By the time the scrap-iron millionaire and his family drove off in their Rolls, Richard realised he had been talked into taking Amanda out in his boat. He did not anticipate the trip with any noticable enthusiasm.
*
“These digs are awful,” Justin complained. “Couldn’t you find anything better?”
“Yes, but far too expensive. I can’t afford to splash out too much or I won’t be able to complete the tour.”
The room was pretty shabby: the thin curtains had lost much of their floral colour and their hooks, the cheap, worn brown carpet was stained and the painted furniture badly chipped, but Debbie loved it because it was their little love nest, however humble.
“Well, why won’t you agree to sharing digs with me? I seem to spend most of my time in yours, anyway.”
“You know my reasons,” Debbie sighed. It was one thing to get her mother to agree to her going on the pill, but quite another to actually, deliberately live in sin.
“I still can’t believe your mother is that old fashioned. Lots of people share digs nowadays.” She was such an attractive little piece, lovely body and good legs, he felt the need to have her within reach on a more regular and easier basis. “Makes far more sense,” he added forcefully, “than all this extra expense and coming and going night and morning.”
He was right, of course. Debbie softened. “Do you think we could work it pretending we had separate addresses?”
“If that will keep your mother happy.” He took her in his arms, relieved that he seemed finally to have made a breakthrough.
Debbie still wasn’t completely sure. Quite apart from her mother’s attitude, she wanted to be sure of Justin’s. He was certainly subject to some strange mood-swings . . . but then maybe he’d feel better once they had a more solid relationship. There was no doubt about her own feelings: she simply adored Justin to bits. He was her whole life. More so even than tennis.
Not that they didn’t both hurt her from time to time. Some of the criticisms of her game were very cruel: destructively so. She hated the bad sportsmanship on the circuit. It was one thing to have someone try to help by advising her to alter the angle of her racquet head for her forehand drive, or throw the ball higher for her first service. But after an off day, to be told by the parent of another player, or even on a couple of occasions by an official, that she was so hopeless it was pointless for her to be playing the circuit . . . that was devastating. Justin could be so kind and helpful at such moments: put a comforting arm round her and tell her to ignore the stupid old duffer or jealous witch. But occasionally he would simply disappear off to London in his car, not saying why he was going, nor when he’d be back, leaving her feeling deeply dejected. A dark cloud of depression would then descend to envelop her for hours, sometimes for days on end. Her fingernails suffered badly.
Debbie’s life did have it ups, though. When she reached the semi-finals of the Hampshire Championships she was over the moon, and not even her defeat in the next round could suppress her sense of achievement. Likewise, she did well in Gloucestershire, and Suffolk, and she was thrilled for Justin who defeated a strong opponent in the first round of the Surrey matches.
Two weeks later they motored north to Harrogate, and Debbie wore a gold band on her wedding finger as they signed into an upmarket guest house. It was the start of a very happy fortnight for them both.
*
The Tetchworths were invited to join the family party going over to Herm one Sunday. Richard was taking the party over in George Schmit’s boat; the latter was always happy for the competent young man to use her when he wasn’t taking her out fishing. Sue, Anne and Hilary compared notes about the picnic food on Friday morning, each keen to provide different items.
“Johnny suggests we buy two or three ready-cooked chickens,” Hilary told Sue.
“I usually roast them myself. And I’ve got a ham to boil. Why don’t you do a couple of bowls of different salads, instead?” The very idea of buying pre-cooked stuff detracted from the ambience of picnicking, in Sue’s mind.
“If you’re sure that will be enough.” Hilary was only worried about Johnny’s reaction: he did so love ‘pushing the boat out’. But she’d suggest he bring some wine. That should pacify him. “I’ll get some French loaves, too.”
“I’ll do a couple of big flasks of homemade ice-cream to have with the strawberries,” Anne offered. “And I’ve made some scones for tea.”
They set out from St Sampson’s Harbour at ten-thirty in the morning, Richard at the helm, Stephen and Roderick busy with warps and fenders while Johnny, carefully attired in a traditional, oiled navy wool “fisherman’s Guernsey” and red bandanna tied round his neck, hurried to and fro getting in their way. Bobby had brought a school friend and the two of them, in lifejackets, settled themselves up on the foredeck in prime position. The ladies busied themselves in the cabin, stowing the endless bags of food and bathing things, watched by Jane, Justin’s rather colourless sister, now nineteen years old.
The wind was in the west – good for dropping anchor in Belvoir Bay, but not so good for the diesel fumes curling up the transom to the cockpit and blowing over the seafarers. Johnny’s popularity rating was not improved by comments about modern, speedier boats out-running the fumes, and asking when George was going to swop this old thing for something more convenient and up-to-date.
Richard’s response was abrupt and to the point. “Who on earth would want to exchange a classic craft for some flashy bit of fibreglass?”
“Lot of French yachts around this weekend,” Stephen observed, tactfully. “I wonder if there is a race on?”
“I do love to see all those colourful spinnakers.” Hilary appreciated the change of subject. Then added sotto voce to Sue, “I would so love us to take up yachting but I’m afraid we would never agree on the type of boat. Would we?”
Sue winked at her and said nothing.
It was decided to eat aboard, anchored in the bay, but most people wanted to swim ashore beforehand, some for ice creams, others just to take a walk.
Bobbie and his friend jumped overboard feet first, holding their noses, Anne and the men dived in while Sue and Hilary climbed down the transom ladder in more dignified fashion, passing little Derek to his mother in his rubber ring.
Roderick did not find Jane Tetchworth a very attractive female at first. They went off for a walk together, just for something to do, and stopped to see St Tugual’s chapel. “Do you know how they managed to build these arched roofs, all those centuries ago?” Roderick asked, prepared to impress her with his knowledge.
“Yes. They built the walls then packed ground within them, mounding it up to support the stones as they arched them into position until the stones met in the centre when the wedge-shaped keystones were locked in.” She smiled shyly at him. “Then they dug all the ground out again through the doorway.”
Eyebrows raised, Roderick nodded appreciatively. “You have been doing your homework!”
“I love old buildings. When we lived in England Mummy and I would go off together for the day to explore castles, or an abbey or cathedral. Sometimes Mummy would take her paints and do a watercolour. I’m hopeless with a brush. I enjoy pen and ink so much more.” Suddenly she blushed and changed the subject. “Do you know anything about this saint?”
“No. No one even seems to know if St Tugual was a man or a woman. The chapel was built of imported granite and dedicated to the saint by Catholic monks. Lovely to think that it has been so beautifully restored and is still in regular use.”
They went on to discuss buildings in general, and Roderick was moderately impressed with her intelligence.
Jane, on the other hand, though pleased that he seemed happy in her company, thought he was a bit pompous. Rather like her father.
By the time they returned to the beach, all the others were aboard and lunch was being laid out on the saloon table and in the cockpit. “We’d better swim out to the boat,” Roderick said, striding down the steeply s
helving shingle.
Jane’s eyes were big as saucers. “The tide’s come up a lot. It looks a jolly long way.”
Roderick suppressed a sigh. “Do you want me to fetch the dinghy? Or will you feel safe enough swimming alongside me? You can always hang on if you get tired.” Compared with his sisters this girl seemed rather feeble.
Reading his reaction only too clearly, Jane felt awful. “I’m game to give it a try,” she said bravely.
Roderick was a fairly good swimmer, but he doubted if he could cope if she panicked halfway across. “I’ll get the dinghy. You wait here. It won’t take me long.” He plunged into the next wave and struck out.
*
The Rock Festival had been a weekend affair, starting on Friday evening and continuing all day Saturday with different groups and soloists taking turns on the scaffolding stage. Stephanie hadn’t been sure what to expect; three or four of the gang had been to other such gatherings before and described their impressions, which had proved very confusing as they were all so different. She had looked around at the litter of bodies, standing, sitting, lying; walking, talking, laughing, sleeping. Everyone doing their own thing. And there were thousands of them. Many, like her own crowd, were in jeans, shirts and jumpers, with some of the girls in ethnic cottons, others were dressed up really weird with wigs, feathers and top hats. Beads, earrings and pendants were in for both men and women. They had brought groundsheets, rugs, sleeping-bags, and plastic carriers of food and drink. There were food stalls and beer tents round the edge of the field, though most of the gathering were wary of inflated prices. Toilet facilities were hopelessly inadequate and it didn’t do to get downwind of them.
Stephanie had shivered when dusk and dew were falling, one stage better than rain, but a chill breeze had blown across the open meadows from the west.
“Why don’t you put this rug round your shoulders?” Tony suggested, unrolling it and placing it over her cardigan. He had come, ostensibly, as Melanie’s partner, but hoping to make it with this luscious art student before the weekend was over.
Seeing the gesture, Marcus had known only too well what was in Tony’s mind and had every intention of beating him to it. He sat on her other side, unzipped his sleeping bag and suggested she put her frozen feet in it, sandals and all. Stephanie smiled at them both and thought how sweet, kind and friendly everyone was.
Melanie took out her flute and played a haunting, James Galway type piece.
Caroline Patterson sat up in her smart new sleeping-bag, dug her teeth into a large piece of pork pie which she had no intention of sharing with anyone, and wished she hadn’t come.
A dark-skinned, leather-clad chap in a group nearby plucked at his guitar, in tune with Melanie’s flute, and soon his friend with the dreadlocks had joined in, too. It was a pleasant sound and everyone in the vicinity began to hum and sway.
Marcus produced some bottles of beer. “Here, have one of these, Stephanie.”
She took the bottle and drank deeply from the neck. She didn’t much like the taste but she knew the effect would be good if she got enough of it.
With darkness had come the lights, flaming torches round the perimeter, and psychedelic, flashing electric spots round the stage powered by the distant generators. Then the serious music started, thumping like the rhythm of heartbeats. Several people got up to dance; lively, jerky movements, bodies lurching back and forth.
Stephanie’s party had danced together, no one partnering anyone in particular, all united by the obsessive beat which took command of their senses, drove all thought out of their minds.
When the performing group took a break to rapturous applause and the dancers flopped to the ground for refreshments, someone passed round a thin cigarette.
Stephanie had developed a deep love of God, of the world and of all the people in it.
*
In Guernsey everyone is either someone’s old schoolfriend or their cousin. Everyone knows everything about everybody, going back generations. Islanders knew their family history was public knowledge, but few cared, because for every skeleton known to be in your cupboard, you knew of equal skeletons in everyone else’s.
William Smart was Geraldine Schmit’s nephew, and Geraldine, usually known as Gelly, was an old school friend of Sue’s mother Sarah, and of Aunt Filly, and was George Schmit’s second wife. And everyone knew her sister Louise had had the misfortune to marry a “Bad Lot”, a shotgun marriage when she was five months gone, and had endured a miserable life of hardship and abuse until she finished up in the Castel Hospital with a mental breakdown, only three months before the “Bad Lot” fell under a bus in a drunken stupor.
William, young Billy, the only outcome of this unhappy union, never shone at school, left when he was sixteen, and Uncle George had kindly agreed to take him on in the boatyard, where he shone even less. This was largely due to the fact that his agile mind was constantly preoccupied with schemes for accumulating the maximum amount of money for the minimum amount of work. Years ago, he had involved an unwitting Richard in a blatantly dishonest venture from which they were extricated only by a great deal of goodwill and repentant promises. Although, as George variously swore to his friend, Richard’s father Greg, he didn’t believe ‘a leopard could change its spots’, and ‘what is bred in the bone will come out in the blood’, nevertheless, he continued to employ the boy for Gelly’s sake. And now, at thirty-four years of age, Billy continued to dream and scheme and leave most of the hard work to Richard.
“I promise you I’ve got a winner this time,” he told Richard that August. “There’s this firm in France who buy up bankrupt boats and sell them on cheap to yards all over the continent. I can pick up a really nice motor cruiser for five thousand quid, bring her back here where we put five thousand’s worth of gear in her, plus pretty her up, then flog her off for twenty-five or thirty. It can’t miss.”
“And who is going to buy it?” Richard asked, not really paying much attention as he wrestled with a propeller shaft bent by a speeding owner on a sharp rock.
“There are yacht-brokers springing up all over the island now, selling to business people in Birmingham who register and berth their boats here to dodge English taxes. Do you realise they can fly here for a weekend’s sailing far quicker than they could motor down to a marina on the south coast? Those are our customers.”
“You mean they would be our customers if we had ten thou lying around waiting to be invested in your scheme.”
“Well, that needn’t be a problem. If we put the figures to your father and to Uncle George, either of them could cough up that amount without blinking.”
“How little you know my father or Uncle George,” Richard snorted. “Neither would cough up a bean without losing sleep. Here, pass me that hammer, will you?”
Richard didn’t give the matter another thought until he was on his way home that night. Then it occurred to him that Billy’s idea might not be such a bad one, providing one had that much capital to invest. He might just mention it to Dad next time he saw him.
*
It was a warm September day. Bees were collecting the last dustings of pollen from the asters and Michaelmas daisies below the verandah, a collar dove was cooing a monotonously boring song out of sight in one of the conifers; Cressida was scratching her back on the stunted, dry grass on the lawn watched by Troilus, who was lying nearby with his chin on his paws waiting for something sufficiently interesting to happen to make it worth his while getting up.
Sue sat in her deckchair, an open book on her lap, listening. But there was no “pluck” of tennis balls on the court, no din of pop music coming through an upstairs window. No one called “hallo” as the front door slammed, or scrunched the gravel with cycle tyres. Bobbie was back at school, Debbie had flitted over and gone back again to England to finish the tennis season, Stephen was at work, and Roderick had gone off to see some English cathedrals before returning to university. As for Stephanie, well, she hadn’t come back all summer and Sue co
uld only hope she would be going back to college eventually. Sue had begged and pleaded with her on the phone and had the receiver slammed down on her ear for her trouble. She had wept, written letters which were returned “Gone away, address not known” and now she knew she could only try not to think about her daughter at all, because the thoughts made her so miserable she was depressing everyone else round her. It wasn’t fair on Stephen and Bobbie, or on Roderick and Debs when they happened to be around. She had asked herself “why?” a million times but no answer seemed to make any sense. What had she done to cause the girl to reject her, reject home and family? Where had she gone wrong? Or was this God’s punishment for some unwitting transgression? Oh no, not that line of thinking again; she had gone down that track after Jonathan’s accident, worrying that it was some form of retribution for having thrown David Morgan over to marry Jonathan. So was she really to imagine that once again she was being punished, this time for having had an adulterous relationship with Stephen while Stephanie’s father was still alive? Rubbish! She had decided long ago that God had sent Stephen to her at that time to keep her sane . . . for the sake of the children if for no other reason.
So forget it. Forget Stephanie. The girl would come back when she was good and ready. She had her reasons, however obscure they might seem to an older woman. To her mother.
And in the meantime, the sun was shining, the bees buzzing and the birds singing and . . . she was bloody lonely and miserable.
Sue looked at her watch again. There was tons of time to take the dogs across the common to the beach and back again before Bobbie came home from school. She pushed herself out of her chair and immediately Troilus’s head came up, ears forward in expectation. “Come on then, you two.”
On impulse she grabbed her swimsuit and towel from the utility before heading out to the gate. There would be sufficient wind out there to build up some boisterous breakers in the bay. A bit of belly surfing would do her good.
The Guernsey Saga Box Set Page 60