Come Away With Me

by Sara MacDonald

Bea and I both felt nervous when Adam began to play his clarinet. It was Weber’s virtuosic Concertino, a solo piece and he was as white as a sheet. Biased, we thought he played wonderfully and he got an ovation. Harry played Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor like an angel and there were four ambitious and frighteningly adept violin pieces.

  At the end the boys sang carols they had arranged themselves. Harry had a sweet choirboy voice, but we could hear the break in it. It would be his last year singing. Adam joined him for ‘We will rock you, rock you, rock you’ and I smiled. They both looked so innocent, but I had listened to them practising rudely with each other as they substituted the f-word, ending up rolling on the floor with raucous laughter in the sitting room.

  It was here in the decorated school hall among the smell of boys and mulled wine that I saw Adam’s childhood slipping away into husky awkward adolescence. I knew that next year everything would change. This time between us would fade.

  He still liked to get into the other side of the bed sometimes and I didn’t comment. He was growing up, becoming confident and secure. He had joined the school cadets. He was taller and leaner. He grew more like Tom every day. This year he had needed to feel close and safe, and I loved the knowledge that I had been able to give him security.

  I woke at dawn on Christmas Day. I threw on jeans and a sweater, pulled an old coat from the back door and walked down into the sleeping town. I headed round the harbour and up to the island. At the top by the tiny chapel I stopped.

  The sun was coming up and everything would change in an instant, tingeing the day with washed colour. The wind was so cold it took my breath away.

  Ahead of me I saw a small huddle of people standing close together and snatches of a hymn reached me. It was the Christmas Day sunrise service. I stood with a little group as light edged blood-red over the sea. I thought of Tom and Rosie as the sun hung suspended in front of us, mystical and mysterious, lighting a new day. I hugged them both to me, precious and clear, as I walked slowly home to face another Christmas Day without them.

  When I pushed open the back door, letting cold air into the kitchen, Bea and my sisters were sitting at the table drinking tea in their dressing gowns. I smiled. Everything was as it always was here.

  My sisters hadn’t seen Ruth since she was sixteen years old. They had both left home for university and a gap year when she vanished.

  ‘Do you remember’, my sister Sophie asked me suddenly as we banged pans on to the Aga, ‘how on Christmas afternoon Ruth’s small figure would come hopefully up the drive clutching a little present, an excuse to escape her parents and come to us?’

  I stopped what I was doing. I had forgotten. The memory cut me, brought tears to my eyes. I turned away quickly, but Bea said briskly, ’Wait until you see what a lovely, successful woman Ruth has grown into despite everything. Despite those truly wicked parents.’

  My sister and I smiled. Mum never used the old-fashioned word wicked lightly.

  The day slid happily by and if a part of me was absent it was only Dad who noticed. Vast quantities of food and drink were consumed. The usual culinary disasters befell, which happened every Christmas. Flo was a rock, soothing Bea, making more gravy, wiping sticky fingers. If Ruth avoided my eyes she seemed happy enough.

  Adam got on well with both my sisters’ children. Ruth got on a bit too well with my sister Natasha’s husband, which caused a minor drama in the kitchen because too much wine had been taken. Dad raised his eyes at me and we went into the garden while he smoked his Christmas cigar and I had the odd dizzying puff.

  Harry suddenly arrived in the evening and there was a lot of whispering between him and Adam and Dad, and the sitting room door was shut on us all. When we were allowed out, the dining room had been turned into a little concert hall with the chairs all facing the piano.

  I smiled at Ruth. The boys were going to do an impromptu concert for her. I was so glad.

  Harry played a Beethoven piano sonata. Adam played a new solo arrangement from the St Luke Passion on his clarinet, concentrating hard. It was haunting, and he faced Ruth and I could see her choked with pride and love. It was the most wonderful Christmas present he could have given her.

  They did a little jazzy number together on the piano with Harry singing. Then Adam glanced at me quickly and what I saw in his eyes made my heart pound. He was going to do a something for me. I was standing at the back by the closed door and I leant against it.

  There was a long silence. Adam held some sheet music and stood. He was nervous. Harry watched him anxiously, wondering when to begin to play. Eventually Adam nodded. He avoided looking at me as he sang. Only James and Bea knew it was the song Tom used to sing to me.

  ‘Come away with me,’ Adam sang huskily over my head, his eyes fixed on the wall. His heart was in his voice and his voice was for me. The wistful, sad rise and fall of his boyman voice caught at my soul, created a tension in the room.

  No one moved:

  Come away with me…in the night. Come away with me…I will write you a song…Come away with me…I want to walk with you on a cloudy day…in fields where the yellow grass grows high…Come away with me…On a mountain top…I want to wake with you…Come away with me in the night…

  I was back in my house in a storm, surrounded by photographs, a fire crackling, the wind buffeting the house and Adam beside me as we pasted my lost life on to card. Tears rose in my throat. For a second I wondered who was singing to me: Tom or Adam? Adam or Tom?

  I felt James alert beside me. I prayed the heightened atmosphere was inside me and not in the room.

  Harry suddenly joined in and they camped it up, moving into other Norah Jones lyrics and then carols, before embarrassment took over.

  I felt James relax. He pulled me to him and kissed the top of my head, then he called out, ‘Mince pies and mulled wine in the kitchen!’

  Everyone filed out. Ruth was talking to my sisters quite happily and I sighed with relief. One of my small nieces pulled Harry out of the room for a mince pie and I was left with Adam.

  I drew in his sweet boy heat. ‘Thank you, darling boy,’ I said lightly. ‘That was lovely.’

  He grinned at me, pleased and embarrassed. ‘I left out the soppier lines.’

  I laughed. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Or you’ll miss out on the food.’

  That night, when I went to bed I found a small wrapped parcel on my bedside table. For Jenny, with love always, Adam. (Unabridged version.) He had made me a tape of him singing ‘Come Away with Me’.

  The house took ages to settle down and I sat in the window with my earplugs in, listening to Adam sing, and I loved him so much that my eyes stung. The thought of losing him made me feel sick. I felt he was mine, my own child; yet it was more than that.

  We both had an acute awareness of the other; an unspoken perceptiveness for one another’s moods. If I was sad or low he would try to comfort me with his guileless warmth. If I saw he was stressed by music practice or school work or overtired or bewildered by life I knew that his one solace was being with me. Often I did not even hear him slip into my bed in the dark, but I would become conscious that his breathing matched my own. Living with Adam was like having another skin, or sharing one.

  I knew the danger. It was innocent. I defied anyone to misunderstand something that gave hope and comfort to us both and would cease as seamlessly as it started, but I was the adult. Adolescence was confusing enough. Tonight had shown me I couldn’t blur the boundaries.

  In the dining room, when I knew Adam was going to sing to me, I had broken out into a sweat in the sudden fear of him exposing us somehow to what other people would find unacceptable. It had never felt wrong, but as I stood next to Dad by the door I knew that he would be appalled by my sharing my bed, however artlessly, with a young boy. Up until that moment I had judged everything I did by my ability to tell my parents. I knew that I had to start being the parent because Adam was leaving his childhood behind.

  I heard giggles from a bedroom,
then a door opening and a stern admonishment to go to sleep at once. I smiled and got into bed as the house rustled and whispered around me. It seemed a lifetime ago since I left the house to watch the sun flare up out of the water.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Antonio rang me nearly every week to tell me the news of his ’English Project’, or to ask me how I was getting on, or just to chat. I grew used to hearing his voice in the early evening. He had invited Bea and James to his villa in the summer and to my surprise they had accepted.

  He was impressed with Ruth. ‘They are a good team, Ruth and Danielle, darling. Ruth is even more ruthless in business than Danielle.’

  It was April and the gardens were full of scarlet camellias and early clematis and waxy yellow primroses. The eider duck were back and Adam spent hours on the foreshore cataloguing the birds arriving and excitedly ringing James.

  For weeks it had been warm enough to sit out and have coffee facing the water. The conservatory was full of belts and bags and small ethnic tops. I was trying out different Italian dyes Antonio had found for me.

  As I sat in morning sun with my coffee, listening to a blackbird singing its heart out in a garden bristling with dew and full of cobwebs lacing the trees together, I felt a flash of pure joy in the moment. The water glittered beyond the gate and I thought, This is as good as it gets. I sat there considering my working day.

  Then Danielle rang. ‘I’m flying to see Antonio tomorrow to check our first small shipment arrived safely.’

  ‘OK. Will you tell him I have a conservatory full of belts and bags? By the way, his dyes are wonderful.’

  ‘Are they? I am longing to see…’

  ‘I’ve found a man and a white van, which will solve some of our problems with getting my work up to you. Flo has been hinting for weeks that I can’t expect you or Ruth to travel up and down all the time, and she’s right. It’s fine when Ruth wants to see Adam, but I shouldn’t exploit that. I can still fly the smaller batches up to you.’

  Danielle was obviously relieved. ‘Flo and I were just talking about that this morning. Jen…?’ She paused and I waited. ‘Is there any chance of you coming up to London yourself, if you are ready? Flo and I would love to show you the changes we have made in the house and garden. Also, I want to show you some of our commissions. It would be interesting for your accessories. Photographing them is not the same.’

  I was silent and she said quickly, ‘Do not get me wrong. It is so exciting that you are working down there. Your belts and bags sell as soon as they go in the stores. It is that I miss your ideas and your input.’

  Danielle had startled me. I couldn’t think what to say. London seemed like another planet. I thought we had a mutual understanding.

  ‘To see you for a couple of days would be wonderful. The girls in the workroom would love to see you. Would you consider half-term when Adam and Ruth are away? It would be a great help.’

  ‘I don’t know, Danielle.’

  I heard her sigh. ‘Sorry! I should not open my huge mouth.

  Maybe it is still too soon. I should leave these things to Flo. Sorry. Sorry.’

  I laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. You have a point. It shouldn’t be too soon. Let me think.’

  We talked of other things, then she rang off. I filled up the back of my car with orders. Three-quarters were from outworkers. A quarter of the work was not up to scratch. I had to be firm. I would not pay for shabby work. I felt happy, though. It reminded me of the time Danielle and I had started in a damp basement in Hammersmith. There was fun in starting over, in being small again; something sweet in setting things up.

  I dropped some bags and belts at the shop, then drove up to the industrial estate where I had rented a small commercial unit fitted with machines and the leather tools I had sent for from London. I employed four women and two men.

  One of the men had been a cobbler and the other a leather tooler. One woman was a retired dressmaker, the other had worked in textiles and had a wonderful sense of colour. Then there was a young mother who had been to art college in Falmouth, before getting herself pregnant. She was the weak link but I liked her and decided I could train her up. She had a quirky stance on design and clothes, and the imagination to invent. Maybe she reminded me of myself a hundred years ago.

  I read the riot act about the shoddy work. I told them I didn’t want my name behind their careless handwork. I would not produce cheap tat for tourists and they had to recognise the difference between professional craftsmanship that had a price and rubbish that would fall to bits after a couple of outings.

  I stressed the importance of working as a team. They needed to check their own and each other’s work. I asked them to put each day’s finished products on a table by the door and I would now go through each item before it left the unit. It only took one batch of inferior work for orders to be cancelled. These items were not just going into local shops, they were going out under my label to London and to Italy until Antonio got his factory up and running.

  As I drove back down the hill into St Ives, the sea glittered invitingly and I parked to walk along the coastal path for an hour before I went back to work at the house. It was a rare windless day. The air, cold above the sea, stung my face.

  I thought of my conversation with Danielle and wondered if my tiny project was going to work long-term. Inferior work would harm Danielle as well as me. Perhaps I should go and work up at the industrial estate to keep a constant eye on things. I knew I couldn’t. I loved the empty house. I needed silence to create. I had to be alone. That was the point of all this. If I was going to be sucked in, I might as well be back in London.

  How much longer was I going to avoid the house as I left it—Rosie’s room perfectly intact and our bedroom shut and gathering dust? I did not think I could ever live there again, but I couldn’t avoid going back. I couldn’t avoid the girls and the workroom and the hub and heart of what Danielle and I had started together.

  Danielle and I still needed each other. I’d been in danger of forgetting that it was our combined designing that had given us our edge and success.

  I had been touched and amazed by the letters I had received from buyers and retail outlets welcoming me back. I needed to prove to myself, as well as to Flo and Danielle, that I could produce a steady flow of work using local people, without compromising our London standards. Increasingly, as I got back to basics, I realised how much we relied on Flo to check every single piece that came out of the workroom. We had been such a tight team. We expected a lot from our workforce, but in return we looked after them like an extension of our family.

  As I walked down the muddy track, past the farm where the dog always barked but could not possibly be the same dog since childhood, I made two decisions.

  I would create a mini label, an offshoot, for products made here in Cornwall, find a Cornish name for the label and promote it. This might instil local pride and I could protect Danielle’s designs as well as myself while I went through teething problems.

  I would go up to London at half-term. Adam and I could travel together. I would stay and help Danielle and Flo while Ruth spent the break with Adam. Then Adam and I would come straight home.

  I called in to Bea and James on the way home. Bea was out but I found Dad in the garden digging over the vegetable patch making conversation with a robin. I sat on the wall to talk to him.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, Dad. I’m going to have to start going up to London. I can’t expect Danielle and Ruth to keep coming down, can I?’

  Dad leant on his fork. ‘No, Jen, I don’t think you can.’

  I looked across the garden full of blazing old azalea bushes covered in lichen. I saw the front door of our London house. I saw Tom bounding up the wide stairs two at a time. I saw myself at the top waiting for him. I saw our huge lovely bedroom where we’d spent so many of his leaves almost permanently in bed.

  I thought of the huge squishy sofa, the television in the corner. The beautiful mirror over the fireplace t
hat Tom had bought me in Jordan; the way the flame gas fire in the old Victorian fireplace would flicker over the walls, making us feel safe and warm as we lay closeted together. I thought of the room now, devoid of him, soulless, no doubt stacked with boxes and rolls of materials: the spare room.

  I saw Rosie sitting on the floor, her face full of wonder as she pulled the string of Danielle’s doll and it sang to her. I dreaded going back to face the absolute finality of it all.

  Dad stuck his fork hard into the ground, came over and sat on the wall beside me. ‘Sometimes, the fear of something is worse than the thing itself. You’ve dreaded going back for so long, Jen, that it now feels like an insurmountable hurdle. I’ll come with you, if it’s any help.’ He sighed and looked at me. ‘I think it’s time, darling. No one is asking you to go back to live. But it is your home and has been the hub of your life. You’re happy here at the moment, but you’re very young to bury yourself. Look at the letters you’ve had. Your belts and bags are very innovative and very you, but people want your stunning, beautiful clothes. I know you’re going to design just as well if not better than you did before.’

  I smiled. I hadn’t realised Dad was so proud of me. I told him about my piffling little commercial worries.

  ‘I would think’, James said as we walked to the house, ‘that the same rules apply whether you have a tiny workforce here or a large one in London. It’s human nature to get complacent. Talk to Flo; maybe instead of having six equal workers you need to put someone in overall charge, especially if you’re not going to be there all the time.’

  ‘Oh, you are so wise, father of mine!’

  ‘It comes with years of dealing with terrifying doctors’ receptionists. Fire those who can’t work as a team. Reward those who have pride in their work. Everyone needs to feel that what they are doing matters.’ He grinned down at me. ‘Perhaps also a little fear of the boss is no bad thing…An edge of ruthlessness?’

  I stopped and planted my feet on the grass. ‘Are you saying I can’t do frightening?’ I demanded.