Voices in Summer (16 page)

'Oh, darling, that is good. . . . Mathie must be thrilled.'

'Yes, it's encouraging.' Ivan leaned forward to cut himself a thick slice of bread. His hands, doing this, were neat and strong and competent, their backs, and his bare forearms, downed in sun-bleached hair.

'Where did you stay in Bristol?' Eve asked.

'Oh, some pub Mathie knew.'

'Lots of traffic on the motorway?'

'Not too bad . . . middle-of-the-week stuff.' He took a tomato and began to slice it. He said to Laura, 'You've brought the good weather with you. I heard the forecast on the radio. It seems to be set fair for a few more days. How's Alec?'

'He's very well, thank you.'

'I was sorry to miss him. But he's coming back for you, isn't he? That's fine, I'll see him then.'

'You can come out to dinner with us,' said Eve. 'Laura and I have decided that one night, we're all going to go somewhere terribly expensive and grand for dinner, and we're going to ask Silvia to come with us.'

'She'll love that,' said Ivan. 'Head waiters to hand and a quick fox-trot between courses.'

'Who's going to pay the bill?' asked Gerald.

'You are, of course, my darling.'

He was not in the least put out by this, as Eve knew he would not be. 'Very well. But remember to ring and book a table in good time. And don't let it be that place where they gave us rotten scampi. Took me days to get over it.'

Ivan made the coffee. 'What are you all doing this afternoon?'

'Good question,' said Gerald.

'Gerald's going to have a little nap. He says he won't come to the beach with us.'

'Are you going to the beach?'

'We haven't decided.' Eve took a sip of her coffee. 'What are
you
going to do? Go up to the factory, I suppose?'

'No, I have to drive to Landrock. Old Mr Coleshill's got some old pine pieces in . . . there's been a sale at some big house. He's given us first refusal, and if I don't go today, the dealers are going to find out about them.'

Eve took another sip of coffee. 'Why don't you take Laura with you?' she suggested. 'It's a pretty drive, and she'd probably enjoy nosing round Mr Coleshill's antiques.'

'Of course,' said Ivan at once. He turned to Laura. 'Would you like to come with me?'

This unexpected suggestion took Laura unawares. 'Well . . . yes. But, please, don't worry about me.'

Eve and Ivan laughed. 'We're not worrying,' Eve told her, 'and you don't have to go if you'd rather rest. But you might enjoy it. And the shop's filled with pretty china as well as a mass of dusty junk. It's fun nosing around.'

Laura loved antique shops almost as much as she loved bookshops. ‘I think I'd like to come. . . . Would you mind if I brought my dog as well?'

'Not at all, provided it's not a Great Dane prone to car sickness.'

Eve said, 'She's a dear little dachshund, but I think she'd be happier left with me. She can play in the garden.'

'That's settled, then.' Ivan pushed back his chair. 'We're off to Landrock. And on the way back, we'll maybe stop at Gwenvoe and have a bathe.'

‘I was there two days ago,' his mother told him. 'The tide's out just now and the swimming's perfect.'

'Would you like that, Laura?'

'I'd love it.'

'We'll leave in about fifteen minutes. I've got a couple of phone calls to make . . . and don't forget your swimming things.'

His car was just what she had expected, an open coupe, which meant that the wind blew her hair from the back, all over her face. She tried to hold it back, but it was an impossible task, so Ivan produced an old silk scarf and she tied her head up in that, wondering how many of his girlfriends had already done just this thing.

They followed the main road for a mile or so, moving at great speed, and then turned off into a maze of winding high-hedged lanes. These, with their narrowness and blind corners, Ivan treated with respect and took at a leisurely pace. They trundled peacefully along, every now and then passing small villages or isolated farms, where the air was heavy with the smell of manure and farmhouse gardens bright with flowers. Fuchsias grew in the hedges, purple and deep pink, and ditches were filled with buttercups and tall, creamy stalks of cow parsley.

'It's so peaceful,' said Laura.

'We could have taken the main road, but I always come to Landrock this way.'

'If you build new furniture, why do you have to go and buy old furniture?'

'We do both. When I first met Mathie, he was in the pine-stripping business. Had quite a good little concern going and no shortage of material. But then stripped pine became suddenly very fashionable and all the London dealers were down, buying anything they could get their hands on. The supply started petering out.'

'What did he do?'

'He couldn't do anything much. He couldn't afford to top their prices, and after a bit he couldn't supply his own customers. That's when I came in, a year ago. I met him in a pub, and he poured out his troubles to me over a glass of beer. He's such a good chap, I went the next day to look at his workshop, and I saw some chairs he'd made himself, and a table. I asked him why he didn't start up manufacturing the stuff himself, and he said he couldn't, because he hadn't the capital to buy machinery and generally shoulder all the overheads involved. So we went into partnership. I put up the money, and Mathie put up the expertise. We've had a few thin months, but I'm more hopeful now. I think it's beginning to pay off.'

‘I thought you were an architect.'

'Yes, I am. I was a practising architect for a number of years, in Cheltenham of all places. But when I came down here to live I realized that there simply wasn't enough work. There was no call for a man with my qualifications. Anyway, designing furniture isn't that different from designing houses, and I've always liked working with my hands.'

'Are you going to stay here always?'

'If I can. Provided I don't blot my copybook with Gerald and get flung out of Tremenheeie. It's your first visit, isn't it? How do you like it?'

'It's heaven.'

'Mind you, you're seeing it under ideal conditions. Just wait till the winds blow and the rain starts pouring down. You'd think it would never stop.'

‘I was a bit apprehensive about coming,' she admitted, and somehow it was possible to do this, because he was an easy person to talk to. 'You know, to stay, by myself, with people I'd never met. Even though they are Alec's relations. But the doctor said I wasn't to go to Scotland, and I didn't actually have anywhere else to go.'

'What . . .?' he sounded astonished. 'No relations of your own?'

'No. Not one.'

‘I don't know whether to envy you or be sorry for you. Well, don't worry about it anyway. My mother's most favourite thing is looking after people. Every now and then Gerald has to put his foot down, but she persists. He grumbles that she's turned his house into a bloody commune, but he only becomes annoyed with all us hangers-on when he thinks that Eve's looking tired. Have you met Drusilla?'

'Yes.'

'And the dreaded Joshua? I'm afraid Drusilla's coming to Tremenheere was my responsiblity.'

'Who is she?'

'I've really no idea. She turned up at Lanyon about a year ago, with the infant Joshua and a man called Kev. I suppose he was Joshua's father. He called himself an artist, but his pictures were so appalling that no person in his wildest moment would dream of paying good money for them. They lived in a little house on the moor, and then one evening when they'd been there about nine months, Drusilla turned up at the pub with her backpack and her flute case and her baby in a grocery carton and the news that Kev had decamped on her and gone back to London and another woman.'

'What a brute.'

'Oh, she was quite philosophical about it all. Not particularly resentful. Just homeless and broke. Mathie was in the pub that evening, and at closing time he took pity on her and took her home to his wife, and they looked after her for a couple of days, but it was obvious that she couldn't stay there, so I had a word with Gerald and she moved into the cottage at Tremenheere. She seems to have settled down very nicely.'

'But where does she come from?'

'Huddersfield, I think. I don't know her background. I don't know anything about her. Except that she is a trained musician. I think she once played in an orchestra. You'll hear her practising her flute. She's very good.'

'How old is she?'

'No idea. I suppose about twenty-five.'

'But what does she live on?'

'Social Security, I imagine.'

'But what will
happen
to her?' Laura persisted. She found this all fascinating, a glimpse into a life that she had never had to imagine.

'Again, no idea. Down here, we don't ask those sort of questions. But have no fears for Drusilla. She and Joshua are born survivors.'

As they talked, the road had climbed, the terrain altered. Bosky lanes had given way to open countryside, reclaimed moorland, with distant views of rounded hills topped here and there with the engine houses of disused tin mines, piercing the skyline like jagged teeth.

They came to a sign, Landrock, and a moment later entered the village, not as picturesque as the others they had come through, but a collection of bleak stone terraces, built around a crossroads. On the four corners of this stood a pub, a newsagent, a post office, and a long rambling building that had once, perhaps, been a barn. It had small, dusty windows crammed with seductive junk, and over the door hung a sign.

WM. COLESHILL

SECONDHAND FURNITURE

BRIC-A-BRAC ANTIQUES

Ivan slowed down and drew up at the pavement's edge. They got out of the car. Up here, on the hill, it was cooler, the air fresh. There did not seem to be anybody about. They went through the open door of the shop, down a step. Inside the temperature dropped by ten degrees or more, and there was the smell of damp and decay and musty old furniture and wax polish. It took some time to grow accustomed to the dark after the bright sunshine out of doors, and as they stood there, a stirring came from the back of the shop. A chair was pushed back. Out of the gloom, edging his way between cliffs of stacked furniture, emerged an old man in a sagging cardigan. He took off his glasses, the better to see.

'Ah . . . Ivan!'

'Hello, Mr Coleshill.'

Laura was introduced. Remarks were made about the weather. Mr Coleshill asked after Eve; then he and Ivan disappeared into some dim recess to look at the pine furniture the old man had acquired. Left alone, and very happy, Laura pottered around, squeezing herself into inaccessible corners, tripping over coal scuttles, milking stools, broken umbrella stands, piles of china.

But she was not simply pottering, because she was looking for a present for Eve. There had not been time before she left London to buy a gift for her hostess, and she had felt badly arriving as she did, empty-handed. When at last she came upon the pair of china figures, the shepherd and the shepherdess, she knew at once that they were exactly what she had been searching for. She inspected them for cracks or chips or mends, but they appeared to be in perfect condition, if a little dusty. She blew at the dust and wiped the shepherd on the skirt of her dress. His face was white and pink, his hat blue, encircled by tiny flowers. She wanted them for herself, which is perhaps the best criterion of all when giving presents. Holding her find, she made her way back into the main part of the shop, where Ivan and Mr Coleshill, having apparently transacted their business successfully, were waiting for her.

'I'm sorry. I didn't realize how long I'd been. I found these. . . . How much are they?'

Mr Coleshill told her and she reeled. 'They're genuine Dresden,' he assured her and turned them up in his dirty long-nailed hands to show her the mark on the bottom. 'Dresden and in perfect condition.'

'I'll have them.'

While she wrote the cheque, Mr Coleshill went away and returned with her purchase, bulkily wrapped in dirty newspaper. She gave him the cheque and took the precious parcel from him. He went to the door to open it for them and let them out. They said goodbye and got into the car. After the chill of the shop, it was good to be warm again.

Ivan said, ‘I think you probably paid too much for them.'

‘I don't care.'

'They're charming.'

'They're for your mother. Do you think she'll like them?'

'For Eve? What a darling girl you are!'

'I'll have to wash them before I give them to her. They can't have had a bath in years. And perhaps, on the way home, we could stop off somewhere to get some pretty tissue paper. I can't give them to her wrapped in dirty newspaper.'

She looked a him. He was smiling. 'You're obviously a person who loves to give presents.'

'Yes, I do. I always have. But . . .,' she added, in a burst of confidence, 'before I married Alec I could never afford to give people the sort of presents I really wanted to buy. But now I can.' She hoped that she did not sound mercenary. 'It's a lovely feeling,' she said apologetically.

'There's a gift shop in the town. We'll get some paper there when we've had our swim.'

Laura stowed the parcel at her feet, where it could not fall and break. She said, 'And you? Are you pleased with what you've bought?'

'Yes. Quite satisfied. Although like you I've probably been rooked. But so what? He has to make a living. Now' – he started up the engine – 'let's forget about shopping and go to Gwenvoe and jump into the sea.'

Silvia lay in the deck chair, where yesterday Laura had lain. After his stint of hoeing, Gerald had taken himself off to the town to deal with a few small masculine errands, and Eve had grasped the opportunity to calm her troubled conscience, and telephoned Silvia to ask her for tea. Silvia has accepted the modest invitation with alarming alacrity and come at once, walking the short distance up the road from her little house.

It was now five thirty, and they had had their tea. The remains of this stood on a low table between them, the empty teapot, the thin Rockingham cups and saucers, a few biscuits that had not been eaten. Lucy, who had decided that if she couldn't be with Laura, she might as well be with Eve, was curled up in the shade beneath Eve's chair. Eve was stitching at her tapestry.