Alison Giles - Meadowland

Somehow it didn’t surprise me at all that it was a familiar figure who clambered out across the passenger seat of the Volvo. Father, I reflected later, could be said to have had his way this time too. There was no opting out of this scene.

Still clutching the wheel, engine running, I watched as Andrew peered across the bonnet of his car at the offside wing. I wondered, guiltily, how much damage had been done.

He shrugged, then turned and walked unhurriedly towards me. ‘Could be worse,’ he announced. He bent to peer in. ‘Good God, it’s you.’ His eyebrows lifted, and he laughed. ‘You’re an absolute menace with this thing, aren’t you?’ He patted the roof just above my head.

I shifted in my seat. ‘I’m terribly sorry …’

The grin was still there. ‘Don’t worry. I doubt there’s anything a bit of touch-up can’t put right. In any case, I was probably driving too fast.’

‘Even so …’ I reached for my bag, intent on producing insurance documents.

He cut across. ‘Been to see Flora, have you?’

‘No.’ I kept my tone carefully neutral. I produced my wallet, opened it and took out the certificate. ‘You’ll want to make a note of this.’

‘I doubt it. Here, let me get the thing off the road-’ he straightened up – ‘and then we can consider.’

He bounded across to his car, climbed in and reversed. Branches sprang back into place; uprooted strands of grass clung to his front wheels. He steered the car efficiently on to the rough beside the Astra and crunched up the handbrake.

I got out and went to meet him. Together we surveyed scratches to the paintwork and an ugly three-inch-long dent just behind the headlight. I ran my hand over it. ‘Soon knock that out,’ said Andrew.

‘Are you sure?’ I looked at him uncertainly. He stood there, as relaxed in a suit by the side of the road as in a pullover lounging in Flora’s kitchen.

‘It’s honestly not worth making a thing about. Can we drop it?’

I gave in – gracefully, I hoped. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But I owe you.’

‘Good. Then come back and have a cup of tea.’ He waved his arm towards a boxful of files on the back seat of the car. ‘Help me put off the evil moment when I have to start wading through all those.’

‘My curiosity,’ said Andrew, leaning back and crossing his legs, ‘is getting the better of me. If you didn’t come to see Flora …?’

We were sitting in his garden, the sun throwing a patchwork of light through the branches of a horse-chestnut on to our afternoon-tea scene. It was all very Rupert Brooke somehow – fine china set out on a silver tray, garden trestle and chairs casually occupying an oasis of close-mown grass bounded by flower-beds and an orchard.

I’d had time, as I followed the Volvo along the route I’d taken in February, to prepare myself for the inevitable question. By the time we reached the T-junction, turning right rather than left this time, I’d decided to be honest. More or less.

I explained my visit to the hotel; and the start of my drive back to London. ‘I suddenly saw the sign,’ I said. ‘It was just one of those spur-of-the-moment things.’

‘But you didn’t go to Wood Edge?’

‘No. Where you “found” me –’ I grimaced at the euphemism – ‘was as far as I’d gone. I was turning to go back.’

‘Why?’

I shrugged and reached towards the table. ‘May I help myself to a biscuit?’

‘Sorry.’ He leaned forward and passed the plate. I selected a Bourbon. Andrew picked out one with a dollop of jam at its centre. ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, pausing to swallow, ‘you probably wouldn’t have found her at home anyway. I’ve an idea this is her week for going to see Donald.’

‘Donald?’

He threw his last piece of biscuit to a blackbird that had been eyeing him hopefully, and watched as it scooped the titbit up and flew off. Then he glanced across at me. ‘Her brother.’

‘Oh.’

In the silence that followed I smoothed my skirt and tried not to consider that I could, and should, have been halfway back to London by now. Andrew, sitting sideways on to me, appeared totally at ease. He’d taken off his jacket and tie as soon as we arrived. One arm was flung over the back of the garden chair; with the other hand he balanced his cup and saucer on his thigh.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, bringing myself back to the moment, ‘that I had any idea of calling on her anyway. I think I might have gone up to the meadow. The one above the village. You know, the one at the end of the track.’

‘Where I nearly ran you down.’

I smiled. ‘Hardly. But yes, that one.’

Andrew put his cup down and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He passed me one. I held the end to the flame as he flicked the lighter. Settling back, I watched the fronds of smoke rise and waft gently towards the house.

It had, I remembered Flora saying, been built as a dower house. Not that long ago, maybe seventy years or so by the look of it; but long enough for the bricks to have mellowed to a deep golden grey, to unstripped parts of which ivy clung; like old memories, I thought. Inside, as Andrew had proudly shown me when we arrived, the place had been totally redecorated and the kitchen gutted and fitted with modern units. ‘Ginny says,’ Andrew had laughed, ‘that if she’s to be deprived of a big kitchen, at least she’ll have an efficient one.’

I remembered Flora’s kitchen. And Andrew in it.

‘Did Flora give you the painting?’ His voice, against the stillness of the summer air, startled me.

I swivelled my attention back. We both knew which one he meant. I pictured it, still propped at the back of the hall cupboard; thrust there in discomfort that first evening back at the flat. ‘Yes, she did.’

‘I thought she might.’

I brushed a leaf from my skirt and squinted up at the sky. ‘So Flora has a brother?’ I said eventually.

Andrew accepted the change of subject smoothly. ‘She doesn’t talk about him much,’ he said.

I took a sip of tea and raised my eyebrows politely.

‘Visits him every month, though. He’s in some sort of a home in Sussex.’

‘Really’

‘Caught by a sniper in Malaya. Brain damage. That’s about all I know.’

‘And he’s been like that for … what … forty years?’

‘Coming up for. He was there towards the end of it all, I think.’ Andrew took a final pull on his cigarette. ‘Almost died twelve or so years ago. Pity he didn’t, poor fellow.’ He leaned sideways and pressed the butt into the flower-bed, sweeping the earth over it. Sitting up again, he looked across at me. ‘That was how Flora and your father met, of course.’

I stared. ‘Go on.’

‘You don’t know this?’

‘I don’t really know anything.’

I flinched slightly under his gaze as he breathed in and paused.

‘They phoned through to the Horse and Dragon. Typical Flora. Wouldn’t have a telephone then – and still won’t. Just one of her quirks,’ he explained in response to my raised eyebrow. ‘Making some sort of statement about her space, I guess. Anyway –’ he returned to his tale – ‘your father happened to be downing a half of Guinness at the time, grasped the situation and, having driven round to Wood Edge with the message, offered to drive her over.’

‘All the way to Sussex!’ I shot upright.

Andrew surveyed me calmly. ‘I wasn’t there so I can’t recount the tale blow by blow. But yes, he certainly – so I understand – ended up taking her the whole way.’

‘And, I suppose, held her hand through it all.’

‘He was that sort of man.’

I subsided. ‘But that,’ I said after a moment or two, ‘doesn’t excuse his … getting involved with her.’