He trudged upstairs, and stood by the bed he had shared with Kate. Instead of the smooth, orderly bedspread, it looked like a crumpled heap. He found himself doing something he’d never done in his life. Crawling back into bed after breakfast, seeking the comfort of pillows and the oblivion of sleep.
He dozed, half listening to the sound of Tarka walking around downstairs, his nails clicking on the linoleum floor. Left alone, the dog had found confidence to explore. He needs peace, Freddie thought. I must leave him be. Let him settle.
About an hour later, he heard Tarka coming upstairs. Freddie pretended to be asleep. He kept still as the dog slunk into the bedroom. Freddie felt the weight of him as he put two cumbersome paws on the bed. He felt the dog’s whiskers and his warm breath coming close, smelling his hand, making a decision about whether this sleeping human could be trusted.
Moments later, Freddie sensed a smile deep in his heart as Tarka jumped right onto the bed. He didn’t dare to move but let the dog settle, turn around a few times with his heavy paws sinking into the mattress, and finally Tarka lay down with a gargantuan sigh. As if he’d come home. And he has, Freddie thought. He’s come home. To me. He’s chosen me.
Tessa drove back to London in a daze. The thought of going back to work the next morning, as if nothing had happened, was daunting. Only a few months of the school year remained, and she planned to resign in July, and try to work full time as a clairvoyant medium and astrologer. A scary decision that Paul wasn’t going to like.
As she drove the now familiar route, she relived the funeral over and over in her mind. The red roses on the coffin, one for every year Freddie had known Kate. Red roses and white chrysanthemums, and the sunlight shining on them through the stained glass window of the church. The rim-lit petals cruelly bright, as if infused with the pain she had felt at having to follow the coffin into church. She and Lucy, one each side of Freddie, holding on to each other so tightly.
Lucy had flown over from Australia, on her own, and Tessa had met her at the airport, hardly recognising the suntanned young woman. Jetlagged and distraught, Lucy had wept bitterly. She couldn’t believe her mum had died. She hadn’t said goodbye. She hadn’t told Kate how much she missed her. At the funeral Lucy had cried and cried, as if she cried for all of them, when Tessa and Freddie had been stoically silent.
The church had been full of friends and neighbours who knew and loved Kate. It made the singing robust and earthy, the vicar’s voice melancholy, the black clothes gloomy. None of it was what Tessa would have chosen for her mother’s bright spirit. She felt isolated, driven into silence, the way it had always been for her in her home town. She longed to step into the centre and share the beauty of what she was seeing, but Freddie’s story about seeing the angel had touched her deeply, and given her a warning. Monterose is not ready for this, she told herself, and kept quiet, glancing occasionally at Freddie’s stone-like expression.
Tessa saw her mother’s spirit throughout the service, her bright brown eyes still full of life, her smile radiant. Kate drifted around the church, visiting everyone, looking into their faces with warmth and compassion for their earthbound, physical state, and wanting to say she still loved them. She spent a long time with Lucy, enfolding her in layers of light, as if light was a soft, translucent fabric. Tessa watched Lucy, detecting a momentary aura of calm, before the crying relentlessly continued. Then she watched Freddie as Kate wrapped cloaks of love around him and looked into his face with that searching, caring gaze he had loved so much. Surely he saw her? Still he was rigid with grief, unresponsive, numb. It bothered Tessa deeply. What had happened to his gift?
Her own special moment came at the church door when they all filed out. Kate was there, waiting for Tessa. It was her turn to receive the searching, caring gaze, and the words that gave her courage and joy.
‘Use your gift, dear,’ Kate said.
Four words that changed her life. Permission to spread her wings and fly.
Now she drove on, over Salisbury Plain, secretly empowered, but confused by the conflicting demands on her time. She didn’t want to go home. It felt wrong to leave her dad at The Pines, alone for the first time in his life. She was worried for him, and her mind kept going to the shotgun in the cupboard. Before leaving she had picked Benita up for a cuddle and looked into the little cat’s attentive golden eyes. ‘You must look after my dad. Stay with him, please, Benita, and give him lots of love and purring.’
She felt drawn to stop at Stonehenge and stroll up to the stones, muffled in a coat and scarf in the crisp easterly wind. The skylarks were singing, high in the blue air, and the wind whipped through the expanse of grasses, turning them to a glistening weave of patterns in the light.
Tessa sat down with her back against one of the stones. Ignoring the tourists wandering about with cameras, she closed her eyes and remembered something Starlinda had told her, a precious nugget of spiritual truth. ‘Closing your eyes is like opening them to another dimension. When you close your eyes with intention, you can go through the point of infinity and go home, to your true home in the world of spirit.’
Tessa wanted answers to the problems bugging her life. She wanted a break from the people-pleasing altruism she had got herself into. Pleasing Paul. Pleasing the children she worked with. Pleasing her family. Trying to heal broken hearts. She was constantly striving to do the impossible. Yet still the impossibles queued up in her mind. Why was her life so difficult? Why did this moment of sitting alone at Stonehenge feel exactly the same as that long ago time on the Ridgeway when she had tried to take her life? Why was it the same when it was different?
And why, why, why was she still obsessed with finding Art?
I’ve made no progress at all, she thought, devastated, and Paul’s eyes danced in her mind, mockingly, possessively. He thinks he owns me. I have to leave him. I have to get away, and begin to LIVE.
It took Tarka a week to settle down at The Pines.
‘I’ve never seen such a joyless dog,’ Freddie told Herbie. ‘I’ve had him a week, and he hasn’t wagged his tail once.’
‘What about the cat?’ Herbie asked. ‘Is he all right with her?’
‘Benita soon sorted him out.’ Freddie couldn’t help smiling. ‘She hissed and spat, and scratched his nose a few times – made him yelp like a puppy. Now she’s curling up with him. Tarka seems to like her company. It’s me he doesn’t like.’
It was depressing, as if he and the dog were locked together in some kind of emotional prison. Freddie tried to take Tarka for a walk on the lead, but the dog wouldn’t go. He dug his paws in at the gate, lay on the path and refused to move. He whined pitifully and Freddie wondered if he was in pain. He got down on the ground with him and ran his hands over the dog’s heavy coat. It felt harsh and unloved. Unresponsive and numb. ‘Will you walk round the garden with me?’ Freddie asked, and Tarka got up obligingly and they did two circuits of the garden, including the Anderson hollow where Tarka wanted to linger and sniff around close to Jonti’s grave. Still with his tail down and his eyes dull with gloom.
At night he slept on the bed, and Freddie found his weight and presence comforting. But the dog’s behaviour in the house was puzzling. He followed Freddie around, but he wouldn’t go in the kitchen, even for his meal. It was weird. Freddie wished Tessa was there. She would know the reason. He stood looking at the phone and decided to ring her.
‘Hello, Dad!’ She sounded surprised, but then he didn’t often pick up the phone. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Ah – well – it’s been a miserable week,’ he said, ‘on me own. And ’tis hard. I miss Kate. I never realised how much she did for me – little things I never noticed. Are you all right?’
‘Just about,’ Tessa said.
‘Back at work, I suppose?’
‘Yes. The children take my mind off things, Dad. I go into work feeling terrible and they lift my spirits.’
‘Ah – well – I got something to tell you, Tessa.’
‘
What’s that?’
‘I got a dog. A black Labrador. Tarka.’
Tessa’s voice brightened and there was a smile in her voice. ‘That’s great, Dad! What’s he like?’
‘He’s a bundle of nerves. Herbie got him for me – well – no – he dumped him on me. I wish you were here. You’d soon figure out what’s the matter with him.’
‘What is he scared of?’
‘The kitchen. He won’t go in there even for his tea.’
Tessa was quiet for a moment, and Freddie could hear a crackling sound.
‘’Tis a windy night,’ he said, ‘branches hitting the telephone wires – makes the phone crackle.’
‘It’s not the kitchen, Dad. It’s something in the hall – on the way to the kitchen,’ Tessa said, ‘or in the coat cupboard. Maybe you should open the cupboard door and let him look inside.’
Freddie was astonished at her insight. Not for the first time he thought, I hope Paul appreciates her. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘thanks, I’ll try it.’
‘Where’s the dog now?’ Tessa asked.
‘Behind the sofa. He always goes behind the sofa when I’m using the phone.’
‘Yes – well, the phone is close to the coat cupboard,’ Tessa said. ‘And he thinks your life is in danger, Dad. He’s a highly sensitive dog.’
Freddie was silent. It was making sense.
‘And he wants you to brush him, Dad. He hasn’t been loved and cared for. His coat is bad – and brushing him will help him relax, and bond with you.’
‘You’re right,’ Freddie said, a lump in his throat. ‘How can you be so sure? You’ve never even seen the dog.’
‘It’s easy. As easy as breathing.’
Freddie felt choked with emotion. It was all coming true. The words of the Romany Gypsy, given to him the day of Tessa’s birth. He was glad he’d shared them with her, and they were crystal clear in his memory. ‘This child has a special gift.’ He couldn’t think beyond that point. It was too overwhelming. Especially now, when he was so vulnerable, so lost without Kate.
‘Dad?’
He wanted to tell Tessa she was wasting her life up there in London with a bunch of kids. He wanted to say she was too good for Paul. But he couldn’t find the words.
‘Are you okay, Dad? I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing!’
‘Yeah – I’m all right, love, just a bit emotional. But I’ll give it a try. Brush the dog – and show him what’s in the coat cupboard. And – by the way, Tessa,’ his voice brightened a little, ‘how long do you boil an egg for?’
‘Four minutes.’
‘Oh dear – I boiled mine for forty minutes and it was awful. Like the inside of me shoe.’
Tessa screamed with laughter, and he felt better immediately, as if a breath of Kate’s irrepressible humour had come bubbling down the phone. He felt a smile warming his face, and his heart. He had a daughter. And a dog. He heard a whine and saw Tarka watching him from the doorway and, for the first time, the tip of his thick tail was twitching as if it wanted to wag.
Tessa put the phone down and stood in the hall, feeling locked like a padlock with two chains pulling in opposite directions. It was Friday, six days after the funeral, and she sensed how badly her dad needed her. But Paul needed her too. This weekend she’d planned to catch up on the housework. The place was a mess, the laundry basket overflowing, the fridge empty; whichever way she turned there was clutter. Depressing – and daunting when her energy was low. She needed to rest, to sleep through the weekend, walk under green trees, sit on a bench by the river. ‘I need a weekend here in London, Dad,’ she said, but his response conveyed a desperation deeper than he would admit. His voice shook with disappointment. Despite the new dog, he wasn’t coping. Emotional support was thin on the ground in Monterose. Bereaved people seemed to fade into a thick mist of grief where no one could reach them. She saw her father’s spirit shrivelling into a hard knot, and unless it could be unravelled it would destroy his will to live. Freddie didn’t talk easily to strangers; he wouldn’t phone The Samaritans and find a listening, caring angel like Dorothy, as she had done. The sustaining sparkle had gone from his eyes. Tessa found it distressing. She felt she must deal with her dad’s grief as well as her own.
Tessa was still standing, undecided, with one hand on the phone when Paul came home, his hair falling over his brow, his lips white around the edges. He looked at her with tormented eyes. ‘I’ve had a hellish day.’ He dragged his jacket, briefcase and violin case through the door and up the stairs in a disorganised tangle. At the top, he turned and glared down at her. ‘I’m boiling hot and bloody tired. Are you going to stand there looking like a miserable cow or are you going to get my tea? I need my migraine pills and an ice pack.’
Tessa bit back her retort. She wanted to tell him her mum had just died and she was entitled to be miserable. She wanted to remind him she was exhausted and overwhelmed. But what was the use of trying to tell Paul anything when he was in one of his ugly moods?
Halfway up the stairs, she made a decision. From the heart. Paul had left the door open and she guessed he had gone to the bathroom. She took her bag, car keys and coat from the kitchen, shut the flat door with a quiet click and hurried downstairs, praying the car would start, and praying she’d get there in time to stop Freddie doing what she knew he was thinking about.
CHAPTER 20
A Taste of Glory
The night was starry and mystic as Freddie padded down the lane, the air cool and still, the luminous faces of primroses staring from the deep grasses. The dead elms loomed, bone-pale like driftwood, but the hedges bristled with white sloe blossom.
Freddie saw none of it. He saw Kate. Only Kate. Unreachable. Gone. He felt none of the magic, none of the joy in the night. He didn’t listen to the owls. He heard only the harrowing sound of Tarka howling. It sounded like a pack of long-ago wolves, filling the night, filling his heart with a sense of doom.
In one hand he carried an old rubber torch with a fading battery. He didn’t use it. A lifetime of watching badgers in the night woods had given Freddie a unique ability to see his way in the dark.
Tucked under his arm was something he had removed from the coat cupboard. Bertie’s gun. He felt guilty carrying it through the night, as if Bertie was watching to see what he would do with the gun.
Tessa was right, he thought. Tarka had backed away, his eyes glittering with terror when Freddie took the gun from the cupboard. The big dog had gone behind the sofa and cowered there, whimpering. The springs of the sofa twanged as he pressed his shaking body against the fabric. No amount of coaxing, reassurance or biscuits would tempt him to come out. So Freddie had locked the door and left him to howl.
He walked on, past the derelict station which still had a lingering whiff of coal and soot. Piles of rusting metal and ballast were softened by the graceful panicles of buddleia which had seeded itself in every available crack, growing with purpose like the forest in Sleeping Beauty. Freddie paused to watch a train hammering through, relentless and brightly lit, as if the station had never existed.
‘Off shooting rabbits are you, Freddie?’
Charlie’s voice startled him in the quiet of the night. Charlie had been the stationmaster ever since Freddie had been a boy earning pennies by carrying luggage over the bridge. He still lived in the cottage below the disused signal box.
‘Ah – might be.’ Freddie didn’t want to say yes, or no. And he didn’t want to explain his doom-laden mindset to Charlie.
‘All right, are you, Freddie?’
‘Fair to middling.’
‘’Tis sad seeing the old station,’ Charlie said. ‘And – I’m sorry, so sorry, about your missus. Lovely girl she was. Lovely. I knew her when she were a little girl with plaits. Always a smile she had – always.’
Freddie struggled to breathe normally, look as if he was coping. Funny, he thought, after all the sadness, ’tis a drop of kindness that makes me want to cry.
‘You can come in
if you like – have a tot of brandy with me,’ Charlie offered, ‘or a cup of tea.’
‘Thanks – but – not right now. I’ll go on me way, Charlie. Left me dog shut in and howling.’
‘I can hear him,’ Charlie said. ‘I reckon dogs still believe they’re wolves.’
Freddie headed for the river, a new, hotter pain in his throat. Would he feel like this forever? Was this how it would be now? His life savagely stitched with the fibres of grief. The silence deepened as he plodded downhill. The Somerset Levels had once been an ocean, and he felt its enveloping tide, the sound of Tarka’s howling now a lost cry from a distant shore.
He was aware of Benita following him, a velvet shadow with big lamp eyes trying to engage with him. She stayed with him, sometimes dashing ahead, then hiding and popping out as he strode past. The little cat was out of her comfort zone but determined, it seemed, to keep him company. Would she find her way home? He didn’t want to lose her.
The river bridge loomed, the water a silent slipstream weaving between reeds. Freddie shone his torch on the marsh-marigold, their golden flowers closed for the night. He leaned over the parapet, still faintly warm from a day of sunshine. He dropped a stone into the pool below. The torchlight gilded the circular ripples. A huge carp rose momentarily to the surface and he saw the sheen of its gaping lips, the iridescence of its eye. The fish was legendary, eluding all attempts to catch it. Freddie thought it had been in the pool since he was a boy.
There was no doubt that the pool was deep enough, and so was the mud below, deep enough to swallow a cow.
Freddie lifted the gun down from his shoulder. He rested it on the uneven stone of the bridge, his heartbeat pounding through his body. His hands shook. He scanned the diamond night, listened for footsteps or voices. No one was there. Except Kate. He felt her strongly, sensed her watching him, and felt the touch of her hand waft over the gun, as if giving it a final polish.
He hesitated. Kate would know. She wouldn’t be happy with what he was about to do. But what was left of his life now? What use was he? A man alone in an echoing house? A man disempowered by grief. A half-person. A nobody.
Born to Be Trouble Page 27