Deceit by Clare Francis

Author:Clare Francis [Francis, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: UK
Publisher: Leicester [England] : Charnwood
Published: 1995-06-16T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

A GALE is blustering off the sea. Not an ideal time for a walk on the heath. The wind is so strong that the children and I have to lean into it, plodding heads down, like characters from an illustration in a Dickens story. But I’m glad we came. Sunday walks over the heath were a regular event when we lived at Heath End and I feel it’s important to re-establish these rituals, that by reverting to the habits of those happy days we might recapture some of their mood.

We are walking off an indifferent lunch served at an inn outside Woodbridge: overcooked roast beef, pale Yorkshire pudding and dense apple pie. The children ate with uncritical hunger, I with little enthusiasm. Keen to set the right tone for this, the first of what I want to be a string of successful family Sundays, I was too busy guiding the conversation through a series of light-hearted topics. But if I had hopes of a response from Josh, he soon put me right. Since our return he has become skilled at the art of polite inattention, a master of the unfocused gaze, the close examination of his food. Meeting this newly developed indifference, I was struck once again by the feeling that, somehow or other, I have engendered his disapproval.

Troubled by this and other thoughts, I lost momentum. By instinct or chance, Katie chose this moment to come to life. Emerging from a dreamy mood, fired by a sudden vivacity, she launched into a stream of joky gossip and extravagant tales and scathing skits on the school staff, told with her special blend of theatrical effects and flourishes. When she breaks free from her doubts and sparkles like this, when she uses her extraordinary talent for mimicry, I am overcome by the most enormous pride and admiration. She has such brilliance, such gifts, that I can’t help imagining a splendid future for her. Not as an actress—she’s far too uncertain for that—but as a writer or journalist, maybe an artist, some occupation which would make full use of her breathtaking flair for observation.

The gossip exhausted, Katie began to tease Josh, reverting to an old banter they both know well, reducing him to grinning affection. Feeding on this, she began to laugh herself, a sound that gladdened my heart, until, in her rapidly escalating euphoria, her laughter took on a fierce, brittle edge. Then I called for the bill and we left.

Now, as Josh spreads his arms wide against the buffeting wind, an aircraft attempting take-off, Katie swoops down on him and, gripping him by the waist, steers him into a series of loops and turns. The two of them gather speed, wheeling in ever wilder arcs, heads down, legs windmilling behind, until they come to a sudden halt and look solemnly out over the heath, catching their breath. Then, draping an arm around Josh’s shoulders, Katie leads him on at a slower pace.

They walk head to head. I keep back, out of earshot.

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