Beyond the Arch Page 3

  Peter and Ann arranged to have dinner that evening with Jenny at a small Italian restaurant close to their hotel but Peg had resisted all pressure to join them. The atmosphere was restrained. Ann clearly felt unhappy and guilty at only returning to the family when her father was so ill. It had not been possible to expiate the guilt by purchasing better medical care for her father and she was concerned that she had been deterred too easily from doing so by a young doctor imbued with what she saw as immature idealism. She had desisted from pressing the point further as she had sensed intuitively, and correctly, that Peter was in sympathy with the doctor’s views. Anxious to atone for her failures, she determined to pursue the possibilities further the following day in Peter’s absence. She resolved to spend a large part of the Bank Holiday Monday alone with her parents and to spend the remainder of the week in the north-east. She suggested to Peter that he might hire a car and explore the Northumberland coastline on the following day as the weather was now set fair. Peter offered some nominal resistance to this suggestion but was speedily overruled. Privately he was pleased to have a day for leisure and reflection. It was decided that he should return to London on the Tuesday and that Ann would stay in the flat for the remainder of the week to see more of her father. Jenny had an interview with a publishing house in London a fortnight later for a possible job now that her postgraduate course had finished and she would accompany her sister back to London.

  3

  Peter was awake early on the Bank Holiday Monday. After driving Ann to her parents’ flat, he headed for the Great North Road with a sense of release. He drove fast and with some abandon across the wide upland fields with distant views of the Cheviots and as he did so the sun emerged from light cloud cover. Half an hour later, the massive towers and outer bailey of Alnwick Castle came into sight. He crossed the Aln and, turning the car towards the coast, drove more slowly to the fishing village of Craster and parked by the quayside. On leaving the car, he was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of kippers emanating from the smokehouse. He walked north along the coastal path towards the jagged, upraised fingers of the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle on its promontory overlooking the North Sea. Standing in the heart of the old fortress in the mid-morning sun, he quietly absorbed his surroundings, refreshing the memories of his previous visit. He rotated slowly through three hundred and sixty degrees taking in the great southern curtain wall terminating at its western end in the monumental drums of the gatehouse, the square northern Lilburn Tower and the gentle slope of the soft moss-interwoven grass of the main ward leading to the cliff edge. He made his way slowly down, stopping close to the seaward point of the lime-stained dolerite cliff which marks the point where the Whin Sill meets the North Sea. He looked down into the rumbling churn below funnelling the spray high into the air. The ever-changing patterns of the plumes of water and surf held his gaze for several minutes and then, stepping back a few paces, he lay on the grass in the sun and re-ran the film clip of the previous forty-eight hours in his mind. The office seemed a hemisphere away. A number of thoughts disquieted him. Ann’s sensitivities and vulnerabilities had been exposed to him more starkly than ever before. Previously these had been hidden by her protective and often impenetrable shell. Some had been brought to light through the conversation at the dinner party which, despite his flippancy, he had found unsettling and challenging. More had become apparent as they had reached Newcastle and she had reacted to the half-remembered environment of her childhood and family. A mixture of affection and guilt had engendered a wish to assert herself at the hospital through positive action, a wish which had been frustrated by the young doctor. Finally, as he reflected, his eyes closed and he drifted off to sleep in the sun.

  He awoke after ten minutes or so and glancing round saw a woman about twenty yards away walking very slowly towards the cliff edge. There was something about her progress which perturbed him. He got to his feet soundlessly. She stopped close to the edge and stood, neck extended and eyes closed with her face bathed in the sunlight. She was young with fair hair and wearing a white summer dress which contrasted with her deeply tanned face, shoulders and arms. He found it impossible to decipher the expression on her face. She swayed gently in the sun and Peter, unsure of her intentions, walked quietly along the grass track to within about six feet of her, looking uncertainly between the figure and the sea repetitively striking the rocks below. She slowly opened her eyes and turned her head to look directly at him. He started to look away, embarrassed and concerned that his proximity might be misinterpreted. He turned back again a moment later, disconcerted, when he heard the sound of soft laughter. She took a pace or two towards him. ‘That was kind of you but I can assure you that nothing could have been further from my thoughts.’

  ‘Oh, I never imagined anything.’

  She turned to face him and said with an unsettling directness, ‘Oh, I think you did. I think you were confronted by a dilemma. You weren’t sure as to whether you might be making an embarrassing and un-British fuss about nothing but finally decided that you would never forgive yourself if I had leapt off and you had done nothing to try and prevent me doing so. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Near enough, I guess. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Now you’re apologising for making a fuss about nothing. That’s not necessary. Now I shall drop the subject and you’ll probably be grateful for that.’

  Peter blushed and started to mumble further apologies while backing away feeling embarrassed and somewhat foolish. She held out a detaining hand which did not quite touch his arm. He raised his head and found that she was scrutinising his face. He stared for a moment too long before looking away and knew that courtesy demanded that he should stay and talk for a few moments. He looked back at her once more as he heard further light laughter.

  ‘Now I’ve discomfited you again. I’m really quite safe. My name is Sally Dunham. What’s yours?’

  ‘Mine’s Peter Bowman.’

  ‘Why don’t we sit in the sun and then you can tell me what Peter Bowman is doing in Northumberland?’ They walked slowly back up the grassy slope to the centre of the ward and sat facing south as the sun reached its zenith. Peter was sitting slightly behind Sally and was grateful for the opportunity to examine unobserved his companion in profile. She was a little older, perhaps his own age, than he had first imagined. Her easy movements, soft slim figure and clothes all belied her age. They rested back against the stones allowing the sun to caress their faces. ‘Have you visited Northumberland before or do you live locally?’ Sally asked.

  ‘No, I live in London but I have visited Dunstanburgh before and with a free day I wanted to see if my memories of the place were accurate.’

  ‘And are they’?

  ‘Yes, and the sun was shining on my last visit too. Do you live in the area?’

  ‘No, I also live in London and I’ve never been here before. Perhaps it’s a place which should always be remembered in the sunlight, like the memories of youth.’

  ‘Now you’re laughing at me again.’

  ‘Perhaps a little. Memories are much more important to some than to others. But this view is memorable. Are you staying for long?’

  ‘No, I’m going home tomorrow. My wife’s family live in Newcastle and her father is very ill.’ Then he added, ‘She’s been away for many years and wanted to be alone with her family today. I’d never met her parents before we came north yesterday. But what are you doing here? Are you on holiday?’

  ‘I’m partly on holiday and partly collecting information for a project.’

  ‘What project is that?’

  ‘Oh, I’m a freelance journalist. I write features for various magazines and occasionally for the Sunday papers. They include travel articles mainly on Europe, opinion pieces and some on literary themes.’

  ‘I thought your name was vaguely familiar, but haven’t you written a novel as well?’

  ‘Yes, but most of the time I prefer to
suppress that particular memory and rather hope others will have done so as well. It was not well-received by the critics or, as they say in a euphemism much beloved by the book trade, it “didn’t work”. I’m surprised you even know of it – most people don’t! But I think that’s enough about me.’

  ‘No,’ said Peter abruptly and then he paused. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for that word to come out quite so emphatically, but I might never again have another opportunity to ask someone like you a question like this. How do you go about writing a novel?’

  Sally turned laughing and looked at him. ‘You’re apologising again but tell me, what’s your job?’

  ‘I’m a solicitor. It’s a profession where all that we do is done within a well-defined legal framework. Creative writing must be very different.’

  ‘Yes, of course it is. It draws on many elements – imagination, fantasy, personal experience, prejudice, emotion and these must then be integrated to construct a coherent whole. I’m quite unable to describe how I did this and I suspect there are as many different ways of doing so as there are authors. I really can’t give you any guidance since I can’t even communicate the ways in which I prepared to create fiction. Some of it, probably most of it, was simply flying by the seat of my pants. In any event, as an unsuccessful novelist, I’m certainly not the most satisfactory source of knowledge.’ She paused and looked at him directly. ‘I sense that the question was important to you. Is there a particular reason why you ask?’

  Peter hesitated before responding. ‘Yes. The night before we came away we had some friends over for dinner and spent some time reflecting on the routine and conventionality that most of us impose on our lives – or allow to be imposed on our lives. We speculated why so often at an early stage of our adult lives we opt for or simply accept long-term stability and certainty. I was challenged and asked what I would do if I were to throw off all my bourgeois inhibitions and constraints and redirect my life. I chickened out and didn’t answer that question, but if I had been more open I should have said that I should like to write.’

  ‘I’m not laughing now, but why did you say “should like to”?’

  ‘Perhaps I held back because if I’d said that I was going to write a novel this would have sounded pretentious and possibly opened me up to ridicule. You see, bourgeois inhibitions again. Certainly, the thought of writing a novel is daunting.’

  ‘I can well see that you might feel inhibited by the thought of making a casual announcement that you were about to write a book, an intention that would perhaps be treated with the same level of seriousness as a statement between dessert and cheese that you were off to swim the Channel or planning to become an astronaut.’ They laughed. ‘I personally solved this problem by telling all my journalist friends that I was going to write a book and then going away to a cottage in the south-west of France for six months and writing alone without distractions. This was easier for me since my job is centred around the written word and some of my colleagues had already written works of fiction with mixed success. I knew my pride would not allow me to return until I had at least produced a manuscript.’ He looked away, uncertain of his ability to undertake so large a task. Sensing his diffidence, she added, ‘You’ll only know if it is within your capabilities if you sit down and try. There is nothing which concentrates the mind quite so effectively as sitting down in front of a typewriter with a ream of pristine paper. It’s challenging even to get to that point.’

  ‘I guess that’s true. If I’m honest, I must admit that my life is too comfortable at present and being a lawyer and a man I’ve not yet got beyond pen and paper.’

  ‘I’m not so sure that anybody’s life is that comfortable. Your dinner party conversation and your reaction to it suggest that you and some of your friends are very possibly not as satisfied with life as you claim. Now I must be making you feel very uncomfortable – again.’

  ‘Yes,’ he laughed, ‘you’ve succeeded in doing that. I’m not sure I’m any wiser but possibly a little better informed and more insightful than I was. Thank you for listening to me. It’s often easier to rehearse thoughts with a stranger than with those to whom one is close.’ He hesitated before asking, ‘Would you be prepared to walk back to Craster with me and have a drink and a sandwich in the pub so that we can talk for a little longer?’

  ‘I’ve left my car in Embleton,’ she said pointing towards the small village to the north of the castle, ‘but if you can drive me back there afterwards then I should enjoy that.’

  They began to walk down the track to re-join the coastal path when Sally suddenly took off her shoes and started to run. Peter gazed after her in some surprise before following and did not catch up with her until she had reached a gate on the path where she had stopped to regain her breath. ‘It’s the effect of the sun, the warmth and the grass under my feet,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I just feel like running. But now I shall adopt a more regular pace.’ They continued more slowly, eyes part-closed against the early afternoon sun, and as they walked Peter was able to learn more about her. She was single and unattached, and after three years at Oxford had worked as a journalist. Her mother had been French and her father a diplomat and, as a consequence, she had travelled a great deal, first as a child and later in the course of her work. Neither parent was now living nor had she any immediate family. Her mother had returned to her native land after her father had died and Sally had been left her house in France. This, together with some private sources of income, had made it possible for her to leave salaried employment and pursue a career as a freelance journalist and spend the summer months in rural France.

  They reached the village and sat companionably on a rough bench outside the small pub looking over the kipper smokehouse. She told Peter she had been planning to drive further north up the coast that afternoon. Impetuously he offered his services as a chauffeur and guide despite his scant knowledge of the area and was quietly pleased that these offers were accepted. He was uncertain about his motives in inviting her to spend the afternoon with him. His interest had been aroused by her freshness, candour and perceptiveness. He had been disturbed more than he had cared to admit by the challenges posed by the dinner party conversation. These had highlighted the extent to which his orthodox career and conventional and comfortable marriage, despite occasional frictions, were bound by routine. This chance encounter had offered him an opportunity to act out of character and the discovery that she was a writer had given him vicarious access to a sphere of activity of which he knew little. He felt some disloyalty to Ann in enjoying Sally’s company for several hours of the day when her father was ill and knew he would have felt some relief if she had declined his offer, which irrationally he thought would have diminished any feeling of guilt. He assured himself that he was not driven by any specific sexual interest, although he was aware that she was an attractive and desirable companion.

  They drove north to Bamburgh and sat on the soft sand at the foot of the castle and later, stimulated by Sally, they walked and then ran, shoes in hand, along the cool firm sand at the water’s edge. They talked much and as they did so Peter began to wonder if he did have the courage and initiative to break free from his life and construct a new world, entirely dependent on his own endeavours and enterprise.

  He drove Sally slowly back to her car and turned to face her as she was about to leave. ‘Can I see you again in London?’

  ‘I don’t think that we should make arrangements like that.’

  Peter looked at her. ‘I have enjoyed today.’

  ‘I too, but I suspect that you might not be planning to tell your wife about this encounter.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ Peter was surprised by the directness of the comment and his readiness to admit this so freely. He knew that it would be difficult to explain the day to Ann, particularly the unsolicited offer to act as a driver and guide for the afternoon, without sounding apologetic and defensive. It was more than like
ly that Ann would misinterpret the meeting. On the other hand, a failure to refer to the meeting would suggest complicity in an affair which did not exist.

  ‘You should not make arrangements or assignations,’ she said with a grin, ‘on the basis of occasions like today which are purely serendipitous and not entirely real. Therein lies their pleasure and charm.’ She leant forward and kissed him quickly and firmly on the lips and then sitting back laughing she said, ‘We shall only meet again if it is in our stars – farewell middle-class man!’

  She slipped out of the car and into her own and was gone. Peter restarted the engine and set off to follow her but thought better of it and drove slowly back to the city in the evening gold.

  4

  It was a Friday evening three weeks later back in London. Peter had not mentioned his encounter at Dunstanburgh. Jenny had travelled to London with her sister and was still with them. After an inconclusive first interview she had been invited for a further one the following Monday. Ann’s father’s condition had stabilised and he remained in that grey and uncertain clinical no-man’s-land, neither well enough to leave hospital nor yet sufficiently ill to cause immediate concern to his family or medical attendants. They were to be joined by Peter’s parents for dinner that evening.

  Ann was preparing dinner when Jenny wandered into the kitchen to help, which she was doing in a desultory manner. Ann was not entirely prepared for the discussion which was to follow. She had often found Jenny’s direct and uninhibited conversational style a challenge to her more conventional attitudes, imprinted through her nonconformist and, initially, pre-war upbringing.

  ‘Ann, did you sleep with Peter before you were married?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Why do you say “of course not” and why are you blushing?’