resumed her wrapping. ‘That house will be perfect.’ Another object was placed in the packing case. ‘For what I have in mind.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
She did not answer directly. ‘Did you know that there are beaches up in Lincolnshire that are famous for their samphire? But only those who belong know which ones they are. Not many outsiders are told. I shall be very pleased if, one day, I am invited to go and collect samphire.’
She could tell that Julian was at sea. He gestured at the object-strewn room. ‘It’s all happened very quickly, Kitty.’
‘On the contrary. It’s taken far too long.’ A china plate was next on the pile and she picked it up. ‘As you well know, the house is empty and waiting in Tennyson Court and I’ve had two offers already on this one. One of them a cash buyer.’
She saw the flare of admiration light up his eyes. ‘But are you really, really sure?’
The tissue paper rustled softly. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Julian, it’s none of your business.’
There was just room for the plate and another vase in the case and she stowed them skilfully even though her hands were trembling. She was holding on. Just. ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
With a swift movement, he bent down and took her in his arms. ‘I’m sorry, Kitty,’ he breathed into her hair. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’
Safe in his embrace, she closed her eyes and, to her surprise, thought, Truly, I don’t want this back.
Julian let her go and stood back. ‘Kitty, I know that I took ten years of your life.’
She snatched her trembling hands behind her back to hide them and lifted her chin. ‘I chose my life,’ she said. ‘That’s something.’
When he had gone, Kitty sank down on the floor and pressed her head against the buckled surface of the packing case. The air vibrated with her loss.
Think of the flat sheet of fen. The light. The raven, and seals in the grey sea. Think of the smells of dark earth and of harvest.
She would learn, she must learn, to be tough, spare, not made-over, the reverse of the image she had constructed so ardently over the years.
Eventually, Kitty climbed to her feet and went upstairs to the bedroom. For a long time, she looked at the bed she had shared with Julian. One by one, she recalled the sensations: sweet, slippery desire. And the ache of a throat gripped by passion, the deep, deep happiness of love that was going well.
But time went on. Change. Decay. The flesh that had so tormented and pricked must drop away. She would let it go, stepping into a land where she would no longer hear its moist, insistent murmur. There she would live, her bones whitening and ageing until, dry as summer dust, she would be laid in the flat earth.
The extinction of desire.
One by one, Kitty opened her drawers, shook out their tenderly folded contents and strewed her burden of cashmere, linen and sea-island cotton around the room, until it flowed with grey, white and ecru. Then, she stepped out of her high-heeled shoes, bent over, picked them up, held them over the wastepaper basket and dropped them in.
A new pair of shoes lay in the cupboard. Flat and inexpensive. Kitty put them on and, treading experimentally, went downstairs, leaving behind her shipwrecked room.
Goodbye, to this part of her life. She neither wanted nor desired anything more.
Theo was cleaning the hall and tut-tutting – the pictures had left dark rims on the paintwork. Kitty held out a foot, which already ached a little. ‘Do you like my shoes, Theo? Say you do.’
Late that afternoon, Julian pulled into the drive of Flagge House and rang the doorbell. Maud answered it, seized on Julian and demanded that he take a glass of sherry with her.
‘Agnes has gone to Exbury,’ she said. ‘Something to do with that farmer. Was she expecting you?’
Unused to jealousy, he tensed but made himself step into the hall. Then he sniffed. ‘Have you had a fire?’
Maud’s eyes widened. ‘My fault, I’m afraid. I had a go at burning down the kitchen.’ She led him into the drawing room. ‘I was trying to exorcize Bea. She’s run off, you know, with that Freddie person, and I wanted to tidy up after her. But it got a bit out of control.’ Maud fiddled about with glasses and the bottle. ‘Agnes dealt with it. Insurance and all that sort of thing. She was very cross.’ Maud fiddled further. ‘Why did you want to see her?’
Julian ignored the question. ‘How are you managing without a kitchen?’
‘This and that. We boil a lot, Mr Knox. You can probably smell the fish from last night.’
‘A little,’ he admitted.
Maud wiped the bottom of the glass and handed it to him. ‘Agnes has been in hospital. Badly burnt fingers. Rather apt, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t.’
Agnes was everywhere in the room. A new cushion on the sofa, a re-covered stool, a row of invitations on the mantelpiece, mostly to media parties, a copy – of course-of the
‘Do you have any views on what Agnes should do with the house?’
‘Yes, I do, but I don’t think they would interest Agnes.’
‘How very safe you are, Mr Knox.’ Maud sounded disappointed. ‘I hate it,’ she said, apropos of the house.
‘Yes, I know you do.’
‘We’ve had a bit of trouble with flooding as well as fire,’ said Maud. ‘It’s a nuisance, this river.’
Julian glanced out of the window to the water-meadow, where little flashes of light were trapped on the river’s surface – a code flashing information to the aqueous life under its surface.
‘Yes. It must be.’
‘Do have any messages for Agnes?’
He smiled his professional smile ‘No, I haven’t, and I think I’d better be going. I just thought I might catch her, that’s all.’ He picked up the script. There was a typed list attached to the first page: ‘Uprooted Apple Orchards and the Death of the English Apple’, ‘Death in Life: The Orphans of Eastern Europe’, ‘A Whaler’s Defence’. Underneath, Agnes had written, ‘Confirm Andrew, parish records?’
He frowned.
Agnes’s work. Agnes’s world. In this room, he could hear her inveighing against the developers’ skilfully thrown lure and against the concrete rolling over water-meadows and apple orchards.
Maud had tackled the sherry yet again. ‘In the stories, Jack always gets his Jill, but it isn’t true, is it?’
He put down the script. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t,’ he said bleakly. ‘I don’t think this Jack did. I think it all went wrong.’
‘So why did you come here, Mr Knox?’
In the flat autumn light, every wrinkle on Maud’s face was emphasized – indeed each shadow and plane in a face that regarded the world with parsimonious optimism. It was a selfish face, and it was possible that his own was set in a similar cast. He hoped not.
Love should be unselfish. Yet it was far more complicated. Love was unselfish – but it was also unutterably selfish. He needed Agnes and a future, and it was a desire that was both fierce and passionately egotistical. He needed to find the new continent.
He heard himself saying, from a long way away, ‘I came because I wanted some comfort.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Maud, giving him one of her madder looks. ‘We don’t have any of that. Dear, no. None at all. If there was any lying around, I’d want it for myself.’
31
‘Maud,’ Agnes trod warily, ‘Bea has sent us a letter.’
The two women were in the drawing room and both were swathed in sweaters. The atmosphere was both stuffy and cold and, in the cornice above them, the spiders moved through the webs with complete freedom.
