The summer was becoming a long and hot one and as the days passed she began to take note of the falling levels of water in the various channels. On the days she didn’t feel like talking she would find some shade under a tree and sit and read. She had forgotten how much she loved being in the sun and this summer of 1976 was something special.
Linda wrote to her regularly, scribbled postcards or short notes arrived every few days telling her how things were in the office. She didn’t reply, thinking there wasn’t much she could say that Crispin and Oliver weren’t reporting anyway.
As the city emptied of students and filled with tourists she wondered if anyone from home would recognise her if they passed her in the street. Her skin was a deep bronze, her long hair had been cut short and she knew she was losing the drawn, haunted look she had had for so long.
It was three weeks before she could talk to the twins about anything that mattered.
“It all went wrong when Mom died.” She had said to Oliver one evening as they sat on the pavement outside the pub. “I was fine up till then.”
He listened sympathetically, wondering how much of her pain was down to him for warning his brother away from her. He dismissed the idea. It had never been the right time, however good they might have been together. And it wasn’t the right time now. He was sure of that.
“You need time to get over all that. You’ve had a rotten few years, parents dying, rubbish marriage, no support from anyone.”
“I feel like I’m hiding my head in the sand. I haven’t earned any money for weeks. I’ve abandoned the flat half decorated. It’s such a mess. I just went down to the hardware store and bought whatever tins they had on offer. They’re god-awful colours! I got rid of all the furniture and need to get some more.”
“You can stay here as long as you like you know.” Crispin arrived and handed them each another glass.
“But my life’s just on hold.”
“Why not?” Oliver backed up his brother “Stay as long as you like, the longer the better. We’ll hate getting back to having to do our own cooking and washing up.”
“But I’ve run away haven’t I? I suppose I’ll have to face up to it all one day.”
“We all have to run away sometime. We ran away here, we didn’t go back up north when we’d graduated, we hung around here doing our own thing which was definitely not what was expected of us. Everyone has to run away sometime.”
“It’s perfectly OK you know.”
“That’s not the same. You’re doing so well, you’ve got your lives together, you know what you’re going to do for the next few years.”
“We haven’t got everything right, you know, we haven’t even got proper girlfriends let alone wives. And the worst thing is we’re 30 next week and we still live with each other. A lot of people think that is very odd indeed.”
“You’ve got years yet, don’t get married for the wrong reasons.”
They all left that comment hanging leaden in the air as they consumed more pints of ice cold lager or as near ice cold as the Landlord could produce in the heat.
Eventually Holly asked them what they were going to do to mark the ‘Big Three O’.
“Are you going back up north?”
“No, hadn’t thought of it really, rather gave that up when we got passed 21. Mutt and Jeff will send a card and a present and we’ll phone them and thank Mum for the pain we must have put her through x number of years before, that sort of thing. But we can’t just drop everything at work like we used to when we worked for someone else so we won’t be going up.”
“You should have a party here. Get Linda to come down, Carl, all your mates from the pub, the blokes from your work, it’d be fun. I’ll do the food, you do the booze. Come on! You’ve got to do something.”
“Could do.”
“Possible. What day of the week is it?”
“Sunday.”
“We’d have to have the party on the Saturday so we’ll all have time to recover.”
“Right then. It’s on. Hey guys…” Holly caught the attention of a group of drinkers whose names they just about knew “Party, next Saturday, round the corner, 10a. Be there!”
“Holly! We hardly know them” Oliver tried to restrain Holly, “We don’t want millions of hangers on.”
“The more the merrier!”
Where all the people came from and how they heard of the party Crispin and Oliver could only guess as the house filled up and overflowed onto the pavement outside.
Holly spent the evening in the tiny kitchen at the back of the house pouring wine and beer into plastic mugs and paper cups for anybody and everybody. Most of the men tried to chat her up but she was well practised at preventing unwanted attention. She had long ago taken off her wedding ring but she had put her Mother’s ring on her engagement finger and she would wave it in the face of anyone who got too friendly and if anyone asked who the lucky man was she would wave vaguely in the direction of Crispin or Oliver who were never far away. She knew they would back her up.
But it was neither Crispin nor Oliver who rescued her at around 2 in the morning from one particularly persistent drunken attempt to grab her and plant beery kisses on her neck.
“Go away you prat! You’re pissed.” She was shouting, trying to make him hear she was serious over the noise of the music.
“An’ you’re gorgeous, here, gissa kiss.”
“Piss off!” as she tried to push him away he staggered against the table upsetting all the cups and mugs on the table so the flat booze with disintegrating dog ends spilt over Holly.
“Piss off! You’re disgusting!”
“Here! Gissa kiss gorgeous.” He was not going to give up without a fight, so it was a fight he got.
Holly had never punched anyone before in her life.
She had hit out at Graham but they were more slaps than punches, but this time she pulled her arm back over her shoulder and formed her right hand into a fist, remembering from somewhere in her mind that she should keep her thumb on the outside so she didn’t break it, and she thrust her arm forward towards the idiot’s face with such force that she hurt her shoulder as she connected with his nose.
It couldn’t have hurt him very much as he was anaesthetised by alcohol but it stopped him in his tracks. He backed away, not forgetting to pick up one of the few remaining full mugs of lager on the table.
“Bravo! Couldn’t have done it better myself!”
“Carl! We didn’t think you were going to make it.”
“Got back from the airport, got your message on my flash new answerphone and got straight in the little car. I drove like a lunatic here hoping I wouldn’t miss the party. It seems I got here just in time for the best punch I’ve ever seen a lady lay.”
When Oliver eventually woke up the next morning and made his way down stairs he found assorted people asleep in all the rooms in the house.
Hearing voices from the kitchen he gingerly picked their way over legs and arms that may or may not have been attached to each other, headed for the sound of laughter.
“Coffee? You look as if you need it.”
Holly was standing wearing the shortest of shorts, a t-shirt that barely covered her and a pair of yellow rubber gloves. In one hand she held, at arms length, a bin bag.
“It’s been like that game, you know, where you drop a pile of sticks down on the table and have to pick them in turn without moving any others. I’ve been going around the house with this,” in her other hand she held a long handled stick that had pincers on the end operated by a lever at the top, “picking up mugs and cups and bits of fag end trying not to wake anyone up! We’ve been taking it in turns to see who can get the most without someone grunting or farting or turning over! This is the third sack load.”
“Once you get rid of all the bodies we’ll give it a hoover round and you’ll never know there’s been a party here at all. Oh,” Carl added almost as an afterthought “Happy Birthday.”
“God yes! 30! Ancient.
”
“Not so much of that. I’m already there you know.”
Carl had done nothing on his 30th birthday nearly two months earlier. He had been in Spain working and had barely given it a thought, which was partly why, tired as he had been the previous evening, he had driven the 40 or so miles from his home to join Crispin and Oliver to celebrate theirs.
“Bloody successful bash that.” Oliver planted a kiss on Holly’s cheek. “Thanks old girl. We wouldn’t have even thought about doing it if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Thanks Holly.” Crispin appeared at the kitchen door and wanted to kiss Holly as well but there wasn’t room for another in the small kitchen. “Make sure you’re around for our 40th won’t you.”
“Of course! Try and keep me away.”
She smiled. She was happy.
She was in a tiny kitchen with three good looking men who any girl would have given their eye teeth to have been with. And they all cared for her, maybe not in the same way, but they all liked her and wanted her to be happy. Unlike …
She brushed away the shiver that she always felt when she thought of Graham and how she had ignored their warnings and married him. That was the past. She hadn’t heard from him for months. Ted had said he had moved and was being very cooperative with the divorce. Graham was the past. Once the divorce was behind her she need never think about him again.
He couldn’t spoil her life now.
Not when she had friends like these.
“We’ll leave you to your Cinderella and Buttons act.” The twins helped each other over some supine bodies and up the narrow stairs.
Carl felt he and Holly were the only ones with any energy that morning. He kicked and nudged the hangers on who had stayed overnight awake and urged them out of the door while Holly cleared up what seemed to be hundreds of plastic glasses and paper plates.
“Why does this always seem so appetising at three in the morning?” She asked conversationally as they filled the black sacks. “It’s disgusting.”
“They should ban smoking.” Carl added as he decided the only way to dispose of an ashtray that was swimming in a golden cocktail half beer and half nicotine, was to throw the whole thing into the sack.
Holly watched him. “Yuch. That’s totally disgusting.”
“Have you ever smoked?”
“Absolutely never. Disgusting habit. There’s nothing worse than having to kiss a man who’s been smoking. Ban it.”
“Done!”
For a few moments as she remembered Graham’s breath. She had always hated the mixture of alcohol and stale cigarette smoke. The memory was so vivid she could almost taste him and shuddered before shaking her head and getting back to the task in hand.
“You’re very domesticated.” Holly said when she and Carl eventually sat down in the cleaned and tidied empty house “Most men would have left all that to me.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being ‘most men’.”
“Well you definitely aren’t.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment then.”
“Like I did when you all said I wasn’t American any more?”
“You know what we meant.”
“Of course I did.”
She wondered what Linda would have thought of the ease and familiarity between her and Carl that morning.
When the twins eventually reappeared Carl handed them each a mug of coffee. “I know it’s hot but we’re going to make today special.”
“Sunday lunch. That’s all I need.” Oliver sounded less than enthusiastic as he sat sprawling on the sofa. Carl deliberately misinterpreted him “Of course it is. It’ll do you both good. Good roast, all the trimmings, a walk by the river then an afternoon drinking Pimm’s. It’ll be a real celebration.”
“Of course it will.” Crispin didn’t sound convinced.
“A few cups of coffee and you’ll both be fine.”
An hour later they piled into Carl’s Jensen and headed south out of Oxford towards the small village pub by the Thames.
“Dorchester. It sounds like it should be a big town, a city with a cathedral, not a tiny village.” Holly shouted above the noise of the engine as they approached the village.
“There’s two.”
“Two what?”
“Two Dorchesters.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
Conversation with the twins was limited but the rush of fresh air in the open car completed what the coffee had begun and if only for a few seconds at a time they were able to forget their hangovers. By the time they sat down to eat they had forgotten them completely.
The lunch went well.
“Good idea Carl.” Oliver admitted as he ate the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks.
“But definitely not the best meal we’ve had all summer.” Crispin added looking at Holly.
“It’s OK Carl, don’t look so downcast. He’s joking.” Holly put her arm in Carl’s and briefly rested her head on his shoulder. “It was a brilliant idea.”
Conversation never flagged as Carl brought the others up to date with his next television series and the twins detailed their plans for developing their engineering business. If Holly was a little quiet as the others talked so animatedly about their plans and their successes, she contributed enough for them not to notice.
“Time for a zizz I think.” Crispin was feeling weary and after the food and wine was almost asleep. “I think I’ll go into the garden and sit in the shade and relax a bit.” “Me too.” added Oliver, normally the one with less stamina anyway. “You two’ll be alright on your own for a bit?”
“We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us, it’s your birthday you can do exactly as you want.”
The two brothers left the room and headed for the chairs set out under the trees on the grass that was being kept green by the gentle stream of water from the sprinkler. It was probably its rhythmic whoosh whoosh that sent both of them to sleep almost as soon as they had sat down.
Carl stood up, walked round the table and pulled Holly’s chair out as she stood up.
“That’s nice. No one’s ever done that.”
“Ever the gentleman.” Carl replied chivalrously “What would you like to do with this lovely afternoon Holly? Sit in the garden with us elderly gentlemen?” Carl didn’t seem enthused with the idea of joining the twins.
“I thought I’d go for a walk around the churchyard.
“It’s an Abbey, I think”
“Does that make is an Abbeyyard?”
“Probably not. Can I come with you?”
“Why not?”
They crossed the road and, passing a chattering group of women milling around by the tearooms, walked into the quiet haven of the churchyard. Holly loved to look at gravestones and wonder about the lives of the people buried beneath. She didn’t do this in a morbid manner, it was more her way of paying tribute to the people long dead and of remembering her mother whose grave she had never seen.
“Oh how sad!” She drew Carl’s attention to one particular tomb “Look at all those children, and so young.” She quietly read out the names and ages of the children whose short lives were noted on this weathered stone. She felt angry that some of the names were so worn she couldn’t read them. It was so unfair the lives of those children wouldn’t even be marked by their names being spoken aloud.
Carl took her hand and led her to one grave. “Exactly 200 years ago today.” He was not surprised to see tears filling Holly’s eyes, so he didn’t let go of her hand, nor did she draw it away herself.
They walked through the network of graves and stopped at the corner of the building looking down a slope to the river.
“It’s just so beautiful.”
It may have been the quiet serenity of the spot, or maybe it was because they had had a lovely morning together, but whatever the reason Carl bent his head to kiss her lightly on the lips. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
I
t could have meant nothing.
“Come on, let’s walk.”
Still holding hands they walked slowly back through the gravestones, along the path and towards the river. Despite it being a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon they soon found an area where there were no other people.
They followed a path through the long grass without speaking. It was as if they both sensed the inevitability of what they were about to do.
Carl wasn’t in love with Holly. He hadn’t been in love with any of the girls he had made love to in the past few years. He loved, and always had loved, Susannah. But since he had no idea when she might decide she needed him enough to overcome all the barriers that separated them he found no difficulty in enjoying the company of others. As long as girls found him attractive and he didn’t hurt them or let them get emotionally involved he couldn’t see why not.
Holly knew she wasn’t in love with Carl now, perhaps she never had been attracted to him for any other reason than she knew Linda wanted him. She had fancied him since that first July day when she had been in the Forster’s garden and he had walked round to the horror of Linda who adored him and was looking 13 years old and a mess. She had looked at him and wondered what it would be like to kiss him though she had always known he was Susannah’s. Or Linda’s. She had never really wanted him to be hers.
She had no idea what she really felt about Charles. Sometimes she missed him so much it was a physical pain, at other times she hated him and how he had been able to lie to her. She saw so much of Charles in Carl, they had the same beautiful blue eyes. She would have loved to have met their father.
Neither Carl nor Holly was in love with the other but they made love that hot afternoon.
Walking Alone Page 27