An Ocean Apart

by Robin Pilcher

  “Granny doesn’t understand cricket,” Charlie whined. “She just spends her time talking to people and not watching.”

  “Oh, do stop moaning, Charlie!” Sophie said sharply. “It’s really kind of Granny to come at all. Anyway, Dad will probably be back by next weekend.” She looked round at her father, a flash of uncertainty in her eyes. “Won’t you?”

  David smiled reassuringly at her. “Well, it depends, but I’ll certainly do my best.” Stretching across, he took an over-cooked chip from Sophie’s bag and, crunching on it, eyed the glum faces of Charlie and Harriet in the rear-view mirror.

  “Listen,” he said after a pause. “I know that we discussed this all before, but, well, now that you’ve been back at school for a bit, I wondered if you had any second thoughts about being away from home. It’s just that I spoke with Mr. Hunter this morning and he says that he would quite understand if you did want to come back to Dalnachoil.”

  Sophie was shaking her head even before he had finished his last sentence. “No, I really don’t think it would be a good idea.”

  “Can I ask why not?”

  Sophie let out a long sigh. “Because we did discuss it, Dad, not just with you, but between ourselves as well. We all agreed that we didn’t want to leave our friends, and well, since we’ve been back, Mr. and Mrs. Hunter have been really kind. We go up and see them every night and they, well, just talk to us.”

  “They don’t play cricket or rugby at Dalnachoil,” Charlie interjected quietly.

  “We are really all right here, Dad,” Sophie continued, “unless…” She stopped and looked across at her father.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you want us to come home.”

  David put his hand on her head and smoothed back her sleeked hair. “No, please, I really want what you want. It’s just that, well, I thought it was worth asking the question again.”

  “I want to go home.” The voice sounded so distant and so diminutive that everyone turned to look at Harriet. She was sitting contentedly munching on her hamburger and staring out of the window at a screaming child who had just covered the car-park with chocolate milk shake. Seeing everyone staring at her, she grinned broadly and readied herself for another bite. “Not now, though—in the holidays.”

  Everyone let out a groan of relief, then burst out laughing. David reached forward to turn the ignition key, but stopped when he felt the light touch of Sophie’s hand on his arm.

  “Dad?” A serious expression had suddenly come over her face.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you all right?”

  David paused for a moment, then smiled and slowly nodded. “Yeah, I’m all right.”

  “Good.” She sat back in her seat. “Then we’re all all right.”

  David looked round at the faces of each of his children in turn. “Yeah, we are, aren’t we?” He fired up the engine. “Come on, let’s get back to school before our master batsman misses out on his big moment!”

  Chapter TEN

  Despite having left Inchelvie at six o’clock, the journey down to Glasgow Airport on Tuesday morning took one hour longer than planned, due to the endless stream of temporary traffic lights set up for roadworks between Perth and Stirling. Consequently, when David pulled the car to a halt outside the terminal, he had only time to bid a fleeting farewell to his parents before grabbing his cases from the trunk and hurrying into the building. At the check-in desk, the taut-faced girl glanced at his ticket, then told him, with acid delight spread across her over-made-up face, that the flight was due to leave in an hour and that she was only accepting late arrivals for Business Class passengers. Silently cursing the fact that he had the last seat on the plane, and that it happened to be in Economy Class, David had to use every ounce of his guile and charm to persuade the girl to allow him to proceed.

  “Departure gate two then, sir,” she said without a trace of a smile as she handed him back his documents, “and as fast as you can. The flight has just about finished boarding.”

  Returning her lack of animation with a flashing grin, David rushed through passport control and sprinted the full four hundred yards to gate 2 before thumping his way noisily down the telescopic bridge onto the plane. He was immediately the star attraction, The Man Who Dared Arrive Late. Every seat was taken and every eye turned towards him as he walked up the aisle between the rows of disgruntled passengers.

  His boarding pass did say that he was in seat number 21F, but when he arrived beside it, all three in the aisle row seemed to be already taken. A young woman in a garishly purple nylon shell suit sat in the seat nearest to him, clutching the pudgy fist of a baby girl who occupied the middle seat, while a hyperactive five-year-old boy, sporting a Celtic football strip with matching nylon track-suit bottoms, bounced energetically on the third seat, playing peekaboo with the elderly couple behind. David delved his fingers into the top pocket of his blazer for the stub of the boarding pass, finding it just as a stewardess approached him.

  “Have you not found your seat yet, sir?”

  “No, not yet.” He handed her the stub, and she studied it for a moment before turning to the woman.

  “How many seats did you reserve, madam?”

  “Only twa,” the woman replied in a broad Glasgow accent. “The wee yin is meant to be sittin’ on my knee, but I wis hopin’ this one wis free.”

  The stewardess smiled at her. “I’m afraid not. This seat is reserved for this gentleman.”

  David expected the woman to sigh heavily at this last-minute inconvenience, but instead she grinned up at him. “Och well, it wis worth a try.” She unbuckled her seat-belt and, picking up her daughter, moved into the next seat. “C’mon, Tracy, you come onto my knee, darlin’, and you, Darren, sit doon and dinnae be such a pest!”

  Smiling a thank-you at the woman, David slumped down into his seat, buckled up, leaned back against the head-rest and let out a long sigh of relief.

  That was cutting it far too fine. In fact, the past twelve hours had been cut too fine. He had really done very little to prepare himself for the trip over the previous two days, preferring to try to finish off the work in the garden with Jock and do most of his organization and packing on Monday evening. But then on Monday afternoon he had picked some daffodils from the garden at Inchelvie and had taken them to the small churchyard in Dalnachoil to put on Rachel’s grave. Once there he hadn’t wanted to leave, and consequently he had sat for hours, talking quietly to her until the sun eventually dipped away behind the hills.

  The engines of the plane rose in volume and it edged slowly away from the terminal building. David turned his head to stare past the occupants of the window-seat as the plane taxied out onto the runway. He remained in that position until they had risen far above the river Clyde and had begun the ascent through the low cloud base. Once nothing was left in view below, he turned away, only to find himself being eyed with uncertainty by his three travelling companions. He gave them a smile, then suddenly realized that he was clutching tight to Darren’s hand. “Oh, God, I’m sorry about that!” he said, letting go immediately and looking over at Darren’s mother. “It’s a natural reaction, I’m afraid. I always seem to grab hold of one of my children’s hands during take-off.”

  The woman’s face broke into a smile once more. “How many do you have?” she asked.

  “Three.”

  “Jeez, twa’s quite enough handlin’ for me. You must be a glutton for punishment.” She let out a throaty laugh which ended in two rasping coughs, and instantly David wondered how on earth she was going to survive the long non-smoking flight with the tantalizing sight of the pack of two hundred duty-free cigarettes protruding from the basket at her feet.

  Darren, meanwhile, had not taken his eyes off David. “Mum’s takin’ us tae Disneyland,” he said in an unanimated monotone.

  “Is she?” David replied. “Well, you’re a pretty lucky boy, aren’t you!”

  “Dae ye like Mickey Mouse?”

  “Yeah
, I think he’s great! Is he your favorite?”

  “No. I think he stinks.”

  “Darren!” the mother exclaimed, a look of embarrassed horror spread across her pasty features. “Dinnae be so cheeky tae the man.”

  “I’m no’ being cheeky, Mam. You think he stinks too.”

  “Darren, that’s ENOUGH, laddie!”

  David smiled a fixed grin at the happy little trio, and as a form of diversion to return to his own company, he opened his brief-case and took out the Glendurnich document.

  “Mam,” Darren piped up again, “I’m needin’ the bog.”

  His mother leaned across and whispered angrily at him. “How many times dae I have tae tell ye? It’s no’ called the bog, it’s called the toilet.”

  “But, Mam, you call it the—”

  “Darren!”

  She undid her seat-belt and stood up, not noticing that the “Seat-Belt” sign was still on. A young stewardess came along the aisle towards her. “I’m afraid that you will have to sit down again, madam, until the captain has switched off the ‘Seat-Belt’ sign,” she said, pointing up to the little illuminated light above the seat.

  “My wee lad’s desperate for the toilet. Can I no’ tak’ him?”

  The stewardess, uncertain as to what to do, looked along the aisle for guidance from her superior, who was in the galley at the back of the plane. Hand gestures were exchanged, and she turned back to the woman.

  “That’s fine. I’ll take you along with him, but the senior stewardess has indicated that it would be safer if you didn’t carry the little one along.”

  The woman was beginning to get flustered, darting worried looks at the baby on her hip. “I canna leave her here by hersel’. Could you tak’ Darren along for me?”

  It looked as though a solution had been found until the stewardess put her hand out to Darren. He resolutely stuck both hands behind his back and began to wail loudly. “I want to go wi’ you, Mam.”

  “Please, Darren,” the woman pleaded in exasperation with her son. “Go wi’ the nice lady.”

  David looked up at the scene, and wondered how it could possibly resolve itself. He didn’t particularly want to become involved, but realized that if drastic action wasn’t taken soon, young Darren would begin to flood the plane.

  “Excuse me,” he said, leaning across the seat towards them.

  They all looked at him.

  “I’m quite happy, if you want, to hold her until you come back.”

  The woman smiled at him. “Och, thanks, mister, but dinnae you worry yoursel’.”

  “I promise you, I don’t mind. As I said, I’ve three of my own, so I’m quite an expert.”

  “Do ye really no’ mind, mister? I’m afraid she’s got an awful dose of the cauld.”

  “Come on, don’t worry about it.” He shoved his papers into the seat pocket in front of him and stretched out his hands to receive his charge.

  The woman handed over the little girl. “There you go, Tracy. You stay with the nice man. Thanks, mister, you’re a gem. I’ll no’ be a minute.”

  As the “toilet” party headed off up the aisle, Tracy sat on David’s knee, staring at him in astonishment, her large brown eyes as round as the pacifier in her mouth, which thankfully was doing its job in preventing any outburst of protest. David gave the snuffling child a reassuring smile, then, thinking it better if she didn’t have to suffer such a blatant reminder that she had been abandoned with a complete stranger, he turned her around so that the back of her head rested on his chest. He pulled in his chin to glance down at her, and thought that, for all the earthy coarseness of her mother, Tracy was beautifully turned out. Her tiny feet were tucked into a pair of cheap white plimsolls, and through the lace at the top of her short white socks were woven yellow strands of ribbon, matching exactly the colour of her little acrylic dress. Her soft, wispy hair was caught up in a white elastic band, making it sprout, like a tiny fountain, from the top of her head. David leaned forward to retrieve his document from the seat pocket, and with that, caught a whiff of the warm, sweet smell of baby, a cocktail so addictive, yet its ingredients so indescribable, save for the liberal sprinkling of Johnson’s Baby Powder. It was a smell he had known so well in the past, a smell so powerful that, at one time, it had made him think that he could never live without a baby in the house.

  Leaving the document where it was, he pulled Tracy close into his chest, the gentle movement of the little girl’s body against his supporting hand seeming to calm his mind and dust away cobwebs from long-storedaway memories of his own children.

  * * *

  It was surprising that, during his first three months of working at Glendurnich, he hadn’t been given the boot for sleeping on the job, as it seemed to be the only time that he could catch up on much-needed rest. This was all because of a small, vulnerable bundle of humanity called Sophie Rosemary Alicia Corstorphine, an angel during the day, who metamorphosed into a screaming scrap of unconsolable wretchedness in the early hours of the morning. Waking hours at night suddenly matched those of day, and even though it quite often resulted in a gritty-eyed tetchiness on the part of both himself and Rachel, she never lost patience with the baby. She would take it into bed in the middle of the night and, gathering up all the pillows behind her, would sit cross-legged gently rocking the baby, until its violent sobs receded to a gulping contentment as it sucked from her nipple. He, meanwhile, would be forced to lie pillowless, wedged into an eight-inch width of bedspace, with a hand and a foot stretched out to the floor to stop him from rolling out.

  “Try singing to her,” Dr. Spiers had helpfully suggested, and, not realizing that it all mostly took place at two in the morning, “or maybe take her for a walk in her pram to settle her.”

  So they tried one and then the other, only to find that Sophie would respond solely to a combination of the two. Consequently, the lights of The Beeches were often seen to burn brightly in the night, while David walked up and down in the hallway like some destitute busker, bleary-eyed and unshaven, singing soothing lullabies to his first-born child.

  And then four years later, when Sophie had grown into a constantly happy, lovable child, thus making more than enough atonement for her ignominious start in life, Charlie appeared, live and kicking, with all the clichéd remarks about a future football star in the making. They battened down the hatches, prepared the pram in the hallway and the guitar at the ready, but it was as if he had been conceived by a different formula of genes (or, more likely, that he and Rachel had ironed out all their inexperience on Sophie), because the baby slept by night and grinned by day. By the time that Harriet appeared, there was enough baby-care knowhow in the household for Rachel to afford to take a back seat while her eldest daughter, just turned seven years old, took control with an accomplishment and dedication that surpassed by far the efforts of any of the morose, disinterested au pair girls that had been employed in the past to look after herself and Charlie.

  And as they grew, they became a unit within themselves, independent and content with each other’s company in the games that they played: Sophie the organizer, Charlie the stuntman, and Harriet the cook, the chief bottle-washer, the alien from a different planet, but ultimately the baby. Yet their relationship with each other was not one of sugary-sweet perfection, their individual strength of character quite often being the cause of fervent disagreement, and games, on occasion, would culminate in vicious fights between the two elder siblings. While they ran to their mother to get first word in for comfort and mediation, Harriet would for a moment cast an uncomprehending look after them and then return happily to their now-abandoned game—to wash her teacups or to send her spaceship into warp five.

  * * *

  “Sorry we were so long, mister.”

  David looked round sharply from the window, his hand tightening instinctively on Tracy’s stomach in the immediate thought that he might have unconsciously lessened his grasp on the baby. The woman was edging her way back into the seat, pushing a
much-relieved Darren in front of her.

  “Darren needed more than a pee. Och, would ye look at that! She’s fast asleep.”

  David glanced down at Tracy. Her face was turned to the side, one flushed cheek squashed hard against the front of his shirt, her eyelids flickering, her pacifier hanging loosely in her mouth.

  “My, she’s lookin’ awf’y hot. I hope she’s no’ comin’ down wi’ the flu or anything like that. Anyway, thanks again for your help, mister.” She reached over and relieved David of his charge, and at once he felt the coolness of the plane’s air-conditioning hit the warm little area which Tracy had occupied.

  “Not at all. It was my pleasure,” he said, smiling across at the woman. Then, pulling his blazer around him, he took the Glendurnich document from the seat pocket and at last settled down to read it.

  * * *

  Alicia stuck her spectacles on the end of her nose and looked up at the latest school photograph that hung on the wall outside the headmaster’s study to see if she could pick out her three grandchildren amongst the other two hundred or so faces. Across the hall from her, the headmaster’s nervous little secretary tapped ineffectively on the door for the second time.

  “Come in!” a muffled voice bellowed out.

  The secretary flashed a brave smile at Alicia before slowly opening the door and putting her head round the corner. “Mr. Hunter, I have Lady Inchelvie here to see you.”

  Without waiting for a reply she jumped back from the door, and within a second it flew open as if caught in a whirlwind, to reveal a tall, spindly young man in his mid-thirties with wild bushy hair and half-moon spectacles, the combination of which would have made his age indeterminable to Alicia if she hadn’t come to know him so well over the past six months.

  “Lady Inchelvie,” he said, stretching out a long, bony hand. “I’m so sorry, I had no idea you had arrived. I’ve just been having to reschedule a boys’ cricket match to another venue, because the girls are going to be using the athletics track around the one out there”—he waved airily with his hand in the direction of the front of the school—“and I do rather want to prevent them from coming under fire from one of the big hitters in our team.” He smiled down at her from his lanky height. “Nevertheless, I do apologize for not springing up to meet you immediately.”