Second Time Around

by Marcia Willett

  Her heart was heavy, however, and even this task seemed pointless and exhausting. Everything tired her and her natural vitality and enthusiasm had deserted her. She sat drown upon a boulder, turning her face to the sun, her fingers picking idly at the crumbly dry lichen on the rough pitted stone. At the sudden beating of wings and the raucous cry of a gull she opened her eyes and stared out across to Start Point; at the jagged bony spine of the cliff as it descended towards the sea and at the white column of the lighthouse. The tranquillity of the scene, the sheer timelessness of sea and rock, soothed her and presently she picked up her handkerchief and its contents, strolled back across the cliff and descended the steps which led down to the back of her cottage. Soon the cove would be in shadow and she shivered a little as she thought of the winter drawing on. She knew that she simply must not allow despair to swamp her nor self-pity deaden her will to survive. She let herself into the kitchen which was still warm from a day of sunshine and put the blackberries on the table, determined to make a pie for supper.

  Her kitchen was hardly less basic than Mathilda’s but at least she had a microwave and an electric mixer. The room was filled with the light from the sea; a white shaking light which continually formed, dissolved and re-formed into watery patterns on the whitewashed walls. On certain days Isobel felt that she was living underwater. She loved it and she loved the sound of the sea shushing across the sand; hissing and sucking at the land as if it were loath to leave it behind as it retreated; whispering secretly across it as it returned.

  At first she had been fascinated by the changing scene; the colour of the water as it reflected a cloudy sky; the dark outline of the Mew stone; the tall day beacon above Kingswear shining white in the evening sunshine. She had sat late at her bedroom window watching the moon rise clear from a skein of cloud and ride high above the black silk of the sea, its silver path running almost to her very door; and had woken early to see the sun rolling up out of the cliffs to the east to set the water blazing with orange and gold. After a while she had learned to close her curtains against these temptations lest she be too tired to work; but she never grew indifferent to her surroundings. Even now she was aware of the glory all about her and, even if it did not set her spirits leaping with joy, it brought a measure of comfort to her unhappy heart.

  Isobel took off her jacket and concentrated on the pie. Now that she did so much cooking for Mathilda she was always finding that certain items were no longer to hand. This afternoon it was her pie dish which was missing; no doubt languishing in Mathilda’s kitchen where it had been washed up after they had eaten their last pie together. Isobel debated with herself. Should she run over to fetch the dish or take the ingredients and make the pie in Mathilda’s kitchen? She knew that the pie would taste better if cooked in the Rayburn—apart from which she needed company. Gathering up the things she required, she piled them into a basket and went out across the cove. The shadow of the cliff stretched nearly to the water’s edge and she was glad to reach the warmth of Mathilda’s kitchen. She set the basket on the table, checked the Rayburn and glanced at her watch. Whilst the Rayburn pulled up a little to the necessary temperature she would make Mathilda a cup of tea.

  Mathilda was in the study, working at the big desk. Isobel set the tray on the fender and paused to throw a log on the fire.

  ‘Tea,’ she announced. ‘I’m making a blackberry and apple pie for supper but the blackberries taste a bit funny. Sort of mushy. I hope it’ll be OK. Isn’t the Devil supposed to spit on them at Michaelmas or something?’

  ‘I think,’ said Mathilda, without turning round, ‘that the blame should be laid at the door of the fresh fly. He dribbles saliva on them so as to be able to suck up the juice.’

  ‘Eeuch!’ Isobel made a face. ‘Honestly, Mathilda, I wish you hadn’t told me. That’s disgusting, isn’t it?’

  ‘That depends on whether you are a flesh fly,’ replied Mathilda. ‘Thank you. I should like some tea. I’m trying to work out my family tree.’

  ‘Heavens!’ Isobel kneeled down by the fender and began to pour the tea, attempting meanwhile to expel the taste of flesh fly saliva from her mouth. She scraped at her tongue with her teeth, quite certain now that it was coated with it. ‘Whyever?’

  ‘I’m looking for a beneficiary,’ replied the old woman. ‘I’ve decided to change my will.’

  Isobel’s hands were arrested in the act of adding milk; the flesh fly was utterly expunged from her mind—and mouth. ‘Your will?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Mathilda swivelled round in her chair to look at her. ‘I had decided to endow a studentship at my father’s old college but I disapprove of their new policy of giving the highest proportion of places to foreign students who can afford to pay huge fees. And now I hear that they are intending to discontinue his field of study in favour of the peat bog. Apparently, with all this fuss about preserving peat it is hoped that it will attract more funding.’

  ‘I see,’ said Isobel. She carried the cup across and placed it on the desk. ‘So how far have you got?’ Her heart was hurrying a little as she tried to frame the words as carelessly as possible. ‘I hope you’re not planning to pop off just yet, Mathilda?’

  ‘Not just yet,’ said Mathilda comfortably, ‘but I do want to get this sorted out.’

  Isobel stared down at the papers upon which Mathilda’s neat writing was quite clear. Names stared up at her. ‘Who are Maria and Albert Holmes?’ she asked.

  ‘Maria was my father’s sister.’ Mathilda sipped her tea. ‘She married Albert Holmes and had three children. Ruth died young and Peter and John were both killed in the Great War but John had already married a woman called Ada and had a son by her.’

  ‘It’s fascinating.’ Isobel peered at the names and the dates. ‘What about your mother’s family?’

  Mathilda shook her head. ‘I never knew my mother’s family. I can very vaguely remember an old woman who might have been my grandmother but I think she must have died whilst I was still very young. My mother died when I was ten and my father was not good at keeping in touch with relatives. Even with his own family.’

  ‘I can believe that,’ murmured Isobel, who guessed that Mathilda was much like her father. ‘And who are William and Edith Rainbird?’

  ‘William was my second cousin and died at Dunkirk.’ Mathilda frowned. ‘It’s all rather complicated.’

  ‘And how have you tracked down these people?’

  ‘Some of it was in the family bible and I found a few notes amongst my father’s papers but a friend of mine in London is putting in the real work,’ admitted Mathilda. She replaced her cup in its saucer and looked at Isobel. She noticed that she was looking thinner, sharper around the nose and cheekbones, and the old woman studied her for a moment. ‘Perhaps you should have a holiday?’ she suggested..

  Isobel, surprised both at the sudden change of subject and that Mathilda should make such a personal remark, looked at her quickly. ‘Do I look as if I need one?’

  ‘You do rather,’ said Mathilda bluntly. ‘Are you losing weight?’

  ‘I’m worried in case you’re thinking of turning me out,’ replied Isobel lightly. ‘In favour of all these relations.’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t do that.’ Mathilda shook her head. ‘You will have all the rights of a sitting tenant. No one shall turn you out.’

  ‘That’s a comfort.’ Isobel tried to maintain her lightness of tone, wondering whether the beneficiary would require a housekeeper and, if not, how she, Isobel, would afford the rent of her little cottage. ‘So which one have you decided on?’

  ‘There appear to be three possible contenders,’ said Mathilda. ‘Edward Holmes married the year after I was born so, though it’s unlikely he’s still alive, he might have offspring. Then William married in 1914. He was the one who died at Dunkirk. Apparently he had a son but we have been unable to find him as yet. We have traced the third possibility down to the last decade at which point the entire family appear to have vanished without trace.’

 
‘But what will you do if you find them all?’ Isobel’s question had a certain self-interest behind it. ‘How would you decide? Would you interview them?’

  Mathilda finished her tea and passed the cup to Isobel. ‘Yes, please. I should like another if there’s any in the pot. It’s a rather difficult decision. There might be an obvious candidate, you see. On the other hand I might decide to leave it to several of my father’s descendants.’

  ‘That sounds fraught with difficulties,’ said Isobel, pouring the tea and feeling more nervous by the minute. ‘They could hardly be expected to live here all together. Surely they’d simply sell it all up and divide the spoils?’

  ‘You may well be right.’ Mathilda looked at her papers thoughtfully. ‘We are not a particularly fruitful family,’ she observed. ‘Perhaps there will be no one left to inherit after all.’

  ISOBEL CARRIED THE TRAY down the two flights of stairs and set it on the wooden draining board. She felt frightened and lonely; what would happen to her with Mathilda gone? She stared at the blackberries and suddenly remembered the flesh fly. With an exclamation of disgust she heaved the whole lot into the pedal bin and, sitting down at the table, put her head in her hands. She tried to imagine Mathilda’s descendants arriving at the cove; going all over the house with an eye to its value, laughing at its old-fashioned kitchen and deciding to turn the house and cottage—not to mention the boathouse—into a kind of holiday park. In her mind’s eye she could see it; the house split up into letting units; the cottage frizzed and powdered into the kind of twee ‘fisherman’s cott’ one saw in the glossy brochures. The boathouse with its huge attic room where Professor Rainbird had once worked would be ideal for keeping sailing dinghies and sailboards, as well as a launch—but not Mathilda’s old boat—for trips along the coast. She could imagine children on the small stone pier and the cove resounding to their shouts. Even the long winding drive would no doubt be laid down to tarmac and proper garages built into the cliffs behind the house where the Morris now lived in solitary splendour.

  Isobel wiped away a tear or two and sighed. Whatever happened would have to be faced. Perhaps she could raise the money to buy the cottage … Perhaps Mathilda might be right when she said that, after all, there might be no one left to inherit.

  Five

  TESSA RAINBIRD SAT AT the small table in the little back bedroom of a house in Shepherd’s Bush. This had been her home almost ever since her parents and small brother had been gassed to death when a volcano erupted in the Cameroons where her father was working as a petrochemical consultant. At the time Tessa had been at her school in England but even now, eleven years on, she suffered nightmares in which she was desperately trying to save her adored baby brother. Sometimes the nightmare took the form of wreckage, amongst which she crawled whilst explosions and screams reverberated about her. At other times the nightmare had that well-known quality of helplessness: her legs refused to run, her voice died in her throat, and she was unable to warn her brother or her parents or rescue them from their terrible fate.

  Her mother’s second cousin had stepped into the breach when Tessa’s paternal grandmother died two years after the accident. Tessa’s father was an only child but her mother, whose parents were dead, had a sister in New Zealand who had offered to care for Tessa. Tessa could barely remember her aunt and dreaded leaving England and the friends she had made at school who had been so kind to her during these years. At last it was decided that she should stay on at her boarding school and go to Cousin Pauline in the holidays. She was already elderly; a quiet, gentle woman who watched a great deal of television and was no companion for a thirteen-year-old. Gradually Tessa began to accept more of the invitations to stay for the holidays which issued from her friends, and spent very little time at the terraced house in Cobbold Road. She knew that Cousin Pauline had taken her out of duty rather than love and, though she was grateful, Tessa knew that her presence was not an advantage except as a pair of young legs and hands to help with the household tasks.

  When Rachel Anderson arrived at the school on the south coast the two girls took to each other at once. Rachel, a warm-hearted, eager girl, was horrified at Tessa’s tragic history whilst Tessa was immediately drawn to the family to whom Rachel belonged. Her father was a naval officer, her mother a natural homemaker—wherever she was posted with her husband—and the small twins were the same age that Tessa’s brother, Timmy, would have been had he lived. As for Sebastian … At seventeen he was the most handsome young man she had ever seen. Tall, fair-haired, hazel-eyed, he treated her just as he did his younger siblings; he teased them, hugged them and for the most part ignored them. Tessa, who had so desperately missed family life, was enchanted by the Andersons and never refused an invitation to stay.

  By the time she was seventeen she was wondering what she should do with her life. She could see that a university degree was not the passport to a career that it had once been and she knew that she was not brilliant enough to be one of the lucky few who, in these difficult times, found jobs easily. Once again it was through the Andersons, who gave her help and encouragement, that she discovered, quite out of the blue, what it was she really wanted to do. At the end of the spring term Rachel received a letter from home.

  ‘Doom and gloom,’ she announced to Tessa, with whom she shared a study. ‘The dog lady can’t come, apparently. She’s broken her ankle and Granny’s down with flu. Looks like our holiday’s up the spout.’

  ‘Dog lady?’ Tessa knew that the Andersons were going skiing as soon as school broke up for Easter.

  ‘You know,’ said Rachel. ‘The woman who dog-sits when we go away. Mummie’s quite desperate. It’s the first leave that Daddy’s had for ages that fits in with school holidays.’

  There was a silence whilst Rachel read her letter and Tessa was visited by an exciting answer to the Andersons’ problem. She thought it through carefully.

  ‘I’ve had a thought,’ she said at last. ‘Is there any reason why I couldn’t do it? After all, Baggins and I are old friends. I’d be quite happy to look after him.’

  Rachel had stared at her for a few moments, letting the idea sink in. ‘Brilliant!’ she’d said. ‘Fantastic! Are you sure? It’s a great idea. I’ll phone Mummie.’

  That was how it had started. During those quiet weeks in the Andersons’ house Tessa began to see how she could earn her living. She adored dogs, preferred the country to the town and never minded her own company. She still missed her parents and her brother quite dreadfully but she had already learned that it is better to be alone than to be with the wrong people.

  Sebastian and Rachel approached the suggestion of her new career with their usual enthusiasm. Sebastian immediately drew up a list of naval families who might require her services and Mrs Anderson recommended Tessa to these friends and wrote a glowing reference. In the following year—her last at school—she had four jobs during the holidays and a growing clientele.

  Now, at twenty-two, she worked almost two-thirds of the year. Between jobs she came back to London but she longed for a little place of her own. Her work took her all over the south and west so it was difficult to decide where she might base herself and whatever she chose to rent would be empty for the greater part of each year. The money from her father’s estate would come to her when she was twenty-five but it was by no means a large sum. It had paid for her education—which included driving lessons—and her trustees had advanced enough for her to buy an estate car so that the dogs could be taken for walks or to the vet in an emergency—owners did not always leave transport available—but meanwhile she lived on the interest which was paid quarterly. It amounted in all to approximately two thousand pounds a year, which came in very useful.

  Tessa bent thoughtfully over her diary. The weeks were filling up very satisfactorily and tomorrow she was off to Devon; a week on Dartmoor. She sighed with pleasure. Kate and David Porteous were probably her favourite clients. David was an artist—an RA—who often went to London whilst Kate tried to ju
ggle their lives between their town house and the country. Kate, who once had been married to a naval officer, knew the Andersons very well and had been quite willing to give Tessa a try. It had been one of Tessa’s earliest jobs and she was desperate to do well. She took at once to Kate’s large golden retriever, Felix, fell in love with the moor, and now Kate was a regular client.

  Tessa shut her diary, picked up her bag and ran downstairs. She had promised to go to the Spar shop in the Uxbridge Road and it was very nearly lunchtime. She put her head into the sitting room, where Cousin Pauline was watching Neighbours, told her where she was going and went out into Cobbold Road. As she hurried along, crossing by the library and turning right by the Askew Arms, she was barely aware of her surroundings. Only one thought sustained her; tomorrow she would be in Devon.

  AS SHE DROVE OUT through Ashburton and headed for the moor, Tessa was thinking of Sebastian. This was not unusual; Tessa spent most of her time thinking or dreaming about Sebastian. From those earliest days she had been in love with him and she had plenty of hours in which to weave fantasies about him. Yet it was fairly clear that, fond of her though he was, Tessa was little more to him than Rachel’s friend. At one time, when he was at university, Tessa believed that their friendship had blossomed into love. He had invited her to a party in London and they had both drunk too much. She had told her love and he had very kindly and considerately relieved her of her virginity. Afterwards she wished that she could remember more about it but the act alone convinced her that he must love her, too.

  This sadly had not proved to be the case. He was still as affectionate as he had always been but nothing, it seemed, had changed. Tessa had been shocked and then desperate. Had she thrown herself at him? Had he been just using her? She could hardly ask Rachel, frightened that she might confront Sebastian, and there was no one else in whom she could really confide. Sebastian put things right himself.