Uphill All The Way

by Sue Moorcroft

  Hunkering down more comfortably on the sofa, Adam folded his arms. 'Shelley's choices; I wanted Patrick and Mark. But what can you do against a woman who gets up out of her hospital bed and visits the registrar herself?'

  'Did she do that?'

  'Yes, she did.' His smile was caustic. 'Patrick and Mark are their middle names.'

  She absorbed the idea of someone who didn't view the names bestowed upon shared children as joint decisions.

  He let his head tilt back. His jaw-line was a firm sweep. 'I indulged her too much. Laughed at the more outrageous pieces of selfishness and quite admired her for doing what it took to get her own way. She got used to it.'

  It was deep into the night, now. Judith would have ended the conversation, found Adam a quilt and crept away upstairs so he could sleep. But Adam, now he'd begun, seemed in the mood to talk and talk.

  'My mother mutters darkly that Caleb takes after Shelley. Does that mean Matthias takes after me? I'd like to think so, but Matthias is impressive. He's intelligent, motivated, good-looking, and engaged to the most amazing girl. Davina. The Divine Davina.'

  Because he'd shut his eyes as he talked, Judith could study him properly. The tightness of the skin across his cheekbones under the fans of his lashes, the burst of deep laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, the cleft in his chin. Where many men, like Tom, sagged and slackened with age, somehow Adam seemed to have tautened and become wirier. 'How is she amazing?'

  'Apart from being frighteningly clever and hard working, she's as gorgeous as Lara Croft.' One of Adam's eyes opened slightly to look at her. 'Honestly, she's a goddess.'

  'Personality?'

  'Definitely personality-plus; cheerful, interesting, caring. They're going to have the most phenomenal children.'

  'But is Caleb more fun?'

  The eye shut again. 'Certainly less predictable.' He gave several huge yawns. 'My boys are like the tale about the chap with two really good friends. The chap gets drunk and ends up in jail, and one friend gets him a solicitor and hides the escapade from his wife. But the other friend is beside him in the cell, saying, "Damn that was fun!" ' He yawned again.

  A little like Adam getting drunk with her tonight. 'I ought to go up and let you sleep.'

  'Will you be able to sleep, if you go to bed?'

  She shook her head.

  He smiled. He had a really nice smile. It could be gentle or sympathetic, and, sometimes, wicked. 'Sleep's overrated. I can sleep any time. I'll stay with you a little longer.' He pulled himself more upright. 'You and I went to the same school, didn't we?'

  It took her by surprise that he realised. Maybe Melanie had told him. 'I believe we did.'

  'I recognised you the instant I walked into the kitchen when you first called. Judith Morgan. We had a conversation once outside the school gates about Polos and if they'd rot your teeth.'

  He remembered all that! She would never have admitted it herself, in case it led him to suspect the gigantic crush she'd had on him. Weakly, she offered, 'I still like Polos.'

  'Me, too, the mint ones are my favourite. And the fruit, of course. I'm not keen on the butterscotch or the citrus.'

  'New fangled inventions.'

  'Absolutely. And the spearmint, with those flecks, they look as if they're made of washing powder.'

  His eyes drooped again. 'You always insisted on being called Judith; the guys from your year used to sing out, "Hey Jude!" after you, and you'd get sniffy.'

  Her own eyelids were feeling heavy. Maybe she ought to go up to bed after all and leave him to what was left of the night. 'Paul McCartney sang it so much better.'

  And despite everything, despite the heavy, gluey despair in her heart, despite the gallons of scalding tears waiting behind her eyes for the moment when she stopped thinking about other things and thought again about Giorgio, she couldn't help feeling pleased that someone had noticed and remembered these things about her.

  'I always thought it was kind of a shame,' he murmured, drowsily. 'I thought it would be nice to call you Jude. The name conjures up someone who dares to be different, fun. Interesting.'

  She wasn't altogether sure what to say to that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Morning. Early. Judith opened her eyes to the sun-filled sitting room and discovered that eventually, last night, she'd fallen asleep, her legs curled and cramped and her head on the sofa arm.

  Her face felt creased, her mouth and eyes dry.

  Adam was asleep at the other end of the sofa, feet still on the table, arms folded, head propped against the upholstered wing of the sofa as if he'd just dropped off for five minutes during Grandstand.

  He'd stayed, she remembered, because of Giorgio.

  Giorgio.

  Sickness clutched her, but her eyes were too dry for tears.

  Her mind had held the knowledge of his death cradled complete while she slept, ready to give it back to her now with sickening clarity. Giorgio was dead, and very soon would be committed to the ground of the island he'd loved.

  The floor heaving like the deck of a boat beneath her feet, she went to the computer in the alcove and left it to start up while she visited the bathroom, brushed her teeth and showered. Sliding into an enveloping cotton robe, she returned quietly to the computer. Adam slept on.

  The World Wide Web was a wonderful thing, she acknowledged, contemplating the elegant web-site of The Times of Malta. The Times could be accessed as easily in Brinham as in Sliema.

  Clicking on the correct link, she watched the social and personal page flicking onto her screen. She scrolled down and, even though she was expecting it, Giorgio's name leapt out and stopped her breath.

  ZAMMIT. On July 27, at St. Luke's Hospital, GIORGIO, aged 42, passed away suddenly, comforted by the rites of Holy Church. He leaves to mourn his irreparable loss his wife Johanna née Grech, his daughters Alexia and Lydia, his parents Agnello and Maria, sister Josephine and her husband Paul Gauci, his uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces and friends. - R.I.P. The funeral leaves St. Luke's Hospital on Tuesday July 29 at 1.30 p.m. for Stella Maris parish church, Sliema, where Mass praesente cadavere will be said at 2.30 p.m., followed by interment in the family grave at the Santa Maria Addolorata Cemetery. Family flowers only.

  She'd guessed that Maria and Agnello would place the obituary in The Times as well as in the Maltese papers, In-Nazzjon or L-Orizzont. Giorgio had been a businessman, his death would need declaiming in both of the island's languages. She stared at the formal words.

  Adam stirred, and she realised he was awake.

  She had to clear her throat, concentrate to make herself speak. 'Obituary.' She nodded at the screen. 'I must go.'

  He frowned for a moment. 'To the funeral?'

  'I have to be with him.'

  He didn't precisely try to dissuade her, but he rubbed his unshaven chin, making it rasp. 'Somebody ought to go with you. I volunteer, if you can't scare up anyone better. You'll need an ally. The family will shut you out. Feelings will be running high. A mother and father have lost their son, children have lost their father. The wife will act with wounded dignity and ignore you.'

  It was an uncomfortable picture. 'You're right,' she said, mechanically, 'what was I thinking? But thank you. You've been really kind, Adam, especially considering that I threw you out of your home.'

  'You're having a rough time.'

  The doorbell shrilled. They raised their eyebrows at each other.

  'Half-past seven?' An unusual hour for visitors. Judith pushed the chair away from the computer.

  Adam stood up, winced, and lifted a protesting hand to his head. The right hand. He must be feeling rough. 'Do you want me to answer it?'

  'I'll do it.' At the front door Judith squinted out over the chain, pain lancing across her eyes at an attack from the cruel morning sun.

  The figure on the step snapped, 'It's me.'

  'Molly?' She unchained the door. 'What are you...? I mean, come in.'

  Molly's Lexus was pulled up at the kerb, very
gold in the early sunlight. Judith frowned as she made out solid shapes crouching on the back seat. Suitcases?

  'Can I stay for a bit?' asked Molly, calmly, taking off her cardigan and smoothing her hair. 'I've left Frankie.' She took in Judith in her robe and bare feet, and Adam with his slept-in his clothes. 'Who's he?'

  The morning grew hazy with heat. Judith stood the door to the garden open, and filled the kettle.

  After making room for Molly's things by removing all the clothes that she'd just stowed in the spare wardrobe, she occupied herself with small chores, wondering about her sister and feeling nauseous and headachy. It was a long time since she'd been drunk enough to have a hangover and the whole unpleasant process had not improved.

  The computer hummed gently, the 3-D design on the screensaver rolling slowly through its contortions. She didn't need to click the mouse and let Giorgio's obituary beam again from the screen and jolt her with fresh pain. It was there, but she hadn't quite brought herself to remove it. In fact, she could almost have lit candles around it, an illumination in a plastic shrine.

  The sounds of Molly moving purposefully about in the spare room filtered through the house; the wardrobe door opening, shutting, opening, shutting, the drawers of the chest groaning in and out.

  It was a kind of inverted déjà vu. A few short weeks ago she'd shut herself in Molly's spare room to unpack her life methodically from her suitcases. And now here was Molly, returning the favour.

  Judith stepped out onto the patio, the flagstones warm beneath her bare feet, looking up the long narrow garden at the lawn, and Adam beyond it, cutting back some shrub that grew in an enormous spray of cerise flowers against the ochre tones of the back wall. He had far too much alcohol in his system to drive straight home and she'd brushed away his offers to walk the three miles or so to his new place, or to call a cab.

  He'd kept her company when she needed someone to be with. She wasn't going to heave him out prematurely just because her sister was taking her turn to have a crisis.

  'Coffee? Tea?' she called.

  He shaded his eyes to look back at her. 'Tea would be nectar.'

  Borrowing his pragmatic approach of the evening before, she made two mugs and took him them both.

  He grinned appreciatively. 'The only thing better than a cup of tea is two cups.'

  Back in the kitchen, she jumped to find Molly waiting.

  Molly was composed, neat in black trousers and a cherry red short-sleeved jumper, her hair brushed loose and shiny over her shoulders. 'Sorry that I didn't feel like talking straight away.'

  Judith slid her arm around her sister, looking down at the pale face. 'That's all right. How are you doing?'

  'OK.' Molly didn't look OK. She looked glum. 'I'll get the coffee on, shall I?'

  She was going to take over, Judith could see, putting herself in charge of the kettle was the first step. She wondered whether to form some kind of protest, but realising that a) Molly probably needed something to do, and b) Judith didn't enjoy chores enough to hog them, refrained, as Molly busily poured the steaming water from the kettle into the mugs.

  Feeling slightly less nauseous in the fresh air, Judith carried their drinks out to the bench.

  'So.' She made herself concentrate on Molly. 'Tell me what happened. Do I have to go round and smash his face in?'

  Molly didn't bother to smile. 'As long as I don't have to stay with him any more, I don't care what happens.' Her entire body was loose, still.

  A silence.

  'Look.' Judith linked the soft arm and drew her sister closer. 'I don't want to compromise your privacy, but I think you're going to have to give me a few hints. He hasn't been knocking you about, has he?'

  A head shake.

  'Having an affair?'

  'No.'

  Judith waited.

  Eventually, Molly sighed. 'I just can't bear him any more, ruling the roost like a Victorian, treating me like a skivvy. Never showing me any affection, thinking it's fine to ogle other women and ignore me. He even told me that I bored him, and he wouldn't...' She blinked fiercely. 'He wouldn't be able to do it if we tried, because I don't arouse him. So I packed.'

  Judith gave Molly's arm a sympathetic squeeze. 'Good for you.' What else could she say? Frankie had always ruled the roost, and always treated Molly like a skivvy. Equality had come in the seventies without Frankie ever taking out his subscription.

  But saying that he couldn't get an erection for her, well that was just nasty.

  It was difficult, given recent history, to protest about Molly landing herself in Judith's newly acquired space, but this wasn't a great moment to be landed upon. She was sympathetic, of course she was sympathetic, she loved Moll to death. But it was tough to 'be there' for her just at this exact moment, when all she wanted to do was sit in the sunshine and think of Giorgio.

  Her eyes were beginning to burn ominously, as if her tears were preparing to flood out again.

  Molly nodded in Adam's direction. 'When's he going?'

  'When he's not so full of booze.'

  With a quavering sigh, Molly put her hand over her eyes. 'Honestly Judith, you can't know what Frankie's like! He's so grumpy all the time...'

  Judith watched Adam, how he squinted against the bright light.

  ' - dictatorial, criticising and carping...'

  He had his back to them, his cowboy legs planted firm against the earth as he worked his way methodically over the shrub, snipping off a leggy branch and snip, snip, snipping it into smaller pieces into a garden refuse sack. He seemed to be able to work the secateurs OK with his right hand, he'd slipped it into some kind of protective splint, leaving his thumb and finger free to lever against a projection where his fingers used to be. Probably the 'gizmo' he'd talked about.

  He'd been so kind last night. Had seemed to instantly understand the depth and futility of her pain, amplified because her grief would forever go unacknowledged by Giorgio's family.

  Oh Giorgio! Will it always hurt this much?

  ' - and he should've found someone else years ago if he's found me unexciting for such a long time. Shouldn't he? Judith?' Molly waited.

  Stricken, Judith turned. 'I'm sorry Moll, I didn't - '

  Molly's face flooded dull crimson and her eyes blazed. 'I'm sorry if I interrupted something with my obviously inopportune appearance, but is it too much to ask that you stop lusting after the gardener just long enough to attend to my woes for a change? Honestly, it's different when it's you, isn't it? Talk about selfish.'

  Misery closed in. Judith had to swallow hard before she could speak. 'I'm not 'lusting after' Adam. He stayed last night because...' She breathed in. ' - because Giorgio died yesterday.'

  A silence. Shock dragged down Molly's jaw. 'Don't be stupid,' she denied uncertainly. 'How could he?'

  Wearily, Judith let her head tip back. 'Do you want me to show you the obituary? He had an accident, he was in a coma, which is why I came home. And now he's been released.'

  And then Molly was crying, and Judith let her fall into her arms. 'I'm sorry,' Molly wept. 'I'm sorry, I didn't know! But please don't ask me to go back to Frankie, Judith. It's been horrible, hardly speaking, sleeping in the spare room.'

  That explained the underwear. 'Of course not.' Judith closed her eyes as her sister cried in great soaking gulps.

  She shouldn't have come home.

  She couldn't give much support to her sister's unhappiness or her mother's frailty. Tomorrow, she should be standing on the rock that was Malta as Giorgio Zammit became part of it forever, there to see his grave. How, from green, leafy Brinham, could she feel close to him? Sense him in the yellow stone and blue sea of the place he'd lived, the place they'd loved, feel proof that he'd existed?

  In Malta she would have been able to talk to his friends about him, Charlie, Carmelo, even Anton and Gordon, bring him back to life in their stories, his sense of humour and his gentleness.

  Perhaps, in time, she would be able to overlay the inner vision that hau
nted her, of Giorgio, helpless and empty, like a big baby in a white gown on a white hospital bed with his head bandaged and his life lived for him by a handful of tubes.

  Even as she patted Molly's heaving back, making comforting noises, framing soothing sentences, other words were forming in her head.

  I can go back.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Judith sat on the clifftop at Ghar Lapsi and stared at the glittering sea.

  She'd driven there straight from Luqa airport and made no attempt to see the funeral cortège set out from the imposing buildings of St. Luke's Hospital, nor to slip into the church to hear the mass said for the repose of Giorgio's soul or skulk among the mourners at the cemetery.

  Instead, she watched the delicate movements of the sea where they'd dived together and been happy, and remembered loving a man with a joyful heart. Even if he'd proved to be a bit butterfingered with insurance premiums.

  The cliff top - more of a broad shelf, really, as a second cliff rose behind her - was scrubby, but she found a slab of rock and sank down. It was quiet up here, she'd positioned herself away from the restaurant with its tables on the terrace, the concrete pathways, the steps to the sea. She could gaze down into the bay sheltered by its arm of rock and not be bothered by the tourists or the fishermen.

  Having learnt respect for the power of summer sunshine she'd brought a big bottle of water in her bag, and wore a black straw hat.

  The sea was ultra blue, the waves shattering the sun's reflection into smithereens of blinding light. Insignificant waves today, sighing against the dark craggy rocks with little spray. There might be divers down, a slight choppiness like that wouldn't affect them. It was when there was a swell that the currents were treacherous. Divers died, dragged out past the reef with its sponges and coral, or trapped, slapped about somewhere in the underwater cavern system.

  The sea was mighty.

  But today was a beautiful day for a dive. The light would be filtering through chinks in the rock and into the caves, rainbow wrasse, rays and moray would flit through weed swaying with the motion of the sea. Divers would fin through the near-silent, turquoise world in pairs, communicating with occasional gestures and signals.