Secrets of the Heart

costs is… not clever. If you are going to do it, think hard.’

He looked so anxious and genuine, so upset for her, that she wanted to kiss him into tranquillity. Instead, she smiled sweetly at him. And you told me not to trust anyone.’

The phone rang and he got up to answer it. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

A minute stretched into two, then five and she could hear him talking fast in the next room. The daylight was fading and the sun was poised above the sea like a scarlet bauble, so bright that Agnes wanted to touch it. She let herself out of the conservatory and walked down to the gate that led on to the cliff path.

It was narrow and the cliff was steep, dangerous, no doubt, in the dark. Here and there it divided and forked down to the tiny beach, which was flanked by black rocks and pools, one leading into the other like a necklace of sparkling stones. The dying sun threw a red wash across the rocks and pools where the mermaid would – surely – rise to the surface to meet her calvary of human love, and Neptune ride in on the spume to impose his law.

Out to sea, a tanker steamed from east to west. The incoming tide rushed in and flung a lacework, woven with orange peel, tin cans and plastic bottles, further up the sand.

‘Things change,’ she reiterated, feeling the first rays of real happiness steal through her. The prodigal returns.

‘Hallo,’ said a voice from below. ‘Who are you?’

Agnes swivelled round. Ultra-slender, ultra-groomed, honey blonde, defensive… This must be Kitty.

12

She is… young.

Twice before, during her ‘career’, Kitty had experienced an encounter such as she knew, instinctively, this one to be, and had observed the form. Take defeat gracefully. Negotiate the pay-off and move on.

This time it was different. Love for Julian made it different. Confronted by this fair, dreaming girl, she knew that her options had been violently narrowed down. Run? Run back to the cool white embrace of her bedroom, shut the door tight and lick her wounds? No. Whatever her fears, a grain of sense stuck in Kitty’s brain.

‘I’m Kitty.’ She held out her hand.

‘I thought you might be.’ The girl took it.

Her touch felt assured and practised, and she seemed not at all fazed. Perhaps Kitty had got it wrong. ‘Julian mentioned me?’ There was the faintest relaxation of Kitty’s features.

‘Yes. He showed me where you lived. I’m Agnes Campion.’

‘And I know about you. The girl with the house and the irises. The girl with the letters.’

She seemed surprised. ‘You know about them?’

‘Julian told me. He knows it’s the sort of thing I’m interested in.’ Tiny pause. ‘He tells me most things.’

‘Of course.’ Agnes absorbed the message.

Kitty enunciated each word very clearly. ‘I should have been visiting my mother but she cancelled. You know what mothers are.’

Agnes’s unease deepened. ‘Mine died when I was twelve but I can imagine.’

For a second, Kitty’s veneer cracked. ‘I’m sorry.’

A flash of sympathy darted between the two. Loneliness, I understand. Almost immediately, the hostile expression snapped back into place on the older woman’s face. ‘Shall we go in?’

Julian was stirring the contents of saucepans. ‘I hope you like spaghetti with clam sauce.’ He looked round at the door, and a frown came and went like lightning. ‘Good God, Kitty! I thought you were with your mother.’

Interposing herself between Julian and Agnes, Kitty raised her face for a kiss. This is mine, she was saying. Thou shalt not steal. In the electric light, Kitty’s beauty was impressive: this was the setting that suited her looks and she knew it. Creamy, serene, with reddened lips and highly tended porcelain skin. She had dressed casually in silk and cashmere, her hair was beautifully cut and her nails manicured. Not a woman of extreme style or of fashion, but one whose every item of clothing proclaimed self-conscious femininity.

‘Mother did her usual nonsense and muddled up arrangements.’ Kitty checked her watch. ‘Is Agnes staying the night?’

‘No.’ Agnes stepped in quickly. ‘Julian drove me over and I was planning to catch the late train. In fact, I think I should be going. Isn’t there one about now?’

‘I’m afraid there isn’t a late train on Saturdays,’ said Kitty, ‘only weekdays.’

Agnes was hot with embarrassment. It was not fair to pay Kitty back in this fashion. ‘I think I should try to get home. It’s not that far.’

But, for reasons of her own, Kitty cut off the retreat. ‘Face and rout the enemy,’ had been the instructions that her great-grandfather, the famous General Mabey, had given to his men up on the Khyber Pass. It wasn’t bad advice. She assumed the smile of the hostess who has successfully backed a guest into a corner. ‘Why don’t you stay? There’s plenty of room. We can put you on a train early in the morning, if you wish. Then you can enjoy dinner… and we can all have wine.’

There, she had taken charge. Kitty the orchestrator. We are all very adult and mature and we can deal with this. ‘Come,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s decided.’ She marshalled Agnes upstairs. ‘You can borrow anything you want. I keep quite a few things here.’ She pushed open a bed-room door and said, in a low voice, ‘I’ll be staying too.’

The message conveyed, Kitty ushered Agnes into an immaculate room and extracted towels and a flannel from the cupboard. ‘I’ll get you a jumper. You must be chilly.’ She ran her eye over Agnes’s jeans and crumpled shirt. ‘Would you like anything else?’

Agnes shook her head. ‘You’re very kind.’

Kitty knew that Agnes knew that kindness was not the point and, to her surprise, discovered there was some enjoyment to be had from this encounter. With the realization came enlightenment – I can see her off - and the tiniest flexing of her muscles. Quick, before her courage left her. With all the permutations of sexual arrangements, there remained an element of the primitive. Do battle to the death. Kitty trod confidently downstairs in her high-heeled shoes but on the last tread her heel slipped and she was forced to grab the newel post.

Glass of wine in hand, Julian was waiting in the kitchen for her. He was not in the least abashed. ‘What’s this about your mother?’ He looked hard at Kitty. Reading her as easily as a book. ‘What are you playing at, Kitty?’

‘Shouldn’t the question be addressed to you?’ she riposted furiously.

He handed her a glass of wine. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve told you about Agnes, and I’ve told you that I have met her on several occasions. I told you I had invited her to sail.’ He was unsmiling and very angry. ‘At the very least you should have phoned.’

Kitty helped herself to more wine. ‘Why on earth did you bring her here? To our house.’

He looked down at his glass. ‘My house.’ But when Kitty gasped under her breath, he softened. ‘Kitty. I’m sorry. That was unforgivable.’

The bravado had gone. She wanted to cry out that this arrangement of theirs might sound so cool and modern and sophisticated. And, yes, they had always agreed to tell each other the truth. But, now it came to the test, a river of hot and desperate feeling was drowning Kitty. She had read – where? – in one of the newspapers she combed for opinions, an article that inveighed against the impermanence of relationships and how people couldn’t cope with no religion, no structures and too much freedom.

‘Why can’t you accept me properly? Why can’t I live with you… acknowledged?’

He put down his glass on the table, and checked the clam sauce on the stove. In the spare room above the kitchen, they could hear Agnes moving about, turning on a tap, opening a window. Julian looked as sad and bewildered as Kitty felt. ‘Kitty, we go round and round. Perhaps we should both reconsider?’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Perhaps I’m the one who’s changed. But I hope I have never misled you.’

‘Oh, stop it.’

Yes, he had been honest. She could never accuse him of not being so. Right from the beginning, when she had fallen for his predatory, energetic charm, he had been open, uncommitted, and the first to admit that he did not think fidelity was for him. But she had learned that honesty could not possibly cope with real, intense feelings.