‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure.’
He drove down into the woods again and after about a quarter of a mile I saw the house to our right in a clearing of old trees, a fenced paddock in front, with the fir plantation rising immediately behind it.
It was set back about a hundred yards above the road, with a pathway leading up to it between two rows of crab-apple trees; a long low converted Cotswold barn, covered at one end with a brilliant, coppery red virginia creeper, with windows all along its length, a wooden terrace giving out over the town and a small lawn at one end where the front door was with a lot of roses and glowing autumn shrubs bordering what I could see of the turf. A drift of grey smoke rose from some hidden, smouldering fire at the far end of the lawn, barely moving against the late sky, pale blue above the horizon of firs. And now, with the noise of our arrival, an extraordinary cackling broke out in the orchard and paddock which surrounded the house and I saw a flock of handsome plump, white geese, suddenly roused and strident, craning their necks and tilting their beaks in outrage, looking at us with deeply offended eyes, complaining bitterly at our intrusion in a long rising symphony of alarm.
I got out of the car and helped with my luggage, and I was shaking now and my hands were trembling as I paid the man. He offered to help me up the steep pathway but I said no. And he turned in the garageway and drove off back along the dusty road, the exhaust dying, the smell of burnt petrol rising in the still air.
And then I heard the cries that I had not wanted to hear — the beginning of what for another man would have been the first notes in a singing homecoming — the first words, in happier circumstances, that begin every book of family reunion.
‘Daddy! Daddy! It’s Daddy — he’s here, Daddy!’
The twins were standing at the top of the pathway, undecided for a moment, in their brown corduroy dungarees I remembered from upstate New York, topped off with big round faces and fair-fringed, rakish hair. Then seeing my dark suit for the first time, they both moved at once, quickly, anxiously, tumbling down the shallow rough steps to meet me. And I moved towards them.
I suppose they were about five yards away from me before they realised I wasn’t their father, merely the image of him. But they didn’t really stop. They paused for an instant in their rush, and looked at me quizzically, fiddling with their thumbs, suddenly sucking them. Then they recognised me as the bedtime story man from that weekend upstate, for they came on quite happily, one of them saying ‘Have you brought another Babar Book?’ And the other said, ‘Yes — have you?’ And now they were both very close, looking up at me — bronzed, wide American faces, eyes as clear as water, noses turned up, and one of them — I couldn’t tell which — touched my suit. ‘You’re in Daddy’s clothes, aren’t you?’ she said knowingly, stroking the cuff. ‘They’re fine aren’t they?’ She smiled, looking all over me now. ‘And his tie, and his shoes, and his bags,’ she went on in wondrous appraisal. ‘And you’ve got his ring as well!’ She was particularly intrigued by this fact, touching the brassy metal very delicately. And then the other child looked at me, much more seriously and questioningly, unable for a moment to make any sense of this mysterious transformation. And then, finding the answer she needed, she turned to her sister.
‘He isn’t Daddy. But he is. He’s another Daddy. Our Daddy must be wearing his clothes. Don’t you see?’ And she looked behind me, peering between the crab-apple trees. ‘He’s hiding some place, I bet. We’re going to have a game.’
‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘That’s it. But he’s not here just yet. I came first to start it off.’
And with this answer they were quite happy, and they jumped up at me and clutched at my arms. And I lifted them off the ground, the two of them together, riding one on each arm, and I held them to me and bounced them a little. And then Helen appeared at the top of the pathway, without recognising who it was, I think, for my face was hidden by the movements of the children. I left my luggage where it was and walked up towards her.
There are some encounters which are not meetings in the accepted sense at all, in which the exchange of every accepted emotion in the event — surprise, distaste, interest, happiness — never takes place: which are not meetings but speechless mysteries in which the two people involved — so shocked, so instantly changed, their expectations so completely altered — lose touch utterly with present time or concern, and where they drift forwards and backwards aimlessly through the whole life of their minds, looking for a touchstone, a signal from reality, which will return them to some understanding, immediacy, sanity.
And for the first few minutes this is what happened between Helen and me. We behaved in a trance of awful formality.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello. How are you?’
Apart from this we were speechless, looking at each other only with the vaguest interest, unfocused, unconcerned, the twins running round us shouting eagerly.
She had been gardening or raking, with rubber gloves on, rusty cord jeans and a white Arran knit pullover spotted with leaves and mould. She took the gloves off and brushed herself down and pushed her dark hair back behind her ears, her face pale in the light, all its questing incisiveness gone. And we just stood there on the paved terrace with aubretia growing out between the cracks, between the lawn and the small church-like porch and double hall-door, the sun low now, but still brilliant away to the west over the town, with a pale blue sky running down towards the horizon, melting into pink and then gold. I looked round at the wide view, and frowned and was almost pompous when I spoke to her.
‘It really is a splendid place you’ve got here,’ I said, like an auctioneer. ‘Marvellous, How did you get it?’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ She looked over the town, pursing her lips, frowning herself now, as if trying to remember something. Then, after a long pause: ‘Oh, how did we get it? Yes — well, they told us about it. Someone — Mr Nichols in the housing section at Oakley Park. He wrote to Guy about it in New York.’
She turned now and began to look at me clearly for the first time, as if the mention of Guy’s name had given her a first clue to present reality. She looked at me with an amazed intensity, an expression that carried no other emotion. Something started to burn behind the skin of her face, a gradually rising heat in her skull which put a fire in her eyes, coloured her cheeks, and seemed to fill out her whole being with flame, with a questioning but wordless force. So that I said, feeling she was accusing me unjustly and wishing to retaliate, ‘I thought you might have met me at the station.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, almost apologetic. ‘I’ve never met Guy at stations or airports. It was something we agreed on years ago. You know — not unless I had to. I’m very bad at comings and goings like that.’
And there was a tinge of exclusion then — even then: one among a thousand small things between them which I knew nothing about: all the minutiae of their life together, the details they had shared without enmity, the little agreements which at one time they had made with so easy an acceptance and understanding.
She had a trug with her on the ground full of freshly picked lavender and another basket full of crab apples. I picked them up and sniffed at them both; the first sweet and dry, the other moist and tart.
‘I was getting bunches for the bedroom,’ she said. ‘And Mrs Grace is going to make some crab-apple jelly with me.’
‘Who?’
‘The lady we have helping.’
‘Oh. I’ll get my bags.’
They were half-way down the pathway and as I turned to get them I saw someone in the shadow of the hall beyond the porch.