Folly's Child

by Janet Tanner

  She read the details on the birth certificate, wondered a little about them – and the glaring omission – and put it away in her dressing table drawer along with her National Insurance card, premium bonds and a photograph of Sadie, her Jack Russell cross dog. It was a very long time before she looked at it again.

  From the time she was a little girl Theresa had been interested in fashion. She loved to dress up herself, parading in her mother’s shoes and various assorted garments that Doreen had put in a ‘play box’and her favourite doll was Cindy, with her extensive wardrobe. Theresa never cared much for playing ‘mummy’ to the baby dolls; they lay neglected whilst she dressed and undressed Cindy and her pocket money was always saved towards buying new outfits from the breathtaking selection at the local toy shop.

  Besides her interest in clothes Theresa was a talented artist and sewing came naturally to her. By the time she was twelve she was far more proficient on her mother’s sewing machine than was Doreen herself, and Doreen, who usually managed to get the bobbin in a tangle or jammed the needle and broke the thread, gave the machine over to her lock, stock and barrel.

  ‘I’ll do that, Mummy,’ Theresa would say with condescending amusement when she saw Doreen struggling to sew on a button or turn up a hem. ‘For goodness sake – like this – look! It’s so easy!’

  ‘It might be easy for you,’ Doreen would retort, gratefully relinquishing the task and thinking that one of the fascinating things about having an adopted daughter was that you never knew what they were going to be good at because you hadn’t a clue who it was they were going to take after.

  Good as she was, however, it still sounded like pie-in-the-sky when Theresa announced she wanted to be a fashion designer. It really wasn’t the sort of thing ordinary girls from ordinary homes, educated at the local comprehensive, did – was it?

  ‘Shouldn’t you think about a proper job?’ Doreen urged her. ‘You can always sew for pleasure, but there’s not much money in it. People aren’t prepared to pay for all the time it takes.’

  ‘I’m not going to sew – not myself,’ Theresa explained patiently. ‘Other people can do that. I want to design!’

  Doreen shook her head indulgently. Sometime, she supposed, Theresa would come down to earth. But as time went by she never wavered in her ambition and to Doreen’s surprise Theresa’s teachers did nothing to discourage her. At sixteen she counted ‘A’ grades in both art and needlework amongst her O-level successes and even before the A-level results were announced she had gained an unconditional place on a foundation course at the nearby College of Art.

  ‘Just be careful who you mix with,’ Doreen warned her, for what she had seen of art students made her think they were a weird lot and the whole place was probably rife with drugs.

  Theresa only laughed.

  ‘I shall be working far too hard to have time for that sort of stuff,’ she said confidently and after a while Doreen ceased to worry. Theresa was indeed working very hard – anyone who considered art an easy option was quite wrong, Doreen thought as she went to bed night after night leaving Theresa hard at work on some project or thesis.

  The year would have been a happy one for Theresa but that it was marred by Les’s sudden death. What he had long imagined to be indigestion proved in fact to have been the warning signs of heart problems. One night when Doreen had gone to London on a Christmas shopping trip Theresa arrived home from college to find him collapsed on the kitchen floor. As long as she lived she would never forget the horror of it – coming in as usual laden with her portfolio and a bag containing all she would need to make a nursery-rhyme mobile – the current project – calling ‘ Hi, anyone home?’ into the warm but oddly quiet kitchen – and then seeing his legs protruding from behind the big wing chair.

  ‘Oh my God – Dad!’ she screamed, going down on her knees beside the inert form in a state of utter shock and panic. First she tried mouth to mouth resuscitation – she had learned the rudiments in First Aid at school – then she dialled 999 for an ambulance, then she tried mouth to mouth again. But even as she worked, trembling so much she could scarcely manage to count between breaths, she knew it was no use and when the ambulance men arrived minutes – though it seemed like hours – later she could tell from their faces that there was nothing to be done. She learned later that he must have been dead for at least an hour and although it was a relief to know that not even the most experienced medico could have saved him by the time she had found him it somehow added to the horror and made her wretched with guilt too. If she hadn’t stayed so late at college, if she had caught an earlier bus, if she had decided to work at home that day instead of going in to be part of all the Christmas preparations, then she would have been there when he collapsed and maybe, just maybe, she could have saved him.

  That Christmas was the most miserable Theresa could remember. They went through the motions, she and Doreen, because Doreen said he would have wanted them to, but the sad decorations mocked them, the unlit tree lights reminded them he was no longer there to get them working as he had had to every year since Theresa could remember, and though they worked together in the kitchen cooking turkey and bread sauce, Brussels sprouts and chestnuts for Christmas dinner as they did every year, neither of them had the heart to eat it. At last, unable to bear the pretence any longer, they drowned then sorrows with a bottle of apricot brandy, switched off the television which was blaring enforced jollity, and went to bed early, a horrible depressed end to a long sad day. Christmas, Theresa had thought, lying numb and sleepless, her head aching from too much Apricot Brandy, would never be the same again.

  Life however had had to go on even if it was emptier than before and a good deal more of a struggle financially. Theresa was all too aware of the sacrifices Doreen was making to enable her to stay on at college and she promised herself that one day she would more than make up for them. The desire to be successful enough to be able to afford to buy Doreen all the little luxuries she so richly deserved gave an extra biting edge to her ambition. She threw herself into her work heart and soul, even winning a national competition organised by an important fabric manufacturer with her designs for a day-into-evening ensemble, and the lecturers at college were all agreed – Theresa Arnold was a talent to be reckoned with.

  In the spring before she was due to graduate Theresa began hunting for a job. Many of her fellow students intended to travel before settling down to their careers – one was going to Paris, another to Italy, a third wanted to travel in the USA. All very well if you could afford it, Theresa thought, envious but not jealous. She was too anxious to drive on towards her goal to be lured off the path by the prospect of glamorous adventures. The trouble was, lulled into a sense of false security by their casual attitude, she had left it a little late. Many of the big companies, such as Marks and Spencer, insisted on applications before Christmas, and already had more than enough hopefuls to meet their requirements. Theresa spent a long weekend laboriously writing letters and CVs (how was it practically everyone else on her course seemed to have access to a word processor?) and posted them off, but the replies were not encouraging. Some came back a simple refusal, others promised to ‘put her name on file’ – not much good since she would need a job in less than three months. As a last resort she stretched her allowance to allow her to subscribe to the Drapers’ Record and scanned the advertisements there. But they were not very promising either. The majority wanted someone with experience.

  How can I gain experience if I can’t get started? Theresa wondered.

  She was just beginning to think the search would have to wait until, she had the time to set out and leg it around to see individual designers when she saw an advertisement that interested her. A world-famous design manufacturer in the West Country was looking for an Assistant Buyer – no experience necessary, training would be given. Buying was not really what Theresa wanted to do but at least it would be a start.

  She wrote away immediately, was interviewed first by an employment
consultant and then invited by the company to their head office for a second interview.

  She set out, dressed in an outfit of her own design – a jacket and skirt in burnt orange wool, smart enough for an interview but sufficiently innovative to show her flair, worn with a brown silk camisole top. The manufacturer’s headquarters was way out in the country and Theresa took a taxi to ensure she would arrive looking fresh and respectable. But she did not think her finances would run to a taxi back to Bristol, where she had to catch her train. She would hitch-hike, she decided.

  It was late afternoon when she left the smart new office block, the early summer sunshine turning the straight, tree-lined road into a ribbon of silver. In the hedges birds swooped and fluttered busily and the may made great white splashes against the fresh green leaf, beyond them, in the fields, cows grazed. Beautiful and peaceful, but Theresa felt tense and depressed. She was not at all confident about the impression she had made on the woman who had interviewed her but she felt in her heart she had not got the job.

  The woman, the chief buyer, had made too much of the fact that Theresa was primarily a designer – even wearing her own suit had been a mistake.

  ‘You made what you are wearing?’ the woman herself immaculately dressed, had asked, and when Theresa confirmed it she had said: ‘‘Are you sure buying is what you want?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d like to get some experience on the business side,’ Theresa had said eagerly and immediately realised her mistake. They would think she was applying for the job as a stepping-stone and truth to tell they would be right.

  A few cars passed her on the road but none stopped though she looked at them hopefully. Perfect! she thought. All she needed now was a fifteen-mile walk and already the high-heeled shoes she had worn to set off her suit were raising a blister on her heel. When she heard another car approaching she raised her thumb without much hope but to her relief it braked to a halt just past her – an old, but immaculately maintained royal blue TR6 with the hood up. The door opened and Theresa found herself looking into a pair of the bluest eyes she had ever seen.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ he asked. He had a nice voice, light, with just a touch of humour.

  ‘Bristol. Well, actually, I’m going back to London but I get my train in Bristol.’

  ‘Hop in,’ he said. ‘You are in luck. It so happens I am going back to London.’

  She felt a moment’s trepidation. It was too pat, too coincidental. Suppose he should be some kind of sex fiend, enveigling her into his car? They didn’t have to look like monsters. Some appeared perfectly ordinary, perfectly respectable, until you looked into their eyes.

  Theresa looked into those blue eyes, fringed with long lashes like a girl’s, clear, honest, merry eyes – and made up her mind. No way was this young man a sex fiend. In fact he was gorgeous. She got into the low bucket seat as gracefully as the tight little skirt would allow.

  ‘This is incredible,’ she said. ‘You are really going all the way to London?’

  ‘Yep, but I shan’t even touch Bristol. My favourite route is cross country, then hit the M4 at Chippenham. Should take about three hours, depending on the traffic. Where in London do you want to go?’

  ‘Well, it’s Beckenham actually, but anywhere will suit me fine. Once I’m back in civilisation transport will be no problem.’

  ‘Back in civilisation! I take it that means you are not going on holiday. Anyway, you don’t have any luggage.’

  ‘I’ve just been for an interview for a job.’ It was incredible how easy it was to talk to him. ‘I’m a student,’ she explained.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t look like one.’

  ‘Because I’m all dressed up to impress! I don’t usually look like this.’

  ‘What are you studying?’

  ‘Fashion design.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said drily, ‘that explains it. So how did your interview go?’

  ‘Not too well. I don’t think I’m what they are looking for.’

  His glance indicated that he thought anyone turning down Theresa must want their heads reading but he was far too intelligent to say anything so clichéd.

  The country through which they were driving was beautiful, small towns and villages strewn along the road like beads on a necklace. Beyond burgeoning hedgerows the patchwork of fields undulated away, green, darker green, and yellow where the first crop of rape was beginning to ripen.

  By the time they reached the M4 they were like old friends. She had learned his name was Mark Bristow and he was in advertising. But he didn’t say what he had been doing so far from London and she did not ask. She was too busy thinking what an amazing coincidence it was that his name was the same as her real mother’s.

  The Friday evening traffic was heavy but Mark drove fast and well, speeding up the outside lane to overtake then tucking back in again, and the TR, though a little cramped, was a joy to ride in with the throaty roar of the engine so close and the road contact sending little quivers and tremors up her spine. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye – good-looking, clean-cut profile, thick fair hair, casual polo shirt worn beneath a well-cut tweed jacket, and the new set of quivers owed nothing to the TR engine.

  Theresa had had plenty of boyfriends. She was a friendly, outgoing girl who managed to simultaneously present just the slightest suggestion of mystery, though no-one who knew her could have explained exactly why. Perhaps, they thought, it was her unusual face – high cheekbones and slightly flattened features – which almost suggested foreign blood in her veins, perhaps it was the way she could suddenly change from effervescence to stillness, as if she was drawing on some inner strength to replenish the power and energy that drove her. But for the most part her friends did not try to fathom her – it was not their way. They were artists, not psychologists, they looked at form and line, not the innermost workings of the mind. And in the same way the friendships were superficial – fun relationships, never more than skin deep. She had been in love, she supposed – at least she had called it that – but she had never truly given of herself and never wanted more than was on offer. Now she looked at a stranger and felt something new and exciting stir within her.

  ‘I feel as if I know you,’ she said – and then thought: What a stupid thing to say!

  For a moment he did not reply. He was concentrating on overtaking a juggernaut. Then, as he returned to the central lane, he said:

  ‘Funny you should say that. I was thinking the same thing.’

  She was surprised. ‘As if you know me too, you mean? We haven’t met, have we?’

  He laughed. ‘I don’t think so.’ As if I’d ever forget! he added mentally.

  The exchange made them awkward for a few minutes; it had contained too much unspoken intimacy for comfort. Then he said: ‘What do you do for fun, Theresa?’

  ‘Fun? I don’t have much time for fun. Fashion is a very demanding course. We don’t even get to do much student roistering. Sometimes I think I should have chosen something simple for my degree, like engineering or classics.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He wondered if he should tell her about Hugo and decided against it. It might sound like boasting.

  ‘It’s infuriating,’ she went on. ‘ Everyone seems to think an art degree is an easy option. It’s not, believe me. For one thing, it’s continuous assessment – project marks count towards your final grade. There’s a thesis to write – I did mine last summer, so that’s out of the way, thank goodness, and they are so fussy about the way each project is presented. I spend a fortune on letraset and binding and so on for source sheets and that’s even before I begin to make anything up. Now I’m doing my final collection – and that is a hellish expense, I can tell you. If you don’t use nice fabrics you can’t show off your designs to their best advantage – and nice fabric for fourteen or so pieces doesn’t come cheap.’

  ‘I guess not,’ he said, and the nonchalance of his tone embarrassed her again.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m boring you,’ she said
. ‘It’s just that sometimes I get very despondent. I’m determined to succeed and I work my socks off and still end up getting lower grades than some of those who do next to nothing because I just can’t afford to present it as they do.’

  ‘That’s tough.’ Mark, who had started out with every advantage in life, had seen something of the other side since he had been in business on his own account.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said, determinedly cheerful, ‘ I’ll get there in the end. Practically no one fails a fashion degree anyway, so that’s a comfort, even if it means they don’t get any sleep for a fortnight before the final collection show.’

  Again Mark was tempted to remark that at the top end of the business things were much the same, again he refrained, saying instead: ‘You wouldn’t be able to take time off for a drink one evening then?’

  Theresa’s heart lifted; her pulses had begun to hammer. – ‘Is that an invitation?’

  ‘Well – yes.’

  ‘In that case I don’t suppose one evening would make much difference,’ Theresa said, and thought that if it meant staying up all night for three weeks before her final collection show it would still be well worth it.

  She was in love, crazily, madly, head over heels in love and it was wonderful. As she had warned him there was little time in those last months before graduation for anything but work and in any case Mark, too, led a busy life, chasing accounts, working overtime on brilliant new ideas and jet-setting between London and New York, but what time they could spend together they made the most of. Sometimes he took her out, grand style, to a show or a restaurant, sometimes they shared a drink with friends in an unpretentious bar or watched a video, curled up with cans of lager and a Chinese take away. Occasionally Mark cooked for her, suprisingly good spaghetti bolognese or chicken curry, and the last night before her final projects had to be handed in for marking he supported her with his presence while she napped: ‘Oh shit, I’ll never get it all done in time!’ handing her the spray mount as she arranged last minute source sheets for her portfolio and clearing up the heap of cuttings that littered the floor. He made coffee for her as she sewed on buttons, neatened hems and pressed seams, he had a handkerchief ready when she burst into tears over a revere that refused to sit properly no matter how she fiddled with it, and again when she told him she had been awarded a 2.1 degree.