Secrets of the Heart

House was pitted in a dreamscape of light and shadow – a moment of lush, dreamy, sensual exchange between deep evening and night, accompanied by the sound of running water.

‘Andrew,’ she said, ‘I’m pregnant.’

Andrew exclaimed, a sound full of anger and frustration, and swung on his heel away from her. A second passed. Two, then ten, twenty. ‘I needn’t ask whose it is?’

‘As a matter of fact, no.’

‘Does he know?’

‘No.’

‘Will you tell him?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because…’

‘You are sure you want it?’

‘Yes…’ She took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s spoilt, then,’ Andrew said bitterly, and abandoned Agnes on the riverbank. Conscious of the weary drag of her body, she lowered herself to the grass, listened to the water and watched him go.

The dusk intensified.

If she remained quiet and concentrated, her reward might be a fox’s bark, the rustle of a tiny rodent in the grass, even the slither of a grass snake cooling after the heat of the day. She undid her sandals and wriggled her feet in the cool, sappy grass – the action reminding her of the early years at Flagge House when her body had been wild and uncontrollable in its growths and surprises.

She had been solitary then, so why should she be surprised at her solitude now? No one held a blueprint for anyone else’s well-being, and at least – at the very least – the tiny beating heart tucked under her pelvis gave her an entree into another kind of love.

She was a professional, used to coping, and she would cope. Register at the hospital, move her bedroom upstairs to the nursery floor, find someone in Charlborough to look after it when she was away… Agnes ticked off a list in a dreamy fashion. She felt her mind shift into another gear, a certain pride that she was going to take control, a curiosity as to what was going to happen to her body.

The heat was sucking up the air and lowered over the water-meadow. Agnes dipped her feet into the water and her toes knotted up with cramp.

Then there were footsteps behind her. Heavy, circling. Andrew loomed out of the dark and dropped down beside her. Agnes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I came here to sleep with you. To make you give in. I wanted an affair.’ He put his face close to hers. ‘I still do.’

For a second, she heard an elusive echo… tap, tap… and the flight of anguished footsteps, the sound that an agent on the run, like the Mary of Julian’s imagination, might have made. ‘Do you?’ she replied, and touched his cheek. ‘Even now?’

He kept his lips close to her ear. ‘Listen to me. It changes things, but not entirely. Perhaps it’s a good thing’

‘Why?’

‘We have no secrets. The worst has been done. I had Penny. You have a baby. You will need support. I can offer it. Come and live with me. I’ll divorce Penny and we could get married. Think about it. We can pretend the baby is mine. It’s happened before. Often, in fact. In lots of families. I can adopt it. Actually, no one need know.’

‘I had decided that I could cope on my own.’

‘No. Listen.’ Andrew placed his hands at either side of her face. The pressure made circles dance in front of her eyes. ‘It came to me in a flash. You’ll need help when you have your baby.’

His hands moved down to the neckline of her linen blouse, sought entry and found it. ‘Could you love me? Now, in the future, sometime? I could love you. Very much.’ Gently, he caressed the skin at the base of her throat. ‘I don’t mind about him.’

His touch neither stirred nor alarmed her. It was a pleasant physical sensation, reliable and male, and she could live with it. Then, without warning, her pulses quickened and she was pierced by a longing for Julian so acute and anguished that she almost gasped. Why? she cried, in silent despair. Why?

The feeling vanished. Andrew drew her closer and she closed her eyes.

Moonlight and heat rising from the ground. The sensation of skin slicked with sweat, an ever-present hint of nausea, the harvest dusk… These increased Agnes’s sense of unreality. Andrew both unsettled and reassured her, and she yearned to yield to the drifting, drowsy persuasions of pregnancy. Her hands slid down her body and touched the tiny swell of her belly. Perhaps it would be better. A calm, considered partnership where there were no secrets, where the partners had looked at each other, dispassionately and without heat, before they had made the choice.

‘You must take time to think about this, Andrew,’ she said. ‘And I shall too.’

He leaned back on his hands and watched the water. ‘I don’t have to. I like the idea of a family. But you must promise one thing.’

‘What?’

‘That he never knows.’

She turned her head away.

‘You will think about it?’ He leaned forward in a swift movement and cupped her chin so that her face was turned towards him.

‘Of course… And, Andrew, thank you.’

Cloud had smeared itself over the sky and it had grown insufferably hot. Agnes could smell thunder rolling in from the west. ‘Let’s go inside,’ she said, and with Andrew’s arm now lying as heavy as wood across her shoulders, they left the shadowy water-meadow.

Before he left, Andrew asked Agnes, ‘Could you come and live at Tithings?’

She thought of the lanes banked high with dog-rose and honeysuckle, of ancient oaks and the sweep of the moor, of Andrew’s pastures threaded by wild herbs and dashes of shimmering colour. Beside this was the picture of her own house, so steeped in history, its foundations eroded, its structures brittle with age and disrepair, its significance dimming and the prospect of an extended, tortured struggle to preserve it.

Agnes promised him she would think it over.

After he had driven away, she pushed heavy iron bolts into place and turned the huge old-fashioned key in the lock. Then she switched off the lights, and the spun-glass ship was instantly extinguished.

24

Clutching her knitting-bag. Maud collared Agnes in the kitchen after breakfast. ‘Was someone here last night?’

Agnes explained that it had been Andrew.

‘Tiens. What the neighbours must think with all these men popping in and out…’ Maud peered at her. ‘You don’t look as though you enjoyed the visit.’

With an effort, Agnes continued to clear the dishes. She would have given a lot to be quiet, and to be alone. ‘To be honest, Maud, I didn’t.’

‘Oh, well, that’s that.’ Maud searched in the knitting-bag. ‘Did I tell you I wrote to Julie Andrews over a month ago? She hasn’t replied.’

Agnes deposited a crust into the bin. ‘What on earth did you write about?’

‘I wanted to know exactly what she felt when she fell in love with the Captain.’

‘Maud, Julie Andrews is not Maria von Trapp.’