The Path to the Lake

by Susan Sallis

  ‘Is – is your mother all right?’ Something surely had to be wrong.

  ‘I made her rest.’ He reached for the handle of the pram; he wanted to come in. ‘She tried to phone you, but there was no reply.’ He joggled the front wheels on to the slatted boot-scraper; I moved back, opening the door as wide as it would go. I looked down the hall. He’d never get past the coat stand, telephone table, that chair piled high with books and papers . . .

  I said, ‘I’m so sorry. I slept late. Didn’t hear a thing.’

  He got the front wheels over the shallow step; he would now have to do a sharp left turn, and the buggy was long. He coped with that.

  ‘Good wide front door. Shallow step. Decent access.’ He spoke as if to himself, then glanced down the length of the hall. ‘If you could get rid of that chair . . . I’ll move the coat stand behind the door . . . yes, we can manage very well like that. Where do you spend most time?’

  ‘The living room. Straight ahead.’ I squeezed my eyes shut for a second; was it Thursday already? I couldn’t have slept for over twenty-four hours.

  He pushed the buggy past the telephone table and through into the living room. Luckily I had been in the kitchen since I got dressed, so I hadn’t had time to make muddles elsewhere, and no one sees them in that room because their eyes go to the windows and the view of the sea.

  Not Tom’s eyes. He swept the big square room with a single glance, and parked the buggy right in the middle of the elderly carpet.

  ‘This is fine,’ he pronounced. He pushed back the hood slightly and peered inside at the babies. ‘Still asleep. I’ll say one thing for that female Hitler back home who calls herself a health visitor. She knew what she was talking about when she said: “If they won’t settle after a feed, walk them.”’

  I had to work out that ‘back home’ meant Cheltenham. Our village-cum-town hadn’t been home to Tom Hardy for a long time.

  I said, ‘But that hill . . . you could have stayed on the flat and done the sea front.’

  He straightened and looked at me, surprised. ‘I had to inspect your place some time,’ he said. ‘Ma said it was fine, but the Hitler woman told us what to look for. And with twins, easy access is very important.’ He dropped his head, checked the babies again and added, ‘Not good at the cottage. And we don’t know where to put this damned thing.’ He indicated the buggy.

  ‘There’s the garage, of course.’ I held on to the back of the sofa; there was something surreal about everything.

  ‘Dad keeps his tools in there. Works in there, too.’

  ‘Surely, just for the time being . . . and it’s warm and dry . . .’

  ‘Yes. That’s true. If we moved the work bench slightly. Yes. We could do that. In fact Ma and I could probably do it before Dad got in from work.’ He paused, looking thoughtfully down into the pram. ‘I’d better get off.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Half an hour to get here. Probably fifteen minutes to get back?’

  ‘Takes me ten to get to the level, probably another ten to walk along to the river.’

  ‘Right.’ He was already starting a three-point turn with the buggy. ‘Can I see your kitchen on the way out?’

  My heart sank. I opened the kitchen door and looked through at the remains of my ‘breakfast’ on the kitchen table. Milk bottle, bread, marmalade pot, it looked horribly sordid. The sink was full of crocks. My gardening boots had fallen over by the back door. A bucket of stuff to go down to the compost bin . . .

  He said, ‘Marvellous. Room for the buggy in here if necessary. Warm. You’ll need to disinfect things. I’ll bring up some stuff in the car.’

  He went on down to the front door. We jiggled about as I got past the buggy to open up. I was breathless and suddenly full of anger. I spoke very clearly.

  ‘I thought I was coming down to your place. Your mother seemed to think it would be easier.’

  ‘Oh yes. Tomorrow. The funeral. But if you are going to take the babies occasionally, we need to make sure of the environment.’

  All right, I had offered. But . . . but . . . the sheer cheek of the man! He turned right and wiggled the buggy over the step and on to the scraper and into the porch. Then he turned and forced his saturnine face to smile. ‘It was very kind of you to offer. Ma was appreciative.’

  I waited for him to say he too was appreciative, but he turned and walked to the gate. Then he was gone.

  I stood there at the open door, still startled by his coming and going. He had not used my name nor any names for his children. Neither had I. It seemed so very . . . strange.

  I cleared up in the kitchen. Dealt with the chair, which I had shoved into my bedroom out of the way, then got a bucket of hot soapy water and a floor cloth and got down on my hands and knees. David’s words seemed a long way off now. As I scrubbed, rinsed, wiped, changed the water and scrubbed again, I thought about David’s appearance, looking for a meaning, trying to believe that it had all really happened. Hildie had believed in the door knob as a symbol, and had made me believe it, too; but the door knob was real, it was tangible, it had held me to the earth . . .

  I finished the floor and went into the living room, holding that precious, tangible object to my chest again. In spite of the heating it was cold in the big square room, and I slid my talisman into my pocket while I struck a match and lit the fire. I wished I’d done it before, so that Tom Hardy could have seen the room at its best. And then knew that he would only have seen a danger point; I made a mental note to find the spark guard. Then I sat and gazed out of the window and held the door knob in both hands.

  Absolutely nothing happened. I watched the darkness creep from the east and cover the little town, and then, as the invisible sun sank into the sea, engulf everything that I knew was there. My world. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel. Not absurd.

  I stood up and switched on the lights. I was tired. In spite of that long sleep, I was bone-tired.

  I made tea in my pristine kitchen and took it back to where I knew the sea was below me. I thought of those words again.

  David had not been a fan of the Beatles, yet he had said very clearly and distinctly, ‘All you need is love.’

  I spoke the words aloud, trying to make more of them. I knew they contained . . . everything. And as I looked down to the blackness that was the sea, I knew something else, too. They were the only words I would hear from David. I was almost sure . . . I was sure . . . that I would not see him again in this life.

  For a moment, only a moment, I wanted to cry out with pain. But there was no pain. So I made no sound.

  Eleven

  HILDIE HAD INTENDED to ring Viv and warn her after Tom left with the buggy, but she forgot. She took it out on Tom when he got back.

  ‘It’s no good you criticizing! She doesn’t see the muddles. No point in putting things away when you’re going to need them again next day. No one else to worry about.’ She told him about Viv and David Venables and the gossip that had surrounded the whole dreadful accident. ‘And you take the twins up there to inspect her premises!’ She snorted indignantly. ‘That girl has not been interested in her surroundings for a long time. Not unlike someone else I know.’ She stared at him significantly. She had waited until Hardy had gone into the garage to work on some window frames.

  ‘Maybe I was taking a bit of a liberty. But it had to be done some time, Ma. If she’s going to be childminding for us, then we have to check out that her house is safe and warm and hygienic.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It was. A very pleasant yet odd bungalow, stuck into the side of the hill like that. The living room was chilly, but that’s soon remedied. The kitchen was warm. She’s not a tidy person, but of course she’ll learn fast. Especially when they begin to crawl. That home-care woman told me a thing or two about keeping anything precious at head height once they begin to crawl.’

  This little speech placated his mother slightly. She repeated, ‘Mrs Venables has had more important things to think about this past year. Especially since S
eptember.’

  ‘What happened in September?’ Tom was not really curious.

  ‘Her husband . . .’ Hildie stopped, then tried to pass it off. ‘She felt very close to her husband just then. It helped her.’

  Tom looked at his mother. She was peeling potatoes, and she nicked her finger with the knife. He took it from her and tore off some kitchen roll.

  ‘I’ll do that. Hold the paper over it, stop the bleeding.’ He pushed her into a chair and returned to the potatoes. ‘Do I gather that Viv Venables conjured up a ghost?’

  ‘Don’t you dare laugh, our Tom. It can happen, you know. When two people are very close.’ She squeezed her finger till her eyes watered. ‘It can happen.’

  Tom said nothing. She wondered whether he might think Mrs Venables was crazy; too crazy to look after his babies. She said, ‘If I died first I’d try to get to your dad somehow. If that’s what he wanted.’

  Tom looked round at her and smiled. ‘He’d want it, Ma. And I reckon you could do it, too.’

  She sniffed, then said, ‘So you’re all right with Viv coming down here tomorrow while we three go to Cheltenham?’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked surprised. ‘I thought it was all arranged.’ He put the saucepan on the hob and swilled his hands. ‘Did you think I might be put off by a ghost or two hanging around the place? I reckon there’s a few hanging around me, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, Tom . . .’

  Mrs Hardy went to the back door and called Hardy in for his supper. She was glad she had opened up a bit about Viv. Tom had scoffed rather than scorned. He might even be slightly curious.

  Vivian’s story

  I did not think I would write any more. The things I wrote about, they were necessary. They had to be recorded before my memory of them faded or changed in any way.

  That was done. That precious night was recorded in my biro pen inside a pad of A4 paper, and I put it into the small case with my marriage certificate, David’s death certificate and the deeds of the house.

  But then I got it out again on Thursday night, after Della’s funeral, because I realized that it had become more than a record of David. It was a record of the Hardys and what was happening to them. And that was not over. They had a future because of the babies. And somehow I was a hanger-on to that future. I needed to go on recording for a little while, at least. Perhaps just what had happened that day . . . or the next. I don’t know.

  Anyway, Thursday, 21 December. The day of Della Hardy’s funeral.

  I arrived at the cottages by the river much too early. Mr Hardy opened the door to me in his shirt-sleeves, a tie held between finger and thumb with distaste. He stood aside for me to go past him; the incessant baby wails made it pointless for either of us to speak. I went into the big living room, where Tom Hardy was sitting on the sofa trying to feed the babies. They were both rejecting their bottles with a kind of irritable panic; it was a far cry from Tuesday’s tea party, when Tom had managed the whole thing like an expert. I had been nervous before; unable to sleep and unable to run. I badly wanted to turn and run right then and there.

  Tom flashed me an upward look that held relief. He placed the feeding bottles on the table in front of him, then gently moved one twin then another, and stood up. The noise crescendoed.

  ‘Sit in that space,’ he said, close to my ear. ‘See if you can position the babies on your lap . . .’ He eased me into place. ‘Now the pillow and the towel. That’s good.’

  Mr Hardy had gone. Hildie appeared and tried to help me, and Tom brushed her away. ‘She has to do it alone after we’ve gone,’ he said loudly and slowly.

  ‘You go and get ready!’ Hildie said. She gave him a shove when he didn’t seem to hear. He looked at me dickering about with one of the feeding bottles, and went into the hall. I flashed a grateful smile at Hildie. She grabbed the other bottle and massaged one of the tiny heads. Her baby settled, and the decibels halved. My baby – I knew it was Michael because he had a blue cardigan on – was red with anger. I waited until he drew breath and said gently into the silence, ‘Come on now, Michael. A good breakfast is a good start to the day.’ He had already squeezed his eyes tightly ready for the next howl of rage, and then, without warning, he took the teat and sucked on it with enormous power.

  Hildie said, ‘It’s as if they know what today is. Do you think that’s possible?’

  ‘Yes. I think anything is possible.’ The sound of feeding babies was instant balm.

  ‘Poor little things. But . . . do you think you can manage?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’ll find out, won’t I?’ I grinned up at her. Both bottles were in my hands, now, and I was managing. I said, ‘You look really nice, Hildie. I hope you will be all right.’

  ‘Yes.’ She straightened, her eyes still on the babies. ‘I’ll be all right. So will Hardy. And . . .’ She sighed. ‘So will Tom.’

  Those two words, ‘all’ and ‘right’, did not mean much, except that everyone would go through the motions. I smiled wryly and she smiled back.

  I was still feeding the babies when they left.

  David could have got a strip cartoon from my day at Number 1, Riverside Cottages. The fact that the babies cried whenever they were awake made quite ordinary activities completely chaotic. I left them safely entrenched in cushions on the sofa while I took out the bottles and put them in a sterilizer, but before I could take the baby wipes and nappies back in they were crying bitterly, and by the time I had cleaned and changed one of them – it turned out to be Joy – the other one, Michael, was apoplectic, and I was trembling all over.

  Variations on that theme happened most of the day. I remembered what Tom had said about walking them, but the buggy was nowhere in sight, and in any case, had it been right there in the living room, it would have taken hours to install the twins in it, then jiggle it down the hall and steps to the pavement . . . I quailed at the thought. The best I could do was to put Joy on my lap, so that she could drum her tiny feet against my chest, and get Michael on to my shoulder and rub his back. That was their favourite thing; the back-rubbing.

  They took it in turns until lunchtime, then we had a battle with bottles for nearly an hour before resuming the massage. And then Joy stopped kicking and quite suddenly was asleep. Michael grizzled on for a while, and I slid him down by my side and tucked his blanket around him and leaned my head against the back of the sofa and . . . smiled. It was two thirty and Hildie had said they would be home before dark. Another two hours to go, maybe. I opened my eyes and stared down at them, because I could not hear them breathing. They were. And then Michael pursed his lips and gave an experimental suck on his tongue. And Joy smiled. I knew it was wind, and prayed it wasn’t bad enough to wake her. She stayed asleep. At first I had to consciously keep still, but then I relaxed gently into the cushions and went on looking. They were so beautiful. Not a bit like Tom or his parents. So they must look like their mother. The thought was unbearably poignant; I tried to tell myself she would live on in them, but the fact remained that they would never know her.

  David’s words came into my head again. ‘All you need is love.’

  And they had nothing to do with triteness or cynicism. They stated an obvious fact.

  Tom’s car drew up half an hour later. The three of them crept in, respectful of the silence. They crowded through the doorway, and stood looking down at the twins as if they had not seen them before.

  Hildie whispered, ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you had any lunch?’

  ‘No.’ I looked up and shook my head. They exclaimed quietly. ‘I forgot. They’ve been like this for nearly an hour, and I could have made tea or something. I just forgot.’

  Unexpectedly, Mr Hardy spoke. ‘Sometimes you can’t stop looking at them, can you?’

  ‘No.’

  We smiled, first at Joy and Michael, and then at each other. And I giggled.

  ‘What?’ asked Hildie.

  ‘Us.’ I was splu
ttering. ‘We’re like cartoon people.’

  Nobody else laughed. They were just back from the funeral of Tom’s wife. I stopped laughing abruptly. Hildie turned to Tom.

  ‘Viv’s husband was an artist, and he did a lot of cartoons for – for—’

  ‘A syndicate,’ I supplied. ‘I’m so sorry. Let me – let me make some tea.’

  Mr Hardy said gently, ‘I’ll make it. We’re full of tea, actually, but I bet you could drink six cups straight off.’

  He was right. But the others did well, too. They moved around, taking off their coats, emerging from the kitchen in slippers, Hildie wearing an apron. The house settled around them while I drank tea and ‘minded’ the babies. I was suddenly very tired, and it seemed to me that the Hardys were perfectly coordinated in their movements. It was as if they had choreographed getting a meal on the table: first they boiled the kettle and bore in the teapot, covering it with a cosy, putting spoons in saucers and milk in cups and positioning the tea-strainer – and then I was ushered into a chair and provided with food. There was no barging into each other, no conversation; each person’s personal space was preserved at all times. As Tom carried out the empty feeding bottles, and Hildie emerged from the kitchen holding a tray, he lifted his arms and she bent her head beneath them. It was just . . . perfect; I only just stopped myself laughing again at witnessing such harmonious living. All done without a word of direction.

  Hildie poured more tea and indicated the sandwiches she had cut for my lunch.

  ‘Dig in. We’ll have something hot later. You can’t drive home on an empty stomach.’

  I ate. Never had cheese and pickle sandwiches tasted so good. Tom was saying that he could not thank me enough. Later he drove me home in my car, assuring me that he needed a walk and it was all downhill anyway. He put the car away, while I opened up and switched on lights. It was amazingly different doing this with someone else. I was so used to it on my own.