CHAPTER TWELVE #3
Sage lowered herself into the passenger seat.
She quickly checked her reflection in the little mirror under the sun visor, wiped away smudges of eyeliner and mascara that had slipped free of her eyelashes and gave her cheeks a small pinch.
Hearing Rafe slam the boot shut, she flicked the little shutter closed.
She felt nervous, on jittery high alert, and her hands were shaking slightly.
She was torn between basking in the luxury of an hour in the car alone with Rafe and sheer panic at the havoc he wrought on her normally sanguine nervous system.
Rafe slid into his seat and started the engine. The car roared into action and they edged forwards into the slow-moving traffic. Now that he was actually in the car, Sage settled a little. She started to look through his collection of CDs that were organized neatly in a case.
‘I thought CDs were obsolete. It’s lovely to see them again. Although your taste in music is surprising!’ she laughed as she found a copy of Snoop Dogg’s album Tha Doggfather.
‘That’s an old one of Louis’s,’ Rafe laughed. ‘My taste in music is … more traditional.’
Sage rifled through the Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel and Ben Howard mixed in with Debussy and Mozart, and felt at peace; it was comforting that they had similar tastes in music.
‘What’s your favourite book?’ she was prompted to ask him.
Rafe, indicating, looked left and then right and pulled out onto the main road.
‘Am I being tested?’ he asked, looking at her out of the corner of his eye as he changed up through the gears.
‘Quite possibly,’ Sage replied innocently.
‘Hmm, probably Manka the Sky Gipsy, a book by “BB”. Have you heard of it?’ Rafe looked at Sage quickly and then returned his eyes to the road.
‘Oh yes, I have. My father used to read it to us when Casper and I were children, along with Brendon Chase and The Little Grey Men. His descriptions of nature are so powerful and evocative – and at the same time so sympathetic and understanding. Dad always used to say he was a true countryman.’
Sage had compartmentalized her childhood into two halves.
Before and after. The first half, before her mother died and her father retreated, had taken on a hue of golden utopia.
And then the second half, when Dennis and Betsy had gathered up the twins and, with Maggie’s help, kept them from falling apart.
She did not know how to express this, and she had never before wanted to try. But she wanted to tell Rafe everything.
Rafe glanced at Sage again, briefly taking his eyes off the road as they sped along the motorway towards Cambridge.
He wanted to ask more about her father, but he did not want to encroach into uncomfortable territory for her, so he purposefully kept his focus on the surface topic.
‘I thought “BB” was only read in my household. No one else seems to have heard of him. He’s a literary genius, in my humble opinion.
Right, your turn – what’s your favourite?
’ Rafe turned off Radio 4, on which a voice had been droning on about recycling systems, to better hear Sage’s soft voice over the engine.
‘My very favourite novel is probably National Velvet by Enid Bagnold. Oh – actually, maybe it’s the Flambards series by K.
M. Peyton. I can’t decide! I’ve read them all so many times, they’ve kept me company through some long, lonely nights – nights when I felt real despair.
’ She thought of her dog-eared childhood set that she had almost left in the bedroom in Finca Azucar; some of her other beloved books she had abandoned, mourning their loss like old friends.
There had been no space in the trunk for all of her many books, but her very favourites she had packed, instead leaving most of her and Hal’s clothes with no regrets.
She looked out of the window, hoping she hadn’t brought the doldrums into the warm sanctuary of the car.
She wanted to say something more cheerful but her mind had frozen, momentarily stuck in the past. Rafe, speeding past the turning to the Cambridge services, saved her from any further discomfort.
‘Isn’t it peculiar that we are both still reading children’s literature.
I was worried I might have blown it by not professing true love for Dostoevsky – I find him bloody depressing – or Shakespeare, who I do admit is a master wordsmith, but I don’t want to curl up with King Lear on a cold night.
If you think about it, we are both optimists.
We want to live in a world where good ultimately prevails over evil.
Most of the fiction created for young people reassuringly depicts just that.
The lines are somewhat blurred in adulthood and in texts specifically aimed at grown-ups – the principles are harder to decipher. ’
Sage stared at Rafe, the sense of affinity surprising her. She smiled encouragingly, wanting him to go on.
‘Do you know though, I have never read Harry Potter. Kestrel – he’s my second cousin but like a brother to me, closest in age to me in our family – was obsessed with those books. He’s a little clumsy in society but the smartest person I know.’
Sage looked across at him, her eyes shining in the dark car.
‘Do you see him often?’
‘No, but I need to pay him a visit soon. He’s having a rough time. His lovely father, my Uncle Robert, died a few months ago. Kestrel has hidden himself away in Scotland, not wanting to see anyone.’
‘Oh, Rafe. That’s awful.’ It reminded her painfully of her wretched father who had hidden himself away from the world too. ‘Poor Kestrel. He sounds a little like Dad. Is he married? Does he have any family to support him?’
‘No, he’s not married. The family he has are all fairly useless.
His mother remarried about three weeks after my uncle’s funeral, another Duke, and is now, as she crows to the rooftops, a double Duchess.
’ Rafe rolled his eyes. ‘She moved away to her new estate without a backwards glance. Kestrel, who is losing his home, Dunbarton Castle, is now living in an old hunting lodge in the wilds of the west coast, and I doubt has even set eyes on another human except at the post office for a good few months apart from myself. His sister, Mary, lives in the house in London and doesn’t give a stuff about old Kestrel, she just sells more of the remaining family heirlooms when she needs more funds.
I try to go up as often as I can, whenever I can manage a few days away, which unfortunately is not often enough.
’ Rafe gave in to his curiosity and asked gently, ‘Sage, you mentioned your dad. Where is he?’ He glanced at her as he pulled off at the Newmarket exit.
He was reassured to find that she did not look upset.
‘He’s down on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall.
He inherited an old wreck of a farm from his family when they died and he lives down there, supposedly doing the place up, but Bumpa went down several years ago – it must have been when I was still a teenager – and said it was basically a ruin and all Dad was doing was drinking whisky to drown his sorrows.
He is still heartbroken about losing Mumma and he can’t pull himself through it.
’ She looked down at her hands. ‘He didn’t even come to my wedding.
Bumpa gave me away, although not very enthusiastically – he even said to me at the altar that it wasn’t too late for me to bolt!
’ Sage chuckled wryly at the memory. ‘Cas and I have come to think of Bumpa and Gammy as our real parents. They’ve been there for us, come what may.
Bumpa has looked after me better than most people’s real fathers.
I am so grateful to him, not that he would want that. ’
‘Your grandfather is a complete legend,’ Rafe said reverently.
He didn’t know how to respond to this painful revelation.
How could their father have abandoned the twins when they needed him most?
he thought, indignant on Sage’s behalf. ‘He’s helped me so much in this first year, and he prevented me from making a couple of big rookie mistakes.
I have enormous respect for him. He’s earned every ounce of the success that he is enjoying at the moment, and is on track to be leading trainer again this year.
You should be very proud of him. Now, on to more serious issues.
What’s your favourite song?’ He put a large, warm hand across the car to clasp Sage’s smaller one.
Sage accepted it gratefully and clung on firmly to show that his regard was wholly reciprocated.
He lifted their linked hands to his lips where he placed a soft kiss on her fingers.