Come Away With Me

by Sara MacDonald

  How was Adam going to cope with suddenly having a dead father with a name and a face?

  Ruth heard again the horn of the InterCity train as it rounded a bend; heard Jenny’s lifeless voice as she told her of Tom’s car accident. She heard the background noises of passengers and the smell of coffee. She felt Jenny’s small hand tremble under hers.

  She lit the lamp, poured more brandy and went back to the window seat. The night seemed endless, as if there would never be a lightening of the sky, no new dawn to come. It felt, in her exhausted state, as if some fissure were opening out in front of her; a crack too wide to leap.

  She longed to wail into the empty room, to cry out in anguish.

  Life could have been so different. So different. She might have had Tom as well as Adam. She might have had them both.

  Adam woke with a jump and lay on his back in the dark. The house was silent, but somehow claustrophobic. He turned on his side, warm and sleepy, pushing aside a little nag of anxiety that was surfacing. Then, with a start he remembered and switched on his bedside light. His head thumped as he moved upright and he waited for it to clear, for his eyes to focus.

  Furtively he reached into his bedside table for the newspaper he had watched his mother hide in a downstairs drawer. He had taken it while she was in the kitchen. He had been too dazed to read it last night and now he held it over his knees and carefully smoothed out the creases.

  He stared down at a photograph of a mutilated bombed car. There was a smaller photograph of a smiling army officer in uniform called Tom Holland. This man had been in the car with his child. Jenny’s husband. Adam turned the page and looked at the photographs of the soldier; of Jenny and of a small, dark child. His hands trembled. He concentrated on the face of the man for a long time in the silent house. He could feel his heart thumping with incredulous excitement, beating against his chest in a startled flurry of recognition.

  Those laughing eyes evoked such a rush of emotion in Adam that it hurt. He had to rest the newspaper on his knees as his hands holding it shook. He remembered Jenny’s words: You are so like Tom.

  He knew. He knew without a moment of doubt that this man was his father. The face was a familiar, older version of his own. He recognised the truth without ever having seen him before and he felt a burst and rush of pride. It enveloped him warmly, thrilling him, so that the moment in the dark bedroom at dawn when he first experienced blinding love would always be with him. This man was his father.

  Was. He smoothed again with shaking fingers the photo of the dead man between his forefinger and thumb. His excitement ebbed away into a gaping loss. He wept for all that his mother had refused to tell him and for the chance of knowing his real father gone for ever. He wept for the little girl who would have been his half-sister and for Jenny who, without them, had wanted to die.

  He heard a strange sound. He got out of bed and went down the stairs. His mother was sitting in the dark in the window seat. Her head was thrown back, her face in shadow. Awful, harsh noises were coming from deep inside her. Adam froze. In all his thirteen years he had never seen his mother cry.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Bea left Jenny’s side at six in the morning. She had had all night to think about what James had told her and she needed to see Ruth.

  As she drove over the causeway her tiredness made everything outside the car appear overbright and sickly. The dual carriageway was empty, the sky in front of her flared dramatically in thin fingers of orange.

  Bea drove to St Minyon and down the hill to the water and parked near the upturned boats. The place seemed to have changed little since the days when she and James had collected Ruth and Jenny from the thatched cottage. A hunched figure in a coat stood staring out over the water.

  ‘Ruth?’ Bea asked tentatively.

  The woman turned. Her forlorn face was familiar, her eyes were swollen and puffy, but it was unmistakably Ruth.

  The two women stared at one another as the tears trickled out of the corners of Ruth’s eyes in a miserable, unstoppable flow. Bea did what came naturally and opened her arms. Ruth moved automatically into them as she had so often done in childhood, only this time she dwarfed Bea. After a minute Bea held her gently away. ‘Come on. Try to stop. Let’s go inside the cottage and make a cup of tea.’

  Bea made the tea and Ruth tried to light the fire in the cold cottage, moving quietly so she would not wake Adam. Ruth knew why Bea had come but she had got almost beyond talking. Bea, too, looked exhausted. It was hard for Ruth to look at the Bea of her childhood and see an old woman. They sat in front of the weak fire, clasping their mugs for warmth.

  ‘How’s Jenny, Bea?’

  ‘Heavily sedated. There seems so little of her, as if she were wasting away.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Bea looked at Ruth sharply. ‘You’re surely not blaming yourself, Ruth? I understand from James that it’s thanks to your son that Jenny’s alive.’

  Ruth bent to the fire. ‘Adam did react quickly, but so did the fisherman.’

  ‘When James told me about…Adam, I realised immediately what must have happened all those years ago. Why you had to leave school so abruptly. Why your parents wouldn’t let me see you and why you all left St Ives so suddenly. You were pregnant?’

  Ruth nodded and Bea leant towards her. ‘Knowing your parents, Ruth, I imagine you had a beastly time.’

  Ruth looked up from the fire. ‘I didn’t even know Tom, Bea. I met him once and I never saw him again. I made myself forget him. To open that paper and find he had died like that with their child was horrific. You know?’ Her voice rose, overwrought. ‘After that one time with a man I knew nothing about, I’ve never been able to experience that soaring feeling of love. The only real emotion I can feel is for my son.’ Her teeth chattered.

  ‘Come on,’ Bea said briskly. ‘I’m going to treat you like a child and put you to bed. You’re absolutely past it.’

  Ruth smiled wanly. ‘You’ve been up all night with Jenny, worrying yourself sick. I should be putting you to bed.’

  ‘Ah,’ Bea said, ‘but I’m a tough old bird. You have to be with all the children and grandchildren I have.’

  Ruth let herself be led upstairs and put into bed with a hot-water bottle. ‘You were always kind to me,’ she murmured.

  Bea sat on the bed. ‘Oh, Ruth, how I wish you had confided in us all those years ago. We could have made things very different for you. We would have taken care of you.’

  ‘That’s what Jenny said. If I had done that Jenny’s life would have been different. I would have spoilt it then instead of now.’

  ‘Jenny is going to be all right, Ruth,’ Bea said firmly. ’You won’t help her by being maudlin about something that’s not your fault. A bomb killed Tom and Rosie. Their awful deaths have resulted in her breakdown. I know my daughter and she will come through this.’ She patted Ruth’s leg. ‘I don’t believe this is like you, Ruth. You were never sentimental or wishy-washy.’

  Ruth laughed suddenly. ‘Oh, Bea! You haven’t changed a bit. You always made everything seem somehow better.’

  ‘No. I let Jenny down. I should have gone back to London with her after Tom died. I should have sensed this coming. I found it difficult to get near her and I didn’t try hard enough. I’m not going to fail her again.’

  Ruth closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do, Bea. For Jenny’s sake I should disappear out of her life again fast, but Adam’s not going to let this rest. I’ve only ever told him a partial truth, that Tom was a brief encounter and I remembered nothing about him. Actually, I remember everything about that evening. I just never let myself…You should have seen Adam in the early hours of this morning. He was beside himself and very, very angry with me.’

  ‘Disappearing as if none of this has happened is not going to help Adam or Jenny. Her shock and grief are raw but at least they are out in the open now. We will have to help her come to terms with the fact of Adam and Adam will have to come to terms with the knowledge
of who his father was. The fact that he can never meet Tom now is going to be terribly hard for him.’ Bea paused. ‘You do realise that Adam is going to want to find out everything he can about his dead father?’

  ‘Oh yes, I realise. And I don’t have any answers.’ She met Bea’s eyes. ‘But, Jenny does.’

  Bea held them. ‘Jenny does.’ She got a pen from her bag and rooted for a piece of paper. ‘Give me the number of your mobile. I’ll phone you later in the day.’ She got up wearily. ‘Try and get some sleep.’

  She hesitated at the door. ‘I’m sorry that James jumped to the wrong conclusion, Ruth. He was too disturbed by events to take in the fact that Adam’s age precluded an affair with Tom.’

  ‘It was a natural conclusion.’

  ‘Sleep, now.’

  As Bea went down the narrow stairs she glanced at the closed bedroom door where Adam must be sleeping. She longed to see this boy whose likeness to Tom had tipped Jenny over the edge. As she drove away from the creek, doubt crept back like an insidious black shadow: a young boy in thrall to a dead father he never knew; her daughter, whose only lasting legacy with the man she loved, the life she had lost, was this boy; Ruth, so vulnerable and needy in childhood, clinging desperately to the fickle memory of a fleeting passion she mistook for love. Bea shivered. Obsession was damaging, unpredictable and ultimately destructive.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Of course we have to go home, Adam. You’ve got school and I have to work.’

  ‘I want to see Jenny first. I don’t want to leave without seeing her.’

  ‘Jenny’s not well enough to see anyone yet. You heard me talking to Bea. She’s going to be at St Michael’s for a while. It’s a small hospital near James. When we next come down I’m sure Jenny will be up to seeing us, but at the moment it’s too soon.’

  ‘That really suits you, doesn’t it, Mum?’

  Ruth looked at him. ‘What do you mean, that really suits me?’

  Adam stared at her truculently. ‘Well, obviously it’s in your interests that I don’t get to talk to Jenny.’

  ‘Why?’ Ruth’s voice was dangerously quiet.

  Adam coughed nervously and scuffed his shoes on the kitchen floor. ’Why would you want her telling me about my father when you haven’t told me anything about him since the day I was born?’

  ‘I’ve always explained to you that I don’t know much about him to tell.’

  Adam met her eyes for the first time, and Ruth was astonished by the surliness she saw in them and the accusatory tone he was using. ‘Oh, so you didn’t remember his name was Tom Holland?’

  ‘I remembered his name was Tom, but if I ever knew his surname I certainly forgot it.’

  ‘OK. So you could have told me his first name, couldn’t you? You could have told me that.’

  ‘What difference could it have possibly made to you knowing his first name?’

  ‘If you can’t see that, then you must be stupid. If someone has a name, then they become a person, don’t they? They become Tom. Tom is the name of my father. You could at least have told me that.’

  Ruth picked up her coffee cup and folded her hands round it. She said, in a voice not quite steady, ‘Adam, please don’t talk to me like that. I know this is a hell of a shock for you, but why are you so angry with me? I did what I thought was the best thing at the time. I didn’t want to trace your father for reasons that I’ve already told you, honestly, many times.’

  Adam suddenly crumpled and sat down at the table. He put his head in his hands and Ruth, watching his distress, felt like doing the same. He did not cry, he just sat very still. Then he said huskily, ‘I’ve always imagined the day, when I was grown up, that I would secretly go and find my dad. I’ve thought about it all my life and now I can’t. I can’t ever see or know the man who was my dad.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m sorry. I can’t undo my past. I can’t make it all right for you. I know it hurts, Adam, but I’m shocked too and I’m not responsible for Tom Holland’s terrible death.’

  ‘Jenny’s lost everything, Mum, everything. No wonder she didn’t want to live. Imagine if you’d lost me and Peter all at the same time. I bet you’d feel the same.’

  ‘What’s happened has a huge bearing on how you’re feeling, Adam. You were brave and I’m proud of you, but now we both need to step back and establish some sort of normality in our lives. Of course I’m not going to stop you talking to Jenny about Tom. But until Jenny can cope with talking about him you will have to be patient.’

  ‘I’ve got to see Jenny. We don’t need to talk. I just want to see her. I can’t go back to school without seeing if she’s OK. I can’t.’

  Ruth sighed. ‘I could ring James and Bea to see if this is possible.’

  Adam nodded and got up from his chair to get her mobile.

  ‘Go and get dressed. I’ll come and tell you what they say. I’ll have to walk up the road for a signal.’

  Bea answered on the second ring. ‘Ruth! I was just about to pick up the phone to ring you, it must be telepathy.’

  ‘I’m having a problem with Adam. He’s insisting on seeing Jenny before we leave tomorrow. I’ve told him she’s too unwell, but he’s adamant. I’m sorry, I’m at a loss. I’m wondering if I should get counselling for him after what happened.’

  ‘It’s actually what I was going to ring you about. I was rather dreading it. James has organised a private room in St Michael’s for Jenny, so she can have some physical tests and an assessment by a colleague. She’s very hazy about what happened and she’s still sedated. However, she’s repeatedly asking to see Adam. Naomi Watson, a psychiatrist friend James has a lot of faith in, thinks it’s a good idea for you, Adam and Jenny to see each other at St Michael’s to help normalise things and help her assess Jenny’s attitude to Adam. Naomi also thinks that Adam might be very disturbed by the incident and it might be helpful if she talked to him. How do you feel about this? It is, of course, entirely up to you.’

  Ruth wanted to cry out, But it isn’t up to me! I want none of it. I just want to get Adam home. I want us home and out of here. I’ll look after Adam. But she knew she didn’t have a choice and perhaps it would be the right thing for Adam.

  Hearing her hesitation, Bea said, ‘My dear Ruth, this is very difficult for you. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It might help Adam. He’s hellish this morning, bolshie and aggressive. So, yes, perhaps he’ll be easier when he’s seen Jenny again.’

  Bea thought, but didn’t say, This couldn’t have happened at a worse age for Adam. He would slowly have stopped being a delicious and easy boy any time now without the added stick of his father to whip Ruth with. It was going to be a long haul for her, but Bea had not expected it to start so soon. ‘All right, Ruth. I’ll talk to James. When are you heading home?’

  ‘We should leave tomorrow by midday. At a push, we could leave the next morning.’

  ‘I’ll ring you back. You may have to bite your tongue and try not to let Adam hurt you. There is a lot for him to take on board, but you know this.’

  Ruth laughed shortly. ‘I do.’

  Walking back to the cottage, she suddenly wished vehemently that Peter were with her. She started to dial his number, but stopped. She had never told Peter much about Tom Holland either, and it wasn’t the sort of conversation to have, standing on a gloomy morning with a biting wind coming off the water. If he rang she would have to explain things, otherwise it could wait until they were both home. It was the first time in his life that Adam had spoken to her so rudely and Ruth felt miserable.

  She remembered all of a sudden that if Jenny had really wanted something as a child she had gently but surely chipped away until all resistance wavered and gave up under her quiet perseverance and gratitude. James had been a sucker. Bea flintier.

  The future seemed abruptly uncertain and Ruth felt powerless in the presence of an imperceptible threat coming from an unexpected quarter.

  TWENTY-SIX

  James Brown was w
aiting in the hospital foyer for Ruth and Adam the next morning. He was standing talking to a woman with a long fair plait. He introduced Ruth and Adam to Naomi Watson and they went into a small waiting room to talk.

  ‘How’s Jenny?’ Ruth asked James.

  ‘She’s very quiet and sad, Ruth. She sleeps a lot.’

  ‘Does she remember what she tried to do?’

  Naomi Watson leant forward. She was watching Adam. ‘I don’t think Jenny remembers anything too clearly. It’s too soon to hope she’ll talk about anything yet.’

  Adam said in a self-conscious rush, ‘But she’s going to get better, isn’t she? I mean she’ll go back to how she was, won’t she?’

  Naomi smiled at him. ‘She hasn’t lost her mind, Adam, if that’s what you mean. People get sick, not just physically, but mentally as well. If someone becomes diabetic we give them insulin. If they are epileptic their fits are controlled by special drugs. Jenny is what we call clinically depressed. That is not the same as being depressed, which we all are at times. Jenny needs drugs to help her in the same way as anyone with a physical ailment. She also needs time and a chance to grieve. Does this make sense?’

  Adam nodded and Naomi turned to Ruth. ‘Jenny has asked to see you both. Are you happy with that, Ruth?’

  Ruth, irritated by the way the question was phrased, said, ‘Of course I’d like to see Jenny, if she’s up to it.’

  ‘Good. I suggest five minutes. Would you mind going with James? Adam and I will join you.’

  Ruth did mind, but she went out of the room with James, touching Adam’s arm on the way out.

  When they had gone Naomi said, ‘How about you, Adam? How are you feeling?’

  Adam was silent. He did not know what to say or what the woman wanted him to say.

  ‘I understand you were quick-witted and brave. It must have been shocking to see Jenny going into the water.’