The Path to the Lake

by Susan Sallis

  ‘She in one of the other homes?’ Hildie asked. ‘She must be getting on – older than Juniper?’

  ‘Much younger, I would think. She was still captain of the ship down at the lake when we moved here.’

  ‘Was she really? Time is strange. Sometimes long, sometimes short.’

  They began the climb on the other side of the valley. Hardy negotiated each hairpin bend with great care.

  ‘She lives in sheltered accommodation. A bungalow. On that development behind the Pill.’

  ‘I never knew her,’ Hildie said. ‘But her son used to fish with you, didn’t he, Hardy? Send our regards.’

  ‘I will,’ Viv promised. They drew up outside the house, and Hardy opened the back doors and helped her out. Hildie went ahead, unlocked and walked down the hall, peering into the rooms and switching on lights.

  They said goodnight. She watched them back into the drive and turn the van around; a tiny peep on the horn, and they took the first bend and were gone.

  She closed the door and looked into the hall mirror. She looked different: she had topped her usual black slacks with a jewel-green tunic in honour of the birthday, and it must be that that was making her glow.

  She said, ‘David, Tom asked me to be his sister. Isn’t that something?’

  Twenty-seven

  BECKET’S CLOSE WAS a crescent of identical bungalows set around a lawned island of flowerbeds and shrubs. Concreted ramps with safety rails led up to front doors. Outside Mrs Bartholomew’s front door, a small car was parked with a note inside the windscreen which said simply, ‘district nurse’.

  Viv almost turned back, imagining that Mrs Bartholomew was at this moment having treatment of some kind, but then she remembered she was expected, and that the car might belong to one of the bungalows on either side. Space was very limited, and she was thankful she had walked down.

  She rang the bell, a ping-pong almost exactly like her own, and the door opened immediately.

  ‘My dear, I saw you hesitate at the car, and I was coming to give you a call.’ Mrs Bartholomew stood aside. ‘Come in, come in. The note means nothing. I was on the district many years ago, and when I couldn’t get a disabled parking ticket, my son thought it was highly amusing to fish out my old calling card and stick it in the windscreen.’ She indicated Viv to go ahead out of the cramped hall and into the living area. ‘He’s a bit of a joker, is Jack. Keeps me going, I can tell you!’

  Viv stood in the middle of the room; it was a glorious clutter of plants and books and shelves of mementoes. The wide window ledge must have held thirty or forty glass paperweights – and a troop of ebony elephants. The window overlooking the rest of the crescent could have offered a peaceful view of the lawned island if it hadn’t been blocked by the car.

  ‘I know it’s a bit of a muddle in here, but I will get it straight eventually. It’s difficult to fit everything in.’ Mrs Bartholomew did not sound apologetic, and Viv had a feeling that she chose to be surrounded by her things.

  ‘It’s great.’ Viv turned with a smile and held out her hand. ‘It’s your life. All around you. It – it’s a happy room! And you haven’t changed at all. I remember you so well. In that little office by the changing huts. You look exactly the same.’

  It was not strictly true. The dark hair was now almost iron grey, and there were lines in the face that had not been there eight years ago. But the black eyes were still bright, and there was a firmness in the handshake that left no doubt she could still take command of an army of swimmers.

  ‘I feel the same from the waist up!’ She patted the back of Viv’s hand, released it and sat down in a well-padded chair by the window. ‘It’s my legs that give me gyp. Sit down, Mrs Venables. It’s good of you to pop in like this. I’ve been curious about you, I’ll admit.’

  ‘Curious about me?’ Viv settled herself, and noticed the tea things on the table behind the knitting and the photograph albums.

  ‘Well, about your husband, of course. His cartoons. And then about you. Jack has told me how you used to run all the time – he used the word run, not jog.’

  Viv said nothing to this, but she was surprised that Mrs Bartholomew knew about David. ‘You liked David’s art?’ she asked, smiling. ‘Not many local people knew about it. He would be very pleased.’

  ‘I always turn to the cartoons in the newspaper. They often tell you more than the articles and reports.’

  Viv laughed. ‘Oh yes. He would be pleased to hear you say that.’

  Mrs Bartholomew laughed too, then got up, and with the help of the furniture negotiated the table, two more armchairs and a Welsh dresser, and lifted a shutter to reveal a galley kitchen behind a counter. She flicked a switch and a kettle on the counter boiled immediately; she poured the contents into a teapot and brought it back to the table.

  ‘So convenient here, Mrs Venables. Living area this side of the front door and bedroom and shower room the other. Always something to hold on to. No trouble at all.’

  She set the teapot on its stand, and sat down with a little breath of relief.

  ‘That’s better. Now you can tell me why you’ve come. Then I’ll pour the tea and we’ll talk it all over. Does that sound about right?’

  ‘Yes. But . . .’ Viv was at a sudden loss. ‘I thought . . . I mean I understood from your son that you would welcome a visit. And the Hardys met you one day . . . That was why I telephoned. And you suggested today. And I’m here.’ She tried to laugh again, and faltered.

  Mrs Bartholomew fished down the side of her chair and produced a spectacle case, opened it and put on glasses. She peered through them at Viv’s face, then took them off and put them away again, obviously reassured that Viv was being truthful and open.

  ‘Well, I’m blessed. I was so sure you knew. I asked Jack, and he said he had no idea but you often came around by the lake.’ Viv felt her stomach sink; it was that blasted door knob again. Jack Bartholomew had seen them replacing it. On the other hand it did not sound as if he had confided that to his mother.

  ‘You don’t know that your husband and me were first cousins, then?’

  Viv sat up straight. ‘I had no idea.’ She subsided. ‘And neither did he. He would have said. We came down to the lake to swim, neither of you appeared to know the other.’ She frowned. ‘What do you mean, Mrs Bartholomew?’

  ‘Well, he probably didn’t know, then. And I saw no point in telling him. My mother and her sister were both dead and the connection between us was gone. He was nearly twenty years younger than me. I was intending to come to see you, however, after that terrible accident. Then I was moving, and Jack said as how Hildie Hardy was looking after you. So I knew you’d be all right.’

  There was a little silence. Mrs Bartholomew took off the lid of the teapot, stirred the contents and replaced the lid.

  Viv said, ‘I still don’t understand. Why didn’t David know about you? Why didn’t his father tell him?’

  ‘I’m not sure he knew.’ She poured the tea. ‘But if he did, it was a sordid little story to most people. He would have forgotten it as soon as he could.’

  ‘He wasn’t like that,’ Viv said in a low voice. ‘He was a decent man. And lonely. He would have been glad to have made contact with his wife’s family.’

  Mrs Bartholomew picked up her cup and saucer and sat back. ‘I’m not so sure. We’re a pretty rough lot.’ She saw Viv’s sudden flush, and smiled. ‘I don’t mean he was a snob. Though he and that John Jinks were thick as thieves, and Jinks was a snob if ever there was one.’

  Viv did not know what to do. She had come here in the same spirit as she went to Tall Trees, and now she felt condescending. And why on earth was there all this secrecy?

  Mrs Bartholomew’s black eyes twinkled suddenly. ‘It’s all a bit much, I can see that. Look. Sip your tea and I’ll tell you about it. It’s so simple, really. Time has made it seem complicated. And the fact that it’s in two halves. My grandfather had two families, one on this side of the water, and my mother and aunt
the other.’

  Viv sat very still, frowning slightly, still puzzled. Mrs Bartholomew leaned forward and pushed a cake stand nearer to Viv. She said kindly, ‘Have a cake. These were two for the price of one.’

  Viv did exactly as she was bid; Mrs Bartholomew had not lost her touch.

  ‘Juniper told you about George Jackson, the mason who built the lake? He was my grandfather. And her father. Though there’s a lot of doubt about that – my grandmother never believed it. Anyway, he came over to do this job – biggest job he’d ever done – leaving behind twin girls, Rose and May. Rose was my mother and May was David’s mother.’ She sighed sharply. ‘Next thing my poor old grandma knew, he was home for a weekend and telling her he had fallen in love with Nellie Stevens. Proper-like – those were his words. Can you believe it? My grandma never did. Or if she did she thought he’d get over it, and come back home to her and his five-year-old twins.’ She sighed again. ‘Then, of course, the day they let the tide into the lake, he gets his foot caught on a lever and he’s drowned.’ She paused and stirred her tea. Viv sat as if turned to stone.

  Mrs Bartholomew put her spoon carefully into her saucer and said, ‘Rose got out of Cardiff as soon as she could. My grandmother never got over her handsome, wonderful George being drowned like that – terrible thing, no compensation then. She had to go out to work, and as soon as it were legal so did Rose and May. Not much of a life, apparently. My mother – Rose – came over here hoping to get something out of the accident. That was 1935. Bit late in the day, but she met up with Jimmy Jinks – John Jinks’s father, and got him to fall for her in a big way. He set her up in a nice flat in Clifton and she got a job down in the council offices doing filing. Taught herself to type on the typewriters there when everyone had gone home. And as soon as she got to fifty words a minute, Jimmy Jinks got her a job as secretary to the school doctor. She didn’t marry the doctor, but she married his brother.’ Mrs Bartholomew’s laugh was infectious. ‘Not such a good catch. He couldn’t keep a job and was only too glad to be called up in 1940. Went out to Africa a year later and didn’t come back. I was born in 1937. Mum was twenty. She got her army pension, another job in the new typing pool, and we got on very well.’ She paused and looked down the years as she sipped her tea. ‘Yes, Mum and me got on well. Really well. She lived with Barty and me for years, no trouble. He liked her, too. And when Jack came along he was her boy as much as ours.’

  She was smiling slightly, reminding Viv of Juniper when she reminisced. This woman was half-related to Juniper . . . it was incredible.

  ‘Poor May didn’t do so well.’ Mrs Bartholomew sipped again and came back to the present. ‘There’s always one in every family who gets lumbered with the elderly. Jack hasn’t got no choice, but May had. She could have gone when Rose went. Grandma was floored by what had happened, but she was still strong enough to manage. In a way she would have been better. As it was it didn’t take her long to lean on May until she couldn’t stand straight by herself any more.’ She sighed sharply and picked up the cake stand. ‘Come on, have another one, they’ll help you to swallow other things as well.’ She grinned. ‘It’s not that bad really, is it? Must happen to lots of families – discovering they’ve got another one tucked away somewhere because Dad strayed.’

  Viv said nothing. She took a cake and put it carefully on the china plate that matched the cup and saucer. She wanted to say that George Jackson had really loved Nellie Stevens, and she had had the door knob to prove it. But how ridiculous would that sound? Especially if Mrs Bartholomew knew nothing of door knobs. She bit into her cake.

  ‘When Grandma died, May was nearly forty and properly on the shelf.’ Mrs Bartholomew took a cake herself, and viewed it suspiciously. ‘Barty said to me that if it hadn’t been for her hanging on to look after Mum, I might have had to do my stint, and we might never have met. So we should help her. He – my Barty – was in charge of all the electrics in Somerset: traffic lights, street lights . . . you name it. He got May the job in the museum when he was doing some special lighting for a new exhibit. David Venables was the curator by that time, years younger than her, of course. She fell for him hook, line and sinker. He didn’t stand a chance. She took after her dad – just kept going till she got what she wanted. She was pregnant after their first date – can you believe that?’

  Viv almost choked on her cake. She would never be able to share the sheer irony of all of this. She thought of May Jackson. Her mother-in-law.

  ‘They got married double-quick of course. It was 1957. The sixties hadn’t even arrived, and they didn’t get to the Bristol museum for a very long time.’ She chuckled. ‘Might not have got there yet for all I know!’ She swallowed. ‘The cake’s a bit tough, isn’t it? Probably past its sell-by date. There had to be a reason they were giving it away.’

  ‘It’s not bad.’ Viv finished hers and sat back. She found she still liked Mrs Bartholomew. She liked her matter-of-fact attitude towards her grandfather’s perfidy. She saw people as they were, and did not condemn them. Viv smiled, and said, ‘Thank you for telling me all this. It puts everything into perspective, somehow.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch before. I wasn’t sure your husband knew anything about the Jacksons. May was funny like that. She probably never told old David Venables that she had a sister – a twin sister, what’s more! I think she’d caught some of Grandma’s bitterness and shame. And when she died I thought that was the end of it. But I kept an ear open for the two Davids. If they’d needed help I’d have been there. And then, when you young people moved down here into that house on the top of the hill, I thought I ought to do something about it. Every time you came for a swim in the lake I used to look at the two of you and see how happy you were, and I thought, don’t start rocking any boats, Maggie Bartholomew. Might muck them up for ever. You just never know, do you?’

  Viv shook her head. ‘You never do.’

  ‘And then his dad came down to Tall Trees and was being looked after by Mick Hardy’s wife. Mick used to take my Jack fishing and on trips . . .’ She smiled nostalgically. ‘I was down at the lake all summer long. We missed Barty, course we did, but we managed. We got through it. Just like you’re getting through it, my girl.’

  Viv nodded this time.

  Mrs Bartholomew said, ‘Would it have helped if I’d come to see you right after the accident? Would it have helped to know this?’

  ‘I don’t think it would. I had to be helped in a different way.’ Viv smiled. ‘But it was connected with what you’ve told me. It was all connected.’

  ‘Well, yes. It would be. We’re all connected. Thing is, d’you want to be connected to me and Jack? You can be honest with me.’

  Viv’s smile grew. ‘Do you ever go out in your son’s boat, Mrs Bartholomew?’

  ‘Of course I do! And my name is Maggie.’

  ‘And mine is Viv. And if I can come out with you now and then I would very much like to stay connected!’ She laughed, and so did Maggie Bartholomew.

  ‘You worked that one well, my girl. We’d be glad of your company.’

  They settled down with another cup of tea and Maggie Bartholomew spoke of the lake in its heyday, and how a few people were asking for it to be tidied up so that it could be used again. Some wanted it listed as being of historic interest. Viv asked how the gig had gone the previous week, and Maggie rolled her eyes and said the youngsters could wrap Jack around their little fingers. ‘The noise was something terrible, and there’ve been letters in the local paper.’

  ‘Perhaps it will encourage the district council to get the lake filled with water again,’ Viv suggested.

  Maggie described her own childhood visiting her grandmother and Aunty May and swimming at Barry Island. ‘My idea of heaven, that was. When they were looking for someone to superintend the swimmers over here I jumped at the job. I’d been nursing so I had the first-aid qualifications. And with Barty gone I wanted to get away from illness.’

  She told Viv about the spr
ing tides that leapt over the retaining wall and half-way up the changing huts, so that the whole area was taken into the sea.

  By the time Viv left she felt strangely different.

  Maggie stood by the door to see her off. ‘Will you move back to Bristol eventually?’ she asked.

  Viv said truthfully, ‘I could never leave here. I don’t know what will happen when I can’t climb the hill any more. But I can’t live anywhere else, I know that.’

  She walked back to the Pill and watched Jack Bartholomew as he worked on his boat. When he spotted her he came clambering over the rocks and stood below her.

  ‘How did it go?’

  She knew what he meant, and did not prevaricate. ‘Rather a surprise – a shock, I suppose. But as your mother said, it was so simple. It explains things to me, too. I suppose it makes us sort of cousins.’

  ‘I would have liked to make myself known to your husband – or to his father. But Mother said best leave well alone.’

  ‘I think she was probably right. I’m not sure how David’s father would have reacted. It’s different now . . . too far away to worry us.’ She grinned. ‘Next summer your mother has said I can come out in the boat with the two of you. Will that be all right?’

  ‘It certainly will!’

  She went on home wishing she could have told him the whole story. How David would have loved it! She could tell Tom, of course, but she would then have to show him what she had written, half the irony was lost without that.

  She rang Hildie when she got home, and told her that it had gone very well with Mrs Bartholomew.

  ‘Her name is Maggie,’ she said.

  ‘Strange. I always thought it’d be something like Erica or Helga. Strong names. Not feminine and ordinary like Margaret.’

  ‘George Jackson fathered girls. All girls. May and Rose and Juniper. May had my David, Rose had Maggie and Maggie had Jack. Perhaps that is short for Jackson. But May wanted nothing more to do with her father, and she let old Mr Venables choose a name.’