Hiding From the Light

‘So, my darling, what on earth are you doing outside that temple to Mammon you call an office?’

Emma smiled. ‘I took the afternoon off. It’s very quiet at the moment as it’s August. Everyone is out of the City. I’ve been having a check up at the dentist and I’m on my way to Sainsbury’s. We’ve got Piers’s boss and his wife coming to supper.’ She made a face. ‘Then, I hope, a long peaceful weekend! Do you and Dan want to come over for a drink some time?’

Peggy shrugged. ‘Can we let you know? I’m working tomorrow – at least till lunchtime. I’ll close up if no one comes in, but I don’t know what Dan’s plans are.’

Emma’s father had died in 1977 when she was still a child. Her mother’s toyboy lover – only six months younger than Peggy, but neither of them could resist joking about the age difference – was the best thing that had happened in Peggy’s life for a long time.

Emma fished in her bag again and produced the page from Country Life. ‘Ma, the reason I came over was to show you this. Does this house mean anything to you? Do you recognise it?’

Peggy reached for her spectacles and examined the picture closely. ‘I don’t think so. Why? You’re not thinking of buying a country cottage?’

‘No.’ Emma grimaced. ‘Piers would never hear of it. ‘No. It’s just –’ She hesitated and her face grew sombre. ‘I saw this at the dentist. Don’t you remember? Near where Great-granny lived at Mistley. I’m sure it is.’

Peggy squinted at the page again. ‘We did spend a lot of time there when you were little.’ She chewed her lip thoughtfully, holding the paper closer to her nose. ‘Wait a minute. Perhaps I do remember it now I come to think of it: Liza’s. You think it’s Liza’s? Are you sure, darling? There must be a million cottages that look just like that one. Anyway, it says it’s a farmhouse.’ She took off her glasses and, putting down the page she surveyed Emma’s face, frowning.

Emma nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure it is. I loved that house so much I’d recognise it anywhere.’

Peggy nodded. ‘I do remember now. You used to peer through the hedge and make up stories about that wonderful old lady who lived there. Liza, presumably. They were lovely times, weren’t they. Those holidays seemed to go on forever.’

‘Long, sunlit summers.’ Emma nodded.

Before Daddy died.

Neither of them voiced that last thought, but both were thinking it.

‘Wouldn’t it be strange if it was the same house?’ Peggy put her glasses back on, squinting. ‘It’s very pretty. I’m not surprised you’re tempted. You are tempted, aren’t you?’ She looked up and surveyed Emma’s face shrewdly.

Emma nodded. Somewhere deep inside an idea had taken root.

‘Is this interest a sign you’re feeling like settling down at last? Is it possible, sweetheart, are you feeling broody?’ Peggy surveyed Emma’s face for a moment, then she shook her head. ‘Well, maybe that’s for the best. Not till you’re sure about Piers. And you’re not. Are you?’

Emma frowned. ‘I love Piers, Ma. I wouldn’t do anything unless he agreed.’

‘No?’ Peggy raised an eyebrow. ‘He won’t agree to this, Em. I can tell you that right now!’

2

Piers stood under the shower for a full five minutes before he stepped out and reached for the towel. He had been expecting Emma to be there when he arrived home from his office but the door had been double-locked, the flat, on the top floor of the converted house at the end of Cornwall Gardens, empty but for two loudly complaining cats. He stopped to give each a brief hello before checking the fridge for dinner party supplies. She couldn’t have forgotten that Derek and Sue were coming over, surely. Hadn’t she said she was taking the afternoon off? Pulling on some cool trousers and an open-necked shirt he surveyed himself for a second in the mirror in their bedroom, checking out his tall lanky figure, smart haircut, tanned skin – even in casual gear he looked cool and sophisticated – before he went into the living room and glanced round. It was tidy as always, a full array of drinks on the top of the low bookcase in the corner. The pale cream sofas, the linen curtains and the wood floor gave just the right impression. Expensive. Elegant. Comfortable. Two young, well youngish, executives with perfect taste. He walked across to the French doors and reached up to the hiding place behind the curtain for the Chubb key, hanging from its little hook. Unlocking the doors he pulled them open and stepped out onto the roof garden. This was Emma’s very own paradise. She had created a little heaven from a sooty expanse between four ugly chimneys. Italian earthenware pots, small trees, roses, honeysuckle, herbs – her special passion – the unexpected riot of colour and sweet scents never failed to take his breath away. Emma’s love for gardening and her indelibly green fingers were one of the unexpected sides to her character which he could never quite reconcile with her astute business brain and the sophisticated lifestyle she shared with him. Closely followed by the two cats, he walked over to the wrought-iron table with its matching chairs and opened the large, bleached-linen parasol. Any moment now the sun would have disappeared behind the rooftops, but the parasol perfected the picture of elegance he so enjoyed up here. And on an evening like this where better to be than a rooftop garden?

‘Piers?’ Emma’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘Sorry, darling. I got caught in horrendous queues in Sainsbury’s.’ She appeared at the French doors looking, as ever, a city animal, elegant and sophisticated and cool – the furthest one could imagine from a busy shopping queue, or a gardener. ‘I’ve got cold meat. Vichyssoise. Ciabatta. Smoked duck. Salmon. Salad. Strawberries and cream. It’ll take me five minutes.’ She greeted the two cats with a pat on each eager head, joined him under the parasol and held up her own face for a kiss. ‘Put the wine in the fridge. When will they be here?’

He felt obscurely irritated suddenly. She knew when they’d be there. Damn it, she had rung up and fixed it with Sue.

‘Unzip me?’ She turned in his arms just before his kiss landed on target, presenting him with the nape of her neck and the top of a long black zip. ‘I called in on Ma. I thought she and Dan might pop over and have a drink tomorrow.’ With a quick wriggle of her hips she shed the dress. Under it she was naked but for a pair of the skimpiest bikini briefs.

‘Em!’ In spite of himself he glanced round, shocked. He would never get used to this side of Emma. Unconventional. Provocative. Always teasing him.

‘No one can see! Not unless they’ve got binoculars and are standing on top of the power station chimneys!’ She tapped his lips with her finger. ‘Stuffy.’

‘I know.’ He knew he ought to laugh. But he was cross. He wanted her badly. But there wasn’t time. With a groan he ducked into the living room and went to rummage in the wine rack in the corner behind the kitchen door. ‘Dry Hills Sauvignon OK?’

‘The best! Lovely.’ She was still standing naked on the roof.

‘Em! They will be here in a minute.’

She glanced over her shoulder at him coquettishly, then she relented. ‘OK. I’ll jump in the shower. It will take ten seconds to dress.’ As she passed him she brought her hands to her hips briefly and gave a quick shimmy. ‘Not bad for a thirty-something, eh? And look at the teeth!’ She ducked out of reach and ran to the bathroom. In ten minutes rather than seconds she was dressed, her hair brushed, a quick skim of colour on lips and eyelids and she was ready, once again the cool calm City woman, fit partner for a potential director of Evans Waterman, one of the largest City broking houses.

In the event Derek and Sue were half an hour late. By the time they arrived the hors d’oeuvres were laid out on the wrought-iron table, the wine was chilled, the table was laid and the duck and the salad prepared, the duck locked securely away from the enthusiastic attention of the cats.

It was as they moved on to the coffee at the end of the meal that the subject of weekend cottages arose. ‘We have a place in Normandy, you know.’ Sue leaned back against the sofa cushions and crossed her ankles. ‘It would be lovely if you could both come over for a few days.’

Outside, the roof terrace was dark, lit by two shaded lights hidden amongst the flower pots. A gentle breeze wafted the smell of the hot London night into the window. Sue sipped at her coffee. The two cats were asleep on one of the deckchairs outside. ‘Have you ever thought of buying somewhere yourselves?’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

Piers and Emma spoke at the same moment and they all laughed.

‘Sounds like a fundamental difference of opinion,’ Derek commented as he reached for his brandy glass. As so often, he found himself wondering how Piers managed to hang on to this lovely spontaneous creature.

‘That’s because we haven’t discussed it yet.’ Emma climbed to her feet and went over to pick up her bag which was lying on the side table. ‘I saw something today which intrigued me so much, I want to go and see it.’ She found the folded page and brought it back to the sofa. ‘It’s a little farmhouse in Essex.’

‘Essex!’ Sue hooted. ‘Oh, my dear, I think you could do better than that.’ She held out her hand for the picture.

‘Essex is quite nice, actually,’ Derek put in mildly. He raised an eyebrow in his wife’s direction. ‘The Essex they joke about is in the south of the county, part of the greater London area. But if you go up to the north you have wonderful countryside and lovely villages and towns. Constable country. You’re miles and miles from London there. It’s very rural.’ He held out his hand for the magazine page which Sue had glanced at and dropped dismissively on the coffee table. ‘This one, is it?’ He tapped the photo. ‘It looks a lovely place. Perfect weekend material. Good sailing up there. Do you sail, Piers?’

Piers had risen to his feet. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said briskly. ‘Weekend cottages are not my thing, I’m afraid.’ He looked angry. ‘Emma knows that. I can think of nothing I would like less than pottering about “doing it myself”, mowing grass and being nice to hay-seed neighbours! I hate the country! I was stuck in deep country as a child and I couldn’t wait to get away. I can still remember my parents vegetating, telling me to go bird watching, trying to make me interested in nature, for God’s sake! I couldn’t wait to get away and I will never, never go back!’

There was a moment’s intense silence.

‘Oh, well!’ Emma forced herself to laugh. ‘There goes that idea!’ She took the cutting from Derek’s hand and, folding it, tucked it into her pocket. ‘More brandy, anyone?’

Derek and Sue left early – ‘It’s been a long week, old things, bed for us, I think,’ – but it was after midnight by the time Emma and Piers had stacked the dishwasher and carried two more brandies out onto the roof terrace.

‘Do you think they enjoyed it at all?’ Emma was staring out into the luminosity of the London night.

‘Yes, of course they did.’

‘They left a bit soon.’

‘Like Derek said, they were tired.’ He leaned his elbows on the parapet, rolling the glass between his hands. ‘Don’t worry about it. They have asked us to go to Normandy, don’t forget. And while you and Sue were brewing that second pot of coffee he told me it’s OK.’ He turned to her and she saw the triumph in his face. ‘I’m going to be asked to join the board.’

‘Oh Piers, I’m so glad. Why didn’t you tell me at once?’

‘I wanted to wait till we had a glass in our hand. I wanted us to drink to the future. My future and our future.’ He held her gaze for a moment. ‘And I wanted to tell you when we were on our own because I think we should get married, Em.’

For a moment she didn’t move, and he could read the conflicting emotions on her face as clearly as if she were speaking out loud. Elation – that first, at least – worry, doubt, excitement, caution, then that moment which he recognised so well when she withdrew inside herself, her eyes suddenly unfocused as though viewing the future on some mysterious invisible internal screen. He waited. It would only take seconds for her private computation to take place. Until she had done it, he had learned to wait.

He felt a warm pressure against his ankle. Max was circling his feet, purring. He bent to pick the cat up, tickling him under his chin. ‘Well?’ He glanced at Emma and grinned. ‘So far I am not overwhelmed by your enthusiasm.’

She smiled. Reaching forward, she gave him a quick kiss on the lips. ‘I love you, P. You know that. And I want to live with you forever and ever.’

‘I can feel a “but” coming.’

‘No. It’s just –’ She hesitated, then putting her glass down on the parapet beside him she reached into her pocket. ‘When we talked about country cottages earlier, you were pretty damning.’ She unfolded the cutting. ‘It didn’t sound to me as though there was any room for compromise.’ She reached out absent-mindedly and rubbed the cat’s ears. ‘We’ve never talked about the sort of future that marriage means, P. Kids. Gardens. A life beyond EC1.’

‘And why should we? That’s all for the future, surely. Nothing we have to think about yet. In the abstract, yes, I’d like kids one day. If you would.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve never had any sense that you are hearing the time-clock ticking, Em. My God, that’s years off, surely.’

She laughed. ‘Not so many. I’ve reached the dreaded thirties, don’t forget.’ She reached over for Max, who climbed into her arms and draped himself across her shoulder with a contented purr. ‘I want to go and see this cottage. This weekend.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He snatched the cutting from her hand. ‘Em, this is silly. What is it with this place? You know we can’t go this weekend. I’m playing squash with David tomorrow. You’ve asked your mother and Dan over. I’ve got a report to write. We have a hundred and one things to do.’ He moved over to the lamp and held the cutting so he could see it more clearly. ‘Three acres. A commercial herb nursery for God’s sake, Em. This isn’t even a country cottage. It’s a business. Look, if you’re so keen on the idea of a cottage why don’t we go down to Sussex or somewhere and take a look. Or why not France? Now that’s an idea. Derek said property there is still a fantastic investment.’

‘I don’t want it as an investment.’ Letting the cat jump to the ground, she threw herself down on one of the cushioned chairs. ‘In fact, I don’t know that I want it at all.’ There was a sudden note of bewilderment in her voice. ‘I just want to go and see it. I remember it from when I was a child. It’s a cottage I used to dream about. I built a whole fantasy world around it. It means a lot to me, Piers, and if it’s on the market …’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s meant to be.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Not for me, it isn’t. I told you what I think about the country.’

‘Well, I want to go and see it at least. As soon as possible. Tomorrow. I’m going to ring the agent first thing.’

‘Well, if you do go, you go without me.’ He threw the cutting down on her lap. ‘The place has probably gone anyway. Did you see the date at the bottom of the page? The magazine was three weeks old.’

3

For a long time Emma lay awake listening to Piers’s even breathing. They had tried to patch things up; to paper over the awkwardness; but it hadn’t worked. The night seemed to have grown chilly suddenly and going inside they had closed the windows and drifted, apart, towards the bedroom. When Emma had emerged from her long soak in the bath, Piers was sound asleep.

It was impossible not to toss and turn, and after what seemed like an interminable attempt to relax and follow suit Emma got up and walked through into the kitchen. Two alert pairs of eyes watched her from the kitchen table.

‘You know you’re not supposed to sit there,’ she commented half-heartedly, but she made no attempt to move them. Without bothering to turn on the main lights she opened the fridge door. The interior light illuminated the kitchen, filling it with a subdued eerie glow as she poured herself a glass of iced spring water. Slamming the door shut again, she walked on in the semi-darkness into the living room. The faint echoes of the evening were still there. The richness of wine and coffee, of Sue’s scent, the sharp aroma of brandy from the glass Piers had put down on the low table as he walked past on his way to bed.

Emma threw herself down on the sofa and closed her eyes. The curtains were open and a faint light seeped into the room outlining the furniture, reflecting flatly from the cut-glass bowl of roses on the table. Two black shadows padded silently from the kitchen and leaped lightly onto the sofa back to sit close to her, like bookends in the silence of the room.

She sighed and closed her eyes.

In her dream it was the year of Our Lord, 1646. The cottage was very small, the rooms dark, but the garden was bright and neat, a riot of colour. She stood by the gate, her back to the church, staring round, and she knew she was smiling. Hollyhocks and mallow crowded the beds with roses and honeysuckle vying for position on the front wall. She could feel the sun hot on her back as she pushed open the gate and walked up the path. She knew she ought to knock, but the front door was open and she ducked inside.

‘Liza? Where are you?’ She heard her own voice without surprise. ‘Liza? I’ve brought you some pasties from my father’s kitchens.’ She had a basket on her arm, she realised suddenly, the food inside succulent and still warm beneath a white linen napkin. She put it down on the table and went to the foot of the narrow steep staircase. ‘Liza? Are you up there?’

The house was silent. The only sound came from the sudden piping calls of the young swallows in their nests hanging under the untidy thatch.

She ran up the stairs, feeling suddenly anxious, and peered round the room. The small box bed was empty, the patchwork cover neatly spread across it. A coffer chest in the corner was the only other furniture.

‘Liza?’ She ran downstairs again, very conscious of the emptiness of the house. ‘Liza, where are you?’

Outside there wasn’t a breath of wind. The heat was overwhelming. Humid. Uncomfortable. The swallows were silent now. Nothing moved. She tiptoed along the path and peered round the corner to the patch where Liza grew some of her herbs. She had thyme there, and rosemary. Vervain. Cinquefoil. St John’s Wort. Elecampane. Horehound. A basket lay on the ground nearby and a pair of silver scissors. Emma bent and picked them up. ‘Liza?’ Her voice sounded strangely muted out here. And it echoed as if coming from a long way away. There was a piece of green ribbon tied around the mulberry tree. She stared at it for a long time, then slowly she turned back towards the gate. From the lane she could see down towards the blue waters of the estuary in the distance. The tide was in. Two boats were sailing in towards the shore. She stopped to watch them for a moment; only when she raised her hand to her face to brush away a tear did she realise she was crying.

When Emma woke, wondering where she was, she found her cheeks still wet with tears. By the time she had fallen asleep again her mind was made up. She would go and see the cottage in the morning and if Piers didn’t want to go with her then she would go alone.

4

Saturday

Mike Sinclair, dressed in an open-necked shirt and jeans, was standing in the kitchen of his rectory gazing down at the toaster, watching the red elements slowly browning the flabby white slices he had extracted from the bag of Co-op bread his cleaning lady had bought for him two days before. He sighed. He must make time to do his own shopping from time to time. In vain he wrote brown bread on the list, sometimes wholemeal, underlined. White and flabby was what he always got.

The two slices of toast leaped in the air and fell back into their slots. He whisked them out onto a plate and, picking up his mug of coffee carried both over to the table. Butter, still in its paper and already liberally anointed with yesterday’s toast crumbs, stood there waiting together with a jar of Oxford Marmalade. He grinned to himself. In spite of the bread it was still his favourite breakfast and it was going to be another glorious day. He had to spend most of it in his study catching up on paperwork and going over his sermon one more time, but it was still very early and there was going to be time for a walk.

He had only been in the parish a few months and he was still feeling his way with both congregation and geography. The best time to explore, he had discovered, was the early morning when the streets and lanes were comparatively empty and he could wander round without being accosted by his parishioners. So, he would allow himself a couple of hours to eat and walk before coming back inside and facing the pile of papers in his study.

Breakfast complete, headlines from the paper which had appeared on his doormat scanned – he had been amused to see when he had first arrived that the lady from the paper shop had assumed he would read the Telegraph, so he had gone in to thank her, congratulate her on her business acumen in snaring a new customer and tactfully amended the order to The Times – it was time to set out.

The rectory stood back in its garden down a long gravel drive at the end of Church Street. It was not the old rectory, of course – that had burned down a hundred years before – but an old house none the less, acquired by the church in the 1920s as a fit home for a parson and his then large family. It was a big house for one man, but Mike had been enormously pleased to find his new parish was not one of those which had decided a characterless modern bungalow was a fitting habitation for its rector.

It was a pleasant Georgian-fronted building, painted a pale Suffolk pink, the interior probably Elizabethan and heavily beamed. He would try and find out about some of its earlier history one day when he was not so busy. The garden, he had noted sadly, was, apart from a few lovely trees, more or less devoid of interest. It was not very big, which was probably just as well, given the fact that he suspected he would have little time to give to it and there would be no money from either his own pocket or the diocese for a gardener. Wonderfully, he had managed to secure the services of a cleaning lady two mornings a week. Probably not for long. He doubted if he could afford her forever. It had been a shock when he realised just how small in real terms his stipend would be as a country parson. He gazed at the grass. It was as always neatly mown and as always he wondered who on earth had done it. One of the PCC perhaps, choosing a moment when they knew he would be out, or one of the other kind people who had offered him their services when he had first arrived in the parish. Many had offered help. The two food baskets – to stave off starvation, he supposed – which had greeted his arrival, had from time to time been discreetly replaced and two ladies had offered to cook him the occasional meal.

He grinned to himself. Several people, including the bishop, had warned him about the ladies. An unmarried, good-looking rector in his early forties – Mike was broad-shouldered, fair-haired, blue-eyed – would be a major target once they had decided amongst themselves that he wasn’t gay!

Slamming the door, he headed for the gate. Church Street was, up here at the top, actually more of a lane. Beyond his house, the church itself sat serenely in its churchyard sheltered by three huge yew trees, a surprisingly rural setting when one considered that Manningtree was actually a small town – the smallest town in England, so someone had told him – and that over the hedge he could see lines of old roofs rising gently up the hillside.

This early, the road was deserted. He strode down it purposefully, passing between houses much like his own, except that where it descended into the centre of the town they were terraced and what gardens they had were hidden by high walls. Down on the corner where Church Street met the High Street the last two houses had been converted into double-fronted shops, but a glance at the roofs showed that they too were as old as the rest of the street. One of them, he had noticed, had been empty since he moved in.