Holding On (6 page)

Freddy forced her mind away from such horror and thought about Susanna. Happy, friendly, well balanced: Susanna was the easiest of all the children. Since she had been too young to remember her parents and brother, she had settled contentedly into The Keep and now had no other memories. This was her home and these were her people. She belonged here – as they all did in one way or another, which was why Freddy had insisted that The Keep must be kept as a refuge for them all. Hal might be the natural candidate to take over the reins, to preserve the trust for his own children and their cousins, but this was the condition attached to his ‘inheritance'. After all, there were not only the children to consider.

Freddy thought: I suppose we're an odd collection. Dear old Ellen and Fox who have been with me for ever. Caroline. What in the world would we have done without Caroline? And Theo . . .

Sitting there in the sun, her basket beside her on the seat, Freddy smiled sadly. All those years in which she had loved him and yet he had never guessed. How terrible it had been to marry the man you thought you loved only to fall in love with his youngest brother. It had been hard to live without any return of that particular kind of love . . . At least he had never married. No doubt being a priest had had something to do with that, although as a naval chaplain he might have done so. Even now, all passion supposedly spent, Freddy experienced a faint thrill of jealousy at the thought of Theo romantically involved with another woman. How happy she had been when he had decided to come home at last, how precious his companionship had been for these last seven years. She had railed at him, spurned his faith, leaned on him and loved him for more than fifty years. Life without Theo was unimaginable.

The robin flew down, pecking at the cracks between the paving stone beside her shoe, peering at her with his bright, knowing eye.

‘Quite right,' she told him. ‘I'm slacking,' and, climbing to her feet, Freddy picked up her basket and went back to the roses.

 

Mole, climbing the hill to the narrow house in Above Town, was thinking what luck it had been to have Fliss living in Dartmouth during his first two years at the college. He loved the town with its narrow streets and quaint old houses, its life centred round the river, busy now with pleasure steamers plying between Dartmouth and Totnes, or taking the visitors out to sea for trips along the coast. The castle guarded the mouth of the river and beneath the wooded shoulder of the hill called Gallants Bower huddled the small stone church of St Petrox.

Mole thought: I feel as if I belong here. Perhaps one day I shall buy a house on the river and come to live here.

During the last year he had begun, at last, to free himself from the nightmare of his family's death; not just to push the horror down where it might spring back at him at any moment but actually to grow away from it. He had begun to think that this would never be possible but his new life – Dartmouth, the Navy, a sense of real belonging – this combination seemed to put his burden into some kind of proportion. For years it had filled his mind, corroding anything else it touched, the words and images blinding and suffocating him. None but he had heard the policeman's account, blurted out to Cookie on that hot afternoon ‘. . . Oh my Christ! The blood was everywhere. They had machetes, axes, sticks . . . The boy's shirt was soaked with blood . . . They'd smashed his head to pulp and nearly severed it from his body . . .' Sudden death striking out of a bright sunny day. His beloved big brother dead – and in such a way. Only, he, Mole, of all the family carried this burden of the real truth, learning gradually to live with it, coming to terms with it, and, now, it seemed, with the chance to overcome it. He had believed that if he could only hold on, not to be overborne and dragged down into the black pit with those terrible visions, he would eventually control the fear but he had never hoped for absolute freedom from it. Yet he was wise enough not to test himself too far, to hope for too much too soon. It had been his companion for fifteen years and he suspected that it would not relinquish its hold too readily.

He whistled beneath his breath as he climbed Crowders Hill and turned into Above Town. The door was open and he beat a tattoo as he passed into the narrow hall with a shouted greeting. Fliss came out of the kitchen to meet him and they hugged. She was wearing one of her wrap-around Indian skirts and a short-sleeved cheesecloth shirt, its tails tied around her waist. Mole was very conscious of women's clothes and he preferred, on the whole, a more tailored look, but he thought that she looked rather charming in the long flowing skirt with her thick, fair hair twisted casually into a knot. It was difficult to see her dispassionately. She was his sister, friend, confidante, but he looked at her critically, seeing the shadows beneath her eyes and lines of strain about her mouth.

‘Are you OK?' he asked, following her into the living room across the hall from the kitchen. ‘Everything all right at home? How were Hal and Maria?'

‘Everyone's fine,' she assured him. ‘Mixed feelings about Hong Kong and the baby, of course.'

‘That's understandable, I suppose.' He glanced about the room as he sat down in a Habitat chair, green corduroy slung hammock-like on stainless-steel tubing. He liked this room best. ‘Was Maria jealous about the baby?'

She glanced at him sharply. It still surprised her that Mole should be so observant, so quick to assess the thoughts and feelings of others.

‘It's funny that you should say that,' she said slowly, curling up in the matching chair. ‘She was rather odd about it all. She went very still, expressionless . . .'

‘As if her features are icing over,' assisted Mole when Fliss seemed lost for words. ‘I know. But her eyes are alive, as if all her feelings have gone into her eyes.'

‘What an extraordinary thing to say.' Fliss began to laugh – and then frowned. ‘It's true, though. There's something painful about it, somehow.'

‘She's not a very confident person,' said Mole. ‘I feel rather sorry for her. It's silly really because she's so pretty and all that. But she's too busy thinking about Hal to relax. And dear old Hal is such a friendly person that her life must be hell. She's jealous of you because he's so fond of you. And now there's the baby as well.'

‘Why should she mind about the baby?' asked Fliss quickly, sheering away from the subject of Hal's affection for her. ‘There's nothing to stop her and Hal having a baby.'

Mole watched her thoughtfully, seeing her expression cloud, noting the brusque note in her voice.

‘True,' he said, ‘but she won't be first, will she? I expect she would have preferred to produce the first child of the next generation.'

‘She's had two years,' Fliss pointed out. ‘No one was stopping her. They said that they were going to start a family straight away.'

‘Hal's been at sea a lot,' said Mole. ‘Perhaps she's been unlucky, which is why she's so upset.'

‘We didn't discuss it.' Fliss stretched and shook her head. ‘Never mind. Everyone sent their love. Ellen baked me a wonderful chocolate cake which we'll have in a minute. Caroline was muttering about an Aran jersey you wanted her to wash. Grandmother and Uncle Theo were still railing against joining the Common Market. Grandmother does not, she informs me, feel like a European. “We are an island race . . .” and so on. Poor Fox is still suffering agonies but being very brave. Nothing changes at The Keep, thank goodness.'

‘Thank goodness,' he echoed. ‘I forgot to leave the jersey for Caroline. I brought it back in my grip. Never mind. By the way, I had a letter from Sooz yesterday. She's on the brink of her exams and all of a twitter.'

‘She's longing for Bristol,' said Fliss. ‘All those stories Kit told her about student parties and going to the Old Vic.'

‘Thank God she's going to be staying with Aunt Prue,' said Mole, a flicker of the old terror touching his heart. ‘The thought of Sooz loose amongst the student life of Bristol hardly bears thinking about.'

Fliss grinned at him, guessing at the terror, knowing how Mole felt about the safety of his loved ones.

‘It's the students I feel sorry for,' she said. ‘They have no idea, poor things, what is about to be unleashed amongst them. Come and help me make the tea and we'll pig out on Ellen's cake.'

‘I
know
the quarter in Compton Road isn't as nice as this,' said Hal, ‘but we were terrifically lucky that old Mike and Sarah were going off to Singapore and let us rent their cottage. It's been great being out in the country but we can't expect this sort of luck every time. Once we're down in Devon we'll explore and see if we can find a hiring or a cottage to rent. You could have looked into it before, darling, when I was at sea, couldn't you? No good moaning about it now.'

The atmosphere in the tiny kitchen tingled with unspoken irritation, contrasting sharply with the peace of early evening. The door stood open on to the small patch of grass, edged about with cottage-garden flowers; heart's-ease and cornflowers, lavender and feverfew. Beside the door a bush of jasmine blossomed, an old stone trough bright with pot marigolds tucked beneath its delicate sprays. A tall ragged fuchsia hedge sheltered this sunny corner from the narrow village street, and camomile grew between the paving slabs which led to the wooden gate. House martins were busy feeding their babies who crowded at the nest's edge, jostling for position, clamouring for food, and a blackbird was singing in the ash tree by the old shed which doubled as a garage.

Maria stood with her back to Hal, waiting for the potatoes to finish cooking. She heard the tinge of exasperation in his voice but was unable to pull herself out of her mood. She hated it when he criticised her, even obliquely. Surely he must see how impossible it was for her to go down to Devon on her own and sort out hirings? She fiddled with the saucepan, knowing that the usual crossroad was before her. She could turn to him, smiling, agreeing that they had been lucky with the little cottage in Boarhunt, that the quarter would be fine, that they could look for something else later. She could let herself fall in with his attitude that life was good fun, that problems were there to be solved and so on, but it meant relinquishing her grievances, allowing him to get away scot-free. It was important that he saw the sacrifices she was obliged to make, that the life of a naval wife wasn't all coffee mornings and Ladies' Nights.

‘How could I go down?' she asked. ‘How could I manage to get about? Can you imagine trying to view hirings by public transport?'

Behind her, Hal closed his eyes for a moment. Ducking his head beneath the oak beam, he picked up his glass and swallowed back some beer, waiting for his patience to return.

‘You could learn to drive,' he said reasonably. ‘The car is there, standing in the garage for weeks on end while I'm away. I know you're nervous because it's a sports car but it's only a Sprite, for God's sake, not a Lamborghini. I've offered to teach you myself but you've always refused.'

Maria picked up a small sharp knife and, lifting the saucepan lid, prodded at the new potatoes boiling with the freshly picked mint, which grew with other herbs at the edge of the minute vegetable patch, where sweet peas, and runner beans with bright scarlet flowers climbed together on the tall bamboo sticks.

‘Daddy always says that there's no quicker road to divorce than a husband teaching his wife to drive,' she said.

Hal bit back the retort that, at this rate, they wouldn't be needing driving lessons to achieve that end, knowing that Maria would take even such a lightly uttered observance to heart and probably burst into tears.

‘He might be right,' he said, ‘but you have to admit it's silly going on like this. Anyway, Caroline would have run you about. She'd have fetched you from the train and taken you anywhere you'd wanted to go. She'd have enjoyed it, too. It would have been a bit of a variety for her. She loves a challenge.'

‘Perhaps she should have been a naval wife then,' said Maria sulkily, lifting the saucepan and carrying it to the sink. ‘Plenty of challenges there.'

Hal was silent, wondering how other men coped with this kind of problem. It was clear that Maria resented it every time he went to sea – but what had she expected? The other worrying thing was that she'd made hardly any friends during the last two years, apart from one or two of his fellow officers' wives. Then there was all the fuss about Fliss being pregnant . . . Hal strove to be fair. It was hard that Maria had been unable to conceive, that his brief spells at home had been the wrong time of the month or she had been too tense.

‘Look,' he said gently, ‘let's not make this a big deal. We can use the married quarter as a base to find somewhere else to live and we'll organise driving lessons for you. I'll probably have more shore time when I join
Falmouth
. I'm sorry that we haven't managed to get you pregnant but don't begrudge Fliss her baby. Poor old Fliss. If you think you've had a hard time think how she must be feeling about going out to Hong Kong. Of course, she puts a brave face on it but it must be a bit unnerving, being pregnant as well.'

Nothing could have been more calculated to make her angry. As she put the potatoes into the dish with some butter, Maria was seized with a furious envy of Fliss.

‘She hasn't done too badly,' she said bitterly. ‘She's had Miles with her for the last two years in that lovely house in Dartmouth and she's been within half an hour of her old home. Hardly a great hardship, would you say? You've no idea how difficult it is to move into a completely strange area, not knowing anyone, miles from your family, and have your husband go off to sea for months on end. It's OK for you, surrounded by all your friends, in a world of your own.'