Holding On (44 page)

‘Why not?' she cried, embarrassed but still angry. ‘It was you who said that Jolyon ought to go away to school. Well, you spend enough time going over there to see the twins so why shouldn't Jolyon go, too? The twins didn't start until they were ten. It's a different setup there from prep schools. And I can look after Edward properly and still get over to see Jolyon. It wouldn't be that much further away.'

‘And how do you think Jolyon will feel when you tell him that you're going to pack him off to school now, after all the awful things you've said about boarding schools, when he's very happy where he is and looking forward to moving on eventually with all his friends? How do you think he will feel, Maria, when you tell him that?'

‘I'm afraid it's just too bad,' she answered sulkily. ‘I can't please everyone.'

‘Have you asked Elaine whether Edward could live with her during the term?'

‘No,' she said, frowning. ‘I haven't. Mum's too old now to have that kind of responsibility. It wouldn't be fair to ask her. She'd feel obliged to say yes. I've thought it over very carefully and I still think that this is the best way for everybody. Of course, it's not perfect. What is, in this life?'

‘I thought you really liked this house.'

‘I do but there are other houses. Salisbury's lovely. We might get a town house. They're often much cheaper than country places. You can get really big houses very reasonably.'

‘And I suppose you're not confusing Salisbury's attractions with those of Adam Wishart?'

She swallowed, the colour rushing back into her face, but when she looked at him her eyes were cold.

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

He raised his eyebrows in polite disbelief and she bit her lip. Turning away from him she began to put the china away, slamming drawers and banging the doors of the fitted pine furniture which had cost so much to instal.

‘You said that when I was made Captain you would join me,' he reminded her. ‘Remember?'

‘Oh, don't be so bloody selfish,' she shouted. ‘Edward isn't yet eight. Do you seriously expect me to put you before him? You'll be at sea for most of the time anyway, and you'll have your delightful family to wait on you when the ship's in. You don't need me the way Edward needs me. You never think about anyone but yourself, do you? God, you make me sick.'

Hal sat down again at the table. ‘Well, that certainly makes things very clear,' he said. ‘Are you so very certain that this is something that Edward wants and not simply something that you and Elaine want for him?'

She stared at him. ‘What are you suggesting?'

He shrugged. ‘It's very difficult for someone like Edward to refuse something which you and his grandmother have glamorised and made very desirable in his eyes – and yours. Edward likes to please you but he's only a small boy. Being a chorister is very gruelling, you know. It's like a vocation. It'll have to become his whole life until his voice breaks. And what then? He'll just be an ordinary little boy again, having to start somewhere new. Are you certain that it's right for him?'

‘You're jealous,' she said contemptuously. ‘That's what it is. You can't bear for him to have all this attention or to be better at something than Jolyon is. You can't bear him having everyone's attention, can you?'

He closed his eyes for a moment – and presently he laughed. ‘Have it your way,' he said. ‘But I shall have a talk with him just the same. I want to be absolutely certain he knows what's going on.'

‘If you put doubts in his head and make him change his mind I shall never forgive you,' she hissed. ‘And you can take that any way you choose.'

She went out of the kitchen and he heard her running up the stairs, her voice raised, calling to the boys. Hal sat quite still, staring at the cold remains in his coffee cup. When Jolyon appeared he glanced at him absently and then smiled quizzically. Jolyon was looking upset.

‘Mum says she's phoned Grandma and we're going to Salisbury. Grandma's taking us out to lunch and then we're going to decide what we're going to do after that.'

‘Well, that will be fun,' said Hal, only slightly surprised by this new turn of events. ‘There's lots to do over there.'

‘It's not that.' Jolyon lifted Hal's arm and put it around his shoulders as he'd always done ever since he was little. ‘She says that you've remembered that you've got work to do and that you can't come. Oh, Dad . . .'

‘Never mind,' said Hal after a very long moment. ‘We'll do something tomorrow instead. I promise. Something special.'

‘Will we?' He was looking happier. ‘Certain sure?'

‘Certain sure,' agreed Hal. ‘I'm sorry, Jo. You know how it is.'

‘Is it something to do with being Captain?' he asked eagerly.

Hal hugged him. ‘Something like that. I'll make it up to you tomorrow, I promise. You and Edward think something out between you.'

‘OK. See you, then. Mum says to say goodbye.'

‘Take care,' said Hal. ‘Look after Mummy and Edward for me.'

He heard the noises of departure, the front door closing, the car starting up, and after a while he stood up and switched on the kettle.

Hanging out the washing beyond the utility-room door, Susanna kept a cautious eye on the dark clouds massing yet again in the west. She was hoping to take advantage of a brief respite in the weather, knowing that if the rain would hold off even for an hour the strength of the late March wind would dry the clothes very quickly. She sang as she worked, blessed with the happy awareness of the person who is in the right place at the right time. Even in a few short years the barn had acquired a mellow appearance; the garden and trees growing up about it, hiding the rawly turned earth, covering any remaining evidence of the builder's traffic. A hedge of mixed shrubs and trees was tall and dense, already giving some protection from the road that ran at the end of the track, and the courtyard which Gus and Susanna had built within the L of the barn walls was a delightful place, an area of complete safety for the children.

As she pegged out the small garments, Fred's dungarees and Podger's pinafores, her mind was already planning her planting for the coming spring. This year they intended to start work on the plot at the west end of the barn that looked out across the fields to the moor. It could be a cold windy spot, exposed as it was, but Susanna refused to agree to anything which might obscure the glorious views. She liked to stand at the window of the sitting room, watching the sun, partially obscured by great ramparts of cloud, cream, amber, gold, rolling down behind the high bleak granite tors. Long after the sun had disappeared the sky remained stained with scarlet and crimson banners, fading at last to a golden luminosity which filled her with a kind of wordless poignant joy. Nothing, she told Gus,
nothing
must shut it out, no matter how much the wind might hurl itself against that end of the barn or the rain beat against the sitting-room windows. After all, she argued, they had the courtyard if they wished to be warm and out of the wind.

In the end they'd decided to start with a lawn, bordered by a beech hedge where the ground began to drop away a little to the west. The hedge would take a long time to grow but it would be worth it to see the tender green leaves unfurling in spring and to enjoy the splendour of the autumnal colours. She planned to plant daffodil and bluebell bulbs beneath the turf of the new lawn and perhaps crocus and squills that would flower into a tender tide of colour, washing over the grass just as it did in the orchard at The Keep each spring.

Susanna dropped the peg-bag into the wicker basket and went back inside. Janie was coming for supper and she had yet to decide what they might eat. As she rooted amongst her cookery books, she felt a sense of pleasure that things had worked out reasonably well for her old friend. Janie loved the flat above the studio and she and Gus worked happily together, the business continuing to flourish. She'd slowly recovered from the break-up with her boyfriend and seemed quite content with occasional dates with one or two of the local males although she never allowed them to become too serious. When Mole was home on leave they tended to partner off together, although here Susanna suspected that Janie might have been quite ready to settle into a more intimate relationship had Mole ever given her the least encouragement. Mole, however, had shown no such inclination. For the last two years he'd been First Lieutenant of HMS
Osiris
based in
DOLPHIN
and his journeys home from Gosport had been few and far between, mainly because he'd been at sea for most of the time.

Susanna pushed the kettle on to the hot plate of the Esse and perched on a high stool at the quarry-tiled working surface, her cookery books spread out about her. How long ago it seemed since she had slipped out of school and gone to meet Mole after his AIB. Even now, fourteen years on, she could remember the expression on his face as they'd stared across the water at the long black boats rocking gently at their trots. ‘That's the future of the modern Navy and that's where I'm going, Sooz,' he'd said and she'd felt a shiver of mingled pride and fear and absolute confidence in him. This confidence had not been misplaced. His captain on
Osiris
had recommended him for Perisher – the commanding officers' qualifying course for submariners – and having passed it he had been given his own command: HMS
Opportune
, a conventional submarine, running out of Devonport.

He'd hidden his pride – or tried to – when she and Fliss had gone down to the dockyard to see him, but his sisters had found it more difficult to dissemble. As they were shown over the submarine and were introduced to his First Lieutenant Susanna couldn't decide which was the most impossible to believe: that Mole was thirty-one years old or that he was the Captain of this warship and its complement of men. She'd squeezed his arm privately as they'd left. ‘Even further from the spinney,' she'd whispered and he'd remembered and smiled. With another shock, she'd seen that his smile reminded her of Uncle Theo's, crinkling his eyes but barely touching his mouth, and she'd thought for a dreadful moment that she might actually burst into tears. When she'd looked at Fliss, once they were back in the car, she'd known that Fliss was feeling exactly the same. She'd stared out across the driving wheel, lips pressed tightly together, and when Susanna had touched her arm she'd turned to look at her, her face clenched with pain. ‘Grandmother would have been so proud of him,' she'd muttered . . .

Susanna slipped off the stool and began to make some coffee. At moments like these it was as if her body simply couldn't cope with inactivity but must hurry into action; anything to prevent her from giving way to the grief that welled up when she thought of her grandmother and how much she still missed her. As Fred and Podger grew she longed for her, to share her pride and her fears, to feel once more that steel at her back as she faced out into life. Swallowing fiercely Susanna made her coffee and went back resolutely to the cookery books. As she brooded over the evening's menu, however, her thoughts kept returning to Mole.
Opportune
was on a visit to Copenhagen and his postcard, pinned to her cork notice board – he'd chosen, with a certain unoriginality, a picture of the little mermaid – suggested that he was enjoying himself. She sighed, focusing her mind more firmly. If she didn't stop daydreaming Janie and Gus would be having no supper at all.

A handful of rain pattered against the window as a swirl of wind raced round the barn. Groaning with frustration, Susanna set down her mug of coffee and hurried out to retrieve the washing.

 

The pinging could be clearly heard on the underwater telephone. In the silent control room Mole stood motionless, head bent, mind busy. Somewhere close at hand, in the cold waters of the Baltic, the two Russian frigates were cruising, waiting and watching. HMS
Opportune
was in the area to carry out an exercise with a Danish submarine, and Mole had no intention of being tracked to the rendezvous. He could feel the sweat prickling on his forehead as he clamped down on the old terrors of ambush, of sudden death striking out of a bright sunny day – or a cold dark night. At moments like these he was still prey to his childhood fears. The First Lieutenant, standing beyond the periscope, shifted position, distracting him, and their eyes met. Mole's nod was almost imperceptible – an acknowledgement of solidarity, of accepted responsibility for the little team around him. He clasped his hands behind his back, imagining the Officer of the Watch up on the bridge, sweeping the swelling stretches of black icy water through his powerful binoculars.

Mole thought: He'll be bloody freezing up there tonight . . .

The visit to Copenhagen had been fun, especially the trip to the Tivoli Gardens. Mole liked the English-speaking Danes, who smoked like chimneys and drank quantities of Gammel Dansk which, in his view, tasted exactly like cough medicine, but the arrival of the Petya and Krivak class frigates had been a bit of a shock. Their presence, nevertheless, generated an air of subdued excitement amongst the submarine's crew, and Mole, rising to the occasion, had even gone so far as to seat his First Lieutenant on a bollard on the edge of the harbour so as to take his photograph – as well as that of the Russian frigates moored behind him. It was an act of cheerful bravado which the First Lieutenant, a sound, reliable officer who was certainly going places, entered into with tremendous panache.

The frigates sailed during the afternoon but it was after midnight when
Opportune
slipped her mooring and crept out of harbour, turning east, keeping close to the coast. It was too shallow to submerge and she was travelling on the surface, going slowly, using the two diesel generators. Down below, the crew went to action stations, getting quiet, getting set, checking the trim; the control room lit by red lighting, the atmosphere electric with nervous tension.