Wishing Water

by Freda Lightfoot

  Locals breathed a deep sigh of relief, pulled down the shutters on their guesthouses, and returned to their winter activities of bell ringing, flower arranging, photography and amateur dramatics.

  With the promise of a restful, quiet autumn and winter ahead, now was the time, Lissa decided, to pay a visit home. She readily accepted Derry’s offer of a lift in his new van, knowing it was only an excuse to show him off, and Jan too. She was almost sure that Meg would like her new friends. How could she not?

  Meg and Tam came running down the fells from where they’d been checking the sheep, to greet them. There were tearful hugs and kisses which set the young dog Ruff, grandson of Rust, into a frenzy of barking.

  ‘Oh, it’s so lovely to see you all,’ Lissa declared on a happy sigh. She gazed around at the mountains thick with fronds of bracken like a matted bronze beard. Heard the familiar sounds of hens clucking about the yard, sparrows squabbling in the hedge, the moan of the wind through the ash trees. Relished the dearly loved scents of green grass and woodsmoke.

  When she returned her gaze to Meg, it was to find her eyeing the two smiling visitors with a query in her grey eyes.

  ‘Sorry, this is Jan Colwith, my best friend.’ Lissa felt proud to introduce her as such.

  Jan stepped forward, hand outstretched. ‘Pleased to meet you, though I feel I know you already.’

  Meg smiled an acknowledgement but her eyes slid to Derry.

  Lissa had grown so used to Derry’s outlandish style, knowing it didn’t give a full picture of his complex personality she’d come to ignore it. It certainly didn’t affect the way she felt about him, particularly when he kissed her.

  But looking at him now through Meg’s eyes, her heart shrivelled a little inside. He cut an odd-looking figure in leather jacket, narrow black trousers, huge crepe-soled shoes and string tie. A skiffle king with a fancy to be a cowboy?

  Is this the best my darling girl can do? the grey eyes said. Is this why I brought her up with such care, to have her throw herself away on the first dandy that crosses her path? All this was evident, and more, in the set of Meg’s mouth, the tightness of the skin around her shrewd eyes, the whole stance of her body.

  Lissa could see that Derry too had noted the disapproval for he adopted a defensive, insolent look.

  Lissa drew in a quick breath as she introduced him. ‘Jan’s brother Derek, though he prefers to be called Derry.’

  There was a long awkward pause as Meg made no move towards him. Then Derry, responding to a nudge from Lissa, held out his hand. Howdy,’ he said, as if he were a US Marshal. Lissa inwardly cringed.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Meg coolly responded, not taking her hands from the pockets of her jeans. For a moment the awkwardness deepened before Tam slapped Derry on the shoulder and ushered them all inside.

  ‘So good it is to see you we’re forgetting our manners, are we not? I’ll put the kettle on. Meg, you fetch that fruit cake you made the other day, since we haven’t got a fatted calf.’

  Everybody laughed and the moment of tension passed.

  An hour drifted by pleasantly enough with Lissa learning all the latest news and gossip, though the conversation grew stilted at times. Derry didn’t say a word and nobody spoke to him. He sat and gazed upon them all with impudent arrogance on his face and Lissa chewed on her fingernails and worried.

  Tam finally excused himself, saying he’d catch them a rabbit for tea. ‘Would you be wanting to come with me, lad?’ he asked Derry, who blenched and shook his head.

  ‘N-no thanks. I’m OK here.’

  Tam chuckled and went off whistling.

  Lissa recognised a flicker of annoyance in Meg’s eyes, as if she’d been hoping that Derry would disappear in a puff of smoke, so she started to talk about the draper’s shop, anything to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe how old fashioned it is, and Miss Stevens spends all her time in the office though what she does there I can’t imagine. I’d love to be let loose on the place,’ Lissa declared, suddenly realising that she would.

  Meg, scraping potatoes for lunch at the kitchen sink, looked up in surprise. ‘Why, what would you do with it?’

  ‘I could make it profitable.’ Lissa’s sudden flush of excitement increased as she considered the idea. ‘I’d get rid of all that old stock for a start.’

  ‘Paint the front,’ Jan suggested, coming to sit at the pine table with her. ‘Get rid of that awful pea green.’

  ‘And turn that draughty old stock room into a second display area, and fitting rooms. There’s plenty of space upstairs for stock.’

  ‘Why not open two floors while you’re at it,’ Jan quipped.

  ‘Why not?’ Lissa laughed.

  Meg rinsed the potatoes, put them in a pan and set it on the stove with a clatter. Then checked the progress of the meal. A casserole of pork in cider was bubbling nicely in the oven. For afters she’d made a lovely apple pie, spiced with a pinch of cloves. It would go down well with a hunk of home-produced, crumbly cheese. She wiped her hands on a cloth and took off her apron.

  ‘You seem happy anyway,’ she said, forcing her voice to sound pleased and wondering why she wasn’t.

  ‘Oh, we are. Life’s great.’

  Meg wanted Lissa to be happy, she really did. If only Carreckwater were nearer, and they saw a bit more of her. And if only she wouldn’t pick up every bit of rubbish she felt sorry for, such as this Teddy Boy. Meg felt the familiar fear in the pit of her stomach. Didn’t Lissa realise how unreliable men were?

  After lunch Lissa offered to show Jan and Derry around her home. They were halfway out the door when Meg stopped them.

  ‘We’re a farm, remember, and the lanes are muddy,’ eyeing the pretty blue shoes with the kitten heels.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t think.

  Meg tried to make a joke of it but felt awkward, as if her own daughter had become a stranger to her. ‘Not really suitably dressed, are you? You look so different.’ She hadn’t meant to say anything of the sort. But looking at this newly minted, coolly sophisticated young miss who had replaced her own laughing, lively country girl, Meg felt suddenly faded and tired, and old. But then that girl had vanished long since, in a muddle of adolescent angst. It was sad really that daughters had to grow up at all, Meg decided.

  Lissa was bridling at the implied criticism. ‘I wanted to look smart for you, that’s all.’

  Now all the wrong words came tumbling out. ‘What in fancy shoes, lipstick and eye shadow. Is that mascara on your lashes? And what makes your skirt stick out?’

  ‘A paper nylon petticoat. Do you like it? I starch it with sugar.’ Lissa spun about to show it off then flushed slightly as she saw Derry’s smile.

  ‘Paper nylon? Whatever next?’ Meg said, wiping the table top with unnecessary vigour. ‘You must be earning plenty of money then?’ She bit her lip, realising she sounded silly and mean.

  ‘I earn enough.’

  Tam laughed in his cheery way, as if it were all great fun and the air was not crackling with an undercurrent of tension. ‘I think we’re a bit out of touch with your young world,’ he said.

  Wellingtons had to be found for them all since Jan’s shoes were even sillier and Derry’s were quite beyond the pale for farm lanes. But there was no shortage of sensible footwear in the Broombank kitchen. Yet the fact that she had forgotten to come properly shod seemed to be a black mark in some way. Lissa felt hurt by this unspoken criticism, seeing it again as a form of rejection.

  Lissa stood on the knoll gazing up at Dundale Knot, breathing deeply of the clear air, letting it bubble inside her like champagne. She’d taken her friends to visit Sally Ann and Nick down at Ashlea, which had gone quite well and she’d left them talking while she went for a walk with Meg. ‘Carreckwater is pretty, and great fun but I do miss all this majesty, this freedom of space.’

  ‘You can come back any time,’ Meg said at her elbow.

  Lissa smiled. She thought Meg seemed quieter these days, a rather
sad and lonely figure. No more babies had come and she would be forty next year. She wanted to wrap her arms about her foster mother and say how sorry she was to have caused the loss of that precious burden, but Meg was moving away from her, saying something that brought Lissa’s wandering attention to heel quite sharply.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Meg turned to her. ‘I said where on earth did you find him? He’s not at all the sort of boy I would’ve expected you to bring home.’

  ‘Derry?’

  ‘Yes, Derry. Even the name is rather silly.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with it, or him?’ Lissa was instantly on the defensive.

  Meg gave a self-conscious laugh. Too late she realised she’d spoken her thoughts out loud when really she shouldn’t. She ploughed on, hoping to make Lissa understand how anxious she felt. ‘I should have thought that was obvious.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘Look at his clothes. We may live on the remote fells and not yet have the wonders of television, or even electricity. But we read the newspapers, listen to the radio, so we’re aware of the trouble such people are causing.’

  ‘Such people?’ Lissa could feel a cold sensation creep into her stomach. Why could they never be friends as they used to be? ‘Derry isn’t a separate breed. Anyway, what sort of trouble?’

  ‘Teddy Boys. Ripping up cinema seats, that sort of thing. We’ve read all about it.’

  ‘Derry never ripped up a cinema seat in his life. He wouldn’t know how to start.’

  Spots of colour marked each high cheek bone but Meg’s lips remained tight and thin, determined to stick to her point. ‘Nevertheless, he seems unreliable. Not at all the sort of boy we would have chosen for you.’

  ‘Then it’s a good thing I can choose for myself,’ said Lissa tartly, feeling the gulf between them widen. And she had hoped to bridge it today, to bring them close again.

  ‘You’re too young to make choices,’ Meg unwisely remarked. ‘It’s too easy to make mistakes when you are young.’

  Lissa struck back in the only way she knew. ‘Like you objected to my writing to my own mother?’

  Meg’s face was the colour of cold ash. ‘I was afraid for you. I wanted to keep you, yes, I’ll admit that. But I was afraid that it might not work out with Kath, and her rejection would hurt you.’

  It was a fair assessment of what had actually happened, but Lissa was no longer receptive to reason. Meg had disapproved of her clothes, Jan’s silly high heels, and worst of all, she’d criticised Derry. ‘I need to understand why I wasn’t important to her. Why my mother didn’t simply drop everything when she realised she was having me.’

  Meg did not reply. It all seemed so long ago now. How could she explain the hurt, the passion, the lost hopes and fears of a past generation to this young woman who saw everything in black and white, and only as it related to herself. Lissa was self-obsessed as all young girls were, as Kath had been. But it would be unkind to say so. She had often thought how unfair it was that the major decisions of one’s life had to be made when one was too young to make the right ones.

  ‘There was a war on,’ was all she could say. ‘It changed things.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’ Lissa spat out the words, stepping, as if wanting to distance herself from the simple truth. ‘Anyway, the war has been over for years. Everyone is entitled to know who they are, where they come from, and what makes them behave in a certain way. You never gave me that chance.’

  ‘I did my best. I told you about Kath, about both of us, and about Jack. I told you what happened.’

  ‘Eventually you did, but much too late. The damage had been done.’

  Meg looked Lissa squarely in the face but she did not beg for understanding now. She showed annoyance at fighting this unjustified attack. ‘What damage? I loved you. I wanted to protect you.’

  Lissa gave a grunt of disbelief, hot tears standing proud in her eyes, wanting to extricate herself from the terrible hurtful words pouring into her head and out of her mouth but unable to do so. ‘If that were true you wouldn’t have needed a baby, would you? But you did, so you couldn’t possibly have loved me.’

  Meg jerked with shock and at last did raise her voice, the anger in it sharp and acrid. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘It’s the truth. I have this memory,’ Lissa cried. ‘Of me crying in a cot. I’m holding on to the sides and you look as if you are about to pick me up, then you turn and walk away, leaving me screaming. Was that true? Did that really happen?’

  Meg was gaping at her. ‘No one can remember so far back. Someone has told you.’ It was the worst possible thing she could have said, for it proved Lissa’s point.

  Lissa stared at her for a long, silent moment, shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘So it did happen. You really didn’t want to pick me up.’ It was a statement, cold and bleak.

  ‘I was young. Hurt and betrayed by my best friend and the man I’d hoped to marry. I was afraid...’

  ‘For yourself,’ Lissa cut in bitterly, not wanting to hear any more. She turned and started to walk away. Meg hurried after her and grasped her arm.

  ‘Don’t go, Lissa. Not like this, angry with each other. I do love you. I know I have my faults, being obsessed with the sheep the main one, but I’ve been the best mother I could be. I loved you as if you were my own child. I also knew that I might lose you, that Kath might come back at any time and take you from me. Can’t you imagine how that felt?’

  There was a desperation in her voice, one that suddenly Lissa longed to respond to. But too much had been said, too much hurt inflicted. ‘You stopped me going with her when I was seven. You stopped me writing to her. Now you want to stop me from seeing Derry.’ Lissa shook off Meg’s restraining hand. ‘You criticise me, tell me which friends I should choose, decide my life for me, but you really have no rights over me at all, have you? You never even adopted me, not officially. You are not my mother.’

  It was the final cruelty and Lissa’s heart clenched as she saw the spasm of pain that came into Meg’s face at these words. What had she said? What had she done? She hadn’t meant to go this far. But all the disappointments, the broken promises she’d suffered over the years had boiled up and spilled out of her like a hot tide of evil lava, destroying everything in its path.

  ‘Oh, Lissa,’ Meg said, putting her hands to her face in a helpless gesture of despair. ‘I didn’t realise... I never believed it was so important to you. You should have said.’

  ‘I did say, but you weren’t listening, were you? You only heard what you wanted to hear.’ Lissa’s voice grew thick with unshed tears and not a little self-pity while Meg, knowing there was too much truth in the accusation to deny, bit on her lip and said nothing.

  Then Lissa tossed back her head, eyes blazing, and in that moment she had never looked more like Kath, with the same wild, devil-may-care beauty about her. ‘As for Derry, he’s good and kind for all his odd notion of fashion. More importantly, he’s my friend.’

  She very nearly said that she loved him but decided against it at the last moment, her instinct for self-protection too strong. ‘`I choose my own friends even if I couldn’t choose my own mother. I’m free to make my own decisions now, and one day I’ll marry whom I damned well please. Not that you’ll be interested, since neither you nor Kath wanted me at all really, did you?’

  And she walked away, not waiting for Meg’s reply.

  Lissa wept as they drove along the lane out of the dale. She knew she’d hurt Meg badly and wanted it not to matter. Knowing that it mattered very much.

  ‘Didn’t go too well, did it? Suppose I shouldn’t have worn this pink shirt. Bit much, was it?’

  Lissa wiped her eyes to look into his warm brown eyes and felt herself melt inside. ‘Wear whatever you like, Derry. People should accept you for yourself, not what or who they think you are. Stop. Stop here.’

  He slammed on the brakes at the urgency of her request and stared at the rain streaming down t
he windscreen. ‘You’re not getting out in this?’ But she was.

  Lissa was out of the car in a trice, gazing out across the rain swept fells.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ Derry asked Jan, disbelief in his voice.

  ‘Haven’t the faintest.’ Jan tried calling through the window but Lissa didn’t even turn her head. Then she darted an agonised glance at her brother and on a mutual decision they both sighed and climbed out of the car, stepping gingerly through the puddles to go and stand beside her. Derry turned up his collar as the rain flattened his hair and ran down his face and neck, soaking the front of his best pink shirt. His shoes would be quite ruined, he thought.

  Lissa was lifting her face up to the rain as if she loved it.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ he asked, following her gaze into the sweep of mist that cloaked the fell.

  ‘There. Don’t you see it? High on that ridge?’

  Derry squinted through the rain, trying not to think that he could be somewhere warm and dry, enjoying a pint in the King’s Arms with his mates maybe. ‘There’s a house,’ he said in surprise. ‘Surrounded by tall trees.’

  ‘Larkrigg Hall. Yews and oaks all about it.’ Lissa smiled. ‘Or yows and yaks as Grandfather Joe would say. That’s where I might have lived, if my mother had kept me. It’s where my grandmother still lives.’

  ‘Saints alive!’ Derry said, forgetting all about the rain as his mouth dropped open. ‘That’s some pad.’ No wonder she’d appeared so stuck up at first, with a place like that behind her.

  ‘I suppose it is. But I hate it. I hate my grandmother too. She doesn’t want me and I don’t want her. Any more than my mother wanted me. Any more than Meg wants me now.’

  They were both staring at her, not daring to challenge her words because of the venom and desperation in her voice.