Sail Upon the Land (16 page)

‘Goodbye then, Matron. As I say, I am sorry. It was my mistake.’

‘All jobs are difficult, Miss Reeves. I don’t know what you think is out there for you that will be better. Shopgirls stand up all day, and don’t have the satisfaction of helping their fellow man.’

Melissa turned away and began to leave the office.

‘You were a debutante, weren’t you? Wrong class, no use at all, fit for nothing but marriage.’

Matron’s barbs did not find their mark. Melissa went back down the long green-painted corridor, her heart lightening with every step. She knew she would come crashing down again soon, but enjoyed for that moment the delicious sensation of being free. Free to go home and allow her mother and father to look after her again as they always had before.

‘No more bedpans,’ she crowed, pulling her cap off her head and chucking it in a bin as she passed by.

Back in the Nurses’ Home she looked round her cell with new eyes. Why had she forced herself to stay in this place for so long? It seemed bizarre now that she had given herself permission to go home to her comfortable bedroom. The sweet soft protected cocoon of her childhood beckoned.

She swept through the room, now a whirlwind of effectiveness, stuffing all her clothes into a suitcase and putting her uniform into the communal laundry basket at the end of the corridor. Someone else could have it. She didn’t want it any more. The only bits she kept were her watch, and her belt, with the silver clasp that had been her mother’s as a VAD. One last glance round at the room that had contained so much pain, tears and exhaustion and she was free. The suitcase was heavy, and she wondered whether to leave it in the Porters’ Lodge and get it sent on, but then decided instead to take a taxi to Waterloo. She stopped at the Lodge window and rang the little bell. All the porters in the Nurses’ Home were women for the sake of some long lost propriety, and Melissa recognised Mrs Edge.

She put her keys on the sliding tray, saying, ‘I’m leaving, Mrs Edge. Can you take my keys?’

‘Leaving, Miss Reeves? Why?’

‘Nursing doesn’t suit me. It’s too tiring and my talipes can’t take the pressure.’

Once again the excuse slipped from her mouth. She was sure her mother wouldn’t have ever excused herself in that way. But then her mother never let herself get away with anything at all. It was no use trying to be like Mummy. She was herself and had to find her own way of doing things. And right now that meant not being a nurse or anything like it ever again.

‘Oh, I am sorry, Miss Reeves.’

‘Do you think you could get me a taxi? My foot is very painful.’

Once she had started, she couldn’t stop. The foot, which the whole family had viewed as something that should never stop her from doing what she liked, was now proving to be useful.

‘Poor you, miss. Of course.’ And Melissa heard her dial a number and speak briefly, coming back to say the taxi would be there in five minutes. Melissa prayed no one she knew would walk through the Lodge, but it was mid-afternoon and everyone would be over in the wards, doing all the ghastly things that she would never have to do again. She tried to summon up the boost of relief that had carried her thus far, but found her heart was beating in guilty thuds.

Just as the discomfort was getting unbearable, she heard the grumble of a taxi and watched through the glass doors as it drew up. Mrs Edge came out of the Lodge and insisted on helping her with her suitcase. She gathered up the various bags and scrambled in.

‘Thank you, Mrs Edge. You’ve been a great help.’

As the taxi pulled away, she waved at the back of Mrs Edge’s head, which seemed to be shaking from side to side with pitying disapproval. She sank back into the seat and tried to calm down as they chugged towards Waterloo.

She’d considered whether to call her parents from the station and ask to be picked up, but something held her back and she took a taxi at the other end as well. The driver left her bags and suitcase on the step. Melissa knocked but there was no answer. She went around to the surgery door but found that locked as well. Then she remembered that her father went out on his rounds on Thursday afternoons. She wondered if she had a key and groped around in the bottom of her bag looking for one. She had been so sure someone would be there to let her in, to welcome her home. She’d imagined warmth, tea, sympathy, not locked doors. She went around via the garden to see if the back door was open and that too was locked.

At a loss she sat down on the porch bench to think. It was getting cold and dark, houses on the other side of the road were lit up and she saw people drawing curtains. Some had Christmas trees covered in fairy lights. Nobody came home. Melissa realised she had been foolish not calling her parents and making sure they were there. She began to cry as the chill seeped into her bones and a vicious little wind whipped around her ankles. She pulled her luggage and herself deeper into the porch and curled her legs up beside her on the bench leaning on a bag. So exhausted was she that in spite of the cold her head began to nod.

‘Melissa? What are you doing here?’ It was her mother, shaking her shoulder. ‘You weren’t meant to be coming home until after Christmas.’

She awoke, numb with cold, to see her parents standing over her, looking worried. She unwound herself and stood up, stumbling slightly, and saying, ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t stand it. I’ve resigned.’

Her parents didn’t look as pleased and welcoming as she’d hoped.

‘Well,’ said her mother. ‘We’d better get you into the warm. How long have you been here?’

‘I took the three o’clock. What’s the time now?’

‘It’s seven o’clock. Why didn’t you call and let us know you were coming?’

‘It was a bit spur of the moment.’

They had the front door open, and her father, looking grim, picked up her luggage and ushered her inside.

‘Don’t go to your room, it isn’t ready for you. I’ve been giving it a good turnout with Mrs Lewis, so it’s all upside down. You’d better go along to the spare room. There should be enough hot water for you to have a bath to warm yourself up.’

Melissa knew what she had been expecting – the kind of unconditional loving welcome that she had always had before. That her parents would instantly make everything all right again. Not this, being treated like an unexpected and not very welcome guest. Her mother bobbed forward with a kiss on the cheek, but Daddy didn’t hug her as he usually did. She could see that they were not pleased with her and this was the very first time in her life she had ever experienced anything like it.

She moved towards the stairs looking back to see her unsmiling father carrying her suitcase and her mother gathering the scattered bags.

‘You get warmed up and we can talk later,’ she said. Melissa turned away and went along the upstairs passage to the spare room.

Dreaming the afternoon away, Melissa slouched on a chair behind the counter, her face resting on her cupped hands. There were few customers mid-afternoon, mid-week, to her relief. Anyone conceivably interested in Lord Groove’s array of purple tie-dyed T-shirts, love beads, granny glasses, loon pants and fringed waistcoats was either stuck behind another counter, a typewriter or a desk. It had been a struggle for her, to begin with, to attract the customers’ attention and sell them things. They all seemed so sophisticated and knowing, and she quite invisible and shy. She quailed at the thought of suggesting items that might suit them.

She was alone with her dreams and the slow passing of under-occupied time. Her boss, whom she delighted in her mind in calling ‘your lordship’, although his real name was Alan Smalls, expected her to spend the hours ripping open the outer seam of second-hand jeans he bought in bulk, and inserting colourful corduroy triangles to convert them into bell bottoms. The sewing machine was silent, a fly buzzed against the shop window and her eyelids drooped.

She wished she had something concrete to think about, some future in view. At least she was sitting down and the smell of joss sticks was better than bedpans.

Returning to live at home had not turned out as expected at all. There was no drifting back into the irresponsibility of her childhood. After the first chill, her parents had been kinder but a new brisk note had crept into their conversations. They asked her all the time what she was planning to do. Did she want to go to secretarial college or even retake her A Levels and go to university? They didn’t mention nursing again and accepted that her foot had made it difficult for her. She was considering it but she wasn’t drawn to any one subject. The idea of being a teacher or a secretary in some dull office afterwards filled her with horror.

She was also expected to take a full part in the family’s domestic arrangements and not just the fun bits like cooking. Her mother had breezily told her that she wouldn’t expect rent – this hadn’t occurred to Melissa – but would require a good deal of cleaning and tidying in exchange for room and keep.

She found herself scrubbing the kitchen floor as an unpaid skivvy for her parents. Relations became strained quite quickly. She also had a queer suspicion she was in the way. She was amazed at the amount they went out, even for whole weekends, leaving her alone at home. They never invited her to join them.

The present seemed formless and uninteresting. All work, high tea, evenings in with the television or books or Scrabble, and hoovering, dusting, mopping and folding. Her brothers were still away at school. Even when they did come home they ignored her just as they always had. It was mutual though so didn’t cause any further dismay.

She had always taken it for granted that her parents loved each other, but now she noticed how united they were, that her mother was essential to the smooth running of her husband’s practice, as his office manager and receptionist.

Having shied away from it to begin with – her terror of the lake blocking her dreams – she found herself straying in her mind back to lovely sleeping Castle Hey. When she remembered how she had treated Munty she blushed with remorse. It was unlikely she would ever see the house or him again. Then she relived his kisses. She couldn’t forget that with Munty she had been the cool envied girl, driving up the King’s Road in a sports car.

She’d been horrid to him, blaming him, frightened and embarrassed by her accident, and guilty about lying to her parents. The gloom had come upon her with terrifying speed and she wasn’t able to shake it off. She realised now she had taken it all out on that gentle man who had treated her with such kindness and admiration. She regretted it bitterly and Munty began more and more to occupy the echoing wastes in her mind.

She liked to lull herself to sleep by picturing herself in something gorgeous from Quorum, floating through magical candle-lit rooms at Castle Hey, Munty adoring at her side, directing teams of people to perform various unspecified tasks.

She designed her wedding dress over and over again in her mind – should it be a white mini, lace headscarf and go-go boots or something more traditional? Whatever she was wearing, it was always Munty’s fair head and slender back encased in the same black tailcoat that she had seen him wearing at P&Q, waiting for her at the top of the aisle. Turning to smile at her. When she woke up from her fantasies to the dreary day-to-day of housework and Lord Groove, she sometimes fell into a gloom and, much to his lordship’s irritation, had to take days off sick. She was lucky to keep her job.

In the absence of Munty, no other man she knew invited her out on dates, and it was difficult to meet anyone interesting in Dorking. She regretted bucketing out of her Season where at least there were men to meet. What on earth had possessed her to waste such an opportunity? There was no going back now. She was stuck.

Half dozing when the bell in the shop doorway tinkled, she snapped awake and looked up to see someone tall standing against the light. Her well-primed heart leapt with recognition.

‘Munty!’ she cried out, louder than she meant, so delighted that her ridiculous dreams had conjured him up at last. It was clear to her from his worried expression that he was expecting to be rebuffed.

‘Melissa, hello. I was just passing.’

‘Passing? You were just passing Dorking?’

‘Well, yes. Driving down to Castle Hey.’

Then she laughed, thrilled that he had come to find her.

‘I called at your father’s surgery and the nurse told me where you were.’

‘Ah!’

Melissa lifted the hinged section of the counter and stepped through. She was wearing a long-sleeved short shift in bright peacock blue, with strings of beads and flat sandals on her feet. Lord Groove insisted she look the part. She looked up at him smiling, raising her arms, and the anxious expression left him as he bent to kiss her as if he couldn’t help himself.

He came back the following Saturday to take her to Castle Hey. As she stepped once again across the threshold of her dream house Melissa let go of last year’s fear. Her parents knew where she was and approved. She decided to remember only the fun, the kisses, the promise that Munty and his house would be her busy exciting future.

Work had started in earnest, windows were flung open, sunlight streaming in while workmen scrubbed the scarred walls and slapped on whitewash. Munty told her that he’d been spending every weekend here himself for months working alongside the men.

‘I wanted to show you something much better than when you came before,’ he said. ‘At least half the problem must have been what a mess it was. I didn’t blame you for wanting to run away.’

Melissa knew that that hadn’t been it. She’d been excited by the possibilities of the house as soon as she had seen it, about being with Munty and making it a special place where people would want to stay. About behaving like a grown-up. It had been the lake that had ruined the weekend. Nothing else. She looked at Munty with new eyes so grateful that he’d tried again.

‘Oh no, not at all,’ she replied gazing around at the transformation.