The Pull of the Moon (3 page)

Marjorie resumes her indignation meeting while I am getting dry. ‘Basically it’s dishonest. If you minute something and it isn’t exactly what was said, well, it’s a
downright lie, isn’t it?’

I banish another sentence beginning
Dear Mrs Ivanisovic
to the back of my mind before saying out loud, ‘I suppose if it’s a complicated discussion, it’s sometimes
possible to make a mistake.’ Always looking to give the benefit of the doubt, that’s me. Always the diplomat. Too busy trying not to offend. That’s how you end up squashed into
the back seat of a Ford Anglia with some girl you’ve only known a couple of hours. That’s how it all begins – being too polite to demur. Another person might have said there
wasn’t enough room – but good old Katy will just budge up; crush herself into the corner of the oven-like interior, whose back windows don’t open more than half an inch. Air
conditioning? Are you kidding me? In 1972?

Marjorie isn’t having this notion of an accidental misunderstanding. The minutes have been falsified. Her very being is affronted by the episode. I idly wonder what is at stake – a
vote of thanks? Someone claiming half a dozen more second-class stamps than was their due? ‘I have never done anything dishonest in my life,’ she says primly. ‘I will not be
associated with any sort of dishonesty – nor with people who tell lies.’

A mad urge comes over me to take her hand and bid her a solemn farewell. If she doesn’t fancy being tainted by association with George and his dodgy minute-taking, then boy would she flip
her lid if she knew a bit more about one of the companions with whom she takes her daily dip. I don’t do it, of course. I just toss her my usual ‘See you tomorrow’.

On the way home I am free to give my uninterrupted attention to the problem of Mrs Ivanisovic. She has known my address since forever – so why not write before? Has something happened to
prompt her? The existence of this unknown factor worries me more than anything. Has an old memory resurfaced – a piece of the jigsaw that doesn’t quite fit? And if so, would she be
likely to mention it to anyone else? Or could it be something to do with the place itself? Does she know something I don’t? Has someone found something? I don’t always get a paper
– I might easily have missed a small news item. They can do such a lot with so little nowadays. It isn’t just cells that have come on in leaps and bounds – there have been huge
advances in forensics, stuff we never dreamed of like DNA: which
is
cells, now I come to think about it.

Maybe I should drive out and take a look. I suppose the public footpath still runs right alongside the boundary. If there was any activity I’d be able to spot it. There’s Bettis Wood
as well. I don’t want to go back, but maybe I ought to. The thought flares dangerously. I put it aside while I continue to ponder Mrs Ivanisovic’s letter. It’s not a good idea to
leave it unanswered for too long. A blank refusal might be disastrous when I don’t know what cards she holds.

If it was an ordinary problem I could mull it over with friends. Over the years I’ve accumulated some good ones – people who have all sorts of knowledge and life experience, and who
between them can advise on anything from income tax to growing geraniums – but this part of my life is a closed book to them and I wouldn’t dream of confiding in my brother, still less
my sister.

My sister is one of those people you start off making allowances for because they’re only six years old and one day wake up to the fact that you’re still doing it when they’re
cracking on towards fifty. That’s the way it has always been with me and my sister. She grew up accustomed to evading family responsibilities, so she came to expect automatic exemption from
them. Anyway, there is always some pressing thing going on in her life: trouble with a man, or trouble without a man – there was the whole starting-a-new-life-in-Spain thing that failed to
materialize, the trauma of her first divorce, the drama of her second . . .

By a strange trick of the light, my sister’s complete unreliability in any sort of family crisis has never been a source of irritation to anyone but me. My sister’s role was to be
the youngest. I was the one upon whom expectations invariably fell, in spite of the fact that, so far as my parents were concerned, I was the scatty, emotionally suspect child, who could not
entirely be relied upon – the inherent contradiction seemingly lost on everyone but me.

But then again maybe there is something useful my family can offer in the present situation after all, because from nowhere in particular I suddenly recall my father and the Garden Shed
Protocol. My mother loathed our ramshackle garden shed, so after much procrastination my father promised to replace it – but somehow the plans he made to this end were always mysteriously
thwarted. Materials were ordered, his best intentions regularly restated, but somehow the new shed failed to appear. On the weekend eventually named for the commencement of this long-awaited
project, he was unaccountably called in to work at the last minute and the job was postponed yet again. I often wondered how he managed to arrange that telephone summons – or maybe the gods
really were on his side. The new shed was never built.

And so it will be with the visit to Mrs Ivanisovic. After breakfast I frame my reply.

Katy? Well, why not?

In fact there is very little in my diary which cannot be moved if needs be. I took early retirement eighteen months ago, when my mother died. I am a completely free agent, which means that I can
drive out towards Hereford this afternoon, park my car and take a stroll along the footpath which runs from the house down into the woods – assuming I really want to.

I’ve been kidding myself for years that I can do as I please, but in reality the puppet strings have only been cut in the past eighteen months – until then it had always fallen to me
to be on call for my parents. I never developed any real empathy with them – too great a barrier of assumptions and secrets divided us: but I was pliable and trapped by geographical proximity
and complex loyalties. Maybe I never outgrew a vague sense of owing my parents a payback for being such a disappointment to them – or maybe I vainly hoped to redeem myself. Not that it
mattered either way – ‘their’ Katy was too indelibly drawn to be changed. For my siblings, too, I suspect I am a presence rather than a person – their sister Kate, who is
there to pick up family duties, provide a cash loan or lend a sympathetic ear (my sister); or who is an occasional duty to be undertaken, a bit like walking the dog, only far less frequently (my
brother).

One of these periodic family excursions took place last summer, when I visited a motor museum with my brother and his wife, children and grandchildren. I am not particularly fond of these jaunts
and I do not imagine my presence enhances the experience for them; but these occasional get-togethers cannot be avoided – like visits to the dentist, one must be stoical and get through it
with partially frozen face and brave attempts at a smile whenever someone makes a joke. One thing I did bring away from the visit was an appreciation of how very small the cars of my youth appear
to have been.

There wasn’t a Ford Anglia in the display, but they had other makes and models of a similar vintage, and I marvelled at the rear passenger space – accessed by tipping forward a front
seat, then clambering through a gap small enough to challenge a contortionist. People boasted of screwing in the back seats of cars, but God alone knows how such an undertaking would have been
accomplished.

Cars were slower then and had fewer dual carriageways to travel on, which meant that any but a local destination turned into an endless trek. When I was a child a long car journey was planned
like a military campaign, the boot loaded with supplies for the road – sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper, flasks of tea, blankets in case of hypothermia, spare Sherpas. With the
rashness of youth, Simon, Danny and I had made no such preparations before setting off to the coast, equipped with nothing save what we stood up in and Danny’s guitar. There were no emergency
rations and nor had we written out the route in bold capitals, packed a torch to read it by after dark, or given much thought to how long the journey might take. Detailed planning was for parents,
not free spirits like us.

In this careless frame of mind we lingered on the beach into the early evening, with no one bothering to consider where Trudie might be expecting us to take her. When we finally climbed into the
car, Simon did wonder aloud how long it would take us to drive back; but as he and Danny couldn’t agree on how long it had taken to get there in the first place, they eventually settled on a
mutual notion that the return journey would be quicker than the outward one. I didn’t contribute to the discussion at all. I was tired and sunburnt and every breath I took tasted of
overheated vinyl.

Thanks to a misunderstanding between the driver and the navigator, we got hopelessly lost along a network of minor roads, whose signposts all led to places beginning with double L, none of which
we could pronounce and none of which existed according to our rudimentary road atlas. Trudie thought this was hilarious, as did Danny and Simon. I sat silently in my corner, steaming in every
sense.

When we eventually got back on the right road, Danny suggested we pull in at a pub. He spotted that something was wrong as soon as I climbed out of the car.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked, momentarily placing a cool hand on my forehead. ‘You’re very warm.’

‘I’ve got an awful headache,’ I said.

‘Probably had too much sun. You’ve hardly eaten anything all day either. We’ll soon revive you with some beer and sandwiches.’

The pub only had crisps, but the alcohol went straight to my head so I was soon in a much improved frame of mind, joining in with the laughter which was provoking glares of disapproval from the
locals. We were accustomed to the hostility our long hair and beads generated in most males over the age of sixty (had they fought a war, just so that we could hang about in pubs looking like
that?) and we only laughed all the louder. We were young and free and the world belonged to us.

We had travelled quite a number of miles beyond the pub when I became vaguely aware, from Trudie’s remarks, that she not only hadn’t the slightest idea of where we were, but was
equally uncertain about where we were going. Only when she asked with no more than idle curiosity, ‘What’s at Hereford?’ did it dawn on me that we might have a real problem. I had
just decided that a direct question about where she wanted to be dropped off was overdue, when the car started to bounce more alarmingly than usual, forcing Simon to pull into the side of the
road.

Trudie and I sat on the dusty grass verge while the lads set about changing the flat tyre. Dusk was descending and the few cars which passed us had their headlights on. Trudie started to hum.
Another Cat Stevens number – she was evidently a fan.

I took my opportunity. ‘Where are you going exactly?’

The humming stopped. She had been watching the operations with the car jack, but now she turned to face me. It was already too dark to see her expression. ‘I’m not sure,’ she
said. ‘I suppose I’m going wherever you guys take me. I saw you sitting on the beach and I just knew my fate was bound up with yours. I’m mediumistic, you see. Sometimes I just
know things. It’s a gift. I get it from my grandmother.’

I wasn’t too sure if there was such a word as mediumistic, but even so I got her drift. I’d met them before, these fashionably fey types, with their mysterious gifts and
intuitions.

‘I can read palms,’ she continued. ‘Here – let me do yours.’ She held out her hand and I complied, resting my upturned hand on her long slim fingers, while my
sceptical mind thought it was too dark to see anything, even if there had been anything to see.

Trudie did not attempt to peer at my lifeline, however. Instead she ran the fingertips of her free hand gently across my palm, looking not at me but at the pale sliver of moon which had just
appeared in the sky. A tingle of excitement coursed around the roots of my hair, and the thin steel bangles on my wrist trembled against one another, encircling our hands in a series of barely
audible vibrations, like a thousand tiny bells, ringing out a warning from worlds away. When she spoke again it was in a soft rich voice, too low to be audible to the wheel changers.

‘You’ve got an older brother and a younger sister,’ she said. ‘So you’re the middle child, which isn’t an easy thing to be. You like children – in fact
you want to work with them. You’d like to be a teacher, but I can’t tell if you will be or not. There’s something in the way – an obstacle of some kind – it’s up
to you whether you overcome it or not.’

So much for that, I thought. We had been chatting for hours by then and I’d probably let slip clues about myself and my family and the fact that I was at teacher training college.

‘I expect you want to know about your love life.’ I fancied I detected a trace of mischief in her voice. ‘People always do.’

My hand was warm beneath her touch; the pressure of her finger had become a caress. ‘Danny is the first great love of your life – but it isn’t going to last.’

‘That’s enough,’ I said rather sharply, pulling my hand away.

Trudie didn’t seem offended. She continued to affect a dreamy tone. ‘There was something else there. Something dark which I couldn’t understand.’

My sunburnt flesh was reacting to the cooler air. Goosebumps had broken out on my bare arms. ‘Are you guys going to be much longer?’ I called out.