‘In heaven’s name, Molly, why?’
Molly drew herself up with dignity. ‘Because I’ve been lonely as hell, that’s why. You see, it wasn’t just him I lost. I used to be friendly with his sisters. And with his dear old mum. I fell out with my mum over it too; she thought marriages should be worked at, no matter what. So you see, my support mechanism, as it’s fashionable to call it these days, was totally smashed to pieces.’
‘Support mechanism,’ Susannah scoffed. ‘Is that what it’s supposed to be? I think I could manage without mine.’
And Molly couldn’t persuade her otherwise. But as Susannah walked away from the house to her car, she wondered whether she could really cope on her own half as well as Molly apparently did. Molly seemed to have her life – which must have been tough at the best of times – neatly sewn up now And it was amazing how well she controlled her children. She ought to be running the country, Susannah mused, unlocking her car and ducking into it; she was certainly wasted as a clerk.
CHAPTER 23
Katy found her father packing a small nylon hold-all.
‘You’re not going so soon?’ she gasped, watching him roll up a red sweater and fit it down the side of the bag.
‘Just a preliminary visit,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back again in two days.’
‘I wish I was coming with you.’ She sighed. Jan could be such a pain, making her do this, that and the other. She was far too bossy by half. If she could escape from her clutches she would. And now that it turned out that Dr Platt was a happily married man there was nothing at all to keep her here.
‘It’s a long way to go just for two days,’ her father was saying.
‘I know. I didn’t mean now; I meant when you go permanently.’
‘But Katy …’ Paul frowned. ‘There’s nothing much up there for you.’
‘That’s what Mum says too.’ She folded a shirt for him in two, and then into four. ‘But there’s nothing down here either. You’re going to be awfully lonely, aren’t you, if Mum’s not going to go with you?’
‘But of course she’ll be going with me!’ Paul shook out the shirt, lay it on the bed and folded the sleeves to the back.
‘But Mum keeps saying she’s not.’ Katy was thoroughly confused.
‘What your mother says and what she actually does are two separate things. She’ll come round in the end, you’ll see.’
‘If you say so, Dad.’ She stared hard at her father; she wanted, with all her heart, to believe he knew what he was talking about. The thought of her parents parting like this made her feel sick, but she couldn’t push it away. Somehow, deep down, she had the feeling that for once he’d got it all wrong.
‘Mum,’ Katy said, her mother having just come up to the bedroom with a heap of clean towels, ‘are you going to Glasgow with Dad or not?’
Susannah looked at them each in turn, and looked away again.
‘I’ve made my intentions quite clear,’ she said.
‘Well, I don’t think Dad –’ Katy took one look at her father’s face and decided she was needed downstairs.
‘You have to come with me, Susannah,’ Paul rasped, when Katy was safely out of earshot. ‘Everything’s been arranged.’
‘How can everything be arranged?’ Susannah demanded. ‘I’ve told you, I’m staying right here.’
‘You’re being thoroughly selfish, you know. I suppose you realise that?’
‘Oh, and you’re not? This has nothing to do with your promotion, of course? Nothing to do with your wants?’
He threw down his striped pyjamas. ‘Susannah! We’re not going through all that again. Look –’ he held out his hands as if about to make two karate chops – ‘why are we being like this? Why can’t we be friends again? Why do we have to keep hurting each other?’
Susannah went and stood by the window, her arms folded across her chest. She was as miserable as the world outside appeared, cowering under a dark grey sky. She didn’t want any of this to be happening. She wanted to slip into Paul’s arms and be comforted. She wanted it just to be the two of them again, left to get on with their lives: him to his count-down to retirement; her to her new little career. Was that so selfish?
‘This could all be so simple,’ he went on, ‘if you’d only listen to reason. Us going to Scotland together means all our problems will be solved.’
‘Solved to your satisfaction, you mean.’
‘Solved for everyone in the family. It’s the best thing you could possibly do for them.’
‘Best for them if I was out of their way.’ She turned to look up at him bleakly. ‘Well, if that’s what you’re all waiting for, I’m sure it could be arranged. I hardly need to go as far as Glasgow, though. I’ll find somewhere of my own to live.’
‘Oh, now you’re just being ridiculous.’ Paul fell on to the bed and closed his eyes. And he didn’t open them again until she’d gone.
Perhaps she was being ridiculous, she thought, running downstairs. But she really couldn’t see it. Something had got into her – a stubbornness that urged her on. And if she didn’t hang on to what she believed in then she knew she would lose all faith in herself. She would virtually cease to exist.
She went for a walk across the fields behind the cottage, feeling conspicuous and vulnerable without a dog, and finally returned through the village so that she would pass the public phone.
Shutting herself in the booth she got a number from directory enquiries and fed change from her pocket into the slot. Minutes later it was all arranged; she knew what she was going to do.
But she hadn’t reckoned with the effect her decision would have on the rest of the family.
The first person she told was Jan, who she found making out a shopping list on a wipe-clean board. Jan had got as far as writing ‘bread’ beneath the harvest fruits motif when Susannah burst into the kitchen.
‘No doubt you’ll be delighted to know,’ Susannah immediately informed her, ‘that I’ll be moving out as well.’
Jan paused and looked up, preoccupied, the pen hovering with her thoughts. ‘Of course you are, dear.’ She smiled. ‘You’re going to Scotland with Paul.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m going to London.’ She looked up at the ceiling and waited.
‘To London? But … I don’t understand.’ Events were moving too quickly for Jan to keep up.
‘I’ve just phoned Dora Saxby,’ Susannah went on. ‘That’s the woman my uncle left his house to, if you remember. I asked if she would mind me renting the place for a while. I knew she wouldn’t have done anything about it yet. And she seemed pleased to have someone to look after it.’
‘But you’re … not … leaving Paul!’
‘Well … I wouldn’t put it quite like that. He’s insisting on going to Scotland; I’m going to London. It’s just a parting of the ways.’
‘Oh, Susannah, please don’t. There’s surely no need for all this.’ Jan clutched the onyx pendant at her throat, her eyes flickering about as though she could take nothing in. ‘I – when I asked for ideas as to how we could all manage together … I didn’t mean … I didn’t think it would all come to this …’
‘Come to what?’ Katy came into the kitchen, her eyes wide and alert, but when neither Jan nor her mother would look at her, she needed no further telling. Her mother and father really were going to split up. They were no different from hundreds of other parents. She fled back upstairs to her bedroom and slammed the door in disgust.
Simon went very quiet at the news. Only Natalie could talk to him. Finding him stretched full-length on the sofa without even the television on, she squeezed in beside him and lay down.
‘Perhaps it’s the menopause,’ she said helpfully, snuggling under his arm. Jan had got her a book of women’s ailments from the local library, and she felt well prepared for any eventuality now. ‘That’s all to do with hormones too, you know.’
‘Bit young for all that, isn’t she?’
‘Well, some women start earlier than others; there
aren’t any written laws.’
‘So what d’you think the solution is?’ Simon’s tone was cynical. ‘You think this is just another problem for the doctors to solve? They can cure a twenty-five-year itch, can they? Or bring Glasgow nearer to Bristol?’
‘No, of course not. But perhaps your mum needs pills of some sort, and – and counselling, maybe, like me.’
Simon showed his contempt of the idea with a grunt; there was a limit to what pills and talk could do.
He fell into another silence, then broke it by saying with a scornful laugh, ‘D’you know, before all this, I was going to ask you to marry me. What do you think of that? I was thinking: wouldn’t it be good to have what my parents have had all these years? Something really good and lasting and strong. Perhaps if we’d been married – properly committed – then we wouldn’t have had difficulties either. We would have had more reason to stick at working things out. But now they’ve bust up like everyone else does. It was all nothing but a sham.’
‘That’s what I thought when my parents parted,’ Natalie said forlornly, forgetting her intention to comfort Simon. ‘Marriage is a complete waste of time, really, isn’t it? You might as well not bother.’
Paul didn’t know what emotion to put on his face when he discovered his wife heaving a suitcase down from the top of a cupboard in their room. Should he show delight that she had decided to come with him – or was she about to carry out her threat of going off on her own?
‘I’m going to London,’ she told him, putting paid to his last shred of hope, and she briefly explained where she would be staying.
Paul didn’t know whether to hit her or throw himself at her feet. He waved his arms about helplessly for a moment, then put both his hands on his hips. ‘Well, if that isn’t the daftest thing I’ve ever heard!’ he blustered. ‘What the hell’s the point of going there? I thought you were desperate to stay in this area – to be nearer to your god-damned clients.’
Susannah snapped back the locks on the case and threw up the lid. ‘I’ll be within commuting distance,’ she told him tightly. ‘I’m not working in people’s homes at the moment. All I need to be able to do is to deliver completed items when necessary.’
‘Sounds to me like you’ll be losing all your profits on petrol.’
‘Well, it would sound like that to you, wouldn’t it?’ She put a hand to her forehead, suddenly weary. ‘Look, I don’t want to start another argument, Paul.’
‘You can’t expect me to take this lying down like a helpless lamb. God – I haven’t even done anything! It’s not as though I’ve played around with another –’ He stopped, shocked by his own thoughts – and by their implications. He stared at her, round-mouthed, his eyes bulging with the pictures conjured up in his mind. Then he let out a self-deprecating laugh.
‘My God, how naive can one get?’ He rubbed the back of his neck and walked a full circle, trying to take it on board. ‘So that’s what this is all about, is it? Jeez – now it makes sense. Now I see why the family was too much trouble for you all of a sudden. And who’s the lucky fella, eh? This Harvey Watchamacallim, I suppose? Him with the smooth talk and the money to fritter away? And nothing better to do?’
‘No!’ Susannah reddened at the accusation. ‘This has nothing to do with him. Or any other man. I – I give you my word on that.’
But Paul almost wished there were another man involved; at least he would know what he was up against. At least there would be something to fight. ‘I simply don’t understand,’ he said, sinking on to the edge of the bed.
He watched her fold jeans and fleece-lined sweat-shirts, and his tone was almost pleading when he spoke again. ‘You’ve still time to change your mind, you know. Oh, come with me to Glasgow, Sue! Just for the two days. I’m sure you’ll like it up there. At least it’d be a break for you. You’ll be able to sort your thoughts out; get everything in proportion.’
He thought he saw her wavering as she turned with a nightdress over one arm. But after briefly glancing at him she shook her head – hard.
‘Susannah.’ He sprang from the bed and turned her back to face him. ‘Don’t break up the family like this. Please, Susannah, please!’
But if there were any magic words he could say to make her change her mind, he didn’t know what they were. He had to give up in the end. And pray that she’d soon see sense.
Susannah found Katy in her room. She hadn’t appeared for the evening meal.
‘Are your hands hurting again?’ she asked worriedly.
‘A little.’ Katy regarded her mother with soulful, accusing eyes. ‘I wish you weren’t going away. How can you go and leave me like this?’ She held up her hands as though they were in iron chains. ‘And why do you keep changing everything? Why can’t things stay the same?’
‘Nothing ever stays the same, Katy. You know that perfectly well.’ She shrugged. ‘I just feel I must get away for a while. I can’t stay here.’
‘You’ll come back, though, won’t you?’
The words were a knife in Susannah’s heart; her mother hadn’t been able to come back. At least she wasn’t exposing Katy to the same gut-wrenching sense of loss that she’d experienced when her mother died.
‘I’m not going to the ends of the earth, you know. I’ll still be able to pop in. Anyway,’ she tried to smile, ‘you’re a big girl now. You don’t need me.’
‘But we don’t want you to go to London. And we do need you. We want you to stay here with us.’
Susannah looked at the fluff gathering in rolls on top of the pine chest, exasperation welling up through layers of sympathy, helplessness and guilt. ‘But it’s not the real me that you want,’ she said. ‘And I can’t be the old one any longer.’
She got up from the bed then, muttering something about dinner going cold, and left Katy more confused than ever. But there was no other way she could explain her feelings; no way Katy would ever see.
CHAPTER 24
The Webbs’ utility room was a part of the old dairy, the original purpose of which could only now be guessed at. A spacious but gloomy room, it was currently cluttered with an assortment of household items for which neither Harvey nor Julia could find a home. Only a large gleaming white washing machine that loomed out of the shadowy muddle served any real purpose in their lives – along with a battered stainless steel sink and a floor mop.
‘You left them on the draining-board, you say?’ Harvey flicked the strip light into life and set it humming. ‘Let me get them for you then.’
He began picking his way over old shoes, a piece of dented brass curtain rail, an empty plastic petrol can, and a trug containing weeds. He had forgotten he was supposed to have sorted it all out.
‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ Susannah said, watching him negotiate the mine-field like someone wading through glue. ‘It’s not so much the value of the things, otherwise I wouldn’t have troubled you; it’s just the bother of getting replacements … Silly me, I should have remembered I’d left them there to dry the last time I was here. It would have saved – oh, thank you. Thank you very much.’
Harvey had retrieved her spatulas, sponges and mixing bowls and thrust them into a Woolworth’s carrier bag, and now, dangling the bag by one finger, he held it out to her.
‘A pleasure to be of assistance, ma’am. But I know what you really came for,’ he added, giving her a comical nod and a wink.
‘I – what?’ She took the bag from him, not sure what was in his mind.
‘Yes –’ He was grinning broadly. ‘I’ll write you out your cheque.’
‘Oh no! Good heavens! That wasn’t the reason I came.’ But of course he’d seen through her excuse. She should have realised he would.
She would rather not have had to come at all, only she was desperately in need of the money. She didn’t want to have to touch the account she held jointly with Paul, unless compelled to do so.
‘Please don’t think that I –’ she went on.
‘– that you’re as av
aricious as the rest of us? I know you better than that. All the same, I must pay you some time; it might as well be now. Now where did I put that cheque book?’
Stepping out of the utility room he strode through a coolly tiled inner hall and into the carpeted lounge, leaving Susannah to follow him meekly. When he had found the cheque book among a litter of papers in the bureau and filled one in with a flourish, he grandly ripped it off.
‘Your first job complete and paid for,’ he said, bowing as he handed it to her. ‘Allow me to congratulate you, Mrs Harding, on an accomplished piece of work.’
‘Thank you,’ she mumbled awkwardly, folding the slip of paper without looking at it. She tucked it into the pocket of her thick-knit cardigan.
‘You don’t seem very pleased,’ he remarked, watching her all the while.
‘Of course I’m pleased … very.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘I – I’m sorry but I have to dash now. Lots of things to do.’ She was already moving towards the front door as she spoke, but Harvey managed to get there first.
‘Susannah, what’s the matter?’ He had put his hand on the latch – not, it seemed, with the intention of seeing her off the premises but of holding it firmly in place. She was not going to get away, apparently, until he had had an answer.
‘Nothing’s the matter. Really. I’m perfectly all right.’
‘Really,’ he echoed flatly, cynicism curving his mouth. ‘You drift in here looking like the world’s come to a tragic end – but nothing’s really the matter?’
She stared at the typically masculine area of his throat revealed by his blue open-neck shirt. ‘Well –’ she tossed her head dismissively – ‘I’ve a few minor problems at the moment. Nothing for you to worry about, though. I’m sure I shall survive. Would you let me out now, please? I really must be off.’
‘But, Susannah, I thought we were friends.’ He admonished her with a frown. ‘Didn’t I give you your first commission? And encourage you all the way?’
Puppies Are For Life Page 21
