The Way We Were (23 page)

Julia gazed at her in disbelief. ‘At Penharrow? But why?'

Liv shook her head. ‘To make trouble,' she said bitterly. ‘Why else? Oh, I don't know why. She's staying with friends at Rock. I'm furious with Andy, and I've told him so, but he simply doesn't care. I'm probably being silly but my hackles still rise at the thought of her. You should just see her now.'

‘What's she like?' asked Julia almost fearfully.

‘Very attractive. Odd, isn't it? She was always such an ugly child.'

‘Does she look like Angela?'

‘Yes,' said Liv after a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose she does.' She glanced at her mother, distressed. ‘Oh, Mum, I'm sorry, but I just thought you ought to be warned. You never know. She might turn up here. What can we do?'

‘Nothing,' said Julia. ‘Nothing at all. We can't prevent Andy from seeing whomever he likes. I'd just rather it wasn't Cat.' She made an effort to be cheerful. ‘Come on. Let's go and make some tea for your father.' But her pleasure in the day was gone and she was filled with foreboding.

1976

The heat increases; the shimmering moor bakes gently, hardening and cracking into great fissures. Now, when Tiggy comes out of the house, she seems to walk into a wall of heat that makes her breathless, as if the sun has sucked the oxygen out of the air. She wades, heavy-limbed, through the heat, pinned down by it, and she looks back with astonishment and disbelief at the icy, wintry weather and the cool, misty days of spring. It seems impossible to imagine that she has ever been cold.

The washing, hanging motionless on the line, dries quickly. When she unpegs the clothes they are so hot, so crisp, that she expects them to crumble to cindery dust in her hands. Getting into the van or the car is like climbing into a furnace; so stifling and unbearable that they keep the windows permanently open and park the vehicles in the shade of the trees on the drive. There are rumours of birds dying in their thousands, reports of forest fires, warnings of standpipes.

‘Thank goodness we have our own water,' says Julia. ‘Uncle Archie says the spring has never failed yet.'

Even so, they are very sparing with it, rationing every drop, sharing the bath-water. Tiggy is so big now that she can hardly manage to get into the bath, and she keeps her overnight bag ready to hand; meanwhile they pray for rain. It comes at last on Bank Holiday Monday.

Tiggy rises unrefreshed after a restless night: pains in her lower back have prevented her from any kind of prolonged sleep, though she'd dozed heavily around sunrise. She sits on the edge of the bed, one hand pressed to the small of her back, willing down anxiety. The baby isn't due for another ten days and she has no wish to worry Julia, now nearly three months' pregnant, unnecessarily. Even so, she feels some kind of change in the rhythm of her body: supposing today is the day?

Mentally she reviews the plan which is quite simple: when labour starts, one of them will phone Aunt Em who is standing by to baby-sit whilst Julia drives Tiggy to Treliske Hospital.

‘Aunt Em would take you,' Julia offered rather awkwardly, ‘and I suppose that might be more sensible. But I'd rather be around if that's OK with you, though I'm not going to risk driving the van.'

Remembering, Tiggy smiles gratefully as she perches on the side of the bed.

‘I'd like you to be with me,' she said. ‘Having come this far it would be nice to see it through together, much as I love Aunt Em.'

‘She'll be fine with the children,' Julia said confidently, ‘and if it takes a bit of a time Uncle Archie can come out and join her here.'

‘Don't worry,' Aunt Em promised when asked. ‘I shan't go further than the local shop during the last week. Archie can cope with anything else. We'll be on twenty-four-hour call. No, of course we don't mind. We never want to do much in August anyway. Far too many holiday-makers around.'

Now, Tiggy pulls on the loose cotton smock that is the only garment that fits comfortably, and goes carefully downstairs. She thinks she can detect a difference in the atmosphere as well as in her own body, but she is reluctant to confide her fears just yet: she'd feel a fool if it were simply backache.

‘I think the forecast for scattered showers might be right,' Julia says just before lunch. ‘There are some rather black-looking clouds over the Camel estuary.'

‘Good,' says Tiggy, but the word ends in a kind of involuntary groan and Julia looks at her anxiously.

Are you OK? Oh God … is it the baby?'

‘I don't know.' Tiggy tries to straighten her aching back. ‘It's just that I've been having these pains. No, no. Not labour pains. In my back. And now I'm leaking a bit.'

‘Oh God!' Julia says again. She hesitates for a few moments, then: ‘I'm going to phone the doctor,' she says firmly. ‘No, don't argue! Sit down and practise your breathing lessons.'

The doctor says that it's a bit early, that backache is fairly standard at this stage and the other might simply be incontinence, but that it is probably better to be safe than sorry. Julia phones the maternity ward at Treliske to warn the staff they are on their way, and then Aunt Em, who answers straight away.

Tiggy fetches her case while Julia explains to the twins that she is going to take Tiggy to collect her baby and that Aunt Em will be with them until they all get back home; they must be very good, she tells them, and help Aunt Em with Charlie. Impressed by Julia's gravity they stare solemnly at Tiggy, who smiles at them reassuringly, but they are distracted from the usual flow of questions by a sudden and unfamiliar tattoo; a hollow drumming on the roof of the back porch. For a moment they all stare at one another, puzzled, until Liv cries: ‘It's raining. It's absolutely pouring,' and they all run outside to look.

It comes in torrents, sizzling and bouncing off the hard-baked earth so that soon the bare moorland looks as if it is covered in a low cloud of steam. It hammers on the roof and clatters on the leaves of the rhododendron bushes; it dislodges stones and washes the loose, dry topsoil away in rivulets of muddy water that pour down into the lanes.

Aunt Em drives in looking faintly alarmed and they hurry to greet her, drawing her into the house.

‘Bad timing,' she says. ‘This downpour is making driving very difficult. There's lots of bank holiday traffic about.'

Tiggy picks up her case and kisses the Turk on the nose.

‘Look after her,' she says privately to Andy, and he nods, looking important and pleased at having such a responsibility entrusted to him. She kisses the children, hugs Aunt Em and goes out with Julia to the car. Panic is beginning to sweep over her in shuddering waves; she has the presentiment that something terrible is going to happen, something that has happened before is about to repeat itself, although she can't clearly remember what it was. Trembling, she climbs into the car, trying to control her formless terror but wanting to cry out that this is wrong; that they shouldn't be leaving the house.

Julia is talking, starting up the engine, edging round Aunt Em's car, trying to sound confident and reassuring. Out of the shelter of the rhododendrons, however, the car receives the full force of the storm and Julia is momentarily silenced by its violence. Tiggy can sense her anxiety as she grips the wheel and peers out through the streaming windscreen.

‘Stop!' she wants to say. ‘Stop, Julia,' but her mouth is dry her muscles disabled with fear, and she crouches silently in her seat, her arms wrapped protectively around her body.

The narrow moorland road is greasy with rain, covered with liquid mud, and, as the car approaches the T-junction, Tiggy is struck by the remembrance of her arrival: her mounting terror of some disaster and the van sliding out of control. She cries out, a groan combined of anguish and pain, and Julia glances at her fearfully. It is a quick glance, lasting only a few seconds, but it is enough to distract her, so that, as the car begins unexpectedly to aquaplane, she turns back in a panic, braking a little too hard and sending it skidding across the lane at the junction and crashing into a huge lump of granite.

Tiggy is flung against the windscreen; both girls scream. Tiggy covers her eyes with her hands, unable to move, rendered powerless by fear; but Julia is out of the car in a moment, hurrying round to the nearside to see the damage. She comes back and leans into the car, half kneeling on the driver's seat, and Tiggy raises her head, biting her lips, to look at her. Julia's face is white and her hair, dark with rain, is plastered to her cheeks.

‘It's no good,' she says, distressed. ‘The wing's smashed in and the tyre's flat. We must go back to the house.' She hesitates for a moment, as if debating with herself the wisdom of this decision. ‘I think we must. I can't just leave you here on your own. Aunt Em will have to take you to the hospital in her car, or we'll call an ambulance. Are you OK? God, I'm so
sorry
. Look, you'll have to get out this side.'

Tiggy manoeuvres her bulk into the driving seat and swings her legs out: shaking violently she stands up and immediately gives a cry of pain. Her head throbs and her left shoulder and arm feels badly bruised.

‘Oh my God.' Julia puts her arm around her and Tiggy can feel that she is trembling too but making a great effort to control herself. ‘Perhaps you should stay here. Get back in and I'll run and get the car.'

‘No,' cries Tiggy desperately. The prospect of being left alone is too frightening to contemplate. ‘I can manage. Really, I can.'

The rain streams down in torrents as they stumble slowly along the slippery, stone-strewed road. Tiggy, leaning on Julia who is half carrying her, can barely walk. She can feel warm water gushing down her legs and a savage pain is now beating, now receding, at regular intervals low in her back. She clings to Julia's warm hand, to her strength, whilst Julia's voice speaks in her ear, encouraging her, willing her forward: ‘I can see the gate. Nearly there now. Not much further. Be brave,' until there are other voices, other hands, and she collapses at last into a blessed, senseless darkness.

PART TWO

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

August 2004

‘TO THE WEST': Ringwood Bournemouth Poole. Driving along the A31 at the edge of the New Forest, Julia read the familiar signpost with mixed emotions. She was sad to be leaving Charlie and his little family yet those words – ‘TO THE WEST' – had long been a symbol of the journey home to Trescairn. For thirty years she'd been driving this route between Cornwall and Hampshire: first as a young wife and mother visiting her family, and Pete's, and now travelling to see Charlie and Jo and their two small children.

Take care, Mum,' Charlie had said, giving her a big hug. ‘Give us a buzz when you're home. Love to Dad when you speak to him.'

‘Whenever that might be,' Julia had answered, resigned. ‘He's not given much to telephonic communication. A run ashore in Gib, yes. Checking out the Sliema Club in Malta, yes. Telephoning home, no.'

‘These sailing holidays in the Med are getting to be a bit of a habit, aren't they?' Charlie grinned sympathetically. ‘Still, if you don't mind …'

‘Oh, I don't mind. He and Mike have been sailing together all their naval careers since they did their first tall ships race when they were at BRNC. Can't expect him to break the habits of a lifetime just because he's retired.'

Travelling between tall banks of gorse that edged the road through the Forest, Julia was aware of a faint but increasing sense of unease. Ever since breakfast, this feeling had hovered at the edges of her mind: yet she couldn't pin it down. She reviewed the morning's events but could think of nothing unsettling that had occurred either during the usual breakfast routine with Charlie and Jo and the children or afterwards, when she'd been packing up the car and saying goodbye.

Julia drove on, mentally picking away at fragments of conversation that might offer a clue to this uneasiness and, at the same time, aware of Frobisher, scrabbling behind her. She wondered if he'd mislaid his bone.

‘You'll have to wait,' she told him, glancing with amusement in her rear-view mirror at his despondent expression. ‘It's probably under your rug. Look about a bit. Don't be so helpless.'

He collapsed with a sigh and Julia shook her head: Frobes showed very little initiative. She remembered other journeys and other dogs: Bella and the Turk, then Baggins. The children would beg for the dogs to be allowed to sit with them. Liv and Andy would bicker, practising their own particular form of gamesmanship. First, before the journey had begun, there would be the contest as to whose turn it was to sit in the front; next, which one of them would be first to see the familiar landmarks along the way: the magnificent stone lion atop the lodge gate in the brick wall that surrounded Charborough Park, then the great stag on Stag Gate, then the first glimpse of the sea.

Now, as she turned on to the A35 heading towards Dorchester, Julia hoped with all her heart that Liv would accept Matt Greenaway's offer. Once the sale was going ahead he'd agreed that she could talk about it with her parents and Liv had suggested that they should go down to Truro and have a look at The Place.

‘You won't be able to go upstairs, of course,' she'd said, ‘but I'd like to have your impression of it.'

They'd loved it. ‘She'd be crazy not to have a crack at it,' Pete had said. ‘It's exactly what she needs.'