Uphill All The Way

by Sue Moorcroft

  Out to sea, looking closer than it was, the dark shape of the tiny island of Filfla, a nature reserve and possibly, depending on what you believed, the home of two-tailed lizards. A couple of fishing boats surged across the waves perhaps half-a-mile out. The rest of the sea within eyeshot was empty.

  Except, on the horizon to the left, purple through the heat haze, the oil rigs some moron had allowed to wait there for their next job. Resolutely, she ignored their spikiness.

  It was probably how it had looked the day Giorgio was injured, the squatting presence of Filfla and one or two boats. One, at least. One that carried jet skis.

  It was almost evening by the time she roused and rose stiffly from the rock, her eyes burning from the salty breeze. She could have stayed all night, watching the sun set and the sky turn shrimp pink, purple, then black. But she needed the loo.

  After the public toilets she retrieved the hire car from the car park and drove towards Tarxien and the Santa Maria Addolorata cemetery. In the residential areas the buildings were turning tawny as the sun angled low, the forest of television aerials glinting above.

  Tiredness crept up on her. The day had begun early, she'd only just made her flight because the southbound M1 was closed owing to a chemical spillage. Tight with anxiety she'd had to find a way onto the M11 and then M25 and pass London to the east.

  She'd left without telling anybody.

  No doubt she'd catch hell from Molly. Molly didn't understand that Judith had to do things her own way. And if that way included booking a flight and leaving for Malta before Molly was awake... She could almost hear her elder sister's scandalised complaints. 'Fancy just going off like that without telling a soul! Leaving me a note to say make yourself at home and there's plenty of food! What a way to treat a guest! That's just like you, Judith...'

  What was surprising was that Molly should expect her to be anything other. Who else would she be like?

  She left the car outside the black, wrought iron cemetery gates that were patterned to echo the gothic stone arches beyond. The flower stalls in the car park were being closed up, the stallholders calling to one another as they worked. A pretty girl flashed a smile as Judith asked her if she'd sell her a single white orchid. 'Of course, madam.'

  The hilly cemetery was still except for the grumble of nearby traffic and the rushing of the wind. Funerals were over for the day and the dust had settled. There was no rolling grass here as in an English cemetery, just clumps of trees among the broad paved walks between the mausoleums and graves with sculpted figures that terraced the hillside. Having only been to Addolorata once before, she'd forgotten how big it was.

  She followed a couple up a succession of pathways that led, eventually, to recent graves.

  There was nothing there to indicate any connection with Giorgio. Elaborate wreaths, yes, but the names were wrong - Borg, Debono, Gatt. Her heart began to thud in panic as she walked up and down.

  Where was he?

  And then she remembered the words 'family grave' in the newspaper, and relief seeped in. Methodically, she returned to the older area, and continued to walk the paths. It was quite a place to cover and it took her some time, her nails digging into her palms and her legs feeling as if they belonged to someone else. She passed between the ranks of marble, the occasional black to punctuate the pale grey, plots arranged close together like terraced houses and some edged with wrought iron or with posts and chains. She'd thought that fresh flowers would give her the clue to a recent burial, but many of the graves were graced with sprays, along with candles burning in glass lanterns.

  The gates would close at dusk and she began to fear that she'd have to leave or be shut in. But then a significant burst of colour caught her eye, and she made her way between the stone crosses and exquisitely carved saints to a blaze of fresh flowers that spilled onto the graves on either side.

  And on the head of the plot, beside a mourning angel carved from marble, were the words she was looking for. Zammit Familja.

  The grave had been closed, gravediggers obviously prompt in hot countries. The floral tributes arranged before a series of marble plaques angled and ranked like pictures on a shelf, with the names of the Zammit family already passed inscribed beneath small oval photos.

  Reality hit her like one of Sliema Z Bus's buses: Giorgio was down there. Because Giorgio was dead. Separated from her now by six feet of soil and stone. And suddenly it was all too bald, too raw and real. Instead of the comfort she'd searched for, the resting-place was a place of horror.

  Forget the twinkling eyes, it seemed to say, no more laughing mouth and hungry lips. No more searching hands. It's all ended down here with a box thrust into the ground, and Giorgio trapped inside it.

  She closed her eyes and struggled to remember that this was better, better a proper death than to be a shell of a man at a hospital, a mockery and an insult.

  'I knew you wouldn't be long.'

  Judith staggered in shock on the sloping path as she spun around. 'Cass!' In a black dress overlaid with lace fluttering in the evening breeze, Cass clutched a white handkerchief. She'd aged ten years in the last months. Her eyes, washed with too many tears, were pink rimmed in the deepening folds of her face.

  Cass stepped closer, crossing herself. 'They don't know I'm here,' she said. 'I pretended I'd left some medication at home that I needed. I knew you'd be around. I watched Maria watching for you all day. She was so very relieved when you didn't come. Thank you for letting the family mourn.'

  Judith had lifted her arms to drag Cass into a fierce embrace, but now she let them drift down again to her sides. She was being thanked for not inflicting herself.

  It was a queer thought, and one that made her feel strange and distant. She hadn't fainted since she was a teenager, but now she felt hot and empty, her ears ringing. Her voice emerged reedily. 'But I'm mourning, too.'

  Cass's smile was thin. 'I know. I know, believe me, I know how it was between you. But they don't care. They want him for themselves.' She made a gesture as if clutching something to her heart.

  'I loved him.'

  Cass took out a brown leather purse and extracted a small item that glinted gold. Giorgio's crucifix, that he'd worn against his skin. She wiped wet cheeks with her handkerchief, then closed Judith's fingers around the gold. Her hands were cold. 'And he loved you. Only his body is here. You have his heart. Take it with you.' She turned and walked away, leaving Judith beside Giorgio's grave alone, feeling the gold warming in her hand.

  It was three days later when Judith pulled up outside her house in Lavender Row. She'd spent a couple of days with Uncle Richard, it calmed her to be with him. His wife, the lovely Erminia, had smiled her big, warm smile and was serenely unmoved that Judith was unwilling to join in dinners with her cousins Raymond, Lino and Rosaire and their families. Molly and her mother should be so restful, she thought, struggling to open with one hand the tall front door.

  Then Molly was bustling to meet her in the hall to offer a quick hug. 'I can't believe you've been all that way to go to a funeral.'

  Judith didn't bother explaining that she'd been 'all that way' not to go to a funeral. It was too complex. She was just grateful that Molly wasn't launching into a session of sighs over Judith's strange ways.

  Molly clasped her hands. 'I've done some shopping, there's a casserole in the oven, you'll be hungry.'

  'Um, thanks.' Casserole sounded stodgy and worthy, very Molly, and unappetising even though she hadn't eaten much recently. She thought longingly of an empty house and a full wine bottle. It didn't sound healthy, but it did sound attractive.

  In the kitchen, she found white wine in the fridge and red below the stairs. Excellent. She opened the white. 'Wine, Molly?'

  Molly looked surprised. 'Oh, no, thank you.' As if drinking wine were naughty.

  Judith poured herself a big glass, one of those enormous glasses meant to be quarter-filled with red wine to allow for breathing. She filled it. It took almost half the bottle. On the kit
chen table lay her mail, on top a white envelope with Jude written large and untidy across the front. She opened it.

  Jude,

  Your ferocious sister grudgingly told me you'd be home tonight. You evidently decided you didn't want company on your odyssey, but you know where I am if you need anything.

  Don't forget to eat.

  Look after yourself.

  Don't get drunk alone (ring me).

  Good old Adam. 'What's in the casserole?'

  Molly smiled, on solid ground. 'Chicken, leeks, carrots and potatoes.' She reached swiftly for a bowl and took the casserole out of the oven with mitts - Judith was sure there had been no oven mitts in the house when she left for Malta.

  She accepted one ladle from the fragrant casserole. It steamed in the blue bowl she reached down. Judith breathed it in. 'Lemon?'

  Molly looked pleased. 'And thyme.'

  Judith began to eat, because if she didn't make an effort she'd soon be as thin as a witch.

  Halfway through the modest portion, Molly asked in a small voice, 'Can I stay?'

  Judith lay down her fork, and patted her sister's soft shoulder. 'Of course you can! You'll need somewhere until you decide what you're going to do.'

  Eyes reddening, expression relieved, Molly turned away to reach for a phone pad - Judith didn't think there had been one of those before, either - and tore off a message for her. 'Kieran's coming round in a while. Desperate to talk to you about something, apparently.'

  Immediately, Judith set the wine aside.

  Chapter Seventeen

  'Can we stay?'

  Kieran and Bethan sat together like a pair of cuddly toys on Judith's sofa, hands clasped tightly. Their cheeks were hollow, eyes shadowed. Molly had ostentatiously taken herself off to her room, although slowly, perhaps hoping for an invitation to stay and be part of the solemn meeting. Judith would have changed places with her like a shot, gladly leaving her sister to deal with what was very obviously going to be a problem.

  'Stay here?' repeated Judith, thoughtfully. That would fill her house right up and deprive her of the peace to mourn that she craved. She'd even have to ask Molly to move from the spare double room to the box room. She'd be able to hear Kieran and Bethan through the wall. Giggling, making the unmistakable sounds of sex. Embarrassing her, unembarrassed themselves.

  There would be a morning and evening queue for the bathroom.

  The television on non-stop. Music at headache volume.

  She was too fragile for this. OK, fragility aside, too middle-aged and probably too curmudgeonly. 'Why?'

  Bethan looked down at her trainers, oversized things that had once been white. 'I'm not getting on with my parents.'

  'Why?' Her voice was calm as she looked from Kieran to Bethan and back.

  They gazed at each other. Kieran whispered to Bethan, 'Be best to explain.'

  Bethan's eyes filled with tears as he slid an arm around her narrow back. She nodded. 'Tell her, then.'

  The caramel flecks in Kieran's eyes were very bright. 'We're going to have a baby.'

  Oh. No.

  Frozen, Judith stared at him. Had to force herself to remain calm. No good would come of yelling, 'Oh you stupid, stupid little buggers!' however much it was her first instinct.

  She spoke out of stiff lips. 'So you told Bethan's parents, and they were furious?'

  Two shaken heads.

  She thought again. 'You haven't told them? You've just assumed that they'll be furious?'

  Two nodded heads.

  'You don't know what they're like,' added Kieran, earnestly. 'They're awful. They'll murder Bethan when they find out.'

  'She's going to tell them!' squealed Bethan, leaping to her feet in panic. 'We can't stay, I can't bear it if she goes and tells them!'

  Kieran jumped to his feet, too, uncertain, his complexion very white against the bright red bead on the ring he wore in his eyebrow. 'I won't let her!'

  Judith sat still. Leaping to the feet took energy she couldn't summon. And, oh God, a new great sadness to add to the one she carried already. Obviously, pregnancy outside marriage didn't mean the same shame or economic difficulties that it had when she was seventeen.

  But what would happen to their youth? They were hardly more than babies themselves, it was too soon to give their lives over to parenthood and putting themselves last all the time. 'Sit down,' she suggested, without raising her voice. 'I can't tell Bethan's parents - as I don't know who they are or where they live. And I think we three need to talk some more. Could you please sit down? You're giving me neck ache, and dramatic outbursts simply won't help anyone.'

  Deflated, Kieran and Bethan sank back onto the sofa.

  At the end of a torturous hour, Judith had established that Bethan was eleven weeks pregnant, had both done a test and seen a doctor, and felt unable to tell her parents, especially as they didn't even know that she was going out with anyone.

  'Why not?' Judith demanded, blankly astonished at this information.

  Bethan leant forward earnestly, as if urging Judith onto her side. 'It's one of their rules that I can't go out with anyone more than two years older than me.' Then she launched into a tangled explanation about the deceptions and subterfuges she'd felt obliged to employ so that they wouldn't realise she'd broken that rule. 'They have loads of rules. Loads and loads.'

  'Rules to do with wellbeing and safety, I expect.'

  Bethan fixed Judith with big, tragic eyes. 'You don't understand.'

  Sympathy twisted in Judith's chest. At least she understood that Bethan was young to give her life over to bringing up a baby. She made her voice gentle. 'On the contrary. I think I understand all too well.' She thought furiously for several minutes, caught in the age-old parental obligation of wanting to act in a way most likely to benefit the kids. The clock ticked, and Kieran and Bethan held hands and stared at the carpet.

  Eventually, Judith offered, 'I'm prepared to consider letting you stay here if you ring your parents and tell them where you are.'

  With a smirk of relief, Bethan jumped up once more and started for the door. 'I'll ring from my mobile.'

  The poor thing must think Judith was simple.

  Rubbing her forehead wearily, Judith disabused her of this notion. 'What, pretend to speak to your parents? And then declare that they don't mind a bit that you're moving in with an unknown woman for no particular reason? I don't think so! Ring them from this phone, and they can speak to me as well.'

  Silence. Slowly, Bethan sank down again, making no effort to make the call.

  Kieran looked at Judith pleadingly. 'You don't know how awful they are!'

  Judith's patience began to stretch. 'For minding that she's ballsing up the life they gave her for the sake of a condom or a pill she could get free from the doctor? That she's kept you a secret because you're precisely the person they've asked her not to go out with? That she's lied to them, fabricated a tarradiddle of outings with friends and mangled their trust? Forced a grandchild upon them in the most difficult of circumstances, robbing them of all the joy a grandchild ought to bring?' Her voice rose in volume.

  'And how are you to know whether they're awful? You've never met them!'

  Kieran looked stricken. Bethan went deadly quiet.

  Judith looked from one of them to the other. She felt furious for all the reasons she'd just outlined. But also because they were making her deal with this when she had so much else to deal with. And still she had hanging over her the task of telling Kieran that Giorgio was dead, it not being news she cared to break over the phone. An inappropriate time now, and it couldn't even be considered a priority.

  She could do no more for the life that had gone out of the world. The life coming into it took precedence. She forced herself to concentrate on that difficulty. 'Does your father know, Kieran?'

  Kieran looked horrified. 'No!'

  Taking a deep breath, she focused on limiting the damage, making her voice sensible, reasonable. 'You've made a bad job of this, and now yo
u're preparing to make it even worse for your parents by running away, adding more crushing fears to the ones they'll have already.' She shook her head at Bethan. 'Your poor parents!'

  Bethan began to sniffle.

  They sat in silence for some time while Judith frowned. 'I'll come with you both,' she offered, heavily, in the end. 'Because you do have to tell your parents. You have to grow up tonight and learn to think of someone other than yourselves. If you're bringing a child into the world you'll find you do a lot of that. Stop manufacturing reasons to feel hard-done-by, and bloody-well face reality.'

  It wasn't a textbook counselling session, Judith was certain the counsellor wasn't meant to yell and swear. But it got Bethan and Kieran into her car.

  Bethan lived in a nice new part of town in a detached house, overlarge for its plot but not actually big. The bricks were yellow, the roof tiles red, the window frames had been stained with a too red mahogany, and would soon need doing again.

  Hannah and Nick Sutherland looked bewildered and suspicious at the party descending on them. Hannah was small and mousy with blonde streaks that might have once brightened her up a bit but had now almost grown out. Nick was chunky, with thinning brown hair.

  They stared from Bethan to Kieran to Judith.

  In the silence, Judith wondered whether the youngsters actually expected her to do the breaking of the news, and wished she'd established earlier that it was their job.

  But then, with a noise like an elephant's sneeze, Bethan burst into tears and threw herself into her mother's arms. 'Mum, I'm so sorry. You're going to be so sad and angry!'

  She was right.

  It was a long evening. Nick and Hannah Sutherland, as predicted, were both sad and angry. Also horrified, hurt, gutted, disappointed; the list of their emotions was long.