Sweet Home Summer

by Michelle Vernal

  ‘There’s worse places than Bibury you know, and you’ve your whole life ahead of you to go and explore,’ Charlie said with a smile.

  ‘I know it sounds silly and it’s hard to put into words, but there are times when I feel trapped and I don’t see a way out. It’s like deep down I know that I will never leave, my whole life will be played out here from start to finish with nothing very exciting in between.’

  ‘Okay, so where would you go, if you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?’

  ‘That’s easy. I’d go to Ireland, I want to see the rainbows around every corner that my Great-Granny Kate used to talk about.’

  ‘I’ll take you there one day.’ He fished a pack of Pall Malls out of his pocket and offered the pack to Bridget, but she shook her head.

  ‘No thanks, but I’ll have a puff of yours if I may.’

  ‘Sure.’ Tapping a cigarette out of the pack, he produced a gold zippo from his pants pocket. ‘My father gave me this on my eighteenth birthday.’ It was mumbled, with the cigarette dangling from between his lips, as he flipped the lid striking the flint until he had a flame. Lighting the cigarette, he inhaled deeply before passing it to Bridget. She took a little puff, aiming the smoke she exhaled up into the sky before handing the cigarette back.

  ‘How will we get there? By sea?’

  ‘We could fly.’

  ‘An aeroplane going all that way, imagine.’

  ‘It will happen one day, you’ll see, and it won’t just be for the rich either.’

  Bridget smiled up at him. The early evening light was bathing everything in gold and she was mesmerized by the way it played with his hair turning the black tips a shade of rich chocolate.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Bridget said, embarrassed at being caught staring.

  ‘You’re beautiful, do you know that?’ He ground his cigarette out into the ground next to him and Bridget didn’t get a chance to reply, nor would she have known what to say to his compliment because he leaned over and she felt his lips settle over the top of hers. He tasted salty and smoky, and his lips were soft. She felt his tongue begin to seek hers and she opened her mouth hesitantly, unsure as his arms entwined around her and he pulled her closer. As his hands roamed her back, feelings flared up inside her, feelings she’d never experienced before and soon she was kissing him back with a passion that almost frightened her. Charlie pulled away first, running his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’ Bridget asked in a small voice feeling slightly bereft with longing.

  He laughed. ‘Oh no, you did everything right but I promised your father I wouldn’t behave inappropriately, and I’m afraid that if I don’t stop now I won’t be responsible for my actions.’

  ‘Oh.’ She blushed.

  He reached over and stroked her cheek before getting to his feet, brushing the grass from his trousers. ‘Come on, I’ll get you home. Better to be a few minutes early because I don’t want to mark my card on our first date.’ He held his hand out and she took it letting him help her to her feet. They followed the path along the river, Charlie’s hand warm and strong as it clasped hers.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ He looked down at her concerned as they strolled along. ‘Have I overstepped the mark, I didn’t mean to launch myself on you it’s just that—’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s nothing.’

  ‘I can see it’s something, please tell me?’

  ‘It’s my parents. They won’t approve of you being a Catholic.’ She blurted it out. He was right, it was worrying her, niggling away at the back of her mind and casting a shadow over the golden evening.

  ‘Oh, will they not?’

  ‘No. My brother was sweet on a Catholic girl once but my father wouldn’t hear of him taking her out once he found out what church she went to. It’s ridiculous but it’s just the way it is and it won’t matter what I say to him.’

  ‘Well then, do we need to tell them? Because it’s been a long time since I set foot in a church.’

  Bridget wasn’t sure if that would be deemed as worse or not. ‘I won’t say anything but Bibury is a small town. Things just have a way of getting around.’ She felt a sinking in the pit of her stomach as she said the words, knowing how true they were.

  ‘Well, let’s not spoil tonight by worrying about something that’s out of our hands anyway. We’ll cross that bridge when we need to, deal?’

  ‘Deal.’ Bridget nodded and he squeezed her hand dropping a kiss onto the top of her head.

  ‘It’ll be alright you’ll see.’

  Chapter 28

  1957

  Jean’s revelation was made out of malice. It was over a matter so trivial that Bridget really and truly could have pulled her sister’s hair out had she been able to get into her room after she had chased her up the stairs. Jean was not silly; she’d seen the look on her younger sister’s face and had barricaded herself in by moving her chest of drawers in front of her bedroom door. She wouldn’t shift it back no matter how many times Bridget hammered on the door. In the end, her father had threatened to come up the stairs with his slipper if she didn’t stop her carrying on.

  ‘You’re sixteen years of age, as you keep reminding us Bridget, so stop behaving like a child!’

  She peered over the landing to where he was stood in the hall looking up at her with displeasure. ‘I’m acting like one because you’re treating me like one.’

  ‘Don’t talk back to me young lady.’ He waved the slipper at her in a way that meant business.

  ‘I’m going to Clara’s,’ she stated having decided it was best to put some distance between herself and her family.

  ‘Ah no, you’re not. You’re not going anywhere today after that carry-on, and that’s my final word on the matter.’

  She’d gone and thrown herself across her bed then. The tears were unstoppable with the frustration of knowing that in a few hours, Charlie would be waiting for her outside the Town Hall. They were supposed to be going to see the seven o’clock showing of the Seven Year Itch. When she didn’t come, he’d think she’d stood him up, and that was simply unbearable. The walls of her boxy room were closing in on her, and she contemplated climbing out her window and escaping to Clara’s that way. Even as she was tempted by the thought of escape, she knew she wouldn’t do it. For one thing, she was on the second storey and the rose bushes below would in no way cushion her fall, and for another, she knew life would not be worth living were she to disobey her parents.

  Jean had ruined everything and, she’d done so because Bridget had gotten the teensiest of cigarette burns in her new cardigan. Bridget had retaliated by telling her parents what it was her sister had gotten up to in her boyfriend’s car the other week. As Colin had been around on bended knee to ask their father for Jean’s hand in marriage a day or two earlier, this misdemeanour was swept under the carpet.

  ‘You won’t be seeing him again, Bridget. He’s not suitable, and that’s the end of that,’ her father had said in a voice low and firm enough for her to know he meant business. There was no point in trying to argue or make him see reason.

  ‘I should have known, with a name like Callahan,’ she heard him mutter to her mother, and she could see him in her mind’s eye, shaking his head in that way he did before taking a puff of his pipe. Her mother, she knew, would be hovering in the doorway of the kitchen, apron tied around her waist. She would be twisting the rings on her finger in that nervous manner she adopted when her husband was upset.

  ‘Nothing is perfect Bridget, so it’s a waste of time crying to the moon,’ she said later that day, popping her head around her daughter’s bedroom door. The shadows were beginning to stretch long across the floor. She found her youngest child lying prone on her bed, the candlewick cover ruffled as she sobbed into her pillow. The clock on her dressing table taunted her with its ticking away of the minutes until seven o’clock. Her mother had softened enough to come over and rub her back
gently.

  ‘Come on now, don’t be a big silly. You’ve only been out with the lad once. There’s plenty more fish in the sea, Bridget. You’ve your whole life ahead of you, and the right man will come along, you’ll see.’

  Bridget shook her mother off. At that beat in time she hated her. The right man had come along, and they’d ruined things for her. She hated them all and their petty prejudice.

  Bridget passed a restless night but Sunday morning eventually rolled round, dawning with a heavy grey sky that befitted her mood. She ate her breakfast quietly and spoke when spoken to but no more. She got herself ready for church and joined her mother and father in the short walk to St Andrew’s. Jean was waiting on Colin, eager to share her engagement news with the congregation after the service. The service dragged as the minister intoned, his words not registering as she met Clara’s questioning gaze across the pews to where she was sitting with her parents. She was desperate to tell her what had happened yesterday but it would have to wait. At last, the minister finished, and with a snap of closing bibles the congregation formed an orderly line and began making their way outside to the courtyard. They milled around there with the wooden white church a backdrop behind them.

  It was customary to stand about chatting and catching up on the news of the week, weather permitting. Clara raced over to where Bridget and her parents were standing near the church’s arched entrance. ‘Good morning, Mr and Mrs Upton.’

  ‘Good morning Clara, how are you dear?’ Bridget’s mother smiled in the hope that Clara might perk her daughter up. Her father doffed his hat at her, but his face remained stern.

  ‘Fine thank you, Mrs Upton.’

  Her parents moved off to talk to Mr and Mrs Pettigrew, fellow bridge players and Clara pulled Bridget away, out of earshot of any nosy parishioners.

  ‘What happened?’ Her eyes were wide. ‘Tom and I waited with Charlie outside the pictures, but in the end, we went in ahead. Charlie said he was going to call around to your house to see what had kept you. He was dreadfully upset.’

  ‘My poor Charlie.’ Bridge was torn between wanting to run to him and wanting to scratch her sister’s eyes out. ‘Jean, that’s what happened,’ she spat her sister’s name. ‘She told Mum and Dad that Charlie was Catholic because she was annoyed that I got a wee hole in her new cardigan. Dad told me I should’ve known better than to go out with him in the first place. I wasn’t allowed out, not even to pop around to your house and leave a message as to why I wouldn’t be meeting you all. Can you believe it? Look at her over there, thinking she’s the Queen Bee.’ She pointed to where her sister, with her arm linked through Colin’s, was holding court with a group of friends. She was waggling her hand under their noses as they all exclaimed over the ring on her finger. ‘It’s a tiny diamond, positively miserable. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If she comes near us, I swear I’ll stick my foot out and send her flying. That’d take her highness down a peg or two.’

  Clara giggled. ‘Now that I would like to see. I thought that must’ve been what’d happened. I knew she’d spill the beans. She wouldn’t have been able to help herself, it’s in her nature to be nasty.’

  ‘It is,’ Bridget concurred and with a defiant toss of her head and flick of her ponytail she declared, ‘I don’t want to talk about her anymore. She’ll get her comeuppance one day.

  ‘I didn’t enjoy the film at all, even though everybody was saying it was hilarious afterwards. I was far too worried about you and what was going on.’

  ‘It was awful, Clara honestly you can’t imagine how awful. I tried everything to make them see some sense and let me go out, but it was a waste of time. Dad’s mind was set. I don’t understand this silly prejudice of theirs anyway. We all believe in God, don’t we? What does it matter how we go about worshipping?’

  ‘You’re right but it’s always been that way, and it goes both ways. Mum told me she overheard the kids at St Michael’s referring to us as proddy-dogs when we walked past this morning!’

  ‘I still don’t understand it, and it’s not as though Charlie or I care what church either of us attends. The worst of it all is that I heard him last night when he came to the door. There was no point trying to talk to him as much as I wanted to because Dad would’ve gone mad. It’s just so unbelievably unfair.’ Bridget stamped her foot on the damp grass. ‘They keep saying I’m still a child who doesn’t know her own mind and in the next breath they tell me to stop behaving like a child and to act my age.’

  Clara nodded in sympathy. ‘Parents are illogical. It’s just the way it is. What’re you going to do though? If they won’t let you see him, that will make things pretty tough. Will you try and forget about him?’

  Bridget looked at her friend aghast. ‘Would you forget about Tom if your parents decided he wasn’t suitable just because of the church his family attend?’

  ‘No.’ Clara was contrite, her blue eyes wide. Neither girl had any idea what a pretty contrast they made to onlookers, one fair and one dark. ‘I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.’

  ‘I can’t just forget about him. I’d run away with him before I’d stop seeing him. Will you pass a message to him from me? Please, Clara.’

  ‘Of course I will, but you do know there’ll be hell to pay if you get caught.’

  ‘It’s a chance I’ll have to take because if I don’t see him again, I’ll die anyway,’ Bridget stated with all the passion of first love.

  Present day

  ‘But you didn’t die, you married Granddad and had Mum and Uncle Jack,’ Isla said as she sat on the bed next to her grandmother and squeezed her hand seeking reassurance herself. She’d loved her granddad, and it was unsettling to think there had been someone who’d played such a pivotal role in her gran’s life before him. She’d always looked at them both with the mentality of a child. They were her grandparents. They weren’t individuals as such and certainly not individuals who had experienced grand passions in their lifetime.

  ‘I did, and I loved him, we had a good life together for the most part.’ Bridget wouldn’t change her life with Tom. They’d hurt each other along the way, but even if she could go back and somehow reverse the events of the past, she knew she wouldn’t. She would stop him doing what he’d done though, and she’d erase what he’d told her in those last days at the hospital in a heartbeat. But, to reverse the past with Charlie would be to reverse the present and she couldn’t imagine her life without Mary, Joe, Jack and even bossy boots Ruth. As for not having her grandchildren in her life, well that was simply unimaginable.

  ‘Did Charlie move away after your parents stopped you seeing each other?’

  ‘Not straight away, no.’ She drifted back into her memories.

  Chapter 29

  1957

  He behaved like a gentleman and Bridget did her best to behave like a lady. He told her that he loved her each time they sat on the wavering grasses, with the long summer evenings beginning to give way to autumn. It was a sentiment she returned with all her heart as the water rushed past them with an urgency. It was a sentiment that was wished with a heavy heart though because it was inevitable that they’d be found out. Still, though, when it happened neither of them was prepared for the fallout.

  Bridget knew as she stood outside church talking to Clara, two weeks later that she was in very hot water. It was the way in which her mother and father turned simultaneously from the conversation they were having with Mrs Taylor who was also looking very lemon-lipped in her direction. The sky was an ominous grey, and the air smelled of freshly mowed grass and the faint scent of the bush readying itself for the deluge to come. She saw the set of her father’s jaw as he made his way over to where she was stood. He ignored Clara as he ordered Bridget home in a voice that was edged with steel before turning on his heel to re-join his wife. Bridget knew he would not cause a scene here; that would come later at home. Clara looked at her friend alarmed and unsure as to what she should do, and Bridget mouthed, ‘Tell Charlie they kn
ow,’ before doing what she was told because there was nothing else she could do.

  She readied her arguments in her head as she sat on her bed waiting to hear the door open and close downstairs, signalling her parents’ return. She fully expected footsteps to pound up the stairs and she moved to the edge of her bed, in readiness for the fight that was sure to ensue. She felt like a gazelle taking water down at the waterhole, ears up and poised to take flight when she came into the lion’s line of sight.

  Her breath came out in short puffs as at last, she heard the front door, but footfall did not follow on the stairs, and the fight went out of her as the minutes ticked by. In the end, she could stand it no longer, and she took herself down the stairs, heart pounding. She was hoping that Jean had not come back from church with their parents, Colin in tow for Sunday dinner as had become their habit. She was in luck in so much as it was just her mother pottering about the kitchen. She stood in the doorway waiting for her to say something but she carried on switching on the elements on which the pots were sat. The set of her small rounded shoulders was the only clue that she knew Bridget was there. The vegetables had been sitting in salted water since Bridget had prepped them for the roast earlier that morning. ‘Where’s Dad, Mum?’ she asked her voice wobbling and giving away her uncertainty as to how they were behaving as she broke the silent stand-off. She wanted to get her punishment over and done with.

  Her mother looked up then, and Bridget saw the disappointment etched on a face that age was only just beginning to catch up with. Then she turned away and opened the oven door to check on the joint she had slow roasting. The aroma would usually make Bridget’s mouth water in anticipation of the meal to come. Normally she would pester her mum to make Yorkshire puddings too, but today she had no appetite.

  ‘He’s in the garden,’ she said. ‘Best you go and face the music young lady. You’ve let us both down badly, but worst of all you’ve broken our trust, Bridget.’