Fear In The Sunlight Part 5

'I'm surprised you go so often,' Josephine said. 'Now that the screen is the medium of the future.'

'Ah, you read that interview.' Alma looked approvingly at her, and conceded a smile. 'Hitch and I have both been going to the theatre since we were children, and it's a very hard habit to break once it's in your blood. He has a professional interest in ringing its death knell, of course, but between you and me he sees more plays than films. In fact, he's saying no to America at the moment on the basis of our daughter Patricia, our house at Shamley Green and the fact that we can nip across to the West End whenever we like a and not necessarily in that order.' She called the terrier to heel, rescuing another couple from a barrage of barked abuse; the spaniel had never left her side, and Josephine noticed that both dogs seemed to adore her. 'Jenky's a bit affronted,' she explained, bending down to put his lead on. 'We were walking through the woods and stumbled on some sort of dog cemetery. Now he's behaving as if I were trying to tell him something. But anyway, I hope you can see a future of some sort in film, Miss Tey, because we have some business to discuss.'

'Of course. I'm here until Monday, so whenever you and your husband are free.'

'Why don't we talk first? If Hitch is involved, he'll launch straight into camera shots and you and I will wonder why we're there at all.' Josephine agreed, hoping her relief didn't show. 'Good. Tonight would be best. He's got something up his sleeve for the rest of the weekend, so I've no idea what will happen but it probably won't be peaceful. Shall we have a c.o.c.ktail before dinner? I'll meet you in the hotel at six.' Without waiting for a reply, Alma turned to Marta and Lydia, and Josephine wondered if the rest of the negotiations were going to be any more mutual. 'And I'll see you both later, I hope. Perhaps you'd all like to join us for coffee? You never know, we might have a deal to celebrate by then.'

She turned and walked back in the direction of the hotel, and Marta quickly squeezed Josephine's hand. 'Did you tell her I was dreading this?' Josephine asked. 'I didn't expect her to be quite so gentle with me.'

'I don't know her well enough for that, but there was no need for me to say anything. She hates people as much as you do.'

'I don't hate people,' Josephine said indignantly. 'I just . . .'

'Prefer it when they're not around.' Lydia finished the sentence for her, and Josephine laughed.

'Yes, something like that.'

'Actually, that's not fair on Alma either,' Marta said as they headed back to the village. 'I've heard she's a fabulous host, but she chooses her friends very carefully a and his. I suppose she has to.'

'It should be an interesting evening,' Josephine said, surprised to find herself looking forward to it.

'Yes, although I think someone might have to put a muzzle on Ronnie,' Lydia said. 'Whatever progress you make with Alma could all be undone the first time she opens her mouth.'

'That's a head-to-head I'd pay to see.' The path narrowed slightly, and Josephine allowed the other two to go first. 'Alma's younger than I expected,' she added. 'When people have the sort of reputation that the Hitchc.o.c.ks have got, you automatically expect them to be older than you. It's quite sobering when it turns out to be talent rather than experience.'

'Get used to it, darling,' Lydia said with feeling. 'It's all downhill from here.'

11.

An experiment in fear and guilt, he had called it, but an exercise in control would have been more accurate. Staging a joke, like making a film, was a way of holding on to the power, and Hitchc.o.c.k had discovered long ago that the manipulation involved in both helped him to forget his own anxieties and doubts. It suited him if people thought him childish, if they underestimated him as a result; behind the grinning schoolboy, there was someone smart enough to realise that people were most truly themselves when they were disoriented, frightened, exposed a and he had important decisions to make. There had never been a more important time to know whom to trust.

He had lost track of how many times people asked him if he enjoyed watching his own films. The answer was always the same: his work was laid out scene by scene in his mind, and he had no need to go to a cinema to see it. It had been the same for as long as he could remember: his past, like his career, was made up of pictures; memories were visual rather than verbal, like a very young child's. The older he got, the more fervently he wished he could storyboard his future, plan it out day by day and get rid of this paralysing fear that his life was in someone else's hands. By going to America, he knew he would be setting in motion something that was bigger than he was, and it terrified him.

Still, he would do it for Alma. Everything he did, he did for that moment when they went home together in the evening and he could see the pride in her eyes, another memory for their old age. It was the best of who he was, the only reason for doing anything. Hitchc.o.c.k got up from the bed and walked over to the balcony, impatient for Alma to come back. It was never the same without her. He hated being alone.

12.

Bridget Foley stood on a stepladder outside the Salutation Restaurant, putting the finishing touches to the mural that had occupied her for the past ten days. It had seemed an insurmountable task at the beginning, but she knew by now that the trick was to treat it as a game of patience, mentally dividing the wall into grids and concentrating on one small square at a time, working her way inch by inch across the hot stone without any thought for the picture as a whole. She engrossed herself in her work each day, following the branch of a tree or the path of light on water as if it were the only image that concerned her; now, when the mural was almost complete, patience became less important than faith a and if art was anything, it was an act of faith. She had learnt long ago that creating one thing did not necessarily mean you had a G.o.d-given right to do it again, and a successful as she was a a blank s.p.a.ce still frightened her as much as it had when she had first begun to paint; more so, in fact, because the fearless arrogance of youth was such a distant memory that she sometimes wondered if it had ever existed.

There was something very satisfying in continuing a tradition that was as old as humanity itself. As a child, she had been fascinated by the medieval wall paintings which dominated the churches that her father preached in a terrifying lotteries of judgement and salvation that stretched from the chancel arch to the timbers of the roof. A sense of honouring the past made the first few strokes of the brush even more nerve-racking than usual, especially when every movement was under public scrutiny; out here, she didn't have the protective sh.e.l.l of a studio, where mistakes could be destroyed before they saw the light of day. She hated being a public spectacle, but Portmeirion forced a choice between solitude and fine weather: its fertile, almost tropical climate meant that it was impossible to find a dry wall except at the height of summer. Fortunately most people were happy to watch quietly while she worked. Only a few were rude enough to offer a constructive comment or two along the way, and she had perfected a smile which dealt with them effectively. Crowds were never really a problem: even now, with Portmeirion's increasing popularity, the village still felt like an island, unthreatened by an influx of people and cut off from the outside world. To deter too many visitors, daily admission charges altered according to the privacy needs of its residents and had hit an all-time high with the arrival of the Prince of Wales a couple of years ago; Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k, she noticed, was a couple of shillings cheaper.

The sky was the lightest part of the painting, pale blue at the topa fading down through white and yellow; Bridget stretched cautiously up to her right to add some warmer tints just above the treeline. The ladder wobbled precariously, much to the delight of two small boys who were standing nearby, threatening to have some fun with the tantalising array of paints that she had laid out on the floor, and she sent them scuttling back to their families with an unnecessarily vigorous stroke of the brush. There was a great sense of freedom in working here: Clough's 'home for fallen buildings', as he affectionately referred to it, was a continual experiment in form and colour. Nothing was considered too bizarre, and the shades of the buildings mirrored the flowers and plants which filled the woods behind the village, bridging the gap between the natural and the man-made, the real and the illusory. In all her life, even among artist friends who were notoriously selfish, she had never known anyone to do exactly what he wanted in the way that Clough did a and yet that single-mindedness was such a benevolent gesture, an a.s.surance that here, at least, trees would always be trees, streams would continue to tumble into the sea, and rocks would stand unthreatened. It was no longer the fashion in art to glorify a property or a landlord, but it made what she was doing more important, somehow, if she thought of it as a tribute to his sense of beauty and permanence.

She had known Clough for most of her life. Her father had met him at Cambridge and presided over his marriage to Amabel Strachey, and the families had remained friends a part of a circle of influential writers, artists and political activists which had enriched her childhood with its ideas and eccentricities. As a young girl, she had spent most of her summers in North Wales, staying in one of the farmhouses near Clough's family home. It was long before Portmeirion existeda but, even then, the love that she developed for the landscape was tempered by an awareness that families like hers were not welcomed by the local people. She felt the same resentment these days from some of the older staff in the village, though she couldn't fault them for it: there was precious little housing for them and their families, yet extravagant buildings sprang up at Portmeirion each year to be played in during the holiday season then left empty and useless over the winter months. Not everyone blessed Clough the way she did.

Bridget swapped to an old decorator's brush, conscious that she was running out of those cowardly finishing touches which served to put off the moment of truth. She had painted a carved arch to frame the mural, and she added some darker tones at its edges to give it a more solid look, using the roughness of the surface to create a mottled effect and subtly ageing her painted stone until it resembled the wall around Portmeirion's original kitchen garden. Knowing that she risked ruining the whole image if she added anything else, she got down from the ladder and walked a few steps back from the building, picking her way carefully through the detritus of her work. Her body ached from another day of bending and twisting at odd angles, but she was quietly excited: when her work was going well, it was almost as if she were uncovering what was already there rather than creating something from nothing. She turned round and saw with relief that her excitement was justified: she had created a fine illusion, worthy of its place in a village where nothing was quite what it seemed. Her mock arch enclosed a woodland scene, a glorious profusion of trees, rhododendrons and ferns with a lake in the foreground; the mural brought the wild gardens of Portmeirion into the heart of its ordered piazzaa and, if you glanced at it quickly, you would believe you were looking through the wall of the restaurant into the woods beyond.

But it was missing something a a bird in the trees, perhaps, or a sign of life on the lake. She reached for some white paint, then changed her mind and picked up the black; like many of her brushes and artist's materials, she had inherited it from a friend who had died too young, and she had found herself using the paint sparingly, wanting to create as much as possible with it to compensate for what had been destroyed. The swans she had in mind would need all that was left, but somehow that was fitting. She sketched the outline, making sure that the figures were balanced within the overall composition. As the birds began to take shape, she smiled.

Satisfied at last, she decided to call it a day. The cafe had shown no sign of dwindling in popularity as the afternoon wore on, and she was glad to leave the families behind and head for her own small cottage on the southern boundary of the village, just beyond the hotel. White Horses, so called because waves had been known to beat at its door and flood the property, was unique among the buildings of Portmeirion in that it was neither available for hire by the public nor simply decorative. Formerly a fisherman's cottage, the building had been variously used by Clough as a storeroom, a workshop for weaving and dyeing and temporary lodgings for builders and craftsmen employed in the village. She made her home there whenever she was at Portmeirion, feeling comfortable in that final category and using her dogs as an excuse to fend off repeated invitations to stay at the hotel. While she appreciated Clough's hospitality, Bridget had no liking for a life governed by other people's routines.

The lower terrace seemed quieter, so she chose that route past the hotel, conscious that a woman in paint-splashed overalls carrying a stepladder wasn't the illusion of perfection which most of the clientele paid for. Up ahead, moored at the quayside, the Amis Reunis a a graceful old trading ketch from Porthmadog, used now as a houseboat a shone proudly in the sunlight, giving the wharf a deceptive air of seafaring activity which always made her smile. As she drew closer, she noticed a man standing alongside the boat and hesitated when she recognised him, instinctively calculating how many years it must have been since they last saw each other. He was filling a pipe, and she watched as he packed the tobacco into the bowl, remembering how he had always given even the simplest of tasks his full attention. It was one of the things she had loved most about him, that intensity which relaxed so easily into laughter whenever she teased him about it, like the sun breaking suddenly through a cloud. Looking at him now, she was pleased to see that she had been right: the face she had drawn so often a still young then, if aged prematurely by war a had grown leaner and stronger in the intervening years and was now more attractive than ever.

'You never could get that d.a.m.ned thing to stay alight.'

'Bridget!' He looked at her in astonishment, and she was touched to see how quickly delight followed surprise. 'What on earth are you doing here?'

She glanced down at her paint-covered clothes. 'I would have thought that was fairly obvious,' she said, trying to transfer everything she was carrying to one hand in order to hold out the other. The stepladder defeated her, but it was an oddly formal gesture anywaya and he pre-empted it by bending to kiss her.

'I learnt a long time ago never to take anything about you at face value,' he said with a wry smile. 'It's always sensible to check.'

Bridget laughed. 'And how often did I tell you that sensible is overrated?' She dumped her bags on the quayside so that she could embrace him properly. 'Here, give those to me,' she said, taking the matches out of his hand. 'We could be here all day.' She held the flame up to the bowl, surprised at how easily the first traces of pipe smoke erased twenty years, and nodded to the Amis Reunis sign on the ship's bow. 'Looks like this old lady's very well named. How are you, Archie?'

'I'm fine,' he said, 'and I don't need to ask how you are. Whatever you've been doing, it suits you.' He gazed at her, and she brushed the hair away from her eyes, unusually self-conscious. 'You've hardly changed at all,' he said, and flushed slightly at his own cliche. 'It's the first time I've ever said that truthfully, although the paint could be hiding a lot a is there any on the canvas?'

'On the walls,' she corrected him. 'I've been doing some work for Clough up at Salutation. He fancied a mural to liven up the cafe terrace. Every now and then, he gets bored with a wall or ceiling and decides it needs Cloughing up a bit.'

'Your phrase or his?'

'Neither. I think someone used it in a novel and not necessarily as a compliment. He doesn't mind, though a he always says he'd rather be vulgar than dull.'

'I'm sure his mural's neither. Is he pleased with it?'

'He hasn't seen it yet. He's off in Flintshire, saving a vaulted ceiling that no one else can find room for. G.o.d knows where he'll put it if he gets it.'

'Somewhere ludicrous, no doubt. We'll all say he's off his head and then marvel at how good it looks once it's in place.' He nodded at her paints. 'Is the mural finished?'

'Just about, although I'll probably see a hundred things I don't like about it when I go back tomorrow.'

'But it's safe for me to look?' Bridget nodded. Funny, she thought, after all these years, that he should remember how much she hated people seeing her work before it was finished. 'I'll go up there later then. I haven't been that way today, and it was getting dark when we got here last night.' The 'we' hung awkwardly in the air between them for a moment, as she resisted the temptation to ask and he avoided seeming overanxious to explain. 'It's a friend's fortieth birthday,' Archie said eventually. 'That's why I'm here a a few of us have come over for the weekend.'

'I see.' She didn't, but was determined not to flood him with questions when they had only just met. In any case, it made no difference to her with whom Archie had come to Portmeirion; they had never had that sort of relationship, and she was surprised to find herself more curious now about his life than she had ever been when they were young.

'How are your parents?' he asked, and the clumsy change of subject made her burst out laughing, even though she could see that it hurt his pride. Embarra.s.sment made him irritable, and he added tetchilya 'I don't see what's so funny. It was a straightforward question.'

'Oh, Archie a you were always so polite,' Bridget said, still laughing. 'I'd quite forgotten what good manners you have.' She looked at him affectionately. 'They're both very well, thank you.' He smiled grudgingly, and she took his arm. 'Come on a you can help me get this lot home. I'm staying at White Horses.' It was late afternoon, but the heat still shimmered over the estuary, blending with the ripples on the water until it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. 'You're not connected with this film circus, then?' she asked as they walked along.

'Not really, no.'

'When I first saw you, I thought the Yard might have been called in to take care of Mr Hitchc.o.c.k.'

He stared at her in surprise. 'How did you know I was a policeman?' he asked. 'Please tell me it's not obvious.'

She laughed. 'Of course it isn't. I wouldn't be walking along here in daylight with you if it were. No, I've just seen your name in the paper a few times. It beats the wireless, you know. Inspector Penrose of the Yard a he's quite a hero.'

'Chief Inspector now, I'm afraid.'

'Good G.o.d, that's even worse.' The combination of admiration and gentle mockery in her tone was unfamiliar, and she tried to think of someone else she used it for. 'Actually, it makes me realise what a lucky escape I've had. All that effort I've put into bucking the trend and being radical, only to end up on the long arm of the law. It takes a lot of discipline to be a free spirit, you know. What would Dover Street think of me?'

'Whatever the most fashionable critic told them to, I suppose,' Archie said cynically. 'Anyway, I'm not the only one in the newspapers. Your retrospective had the reviewers falling over themselves to compliment you.' He grinned at her, making the most of having the upper hand for once. 'And not without good reason.'

She stopped. 'You went to see it?'

'Of course I did a several times. I thought about leaving you a note, but you didn't need any kind words from me, not with Augustus John singing your praises.'

'They would have meant more coming from you.' She smiled. 'Although Augustus John earns me more money.'

'Tell me about it. It's a lot to find on a policeman's salary.'

'Jesus, Archie a I can't believe you bought one. What on earth were you thinking of?'

'Grantchester Meadows in 1915.' He looked serious for a moment, and for once she didn't want to shake him out of it. 'It's beautiful a more so because I thought that time had gone for ever.'

Bridget nodded, pleased. 'I was sorry to see that picture sold, actually, but not any more. You should never have bought it, though. I'd happily have given it to you if I'd known you liked it so much.'

'And I'd happily have paid twice as much to own it.' She smiled. 'Have you any idea how strange it is to walk into a gallery and see a portrait of yourself on the wall?' Archie asked, opening the gate that led from the terrace to the coastal path. 'I see that one's in somebody's private collection. I hope I've got a good home.'

'Mine, of course. I don't know if you'd call it good, but it's never dull.'

'You kept it?'

She looked out across the estuary, turning her face away so that he couldn't see the colour rise in her cheeks. 'Who else would want to look at you, Archie?' she said, a little too glibly. 'And they certainly wouldn't pay me for the pleasure.' He was about to say something, but she cut him short by pointing further down the path; three women a two walking arm in arm and the other slightly apart a were heading in their direction. 'Somebody's waving to you. You didn't tell me the birthday party was such a female affair. I'm not surprised you look so revoltingly pleased with yourself.'

'Believe me, it's not what you think,' Archie said, and there was something in his tone that made her look at him curiously, but there was no time to probe any further. 'Bridget a this is Josephine,' he said, beginning the round of introductions, then added rather weaklya 'It's her birthday.'

They shook hands, and Bridget wondered what the appraising full-length glance told Archie's friend about her. 'Congratulations,' she said, resisting the temptation to apologise for her clothes, her hair, her very existence. 'I went to bed for a week when I was forty, but you soon get over it.'

To her credit, Josephine laughed, but Bridget guessed that Archie would not be forgiven quickly for revealing her age. 'And Marta Fox and Lydia Beaumont,' he continued, oblivious to his breach of etiquette.

Marta smiled warmly at her. 'We saw you working on our way in,' she said. 'You were up a ladder, but I recognise the paint on your trousers.'

'Bridget's an artist,' Archie explained redundantly to Josephine. 'She painted the oil of Grantchester in my flat. Well, she didn't paint it in my flat, obviously a I meant the oil that's hanging on the . . .'

'I know the one.' Josephine looked at Bridget again, but this time there was a glint in her eye which suggested that they might share an amused solidarity in Archie's discomfort, and Bridget revised her first impressions. 'You didn't tell me you knew the artist, though,' Josephine continued. 'No wonder you were so delighted with it.'

'Where is it hanging, Archie?' Bridget asked. 'Just out of interest.'

'It's in the bedroom.'

'Do you live near Portmeirion, Bridget?' Lydia asked brightly, while everyone else looked at each other.

'No, in Cambridge most of the time, but I have some friends in Hampstead so I stay with them whenever I need to be in town.'

'Oh, whereabouts? We're in Holly Place.'

'Redington Road, not far from Clough and Amabel.'

'Then you must come for supper some time.'

'And bring Archie,' Marta added. 'It would be lovely to see you both.'

'We must go,' Josephine said, looking at her watch. 'I have to decide what to wear for c.o.c.ktails with Mrs. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k, G.o.d help me.' She smiled at Bridget. 'Will you have dinner with us? I haven't seen that painting of Grantchester since Archie first bought it, but at least I could get to know you a bit better.'

It was an exceptionally eloquent white flag, Bridget thought, and something told her that it was not aimed exclusively at her. 'I'm sorry a I have to work tonight,' she said, 'but I'll gladly accept a drink tomorrow when I've had a chance to a.s.sess everything that's wrong with the mural. You're here for the weekend?'

'Yes.'

'Good. I'll look forward to it.' Bridget watched them go, noticing how often Marta glanced across at Josephine. 'Well, that's all very difficult,' she said.

'It's fine, honestly a she just wasn't expecting to see me with anyone.'

She laughed and hit his shoulder. 'You men a you always think it's about you, don't you? I meant those three. Call it a peril of the job, but I can spot an awkward composition a mile off. G.o.d knows, I've been involved in enough of them myself.' He smiled, but she could see that he was trying to work out if the comment referred to her work or to something more personal. 'The only thing dividing my affections at the moment, though, is a pair of border terriers, both of whom will leave me if I don't get back and take them for a walk.' She kissed his cheek. 'So I'll be free for a drink later on. Come and find me at the cottage.'

'I thought you were working?'

'Give me a reason not to.'

He smiled, and shook his head. 'If anything, you've got worse over the years and I never imagined that was possible. What time shall I come over?'

'Whenever you like. If I'm not there, I'll only be walking the dogs, so make yourself at home.' She raised an eyebrow. 'And I'll be needing you to explain why you've kept me quiet all these years, even with your closest friends.'

He looked uncomfortable. 'I haven't deliberately kept you quiet, Bridget, but you're not very easy to explain. I never quite understood what we were.'

'We were lovely, Archie,' she said, turning to go. 'What is there to explain?'

13.

The bus from Porthmadog to Harlech was late, and it was five o'clock by the time Gwyneth Draycott put her shopping away in the kitchen and went up to the attic. Weary from the heat and the effort of leaving the house, she used the banister to haul herself up the final flight of stairs, marking her progress with a series of prints on the wood from palms that refused to stay dry. Her clothes were sticking to her, and she was glad to kick off her shoes and settle down by the window; even with the cas.e.m.e.nt flung wide, there was very little air at the top of the house, but the chance to sit still was something to be grateful for. The weather would surely break soon. Over the past few hours, she had felt the pressure tighten like a wire around her throat, threatening the storm that carried with it so many memories. When it came, she knew that each flash of lightning would illuminate the past, and she dreaded it. Anxiously, she shifted in her chair and reached behind her to remove the toy monkey which dug at her back. The mohair made her feel hotter than ever, but she looked fondly down at its black b.u.t.ton eyes and felt ears. Its arms and legs moved, although Taran had always carried it by its tail; the repairs she had made to the monkey's hands and feet were nothing compared to the criss-cross of neat st.i.tching which almost obliterated its face, patching the tears where its nose had b.u.mped and dragged along the floor. Taran. Thunder, in her native language. She had always loved the name, and what it represented. Now, it was the hollowest sound she knew.

For Gwyneth, trying to describe how she felt in the days and weeks that followed Taran's loss was like struggling with a foreign language, looking for words which simply did not exist in her vocabulary. The one emotion that she could identify with any certainty was resentment: she felt cheated. She had been a good mother during the brief time allotted to her, watching the cot as her child slept and keeping a careful eye on playtime in the garden of the old house; she kept Taran by her while she worked, always away from the stove, always within reach, always safe. So many innocent dangers carefully negotiated, only to be let down by a horror beyond her control. Gwyneth had tried not to lay blame or wish her suffering onto others, but there was no common ground between reason and grief. All around her, women started to take greater care of their children, learning from her mistakes. She saw the guilty relief in their eyes and knew exactly what they were thinking: there but for the grace of G.o.d. It would have taken a better woman than she not to despise them for what they still had.