Tish had assured him she was not looking for something serious. After four years of almost total celibacy, living in a city that still looked and felt as dour and grey and lifeless as it had under communism, the idea of some fun, especially the kind of fun that Dr Michel Henri was offering, sounded utterly perfect. Since founding her own children’s home three years earlier, and particularly since adopting her darling Abel, Tish barely had enough time in the days to eat and shower, never mind indulge in a sex life. I deserve some fun, she told herself. Why not?
But of course she’d had to go and spoil it all by falling in love with him. Fool, she told herself, but then how could one not? When Michel took up with a pretty orthopaedic surgeon from Médecins Sans Frontières a few weeks later, Tish’s heart was crushed like a bug. It had taken every ounce of her self-control to hide the worst of her anguish from Michel himself. But to everyone else who worked with her, it was painfully obvious.
‘He’s not worth it, you know.’ Pete Klein, the head of one of the American NGOs, had been watching Tish gaze longingly after Michel’s retreating back in the hospital car park a few weeks ago.
He is to me, thought Tish, but she forced a professional smile.
‘Hello, Pete. How are you?’
‘Better for seeing you, my dear.’
A kindly, born-again Christian in his early sixties, Pete Klein had decided to make it his personal mission to find the lovely Miss Crewe a suitable husband. She was, after all, a gorgeous girl. Not gorgeous in an obvious, long-legged, modelly sort of way. No, Tish’s beauty was of an altogether more wholesome variety. Slight and naturally blonde, with a long nose, strong, aristocratic bone structure and a glorious wide, pale pink mouth that Pete had seen express every emotion from compassion to courage to delight, Tish had a natural, make-up-free charm to her that a certain type of man would give his eyeteeth to come home to every night. As Tish’s schoolfriend Katie had once accurately, if tactlessly, put it: ‘You’re Jennifer Aniston, Tishy. Guys like Michel always go for the Angelinas in the end. You’re too nice.’
Pete Klein didn’t believe a person could be ‘too nice’. Nor could he see what on earth wonderful young women like Tish Crewe found attractive in good-for-nothing fly-by-nights like that slimy Frenchman Dr Henri. Forget Doctors Without Borders. Michel Henri was a Doctor Without Scruples, and he’d hurt poor Miss Crewe badly.
‘You should have dinner with my friend Gustav,’ Pete told Tish.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Pete …’
‘Yes, yes, you must,’ Pete insisted. ‘Lovely young man, from a very nice family in Munich. Just started working for us. Brilliant with computers,’ he added, with a wink that made Tish wonder if this was intended as some sort of double entendre. Except that Pete Klein didn’t do double entendres. He did earnest and avuncular and kind.
So, ‘too nice’ to say no, Tish dutifully had dinner with ‘lovely young Gustav’, who was indeed brilliant with computers; though not quite so brilliant at either conversation or romance, judging by his clumsily attempted lunge in the back of the taxi after dinner, reeking of garlic sausage and cheap aftershave.
‘What are you doing?’ said Tish, squirming away from him.
Gustav looked aggrieved. ‘I thought you were single?’ he accused her.
‘I am,’ stammered Tish.
‘Well, what’s the problem then?’ demanded Gustav. ‘Everyone knows the only reason singles come out on these voluntary do-gooder vacations is for the sex. I mean, come on! We’re not in Romania for the scenery, are we?’
That much, at least, was true. Tish was not in Romania for the scenery. But why was she still here, really? Tish was the most English person she knew and she missed home dreadfully. Not a day went by when she didn’t stare unseeingly out of her car window at the bleak Romanian landscape, daydreaming about hedgerows and Marmite and EastEnders. It didn’t get any easier. She told herself she was here for the children – both the sixteen she’d been able to permanently rescue from institutions and bring to the bright, cheerful, family-run home she’d built just outside Oradea; and for the hundreds of others she was forced to leave behind, but whom she and her staff visited regularly in their hospitals. But, gazing at Michel’s strong, warm hands now as he changed a little boy’s dressing, remembering the feel of them on her skin, part of her knew that she was also staying for him.
Tish was doing what all the books said you should never do. She was waiting. Hoping, praying that eventually Michel would see the light and realize that the two of them were meant to be together. He’d make a wonderful father for Abel. So noble. So dedicated …
‘Tish!’ Carl, one of her co-workers, was tapping Tish forcefully on the shoulder. ‘Did you hear me?’
‘Hmmm?’ She blushed. ‘Sorry. I was, erm … distracted.’
‘There’s a problem back at Curcubeu, Carl repeated patiently. Curcubeu was the name of Tish’s children’s home. It meant ‘rainbow’ in Romanian. ‘Child services just showed up on the doorstep. They’re saying Sile hasn’t got all his releases signed.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. Of course the releases are signed. I picked up his paperwork myself.’
‘Whatever, they reckon he needs something else. They tried to seize him on the spot.’
‘What?’ Tish placed the sleeping baby back in her crib. Sile was an adorable, curly-haired two-year-old boy, the latest addition to her happy brood at Curcubeu. He’d only been with them a week and already child services were kicking up a fuss, no doubt hoping for yet another backhander. ‘How dare they!’ she seethed. ‘They have no authority.’
‘Yes, well, don’t worry,’ said Carl. ‘Lucio didn’t let them in the door. But they’ll be back in the morning with a warrant. We need to get it sorted, today.’
Damn, thought Tish. She’d really wanted to talk to Michel today, to get his advice. Yesterday, she’d received a letter, rather a distressing letter, from home. The letter meant that she might need to leave Romania, at least for a while, an idea that filled her with such a conflicting mix of emotions that she’d barely been able to string a sentence together since she read it.
Michel will know what to do, she thought. He’s always so level-headed. But now there’d be no time to consult him. By the time she’d sorted out this bullshit with Sile and child services, she’d have to race home in time to put Abel to bed, and Michel would already have left for Paris. He was flying home for the weekend to attend his sister’s wedding. Maybe once he sees her in a white dress, making that commitment, sees how happy and glowing she is …
‘Tish?’
‘Yes. Sorry. I’m coming.’ Tish reluctantly switched off the fantasy. ‘Go down and start the car. I’ll explain what’s happened to the nurses and meet you downstairs in five.’
The rest of the day passed in a blur of frenetic activity and stress, with Tish and Carl breaking every speed limit in the book in Tish’s ancient Fiat Punto, tearing from one government agency to the next in an effort to prove their legal guardianship of little Sile. Two bribes, a phone call to the British Consulate and countless vicious screaming matches later – Romanian Child Services did not consider Letitia Crewe to be ‘too nice’; as far as they were concerned, she was a bolshy, strident, harridan who’d been a thorn in their side since the day she set foot in the country – the matter was at last resolved. ‘For now,’ the Child Protection Officer warned Tish sternly.
As if we’re any bloody threat to him, Tish thought furiously as she finally started the drive back to her flat in the city. As if anyone on God’s earth gave a crap about that little boy until we took him in. Sometimes, most of the time, her work was so frustrating it made her want to scream. The Romanian government were like dinosaurs, terrified of change, resentful of any ‘outsider’ who wanted to help. As if any of the foreign NGOs wanted to be there. Don’t you think we’d love it if you sorted out your own bloody country and took care of your own kids, so we could all go home?
Home.
The word had been turnin
g over and over in Tish’s mind all day. She would have to make a decision soon, tomorrow probably, and start making some concrete plans. She’d wanted Michel’s advice today, but deep down she already knew what he would have told her. Go. Go home and do what you need to do. There was no other way.
Home for Tish was Loxley Hall, an idyllic Elizabethan pile in the heart of Derbyshire’s glorious Hope Valley. Much smaller than neighbouring Chatsworth, but widely considered more beautiful, Loxley had been the ancestral seat of the Crewe family for over eight generations. Growing up there as a little girl, Tish had never noticed the house’s grandeur, not least because behind the intricately carved, exterior with its stone mullioned windows and fairytale turrets, the family actually lived in a distinctly down-at-heel ‘apartment’ of seven, shabby rooms, and not in the immaculately preserved ballrooms and dining halls that the public saw. What Tish was aware of, however, was Loxley’s magic. The beauty of her grounds, with their ancient clipped yew hedges, endless expanses of lawn and deer-covered parkland beyond, punctuated by vast, four-hundred-year-old oaks. At the front of the house, beneath a crumbling medieval stone bridge, the river Derwent burbled sleepily, little more than a stream in the narrow part of the valley. As a child, Tish would sit on the bridge for hours, legs dangling, playing Poohsticks with herself or watching hopefully for an otter to make a thrilling, sleek-headed appearance. Her older brother Jago had never shared her fascination with the river, nor her romantic belief in Loxley Hall as some sort of magical kingdom. Mostly, Tish remembered him as rather distant and aloof (‘sensitive’, their mother called him), always playing inside with his computer games or his older, sophisticated friends from Thaxton House, the local boys’ prep school. Tish’s childhood playmates were her Jack Russell, Harrison, the family housekeeper Mrs Drummond, and on occasions her elderly but much beloved father, Henry.
Henry Crewe had died two years ago and Tish still missed him terribly. It was Henry’s death that had set off the chain of events leading to the current crisis. Amid much familial wailing and gnashing of teeth, Henry Crewe had broken Loxley’s four-hundred-year entailment and left the house lock, stock and barrel to his estranged wife Vivianna, Tish and Jago’s mother. This was partly a romantic gesture. Although Vivi had left him and their children the better part of two decades ago to start a new life in Italy, visiting England only rarely, she had never actually divorced Henry. To the bafflement of all his friends, not to mention his daughter, who felt Vivianna’s abandonment deeply, Henry maintained a nostalgic attachment to his wife that only seemed to intensify as the years passed. The Crewes remained on friendly terms, and Henry never gave up hope that one day Vivianna would see the light, tire of her stream of younger lovers, and return to the bosom of her family.
Needless to say, she never did. But changing the will had not solely been about Vivi. It had also been an attempt to mitigate Jago’s influence over Loxley’s future. The withdrawn, distant brother Tish remembered had grown up into a feckless, selfish and completely irresponsible young man. Blessed with good looks and a big enough trust fund never to have to earn a living, Jago Crewe partied away the years between eighteen and twenty-two in a narcotic-induced haze, eventually winding up depressed and seriously ill in a North London Hospital. It was after he had emerged from this self-styled breakdown that Jago had decided the time had come to change his life. He had shown no interest in ‘knuckling down’ at Loxley Hall, however. Pronouncing himself teetotal, Buddhist and a committed vegan, he had proceeded to disappear on a spiritual journey that had taken him around the world from Hawaii to Tahiti to Thailand (first class, naturally), spending family money like water as he tried out one spurious, navel-gazing cult after another.
Meanwhile, Henry’s health had been failing. Clearly, something had had to be done. And so it was that Henry had willed the house to Vivianna, intending that she would let it out for the remainder of her lifetime, perhaps to the National Trust, and leave it on her death to whichever of the children, or grandchildren, looked like the safest bet at the time.
Things had not worked out that way. Having failed to come home for his father’s funeral, or even send flowers, Jago showed up at Loxley two months later, announcing that he’d had a change of heart filial-duty-wise and had returned to claim his inheritance. Vivianna immediately made the house over to him (she never could say no to her darling boy) and retreated to her villa outside Rome, considering her duties to her former husband fully discharged and all well that had ended well.
Meanwhile, stuck out in Romania, Tish was concerned about the situation, but as a single mother with a full-time children’s home to run, had problems enough of her own. Besides, as the months passed and nothing disastrous happened at Loxley, she began to relax. Perhaps Jago really had grown out of his immature, selfish stage this time and was going to make a go of things on the estate? He was still only twenty-eight, after all. Plenty of time to turn over a new leaf.
Then she got the letter.
The letter was from Mrs Drummond, the Crewe family’s housekeeper of the last thirty-odd years and a surrogate mother to Tish and Jago. According to Mrs D, Jago had walked out of the house three weeks ago, announcing that he would not be returning as he intended to live out the remainder of his days as a contemplative hermit in the hills of Tibet. Mrs D, who’d heard it all countless times before, took this latest change of plans with her usual pinch of salt. But she’d been forced to view matters more seriously when Jago’s wastrel hippy friends, many of them drug addicts, had refused to leave Loxley after Jago’s departure. Worse, they had begun to cause serious damage.
‘I called the police,’ Mrs Drummond wrote to Tish, ‘but they say that as Jago invited them in, and has only been gone a matter of weeks, they have no power to evict them unless they hear from Jago directly. They won’t listen to me. But Letitia, they’ve been stealing. At least two of your father’s paintings are missing and I’m certain some of the silverware is gone. I’ve tried to reason with them, but they can actually be quite intimidating.’
That was the part that had really made up Tish’s mind. The thought of these drugged-out thugs scaring Mrs Drummond, the sweetest, most defenceless old woman in the world, brought out every protective instinct within her. She had to go back and sort out her brother’s mess. How could he have left Mrs D to cope with all of this alone? Whenever he deigned to return from his latest self-indulgent, soul-searching exercise, Tish was going to strangle him with her bare hands.
Parking her exhausted Fiat in front of the graffiti-covered tower block she called home, Tish bolted up the staircase two steps at a time. Her flat was on the sixth floor, but the lift had long since broken, so she and Abel got regular workouts dragging their groceries and schoolbags up and down the stairs. Tish was still fumbling in her bag for her keys, trying to catch her breath, when the front door opened. Lydia, Abel’s heavy-set Romanian nanny, glowered disapprovingly in the doorway.
‘You’re late.’
With her fat, butcher’s arms, old-fashioned striped apron, and steel-grey hair cut in a blunt, unforgiving fringe, Lydia had the body of an ex-shot-putter and the face of a Gestapo wardress. She had never liked her English boss, whom she considered flighty and appallingly laissez-faire as a mother. However, she was devoted to little Abel, who in turn was very fond of her, which was why Tish had never fired her. That and the fact that Lydia was prepared to work long, often erratic hours for laughably low pay.
‘I know, I’m sorry. There was a bit of a crisis at Curcubeu.’ Tish forced her way past the nanny’s giant frame into the hallway, dropping her bag on the floor. ‘Abel! Where are you, darling? Mummy’s home!’
‘He sleeping,’ said Lydia frostily. ‘He waited long time for you. Very upset in his bath time, but now is OK. Sleeping.’
Tish looked suitably guilty. She couldn’t have cared less what old iron-pants thought of her, but she hated letting Abel down. Had he really been unhappy at bath time, or was Lydia just twisting the knife?
Th
e old woman pulled on her coat, a thick, frankly filthy sheepskin, and a pair of brightly coloured knitted gloves. ‘He need his sleep,’ she told Tish sternly. ‘Don’t waking him.’ And with this commandment she shuffled out of the flat, shaking her head and muttering darkly to herself in Romanian as the door closed behind her.
Silly cow, thought Tish, making a beeline for her son’s bedroom. Inside, the low glow from Abel’s Makka Pakka night-light helped her find her way to his bed. Pulling up a chair, Tish rested a hand on the warm, gently heaving Thomas the Tank Engine duvet and felt the pressures of the day evaporate. My life’s under there, she thought. I love him so much. Loxley and Mrs Drummond, the children’s home, even her terrible, unrequited love for Michel: they all faded into insignificance when Tish gazed down at her sleeping son. Gently peeling back the bedclothes, she stroked his soft mop of jet-black curls and bent to kiss the warm, silken skin of his rounded, still-baby-like cheek. It was hard to believe that this was the same malnourished, sore-covered baby she’d first laid eyes on in a maternity hospital outside Bucharest four years ago. Today, Abel was as healthy and chubby and rambunctious as any other little boy his age. Much more handsome of course, thought Tish proudly. It had been a long and arduous struggle to adopt him formally, even though Abel had lived with her since he was thirteen months old, and Tish was the only mother he’d ever known. Tish’s one regret was that her beloved father, Henry, had never got to meet his grandson. Abi’s paperwork had taken years to complete, and Henry had been too frail and sick to travel. Abel’s passport was finally granted a month after Henry’s funeral, a bitter irony for poor Tish.
Now, though, she’d have a chance to take Abel home. To show him England and Loxley and Mrs Drummond, and introduce him to his adopted culture and family. Better late than never.
Fame Page 5
