house.
‘And?’ He waited, breath stilled, for her answer.
‘His wife has gone back to him, if that’s what you are asking.’
‘Ah.’ Julian walked over to the window, a man whose energy had been diminished and drained. ‘I thought I might be too late.’
Agnes picked up the postcard of Lincoln cathedral. ‘I received this from Kitty. She writes, “I’m living here now.”’
He looked down at it. ‘Kitty decided that enough was enough.’ His fingers drummed on the shutter, the tap of impatience that Kitty engendered in him but, following as quickly, was a scorpion’s sting of regret and nostalgia. ‘It was my fault because I met you… Ten years is a long time.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, for a second time.
‘I wonder if ten years is all we can ever ask of each other?’
‘I don’t know, but that’s what I want to talk to you about.’ Agnes sat down on the sofa. ‘I want to tell you something, Julian. I’m pregnant.’
‘A baby?’ It took a couple of pulse beats, then: ‘Whose?’
Agnes smiled and shook her head. ‘Didn’t you notice? I’m huge.’
He ignored her. ‘Whose it is? Please tell me.’
Struggling through the flat tone was fear, wonder, excitement. Agnes took pity. ‘It’s yours, Julian. Of course.’
‘Are you sure?’
She scrutinized the exhausted face. ‘You and Maud have more in common than you realize. You both imagine that I have a particularly lurid love life.’
He smiled bleakly. ‘Then I must help you. You must let me.’
‘Sail away to the land where the bong trees grow?’
‘Nothing wrong with that.’
She reached up and placed a hand on his chest. The new, powerful Agnes. ‘I want to give you something.’
He caught her hand and pressed it on to her stomach. ‘Aren’t you giving me this?’ he demanded. ‘You must say that you are. Otherwise I will imprison you on the island, where you will go mad with boredom.’
The response pleased Agnes more than she could say. ‘Go and sit down and listen to me, because this isn’t easy.’ He hovered. ‘Go on.’ Julian did as he was told.
Agnes looked out over her water-meadow. Its music and the play of light on the water were about to change. ‘Julian, I’m giving you the grounds of the house. I come with them. That is, if you want me… us. I’ve reached the conclusion that things cannot go on as they are. If Flagge House is to survive, then I must contrive. Survivors are survivors,
‘Remind me sometime to explain the theory to you properly’ Julian was digesting the implications. ‘Agnes, do you mean it?’
Already the energy of the old Julian was flowing back, investing his features, pulling the weary body into shape. He was shaking himself back into a skin that was comfortable and familiar. ‘Let me think. Finance. I’ll be hobbled by investors because of my history, but that’s OK. Once I’ve got a team organized and I’m out of Portcullis, we’ll design you houses that will look as though they belong here.’ He checked the water-meadow from the window. ‘Four.’
‘Two, Julian. No more,’ she cried in panic.
He grabbed her hand. ‘Three.’
‘Two.’
His fingers squeezed hers hard. ‘I promise it will work, Agnes. I will make it work. I’ll leave the river, make it the focus of the planning.’
She was beginning to shiver violently with cold and with the reaction that follows great change. She also felt a little sick.
She looked out through the window. The figures that had moved across the meadow and plundered her imagination had vanished.
He stood beside her, hair ruffled, narrow-eyed and calculating, and she looked at the profile and wondered at the contrariness and yet the vastness of her love for him and for the unknown person she carried. ‘Ten years you said… for a relationship.’
He frowned. ‘Did I?’
‘Ten years is not enough for a child. It must be longer.’
He touched her stomach. ‘Will you come and live with me?’
She thought of the children surrounding the dying other Agnes. ‘Yes. For the time being.’
His grip tightened on her.
‘Maud.’ Agnes led Julian into the kitchen. ‘You wanted to know who the father is so I’m introducing him. Furthermore, we’re going to get married.’
Maud poked at the pork chops that Agnes had put out for lunch. ‘Very nice.’
‘Are you hungry?’ Agnes removed the plate. ‘Listen, Maud, I have agreed with Julian to develop the water- meadow and then Flagge House.’
Maud sat down with a thump. ‘Pull down the house?’
Agnes slid her arm around Maud’s shoulders. ‘No, of course not. But the money made on the field development will be used for renovating Flagge House into a proper home, including a flat for you. A nice, warm, centrally heated one.’
‘But you won’t change the house? Make it different?’
‘You mustn’t do it.’ Maud was shrunken and wildeyed at the prospect of the changes she had begged for all her life. ‘I didn’t mean it, Agnes!’
‘How long have you been bullying me to sell the house?’
Maud assessed her captive audience. ‘You can be so stupid about things.’ She hunched a shoulder. ‘I had to make my stand somehow. Anyway, I feel differently now.’
‘This will be better, you’ll see.’
‘But it won’t be the same. The house won’t be the same.’
Agnes stroked the angora-clad bony outcrop of Maud. ‘No,’ she agreed, filled with a weary, desolate feeling. ‘It won’t.’
But Julian was watching. ‘Agnes,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’
She looked up at him and smiled.
Every line of Bel’s body conveyed messages of outrage and betrayal. ‘You’re going to do what?’
‘I’m going to marry the father of my baby and strive to give it some kind of security, and I’m going to live in Lymouth while everything is sorted out.’ She added, ‘I’m on hold, Bel, for the time being.’
Camaraderie. Exhaustion. The noise and smell of planes, bad food, the murmur of the team at work in the dawns, late at night, the bad habit of one last nightcap in the hotel bar. The absolute desire to get a vision on to film, absolutely as it should be. That would all go.
Bel’s frosted blue nails vanished as she searched in her handbag for a cigarette, which she lit defiantly. ‘What happened to you, Ag? You’ve gone off message. You’ve gone bush, native… whatever.’
‘Sticks and stones, Bel. I’m having a baby. It changes you.’
‘Doesn’t take your wits or your ambition, does it?’
Agnes perched on the edge of the table, a manoeuvre that, these days, required thought. ‘Did you ever believe in the letters?’
Bel’s expression hardened, glazed. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I reckoned you were being led up the garden path.’
Agnes’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You always were sharper. I’m sorry, Bel.’ She picked up her rucksack. ‘Look, I’ve had a word with some of our contacts, and there’s a couple who’d be very interested in you joining the team. Here they are.’
Bel picked up the list, scanned it and her eyes widened. ‘Good grief. Thank you.’
