Page 27 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
‘Oh. Well, I suppose it is light and bare-ish but I like to keep the dark stuff for the writing. And Ihatebig cupboards.’
‘You don’t have cupboards?’
‘Not with doors. I have cupboard-phobia, you see, hence the nightmares?’
He looked baffled.
‘You know, becauseof Pa locking me in the cupboard under the stairs as a punishment when I was a child? Janemusthave mentioned it. The devil was supposed to get fed up and come out of me, though if he did I never noticed.’
‘I see,’ he said, though clearly he hadn’t been following what I’d been saying with any great attention. ‘I … er … heard about Max’s wife, Rosemary. I’m sorry. Or should I say—’
‘Congratulations?Better not to say anything.’
‘No – right.’
‘Tea, coffee, cocoa, rum, whisky, wine – no, I finished the last bottle of wine with lunch – sherry, crème de menthe, gin?’ I offered hospitably.
‘Tea, just tea, would be fine,’ he said, and followed me into the kitchen while I made it.
‘Cass, I came because I wanted to ask you something about Jane.’
‘What on earth for? You never believe anythingI say about her.’
‘That was just sister stuff. I knew you didn’t really mean it.’
‘Didn’t I?’
‘This is serious, Cass, and I thought you might tell me …’
He tailed off and stared helplessly at me, a greying, pleasantly homely man with worried blue eyes. ‘Jane’s youngerthan me, and I know I’m not very exciting, but I did think we were happy. Only someone hinted to me that she’d been more thanfriends with that artist in residence we had last year, and that she was still seeing him.’
We gazed at each other like someone had waved a magic wand and painted us both purple, and neither wanted to tell the other.
‘It can’t be true, can it?’ he pleaded. ‘I mean, he left for Cornwall months ago, so when could she have seen him? The only time she’s been away is on holiday with me, or all thoseweekends she’s spent here with you. And Idounderstand that you needed her support while Max was away, so don’t think I resented that,’ he added earnestly.
‘Weekends here with me?’ I exclaimed, then swallowed hard and said with a weak smile: ‘Oh yes – you know how sisters slag each other off all the time, but they’re always there for each other in a crisis.’
‘Jane’s never said a bad word aboutyou,’ he assured me.
Big of her. And that was not her way: Jane’s skill was to plant the poison dart with such skill and artistry that no one noticed she’d done it until paralysis set in and it was too late.
‘There you are then,’ I said soothingly. ‘You can see yourself that she hasn’t had time to meet him even if she wanted to. BesidesImet him once, don’t forget, and he was a hairy, rough-lookingyoung man – hardly Jane’s type.’
‘No, but years younger than me, and Jane’s still so youthful and attractive that everyone thinks she’s my daughter when we’re on holiday,’ he added glumly.
Most men seem to be pleased when people say that, but not Gerald. My estimation of him went up.
People always tellmeI don’t look anything like my real age, but they should have seen me that day: round myeyes it wasn’t so much crow’s feet as rookery nook.
I managed to soothe him down, but, as Jane should know,once you let a little tiny doubt lodge into the crevices of your mind it was hard to uproot it totally, and if you were not careful it just grew back again in a slightly different place.
He made me swear not to tell Jane he’d ever doubted her, and took himself off still looking a sad andsorry version of his usual self.
I didn’t know what to make of it all. Jane and a non-immaculate, non-famous, years-younger, scruffy painter? I couldn’t see it. But if not, what had she been doing when she said she was here with me?
I tried to phone her before Gerald got home, but there was no reply.
Perhaps she was away perfecting her brushstrokes?
For once I didn’t go to the pub for dinner,but instead ate my second pizza of the day (quattro formaggio with sun-dried tomatoes) and spent a quiet hour pasting my review cuttings into a pirate scrapbook with a skull and crossbones on the cover, and renewing my subscription toSkint Old Northern Woman Magazine.
Then I went to my study and unleashed the inhabitants ofLover, Come Back to Meon to expanses of virgin white paper until itwas time to leave for Kedge Hall.
New haunts.
