He did as well. He said, “Is that what you actually think?”
“How can I think otherwise when this”— a gesture towards the carpet, the fire, where they had lain, what they had done— “becomes only about a baby? Your little swimmers, as you call them, and how they are shaped and how they can move and how I should position myself afterwards to make certain they do what you want them to do. How am I meant to feel, faced with this and with your insistence that I visit some doctor and spread my legs and have instruments thrust into me and whatever else?”
Her voice had risen. She bent, picked up her discarded clothing, began to dress. “All this day,” she said, “I miss you so much. I worry when I phone you and you do not answer. I long for you because it’s you, while— ”
“It’s the same for me. You know that.”
“I know nothing.”
She left him. The kitchen was at the other end of the house, down the long panelled corridor, through the main hall and the dining room. She went there and began their dinner. It was far too early for this, but she wanted something to do with her hands. She was mindlessly chopping onions when Nicholas joined her again. He too was dressed, but he’d buttoned his shirt incorrectly and it hung drunkenly from his shoulders in a way that made her soften towards him. He was, she knew, a lost boy without her, just as she would be lost without him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “The last way on earth I want you to feel is like a baby machine. Or whatever.”
“I am trying,” she said. “The vitamins. All the pills. My temperature. My diet. Whatever will make it easier, possible…” She stopped because she’d begun to weep. She used her arm to brush the tears from her face.
“Allie…” He came to her, turned her to him.
They stood together, in each other’s arms. One minute, two. At last he said, “Just to hold you like this, I feel a kind of awe. D’you know how lucky a man I am? I know it, Allie.”
She nodded and he released her. He cupped her face in his hands and studied it in that way of his that always made her feel that the thousand truths she had hidden from him were there, openly displayed, and he was reading them all. But he made no mention of anything but, “Forgive me?”
“Of course. And I will do as you ask. Just not quite yet. Please, Nicky. Let us wait a few more months.”
He nodded. Then he grinned and said, “Meantime, we’ll give those swimmers some exercise, all right? Firm up their sense of direction?”
She smiled in turn. “We can do that.”
“Good. Now tell me why you’re chopping a mountain of onions, because my eyes are stinging like the devil. What’re you making?”
She observed the pile she’d created. “I have no idea.”
He chuckled. “Mad woman.” He walked over to the day’s post, which was in a neat pile near the kitchen phone. He said, “Did you speak with that bloke about restoring the stained glass?”
She had, she told him. He thought he could match the glass in the other windows in the main hall, but it would take some doing. He could either take the original out for a while or he could bring glass to them, but in either case, it would be expensive. Did Nicky want…?
Their conversation found its way back to normalcy: compromise reached and tension gone. They went on to other matters that concerned them till Nicholas found the phone message that Alatea had forgotten she’d written, so intent had she been on getting past babies, doctors in Lancaster, and what Nicholas wanted and expected of her.
“What’s this, then?” he said, holding up the paper she’d torn from a notebook earlier in the day.
“Ah. You’ve had a call. A television film is being made and a woman phoned. She would like to speak with you about it. She is a… I think she called it a scout of research, something like that.”
He frowned. “What kind of film?”
“Alternative treatments for drug addiction. This is a documentary, she said. Interviews with addicts and doctors and social workers. The involvement of a film crew and someone with them— a celebrity? a presenter? I do not know— to ask the questions. I told her it is not likely you would be interested, but— ”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why’d you tell her that?”
She went for one of her cookbooks. Nicholas had created for her a recessed shelf for them above the cooker hob, and she grabbed one at random, wondering what she could possibly do with three onions chopped into tiny bits. She said, “This sort of thing… this is what feeds the ego, Nicky. We have talked about that, you and I. It cannot be good, because of where it leads. Because of all the things you must guard against.”
“Right. Right. But it’s not about me, Allie.” He looked again at the paper he held. “Where’s she from? Where’re the filmmakers from?”
“I did not ask. I did not think…” She looked at the cover of the cookbook she was holding. She gathered her thoughts, considered her approach. She said, “Nicky, you must take care with this sort of thing. You always said that your part is quiet. Behind the scenes. This is best.”
“Raising money to keep the project going is best,” he countered. “This could be what we need to make that happen.”
“And when it does not?”
“Why d’you say that?”
“The other thing… that newspaperman who was here so many times… what came of that? Nothing. And all the hours you spent with him, the talking, the walking round, the working at the pele tower with him, and what then? More nothing. He promises a story and what comes of his promise? Nothing. I do not wish to see the disappointment in your face,” she told him. Because of where it might lead was what he would add in his own head. But that could not be helped.
His expression changed, but not to hardness. Rather, he seemed to glow at her and the source of the glow was his love. He said, “Darling Allie, you’re not to worry. I do know what’s at risk for me every day.” He picked up the phone but didn’t punch in the number. “This isn’t about ego. This is about saving lives, like mine was saved.”
“You always have claimed I saved your life.”
“No,” he replied. “You made it worth living. I’d like to see what this is about”— he gestured with the phone— “but I won’t do it without your agreement.”
She saw no other way. He was asking very little. After all that he had given to her, there seemed no course available but to say, “All right, then, Nicky. If you will have a care.”
“Brilliant,” he replied. He looked at the paper and punched in the number. As he did so, he said to Alatea, “What’s the surname, Allie? I can’t read your writing.”
She came to look over his shoulder at what she’d written. “St. James,” she said.
GREAT URSWICK
CUMBRIA
When the gates of Margaret Fox School opened, Manette Fairclough McGhie sighed in relief. She’d thought there was a very good chance that Niamh Cresswell wouldn’t have phoned the school to inform them that her son would be fetched on this day by someone not on the previously approved list. It would have been exactly like Niamh to have done so. Niamh knew that Manette had been close to Ian, which in Niamh’s eyes made Manette a post-divorce enemy. But it seemed that Ian’s former wife had decided that the convenience of having an additional someone willing to fetch her son outweighed her need to avenge all putative sins committed against her. She’d said, “I’ll let Gracie know. She’ll be upset if Tim doesn’t show up at his regular time,” and this made Manette feel that she ought to be taking Gracie as well as Tim, but it was Tim she wanted to see today, Tim whose face at his father’s funeral still haunted Manette’s nights. This would be her tenth attempt to get through to her cousin Ian’s son. She’d tried at the reception immediately following the funeral. She’d tried with phone calls. She’d tried by e-mail. And now she was going for the direct approach. Tim could hardly avoid her if she had him in the car.