‘I’ll come back,’ she had whispered, still clinging to his hand, standing on the quay as Cormack threw the shopping in his boat, cranked the engine into life. ‘As soon as I’ve sorted things out.’
David hadn’t even kissed her. Quays were too public, he still too shy. She hadn’t come back, had been swept into the riptides of her own world—chores and duties, sullen daughter, disapproving mother, endless arguments. The house was dirty after her long absence, the garden choked with weeds. There was a pile of mail to answer, three meals a day to cook.
David had written—an eight-page letter which combined shyness with ardour, scholarship with lust—promised to return himself, sooner than he had planned. He was missing her, a lot. She made a calendar like the ones she had made at boarding school—end of term ringed and starred in red, each slow laborious day before it crossed off at bedtime. Twenty-seven and three quarters more to go. She and David had no plans. Living on the island had been not quite real. They needed something more practical, more permanent. He was still too diffident to suggest sharing a place, shacking up together, to use her daughter’s term. She would have to make the overtures herself.
‘Look, David, this house is far too big. Once Chris has gone to college, I’ll have either to sell it or let out rooms. Perhaps you’ll need somewhere to stay yourself when you’re back in London working in the libraries …’
No. She hadn’t got it right yet. That would be too blatant, scare him off. And would David really fit in a plush suburban villa? She couldn’t see him discussing brands of coffee beans or pâté with the dapper little snob who ran the local delicatessen where she still had an account, or joining the Residents’ Association to oppose high-density housing or some other outrage which might lower the tone of the area. And what about her mother? Bea had met David for a scant ten minutes when she introduced the two of them at Hilden Cross, way back in July. He was just a name to Bea, some highbrow scholar who had subsequently asked her daughter’s help with translation work or some such. Morna had deliberately kept their relationship a secret, felt like a guilty child still, hiding sweets from Mummy. Bea might approve of David as a person—a well-spoken and well-mannered man coming from a solid Catholic background—but she would never approve of any man living in her daughter’s house, unless he were her legal wedded husband. She had already expressed concern about Morna’s mysterious absence.
‘I was really worried, dear. You’ve always phoned before.’
‘There wasn’t a phone. I told you.’
‘Yes, but you should have warned me you were racing off somewhere else. That letter from the island took ages to arrive, so all that time I had no address for you at all. I phoned Chris in America and even she seemed vague about your plans. I mean, if anything had happened …’
Blackmail. ‘I could have died,’ Bea was really saying. ‘And you wouldn’t have even known, left a not-quite-eighteen-year-old granddaughter to arrange the funeral.’ Ridiculous. Her mother was in perfect health, apart from her arthritis. Arthritis didn’t kill. She had seen her mother every single week when she was married, two or three times a week since her divorce, phoned her every other day. Bea assumed that as her right now, would expect it the rest of her life. Even her opposition to Chris’s engagement sprang partly, she suspected, from fear of losing her one and only grandchild. Bea wanted Chris as a child, someone she could cook for, invite to stay, take away on holidays as she had done in the past. Children with fiancés weren’t the same.
Morna fought her way back across the study, slipped into the dining-room. That was less crowded, the food hardly touched as yet. Bea had been cooking for a week or more, fiddly food which took patience and hard work. Morna bit into a prawn and asparagus tartlet, felt a rush of shame. She had neglected her mother, accepted all her help while still resenting her. It was David who had changed her, David who had made her ache to cut her ties, forge a new one.
Fortunately, the rows had all calmed down now. Father Clarke had helped, tried to talk Bea round. The priest believed in marriage, if only that it prevented fornication. ‘Better to marry than to burn,’ he thundered with St Paul. But it was a second minor crisis which had really solved the first—an accident at Hilden Cross, where Bea had been helping out, accompanying Madge on all her rounds of mercy. Just two days after Morna’s return, Sister Ruth had slipped and broken her leg, was told she would be several weeks in hospital. The community was stunned. They were short enough of nuns, and Sister Ruth had been something of a workhorse, mopping up several full-time jobs at once. Madge and Bea between them had stepped into the breach, taken over Sister Ruth’s domain. Bea had bloomed noticeably—no longer on the sidelines doing merely trivial chores, she now had an official job—her first in seventy years. She had suddenly become important, on first-name terms with nuns and priests, displaying talents she had kept hidden all her life.
Morna had driven down one evening to pick her up when Madge was out of service, at home with a sick dog; found her mother in the office, talking on two telephones at once, working out rotas, checking mail; Joy snoozing at her feet while she hummed in the hot seat. She seemed transformed—younger, more alert. Even the way she sat or walked was different, as if her arthritis had gone into remission. She was no longer a stiff and creaky pensioner, a lonely widow living for her dog, but an administrator, organiser, working in a house which boasted its own chapel, its own resident chaplain—a Jesuit who had spent eleven years in Rome. Chris’s engagement no longer loomed so large. After a full week in harness and a daily lunch with Father (‘Do please call me Michael’) Holdsworth sitting right beside her at the table and a Reverend Mother opposite, she not only apologised to Chris, but promised to make the wedding cake, embroider all the linen.
‘I can’t see Martin with daisies on his pillowcase,’ Chris had grinned, relieved to find the arguments were now about where and when rather than if and should. ‘How about a spanner in satin stitch, or a couple of spare wheels?’
Morna smiled to herself as she circled the buffet table, trying a spoonful of the salmon mousse in aspic, a sliver of the pâté. Someone ought to do justice to the food. She picked up Bea’s ivory-handled cake knife; plunged it into the larger of the hearts. The cake needed cutting or nobody would touch it, scared to disrupt a work of art. She arranged the slices on a plate, fanning them out in a pattern, wrapped the largest in a paper serviette, took it up to Bea who was still ensconced in the sanctuary of the bedroom. She had greeted the first guests, Chris squirming with embarrassment while she asked them if they liked school and what subjects they were studying. Most of them had left school and the few who hadn’t loathed it on principle. She had finally been detailed to babysit. Sarah, seventeen and unmarried, had brought her baby with her, a bald and mournful-looking infant whom everybody called Fez. Bea was giving him his bottle, rocking him to and fro in the brocaded bedroom chair.
‘What’s his real name, darling? I can’t call him Fez.’
‘I don’t know. Chris never even told me Sarah was pregnant.’ Morna sat down on the bed, stared at the pale and ugly child, his face squashed and puckered up as if he were continually about to cry. Perhaps it was just as well that her own daughter was engaged. There were worse things, definitely, and although Chris was young, she wasn’t actually tying the knot for another eighteen months. They had finally compromised. Chris would complete the first year of her degree course before getting married, by which time Martin would have taken his exam and could move up to Bristol to be with her. Chris would still have her grant for her two remaining years and Martin would be earning better money. They would rent the cheapest flat they could find, save all they could towards their future. That future remained vague—although exciting—included treasure-ships, world travel, instructing on underwater courses, and, one far-off day, a full-fledged diving school run by the famous team of Brett and Gordon.
‘You can come and stay if you like, Mum, help out in the office. If it’s somewhere like the Med., your languages wil
l come in very handy.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
Did her daughter see her as she saw Bea—someone spare without a job, who had to be kept busy, kept an eye on? They didn’t know she already had a rôle—two rôles—as mistress and translator. She was glad her daughter was doing Modern Languages. That at least would be a bond between them, pull them both together when other things were drawing them apart. She could relive her own student days, be young again, in love.
Bea had winded the baby, changed his nappy. ‘I really ought to be getting back,’ she said, as she replaced him in his carrycot, tucked the blankets round him.
Morna stood up herself, stretched her legs. ‘Sure you won’t change your mind and stay the night?’
‘Not with this noise, dear, if you don’t mind. I’d never sleep a wink. I’m sorry to drag you out, though. If it’s a nuisance, I can …’
‘Course not. I’d like a breath of air, to tell the truth, and I don’t really think they’ll miss me for half an hour. You get your coat and I’ll just tell Chris we’re off.’
She went downstairs again. The lights seemed lower now, the music even louder, the thump-thump of a bass guitar throbbing through the house. Chris and Martin were dancing, self-enclosed, both his hands cupped around her bottom, her arms round his neck. She squeezed her way across to them, shouted above the noise. ‘Just driving Grandma back. Okay?’
Chris focused on her briefly. ‘Yeah, fine. Take your time.’
Stay away, Chris meant, then we can relax. Would they all break out as soon as she had gone, start an orgy, unwrap the syringes? Unlikely. She squeezed her daughter’s hand. ‘Love you,’ she whispered.
Chris frowned, embarrassed. ‘Bye, Mum.’
Morna closed the door on a tiger-roar from the vocalist, took in great gulps of silence along with the cold night air.
‘When will they be leaving?’ her mother asked, as they turned left by the pillar box and on to the main road.
Morna shrugged. She had been wondering that herself. If she had to stay up half the night, she wished she had David with her. Wished she had him anyway. Thank God Bea couldn’t see into her mind, see the constant thoughts of David, thoughts which should be censored—David naked, David fumbling with her buttons, David blushing when the sofa bed came apart and beached him in full thrust. She kept the images simmering, wove a counterpoint above them more suited to her mother—dogs, babies, the necessity (or otherwise) of pink hair on either sex.
‘Thank you, dear,’ said Bea, as Morna pulled up outside her close-trimmed beech hedge. ‘If you’d like to come and fetch me in the morning, I’ll help with the clearing up.’
‘Don’t worry. Emma’s staying the night. She’ll help me—and Chris and Martin of course.’ Morna followed her mother up the path. ‘I’ll come in for a moment, see you into bed.’
‘No, really, dear, you ought to go straight back. You shouldn’t leave them on their own. And what about the baby?’
‘His mother’s there.’
‘Yes, and not been up to see him once.’
‘Only because we told her he was in expert hands.’
Bea smiled, mollified. ‘All right. Come on in. I’ll make you an Ovaltine. Actually, I wanted to talk to you and I suppose now’s as good a time as any.’
Morna tensed. Had Chris been rambling to her Grandma about David, or Bea jumped to her own conclusions? Was she about to get a wigging, a dressing-down? She followed her mother into the chilly sitting room, left her coat on, perched on the edge of a chair. ‘Well?’
‘It’s about the … er … future.’
Morna eased her left shoe off where it was rubbing at the heel. The word future was better left alone. Her own future lay with David—that she knew—but she wasn’t sure if he knew. Despite his ardent letter, he was too scared, too solitary, too unconventional for formal commitments, vows.
Bea settled back with her Ovaltine and Joy. ‘I’ve been thinking, dear. I can’t keep up this house for ever. Already it’s a strain to keep it clean and …’
Morna kicked the shoe off, massaged her foot. She had been dreading this. Whether Bea moved in with her or she with Bea, both would outlaw David. It was him she wanted as lodger and companion, not her mother. Bea had always been a problem hanging over her head. What happened when she got too old to manage, couldn’t run her own place?
‘I love my home, of course,’ Bea was saying as she sipped her drink. ‘But I’ve been lonely here, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know.’ Morna glanced at the photos of herself in christening gown, herself in frilly tutu, herself in fancy dress—all costumes courtesy of Bea. Lear was right. All children were ungrateful—took half their parents’ lives and then begrudged a few years of their own. But she didn’t have a few years. David was here right now. If she said ‘wait’ or ‘not just yet’ or ‘I’ve got to put my mother first’, he might slip away, elude her.
‘So I thought I’d make a change. Well, it’s only an idea as yet, but if my Job goes well …’ Bea paused, as she always did when she mentioned her new rôle, gave the capital J its due solemnity. ‘I might be able to move in permanently.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, live in the retreat house as a resident.’
‘But I thought it was a … convent.’
‘It is, but the number of vocations has dropped so sharply recently, that they’re taking in lay people. You can actually join the community without taking vows—rather like a Third Order. I wouldn’t do that myself. Well, maybe later if … when … That’s quite a step, you realise—almost like being a nun yourself, in some ways, and I’m not ready for that—nowhere near. I’ve got a long way to go, in fact, a long long way.’ She broke off.
Morna noticed her mother’s hand gripping the chair too tightly, the sudden look of fear. What was wrong? She tried to lighten the mood. ‘So I don’t call you Mother Mary Beatrice yet?’
‘No. No. No.’ Bea rapped out the noes with a sort of desperation, slumped back in her chair. ‘Hope,’ she said, almost to herself, taking off her glasses and polishing them up. ‘That’s the vital thing, you know.’ Her voice was softer now, barely audible. ‘More important than charity—or even faith.’
‘That’s because you’ve got faith. You just take it for granted, as a gift.’
‘Oh, no, I don’t, Morna. You know nothing at all about it.’
Morna put her cup down. Bea had sounded peevish, almost fierce. Her mood had changed entirely. Were the nuns overworking her, putting her under strain? She reached forward, touched her mother’s arm. ‘You mustn’t let them treat you like a slave.’
Bea shook her head impatiently. ‘You don’t understand. It’s nothing like that at all. I love the work.’ Joy shifted on her lap, turned round suddenly and licked her mistress’s face. Bea smiled, relaxed a little. ‘Anyway, I can probably stay free in return for my help. Mother Michael’s already suggested the idea and I must admit it would be a lot more convenient than all those journeys back and forth and having to rely on Madge and …’
‘I thought you liked Madge?’
‘Oh, I do, dear—I love her—but she’s got an oar in lots of other things besides just Hilden Cross. She’s been taking me there some mornings and driving straight off somewhere else. That’s very sweet of her, but I can’t rely on it. I mean, it’s not fair, is it? And then Charlie’s ill and …’
‘Who?’
‘Charlie, her dog, the elder one. He’s going blind, poor darling, so she’s not as free as she used to be. But apart from all that, there’s a lot to be said for actually living in the place. I mean, all my meals provided, and no long tramp to Mass on Sundays in the cold and wet, and the company, of course.’
Morna stared down at the carpet. All the time she had been away, in California as well as on the island, Bea had been fighting loneliness, cooking meals for one, struggling through rain and snow with no daughter to give her lifts or do her shopping. Bea had no David, had only enjoyed a man in her life
for a few short years way back in her twenties. She had been living since then for her daughter and her granddaughter. Now the one was getting married and the other planning to escape. Here was escape made easy, her mother off her hands, fed and warm and occupied. She should have felt relief. She did feel relief, nudging and hymning underneath the guilt. She took a sip of Ovaltine. Bea had made it with the top of the milk, given her the best bone china cup. Tiny things which counted. Could she really let Bea go, see her own mother become an unpaid drudge, living in an institution, giving up her property, her privacy?
‘But supposing you don’t like it?’ Morna tried to keep her voice as flat as possible, suppress any hint or spark of the relief.
‘Of course I shall. I’m enjoying it now.’
‘Yes, but you’re only there part-time and with your own home to return to in the evenings. I mean, you’re used to being on your own. It might be noisy in a community.’
‘Noisy? It’s utterly peaceful. It’s a holy place, if you know what I mean.’
The Stillness the Dancing Page 50