mid-morning, and the afternoons were comfortably warm, usually somewhere in the mid-teens, rather like Santa Monica in January. At least, I didn’t find it cold.
The three of us went for long walks by the river and in the woods, and we spent one day exploring the old buildings of Angouleme, lingering for dinner in one of Graham’s favourite restaurants. We played boules in the village, and the old men laughed at us. The first evening was unexpectedly mild, and we ate outside at the cafe, talking and drinking wine under the stars until it was obvious that the owner wanted to put up the shutters. We didn’t talk any more about Grace Fox or the mirror incident in Scarborough, and nor did Graham tell me the history of the farmhouse, though he did mention that the family who lived there during the war gave shelter to Jews and were eventually discovered and shot on the village green.
Mostly we talked about my film work – Siobhan was always keen to know the latest star gossip, and I tried not to disappoint her – and about the state of the European Union, which seemed pretty dismal, with more and more members needing to be bailed out. I slept well. If there were ghostly echoes of guns shooting and frightened Jewish children whimpering in the attic, I didn’t hear them.
Then, on the fourth morning, I knew it was time to go home. Much as I loved Graham and Siobhan, I realised that I missed Kilnsgate House and the life I was beginning to forge there. I missed working on the piano sonata, too, and had one or two intriguing variations I wanted to work out drifting around in my mind. Graham let me use his piano one evening, but it wasn’t quite the same.
They invited me to come and spend Christmas with them, especially as Mother was honouring them with her presence this year. They usually had a big dinner at the farmhouse with their children and grandchildren, along with some members of Siobhan’s family from Ireland. I said I wasn’t sure, that I’d like to spend my first Christmas in Kilnsgate, and assured them I would be OK. If I felt lonely, I promised, I would catch the first flight over there, then Siobhan gave me a big hug and Graham drove me to the station.
Though each individual journey was hardly more than two or three hours, what with all the delays and hanging around at stations, it took me nearly all day to get home, and it was well after dark by the time the taxi pulled up outside Kilnsgate House, which was waiting for me like a neglected lover, with a mingled mood of sadness and anger. No doubt I was projecting again.
Perhaps I was also projecting about the slight, hooded figure I thought I saw standing by the lime kiln, because by the time I got out of the taxi and hurried to the packhorse bridge, there was nobody there. Nonetheless, the incident shook me a little, and I wondered just how vulnerable I was out here. What if it was a burglar casing the place? What if there was a gang with their eyes on Kilnsgate? I remembered the terrifying scene in A Clockwork Orange when Alex and his ‘droogs’ visit a house in the country, and shuddered.
I had left a couple of the lamps on timers to discourage burglars, so the house wasn’t in complete darkness when I went in. I locked and bolted the door behind me and made a quick check of the rooms to reassure myself that everything was all right. It certainly didn’t look as if anything had been disturbed during my absence.
I had left the heat at a low setting, which meant it wouldn’t take long to warm up, especially with the fire I planned on starting in the living room. That would cheer the dear old place up a bit and take the edge off her chilliness and my jitters. Security checks finished, I picked up the post and wandered through to the living room, where I put some lights on and set about making a fire in the grate. It didn’t take long – with the help of firelighters – before the logs were blazing away just as they had in Graham’s house all those miles away. It was much cooler in Yorkshire, of course, and from what I could see outside, the sky was covered with clouds.
As the old wartime posters used to ask, was my journey really necessary? I didn’t know. I felt that I had learned a lot from Sam Porter, but when I thought about what, it didn’t really add up to much.
I had seen the drawings and paintings of Grace, of course, and they were probably worth the trip in themselves. Also, Sam had given me a personal insight into Grace that I couldn’t have got from anyone else, and that was invaluable. I had seen the images, could picture her walking the coastal path at Whitby hand in hand with him, pointing out a seascape, pausing to feel the wind through her hair, her cheeks flushed. I could see her crying as she gazed on a painting or listened to a symphony. She was more vivid, more real than she had ever been to me before. I had already seen her tiny neat handwriting and Vivian Mountjoy’s rather pale version of her, but now I felt I could almost imagine her voice and the feel of her skin.
I checked for phone messages and found none, put on Liszt’s Annees de pelerinage, poured myself a cranberry juice to offset all the booze I’d been drinking lately and settled down with the post. Besides the polite thank-you cards from Heather and Derek, and from Charlotte, there was nothing much else, though I was happy to receive a couple of utility bills at long last. Now I was legitimate. I could prove that I existed. I could go to one of the other banks in the market square and open an account, which would make life a lot easier. There were a couple of invitations to concerts and premieres back in LA, which I tipped into the flames along with a request for extending the warranty on my television.
For the moment, being home in front of a warm fire with Liszt’s music and the latest issues of Gramophone and Sight amp; Sound to browse through would suit me fine.
I walked across the little packhorse bridge, then up past the lime kiln and through the fields that led me, eventually, to the old racecourse. It was a clear enough morning, crisp but not too cold, and I certainly needed the exercise. The fine dining I had done in London and France was beginning to take its toll, and if I wanted to keep eating well and not restrict myself to a diet of rabbit food and carrot juice, then I needed to burn off a few calories. I was already discovering that the kind of health regimes one seems to adopt naturally in LA don’t necessarily travel well to Yorkshire. I also had a few letters to post in town.
The Dales landscape always made me think of my father. We had visited the area frequently when I was a child, most often in summer, when we would walk the high moors and watch for curlews and lapwings – tewits, he called them – or wander through meadows full of buttercups and clover, where I would watch the swallows swoop and glide. I loved to watch the swallows. Sometimes I would just stand there for hours, it seemed, the only still point, and feel the air from their wings as they wheeled around and above me in ever-changing, ever more complex patterns, flying so close to the ground sometimes you would think they would crash and tumble over. Why was it that those summer days of my memory were always sunny, the still, honeyed air droning with insects and filled with the scents of cut grass and wild flowers?
I do remember one autumn visit, though, on a day very much like this one, when I ran down a country lane joyfully kicking up the heaps of fallen, crisp leaves, delighting in the sound and the spinning kaleidoscope of colour I had created, while my father moved slowly behind me with his walking stick, that small smile no doubt on his face, taking it all in. He was a countryman at heart, forced, like so many, to move to the city for work after the war, and never so happy as when he could walk the lanes or lean on a drystone wall as he admired the view. He could name all the trees, wild flowers and birds. I like to think I have something of his country soul in me, though I was city born and raised.
After queuing for some time in the post office – it seems that some people conduct all their business there except buying stamps and posting packages – I turned left at the square, intending to go the King’s Head for lunch, and almost bumped into Charlotte coming the other way.
‘Hello, stranger,’ she said. ‘I thought it was you.’
‘Hi, Charlotte. Thanks for the card.’
‘It was a lovely evening.’
That wasn’t exactly my memory, but I didn’t say anything.
‘Look,’ Charlotte gushed on, ‘I’ve been wanting to have a word… you know… if you’ve got a moment.’ She seemed to be pushing her hair back from her forehead as she spoke – it was quite windy by now – even though she didn’t need to. It was an attractive pose, rather like the cover of an old Health and Efficiency magazine, but with clothes on, and it showed off her slim, athletic body.
I could have said no, I suppose, that I was busy and had to get back to Kilnsgate House, but I’ve never been a good liar, except to myself. I could probably convince myself black was white if I wanted to, but nobody else would believe me. Besides, I was intrigued, and the prospect of lunch with an attractive woman is not something you turn down so cavalierly at my age. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I was just going to have lunch. Care to join me?’
‘That would be super.’
Who on earth says ‘super’ these days? Well, Charlotte does. That is the kind of woman she is, with her sporty good looks and layered blonde hair. She looked as if she ought to have a tennis racket or a golf club in her hand, but she had a Stead and Simpson bag.
‘Had you anywhere in mind?’
