Born to Be Trouble

by Sheila Jeffries

  ‘Art’s not a bastard. He’s a beautiful person, and he changed my life, Paul. Yes, I’m broken-hearted, and angry with that woman – Rowan. But I’m okay. I’m coping. And I’ve got a job, and this little place – it’s not much, but it’s home.’ Tessa smiled to herself as she heard those words emerging. Thank you, Dorothy, she thought.

  ‘I always admired you, Tessa. You’re so brave.’ Paul sat down on the bed, his long legs hunched against the sink unit. ‘Mind if I sit down?’

  ‘I’m not brave. It’s just an act.’ Tessa sat down too, in the one chair by the window. She didn’t want to get too close to Paul. His eyes roved over her legs, and up to her face.

  ‘You’ve still got the sun-bleach in your hair,’ he remarked. ‘The sun is just catching it now – golden – a golden girl.’

  ‘No way,’ Tessa said. ‘My sister, Lucy, is the golden girl. I’m the black sheep of the family.’

  ‘Your mum didn’t give me that impression. She really loves you, Tessa. I could tell.’

  There was a pregnant silence between them. I wish he’d go away, Tessa thought.

  ‘I’m envious,’ Paul said. ‘My parents don’t love me like that. I’m just an extension of their ego trip. They hated me being a hippie. Dad was all set to disown me ’til I came home and cut my hair. But he still doesn’t like what I’m doing.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Studying music. Violin and clarinet – I’m hoping to get into an orchestra, a big one like the LSO, and travel the world doing concerts.’

  ‘I like classical music,’ Tessa said.

  Paul’s eyes sparkled mysteriously. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out two tickets. ‘Well – what a coincidence. I just happen to have two tickets for the Royal Albert Hall – tonight! – It’s Beethoven’s Violin Concerto – you’d love it. Will you come with me?’

  Tessa hesitated, remembering how much she had enjoyed a concert with Faye. They’d hitched up to London from college, and it had been Tessa’s first ever experience of a symphony concert. The music had been Brahms’s Symphony No 1. Its eight note theme had haunted Tessa forever, especially as Faye had described it so passionately as ‘a light in the forest’. It had been a huge, and welcome, emotional roller-coaster. She had the LP which Faye had given her for Christmas, but it was sitting on top of her record player at home, along with the other LP she had – The Planets by Holst. After that difficult Christmas, she’d spent hours in another world, lying on her bed listening to those two LPs. Neptune from The Planets was magical and contemplative, truly the music of dreams.

  But all that had happened before Art. Before their Summer of Love on the wild shores of St Ives in Cornwall.

  ‘You’re taking a long time to answer,’ Paul said, and the tiniest crease of a frown appeared.

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ Tessa said.

  Paul looked miffed. His eyes changed shape as the frown deepened, and the pupils went pinhead small. His top lip tightened. ‘So what’s the excuse?’

  ‘Do I need one?’

  ‘It would help me to understand why, Tessa.’ He managed to make her name sound like an accusation. ‘Are you going out somewhere already?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Surely you’re not going to sit here on your own on a Saturday night – in this cupboard – are you?’

  Tessa stared at the wall. ‘I’m fine on my own. I’m not going to manufacture an excuse. And it’s not a cupboard. It’s a nest.’

  Paul’s back went rigid. ‘Is it the concert you don’t like? Or is it me?’

  ‘It’s neither. You have to understand – I’m like a wounded animal right now. I need to stay in my cave.’

  ‘Your mother seemed to think it would do you good to go out.’

  ‘Yes – well, she WOULD,’ Tessa said angrily. ‘She’s a going-out kind of person, and I’m not. And anyway I do go out. ON MY OWN.’

  ‘Okay, okay – don’t bite my head off.’

  Tessa glared at the wall. She felt like a trapped lioness. I’m being horrible, she thought, looking at the carnations in their cellophane cone. ‘I’m not rejecting you, Paul,’ she said gently. ‘And – are you sure you want me to have these flowers?’

  His face softened a little. ‘Yeah, of course, I bought them for you. Maybe we could do something else – a walk in the park? Or the Planetarium?’

  ‘Not today, but some other time, when I feel better – if I ever do.’

  ‘Fine. That just leaves me with another lonely Saturday night. There’s plenty of girls around, but I don’t fancy any of them. I’ve never met a girl like you, Tessa. You’re special, and very beautiful.’ He leaned closer. ‘I’m not going to give up on you, and – I really hope you don’t give up on me.’

  Tessa suddenly felt sorry for Paul. He looked crestfallen, as if the pendulum had swung out of its anger zone and into genuine disappointment. He tucked the offending tickets away in his pocket. ‘So what will you do tonight?’ Tessa asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Go on my own.’

  Tessa was tempted to give him a kiss on the cheek, but a warning neon light flashed in her mind. DON’T, it said in scarlet letters.

  Another part of her mind knew it would not be long before she and Paul were going out together. She felt caught in a tide of expectations. Girls were expected to get married, and if they didn’t they would be labelled as ‘odd’ or ‘frigid’, incapable of love.

  CHAPTER 8

  Working With a Broken Heart

  ‘I could calm her down,’ Tessa said in a quiet voice.

  The walls rang with raucous screams coming from the child who lay on the floor. Chandra was a heavily built dumpling of a girl, six years old, known for her mega-tantrums and endless whining. Three teachers and two therapists had given up on her, and so had her mother, who delivered her screaming daughter through the door in the mornings with a sigh of relief.

  Tessa was pinning the children’s artwork on the corridor walls when it started. The teacher in the classroom next door to hers was Helga, a mountain of a woman with a bust like an army tank. She had a booming voice and the children and most of the staff were petrified of her.

  So Helga looked taken aback when Tessa, a mere classroom assistant, quietly offered to do her job for her. ‘I doubt that, Tessa. But you have a go.’ She gave a battle-weary laugh and let go of Chandra’s arm which she’d been using to drag her across the floor. ‘Little madam. She’s playing up because she’s got to go to the nurse for an injection. Anyone would think the nurse was going to cut her head off. It’s only a little needle, Chandra. Silly girl.’

  Her words fired new energy into Chandra’s screams. She pounded the floor with her small feet.

  ‘Go on – you have a go,’ said Helga, and her eyes bulged at Tessa. ‘See if you can drag her to the nurse. I’ll be in my classroom if you want me.’ She strode off, in a pair of red platform heels.

  Tessa sat down on the floor. Chandra was eyeing her through two slits of swollen cheek, like a growling dog, ready to attack. But in there somewhere was hunger for love, love that was forever unreachable for a child like Chandra.

  The power of silence was something Freddie had given Tessa all her life. It had rescued her countless times from the furthest edges of frustration and fury, edges that glittered like broken windows. Tessa was sure in her heart that Freddie was a secret healer.

  So she sat still, and looked at Chandra kindly, praying that Helga wouldn’t intervene and break the spell with her loud voice. Chandra’s aura had the angry colours of an open wound. Tessa waited, imagining the soothing blues of the ocean, the diamond cold of its waters, swirling around the distressed child.

  One of the problems in managing Chandra was the child’s strategy of lying on the floor when things weren’t going her way. Sometimes she would crawl under the desks and tables and stay there for hours. She was so heavy that most of the adults in her life had given up trying to get her to stand. They left her there under a cloud of recriminations and
the occasional kick from one of the other children. Chandra’s life was a thunderstorm of negativity.

  Tessa was interested in finding the real Chandra hidden inside the layers of resistance. The soul who had been born as a magical, shining being. Where was she now? How had it come to this?

  Those two words, ‘silly girl’, were used relentlessly on Chandra. Hearing them again was salt in the wound. The rage was a furious sense of injustice. An unanswered question. Why? Why did no one actually try to understand and respect her feelings? To Chandra the world was a cruel and hostile place.

  So when Tessa sat quietly beside her, not criticising, not pressurising, it was a new experience for Chandra. After a few minutes, she quietened down and her eyes began to open and focus. Tessa caught a glimpse of a wild creature inside Chandra, a beautiful phantasma like a turquoise damselfly on a reed. Something so bright that you weren’t sure whether you had really seen it, or whether it belonged to the solid, physical world at all. Tessa encouraged it with a spontaneous, magical smile, feeling the dimples twitch in her cheeks. It was the rare smile that Art had loved. The smile of a soul recognising another soul.

  A magic moment, coaxed out by the silence. A time to use her special voice. The voice she had used to heal Selwyn.

  ‘What’s the matter, darling?’

  No one ever called Chandra ‘darling’. No one ever spoke to her in such a hypnotic, caring tone of voice. No one else looked into her soul with the bewitching eyes of a healer.

  But there was so much the matter in Chandra’s life that the child didn’t know how to begin, how to choose from the chaotic jumble of words and emotions. Her eyes scanned the space for danger, like a songbird checking to see if it was safe to fly into a garden.

  ‘Chandra?’ Tessa spoke her name in a special way.

  The child breathed in, and forgot to breathe out in the first enchanted moment of eye contact. Helga loomed in the open doorway of her classroom. She’s waiting to pounce, Tessa thought.

  Chandra managed to select a word. ‘Nurse,’ she whispered.

  ‘Nurse? Does she frighten you, darling?’

  Chandra nodded miserably, and the colour rushed over her cheeks again. Beads of sweat crept along her hairline. Anxiety burned in her eyes, and Tessa saw its endless shadow, years and years of it.

  ‘Don’t be too soft with her, Tessa,’ Helga called from the doorway. ‘She has to be held down kicking and screaming if the nurse just touches her.’

  Tessa bit back a furious retort. Crossing swords with Helga could ruin everything. She continued gazing at Chandra. ‘Shall we go for a walk outside?’ she suggested. ‘Sit under the magic tree?’

  Chandra looked surprised, but she nodded, and stood up.

  ‘I’ll take her for a walk,’ Tessa said to Helga, and without waiting for a response she took Chandra’s hot little hand in hers and walked out into the sunshine.

  ‘Don’t take her off the premises,’ Helga called after her.

  Chandra walked trustingly with Tessa, looking up at her in awe. Once outside under the cool coppery skies of London, she grew calmer. Against the predictable roar of traffic and aeroplanes, a dove was cooing to another dove, who was answering, their plump soft bodies hidden in the trees.

  Tessa led her to the big horse chestnut that hung over the playground. Under its dappled light was a bench. ‘Shall we sit down?’ Tessa said. ‘If we’re quiet we might see the squirrel.’

  Chandra sat looking at her. She stretched out a chubby hand and touched the braid in Tessa’s hair. ‘You hair’s lovely, Miss. I wish I had those pretty ribbons in my hair.’

  ‘I’ll do a braid in your hair if you like,’ Tessa said, ‘and you can choose the colours. I’ll bring my ribbons to school.’

  Chandra’s eyes lit up with delight. Then they went black again with anxiety. ‘But do I have to be good first?’

  ‘No,’ Tessa said. Obviously Chandra had anticipated the bribe she’d been thinking of making. So that wasn’t going to work. ‘I’ll do it out of kindness.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause I like being kind,’ Tessa said.

  ‘Can I come home with you, Miss?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause you’re not my little girl.’

  Chandra leaned against her. She pointed across the playground at the main building. ‘She’s in there, Miss, the nurse.’

  ‘So what will you do if she comes to fetch you?’

  ‘Kick her.’

  ‘And then what will happen?’

  ‘She’ll tell my mum, and then all of them will hold me down and make me have an injection. And they always say it doesn’t hurt when it does.’

  ‘Maybe we can find a better way,’ Tessa said. She stroked Chandra’s hot face, moving strands of hair away from her brow. She began to talk in her special voice, telling the avidly listening child about the buds on the horse chestnut. It was late February, and the sticky buds had opened like candles burning a pale green light against the gloomy brickwork and smoking chimneys of London. ‘When I was a little girl,’ Tessa said, ‘I had a magic trick that helped me cope with pain.’ She noted that Chandra was listening with wide, rapt eyes. ‘Because once I was like you. I was terrified of nurses – and the dentist – I used to kick and scream just like you.’

  ‘Did you?’

  Tessa nodded. Then she whispered, ‘But I learned a magic trick. Shall I teach it to you?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Well, first you have to remember what the four winds look like – when you see them in story books. Like this.’ Tessa blew out her cheeks and made a face she hoped was like the North wind.

  Chandra copied her, and they both began to giggle.

  ‘When I have an injection,’ Tessa said, ‘I don’t look at the needle. I look the other way and take a big breath in. Then when I feel the pain, I blow it out – like the North wind, and it’s gone, like magic.’

  A thought hit her, almost knocking her down. If only I could blow away the pain of Art like that, but it’s too big. It’s like an immovable boulder.

  She looked up, aware of loud footsteps. She watched the light die in Chandra’s eyes as Helga came barrelling across the yard, her grey hair looming like a thundercloud. ‘Tessa, it’s nearly home time and Diane needs you. Go quickly. I’ll take Chandra to the nurse.’

  Freddie was in the Post Office when the feeling started. It began as mild uneasiness, a vague sense of being unwell. He was in a queue, boxed in between the shelves of writing paper, carbon paper, bottles of Quink and fountain pens. In his hand was the telephone bill which he had to pay at the counter. He didn’t know any of the people in the queue, except Herbie’s wife who was at the front. Freddie focused on her reassuringly portly back. At the same time he didn’t want her to turn around and notice the sweat on his cheeks and the tremor in his hands.

  As the queue shuffled forward he had a memory of being a small boy clutching an earthenware jar. His mother, Annie, had sent him out after school to queue for a ration of treacle. Exhausted and malnourished he’d arrived home with it, and crashed to the floor in a dead faint. He remembered how everything had swayed crazily, the kitchen dresser, the walls with their copper pans, the coke oven, all gyrating like a carousel.

  It was happening now, in the Post Office, in that very public place. The shelves of fountain pens and paper were moving, like barleycorn in the wind. The sound of his own pulse hissed in his ears, louder and faster with every passing second. Sweat prickled under the rim of his cap. I’m gonna die, he thought, here in the Post Office. Drop dead, like me father did.

  He wanted something to hold. Something that wasn’t moving. He touched the shelf. Sturdy, thick wood. Well polished oak. His fingers clamped over its edge and he told himself it wasn’t moving. He remembered Kate saying, ‘Take a deep breath, dear,’ and he tried. But his breathing was rapid and shallow, beyond his control.

  The yellow lights of the Post Office dimmed, and shone out again
, and darkened like a garden under stormy skies. The bottles of Quink and the fountain pens tilted and spun. I’ll bring shame on the family, Freddie thought, I mustn’t collapse in the Post Office. I gotta get out.

  He turned and fought his way to the door, the phone bill crumpling in his hand. The eyes of the queue bobbed accusingly at him, and he heard a woman’s voice tutting and saying he was drunk. He felt ashamed, and terrified.

  Outside the Post Office was a wooden bench against the sunny south wall. Freddie sat down on it, glad to feel the breeze cooling his skin. His hands gripped the bench, his feet pressed hard on the ground, his back safe against the blue-lias stones of the wall. Nothing is moving, he told himself, and the giddy feeling settled into stillness. The solidity of wood and stone had somehow anchored him to the earth.

  He looked at the ball of paper in his hand. He’d have to smooth it out and present it, creased and cracked, to the critical eyes of the postmistress. But he couldn’t go back inside. Maybe he could never go in there again. And he had to get home. With his heartbeat still hissing furiously in his ears, his breathing shallow, his legs unsteady. No matter what, he had to get home.

  It had taken him five minutes to stride down to the Post Office in the morning sun. Now, suddenly, the distance between him and The Pines felt like a hundred miles of shingle.

  Kate stood on the slipway at Aust Ferry, the wind streaming through her hair. It was always an emotional journey for her, the memory of her sister Ethie drowning in that speeding, merciless tide of the Severn Estuary. She watched the Severn King, the oldest of the ferry boats, struggling against the current, the chugging of its engine ringing painfully on the wind. Kate thought nostalgically of trips across the ferry with Lucy and Tessa. Lucy had always been seasick, but Tessa had loved to stand in the front of the boat with her chestnut plaits flying. Then she would run to the back to watch the wake of churning brown water. It had been hard to keep her safe. All that effort, Kate reflected, and now she had no way of knowing whether Tessa was safe. Her letters from London were mostly about the children she worked with. There was nothing about her social life, nothing about how she was coping with a broken heart. And still nothing about that nice young man, Paul, with the cultured voice Kate had liked on the phone. She’d pictured him striding through the city in a pin-striped suit.