Come Away With Me

by Sara MacDonald

  I can’t find my voice and he puts his arm round me tentatively. ’You are tired, darling. Let me take you up to your room.’

  I nod and he helps me up as if I am ill or old. He guides my stumbling legs round the side of the house and into a small side door, which leads up some back stairs. I can feel my legs buckling and I clutch on to him. Once inside, he lifts me, carries me as if I am weightless up the stairs and into my bedroom, pushing the door open with his foot, and placing me on the bed. ‘Get undressed and into your bed, darling. I go for a warm drink and some bread.’

  But somehow I cannot summon the energy to get undressed. Everything is faraway and I am watching myself. I turn dizzily on to my side and bring my feet up to my chin. Antonio returns. He mutters something in Italian and I see he is with an old woman. She tuts at me and sits me up. My dress is pulled over my head, then I am under the quilt.

  ‘Drink a little of this, Jenny.’ Antonio holds my head on his arm and I sip milk with something in it, nutmeg or herb. Then he lets me go. He sits with his beautiful sad eyes looking down on me. The old woman speaks rapidly to him and leaves. When she has gone Antonio hesitates. He does not know what to say to a guest in his house who wishes she were dead.

  I hear my voice, reedy and thin with fear: ‘Don’t leave me, Antonio.’

  He looks down at me and I hold his eyes, pleading, desperate, like a child. He sits down on the bed again, heavy, and I am warmed by the relaxed feel and shape of him. He radiates an animal warmth and kindness. He smiles. ‘I will go and say goodnight to my guests. I will make sure all is well with my staff and then I shall return to you.’ He picks up my hand and holds it to his lips. ‘I will stay with you all night. Do not be afraid, I will not leave you alone. I will be here to comfort you. I will not try to make love with you.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I tell him.

  ‘But I do,’ he says softly. ‘Come now, try to sleep. I will be back soon.’

  I lie in the dark, waiting for him. Voices gradually cease and the distant sea becomes louder, reaches me in a faint monotonous hush, like listening to the sound from a curved shell. Antonio comes back so quietly I hardly hear him. As he throws off his robe his shadow on the wall seems suddenly huge, like a gorilla and I feel panic and freeze as he gets into bed beside me.

  He lies on his back moving carefully, thinking I am asleep. I relax as his breathing slows down into sleep, glad to have someone in my bed, relieved not to be alone for one night.

  I sleep until the sun edges into the room and I wake abruptly with the familiar horror of memory. Tom and Rosie are dead. I burrow instinctively towards the warmth of the man in the bed. Sleepily Antonio pulls me to him, strokes my hair away from my face, tucks me into the crook of his arm and I fall asleep again comforted.

  I wake to find him watching me, his face very close to mine. He speaks to me softly in Italian. I do not understand the words but the tone is unmistakable. I meet his eyes and my stomach leaps. As our eyes lock, neither of us moves. I wait for him to touch me, but gently he moves his arm from under my head, leaps from the bed and goes into the bathroom. He comes back to smile at me from the doorway, a towel safely round his middle. I smile back. Later, I will be grateful.

  SEVENTY

  Adam wanted to visit Gloucester Cathedral for a school project while they were in Birmingham. From beneath its beautiful high carved ceilings he darted ahead of Ruth and Peter, examining with keen interest the inscriptions to dead soldiers of two world wars. The names of the regiments were inscribed in marble and he ran his eyes over their names, wondering what age they had been when they died.

  In the atmospheric arched cloisters the flagstones were worn shapeless, the inscriptions under their feet long smoothed away and faded back into stone. It seemed to Adam, in the damp, echoing silence, possible to hear the echo of a Gregorian chant and feel the swish of rough woven cassocks brushing against the grey stones of vaulted corridors.

  Peter watched him. The boy was happy. His contentment seeped out of every pore. He had an almost permanent grin on his face and a bounce to his step. Adam had always been a rewarding and uncomplaining boy, but now he positively glowed with the possibilities life had brought him. It was as if in finding his father he had found another dimension to himself.

  The only thing that disturbed Peter was Adam’s constant preoccupation with war and death and all things military. He quizzed Peter about the Israeli army and what level of force they were allowed to use. He showed an unhealthy interest in suicide bombers and how many mutilated bodies Peter might have seen. He was also surprisingly informed about modern warfare methods and the differing roles of American and British servicemen in Iraq. Peter tried to draw him back to his birds and fishing. He noticed Adam was canny enough not to talk about the army in front of Ruth.

  Ruth had arrived in Birmingham looking triumphant, but strained and determinedly jolly with Adam. She was making a conscious effort rather than just being his mother. It made Peter uncomfortable. It was as if she were trying to woo Adam back to her like a jealous lover, as if she now felt grateful for time with her son, and Peter wondered what difference it might have made if he had not left them both so suddenly for Israel and a fated bid for happiness. ‘How do you fancy a pub lunch with a roaring fire, then a long walk?’ he asked her.

  Ruth turned, her eyes crinkling with happiness in a way he loved. ‘Bliss, Peter, I’m having such a lovely few days, thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. I am too.’ He laughed. ‘We all are.’

  That afternoon they walked up on the Malvern Hills. The world was spread out below them like some huge map. Counties melded into one another, stretched into distance and mist; yellow and green fields, blue rivers, church spires and rolling forests of trees. Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Worcester were to their left, Hereford and the rolling hills towards the Black Mountains on their right.

  Ruth said, ‘Odd, how the sheer size of these hills rising up around you makes you dizzy and unbalanced; as if you might fall. I feel like an ant on the edge of a wall.’

  Adam grinned. ‘I know what you mean. It’s like the scale of everything is suddenly all wrong. We’ve shrunk; we have become too small.’

  ‘Or’, Peter said ponderously, ‘nature dwarfs us and we need to be reminded occasionally. How would you both like to come out to Tel Aviv for a holiday? Maybe after Christmas, or in the summer holidays?’

  ‘Wicked! Can we, Mum?’

  Ruth met Peter’s eyes. ‘It’s a seductive thought.’

  ‘Then bear it in mind.’

  When Adam ran ahead with his binoculars she turned to Peter. ‘Why haven’t you signed the divorce papers? What’s going on in your life?’

  Peter was silent, then he said, ‘Things haven’t worked out quite as I hoped in Israel. That’s life, but I don’t see the reason for divorce. We’re separated, we lead different lives, but we’re friends. I miss you and Adam inordinately, Ruth. I don’t think sharing time with you both is hurting anyone, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Ruth murmured, thinking there was a danger that they were both filling in the cracks for one another from habit. Ruth knew they would make love before the holiday ended. Sex had gained a frisson by being technically forbidden. They were both suspended in the present, neither knowing the absolute direction of their separate lives. It was, Ruth thought, like living in a temporary oasis: comforting but not a permanent solution.

  As they lay in Peter’s bed that night, he asked, ‘What’s eating at you, Ruth? You love your job, so it must be Adam. You seem overanxious to please him the whole time. You’re not yourself with him. It’s painful to watch.’

  Ruth edged away so she could see his face. ‘Is that how I seem? Oh God. I’m totally inconsistent in my feelings towards Jenny. Adam is so happy with her and at that school. I should be unutterably grateful, yet I feel huge resentment.’

  Peter was silent.

  ‘Say something,’ Ruth whispered.

  ‘I was wondering if your ambivalence is no
t to do with Adam living with Jenny, but with Jenny herself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How did you feel when you saw Jenny again on that train?’

  ‘I was thrilled to see her again.’

  ‘Yet within a week you discover that she’s been happily married for years to the father of your child, to the man you would never speak about, and that this man had been brutally killed.’

  ‘I don’t want to go into all this again.’

  ‘I think it needs to be said.’

  ‘No, Peter, it doesn’t.’ Ruth started to get out of bed.

  ‘OK,’ Peter said quietly. ‘Run away, Ruth. You always did at any mention of Adam’s father.’

  Ruth hesitated. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Then, tell me what you felt when you saw those photograph cuttings of a dead man who had loved, married and had a child with Jenny. Not you. Jenny.’

  Ruth suddenly sat down on the edge of the bed. In a while she said, ’After the initial shock, I was plummeted back to the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl I had been, waiting for a call that never came. It really was like falling back in time.’

  ‘You were so young,’ Peter said gently.

  ‘I remembered all over again that terrible feeling of selfloathing, the terror of what my parents would do when they found out.’

  ‘Yet you protected Tom from them, didn’t you? Why?’

  ‘Because I knew I had thrown myself at him. I had enough insight, even then, to understand I was needy.’

  ‘How lonely and frightened you must have been. I wish you had been able to talk to me when we were married. It might have made a difference.’

  Ruth turned to him. ‘It was the hardest lesson I ever learnt, Peter. That you can do something so intimate with a man and it can mean absolutely nothing to him.’

  ‘He broke your frail heart and you protected him, preserved his life and forfeited your own. My lovely, brave Ruth. All you got in return was anguish, pregnancy and banishment.’

  Ruth stared at him, abruptly angry. ‘You think it’s a good idea to remind me of it all, do you, Peter? Make me go back to something I buried with good reason. Why spoil a happy week? I don’t want to hear all your psychological counselling crap.’

  Peter ignored her. ‘You froze the whole Tom episode slowly out of your life. As if it never really happened. You tried to banish him from your heart and mind in order to go forward and to survive, but you couldn’t quite manage it, could you?’

  ‘Peter, just stop it!’

  ‘He lived somewhere inside you, a little gold hero you dared not take out in case he became tarnished. You refused to even discuss him with Adam. All your life some little piece of you has hoped that Tom might by some miracle walk into your life again. Aren’t I right?’

  Ruth shook her head furiously. ‘Rubbish! I don’t understand why you are doing this. You are way off beam.’

  ‘Am I? You work your guts out and make a success of your life. You meet a nice boring Jewish accountant who gets on with your son. It’s enough. You marry me. It isn’t enough. I can’t get near. I cannot even begin to get near.’ Peter was surprised at his own anger flying out of nowhere. ‘When the ghost of Tom surfaced like a phoenix, did you secretly think that it should have been you who had all those wonderful years Jenny had with the father of your child?

  Did you wonder why Tom should fall in love with Jenny a few years later and not you?’

  Ruth had gone pale but Peter made himself go on. ‘Jenny seems to have it all, doesn’t she, Ruth? A loving family and talent as well. Is it possible you have always, subconsciously, even as a child, resented as well as loved Jenny, for always, even in tragedy, seeming to have everything she wants? Have you asked yourself why you handed Adam over on a plate?’

  Ruth was shocked by Peter’s anger. He seemed intent on unflinchingly unwrapping her life like a parcel.

  ‘Ruth,’ he said tiredly, ‘be honest with yourself just for bloody once. You let Adam decide for you. It solved your conscience about a job you fully intended to take, despite having Adam to consider, despite any consequences.’ He got out of bed and pulled on his dressing gown. ‘You made a choice. Jenny made it easy for you. Now, you are riddled with jealousy over Adam’s easy relationship with Jenny while she pursues her career from a backwater. You got what you thought you wanted: a place and a job in Jenny’s household. Adam is blissfully settled and well-adjusted in the life you agreed for him. What more can you ask? Or is it this that is your nightmare?’

  Ruth pulled her wrap round her. She walked to the window and turned her back on Peter, lifting the curtain and looking down on to the road. Peter’s words felt like a betrayal of every personal conversation she had ever had with him. No wonder she did not do so often.

  She heard him getting miniature bottles of spirits from the fridge.

  ‘I don’t enjoy hurting you, Ruth. I’m desperate for you to examine your motives for resenting Jenny so fiercely.’

  Ruth turned. ‘Have you examined yours for resenting me, Peter?’

  He met her eyes. ‘Touché. My own bitterness over your unknown soldier caught me unawares.’ His tone caused Ruth another glancing blow.

  ‘I hurt you. I spoilt your life.’

  ‘No. I’ve done that for myself, Ruth, in a bid for love and children that failed miserably. Poetic justice, I think it’s called.’

  They stared at each other, appalled at the damage.

  Ruth said quietly, ‘Perhaps everything you say is partly true. I admit my feelings about Jenny are complicated and can consume me, but I feel with every instinct of my being that Adam is being subtly drawn away from me.’ She thumped her chest painfully with her fist. ‘I feel it in my heart and guts, and nothing you can say can change what I feel.’ Her voice broke, which was strangely dramatic for Ruth.

  Peter went over and wound his arms round her. ‘Maybe you and Jenny should talk this through with someone qualified?’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘God, no! I’ll work it out. I’m trying.’

  ‘Things change between mothers and sons. The gap would have widened between you and Adam anyway. Be happy, Ruth. Don’t ruin your life. Don’t become obsessed. You haven’t lost anyone.’ He smiled at her. ‘Not even me. I love you and that’s never going to change. I don’t know what the future holds but I’ll always be around somewhere in the background, if you want me to be.’ He handed her a small glass of brandy and she drank the burning liquid in one go, as he had done. It warmed her.

  Peter knew that there was always more than one truth. He had wanted, partly, to protect Adam. He’d had a sudden fear that Ruth might, like a kamikaze pilot, make Adam choose between herself and Jenny and in doing so destroy them both.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Christmas came and Adam and I decorated the house with hundreds of candles. We bought a tiny fir tree with roots so that we could put it in the garden afterwards. Adam also went over and helped Bea and James decorate Tredrea and the big tree that needed to be ready for an influx of grandchildren. We were touched that he was not too old or too cool to enjoy doing this with us.

  Two of my sisters were coming. The third was living in America with a new husband none of us had met. Adam was amused that Bea and James ran Christmas like a military campaign, constantly losing their copious lists.

  This Christmas could not be sadder than the previous one, but it felt more poignant. I accepted that Rosie and Tom were gone. I knew I could never have that life back. I knew I was, with guilt, moving on without them and it felt like a betrayal of sorts. Like the first day you think with a start, Oh, God, I haven’t thought about them for an hour.

  Flo had always come home with me and Tom for Christmas. Danielle loathed Christmas and invariably went off to Paris to stay with a single friend. I was afraid Ruth might want to whisk Adam away for Christmas with Peter, but Adam made it perfectly clear in his excited chatter to her on the phone that he wanted to be in St Ives.

  I left Flo and Bea
to talk to Ruth. I was afraid I might sound patronising or somehow possessive or smug. I was afraid I would say the wrong thing. I felt for her and didn’t want her to arrive and feel the outsider in all the preparations.

  Bea said Ruth sounded exhausted and only too happy to come down with Flo and stay in St Ives. She had been far too busy even to think of an alternative Christmas. The runup to Christmas in London was always gruelling. I knew Flo and Danielle were also working flat out. It was the same every year, it was the party season and people suddenly demanded dresses overnight.

  It was the time Danielle and Flo would miss me most and I felt guilty, especially when I rang and their voices cracked with tiredness.

  I planned to contribute more to the business next year. I could build up my work from here. The little co-operative shop had sold everything I could make over the Christmas period and I was quietly excited.

  Ruth had been upset that she could not get down for Adam’s school concert, so James told her that he would video it and she could watch it over Christmas.

  On the evening of the concert Bea, James and I made sure we got there early armed with the video camera. Bea and I sat near the front, and Dad positioned himself at the back. Adam was weary with constant rehearsing. Harry’s mother and I had taken turns ferrying the two tired and tetchy boys to Truro at the weekends and picking them up after school in the evenings.

  All the scholarship boys had had to practise incredible hours. There were children of professional musicians at the school, which kept the standard high but was totally unnerving. Adam missed the musical Peter, who had supervised his practice and given insight into his playing.