The Wind Off the Sea Page 12

  ‘You get quite a view from up here,’ Waldo remarked as he counted out the petrol coupons he had obtained, heaven and Mrs Morrison only knew how. ‘Particularly now the weather’s improving so dramatically. Bexham really is what we Americans love to call quaint.’

  ‘Quaint,’ Peter Sykes smiled. ‘I’ve heard it called a lot of things, sir, but never quaint.’

  ‘No, really? Oh, it’s a word I sometimes think we Americans have become infected with,’ Waldo replied. ‘Soon as we set foot on these shores. I don’t mean it to sound insulting – I suppose it’s simply because we don’t have a word good enough to describe what appeals to us as a small but somewhat mystical country. Maybe I should just stick to beautiful, after all? Because that’s really what your little port here is, it’s beautiful.’

  ‘You staying long in Bexham? Or just passing through?’

  ‘I was thinking of just passing through, but Bexham seems to have caught a hold of me. So much so I was actually thinking of renting a property here for the summer.’

  ‘Well, now, sir. That does sound a good plan, if I may say so. Bexham is a lovely place in the summer, particularly if you sail.’

  ‘Yes, I sail. As a matter of fact I was thinking of hiring somewhere along the estuary – be grateful for any local knowledge. I imagine you must hear quite a lot of tittle-tattle from your regulars. So if you do hear of any houses for hire – I’m staying with Mrs Morrison as you know.’

  ‘Indeed I do, sir. And if I hear tell of any houses for rent—’

  ‘Or even for sale—’

  ‘I shall let you know at once, sir.’

  ‘Most kind. Very kind. If you’d be good enough to check the oil and water while you’re at it, Mr Sykes?’

  Peter nodded and eyed the dial on the pump as it spun towards its allotted six gallons.

  ‘Lovely car, sir, but she must drink a fair bit,’ Peter said, as he hooked the nozzle of the petrol hose back into the Shell pump. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘No more than the average Sherman tank.’ Waldo sighed. ‘For some crazy reason my father brought this car over with him before the war, some time in the nineteen thirties, and left it here. Couldn’t be bothered to ship it back. I have been toying with the idea of finding myself something a little less thirsty and a little more suitable for the winding English roads. Do you deal in cars at all? Do you have any second hand stock?’

  ‘We used to deal quite a lot before the war, sir, my father and I that is. But as you can imagine the market is more or less non-existent now, particularly in these parts.’

  Peter replaced the petrol hose as Waldo opened up the Buick’s big bonnet.

  ‘I could look around for something if you wish, sir. If you tell me your requirements.’

  ‘Something for the summer days, I think, Mr Sykes. Something sportif – a ragtop I’d say. A car to, as they say, ruffle one’s hair.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can find for you, sir. And you’re very low on oil.’

  ‘Mmm, so I am.’ Waldo smiled hugely. ‘So I am. Just as well I came to see you, Mr Sykes. Just as well. How’s that heroic young wife of yours, by the by?’

  ‘She’s very well, sir, thank you for asking. In fact she’s altogether well in herself now.’

  ‘That’s good. Maybe that famous deed of daring helped her turn. Who knows?’

  ‘Who knows, indeed, sir. Who knows indeed.’

  Loopy was taken quite by surprise the coming weekend. She had been shopping in Churchester with Judy and they had returned earlier than expected, empty-handed. Judy had dropped Loopy off at the end of her driveway and refused tea since she suddenly found herself anxious to get back to Walter. Loopy smiled to herself as she wandered up the drive to her own house. It wasn’t so very long ago that she would have been behaving in exactly the same fashion, waiting to hear the shutting of the car door outside and Hugh’s tread on the gravel, the opening of the front door, and his call into the house as he tossed his hat onto the stand. Although she still looked forward to seeing him home, she nevertheless now often found herself only too relieved to be alone for a few days a week, happy to be painting rather than waiting for the sound of his step. It wasn’t that she no longer loved him – in fact she often thought that possibly she loved him even more than she had ever done – it was just that inside her head she had grown older, perhaps even older than her actual years, thanks she imagined to the war.

  When Walter had been declared missing presumed killed part of her had gone missing with him; and although she was past that terrible crisis, redeemed by her middle son’s miraculous return, she was aware that the experience had changed her. For some reason she could not precisely name, it seemed to have changed her more than it had her husband, who as always appeared to have taken everything in his stride, so much so that it sometimes seemed to Loopy that Hugh no longer loved her the way he had loved her before her wartime crisis when he had stayed in London so much, pleading security matters. Of course she was aware that love changed – not that it altered when it alteration found, but that as one grew older so its very nature shifted. But whereas she hoped her love for Hugh had matured and strengthened, she suspected Hugh’s might have gone in the very opposite direction. She worried that he had become bored with her, that she no longer amused him, that nowadays when he sat down at the piano he played and sung more to himself than to her.

  Even so, she still entered the house with a light step at the prospect of seeing him. There was still enough of that old feeling of anticipation, enough of the hope that she could bring a smile to his face, or perhaps make him laugh out loud when she recounted Judy’s and her farcical shopping adventures earlier. As she opened the drawing room door Loopy thought that maybe she might be able to charm her man so well that he might once again be persuaded to play ‘Night and Day’ before he mixed the cocktails as he had always used to do.

  ‘Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry, honey – I didn’t realise you had a visitor.’

  It wasn’t the fact that Hugh had somebody with him that surprised her. It was the look of what seemed to her to be a strange complicity between them. The way they both started when she came in, the way Hugh’s visitor got quickly to her feet while stowing something away in her pocket as if she didn’t want anyone to see what it was, the look of irritated surprise on Hugh’s face, as if he was really rattled, then finally his diplomatically urbane smile.

  ‘Loopy, darling. I didn’t hear you come in. I wasn’t expecting you back so early.’

  ‘We had a kind of frustrating afternoon so Judy and I decided to cut our losses. Meggie – how nice to see you.’

  She kissed Meggie on the cheek. Her behaviour was impeccable. So impeccable in fact that Meggie could never have suspected for a moment how Loopy felt on discovering her so unexpectedly at Shelborne.

  Moments later Loopy turned to see Gwen ushering Waldo Astley into the house.

  ‘Hugh seems to have decided to hold a house party here without telling me,’ she joked to Meggie. ‘May I introduce Mr Waldo Astley, Miss Gore-Stewart.’

  ‘We’ve met already, Loopy darling—’ Meggie laughed.

  ‘Of course. You two met at Meggie’s cocktail party, didn’t you?’ Loopy smiled, feeling foolish.

  It was Hugh who was smiling at Loopy now, repeatedly tapping an untipped cigarette on the back of his silver case before lighting it.

  ‘Mr Astley and I bumped into each other in the Three Tuns at lunchtime, so here we all are, hands across the sea, and all that. Will you ask Gwen to bring us in some tea, darling?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Given the nature of Hugh’s government work Loopy always knew better than to ask too much, yet she couldn’t help wondering what it was that Meggie had been showing Hugh when she came in.

  ‘Come on, Hugh.’ Meggie was teasing him now. ‘I’d say the sun was sufficiently over the yard arm for something a little more serious than tea, wouldn’t you?’

  Loopy turned at that. It was difficult not
to feel irritated by Meggie’s easy manner with her husband. She tried to reassure herself that it came purely and simply from their wartime relationship, when Meggie had worked as an agent for Hugh, but she suspected it might also come from something a little less official, namely that Meggie was an extremely attractive and beautiful young woman, and that Hugh was an extremely susceptible middle-aged man.

  ‘You’re right, Meggie. Sun’s dropped well and truly down below the yard arm, so out with the nose paint,’Hugh agreed, drawing on his cigarette. ‘Whisky? Mr Astley? The real McCoy I assure you, not watered down cough mixture. Meggie?’

  ‘Only the very quickest of quickies for me, Hugh, because I have to dash.’

  Taking the shot of whisky and soda Hugh handed to her, Meggie raised her glass in salute then drank it down in two.

  ‘Excuse the rush, but I suddenly – remembered an appointment,’ she said, picking up her gloves and bag. ‘Goodbye, Mr Astley. Hugh darling.’ Meggie nodded at Waldo, blew a kiss at Hugh, and quickly kissed Loopy once again. ‘I’ll leave the men to you, Loopy darling. I must go and see to more important matters.’ She sighed and looking at Loopy with the air of a conspirator she whispered, ‘Namely – destitution!’

  Meggie quickly left the room and the house, and shortly afterwards Loopy slipped out after her. By the time she had dressed herself for the evening and returned downstairs the two men were finishing what must be their second large whiskies, since they were chatting and laughing as easily as old friends.

  As soon as Loopy came back into the room, both men were on their feet and a moment later Hugh was at the cocktail shaker, ready to mix Loopy’s favourite Sidecar. As she collected her glass gratefully from her husband she noticed Waldo had detached himself and wandered into the conservatory to look at some of the paintings stacked up against the wall.

  ‘This is rather fine,’ he called, stopping and peering at a small contemporary beach scene. ‘In fact, it’s very fine.’

  ‘That’s just one of Loopy’s daubs.’ Hugh turned to Loopy and they both laughed, because it was a family joke – Loopy’s daubs.

  ‘That’s why it’s in the conservatory. It’s not allowed in here. Eighteenth-century watercolours only, please observe. My paintings are far too bright for my husband’s taste.’

  ‘Is this really by you, Mrs Tate?’ Waldo turned to Loopy.

  ‘It is only – as my husband has just warned you, Mr Astley – one of my daubs, that’s all.’

  ‘Actually this is a very fine painting, if I may say so.’

  Hugh turned to Loopy. ‘I think he just wants another drink, darling.’

  ‘Did you train at all, Mrs Tate? I often think those who don’t go to some sort of school are the most expressive. They haven’t had that vital sensitivity stamped out of them by the leaden boots of some half-talented teacher.’

  ‘Mrs Tate is entirely self-taught, aren’t you, darling? Self-trained entirely. Strictly a Monday to Friday painter, because on Friday she starts thinking about her old man coming back from London, which is only proper.’

  ‘May I see some of your other work?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to embarrass you, Mr Astley, really not.’ Loopy shook her head. ‘My husband’s right. I’m a Monday-to-Friday painter – I don’t have to do it. I don’t have to do it to earn a living.’

  ‘I would still like to see more.’

  Loopy glanced at Hugh who simply widened his eyes in mock amazement.

  ‘If you will allow me the privilege.’

  Loopy hesitated. She wanted very much to take Mr Astley upstairs into the room she was using as her studio and show him her work, because she was simply burning to show someone who would not just dismiss her work as daubs, as her family had always done. But she was all too aware that to do so would be to incur Hugh’s jealousy. She looked from one man to the other hoping that Hugh would concede, that he would suddenly smile at her, wink and tell her to go on upstairs and show the man what he wanted to see. But she could see that Hugh’s expression had grown dark at the very idea, while Waldo Astley’s remained entirely impassive.

  ‘It’s getting rather late,’ Hugh said suddenly. ‘Don’t you have to get back to Mrs Morrison, Mr Astley? She eats early, doesn’t she, before the inevitable bridge game?’

  ‘Not for quite a while yet, Mr Tate,’ Waldo replied with a slow smile. ‘Not for quite a while.’

  ‘Well, I’m terribly hungry,’ Hugh complained. ‘Perhaps you ought to ask Gwen to get a move on with dinner, Loopy.’

  ‘I have already spoken to Gwen, Hugh. Dinner won’t be ready for half an hour yet.’

  ‘Plenty of time, then, for you to allow me to see your work, Mrs Tate.’

  Loopy looked again at Hugh, but since he had turned his back and poured himself a third whisky she could not see the expression on his face, or even guess at his feelings, whatever they might be.

  ‘Very well.’ Loopy suddenly announced her decision, loudly enough and with enough determination to cause her husband to spill the whisky he was pouring from the decanter. ‘Why not? Maybe I shall find out whether or not I’m a dauber, a part-time painter, perhaps even an undiscovered genius.’

  Giving her attractively husky laugh, Loopy held the door open for Waldo Astley to precede her out of the room and up the stairs and so to the moment that would change the second half of her life for ever.

  As Waldo was standing looking at each canvas held up in turn by his elegant hostess of that moment, high up on the hill above Bexham harbour Rusty was emerging from the back of her husband’s garage block covered in grime and dust.

  ‘We could easily move in here, Peter,’ she said to her husband, who was locking up the premises. ‘There’s three rooms over the old stores which would make up into two bedrooms and a bathroom, then if we moved the stores—’

  ‘It would cost too much, Rusty,’ Peter interrupted. ‘When I said find us somewhere, I wasn’t thinking of converting any property.’

  ‘We could do it ourselves. I can turn my hand to a few things – I didn’t learn exactly nothing in Dad’s boatyard. And you’re good with your hands – you’re a mechanic, and a good electrician.’

  ‘Don’t get carried away, love.’ Peter stopped her. ‘Just look at the building, will you? It’s a shed. It’s nothing more than a large wooden shed. It isn’t suitable for human habitation.’

  ‘We could make it suitable. Long as it’s got a roof and walls. And floors.’

  ‘You’re forgetting the building restrictions. To do what you’re saying we could do we’d need permissions – and they’re not giving those out to the likes of you and me, not to convert half-rotten old timber buildings into some sort of house or flat.’

  Rusty was about to protest further, but realised there was no point. Peter was right on both counts. The place wasn’t fit or even meant for human habitation, and to make it so would mean a great deal of construction work for which they would most certainly not get the necessary permission. Only recently there had been a case where a well known resident of Bexham had been taken to court and fined a hundred pounds for redecorating and painting his quite substantial house without licence, while someone else who had applied perfectly properly was only allowed to spend fifty pounds on repairing incendiary bomb damage to his property.

  In view of these cases, Rusty realised that there could be precious little chance of the likes of them getting permission to renovate a place that wasn’t even their residence, even if they did have the money. At this realisation the immense feeling of despair that she had been managing to keep at bay ever since suffering what her mother now described as her funny little brainstorm began to surface once again, so much so that Rusty found herself running out of the garage towards the little wood opposite, while Peter slowly limped after her and took her by the shoulders.

  ‘Don’t cry, Rusty,’ he said gently. ‘I know things are bad, but we’ve just got to be patient.’

  ‘It’s easy to say that, Peter. But this isn’t what it w
as meant to be going to be like.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  Rusty gestured hopelessly. ‘This, all this. Everything was going to be better, everything was going to be for something, not less than nothing. Things weren’t meant to be like this, not for anyone, least of all those of us who lived through it.’

  ‘I know. We all thought that somehow everything was going to be all right, just like that, overnight. That having won we were going to wake up to some brave, new and wonderful world. But that’s not going to happen now, is it? Not unless we make it happen. Not unless we try to rebuild it with our own hands. Blood, sweat, toil and tears, all over again, but we can do it, we can rebuild our little world.’

  ‘How? How can we rebuild anything?’ Rusty cried. ‘They probably wouldn’t give us the blooming permission until we’re nearly a hundred!’

  Peter wiped the tears from her face with a grimy handkerchief. ‘We’ve just got to stick at it, Rusty. Long as we have each other and long as you believe in me, we’ll get there.’

  ‘I don’t know as to how. But I hope you’re right, Peter; but don’t ask me as to how.’

  The man who was going to supply the answer to that particular question had just finished his examination of the collection of paintings that had been put before him. He still held one, a small oil measuring no more than one foot wide by ten inches high. It was of two young women sitting on a sunlit sandy beach under coloured umbrellas. By any standards it was an outstanding piece of work in the way that the artist had captured the haze and the heat of the day, as well as the delicate use of colours that were never for one moment too hot for the scene that was depicted, but by the standards of a so-called amateur painter, and a rank unschooled one at that, it was a work of considerable talent.

  ‘I am really at a loss for words, which as a matter of fact, Mrs Tate, is not my usual state of play.’