Free Gold Digger by Frances Fyfield

Gayle?’
    ‘Mrs Edward Morton is a civilised woman. I do not know what she thinks.’
    The old fool admires her
, Saul thought.
Try again
.
    ‘So they feel secure about getting the money when the time comes?’ He was asking for confirmation of what he knew.
    Raymond nodded.‘They have been told there is no change. Thomas thought that was best. If they were to think otherwise, they would plague the pair of them. Edward would be sent to bully him. Beatrice would pretend to love him.’
    ‘Well,’ Saul said heartily. ‘That’s all in the distance. Thomas is as fit as a flea. They’ve got years and years.’
    T hey did not have years and years. They had three. And Saul was right: they were left alone. It was not that young Mrs Porteous and youthful old Thomas Porteous were shunned in the time that followed: it was simply that they were notembraced. They fitted nowhere, belonged in no social pocket, complied to no known formula in the town where they had been born. The doors were always open Chez Porteous; anyone who came in search of a donation was never turned away, but the odd couple seemed to need for so little by way of society, and were always so busy, they were almost insulting in their self-sufficiency. They travelled, left and came back with ease. Maybe the quiet happiness, or the appearance of it, was repellent, all by itself. Maybe envy played a part. Anyway, they were left alone. They were seen staggering back from the beach with pieces of flint.
    And the house breathed in and out and bloomed and blossomed and the paintings on the walls grew in number, size, variety. Wisteria grew in the back yard, birds nested. Di Porteous was better dressed and had her hair done. Thomas kept a daily journal,
so that you will know,
he said,
how happy you have made me.
    He did it till the day he died. They did not have years and years. They had two of health and one of illness. Cancer of the oesophagus, and still, the children did not come; they did not see the point. The adult children, that is.Patrick came, though, as soon as he was old enough to catch the train: he came in secret, and went back in secret. He came because he wanted to.
    And Thomas Porteous kept his vibrant will to live almost to the end. He died when he had done what he thought he needed to do.
    T he evening after Thomas Porteous died, the fireworks started popping all the way along the beach. November 5th, Guy Fawkes day, with a mist.
    Like fireworks on the radio
, she remembered him saying last year.
    Like somebody digesting food
, he said.
Listen to them
.
    Noises on shingle, heard from this vast, unobtrusive house where she lived, explosions in the mist sounding like a series of farts. Di looked from the gallery window and went back to the desk, which was full of neatly stacked files, lists of indexes, lists of contingencies printed from the screen and, most explicit of all, the words typed out in his steady hand.
    You make it your business to acquire beautiful things, to keep them from the rapacious who would destroy them. You acquire them so they can go on living and delight and inform others. Then you give them away, with love, so that they can become something else to somebody else. You pass them on. You’re a Collector, Diana my Huntress, and Collectors must keep things safe. Remember to record what you think before you forget, for thus is learning. I love you so much …
    She looked at the words.
Love things, pass them on, let them go. Keep them first
.
    Then she heard the sound of breaking glass and went downstairs. Someone had hurled a stone from the beach against the leaded window of the disused front door. A small pane broken; a portent of what was to come. Only a small window, only a small life, not hers, somebody else’s.
    I am the Collector now. I carry the flame. You are only ever the custodian. The trustee.
    She was waiting for him to come back, listening for the sound of him.
    Wait for the friends,
he wrote
. And beware the enemies. You