The Path to the Lake

by Susan Sallis

  ‘I know. It sounds crazy. I’ve been through it dozens of times, and I hadn’t left a window open or anything. Jinx thinks I’ve gone mad of course—’

  ‘You’re not mad – I’d put money on it,’ Mrs Hardy said staunchly. ‘It’s obvious, innit? That door knob is a symbol. It saved your life. And it must have been put there by your David. So he brought it to you to show you that. Oh, my dear Lord . . .’ She sat down abruptly.

  I had thought that, too. But I said, ‘I don’t think he did put it there. We used the lake a lot when we were courting, and after we were married. We used to set ourselves up with deckchairs and picnics and stay as long as the sun shone. I’m sure he would have told me about the door knob if he’d known about it.’

  ‘He must have known. But he didn’t think it was important. Maybe Juniper told him?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s something, most likely simple, and we can’t see it . . . did he propose to you proper-like?’

  I swallowed, remembering. It hadn’t been proper-like, not really. We had been planning a very private affair for about a month. Something my father couldn’t spoil. But then David had asked me to marry him as if we hadn’t been talking about it for ages. And he had got down on one knee, only half-jokingly, and produced a ring, and slipped it on my finger. It had happened on the little promenade, with moonlight rippling across the surface of the lake. It had been past midnight. Long past midnight. Somewhere around the same time of night as I had found the door knob two months ago . . .

  Mrs Hardy said sharply, ‘He did, didn’t he?’

  ‘Well, sort of. It was a bit of a joke, really.’

  ‘He didn’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘He’s using that blessed door knob to tell you something.’ She was more like her old self. My problem was occupying her thoughts, ousting the terrible things that were happening to her family. ‘And Mr Clever-clever Jinks reckons Juniper Stevens can give the answer, does he?’ She screwed up her face, considering. ‘He’s a funny one, is that man. Enjoys stirring things up now and then. Used to stir up old Mr Venables, now he’s doing it to you.’

  I felt the usual sick terror. I said, ‘Let’s leave it, then. I don’t see that it can help with what is happening now.’

  She gave me another of her searching looks, then nodded. ‘All right. Don’t fret yourself. Just take in what has happened. It – it’s wonderful, really. And if ever you want to see old Juniper – lovely name – then let me know.’

  ‘And will you let me know if I can help out with the twins? That would be really wonderful!’ I smiled. ‘D’you know, you haven’t told me whether it’s two girls or two boys or one of each—’

  She too smiled. ‘It’s one of each. No names ready or anything. Tom couldn’t care less. But Hardy and me, we wondered about Michael for the boy. Hardy’s name is Michael. And now I’ll put it to Tom, Joy for the girl. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes it is.’ I went with her to the gate, marvelling at her resilience as I watched her bicycle make its normal bouncing way down to the first of the hairpins. I went on standing there, noting that the rain had come to nothing, but a wind was working itself up from the north-east. I did not like winds, they seemed to blow right through me as if I didn’t exist. They made me feel like my father had always made me feel, as if I was nothing. I hurried indoors, and then out to the garden again to put away my tools. The prunings and their leaves were already blowing around everywhere, and I almost ran around the lawn gathering them up and thrusting them into the compost bin. I stood in the shelter of the tool-shed and watched the afternoon darken into early evening. ‘Michael and Joy Hardy,’ I murmured experimentally. ‘Joy and Mike.’ And then, slowly, ‘Della Hardy. Oh, Della, I am so sorry. I wonder whether you had a choice and you opted for death?’

  I pushed away that morbid thought and locked the tool-shed and climbed the steps on to the patio and into the bungalow. Still shocked by my own thoughts, I laid a tea tray, cut bread and butter, and carried it all into the living room. The fire was laid, but for some reason I did not light it. I went back to the kitchen to make the tea. There’s a long mirror in the hall, sited so that you can check your appearance on the way out of the front door. I watched myself walking towards it, and thought there was something wrong with my appearance. I went closer to see my face. And David was looking out of the mirror and into my eyes. I knew he was a figment of my imagination; but he was smiling and there wasn’t a mark on him. His skin was clear and slightly tanned, as it always had been. And he was saying, ‘It’s all right. You must know by now that everything is all right.’ But the mouth in the mirror did not move. His voice was low, it was his voice, but he was not speaking.

  I was wearing the old fleece I wore for gardening; I grabbed a woolly hat from the hall stand, put keys in my pocket and left. I don’t know where I went. I was back at the house as the clock in the hall struck ten. The mirror reflected me. Just me. Unkempt, haggard, even. Just me. I made tea and took it to bed. It still worked. The running. I could run from almost anything. Even David. My dear David. The man I loved, and yet had betrayed and then killed.

  About four o’clock in the morning I went to sleep and dreamed about Della Hardy.

  Eight

  THINGS MOVED QUICKLY for the Hardys. The next day they drove to the flat in Cheltenham and began sorting out. Tom came home at lunchtime and they ate the pea soup his mother had brought with her. Then he took them to the maternity unit and they visited the twins. The babies were both asleep, their eyes sunk in surplus skin, cheeks and mouths already filling out. Tom said, ‘They’re going to survive. They’ve already stopped being miracles, and they’re babies in their own right.’

  Mrs Hardy glanced at him; he had changed. The enthusiasm had gone, and he was looking at the two small babies as if they did not belong to him. Too clinically. He went on, ‘I’ve been practising with dummies, but very soon now I’ll be able to manage the real thing. Bath them and change them . . . normally.’

  Hardy said humorously, ‘Don’t reckon anything will be normal again with them two around.’

  ‘I don’t mean we can go back to what we were, Dad.’ Tom smiled, then suddenly stopped smiling. ‘I don’t want to do that, anyway. But our lives should be normal for people who have babies. Chaotic probably. But normal.’

  Mrs Hardy nodded, as if he had said something profound. ‘You’re right there, our Tom. Mrs Venables has offered to give us a break now and then for a few hours. We’ll manage, I reckon. But it will be . . . chaotic.’ She told them about the names, and Tom described how to feed twins at the same time, head to head. Then they all went back to the flat, and decided which things should be kept, and which sold.

  On the way home Mrs Hardy said, ‘Love . . . do you believe in ghosts?’

  Hardy frowned into the snake of headlights on the north-bound carriageway of the M5, and was glad he was driving south.

  ‘Don’t reckon I do,’ he said, at last.

  ‘Not even . . . not ever?’ she persisted. ‘What if I died? Don’t you think I might be able to come back now and then just to . . . see you?’

  ‘Ah . . . that might be different.’ He turned his head sharply and tried to see her in the darkness of the car. ‘You en’t ill, are you?’

  She laughed. ‘Course not,’ she said. And crossed her fingers beneath the pile of bags on her lap.

  They went up three times more during that week. They worked on rearranging the house by the river to accommodate three more people. Mrs Hardy took a great deal of stuff to the charity shop in the village. Even so, the little house was still crowded.

  At the end of the week they felt they were as ready as they were ever going to be. ‘They’ll be here for Christmas,’ Mrs Hardy said, her voice a mixture of pleasure and apprehension.

  Hardy had just come in from his final trip to Cheltenham. He put a big box on the kitchen table. ‘Just ran into Juniper’s girl. They persuaded old Juniper to go
up to Tall Trees. She’s incontinent. They couldn’t manage any longer.’

  Mrs Hardy opened the box and peered inside; it was full of Tom’s medical equipment. She said, ‘I’m really sorry. She didn’t want to go. I’ll walk up and see her tomorrow. Help her to settle in, perhaps.’

  Hardy nodded and sighed. ‘I knew you’d say that.’

  Vivian’s story

  A week went by. Mrs Hardy did not drop in, the phone did not ring. I kept the door knob on the kitchen table, and looked at it each morning, half-expecting it to disappear as mysteriously as it had appeared. The weather was awful: gales in the mornings, quietly exhausted afternoons, evening darkness with no visible sunset, the gales whipping up again in the night. Everything became difficult once more. I didn’t want to run because of the weather, and I could not get out in the garden, same reason. I knew the Hardys were having a difficult time, and I wanted to help them but was frightened of overwhelming them. Christmas was drawing inexorably closer, but I did nothing about it. This time last year I had returned home from hospital and barricaded myself into the bungalow to avoid all the callers. It was a life-saver to discover my strange predilection for running; I had worked on that to the exclusion of everything else. When I got too weak to run I realized I was not eating properly, and began my midnight forays to all-night garages and motorway service stations. Christmas must have come and gone somehow. This year was different. This year I was noticing how the days went by and what happened in them; I recognized I had choices about what to do. One of the obvious diurnal conditions was the weather. I had not noticed the weather last winter, yet this winter I found I did not want to run in driving rain – so I chose not to. Just as I chose not to contact Mrs Hardy because . . . because I was more concerned with her welfare than my own.

  I drifted into the kitchen and picked up the door knob. Then I moved into the living room and peered out at the thrashing shrubs and the grey pall, beyond which was the sea and the little huddle of houses on its edge. As darkness swallowed up the fog of rain, small lights appeared twinkling crazily around the base of the Tump. They were Christmas lights. I put on my anorak and got the car out and drove down to look at them. Of course, that was what the lorry had been for on that Saturday two weeks ago: the council workers had been stringing up the Christmas lights. And now they were switched on.

  I drove around the village half a dozen times, watching the lights as they fought with rain and wind to say . . . whatever they were meant to say. ‘Christmas is a-coming,’ I suppose. It was December, after all. I glanced at the cinema doorway where people were queuing with their children to see a Disney film. ‘Matinee, Saturday, 9 December’ announced the advertisement.

  Just over two weeks until Christmas day.

  I drove down to the bandstand and past the wispy string of fairy lights along the promenade. The fog was thicker here, yet two women were trudging slowly along by the railing as if it were a lovely summer afternoon. I slowed and wound down my window. One of them was crying, and hobbling, almost falling over, the other was trying to soothe her. The one who was doing the soothing was Mrs Hardy.

  I stopped the car and leapt out. They were both startled; Mrs Hardy recognized me almost immediately and looked relieved.

  ‘Someone up there has sent you, Mrs Venables. Just caught this one trying to jump over the blessed railings – tide’s in, she wouldn’t have lasted but a few minutes!’

  ‘Oh my God!’ I took the woman’s other arm.

  She started to wail again. I made out the words ‘There’s no point—’

  Then Mrs Hardy said, ‘It’s that Juniper Stevens old Mr Jinks told you about. She’s not been well, and her daughter has got her a place at Tall Trees . . .’ She turned to her companion and bent over. ‘I’m just telling Mrs Venables, here, that you don’t fancy coming to see me at the nursing home!’ She tried to make it sound jocular, pretending to take umbrage, but Juniper Stevens could see nothing funny in this situation, and wailed again.

  Mrs Hardy said to me, ‘Could you take us up to your place for half an hour, my dear? Get her a cup of tea and calm her down, then I can ring the home and her daughter. They’re sure to have reported her missing by now. I told them I knew where she’d be, but of course they have to cover themselves.’

  I opened one of the back doors, and between us we got the woman inside. I grabbed a rug from the parcel shelf and tucked her up, then fastened her belt over the top of the rug. She could barely move, but it seemed to comfort her, and she stopped wailing and started to mutter. Mrs Hardy got in the other side and patted her. ‘Not even a coat – no, I know it’s not cold for the time of year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t catch cold.’ I started up and drove towards the Tump. ‘Oh Mrs Venables, this is good of you. I don’t quite know what I would have done. I don’t think we could’ve walked back.’

  I flashed her a smile in the mirror as I negotiated one of the bends. I felt almost elated by this turn of events, and at the same time, guilty. Poor Mrs Stevens crouched within the circle of Mrs Hardy’s arms, and muttered her distress. Mrs Hardy said, ‘There, there, love. You’ll be all right. Mrs Venables is going to take us to her house and make a nice cup of tea, and then I’ll come back with you to that lovely bedroom of yours and put you to bed. How does that sound?’ She lifted her head and spoke to me. ‘I haven’t been to work till today – it’s like a madhouse at home. Then they asked me if I would go in and sit with Mrs Stevens tonight, and when I got there she’d . . . gone for a walk.’ She made it sound perfectly normal. I thought how marvellous it would be to be looked after by Mrs Hardy.

  We bumped over the kerb and on to the drive, and I unlocked the door and put on lights. Between us we got Juniper Stevens into the living room and by the fire. I lifted the coals with the poker and put on some wood. It crackled and flamed, and Mrs Stevens stopped muttering and watched it.

  I said, ‘She’s tired out. Stay with her while I make some tea.’ I touched Mrs Hardy’s shoulder on the way out. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  While the kettle simmered into life I opened a packet of biscuits that Mrs Hardy had brought with her before Della died, and washed up half-a-dozen mugs. The kitchen was a mess; I’d been home all day and my kitchen was still a mess. I felt the usual pang of housewifely shame. Then I put mugs and biscuits on to a tray, made the tea and took it all back into the living room.

  They were sitting side by side on the sofa facing the dark window. The curtains were undrawn and Mrs Hardy was pointing out the lights below. They were brighter now, so the fog must be lifting.

  ‘See?’ Mrs Hardy’s voice was blessedly familiar, and reminded me how much I had missed her. ‘Those coloured ones are going down the pier. Then the white ones are along the prom, and you can follow them right up to the cinema . . . see?’

  Mrs Stevens peered out of her bundle of clothes and made a grunting sound of assent. Mrs Hardy took her hand in both of hers and rubbed it gently. ‘You can see them from your new room, you know. Just the same. When I was a little girl we used to come up here just to look down and see the village all lit up. I used to think we was like the shepherds on the hillside looking down at Bethlehem.’

  Mrs Stevens and I both turned from the window to look at her. She shook her head, embarrassed. ‘I’ve always been one for make-believe,’ she said.

  Mrs Stevens spoke hoarsely but very clearly. ‘I remember you when you was a kiddie. You was little Hildie Wendover. Your dad worked for the squire hedging and ditching an’ your ma was at the laundry. They did say you was small cos all your strength went into your hair.’

  Mrs Hardy smiled. ‘I could sit on my hair,’ she said. She reached for one of the mugs and held it for Mrs Stevens, then drank her own.

  I looked at her curls and stocky figure, and could almost see little Hildie Wendover. I wondered whether Mrs Hardy still had Hildie’s imagination.

  ‘I’ll tell you something.’ She was looking at Juniper Stevens, but I knew this was for me. ‘I nearly didn’t marry
Hardy. Almost forty years we been married, and I nearly missed it all because I didn’t like the sound of Hilda Hardy.’ She laughed. ‘Little Hildie Wendover sounded just right to me. But Hilda Hardy?’ She laughed properly, clutching her midriff against a stitch.

  Amazingly, Mrs Stevens joined her. And then she spluttered, ‘Well, I never married my first sweetheart for that very reason, and ain’t I glad I din’t! Juniper Jinks! You ever ’eard anything so daft in all your life? Juniper Jinks!’

  Mrs Hardy opened her eyes wide at me. Then she shook her head again. ‘Well I never! I didn’t know that! We’re having quite a conversation here, aren’t we?’ She stared into Juniper’s empty mug. ‘Whatever did you put into this tea, Mrs Venables?’

  I, too, shook my head. ‘I don’t know. But I might as well admit that I am Viv Venables . . . well, you knew that, of course.’ The fire fell in and I crouched to feed it, and then turned on one knee to look at them. ‘Everyone uses forenames these days. Will you call me Viv? And may I use your names too – Juniper and Hildie? They are lovely names.’

  Juniper suddenly wailed, and then said, ‘Oh . . . my dear Lord. I’ve done it again. Bin and wet myself!’

  Mrs Hardy – Hildie – was stricken, even though I made light of it without difficulty. Silently, she sponged the sofa cover and put a clean towel on it to dry it. Meanwhile, Juniper was grimly capable, taking herself into the bathroom and stripping off her underclothes, and letting me wash her down and fetch clean knickers from my bedroom.

  ‘This was what my daughter could not manage,’ she grunted sadly. ‘That’s why her and her husband got me into Tall Trees. I can’t seem to do nothing about it. I’m that sorry. And you been so kind . . .’

  ‘Juniper. Stop apologizing. You were right to go to Tall Trees. They will sort you out so that it won’t worry you. Listen, I’ll come and see you. And someone will help you to visit me, too. Try not to think of it as the end of everything. It’s a new beginning really . . .’ I heard myself saying all the usual things. Truisms. They were called that because they were true.