Gone Away Read online

  There was a bell on the table with another hand-written sign that read ‘Please ring’. I rang it vigorously, hardly expecting anyone to come, but a young man came in from the back and said in a quiet, almost timid voice, ‘Can I help you?’

  As he came into the light, I could see at once that it was Jamie’s son. Physically, he was so like the Jamie I remembered, the same features and the same colouring, but without the dash and vivacity of his father he looked like a pale, pastel copy of an oil-painting.

  I smiled reassuringly. ‘I’d like some honey, please.’

  ‘Clear or set?’

  ‘Clear, please. With such lovely local honey I like to have it on yoghurt.’

  He reached over to get a jar and carefully re-arranged the pyramid.

  I moved along to the dried flowers and picked out a rather untidy posy.

  ‘These are nice,’ I said.

  He flushed and looked pleased.

  ‘Did you do them?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s the first year I’ve grown them and I’m not very good at arranging them yet.’

  ‘They’re lovely colours.’ I said, ‘yellow and white. I like statice, it doesn’t drop bits all over every-thing.’

  He smiled nervously. It was difficult to talk to him, he seemed very nervy – ‘highly strung’ Anthea would have said disapprovingly – so that it was rather like approaching a nervous animal whose confidence had to be won.

  I paid him for the honey and the dried flowers, and then I said, ‘I wonder – would it be possible to see your father?’

  ‘My father?’ He looked puzzled and rather wary.

  ‘Yes. I used to know him – years ago – and I would love to say hello, if he’s around.’

  He hesitated and then said, ‘Will you come through then?’

  He led the way out of the barn and towards the house. As we came out into the daylight I saw that he was not as young as I had first thought. He was considerably older than Michael, in his thirties perhaps. I did some calculations in my head – yes, he might well be all of that. It was his manner that made him seem so much younger, the timidity and an almost child-like simplicity. I felt that for him everything was black and white, no shades of grey, as it is for a child.

  He took me into the house through a side door which led into a narrow hall with an ochre and black tiled floor. I was right about the cold, it hit you quite palpably as you went into the house. He opened a door into what was presumably the sitting room and we went in. It was a large, square room which might have seemed cheerless but for the obvious care that had been taken with it. The furniture was shabby but meticulously polished, the curtains and the covers on the chairs were faded but newly laundered, and along both window-sills there were rows of flowering pot-plants. There was a good fire burning in the grate, and in an armchair to one side of the fireplace sat a man reading a copy of Horse and Hound.

  ‘Dad’ – the voice was even more hesitant – ‘there’s someone who wants to see you.’

  The man looked up. It was Jamie Hertford. I don’t quite know what I had expected. No, that’s not quite true. I had had a picture of a Jamie, red-faced and run to fat, bloated almost, the result of the drink and the dissipated life – a sort of Henry VIII figure in breeches and riding boots, all the glory faded and gone. The reality was an even greater surprise. To begin with, he seemed to have shrunk. Jamie had never been tall exactly, but he had looked taller than he was because of his vigour and upright bearing.

  This Jamie seemed positively short and very thin. His face was reddish brown, tanned to leather, more by the wind than by the sun. His features, which had been of an almost classical perfection, had sharpened – his nose, which was red-veined, seemed longer and more pointed, the line of his mouth was thin, and he now had a thick moustache, which was grey like his hair. Only the blue eyes were the same, though even they were now slightly red-rimmed and looked weak behind the reading glasses he was wearing.

  I was struck by a moment of terrible sadness as I remembered my last meeting with the golden Jamie I had known. It was at a Hunt Ball, and Jamie and Jeremy had both been on leave at the same time. Although I was still only sixteen I had pestered my mother so much that she had agreed that I could go, and Jerry, with the kindness that was always the essential part of his nature, agreed to take me as his partner. I was in a daze of delight with my first grown-up ball dress. It had been made by my mother’s dressmaker and was pale blue moiré taffeta, ‘suitable’ to my age, with the fashionable sweetheart neckline and puffed sleeves, but it did have a gloriously full skirt with a stiff net petticoat that made it stick out like a crinoline. So, although I did hanker for something black and strapless, I was very pleased with my appearance. It was one of those rare, totally magical evenings when everything miraculously lives up to your expectations. No one treated me as a child and I had a lot of partners – above all I had the wonderful feeling, so precious to an adolescent, of being accepted into the glamorous grown-up world. Hunt Balls usually end with the Gallop and I was just looking round for Jeremy, who had promised to dance it with me, when my wrist was seized by Jamie, who cried, ‘Come on, young Sheila’ and swept me into the dance. I had never seen him looking so splendid as that evening, his face flushed, his fair hair slightly dishevelled and his brilliant blue eyes glittering with excitement. I suppose, looking back now, he must have been rather drunk, but that didn’t occur to me then; I was simply swept away by a wild feeling of exhilaration. As we whirled round and round the full skirt of my dress swung out and I was all the heroines in all the films I had ever seen and all the books I had ever read. I was totally and blissfully happy. I don’t remember the dance finishing or going home, or anything; my memory stopped at that perfect moment.

  I drew a deep breath and smiled at the man in the chair, who had half risen to his feet.

  ‘Hallo, Jamie.’ I said. ‘I don’t expect you remember me – it’s Sheila Fulford, Jeremy’s sister.’

  He stood up and looked at me in a bewildered sort of way.

  ‘Jeremy.’ he said, ‘Jeremy Fulford.’ A look of pain crossed his face. ‘Poor Jeremy – Cyprus, wasn’t it? I remember now. Yes, of course I remember you. Little Sheila.’

  He put out his hand and I shook it formally. The skin felt dry and rasping and the nails were broken and grimed from working out of doors.

  ‘How are you?’ he went on. ‘You’ve met my boy Andrew I see.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I’ve just been buying some of his delicious-looking honey.’

  ‘Yes, well, he does most of the work around here nowadays

  – bees and goats and vegetables and so on. We’re thinking of getting some Jacob sheep – wool, you know. He’s been reading it up. Marvellous touch with animals. Horses too. That’s all I really do now. A bit of dealing, horse-transporting sometimes. Getting old.’

  I laughed. ‘Aren’t we all?’ I said, and we exchanged a few inanities about how time flew and it seemed like only yesterday...

  He didn’t ask how I had found him after all these years. It has always amazed me that men – most men, anyway – are so incurious, hardly ever questioning why things happen. My mother would have said, in her acerbic way, that they are so occupied with their own lives and thoughts that they never bother to think of anyone else’s. At any rate, I was glad of Jamie’s lack of curiosity.

  I nerved myself to say what I had come to say. ‘Jamie.’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I have some rather bad news. Lee

  – your ex-wife – she’s dead, she was killed.’

  He made no sort of movement, almost as if he hadn’t heard me, and there was complete silence, broken suddenly by a sort of gulping sound from Andrew. I turned to look at him. His face was red, his eyes were blazing with excitement and he was clenching and unclenching his hands. He faced his father and almost shouted, ‘Aren’t you glad – she’s dead, she’s gone, she can’t hurt us any more! Say you’re glad – say it!’

  ‘Andrew, stop that!’

  ‘She’s d
ead. It’s what we wanted – we need never see her again – never!’

  ‘Andrew’ Jamie’s voice was fierce and hard. ‘You’re hysterical. Pull yourself together – you don’t know what you’re saying!’

  Andrew flinched as if from a blow, more from the tone of voice than from the actual words. He began to cry. It was a pitiful sight, and I turned away and looked out of the window.

  Then I heard Jamie say gently, ‘It’s all right, old chap. It was a shock, wasn’t it. It’s all right. Now, you just go and get some coffee for us all, that’s what we need now, a nice cup of coffee.’

  I heard the door close as Andrew went out of the room, and, reluctantly, I turned to face Jamie.

  Chapter Eight

  He was standing in front of the fireplace, still holding the copy of Horse and Hound.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘As you see, Andrew gets a bit overwrought sometimes. Do, please, sit down.’

  I sat in the other armchair and faced him across the fireplace.

  ‘I’m sorry if my news was a bit of a shock,’ I said.

  ‘A shock?’ He seemed to consider this. ‘Yes, I suppose it was.’

  There was another silence. Then he said, ‘I sup-pose you’re entitled to some sort of explanation.’

  He got up and went into the hall and I heard him call to Andrew.

  ‘Leave the coffee for a bit, old man. Go on out and finish mucking out Rajah’s stable, will you – thanks, that’s splendid.’

  He came back into the room and sat down again. ‘He’ll be better with the horses for a while – that always calms him down if he gets upset.’

  ‘He seems very fond of animals,’ I said, trying to ease the conversation along.

  ‘Yes – he’s a marvel with horses – can ride any-thing – has a sort of sympathy with them, I suppose. Yes, well, I was going to explain, though it’s hard to know where to begin.’

  ‘When were you and Lee divorced?’ I asked.

  ‘Divorced?’ He looked at me blankly. ‘We’re not divorced. Lee is – was – still my wife.’

  ‘But what about Mr Montgomery?’

  ‘They weren’t married. I suppose I’d better tell you about it from the beginning.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘You know that Alison and I split up when the kids were small. All my fault, I led her the hell of a dance, poor girl. She went back to her parents and took the children with her. But Andrew – he was about seven – wouldn’t settle. He’d always been very devoted to me, used to follow me about like a little dog, even though I was a rotten father. But, anyway, he had these screaming fits and things so he came back to me – I was living the other side of Exeter then – and Charlotte stayed with Alison. Poor little creature, he didn’t have much of a life – I was involved with Lee by that time, and then we got married and bought this place. We led a pretty rackety life – you know, too much drink, too many parties, too many horses coming in last. Andrew had to fend for himself most of the time.’

  ‘Didn’t Lee like children?’

  ‘She liked them to like her, and when there were other people around she always made a fuss of Andrew, so that everyone said how marvellous she was with him. She was never cruel to him, but she just couldn’t be bothered most of the time. She used to tease him, and, poor child, he rose to the bait every time. And then she laughed at him – it was thoughtlessness really, but it hurt Andrew just as much as real cruelty would have done. I used to laugh at him too, before I realised...’

  Oh Charles, I thought, what a lucky escape your children have had!

  ‘Anyway.’ Jamie continued, ‘we went on like that for quite a while – things went from bad to worse and there wasn’t much money. We were both fairly drunk a lot of the time – it was all pretty squalid. Lee used to go off occasionally with some chap or other, and then one time when she was driving back from London she had an accident. Quite serious, court case and everything. She was fined and lost her licence for a year. That seemed to sober her up. She seemed to pull herself together and decided she wanted a lot more out of life than I could offer her. That’s when she took up with Ralph Montgomery. He was years older than she was – late sixties I should think – a retired business man, pots of money. He was absolutely besotted with her and set her up in a flat in Exeter.’

  ‘Why didn’t they get married?’

  ‘Oh, he was married already. Didn’t want a divorce because of his children. It didn’t seem to worry Lee, she just called herself Montgomery.’

  ‘Why didn’t you divorce her?’

  ‘The whole thing shook me up – that and too much drink. I had a sort of breakdown. Alison tried to take Andrew away, but he wouldn’t go. He was in his early teens by then and he pulled me through – put up with me, nursed me, generally looked after me. It was quite extraordinary. Gradually we built up something here – a sort of market garden, Andrew’s bees and goats, my horses. We just about manage to break even. He works so hard, that boy, all the hours God sends. But I think he’s happy now. At least, he was...’

  ‘What happened.’

  ‘Lee – she got in touch again, after all those years. She said she wanted a divorce. I thought she was going to marry Montgomery, but he had died. Though he had set her up in an estate agency business – in Taviscombe, of all places! I wondered if my mother knew...’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘people have long memories in places like Taviscombe.’

  ‘Anyway, she was going to marry someone—’

  ‘Charles Richardson,’ I said. ‘He’s an old friend of mine. Do you remember Fred Richardson? He was a bank manager – his son. Charles works for a big multi-national and lives in America. Lee was selling his mother’s house – that’s how they met.’

  ‘A lot of money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The bitch,’ he said violently. ‘She didn’t need the money, then...’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She rang me up and said she had to see me. She wanted a divorce and she wanted a settlement.’

  ‘What sort of settlement?’

  ‘We bought this place in our joint names. I couldn’t possibly raise the money to buy her out. I would have had to sell up, after all the work we’d put in – the one place where Andrew feels safe.’

  He gripped the arms of his chair; then, recovering himself, he said quietly, ‘The awful thing is, she spoke to Andrew first – on the phone.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, just as usual, she couldn’t resist teasing and tormenting him. She said she was coming back, and that it would all be just like it used to be...’

  ‘Oh, no, the poor boy!’

  He gave me a grateful look. ‘It was terrible, he went off for three days – took one of the horses and just went off. I was dreadfully worried, anything might have happened with him in that state.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I don’t know – he came back eventually because of Rajah

  – the horse. There was no feed for him out on the hills. Andrew was starving and exhausted. He’d been sleeping rough, in that awful frost, too. It took the best part of a week to get him back to normal again. It wasn’t just the physical illness, I had to convince him that Lee was never coming back again – no matter what I had to do to prevent it.’

  ‘Did you meet her?’

  ‘Yes, while Andrew was missing – I’d said I’d see her at Wringcliff Bay – miles from anywhere. For some reason she was very anxious not to be seen with me. I was half beside myself with worry, but I had to see her. I had to tell her that she wasn’t going to wreck our lives again.’

  ‘What happened.’

  ‘She said she wanted a divorce as quickly as possible – and the money from the house. She said if she got it she would go right away, but if not she’d have to come back to us ... I said I’d find the money somehow but I needed time. I pleaded with her. I took hold of her arm and tried to make her see how she would be destroying Andrew as well as me if we had to sell up. But s
he wouldn’t listen. She shook my arm off and said that I must do the best I could and she’d be in touch again, very soon. Then she went away.’

  ‘Oh, Jamie...’

  ‘I sat in the Land Rover for a long time trying to think what to do, but all I could think of was Andrew. So I came back here and then, the next day, thank God, Andrew came home, and for about a week I was so busy looking after him that I had barely time to think of anything else. And then, as time went by, and I didn’t hear from Lee, I began to think that she’d changed her mind. I let myself hope, well, you know, the way you do, that she’d changed her mind, or something...’

  ‘Charles – the man she was going to marry – thought she was divorced. I suppose that’s why she didn’t want anyone to see you together.’

  ‘I suppose so ... If only I’d known that she was going to marry a rich man ... there would have been no need...’

  His voice trailed away and he sat staring into the fire. We sat in silence for some time and I too watched, as if mesmerised, the ash falling from the burning logs in the grate. There was a lot I felt I should be asking Jamie, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask questions just then.

  After a while he raised his head and said, in quite a different tone of voice, ‘But what about you? What have you been doing all these years?’

  I told him about my marriage and about Peter’s death, using the form of words I had evolved to spare myself thinking about the hurt, and about Michael and about my ‘work’ and my busy life.

  ‘Poor Sheila,’ he said, and with a perception the old Jamie would never have had, he added, ‘We all build a pearl around the grit, as best we can. It takes a while, but it’s worth it in the end.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am beginning to find that.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Will you stay to lunch? We usually only have a bit of bread and cheese – Andrew’s goat cheese, it’s very good – but you are very welcome.’