by Susan Sallis
‘Will you promise me something?’
‘You know I will.’
‘Will you just let it happen. Don’t force anything. Anything at all.’
She considered crossing her fingers, but decided against it.
‘What if something goes a bit wrong and you take against each other?’
‘Then let it happen. It will sort itself out. Or it won’t.’
‘All right,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘You might have to remind me. And it might be something that needs … debate.’
He ignored that and said they should go to the dining room for breakfast.
‘We could have it here,’ she said. ‘I can do toast and coffee in your kitchen.’
‘I have to show my face. Everyone will know about Derek by now. Come on. Smile, please!’
He led the way, bowling along the open corridor so that she had to trot to keep up. It was worth it. Derek was already there, coping as usual with the short stumps that were all the arms he had and avidly watching the two deaf girls who were signing frantically at each other.
He greeted Robert and Jannie with a big if rueful grin. ‘I might not be able to sign but I can still understand what they are saying. It’s a jumble. They’ve got friends on the south coast badly affected by the storms. And they think I’m a big prick because I said last night I wasn’t going to bother about prosthetics any more.’ He scooped up a slice of toast and bit into it. ‘Everyone thinks I blamed you, sir. The boot was on the other foot. I let you down. And I thought that was that. But Elizabeth says she’s going to have a word with the surgeon at Exeter, see if anything can be done to stimulate the nerve endings in my stumps.’
Robert brought his wheelchair alongside Derek’s chair and waited until the toast was gone.
‘I intended to apologize to you. And I will. I am sorry the hand didn’t work for you, Derek. It came so near. The linear mark on the paper recorded a blip – did you feel that?’
Derek stopped chewing and thought. ‘No,’ he said reluctantly.
‘It was not a movement. It was a pause, that was all. Were you conscious of stopping your efforts at any point?’
‘No.’ Derek swallowed the last of his toast. ‘I’m really sorry, sir. But Elizabeth says I have to be honest otherwise there is no point … and sometimes a negative is as useful as a positive.’
‘She’s right, of course. We both hoped desperately that this time there would be a positive.’ Robert smiled. ‘We have to settle for an automatic pause – not instigated by you.’
‘Is that good, Robert?’
‘I don’t know. It’s up to me to make sense of it.’
‘And me.’
Robert’s smile went from ear to ear. He took the toast Jannie had buttered for him and reached for the marmalade. ‘Let’s battle up to the ridge and see what we can see this morning. Clear our heads.’
The two of them did that while Jannie took her English students into the library and talked about The Tempest.
She knew a moment of intense happiness when Cathy Johnson said thoughtfully, ‘I reckon old Shakespeare was bringing up our probs in this one, miss. Don’t you?’
‘Go on, Cathy,’ Jannie encouraged.
‘Well. Look at Caliban. It was his bloody island, after all. And on they come, calling him names, excluding him. That’s what they call it, don’t they – exclusion? We know about that. Just like he did. Poor little bugger.’
The others laughed. Jannie automatically reached into her sleeve for a tissue and then stopped herself.
‘Shakespeare could well have been before his time. My God, he was faced with enough examples of segregation to write a hundred plays about it. Let’s look at the whole thing from Caliban’s angle. OK?’
‘OK!’
Cathy Johnson, newly blonde and – so importantly – newly vocal, grinned at her, very well pleased. And Jannie knew yet again that she was indeed in the right place.
Nineteen
THE TROUBLE WAS, everyone wanted to be Caliban. They solved that by having everyone appear on the stage at the end, taking their bow and saying in various ways, ‘I am Caliban.’
Representing all of them was Kai. His stunted, twisted body was also supple; he began to see it as his greatest asset and as he writhed around the outdoor stage he seemed to be able to communicate with the audience in the strangest of ways. Hanging from one of the remaining elm trees, he declared his love for Miranda and fixed his gaze on a small girl in the front row. ‘What can I do?’ he asked her. She held out her arms to him, tears in her eyes.
Robert reported back to Jannie during the interval.
‘Your brother and sister are absolutely in there!’ He moved his chair away from Cathy who, as Miranda, was teasing her blond hair into a halo around her head. ‘Who is the vicar – surely he hasn’t come to talk to us in his official capacity?’
‘It’s our rector. He did two memorial services for Mum and Dad last year. I wanted Ned and Gus to bring him. So glad he could come.’ She spoke absently, her mind already on the next piece. ‘Ferdinand, go for the laughs. We want a lighter mood now. Miranda, flirt as much as you like. Don’t forget, when Ferdinand promises no sex before marriage, turn to the audience and make that ghastly face.’
Cathy and Derek exchanged looks. This was probably the sixth time Miss Briscoe had given this particular stage direction.
Robert said, ‘I’d better go.’ He tried to give Jannie a reassuring smile but he was as nervous as she. Then he added, ‘Your family are great.’
And she smiled back, nerves forgotten just for a moment.
Some of the children went home with their parents that evening. Others stayed until the end of the term, helping to wash and fold the costumes from the play, enjoy poetry readings in the woods, give extra time to exercise classes. Derek haunted Robert’s workshop and Cathy haunted Derek. She had fallen in love and brought Jannie a poem she had written. It was blunt and very much to the point.
‘I want to sleep with him,’ she said. ‘No flowery language for that, is there?’
‘Have a think about Derek himself. As a person. As the person who blamed himself for not being able to use Robert’s electronic hand. And then read some of these poems. John Keats died very young. But he found the time to look around him and see what a wonderful world we live in.’ She looked at Cathy’s jutting lower lip. ‘Just do it, Cathy. You can’t bludgeon Derek into anything – not like you bludgeoned your parents into letting you bleach your hair. Keats will help you to understand yourself.’ She made shooing movements. ‘Go on. Take this book, walk to the sea – alone – and then read the poems.’
‘It’s over a mile to the sea! What about my leg?’
‘Remember how you chose not to speak for two years? Are you choosing to have these pains in your leg? Robert tells me you have requested a wheelchair.’
‘Changed my mind.’ Cathy’s expression went from stubborn to defiant.
‘I should think so. Derek is a member of the North Devon Harriers. You could train for that, you know. Ask Fizz for some help.’ Fizz was their live-in physiotherapist. ‘You don’t have to shock all of us into submission either, Cathy. You are beautiful and talented. But keep that poem you’ve written. Show it to him when you’re married with a family.’
Cathy’s face opened wide and she reverted to being an adoring schoolgirl. ‘Oh, Miss,’ she breathed. She took the book of poems from Jannie and pumped her legs energetically on the spot. ‘See, now that I am talking again, there’s no reason for me being at this school. And I was expelled from two others before coming here.’
Jannie started to laugh. ‘Can you really see that happening here? You’ve got two more years before your A levels. Derek has got a provisional place at Birmingham. You should bear that in mind when it comes to choosing courses for next year.’
Cathy stopped pumping. ‘I was thinking I’d only got another two weeks of seeing him.’ She frowned. ‘I’d never make university, Miss. Would I?’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘All the students sleep around then, don’t they?’
‘No. That’s what is called their public image.’
‘But I’d see him. Most days prob’ly. Oh, Miss …’ She held Keats close to her chest and departed.
Ned settled back into Zion Cottage like – as he put it – a hand into a glove. He spent a few days adapting his big attic room to take the extra books and the computer on which he had entered test results. He had a telephone installed on the deep window embrasure, which was also his desk. Charts hung from the sloping ceilings and he bought a Swedish dictionary from a bookshop in Penzance.
Gussie was full of admiration.
‘I remember seeing the lab when you first went to work at United Chemicals. It was all a bit iffy because of funding and I thought they’d gone overboard with spending it on so much equipment. But it’s brought forth enough results to last a lifetime, surely?’
‘It doesn’t really signify how many results we get, nor how much equipment. Unless we can see a pattern, make something of the results … it’s a bit like not seeing the wood for the trees. Obviously the people who have made this award know we’re close. That in itself is encouraging.’
‘Who exactly is donating this money, Ned?’ Gus eyed the printer, which was sited on Ned’s old chest of drawers. It was chattering away and spewing out paper unstoppably. She had used a computer herself graphically. Somehow this constant churning out of facts was not the same. Not a bit the same. It made her nervous. She saw Ned in a new light. It distanced him from her.
He said, ‘It’s a trust – yes, another trust. But it’s got a connection with the Nobel Trust, which gives it a certain …’
‘Cachet?’ she suggested.
‘Yes, but more than that. Stability. Gravitas.’ He grinned. ‘Definitely cachet.’
The printer stopped chattering and he lifted out a big wodge of paper and slid it into a file. ‘Copies of stuff I’ve emailed to Sven. You’ll like Sven. He’s your sort. Visionary.’
‘Visionary?’ She laughed. ‘I’m no visionary, Ned. In fact, I’m nothing much. I want to be another Kate. But it doesn’t seem to be happening.’
‘I meant that you could visualize stuff. In this job, for instance, you could look ahead and forecast results before they materialized.’ He waved his hands helplessly. ‘You sort of think. Oh God, I don’t know. When you meet Sven you’ll see what I mean. And see that you are the same sort of person.’
It had struck him quite suddenly that Sven and Gus were very similar in some ways. They would get on. Really well.
‘Not that he’s planning to come over here. I’m going there as soon as we get sorted.’
‘You’re going away again?’ Gussie looked dismayed.
‘Not for ages,’ he reassured her, and hugged her to his shoulder. Then he released her and walked across the room to the dormer window and looked out across the harbour. The sun was settling into the sea at Porthmeor beach and there were flowing streaks of it sweeping around into the harbour. Behind him Gussie was still standing by the computer window, looking out, silently absorbing all that beauty. He thought of Victor and Connor; of Kate and Mark. He thought of Victor’s beautiful Davina and Mark’s eccentric Zannah. He and Gussie were the results of those people. Was it possible they might make a pattern?
He said huskily, ‘Gus, don’t try to be Kate. Or Zannah. Not even Mark. You are yourself and that is at it should be.’
He moved slightly so that her back was reflected in the dormer window. She stayed very still but said nothing.
He blundered on, ‘Kate was my mother and Mark was my father. Jannie is our sister. You …’ She was wearing a conventional summer frock, patterned with daisies on a dark blue ground. He wondered whether it was one of the bundle that Uncle Rory had brought round. It was short on Gus, but would have been the right length for Aunt Rosemary. ‘You are …’ He wondered how to tell her that all his feelings of joy, sadness, wonder, every damned emotion in the world was because of her. She had taught him how to feel. He could have summed it all up by saying, ‘You are my own true love.’ But that might wreck everything for ever.
He saw her turn; she was smiling; she was about to try to rescue him from one of his notorious word blocks when he so often put his foot right into it.
She said, ‘I am your best friend, I hope. You certainly are mine.’ She sat in his office chair and whirled herself around. ‘Do you remember our first meeting on Porthmeor beach when you were helping Jem with the donkeys?’
He turned and watched her properly, and made a sound in his throat.
‘I knew then we would always be best friends. Didn’t you?’ She stopped the revolving seat and looked up at him humorously. He made another sound in his throat.
She grinned. ‘I’ll tell you something now, young Ned. When Dad told me he was going to marry Kate, I didn’t approve. And then he explained that Ned would live with us and be my brother. And that made it all right!’
Ned dragged another chair forward and sat on it. He said, ‘Likewise. I mean … what I meant is … I felt the same.’
She put her hands behind her head and leaned back on them. Her dress rode up her legs. She had the most marvellous legs. She and Jannie usually wore jeans and shirts but they both had beautiful legs. She leaned forward suddenly and put her elbows on her bare knees.
‘We had such fun, didn’t we? We mustn’t forget the fun we had when we were kids.’
He knew her so well, so intimately. She was older than he was but he had been the one who picked her up when she fell down – she was always falling over those long legs – bandaged her up with his handkerchief, wheeled her up to the Out Patients at the Cottage Hospital on the luggage trolley he had made in the old Scaife studio. And he had done her maths homework for ages …
She said, ‘I taught you to swim properly. D’you remember sitting on the sea bed and watching the waves roll over our heads? And when we were intrepid mountaineers and climbed all over Clodgy?’
He recalled something Jannie had said. ‘Well, do you remember jumping off the cliff at Bamaluz Point? I wouldn’t want to do that again!’
There was a long pause. She dropped her head and took a breath. Then she said fervently, ‘Neither would I!’
Jannie was right. There was something haunting Gus. Something underneath the horror of Kate and Mark.
Ned forced a grin. ‘Where on earth did you get that dress? Makes you look like a schoolgirl – an old-fashioned schoolgirl.’
She laughed. ‘You’re an expert with the back-handed compliments! I think it was one of Rosemary’s. I must have kept it back. And it’s been too hot for jeans. Listen, I haven’t got a thing for supper and now the car is back, shall we go out somewhere for a meal? That pub near Constantine – or Mousehole – what do you think?’
‘I most definitely think. Either.’
‘I’ll go and change.’
‘Oh, in that case I’m not coming. I planned to wear my shorts and pretend you are still twelve and I am ten.’
Gussie pretended reluctance. ‘Oh, all right then. But why ten and twelve? We’ve got most of our lives to choose from.’
He couldn’t remind her and just shrugged. But he had been ten when he had watched Gussie cuddling little January and known he had wanted to marry her.
In July, when they went to see The Tempest at Hartley School, Jannie had suggested that Father Martin might like to come with them. He was delighted by the invitation. They’d asked Bessie to come too but she was shocked.
‘Like what they do on the Island on midsummer night? My mother wouldn’t have nothing to do with that sorta thing. You be careful, Gussie Briscoe. That’s when you meets your man and it dun’t matter whether he’s good, bad or indiffrent – you got ’im for life!’
‘Oh dear.’ Gussie gave her a look and she managed a little smile.
‘I wun’t come, m’dear. Don’t want to be far from ’ome these days. Just in case Old Beck do drop by
for me.’
‘Oh, Bessie …’
‘I know. But that’s ’ow it is.’
‘All right. I’ll tell Jannie you are otherwise engaged.’
‘That’s it zackly!’ They both laughed.
At the end of July, Robert and Jannie arrived.
The ice had been broken during the school supper after The Tempest, but it had been a fragmented introduction to Hartley as much as to each other, and already Robert could not remember what Ned had looked like. He remembered Gussie because of her single plait of hair, and even during their brief conversation – held behind Jannie’s back as she leaned forward to pass Ned yet another pasty – he had registered the fact that she did not ‘see’ the wheelchair yet she was absorbing him and revealing bits of herself in return.
He remembered Ned had red hair – that was a start.
The interior of Robert’s van, usually filled with groceries for the school, was packed with everything Jannie had accumulated over the past three years in student accommodation, plus Robert’s tools, which ranged from a coal hammer to the sort of screwdrivers used by watch repairers. The hand itself, aluminium, unbelievably delicate, had its own carton protected by his sleeping bag.
They parked in the Scaife studio. Ned was there to meet them and had somehow managed to open the big double doors, closed since the last of Gerald Scaife’s enormous seascapes had been taken out. Robert drove inside cautiously; there was even space enough for the ramp to be lowered and for him to manoeuvre his wheelchair to the concrete floor.
He shook Ned’s hand and they moved away so that Jannie, now in the driver’s seat, could operate the ramp. As it raised itself and clicked into place, Robert gazed up and around, amazed.
‘It’s like a cathedral,’ he said, forgetting that he had been nervous about this moment.
Ned laughed. ‘Of all comparisons! Gerald Scaife was, well, profane. No other word for it. When you meet our uncle Rory you will understand what I mean. Cornwall produces such characters now and then. They should be pirates. It’s hard to take them on dry land.’