Lovers and Newcomers by Rosie Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

one of those women who ought to come stamped with a warning notice. Luckily, he might have added, she was not his cup of tea.
    He said, ‘What we’ve got here is Selwyn going berserk, Polly being exaggeratedly patient with him, my wife suddenly as happy as Larry in spite of our various not insignificant problems, Colin who is clearly ill, you being your mystical self, and me, waiting for the bloody builders to come and start building my house .’
    Miranda saw that Katherine had been right, the rain had stopped and a dilute sun now shone in on them.
    Amos muttered, ‘But, even so, I’m moderately pleased to find myself here.’
    Her smile reflected the sun. She skipped back to his side, kissed the top of his head and flattened his upstanding hair.
    ‘Oh, that’s good . Very good.’
    ‘I don’t know how it will turn out, though,’ he warned her. ‘I bought into a plot of rural land for development, at a good price, thank you, not into a new-age nest of nightmares.’
    ‘Sweet dreams,’ Miranda laughed.
    Colin and Polly and Katherine took the footpath that skirted a series of fields on the way to Meddlett. The sky to the west was the blue of a bird’s egg, and the yellow leaves in the hedges hung luminous in the oblique light. Polly led the way, brushing through soaking long grass and tramping down the arms of brambles so that the others could pass. She walked briskly, and soon drew ahead. Katherine found that she was breathing hard, and looked back to see whether Colin wanted to overtake her. But he was strolling with his hands in his pockets, apparently studying the edge of the rain clouds where a bright rim of liquid gold shone against the grey.
    The clean, damp air swelled her lungs. She liked the gleam of the wet leaves, and the iridescent trails of slugs glossing the stones.
    Katherine was unused to country walking. She had grown up in Hampstead, and Sunday walks on the Heath with her parents had marked the limits of rural exploration. She had lived all her married life with Amos in London, and apart from occasional games of tennis and some gentle skiing there had been no call to exert herself. In his forties Amos had taken to going on trekking holidays, but always with male friends and colleagues. The idea of leaving the boys and accompanying him to Nepal had seemed so far-fetched to her in those days that it had never even been discussed. Nowadays Amos was too heavy for the mountains, and preferred a tropical beach.
    Polly sat down on a stile and waited for her to catch up.
    ‘Am I going too fast?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes, but I like it. You know the way?’
    ‘Sel and I walked along here the other night.’
    ‘Did you? Going to the village?’
    Polly shook her head. ‘Just having a walk together. He can’t work every minute of the day and night, but he gets so restless.’ She picked off a yellow leaf that was blotched with dark spots like skin growths, and twirled it in her fingers.
    ‘I noticed that,’ Katherine said.
    ‘I wish he’d relax more,’ Polly murmured.
    ‘Why does he drive himself so hard?’
    Amos had driven himself too, especially in his early years at the Bar, but he always claimed that it was work undertaken ultimately to generate the time and money that would allow him to enjoy himself. A simple equation, Katherine reflected. And of course, as it was her habit to acknowledge, he had always been generous with the money.
    Buying you off? A voice that she didn’t recognize startlingly murmured inside her head. She ignored it, and concentrated her attention on Polly.
    ‘Because he thinks he has fucked up,’ Polly answered in a level voice. ‘He thinks that he’s failed with everything else in his life, therefore he’s trying to compensate by building us a new home overnight, using his bare hands. We’re totally broke, you know. We had to sell the house, finally, to pay off the debts, and we’ve put just about everything that was left into the Mead barn.’
    ‘I didn’t