The Moon At Midnight

by Charlotte Bingham

  This was followed by general laughter.

  ‘No one calls me a funk and gets away with it.’ The words burst out of Tam, shattering the heartfelt resolution he’d made after the accident to stay clear of trouble all his days, that no matter what, he would not involve himself.

  ‘Oh, but they do get away with it, Yellow, they surely do, and I just have.’

  Tammy stepped forward and smiled, almost politely. There must be something about the air or the food at the Big U because of a sudden it seemed to Tam that Tammy must be as tall as her stepmother, Sue Sue, but a whole lot better muscled.

  ‘You don’t want to truck with Tammy,’ one of her brothers begged Tam. ‘It’s like fighting a rattlesnake, you’re bitten before you know it. She fights dirty, and she fights tough, and you will be left scarred. Run, boy, run before she starts in on you.’

  But it was too late. She had already charged at the amazed Tam, head-butting him with such force that it knocked him off his feet, and against a less than friendly wall. He reckoned he must have swallowed a bagful of dirt before he finally gave up his struggle and lost consciousness.

  He came round what he imagined might be a few minutes later with R.J. and Sue Sue standing over him. He tried to struggle to his feet, but feeling more dizzy than he would have thought possible sank back once more against the large cushioned sofa on which he’d been laid.

  ‘Oh, I say, I am sorry.’ He stared dazedly up at R.J. and Sue Sue.

  ‘No need to be, boy, that daughter of mine scares the living daylights out of every man within a hundred miles. No shame in Tammy whopping you.’

  Sue Sue flicked back her blond hair, and for once looked mildly interested in what was going on.

  ‘I should have warned you, English boy. No one trucks with Tammy on account her father here clean forgot he was meant to be bringing up a lady. Never had a daughter before she came along, and so he didn’t know any better than to teach her the same old things he’d gone and taught her brothers. Only trouble was Tammy learned ’em better, and she’s learned ’em good. She thinks she can stop bullets at a hundred yards, I swear it.’

  ‘Now, Sue Sue, you’re going sadly wrong here, darlin’. Tammy only fights dirty, she don’t fight like a man. Be fair, honey, she don’t fight like a man, no sir.’

  Sue Sue flicked back her hair once more and turned to make her way to the bar.

  ‘I’m going to get poor English boy a drink.’

  R.J. grinned. ‘And to make up for your whopping, English boy, I’m going to lend you my Mustang.’ He took a key ring from one of the side tables and threw it over to where Tam was now sitting up, holding the ice that Sue Sue had given him to his throbbing face. ‘You take that car and you drive where you want, on me. Make up for your beatin’, boy, make up to you good. You don’t have to come back for a week. Meanwhile I’ll warn that daughter of mine she can’t go round whoppin’ the daylights out of everyone who shares her name – hell, if you’re called Mary, or Susan like Sue Sue here – hell, you’re going to be in a fight every day of your life.’

  R.J. gave a great laugh, lit one of his extra long cigarettes and sauntered off, leaving Tam to Sue Sue’s ministrations. Outside Tam could hear him calling for his daughter. Sue Sue watched him from the window.

  ‘I know Tammy, she’ll be gone for days now, losing herself all over the ranch, or goin’ into town when she’s not meant to, that’s my stepdaughter.’

  She removed the lid of a large silver ice bucket, and came back to Tam.

  ‘There, boy, there.’ She held the fresh ice cubes tenderly over the bruising. ‘You stay right there and let me look after you.’ She handed Tam a couple of tablets and a glass of water. ‘Take these, for the pain. That Tammy, really.’ She sighed. ‘She gave me a whoppin’ once when I first came here and I was in bed for a week. R.J. he had to step in and tell her off good and proper. But I learned my lesson good, never spoke to her since, not if I could help it, not even on Christmas.’ She sat down on the end of the sofa, and smiling at Tam she put her hand on one of his stretched-out bared legs. ‘You English boys, you have such soft skin, like a doe. We don’t get that out here.’

  Happily for Tam he had other things on his mind than his soft skin, what with his cut mouth, and his bruised face. Happily too the tablets soon started to take effect, and not much later he found he’d drifted off into a doze, which was all the more comforting for the fact that he was convinced that Sue Sue had left him.

  Rusty looked over to Peter.

  ‘We haven’t heard from him for weeks.’ She stared miserably at the pile of letters on the hall table.

  ‘That’s because he’s too busy,’ Peter stated for what seemed to him to be the hundredth time. ‘If you haven’t heard from Tam he must be settling in, no time to write. It was the same in the army, so busy you never had time to sit down and write. I know I never did. I did write to you before I was posted, mind you, I just never had a reply.’

  Rusty stopped by the staircase, her hand on the newel post. It all seemed so long ago. Peter and she had made love and then he’d gone, back to his regiment, and she’d been left pregnant. It might have been thought a disgrace by her family, but when Rusty looked back, those months alone with Tam when he was a baby, and then a toddler, now seemed blissfully carefree.

  ‘Peter. . .’

  But Peter had already moved away, heading towards the front door, where he turned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh no, not nothing again. That’s all you seem to say nowadays.’

  Rusty nodded. It wasn’t quite accurate, but it was fairly true none the less.

  ‘Very well.’ She looked across at him. ‘You know, since Tam left, I’ve become – bored.’

  Peter had half opened the front door and now he shut it again.

  ‘What? You’ve become what?’

  ‘Bored, Peter. I feel cooped up, here, with you and Flavia. I can’t stand another minute of entertaining those women from the League, and being nice to townspeople, and members of clubs, and all the other song and dance.’ She sat down suddenly on the bottom step of the staircase and stared into space, not looking at her husband. ‘I’m just not like these people you’ve thrown me among, Peter. I grew up in Bexham, I went sailing, I went fishing, I had my brothers, never a dull moment. Now you’ve put me in this large house with a wardrobe of clothes—’

  ‘And everything you could ever want. A modern Formica kitchen, matching table and chairs, a car of your own, clothes, furnishings, what more could you want?’ he repeated.

  ‘Nothing more, no more. No.’ Rusty looked helplessly round. ‘No, I want nothing more. In fact I want much less. I feel weighed down with all this.’

  ‘Just thank your lucky stars for what you have got, Rusty, because believe me, it could all go tomorrow.’

  Rusty nodded. She’d thought he’d say that. The door closed behind him and she heard him going out into the drive, and eventually driving off in his new Bentley. Peter had changed since Tam went. She’d changed since Tam went. Only Flavia was still the same.

  She stood up, hearing her upstairs, not wanting her daughter to find her looking miserable. She’d go for a walk. She’d walk to Bexham and back. A good walk, the wind blowing her hair, the dog beside her, it would all make her feel better, because she certainly needed to feel better. For a second she didn’t know when she’d felt worse, and then remembering when she’d felt a lot worse after the loss of her second baby, how close she had been to madness, if only for a few months, she pulled herself together and set out to walk to the seaside village where she was born.

  * * *

  At that moment, without realising it, Tam was driving too fast. Driving away from the humiliation of what had happened to him at the hands of R.J.’s daughter. Never mind his face and head still hurt – he couldn’t care less. As he drove along the straight open roads that led away from the Big U he failed to appreciate the unspoilt wild beauty of the scenery, the other ranches that he pas
sed. All he could see were the concealed smiles of the other hands, and their laughter as he walked out of the ranch house, released from the all too caring hands of Sue Sue. Rather than spend another moment living with the other boys’ derision, he’d headed straight for the Mustang loaned to him by R.J. and driven off, not knowing where just so long as it took him away from the ranch house at the Big U.

  As his mother walked away from Churchester towards Bexham, Tam drove further and further away from anything or anybody that was remotely familiar until he’d clocked up more miles than he cared to think. As he did so he found himself struggling with overwhelming feelings of loneliness and despair. He felt desperate. He couldn’t go home to Bexham, and he didn’t want to go back to the Big U. At times he saw himself from far above, a lone figure in a large car, not knowing where he was going, and caring less, yet needing to know where he was going, needing to care. Once or twice he stopped the car in the middle of some lonely road and putting his head on the wheel cried his eyes out. He cried in pity for himself, and he cried in pity for his family whom he knew he’d disgraced. Eventually he grew tired of feeling sorry for himself, and started to look around him as he drove, started to appreciate the scenery, the mountains, the emptiness stretching everywhere, challenging him to feel lonely when it was there to be his friend. Stopping in small towns along the way he ate at diners that were cheap and clean and served him with waffles and maple syrup, with steaks and chips, with chicken fritters and blueberry pie, not to mention gritty black coffee and ice cold drinks pumped into frosted glasses placed on thick white paper coasters.

  He spoke to no one except to point to his order, not wanting to be identified as a stranger, or to attract attention to himself, but speaking little he listened a lot. He listened to the cadences of the cowpokes and men from the ranches who sat about the diners. He listened to the waitresses and the barmen, until after a few days he started to risk speaking to them in what he hoped was their language.

  ‘You out here to work, boy?’ a great white-bearded hand turned and asked him one night.

  ‘Dumped out here, more like, friend!’

  The older man laughed. ‘Well, that’s what happens, boy. You misbehave, you gotta expect to get dumped. I got dumped for beatin’ up my step-daddy, and now my ma wouldn’t know me if I fetched up on her doorstep and called her by name.’ He laughed again, and spat, drank his beer and left.

  After that short exchange, the homesickness threatened to return. Tam instantly imagined himself, like the old man, fetching up in Bexham, and Rusty not knowing him.

  And so he upped and left and headed back for Reedsville and the Big U, driving fast and furiously through the night, as if he was afraid that any moment his hair too would turn white, his eyes grow misty.

  Reedsville being the town nearest to the Big U it was the place towards which the other ranch hands gravitated in search of excitement and, on occasion, night life in the form of music or, equally occasionally, dancing, although neither of the last two were of much interest to men who worked all day in wide open spaces, beer and fights being more to their taste.

  The main saloon in Reedsville was Charley’s Bar. As Tam drove in on the Saturday night that marked the end of his week’s break, the crowd from inside Charley’s was spilling out through the doors into the car park, such was its popularity. Tam managed to make his way to the bar without either drawing attention to the fact that he was queue-jumping or upsetting any of the many drunks who were propping each other up. It was at times like these that he was grateful for his slender physique, being able to weave in and out of larger men as a prairie fox might weave among the tall summer grasses that swayed and sang in unison outside the town.

  Finding himself at the end of the long, polished mahogany counter, he waited to catch the bartender’s eye. It threatened to be a long wait, so flicking a Lucky Strike out of a freshly purchased pack he stuck it in the corner of his mouth and lit it with a shiny Zippo lighter, nicking the top open and the flame alight with a downward and upward rub on his Levi’s, as he’d been practising alone in dark corners of diners over the past few days.

  ‘Beer?’ At last the barman stood in front of him.

  Tam tipped his hat back a little and nodded, letting his cigarette roll in the appropriate manner between his teeth. But that was all he did do – nod. He’d learned that on the road, a nod was big conversation in Texas. Still rolling his cigarette round his mouth he pulled out the appropriate money, and nodded again. The second nod meant ‘keep the change’.

  ‘Thank you, sir!’ The barman was gone down the other end in a flash. Tam drained his beer in one. He was, after all, a man.

  Rusty paused at the top of the hill looking down at Bexham – its church, its harbour, the Three Tuns, the estuary with the boats bobbing – as if at an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long time. She’d hated leaving Bexham for the grander ways and bigger house where they now lived in Churchester, missed seeing people passing by on the green, missed the silly gossip. She knew, of course, that she should go and visit her father who would be alone in his cottage, probably staring into the fire, missing Tam every day. Tam had always been Mr Todd’s ewe lamb, his favourite grandchild, Flavia never getting a look in, not even now when her brother was so far away, possibly even less now. For with Tam gone Mr Todd would only see Flavia as a very poor substitute for what he would consider the real thing – his one and only grandson. Tam had been Mr Todd’s hope for the future, his substitute for his long-lost elder boy killed at Dunkirk.

  Rusty stopped suddenly, knowing that she had no intention of visiting her father, who after all was coming to have Sunday lunch with them in a few days’ time. Her eye was attracted by a For Sale sign which was standing in the front garden of Laurel Cottage, one half of a pair of Edwardian cottages which had been built only a hundred yards from Post Office Cottage.

  Rusty would always be grateful to Peter for sounding so indignant, so almost outraged at her inability to be content with her large house and her Formica kitchen, not to mention her own car, for the truth was she could still hear his voice ringing in her ears when she found herself going in to find out from the new owners of the post office the asking price for Laurel Cottage.

  It was, naturally, more than she could afford, but less than she had thought, so all at once it became highly desirable. Again she could hear Peter’s voice ringing in her ears. What do you want a cottage of all things for?

  As she came out of the post office she saw her father coming towards it clutching a thin blue airmail letter which she knew must be for Tam.

  ‘Dad, the very man I’ve come to see,’ she lied, hugging him lightly, all of a sudden realising just how frail he’d become.

  ‘Rusty Sykes.’ Her father stared at her, smiling. ‘I’d have known you anywhere,’ he teased her. ‘That’s a strapping good idea, to come to tea, because Gwen up at Shelborne’s just been by, and dropped me in some seed cake, and we can toast some crumpets on the fire.’ He posted his letter and then turned and looked at Rusty. ‘So, now that’s done, and you’re coming,’ he turned to walk back across the green, ‘tell me why you’re really here?’

  Rusty nodded back at the For Sale sign on the cottage beside the post office.

  ‘I want to buy that cottage, Dad. Daft, isn’t it? I want to buy that cottage, and start a boutique, like they have in London.’

  Mr Todd stared from the cottage front to Rusty and back again.

  ‘But have you got the money, Rusty Sykes? Money’s hard to come by if you’re married to a man as rich as Peter.’

  Rusty laughed. Her dad was such a shrewd old tar.

  ‘Oh, I’ve everything I want, except what I want, which is a business.’

  Mr Todd stopped. ‘I’ll give you the money for your business, Rusty. I’ve got savings in the Post Office, and they’re doing nothing since I sold the boatyard, and since Mickey’s set up on his own I’ve nothing to spend my money on, except writing to poor Tam.’ The expression on his face becam
e sad and thoughtful. ‘Poor Tam.’

  ‘Tam’s all right, Dad,’ Rusty said brusquely. ‘Really, he’s doing something we should all do – getting stuck in. That’s why I want a business, I want something where I can get stuck in. If I have to give lunch to the Ladies’ League one more time I think I’ll be sick on my shoes.’

  Mr Todd put his key in the lock of his old oak front door and pushed it open.

  ‘Peter won’t like you havin’ a business, girl,’ he said with some relish. ‘You know young men, they don’t like women having anything of their own. You’d better go and tell him before I give you the money to buy it, or there’ll be hell to pay.’ He went on down the small dark passage of his cottage, Rusty following him. ‘Yes, I’d say you’d better tell him all right.’

  That evening Rusty did as her father had advised, waiting until Peter had downed his first drink of the evening, but not finding quite the right words she came out with it as a bald statement, which she realised too late might have been quite a big mistake.

  ‘Peter. I’m going to open a boutique.’

  Peter turned and stared at her. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m going to open a boutique, to sell modern clothes, things we’d all like to be able to buy in the shops, but – I don’t know why – just can’t find. I want to find and sell clothes that aren’t . . .’ she paused, before finally saying, ‘dowdy.’

  ‘Dowdy? You don’t look dowdy.’ Peter stared at Rusty’s three-quarter-length tweed skirt and Shetland wool twinset, tan-coloured stockings and brown court shoes. ‘You look very nice.’

  ‘But that’s just it! I don’t want to look nice, Peter, that’s the point. And I don’t think many people do, not any more. That’s why I want to open a boutique, to stop looking nice and start looking – zippy.’

  The expression on Peter’s face registered one word, and one word alone: Women!

  ‘I don’t understand you, really I don’t. Why should a woman your age, with everything you have, want to look zippy? It’s a little ridiculous, if you don’t mind me saying so.’