Learning by Heart by Elizabeth Cooke Page B

book came and went, and couldn’t find a publisher; and the second found an agent and a publisher, but no money. Then the third. And by this time Zeph was pregnant, and the mortgage lender was about to foreclose, and Cora had even thought they would have to come to Somerset to live with her. But Nick had sold his screenplay, then got a job writing TV commercials, in the same ten days, and they were off, heads above water, not rich when Joshua was born, but no longer desperate.
    They had come through all that, Cora thought, as they reached the gate to the farmyard and the house. Only last year Zeph had hinted at them buying a second home, somewhere near Cora, on the back of Nick’s success with his fourth book. Her heart had leapt in hope. Only last year. And yet, Cora considered, there had been a weariness in Zeph after Joshua was born, an uncharacteristic depression. When she asked Zeph how she felt, Zeph had brushed aside her concern. Yet it was almost visible: a barrier between her and Nick.
    As he held the gate for her, Cora looked at him. He was very handsome. Not just attractive, but handsome. You almost never saw that now: a man who was glamorous, like a forties movie star. A dangerous man, the archetypal image of a womanizer, a seducer. And that’s what he is , she thought suddenly. That’s exactly what he is .
    ‘Why?’ she asked him, made abruptly furious by this, and by her own easy acceptance of his appearance. Richard would have thrown him off the land, she knew. He would probably have hit him. ‘What was it for, with this actress?’ she asked. ‘How could you have been so stupid?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
    ‘I thought you were better than that,’ she told him. ‘I’m ashamed of you.’
    He looked wounded. ‘Are you?’
    ‘Of course! What do you expect me to feel? Proud?’
    ‘I never had it in my head to hurt Zeph, Cora.’
    ‘Well, you did. You have. You let a stranger tell her.’
    ‘I won’t see the girl again. It’s over – it’s been over for weeks.’
    ‘What rubbish,’ Cora retorted. ‘Zeph told me this morning that you’re working with her.’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t stay to do any rewrites in Paris. I asked to work from home. I just saw who I had to, and came home by the first train this morning. I don’t want to see Bella. I don’t want her.’
    ‘Well, now nobody wants you,’ Cora said sharply. ‘Congratulations.’
    She had begun to walk across the yard, but Nick stepped in front of her. ‘Cora,’ he said, ‘please help me.’
    ‘I can’t. What can I possibly do?’
    ‘I can’t lose Zeph,’ he said. ‘Or Josh.’
    ‘What do you expect of me?’ she said. ‘I can’t do anything.’
    ‘You can talk to her.’
    Cora smiled grimly. ‘I can’t talk to Zeph, Nick. You know that. She wouldn’t take any notice of me at the best of times.’ She paused. ‘And I don’t think I should,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t get involved. I should help my daughter do whatever she wants to do.’
    ‘She doesn’t want this,’ he said. ‘You know in your heart she doesn’t.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know that at all.’
    There was a noise along the lane: the sound of a car.
    As Zeph turned into the lane, she was thinking of her father. The thought had been triggered as she had come past the lower field, the one turned to pasture. The grass was full of thistles now, and seemed beaten by the winter cold; she saw the dark areas of scrub and moss in the far corner.
    Richard had always been careful to keep that field properly; he had put the two horses in there and built them a stable. When she was only eight she had helped him with it, gone down on the tractor, towing the trailer loaded with corrugated-asbestos roof sheets; stood by while two other men helped him put up the girders. He had told her long, complicated stories about building the other farm, of how it had been a ruin, and how he had learned at night school to lay