Change of Season
Page 19
Then she brightened. But Tim was coming. Things would brighten up when he arrived. They always did. He’d work out a way to get round these stupid restrictions, though she might keep up with the running, persuade him to join in, even. Her body was getting firmer, developing quite a good shape, actually. She didn’t like to admit that her father was right about that, but he was, the bastard. She picked up the half-empty bottle of wine, pushed the cork in and put it in the fridge.
In her room, Rosalind shut her ears to the noise from below. To help her resist the urge to go down and tell them both off – which had never done any good in the past and wasn’t likely to do any good now – she went and got out her embroidery.
She sat for a moment or two staring at the pretty art nouveau scene, not really seeing anything, still trying to control the confusion inside her head. When she felt calmer, she put that piece away and took out the family portrait.
Concentrate on Life with a capital L, George Didburin had said. Well, this family portrait was no pretty scene. Her own figure with its wishy-washy pastels upset her – but it was true to life – or at least, true to what she had been for so long. Paul’s figure continued to disturb her.
She would never exhibit or sell this piece. It was for her and her alone, and it was going to reflect her whole life, which was turning out to be a failure in so many ways. When she saw it all more clearly, surely she’d know what to do about it.
Jenny, she thought. I’ll make a start on her figure today. She got out her family photos and the sketching materials, but ruined several drafts. The happy smiling girl in the photo wasn’t the Jenny of today or the younger Jenny of her memories. She closed her eyes, trying to visualise the figure she needed and suddenly realised how nervous her elder daughter often was. In fact, Jenny had always been slightly nervous of life.
Rosalind took out a fresh piece of paper and this time the sketch grew beneath her fingers like a thing alive in its own right. When she put her pencil down, she stared at it, knowing it was good, really good. Or it could be. But would she be able to translate the drawing into an embroidered figure? Well, she could only try. Carefully she cut the sketch out.
Now, where to put Jenny? As if of its own volition, the figure settled at the back of the scene, standing by itself. Only it was the wrong size to go there, so she took another piece of paper to sketch it smaller. Yes. That was right. Poor Jenny. As alone as her mother.
No, Rosalind frowned, Jenny hadn’t been quite alone. There had been the dog. Zip had been more Jenny’s than anyone’s, spending a lot of time cuddled up to her. She’d taken him for walks, fed him and looked after him very responsibly, even when she was quite small. And when Zip had died at the age of thirteen – why did dogs live for such a short time when they could be such a comfort to people? – there had been a cat because Paul had refused to have another dog. Sasha, the cat had been called. A nice creature, again devoted to Jenny.
Then Sasha had been killed by a car and Jenny had begged and pleaded for another dog. Paul had refused point-blank, even though it would hardly have affected him.
Guilt shot through Rosalind. I should have let Jenny have her dog, she thought, I really should. I was wrong. Paul wasn’t around half the time, even then. If we’d got a dog while he was away and presented him with a fait accompli, he’d not have been able to do anything about it.
Or would he? You never knew with Paul. He could be ruthless at times, not against her of course, but against other people. She frowned. No, she was fooling herself. He was ruthless with her, too – though he meant it for her own good. At least, she’d always believed he did. Now she was no longer sure of that.
Under her fingers – such clever fingers tonight – Zip took shape, almost as big as Jenny because that was how he came out, and then the cat, slightly smaller than the other two, but certainly not cat size. They’d been such a comfort to Jenny, those animals. It was right to show them larger than life. And all three of them were looking away from Paul. Funny, that.
But Rosalind had come to believe lately that her needle didn’t lie, so she didn’t attempt to change the figures.
She knew it would upset Jenny if she saw this portrait – well, it hurt Rosalind to do it – but she continued working. She heard Jenny call farewell and go out with Ned. She heard the television blaring from downstairs. When Louise came up to bed, calling out goodnight, she answered, but didn’t go out to see her.
Later Jenny came home, humming as she ran upstairs. She hesitated outside her mother’s workroom, but went to bed without coming in. Which suited Rosalind at the moment.
The house fell silent. She didn’t go downstairs, because she wasn’t hungry. For some reason she was consumed by impatience to get the figure done. At one point she got herself a drink of water from the bathroom, but continued sewing until her eyes grew too tired to focus. And by that time, the essence of Jenny had been captured.
Only then did she go to bed, feeling drained and sad. Her last stray threads of conscious thought were of her son. She hoped Tim would turn up soon. Even if it did add to the discord in the house. He’d never been easy to deal with but she had to see for herself that he was all right. Not until then would she be able to do his picture.
And if necessary she’d find a way to keep Paul off their son’s back. She must learn to stand up for her children, as well as herself.
A researcher can be confused, as well as charmed, by the profusion of pictorial and decorative detail on stumpwork embroideries, and also by the strange absence of scale. Flowers, insects, animals and trees jostle for position in scrapbook fashion and mix indiscriminately with fountains and fish, country mansions and castles, and costumed figures, as well as lions and leopards, all in an improbable English countryside, where the sun and moon shine at one and the same time.
(Hirst, p.10)
Chapter Fourteen
The phone rang as Rosalind was passing through the hall. ‘Yes?’
‘Mum?’
The voice was so wobbly it took her a minute to realise who it was. ‘Tim? Is that really you, darling? Where are you?’ Tears started pouring down her cheeks, tears of such relief and joy that it was hard to focus on what he was saying.
Louise came pounding in from the kitchen at the sound of her brother’s name, trying to put her ear close to the phone and listen in. Jenny hung over the banister.
‘I’m in Poole, Mum. At the coach station,’ Tim said.
‘Wait there. I’ll come and get you.’
‘How long will it take you to get here?’
‘An hour, perhaps less.’
‘There’s nowhere comfy to wait, nothing to do. Look, there’s a shopping mall across the road. I’ll go in there and get a cup of coffee. I’ll meet you in an hour near the mall entrance, the one that’s opposite the coach station. And Mum – it’s great to hear your voice.’
‘It’s great to hear yours, love.’
Louise grabbed the phone, but he’d already put it down. She glared at her mother. ‘You knew I wanted to speak to him!’
‘There isn’t time for chatting. We have to leave at once.’
‘Well, you might have bloody well let me say hello, at least.’
‘If you don’t apologise for speaking to me like that, I’ll not even take you with me to Poole. Do you really think you can be polite to your father and rude to me?’
Louise’s mouth fell open in shock. She had never seen such an expression of determination on her mother’s face.
‘Well? I’m still waiting for an apology.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I didn’t mean to upset you, Mum.’
‘Well, you did upset me. I’ve lost count of the times you’ve upset me by your rudeness in the past year or two, and I simply won’t take it any longer. Do you understand that?’ Her voice was still quiet, but steely in tone.
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Now go and get ready.’ Rosalind raised her voice, ‘Jenny? Are you coming with us to meet Tim?’
She paused. No. Not tough. Mum could never be tough in that sense and had spoken as quietly as she always did. But she was starting to stand up for herself – not waiting till she was goaded, like before, and then bursting out with a hysterical-sounding protest. This time she’d spoken straight away, as soon as the put-down started, and had stayed in control of herself. About time, too.
As she came downstairs, Jenny suddenly remembered her date. ‘Oh, can you just wait a minute, Mum? I want to cancel my date with Ned. I’m not going out with him on my little brother’s first night back.’
Tim put the phone down, then went into the shopping centre, where he bought a cup of coffee and sat watching the crowds.
When an hour had passed, he went to the entrance and found his mother and sisters waiting, looking anxious and scanning the crowds. He hurried across to them, tried to hug them all at once and then said in a shaky voice, ‘Get me out of here.’
‘Where’s your luggage?’ Rosalind asked.
‘Lost.’
It seemed a long walk to the car. Tim sank into the back seat and huddled down. ‘I’m exhausted!’ He was holding tears back only with great difficulty. It was so wonderful to see them. So bloody wonderful.
‘So where have you been in America?’ Louise asked. She was sitting next to him in the back of the car, worrying about how ill Tim looked.
He shrugged. ‘Here and there.’
‘But where exactly?’
‘We wound up in New York.’ Which was a lie.
‘You and Wayne?’
‘Yeah. But we split up.’
Silence.
‘It’s lovely to see you, Tim,’ Jenny ventured from the front seat.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
‘I’m delighted to have all the family together again,’ Rosalind said softly.
Tim jerked forward in his seat. ‘All the family? Dad’s not down here, is he? Oh, God, I can’t face him yet!’
Rosalind frowned, wondering why she’d said ‘all’ when Paul wasn’t going to be with them for a few days.
Louise laid a hand on her brother’s arm. ‘It’s all right. Dad isn’t here just now. The chairman called and he rushed off to London again like a tame little piggy-wig. He won’t be back for a few days because he’s going to some sort of live-in planning meeting.’
Tim buried his face in his hands, relief making him shake. ‘Thank goodness! Oh, thank bloody goodness!’
In the front, Jenny and her mother exchanged astonished glances. In the back, Louise sat and worried some more.
By the time they reached the village, Tim had calmed down again.
‘This is it,’ Louise said, waving one hand scornfully. ‘Burraford Destan. Dad’s English country dream. Centre of the bloody universe it isn’t.’
‘It looks wonderful to me. Peaceful and full of real people.’
She stared at him. What had happened to make Tim welcome the idea of living in a dead-end hole like this? She would get it out of him later. He always told her things.
In Australia, Liz stared at the doctor in horror. ‘No! I don’t believe it. We had tests, lots of tests. I can’t have children. We tried for years. It must be something else, gastric flu maybe.’
The doctor sighed. She hated to see women react like this to the news that they were pregnant. ‘According to your records, the tests showed you weren’t highly fertile because you don’t release many eggs, but you could definitely conceive. Your husband was in a similar position – under-fertile – which made it very difficult for you both.’
‘But we’ve never taken any precautions, not since those tests. And I’ve never got pregnant.’ She’d boasted about that to Paul, who had produced some test results giving him a clean bill of health and had then boasted in return that he chose his partners very, very carefully and she had no need to worry about catching anything, if she wanted to really enjoy sex without those bloody condoms.
The doctor cleared her throat to bring her patient’s attention back. ‘There’s no mistake. You are definitely pregnant.’
Liz buried her face in her hands. She hadn’t let Bill near her since she got back. And although it was only a short time and she’d only missed one period, she was feeling wretched, nauseous all day. She’d gone to the doctor for help, worried that she’d picked up a virus in Hong Kong. She hadn’t even asked what the tests were for.
‘It isn’t my husband’s child,’ she said in a voice still muffled by her hands. ‘I’ll have to get rid of it.’ Her voice rose hysterically. ‘I’ll have to!’
‘Ah.’ The doctor steepled her hands. ‘Well, if you really want to do that, we can discuss it later, but it’s too soon to make a decision.’
Liz raised her head and glared at her. ‘What do you mean, too soon? What else can I do? And surely the sooner we do something, the better?’
‘You could tell your husband and ask him to accept the child. After all he wanted children, too, or he wouldn’t have gone for the tests.’
‘That was a long time ago. And he wanted his own children, not another man’s.’ Bill had flatly refused to consider adopting, becoming aggro at the mere idea. Telling him about this child would mean her accepting his screwing around, as well as him accepting her little affair and its consequences. She’d never get an edge over him after this. If he accepted the child. If she decided to have it. If they managed to stay together. Oh, hell! What a bloody mess! She groaned aloud.
The doctor shook her head and gave Mrs Foxen a moment or two more to pull herself together. Patients never ceased to amaze her by the complexities of their emotional and sexual lives. ‘Well, it’s still too soon to think of an abortion. You tried for years to have a child and at your age this may be your final and only chance. My advice is to go away and think it all over very carefully. Take a few days. We don’t need to rush into anything.’
Liz stared at her. It was good advice – for other people. She could see that. But she could never have this child. Still, you had to go through the formalities, the rigmarole and procedures the medical profession had set up. If the doctor wanted her to wait, there was nothing she could do about it.
Just as she was about to agree, however, a thought struck her. ‘I don’t think I can hide it from my husband for much longer. The sickness is so violent in the morning he’s bound to guess.’
‘I can give you something which may help. But it probably won’t stop the sickness completely.’
Liz accepted the prescription and walked out to sit in her car and try to come to terms with it all. She was going to get rid of it, of course she was. Oh, hell! What a stinking, rotten mess!
She’d been a fool, an utter fool.
When they got back to Sexton Close, Tim gulped down a coffee, smiled faintly at the empty mug and looked at his mother. ‘I used to dream about your coffee, Mum. It’s still the best in the world.’
Rosalind gave him a quick hug as she passed. ‘Well, now you can drink it till it comes out of your ears.’
‘Yes. I can.’ He tried to smile. Didn’t succeed.
‘Have something to eat.’
‘I’m not really hungry, Mum.’
‘Just a snack, then. To please me.’
‘OK.’ He picked at some food, then pushed the plate away. ‘What I’d really like is a bath. I must smell awful. I’ve been in these clothes for days.’
‘What happened to your own stuff?’ Louise asked.
‘Stolen.’
Rosalind hadn’t commented, but he did smell pretty high. ‘I’ll find you something of your father’s to wear.’
‘I have a tracksuit that’s unisex,’ Louise volunteered.
‘Thanks.’ He trailed up the stairs without even looking at her.
‘Shall I clear your stuff out of the spare bedroom?’ Louise a
sked her mother, trying to be helpful.
‘Why?’
‘Well, why do you think?’ She sighed. Honestly, her mum could be so vague. ‘Tim’s back. He’ll need somewhere to sleep.’
Rosalind fixed her with a cool gaze. ‘There is another bedroom free. The attic. If you don’t think it’s suitable for your brother, you can move up there yourself. I have my room all set up as I like it, so I see no need to change things.’
Louise opened her mouth, caught her mother’s eye and shut it again. ‘I’ll go and make the bed up in the attic for Tim, then, shall I?’
When she had gone clumping up the stairs, Rosalind looked at Jenny and for a moment her courage faltered. ‘He looks so ill,’ she whispered. ‘He’s nothing but skin and bone.’
Jenny had seen people looking like that before, at university. ‘I think – it’s only a possibility, mind – but he might be seriously addicted to hard drugs. Or just coming off them.’
Rosalind closed her eyes and took a few slow breaths. ‘Yes. That had occurred to me, too. But he’s not going to take drugs in my house.’ She began to fiddle with things in the kitchen, trying to find something to keep her busy. ‘How about a roast chicken for tea?’
‘Fine.’
‘I’ll defrost one.’
She sat and listened to the microwave pinging and whirring as it defrosted the chicken, listened, too, to the sounds from upstairs. The bath lasted a long time, then slow footsteps climbed up to the attic.
A short time later Louise came into the kitchen. ‘He’s fallen asleep.’ She looked a bit miffed. ‘He had a shower, lay down on the bed, grunted at me and fell asleep.’
‘Perhaps that’s what he needs most.’
‘I wanted to talk to him, ask him about America.’
Jenny made a choky little noise to show her disgust. ‘You always think about what you want. Try thinking about what other people need for a change.’
‘Has Mum been talking to you?’
‘What about?’