Judy suddenly subsided into laughter at something Waldo had just said, and despite her covering her mouth with her napkin several people turned round to stare.
‘I’m sorry . . .’ She shook her head, still laughing. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Waldo too stared briefly, if humorously, at the over-interested, as Judy tried to control herself. His look said it all. There was nothing wrong with Mrs Walter Tate’s laughing at one of his jokes in the Three Tuns. She was, after all, allowed to laugh publicly, and eat sandwiches with an old friend. There was no law against it, and no one in Bexham could or would criticise or gossip about such an occurrence. Just as, later, they would be seen to kiss each other on the cheek publicly and affectionately, in the car park, and part with much hand-waving and all the rest to drive back to their very different houses, without causing so much as an eyebrow to be raised.
And so it was.
No eyebrow was raised, no scandal caused by their having enjoyed drinks and sandwiches together, any more than by their open enjoyment in each other’s company. It was all perfectly acceptable.
Except to the landlord of the Three Tuns.
Richards had been watching them from his usual corner by the bar. Not overtly, of course, because that was not his way. Nevertheless he had taken in every moment of their lunch together, as he took in every activity that took place under his roof in the old inn. After they’d left, he slipped off, making his way slowly to his flat above the main rooms on the old harbour side, and having chopped up some fresh fish for his Persian cat, Richards sat down, as he always did, to watch him eating it with his usual elegant feline delicacy.
‘There’s trouble brewing down there, Titan. Mark my words, my boy, there’s going to be trouble all right, with Mr Astley and Mrs Sykes. And why do I know there’s trouble, Titan?’ He paused, staring from the cat to the view and back again. ‘Because I’m a silly old man, that’s why.’
‘But there are good things too,’ Max was saying, as he wandered around the small sitting room and bedroom suite that Mattie and John had made for a surprise for Jenny’s eventual return home, while Jenny herself sat on the sofa, the newspaper open on her lap. ‘I mean I think the very fact that Russia and America have agreed on having this so-called hot line between the Kremlin and the White House – I know there’s something about it in here.’
He picked the newspaper up from his half-sister’s knee and started searching the pages.
‘It says if there’s ever the sort of death dance there was over Cuba,’ he continued, ‘all they will do – that is Kennedy and Khrushchev – is pick up this phone, because the line will always be live, and they will sort it out.’
‘I see.’ Jenny looked up at Max, half admiring, half bored by her restless, fascinating half-brother.
Being with Max was so different from being with anyone else. For a start, which was pretty different after being in Bristol and spending so much time with other victims of road accidents – children with disfigurements, all of them recovering from operations – refreshingly, Max had nothing wrong with him. He was whole, not in need of a nurse or a surgeon, not waiting to get better, or for yet another operation. Weeks and months spent in hospital had a greying, dampening effect. Weeks and months, when, as one child described it to Jenny, all you knew of time passing was that sometimes there were leaves on the trees outside your windows, and sometimes there were not.
And then too, because Max was an actor, he was all too used to making faces look different. Noses bigger, eyes smaller, age added, hair bleached or blackened. Faces to Max, other people’s faces, or his own, were just a series of make-ups, good or bad, and meant little to him. So from the first Jenny had sensed that, to Max, her face, such as it was, scars and all, was just another make-up, and one he expected everyone else to be well used to by now. More than that, it was one that quite obviously he expected Jenny to be used to too, feeling not pity for her, but quite normal and jam-along, which meant that Max’s company was more than relaxing, it was a warm bath, it was a sunny day. It was like the days before she was hurt. He made her forget, he made her feel whole, and she loved him for it.
It was also why she forced herself to pretend to tolerate his overt interest in politics. Max was now shaking the paper.
‘This will mean,’ he went on, turning to Jenny and hitting the paper with his free hand to emphasise both his and the paper’s point, ‘this will mean that instead of just pushing the button blindly . . .’ He turned the pages of the newspaper, muttering. ‘Why can’t I ever find anything?’ Finally, ‘Ah yes, here it is. They’re also – Jenny, are you listening? They’re also, which is greatly to be wished, going to sign some sort of Test Ban Treaty, they being America and us and Russia. So things really are looking up.’
‘Oh. Well.’ Jenny looked up at him, a little sparely, feeling inadequate. ‘That is – good, then.’
‘It’s all there.’ Max handed her back the newspaper, tapping the relevant paragraphs for Jenny’s particular attention with a solemn, pointed hand. ‘All there, Jenny.’
While Jenny skim-read the news report Max had handed her without apparent enthusiasm, Max started to sort through the pile of books on the sofa beside her.
‘Poetry, poetry, poetry. Robert Frost, Rupert Brooke, Emily Dickinson – Shakespeare’s sonnets.’ He sighed. ‘Ah, Silent Spring. Good. Now how did you get on with that? Did you finish it?’ he asked, interrupting Jenny’s reading of the newspaper and tapping the book at the same time. ‘I didn’t think I would ever have a good night’s sleep after that. What about all that stuff about DDT, and all that gloomy forecasting about our wildlife? I mean what about that? Brilliant, brilliant book, but if she’s right, what are we losing in the way of wildlife?’
Jenny smiled at Max’s concerned face as he walked up and down her little sitting room, part of the new suite that her parents had gone to such trouble to make for her, in between operations, but which Max’s presence somehow made seem too small. Perhaps it was because she was seated, but Max’s head seemed to reach the ceiling, his body disproportionately large.
‘Oh, Max, you’re such a doom-monger.’
Max stopped pacing.
‘I’m not a doom-monger,’ he protested.
‘Yes, you are! I’m going to rename you Max the Baptist.’
‘You can laugh, Jenny Tate, but I tell you one thing, if it wasn’t for JFK I don’t know where we’d be, I don’t honestly. What would have happened last October if Kennedy had pressed the button? I mean, what?’
‘But you hated him when he was elected. I remember you saying he was just a girl-mad spoilt rich boy, and now he’s saved the world, it seems.’
Max turned and looked at Jenny and, knowing that it was time for her to wise up and face the facts, he sat down opposite her.
‘Look, I know I’m a so-called doom-monger, and I know that it’s part and parcel of the fact that I’m the odd one out at home, and all that, and everyone in Bexham thinks I’m just a stupid left-wing son of a you-know-what – but.’ He stopped. ‘But, if you’d been there when I was there, maybe you would be too?’
‘Where, Max?’
‘In the hall when Canon Collins spoke to everyone about the effects of nuclear war.’ He paused. ‘There was no publicity, nothing, just this clergyman and his determination to channel how he knew we all felt about a nuclear war, and yet without any advertising five thousand people turned up that day. Five thousand of us, all feeling the same. I was only sixteen, but I went, because, as you say, I’m a doom-monger. All he really told us about that day were the horrific effects of the hydrogen bomb. Well, you can imagine, there was an appalled silence. Quite terrible. But, look, weren’t us doom-mongers that day really rather right? Aren’t we all, in a way, pacifists? All not wanting to end the world, but make it grow into something even more beautiful? Isn’t the world worth saving – even Bexham,’ he ended, jokingly.
‘Mmm, yes, of course, but I can’t be a pacifist.’
‘Why not?’<
br />
‘Because, Max, I’m a fighter. Look at me.’ She turned her face up to him. ‘I have to be, don’t I?’
Max turned away, for once defeated. Jenny smiled at his back, feeling sorry for making her beloved half-brother feel awkward, and at the same time also feeling that he must understand that at that moment politics, important as they were, weren’t her first consideration.
‘Did you know that January and February this year of Our Lord 1963 were the coldest on record since records have been kept – ber-boom?’
‘Yes, actually.’ Jenny held up the newspaper and pointed. ‘It says it here!’
‘Well, I don’t need to read about it, as a matter of fact, because there’s a hole in the roof in the theatre, and it was so cold in February we had to wear sweaters under our shirts. One night snow even fell on the stage, and it got a round.’
‘A round?’
‘The audience clapped – thought it was part of the show.’
Jenny nodded, impressed. She liked stories of hardship, except from their elders and betters about the war, which were getting a bit boring now.
‘Have you heard about Flave?’
‘Flah-viah, you mean? About her wanting to be a model? Yup. Not very surprising, really.’ Max sat down, stretching his long legs out in front of him, admiring his new suede half-boots.
‘She had her picture in the Chronicle . . .’
‘Yes, Mum showed me. She was wearing only a fisherman’s mac and a sailor’s hat.’ Max crossed his arms akimbo like a village lady, and pursed his lips. ‘Whatever next, love?’
‘And a pair of fisherman’s knit stockings, knitted by Mrs Chimes whose husband got the push when the licence was sold. They think they’re going to be quite big.’
‘I never knew fishermen wore stockings,’ Max mused. ‘It brings a whole new dimension to stockings and fishing. And as for Mrs Chimes, as I remember her, she’s quite as big as her stockings, isn’t she?’
Jenny started to laugh. ‘I heard Mum saying that Flave’s been on television on an afternoon programme – just, you know, a women’s one, but she’s already got orders for the stockings because of it.’
‘Flah-viah’s face-for-the-world-to-see, on every knitting pattern. There’ll be fishermen everywhere parading their legs, all over Bexham harbour. It doesn’t bear thinking about, really it doesn’t.’
‘I think she’s going to be terribly, terribly famous, Max, I do really.’
A dreamy look came into Jenny’s eyes, before they eventually clouded over as she remembered the old days when she and Flavia and Kim had used to talk all the time about fashion, and film stars, and who they thought was really pretty, and who they thought might become famous, and all that.
Max, sensing suddenly from the long silence, which was something for him, that he had well and truly put his foot in it, floundered.
‘Listen. Listen, how would it be – I mean how – I mean, look, Jenny. Would you come to London with me, one day soon? Mum and John would let you, wouldn’t they? I could take you to see this new film about the bomb – Dr Strangelove. It’s a comedy.’
‘How can you make a comedy about the bomb, Max?’
‘It’s a satire, meant to be fantastic. Do you think you’d be allowed?’
‘If you really want to know I should think they couldn’t wait for me to go, Max. I heard them saying they were never alone nowadays, only the other day.’ Jenny looked bleak, staring suddenly at something that Max couldn’t see, some great lump of misery that wouldn’t go away. ‘No, they’d love it, actually, if I went to London for a bit.’ She looked up at Max. ‘It’s just me that wouldn’t.’
‘Jenny. . .’
‘Sorry. But no, Max. I know I should go. But. I just can’t.’ She picked up the newspaper again, and Max sensing defeat let the subject drop.
Later, as he was leaving, Mattie slipped out of the house behind him.
‘How do you think she is, Max?’
‘Oh, much better.’ Max picked up his overnight bag, preparatory to driving himself back to London. ‘Don’t you think so, Mum? Doesn’t John?’
‘It’s difficult for us to tell. She’s not the same to us, not as she would be to you, as she would be with you, rather. I mean I heard her laughing just now. She never laughs with us.’
‘I hear she’s going back for more surgery.’ Max was trying his hardest to be helpful, but they both knew he couldn’t wait to get back to London.
‘The surgeons think they’re really winning, you know, that soon you won’t really be able to tell what’s happened to her.’
Mattie opened the front door for her son, as always ready to help her children leave home, knowing it was best for them. Max kissed her fondly, and then backed off down the garden. He didn’t know why but he couldn’t – no, didn’t want to – talk to his mother about Jenny. It seemed like some sort of betrayal. Of course it wasn’t, but it felt like it.
‘I’ll come and see Jenny when she’s in hospital,’ he called back to Mattie. ‘If she’ll let me.’
‘Yes, do, darling. She’d like that.’
But of course they both knew Jenny would hate it. That it would be the last thing that she would want, that she would never forgive Mattie for allowing it. Nevertheless Mattie waved to Max, kissed her fingertip to him several times, and then shut the front door.
Tam, now known even to himself as ‘Blue’, had become everyone’s favourite cowhand. Of course he was well aware that this was entirely due to rescuing Tammy, but it couldn’t matter less for the end result was that, without exactly realising it, he had grown in confidence. Didn’t matter that everyone at the Big U went on tipping him into the dung heaps, or throwing him into the water troughs, and never mind that they made fun of his being English – they’d accepted him, and that meant more than a great deal to him – it meant just about everything, and what’s more his nightmares had stopped.
Nightmares where Jenny lay bloodstained and dead in his arms, where cars blew up before he could reach them, where he was running through fire and never reaching victims – they all began to stop without his even realising it. It was then that he began to think about Jenny again, not consciously, because he was far too busy to sit down and think consciously about anyone or anything except the business in hand, but when he was out riding, relishing the vast acres that made up the ranch, or lying in his bunk at night, staring out at the moon, which like everything round the Big U seemed to be bigger than it was anywhere else. He found himself wondering if he should, or could, write to Jenny, and then realising that the very notion of writing to apologise to someone whose life you’d ruined was more than pathetic, it was insulting.
It was when a letter from Flavia arrived telling him all the news from home, including the fact that Jenny had now been told that her face not only could be mended, but would be mended, soon, and there would be no visible scarring, that he gave in to his all too suppressed feelings of guilt, and got riotously drunk.
‘Mah heavens, Blue boy, but you got more than burned last night, you got scalped!’
Tammy ranged up beside her hero, and laughed at him appreciatively. He might be on the thin side, but he’d certainly proved he could drink.
‘Tell me something new, Tammy, tell me something new.’
Tam looked across the short divide between himself and the ranch owner’s daughter, his head throbbing as if it had seven hammers working hard in it, and wondered why it was that when he really would like someone to throw him into the horse trough, no one would?
Perhaps sensing his state of ultra-sensitivity Tammy moved closer to him, her green eyes running over his body with a great deal more interest than she had hitherto shown in him.
‘I will tell you something new, Blue. I will tell you that up there, above our ’ere heads, there’s a great pile of sweet new hay, and I have a mind to go there with you. Do you have a mind to come there with me, Blue boy?’
‘Blue’ looked at her. He could hardly see out of his eyes. He coul
d hardly hear her sweet suggestion, but he didn’t care. He knew that he was still drunk from the night before, that he was liable to be thrown out on his ear for fornicating with the boss’s daughter, but alcohol had empowered him, and he quickly followed Tammy’s long legs up the rickety ladder to the hay loft. And when the usual ritual of lovemaking had taken place, Tam fell asleep caring less, and only wanting more.
‘Only one thing you have to understand if you’re dating mah daughter, boy,’ R.J. was heard to say to Tam when the news reached him. ‘No heavy stuff, d’you hear? You try anything on with Tammy and the next thing you’ll feel is mah shotgun up your rear.’
There was little point in telling Tammy to behave herself, since she was so used to misbehaving herself she wouldn’t have known how to do otherwise. Nevertheless, once sober, and more or less in his right mind, Tam took the warning to heart, and no matter what tricks Tammy tried to play with him he was never again tempted to go up to the hay loft, happy to keep the swirling, whirling, blissful recollection tucked up and put away in his bank of better memories.
‘Blue’s coming to the gig with me, d’you hear, boys?’ Tammy announced, ahead of herself with the news as usual.
Although it was the first Tam had heard of any gig he managed to look creditably pleased, while at the same time feeling a sense of excitement, because he knew that Tammy’s brothers had formed a group called, unsurprisingly, The Bros.
The night of the gig one of the band, a cousin not a brother, was poleaxed with pneumonia, leaving The Bros without a bass guitarist. About to hit the panic button they started to phone round friends who they knew could play guitar, at the very least.
‘How about Blue here, boys?’
Once again Tammy was ahead of the game. Her brothers stared at her.
‘Sure, but he don’t play electric, Tammy. Blue only plays that damned old six-string of his. Even if he could lay it down he’s not going to be heard.’
The Moon At Midnight Page 19
