Secrets of the Heart

‘Unfortunately there’s a good chance that I will fail the people I employ.’

Agnes reached over and held his hand. It seemed to comfort him. ‘I’m sorry.’ The telephone rang but Julian ignored it. It rang and rang, then went silent.

Agnes stirred in her seat. ‘Where is Kitty exactly?’

Julian frowned. ‘She’s gone to a clinic – the subject of children seems to have come up. Look, I don’t want to discuss Kitty’s business.’

She looked down at the table littered with the remains of their lunch. Her baby needed a champion too, she thought passionately, and she was all it had. ‘But we must talk about it. What is Kitty doing?’

He turned his head abruptly away from her and she tumbled to the fact that he hated to be confronted.

‘She thinks we ought to try for a baby.’

She felt the sun beat down on her skin. ‘Do you want children?’

He stirred restlessly. Actually, I think I do.’

‘So Kitty is going to try to give you one.’ Cold in the sun, Agnes put down her fork. She remembered a famous novelist once saying: ‘Relations with people never finish, only stories have an ending.’ Clever Kitty. She understood the precept so well. Faced with Agnes, the enemy, the pregnant enemy, she had gone underground. Kitty was a natural resistante. Oh, clever Kitty, for she had ensured that if she became pregnant Agnes could not possibly take Julian away. Kitty held the prior claim.

Between them they could bat babies back and forth like balls. Not my baby, she thought tiredly. It is not going to be treated like that.

Later, Julian fetched a rug and spread it in the shade by the long grass. The sun was blazing, the sea had calmed to a murmur and, far out, white-sailed boats tacked to and fro. Sleepy and full, they stretched out on the rug and Julian’s arm cradled her head. ‘You must sleep and get rid of those shadows under your eyes.’ He kissed her eyelids. ‘Then you’ll feel better.’

She obeyed, and drowsiness crept through her limbs, anchoring them with a delicious lassitude.

When she woke, the sun had moved and her arms were flushed pink. Dazzled by the light and by sleep, she turned her head to encounter Julian’s next to hers. ‘Magic’ Her gaze alighted on the long grass. Each blade seemed extra sharp. Some were rolled as tight as a pupa’s case, others were upright razors, yet another hung with downy seed-heads. As she watched, an insect crawled through this green underworld. A small, lumbering creature, intent on survival.

Silently, Julian turned Agnes’s face to his and kissed her. ‘It’s very odd, or perhaps it isn’t,’ he informed her, ‘how the longing for proper love infects you at the wrong moment. Or when you least expect it.’

At sea, the tide turned and began to run in.

They were at the end of the garden, leaning on the gate that led on to the cliff path and talking, when they spotted a figure in a pink linen suit walking towards them.

‘Hallo, Julian,’ said Kitty, her red mouth set in a bitter grimace. ‘Didn’t you hear the phone? I rang at lunchtime to tell you I was coming back earlier than planned.’

Kitty’s groomed exterior was immaculate, but underneath there was a terrified animal (the same animal that had taken up residence in Agnes), who was frantically weighing up the options on how to get rid of that enemy.

‘Hallo, Kitty,’ Agnes said, knowing that Kitty was in mortal terror that she had told Julian about the baby.

The two women sized each other up. ‘This time I’m telling you to get out,’ said Kitty, her voice shaking.

‘Kitty…’ Julian took a step towards her.

Kitty squared up to him. ‘I don’t think there’s any point in beating around the bush. Tell Agnes to go,’ she demanded. ‘Now. At once.’ She tugged at Julian’s arm.

‘Kitty…’ Julian removed her hand from his arm. Agnes is here at my invitation. This is not your business.’

Kitty rounded on him. ‘On the contrary, it is my business. We may not have a piece of paper, Julian,’ she was trembling, ‘but we have everything else. We have a marriage.’ She snatched her hands behind her back to hide them. ‘I know it started out as something else, but that’s what it’s ended up as. I must defend it.’

Oh, God, thought Agnes, noting julian’s at-bay expression, I should not be here, and she looked round blindly for her bag. The baby deserves better than this mess. ‘I’ll go-.’

She allowed Julian to see her into the car, placed the key in the ignition and said, ‘I shouldn’t have come. I should have stuck to what I said.’

He looked so miserable and defensive that she almost laughed, the kind of laugh that is the only response to profound misery.

‘Agnes, what did you want to talk to me about?’

‘It was nothing. Go back to Kitty.’

‘Listen,’ he said urgently, ‘you’re right. This can’t go on. Once I’ve sorted out Portcullis, I will sort this out. I promise.’

‘When will Portcullis be sorted out?’

‘I don’t know.’ He placed a hand on the car door.

She avoided looking at him but gazed down at the hand with brown fingers, brushed with fine gold hairs. At least she knew now where she stood.

On the drive back to Flagge House, Agnes’s face and arms glowed with sunburn, and black depression gathered in her heart.

Fact. She had desired and taken, and got herself pregnant. The so very clever, practical Agnes.

Fact. She had an unborn child to consider – and other considerations clustered as thickly. House. Aunts. Herself.

Each time, with both men, she had left a little bit of herself behind. And who could say that if she had told Julian about the baby that, in the end, they would have tired of each other too?

The situation she was in was not new, and there was nothing startling to be deduced from it. She gripped the wheel and drove on far too fast. The struggle between will, inclination and stricture was as old as time.

After the sound of Agnes’s car had died away, Julian said, ‘I want to talk to you, Kitty.’

‘No.’ Kitty had collected herself. She smiled her society smile but avoided looking at him and proceeded to lay out her agenda. ‘There’s no point in raking it over. We shall have to forget this incident. I shall. Let’s be normal. Let’s just be very, very normal.’

Kitty, the skilled, emotional debt collector. In little ‘normal’ ways, Julian would be asked to pay – as he had in the past. He considered producing the old arguments about their arrangement and their separate freedoms, but they no longer applied. ‘I’m sorry we’ve reached this point.’

‘What did you expect?’ she flashed.

‘But you agreed.’

‘Sometimes, Julian, you have the emotional age of an newborn.’

‘OK. OK.’ He paced up and down. She was right to question him. ‘Kitty, if my behaviour is making you so unhappy that you feel forced to go off to clinics, then we must do something. Make a decision.’

The look she gave him made him flush. It was of pity and superior understanding. ‘Nonsense, darling. We’re fine. It will all settle down.’

Kitty fetched her luggage from the drive, dumped it in the hall and followed him into the kitchen. ‘Shall I make some coffee?’

Let’s be normal, please, let us be normal

Julian was searching in the cupboard for the mineral water. ‘No, thanks.’

Kitty surveyed the washing-up and ran water into the bowl. She spoke with the same light, relentless note. ‘Having visitors has obviously turned you into a pig. How long has this lot been here? By the way, did I tell you that Vita Huntingdon’s daughter is already pregnant?’

‘Kitty, I know this is difficult, but please concentrate.’

Kitty scraped the plates clean and tipped them into the hot water. ‘Julian, over the years I have learned many things from you. One of them is, don’t give up easily. You have given me excellent tuition.’

‘Clearly.’

His sarcasm lashed Kitty into retaliation. She dug her hands into the water and said furiously,