The Way We Were (27 page)

She stares at Angela and Cat in horrified disbelief. Angela laughs, openly delighted at Julia's expression.

‘Don't look so thrilled to see us,' she says, enjoying her discomfiture. ‘We're on our way to Minions and couldn't resist dropping in on the way through.'

Cat, welded as usual to her mother's leg, fist crammed into her mouth, stares up at Julia, who experiences the usual instinctive dislike. The dogs, who rushed out expectantly, lose interest and go back to their baskets.

‘I thought you were in Faslane,' Julia says lamely.

‘We are,' answers Angela airily. ‘Only, we've got tenant problems so Cat and I are with my parents at Rock for a few days while I sort it out. Any chance of a cup of coffee?'

Julia stands aside reluctantly and they go past her, through the sitting-room and into the kitchen. Zack, supported with a rug, is propped in the high chair and Charlie stands beside him, staring warily at the newcomers.

‘You've grown,' Angela observes to him. And so this is Tiggy's baby?'

She studies Zack intently and Julia has a strong desire to stand in front of him and protect him from Angela's scrutiny and Cat's cross-eyed stare.

‘Yes,' she says. ‘That's Zack.'

‘Such a tragedy' says Angela. And how noble of you to take him on. Pete's finding all four of them a bit much, I gather.'

‘Do you?' asks Julia after a moment.

‘Oh, well, Martin spoke to him last week.' Angela sits down at the table, fishes her cigarettes out of her bag. ‘Said that leave had been a bit like a five-ring circus.'

Julia is silent; hurt that Pete should have implied any criticism of his family, trying to be rational.

‘And I thought you said you were pregnant last summer.' Angela lights up and flips the packet across the table. ‘What happened?'

After a moment Julia takes one. She hasn't smoked for several months but suddenly the craving is too great.

‘You
said that I was pregnant,' she says. She pushes the kettle on to the hotplate,
‘I
didn't say so, if you remember.'

Angela shrugs, amused. ‘I still think it's amazing to take on someone else's baby. Didn't Tiggy have any family of her own? I remember she said she hadn't but surely there must have been someone. Some aunt or a cousin or someone.'

‘No,' says Julia firmly. ‘There was nobody else. That's why she was with us. So what's this about your tenants?'

Angela groans. ‘Honestly' she says, ‘it's such a bore. We thought we were so lucky getting a naval couple to rent the cottage but they've been unexpectedly posted to Portsmouth. I've got to do the going-out inventory and find someone else. You don't know anyone I suppose who'd like to rent a nice little cottage?'

‘Sorry, no.' Julia makes coffee and puts a mug beside Angela. ‘Would you like some juice?' she asks Cat, who stares at her with the familiar inimical look but refuses to answer. ‘She's still not speaking then?' Julia says lightly to Angela. ‘However does she manage at school?'

‘She can talk when she wants to,' replies Angela, unperturbed. ‘She ought to be at school now, actually, but I couldn't leave her in Faslane, and my parents wanted me to bring her with me. Would you like some juice, sweetie? Or some milk?'

Cat shakes her head, fingers still stuffed into her mouth. She reaches out, seizes Charlie's little car and with a violent shove sends it spinning from the table. He cries out in distress, hurrying to pick it up, and she watches him with satisfaction. Julia bites back a reprimand whilst Angela simply smiles.

‘How on earth are you going to manage with four?' she asks idly. ‘Stuck out here miles from anywhere and with Pete at sea so much. One's more than enough for me.'

‘I think Cat would be more than enough for anyone,' Julia answers unguardedly.

For a brief moment Angela's habitual expression of wry amusement fades and Julia sees her true feelings: antagonism and dislike. The look vanishes in a second and the usual cynical half-smile returns.

‘Did Pete tell you that he's coming to stay with us when the boat's in Faslane? No? He
is
naughty, isn't he? Should be fun. I wonder why he didn't mention it to you.'

‘Perhaps he didn't think it was important,' Julia suggests, controlling an urge to smack that smug face. ‘I'm sorry to hurry you but I'm going to have lunch with a friend and I ought to get a move on.'

Later she writes angrily to Pete:

So why didn't you tell me that you're going to stay with them? You know how she likes to wrong-foot me and you always manage to give her the ammunition. And why did you tell them that leave was like a five-ring circus? You're so disloyal sometimes …

As soon as she's written this, part of her is tempted to tear the letter up but Angela's words rankle and her heart is still sore. Quickly she puts it in its envelope and seals it, and when she goes to collect the twins from school she posts it, though part of her still regrets writing it.

All through the evening, exhausted by the bedtime routine, she struggles with the familiar demons of guilt, jealousy and despair that Angela's visit have disturbed. Zack begins to cry and she brings him downstairs lest he should waken the others. She switches off
Starsky & Hutch
and settles Zack in the corner of the sofa whilst she puts more logs on the fire. Sitting at the other end of the sofa, turned towards him, she studies his face as he gazes about him; quite quiet now, he stares at the flickering flames. Watching him, Julia feels a strong desire to weep; she wonders if Tiggy might be hovering in the shadows, just out of sight, and she remembers how they sat here together, talking about the future. All those plans Tiggy made; all her fears for her baby; yet neither of them foresaw the reality. Julia thinks about her own child, wondering whether it would have been a boy or a girl, and desperately swallows down tears of anguish. She simply mustn't give way: she has the suspicion that if she were to start crying, really crying, she might never stop.

The Turk stirs and jumps up on to the sofa, curling herself down into a ball beside Zack. Julia puts out a hand and strokes the rough coat. She feels unbearably lonely: she misses Pete terribly and now wishes with all her heart that she hadn't sent him such an unloving letter. Misery swells in her breast so that she can barely breathe. Bella comes to sit against her legs, head on her knee, and Julia passes her hand over and over the heavy head and thick soft ears. Gradually the rhythmic smoothing action soothes her and she stands up.

‘I'm going to make a sandwich,' she tells Zack. ‘I shan't be a sec, so don't cry, there's a good fellow.'

By the time she returns he is peacefully asleep and she sits quietly beside the fire, eating her sandwich. Presently she picks him up gently and carries him upstairs to his cot.

When Pete's letter arrives it carries news so important that his reply to Julia's caustic observations is relegated to second place:

The captain's recommending me for Perisher. He told me this morning. You can imagine how relieved I am. I was beginning to think I'd never make it. He's given me a pretty good report and he says he's confident I'll get through unless I do something really stupid. It's fantastic news … As for staying with Martin and Angela, it just slipped my mind. Honestly, darling, I
do
wish you wouldn't get so uptight about Angela. You should tell her to wind her neck in when she upsets you. I know Trescairn is a bit off the beaten track but you need to make some new friends. I worry about you being so far from all your old chums around Tavistock but, more good news, David and Pam are buying a cottage in St Cleer. Not too far away, and I know how well you get on with Pam and the kids love young Will …

Julia feels light with relief. It is terrific news that Pete should be recommended for the Commanding Officers Qualifying Course, known by submariners as Perisher; even more wonderful that, if he were to pass it, he will be given command of a submarine. His negligent reaction to her angry remarks brings her an equal amount of delight; it seems that her own response to Angela had been the right one: he didn't consider it to be important. She is so thankful that she's been able to make her feelings known without starting a row that she feels happier than she's been for months – since before Tiggy died.

Pete is right too about making friends. They weren't at Trescairn long enough to make new friends before Tiggy arrived. It was such a perfect spring and summer that she didn't feel the need for other friends. How quickly the months passed; what fun they had. Julia realizes that, ever since Tiggy died, she's been caught in a web of mourning, like a fly in amber, paralysed with shock and grief. Yet now, since the twins have started school, she is meeting other young mothers of her own age and friendships are beginning to flourish.

When Aunt Em telephones mid-morning, suggesting that she might come to see her, Julia readily agrees.

‘Pete's been recommended for Perisher,' she says jubilantly. ‘Yes, it's great, isn't it? We must celebrate. See you later then.'

Driving out from Blisland, Em is surprised at her own delighted reaction to Julia's news. It takes her a little while to realize that it is the joyfulness in Julia's voice that is giving her so much pleasure. It is a long while since she's heard that note of real happiness and she wonders if, at last, Julia might be beginning to recover from her grief. She drives slowly, mentally recording small scenes that might be useful to her painting: that magpie, for instance, glossily debonair in his monochrome feathers as he forages on the stone wall, sharply marked against the flowering furze.

The open moorland on Kerrow Downs lies drowned beneath a stretch of shallow floodwater on which flocks of lesser black-backed gulls float so that it looks like some great estuary. A dog appears, a farm collie out alone, lean belly to ground as he follows a scent, and the flock suddenly take flight, great wings beating, crying hoarsely as they wheel above the wind-rocked surface of the water.

Em pauses on Delford Bridge to watch the De Lank, racing down from its source high up on the moor, streaming out over its banks and pouring between the granite piers of the clapper bridge. The sandy shallows where the children play in summer have vanished beneath the flood and the submerged grass streams out, just below the surface; undulating green tresses in the clear, tumbling water.

She drives on, light-hearted in the slanting winter sunshine, making a mental note of the dramatic backdrop made by Rough Tor and Brown Willy, clear-cut against the chill blue sky She catches sight of some new catkins clustered on bare, brittle twigs and her heart lifts even higher; soon spring would be here, the cold, sweet spring; that magic time of healing and regeneration.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

2004

‘We could have let the cottages ten times over this month,' said Liv, putting down the telephone. ‘If I say it myself, the website's really pulling in the punters. I made a pretty good job of it.'

‘The photographs are very good,' Chris agreed. ‘You made the courtyard look very attractive.'

‘Well, it
is
attractive, but I think it was good to do some of the interior shots as well as the views, of course. I keep wondering how I can improve it.'

‘It doesn't sound as if you need to if we're turning people away.'

‘If the weather sets in fair then people suddenly think, let's dash down to Cornwall for the weekend. I always knew we'd be able to pick up some of that trade. I just didn't realize we'd be so booked up from day one.' She glanced at him, frowning. ‘I'm just sorry that Val seems still to be so anxious. I thought she'd come out of her slough of despond for a while. She seemed positively effervescent. Now she's right down again.'

Chris didn't look at her but continued to stare at his screen. He made a resigned face. ‘You know how it is. She's subject to mood swings and that's about it, I suppose.'

‘Well, we're all a bit like that,' admitted Liv. ‘Depending on the time of the month …'

There was an odd little silence; Chris stared more intently at his screen and Liv stared at him, an idea slowly dawning. She couldn't bring herself to ask the question but she could see a pattern now in Val's behaviour over the last two months and it also explained Chris's strained, almost embarrassed manner.

‘I'm going to make myself a sandwich,' she said, getting up. ‘See you later.'

In the annexe she walked up and down for a while, staring out at the sea.

What difference did it make, she asked herself, if Val and Chris were trying for a baby? She'd made her own vow never to come between them – never to be like Angela – so what difference? The little pain in her heart told her that it mattered very much. Clearly there was to be no future for her with Chris. The miracle that she never quite dared to imagine fully – Val throwing in the towel of her own accord and flouncing back to London – was not going to happen. It occurred to her again that she'd allowed Penharrow and Chris to become a kind of comfort zone: there was something attractive about being with someone who knew you inside out and accepted you totally, though no emotional demands were being made. It was fun and exciting; and dangerous.

Liv cut a slice of bread, took out some cheese, but her appetite had deserted her. She sat down at the table, opened her laptop and logged on. There was an email from Andy: