by Jo Verity
‘He hasn’t been happy, love.’ Tom squeezed her hand.
She shook her head. Of course he hadn’t been happy. What a stupid thing to say. How could he ever be happy again, now the love of his life had died? Yes, he had changed but how could he have stayed the same when half of him was missing? He’d lost his edge and turned into a boring old man but his mundane routine was the very thing that enabled him to function.
‘I know, I know. I just feel weird about it. I suppose I’m hurt that he hasn’t mentioned her until now. You must admit it’s strange. We’ve been there several times since Christmas. Why didn’t he tell us about her then?’
‘Perhaps he was waiting to see how things developed. I’m surprised Steven didn’t spot it, though. He’s at your father’s quite often.’ He shook his head.
‘Dad’s obviously been keeping her a secret. But surely she must have found it odd. Would you want to get involved with a man who hides you from his family?’
‘Let’s not pre-judge her,’ he cautioned.
They walked back home along the road. The circuit took two hours and they’d talked about Maddy and her pregnancy for most of that time. Tom wasn’t happy with the situation but he was starting to make practical suggestions and they agreed to try and see the positive side of it. They’d always imagined themselves with hordes of grandchildren and the process had to start sooner or later. It was only when the conversation strayed towards the baby’s father that he became agitated, but she stopped herself suggesting that they ‘shouldn’t pre-judge’ this man, either.
Back at the house, several telephone messages awaited them. The first was from her father. He’d never got to grips with message technology and spoke with exaggerated clarity, in terse phrases, as if he were speaking to a foreigner who was hard of hearing.
‘Message for Anna Wren. Dad here. Everything’s fine. Get my letter? Going out now. Speak soon.’ If everything was so fine, why had he broken his own golden rule and phoned before six o’clock when the cheaper tariff started?
Flora had called, twice, and said she would try again when she got home from work.
No word from Madeleine or Steven.
‘Let’s make a pact never to get a mobile phone,’ said Tom. ‘Think how the wretched thing would have ruined our walk.’
‘Perhaps we should offer to buy Maddy one for her birthday. At least we’d be able to keep in touch with her.’
He ignored her suggestion.
They prepared supper. A persistent stomach-flutter had put her off food all day but now she was ravenous. They were finishing their meal when Flora rang as promised. Anna confirmed that they’d received Maddy’s letter and that they were getting used to the idea. Ever since the children were old enough to have their own opinions, they’d treated Anna as a shock-absorber between themselves and their father and Flora slipped easily into the one-sided telephone conversation.
‘Dad’s there?’ asked Flora.
‘Yes.’
‘Is he in a state?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has Maddy spoken to you yet?’
‘No.’
‘I think she might want to come to Pen Craig to have the baby. How would he feel about that? She’d want Taliesin to be with her, though.’
‘...’
‘Mum? Ring me back when you can talk. I’m around all weekend.’
She replaced the receiver and smiled. Tom looked at her and raised his eyebrows. ‘Flora,’ she said. ‘She’s fine.’ He never objected to being fed the censored version because he trusted her to tell him what he needed to know.
Taliesin. Mmmm. She accepted that the conception had not been immaculate, so now she could put a name to the father of her grandchild. And what an odd name it was. It rang bells. King Arthur? Frank Lloyd Wright? She would have to look it up.
They washed up, Tom whistling while he dried the plates, staring through the window, as if he expected someone to come across the yard. Whistling was often a sign of good spirits but Tom’s whistling indicated a retreat into his own thoughts. After all the good work she had put in on their walk, he was slipping away from her again and, to keep lines of communication open, she talked about their plans to use part of the outbuilding for her wheel and kiln.
Until these were installed there was little she could do apart from make sketches and notes for future projects. She’d attended a few evening classes in Ludlow, to keep her hand in, but she was a far better potter than the teacher, a fact which she’d tried to conceal from the rest of the class. This wasn’t through modesty but more a desire to get on with her own work and not to get roped in to coach the beginners. ‘Teaching a few classes might be a good way to get your name known,’ Tom had ventured.
They took coffee upstairs to the sitting room. It was almost dark. The weather had settled into a pattern of warm clear days and frosty nights. The sky was graded from royal blue to azure where it touched the hilltops, and lights were already glowing in the redbrick farmhouse across the valley. Tom switched on the television and embarked on non-communication. She picked up her book, staring at the page. Why did no one phone? Her brother must be as disturbed by the wedding announcement as she was. Maybe not. Steven and his wife lived ten miles from their father but Elaine didn’t get on with Frank and contact was minimal.
She closed her book. ‘I think I’ll pop and see Dad tomorrow. I haven’t been for a while.’
‘What if Madeleine phones?’ said Tom.
Maddy was ‘somewhere in Dorset’ without a telephone. Short of touring around the county, looking for a group of New Age travellers, they had no means of contacting her. ‘You’ll be here if she does, won’t you?’
There was no reply from her father when she rang later that evening but it suited her not to speak to him. He might try to deter her. She left a message, saying that she would be coming the next day. ‘If he’s not there I can always go to Flora’s or drop in on someone else.’ She needed, whatever happened, to see Flora and have a proper chat.
Tom glanced at her and smiled. ‘Good idea.’
Now she had a plan of action she managed to struggle through two chapters of her book before it was time for bed. While Tom went down to lock up and check that they had switched everything off, she climbed the stairs to the top floor.
Their bedroom was her favourite room. With its daffodil-yellow walls and white woodwork, it felt fresh and welcoming. The planes of the ceiling, tucked up here under the old roof, came together at irregular angles to form interesting spaces without a hint of the fakery prevalent in most farmhouse conversions. Tom had been disappointed when the Webbers managed to get carried away at a local sale of architectural salvage. Consequently, Number Two now boasted ‘features’ concocted from distressed and stripped timber. Every piece of wood used had already existed in at least one other form, not counting the tree. They had found someone to cobble together tables out of floorboards, cupboards from panelling. Celia said she found it romantic to think of all the things their floorboard-table had witnessed. ‘Probably a lot of boots covered in dog shit,’ Sally had ventured. It was too easy to wind Celia up.
Anna stood in front of the mirror and brushed her hair. Thick, with a tendency to curl in the wet weather, it was half-and-half, black and white. The first grey hairs had appeared when she was at college and she’d let nature dictate the rate of greying. She pulled it back, catching it with a velvet scrunchy to prevent it irritating Tom during the night.
She crossed the landing to the bathroom, washed her face and cleaned her teeth. She’d once calculated how much time she saved by going without make-up. Its application and removal might take fifteen minutes or more each day and, from observing friends, this was a conservative estimate. Fifteen minutes every day. One and three quarter hours each week. Ninety-one hours a year. And say she’d been not using make-up since she was sixteen. That came to one hundred and forty days. Add to that the time not spent fussing with her hair, and she might have accrued a total of seven or eight months.
Anna wandered around the room, collecting clothes and shoving them into drawers. She located her book beneath a sweatshirt on the chair, climbed into bed and switched on the bedside lamp.
Tom was taking a long time to come up. She read another chapter before she heard his footsteps on the stairs. He went straight to the bathroom and completed his bedtime routine. When he came into the bedroom, he undressed in silence and put out the light, leaving the room in the mellowness of the bedside lamps.
‘I’ll go straight after breakfast if that’s OK,’ she said. ‘If you could pop me to the station, there are plenty of trains on a Saturday.’
‘No need. I saw Bill just now, when I was putting the rubbish out. They’re going down to see Luke tomorrow, so you can have a lift with them. As far as Bristol, anyway. They’re leaving about ten.’
There was no plausible reason for refusing this offer. It made perfect sense, but the last thing she wanted was to be trapped in a car with Bill and Sally. One of the attractions of a weekend away from Pen Craig was to put some distance between herself and Bill.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked when she failed to enthuse.
‘Nothing. I suppose I was looking forward to finishing this on the train.’ She waved her book in the air.
‘Bill wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ Tom switched off his lamp and adopted his sleeping position.
She marked her place with a dusty receipt for something she’d purchased last summer. It was for a ‘dmsn sht slved’ and, whatever it was, had cost nineteen pounds ninety-nine. She switched off the lamp and lay in the darkness, trying to fathom out what it could have been. It was a good ten minutes before she remembered the purple short-sleeved shirt.
4
Anna stood back from the window, peering across the yard. It was just past ten o’clock. She had been ready for a quarter of an hour, her overnight bag on the floor next to the back door. Bill was already out there, prowling around the car, wiping the windows with a chamois leather. Sally was nowhere to be seen. Tom had said his goodbyes and stood poker faced whilst Anna issued instructions for his survival during her absence. When she had finished telling him that there was bread in the bread bin and fruit in the fruit bowl, he had smiled, kissed her on the forehead and gone to get on with some work.
Neither her father nor Maddy had been in touch but she had spoken to Flora, agreeing to make the final arrangements for their get-together when she saw how the land lay in Bath.
A tappity-tap on the brick-paved yard heralded Sally’s progress to the car. Whenever Anna undertook a journey, she looked on it as an endurance test and wore loose clothes which wouldn’t show the dirt, and comfortable footwear, in case she was forced to tramp several miles to safety. With this in mind, she also carried essential rations – bottled water, fruit and muesli bars. Sally took the opposite tack. She travelled in her smartest clothes and her highest heels. If she were hungry or thirsty, she would stop at a service station or restaurant. If the car broke down, she would pay a garage man lots of money to come and sort it out.
‘I’m off now,’ shouted Anna, grabbing her holdall.
Sally was settling herself in the front seat. Bill raised his hand in greeting and dashed towards her, eager to take her bag and stow it in the boot of the car.
‘You’re looking as lovely as ever,’ he whispered. ‘Purple has just become my favourite colour.’
Oh dear, now she would have to discard this shirt and about half the clothes in her wardrobe. He opened the car door and made great show of helping her into the back seat.
‘Stop fussing, Bill. Anna can look after herself.’ Sally turned and grinned at her friend. ‘Sorry about that.’
It was nice to be made a fuss of, now and again, but Anna dared not say this, afraid Bill might take it as encouragement. Instead, she fiddled with her carrier bag.
The journey from Pen Craig to Bristol usually took a little over three hours, but today this extended to more than four by the time they had taken a leisurely brunch-break at a service station on the M5. Anna wanted to treat them to the meal, as a thank you for the lift, but Sally insisted that Bill should spend some of his redundancy money.
The Davises were off to visit their children. Luke, having secured a good law degree, had announced that he no longer wanted to become a solicitor. He was currently working with a charity for the young homeless. And Emily was half way through the second year of a teaching degree, following in her parents’ footsteps. Brother and sister shared a flat and kept an eye out for each other.
‘Em’s going through a bit of a bad patch,’ said Sally. ‘That’s mainly why we’re going down this weekend.’
‘I still say it’s daft to spend four years training if she can’t stand teaching,’ Bill mumbled.
‘And it looks as if Luke’s lost his mind,’ Sally added, as if Bill hadn’t spoken. ‘He’s got to pull his socks up and stop all this social conscience rubbish. It’s very self-indulgent.’
Anna felt ill-equipped to hand out advice on child-rearing but she did feel that it was unfair to force someone into a job they hated. How could any eighteen-year-old be expected to know what they wanted to spend the rest of their life doing? Her own parents had been disappointed when she chose art college, rather than university, but they didn’t stand in her way. She’d always been grateful to Steven for fulfilling their ambitions, which had taken the heat off her.
From the moment they left home, Bill spent too much time checking the rear view mirror. Once or twice, their eyes made contact and she felt her cheeks grow warm. She sank down in the seat and closed her eyes.
After their refreshment stop, Sally offered to drive but Bill wouldn’t hear of it. Then she suggested that she and Anna change places. ‘There’s not much leg room in the back. You must be dreadfully cramped.’
‘I’m fine.’ Anna edged herself into the corner. Bill immediately realigned the mirror. This improved his view of her, but left him with a serious blind spot. After one or two near misses, she wished she’d accepted Sally’s offer.
‘I assumed we’d be able to avoid travelling at weekends, now that we’ve joined the SAGA ranks.’ Bill knew how Sally hated his clumsy references to senior citizenship.
‘I know,’ said Anna. ‘I could visit Dad in the week, I suppose, but then I wouldn’t catch Flora.’
‘Why didn’t Tom come?’ asked Sally.
‘He’s got something to finish and I thought it might be better to talk to Dad on his own – try and find out about this Dorothy woman. If Tom’s around, they go off and do manly things.’
‘I don’t envy you,’ said Sally. ‘It might be tricky. What if she’s some bimbo gold-digger?’
Anna watched the landscape slipping past. Travelling with her head twisted to the side was making her feel sick and shutting her eyes made it worse. The farmland, greening up after the winter, undulated beyond the motorway verges, bland in comparison with the patchwork of fields which lined their wooded valley. She wondered if Maddy was out there, muddy and smelling of wood smoke, with Taliesin and her New Age friends. At least the April sunshine would keep her warm.
Anna had planned to make the last stage of her journey by bus but the matter was taken out of her hands. Sally concocted a
n excuse to take a detour to visit a dress shop in Bath, taking them more or less past Frank Hill’s door.
‘Give us a ring tomorrow, about getting back,’ Sally instructed.
‘OK. I’ll be at Flora’s for lunch. I know she’d love to see Luke and Emily, if they’ve got time to pop over.’ This wasn’t entirely true. Flora and Luke had always been close. They’d been in the same class when they started school. But Emily, who was the same age as Maddy, had been an inscrutable, self-contained child, inclined to stick to the rules. Maddy had once described her as a ‘little mother’ which Anna took, from her tone of voice, to be an insult. Even Sally grumbled that she never needed to discipline Emily because she never did anything wrong. While Maddy was running away, shoplifting and getting tattooed, Emily Davis had done nothing worse than paint her fingernails and lose her homework diary. Perhaps her current dissatisfaction marked a turning point in her blinkered progress.
The car pulled up outside the house where Anna had grown up. She gathered her things and was on the pavement before Bill had time to dance attendance. She waved them off, glad to have a few moments to herself.
The brick-built semi and the garden in front of it had barely changed since she and Steven had played there as children. The flowering cherry, planted when they moved in, spread its branches across the drive. A birdbath marked the centre of the lawn. It had been a vital element in their childhood games. It was the place where she had to stand and count to one hundred, while Steven dashed off to hide. It was the lighthouse, marking the dangerous rocks, when pirates invaded. It was the totem pole where Indians danced around the camp-fire. Now it was nothing more than a grey concrete dish balanced on a tapering column, one side green with moss, a pile of crumbled biscuits on its rim.
The garage doors were shut so there was nothing to indicate whether her father was at home. The kitchen, where he spent most of his time these days, overlooked the back garden. She wondered whether to go around to the back door, her habit when she lived in Bristol, but today it seemed important to announce her arrival. She rang the front-door bell and waited.