Wishing Water

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘It’s all right. There’s no need for you to talk about it. I understand how you must have felt when she died in that tragic way.’

  His dark eyes swam with gratitude. ‘Of course you do. Because you’ve known pain too. Darling Lissa, what can I say? You humble me by your beauty. I want you never to suffer pain again. We both of us deserve so much more, a new beginning. To have you here, beside me, makes me the richest man in the world. All I ask is to spend the rest of my life making you happy. I believe you feel exactly the same way.’ He was taking her hand, slipping something into it.

  She glanced down, surprised. ‘Philip?’

  ‘I’ve decided it’s time we made it official.’

  She opened the box in a daze and stared at the ring, no more than a glittering blur in her hand.

  ‘If it isn’t the right size I can get it altered. You do like diamonds, don’t you, darling? Let me put it on for you. There, perfect. Flawless, like you, darling.’

  ‘I am far from perfect.’ Diamonds. Ice cold. Many-faceted. Diamonds are right for me, she thought.

  ‘To me you are.’ He kissed her cheek. Chaste and undemanding. ‘I thought June for the wedding. Far the best month for weather. A reception at the Marina Hotel. You have no objection to June?’

  She gazed up into his face, his eyes filled with a quiet eagerness to please, anxiety to make her happy. Offering the stability and security she craved.

  ‘I need you, Lissa.’

  It was what she most wanted to hear. No more broken promises, no more rejection. A simple and uncomplicated relationship, dependable and caring, untroubled by too much emotion.

  ‘June would be perfect,’ she said.

  Lissa was upstairs showing Jan her ring as Philip had suggested when the knock came. Philip crossed the room and opened the door. Derry stood on the step, mouth dropping open in shock.

  ‘Mr Brandon.’

  Philip half glanced back over his shoulder, then stepping out, pulled the door closed behind him. His voice was low with unspent anger. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Derry’s brain was spinning so fast he could hardly find the words. ‘I want to see Lissa.’

  Philip jabbed one finger in Derry’s chest, pushing him backwards down the steps and on to the shingle. ‘The last thing Lissa wants is you hanging around, creating trouble.’

  ‘I’m not here to make trouble. I need to talk to her, that’s all.’

  ‘She’s no wish to talk to you.’

  ‘How would you know?’ Derry wanted to ask what Philip Brandon was doing in the boathouse at past eleven o’clock at night but couldn’t seem to get his tongue around the words. Maybe because he was too afraid of the answer. ‘Isn’t that something she should decide for herself?’

  ‘You promised to stay away. You know what’ll happen if you don’t.’

  Derry stiffened. ‘Is that some kind of threat?’

  ‘My boat is still undergoing repairs.’ Quietly spoken, with undertones of menace.

  Derry gulped. ‘I never touched your bloody boat. Maybe I’ll face the police and tell them that.’

  Philip’s dark eyes raked over Derry from the top of his tousled head to his dusty shoes. ‘You could try it, but think of the risk. I see you haven’t made your fortune yet. Quite the reverse in fact. Scruffier than ever, if you ask me, in that old leather jacket and Teddy Boy jeans. The world is moving on, Derry. It really is time you started to grow up.’

  Derry wanted to yell that his jacket cost fifteen quid and wasn’t scruffy at all but he’d worn it every day for months, so he ground his teeth together and held his temper with difficulty. And he really had no wish to get involved with the police. Not the way his luck was running at the moment. ‘Where is she?’

  Having reasserted control Brandon was gracious. ‘You are history so far as Lissa is concerned. I’ll tell her you called.’

  ‘What will you tell me?’ A familiar voice from the door. A beloved figure silhouetted against the light that spilled out on to the shingle. As she moved involuntarily towards him so that the moonlight captured her in its radiance, he gazed up at her, speechless, awed by her ethereal beauty.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. Renee was right, he thought. She was too thin. Her eyes were like dark bruises in her face. Oh, but so lovely, and surely that light which suddenly sparkled on her face was happiness at seeing him?

  ‘Derry?’

  Philip put his arm about her waist. ‘I was telling Derek that it was rather late for social calls, but he’s leaving on the first train from Windermere in the morning, so he’s in a hurry. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Er…’

  Lissa cleared her throat, her brain surging with so many questions she could hardly think. What was he doing here? What did this mean? Then reality sank in. ‘Train? You’re leaving already?’

  ‘Well, I had a bit of a barney with Dad so...’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’

  ‘He has his fortune to make, my dear. Have you not, young sir?’ Philip said in a jokey voice. ‘Shall we tell him our good news, darling?’ He pulled her closer as he smiled triumphantly upon Derry. ‘Lissa has done me the honour of agreeing to become my wife.’

  A stunned silence during which there was no sound but that of the waves noisily slapping the shore.

  ‘Your wife?’ Derry’s voice had sunk to a whisper, as if he was afraid of disturbing that silence. But there was fury in it. And cold shock. ‘Did you say wife?’

  ‘Show him the ring, darling.’ It was Philip who held out Lissa’s hand, since she seemed reluctant to display quite the right degree of pride in it herself. ‘Rather lovely, don’t you think? A well-cut stone. Only the best, of course, for my own sweet love. We thought June for the happy day. Let us have your address when you get settled, then we’ll maybe send you an invitation.’

  Derry stared at Lissa, bemused, a question in his brown eyes, but she was looking up at Philip and the expression upon her pale face was quite unreadable.

  ‘I doubt I’d be able to manage it,’ he said stiffly, fighting the tremor in his voice. ‘Congratulations. You must be very happy.’ Only then did she look at him and her eyes seemed distant, unforgiving, empty.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I must, mustn’t I?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  1961

  A coating of rust lay upon the mountains. Mist hung in the valley, trailing ethereally over the glass-calm water. There were fairy rings in the woodlands that clustered along the shoreline, and heaps of leaves in gold and amber and bronze. The mallards hustled together on the lake in restless groups, sometimes springing up into the air, instinct telling them that soon their feathers would be ready for flight to the winter nesting grounds further south. One pair came waddling across the road, as if returning from a shopping expedition in the quiet streets of the town.

  ‘Raarb!’ called the showy drake, bossing his dull brown wife, but she refused to hurry, holding up traffic, making people curse or smile as their mood took them.

  Lissa tried to smile too but the sight was almost painful. She felt at one with the plain little duck, following on in the wake of her mate, his brilliance outshining hers.

  It was three years since she had married Philip Brandon. It had taken less than three months to realise her mistake. A sobering thought.

  It served her right of course. No one else had been in favour of the match. Certainly not Jan.

  And when Lissa had asked Meg and Tam for permission to marry since she was still under age, Meg’s reply had been to urge her not even to think of it until she was at least twenty-one.

  ‘You’re too young, sweetheart. Do you truly love him?’

  Love? What was love? Lissa didn’t trust love. Love let you down. It had no substance. It lasted only for, a moment and was all tied up with duty and selfish need. Why should she expect anyone to love her when her own mother and grandmother hadn’t even bothered to try? Meg had tried, she supposed, until she’d started wanting her o
wn babies. Derry hadn’t. Derry had let her down like all the rest. No, best to steer clear of love. It was unreliable.

  So Lissa had married Philip Brandon one sunny day in June, 1958, and twelve months later almost to the day the twins had been born. Only in that moment, when her babies were put into her arms, did Lissa learn about love. Sarah and Elizabeth were two precious scraps of humanity with soft downy hair, curling fingers tipped with pearl, and bewitching blue eyes. Even at birth Sarah seemed especially alert and enquiring, while Beth, as she at once came to be known, contentedly smiled. They were a part of her and Lissa knew that their birth had changed her life for all time. She could pour all of that frustrated love upon them without fear of rebuff.

  Not that it was quite fair to blame Philip for whatever it was she felt their marriage lacked. He adored her and told her so all the time. The failure must be in herself. She should be the happiest woman on earth. As well as her beautiful children she had a lovely home on the Parade with a fine view of the lake and the mountains beyond. Beautiful clothes to wear, an interesting social life with a good looking husband, and money in her purse. Philip gave her everything a woman could possibly desire. So what was the matter with her? She could surely expect no more?

  ‘Come along, darlings, throw the crust to the ducks. We must get home.’

  The two year olds squealed and giggled as the ducks clustered about, gobbling up the pieces of bread they’d thrown with such verve but which had landed only inches from their feet.

  Sarah suddenly took it into her head to set off after one unfortunate duck, running on unsteady legs down the shingle to the water. Laughing, Lissa snatched up Beth, who protested vigorously, and ran after her.

  The duck took evasive action while Sarah plonked down on to her bottom, missing the water by inches.

  ‘Duck, duck!’ she shouted.

  ‘Take care, darling. Mummy doesn’t want you to fall in.’ She gathered her children to her, one at each side, while she knelt on the shingle and gazed at her own reflection in the still waters. It surprised her sometimes to see how young she still was. No more than twenty-one, for all she felt like a mature married woman. ‘Can you see your faces, darlings? Look, there’s Sarah with her snub nose, and little Beth with her sweet smile and new tooth. Can you see?’

  The twins hunkered down beside her in their matching cotton frocks and gazed very seriously at their reflections, so similar and yet so different. They were not identical. The hair was changing colour now, even the eyes had lost their baby blueness.

  ‘When I was a girl we used to wish by the water every spring for whatever our hearts most desired.’ Lissa laughed at the memory, pushing back the errant jet curls that still tumbled upon her brow for all the care she took to pin them back in a tidy fashion as Philip liked. She never wore it in a girlish pony tail any more and he did not like to see it flying free.

  ‘Me want to wish,’ Sarah announced, sticking out her jaw in determined fashion, making Lissa laugh.

  ‘You want everything, darling, even when you have no idea what a wish is. What do you want, Beth?’

  Beth slid her arms about her mother’s neck and kissed her damply. ‘Sweetie,’ she said, at her most alluring, and Lissa laughed all the more, letting them tumble her backwards on to the shingle and search her pockets until the hoarded treasure of two jelly babies had been found. Then she dusted the children down and took their hands in hers, her spirits sinking in that familiar way as they turned towards home.

  Sometimes she did wonder why Philip had chosen her. Just as one might wonder why the showy mallard was happy with its dull brown mate. Perhaps it was simply because it had no choice.

  Was that how Philip saw her? As the best choice he could find at the time? He was certainly always striving to improve her. And she was grateful for his assistance, oh, she was. How else could she know the correct knife to use at a grand dinner, or which dress was quite appropriate? She depended upon his opinion absolutely. If she felt inadequate sometimes, the fault must be entirely hers.

  Where was it they were going tonight? The Yacht Club, or something to do with the Town Council? She couldn’t quite recall but there was plenty of time. It was lovely to saunter by the lake in the September sunshine. And what was there to rush home for? The house shone like a new pin, and was entirely empty.

  They passed the benches and as she passed the old boathouse, tears sprang to her eyes. What was the matter with her today? She could remember those happy times as if they were yesterday and not a million years ago.

  ‘When I was a teenager,’ she told the twins, her voice brightening for their benefit. ‘We used to have parties and barbecues on the shore here, with Coca-Cola and burnt sausages. What fun we had!’ She remembered the night of the storm and the Spin-the-Bottle party when Derry had kissed her in the kitchen.

  She remembered how he would pull a comb from an inside pocket and flick the already tidy quiff into place. Did he still dress in those ridiculous long jackets, tight jeans and brightly coloured shirts? Had he ever got his recording contract? she wondered. His dream?

  She recalled the night he’d stood on this very spot and Philip had told him of their coming marriage. She would never forget the expression in his brown eyes till her dying day.

  A ripple of emotion coursed through her body, shocking her by its intensity. It did no good to remember. She was a mature, married woman. Those glorious youthful summers were over. Strangers lived in the boathouse now. Jan was at Ashlea with Nick, busily knitting for the expected arrival of their first child. Tony and Helen had two. Where the other band members had gone, she had no idea.

  Lissa had no dream, only a confusing jumble of unsatisfied needs. She’d never felt Derry’s driving ambition to succeed, would have been happy with more modest achievements. Someone to love her and never let her go.

  Yet more often of late she had felt dissatisfied, had started to ask herself questions. Am I happy? Am I fulfilled? The Russians had more control over their rockets flying through space than she had over her own life. The days seemed so long. She had the twins, of course, and they were such darlings she could eat them. But Philip had insisted on employing a nanny. A plain, stolid woman of uncertain years who dressed predictably in starched overalls and had all the right qualifications. Which meant Lissa was left with too many empty hours to fill, too much time to think.

  They had reached the bandstand when Sarah squealed in delighted fear. ‘Duck chasing me, Mummy.’

  Lissa laughed. ‘No, darling, they’re greedy, that’s all.’

  A hopeful troop of ducks had come waddling behind in search of a forgotten crust, so the twins must be permitted to bend down and talk to them, explain how they would be back tomorrow with more. Suddenly a car came, too fast, along the narrow shore road. The birds whirled up into the air, wings beating madly, crazy with fear before skimming into the water in a flurry of injured pride and flustered panic. Scattering all the other ducks in a squawking mass of feathers. In an equal panic Lissa grabbed the twins, heart beating wildly as she leapt to one side, shouting at the retreating car. ‘How dare you? Road hog! Have you no consideration?’

  The ducks flapped their wings, shook their stubby tail feathers to restore lost dignity and at once began to preen and groom themselves to settle their nerves.

  Sarah was screaming. She had fallen down and grazed her knee. Beth was sucking her thumb and crying around it, wide-mouthed, in sympathy.

  ‘Oh, dear Lord.’ Lissa held them both in her arms, soothing, kissing, mopping up blood and tears. What would Philip say?

  The sun was dropping behind blue-misted mountains by the time she reached home. He met her at the foot of the stairs in his dressing gown, face tight with anger.

  ‘Where have you been? What have you done with the children? Nanny?’ He yelled up the stairs and a starched white overall came instantly into view. Nanny Sue came running, clucking her tongue in disapproval, and bore the children away for hot chocolate and baths and the joy of an Elast
oplast.

  Lissa’s heart sank. She so hated to displease him. ‘It’s all right. It’s only a graze.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have been out so late. What were you thinking of? I came home to find the house empty. You weren’t here, Nanny on her afternoon off, the twins not in bed and my bath not even run.’

  Reaching up she kissed his cheek, hoping to placate him. ‘We were feeding the ducks.’ Smiling, she brushed past him and walked up the stairs to the blue and white bedroom they shared at the front of the house. Ten minutes in the bathroom, she dare waste no more time, and she was standing before her dressing table in her slip, dabbing her face with cream when he entered.

  ‘Is it the Yacht Club dinner tonight?’

  ‘No, that’s next week. Don’t you ever listen? We are due at the Cheyneys on the dot of seven-thirty.’

  ‘The Cheyneys. Of course.’ Nothing to do with either the Town Council or the Yacht Club. Don Cheyney was a magistrate of some standing, so the talk this evening would be of legal matters. ‘How delightful. It won’t take me long to get ready.’ It would be boring in the extreme. His wife would be no help at all since she was at least fifteen years older than Lissa and constantly trying to persuade her to join some worthy ladies’ group or other. Lissa stifled a sigh and started to pull the pins from her hair.

  ‘I’ll do that.’ She looked up, catching sight of his expression through the mirror, and felt her stomach clench.

  Lissa stood unresisting as he released her hair, spread it upon her shoulders and combed his fingers through the tumbling curls from scalp to tip. Then he lifted it with one hand so he could kiss a bare shoulder. Lissa suppressed a violent urge to slap his hand away. ‘You said we were in a hurry.’