The Path to the Lake

by Susan Sallis

  They drew up outside the school. It was early. The head teacher’s car was the only one in the car park.

  David said, ‘Dunkirk’, and she looked a wild question at him. He smiled, ‘You have just made a wonderful victory from defeat. Worthy of Dunkirk.’

  She held his eyes for a moment, then leaned over and kissed him. ‘I shall remember that,’ she said.

  She got out of the car and he shouted at her, ‘I’ll be here at three forty-five.’

  She waved and smiled and shouted back, ‘Great! Good luck!’

  They both thought everything was back to normal, their kind of normal. Perhaps they did not want to see that David senior was slowly failing. They heard tales from the staff about Jinx’s run-ins with some of the female residents, and assumed they included his best friend, David Venables. They visited less. And though on a nice day he was perfectly capable of walking down to the bungalow, he seldom did.

  David was requested to do a residency at one of the universities on the south coast and wanted Viv to take a few weeks off and come with him. But it was September; a new school year. The head had asked her to take the reception class and settle them in ‘properly’.

  ‘I know you love your ten-year-olds, Viv.’ Viv was surprised; yes, she did love them but never demonstratively. What she liked about them was that they were old enough to recognize her respect for them. The head went on inexorably, ‘I think your professionalism would be good for the tinies. They don’t need mums, they’ve got them at home. They come to school expecting a teacher, and you will fit that expectation perfectly.’

  Viv was not sure how she felt about it all. One thing was certain, she was committed to it. She explained all this to David. He made a face.

  ‘I’m not competitive, luckily. I wouldn’t stand a chance against four-and-a-half-year-olds.’ He picked up her hand. ‘Will you be all right? You need not visit Tall Trees, you’ll have enough on your plate.’

  ‘Of course I’ll be all right. What about you? What do you have to do? Actually do?’

  ‘It’s an open decision. And I’ve decided I’m doing an adaptation of one of your school projects. D’you remember the junk sculpture?’

  ‘Of course. But they will have done that already. It’s a standard primary-school thing.’

  ‘The object is to make a maquette. See where it goes from there.’

  ‘Techniques.’

  ‘Why not? Artists need to be technicians these days.’

  ‘What about your imaginative stuff – what about the skyscapes?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  They bought another car. She missed David even when she was at school and would not normally have been with him. At weekends she was very conscious of Mr Venables at Tall Trees. David had told him about the residency, had told him about Viv’s new class at school. In fact there was a great deal to do for her tinies; their ‘finds’ had to be made significant, and she spent evenings mounting acorns and grasses in the small frames David used for some of his cartoons, labelling them carefully and then adding ‘What? Where? Why?’ It had been Marvin Jellicoe, who knew everything before he was five years old because he watched television assiduously, who said, ‘We’m detectives, miss. Like CSI.’

  And Sky Smith, whose mother was a left-over hippie, who said ecstatically, ‘We’m green tectives, miss. Cos we’m finding out everything about flowers and stuff.’

  She had loved them as they came in to school on their first day, hanging on to their mothers’ hands desperately. She respected them because they were wise already. They deserved her evenings and weekends. David’s father had the company of twenty-four contemporaries at Tall Trees. She said to David, ‘I won’t be able to visit regularly like you do. These children need me in a way the juniors didn’t – I’m not being awkward, David.’

  He said, ‘Don’t feel desperate about it, love. You’re here if there’s an emergency. I’ve told Mrs Hardy the situation – she’s got a soft spot for Dad. In fact she’s even got a soft spot for that mate of his. Jinx. Sarcastic old blighter. Matron knows, as well. They’ll give him some extra attention.’

  But she felt guilty.

  And then Jinx and David senior had some kind of falling-out. Mrs Hardy called in about it on her way home one evening. Viv had been sewing tapes on to the tabards the children used for painting. She had met Mrs Hardy when she and David visited Tall Trees. She was small, plump and cheerful. She was cheerful about this at first, then not so cheerful. In fact her face lengthened, and she sounded anxious.

  ‘Jinx enjoys the whole thing. He’s used to being on his own, and waging war with Winnie and Esmé. Your dad isn’t like that – as you well know. He needs that friendship.’ She forced a smile. ‘Hasn’t eaten this week. Doesn’t come into the lounge.’

  Viv was still cringing at that word . . . dad. But he wasn’t her dad, so she rallied quickly and said, ‘I’ll go up. This minute.’

  Mrs Hardy said, ‘You’ve only just finished your jobs, I can see that. Have you had anything to eat, yourself?’

  ‘Not yet. But I will do when I get back.’ Viv smiled, there was something about Mrs Hardy she liked. ‘I’ve got some pears. I’ll take a couple up and try to get Mr Venables to have one.’

  ‘Mr Venables? Ah, of course, he’s your husband’s dad. He talks about you such a lot I get mixed up.’

  They walked to the gate together and then split up. Viv thanked Mrs Hardy for letting her know. She thought it would be all right. Awkward, but all right.

  He was sitting on the edge of his bed trying to reach his socks.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry. I forgot you all went to bed early. I got these pears, thought we might have one each.’

  His pleasure was painful to see. She felt mean. His smile was shaky, and she knew for two pins he could cry. But all he said was, ‘Viv! How’s our David getting on? Early days yet, I suppose. Still settling in.’

  ‘I think so.’ She drew a chair forward, leaned down and removed his socks and put on his slippers. Leaned back well away from him. ‘It’s just his thing, of course. And he’s got time for his own work, too. Couldn’t be better.’

  She talked about the weather. The fallen leaves in the driveway of the home, slippery underfoot now because of a recent shower. He looked at her. His eyes were asking her something. She peeled and cored a pear and cut it into segments. He ate one obediently, like a child. She told him about her new class: Marvin and Sky. He tried to look interested, but his head fell back on the pillow awkwardly. She lifted his slippered feet on to the bed and leaned over him.

  ‘What’s wrong? Why have you quarrelled with John Jinks? David thought you were good friends.’

  He moved his head from side to side. She waited but he said nothing.

  ‘You’re not eating. Mrs Hardy is anxious about you.’

  ‘She is such a dear.’ He smiled for the first time. ‘She doesn’t let Jinx get her down.’

  ‘And neither must you.’

  ‘He knows.’ He sighed. ‘I told him. He was angry, called me a pervert. Can’t face him.’

  She realized the sigh had been a yawn; his eyelids were drooping, the eyes almost unseeing. She had a terrible sense of déjà vu, and jerked back from him with horror. He opened his eyes wide at the sudden movement, and looked at her and said, ‘You must have known, Viv. It happened a long time ago . . . my first stroke . . . knew I could not come to live with you . . .’

  She breathed, ‘You did not want to live with us?’

  ‘Surely you understood? You understand so much . . . accept so much . . . you accepted the situation . . . did not make a fuss . . . saw as little of me as possible.’ He turned his head on the pillow. ‘I know you did not discuss it with David. Thank you for that, too. I love you, Viv. And you have respected that love, and not seen it as perverted. Jinx debased what I feel for you. I cannot allow that.’

  She did not move a muscle. She remembered that was the best way. If she stayed very still and let it happen, there would be less
violence. She remembered . . . remembered the voice saying, ‘I love you’ . . . ‘I love you’ . . .

  Time ceased to be; at some point the wrinkled eyelids closed. She stayed as if turned to stone, daring to hope that she could stand up and walk out of that room. Then the voice began again, talking of the past and the ‘brown bird’, just as it always had done. Pain was everywhere, it flowed around her like the water of the lake.

  ‘My wife was very much older than I was. She wanted a child quickly, before it was too late. After she died there was a kind of relief, because she had got what she wanted, and I was free. David’s disability was not diagnosed until he was in his teens . . . it became my punishment. I wanted him to be a serious artist . . . cartoons weren’t the way. And he met you. And he changed. His work became . . . different. It was your doing . . . Saw the sort of love you had . . . wanted it . . . fell head over heels for you.’ A tiny smile lightened his sombre face.

  Tears were pouring down her face. Had Dennis spoken like this? Behind the brutality had there indeed been love as well as degradation?

  The voice whispered on and on. His wife . . . his son . . . his love . . . the love that was his salvation, and which belonged to his son. And his son could not fulfil that love.

  Still, she did not speak or move.

  ‘. . . wanted to thank you . . . wanted you to know the joy I have felt . . . it must not be a burden to you . . . a gift . . . unwanted I know, but a gift just the same . . .’

  She still did not speak but she moved. Like an automaton she lifted herself from the chair on to the bed by his side. Her arm slid beneath his head, her other arm went around his body and held him to her. She cradled him; Vivvie Lennard, who shrank from intimacy, held her father-in-law tenderly and said, ‘I did not know. Forgive me. I have never understood.’

  They lay together for a long time. She was conscious that someone peered through the glass of the door and then went away. Her arm gradually numbed. She moved slightly. He breathed into her ear, ‘Don’t go.’

  Had it been then, at that moment? There was a point at which she could have left him. And then that moment was gone. She kissed his forehead. ‘Dad,’ she whispered back. ‘Dad.’ It was not a moment of surrender; she remembered those well. This was a moment of decision. Her decision. Whatever might be the outcome, she had decided.

  ‘Dad.’ She murmured the word over and over again. ‘It’s all right. We love you. Your nut-brown maid. She loves you.’

  Twenty-five

  THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY of the accident came around. Hildie did not mention it but she did suggest they went to the pictures again.

  ‘It’s not Harry Potter, but it’s something for the kiddies.’

  Viv had already looked it up in the local paper. ‘It’s a film about Narnia.’ She beamed at Hildie. ‘Is this going to be an annual event?’

  ‘Why not?’ Hildie beamed back. ‘You’re feeling good, aren’t you, Viv? It’s sticking that blessed door knob back where it came from, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Viv hesitated. ‘Also . . . your Tom suggested – ages ago – that it might be a good idea to write things down. I’ve been doing that. I wasn’t going to, but Maisie did something similar and it seemed to help her.’

  Hildie nodded, pleased. ‘He’s done that, too. Written things down. Sorts it out inside your head.’ She asked no questions; she had asked them of Tom and he had told her they were inappropriate. She had wanted to say ‘Why?’ but had stopped herself. And Hardy had actually told her later that he had been proud of her!

  She said instead, ‘You and Maisie. You get on well.’

  There was a note of wistfulness in her voice, and Viv said quickly, ‘It’s because of David. His work appeals to her.’

  Hildie nodded, then said, ‘I’ll have to get Hardy to go to art classes, then!’

  She meant it as a joke, but Viv shook her head. ‘Hardy is an artist already, and he doesn’t need an exhibition to prove it. Walk through the village and you see his art everywhere.’

  Hildie did not scoff. ‘I know. Go into the library when you can, Viv. He’s made some shelving for the children’s corner. Each bookcase has a window in it with curtains. They draw different pictures and slot them into the window spaces, so that when people open the curtains there’s a view. It’s really good.’ She was quite pink. ‘I’m really proud of him.’

  They went to the cinema just as they had done the previous year, and Viv insisted on leaving her as before. Hardy liked his Saturday sausage and mash and had had little enough of it for a long time. Viv promised Hildie she would make herself a boiled egg. Hildie reminded her that the following weekend they had been invited to the twins’ first birthday party. ‘We’ll go in the van because Hardy’s made two rocking horses.’

  Viv had seen the first one – the ‘prototype’ Hardy had called it – and had not imagined he would find time for a second. She also wondered whether there would be room for the horses and herself in the back of the van.

  Hildie read her mind. ‘I’ve cleared those toilets out of the way, don’t worry. And Hardy has soaked the horses in wood preserver so that they can go out on the patio. Elisabeth is fairly . . . tidy.’

  They parted, and Viv started up the hill and then stopped and turned back. It was four thirty, and there was over an hour of light before the evening set in. She could watch the sun sink into the sea from her windows, but she had spent the last two hours watching a cinema screen and suddenly wanted to be part of things. She certainly wanted to shake away the film images and reinstate her own reality before the evening at home.

  She had put her case full of papers in one of the top cupboards in David’s work room and was still terribly conscious of it lying there. She had read her first account of contacts with David, and then followed it with the second terrible confession. She had acknowledged its redemptive messages; she knew she would not find the word ‘dad’ horrific again. It reminded her that you could link the absurd . . . the fear . . . the cruel and the sordid . . . into the infinite. David had told her that all she needed was love. She had found it that long evening with her father-in-law. Compassion had reached a point of such intensity that the only way to go had been physical. Love had overwhelmed her. She could actually think of her own father compassionately.

  She knew now, with certainty, that her father had ill-treated his wife just as he had abused his daughter. The instant adoration he had wanted had not been there, and he had demanded it with force and then hated himself and had wept. It was almost simple. If his wife had lived, she might have stopped that vicious circle somehow. Perhaps Viv’s own removal from it had stopped it. She had never tried to find out. But she had discovered something else. David had shown her what tenderness was. And that was why. That was why. That was why . . . the rest of it had happened.

  She walked past the familiar shops, and wondered whether this really was a new beginning. She corrected that thought immediately: she could never begin again, but perhaps she could start again. Not from the beginning by any means, nor from the point of the accident. She had travelled a long way since then. The difference was she had been travelling – running and panic-stricken – away. Perhaps now, she was walking towards. It was still frightening. But not . . . completely frightening.

  She left the line of shops; the smell of the sea mingled with fish and chips. Leaves were everywhere. Winter was almost here again. She had somehow survived two of them, and found she was no longer alone.

  She lengthened her stride, left the shelter of trees and houses; ahead lay the enormous field where hundreds of years before, the people of the villages had let the sea flood through to make salt pans. The light from the low sun came over the sea wall and made her blink. She would climb to the top of Becket’s Hill and look over at the islands and then go home. She started off across the field.

  The matron of Tall Trees had asked her whether she might like a part-time job at the home. And Tom had ‘suggested’ brusquely that she might want to go back to
teaching. She knew there was always a need, especially in the winter months, for supply teachers. And Esmé Wetherby had suggested diffidently that they were thinking of starting a reading group at Tall Trees, but did not quite know how to go about it.

  She reached the amusement arcades and the crazy golf course. She discovered she was . . . excited. The possibilities for starting again were all there. She would talk to Juniper about the book group, she would break through all the scoffing about ‘going back to school at eighty-five’ and ask her for suggestions for the first book. Something funny? Maybe something they had already read. From the war years. An old-fashioned romance? She could imagine Juniper’s expression softening.

  As she passed the shuttered ice-cream stall, she could hear music. At first just the repetitive bass beat that often came from car radios. She walked on towards the lake and it became recognizable as something she had heard on her own radio. A singer burst into the rhythm of the percussion; she could not make out the words of the lyric. Terse, very modern. And coming from the deep hole that was the lake.

  She hurried to the wall. The whole curved area of the little promenade surrounding the empty blackness was highlighted by the last rim of the sun as it lay on the sea. And on the steps down to it a disc player, looking strangely like the head of an extra-terrestrial creature, was blaring forth its insidious beat and its incomprehensible message. And in front of it, a girl and a boy no older than sixteen were dancing. They were facing each other, not touching, gyrating crazily, every ounce of their beings chock-full of energy, every muscle moving as they jumped, pumped their legs and arms, twisted their necks and shoulders. The singer slowed, and they had to adjust their own movements. Viv heard the girl’s laugh as she paused a second. The music ended. A voice spoke, velvet smooth, saying something about love.

  The dancers, left high and dry without music, were caught in mid-flow. The girl screamed with laughter, and collapsed at the waist, hanging her head to her knees like a broken doll. The boy said, ‘What are we supposed to do with that? You can’t dance to words!’