The Path to the Lake

by Susan Sallis

  Juniper’s daughter, who turned out to be older than Mrs Hardy, appeared soon after, and sat with her mother, holding her hand until two nurses from Tall Trees knocked on the door because they could not see the bell. They had a wheelchair and we swathed Juniper in the car rug and walked back up the hill with her. Mrs Hardy – Hildie – decided she could do no more, and came back with me, and for another hour we sat by the fire and talked about Juniper, and how odd it was that she and Jinx had had some kind of relationship.

  ‘When he spoke to you he could not have known that she was going to be coming to Tall Trees,’ Hildie mused. ‘I wonder whether it was his devious way of trying to get back in touch with her?’

  ‘I’m glad she didn’t marry him. She seems much too nice.’

  ‘Yes.’ Hildie sighed. ‘I’d better be going. Hardy will want supper. He’s been in Cheltenham all day, loading Tom’s stuff.’ She shook her head. ‘We’ve brought more back each day. There’s so much needs cleaning up. I meant to phone you but it were always so late when we got back . . .’

  I patted her hand and made reassuring sounds. ‘What about Joy and Michael?’ I was determined to name them from the outset.

  ‘Still in hospital. They need to put on some weight. They’re so tiny . . . how Della would have coped . . . well, we shall never know. Sometimes I wake up and think none of it has happened and then . . . it crashes in all over again.’ She put a hand to her head, and I patted her shoulder awkwardly, and she half-turned to give me a smile. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Venables . . . Viv. I’m so busy I don’t have a chance to dwell on it. I’ve been doing out the back room for the kiddies. We had the box room made into a bathroom back in the seventies, and I’ve got the washing machine there, so it will be next to their nursery. Luckily we had that dormer room put in the attic at the same time. It will be just right for poor Tom. He can work up there if he needs to.’ She sighed again. ‘I don’t know how he’s going to cope. He’s still got no idea of the amount of work from one baby, let alone two.’

  I thought of our spare bedroom; it was full of David’s books and clothes. I hadn’t been in it since . . . then. Could I transfer the books into the dining room? And what about the clothes? I squeezed my eyes shut, and opened them to find Hildie standing up and taking gloves from her pocket.

  ‘I’ll take you home,’ I said. ‘Really. I insist.’ I ignored her protests and fetched my coat and car keys. The fog had definitely lifted, but there was still no moon or stars, and the street lamps made small and isolated pools of light only.

  When we got down to the river she said, ‘No light. He’s not back yet. Come on in and see what I’ve been up to.’

  I followed her into a long narrow passage ending in stairs. A door on the right led into a big living room, a table at one end, armchairs and a sofa at the other.

  ‘Hardy took down the middle wall, gave us a bit more room. Tom wasn’t keen on working in his room. All that studying . . . he could do it better with us around and the telly on – or so he said!’ She laughed, and I said something about him doing all right anyway. She nodded. ‘He did that. Poor lad. This is the first really bad thing that’s happened to him. Anyway, come on upstairs and see the nursery.’

  It was a dream: one side pink, the other blue, the ceiling yellow, the cots white. ‘I got them in the charity shop. Not quite matching, so I painted them white. You got to get special paint in case they try to eat it!’

  I was full of admiration. ‘It’s just lovely.’ I looked at her. ‘Oh Hildie. They are so lucky. Coming home to this, and to you and Hardy.’

  ‘Well, actually, they’re coming home to Tom. I know that sounds obvious, but officially, they will be living with him and we will just happen to be around!’ She laughed uncomfortably. ‘It’s to do with the Social Services and Della’s mother. Apparently.’

  I looked at the identical mobiles clipped to the end of each cot. ‘Are you all right with it?’

  There was no need to ask, really, and she just smiled and nodded. ‘These are new. I got them from that big baby shop in the Mall.’ She pressed a switch on a mobile and it went round, displaying birds and butterflies and playing a nursery rhyme. ‘You can have them without the music. And you can have the music without the movement. Hardy reckons I bought them for myself, never mind the babies!’ She laughed again, and I realized how nervous she was.

  ‘Hildie, please don’t forget that I can help out at any time. Really.’

  ‘I know. And I know you mean it. But what with Tom being shell-shocked, and all the chit-chat from Social Services . . . I can’t help feeling a bit nervy. It’s daft I know—’

  ‘No it’s not, because ultimately you will bear most of the responsibility. But I do want you to know that I’m there, and I should be honoured to have them.’ She laughed again, and I said soberly, ‘Hildie, there are plenty of people in this village who would not countenance me as a childminder. They think at the best I am a careless driver, and at the worst—’

  She grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t you dare even say it! I know what that old goat Jinx said to you.’

  ‘There was nothing wrong with the car, Hildie. I lost control, and it could well have been my fault. I was in a bit of a state at the time—’

  ‘I think they missed something, Viv. It was obviously an accident, so they didn’t have one of those specialist police teams on the job. I’ve said it all along – there was something the matter with that car. Nothing to do with you being in a state.’ She looked up at me. ‘It was not your fault,’ she said slowly and emphatically.

  I tightened my lips against sudden tears, and nodded just as slowly. At that moment I believed her.

  Even so, when I got home I still avoided looking in the hall mirror.

  Nine

  TOM FETCHED THE twins on Monday morning. It was 18 December, and everyone else was thinking of Christmas.

  The journey home was difficult, and their arrival was chaotic. The babies had not enjoyed the journey, and had complained bitterly from their individual car-seats. Tom tried them with the radio, but the noise they made completely drowned it. By the time they crossed the river and turned right alongside the terraced cottages, he was using a technique he had learned when Della’s mother had ranted at him, after Della’s death, when everything had become insupportable. He tightened his muscles until his whole being was compressed into a grim stoicism and he became nothing but an efficient machine.

  His parents were bewildered by both the noise and Tom’s strange behaviour. As the car-seats came into the house, and the neighbours came out of theirs, they admitted to each other, much later, that they felt invaded. Invaded by their own son and their brand-new miraculous grandchildren. It made no sense at all. Tilly-next-door shouted above the cacophony, ‘They’ll settle soon enough, don’t worry.’

  Hildie whispered to Hardy, ‘How soon is soon enough?’

  And Hardy whispered back, ‘Not soon enough by half, I’d say.’

  Tom took off his coat, lifted both babies on to the sofa, unwound blankets, unpopped Babygros, and used wet wipes with a kind of grim determination. The twins were both, in turn, momentarily taken aback, and their nerve-twanging whine became sporadic.

  Tom said, ‘Leave the car, Ma, we can unpack later. Can you make up a couple of bottles of that milk stuff? I’ll feed them now. They’ve been like this the whole journey, so they should sleep.’

  Somehow, they struggled through that first afternoon and evening. Tom looked cadaverous; Hardy not much better. Hildie thought about the long night ahead and the even longer day after that. And the funeral. Della’s funeral, which was on Thursday.

  She said brightly, ‘I’ll phone Viv in a minute and ask her to come to tea tomorrow.’

  Vivian’s story

  It was Monday. I went to see Juniper Stevens in Tall Trees, and wheeled her down to the Tump to look at the misty sea and the pier, and to ask her how she was.

  ‘I’m resigned, I suppose.’ She looked up at me from the chair. ‘Don�
��t suppose I’d ever have got one leg over the railings, let alone the whole of me, but just for a minute or two it seemed such a good idea.’ She grinned; she had her teeth in and seemed pretty well with-it. ‘I reckon I’ve passed my sell-by date. If you’re not needed by someone or something, then you can’t help wondering what you’re doing taking up space someone else could use!’

  She didn’t sound bitter; but she was serious all right. I replied just as seriously. ‘I know what you mean, Juniper – I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘No, you don’t, my lovely. You was a teacher, everyone knows that. You gave it up after the accident. Well, you’re fit now, and you haven’t gone back to it. But you know you could. You might feel useless, but you could change all that.’

  No one had spoken so straight to me before.

  She said, ‘Let’s go up to that seat, then you can sit down and look me in the eye and tell me to mind my own bloody business.’

  I wheeled the chair up the rough road, put the brake on again, and almost collapsed on to the slatted seat. Wheelchairs are like supermarket trolleys and have minds of their own.

  She said, ‘Go on.’

  I said, ‘How do you know . . . all that stuff?’

  ‘Tisn’ a very big place. Old Mr Venables had a good job at the museum, then came to live here. Very respected he was, too. We didn’t know your David that well, but we was pleased to find he’d married a nice girl and wanted to live locally. We wasn’t that particularly curious. But we was interested.’ She looked at me; she had cloudy blue eyes, and somewhere in their depths I could see something . . . sympathy?

  I said carefully, ‘What else do you know, Juniper?’

  She did not answer for some time. Her gaze went past me to the indistinct horizon. She said at last, ‘Some people say you did it deliberately.’

  ‘Why would I have done that?’ I held my breath.

  She gave a tiny shrug. ‘To kill him? To kill yourself?’

  I let my breath go. ‘I had no reason to do either, Juniper.’

  She shrugged again. ‘John Jinks did put it about you wasn’t sleeping together. Maybe your man looked somewhere else. Happened to me and my Charley.’

  There was so much information there, I couldn’t take it in at first. I said lamely, ‘Married couples have difficulties. They work through them.’ What had Jinx been saying?

  ‘That’s zackly what I said to him, my dear. He’s a trouble-maker, he is.’ She was triumphant, and my heartbeat decelerated. ‘I had to do just the same. Work through it. My Charley, he had a fling, too. And it was after that I fell for my little one. Just like you. Only, praise be, I did not lose her.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Don’t worry, Vivian Venables. You’re still working your way through it. Think like that, and it won’t be so bad.’ She saw my expression, and added, ‘That was your name, wasn’t it? Vivian?’

  I wanted to shout and laugh. Juniper Stevens thought David had had a fling – was that what she was saying? If only . . . if only it had been that. I nodded to my name.

  She was off again. ‘When you get to my age, you understand how things happen. And once they’ve happened you can’t put the clock back, so you just got to get on with it. Some folks just sit on it, push it right away and say they’ve forgotten all about it. I’d rather deal with it like you are. Work through it.’

  She obviously had not heard about my running. I wondered what else she knew. I tested her out.

  ‘You and Jinx . . . you were saying last night about not wanting to marry someone with the same initial . . . you were actually going to marry him?’ I tried to make my voice incredulous and teasing at the same time.

  Her chin wobbled, as if she might be trying to toss her head. ‘He wanted me to. He said I drove him mad. We met at one of the dances in the war. I was eighteen and he was a bit older – he says he’s the same age as me, but he was born just after the Armistice so he’s four years older. And he knew a thing or two. Turned my head right round the other way, he did. We used to meet down by the lake – watch the moon on the water, that sort of thing. He tried it on one night and I pushed him in!’ She cackled with laughter, then sobered. ‘I didn’t know he couldn’t swim. He was floundering about – it’s over twelve feet deep in places. Anyway I knew something about that lake. That’s where I was begun . . . what’s the word? Conceived. That’s where I was conceived, and my mam always took me down when the lake was dredged, to see what she called our family crest.’ She shook her head. ‘A door knob. An old-fashioned brass door knob. Can you believe it? Apparently the man who was my father worked on that lake, and the night I was begun – conceived – he drove a great hole in the wall of the lake and cemented in a door knob. He told my mam that one day it would open for someone . . . when it was important enough. What d’you think of that? It was very romantic for an ordinary everyday mason, wasn’t it?’ She cackled again. ‘Luckily I knew exactly where it was because there’s a mark on top of the wall. I just laid on the wall, took old Jinx’s hand when it came up, and put it right on that-there door knob. And he heaved himself up. Reckoned I’d saved his life, so I’d got to marry him. I almost believed him, but then when he went back off leave I met my Charley, and I knew straight off he was the right one. Even when he was all dazzled by Jeannie Watkins from the haberdasher’s, I knew he was still the one. And I was right. He was.’

  She became conscious of my stare, and frowned. ‘I haven’t been and shocked you, have I? Talking too much? I thought it’d help to know other people have had your problems and learned to live with them.’ She looked away morosely. ‘Anyway, it’s supposed to do me good to talk.’

  ‘Yes – yes. Don’t stop. I’m surprised, but I’m not shocked, not in the way you mean. Keep going.’ She sucked in her lips stubbornly. I said, ‘Tell me about your mother and . . . and the door knob. When you said about it opening . . . is there a door behind it?’

  She laughed. ‘No, course not. No secret passages behind, neither. He meant when it pulled out it would mean something . . . not that it will ever pull out until the whole lake is broken up. It’s like part of the rock itself, you should test it yourself some time.’

  I had of course done just that, and could vouch for its total firmness. Yet it was at the moment lying on my kitchen table.

  There was such a long pause I thought she really had dried up, but then she sighed and started again.

  ‘The bloody door knob was the reason I didn’t have nothing much more to do with old Jinx. It reminded me of what Mam had said when she warned me about the American soldiers and told me to keep my knickers on.’ She cackled her laugh. ‘We had a good old row that day. Ended up with me yelling at her that if she’d kept hers on I wouldn’t be cooking and cleaning up at the gatekeeper’s, then back home doing the same thing for her. And she reminded me about the door knob, and how it was the most romantic thing ever happened to her, and my dad was the only man she’d ever really loved, and though it had been hard having me without him around she never regretted it . . .’ She sighed. ‘They would’ve got married. Or so she said. He was drownded a day later, when they opened the gates and let the sea water flood into the lake. They reckoned it would take three or four high tides to do the job proper, like. But that high tide was the highest we’d had for twenty years, and it came over the top of the wall like Niagara Falls, and he was there checking the gates, and his foot got caught on the lever and held him down. They dived and dived, but when they brought him up he was dead. Poor Mam. She never got over it. Neither did I. Not really. It was another thing I had to get on with. So I decided the door knob was telling me something that night. It saved Jinx’s life, I suppose, and it warned me . . . it warned me . . .’

  I glanced at her, and saw she was going through her memories as if they were a series of photographs. I did not doubt that she had had to put up with taunts in those good old days, when the village had been really small and everyone had known that she was . . . illegitimate. What a word to use about an innocent child! Possibly the S
econd World War had done away with a lot of bigotry, but not all of it. I, too, sat there and let a few of my own memories filter back, and thanked God that Jinx hadn’t told Juniper everything.

  I wheeled her back to Tall Trees and into her room; for the moment she was staying out of the main rooms. Hildie Hardy had told me that new arrivals were allowed to keep themselves to themselves for a while. ‘No one expects them to take it all in at once; bad enough that they’ve had to give up their homes. Let them have some privacy,’ she had said. I helped Juniper out of her wheelchair and into a recliner next to the window. As I walked back to the Tump it occurred to me that she probably did not know that her old flame was in the same building.

  The message machine was flashing as I walked briskly down the hall – not looking in the direction of the mirror. It was Hildie.

  ‘Viv? Funny, I can’t think of you as anything but Mrs Venables yet! Listen, Tom has fetched the babies. They’re here! We’re all at sixes and sevens, but I do want you to meet them properly as soon as possible. Will you come to tea? Tomorrow? Just sandwiches and cakes. I’d like you to be here right at the beginning. I thought we could put them to bed between us. Let me know.’

  I felt diffident, to say the least. Tom did not know me, presumably he was in a bad way; it was difficult enough to have to rely on his parents, but a strange woman thrust into the tragic scenario seemed . . . unnecessary. I rang to tell Hildie how I felt.

  She said flatly, ‘Viv . . . it’s Della’s funeral on Thursday. I was hoping . . . I know it’s a lot to ask. If you come to tea tomorrow you could see if you were able to face a day with them. They are noisy. Tom was all prepared to take them with us, but what between the weather—’

  I interrupted gladly. ‘I’d be so happy to come and be with them, Hildie. We’ve talked of this. If Tom agrees, then . . . of course.’