by Maeve Haran
But after his final quarrel with Liz nothing seemed to matter. He had only thrown in the idea of a divorce as a wild card to see her reaction. And he had seen it all right. She had calmly picked it up and played it.
And it was in this mood that he approached the signposts which offered him a simple choice: Central London or the M1 Motorway to the North.
He had no more than twenty seconds to decide and suddenly, irrationally, it seemed to him that everything, his future and all his hopes of happiness turned on this one simple decision.
Susannah took a firm hold on Liz’s hand and closed her eyes.
‘You also had a happy childhood. You lived in the country, on a farm with horses and chickens.’
Liz felt a creeping sense of unease. She had grown up with horses all right. For years her biggest, and only, thrills were on the back of a pony.
‘Your father took you riding when you were five. You fell off but you made him put you straight back on. He was proud of you.’
It was a memory hidden so deep that it took her a few seconds to unearth it. And there it was. A bright spring day in the Long Sally, the field next to the orchard. Her father had saddled up the oldest and gentlest horse they had. But it still seemed vast and terrifying to the five-year-old Lillibet. For a moment the fear flooded back, as if she were astride him now. And then the exhilaration as the horse trotted slowly forward and her father let go of her. Now she was really grown up! And then, unexpectedly, the terrifying sensation of falling and the long-forgotten thrill of watching her father’s pride as she demanded to get back on.
As she came back to the present with a shock Liz realized that she was scared. She wanted both to run away and to remain rooted to the spot. But Susannah was still holding firmly on to her hand.
‘He was proud of you then,’ Susannah said gently, ‘and he’s proud of you now.’
Liz looked up. Her father had been dead for ten years! For a fraction of a second she thought she felt an additional pressure on her hand coming from the clairvoyant but Susannah said nothing. Liz thought about the father she’d loved so much, and experienced an unexpected sense of peace, untinged by the sadness she usually felt when she thought of him.
Susannah was talking again. ‘You’ve made great changes in your life. You felt like a butterfly in an iron cage, so you broke the cage. It took great strength. But it hasn’t brought you the happiness you expected. You will have to make more changes still. But you will in the end be happy.’
Listening to Susannah, Liz finally understood why Mel had wanted to come today. The promise of eventual happiness, after painful struggle, was so reassuring that you were prepared to suspend all rational instincts to believe it. You needed to believe it. And she saw that rather than encourage you passively to lay yourself down in the palm of fate, it made you more eager still to fight for that happiness you’d one day been promised.
Feeling the weight of emotion on her, she consciously wanted to change the subject.
‘What about my love life. Is there a free spirit with a ponytail for me too?’
But Susannah didn’t pick up on her teasing tone. Instead she moved Liz’s hand fractionally in hers as if to unblock some energy line. ‘Two men love you and they will both hurt you.’
‘Oh great,’ sympathized Mel, ‘no prizes for guessing one of them.’
‘But you’re strong, a survivor.’ She paused and ran a finger down Liz’s hand as if to double-check on some surprising fact. ‘One of them is at a crossroads in his life. He could turn towards you, or away.’ She paused. ‘He is turning away.’ She opened her eyes and looked at Liz, her own cloudy and troubled. ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’
‘It’s nonsense, Mel, a bit of fun, that’s all!’
The freezing wind was clearing Liz’s head, and her familiar scepticism came back to rescue her.
‘And what about your father and the riding and Garth’s ponytail?’
‘Some form of mind reading, that’s all.’ Liz pulled her coat tightly round her as she felt the first snowflakes of winter on her face. ‘She may be able to tell what we’re thinking now but there’s no way, absolutely no way, she could possibly see into the future.’
Ten minutes later David pulled out of the lay-by next to the roadsign and put on the left-hand indicator of his Mercedes. There was nothing to keep him in London, and he felt a sudden longing to see Yorkshire again. Not to go home – he wasn’t ready for that yet, but to get out into the countryside of his boyhood. He would pick up a pair of walking boots, a cagoule, maybe even a simple tent and sleeping bag. By tomorrow he could be on the tops watching the sun light up Nidderdale Edge.
Putting his foot down he felt an overwhelming sense that his past lay in the South and his future in the wider, wilder spaces of the North.
As she drove back to the cottage Liz put a cassette of The Lark Ascending in the car stereo to calm herself. It always made her feel peaceful and optimistic. It was ridiculous to take what that Yuppie clairvoyant had said to heart.
David wasn’t at a turning point in his life. By now he would be back in London, chained to his desk as usual, editing his precious paper and deciding what dubious and exploitative stories the nation should be treated to at their breakfast tables tomorrow. It would take more than a quarrel with her to prise David away from Logan Greene and hinder his progress on and up the corporate ladder.
As the music soared, Liz forgot the cold dank day outside and pictured a late spring sky, so painfully blue you had to screw up your eyes to look at it, and heard the skylark swooping and singing above the cornfields of East Sussex. In half an hour she would be home with Jamie and Daisy. They would have tea and her mother would cut them thick slices of her dark and fruity Christmas cake.
At last she was back in Seamington. Home. Noticing with surprise that the village shop was still open she remembered they were running out of milk and stopped to buy some. To her annoyance they only had homogenized plastic milk left, which was the one sure way to ruin a cup of tea, but at least it would do for the breakfast cereals. As she delved into her bag she realized her purse was still in the car. Before she ran out to get it she dipped her hands into her pockets. Now and then she’d found a stray pound coin that way, and once a fiver. Her hand closed on something that crackled and she pulled it out, mystified.
In the bright neon light above the small freezer she saw that it was the ringlet of shiny ribbon she had put there before Christmas. She was about to throw it away when she stopped for a second, finally hit by its significance. She had found it in the porch just before Christmas. Exactly where David had said he’d left the presents.
A sudden image of David racing down from London with a bootful of gifts for her and the children filled her mind. He had been telling the truth after all. And she had shouted and sworn at him. And on Christmas Day when he was alone at Logan Greene’s flat she had even accused him of ruining Jamie’s Christmas.
Promising to pay for the milk next time, she rushed out to the car, grabbed her purse and ran through the freezing night towards the old red telephone box at the other end of the village, next to the matching pillar box, both graceful reminders of the solidarity of Victorian design. Opening the door she was catapulted back into the twentieth century by the four-letter graffiti and the smell of urine. But at least the phone worked.
Fumbling in her purse she lined up a row of coins. She didn’t know how long it would take to say sorry.
When she asked to speak to the editor, she was surprised that they put her straight through. It was just after six, admittedly, and his secretary had probably gone home. After seven or eight rings a man’s gruff voice answered which to her surprise she recognized as Bert’s.
‘Bert? Is that you? Did you have a good Christmas? Look, Bert,’ she had to shout somewhat as the line started to click and buzz, ‘is David there? I don’t want to disturb him, but it is rather important.’
‘David?’
She couldn’t understand why Bert
sounded so astonished. She hadn’t asked to speak to the Pope or Mick Jagger, just her husband.
‘Yes. David. My husband.’
‘But David’s gone.’
‘Gone where? Home?’
‘None of us knows. He went in to see Logan yesterday and handed in his resignation. We’ve none of us seen him since.’
Liz felt her heart stop for a moment then beat so loud it deafened her. David had walked out on the Daily News and come straight down to see her. And instead of finding out why, she’d quarrelled with him and laughed when he’d suggested a divorce.
When she got back the house was empty, with the tea things laid out on the pine table on a white lace cloth. Her mother liked things to be done properly. She must have taken them over to the swings.
She looked around the room at the familiar, loved objects, the small pieces of blue-and-white china, the old flowered chintz sofa, the cushions she’d made herself, the framed photos of Jamie and Daisy without seeing any of them. David had gone, disappeared, no one knew where he was. She had tried Britt’s number, in an absurd way hoping that he would be there, so that she would know where he was, but also hoping violently that he wouldn’t, because it would mean he had gone back to her.
But it had been an answering machine that had taken the call, and she noted with guilty satisfaction that the message no longer informed her that neither David Ward nor Britt Williams could take her call at the moment. Only Britt’s voice remained, informing the caller that she was out at the moment and would call back later.
If he wasn’t at Britt’s, though, where was he? Gone abroad for a few weeks of R & R? No, David was too restless. By the second week of any holiday he was already buying all the papers and starting to itch to be home. Where, then, for God’s sake?
She tried their house in Holland Park for the third time, but there was still no answer. And, even though she knew it was ludicrous, a technical impossibility, she was convinced that when she dialled the number the ringing tone had a peculiar deadness, a kind of unused quality about it, that told her beyond doubt that no one was there to pick up the phone.
For a moment she thought of Mel and her endless pursuit of Garth, the unreturned messages clogging his answering machine, the piles of notes left on memo pads throughout London, and she wondered if she should let it go. But surely this was different. She wasn’t pursuing David. She simply wanted to say sorry, and to admit that she had misjudged him. That was all.
To take her mind off it she switched on the television, realizing that now she was just a viewer, with none of the preoccupations of the TV professional, all she wanted from the telly was to be entertained. The programme before was just finishing and suddenly she sat up, recognizing the names on the credits. It was the Agatha Christie series she’d helped cast all those months ago!
For a moment she felt a wave of sadness that she never had the buzz of feeling she’d contributed to something in a lasting way any more. Looking after Jamie and Daisy was important and often satisfying, she knew, but there was something so temporary in building Duplo castles that would be destroyed in ten minutes and baking cakes that would be devoured in a sitting.
Suddenly she didn’t feel like watching television any more. As she reached for the remote control an advert for lager caught her eye and she paused a moment. The ad showed a middle-aged father and grown-up son playing football together. They were discussing the son’s impending wedding, which to his father’s disgust was on the same day as the Cup Final. The son, clearly one of the elusive breed of New Men, just grinned and said it would be on again next year. ‘Kronenbourg,’ said the catchline, ‘a different kind of strength.’
Nonsense, thought Liz, half the guests wouldn’t turn up. Yet, there was something about the ad that stayed with her. And as she turned off the television and reached for her book, she realized what it was. The father and son were Northern, and the ad was set lovingly in the industrial North.
And in that moment she knew, without a shadow of doubt, that that was where David had gone.
‘Hello, Betty. This is Liz here.’
Liz waited for her mother-in-law to get over her surprise at hearing from her for the first time in six months. As she waited for a reply, Liz pictured Betty sitting there in her neat little home, every inch Hoovered to death, every surface sparkling, the air perfumed with the sickly artificial fragrance of Air-wick, one of which she placed in every room in case some unwelcome odour of warmth or life dared to penetrate. The high point of Betty’s life so far had been winning the Mothers Union prize for having the cleanest kitchen units in Kettley. When she died, if they opened her up they would find written on her heart, like Mary Tudor and Calais, ‘A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place’.
‘Liz? This is a surprise,’ and not a pleasant one, her tone implied. Liz felt a flash of guilt. She should have phoned a few times since she and David had split up. Betty and Bill were after all the children’s grandparents. But she knew that when Betty had learned of the marriage break-up she no doubt instantly blamed Liz and Liz’s career and she hadn’t been able to face Betty’s crowing tone of domesticity vindicated.
‘Betty, I was wondering if you had seen David lately?’
Betty instantly became defensive. ‘He’s very busy. He doesn’t often get the time. You know that. He’d come more often if he could, he always says so. Why do you ask?’
For a moment Liz considered telling her the truth. But David was their pride and joy, the son who had paid off all their investment and become a success, one of Kettley’s most famous sons. And if the price they paid was that they didn’t see him, then Betty at least found it an acceptable one. And Liz wasn’t about to burst her bubble by telling her that her pride and joy had chucked in his job, abandoned his pregnant girlfriend, and taken to the road.
No doubt if David wanted them to know, he’d tell them himself soon enough.
‘Can’t you get hold of him at the paper?’ Liz could sense that Betty was eager to get back to disinfecting her work surfaces.
‘He’s not there at the moment. He’s having a bit of a sabbatical. If you see him could you ask him to call me?’
‘I won’t be seeing him,’ Betty snapped suspiciously, ‘home is the last place he’d come to see in the New Year.’
And who could blame him, thought Liz bitchily as she said a hasty goodbye. Five minutes talking to Betty on the phone had made her feel depressed. God knows what eighteen years of it would have done to David.
With all this excitement over David resigning she’d completely forgotten it was New Year’s Eve. She, who had always been aware of significant days and turning points and rites of passage, and she knew that she didn’t want to spend it alone.
On the off chance she dialled Ginny and Gavin’s number and smiled with relief when she heard Ginny’s laughing voice answer the phone, a breath of life and warmth after the narrow, grudging tones of Betty.
‘I don’t suppose . . .’ Now that her friend was there on the other end of the phone Liz suddenly realized what she was asking and tailed off shyly, not wanting to impose on any plans they’d made.
‘You don’t suppose . . .?’
Liz answered in a rush. ‘I don’t suppose you’d all like to come over and celebrate New Year with me? We could have supper, and you could stay the night if you wanted so you didn’t have to worry about driving.’
‘Speaking as the driver’ – Gavin had clearly taken the phone out of Ginny’s hand – ‘I’d say that’s the best offer I’ve had all day!’
‘Are you happy, love?’
It was the kind of question that, three days ago, before this visit, Britt couldn’t imagine her father asking in a million years.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say ‘Of course I am, Dad’ and move the conversation on to safer territory. Instead she looked at him and thought for a moment about how to answer.
He sat by the fire in his pyjamas with a rug across his knees, his face as grey as the ash her mo
ther dutifully cleaned out of the grate each morning. But what was most noticeable was that he had lost his combativeness. It was as though he had left it in a neat pile along with his clothes on the bedside chair. And she found seeing him like this more disturbing than she could ever have imagined. Because she knew that it meant that he was worse, far worse, than he had ever let on.
She took his hand. ‘Am I happy?’ She turned the question around and looked at it from every side before facing the truth she’d never dared to face before. ‘Not really, Dad, no.’
‘Not with all your achievements, and your company that’s doing so well and all?’
‘Maybe it’s not enough.’
She felt his grip tighten on hers. ‘Aye. Well, I’m glad you see that, love.’
‘Dad?’
Hearing the urgency in her tone he looked into her eyes.
She faltered for a moment. She felt the sudden desperate urge to tell him that she was pregnant, but she was terrified that this new closeness, this wonderful ability to talk might evaporate and the old dad return. He would have thundered about throwaway values and selfish motives.
But she had to talk to someone. It was a risk she was just going to have to take.
She held her head up, and fixed her eyes on his. ‘Dad, I’m going to have a baby.’
She watched his face harden for a moment with the shock of the revelation. And she knew that he was thinking of all the sacrifices they’d made to give her a start in life, to make her different from the mill-girls who fell pregnant at seventeen, and were trapped for life.
At last he spoke. ‘A baby? A baby, eh? Well I’ll be buggered!’
And she saw from his expression that he was not, as she’d feared, about to play the Victorian father and tell her never to darken his doors again. Instead she saw to her amazement that he was taking what she had told him as a gift. The gift of life in death. And he opened his arms and held her.
‘A baby, eh?’ He patted her head gently. ‘Are you glad, love?’
Britt smiled and hugged herself like a small child with a secret. ‘Yes, Dad, very glad.’ And she knew to her astonishment that it was true.