by Ann Swinfen
Mr Elliot was sympathetic when she telephoned him, and said briskly that he would contact the music college at once about financial assistance for Roz.
‘She is too late to try for one of the regular scholarships, of course. Those will have been awarded before the summer vacation. But there is a Benefactors’ Fund which the Principal can use at his discretion, as well as some small bursaries which can be awarded after she arrives and takes the bursary exam. Please don’t worry, Mrs Milburn. We’ll sort something out. And please tell your husband how sorry I am. Nobody’s job seems safe these days, does it? However good you are at it.’
Kate began to feel a little better. It looked as though Beccy and Roz would be all right for the next year. There was nothing she could do about Stephen until he arrived home and they found out whether his A-Level results would gain him a place at one of the universities he had applied to. Otherwise they would have to start the mad dash of shopping around for a course through clearing. There would be his grant to sort out as well.
One thing at a time, she thought. If I can make sure things are settled for all three children for next year, then after that I will tackle Tom about what we are going to do ourselves.
On Thursday, two things happened. The first was a visit from Sofia. Roz had taken the bus into Charlborough to see Angie and go to the cinema in the evening. She was planning to stay overnight and come back the following morning. Beccy was at work in the bookshop. Kate still hadn’t seen Linda since she had arrived home, and was waiting to give her the book of photographs of Hungary she had brought as a present. Tom was somewhere about the house, but still avoiding her.
‘I’ve decided I’m not going to take a holiday, Mum,’ Beccy had said at breakfast. ‘I think I’d better stash my money away for emergencies.’
‘Don’t you think you need a break before term starts?’
‘Not really. It’s not tiring at the bookshop, except when we check the stock, and I really enjoy it. I’ll go back to Uni reasonably refreshed – and much richer!’
‘What about, er...Jerry?’
‘Jerry? Oh... Jerry! That’s all over with. It was pretty cooled off before I came home.’
Kate was thinking about this exchange as she came in from walking Toby on the rough ground at the top of the hill beyond the garden. As she hung up her coat she saw Sofia through the kitchen window, approaching the back door.
‘How lovely!’ said Kate, throwing the door open. ‘I’m longing for company and you’re just in time for a cup of tea.’
She ushered Sofia in and sat her down at the table. Then she noticed she was carrying Eva’s violin.
‘Heavens, Sofia, have you carried that all the way up the hill? It’s bad enough if you’re unencumbered.’
Sofia was a little breathless, but she smiled. ‘It must keep you fit, going up and down that hill all the time.’
‘I haven’t been doing much of that since we got back,’ said Kate, putting the mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits down on the table. ‘Not at all, in fact.’
‘Yes, Beccy and Chris explained. I’m so sorry.’ Sofia looked around. ‘Is your husband at home?’
‘He’s somewhere about. I’m afraid he’s brooding a good deal at the moment.’ It came to Kate suddenly that Sofia and Tom had never met. After the disaster of the dinner party she had not tried again to bring them together.
‘Roz is back from her music camp, full of excitement at going off to college when term starts. Stephen gets back tomorrow – at least that was the original plan. We’ve had no news since he went to France except one postcard from Avignon posted nearly two weeks ago.’
‘You’ll be glad to have them back.’
‘Yes,’ said Kate simply. ‘Yes, I will. But it won’t be for long. Now that this offer has been made to Roz, all three of them will be going away from home in a few weeks. It’s a bit of a shock, really. And with Tom not working, everything will be very strange. But we’ll sort something out. I’ll try to get a job.’
‘What I particularly wanted to see you about, Kate, was Roz.’
‘Roz?’ Kate was surprised. Sofia had met Roz a few times, but did not know her as well as she knew Beccy.
‘I want her to have the Guarneri.’
Kate stared at her, dumbfounded.
‘But, Sofia, you can’t possibly! I’ve no idea what it is worth, but it must be... tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? I haven’t a clue. Anyway, we couldn’t possibly accept.’
‘Kate, I do not play the violin. My mother would have wanted it to go to someone who will love it and play it and care for it.’
‘If you sold it, the money would keep you for years.’
‘I don’t want to sell it. I want to give it to your daughter, who is a talented violinist. Perhaps, some day, even a great one. And I would never have recovered the violin if you hadn’t taken me to Hungary.’
‘But it is far too valuable for us to accept. You must see that.’
Sofia looked at Kate. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I was alone, without family or friends. You brought me both. Now, I feel as though your family is also my family. In families, such things are perfectly possible.’
Kate leaned across the table and took both Sofia’s hands in hers. ‘Yes, I feel the same. I have a family, but I was very lonely. Now I have you, and... all the others in Hungary.’ She did not want to say their names. ‘I know what we will do – and this, too, is perfectly acceptable in a family. The Guarneri will remain your property, but you will lend it to Roz to play. We must have it valued, and make sure it is properly insured. Is that a solution?’
‘That is a perfect solution.’
After Sofia had gone back to her cottage, Kate took the violin up to Roz’s bedroom and laid it on the chest of drawers. She noticed that the room was much tidier since Roz had come home. Either the camp had forced habits of tidiness on her, or she was growing up enough to value it for herself.
And then the second unusual thing happened. Kate heard the front door close and, looking out of Roz’s window, saw Tom walking across to the garage and getting his car out. He swung the car round with a violent crunching of the gravel and she heard it turning out of the drive in the direction of the main road to Charlborough.
It was a good sign, she thought. It was the first time he had gone out of doors of his own volition since she had come home, and the first time he had gone away from the house since he had come back from Banford the day he was made redundant, two weeks ago now. She sighed with relief. She would leave it till the weekend, after Stephen was home, and then she would make Tom sit down and discuss the future.
* * *
Roz came back from Charlborough by the lunchtime bus on Friday, and Kate told her about the Guarneri. At first Roz went pale, then red, and she raced up to her bedroom. By the time Kate caught up with her she had the violin on her lap, stroking it like a cat.
‘Isn’t it beautiful, Mum? Oh, I can’t believe it!’
‘It’s amazing. Let me tell you the whole story of where it has been all this time.’
‘Just a minute.’ Roz flipped through her collection of CDs and selected one. The sound of the Bruch violin concerto poured out. Eva, playing the Guarneri. Kate turned away, thinking of Eva and Zsigmond, of Jakob Stern and his family driven away on the death march, of Zsigmond and Juliska with the patriots in the forest, of István watching the secret police taking his father away, of Juliska and the firing squad, of Magdolna and the figure of the mother and child.
‘Mum, what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ said Kate. ‘I’m just so glad we were able to recover the violin.’ And she told her the story they had heard in Budapest.
‘Of course, I can’t play like Eva Tabor,’ said Roz, ‘but shall I play something for you?’
‘Can you play the Bruch?’
‘It’s not the same without an orchestra.’ Reverently Roz picked up the violin, tightened the bow and began to tune the strings. Then she tucked it under her chi
n and started to play the violin part from the first movement. The rich lyrical melody sang out, filling the bedroom. They were so engrossed that they did not hear the back door open and close, and only when his feet clattered up the stairs and he appeared in the doorway did they realise that Stephen was home.
He looked magnificent. He was as bronzed as an Australian surfer and his hair was bleached fair with the sun. Kate thought he looked heavier, too. Not fat, but as though his body, which had been gangling and adolescent when he had gone away, had somehow solidified into adult male flesh. He looked like a man, and her heart gave a jerk that was somehow pity.
‘Where on earth did you get that violin?’ was the first thing he said. Even he could recognise the difference.
‘And hello to you too,’ said Kate.
‘Hi, Mum.’ He submitted to being kissed.
In a cascade of speech, both of them talking at once, they told him about Roz’s success at the music camp, about the offer of a place at college, about the recovery of the famous violin in Budapest, about Sofia’s loan to Roz of the Guarneri.
‘That’s great,’ he said kindly. ‘Looks as though you’ve really fallen on your feet, Rozie. Mum, I’m absolutely starving – is there any lunch going?’
‘We were just going to have some. Come down to the kitchen and tell us about your holiday while I make us something.’
As they went down the stairs, Kate thought: Not one of them has asked me about my trip to Hungary, not even Beccy. It’s almost as if it never happened. Of course, Roz and Stephen left while I was still here, and have come back to find me here again, so to them I might never have been away. But neither Beccy nor Tom has so much as mentioned it. The whole journey seems as insubstantial as an illusion. Yet István has changed me, altered the very essence of me. And they see nothing.
Stephen was giving them a day-by-day account of his journey and a series of hair-raising adventures involving lost wallets, a tumble into a canal, and an encounter with a frisky bull.
‘We found this really fantastic place called Villevent, not far from Avignon, and stayed there most of the time. Camped in this farmer’s field, who was really great. They gave us eggs and melons and vegetables, and we also went into Villevent for meals at the bar-tabac.’
‘How’s your French now?’ asked Roz.
‘Brilliant,’ said Stephen, modestly. ‘Mick absolutely refused to speak it, so I had to do all the talking. I can understand just about everything now, and at least I can make myself understood when I speak.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve probably picked up a Provençal accent.’
‘We all went there on holiday once when you were quite small,’ said Kate, ‘but I don’t suppose you remember. When we went to Brittany we tried to persuade you to speak French, but you never would – at least nothing beyond “une glace, s’il vous plaît”.’
‘It’s much easier when you have to speak it, in order to survive.’
‘So it is.’
‘I mean, we’d have starved in Villevent if I hadn’t been able to go into the village shop and ask for things. There wasn’t a supermarket where you could help yourself, and nobody spoke English – or only a little.’
He started to describe the breathless journey back, rushing to catch the ferry, when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence with his mouth open.
‘I’ve just thought – have my A-Level results come?’
‘The letter is in the hall, on the telephone table,’ said Kate, who had heated up soup and was making sandwiches. ‘But why not have your lunch first?’
He ignored her, running out of the kitchen and down the hall.
There was a long silence, in which Roz and Kate looked at each other apprehensively. Then Stephen gave a howl and they heard the front door slamming shut.
‘Oh, no,’ said Kate.
‘Watch out, Mum, the soup’s going to boil over.’
Kate grabbed the pan and pulled it to the side of the stove. Through the window she saw Stephen running out of the garden and up the hill into the rough turf and scrub which lay beyond Craigfast House. She thought, sickeningly, of the outcrop of rock up there, which ended in a sheer cliff overhanging Castle Terrace, two hundred feet below.
Things like exam results can be so devastating when you are young.
‘You have your lunch,’ she urged Roz. ‘I’m going after him.’
‘Shall I come too?’
‘No, better not. We don’t want to smother him.’
Kate went out of the back door from the kitchen and began to scramble up the hill behind the house as fast as she could go. At first she could not see him, then she caught sight of his red sweatshirt ahead of her. He was still running, but not so fast. As she watched, he flung himself down behind a clump of gorse, a place where he had sometimes taken his books when he was studying for his exams. She slowed her pace, and came up with him quietly, sitting down beside him on the tussocked grass. He did not look at her, but thrust out the sheet of paper in his hand, crumpled where his fist had been closed over it: Mathematics C, Physics F, Chemistry F.
She could not believe it. He had worked so hard. Surely there must be some mistake? Then she remembered his unease after the exams, his worries about whether he would be good enough. And her own doubts when he decided to switch from arts to science subjects.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said tightly. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve let you down.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She put her arm round his shoulder, laying the paper on the ground and weighting it down with a small stone.
‘I tried, I really tried. I worked as hard as I possibly could.’
‘I know that. We all know that. I was worried you were working too hard. Nobody could have worked harder.’
‘Then why?’ He gave a rasping sob. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ He choked, and the tears began to fall. Kate put her arms around him, and he stopped trying to be brave. His arms and shoulders were hard and muscular, and she thought, This is a man, this is a grown man now. But he cried as he had done when Benjy died, when he was only ten.
* * *
Tom did not come home until half-past eight, chewed his dinner in silence and then shut himself in the little back room they had assigned as his study, but which he had never made use of since they had moved to Craigfast House. Kate badly wanted to talk to him about Stephen, who had gone to bed straight after dinner with a headache. She had spoken briefly to Beccy, who was going out to the pub after dinner with Chris. Beccy, though sympathetic, was not able to offer much help. She had gained straight As in her exams the previous year, and been accepted by the university of her choice. Like Kate she was baffled by Stephen’s results, and suggested tentatively to him at dinner that he should appeal.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Obviously it’s all I’m worth, isn’t it? I’m a failure, a total failure. I’d better see if I can get a job at the chicken factory. Slaughtering and plucking chickens, that’s about all I’m good for.’
Roz looked sick at this, cutting up her veggie cheeseburger. Tom stared at him blankly. Kate suspected that he had not even taken in what they were talking about.
Tension in the house, which had eased briefly when Roz arrived home, built up with a vengeance. Stephen veered from refusing to talk about his results to pacing back and forth wherever Kate happened to be, talking and talking. One moment he would be going over what he knew he had done right on the papers, which proved he should have had better marks; the next he was kicking the furniture, saying again that he was useless and ought to go job hunting at the chicken factory.
One day he started to sound quite serious about this, instead of just blustering, and Kate said briskly, ‘Come on, we are going to talk about this sensibly.’
She sat him down on the terrace, where the wind was blowing off the sea with the first chill of autumn in it. The cries of seagulls circling the harbour floated up to them.
‘Now,’ she said firmly, ‘point one: you are not going to start looking for a
job. You know how difficult it is even for people with degrees to get jobs.’
‘I don’t mind what I do. With Dad out of work, we need anything I can contribute.’
‘Not regardless of the cost to your future.’
Tom had still said nothing about his redundancy money, and no money had appeared in the account. The bank balance was diminishing with frightening rapidity. Kate was being very careful about household expenses and thought with relief that the large fuel bills would not come until after Christmas.
‘I’ve already made enquiries about a teaching job. I might at least get some supply work. That will help.’
‘I want to be some help too.’ He sat with his hands clasped loosely between his knees. She looked at the strong knuckles and the tanned skin. It seemed only a short time ago that those hands had been small and plump, clutching her skirt.
‘Of course you do, and I’m quite happy for you to get a holiday or weekend job like Beccy. But you know perfectly well that to have got this far, and to throw it all away, is just stupid.’
He said nothing, staring out at an oil rig support vessel heading out to sea. They were sitting so still that a large herring gull, crying raucously, flew into the garden and settled on a stone urn still filled with scrawny wallflowers Kate had forgotten to root out in the early summer.
‘I had a word with Mr Ramage,’ she said carefully. She had, somewhat guiltily, phoned the headmaster at his home. ‘He thinks you should go back to school for another year.’
‘I don’t want to go back. I’d feel such a fool.’
‘Apparently there are a few others going back – some to do resits, some to take extra A Levels. He’s planning to form a small third-year sixth.’
Stephen clenched his hands, then sighed. ‘I don’t think I really want to resit the same subjects. I don’t think I have the right kind of brain for science.’
‘We always did think you were going to take arts subjects – English and history...’