The Road Back

by Liz Harris

  That naïve girl had remained in Ladakh.

  In her place, the woman who had loved Kalden with the same passion as he had loved her had come back to England. Theirs was a love that many people never knew in the whole of their life. It was a love that had changed her forever, and it would never die. She didn’t need mementos and she didn’t need to talk about him in order to remember him – he lived in her mind every minute of the day; he lay at her side every minute of the night.

  It was the only way that she’d been able to go on without him.

  At the first light of day on the morning after Kalden’s fall, she’d run from the shepherd’s hut to the ravine, desperate to find him, desperate to be with him, not caring what happened to her. But Lobsang had reached her as she’d been about to step on the bridge. He’d gripped her arms and forced her to look into his face. She could do nothing for Kalden, he’d made her understand, his face frantic. They had to set off at once for Manali: snow was coming. They weren’t prepared for snow and would be at risk.

  ‘Nyerang-a ha go-a?’ he’d asked her, repeating the question over and over again.

  She’d slowly nodded that she’d understood.

  Without releasing his hold, he’d taken her back to the hut and helped her on to her pony. Leaning across from his pony, he had taken hold of her reins and pulled her pony along the track alongside his. Her head bowed, she’d sat in a daze, misery gnawing at her heart, eating into her with agony as she was taken further and further away from Kalden.

  As the days had passed, she’d found that she could close her eyes, day or night, and see Kalden’s face in front of her, and from that time on, she’d never been alone.

  She glanced around her once more, and then started to walk slowly down the hill, glancing idly in the shops as she passed them by. When she drew level with the chemist’s shop, she stopped sharply and thrust her hand into her pocket. Her fingers curled around a small spool of film, and her heart thumped fast – there were some photos of Kalden on the film, taken in the early days of their visit. No matter what she’d promised her father, she’d have the film developed. She didn’t need photos to remember him by, but just to have them, to have something to touch … She half ran into the chemist’s shop.

  ‘That’ll be a week from today, Miss. Is there anything else I can do for you?’ the chemist asked, handing her a ticket.

  There wasn’t, she told him, and she put the ticket in her jacket pocket, picked up her newspaper and left the shop.

  She’d get a Saturday job, she decided as she walked briskly down the hill, a new lightness in her step. She needed some money of her own and it’d be good to do something totally different on Saturdays. When her father had finished with the paper, she’d look in the Situations Vacant column and see what there was. If she found that having a job interfered with her college work, she could always stop.

  Her spirits lifting, she turned into Belsize Grove and made her way down the road to Belsize Park Gardens.

  ‘What about the library?’ Enid asked.

  ‘Well, what about the library?’ Patricia looked up from the newspaper.

  ‘When I changed my book last week, I noticed that they were advertising for Saturday staff. That’d be the ideal job for you. You love reading.’

  ‘Which library, Arkwright Road or the branch in Antrim Grove?’

  ‘Antrim Grove. I usually go there now as it’s much closer.’

  ‘That would be perfect. I can easily walk to Antrim Grove. I’d love that. Kalden and I used to go out walking for hours.’ She stopped abruptly, and her hand flew to her mouth.

  Enid leaned across the kitchen table and squeezed the hand that held the newspaper. ‘I know you miss him, Patsy darling, and I wish I could help you. I hate seeing you suffering like this. But you know what your father’s like.’ Her voice trailed off and she glanced at the clock. ‘Why don’t we go to the library now and pick up an application form? You can tell me all about Kalden as we walk.’

  Patricia nodded. She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose.

  Her mother got up from the table, put her cup on the draining board and went down the corridor to the front room. Patricia heard her knock on the door, open it and tell the Major that she and Patricia were going to the local library to see about a Saturday job they were advertising. She couldn’t hear her father’s response, but she returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, a wide smile on her face.

  ‘I’ve said we’ll be back well before it’s time for tea. If you’re ready, we can go now, darling,’ she said, and she untied her pinafore.

  Scraping her chair back from the table, Patricia followed her mother to the door.

  Less than a week after she’d returned her completed application form to the library, she was given an interview with the Librarian there. A day later, she received a letter offering her the job. Her mother hugged her, and her father nodded his satisfaction.

  ‘I’m not surprised that they’ve offered you the position,’ the Major remarked. ‘I imagine that your experience with the children at the hospital will prove advantageous to the library. They have quite a large children’s section there. Indeed, too large, I sometimes think. Children today have no conception of the meaning of silence.’

  ‘I’d better sort out what to wear,’ she told them. ‘And I really ought to put my summer clothes away and get out the rest of my winter things. In fact, I think I’ll make a start on that before lunch.’

  She went up to her room, opened her wardrobe doors and started taking out her summer things. As she threw her jacket on to the bed, the ticket for her camera film fell from one of the pockets. She picked it up and looked at it. It was one day short of a week since she’d left the film to be developed. The chemist had said that the photos wouldn’t be ready for a week, but they just might be back early. She glanced at her watch. It was almost one o’clock – if she moved quickly, she could get to the shop before it closed for lunch.

  She sped downstairs and told her mother that she had to get something from the shops, but wouldn’t be long. Running all the way, she reached the chemist’s at exactly one minute to one o’clock.

  The chemist looked up as she approached the counter, out of breath. He stared pointedly at his watch, then took the ticket from her, flicked through the photographs awaiting collection, pulled out a packet and gave it to her. She glanced round for something to buy as she had to have a parcel to carry into the house, saw the sanitary towels in the aisle behind her and grabbed a box of Kotex. The chemist put it into a paper bag, and she paid him and left the shop.

  Slipping the photographs into the paper bag, she hurried back down the hill. Much as she would have loved to have sat on one of the benches and looked through the photographs, it would make her late for lunch, and in her mind’s eye, she could see her father sitting rigidly at the table, his eyes on the clock on the wall. Her mother would bear the brunt of his ill humour and she didn’t want to put her through that if she didn’t have to. Also, looking at the photos in a rush wasn’t really the way in which she wanted to look again on her Kalden’s face.

  Her mother opened the door as she reached the house. ‘Lunch is ready, darling.’

  ‘Just let me pop upstairs and wash my hands first. I won’t be a moment.’

  ‘I’ll start dishing up, then.’

  As she hurried up the stairs to her bedroom, she heard the sound of plates being put on the table.

  She hastily looked around her room, trying to think of a place for the photos where no one would look. Her eyes lit on the bottom drawer of her chest of drawers, where she kept her sanitary towels, and she went over to the drawer and pulled it open. As she slid the new packet of Kotex into the drawer, she saw with surprise that she already had two boxes. Slipping the photos beneath the boxes, she wondered idly when she’d had her last period. She couldn’t quite remember.

  Her system must still be unsettled after all the travelling she’d done, she thought, standing up, not to mention th
e shock she’d suffered over Kalden’s death. Now that she was settling into a routine again, she’d soon get back to normal.

  She closed the drawer, went into the bathroom, washed her hands and ran lightly down the stairs to the kitchen. Travelling could have that effect on women, she told herself as she took her place at the table.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Late October

  Several times when they met up in the evening, Patricia had come near to telling Ruth what she suspected, but the moment had never seemed quite right, and each time she’d held off.

  They’d first seen each other again shortly after Patricia’s return from Ladakh.

  At the start of the evening, each had been ultra polite to the other, and Patricia had realised that neither had truly recovered from the things that had been said at the time of her seventeenth birthday. She’d also sensed that Ruth was still upset that she’d been so tied up with her plans for the trip to Ladakh that she hadn’t gone to Ruth’s engagement party.

  Hoping to get things back to normal between them, she’d asked Ruth to tell her all about the party and about Johnny. Ruth had beamed at her, produced photographs of the party and had held out her hand for Patricia to admire her engagement ring, a tiny sapphire with a diamond chip on either side of it.

  Unwilling to introduce a note of sadness into the evening, Patricia had decided not to tell her about Kalden on that occasion, but to continue trying to get their friendship back to where it had been a few years earlier. With that end in view, she’d plied Ruth with questions about her plans for the wedding and honeymoon, about where she and Johnny were going to live, about her job at DH Evans, and about whether she wanted a boy or a girl when the time came.

  Gradually they’d relaxed into a genuine warmth, and by the end of the evening, it was clear Ruth had thoroughly enjoyed herself and she was the first to suggest that they meet up again as soon as possible. It was on the second occasion that they’d met that Patricia had told Ruth all about Kalden. Her face full of sympathy, Ruth had hugged her friend.

  ‘You’ll meet someone else, someone from round here, honest you will, Patsy,’ she’d told her. ‘When you go to college, maybe. And I’ll tell Johnny to be on the lookout for a bloke for my best friend. It’s a crying shame that he hasn’t got a brother. There might be someone in the garage where he works.’ She’d hugged Patricia again. ‘You’ll be all right. I just know it.’

  Patricia decided that she’d probably said enough about Kalden for that evening, and that she definitely wasn’t going to bring up the subject that was increasingly dominating her thoughts. That could wait for another evening.

  A week later, she and Ruth had gone to the cinema together to see Flower Drum Song. As they’d got up from their seats at the end of the film, Patricia suggested that they go for a drink somewhere nearby. She’d waited long enough to tell Ruth what she suspected and she desperately needed to talk to someone; she was going to tell Ruth that evening.

  ‘Some of those Chinese men are good-looking in a sort of way,’ Ruth had laughed, tucking her arm into Patricia’s as they left the cinema. ‘But I could never fall for anyone like that, good looks or not. They’re much too different from us.’

  Patricia had glanced at Ruth’s face, and she’d changed her mind.

  Sitting on her bed, she stared at the photograph of Kalden. His eyes were half closed as he squinted against the sun to look straight into the lens of the camera. Her heart raced – he looked so good-looking, so strong and so alive. A powerful surge of longing for him swept through her body, shaking her to the core.

  She raised the photo to her lips, and kissed it. ‘I think you’re going to be a father, Kalden,’ she whispered to him. ‘I’m telling you this because I’m sure you can hear me. I’m really scared, but I’m also very, very happy. I do hope that our baby looks exactly like you.’ She smiled at the face that stared up at her from the celluloid. Lightly she ran her fingers over his features, then she hugged the photo to her chest.

  ‘Patricia!’ she heard her mother call from downstairs. ‘Do you want to come round the corner with me? I’ve got to get some things from the shops, and you said earlier on that you wanted a walk.’

  ‘I’ll be down in a minute. I’m just putting my jeans on,’ she shouted. With a last glance at Kalden’s face, she got up, went over to the chest of drawers and put the photo back in the bottom drawer.

  Then she hurried to the wardrobe, took out her jeans, stepped into them and started to pull up the zip. Half way to the top, she stopped – the two sides of the zip no longer met. She stared down at her stomach, and her heart beat faster – not only must she definitely be pregnant, but it was starting to show.

  She pushed the wardrobe door wider open and studied her reflection in the full-length mirror. Yes, her stomach was certainly a little rounder. Not enough to be obvious to anyone else but her at the moment, but it soon would be.

  Panic rising within her, she took off her jeans and put on a gathered skirt; she’d have to tell her parents very soon.

  She’d tell her mother first, she decided as she went down the stairs. Her mother would hate the idea of her daughter being an unmarried mother, that was for sure, but on the other hand, she very much wanted to be a grandmother, and this would be her only chance – she could never love anyone else but Kalden. Hopefully, her mother’s desire for a grandchild would outweigh the fact that she wasn’t married.

  As for her father, she dreaded telling him. She knew him well enough to know that he’d see this as a shameful situation. Her only hope was to try to counteract that by pointing out that if the baby were a boy, he could join the Major’s regiment. The thought of having a grandson might just help him to see her pregnancy in a positive light. She was far from convinced that it would, but tell him she’d have to, and she couldn’t leave it too long after telling her mother.

  She stepped off the bottom stair on to the hard lino and glanced towards the kitchen. She’d tell her mother that morning while they were out – she would know what to do next.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Patsy,’ Enid said a little later as they walked up Belsize Grove towards the shops. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘No, there’s nothing wrong as such,’ she said, suddenly very nervous. She bit her thumbnail. ‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind getting a cake. We could stop at Grodzinski’s and treat ourselves, and then we could sit on a bench and eat it. There’s something I want to tell you.’

  ‘It all sounds very mysterious. All right, then, we’ll get that cake, but we mustn’t let it ruin our appetite. You know what your father’s like.’

  Enid stared at her, her face ashen.

  ‘Say something, Mother,’ Patricia urged. ‘You’re going to be a grandmother. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  She saw the alarm in her mother’s eyes, and felt a stab of fear. She’d been so happy at the thought of having Kalden’s baby that deep down she’d felt sure she’d be able to persuade her parents to feel the same. But maybe she’d been naïve. Her mother looked anything but pleased, and if she couldn’t convince her mother …

  ‘Please say something, Mother.’

  Her mother turned a chalk-white face towards her, her eyes watering. ‘Have you thought how your father will take this, Patricia? Have you thought what he’ll say, what he’ll do?’

  ‘Well, yes, I have a bit. I thought he might like the idea of a boy who could join his regiment … if it is a boy. Obviously, not to replace James …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Aren’t you pleased for me?’ she whispered. ‘I’ll always have a part of Kalden. You know how much I love him.’

  Her mother took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I can understand how you feel, darling, really I can. You must believe that. But there are other things to think about, too. Like your father.’

  ‘Father loves me in his own way and he’ll want me to be happy. I know he was furious when he found out about Kalden and me, but that was instinctive. If he’d had longer to get used to the idea,
he’d have come round in the end, I’m sure.’

  ‘That’s neither here nor there, Patricia. There is no Kalden any more,’ her mother said gently. ‘There are only the neighbours,’ she gestured around her, ‘and the people we know, such as your father’s regimental colleagues. Heaven knows, you would have found it hard enough with a child of mixed race if you and Kalden had been married, but to have such a child without a husband … It would be far more difficult than you can possibly imagine. For a start, I’m quite certain that the child would never be accepted into your father’s regiment.’

  ‘Kalden and I would have managed whatever happened,’ Patricia cut in quickly. ‘And our child would have been loved – and will be loved – and that’s the most important thing.’

  ‘Maybe you would have managed, but we won’t ever know. The thing is, you’re not married. You would be an unmarried mother, which brings shame in itself, and worse than that, your child would be a half-caste. How do you think your father would cope with that?’

  Patricia pulled her hand away from her mother and slid back against the bench, her half-eaten cake forgotten. ‘So you’re saying that Father’s bound to be against me having a baby and that you don’t like the idea, either. Even though the child will be the only thing I have left of Kalden. What the neighbours might think is more important than what I feel. Is that it?’

  ‘If we lived on a desert island, I’d be so happy for you. I know how much you miss Kalden and how you’d love to have such a permanent reminder of him. But we don’t live on a desert island.’ She gazed at Patricia with sympathy. ‘I’m sorry, darling, but that’s the truth.’

  ‘What do you think Father will say, apart from the fact that he’s not pleased?’ Patricia asked after a short pause. ‘If I’m pregnant, there’s not really a lot he can do about it, is there? Except kick me out of the house. But that would also bring disgrace upon the family and I can’t really see him wanting to go down that path. Can you?’