The Way We Were (15 page)

Val's eyes flicked up briefly, then down again, and Liv saw that she was close to tears. She'd already noted the glass of water, the strip of tablets, and now she leaned over and took the pad, tore off the shopping list.

‘I'll do the cash-and-carry' she said. ‘I'll take the Subaru. Go out and walk in the sunshine, or just sit in the sun out of the wind. Switch off for a moment, Val, or you'll crack into pieces.'

She didn't wait for an answer, she simply put the list in her shirt pocket and went out. In the silence that followed Val put her head down on her forearms; she felt that if she were to start crying she might never stop. Chris, coming in unexpectedly, caught her by surprise. His first reaction was the, by now, familiar frustration but as she raised her head, startled, he saw her expression and felt a pang of remorse.

‘I've run out of milk in the office,' he said. No point in asking what was wrong; he knew the answer to that one. ‘But since you're here I'll have my coffee with you. I thought you'd probably gone to the cash-and-carry.'

‘Liv's gone,' she said. ‘Well, she enjoys it. Anything to be off in the car.'

Her voice lacked its usual bitterness, however, and he decided not to defend Liv this time. He was beginning to be seriously worried about the reignition of his affection for Liv; it had seemed so right at lunchtime in the café to be there with her, joking and at ease, as if they belonged together. Just lately he was convinced that Liv felt the same way. A tiny but insistent voice in his head told him that they were doing no harm; that they needed to support each other. The same voice was beginning to hint that he deserved all the help and love he could get from Liv, and that Val was asking for it. He longed to believe the voice but, each time he worked himself into a self-pitying mood of agreement with it, his conscience disturbed from its heavy sleep and reared up to tell him with finger-wagging righteousness that he'd be a cheating bastard. Chris, cursing beneath his breath, suddenly remembered Liv's silly chant – pee po piddle bum – and had to choke down an unexpected spurt of laughter.

‘Tea?' he asked abruptly. Val nodded, and, as the kettle boiled, he cast about in his mind for some topic that would reconnect him with her.

‘Zack was very impressed,' he told her. ‘Of course, he hasn't seen Penharrow since we've been up and running properly so it was good to have his reaction. He really liked the way Liv designed the café and the shop.'

She didn't respond directly but accepted her mug of tea, looking thoughtful. ‘Caroline was looking well,' she said.

Chris sat down opposite. ‘Mmm.' He took a sip. ‘I suppose she was.' Val looked at him; her wide-eyed unsmiling gaze unnerved him. ‘What?' he asked defensively, as if she'd accused him of failing in some observation or duty.

‘Perhaps we should be thinking about it,' she answered. ‘Having a baby, I mean.'

He was shocked by his instinctive negative emotional response. A baby: the final commitment, the big one.

‘Well, that's a conversation stopper.' He pretended to laugh it off, hoping she hadn't noticed his initial reaction. ‘I'm a bit surprised that you think you could cope, to be honest, love. You're finding it such hard going as it is, aren't you? Surely a baby on top of running Penharrow would be the last straw. How would you manage?'

She gave a kind of facial shrug. ‘It was something Liv said just now made me think about it,' – and Chris felt a tiny jolt of pain, as if Liv had somehow betrayed him – ‘about pulling myself out of this downward spiral. Seeing Caroline looking so well and happy made me wonder if perhaps we should try it.'

He bit back the retort that Prozac might be a cheaper, easier option, and pretended to consider her suggestion. ‘A bit drastic?' he offered tentatively. ‘Of course, it's up to you.'

‘Is it?' She gave him that same unsmiling stare. ‘You mean you don't get to have a say in whether we start a family?'

Chris thought: Probably not, if you've already made up your mind – and was taken aback by the depth of his anger at his helplessness. He didn't answer.

‘But if I could cope,' she argued after a few moments, ‘if it, you know, would get me back on track, how would you feel about it?'

‘I'm not against having a family' he answered defensively; ‘it's just the timing. We don't
know
that being pregnant would help you to be less fearful and anxious, do we? It might even make you worse. It's a big chance to take. Wouldn't it be more sensible to give this another six months? See how it goes before we start having kids?'

Her face fell into dispirited lines and his heart sank.

‘Look, it's up to you,' he said. ‘Honestly. If you really think you could manage and that it would help …'

His voice trailed away and they continued to sit in silence, each of them trying to gauge the other's thoughts.

Driving back from Wadebridge, Liv decided to make a detour up to Trescairn; it was a good afternoon to have a walk up on the Tor. Driving between wild, high hedges, streaked and splashed with paint-bright colours of the celandine and campion and buttercups, she pondered on her earlier reaction to Val. Liv realized that by talking to her in such a way she'd done her own cause no good. Instead of standing aside to give Val plenty of space to self-destruct, she'd offered her a lifeline back to normality – and to Chris. It would be so easy – and so tempting – to let Val dig her own deep pit and then topple into it, requiring barely a nudge from anyone else.

So why had she felt the need to stretch out a hand to her? Had it been the pitiful sight of that tense, immobile figure, shut off from the happy little group in the café, that had roused her compassion? Whatever had been the cause of her pity she'd felt the need to respond to it.

‘More fool you,' Liv told herself crossly – but she couldn't quite regret it. If Val insisted on alienating Chris then she needed to see the extent of the damage that might follow; that was only fair. She, Liv, had no intention of letting him topple into the pit with Val.

It had been such fun at lunchtime; sitting with Chris, opposite Zack and Caroline. Not only was there the fizz of excitement at being so close to him but also a nice, comfortable quality too. After all, they'd done this before. They'd sat in cafés with friends, walked through the streets of Durham and over the Northumberland moors; laughed, fought, made love.

Driving through a small hamlet of granite cottages, where the clematis, charming ‘Nelly Moser', scrambled up the walls and across the roof of a small stone hut, and laburnum trees dripped golden pendent blossom over garden walls, Liv tried to remember exactly how their love affair had ended. There had been no dreary deterioration, none of the painful disillusion that Chris and Val were suffering now; it had been an amicable parting of the ways. Chris had been offered a very good job in the financial department of a huge pharmaceutical company, whilst she'd been determined to travel. She'd had no such tempting job offer to make her weigh up the advantages of going with Chris to London and, anyway, she'd always wanted to see the world. Another student friend had invited her to go to Australia with her; she had relatives there, she'd said, and they'd be able to pick up work as they went along. Liv had been unable to resist. The parting had been hard, they'd promised to stay in touch – and there had been several moments when she'd seriously considered giving it all up and coming home to him – but in the end they'd drifted apart. Distance had not made the heart grow fonder.

Which must surely mean, Liv told herself now as she approached Trescairn, that it wasn't meant to be; our love simply wasn't strong enough to survive.

She turned up the drive, parked outside the house and climbed out. The car wasn't in its usual place and the back door was locked. She had a key but she didn't go inside; instead she passed round the end of the house and through the little gate that led directly on to the moor. Climbing the track amidst the scattered granite rocks she breathed great gasps of the cold fresh air that poured over the high uplands and sang amongst the stones. Larks flew upwards ahead of her, their song falling in a showering of liquid notes all around her, and she paused to glance back at the shimmering rim of sea at the land's edge. Vapour trails crisscrossed at sharp angles: delicate rafters in the sky's roof. Out of the west a small black speck appeared in the sky, grew larger; the jet plane screamed overhead and dwindled away to nothing.

Just for a moment she allowed herself to wonder what it might be like to run Penharrow with Chris: just the two of them together. It was such an idyllic prospect that she deliberately blotted it out. Her conversation with Matt slid into her mind; their lunch date had had to be postponed, rearranged for next week, but she was very interested in his idea for The Place.

‘It would be quite a commitment,' he'd said. Instinctively she shied away at such a thought – she liked to sit loose to things – but a tiny part of her was attracted by his ideas. She'd decided to wait until she saw Matt again before she gave the project too much thought; she knew that the chemistry between them would be crucial for such an undertaking.

A blast from a horn echoed up from the valley and she saw a dazzle of sun on a windscreen. A Land Rover bumped slowly across the lower slopes, herding sheep before it, whilst a rangy collie sped to and fro like a shadow at the outer edges of the flock. Liv stood looking down on Trescairn's chimneys and beyond to the stand of trees where the new pale green twiggy fingers of the larch contrasted sharply with the black pines: so many childhood memories. She stuck her hands in her pockets and began to climb higher, leaping and jumping amongst the granite slabs and bony ridges of the Tor.

1976

As the day of Pete's return approaches the twins grow more and more excited. Tiggy helps them to make a banner with the words ‘WELCOME HOME DADDY' painted across it, which is to be strung outside the front door on the great day. They assemble paintings, things they've made at playschool or at home, and vie to outdo each other in amazing him with their prowess. Charlie, meanwhile, has taken his few first unsteady steps and the twins are rehearsing him for his great entrance. The plan is simple: the moment Pete opens the front door Charlie will be released from the kitchen to walk unaided into his father's arms.

They practise it over and over again; Julia has to be Pete noisily opening the door so as to give the alarm and then, once inside, crying: ‘Golly! Goodness me! Can this be Charlie? Walking? Oh, how wonderful!' Tiggy has to hold Charlie in position with the twins whispering encouragement. ‘Wait! Not yet, Charlie. Wait. Listen for the door. Now!' Then Tiggy releases him, pushing him gently towards Julia, while they watch breathlessly until he's achieved the full length of the hall, when they all cheer loudly. It takes many rehearsals before Charlie fully grasps what is expected of him but at last he connects the start of his marathon across the hall with the opening of the front door and he staggers forward, his eyes wide with amazement at his own cleverness, beaming delightedly and eagerly waiting for the round of applause from the anxious trio at the kitchen door as he falls into Julia's waiting arms.

‘The problem will be that the boat will dock at midnight and it'll be too late for Charlie to be up, or he'll be so surprised to see Pete that he'll be struck all of a heap and sit down on the floor,' Julia prophesies. ‘I shall have to rehearse Pete on the way back from the dockyard.'

‘It'll be fun.' Tiggy grins, remembering the latest rehearsal. ‘Charlie positively vibrates, you know, when I'm hanging on to him, waiting for him to go. He's like the Turk trying to get down a badger sett.'

‘Let's simply pray that the boat gets in at a reasonable hour. I'm glad you've given up the silly idea of not being here when Pete gets home. It's not as if we're newlyweds, not with three kids.'

‘It would have looked a bit obvious,' agrees Tiggy, ‘and with you all going off on holiday so quickly it's not quite the same as us all sitting around staring at each other for two weeks.'

‘Actually, we both tend to feel a bit shy to begin with,' admits Julia. ‘It sounds silly but it takes a little while to get back to normality after a long separation. I told you, Pete's often very wound up when he gets back from sea. You being there will make it easier.'

‘If you say so. I know it sounds crazy but I'm looking forward to it just as much as the rest of you. I've never done anything like this before. It's wonderful to be a part of a family. I've missed so much, I can see that now. You'll never know how much I used to envy you, when we were young and I used to stay with you sometimes in the holidays. It was an utterly different world.'

‘It was a madhouse, if that's what you mean,' says Julia, but she's pleased.

Pete makes the whole thing very easy: the homecoming exceeds every expectation. The boat docks at two o'clock in the afternoon, the welcome party is ready and Charlie performs wonderfully: the sight of his father seems to spur him to even greater heights and he propels himself into Pete's arms shouting with excitement. Tiggy suspects that Julia has done more than rehearse Pete for the big welcome home scene; she's also explained Tiggy's reluctance to be present and her fears that she'll be
de trop
. She slips away as soon as the twins have rushed out into the hall, only reappearing when the family has had plenty of time to be reunited.