Such Visitors Read online

  Such Visitors

  Stories by

  ANGELA HUTH

  For Felicity Binyon

  Contents

  The Fuchsia Auberge

  Mother of the Bride

  Ladies’ Race

  Donkey Business

  Sudden Dancer

  The Bull

  Balloons

  A Matter of Diplomacy

  Moment of Fame

  Such Visitors

  The Weighing Up

  Irish Coffee

  Not for Publication

  Such Visitors

  ‘He’s a funny one, all right,’ said Rose. ‘What are we going to do about him, Lo?’

  Now Rose had come to the point, Lola stretched her long legs with relief. The gin was beginning to turn her blood warmly to quicksilver. It would be quite easy, now, as such old friends, to be practical. They could solve the problem very quickly.

  ‘It’s quite clear we both love him,’ she said, ‘and it’s quite clear he loves both of us. All we’ve got to do is force his hand in making a choice. Procrastination is the destructive thing. Hell, the greatest friends on earth could hardly be expected to survive the misery he’s causing us, waiting for his decision.’

  ‘To be fair, he’s only known us a couple of months, hasn’t he? Perhaps,’ she smiled, incredulous, ‘I mean, it could be he doesn’t want either of us.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ scoffed Lola. Rose copied the brusque, practical tone of her friend’s voice.

  ‘Well, my position is quite clear,’ she said. ‘I want to marry him.’

  ‘Do you? Marry him? Marry him? – I suppose that’s what I’d like too,’ said Lola.

  The Fuchsia Auberge

  On the eighth day of the holiday, mid-afternoon in Angers, Anna McGull suffered a crisis no one noticed.

  She stood apart from the rest of her family who, for the second time that day, were looking at the famous tapestries. Her husband Michael and her youngest son, Patrick, huddled together, seemed to find as much interest in the guide book as in the tapestries themselves. Simon, the eldest son, stood some distance away, his earnest stare fixed upon the Apocalypse. When contemplating any work of art, Simon managed to exude an air of superiority, as if he alone were granted understanding. His father and brother, a little awed by this attitude, believed Simon had a vision they lacked: hence their endless perusal of guide books to make up in facts what they lacked in spiritual communication. Anna had no such feelings. Simon’s loftiness drove her wild. She thought he looked quite goofy, peering through his thick spectacles, fingers twitching at his sludge-coloured anorak. For years, she had struggled to fight the annoyance his physical presence caused her. It had never been so bad as on this holiday.

  Outside, it gently rained. A flat, plum-coloured light in the galleries darkened the tapestries. Anna wondered if any of the women who had put thousands of hours of work into these hangings of gloomy beauty had ever rebelled. The younger ones, surely, must have woken some mornings and thought to themselves they would go mad if they had to do another bloody stitch.

  Anna’s reflections were cut short by a Norwegian tourist. He stepped in front of her, blocking her view and provoking the crisis. His mackintosh skimmed calves latticed with veins: bare toes splayed beyond the edges of his sandals, clenched in concentration. Anna thought: in the past week I’ve seen forty-three Romanesque churches, fifteen museums, eleven châteaux, seven picture galleries, the tapestries twice … and now a Norwegian is thwarting my view. I can’t bear it any more.

  She left the gallery, hurried outside. It was raining harder, now. Sheltering under a chestnut tree, she looked up into the great dome of sharp green leaves and thanked God there was nothing in the guide book about this. The very thought of the guide book made her cry for a moment. Soon she would recover herself, return to the gallery, wait.

  But as she was dabbing her eyes an English couple walked by. Plainly happy, the man took the woman’s arm and guided her towards a café. His innocent gesture caused Anna a second crisis, this time of jealousy. Michael and the boys would never consider stopping mid-afternoon for a drink. Three more churches before dark, they would say.

  Anna followed the couple into the café. She chose an empty table by the window, ordered a croissant and coffee. (Lunch had been a bag of apples eaten beside an ancient tomb.) Her aching legs and feet recovered. The pleasure of sitting alone at a foreign table uncluttered by guide books was almost tangible.

  After a while she saw her husband and sons leave the gallery. They looked briefly about them, then set off towards the church. The English couple rose to leave.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Anna heard herself asking.

  ‘Delange, ten miles north. We’ve been staying in an auberge there, but we’ve got to get back to Paris.’

  The woman smiled, friendly. Then Anna heard herself requesting a lift.

  They sped along a small road that followed a curling river. Silver birches shimmered high above white cows, and higher still white clouds feathered the sky. What am I doing? Anna thought, just once.

  The auberge was the sort of place she had been hoping to find ever since landing in France. In her mind a fuchsia auberge (baskets of flowers hanging round the terrace) represented warmth, peace, an hour or two to herself. Michael and the boys, of course, were not interested in such things. Convenience for the sights was all they cared about. Station hotels. But she was alone now. She could do as she liked. Anna quickly decided the place was much too agreeable to leave within the hour. Besides, there was no transport. She booked in for the night.

  Her room had blue-striped walls, curtains dizzy with flowers, a freckled mirror in a heavy frame. The window looked on to a narrow garden of apple trees and lupins. A grey cat, ears laid back, snaked across the grass and jumped up on to a wall. Small gusts of windy rain, splattering against the window, were the only cracks in the silence.

  So this is freedom, Anna thought, and put out her hand to touch it: the silky bed cover, the cold brass of the bedstead. She climbed under the eiderdown and with no feelings of disloyalty reflected what a relief it was to be in a silent bed: no Michael beside her rumbling on about tomorrow’s plans or today’s churches. Then she fell asleep.

  It was almost dark when she woke. Away from the family for four hours … Guilt brushed her lightly. Much stronger was a kind of nefarious excitement, a feeling of adventure. The word caused her to smile to herself with a touch of scorn. If an afternoon’s sleep in a French auberge was an adventure, how dull was the rest of her life?

  Downstairs in the salon – open fire, smell of lavender – the guilt vanished altogether. Half a dozen couples – here for the fishing, she supposed – all seemed to be drinking champagne. The place reminded her of a small hotel in Galway where she and Michael had spent a last holiday alone before the children were born. They would sit on the bank of the river all day, Michael tweaking at his rod, she reading War and Peace. After a dinner of grilled fish they would play Scrabble by the fire, and have a glass of Irish whiskey before bed. That had been a good holiday, long ago.

  Michael, these days, hated spending money on frivolous drinks. In private defiance, Anna ordered herself a glass of champagne. Careless of her light head, she chose a seat and drank fast. Then, rising cautiously, she went to the telephone and rang the hotel in Angers.

  Michael and the boys were out.

  ‘Sortis pour le dîner,’ the receptionist said.

  Anna was silenced for a moment. Loyalty and compassion had forced her to make this call. She had imagined them worried, searching.

  ‘Were they looking for me?’ she asked at once.

  ‘Absolument pas.’

  ‘Please say I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  Returning to the bar, annoyed b
y her burning cheeks, Anna found a full glass of champagne on her table. Puzzled, she caught the eye of a man she had noticed before. He sat alone.

  ‘Je vous en prie, Madame,’ he said quietly, and lowered his head into his newspaper before Anna, in her confusion, could thank him.

  Her hand now trembled on the glass. The extraordinary gesture had blasted all thoughts of her family from her mind. She felt the warmth of vanity. Her profile, she remembered, had always been good. Perhaps the remnants of other attractions were still recognisable. After a while she allowed herself to glance at the sender of the champagne. Nice face, hair drooping endearingly over one eye.

  Suddenly, the way things were going became marvellously clear to her. She thanked God for the double bed, though how would she manage without a dressing-gown? The man raised his eyes.

  They looked at each other searingly, recognising their mutual intent. Anna got up, left the salon. She would go straight to her room, rip off her clothes and let the stranger begin.

  Somehow she found herself guided by the friendly proprietor to the dining-room. A candle burned on her corner table, a vase of blue lupins made pearly shadows on the white cloth. She ordered dinner. Passion would have to be postponed for an hour or so. Soon the man would follow, make his next move.

  As she sipped at the stranger’s champagne, Anna found herself wondering at her cold-blooded lack of guilt as she contemplated imminent infidelity. After twenty-three years of absolute faithfulness, here she was suddenly confronted by the prospect of adultery, determined to break every rule she had ever lived by, to behave like a whore. She shivered, enthralled at the thought.

  She was halfway through her wild duck when the man eventually entered the dining-room accompanied by a girl of about twelve – plainly his daughter. He gave Anna a brief smile full of purpose, then sat with his back to her and started a conversation with the child. Pity, considering the scarcity of time, Anna thought. But there was also something luxurious about not being able to have dinner with him.

  By ten o’clock she was naked in bed, waiting. The sound of voices and the banging of cooking pots came from downstairs. Two hours went by. Footsteps creaked outside her room. Doors shut. Silence.

  Tense with anticipation, Anna found herself wondering if just one night with a stranger would do anything to jeopardise twenty-three solid years of marriage. Might the placing of one foot on the slippery slope mean a general descent? Would it whet a long-dormant appetite, underline her discontent? It was hard to judge in advance. The self is so surprising. Maybe, from now on, she would break out in all sorts of directions. Maybe she would start to acknowledge the looks that Jack, Michael’s oldest friend, had been giving her for years. Maybe she would become impervious to the boys’ lack of consideration and, with other things on her mind, be irritated by them no longer. Maybe she would spend some money on herself, for once: resuscitate her rusty smile … cut and redden her hair, go off to London on Michael’s nights out at the Round Table, the Parish Council, the Rock Gardeners’ Club, and the Regiment’s endless reunions …

  The silence continued. Anna lay awake all night. The man did not come. The cold she felt became the cold of foolishness and shame. Desolate, she dressed at dawn, stood for a long time at the window watching a hard sun rise over the lupins. Escape had been quite spoiled by her own stupidity, her own crushed vanity. Also, she must now query her own judgement. How could she have been so wrong about the man’s intentions?

  By eight, she was downstairs settling the bill. Through stinging eyes, she observed a mistake. She had been charged for two glasses of champagne.

  ‘A gentleman paid for one,’ she explained.

  ‘Apologies,’ said the proprietor at once. ‘Of course: Monsieur Cadeau. He gave instructions. Whenever he’s here he buys everyone in the place a glass of champagne. Good for – how do you say? Public relations.’

  Anna felt the blood scour her face.

  ‘Who is Monsieur Cadeau?’ she asked.

  The proprietor’s smile indicated it was not the first time he had had to solve this puzzle.

  ‘He works for a champagne firm,’ he said.

  A taxi took Anna back to Angers. At the hotel she found Michael and the boys at breakfast. They showed no surprise at her return.

  ‘Had fun?’ asked Michael. ‘You might have left a proper message. Still, we didn’t worry. We knew you wouldn’t do anything silly.’

  The boys, engrossed in guide books, asked no questions.

  ‘Delange is the plan for today,’ Michael went on. ‘Looks like an interesting church.’ He turned almost contrite eyes to his wife. ‘I see it has a pretentious auberge, your sort of thing. Would you like –?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Anna quickly. ‘I went there. You wouldn’t like it at all.’

  From a long way off, she registered Michael’s relief, and her sons’ clumsy hands thrashing about among their guide books and maps, eager to be off.

  ‘Buck up with your coffee, Mum,’ said Simon.

  Was there anything more bleak than return from a flight that had failed?

  In the car, Michael said, ‘Let’s take the small road, follow the river.’

  I could always try again, thought Anna.

  ‘Did you look at the church?’ asked Simon, zipping up his horrible anorak.

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘I didn’t go there to see the church.’

  Turning her attention to the map, she found the road that led to Monsieur Cadeau of the champagne firm.

  ‘On our way then,’ said Michael.

  But I don’t suppose I will, thought Anna.

  En famille once more, the McGulls then set off for the ninth day of their sightseeing tour of France.

  Mother of the Bride

  After much deliberation Mrs Hetherington decided against taking any tranquillisers. Better, she thought, to witness the whole thing with a clear mind than through an unreal calm induced by pills. If a tear should come to her eye – why, that was the prerogative of every bride’s mother. Few people would see and those who did might understand.

  When she had taken her decision Mrs Hetherington had not envisaged the strength of emotion that would affect her on the Big Day. So it was with some surprise, here and now in the church, the journey up the aisle having been accomplished with dignity on the arm of her brother John, that she felt frills of sweat at the back of her knees. And her hands, stuffed into navy gloves one size too small, trembled in disconcerting fashion.

  She had chosen to wear navy with the thought that it was the most appropriate colour for her particular role at the wedding. Nobody could accuse her of trying to steal the bride’s thunder – as did so many mothers, perhaps unconsciously -and yet, if they observed her closely, Mrs Hetherington’s friends would see that her clothes conveyed the quiet chic she had always managed to achieve. She had chosen them with care: silk dress, matching coat, straw hat bearing the only small flourish of which she could be accused – an old-fashioned rose on its moiré band. On a November morning of early snow she had taken shelter in Debenhams and come upon the whole outfit, piece by lucky piece: even bag, shoes and gloves. In the small changing-room she had examined her appearance with the sort of critical eye no bride’s mother can afford to be without. How would it all look five months hence under a blue April sky? Mrs Hetherington would have liked to have asked Alice’s opinion – after all, it was by tradition supposed to be Alice’s day – but her daughter was off on a ‘holiday’ raising funds for overseas famine relief. She was funny like that, Alice. No interest in appearance – never had had. It had been all Mrs Hetherington could do to persuade her daughter in March – cutting it pretty tight – to concentrate on her own wedding dress. No: Alice had never so much as asked her mother what she was going to wear, and in all the flurry of getting ready it was unlikely she had noticed. Or cared.

  Precisely what Alice did care for, Mrs Hetherington was sometimes at a loss to know. As a child she had been straightforward enough – ordinary, really, except for h
er freckles. A fondness for rabbits rather than ponies; some talent at the high jump, which petered out at puberty; an inclination towards history, which petered out after ‘O’ levels; and no traumas that Mrs Hetherington could recall. Except perhaps for the time Alice had thrown scrambled egg at her father on the last morning of their holiday at Brancaster, calling him a fuddy-duddy (and worse) for not allowing her to stay at the village disco later than midnight. But that had been an exceptional time, and David had made his point clumsily, Mrs Hetherington had to agree. She put the incident down to teenage wilfulness and considered herself lucky she had such a comparatively easy offspring.

  It was only when she thought about it later that it occurred to her that Alice’s ‘distance’, as she called it, dated from that holiday. This ‘distance’ itself was so hard to define that Mrs Hetherington refrained from mentioning it even to David, lest he should consider her ridiculous. But to Mrs Hetherington, who could never be accused of insensitivity, the widening gap between their daughter and her parents seemed noticeably to develop. It wasn’t that Alice changed in any outward way: she remained the polite, willing, quiet creature she had always been, dutiful to her parents and apparently content to come home most weekends. But of her weekday life in London Mrs Hetherington was aware she knew nothing beyond the facts: Alice had a research job in television – exactly what that meant Mrs Hetherington had always been a little unclear and never remembered, somehow, to ask. She shared a flat with an old school friend in Shepherd’s Bush: not a very salubrious part of London, but still. What she got up to in the evenings Mrs Hetherington had no idea, though several times when she had rung after nine at night Alice had been in, giving rise to the comfortable thought that at least her daughter spent many evenings at home watching television. Once, when Mrs Hetherington had conversationally mentioned a demonstration in Trafalgar Square that had been given much attention in the papers, Alice casually remarked that she had been there and it wasn’t half as bad as the publicity made out. Well, thought Mrs Hetherington at the time, Alice must have been passing. She had never been a political girl, that was for sure. She could happily have bet her bottom dollar Alice would have no interest in the terrible carryings-on of the National Front, or those dreadful Militants.