Blind Beauty (2 page)

T
essa sat in the train and watched the countryside flicking past, seeing nothing, not even where to jump the hedges and fences if you were on a horse. Maurice had refused to send the car for her.

“If your school can't put up with you, we're in no hurry to see you down here.”

Myra had never learned to drive, of course, even though there were three cars in the garage. She had learned other things – how to be smart, for example, in all its senses – but not how to handle a car, nor her daughter. They had sent Tessa away to boarding school at the age of eight, to try and “give themselves a chance”, as they put it. She had been sent home by two of the schools, and now by the third. Excluded, they said. This time for smoking. “Everyone smokes at twelve,” Tessa said carelessly. “Insolence and general unpleasantness,” the headmistress added. “We have to consider the other girls.” Tessa was sorry to lose the other girls, the ones the school thought she was corrupting. There were three of them – the first time in her life she had made any friends. She knew now that she wouldn't see them again.

Who would she see?

Maurice had a son of eighteen called Greevy (or Gravy, or Greasy, to Tessa) but he was as foul as his father. Luckily he too was away at boarding school and not underfoot often. Her best friends were Betty the cleaning girl and George the gardener. George was old and deaf, and Betty stupid. Betty had taught Tessa to smoke in the cupboard under the stairs. But Mrs Tims the housekeeper had found them. Mrs Tims was horrible, but didn't report the news because she knew Betty would be dismissed and she would be lucky to get another cleaning girl within six months. Nobody much wanted to work at Goldlands.

Tessa hated Goldlands. She hated Maurice and she hated Myra now that Maurice had made her smart. Besides hating Maurice she was frightened of him and thought Myra was too. She was frightened of going home and frightened of what was going to happen to her. But when Tessa was frightened she stuck her chin out and faced it head on. She would kill Maurice! She thought of ways of doing it as the train chattered on its way: a carving knife (too messy); pushing him in front of his racehorses on the gallops (nice, as long as the horses weren't hurt); running him over in the drive (she had taught herself to drive the smallest of the three cars when everybody was out). Maurice kept the keys hanging in the kitchen, and never knew. She had practised all round the drives and lawns, and George had kept mum and mowed over her tyre-marks afterwards.

She could poison him perhaps – put cyanide in his whisky, save it was hard to buy (she had tried the first time she came on holiday from boarding school), or perhaps slowly with arsenic, like poisoners in Agatha Christie. She would like him to suffer first, and know with his dying breath that it was she who had killed him. She would like to see a look of craven defeat in his staring eyes. He had strange eyes, a way of looking that went right through you. Tessa, who could insolently hold the gaze of school teachers longer than they could endure, could not hold Maurice's gaze. It made her go funny. Sick. She knew that her mother had married him for his money. But he certainly hadn't made her happy, Tessa could tell. She had been much happier with Declan, when they hadn't been fighting. In between the fighting there had been lots of laughter. Tessa hadn't heard her mother laugh for a long time now.

So going home was not anything to look forward to. Cruelly, just as after four years she had got to quite like boarding school, she was now thrown out of it. The other times she had been pleased. But this time she wasn't. She couldn't see any future for herself at all. Even going back to Declan, which was her dream, was now impossible, for Declan had moved on and no one knew where he was.

If Tessa had been the crying sort, she would have cried. But self-pity was not one of Tessa's habits. She clawed herself out of trouble as best she could and tossed past failures aside. If she had to live at horrible Goldlands, so be it. But she would find her own way to win.

To her surprise, Myra had come to meet her, sitting in the car with George. Myra hugged her and kissed her and said in the same breath, “Oh Tessa, what have you done, getting yourself thrown out again? We'll never get you into another school now!”

“I don't mind.”

“You're only twelve. It's not like you can leave!”

“If nobody'll have me, I've no choice, have I? I don't mind.”

“Well, you wouldn't.” Myra's voice trembled. “I can tell you someone who does.”

Tessa didn't answer. She was even more angry now, seeing the woman that had once been her cheerful feckless mother tied up in a tight skirt and satin blouse and her hair all highlighted, with the lines of worry (or fear?) on her face growing deeper by the month. What was Maurice doing to her?

“Why don't you leave him?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look so miserable. Not like you did once.”

Myra looked shocked. “Do I? Leave him? Don't be so silly! What a thing to say!”

Maurice had made her stupid too. He was always doing her down, sapping her confidence. Once she had overflowed with confidence. One thing Tessa knew, Maurice wasn't going to change
her
.

She felt sick, heading for Goldlands. It was May and the hedges were bright with flowers, the white hawthorn blossom just beginning to break. After a shower of rain, its pungent scent filled the lanes. Over the downs a blue-black cloud lay as if to part the shining grass from the blue sky above. White cumulus sailed along before the wind, high and ever-changing. Weather delighted Tessa, even rain and snow. There were times, if you were really down, you could get put right by enjoying the weather: the wind and the wildness – know that there was life beyond your own bad spot. She seemed to have had a lot of bad spots in her life.

“Is he home?”

“No. Not till tonight. He's gone racing.”

Myra had always loved racing.

“Why didn't you go?”

“He didn't ask me, darling. Besides, you were coming.”

But Tessa knew he never took her. And if he had asked her, Myra would have gone, whether Tessa was coming or not. Tessa was used to knowing things that were never actually said.

“I don't know why he goes; it never seems to make him happy,” Tessa said. She could still remember whooping times with Declan at the races, when he had tossed her in the air with joy when the right horse won. Maurice always seemed to have a face like thunder when he went racing.

“He has to win,” Myra said. “He races not because he loves the horses, but to win. To make money.”

“How boring,” Tessa said in her put-down way.

Myra tossed her coiffed head in annoyance but said nothing. Perhaps she too remembered what fun it had been with Declan.

Maurice made a lot of money and liked it to be noticed. His cars had swanky number-plates and were white with red leather interiors, and had tinted windows as if he were a pop star. And Goldlands… Tessa looked with loathing as the car left the lane and turned in at the electronic entrance gates. Such grandeur! A golden stone wall replaced the cheerful hedge, as expensive a wall as ever was built – for what? Tessa wondered. To impress the neighbours? The driveway went over a slight rise, with mown grass on either side, and over the rise one came upon the front of a large, brash modern house. Behind the house the land fell away into a wide valley, and the view from the back was magnificent – of rolling downs and woods. Tessa knew that Maurice had bought the land from a bankrupt farmer, and owned the whole valley. Much of the farmland was tenanted out and Maurice had no power to evict his tenants, but how much they welcomed their new owner Tessa did not know. From Betty's gossip, she knew that they thought him ignorant of farming and they feared for their good relations. Maurice Morrison-Pleydell was a developer and thought of land in terms of golf-courses, supermarket sites and holiday complexes – not a happy omen for the men whose lives were in his land. The former landowner had been an old farmer whose family had owned the place since Tudor times. He had rashly speculated and lost all he owned in the Lloyds disaster. His home, known as the Home Farm, lay abandoned behind a screen of trees some half a mile from Goldlands, the barns and milking parlours now deserted and the house empty. Maurice left it empty – “I don't want neighbours as close as that” – and didn't care about the lovely old house rotting away. He didn't like old buildings.

Tessa's only consolation at Goldlands was playing in the old buildings, because they had the homely run-down feel of her old Irish home. She had asked for a pony to keep there, but Maurice had refused. Who was going to look after it when she was at school? Myra offered gladly but Maurice said he didn't want his wife mucking out and smelling of manure.

“George could do it,” Tessa said. “He wouldn't mind.”

“I pay George to do the garden and drive the car, not to play about with pets.”

“It would be something for her to do, dear. It's lonely up here for a child.”

“She can use her bike if she wants to get around. What's wrong with a bike?”

“It's not like a pony. It's got no heart. Like you,” Tessa muttered under her breath.

“What did you say?”

“I said a bike's got no heart,” Tessa said loudly in the stupid-didn't-you-hear-me-first-time? voice that got her into trouble at school.

“Don't you use that tone of voice to me.” Low and menacing.

“What tone of voice?” Careless and insolent.

“You know very well what I mean. Get out of my sight. Go.”

“But she's eating her dinner!” Myra wailed.

“Go,” said Maurice, and she went. She slammed the door hard. If Maurice called her back she didn't hear.

Once she said, “If you hit me I'll go to the police.”

He said, “You go to the police and they will call in the social services. I'd think again if I were you.”

But he didn't hit her. She knew he would like to sometimes. She would like to hit him, beat him with tight fists, smash his face until he cried out. He was so cool. He never lost his temper. Just looked at her.

Who was he anyway? she wondered. He didn't have a pigeon-hole she could slot him into. Very rich, but not well-educated, as far as she could tell. His friends gave no clue – all sorts – racing men, lawyers, land agents, grocers, golfers… they came for dinner parties sometimes with their hard-faced wives. Caterers would come in to do the cooking. Myra would do herself up to the nines and drink a lot so that she was happy and vivacious, but Tessa knew that she wasn't happy underneath. It was all a sham. She was nervous of them and had to put on a front. She had never had to put on a front with old Paddy and Liam and Declan's mate Harry and his crazy wife Sheila, who had all shrieked with laughter in the kitchen. If it wasn't a party, Maurice didn't seem to have any friends. Nobody ever dropped in for a chat. He never brought just a couple home, for fun, or a man friend for a drink like Declan used to. All the people who came to dinner parties were to do with his making money.

“Try not to annoy him, Tessa,” Myra said despairingly as the car swept up the drive. “It won't do you any good.”

But she enjoyed annoying him. It was one of her few pleasures in life.

“He'll be back for supper. It's all right now.”

Tessa noted that Myra used “all right” for Maurice not being there. It came to her lips quite naturally. They both felt the same. Tessa was tempted to cry out, “Oh Mum, it's awful – you too!”, put her head on her mother's smart bosom and cry her eyes out, but she had learned long ago not to give way to such weak feelings.

They got out of the car and George unloaded all her boarding school paraphernalia in two trunks.

“You can throw all that away, George,” Tessa said with a grin. “I won't want it any more.”

Tessa travelled light and had nothing she treasured amongst the clothes and rubbish.

Myra said, “Don't be ridiculous! Bring the stuff in, George. Really, Tessa!”

Tessa ran up to her room. It was enormous and had a wonderful view over the valley. Apart from that it was like a hotel room, tastefully furnished (by an interior designer from London), with pictures on the walls chosen by the designer. Tessa had printed nothing of herself on it at all. She had a den in one of the stables at the home farm, and her few dear possessions lived there – one of Moonshine Fields' shoes, her photos of Shiner, a jersey of Declan's she liked to wear – it was unravelling and came down to her knees, and an old book about the Grand National.

In her bedroom she flung herself on the bed and picked up the remote control for her television. She switched on a stupid programme. She felt dead inside. She supposed she was frightened, but even that feeling was dull. She had learnt to block being frightened, having been lectured so many times at school. What could they do, after all? She had no idea what was going to happen next. At the moment she didn't care.