Come Away With Me

by Sara MacDonald

  I heard running footsteps and turned. It was Adam, clothes all awry. I stopped and he caught me up, breathless. ‘I saw you run out of the house. I saw the boxes. You’re not all right. You’re not. Where are you going, Jenny?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m just going to the park for a walk. Really. You must go back to Ruth, Adam, it’s very early.’

  He stood in front of me. ‘You’re not fine. You’re crying, Jenny. You’re crying. I won’t let you be alone.’ He stepped towards me and hugged me fiercely to him, and my tears, hot and wet, ran down his T-shirt.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I managed eventually. ‘I’m so sorry. Look, darling, I will be OK now. You must go back. Get dressed properly and make me a pot of strong coffee. I’ve just got one last pilgrimage I need to do alone.’

  He looked at me, then turned and walked slowly back to the house.

  The park was beautiful, full of the scent of blossom. The leaves on the trees grew new and curled, emerging into virgin green. Joggers passed me with their dogs. The ducks made great wet messes on the path. I heard Rosie laugh and point, then get out of her pushchair to throw bread, while Tom and I hung on to her coat to stop her falling in. Tom threw his arm round me as we walked away back to the gates. Oh, why don’t I leave the army and become a civvie, then I can spend every Sunday with you and Rosie.

  I smiled, waiting for his laugh, which acknowledged that these Sundays were special because he wasn’t here all the time.

  Goodbye, I whispered to them both. Goodbye. I turned and looked back over the grass where the branches of leaves made shadows. Neither Tom nor Rosie needed rooms to house their spirits; their shadows moved with me everywhere. They always would.

  Ruth heard Adam get up. She looked at her bedside clock: six thirty. What was he doing up at this time? She lay for a moment, reluctant to move out of her warm bed, and then, worried about him, she threw off the covers. She drew her curtains quietly, pulled on her dressing gown and looked down on to the overgrown garden that was beginning to take shape again.

  Adam’s room was empty. He wasn’t in the bathroom. He wasn’t in the flat. Anxious, she went out and up the stairs into the other side of the house. No one was here either, although someone was running a bath.

  Ruth looked in Rosie’s room and saw all the boxes. Jenny must have packed them in the night, poor thing. Had Adam gone out? Instinct told Ruth that he had and that he was with Jenny. Her stomach knotted.

  Something made her go to the window. She looked down the road and saw Jenny on the opposite side with Adam. They were standing facing each other, talking; their bodies leant towards each other, intense.

  Jenny lifted her hands in a small gesture of distress and Adam moved and put his arms round her. He was taller than Jenny now and they rocked together in the deserted earlymorning road like lovers; like people who had known each other all their lives.

  Fuck! Ruth’s anger came streaking out of nowhere, doubling her up. Fuck her. Fuck her. Fuck her.

  She turned from the window clutching her stomach, the pain excruciating, and collapsed into a chair, rocking. The rage rampaging through her terrified her. Coloured floaters bobbed behind her eyes, temporarily blinding her.

  It was years and years since she had experienced uncontrollable anger like this. She hobbled back to her room and threw herself on the bed, giving into raw and unspeakable feelings that appalled her. I hate Jenny and her pain. I bloody well hate her. It’s always been the same: small, happy, popular Jenny. Always the centre of everyone’s fucking universe. Jenny and her bloody perfect life, her bloody perfect family in their bloody perfect house. Jenny who had Bea and James and Tom and now Adam. Jesus Christ, Peter’s right, I was stark staring mad.

  She was propelled into childhood again. The terrible rages that came from nowhere, that she’d had to squash down inside her, hold down with all her strength, petrified in case they escaped in an unstoppable ugly stream. Sometimes they did escape, making her inarticulate; then they had to be turned into something else, a silent dark mood which elicited sympathy and attention; from Bea, anyway.

  Jenny’s taken-for-granted childhood had wrought in Ruth a bitter resentment. She wanted to be Jenny. Sometimes she fantasised Jenny’s death and then Bea would have to adopt her and she would have Jenny’s life.

  Ruth sat up, shaking. She had forgotten. She had buried and annihilated her childhood feelings about Jenny, which had swung from absolute love to blind hate, triggered by some small act or word or glance of family collusion—or, sometimes, purely by Jenny’s impregnable happiness. She remembered digging her fingernails into the flesh of her arms, drawing blood, to stop the scream of anguished rage. She smelt again the toast she and Bea had made or the cake bowl she had been given to lick in an effort by Bea to cheer her. The hours she had spent in the years of her childhood in that hot, safe kitchen where nothing bad could possibly happen. Jenny’s kitchen. Jenny’s mother.

  I wish to God I had never seen her on the train to Birmingham. I wish to God I’d never met her again. I only remembered the good times. How she made me laugh. How close we were. I had forgotten this: the green bile of envy and jealousy. I had forgotten how close love and hate are and at this moment I hate Jenny with all my heart for worming her way into my child’s life. I want to run as fast and as faraway with Adam as I can. I want to carry him away with me.

  Danielle called, ‘Ruth! Adam and I are out of the bathroom. Flo’s doing an English breakfast. We thought we’d all eat together before the day starts. Ruth, are you awake?’

  ‘Of course! You go on. I’ll catch you both up,’ Ruth called.

  Adam was manning the toaster when Ruth arrived after a shower and with a careful application of concealer round her eyes. ‘Hi, Mum.’ He grinned at her.

  ‘Ruth, cooked breakfast? It’s in the warming oven.’ Flo started to get out of her chair.

  ‘Don’t move, Flo. No, thanks. I’ll just have toast.’

  It took Ruth a minute before she could look at Jenny. She smiled in her direction as Jenny handed her a cup of coffee.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Jenny asked quietly. ‘You look a bit pale.’

  ‘I’m fine. I didn’t have the best night. Probably too much wine.’

  They talked generally about the day ahead. Ruth was taking Adam off to the Eye. Jenny and Danielle were staying in to talk about Italian commissions for Antonio. Flo was meeting a friend for lunch.

  ‘Ruth,’ Jenny said suddenly. ‘I wondered if you would like to move into my bedroom. It’s so large that Tom and I used it as a living room too. I thought it might be a place where you could shut yourself away when you feel like it; your own domain. If Adam had Rosie’s room when he was here, you would both be almost self-contained. You could set it up with some of his things. Of course, both rooms need redecorating. You could choose whatever you wanted. I mean, if you’d like to?’

  Ruth stared at Jenny, speechless. ‘But…’

  ‘I’ve thought about it carefully,’ Jenny said quickly. ‘You and Adam go and look. See what you think.’

  Ruth walked across the landing and into the large sunny room. Her heart soared. She could do wonders here. She could make this her own. She turned and saw Adam standing in the doorway of Rosie’s room staring at the boxes, then he came to her. His face was set in an expression Ruth could not decipher. He walked into the room his father had shared with Jenny and looked around at the small ornaments still on the mantelpiece and the clothes piled on to the bed. ‘No,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’s sad. It’s too sad.’

  ‘But we could make it happy again, couldn’t we? Rosie and Tom aren’t any the less remembered.’

  ‘It’s as if we’re wiping them out.’

  Ruth looked at him. ‘Perhaps you would rather not sleep in Rosie’s room?’ She hesitated and then said calculatingly, ‘I rather think Jenny wants you to have that room, Adam. I think she would feel better if she knew you were sleeping in it sometimes, don’t you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Adam muttered. ‘You really l
ike this room, don’t you?’

  ‘I love it.’ In the room Tom shared with Jenny. My room.

  Jenny walked across the landing. ‘What do you guys think?’

  Adam said, ‘Are you sure you want Mum to take your room, Jenny?’

  ‘I’m sure, Adam. It would make me feel better.’

  ‘Honestly?’ Ruth asked.

  She smiled. ‘Honestly. Ruth?’

  ‘It would be…amazing, if you really mean it, Jenny, and very generous of you.’

  Jenny was always so much kinder and nicer than me. Catching me out with her sweet nature. Rarely hitting back when I was foul to her. Never telling or complaining. Catching me out with her giving. Wrong-footing me with her goodness. She still is.

  Ruth moved over to Jenny. She could not bring herself to hug her, but she put her hands on her shoulders and kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you, Jenny.’

  Jenny’s eyes met hers. Ruth blinked furiously, afraid Jenny could read what was in them, but Jenny turned away and said softly to Adam, ‘I’m going to head back to Cornwall on the sleeper tonight, Adam. I just need to be home. Have a wonderful half-term, both of you. I’ll hear all about it when you get back.’

  Ruth watched Adam’s face fall and saw Jenny shoot him a warning glance. She went to look out of the window, furious at the tears that rose painfully from her heart and ran down her cheeks with the loss of something intangible, but so fundamental that had Jenny stabbed her in the heart, Ruth could not have felt more mortally wounded.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  James met me off the sleeper at St Erth station. Cornwall was being slashed by gales, that had whipped up mountainous seas. We were soaked in minutes as we made a run for the car.

  ‘A container ship went down off Devil’s Mouth,’ Dad said as we drove along the causeway. ‘Amazing pieces of wood were being swept ashore on the north coast. The locals descended like gannets and carted and scurried the best pieces away until Her Majesty’s Customs men arrived in Land Rovers with loudhailers bellowing that anything thrown up by the wreck was government property and everyone caught with wood would be prosecuted for stealing. As if smuggling weren’t in the Cornish bloodstream!’

  I laughed. ‘Oh, Dad, it’s good to be home.’

  We belted up the path into the house and I put the kettle on.

  ‘Flo rang. She said you’d been very generous about letting Ruth have your room. I think you did the right thing. Well done, darling.’

  As we drank coffee, Dad cleared his throat and said nervously, ’Antonio arrived out of the blue yesterday. He didn’t realise you were in London.’

  ‘Antonio?’

  ‘He flew into Exeter and hired a car. He did it on a whim, thinking you were sure to be here. He’s hung on to see you. It’s been rather nice having him. He and Bea have been planning our proposed trip to Italy.’ He trailed off, seeing my face. ‘You’ve had enough of people, haven’t you? You just wanted to be on your own?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t ignore him, darling,’ he said, getting up to go. ‘He’s going back to Exeter tonight, so it won’t be for long.’

  ‘I know.’ I sighed. ‘I’ll have a bath and get myself together, and then come over to Tredrea.’

  I lay in the bath annoyed. I didn’t like surprises. Why hadn’t Antonio rung Danielle or checked first that I would be here? I could have seen him in London. I thought of his telephone calls. It was much easier to be sociable on the phone. I didn’t want to be told that I should go to Italy to see for myself how his new project was progressing.

  I got out of the bath and put on some Barber: Adagio for Strings summed up my feelings in this grey morning of dripping rain. I pulled on a huge white sweater of Tom’s that came to my knees and old jeans that were too big, and tied up my hair in a scarf. I needed an hour on my own. Then I’d go and see Antonio.

  I wandered into Adam’s room. There was the usual boyhood mess and I picked up papers off the floor and put them on his desk. As I pulled his bed straight, some magazines slid out of the bedside table: military magazines; Jayne and others I had never seen before. I sat on the bed and thumbed through them, wondering where he had bought them. There was a fair amount of recruitment literature and my heart sank. It was now a different army from the one Tom had joined. The world had changed and become increasingly dangerous.

  Unease gnawed at me. I certainly didn’t want him even to think of joining because of Tom. Then I thought that this was probably just a phase because he was going to join the school cadets. It would pass.

  I went into the sitting room. Adam was studying the war poets for English and had borrowed an old edition of Siegfried Sassoon that Antonio had lent Dad and it lay on the chair. I picked it up. On the flyleaf it said, For Antonio, with love always, Sophia. Who was Sophia? I began to thumb through it.

  …And in their happiest moments I can hear Silence unending, when those lives must lie Hoarded like happy summers in my heart.

  I smiled and went out into the wet garden. On the water creek birds called quaveringly. The sun was valiantly trying to break through. The water was still choppy and out on the bar I could see angry waves. My feet sank into the grass. I sniffed the wet earth and the smell of seaweed on the wind, and it felt like a homecoming, a moving on.

  I turned and jumped as I saw Antonio. How long had he been standing at the gate watching me? I felt embarrassment and annoyance. I looked a complete mess with my enormous sweater and baggy jeans, and my hair tied up like a washerwoman.

  He smiled. ‘Forgive me. I interrupt a meditation, I think.’

  ‘Come in.’ Self-consciously I led the way up the path.

  I took him into the kitchen and plugged in the coffee pot again.

  Antonio stood awkwardly in the doorway. ‘I have come at the wrong time, Jenny. I am sorry.’ He came and kissed both my cheeks in greeting and I felt rude and churlish.

  ‘No. It’s fine, honestly. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived yesterday.’

  ‘It was a surprise, you being in London. I should have rung first.’

  ‘Have you been OK with Bea and James?’

  ‘It is always a pleasure to be with your parents.’

  I put the coffee on a tray and took it into the sitting room. He sat down. Siegfried Sassoon lay open on the sofa and Antonio picked it up. He shot me a look and smoothed it in his hands lovingly. ‘I am glad you read this.’

  ‘Who is Sophia?’ I asked before I could stop myself.

  Antonio looked amused. ‘Sophia was a woman I was in love with long ago. She lived in England. We studied English together at university.’

  ‘You have an English degree?’

  He laughed at my face. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘It’s just a surprise. I thought you would be more likely to have a business degree or to have studied fashion or history of art,’ I floundered.

  ‘I never meant to join my father’s fashion business. My older brother died, so it was expected that I leave my studies and go back to Milan.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘That must have been tough?’

  ‘At first it was very tough. But you know, Jenny, happiness is a conscious decision. I decided to be content working with my father and I am.’

  The sun was beginning to warm the room. Antonio had a facility for stillness and it unnerved me. He sat on the sofa with the book in his hand and he seemed to merge seamlessly with the room. He smelt vaguely of some aftershave. His jacket was uncrumpled and his shirt expensive. How do Italians always manage to look immaculate?

  Dark hairs sprang from the cuffs of his shirt and over the backs of his hands, hands that were square and beautifully manicured. I had always found men’s wrists sexy. I was very conscious of him in the small room. The silence grew. I opened my mouth to ask him why he was here. I looked up and met his eyes and what I saw in them made my body weak and hot. Neither of us moved. The atmosphere was stiff with sexual chemistry.<
br />
  I picked up the tray and moved swiftly to the kitchen. I heard Antonio follow me but I kept my back to him and ran water into the sink.

  ‘I came to ask you if you would visit Milan and then travel to the Far East with me, Jenny. Malaysia, Singapore…I have decided I must import materials from the Far East and many will be for your designs under the Antonio label. I need your advice on this.’

  I turned. ‘You are joking, Antonio.’

  ‘No, I am not joking, Jenny.’

  I laughed. ‘I can’t take off at a moment’s notice. I have Adam to look after and my work here.’

  ‘I am not giving you a moment’s notice. Ruth tells me that the boy will be with her for some of the summer holiday. Bea and James tell me that the boy is always welcome there. I do not think there will be a problem.’

  ‘His name is Adam. I see that you have arranged it all with everyone except me, Antonio.’ I was furious.

  ‘No, it is not all arranged. I would like to go next month before the holiday season, but if you feel it is impossible for you to come now, then I wait. It is no good taking Danielle. It is your clothes I primarily wish to promote. There is no point in going without you.’

  I looked out of the window. Why didn’t the world go away and stay away and just leave me and Adam to get on with our lives? Just leave us alone.

  Antonio said behind me, ‘I am sorry, I do not wish to upset you or make you angry. It is important for business that you come.’

  I turned. ‘There are other things in life besides business, Antonio.’

  I thought I saw a flicker of anger. ‘Indeed, Jenny, many things,’ he said evenly. ‘But it is business that gives us a place to live and the choice of the way in which we live, is it not?’

  I opened and shut my mouth. He was right. I had a mortgage to pay and a business that needed to keep afloat in order for me to pay it.

  ‘I know that you have Adam to take care of,’ Antonio said as if reading my thoughts. ‘Is it that you cannot bear to leave this house and this boy even for a short time?’