First Friends

by Marcia Willett

  First Friends

  Also by Marcia Willett

  A Week in Winter

  A Summer in the Country

  The Children’s Hour

  The Birdcage

  First Friends

  Marcia Willett

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  FIRST FRIENDS. Copyright © 1995 by Marcia Willett. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Design by Jane Adele Regina

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-30662-5

  ISBN-10: 0-312-30662-8

  First published in Great Britain by Headline Book Publishing, a division of Hodder Headline PLC, as Those Who Serve

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  To Roddy

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to Cate Paterson, my editor, who acted as midwife to the

  birth of this book and encouraged me through the labour pains.

  First Friends

  Prologue

  1981

  Cassandra Wivenhoe stood at the foot of the open grave and watched her daughter’s coffin being lowered into the Devon earth. She thrust her hands into the pockets of her dark grey wool suit and swallowed several times. She simply must not think of Charlotte, lying there, alone and unprotected: soon to be abandoned to the windy moorland churchyard.

  ‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts . . . ’

  The secrets of our hearts! She looked up and into the eyes of Kate Webster, her oldest and closest friend, whose compassionate gaze stiffened Cass’s spine and gave her a small measure of courage. She blinked back tears, remembering Kate’s words: ‘If you go on playing Russian roulette, one of these days you’ll get the bullet.’

  But I didn’t want anyone else to suffer, Cass cried silently. Not my children! Not Charlotte! She was only fifteen!

  ‘. . . to take unto Himself the soul of our dear daughter . . . ’

  Despite herself, images superimposed themselves on the churchyard scene. Charlotte; as a baby, as a small child playing with Kate’s twins, as a bigger girl learning to cook in a too-large apron—her face serious and intent—on her pony, and then, as a teenager, shy and awkward . . .

  No! screamed the voice inside Cass’s head. I can’t bear it! It is simply not to be borne!

  ‘ . . . earth to earth . . .’

  Handfuls of damp black moorland soil thudded softly on to the wooden lid, breaking into crumbs.

  She jerked her head up and met Kate’s eyes again. She saw that Kate’s own hands were balled into fists and she knew that Kate was willing her some of her own strength.

  Cass swallowed, her face twitching pitifully and gave Kate an infinitesimal nod.

  ‘. . . in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection . . . ’

  MEMORIES CROWDED UNBIDDEN INTO Kate’s head: so many scenes and conversations, a whole way of life that had finally brought them to this graveyard on a wild autumn afternoon. Through unshed tears and a whole shared past, Kate looked back.

  Part One

  One

  1964-68

  The Isle of Wight, ghostly and featureless, seemed to float on a sea of liquid glass. A faint, thin pencil line of silver indicated the horizon where it merged with a sky of a uniform grey-white. There was a brightness, a gentle glow to the late-autumn afternoon, a promise of sunshine yet to be fulfilled. Kate, scrunching slowly across the beach at Stake’s Bay, was gradually adjusting to her new surroundings. Accustomed to the sandy beaches, rocky outcrops and towering cliffs of the West Country, these shingly flat shores and broad esplanades, with the worn stretches of grassed areas behind them, seemed tame to her. Even the behaviour of the sea itself was much more domesticated here. It lay placidly against the land, retreating calmly, advancing demurely, quite unlike its boisterous, wild poundings on the north Cornish Coast.

  Kate glanced into the shelters that were placed at intervals along the esplanade. She was beginning to recognise the elderly regulars who sat there like so many spiders waiting to trap the unwary victim with friendly little nods and bravely pathetic smiles. They were lonely, of course, and so was she, but she knew that if she went too close she would be drawn in by the flying strand of a casual greeting and caught in a web of gently banal conversation which would wind inexorably around her independence, curtailing the freedom of her walk. Almost it was tempting. There would be a certain companionship in sitting idly, half anaesthetised by the gentle hum of reminiscences, knowing that any half-hearted struggles to escape would be obstructed by the sticky flow of talk flowing over and around her.

  Kate hardened her heart and turned her head away. Her husband, Mark, had gone to sea for seven weeks and it was early days. Remembering all the advice and warnings that she had received from well-meaning friends on her wedding day nearly two months before, Kate stuck her chin out, thrusting her fists more firmly into her duffel coat pockets. She had no intention of admitting defeat and rushing home the first time that the submarine sailed although it would have helped to have known a few other people in Alverstoke before Mark had left. He didn’t know anyone either. How could he when he had come straight from Britannia Royal Naval College and Fourth Year Courses to HMS Dolphin, the submarine base at Gosport?

  Watching the Isle of Wight ferry ploughing out from behind the sea wall, Kate let herself realise how much she missed her closest friend. Cassandra and she, both twelve years old, had first met at boarding school on the north Somerset coast on the edge of the Quantock Hills. The friendship had meshed smoothly and firmly at once. Kate, coming from a home overflowing with brothers, a sister and dogs and presided over by two loving generous parents, had listened, eyes stretched, as Cass, an only child, talked about nannies and Army quarters and her father—now a General—at his wits’ end after her mother’s death in a car accident.

  ‘Rumour has it,’ disclosed Cass, biting into a forbidden doughnut, ‘that she was eloping with her lover.’

  Kate’s eyes grew rounder.

  ‘Gosh!’ she breathed. ‘But can you elope if you’re already married?’

  Cass shrugged, the details were unimportant. She licked up some jam. ‘Ran away, then. Anyway, the car was a write-off. I can’t really remember her. I was only two.’

  ‘Your poor father.’

  ‘Devastated, poor old dear. And he simply doesn’t know what to do with me now I’m growing up. That’s why he’s sent me out here, to the back of beyond, for the next five years. He thinks I’ll be safe from temptation.’

  Even the way she spoke the word gave it a flavour of excitement and promise. Something to be sought rather than avoided.

  The five years had passed, punctuated with crushes on Cliff Richard and Adam Faith followed by agonising infatuations with other girls’ brothers. They had played lacrosse and tennis, rode and swum, passed examinations by the skins of their teeth, chaffed over puppy fat and spots and then, one day, they had woken up and it was all over. The schooldays that had stretched so endlessly ahead were now a thing of the past.

  ‘But we’ll stay in touch.’

  They stood together in the study that they had shared for the last year, their things packed, shelves and desk tops emptied, and looked at each other.

  Cassandra, blue-eyed, tall, full-breasted, her long fair hair twisted into a French pleat, was elegant in a cashmere twin set and a navy blue pleated skirt, pearls in place.

  Kate grinned. ‘D’you remember sneaking out to see Expre
sso Bongo?’

  ‘And that year I got twelve red roses and a Valentine card from Moira’s brother and they were confiscated?’

  They roared with laughter.

  Kate, with her mop of unruly brown curls and grey eyes, was shorter and stockier than her friend and made no attempt at elegance. She wore honey-coloured tweeds; going-home clothes.

  They hugged and hugged.

  ‘You must come and stay. We’ll have lots of fun.’

  They separated. Cass went to her father’s flat in London for a year of relaxation and to think—very vaguely—about getting some sort of job. Kate went to her home in Cornwall to think—very reluctantly—about attending a course on cookery or shorthand typing. Both thought very seriously indeed about falling in love and getting married.

  At a party barely a year later, Cass met Tom Wivenhoe, a midshipman in his final year at Britannia Royal Naval College, and shortly afterwards Kate received a telephone call.

  ‘S’meee. How’s the typing course?’

  ‘Awful. Terrible. How are you?’

  ‘Never better. Listen, I’ve met this smashing chap. Now! How about coming to the Summer Ball at Dartmouth? You know, the naval college.’

  ‘Are you serious? The tickets are like gold dust!’

  ‘Aha! Trust your Fairy Godmother. You shall go to the ball, Cinderella.’

  ‘But who shall I . . . ?’

  ‘Tom’s got a friend called Mark Webster. His partner’s broken her leg or something and he’s at a loose end. He’s nice. Honestly. A bit quiet but tall, dark and handsome. What about it? We’ll book a double room at the Royal Castle. It will be just like school. What do you say?’

  ‘Oh, Cass . . .

  A year later, after Fourth Year Courses and a continual round of balls, ladies’ nights and parties, they were both married; Cass and Tom in August with Kate as bridesmaid and, two weeks later, Kate and Mark, with Cass as Matron of Honour. In a rapture of white silk, the thunder of the organ in their ears and a vision of married bliss in their dazed eyes, they passed beneath the arches of naval swords and out into the sunshine of Happy Ever After.

  On their return from honeymoon, Kate and Mark had moved into a furnished ground-floor flat in a lovely Georgian terrace in the village of Alverstoke, one road back from the beach. Kate had spent many happy hours making it as cosy and homelike as she could with their few possessions whilst Mark, now a Sub-Lieutenant of sufficient standing for the single gold stripe around each cuff to have lost its obvious newness, went daily into Dolphin to complete his submariner’s specialisation course.

  Cass and Tom were in Alverstoke too. He was the only other married man on the course and he and Mark were drawn together, more by their newly-married status and the long-standing relationship between the girls than by any similarity of character or outlook. They started to adopt a more serious and responsible air than the rest of the course who were living in the Mess and whose main topics of conversation were still parties and girls and arrangements for drinking sessions in the pub in the evenings. The four of them often got together for informal suppers at Kate and Mark’s flat or at Cass and Tom’s cottage and sometimes met late on Sunday mornings in the Anglesea Arms for a pint. Tom and Cass often had other members of the course round at the cottage for curry suppers but when Kate tentatively suggested that they might do the same at the flat, Mark said that he had quite enough of them during the day, thanks very much and, although Cass and Tom seemed to have a great deal of fun, Kate was pleased that Mark seemed content with her company.

  For Kate, being a naval wife was endowed with far more glamour and responsibility than being any other sort of wife except, perhaps, a doctor’s or a vicar’s. Her mother—and others—had warned her about the loneliness of her life to come, the difficulties involved in dealing with emergencies and moving households from one base to another, often all alone. She had felt pride that she would be ‘doing her bit’ and making sacrifices herself in order that Mark might do a demanding job involving national security whilst having the comfort and support of a home and family in the background to which he could return.

  Even so, Kate was beginning to realise how very long a day could be. It was so difficult to spin things out. She had always been an early riser and found it impossible to laze on in bed in the mornings. She would deal with the solid fuel stove and take as long as she could over her bath and breakfast. If it was as late as half-past nine when she’d finished, she felt that she’d done well but there were still twelve long, empty hours to be filled before the bedtime routine could be embarked upon. She made so little work all on her own that after a while she tended to let things mount up so that the jobs seemed worth doing. Preparing food took minutes—it wasn’t worth cooking elaborate meals just for herself—and took even less time to eat and she spent every mealtime with a book propped up in front of her plate. She had mentioned the possibility of getting a part-time job when the boat sailed but Mark had vetoed that at once: he wanted a wife at home when the boat was in, not off somewhere, working. Surely she could cope for a few weeks alone? he had said. After all they’d see little enough of each other as it was. And Kate, anxious to pull her weight—and who, at that point, had never been alone in her life—agreed that she could manage perfectly well and shelved the idea of a job at once.

  At the end of this course, Mark was appointed to one of the older conventional boats as Fifth Hand: Casing Officer and Correspondence Officer. It was a proud and a solemn moment—Real Life had started at last. Within a few weeks of Mark joining, the boat had sailed for Norway to ‘show the flag’. Tom’s career, thus far, had followed an identical pattern and when his boat had sailed for Middlesborough, Cass had hurried down to Devon to help her father, now retired, settle into his new home on the edge of Dartmoor.

  Kate trudged on. Mark’s letters arrived intermittently and she learned that it was difficult to get letters away from a submarine unless it was in port. Occasionally a helicopter would rendezvous with the boat to collect and deliver mail and then there would be a letter from him telling her how much he missed her and how he was looking forward to coming home. He wrote very little about his life on board but Kate didn’t mind that. It was so lovely to hear from him, to see the envelope with the familiar handwriting lying on the hall floor. She would carry it with her when she went out, to read it over and over, sitting in one of the shelters on the front or in the little cafe in the village. It made her feel less lonely, as she watched other women gossiping with their friends over coffee, to bring out Mark’s latest letter to read yet again.

  Coming back to the present, Kate realised that she was hungry and, turning her back on the sea, she headed for the road which swept along the sea front and curved back into the village. As she turned into the Crescent a small car passed her and pulled up at her gate. Kate quickened her step. The driver of the car was getting out, opening the gate and going in. It could have been a visitor going to one of the upstairs flats or to the basement but Kate prayed that it was someone for her. To talk to someone other than at a shop counter or on a bus would be bliss. She hurried up the road. Hearing the gate clang open, the woman glanced back. She was short and slight, with sandy feathery hair and a dusting of freckles on her pale, small-featured face. She wore sailcloth trousers and a jersey and to Kate’s nineteen years she looked very mature, twenty-eight at least.

  ‘Hi!’ She was turning back from the front door, smiling. ‘Could you be Kate Webster? Do say you are. Oh, good!’ as Kate nodded breathlessly. ‘My mission is to track you down and take you home to tea. I’ve only just heard about you.’ She made it sound as though Kate were a new species, just invented. ‘I had a letter from Simon this morning saying that no one knew you were here. It was too bad of Mark to go off like that without introducing you to the Wardroom but he’s a new boy so we’ll have to forgive him. I’m Mary Armitage.’

  Kate was aware that her hand was being pumped briskly up and down and that Mary’s smile had a fierce frowning quality, rat
her quizzical and assessing. Behind this, however, she felt a real anxiety. Simon Armitage was Mark’s First Lieutenant and, if Kate knew that submarine Captains were God to their junior officers, she also knew that First Lieutenants were the Archangel Gabriel. She prayed that Mary wouldn’t want to come inside. Housekeeping had ceased to be important with Mark at sea and she could imagine Mary reporting the cobwebs, the pile of unironed clothes and the lack of cake or biscuits to Simon. Mary, however, was moving back down the path.

  ‘Can I carry you off with me? I’ve got to pick my son up from school and I daren’t be late. First term and all that. Then we can go home and have tea. I can drop you back later although, to be honest, you could walk it in ten minutes.’

  Kate found herself in the car and being driven away, schoolwards.

  ‘This is very kind of you,’ she began, rather shyly. ‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting some other wives. I wasn’t sure if there were any living near the base.’

  ‘You poor child. You’ll soon learn the ropes.’ Mary, sounding like a very senior Girl Guide, patted Kate’s arm. ‘There’s lots of wives to meet, all like you with husbands away. No need to be lonely again.’

  _______

  ‘BUT, HONESTLY, CASS, THAT’S what she said. “Learn the ropes!” I thought: it’ll be tying knots next. It’s the way they talk.’

  Kate’s relief at the sight of her old companion had been overwhelming. Cass and Tom were living in a tiny cottage near the church in the village and as soon as Cass had returned from Devon, Kate had rushed round to see her. Her new friends were very ready to integrate her into their society but Kate could already see a requirement to conform that was rather terrifying. The sight of Cass, piling a most unsuitable-looking tea—crisps, sausage rolls and shop-bought chocolate cake—on to the old deal table that was squashed into the corner of the sitting room, was immensely comforting. Kate thought of Mary Armitage’s home-made scones and cakes and jams and experienced a sense of release from pressure. Being with Cass was like taking off a tight corset or kicking off a pinching shoe.