Backward Glances

M Dooks S

Description

In her third novel, Sue Dooks revisits scenes from the first two novels of her trilogy, largely set in the Cevennes mountains, as she unravels the untold events that still haunt Rosalind and her lover Matthew and others who were caught up in their story of daring love and unforeseen tragedy. For some characters it seems as if reconciliation to their fate will never be possible but place and myth quietly begin to work their magic and ghosts are laid to rest at last.In the first two novels of her trilogy - The English Girls and L'Hermitage - Sue Dooks shows how the consequences of our actions are never in our control and that to make amends for the forces we may unwittingly unleash will never be easy. In Backward Glances it is once again the power of love and the ability to forgive which brings an acceptance of the past which allows the possibility of a future for her characters.

Sujets

• Romance

Informations

• Publié par: eBook Versions
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781843965220
• Langue: English

Extrait

Published by Caxton Park

Copyright © 2018 S M Dooks

All rights reserved

S M Dooks has asserted her
right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988
to be identified as the author
of this work.

ISBN 978-1-84396-522-0

Also available in paperback
ISBN 978-1-72772-858-3

This book is a work of fiction
and all the characters and/or
organisations and events appearing
in this work are the product of
the author s imagination; any
resemblance to actual persons, living
or dead, is entirely coincidental.

eBook production
eBook Versions
27 Old Gloucester Street
London WC1N 3AX
www.ebookversions.com
Also by M Dooks


The English Girls
L Hermitage
For Charles Bell
BACKWARD
GLANCES


S M Dooks



CAXTON PARK
Contents


Cover
Title Page
Copyright Credits

PART ONE

I. Maggie
II. David
III. Maria
IV. Matthew
V. Rosalind

PART TWO

I. Maggie David
II. Marie Stephen
III. Matthew Rosalind

PART THREE

I. Maggie
II. David
III. Maria
IV. Matthew
V. Rosalind
Afterword
PART ONE
I. Maggie


The phone call came a few days after the letter. Maggie didn t answer it because she was out with the dog, but there was a message, bleeping at her insistently, on her return. On a first hearing, it didn t seem to make any sense at all, and she wondered whether the speaker had got the wrong number. She couldn t recall a David in her immediate acquaintance, and she knew it would be some minutes before the computer in her head began to search more widely through that long list of names still stored, although temporarily forgotten. Intrigued, and perhaps even a little irritated, by this second intrusion into the steady peace of an increasingly uneventful life, she played the message again.
A strange conviction, appearing out of nowhere, that somehow the letter and the phone call were connected, made her listen much more carefully for clues, which would slot this particular message into its rightful place. The speaker was hesitant, obviously unhappy or nervous at being denied the warmth of an immediate human response. He also seemed unprepared in what he wanted to say, vital bits of information being left out altogether.
It s David here—I wondered if we could meet before I go to France—we need to talk about my father, there are so many blanks to be filled—I ll ring again—.
Even though the message finished at this point, Maggie sensed the speaker was still there, uncertain, or perhaps reluctant to break the connection he had just made. She waited for the final click, and it was more than a minute before it came.
France was the clue she had been listening for, and like a sleepwalker, she returned to the kitchen, and picked up the letter she hadn t opened until yesterday morning. Suddenly the French stamp, and its smudged postmark, became even more weighted with a past which seemed determined not to recede as it should. Instead, both the letter and the phone call, were forcing her to contemplate a life she thought she had finished with, and she felt a rising resentment at such an unexpected intrusion.
Following Tom s fatal heart attack, less than a year after her own premature retirement, Maggie had made a conscious decision to let go of most of the ties which bound her to the past. She still had the boys, of course, but school, a lifelong devotion to teaching, could go. She had given it her soul for far too long, it was time to claw back something for herself. And for over fifteen years she had done just that and now, within the space of a week, a letter and a phone call had begun to dismantle her carefully constructed retreat. A familiar sense of vulnerability, buried but not gone, made her feel a lot older than her seventy three years, and she drew back instinctively, and a little angrily, from the choices she felt she was being compelled to make.
Now that David had been placed, everything else became clear, even predictable. Although it was just over a year since his father s death in a kayaking accident in France, the news had obviously only just reached him too. Perhaps he was in England to visit his father s family before going to France. That would make sense. Rosalind had mentioned in her letter, the letter Maggie was still holding, that attempts had been made to reach David through the Italian police, although with no apparent success. Obviously that situation had now changed, and David was still struggling to come to terms with his father s death. In such circumstances, a hesitant phone call to a stranger, made much more sense and Maggie felt a sharp pang of compassion for the grieving young man. She had never met him, but she felt she knew him, or at least the boy he once was seventeen years ago. When the raw pain of estrangement from his son, had made Matthew turn to Maggie for comfort and sympathy, she had heard so much about the boy he had lost, that David had become almost as real a presence to her as her own two sons. During her last years as Head of English at Layters Girls School, Matthew was an indispensable member of her department, their mutual dependence developing into a bond which was more than just professional. With the perspective of age, Maggie realised the danger of such closeness, although at the time her affection for the young teacher had seemed perfectly natural, and certainly acceptable.
Now Matthew s son was trying to get in touch with her, as well as with his father s lover Rosalind. Maggie sighed. Any venture into the past was certain to make life more complicated, and complications in human relationships was something she had striven to avoid since Tom s death. Life was manageable, if it could be kept simple. She no longer had the appetite or the energy for the maelstrom of other people s feelings, and yet, once again, she felt herself in danger of being engulfed by a tide of emotion she would be unable to control.
Since her last year at Layters Girls School, when her whole professional life had been compromised by Matthew s reckless affair with his sixth form student, Rosalind Dane, she had learnt to be very cautious about the danger inherent in all highly charged relationships. Such danger was contagious and unpredictable, and invariably rendered vulnerable and powerless all those it touched. David was an innocent, of course, and she no longer had a life which could be easily compromised, but nevertheless her whole body ached with a hesitant tension as she stood in the middle of the kitchen, the letter clutched tightly in her hand.
It is an obvious, but not always acknowledged truth, that the loss which death brings is felt differently at different times. For over fifteen years Maggie had been adjusting to such shocks, as the hammer blows of grief gradually fell more lightly, even if they would never completely disappear. Now it was the sounding board she was missing. Tom had been so good at that. Patience, born of years listening to the expression of pain, sometimes trying to track the underlying, unspoken story, had made him a natural listener, firm but not judgemental, whenever a response was called for. Maggie had often wished she had had the skill to return the favour, but she hadn t Tom s patience with the trivial and the incoherent, and he often retreated in the face of her determination to sort things out. He put it down to her being a teacher, and the need to establish order, as quickly as possible, to take control. Since her retirement and Tom s death, taking control had become even more necessary, although increasingly more difficult, as the years passed. Maggie needed a sounding board, even if she took no notice of it. In the first stage of her bereavement, she tried to imagine Tom was still there, fashioning his typical response herself, when a decision had to be made or a dilemma resolved. It had helped to begin with, that sleight of mind, which for a few moments would lull her into a false sense of reality. Now it was more difficult, Tom s absence a dark emptiness, which couldn t be imagined away. She could still guess what his response might be, but she knew it was her guess, and the only sounding board was the one which was to be found in her own head.
The letter perhaps demanded a reply, and there was an address now to write to.
The phone call, however, asked nothing of her at the moment. She couldn t return the call as David had left no number, and she refused to take any steps herself to retrieve it. She had always worked on the principle that if someone really wanted to contact you they would try again. She was prepared to wait, although it made her uneasy.
She put down the letter and switched on the kettle. She felt impatient with her own uncertainty of response, and needed to bustle about. She opened a tin of meat and crossed to the back door to fetch the dog s dish. A greedy cocker spaniel, he always insisted in chasing it into any convenient corner, in order to lick up every last morsel.
On this occasion, she was so preoccupied with her thoughts, she gave him far too much food, and as she put the dish down he looked at her with bemused pleasure, before burying his nose in the sticky mess.
A few minutes later the phone rang again, and she reached to pick it up.
II. David.

Fairview itself was what he had expected. His meeting with his grandfather wasn t. Not that his expectations had ever been clear, but they had certainly not included the abrasive distress which occurred. For the last five years he had known about the dementia, his Italian grandparents had made sure of that, but not its nature or extent. He had made some attempt to research the condition, during his flight from Rome the previous week, but its complexity and variety had overwhelmed him. The more he read, the more nervous and upset he became, and he knew that in this instance knowledge wasn t helping. The one piece of information that had been useful, was that every case was different, and individuals b