“Oh, no!” Hilary leaned back in her chair. “Why?”
Sue took a deep breath. “Because Debbie marched into your house one day, uninvited, and found Justin in bed with Amanda Blaydon.”
Hilary’s eyes closed, deep furrows between them. “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” Then she gazed sadly across the table. “Oh Sue, my dear, I am so very sorry. I did so hope he would not turn out like his father.”
Sue looked startled.
“Oh sorry, didn’t you know? I thought everyone knew that Johnny chases everything that moves in a skirt.”
Sue rubbed a floury hand across her forehead. “Then it’s my turn to say how sorry I am.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I have become used to it over the years. It used to hurt like hell, in the beginning. But not any more. At least he doesn’t fall madly in love and go off with them.”
Sue thought that was probably because Hilary held the purse strings, but she didn’t say so.
“Poor little Debbie. How is she?”
“Pretty grim, I think. She walks round like a zombie. Doesn’t eat enough to keep a fly alive, and goes off to work every morning as though her life depended on it.”
“Perhaps it does.”
Sue sighed. “Perhaps.”
*
Debbie wrote the little card, attached it to the bouquet and laid it in a cardboard delivery box. The phone rang and she answered it, pen in hand, no longer fearful that Justin might be on the other end. She placed the order note in the tray, picked up the next instruction and moved round the shop selecting flowers from buckets and display vases. Debbie wasn’t smiling, but then nor was she crying: she was simply going through the everyday motions of living . . . trying not to feel.
“Everything going all right?” Coralie asked in a matter-of-fact voice as she staggered in behind a huge cardboard box.
“Fine. No problems,” was the colourless reply.
Coralie deposited the box in the middle of the floor, enabling her to peer at her friend over the top. “And what about you? Did you eat those sandwiches I bought you?”
“I had some of them.” Debbie omitted to add that she had only managed a couple of bites of one ham and tomato before hiding the rest away in her handbag.
But Coralie guessed. “Honey, you just have to eat or you are going to make yourself seriously ill. I still can’t believe my bloody sister has done this to you.” Strong words from one who normally avoided saying ‘damn’.
“Don’t worry about Amanda. I gather from the gossip flying round that she wasn’t the first. Look,” she held up a stem of golden lilies, “do you think these would look right in the Harvey’s centre piece for their dinner party?”
Coralie put her head on one side and considered. “No. Too tall for diners to talk across. Try cutting the stems down on these lovely, flat zinnias.”
The subject of Justin’s infidelity was dropped, temporarily.
*
“Mrs Harris has made a lovely job of those cushions,” George said through the hatchway. “Who chose the material?”
“Anne did,” Richard replied, fixing a bottlescrew into place. “Like the colour?”
“Turquoise is my favorite. And it matches the curtains and the decoration on the plastic cups and plates. Very smart. Almost makes me feel our asking price is too low. What do you think?”
“I’m more interested in the hull and the engine. That’s what should sell the boat. They are in good nick but still secondhand. I think we’ve set a fair price.”
“I don’t.” Billy was listening from the floor of the workshop. “We could have asked another three thou.”
“That would give us a disproportionate amount of profit,” George said severely.
“Only because I got such a good deal on the hull in the first place,” his step-nephew grumbled.
“But she wasn’t just a hull. She was virtually a fully-equipped motor sailer.”
“So I knocked ’em down. Why not?”
George presumed the previous owners must have been hard up and had to sell – or they were mentally retarded, and the brokers who bought her couldn’t wait to get rid of her. But he didn’t pursue the argument. “We’ll advertise her while she is still up. Prospective buyers prefer the chance to inspect the hull.”
Richard climbed down over the spanking new dodgers, patting the freshly painted boot-topping appreciatively as he passed. “Definitely. You are so right, Uncle George.” Though George Schmit was not really an uncle, because he was his father’s longtime friend, the younger man continued to give him the courtesy title.
“Are you ready to start work on that one, yet?” Billy asked, indicating a barnacle-clad hull blocked up on a trailer at the far end of the workshop.
“No. We have to finish the work on a couple of local boats, first,” George replied, leaning over the trim.
“Don’t know why you bother,” Billy remarked. “We only get peanuts for labour.”
“We! You should try putting in a bit of labour yourself, sometime. Then there might be a few more peanuts all round.” George was always irritated by the young man’s reluctance to work with anything but his mouth.
“I’m cutting off home now. I have to drop in at Sue’s on the way with a bag of stuff Anne borrowed,” Richard said on the way to the corrugated iron gable door. “See you after lunch.”
He drove off along the Bordeaux coast road, glancing repeatedly across the grass and rocks to the Little Russel. With the westerly wind against tide, white caps were charging down past the Brehon Tower between Guernsey, and Herm and Jethou, buffeting the rocks at the entrance to the little harbour and setting all the small fishing boats dancing on their moorings. He smiled, thinking about Geoff Duggan. “Who’d want to live and work in a city?” he asked himself out loud.
Sue was on the phone when he walked into the kitchen. “Fine, I’ll see you tomorrow at about three-thirty. ’Bye!” She replaced the receiver. “Hi, little brother! Haven’t seen you for weeks. How are you all?”
“Derek’s been off school with a cold, but otherwise we are all fit. What about you lot? Saw Debbie the other day and thought she looked very peaky.”
“She isn’t feeling too good yet. You know she and Justin have broken up?”
“No! Good grief! I thought they were all set to get married. What happened?”
Sue grimaced and told him and was surprised at his reaction.
“That tart! She had a go at me once, back along. Gave every indication of wanting to roll me in the hay.”
Sue had to laugh. “No! When?”
“Remember that party her folk gave in their garden in the summer? Well, there she was, dolled up to the nines and as Mum would have said, ‘Asking for it’, following me round to every group of people I spoke to, in a tiny little pair of shorts that showed off virtually everything she has.”
Sue nodded. “I remember them well.”
“Who wouldn’t? And next thing I know she links her arm through mine and is rubbing her thigh up against me, quite deliberately.”
“Charming!”
“If you like that sort of thing and your wife enjoys sharing your favours. Anne does not. I was fool enough to tell her when I got home. She was not amused and accused me of encouraging the painted witch.”
“Poor Anne! She must have felt very upset at the thought of it going on in front of all those people.”
It was Richard’s turn to laugh. “Poor Anne nothing! You may remember she was carrying quite a bit of extra weight after having baby George, well apparently Amanda’s behaviour decided her to look to her laurels. She started dieting like mad and now says she needs a complete new wardrobe!”
“Well done Anne!” Sue exclaimed. Adding, “but it’s not fair to blame Amanda entirely for Debbie’s misery. Since the break up, people have felt free to relay gossip over all Justin’s other infidelities. It seems that even while they were on tennis tours in England, he would go off to London or elsewhere to meet up with various amo
urs. Debbie never suspected a thing.”
“Just as well she is rid of a type like that before getting hitched.”
“True, in a sense. The pity is she ever fell for him in the first place. She really believed that her whole future was mapped out with him as husband and father of her children to be. Now, the bottom has fallen out of her world. It’s worse than a bereavement. At least if he’d died she could cherish his memory. As it is, she cannot even think of him without hurting.”
“Tell her her Uncle Richard says she is well rid of the louse,” he growled.
*
“The court is quite playable after this dry spell, Debs. Would you like to pull on a sweater and come out for a knock?” Sue was worried to find the girl still shut away in her bedroom as lunchtime approached one Sunday. January was very chilly but they might still work up a steam.
Debbie looked up from the magazine she wan’t reading, green eyes unnaturally large and pale in their dark circles, set in a pinched little face. Compared with the bouncing, bubbling character of a year ago who had been so full of enthusiasm for life, this was a pathetic ghost.
Sue’s heart plummeted. She wanted to weep.
“It’s very sweet of you, Mummy darling, but I think I’d rather go for a walk along the shoreline with you and the dogs. After lunch?”
“Of course, sweetheart, if that’s what you’d prefer.” Sue sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh. “What can I do to help?”
Debbie reached out to pat her hand. “You are helping, Mum. Just by being there.”
“But that doesn’t seem like enough. You are not getting over this. You look worse as every week, every month passes. Talk to me. Tell me what is going on in your mind and we can discuss the thing through.”
“I don’t see how we can. Or how it could help. I mean, without being rude, how can anyone your age know how I feel?”
Sue managed not to laugh but couldn’t avoid a wry smile. “My age? Do you imagine that the teens and twenties have exclusive claim to all feelings of love and sexual desire?”
A faint grin and pale flush crept into the girl’s face, but she said nothing.
“Do you think I cannot remember my first love? And my second? Not to mention my third. Do you think I didn’t grieve for the man I married when your father’s accident robbed him of his love for me? Turned that love into cruel aggression, almost hatred? Do you imagine I didn’t weep into my pillow for years at the daily reminders of what once had been? Do you think I don’t know what it is like to ache for the physical love of the man I once adored, until every mouthful of food stuck in my gullet and I could count every rib in my body?”
“Oh, Mum!” Debbie’s eyes filled with tears as she flung herself into her mother’s arms. They sobbed together for each others’ sadness. Then the girl mopped her eyes with a soggy tissue and said, “Tell me about your first love.”
So Sue told her all about David Morgan, the boy she had met in Wales at the age of fourteen. The boy who had helped fill the void left by the absence of parents and family during the five war years of exile. Then she went on to talk of the handsome ex-serviceman she fell in love with and married: their love, and the home and business they built together. She spoke in a way, and with an openness, that Debbie had never heard before.
“You were fortunate, of course, that you were living back in the island again and able to talk to Grandma, like we are talking now,” the girl observed.
Sue shook her head. “No way. Your grandmother would have been shocked out of her socks if I had tried to discuss the matter in this way. Certainly the sexual side was an unmentionable topic.”
They talked on, for a while, till Sue looked at her watch and leapt to her feet. “Nobody will get any lunch today if I don’t get down to the kitchen.”
“Want a hand?”
“You might do the carrots for me while I turn the potatoes.”
They exchanged warm, intimate smiles as they left the room and Sue only wished that things could be the same between herself and Stephanie.
*
Sarah was a wiry and agile baby, walking before she was a year old. Which didn’t make looking after her any easier.
“No, Sarah, not out there!” Stephanie grabbed her in from the muddy yard, cursing the person who left the door open again, yet daring to say nothing. She was bruised enough. In fact everything was enough. Too much of enough. Too much work trying to make meals out of nothing. Too many swedes and carrots and no meat. Not enough eggs because the boys kept killing off too many chickens for the pot. Too much bread and cake from the local supermarket, going cheap because it had passed the sell-by date. Too much rain and mud. Too much cold. Too many arguments and fights. The nearest doctor or nurse was too far away when the little ones were sick. But what was the alternative? Thank God for Mum’s food parcels: they’d scarcely survive without them. The only problem was keeping a fair share for the babies before the men got hold of it all. There had been six big bars of Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate in one parcel, and the boys had knocked the lot off in one evening. It was so unfair. She kept a packet of chocolate digestives hidden in the nappy box under her bed, and was idiot enough to feel guilty about it. But Sarah’s need was far greater than Griff’s or Tony’s, the two greedy gannets.
“No, Sarah. Don’t cuddle that cat, she has an abcess from fighting off the torn.” She picked up the baby who couldn’t understand what she was saying, and blew a loving, explosive raspberry into her neck. Sarah squirmed and chortled with joy, unaware of the dirt that clogged her baby shoes and smeared her legs: not seeing her mother’s concern at the fleabites on her arms.
Standing there at the kitchen sink, Stephanie’s eyes wandered subconsciously to the ceiling, towards the bedroom above where money lay stitched into the lining of her jacket on the hook behind the door. Money sent by her mother to pay her fare back to the island for a holiday.
She bit her lip, took a deep breath and started counting out the wrinkled, sprouting potatoes that needed peeling for supper.
*
“Do you think I should try and force her to go to the doctor?” Sue asked. “Is there anything he might prescribe to help her?” Yet again she was at Les Marettes, the Banks’s home at Bordeaux. And yet again she was consulting her cousin Sybil about her children, Debbie in particular at this moment.
“I don’t know about medication, but what he might do is impress on her the seriousness of her condition. After all this time, her depression appears to have become endogenous,” Sybil replied, gently. At fifty-five she remained a stunningly beautiful woman: her figure was good, muscle tone firm and only the glistening blonde hair had artificial assistance. “Have a word with him, first, and see what he thinks.”
“I’ll ring him in the morning when she’s at work. See what he says.”
“How is Roderick getting on, these days?”
“Splendidly, it would seem. He has bought the cutest little cottage near Cobo and is currently doing it up. He and Alex Grolinski have made a great success of their business. Stephen was very worried at first, you know. He did his best to dissuade the boy from giving up architecture. But now he’s quite pleased he failed. I have to say that Roderick is a totally changed character. I don’t know if it is Alex’s influence, but he has joined the cocktail set, and started dating a variety of girls.”
Sybil’s elegant eyebrows shot up. “Wow! That’s hard to believe. He was always such a quiet, serious boy.”
Sue laughed. “So much so that I used to worry about him.”
“I must admit there have been times when I’ve wished we’d had children. But then seeing the way they go on being a worry to one all their lives, not just as babies, I am thoroughly thankful we didn’t!”
“It would be rather trying for poor Gordon, I imagine, to be coping with a teenager at . . . what age is he?”
“Coming up seventy-six this year. Yet I don’t know. I think he’d cope better than I would. Know what he’s doing at this moment? Lying underneath
his car fiddling with the rear axle, or something. Says the garage man hasn’t a clue!”
“If he’s happy, why stop him? By the way, what’s all this I hear about your mother and her next door neighbour?” Sue asked.
“Jim Mahy? Well, they play a lot of bridge together. Where did you hear the gossip?”
“From Dad. He says they are thick as thieves!”
“If you call trading help with their respective darning and their vegetable patches ‘thick as thieves’, yes. But as far as I can tell there is nothing wildly sexual in their relationship!”
“I should hope not. Otherwise you’ll have to advise her on taking the pill.”
“Sue, dear, Mother is the same age as Gordon. I hardly think that would be necessary.” They both giggled, wickedly. “Talking of babies, how is Stephanie?”
“Not happy. Though she wouldn’t dream of admitting it.”
“Then how do you know?”
“By the number and length of her letters. She writes about the baby, and the vegetable garden, and her latest culinary achievements, but never says she is enjoying her life. I’ve told you how horrible I thought it all was each time I’ve visited her. I have the feeling my poor, uptight girl is stuck in an impossible situation.”
“Would you let her come home to live?”
“I can’t imagine she would want to. You know she and I could never hold a conversation without having a row.” Sue screwed up her face, sadly. “But I have sent her the money to come back home for a visit. She may have spent it on food, of course.”
Lady Sybil squeezed her cousin’s arm. “Cheer up, old thing. Have another cup of tea.”
*
Sue’s and Stephen’s social life took a very busy turn through the spring and summer of 1973. There were lots of new friends among his clients, as well as old friends from years back. There were dinners and dances, tennis and beach parties. Two of Stephen’s clients had installed swimming pools which opened the way for enhanced barbecued lunches on summer Sundays. The Martels reciprocated with all-day tennis tournaments starting early on Sunday mornings through till evening, while Sue and and the solemn Debbie produced large meat casseroles, endless fresh fruit and cheese, and teas of gache, sandwiches and Victoria sponges. Debbie was occasionally talked into playing a set, but her obvious reluctance deterred all but the bravest from asking her. Nowadays beach picnics tended to happen in the evenings, after work, instead of being all day affairs. Sue loved the memory of those old days but one had to change with the times, and now she enjoyed the evening gatherings almost as much, swimming lazily in the path of setting sunlight then, snug in sweaters and slacks, settling down on rugs and cushions to enjoy a hot supper out of wide Thermos’s, all washed down with paper cups of cheap wine, while the tide rose to lap at their feet. It was what island life was all about. Debbie would seek any excuse to duck out.
The Guernsey Saga Box Set Page 64