The Peacock Summer Page 15

  She’d sparked up a cigarette and sat on one of the empty swings, scraping her boots back and forth across the muddy ground, revelling in her sad, solitary state.

  The two boys had seemed to appear from thin air, quietly settling themselves into the empty swings beside her and starting to swing back and forth with quiet purpose. She’d glanced across and nodded at them and one of them – the older one – had thrown her a casual ‘Hi’ before returning to his task.

  They’d seemed to be involved in some unspoken competition. Maggie had watched with surreptitious glances as they’d urged their swings higher and higher until the whole A-frame shuddered with their force and Maggie had found herself wondering for one thrilling moment if they mightn’t pull the whole thing from the ground and send them all flying. On they went, backwards and forwards, pushing towards the sky until the slightly older boy, the one with the darker hair, had called out, ‘You first,’ and the boy with the freckles and the wide grin had pulled back his leg and on the arc of his forward swing, kicked one wellington boot off his foot and propelled it out into the sky. All three of them had watched it soar until it landed with a thud halfway to the hedge.

  ‘Not bad.’ The darker-haired boy had taken a couple more swings then sent his own boot arcing out, until it crash-landed on the grass beside the first boot, bouncing up off the turf and landing a foot or so ahead.

  Maggie, her head still spinning from the cigarette, had listened to them arguing over who was the rightful winner. There had seemed to be some contention over whether a bounce was allowed. Was it the first spot the boot landed or its final resting place that was the measure of the kick?

  While they’d bickered, she’d started to swing, pushing herself higher and higher. Gradually, she’d edged her Doc Marten boot off her heel until it balanced precariously on her toes, and then she’d pulled back her own foot and let it fly. The boy with the fairer hair had given a low whistle and they’d all watched as it hurtled through the air and fallen a metre beyond the dark-haired boy’s boot. She’d restrained her celebrations to a cautious sideways glance through the curtain of her hair.

  ‘Nice,’ the younger boy had admitted, grudgingly. ‘But Doc Martens are easier. They’re smaller and heavier, so you had a natural advantage.’ He’d eyed her. ‘You don’t live round here, do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she’d said, pleased to prove them wrong. ‘I live with my grandparents on the other side of the village, but I board during school term time.’

  ‘We live in the house near the shop, the one with the red front door.’

  She’d nodded. She knew the one. It had a damson tree in the garden and white shutters at the windows. She’d pulled the cigarettes from her jacket pocket. ‘Want one?’

  ‘Sure.’ The taller boy had taken the packet from her, removing two and sticking one into the corner of his mouth before passing the other to his brother. ‘I’m Will,’ he’d said. ‘This is Angus, my brother.’

  ‘Gus,’ the other boy had corrected.

  ‘Maggie.’ They were a little older than her. Will looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, Gus a little younger; fourteen, perhaps.

  ‘You’ve got a pretty good wang.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘A welly-wang. That’s what we call it: the game,’ he’d added, nodding in the direction of the scattered boots.

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  She’d passed the lighter and watched Will hold the flame to the end of Gus’s cigarette, then his own. Before he’d handed it back to her he’d read the engraved inscription out loud. ‘Boldness be my friend. Cool.’

  She’d nodded. She had no idea if he was teasing her or not.

  Gus had inhaled deeply and then exhaled with a loud, spluttering cough.

  Will had looked on, amused. ‘Want to go again?’ he’d asked, nodding at the boots. ‘Prove it wasn’t beginner’s luck?’

  Maggie had smiled at the challenge and begun to swing immediately, her grin spreading across her face as she’d flown high into the sky, the two boys goading her with gentle insults and attempts to put her off her swing.

  Sitting there now, so many years later, she can almost hear the echoes of their laughter. Of course it had been lame – stupid, childish fun – but the truth was there was a lot to like about hurling boots out across a muddy field with the two boys. Will had won the second round hands down, Gus the third. He’d taken a victory lap around the swings with his T-shirt over his head.

  She had left boarding school for the Christmas holidays that year with a sense of anticipation. Christmas at Cloudesley was usually a quiet affair. There was the Oberons’ annual attendance at church followed by a formal lunch and the customary exchange of presents in front of a roaring fire in the drawing room, Charles slumped in his wheelchair and Lillian trying to jolly things along as much as possible in the usual absence of Albie. (Was it Ibiza that year? Or perhaps Morocco? She vaguely remembers the crackling phone call, the sound of jovial partying in the background, the shouted promises of presents in the post, which of course never materialised.) Yes, there wasn’t much to look forward to; but that year, everything changed. After she’d returned home, unpacked her trunk and taken tea with Lillian and Charles in the morning room, she’d excused herself with the surprising announcement that she was ‘off to see friends in the village’ and ignoring Lillian’s startled look, had raced outside, grabbed one of the rusting bicycles from the stables and headed straight to Damson House. It was Will who’d opened the door to her. ‘Well hello there,’ he’d said. ‘You changed your hair?’

  She’d reached up and touched her bob, now back to its natural russet hue. ‘Yeah. Do you guys want to hang out for a bit? Come to the park?’ She’d waited, shivering on the doorstep, trying not to look too bothered either way.

  ‘We can’t.’ He’d looked slightly sheepish. ‘It’s a bit of a family tradition – games afternoon with the folks.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Another time.’ She’d been crestfallen.

  ‘But you could come in, if you like? We’re playing Pictionary. I’m losing. Badly.’

  ‘Won’t your parents mind?’

  ‘Mind?’ Will had looked startled. ‘Course not. Come on.’ He’d already turned, leaving the door open and there was nothing for her to do, it seemed, other than to close it behind her, slip off her Doc Martens and stand them next to the pile of casually discarded boots scattered around the porch before following him down the carpeted hallway.

  They’d been sitting in the lounge, the Pictionary board spread across the coffee table, Gus slouched next to his mother on the couch, their father seated in an old wingback chair near the fire. ‘Mum, Dad, this is Maggie. She’s from the big house on the other side of the village. It’s OK if she joins us, isn’t it?’

  Their father had leapt to his feet and shaken her hand enthusiastically. ‘The more the merrier. Welcome, Maggie.’

  ‘Hello, Mister . . .’

  ‘Mortimer,’ he’d answered. ‘But please, call me David. And this is Mary, my wife.’

  She’d greeted the boys’ mother with a shy, ‘Hello’, still unsure if it truly was OK that she was there.

  ‘Have a seat, Maggie. Would you like a cup of tea? A slice of cake? It’s homemade. Not the best, but Gus has managed three.’ Mary Mortimer had gestured to the misshapen Victoria sponge cake on the table behind them.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She’d grinned and waved at Gus.

  ‘Over here,’ Will had said, patting a spot beside him on the rug in front of the fire. ‘You’re on my team.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ Gus had commiserated. ‘Will’s terrible at Pictionary.’

  They’d picked up the game again and Maggie had quickly forgotten her nerves and joined in enthusiastically. She and Will had begun to pull ahead on the score sheet. ‘You didn’t say she was an artist,’ said David, faux annoyance in his voice.

  ‘I had no idea,’ admits Will.

  A marmalade-coloured cat had come and curled in a warm circle on her lap. �
�Push her off if you don’t want her,’ Mary had said but Maggie shook her head. It was nice to sit there with this family, in front of the log fire as the night drew in, with their pets and their laughter and their gentle teasing. It was better than nice. It was heaven. Cycling back to Cloudesley later that evening, she’d thought about how she’d never before been anywhere that had felt so wonderfully normal.

  Damson House had soon become her home away from home. Over the years as her friendship with the Mortimers had strengthened, she had sat around the kitchen table, threaded daisy chains upon its lawns, climbed the branches of the old tree, sprawled on the shabby sofa watching movies and eating ice-cream. She had washed up Sunday lunch dishes in the kitchen sink and made cups of tea in the chipped teapot. She had lain upstairs on the boys’ beds watching clouds race past the window as mix tapes played on an old cassette player.

  Of course as they grew older things had shifted: movies and games in the lounge at Damson House gave way to trips to the pub and house parties. Sometimes they’d stay up late playing cards and drinking cheap wine. Sometimes – but not very often – she’d take them back to Cloudesley, where they’d play croquet on the unkempt lawn, steal Charles’s cigarettes and spirits from the drinks cart, or play cards in the drawing room; but usually they were more comfortable in the warmth and cosiness of Damson House, or roaming outside, enjoying the freedom of their youth.

  Then Will had met a girl. Gus and Maggie hadn’t much liked her – she was beautiful but uptight and had seemed wildly mismatched with Will’s relaxed nature; they’d teased him relentlessly, then nursed him through his first broken heart. Things changed, of course; they grew closer and fell out, squabbled over music and movies and whose round it was, but until Will left for university, it was always the three of them, every holiday.

  Remembering how things had once been between them, Maggie can’t help but feel the deep void of their absence. Will is little more than a distant stranger now, every exchange between them fraught with underlying tension. And Gus? Well, they haven’t spoken since she left last summer. Had she imagined that glimmer of connection with Will, as they’d stood there in the bathroom, drenched to the skin? Had it just been wishful thinking on her part, that they might find a way to rebuild their friendship?

  Maggie sighs. She should get back to the house. Jane will be waiting for the butter and she’s not going to fix anything sitting here on the swing feeling sorry for herself as she reminisces about bygone days.

  Leaving the park, she begins a slow trudge back to her car, her shoulders a little more hunched, her jaw a little more firmly set. She’d lived in hope that perhaps things wouldn’t be as bad as she’d imagined on her return; but now she’s faced the full force of Mary’s anger, she knows it’s unlikely the Mortimers will ever be able to forgive her for what she did. Perhaps the sooner she tries to get over them all, the better.

  Chapter 15

  The clock strikes eleven down in the entrance hall. Lillian, lying restless beneath her sheets, hears it echoing through the house. Every minute she lies there alone feels as slow and interminable as an hour.

  Bentham has finished his rounds for the night: she’s heard him moving through the house checking doors and window locks, bidding goodnight to the housemaid and switching off lights. Sarah has retreated to her quarters in the attic, her footsteps creaking overhead followed by the clanking of pipes and the flushing of a cistern, all familiar sounds of the house settling down for the night. As silence settles over Cloudesley, she lies in the darkness and tries to control the emotion raging within, a swirling mix of anticipation and desire, self-loathing and guilt – and fear, too. Fear that it will be tonight that Jack is caught creeping along the corridor to her room – and perhaps, even more so, fear that it will be tonight that he comes to his senses and stays away.

  She shifts, hot and tangled in her silk nightdress, then goes still as somewhere beyond her bedroom door comes the sound of a creaking floorboard.

  She gives an involuntary shiver and holds her breath, waiting. There is nothing but silence. Lillian sighs and shifts again under the sheet. It’s just the house settling around her.

  It’s been two weeks since the madness of their kiss in the woodland clearing. Two weeks since she went to him in the old nursery and they made love on the desk. Two weeks since their lives collided in such an intense and unexpected way.

  Whenever she is alone now, whenever she closes her eyes, she is back there in the golden light of that room, allowing him to undress her as her own fingers pull at the buttons on his shirt, move through his hair, pulling him closer.

  It shocks her to think of herself in that moment; no passive, acquiescent female, but rather a woman filled with heat, driven by want and need. She blushes just to remember it; but she knows she couldn’t have stopped herself even if she’d wanted to. Here she lies in the dark, counting clock chimes, waiting for her lover to come to her.

  Her lover. The word seems shocking, even now. It is madness, she knows. She’s told herself over and over that it is insanity – that she must put a stop to it – whatever ‘it’ is that she and Jack have started. She is a married woman – a wife and step-mother. She has responsibilities and a reputation to consider. But while she is not so carried away that she doesn’t feel the sting of shame that comes with her infidelity, she knows she cannot deviate from the course she has set upon, not even if she wanted to.

  There is another quiet creaking sound from outside her bedroom door, this time followed by the lightest tapping. She doesn’t utter a word, but lies still and silent, watching from the bed as the door opens and a figure slips into her room, his form lost to the darkness as soon as the door has closed behind him. She hears footsteps moving across the floor, feels a waft of cooler air as her sheets are lifted, the slight tilt of the mattress as he slides in beside her.

  ‘My dearest heart,’ he says into her ear as he curves his body around hers and pulls her to him, his lips finding hers in the darkness.

  ‘You smell of paint,’ she says much later, curled languidly into the crook of his arm as they pass a cigarette back and forth in the darkness. ‘Paint and turpentine.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She draws his hand up to her mouth and kisses each of his fingers in turn. ‘I quite like it.’ They have flung open the curtains, the cooler night air and moonlight drifting across their skin, a canopy of stars just visible through the open window. His hand traces a line from her ear lobe down her neck to the outer edge of her collarbone. Lillian sighs and curls in closer to him. ‘Shall I take it as a good sign?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a good sign,’ he says, nuzzling her neck. ‘Though I missed you today,’ he says.

  ‘You could dine with me in the evenings, now that Charles has extended his London trip.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I couldn’t bear it. Sitting so close to you, politely pretending while Bentham pops in and out to clear plates and pour the wine. I’m afraid I’d give myself away.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, pulling back to look into his eyes. ‘This spark between us is so strong. Sometimes, I feel it might steal the oxygen from the air around us.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He smiles and leans in to kiss her on the mouth. ‘Besides,’ he adds, ‘now that I have fixed on an idea for the room, I’m afraid to stop painting. I’m afraid to lose the momentum.’

  ‘Well then, I’m glad. Don’t come. I know how much work you have to do,’ she adds, nudging him in the ribs.

  Jack doesn’t rise to the bait. ‘He’s an odd fellow, isn’t he?’ he says after a moment.

  ‘Who? Charles?’

  ‘I was thinking of Bentham.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. He’s quiet, certainly. Unreadable. Truth be told, I was a little afraid of him when I first moved here. Though he’s been ever so loyal to Cloudesley. We lost a lot of staff to the war and have been operating on a skeleton outfit ever since. But Bentham’s been here through it all, thick and thin. We’re lucky to have him.’

  �
�Yes, it must be hard only having a cook, a maid, a butler and a gardener to look after you.’

  Lillian slaps him on the chest. ‘Don’t.’ Then she adds, with a hint more seriousness, ‘Don’t laugh at us.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. It’s all rather foreign, this life you lead.’

  ‘I’d give it all up tomorrow . . . if I could.’

  ‘Would you?’ He turns to study her in the darkness.

  ‘I would.’

  Jack doesn’t say anything. He places his cigarette in the ashtray beside the bed and wraps her more tightly in his arms.

  ‘Do you ever wish,’ she asks softly, ‘that you could make the rest of the world just disappear?’

  He kisses the top of her head. ‘It does . . . when I’m painting . . . and when I’m with you.’

  Lillian nods, but she’s not entirely sure he’s understood what she meant. She doesn’t know how to put into words the deep longing she feels to escape the life she is bound to. The heavy constraints she feels – the weight of the promises she has made.

  Somewhere out in the grounds a peacock shrieks, the sound echoing out across the garden. She feels Jack tense beside her. ‘Christ,’ he says, ‘I’ll never get used to that sound.’

  She smiles and steals the cigarette from the ashtray.

  ‘So what is the news from London?’ Jack asks and her smile falters at the reminder of Charles. She doesn’t want to think about Charles, not with Jack lying there in her bed.

  ‘We spoke this morning. There are problems with a delayed shipment. He’s not sure he’ll return in time for the village flower show.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘He did ask how the room was coming along.’