Someone in the hallway laughed.
Finally, with a rapidity and deftness that belied his generous size, Mr Tallisker tossed the pen aside and took up a cigarette in its stead. ‘Birchwood,’ he said finally, on a current of smoke. ‘It could work.’
‘I’ll make it work. I can be back in London—’
‘No.’ He swatted the suggestion aside. ‘Not London. Not theatre.’
‘Sir?’
The cigarette became a pointer. ‘Londoners are brave, Jules, but they’re tired. They need an escape and most of them aren’t going to get it. Theatre’s all well and good, but sunny village life? That’s the stuff. That’s the story people want to hear.’
‘Mr Tallisker, I—’
‘A weekly column.’ He swept his hands out to either side as if suspending a banner: ‘“Letters from the Laneway”. The sort of thing you might write home to Mother. Stories of your life, your children, the people you meet. Anecdotes about sunshine and hens laying eggs and village japes.’
‘Japes?’
‘Farmers and housewives and vicars, neighbours and gossip.’
‘Gossip?’
‘The funnier the better.’
Juliet frowned now as she readjusted her back against the rough bark of the tree. She wasn’t funny, at least not in print, not for the benefit of strangers. Acerbic at times – barbed, she’d been told – but funny was not her métier. However, Mr Tallisker had been unmoved, and thus had the Faustian pact been made. The chance to get away, to come to this place, in exchange for … what? ‘Why, your integrity, of course,’ the Alan in her mind supplied, a light smile playing on his lips, ‘only your integrity.’
Juliet glanced down. The blouse she was wearing was not her own and it wore like an apology. Kind of the volunteers to find them clothes, of course; remarkable the way such groups popped up to meet the needs du jour. She remembered a trip to Italy some years before, when she and Alan had emerged from St Peter’s to find it raining, and suddenly the Gypsies who’d been selling hats and sunglasses only an hour before were laden with umbrellas.
A shiver rippled through her at the memory, or perhaps its cause was simpler than that. The last of the day’s light was dissolving and the night would be cool. In this place, the warmth went with the light. Juliet and Alan had been surprised when they came here on honeymoon by the night air on their skin, in that small square room above the pub, with its lemon-striped wallpaper and a window seat for one that they’d managed to share. They’d been different people back then, other versions of themselves: lighter, leaner, with fewer layers of life to see through.
Juliet glanced at her watch, but it was too dark to read. She didn’t need to see the hour to know that it was time to be getting back to the house.
Palm against the tree trunk, she pushed herself to a standing position.
Her head swooned; the whisky bottle was lighter now than she’d realised and Juliet took a moment to regain her balance.
As she did, something in the distance caught her eye. It was the house, but there was a faint show of light inside, right up high in one of the gables – the attic, perhaps.
Juliet blinked and shook her head. She must have imagined it. Birchwood Manor had no electricity and she hadn’t been upstairs to leave a lamp.
Sure enough, when she looked again, the light was gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They rose next morning with the sun. Juliet lay in bed listening as the children ran excitedly from room to room, exclaiming at the light, the birdsong, the garden, tripping over themselves to get outside. Her head was a whisky mud and she feigned sleep for as long as she could. Only when she sensed a looming presence on the other side of her eyelids did she finally admit to being awake. It was Freddy, right above her, proximity rendering his face – already generous of feature – unusually large.
Now it widened into a delighted gap-toothed grin. Freckles danced, dark eyes shone. Already, somehow, he had crumbs around his mouth.
‘She’s awake,’ he shouted, and Juliet winced. ‘Come on, Mummy, we must go down to the river.’
The river. That’s right. Juliet turned her head by degrees and saw a shock of blue-glass sky through the gap between the curtains. Freddy was tugging her arm now and she managed a nod and a brave, meagre smile. It was sufficient to send him scampering from the room with an excited whoop.
Impossible to explain to Red, whose faith in the world’s never-ending supply of good times was absolute, but Juliet wasn’t on holiday; she had a meeting with the local arm of the Women’s Voluntary Services lined up at eleven, in the hope of uncovering an angle for her first ‘Letters from the Laneway’ column. Nevertheless, the single benefit of being woken at such an ungodly hour – for, really, one had to look on the bright side – was the unexpectedly long stretch of hours remaining until duty called.
Juliet threw on a spotted cotton blouse because it was close to hand, belted a pair of trousers, and ran her fingers through her hair. A brief trip to the bathroom to splash water on her face, and she was ready. Rough, but she would do. Downstairs, she gathered Mrs Hammett’s basket with its bread and cheese, and they left the house, following the same flagstone path that she had taken the night before.
Tip, in a pair of faded dungarees at least an inch too short, propelled himself forward like a wind-up doll, his short legs racing as he chased his brother and sister across the grass towards the track that met the river. Beatrice had stopped by the big old stone barn at the top of the coach way and was holding out her arms. Tip leapt into them when he was close enough, and she slid him around so that he could clamber onto her back. What it was to be the youngest of three – what luck to be born into a jumbly, rowdy group of bigger people and be simply adored.
A huddle of geese retreated in alarm as the children barrelled past them, Red laughing with glee for the simple joy that he was running with the sun on his skin and the breeze in his hair. They looked quite unlike her children, and Juliet was struck again by the contrast between this place and London, the only home her three had ever known. It was the world they came from, to which their father so resolutely belonged. She remembered the first time she’d seen him, a tall, lean Londoner with a wooden pipe that he’d been frowning around in a most pretentious manner. She’d thought him arrogant then – talented but impossibly self-assured; pompous, even, with his mannered way of speaking and his opinions on just about everything. It had taken time and the unfortunate business with the revolving door at Claridge’s for her to see through his irony to the beating heart beneath.
She’d caught up with the children now, and they took turns climbing over the ivy-covered wooden stile before setting off westwards along the river’s edge. There was a red canal boat moored against the bank, and it reminded Juliet, vaguely, that there was a lock or weir nearby. She made a mental note to take the children exploring one day. It was the sort of thing Alan would suggest if he were here; he’d say how marvellous it was for them to see the lock in action.
A salty man with a beard and a peaked cap nodded at them from the rear deck of the longboat and Juliet nodded back. Yes, she thought, this was the right thing to do, to come here to Birchwood Manor. They would all do better here; the change of scene would be a balm after the dreadful things that they’d been through.
While the boys tripped on ahead, Bea had fallen into step beside her. ‘When you came here on honeymoon, did you and Daddy walk this way along the river?’
‘We did.’
‘Is this the way to the jetty?’
‘It is.’
‘My jetty.’
Juliet smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘Why did you come here?’
She looked sideways at her daughter.
‘To this village,’ explained Beatrice. ‘On your honeymoon. Don’t people usually go to the seaside?’
‘Oh, I see. I don’t know. It’s hard to remember now.’