Born to Be Trouble

by Sheila Jeffries

  Penelope softened, just one degree. ‘Do you like gardens?’

  ‘I love gardens.’

  Paul gave her an approving squeeze. ‘Shall we go for a quick look? Dad’s out there messing with the roses.’

  He led her through a hall and down some steps. Penelope followed, her shoes tapping importantly.

  Tessa breathed in the scent of roses. It was the first time she’d smelled roses in London. The heady fragrance took her back to her home garden at The Pines. Her dad’s blue eyes. The carrot bed. The lilacs over Jonti’s grave. ‘It makes me homesick,’ she said, and Penelope softened another degree.

  The roses were planted in lines, on straight little standards, and around them was bare earth. The lawn was a sterile green sward, like a bowling green. Tessa felt drawn into the garden by the ambience of the roses with their coils of plush petals that seemed to reach towards her like cats, inviting her to touch, to smell, to begin to sense their flower power. She made a beeline for a rose she knew well. A peace rose. She remembered Freddie bringing her one in hospital. She’d been fourteen and had tried to take her life. She’d lain in bed staring into the heart of the flower, its cream petals flushed with pink. Its vibrant gentleness had spoken to her soul, spoken of healing love, and it gave itself to her, totally, until it dropped apart in her hand. So many petals on the sheet, like leaves, like the autumn of the flower. It had allowed her to use it until it no longer existed, and its corpse was a geometric star on a wine-coloured stem.

  The rose she was looking at now was remote. Not involved. But beautiful with droplets of morning still gracing its petals.

  ‘Tessa!’ Paul’s voice cracked into her dream and it fell away like an eggshell. She hated it when he did that. She felt her eyes glaring at him, and the cold of Penelope standing behind him. She longed to be alone in this garden.

  ‘Come and meet Dad.’ Paul towed her down the path to a shed where a wispy wizard of a man was sharpening a pair of clippers with a whetstone. He looked up at her with tired green eyes that came suddenly to life when he saw her.

  ‘This is Tessa, Dad.’

  ‘Tessa?’ The voice was like that of a spider, had it chosen to speak. ‘Tessa who?’

  ‘Tessa Barcussy.’ She offered her hand and he took it in both his blue-veined, suntanned hands, and held on as if trying to find her bones.

  ‘Your hands are very dirty, Marcus,’ Penelope complained. ‘And we are about to take tea, in the drawing room.’

  A glimmer of humour passed through Marcus’s green eyes, but he held on to the bones inside Tessa’s hand.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Tessa said. ‘I’m a country girl – used to dirty hands. I can see you’re a working man – and I love the roses. They are awesome.’

  ‘Awesome!’ Penelope tutted disapprovingly.

  Tessa beamed at Marcus, showing the dimples in her cheeks, and he was instantly hooked. He gazed at her raptly. ‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ he said. ‘Tessa Barcussy indeed.’ He let go of her hand and opened the door of the shed. ‘I keep everything,’ he said, waving a wand-like arm at towers of yellowing newspaper stacked in the dim interior. ‘And it’s all in order.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Marcus. Tessa doesn’t want to see your ludicrous hoard of tabloid vitriol,’ Penelope said.

  ‘I do actually,’ Tessa said. ‘It looks fascinating.’

  ‘Yeah, Dad – but maybe later,’ Paul said. ‘Why don’t we show Tessa the end of the garden? Before it rains.’

  ‘Evasive as ever,’ said Penelope acidly. She followed them through the roses to an archway cut into a tall box hedge. ‘Yes, this end of the garden is rather special, we think.’

  Through the archway was a circular patio surrounded by a neat mosaic of flowerbeds. A white wrought-iron table and chairs stood there, and in one of the chairs sat a regal old lady, looking at Tessa with azure-blue, expectant eyes. She wore a full-skirted dress of royal blue velvet, sweeping to the floor, a high lace collar and lace cuffs. On the table in front of her was an oak box, wide open, showing an array of embroidery silks in colours as bright as the roses. She smiled right into Tessa’s questioning eyes. The noise of London faded as if heavy folk-weave curtains had been drawn around the secluded garden. Tessa forgot about Paul and his parents. She wanted to talk to this intriguing old lady.

  ‘Hello,’ Tessa said, and smiled warmly. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Tessa.’

  A bewildered silence hovered behind her.

  ‘Who are you saying hello to?’ Penelope asked.

  ‘The lady in the royal blue dress. Is she your grandmother?’ Tessa asked. ‘Is this her special garden?’

  Penelope’s high cheekbones went white. ‘There’s nobody there,’ she said firmly.

  But Marcus clasped his hands together like a child who’d been given a present. ‘Can you describe this lady?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s beautiful, and so tranquil, like a lily,’ Tessa said eagerly. ‘And I’d really like to talk to her, and look at the box of silks she’s got – but I don’t think she’s hearing me – it’s like she’s – she’s somehow in a place beyond – beyond this world.’ She felt her voice wavering like a reflection on water. Something similar was happening to the lady in the royal blue dress. The image of her trembled, shimmered, and vanished. Only her eyes lingered momentarily, and some words drifted in, ‘We must talk. Here in the garden – in the garden.’

  Tessa found herself looking at an empty chair and table. Marcus bombarded her with questions. ‘What kind of blue dress?’ ‘What hairstyle?’ ‘Who was she?’ Anger and confusion closed in on her, from Paul, and Penelope.

  She’d made a terrible mistake. It was irreversible. In front of Paul’s difficult mother and his dad who looked like a wizard. Tessa felt it was a catastrophe. But why should it be? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Why, suddenly, was she under attack? A lethal mix of conflicting emotions overwhelmed her. She pushed Paul away. ‘Leave me alone. All of you. I need to be alone.’

  She slumped into the empty chair, her head in her hands.

  ‘Come on – pull yourself together, Tessa.’

  Tessa looked up at Paul with tormented eyes – hoping to see some empathy. There was none, his stance judgemental and annoyed. He put his head close to hers and hissed, ‘Did you HAVE to start that mumbo jumbo stuff here? In front of Mum and Dad? It was humiliating for me. What about me? What about my feelings?’

  Tessa jumped to her feet and fled through the rose garden, up the steps and back into the drawing room. She grabbed her bag and ran out of the front door and away, down the leafy street. She wasn’t running away from Penelope. She was running away from her own anger, leaving it circling through the rose garden.

  ‘Ah – you can’t afford pride.’ Herbie put a chipped blue and white mug on the table in front of Freddie. ‘That’s a good brew. Stand the spoon up in it, you could. Cure anything, my tea. The missus don’t make it like that. “Don’t be so extravagant, Herb,” she’d say.’

  Freddie eyed the steaming, orange-coloured tea. ‘Did you put sugar in it?’

  ‘Ah – six spoonfuls – that’ll sort you out.’

  ‘’Tis tooth-rot,’ Freddie said, but he wrapped his hands around the familiar old mug and sipped gratefully, feeling the hot, sweet liquid warming his shaking body. He’d dragged himself as far as the stonemason’s yard and found Herbie, covered in dust, chipping away at a slab of Portland stone. Herbie’s shrewd eyes had noted Freddie’s flushed cheeks and trembling hands.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ he’d asked, steering Freddie into his office.

  ‘I dunno.’ Freddie sat down, gingerly, on a chair which was tied together with baler twine. ‘I had a funny turn – in the Post Office. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Didn’t even get me stamps or pay the phone bill.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell someone you was ill?’

  Freddie shook his head miserably. ‘I felt silly. Getting in this state over nothing. To tell you the truth, it frighten
ed the hell out of me, Herb. I thought I were gonna drop dead like me father did.’

  Herbie had made him the cup of strong tea in silence, then handed it to him with the advice about pride. ‘Fag?’ he asked, offering a packet of Embassy. ‘Go on, it’ll calm you down.’

  Freddie had given up smoking after being ill with bronchitis. ‘Ah – I wish I could,’ he said, ‘but if I had one fag I’d be back on twenty a day in no time. I miss it. A good smoke used to calm me down.’

  Herbie’s dog, Jilly, crept out of her basket and leaned against Freddie’s legs, looking up at him adoringly. As soon as he touched her silky head, Freddie felt better. But there was still the distance between him and home. How could he possibly tell Herbie, or anyone, that he was frightened to walk home? He wished Kate was there, and he wished they still had Jonti. Jonti would have escorted him home briskly and cheerfully, like a nurse.

  ‘Kate’s away, isn’t she?’ Herbie asked.

  Freddie nodded. ‘Gone to fetch her mother from Gloucestershire.’

  ‘And Tessa – where’s she?’

  ‘Gone to London.’

  ‘London!’ Herbie bit back the questions he wanted to ask. The two men sat in silence, as they’d often done over mugs of tea, this time contemplating the evils of London.

  ‘I’m gonna take you home,’ Herbie announced, taking the keys to his pick-up truck from a nail on the wall.

  Relief flooded into Freddie’s mind. He finished his tea and climbed thankfully into the front seat of the truck, his feet wedged between boxes of tools and oily rags. Jilly jumped into the back, barking and wagging her tail.

  ‘I’ll just tell the missus where I’m going.’ Herbie went into the house at the end of the yard, and emerged five minutes later, looking furtive and determined. He’s up to something, Freddie thought.

  He soon found out what Herbie had stealthily done. A few minutes after he’d settled down in his chair by the window, Freddie was alarmed and irritated to see Dr Jarvis walking up the path with that ominous doctor’s bag in his hand.

  ‘Herbie rang me, Freddie,’ he said, coming in uninvited and assessing Freddie with those all-seeing eyes. ‘He said you’d had a funny turn.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have called you, doctor,’ Freddie said.

  ‘I know you wouldn’t. Good job you’ve got a friend like Herbie.’ Dr Jarvis unpacked his stethoscope. ‘Let’s have a listen.’

  Freddie rolled his shirt up, reluctantly. He was frightened of what the doctor might find. He’d rather not know. Rather just get on with life and forget about the funny turn.

  ‘Your lungs are all right – and your heart is steady, if a bit too rapid,’ Dr Jarvis said. He shook his thermometer and took Freddie’s temperature, then his blood pressure. ‘Everything is all right – normal,’ he said, and sat down at the table. ‘So what exactly happened?’

  Freddie was silent. Pictures of his mother, Annie, loomed in his mind. ‘Don’t tell the doctor,’ she’d insisted after one of her panic attacks. ‘He’ll say I’m mental and then they can shut me up in an asylum.’ Annie had drummed that into him. An asylum was the ‘mad house’. The final punishment. Like Hell and Damnation, only worse.

  Dr Jarvis was looking at him enquiringly.

  ‘Well – I’m all right now,’ Freddie said. ‘Since Herbie gave me a cup of sugary tea. I didn’t have no lunch, see. That can make you shaky – can’t it?’

  ‘Indeed it can. Low blood sugar. Why no lunch?’

  ‘Kate’s away – and I couldn’t be bothered.’

  Dr Jarvis tutted and started packing up his medical bag. ‘Are you sure it’s not anxiety? Like your mother had?’

  ‘Oh no – definitely not.’ Freddie looked at him steadily, hoping the shrewd old doctor couldn’t see the denial in his eyes. He was relieved to see him go, leaving Freddie with a hastily scribbled prescription in his hand. A tonic. The same kind of square shouldered glass bottle of a foul-tasting iron tonic that Dr Jarvis gave everyone.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s gone home.’ Breathing hard, Paul looked down at the laden tea trolley in the drawing room. The best bone china tea set. The moist slices of ginger parkin, the dainty triangles of egg mayonnaise sandwiches, the expensive tin of Fortnum and Mason biscuits. He reached out and took a chocolate one.

  ‘Wait until you’ve got a plate,’ snapped Penelope. ‘We don’t want crumbs on the carpet.’

  ‘I haven’t dropped a single crumb. Promise.’

  ‘You’re the only person I know who can infuse the simple act of eating a biscuit with such appalling arrogance,’ complained Penelope. ‘And what’s the matter with Tessa? Such disappointing behaviour after you said she was so wonderful.’

  ‘She was just overwhelmed, Mother dear, plus being nervous about meeting you.’

  ‘Nervous? Well, she’ll have to get over that.’

  ‘She will,’ Paul said, more confidently than he felt. He’d chased Tessa down the street and around the corner, but when he’d seen her disappear into the tube station, he’d given up and gone home to face his parents.

  ‘We’ll have to have tea without her. How tiresome.’ Penelope handed him a plate and a napkin. ‘Your father’s in the kitchen scrubbing the skin off his hands. He was about to rummage through those dreadful newspapers and unearth something (controversial I don’t doubt) to show Tessa. As for the lady in the chair – Paul, that really spooked me. There was nobody there – nobody. But—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘We all know the person Tessa described – my grandmother, Violetta. She lived, and died, in this house, Paul. That velvet dress is in a trunk in the loft. Have you shown Tessa a picture of her?’

  ‘No. Never. Haven’t even got one.’

  ‘Then – how did she know?’ Penelope’s eyes narrowed, demanding an answer.

  ‘Tessa’s got a vivid imagination.’

  Penelope looked sceptical. ‘No. It’s more than that. She’s WEIRD. She’s not normal, Paul, and I don’t want her here. That kind of thing belongs in a gypsy caravan at a fair. Not here.’

  ‘Don’t be judgemental, Mother dear. If you take the trouble to get to know Tessa, you’ll find she’s actually very caring and capable. She cares enough to work with special needs children.’

  ‘Hmm – she’ll soon lose her job if she goes around seeing ghosts.’

  ‘She won’t, and she doesn’t.’

  ‘Have you met her family?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘For all you know, they could be gypsies – living out in the country like that. Bucolic, and weird.’

  ‘Her dad is a lorry driver and a sculptor, and her mum was a nurse, an SRN.’

  ‘Well, they haven’t made a good job of raising Tessa, have they? If she behaves like that and then runs off. It’s the height of bad manners.’

  Marcus appeared in the doorway, in his socks, a newspaper in his now pink, scrubbed hand. ‘Wait ’til you read this!’ he gloated. ‘Haven’t I told you how important it is to keep information? I knew exactly where to find this newspaper.’ Marcus sidled up to Paul and pushed the paper under his nose. ‘There you are! That’s your wonderful Tessa.’

  Paul blinked at the photo of Tessa washing her hair in the fountain at Trafalgar Square back in October. Hippie Goddess Bares All. ‘I know about this, Dad. It’s history. Why rake it up?’

  Penelope sat down, the newspaper in her hand. ‘It’s even worse than I thought,’ she said tersely. ‘Scandalous. And you say you knew about it? How can you even THINK about associating with that girl? She’s a dirty, rebellious hippie and I won’t have her in OUR family.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Paul glared at his mother, hating her, ‘because, like it or not, Mother dear, I intend to marry Tessa.’

  There was a fractured silence, and the three of them turned to see Tessa standing in the doorway, her eyes blazing with defiance.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I just freaked.’

  ‘Freaked?’ Penelope’s eyebrows disappeared into her fringe
. ‘Freaked!’ she repeated, picking the word up in disgust as if it were a dead mouse being dropped into the dustbin, by its tail.

  Tessa remembered her mother’s unique gift of blending grace with courage, using those bright brown eyes to bewitch people. She thought of her father and his silences, the way he would quietly say, ‘Now you listen to me,’ and everyone did listen, hypnotised by his simple power. I can be both of them, she thought, if I tell the truth with eloquence and joy.

  She picked up the newspaper Marcus had put on the black glass coffee table. ‘Yes – this is me,’ she said, deliberately putting sparkle into her eyes as she looked around at the three of them. ‘And I’m proud of what I did. I was homeless, and broken-hearted at the time, and I simply needed to wash my hair so that I could go to a job interview. I’m proud of my hippie friends for helping me. I got the job, and it’s a super job, with children who need my depth of understanding.’ She paused, seeing the three faces as if they were painted on a window looking in at her. Penelope was open-mouthed, Marcus gazing adoringly, Paul frowning in alarm. ‘I’m proud of who I am,’ Tessa continued, ‘and, yes, I do see spirit people. It’s a gift, not a curse, a God-given gift, and I intend to use it. I’m a warrior, you see, a warrior of the rainbow. This earth, and its people are in trouble. The trees are dying, the birds are dying. The delicate, exquisite web of life is collapsing. It’s your planet. Don’t you care?’

  Silence.

  Tessa’s cheeks burned. Paul’s frown was transforming into an awestruck grin. She sailed on like a ship with golden sails, set free by the winds of truth.

  ‘Why don’t you see the good in me?’ she demanded, ‘instead of condemning me for something you don’t understand. Accept me for who I am – because if you don’t, I want nothing more to do with this family. And as for gypsies – I’ve met Romany Gypsies, and hippies, and I’d rather live like they do, lovingly and with respect for our planet than live – like – like this!’ She waved her long creative fingers at the porcelain-laden sideboard. ‘Life is not about STUFF. It’s about being and doing and caring.’

  The silence was now in a thousand twinkling pieces.