First Friends

by Marcia Willett

  Hell and damnation! thought Kate. No wonder she didn’t want Charlotte around. Cass prefers to play the field unhampered by her offspring. So that’s why she was so keen for me to come, the cow! She jumped violently as Tom slid an arm around her waist.

  ‘Tom! Did you park OK? Shall we find you a drink?’

  ‘Hi, Tom!’ It was Paul. ‘Great. Now what will you have to drink? I’m relying on your expertise with the steaks, remember. Come and get a drink.’

  They disappeared together and Kate took another gulp of her wine.

  ‘Hello, Kate. This is a surprise.’ (How pretty she looks in that strange blue colour.)

  ‘Hello, Alex. Is it?’ (How does he always manage to look so relaxed?)

  ‘Is your husband with you?’ (How would I be able to be polite to him if he is?)

  ‘No. No, he isn’t. I came with the Wivenhoes. Do you know them?’ (Cass is probably just his type.)

  ‘Name doesn’t ring a bell. I wish I’d known you were coming.’ (I would have to be with Pam.)

  ‘Why?’ (Please let me stay cool.)

  ‘I would much rather have been with you.’ (Well, that’s done it.)

  ‘Would you?’ (Then why are you with that beastly blonde tart?)

  ‘Kate?’ (Does she mean . . . ? She looked for a moment as if . . . ?)

  ‘So there you are, Alex. You see, I can’t trust him for a moment. I go off to the loo and he’s immediately chatting up another woman. Living up to his reputation again!’ Pam slipped her arm possessively into Alex’s. ‘Oh, it’s Kate! Hello, my dear. I warn you, don’t trust this man for a moment.’

  ‘Tom,’ said Kate with relief as he reappeared beside her. ‘Tom, this is Alex Gillespie. He’s my boss and this is . . .’ She hesitated, her pride making her pretend that she didn’t know or couldn’t remember Pam’s name. ‘This is Tom Wivenhoe.’

  Pam held out her hand, introducing herself, smiling archly—every male must be a conquest.

  Kate glanced quickly at Alex and as quickly away from the bleak look on his face. Tom was bending over Pam’s hand, making flattering observations, and she was shrieking with delight.

  Kate found that she was clutching her glass tightly and when Alex put out his hand for it his long fingers lightly touched hers. All her feelings of awareness were so heightened that the blood seemed to sing in her ears and she couldn’t look at him. She knew that she was behaving like any teenager with a crush but she seemed unable to handle the situation. It had been so long since she had been possessed by this foolish illusory magic and part of her didn’t want it. Life was complicated enough as it was. She should have stuck to her guns and, knowing that Alex and Pam had been invited, simply stayed away. It was all so much more controllable at the shop.

  She released the glass but he didn’t move. She was going to have to look at him but she knew she simply mustn’t. And then Cass was there, wonderful beloved Cass, sweeping up, dragging Tony with her, breaking things up.

  Alex went to get some drinks and Kate looked at Tony. He grinned at her. ‘Long time no see.’

  She nodded and then began to laugh. Her nerves were on edge and somehow she simply couldn’t stop laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Tony, infected by her laughter, was smiling.

  ‘You are. Read any good books lately?’

  ‘Books?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Cass, having abandoned Pam to Tom, was back.

  ‘Books,’ said Kate. ‘I was just about to tell Tony that Tom’s grown up a bit since we were all at Dolphin. This time you’ll have to do better than The Wind in the Willows.’

  Thirteen

  All through that summer, Kate held the twins as a shield between her and any possible developments in her relationship with Alex. After the barbecue, she adopted the attitude of one who was in a permanent rush: rushing in, having taken the twins to Cass; rushing home, so as to pick them up to take them to the beach or for a picnic; rushing out at lunchtime, to buy something for their supper. Guy was struck by a whole series of Arthur Ransom’s books—he adored the water and boats—and Kate was overwhelmed when Alex presented the set to him for his eleventh birthday. To Giles he gave two charming pen and ink sketches of the old town of Dartmouth, suitably framed. Kate was speechless and gave thanks that her own thirty-first birthday in August had passed in a well-kept silence. Fortunately, Alex had been away a great deal at that time, buying and attending auctions, and Kate’s furious threats to the twins should they so much as breathe a word about it were almost unnecessary.

  She was horrified to find that, even with the twins for company, she missed Alex most dreadfully. His presence, even when it was casting her into fits of apprehension, had become necessary to her well-being. She missed the companionable chats, the shared excitement of newly discovered books and prints, the occasions when they shut the shop at lunchtime and strolled over to the Bedford for sandwiches and beer.

  The evening of the barbecue had changed all that. Tacitly, certain things had been admitted and Kate knew that Alex was only biding his time before making a further move. She spent hours trying to decide whether she wanted him to: she really knew so little about him. He was very popular, so much was obvious. There were always women telephoning and asking for him and some of them came into the shop. He was in great demand as a spare man and as an escort—and, she was sure, more—to the little clique of divorced women, one of whom was Pam. Kate was well aware that her arrival at the shop had been greeted with interest and even suspicion and Pam and a few others were making sure that she didn’t trespass on their territory. Certainly, there had never been any sign of anyone staying with him at the flat, even overnight, and she had seen no evidence of feminine habitation when she had gone to collect some new stock which Alex kept in a room upstairs.

  She blushed when she remembered how she had tiptoed along the carpeted passage, peering into his other rooms, one ear cocked lest he should come upstairs. The flat was one floor of a Victorian house, high-ceilinged and airy, the rooms opening off a long passage. Kate had taken in as much as she could in the brief time allowed her: a large bedroom furnished with almost austere sparseness—but containing a double bed!—with built-in hanging cupboards, a heavy mahogany chest of drawers—no photographs!—a bentwood rocking chair and a bedside table piled high with books: a delightful sitting room, the pale walls almost papered with water colours, more built-in cupboards on either side of a pretty Victorian fireplace and several huge, comfortable armchairs: a small bathroom with shaving things in evidence—no creams or lotions!—and a very masculine dressing gown tossed over a wicker laundry basket: a practical kitchen with a breakfast bar and two high stools, with a row of cacti on the window sill. The only other room contained the stock and, gathering up her requirements, Kate had hurried back downstairs conscious of Alex’s quizzical look when she reached the bottom. Later, it had occurred to her that he had suggested that she should go upstairs—usually he went himself—so that she could check it out and the thought made her blush in earnest.

  Poor Kate. Even her beloved moor betrayed her that summer. The drought transformed it into a huge scorched wasteland over which the sun hung, a burning ball of brass. Cracks and fissures opened in the ground, the streams dried up and the ponies and panting sheep crowded under the few areas of shade that remained in that shimmering, pitiless glare. Even the skylarks seemed to have lost heart and only the ravens were in evidence, strutting over the parched grasslands, their stiff-legged gait slow and purposeless, before taking aimlessly to the airless heights, their wings flapping with a slow dispirited beat.

  Kate took to walking very early and very late but even then there was no respite from the inexorable heat. She was grateful for the cool of her thick-walled cottage and for the first time let the Rayburn out and had to buy a small camping stove. It was too hot to eat much and she and the twins spent a great deal of the summer lying beneath the apple trees in the garden, grateful for their shade. Even the beach, shadeless and
glaring, with the sea, blazing like a mirror beneath the near white sky, was no place to be in this weather.

  As the lack of water became a serious problem, the locals began to resent the tourists who poured down on holiday, using up precious resources and starting fires in their carelessness, and for many it was almost a relief when the heat wave came to an end and the rain fell.

  CASS WAS ONE OF the few who would have liked the sunshine to go on for ever. Lazing happily and wearing as little as possible in her large cool house and shady garden, she managed to conduct an affair with Tony right through the summer and under the noses of her family and friends. Even the heat conspired with her.

  Deceiving Tom, who was away at Northwood from Monday to Friday, wasn’t difficult and, indeed, she almost looked upon it now as a necessity as much for his benefit as for hers. Over the years she had managed to persuade herself that it was her little flings that kept her happy and contented in his absence. Thus there was no strain on the marriage from the separations or possible loneliness and when Tom arrived home it was to be met with a loving wife ready to minister to all his wants. She uttered no recriminations or complaints—difficulties and traumas were related as huge jokes—and a blind eye was turned to any little philanderings of his that filtered down to her through the grapevine. Some wives who were jealous of Cass’s beauty and success, and whose husbands were serving with Tom, were only too happy to let some little remark slip. Hastily they would pretend to gloss over or withdraw it, hoping, nevertheless, that the tiny dart of poison would find its mark. Generally, and to their chagrin, it would be met by a smiling Cass who dealt with it at once by a light remark. ‘I’m so glad that my dear old boy’s enjoying himself.’

  On the few occasions when Tom had quoted gossip that he’d heard she would look sorrowful and talk of the spitefulness of jealous women and the humiliation of rejected men and then turn the subject slightly to some event or visit where Tom had not been quite so honourable as he might have been. Baffled, he would withdraw, only to be flattered and charmed back into the magic circle that she made for him, until everything else receded to the edge of his consciousness.

  His hope that Cass’s father would be a restraining influence had not been realised. In fact, the General had quite unconsciously proved a tremendous help. Now in his seventy-fifth year, he had a slight heart attack and the heat had kept him more or less housebound but he was well enough, with Mrs Hampton’s help, to have the children to visit. They would walk down after lunch in a little chattering group, the twins often taking it in turn to give Saul a piggyback, to spend an hour or two with the doting pair before sitting down to the sort of tea that most children see only on very special occasions. Only two-year-old Gemma stayed with her mother.

  Often, on these afternoons, Tony’s car might have been seen nosing its way up the drive and pulling round out of sight behind the stables. Slipping in through the back door he would find Cass, smiling, warm, waiting, and they would climb the stairs giggling like naughty children and shushing each other lest Gemma should wake out of her afternoon slumbers. Several times this happened and Cass slipped away from Tony’s protests to bring the child back and set her on the bedroom floor with toys and books before climbing back on to the bed to continue where they had left off. Once Tony, crying out in an ecstasy of fulfilment, had collapsed across Cass’s breasts only to find himself gazing into a different, if almost identical set of wide blue eyes. Gemma, who had pulled herself up by the quilt, gazed back gravely.

  ‘Christ, Cass!’ He had rolled away in ludicrous prudery, dragging the quilt over his naked loins, and Cass, shaking with silent mirth, had carried Gemma away so that Tony might dress in private.

  On one afternoon Mrs Tanner, the Rector’s wife, had arrived and Cass, descending calmly—yes, she had been having a little nap—had given her tea whilst upstairs Tony lounged naked amongst the crumpled sheets, smoking and reading Tom’s latest Wilbur Smith.

  ‘Still playing Russian roulette, Cass?’ asked Kate, who arrived unexpectedly early one afternoon to collect the twins.

  Tony, looking slightly sheepish when Kate asked him if he’d come to borrow a book, had slipped away and the two girls lounged on sun beds drinking cold drinks.

  ‘Can’t resist, darling.’ Cass stretched lazily. ‘It’s such fun. How’s the gorgeous Alex?’

  ‘Away buying,’ said Kate coldly, and Cass burst out laughing.

  ‘No good looking po-faced, my sweet. Anyone with half an eye can see that he’s potty about you. Why don’t you relax a bit and enjoy it?’

  ‘I’m afraid to,’ said Kate quietly. ‘I’m not like you, Cass. I only wish I were. It would make life so much easier. Can’t you see how wonderful it would be to get rid of all my frustration by rolling about in bed with someone who meant nothing to me?’

  Cass sat up and looked at her. ‘Oh, dear. Fallen for him?’

  ‘I might have done,’ said Kate miserably. ‘I don’t know any more. I can’t afford another mistake. But I’m not going to be just one more in a long row of conquests, either.’

  Cass raised her eyebrows. ‘Like that, is he? I’m surprised. I always find him rather distant.’

  ‘Well, I suppose there are, conceivably, one or two males on this earth who might just be impervious to your charms,’ said Kate, somewhat acidly—and then laughed. ‘Sorry. It’s just that he’s got all these bloody women who come into the shop and want to tell me about his reputation.’

  ‘I should have thought that you of all people would know better than to believe that sort of rumour,’ remarked Cass, and felt remorseful when Kate coloured slowly under her tan. ‘Surely you know him well enough to judge him by now without listening to a pack of jealous women. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ cried poor Kate. ‘If only I did! I think I’m going mad.’

  ‘Bring him to dinner one weekend. I’ll invite Abby and William. We’ll give him the works.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Kate began to laugh. ‘I can just see it. Thanks but no thanks. I’d as soon join Daniel for a bite in the lions’ den!’

  TOWARDS THE END OF the holidays, Mark’s mother telephoned Kate and asked if the twins could be spared for a few days to stay in Cheltenham. Mark, she said, would be there for a week of his leave and it seemed a good opportunity for a get together. Kate had seen the Websters once since the Commissioning. They had driven down just before Christmas and a white-faced Mrs Webster had begged Kate to reconsider her decision. It was plain that she didn’t believe in Kate’s mythical lover although the Major continued to stare at her as if she were a rather undesirable species quite beyond his comprehension.

  Feeling a complete brute, Kate tried to explain that she and Mark were utterly incompatible and that a reconciliation was quite out of the question but that it need make no difference to Mrs Webster’s relationship with her grandchildren. Kate knew full well that Mark would make no effort to see his sons unless there were a third person at hand to cope with all the boring bits. She also knew that his latent streak of cruelty would be kept under control with his mother around.

  So it was that the unwilling twins were dispatched to Cheltenham, the only bright spot in their opinion being that they would be travelling by train unaccompanied. The Websters, who were going down to Cornwall on holiday, would bring them back by car. Kate drove them to Exeter St David’s where they would catch a train that went straight through to Cheltenham and praised God, as she often did, that there were two of them.

  She drove back across the moor, sombre now in a soft grey mist, and stopped to give the dogs a run on Crockern Tor. As she climbed the Tor behind them, getting very damp in the process, she thought about the twins, wondering how they would cope with Mark. She decided to use the tactic she had used when they were very small and asking questions: answer only what they ask, as truthfully and briefly as possible. Children, she had found, asked only as much as they were capable of assimilating. If one droned on, they became confused or bored and, t
hough it was sometimes tempting to take them one stage further on, she generally resisted it. So it was now. They rarely asked after Mark and when they did she said that he was at sea. They knew the boat was based in Faslane and she assumed that they felt that life was following a fairly normal pattern. Mark had never written to them as some fathers wrote to their children and when he communicated with Kate on some financial matter she would always tell them that she had heard from him and that he sent his love. When she had told them about the proposed visit to Cheltenham they were surprised. Why Cheltenham? Kate explained that Mark only had a week and felt that he must try to see his parents. Giles had asked why she wasn’t coming to Cheltenham and she had explained that she had promised to be at the shop because Alex had to go away. She pointed out that she could see Mark when they were at school, implying that this sometimes happened, and they accepted it readily enough although she was well aware that Giles would have been happier if she had been going too.

  Giles is not as self-sufficient as Guy, thought Kate, stopping to get her breath and turning to look down on Parson’s Cottage, set among some trees. She suspected that there was more than a touch of Mark in Guy and although it was tempting to think of this with alarm she knew that, tempered with other qualities, it need not be worrying. Giles was much gentler by comparison, more inclined to self-doubt, more openly affectionate. She wondered what Mark’s approach to them would be and was glad that his mother—who adored the twins—would be on hand. She whistled to the dogs and started to descend to the car, praying that the week would pass without problems.

  She dropped down into Tavistock to do some shopping and had got as far as the pavement when she realised that it was early closing day. So it was that Alex saw her standing beside her car, irresolute and dejected, her hair covered in misty droplets. He hesitated only for a moment.