Homecomings Read online

  Deep down, though, he’s wondering about Ned and Hugo, about how to play it. He can tell that Dossie is very fond of them and he’s interested to see if she’s even more keen on Hugo than she’s letting on. Oddly, he feels quite protective about her; he doesn’t want her to get hurt.

  Then Ned and Hugo arrive and it all kicks off. Adam’s taken aback by Hugo’s warmth and naturalness, though when he meets Ned the old wariness returns. The older man’s military bearing, the straight keen gaze and firm handshake, and Adam’s a boy again, waiting to be asked how he’s doing, what he’s achieved, what his prospects are. But then Ned smiles at him and makes some friendly, joking remark about Dossie’s cooking and the moment passes.

  And now Adam sits at the end of the long table, furthest from the Aga, where Pa used to sit, and raises his glass to them and Dossie beams at him as they tuck into her delicious fish pie. Adam takes a sip of the sauvignon blanc and marvels at this extraordinary weekend that he’s having. His life has turned on its head; he feels as if he’s stepped through the looking-glass and everything is a different way round. Yet he can’t get over the truth that it’s because his parents have died that he’s feeling this new affirmation, of being slowly and painfully unfrozen, and his guilt threatens his resurrection.

  He smiles quickly at Ned, who is watching him with a quizzical gaze, and concentrates on the conversation between Hugo and Dossie.

  ‘Ah,’ Hugo is saying, ‘but you’ve forgotten WRM.’

  Dossie frowns, puzzled. ‘WRM?’

  Hugo sighs, shakes his head. ‘What Really Matters. Do keep up, darling,’ he says, and they both burst out laughing.

  Ned grins at Adam. ‘Take no notice of them,’ he says. ‘It’s rather like being a member of the Secret Seven. You have to know the codes and the passwords.’

  Adam laughs, too, and his pleasure expands, filling him with warmth. He can see why Dossie likes these two, though he can also see that her affection for Hugo is merely friendship, on her side at least. He’s not quite so sure about Hugo. He takes a deep breath, stretches out his legs cautiously and then realizes that he’s acting out of habit, back in the past, afraid of kicking one of the dogs. He is struck anew by the awareness of how hard this must be for Dossie: Pa and Mo gone, Clem remarried, no dogs. He looks at her as she stands to serve more of the fish pie, smiling at something Ned is saying, and he experiences this new and unsettling feeling of compassion. He’d had no idea that coming back to life was so confusing; so exhilarating.

  From time to time Dossie glances at Adam, fearful that he will feel ill at ease, become withdrawn, but miraculously he appears perfectly relaxed. He’s refilling Ned’s wine glass, listening to a story Ned is telling him about a naval incident, and as he catches her eye Adam sends her a tiny wink of reassurance as if he’s guessed that she might be worrying about him.

  This change in her brother is nothing short of miraculous to Dossie, though she is sad that it has taken so much pain for him to reveal himself to her. They talked again last night about school, about his fear of rejection and disapproval, his resentment at what he saw as rejection by his parents. She listened to him, trying for the first time to put herself in his place, remembering that both Mo and Pa were tough, critical, products of an earlier age when self-control was absolute and you played up and played the game, even if you didn’t quite know what the game was or the rules involved. Because she showed all these qualities when Mike died, because she grafted, Mo and Pa supported her, approved of her, and it’s difficult for her to forget all that or that she was angry with Adam herself on quite a few occasions when he seemed selfish and uncaring.

  ‘We’re all of us damaged in one way or another,’ she said last night, ‘and none of us knows which way it might take us. We have to cope the best we can.’

  She was afraid to say too much, nervous about getting it wrong and spoiling this new rapport between them. Now, she wants nothing more than that Adam should feel at home here, as he never could when their parents were alive, and what could be better than this: to see him sitting there at the table, playing host to her friends? And how well he is doing it, listening to Ned, joshing with Hugo, as if he’s known them for ever.

  Dossie is beginning to believe, to hope, that there will be few difficulties later with Clem and Tilly and Jakey. She guesses that Adam needs to feel a member of their small family unit and will make every effort to play his part. But can it last or will some unguarded remark, some memory, throw him back into his old self?

  She finishes piling more fish pie on to Ned’s plate and sits down again. A thought crosses her mind.

  ‘Where are the dogs?’ she asks Hugo.

  ‘We left them at home,’ he answers. ‘They’re fine.’

  ‘You should have brought them,’ she says sadly. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘Next time.’ He smiles at her. ‘Assuming there will be one?’

  ‘I hope there will be,’ says Ned promptly. ‘The trouble is I can’t make the excuse that we never have food like this at home now that Dossie fills the freezer for us.’

  ‘So if you do a return match and ask us back,’ says Adam, smiling at the older man, pretending dismay, ‘does it mean that we still get Dossie’s cooking?’

  And everyone laughs.

  Ned is aware of currents ebbing and flowing around him. He feels Dossie’s tension and he was aware of that brief but unmistakable flinch when he shook Adam’s hand. He wonders what the younger man was seeing in that moment. A greater authority, a reminder of a discipline he resented? Ned is very used to such reactions after thirty years at sea, and he also noticed the flash of hostility in Adam’s eyes, as if he were preparing himself for battle, though it was over in a moment. Nevertheless, Ned wonders what was at the root of it.

  He finishes his pie, raises his glass to Dossie in appreciation, and sees the resemblance to her brother as she smiles back at him. When Adam and Hugo begin to talk about London – recent exhibitions, films, concerts – Ned notices, too, that Dossie is clearly unaware of her brother’s interests in the arts. She listens, watching Adam’s face, as if she is searching for something she has been missing and is only just beginning to learn and understand.

  ‘Of course you must come to us for lunch or for supper,’ Hugo is saying. ‘When do you go back to London, Adam?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ Adam answers, rather regretfully.

  ‘But you were saying that you have some leave due?’ Dossie reminds him, almost eagerly.

  Adam raises his eyebrows, as if he is surprised and touched that she should remember it.

  ‘Yes.’ He hesitates. ‘Well, yes I have.’

  It’s not as if he is unwilling to commit himself, thinks Ned, watching him, but rather as if he can’t quite believe that he’ll be welcome here. But even on his short acquaintance with Dossie this is almost too bizarre for Ned to contemplate and once again he wonders what has gone before.

  ‘Excellent,’ says Hugo. ‘We can make a date. You can meet Prune.’

  ‘And the dogs,’ adds Dossie. ‘You’ll love the dogs, Adam.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Adam pretends to groan. ‘Don’t get started on dogs.’

  And the conversation immediately turns on whether Dossie should have a dog and, if so, which breed, puppy or rescue, and finishes with the delightful suggestion that they should all meet at The Chough next day for Sunday lunch before Adam heads back to London.

  Ned finishes his wine with satisfaction. It’s being a very good day, and lunch at The Chough tomorrow will round the weekend off perfectly.

  Lucy, sitting in the corner with her friends, sees Hugo come into the pub and wonders whether to speak to him. She hesitates. It’s just a tad embarrassing that she’s forgotten to mention him to Mum, and anyway, he seems to be with quite a group of people so perhaps it’s best just to keep quiet.

  She sits back a little, so that she is half hidden by one of her companions, and gets on with her lunch. It’s becoming a bit of a habit, eating out while t
he kitchen at the cottage is being disassembled, and she’s enjoying herself. It’ll be good, though, to get home to Geneva and to be with Tom again. For the last few weeks it’s been a bit like being a kid, moving round with Dad on different film locations, or staying in Granny’s flat in London, where there were always random people dropping by, sleeping on cushions or in a sleeping bag on the floor if she had friends stopping over. There was always something going on, a bit of a party.

  It’s like that at the cottage at the moment, but Dan is loving every moment of it and luckily the beds have arrived at last, so Mum will have somewhere to sleep when she comes down next week. Instinctively Lucy glances across to the table by the inglenook but Hugo is sitting with his back to her, talking to a woman with silvery blonde hair and a man who looks as if he might be her brother. There’s a much younger girl with them, and an older man.

  Lucy settles back again. She won’t disturb Hugo but she will definitely tell Mum about him. After all, she’ll be here on Tuesday and they might want to get together. It’ll be nice for her to meet an old friend, not that she’s short of friends, but even so …

  It can’t always have been easy for Mum at the end, once Dad stopped getting so many good parts and started drinking too much. She never had any kind of career herself, always occupied with Dad, and then with Granny, who worked until she died.

  And, of course, thinks Lucy, looking after me. Amongst all that boho chaos Mum was always there for me.

  She glances rather guiltily at Dan. The nanny is already all lined up for when Lucy starts work full time in the autumn. There will be no Mummy to meet Dan from school, no Granny to be dropped off with in an emergency, but that’s the way life is now. It is what it is. Danny will be fine; just fine. And meanwhile there’s the cottage in Rock for wonderful holidays. He’ll learn to surf and walk the cliffs, and the memories will stay with him all his life; just like hers are of theatres and film studios and Granny’s flat off the King’s Road.

  Her group are getting ready to leave. She glances again at Hugo but he and his friends are all tucking into the roast beef, talking and laughing together, so that Lucy and Dan are able to slip by unnoticed. Outside, however, Lucy takes out her phone and sends a text:

  Hi Mum. Just met an old friend of yours called Hugo. Says you knew each other in Bristol back in the day. All great here. See you soon. Love from us both. xx

  There. That’s done and everything is fine. Just fine.

  The Chough is very busy and Hugo is enjoying himself talking to Adam, discovering all sorts of things about this man who is Dossie’s brother. Hugo wasn’t prepared for Adam’s passion for film, for art, and his questions about Hugo’s work are intelligent. He’s seen some of Hugo’s documentaries and is fascinated by the people he has interviewed and worked with. His reading is extensive, to the extent that Hugo suspects that Adam has never really fulfilled his ambitions. He suggests this gently, almost jokingly, but Adam agrees very readily.

  ‘I have to say,’ he answers, ‘that this isn’t quite where I saw myself at this age, but to be honest, back then, I was just really grateful to get into a top London agency. I didn’t do that well at school and I wouldn’t have got to a first-rate university. I couldn’t cope with my father going on about it. You know? Those conversational pin-pricks? “Well, we can’t all go to Cambridge.” Or, “So remind me. Where’s Reading again?” Not really meaning it, of course, but that, “Oh, come on. Can’t you take a joke?” thing that makes you feel that not only are you a failure but that you haven’t got a sense of humour either.’

  Adam speaks lightly, almost dismissively, about the past, but Hugo can see that there is real, hidden damage here. He is aware that Ned, Prune and Dossie are deep in conversation and he wonders how to react to this unexpected confidence. He wants to show sympathy, to draw parallels with his own aloof, successful barrister father, who regarded the BBC as some kind of left-wing kindergarten for underachieving adults and hoped that Hugo would go into the Foreign Office.

  All the while, however, he is aware of Dossie and wondering at what point she might suddenly take part in the conversation. Hugo knows how fond she was of her father and he fears this could be embarrassing and awkward.

  ‘Next time I’m in London,’ he says to Adam, ‘I’ll take you in and introduce you around,’ and Adam looks pleased.

  Then Ben arrives to take their order for pudding, and the difficult moment passes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EMILIA TURNS, STRUGGLES into consciousness, disturbed by loud harsh cries. She raises herself and then falls back on her pillow with a smile: it’s the gulls wheeling over the estuary, screaming to each other as they swoop above the cottage. She lies still, readjusting to her surroundings, remembering that she’s here in Rock, in Lucy’s spare bedroom. She raises her arm so as to peer at her watch and groans: twenty past five. Not even Danny will be awake at twenty past five, but she knows that she won’t be able to go back to sleep now, not even if she begins silently to recite one of the longer speeches from her mother’s Shakespearean repertoire, which has always been a good method for inducing sleep. She was invaluable when it came to listening to Mama’s lines: prompting her when necessary, which wasn’t often, or simply reading the other part, quietly, expressionlessly, so that Mama knew her cues.

  Well, there’s no Mama now, no Papa off to rehearsals or to a concert; no Nigel dashing away to Elstree or a film location. She’s alone in London, whilst Lucy and Tom and darling Danny are living in Geneva. Emilia shifts, rolls on to her side. She misses them all and especially she misses the magical world of the theatre; the emotional backstage scenes, the rows and the bitching, the extravagant making up afterwards, and the general madness of it all. Dear old Mama had kept going until she’d dropped down quite suddenly between Acts One and Two of The Importance of Being Earnest, and now it is as if life has been put on hold. It’s rather colourless and dreary, and it’s a relief to come down here, to be with Lucy and Danny before they go back to Geneva and she stays on to oversee the installation of the new kitchen.

  She feels restless, something nagging slightly at the back of her mind, and she sits up, swings her legs out of bed and looks around. The room is not yet fully furnished. There’s not too much spare cash and, for the moment, Emilia is making do with the bed, which is very comfortable, a small, upright, rush-seated chair and a rather nice, if battered, old pine chest that Lucy found in a second-hand shop, which has a mirror propped on top of it.

  Emilia hesitates, sitting on the edge of the bed. She can’t risk waking Lucy and Danny by having a shower but she feels a desire to be outside, to be walking. Quickly she stands up and drags on the clothes she discarded yesterday, peers into the mirror and brushes her tangled hair, and then, very cautiously, she opens her bedroom door and stands listening. There is no sound. Quietly, oh so quietly, she crosses the landing and creeps down the stairs, praying that no boards will creak.

  She longs for coffee but the requirement to be outside is more imperative than her need for caffeine, so she takes Lucy’s fleecy jacket from its hook, lets herself out of the front door and closes it gently behind her. There is no anxiety in her mind about leaving it unlocked. This is Rock; it is half past five in the morning and there is nobody around. Emilia walks down to the beach, her hands in the pockets of the jacket. She feels dissatisfied, restless. It’s odd how rootless she feels since Mama died. Even after Nigel died there was still Mama’s work, her friends, her routines. There remained that aura that surrounded her mother, which always included Emilia: the recognition wherever Mama went, that touch of glamour, the excited whispers, of having attention focused on her, which spilled out and included whomever was with her. Her mother had the talent to make people believe that she cared about them. She remembered the faces of those who had worked for her, the names of their children and their dogs.

  ‘Hardly rocket science for an actress, darling, is it?’ she’d murmur sotto voce to Emilia after some flattered, delighted fan or stage
hand remarked on her wonderful memory, and Emilia would want to choke on her suppressed laughter. It was the same with Nigel in the glory days. How good he was at it: the deprecating smile in a restaurant when there was a little fluttering sound of applause as they were shown to their table; the little wave of the hand to some adoring fan smiling hopefully at him in the street.

  Emilia stands looking across the estuary at the boats at their moorings, keel to keel with their reflections.

  The trouble is, she thinks, it’s like a drug. This need to be the centre of attention, not caring what people think whilst pretending that you love them. What shall I do without it?

  There’s another thought at the back of her mind, which she doesn’t want to acknowledge: a sense of guilt and uneasiness that has begun to surface recently, ever since she got Lucy’s text saying that she’d met Hugo. It knocked her off balance, flung her back to a past she didn’t want to think about. She digs her hands more deeply into her pockets whilst memories nibble at her reluctant consciousness: Hugo in Bristol, taking her to concerts, to parties, to the zoo up on the Downs.

  Mama was playing in a Shakespeare season at the Old Vic; Gertrude, Lady Macbeth. Hugo came regularly to the performances and Emilia first met him backstage with a friend who knew one of the young actors in the company. They all went out for coffee and it was rather sweet to see how stage-struck, how star-struck Hugo was. He was so simple, so open and thoroughly nice – and very attractive. He thought her mother was wonderful, and impressed that her father was principal flautist in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

  ‘I think he’s in love with all of us at once,’ Mama said, when she met him after a matinée. ‘Do be kind to him, darling Milly.’ And she was kind to him, enjoyed his company, made him happy, and, just occasionally, wondered if they might have a future together – until Jamie came on the scene.