Holding On (13 page)

‘Of course I will,' he told her. ‘And thank you, Grandmother.'

She was alone, shaken by this unknown fear. If only she could bind her children to her, to cling on to what was left, she who had lost so much . . .

A hand gripped her shoulder and she turned quickly to see Theo looking down at her.

‘I was on the terrace,' he said, as if in answer to a question. ‘Be brave. Hold on at least until Fliss has gone.'

She nodded, laying her cheek briefly against her hand. ‘I can, if you are here.'

‘I am here,' he answered. ‘Not much longer now. It's nearly teatime. Half an hour before Fliss comes back from her walk for tea. Play for me, Freddy.'

 

On the hill behind The Keep, Fliss stood watching a phalanx of geese flying in formation above her. As they flew along the valley they began to lose height, wheeling round to land in the water meadows beside the river. The harsh honking, which had attracted her attention, faded, dying into the heat and silence, and she looked about her, fixing the familiar scene in her mind. It had been a day of goodbyes. This taking of farewells was something she had done ever since she first went away to school but never with such an intensity as today. Here, in the shadow of the high stone wall, it was cool, but beyond its shade the countryside shimmered in the heat. The cattle stood knee-deep in the river, their tails swishing away importunate flies, and on the higher slopes the sheep had long since sought the meagre shade provided by granite boulders and the occasional outcrop of rock.

Perks came wagging up, impatient to be started, looking forward to her walk. Fliss bent to smooth the rust-coloured head and gently pulled a floppy ear.

‘Come on, then,' she said. ‘Down we go.'

Perks gave a short pleased woof of approval and set off down the track. Watching her busy back view, Fliss smiled a little. Dogs were such a comfort when you were feeling unhappy. They didn't ask questions or sympathise or tell you to pull yourself together, they were just
there
, undemanding and companionable. Miles had vetoed a dog at the house in Above Town.

‘Totally impractical, my sweet,' he'd said kindly. ‘I don't approve of dogs in towns, anyway, even if the house were suitable, which it isn't. Apart from which, they're a terrible tie.'

This was before she'd told him about the baby. Maybe, once they were tied with the baby, he'd agree to the dog. Fliss laughed at such foolish hopes. She knew he wouldn't. He'd been so relieved to let the house to a suitable couple; people who wouldn't stub out cigarettes on the furniture or spill drinks on the carpets.

Fliss thought: I'm being a cow. I'd hate it, too, if anyone did horrid things in our dear little house.

She forced her mind into more positive channels. It would be very exciting to see Hong Kong and to travel about as Miles had promised they would. It would be fun to meet other naval wives and to be the ‘Captain's wife'. Fliss felt a tug of tenderness when she thought of Miles's delight in his new posting and promotion. He was doing his best, given that he did not really want the baby; trying to organise a ground-floor flat, telling her that October and November were the best months to arrive and acclimatise, encouraging her and giving her confidence. It was simply that she did not want to go.

The gorse bush which overhung the path was in brilliant, paint-bright flower, and berries were forming on the branches of the hawthorn tree. Summer was nearly over but this year she would not see an English autumn. Fliss stumbled a little on the dry shaly track and instinctively put her hands across her abdomen, shielding the life within her. The little shock was becoming familiar; the shock that came when she thought of the baby she carried. Excitement and terror in equal parts strove within her.

‘I shall be a
proxy
godmother,' Kit had said firmly, ‘but we'll all be together for the next one, Flissy.'

Tears filled her eyes. If Miles had his way there would be no more children.

‘One is more than enough,' he'd said firmly. ‘We can do much more for one. Anyway, there's no room for more.'

He'd talked of the advantages of first-class schools and of university but Fliss had been thinking about all that the child would miss. Of course siblings fought and argued, but underneath was a deep bond which was irreplaceable . . .

Perks was back with a stick which she dropped invitingly at Fliss's feet. Head cocked, eyes bright, tail gently waving, she looked from the stick to Fliss and back again.

Smiling, Fliss bent to pick up the stick and, taking careful aim, flung it far down the hill. With a scrabble of paws, barking excitedly, Perks was off in pursuit. Fliss followed her. Of course, the baby would have cousins in plenty if all the younger members of the family married and had children. Kit would probably marry Jake and start producing, and she was certain that Susanna would have a whole tribe of babies. Mole might take a little longer to get to the starting post but Hal and Maria . . .

The tears came quite suddenly. She'd been holding them back all day, determined that no one should be upset at this last meeting. She'd managed to be cheerful and positive but now, with the sun beating down upon her head and Perks barking somewhere further on, there was no need for restraint. She stumbled on, weeping, wiping at her cheeks with the hem of her long cotton skirt, too miserable to care about anything except the need to find some shade.

The spinney was dark and cool, an oasis in the bright, relentless heat. She stood looking up at the trees, drying her eyes, remembering . . . Presently she felt calm; her courage had returned and with it some measure of acceptance. Two years was not so very long, after all. She would soon be home again, with her child, back at The Keep. There would be so much to show him – or her – so much to share, so much fun ahead. If only she could be absolutely certain that when she returned everything would be the same; everyone in their appointed place.

A thought was forming in her head. Running round the spinney had been a kind of test, a challenge. Later, it had become a symbol of achievement. There was something mysterious about the trees, the dense shadows, the silence.

Fliss thought: If I run round the spinney I shall come back safely with my baby and they will all still be there, Grandmother and Uncle Theo and the others.

She laughed at herself. It was simply superstition. There was no real test here for her – yet there was a compulsion to do it, as if it would be a kind of completion of something and a gesture of hope to the future. The three of them were setting out again. Not from Kenya, this time, to live with their grandmother but out into the world: Susanna to university; Mole to sea; she, Fliss, to Hong Kong. It would be a symbolic act performed for the three of them, setting out on the next stage of the journey.

Fliss touched the trunk of the tall beech, took one last glance at the high walls on the hill above her and, with her hands about her baby, she began to jog gently round the spinney. Perks dashed out of the trees, skittering in her wake, and somewhere high above her a lark began to sing.

The moon was rising; apricot-coloured, immense, it hung just above the horizon, lending its reflected light to the patchwork of fields so that the pale stubble glowed warm within its fretwork of inky hedgerows. It was early yet, barely eight o'clock, but the September evenings were drawing in, misty and cool, and already memories of the long, blazing summer were receding before the expectations of autumn.

Leaning from the nursery bathroom window, a towel wrapped turban-like around her newly washed hair, Susanna held her breath. It was a magical scene made more poignant because she knew that, after today, nothing could ever be quite the same again. Tonight was her last night at The Keep and tomorrow everything would change. She might lean from this window in the years to come but it would be different because
she
would be different. Excitement and apprehension churned in her stomach and she reached for her dressing gown, dragging it on as she hurried across the landing to her own room.

Tying the belt firmly about her waist, she went to kneel on the window seat. From this window she could no longer see the moon but the western sky was not yet dark. The tall fir trees stood motionless, clear-cut, black against the greeny-gold afterglow of sunset. A thrush – Fox called it a stormcock – was singing in the orchard and there were rabbits feeding at the far end of the lawn. White scuts flashed and bobbed, disappearing into the chrysanthemums and dahlias whose colours were barely visible in the gathering twilight. This familiar scene calmed her and she smiled a little at her earlier attack of self-dramatisation. Perhaps nobody ever really changed. Whatever might happen to her, perhaps the core of her would remain the same; perhaps she would always carry with her the small Susanna who had kneeled on the window seat each morning to wave to her guardians, standing tall at the end of the orchard. She would bring her own children here and tell them the story of the three fir trees . . .

At the thought of these children, Susanna sat down abruptly on the wide seat, feet drawn up, arms hugging her knees, her eyes still fixed on the scene below. Briefly she tried to imagine her grandmother as a small child. No, it was impossible. Surely her grandmother had always been utterly adult, tall, imposing, all-seeing, confident. Uncle Theo, then. That was more likely simply because she merely translated him down in age to the younger Mole – and she could easily remember Mole as a boy. Anyone could see how like his great-uncle Mole was and, anyway, there was also something – Susanna frowned thoughtfully, childlike wasn't the right word – something young at heart about Uncle Theo. He was wise but he never felt it necessary to instruct people. The word ‘humility' hovered about in her mind but confusing it with humble – the Uriah Heep-like meaning of the word – she dismissed it. There was a quality about Uncle Theo which held him apart; he was never judgemental, yet it would be terrible to know that she had disappointed him. More terrible, oddly, than upsetting Grandmother and, goodness knows, she was strict enough and very ready to deliver a good old-fashioned telling-off if she thought it necessary. Susanna sighed. It was all rather confusing. She'd heard someone say, ‘Age is relative,' but relative to what? To her, Hal, Kit, Fliss and Mole seemed quite unchanged, yet they were all growing older.

Susanna thought: I am twenty-one.
Twenty-one.
I'm old. Grown up. And tomorrow is my wedding day.

She turned her head so that she might see her dress hanging on the cupboard door. Luminous in the growing gloom, the heavy ivory silk fell long and slender from a lined bodice of delicate lace, the sleeves gathered into narrow cuffs. When she'd first tried it on, she'd been unable to believe the sight of herself in the mirror. She'd been transformed: ethereal, beautiful . . . Turning to look wonderingly at her sister she'd been unsurprised to see tears pouring down Fliss's cheeks. It was a tiny, amazing miracle. She, too, would have found it terribly easy to cry, there was something so poignantly unreal, so fairytale about her, quite unlike her ordinary everyday self. It had been almost a relief to change back into her jeans.

Gus had laughed when she'd told him how beautiful she'd looked. ‘You are always beautiful,' he'd said. ‘But I can quite see that there might be something frightening about it. My knees shake at the mere thought of it all. Have you quite set your mind against elopement?'

She'd hugged him happily, knowing how lucky she was to find him.

‘You're like us,' she'd said to him once. ‘You're weird, too.'

He'd frowned cautiously. ‘Until I know your definition of “weird”,' he'd said, ‘I reserve the right to react indignantly to that statement.'

Susanna knew exactly what she meant. Her years at college had shown her that her family was unusual to say the least. ‘You're an anachronism,' a college friend had said after a weekend at The Keep. ‘That Victorian grandmother of yours! What a matriarch. And the old retainers in the kitchen. It's pre-war.' Susanna had felt very hurt and secretly alarmed. After a great deal of thought she'd decided that children simply accepted that how they grew up was the norm. Away at school it hadn't seemed a difficulty but, once out in the world, she could see that the seclusion of The Keep and the old-fashioned attitudes of its occupants were not in keeping with the ways of most other families she met.

‘You had a generation missing,' Aunt Prue had explained after this particular weekend when she'd returned to Bristol, hurt and made anxious by her friend's observations. ‘Apart from me popping in and out, you've been surrounded by old people. Your grandmother, Theo, Ellen and Fox, they were all middle-aged by the time you came back from Kenya. There was no social life at The Keep, no friends dropping in. It's bound to show. But does it matter?'

‘We had Caroline,' Susanna had said, rather defensively. ‘She wasn't all that old. I don't think I want to be an anachronism.'

Aunt Prue had smiled. ‘Perhaps your friend might be jealous?' she'd suggested. ‘I think what you've got is rather special. Don't knock it, as Kit would say.'

‘Are Hal and Kit different from us?' she'd asked, still worrying at it. ‘We all seem the same to me.'

‘They spent quite a lot of time at The Keep, too,' Aunt Prue had answered. ‘And they had no father, which makes a difference. I wasn't what you'd call a model mother either but they've survived. Hal's doing well. Of course, the Navy is still a place where an unusual background might be an advantage – it's a world of its own. And as for Kit . . . well, Kit isn't exactly what you might call an ordinary girl.'