‘Mine will be more than adequate for us both. As for driving to the station, we have our own transport now.’
‘All right, darling, I won’t say anything more. I know times have changed, since the war especially. And I don’t want to lose you, Herbert.’
He envied her directness. ‘You’ll never do that, and you know it.’
‘You’re all I’ve got.’
True it was, and the circle had come around, stopped spinning and closed. He didn’t really know how to feel about it.
Deborah’s grey Mini nosed its way up the drive. He opened the door. ‘Glad you found the place.’
Gentle auburn waves came out from her parting, telling him she’d been to the hairdresser’s. White blouse and brown Liberty’s scarf at the neck, beige skirt and laced brown shoes were right for meeting his mother. ‘You look wonderful, darling. Let’s go this way.’
‘You sounded so mysterious on the phone. But what is all this about anyway?’
He led her on a slow circuit around the house. ‘I want you to meet my mother, and stay with us for a few days.’
‘Your mother? You said she was dead.’ If not, maybe she works here, and he was ashamed of it. There was no sign of Bert in him today, though he could turn it on and off like a tap. ‘Is she the housekeeper?’
He wondered how long it had been since a genuine loud laugh had ascended over the grounds. ‘Good Lord, no! We own the place.’
She stopped, and looked at him. ‘You said something on the phone about not being who you were supposed to be. Well, I’d gathered that much already. I’d been waiting for you to tell me for weeks,’ though she hadn’t felt it could be as important as what seemed on its way.
‘It was difficult,’ he said, passing the neglected old summerhouse. ‘I really had to hang on until now. If I’d told you cold you might have thought it just another of my impersonations. Dominic knew, almost from the beginning. He never gave me away, though he threatened to. We went to school together.’
She was pale with loss, and chagrin, showing a new Deborah. ‘I can’t believe any of this.’
‘I ran away from school when I was seventeen, went to Nottingham and worked in a factory. It was the best way to hide. After the army I drifted back there, and turned into a workman, you might say.’
‘Well, I suppose someone like you might say anything.’
There was nothing but to go on remorselessly. ‘I stayed at the factory. I don’t know why, but the years rolled by. I wrote the novel to keep myself sane. And that’s it. You know it now.’
The wind was warm, but she felt cold. He kissed her, and she pushed him away. ‘It’s just not feasible.’
‘I hoped it wouldn’t hurt you when I told you.’
‘Hurt?’ He was obviously telling the truth. ‘I’m bloody blasted. And this is your family home?’
Not wanting to feel a worm, he became blasé. ‘Yes. I thought you’d be pleased. Thurgarton-Strang is my real name.’
She’d heard the name but couldn’t think where, picked a flower from the clematis, crushed it and let the petals drop. ‘I didn’t fall in love with a liar.’
‘I never lied. I became someone else, but I wasn’t so mean and despicable as that.’ The chariot was weaving out of control, and he felt himself fighting for his life. ‘I just did what I had to do, otherwise I’d probably have killed myself. I’ve been thinking about it. I had to become two people so as to be even one. As far as I know I’ve harmed no one, but I’m more than glad to give up all the Bert Gedling stuff. I only hoped it wouldn’t make any difference to our relationship when I did. Maybe I put it off because I thought it might, out of funk. No, not that, either. I just waited, and let the right time come along.’
‘Your time, not mine.’
‘Well, there never was any right time.’ How could there be? He saw a tear in her left eye, found it touching and gratifying, if not promising. She wiped it away angrily. He cleaned a white chair by the edge of the lawn with his handkerchief. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
A touch of Gedling there. Or was it? He forgot the ‘duck’. ‘Damn you,’ she cried. ‘I have to get used to you all over again.’ She had noticed the obituary of Brigadier-General Thurgarton-Strang in the office Times last week, and now she knew who he was. Bert Gedling’s father. It was almost laughable.
‘Not entirely, I hope. There was a lot of me in Bert Gedling, as you’ll probably find out. One person’s very much like another, after all, when you rub the paint off.’ Which he was sure she would be able to do, though he would take care always to be one move ahead.
She had speculated on whether his father had been a postman, or a shoemaker, or a plumber — he’d never given a straight answer — but to prophesy this had been beyond sensible reach. From a mixture of self-disgust and pique she thought it might not be difficult to stop feeling superior to him, which she had done in some ways. It was unjust that he’d been responsible for that. She supposed her father would be happy to meet the present version of whoever he was, but could she trust Herbert when, as he said (and she felt it was true) there was so much of Bert Gedling in him whether he had played the role or not? Thoughts rushed through her mind. Anyone from his class who had acted the workman for so long was bound to be unpredictable for the rest of his life, and even if he hadn’t been a workman he would still have been someone to be wary of.
‘All I know’, he was saying, and she couldn’t disbelieve him, ‘is that “love is not love which alters when it alteration finds”. Or it shouldn’t be.’
‘You call that alteration?’
The chariot needed final and expert guidance at the reins, and couldn’t be allowed to break up. He stroked her hair, ran a finger over her lips, and felt the wet grass through the knees of his trousers. ‘It’s the best I can do. I love you. That’s all I’m trying to say. You’re the love of my life, and we’re made for each other. I knew it from the moment I saw you.’
Maybe getting to know the rest of him would be more interesting than putting up with the single phenomenon of Bert Gedling, and she wasn’t the sort of girl to eschew an adventure. ‘And I certainly love you,’ she said, contemptuous of all caution.
He stood up. ‘Ah! Here’s my mother, coming from the garden. And she’s carrying the vegetables.’
Deborah was also glad of a reason to stand. ‘She looks as if she needs some help.’
Back in London, he would take down the picture of Phoebus Apollo and put it in the dustbin. ‘Yes, she is rather like Ceres laden with abundance.’
The old folks had been assiduous in doing what they could to control the grounds and garden, which were ruinous and overgrown. A man from the village had helped, but he had died six months ago, and no one else was forthcoming.
‘He was a thieving old devil,’ Maud said. ‘He took most of our tools, over the years. I expect his son’s using them now. But you can see why we didn’t say anything. It was too much work for Hugh. I do want to keep up the summerhouse, though. He loved to sit there and drink his whisky in the evening.’
Deborah said he ought to do something about it, so Herbert paced the large lawn, wondering where to start. A tree overhung the summerhouse, coating the reinforced glass roof with leaves and seeds. His mother was right: if it wasn’t pruned the force of vegetation would crack the guttering, and the place would crumble.
He fetched a ladder from the garage, a handsaw and a pair of the strongest clippers, wondering where to start on the tangle of growth. Roll up your sleeves, to begin with, and put on an old cap of your father’s. That done, he attacked the tree’s outriders methodically, going round and round and slowly closing in, as if reducing the sinews of a besieged fortress. The trunk was too close to the wall of the summerhouse to get the ladder between, but he erected a platform of wooden boxes and sawed through overhanging branches.