Born to Be Trouble

by Sheila Jeffries

  ‘Aw – this is fantastic, Tessa,’ Art said, sitting opposite her at the small table. ‘Is this your mum’s homemade butter? And plum jam – wow – your mum is awesome.’

  ‘And the eggs are from our own chickens,’ Tessa said, happily shaking salt and pepper over hers. Momentarily she remembered a look in Kate’s eyes when she had packed the butter into the basket, and the odd tone in her voice when she’d said, ‘This is for YOU, dear.’ The unsaid words hovered in the air between them. Not HIM. Tessa wondered why, suddenly, her mum didn’t like Art.

  ‘Mmm, it’s delicious,’ he said, licking the melted butter from his beard. His grey eyes shone into her soul. ‘And you look SO beautiful, Tessa. Your hair is a little bit damp – and sparkly’ He moved a tendril of chestnut curl from her cheek. ‘Have you been outside?’

  ‘I went for a wash in the stream.’

  ‘Aw – man! How did I miss that?’ Art joked.

  Tessa grinned widely, showing the dimples in her cheeks. ‘So what are we doing today?’

  Art peered out of the window. ‘I fancy sitting in a tree and reading poetry. With you, of course.’ He stroked his beard and stared out at the sky, as if trying to make a decision, then his eyes looked into hers with startling intensity. He took her hands, his thumb caressing the sheen of her delicate nails and the sensitive tips of her fingers. ‘The thing is, Tessa – I’ve got to go and help a mate move camp this morning – no need for you to get involved – but later I want to do something really special with you, something unforgettable.’

  Tessa smiled, trusting him implicitly. ‘I’ve got somewhere I must go,’ she said, thinking about Dr Jarvis. ‘But later – yes – we’ll do something special.’ Her mind flew to Granny Barcussy’s ruined cottage. She knew it was somewhere on the other side of the wood, but she wasn’t sure exactly where, or how to find it.

  Art was looking at her expectantly, his rough, suntanned fingers playing with her silver charm bracelet. He reached up and touched the amber bead in her hair.

  ‘Dad used to take Lucy and me to see his granny’s ruined cottage,’ Tessa said, and sensed Granny Barcussy’s bright, bird-like face watching her from spirit, encouraging her. ‘It was in an enchanted woodland glade, and I used to see little orbs of light dancing in the trees. I felt peaceful there, and – alive. Dad would sit us down inside the old stone walls and tell us stories, but—’

  ‘But?’ Art was listening intently, his eyes locked into hers.

  ‘But sometimes he used to get sad because the cottage was a ruin, and he couldn’t do anything about it. His parents had sold it to the estate who owned these woods. He’d go on and on about how they didn’t care about the environment. The whole estate was split up into blocks of woodland and sold, and we weren’t supposed to go and visit the cottage any more – but,’ Tessa leaned forward and kissed him, ‘I’ve dreamed of going there with you – if we could find it. Shall we?’

  Art’s eyes shone with love and enthusiasm. ‘Yeah – I’d love to.’

  Tessa found herself tingling with excitement. She imagined lying in the enchanted ruin with Art. A time of magic. She saw Granny Barcussy’s spirit beside them, her old hands clasped with joy, her eyes dancing. ‘Sometime soon,’ she said, happy that Art was gazing at her with love and passion in his grey eyes.

  ‘Sometime soon,’ he promised.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘Sometime Soon’

  Freddie loaded the last bird box into the back of the pale blue Morris Traveller and tied the back doors shut with a length of baler twine. He tied a red rag on there to warn other drivers it was not fully closed. ‘You be careful,’ he said to Kate, handing her the keys. ‘Don’t go speeding round corners.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, dear.’ She beamed confidently and gave him a kiss. ‘I’ll be back about tea time – with a roll of cash!’ She wagged a finger at him. ‘You be good too. No stone dust!’

  Freddie’s eyes twinkled. He liked the way Kate bossed him around. Pretend to agree, then do it anyway was his usual plan. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her what he intended to do today.

  Apprehensively he watched her set off, the bird boxes piled high, even in the passenger seat. She wouldn’t be able to use the mirror at all. He hoped the police wouldn’t stop her. If they did, Kate would be quite capable of charming them into letting her continue on her journey. Today she was going to Dorset, to all the garden centres and pet shops she could find. Freddie felt lucky that Kate was such a good saleswoman. She always came back smiling with an empty car and a bundle of cash, and hilarious tales of how she had persuaded curmudgeonly shop managers to buy the bird boxes. ‘No one else makes them like this!’ she’d tell them. ‘My Freddie has a unique style. These are so elegant – and Japanese-looking, don’t you think?’ Then she’d point out some plain ordinary bird table in his shop and say, ‘I wouldn’t have THAT in my garden when I could have THIS one – would you?’ All the time flashing her warm bewitching eyes at them, eyes that would melt a battleship.

  Freddie stood at the gate, watched her turn at the end of the road and imagined her driving up the steep hill through the woods and away towards Yeovil. There wasn’t much traffic on a Tuesday in October. The occasional lorry, the green country bus, and a few cars. The road was dry, the weather still and sunny. Perfect. But he still prayed she would come back safely.

  He took an ancient canvas haversack from its peg in his workshop, shook the dust out of it and took it indoors. Kate had left his lunch on the table between two plates. A thick slice of pork pie, a cold boiled egg and a mound of homegrown lettuce. Freddie threw some salt over it and bundled it into greaseproof paper. He stuffed it into the haversack with a crimson Worcester Pearmain apple and a glass bottle of water.

  With the bag slung over his shoulder and his mother’s ebony walking stick in his hand, he set off down the leafy lane in eager strides. First he called at the church to visit Annie’s grave. He stood looking down at the headstone, thinking about the angel he was carving to put there. The doctor had said he must give up stone carving. The dust was making him ill. But he wasn’t going to. Damned doctors didn’t know everything, did they?

  Freddie walked on, through the town and over the railway bridge, his mind now worrying about Tessa. Kate had been so furious with Art. She’d worked herself into a state about him betraying Tessa.

  ‘You don’t know that it’s true,’ Freddie had argued. He was trying to like Art, for Tessa’s sake.

  ‘Oh yes I do. He was GUILTY. He couldn’t look at me,’ Kate said. ‘Freddie – he is cheating. Tessa is absolutely head over heels in love with him. He’s led her on while all the time he’s got another woman – and a baby. He’s cheating on her as well. It’s the lowest of the low. Tessa will have to be told – but I can’t, Freddie, I can’t burst her bubble. She’s never been so happy in her life, has she?’

  ‘You should keep quiet,’ Freddie said. ‘If you interfere, she’ll blame you, Kate! I don’t want to lose Tessa the way we lost Lucy.’

  Their conversation was swirling into dark waters. They both fell silent, remembering the ongoing pain of losing their elder daughter. Lucy had been a golden child, perfect in every way, on the brink of taking her A levels when she’d suddenly rebelled and left home to live in a tiny bedsit in Taunton with Tim, a boy Freddie and Kate hated on sight – a timewaster, a spiv, and a drunk, they thought.

  ‘To be fair – we didn’t try to get to know Tim, did we?’ Kate said sadly. ‘I know he’s nothing like the kind of man we wanted for Lucy, but there must be good in him somewhere. I’ve tried so hard to like Art – and Tessa is so much more precarious than Lucy. I’m so afraid for her, Freddie, afraid she’ll try to take her life again.’

  ‘I worry about that too,’ admitted Freddie. ‘And she shouldn’t have dropped out of Art College. That upset me more than anything. I’d have loved a chance like that, and Tessa’s throwing it away – throwing her life away.’

  Throwing her life away! Freddie stood on the rail
way bridge looking down at the gleaming rails curving away into the hills, his mind replaying the conversation. Kate had begged him to talk to Tessa, but he wouldn’t. Tessa trusted him. Even when she was a baby Freddie had been her rock, the only person who understood her dark moods, her anxieties, and the intense power of her dreams. No, he wouldn’t talk to her, but he’d listen. He’d offer a healing silence where she could safely share her true feelings.

  Dr Jarvis looked at Tessa over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses. He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Tessa, but I cannot prescribe the pill without your parents’ consent. You are under twenty-one.’

  Tessa felt a cold gust of fury reach her face, from within. ‘But – the doctor in Cornwall gave them to me.’ She took the foil pack from the back pocket of her jeans and slammed it on the green leather top of his desk.

  ‘And who was this doctor?’ Dr Jarvis asked. ‘He’s got no right to do that. What was his name?’

  ‘I’m not telling you,’ Tessa said. ‘He was a friend of a friend.’

  ‘Sounds very unorthodox to me. And irresponsible. Did he ask for your medical history?’

  ‘No.’

  Dr Jarvis took the foil pack and turned it over, frowning. ‘Knowing you, these particular ones are not what I would give you, Tessa. You shouldn’t be taking them.’

  ‘I want those BACK please.’ Tessa glared at him.

  ‘All right, all right!’ Dr Jarvis handed her the foil pack with its two remaining pills. ‘I know you very well, Tessa, and your parents. You weren’t an easy little girl to treat, were you?’

  ‘No,’ Tessa admitted angrily. ‘That’s because I’m terrified of medical stuff.’

  Dr Jarvis had opened the brown cardboard sleeve containing her medical history. ‘Not so long ago we were dealing with your suicide attempt, weren’t we?’

  Tessa touched the thin scar on her wrist. ‘I was fourteen.’

  ‘Silly girl.’

  The fury reached her throat. She stood up. ‘I am NOT a silly girl. How dare you judge me like that. If I was a doctor I’d try to understand. I was desperate. And I wasn’t happy until I moved away from Monterose and its old-fashioned attitudes. I’m eighteen now, nearly nineteen, and the man I’m with is wonderful. He’s the best person I’ve ever met, and we are totally in love. I need the pill. I really need it. WHY won’t you give it to me?’ Tessa felt her hands clench the edge of Dr Jarvis’s leather-topped desk with a furious strength that wanted to overturn it with one flick. Her slim arms were wire-strong after the summer of swimming in the Cornish surf.

  ‘That is precisely why.’ Dr Jarvis was playing his words like cards, with the ace of spades hovering. ‘Look at you. Relax your hands, girl, and stop murdering my table.’

  Despite her anger, Tessa found herself grinning at the wise old doctor who had treated her all her life. He had a way of deflecting extreme emotion with gentle humour. She remembered that she did actually like him.

  ‘Seriously, Tessa – talk to your mother. She’s very open-minded. I’m sure she’d rather try to help you than be kept in the dark.’

  ‘But she doesn’t believe in sex before marriage. She thinks it’s a sin. I can’t possibly tell her. Please don’t you tell her either, or Dad.’

  ‘I won’t. What about Lucy? Can you talk to her?’

  ‘No. She hates me, always has.’

  Dr Jarvis looked flummoxed.

  ‘Why should I have to talk to someone? It’s my life,’ Tessa said.

  ‘And can’t you say no to this wonderful young man?’

  ‘No. We LOVE each other.’

  ‘Well – there is an agency you can go to. The Brook Advisory Clinic. I think there’s one in Bristol.’

  ‘Bristol?’

  Tessa took the leaflet and trailed out. Bristol! It sounded like the other end of the earth. She’d have to hitchhike. And Art wouldn’t like it. Contraception, and money, and getting to Bristol were outside the sphere of phantasmagoria where he seemed to live. Even now he’d be sitting in a tree reading poetry, while she trudged the streets of Monterose worrying about contraception. She didn’t want it to put a damper on their love.

  What should she do?

  Tessa meandered down the familiar street, not looking at anyone, and turned in to the small Post Office Stores. She wanted a stamp for the letter she’d written to her friend, Faye, who was at College. She’d told Faye about Art, and about their carefree summer on Porthmeor Beach, and explained why she was dropping out.

  As she walked up to the counter a man grabbed her arm. She turned, expecting it to be someone she knew, but it wasn’t. A grey little man with angry eyes was looking at her in a challenging way, his face an unhealthy red as it popped out of his immaculate collar and tie. ‘No hippies,’ he said. ‘Can’t you read?’ He waved a sinewy arm towards a notice in the shop entrance. ‘Out you go. OUT. That way!’

  Tessa stood her ground, in disbelief.

  ‘I just wanted a stamp,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t care. We don’t serve hippies. OUT.’

  ‘I’m proud to be a hippie. They’re beautiful people. You should get to know us instead of being so prejudicial.’ She tried to speak quietly and slowly, like her father would have done. Calm words lapping the shores of a great ocean of frustration. ‘And Monterose is my home town. I grew up here.’

  ‘I don’t care if you grew up in Buckingham Palace. OUT.’ His breath ponged of garlic. Tessa backed away. She stepped round him and marched to the Post Office counter. The woman behind it had a face like a boxer dog. She gave Tessa a silent snarl and slammed the hatch down.

  ‘Supposing I came back dressed as a housewife?’ Tessa said. ‘In a flowery pinny and slippers – and rollers in my hair. Would you serve me then? I need to post this letter.’ She slammed the letter to Faye on the counter. ‘Will you please sell me a stamp?’ The pitch of her voice was rising and the quaking started in the muscles of her stomach. First Ian Tillerman, then Dr Jarvis, now this. Tessa felt like trashing the Post Office. All she wanted was a peaceful day with Art. Why these obstacles?

  Her temper was under control, but only just. She knew that her grandfather, Levi, had died from losing his temper. She’d had years of practice and patient teaching from her parents, and threats of what might happen if she lost it. Yet still she walked precariously along a cliff edge, her feet on solid ground, her eyes warning her of the endless crashing, down, down into a life of broken glass and splintered bone, a friendless life where temper was a lonely outcast dictator. Don’t go there, Tessa, she thought, gathered the shreds of herself into a regal silence, and walked out of the shop into the sunshine.

  She headed home to the sanctuary of the bus, half hoping that Art wouldn’t be there. Time alone to calm down was what she needed. But when she turned into the field she was surprised to see a horsebox parked in there. It had little windows with rainbow curtains, and a woman in a flowing velvet skirt was sitting on the steps breastfeeding a baby.

  Freddie leaned against the green Morris Minor, his fingers smoothing the well-polished roof. ‘Why are you selling her?’ he asked.

  Todd Whitcombe’s eyes looked at him candidly from under his tweed cap which was dark with oil. ‘She belonged to Lady Fontwell up at the Manor House – she died recently.’

  ‘Ah – I heard she’d gone,’ Freddie said. ‘Bit of a character, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She were a witch, people say!’ Todd’s eyes twinkled. A bit of scandal added romance to his life as a car dealer. ‘She were practising some weird kind of medicine.’

  ‘Herbalism?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘No – it were even weirder than that. She had this black box that sent out rays or something. They say she had clients all over the world.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of that,’ Freddie said. He felt the back of his neck prickling. ‘Sounds a bit dodgy, don’t it?’

  ‘Anyway – she were a Lady. Old money, if you know what I mean. I sold her this car, new, and servi
ced it for her. She was always charming, always – but her eyes used to look right through you.’ Todd hesitated as if unsure whether to trust Freddie with the next morsel of scandal. ‘And d’you know what she said to me once?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, one day I had a bad back – awful it were – made my work hell – and she came round for some petrol. She looked at me out the car window and she said, “Todd, you’ve got a back pain, haven’t you?” I said, “yes”, and she said, “I’ll put you on the box.”’

  Freddie’s eyes rounded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘She opened her handbag – scruffy old leather thing – and took out a pair of nail scissors. “Cut me off a snippet of your hair,” she said.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Ah – I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her, so I did it. Gave it to her through the car window and she put it in an envelope and wrote me name on it. That’s all she did – she went off and I never saw her for a month – but d’you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That back pain were gone the next day, and I never had it since.’

  The two men looked at each other over the roof of Lady Fontwell’s car, letting the mystery settle into silence. Like a bird settling into its nest after flight. Freddie felt a stirring in his mind as some long-forgotten energy began to uncoil the tip of its tail.

  ‘How much do you want for it?’ he asked.

  ‘Seventy quid.’

  ‘Ah – that’s too much. It’s not worth that. Shame.’ Freddie buttoned his jacket, ready to walk away.

  ‘Make me an offer.’

  Freddie frowned. He walked round the car and found some rust along the bottom edge of the doors. ‘That’s bad, see. Needs a lot of work doing. I could give you fifty quid, I suppose. That’s all the cash I’ve got.’

  ‘Can’t you find another fiver? I’d take fifty-five, but only from you.’

  Freddie took out his brown leather wallet and counted out fifty pounds. ‘Sorry – that’s all I’ve got.’