A Regimental Affair (30 page)

Netta sighed and glanced at Petroc. ‘You can stay with us for as long as you need. That’s OK, isn’t it darling?’ she said.

Petroc nodded in agreement.

‘But it could be weeks,’ said Ginny, touched by their kindness. ‘I’ll help out as much as I can. I know I’m a hopeless cook but I’m a terrific skivvy. You just tell me what needs doing and I’ll do it.’

‘I know you will, and you may regret making an offer as open-ended as that. With a farm to run and five kids you may find you’ve taken on more than you bargained for.’

The baby finished her feed and Netta handed her to Ginny. ‘Look, hold her up against your shoulder and rub her back to get any wind up.’ Ginny did as she was told, scared she might damage or bruise the minute, warm bundle, but Netta didn’t seem the least bit concerned. ‘That’s right,’ she said as Ginny manoeuvred the infant into an upright position. The baby rested its tiny downy head against Ginny’s cheek and made funny little mewing sounds. Ginny rubbed her back gently and nuzzled against the child. She smelt wonderful – sweet and clean and delectable. She was suddenly aware that she wanted part of this. She wanted to be a mother. This was the whole point of being a woman. Before, she had always been rather frightened at the idea of being wholly responsible for another life, and even more scared of the commitment that went with motherhood. She’d often joked that if it turned out she didn’t like it she could hardly hand the kid back and ask for a refund. But holding this minuscule scrap of human life was what nature really intended her to do in life. She hadn’t been put on earth to organise expeditions or to make money or to order people around, but to have babies. And as Ginny cuddled the baby, she realised how much she was missing out on life. She was silent as she assimilated her thoughts but she stroked the little bundle rhythmically and in a couple of minutes the baby had dozed off contentedly.

Netta yawned too.

‘We must go and let this pair get their beauty sleep,’ murmured Ginny, not wanting to disturb the baby.

‘Here, give her to me,’ said Netta. Reluctantly Ginny passed back the baby and Netta placed her gently in the Perspex cot by the bed and covered her with the utilitarian hospital blanket – pink for a girl.

They hadn’t stayed much longer after that as Netta looked ready to drop. ‘Not much sleep available in a hospital,’ she had explained, so Ginny and Petroc had said goodbye and driven back to the farm.

‘Make the most of the peace and quiet,’ Petroc had said as they had sat companionably in the sitting room, sharing a bottle of wine. ‘I told Granny Flo you’ve come to stay and that we’ll have the kids back here tomorrow. She sounded quite grateful. Her house is not really big enough for her to have our brood for long.’

‘It’ll be nice to be able to make myself useful,’ said Ginny, although she was wondering how on earth she would cope with looking after four children when Petroc was going to be involved with running the farm. She’d been used to helping Netta, but that was just it – she’d helped Netta. The thought of being virtually in sole charge was totally terrifying.

Petroc laughed. ‘You should see the look on your face,’ he chortled. ‘Don’t worry; Granny Flo said she will come over to give you a hand. I’m not going to throw you in at the deep end completely. God, it would be like chucking Christians to the lions.’

But on the Monday morning Ginny was feeling very much like a Christian in the Colosseum. She was in her sister’s warm kitchen gazing glumly at the paper spread out on the vast, ancient pine table that dominated the room and wondering how much more horrid and humiliating life could get than to see your failed love affair plastered all over the first four pages of a national tabloid.

The kitchen was wonderfully cosy, despite the howl of a January gale coming straight off the Atlantic and tearing round the house, causing the trees to thrash about wildly and anything loose to flap and whip madly, trying to tear itself apart and be carried away by the wild storm. On the walls, Netta’s collection of copper jelly moulds gleamed softly in the electric light and on all the cupboard doors were paintings and drawings done by the children of round yellow suns in blue skies, stick figures with starfish fingers, spiky hair and bright red smiles, and blobby white flowers in green fields. The Aga behind Ginny warmed her back and under her feet the bright rag rugs on the aged flags stopped any hint of cold from the stones striking up. Opposite her was the battered, tatty sofa that Netta’s cats used as a scratching post despite the expensive, purpose built and still unused one that Ginny had presented the animals with a couple of years previously in an effort to save the upholstery. And all around her were the thick granite walls that ensured the farmhouse was cool in the summer but totally weatherproof in the winter. But, despite the cosiness of the kitchen, Ginny felt numb and cold as she read and reread the tacky story.

The back door opened and a gust of wind tore into the kitchen and picked up the sheets of newsprint. Ginny grabbed them before they could fly on to the floor and weighed them down with a half-drunk mug of tea. Petroc came in, stamping his feet in his wellingtons on the huge, thick doormat to get the worst of the mud off them.

‘Staring at it isn’t going to make it go away,’ said Petroc, taking off his waxed jacket and rubbing his hands. Ginny had been engrossed in the paper when he had gone out to see to some farm business thirty minutes earlier. ‘God, it’s wicked weather out there and no mistake. Get the kettle on, flower.’

Ginny didn’t appear to hear what he said. ‘But it isn’t even what I told her,’ she moaned. Despite the homely warmth of her surroundings she shivered and rubbed her hands together as if to restore feeling to them. She was hurt by the betrayal but even more so because someone she had thought of as a friend had distorted the facts to make the story seem even more lurid. If people believe this, I’m never going to be able to stay in the army. They’ll think that no man is safe anywhere near me,’ she complained with more than a hint of self-pity in her voice.

‘It’ll be a five-minute wonder, mark my words.’ Petroc shifted the huge kettle that lived permanently on the Aga across on to the hotplate himself.

‘But the damage is done.’

Petroc sighed. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t already been over the same ground a dozen times since he’d nipped to the newsagent in Hugh Town to get a copy of
Mercury
. He hadn’t told Ginny that the newsagent had pointed at the picture of Ginny splashed over the front page and remarked at how much ‘that army bird’ looked like Netta.

‘Does she?’ Petroc had remarked, hoping to deflect any further curiosity.

‘Anyway, why you buying the
Mercury
?’ the newsagent had inquired. ‘You don’t normally.’

Petroc had prided himself on the speed of his response. ‘Netta’s asked for it. She’s just had the baby and it makes her hormones go all funny. And you know what women are like when that happens.’

The mention of the baby had done the trick and by the time the newsagent’s wife had been called through from the back of the shop to hear the news and all the necessary details had been passed on for immediate dissemination into the island grapevine, the matter of which paper Petroc was buying was completely forgotten.

‘So what are you going to do with yourself today?’ asked Petroc. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got stuff to do on the farm so I won’t be any company.’

‘I’ll walk into Hugh Town in a while to see Netta and the baby, then I thought I’d pop into Granny Flo’s to say hello to her and the kids.’

‘Do you think you’ll be around at lunchtime?’

‘Do you want me to be?’

Petroc shrugged. ‘It’s just there’s a load of veg in the fridge that needs eating up and when that happens Netta usually makes soup.’ He looked at Ginny hopefully, like a Labrador wanting to be taken for a walk.

Ginny wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m not sure about soup. I’m not much of a cook.’

‘All you do is chuck it in boiling water and cook it up in a big pan. I’m sure that’s all Netta does.’

‘I’ll ask Netta when I see her,’ said Ginny, not convinced.

The kettle boiled and Petroc dropped a teabag into a mug and slopped the hot water on top. ‘Do you want a cup?’ he asked.

Ginny looked at the revolting scummy dregs in her mug and went right off the idea of tea. Through the kitchen window Ginny saw the sun suddenly blaze across the farmyard. The strong wind had chased the storm clouds away. She got up and leaned across the wide windowsill and peered out. The sky was the colour of speedwells and, although the wind was still whipping across the countryside, Ginny suddenly had an urge to get out in the fresh air.

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m off out while the sun is shining. I need to get the cobwebs blown away.’

Petroc nodded. He understood entirely. He couldn’t bear to be stuck indoors for too long either.

‘You’d better wrap up,’ he advised. ‘That wind is bitter.’

Ginny found a coat and Petroc lent her a pair of gloves and a scarf and then she opened the door and stepped out into the gale. The sun was still shining brightly but Petroc was right – the wind was perishing. It cut through the denim of her jeans and made her face sting. Undeterred, Ginny set out briskly for the mile or so walk into Hugh Town. In the sky above her, the fluffy picture-book clouds were being harried across the blue expanse like sheep being herded by a collie, but on the horizon Ginny could see the dark line of a threatening squall heading towards the islands. She hoped she would make it to the hospital before it struck – she didn’t fancy being caught in a downpour. On either side of the road – little more than a lane, despite the fact that it was one of the island’s main thoroughfares – were tiny fields of daffodils. No nodding yellow heads to be seen though, as the blooms were picked while still in tight bud and shipped off to London and the big markets there. In the stone-walled fields were armies of pickers – January was the height of the daffodil season for the islanders and it was a case of all hands on deck until the crop was harvested.

Ginny breathed deeply as she swung down the road. The air was undeniably fresher here and the tangy smell of the sea made her feel invigorated, despite her mood resulting from the newspaper story. The road sloped down towards the town – well, not really a town, despite its name, but more just a fishing village. Ginny could see the harbour with its little fleet of fishing boats bobbing in the hyacinth-blue sea, and the narrow spit of land that separated the harbour on the north from the beach on the south and joined the main part of the island to The Garrison, the circular peninsula at the extreme western end of the island.

Along the narrow neck of land was the main part of Hugh Town; some of the houses were grey granite and some were painted pastel colours, which gave the village a vaguely Mediterranean air. It looked so idyllic. Ginny felt almost jealous of Netta; with Petroc, the kids, the farm and this scenery. In the past, Ginny hadn’t envied her sister one iota, feeling that she had sold herself short by marrying Petroc when she had been barely twenty. She thought Netta had given up the chance of a career and life in the fast lane to be a farmer’s wife with virtually no financial security on an island booted off the end of England and into the Atlantic. Yet now, Ginny had to admit that there was something to be said for Netta’s lifestyle. She might not have access to the bright lights, and she might not be able to shop for the latest fashions, but maybe the things she did have were worth more than the glitzy trappings of consumerism. She might not have money to burn but the house she lived in had been in the Pengelly family for generations and, short of some terrible global disaster, it was likely to stay that way. Their overheads were minimal, the kids’ school was terrific, the crime rate was almost zero, their health was fantastic, and so the list went on. She weighed up what she had going for her in her own life: a room in an officers’ mess that she could no longer use since she had been suspended, a dodgy bank balance, a car and a handful of passing friends – some of whom had turned out not to be her friends at all.
Frankly
, she thought,
it doesn’t add up to a hill of beans
. Yeah, she’d travelled a bit, been places, seen things, but would that keep her happy in her old age? Everything about her life was so ephemeral, so transitory, so superficial. But Netta had a real life with love, family, security and happiness. Netta had got it right all along and, Ginny had to admit to herself, she had got it wrong.

A cloud scudded in front of the sun and the temperature plummeted still further. Ginny looked at the sky and saw that the threatening squall was almost on her. She broke into a jog and scooted the last few hundred yards past a scattering of granite cottages to the hospital that was down towards the beach. She paused at the entrance to catch her breath just as the first few fat drops of rain that presaged the next shower splattered heavily on to the ground. The door behind her banged open and a youngish man with wildly curly hair barged out. He was so busy pulling up the zip of his jacket and turning up his collar that he almost knocked into Ginny.

‘Whoops,’ said Ginny, as she stepped backwards to avoid him.

‘Uh,’ he said, looking up and noticing her. He stared at her hard. ‘Good grief,’ he then said.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Ginny, faintly put out. She had half expected an apology as he had nearly banged into her.

‘Nothing,’ he said gruffly. ‘You just look familiar.’ He stared at her so hard it verged on the rude. And no sorry, no excuse me. ‘In fact, I know just who you are.’

Ginny felt a frisson of fear. Even here in the Isles of Scilly someone had made the connection between her and that awful picture on the front page of the
Mercury
. She didn’t know why she thought that they wouldn’t. Why, just because they lived on an island, would they not read the national papers and look at the pictures? And then recognise the subject when they saw her. She supposed it was because she felt so far removed from her normal life, so far from the regiment that it was almost like being in a foreign country.
How ridiculous
, she thought. What a nit she’d been. And because she’d been such a nit she’d let her guard down and now someone knew who she was.