bar stool, and started fiddling with a beer mat. ‘I’m not sleeping too well at the moment, that’s the trouble. Don’t know what it is.’

‘It’s the heat,’ said Mick. ‘Five weeks without rain, it’s no good for anyone, you know.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Ron. ‘But it’s something else, too. Ever since we got back from Rome, I’ve been having trouble with it.’

‘Well, that were eight weeks ago, too,’ Mick pointed out. ‘I remember, ‘cause Mrs Mortmain died early June, the day after you all got back, wasn’t it?’ Ron nodded. ‘And we’re in August now, ain’t we. And still no funeral.’

‘I know,’ said Ron. ‘And I think that’s what’s my trouble.’ He looked pertinently at Mick and lowered his voice. ‘I think she’s haunting me, you know. That woman. She’s not in the ground, yet. She’s like the undead.’ He licked his lips. ‘I’ve been getting into vampire books lately, Mick. It’s all the same thing.’

‘Ron Thaxton, you can’t say that,’ Mick told him, chuckling. ‘You can’t speak ill of the dead.’

Ron said sagely, ‘Well, I was blooming rude to her while she were alive, so it’d be hypocritical of me to start weeping over her now she’s dead, don’t you think?’

‘Suppose so,’ said Mick. He ran the tap, pouring out a glass of water for himself and handing one to Ron, who accepted it with a nod. They sat in silence for a moment.