by Susan Sallis
‘Yet you are here.’
‘It was the . . . mystery. I remembered what it had been like.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t do it by myself. When Jessie died, two years ago, I thought I would sell the shop and live abroad. Do something really exciting. Then I was sorting the papers for the delivery boys and . . . there it was. My name.’ He grinned. ‘Never seen my name in print before. And when I realized it was you on the other end of the phone I hoped she might have left me a note. Something.’
‘Oh God . . .’ Arnie levered himself off the bar stool. ‘Let’s go and have some lunch, Maurice. And please call me Arnold.’ They walked out of the refreshment room side by side, suddenly two men in late middle age, chatting amiably.
Arnold said, ‘I have to tell you, Maurice, Greta is alive. Very much alive. She told everyone you had gone to Rangoon. That’s how bereft she was.’
‘Oh my God, my poor darling. But . . . she’s alive! And not ill?’
‘She’s wardrobe mistress for a theatre company here in Birmingham. We went to the first night on Monday and it was great. The play is called Sink and Swim.’
‘That could be us, couldn’t it? I thought we had sunk without trace. Perhaps we could learn to swim? What d’you think?’
Arnold told him that it was all a bit chancy but that Greta wanted to see him. Over lunch, which was a pie and a pint – Rosemary must never know – they got into the car and went to the flat. Arnold said, ‘Look. You know about her, she doesn’t know about you. You have to tell her as soon as you can exactly what you have told me.’ Maurice looked as if he might throw up his lunch quite soon but he nodded. ‘And . . .’ Arnold sounded very serious. ‘Tell her that all you want to do is to be around to put her slippers by the fire. Got that?’ Maurice nodded again.
The door opened before they could ring the bell. Greta’s eyes were enormous. She breathed, ‘I saw the car, I saw him get out. Oh Arnie . . . it is Maurice – it is Maurice, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, my love.’ Arnie stood aside and Maurice took his place.
Rosemary said crossly, ‘What d’you mean, they didn’t say goodbye?’
‘They didn’t say goodbye to me. I was non-existent. They stared and stared and delved around in each other’s soul . . . My God, it was amazing. I’m not kidding, Rosie, it was just how I felt about you. That night we had dinner. We simply . . . knew.’
Rosemary said, ‘Yes, but you were so bossy. It sounds as if Maurice is rather weak.’
‘He’s been in love with Greta yet looked after his wife for twenty years? You think that’s weak?’
She said, ‘No. That was wrong of me. He must be very strong.’
Much later something else occurred to her. They had driven back home separately and she had done a lot of thinking in her car.
She said, ‘Did you say that Maurice’s poor wife died two years ago?’
They were sitting in one armchair watching the evening sky, which was streaked with red and azure. He nodded.
‘It might have been around the time that poor Lucy Pardoe’s son was drowned. That has to mean something, Arnie.’
He kissed her neck. ‘It does. Connie . . . Greta . . . William. All the boy’s family of course, devastated.’
‘We should try to do something. I don’t know what.’
‘No. Best not interfere, love. But it seems awful that she has a grandson and does not know it.’
‘Yes.’ Rosemary thought of May and bit her lip. ‘Yes, indeed.’
‘There was another family in that boarding house, wasn’t there?’
‘I don’t think they were very involved.’
‘No, probably not. And anyway they’ve doubtless put it out of their minds by now.’
He nuzzled her neck again. Then said, ‘Shall we have supper and go to bed? Or the other way round?’
She held his head. ‘Are you really all right, Arnie? You looked sort of peaky when you came into William’s place.’
‘I don’t know what that means. But I am really all right. Seeing Maurice and Greta – it was just beautiful, Rosie. Gave everything fresh meaning.’
‘Oh Arnie.’ She kissed the top of his head. And wished that she could give Lucy Pardoe just a taste of this sweetness.
Fifteen
WHEN THE TRIPS got back from their summer holiday in the States, Lucy tried to explain to Margaret why she felt responsible for Harry Membury lying in Penzance hospital like a broken doll. Margaret not only failed to understand but she was aghast that Lucy had ‘gotten where she was’.
‘Can’t you see, honey, that you are looking for sticks to beat yourself with? And in a strange way, the guy seems to be happier since this – this – horror story than he was before when he was all gawny-lovestruck for you!’
‘I’ve got to look after him now, Margaret. Surely you can see that? He can’t go back to the rectory. The reverend is useless. He’s going to need someone to dress him and wash his clothes and feed him . . .’
‘Oh my God.’ Margaret stared at her friend and saw that she was determined. She said slowly, ‘We’ve got to get something out of this. For you. Sackcloth and ashes are all very well but not for too long.’ She put a finger to her bottom lip, miming concentration, then said, ‘I know, I’ll teach you to drive! Marvin will help you to choose a car. Then you can trundle up and down to Penzance. Better still, you could leave him with Matthew Hobson and go in daily to see that he is OK.’ She leaned forward. She saw driving lessons as her next project. ‘What do you say?’
Lucy thought about it and saw that it made sense. But she was still cautious.
‘Well . . . I’m not sure.’ There had been no women drivers in Hayle that she knew of; it was definitely a man’s thing.
‘I was reading in the paper about the district nurses. That’s what you’d be, Luce. His own special nurse. Would that make things better?’
Lucy had forgotten about district nurses. In the war they had managed on bikes but most of them had cars these days. She nodded cautiously and Margaret – being Margaret – went straight back to her place and fetched her car.
That first driving experience was terrifying. Margaret was used to driving on the right-hand side of the road and had to remind herself about being in England over and over again. ‘I’m not like this when I just drive without having to think,’ she explained. ‘It’s that I want you to do it the right way from the start.’ But the next day she took Lucy up to the country around St Austell where the abandoned clay pits provided traffic-free space.
Lucy mastered the mechanics very quickly. She had watched Josh when he had brought her house-hunting and knew how to check the gears before switching on, how to use the clutch and brake. She proved excellent at easing the car around the huge boulders in the clay pits without stalling. She could reverse and do a three-point turn almost immediately. Margaret was cock-a-hoop. She applied for a test much too soon; Lucy failed it and made her weekly visit to Penzance on the bus as usual. ‘I really wanted to drive there. He’ll have to be discharged next month and I won’t have time to practise if he has to come to us.’ She looked at Margaret mournfully. ‘Now that he’s actually coming out of hospital, I don’t want him in the house one bit. So much for making amends.’
‘We’ll put in for another test, kiddo. The examiner had to fail you because of going through a red light, but that was the only thing, wasn’t it?’
This time she passed. She had never achieved anything ‘official’ before. She was speechless with delight. Without thinking, she threw herself into Margaret’s long thin arms. ‘I love you!’ she laughed. ‘I can buy a car and go anywhere I like and it’s because of you!’
Margaret laughed at first and then said seriously, ‘I love you too, honey. But calm down.’ She gave her an odd sideways look. ‘Hope you’re not like this with Marvin when you test-drive this car of yours!’
Lucy pestered like a child until Margaret let her drive home and even then she continued to chortle. Margaret could not get over it. ‘My God, L
uce. Give you a taste of power and you go mad! I can see where Denny gets it from. Watch that lamp post – this is my car, remember!’
So a new routine was set up that autumn. Harry Membury moved back into his room in the rectory and Lucy drove there each weekday as soon as she had taken the girls to school. She gave Harry his breakfast, ran a bath, bundled his clothes into a basket for laundering back home and helped him to dress and make his bed. Both arm and leg were out of splints and needed no dressing but he was unable to walk without a stick and Dr Carthew had arranged for a therapist to call and organize exercises for him.
Lucy insisted that Matthew must get his own breakfast and do his own laundry and she left lists for him of everything else that needed doing. He said plaintively, ‘Lucy, I can’t do shopping every day. And you bring enough food for both of us anyway.’
Lucy had changed a great deal since the days when she had lived almost entirely off her garden and the orchard. She said, ‘The food I bring is only for Harry. How can we get him better if we don’t feed him properly? I want him to go home at Christmas and be with his family.’
‘You don’t even know where he lives!’ Matthew protested.
‘I went through his things and found a notebook. It’s like a diary but it’s not actually a diary – sometimes there are dates, sometimes not. It starts with . . .’ she swallowed and said, ‘Egg. The drowning.’ A big breath and she went on quickly, ‘And ends with him sleeping with a girl from the commune. He just had time to write it before he went to see my father, who tried to kill him.’
He stared at her, amazed, remembering the Lucy Pardoe who had lived on the towans and suppressed . . . so much.
He said in a low voice, ‘Lucy, you know you should not have read that book.’
‘I haven’t read it all, just the beginning and the end. I needed his home address, that’s all.’ She grinned. ‘It’s because I’ve got a car.’
‘What is? What are you talking about?’ Matthew sounded cross; he felt he wasn’t coming out of this very well.
‘Margaret calls me a megalomaniac. That means I get my power from having money. But actually it’s because of the car. I can do anything because of the car.’
Matthew grinned unwillingly. ‘You seemed to do an awful lot before the car came along.’
She laughed. ‘I know. But I didn’t even know what I was doing half the time.’ She looked at him very directly. ‘Now I know. And I know I have to look after Harry up to a point. But I do not have to look after you.’
He took a long, resigned breath. ‘All right, give me the shopping list.’ He stared down at it unseeingly. ‘You know he wants to divorce Avis and marry you?’
‘Not in so many words but I guessed.’
‘I suppose now that you have read that notebook and seen about the Flower People, you don’t want to know.’
‘I didn’t want to know before. I’m glad about the Flower People.’ She finished clearing Harry’s breakfast tray. ‘He was so terribly unhappy when he arrived last winter. And he didn’t sound much better when he was with you. The Flower People made him happy.’
‘Those mushrooms had a hand in it, I suspect.’ Matthew spoke with a touch of bitterness. He had not relished the laughter from Josh and Carthew.
‘Who knows?’ She took clean towels from the airing rack and made for the stairs. ‘Soup for his lunch. And the fruit jelly is from Margaret.’
He called, ‘The good doctor is having us for Sunday. He reckons Harry should be able to walk to his place.’
‘Check with this man who is coming to give him exercises,’ she called back.
‘It’s a woman. But yes, I will.’
Matthew gathered himself together and made for his study. He had a Confirmation group this evening in the vestry and needed to plan something that would cover the three fourteen-year-olds and the two in their twenties from the commune. Three years ago when he arrived here he had been full of plans for making God accessible to everyone. It had gone well; a youth club, singing groups, an organist from St Cloud who had taken kindly to using Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ for the carol service. But something was lacking and he did not know what it was. Could it possibly be as simple as resenting Carthew’s laughter about the mushrooms? Or the fact that Lucy was prepared to care for Harry Membury but most definitely excluded him? Or that Chippy Penberthy, suddenly saddled with his feckless daughter’s three children, expected him to amuse them for the whole of Sunday? He thought longingly of Ellie Pardoe, who would have told them Bible stories and walked them miles over the dunes so that they might actually ask to go to bed at six o’clock. But the autumn term was well under way and now that Lucy had this car, they would be off calling on Harry’s family, trying to heal the enormous breach that split them when Egbert Pardoe had drowned. That drowning . . . a terrible time that went on and on . . . Ellie going to her school in Truro, so unhappy, white and strained. Eleven years old. And now thirteen and beautiful. They had coped. Lucy had coped. He had helped them but they would have managed anyway.
He drew his papers towards him. He felt useless.
Harry also marvelled at the change in Lucy. In his head he would always have a picture of her standing in that doorway, her remaining children close to her skirt, defying . . . what had she been defying? The knowledge that her only son was dead? At the time it seemed that she had been defying the whole world. Standing there, waiting for the next blow to fall, determined that she would not fall herself.
But after he left the towans and went back home with Avis and the girls, she must have changed. Gone out to meet whatever came and to shape things to her own ends. That business with Penberthy and then the holiday company. He had seen a change in her when he eventually found her in Truro. A different kind of toughness. Not so much stubborn resistance as political manoeuvring.
But now . . . since he had come back to his room in the rectory and she had acted as a daily nurse . . . now it was startling.
She told him it was the car.
‘It’s like having a key.’ She was waiting for him to finish with his breakfast tray and she went to the window and looked down on the bottle-green Hillman Minx parked below. ‘Because I can go anywhere, I think I can do anything!’ She laughed at herself and moved to the tallboy to get the day’s clothes ready. ‘It must be a bit like you with those Flower People. That’s how they are, aren’t they?’
He thought about it, nodding. ‘Probably, in their case, it has a great deal to do with those damned mushrooms.’ He tried to grin and sipped at his tea to cover the usual wince of pain. He had caught his cheek on the splintering steps as he fell.
He said, ‘You know, Lucy, I didn’t go to work for your father to – to inveigle myself into your family. The manager at the Godolphin Estate told me that Zeke was your father . . . but no details. I thought it was one of those family splits – like – like Avis and me. Well, not quite. But anyway, I thought I could heal it. But . . . I’ve heard from Dr Carthew that he was an alcoholic.’
Lucy said in her old flat voice, ‘He killed my mother.’
There was a long silence. Lucy put a neat pile of underwear on top of the tallboy. Harry put down his cup and lifted the tray to the side of the bed. Then he said quietly, ‘I think he pushed me down those steps, Lucy.’
She said nothing but nodded and looked at him, waiting.
‘We had a terrible row. He didn’t care about me dancing and singing. But when he realized – when I told him – that I knew you, that did it.’
‘Yes.’ She sighed and turned to close the tallboy. ‘It would have happened anyway. That’s how he was.’
‘It must have been . . . awful.’
‘It was. I don’t think I realized how awful for a long time. He’d done it to my mother and he was doing it to me. I thought that was how husbands and fathers were. But when the war came everyone was joining up, doing something. He said we were in the front line because we were providing food for people. But the girl from Godolphin Home Farm
said she’d had enough of Cornish mud and she’d heard that this place in Devon needed chambermaids and would I come with her. And I did.’ She laughed and for a moment he could see that wild, unkempt teenager in the face of the mature woman. She said, ‘He came after me but I was doing war work and that was that.’ She shuddered. ‘It made it worse to go back. I shouldna gone. I thought the war would’ve changed him.’ She shrugged. ‘You shoulda given him some of the mushrooms.’
He tried to laugh with her and could not. She picked up the tray and made for the door. ‘Don’t let that bath-water get cold.’
‘No, miss,’ he joked feebly.
‘I hope the physio woman gets you going soon.’ She turned and looked at him. ‘I think you know now what you have to do.’
He said, ‘Get going?’
She said tartly, ‘See if you can patch up your marriage. It’s almost a year since you left them.’
‘They’re all right. I do keep in touch, you know.’
She did know. Because of the notebook she knew a few more things about Harry Membury. Avis too. Harry had said nothing about Avis’s new ‘husband’. It was certainly time he sorted that out.
Lucy took down the tray and laid it again for lunch, then she stuffed the laundry into the boot of the Hillman and closed it firmly. She put the palm of her hand on the shining dark green finish of the car and spoke quietly. ‘We’ll go up to Devon soon. Find that Avis Membury and give her one of Margaret’s penny lectures. That should get things moving again.’ She turned to go back indoors and glanced up at the bedroom window and saw Harry standing where she had stood half an hour before. His striped pyjamas and tousled hair reminded her of pre-war book illustrations of homesick boarding-school boys. She jabbed her finger angrily in the direction of the bathroom and marched back into the kitchen, working out exactly what she was going to say to Avis Membury about the sanctity of marriage. She stuck her head around the study door without knocking. Matthew was holding his head with one hand and a pen in the other, though he did not seem to be using the pen.