Much later her three unmarried brothers returned, laughing, then whispering. One of them tripped over the scraps bucket in the kitchen and they all loudly shushed each other. She huddled in her bed, straining to listen. Later, when William was sick in the bathroom, she heard their mother creep from her bed to stay with him, comforting him, until Lucia heard him fall, in a moaning stupor, into his own bed. Even later the smell of toast wafted up the stairs, and she must have fallen asleep then, lulled at last by the muffled murmurs of Robert and Ambrose talking late into the night.
Saturday 16th July 1976
Dear Elizabeth
I hope you like the book I am sending you and I hope you enjoy reading it too. It is one of my favourites and I have read it twice this year. Of course, it is Ballet Shoes!!! I saved my pocket money and I went into town with Uncle Edward and Tante Simone this morning to buy it for you. Meg chose clackers for herself but I don’t like them much. They are noisy. They are dangeros too if they hit you on the back of your hand. One time at school a boys clackers smashed and there was bits of sharp plastic everywhere. His hand got cut and his face. I won’t use them and Meg says I’m a chicken. Uncle Edward drove me and Meg and Tante Simone into town in his car and he bought us ice-creams because it is so hot here still. Uncle Edward said we were good girls and we deserved a treat. Meg thinks they took us into town as an excuse to get away from Aunty Lucia because neither of them like her. It was fun to have a ride in their car and we had the windows open and everything smelled like petrol and hot seats and it was nice. When we got back Tante Simone and Aunty Lucia chatted in the garden. They were quiet and talked for quite a long time then Tante Simone played with Meg’s clackers and she looked strange and she made them go up over her hand and I was a bit frightned but it was OK they didn’t smash and then Mummy came home from work and daddy came home from the pub and we all had tea at grannys house. Tante Simone gave me a big strong hug when it was time for her and Uncle Edward to go home. She whispered something to me in French I think but I don’t know what she said. My mum started her job last week and me and Meg have to go to granny’s house after school and wait for mummy or daddy to pick us up. Yesterday we broke up for the summer holidays and we will have to go to grannys house every day. This is just a note to put in with your book, I will post it tomorow morning first thing,
Love from Tina xxxxx
Twenty-one
January 2014
Tina continued to stare at Kath, who had by now composed herself.
‘Tina, of course!’ Kath sat back down in her chair.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Tina.
‘You don’t? Well, I’m a counsellor. I’ve been doing it for some time now. I’m sure I told you?’
‘But your name…’
‘I use Kate Wishaw professionally, I always have done. Wishaw’s my maiden name. My husband always calls me Kate. To everyone else I’m Kath.’
‘This is so… weird.’
‘I had no idea it was you. You’re Christina Fathers on my notes, you see. I thought you were Tina Thornton. You use Thornton on Facebook don’t you? But I get it now. Tina – Christina.’
‘Christina is too posh,’ said Tina, remembering the playground taunts. She sat down in the chair alongside Kath’s. There was still no desk, no couch, none of the clichéd trappings of “therapy” that Tina had naïvely expected before her visits to Virginia last year. She knew what to expect now, of course. This place was calm and friendly, and she supposed it had been silly of her to have given up on it. But Meg had been persuasive, and Virginia hopeless.
‘Such an unusual surname,’ said Kath. ‘Fathers. Christina Fathers.’
‘I’m never Christina. Only officially.’
‘Well, Tina Thornton, Christina Fathers, whatever your name is. What would you like to do?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I need to arrange something else for you with a colleague. I can’t be your counsellor as we’re already friends, right? It would be too complicated, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Oh. I… No, thank you. I’d like to… Are we really friends?’
‘I think so.’
‘That’s good.’
‘So I need to transfer you to somebody else.’
‘But I’d like to work with you.’
‘I’m more than happy to help. But not as your counsellor.’
‘As friends then?’
‘That’s what friends are for, right?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘There we are. Shall we have a coffee to celebrate? We have cream.’
‘I know.’
Tina grinned and shook her head while Kath bustled off to make the coffee. This was all so… serendipitous. This was the sort of thing that only happened in books, encountering each other like this, not recognising each other’s names. It was all so strange.
After a couple of minutes Kath came back in bearing a tray with two mugs and a plate of chocolate digestives. Tina took her mug, held it for a few moments, then placed it on the coffee table. She took off her coat. She was hot, bothered, excited. She did recall Kath saying she had a part-time job that she loved. And hadn’t she recently told her she was a counsellor? Probably she had, but Tina hadn’t been listening. She was the most switched-off person she knew. Maybe it was time to switch on again. Or just switch on for the first time.
‘Tina Fathers,’ Kath said, ‘you fascinate me.’
‘Really?’ Tina pulled herself into the here and now. Concentrate, she told herself. Listen. Listen to Kath.
‘Really. I’ve read through your notes that my predecessor… Virginia… made…’
‘Oh. Those. Say no more.’
‘Actually, I think there is rather a lot to say. Don’t you?’
‘Probably.’
Kath contemplated Tina for a few moments. Tina picked up her mug and sipped her coffee. Kath sipped hers. Then she put her mug down.
‘Look, I can’t counsel you professionally but now that you’re here… do you mind if I ask a question?’ said Kath. ‘Because it’s unclear from your notes.’
‘OK.’
‘Are you sure? I don’t want to put you under pressure. But sometimes it can really help if you maybe struggle with certain… facts to just answer a simple question off the cuff. It can be easier than you think, too. There’s no pre-warning and you can just answer it. It might clear the decks. You’re not my client but… you’re my friend and I do want to help you. And anything you say in these four walls stays in these four walls, obviously. I think you need a lot of help. I thought that about you the night we met.’
Tina liked this unsurprising directness. Virginia, she recalled, had tiptoed around her, not really getting anywhere. Kath – Kate – was not a pussyfooter. This directness was what she needed, Tina thought, and yes, this was it – let her ask, let her ask her question.
‘I’m sure,’ said Tina. ‘Please.’
Kath/Kate (Tina wasn’t sure which) nodded slowly, glanced at the notes again, looked hard at Tina and ran her hands through her purple-ish hair. She leaned back, puffed out her cheeks. She threw the notes to one side, muttering about not needing those any more. She leaned forward and sighed, putting her hand on Tina’s knee.
‘How did she die, Tina?’ said Kate. Tina’s heart lurched. It was most definitely Kate the counsellor asking this question. Kath the friend wouldn’t have dared, for all her directness. Oh my god oh my god. What is she aski—
She knew. Yes. Of course she did. All that stuff was in her notes. Probably it was peppered with lots of question marks. Kate was on to her. Kath was on to her. Just like Virginia had been on to her. The question was impossible to answer, and it was cruel. But Tina understood why Kate had asked it and she could see the logic in it. Facts had to be established, even if the facts were wrong, even if
they didn’t fit, even if the whole thing was crazy, even if pretend facts were better than the actual facts or no facts at all. Even if one person’s fact was another person’s fiction. Even if there was actually no such thing as “facts”, even if they were a myth created to help people make sense of the world; for this was a world in which facts didn’t truly belong. There was no place for them – not in the heart, not when it was broken and smashed. In actual fact: Meg had liked to say that when she was young, putting her sister, and others, straight. Meg had been a very factual person.
Kath eased Tina’s mug from her trembling hands and placed it on the table. She then took Tina’s hands in hers. She was such a kind woman. Tina felt a sob rise in her chest. She didn’t think she’d be able to keep it down. Everything was going to burst. Panic took over, as she ran away from a truth that others wanted for her, that she truly wanted for herself. The running away part was, she knew, never healthy, not in the end.
‘Tina?’ said Kath, almost in a whisper. ‘How did Meg die?’
How did Meg die? Tina couldn’t say. She’d never been able to say. Meg was dead, wasn’t that enough? Why couldn’t people leave her alone? Why did she have to talk about this? She felt she might slap Kath, hard and sharp across her wide, kind face. But it was a reasonable question, and for once she must give a reasonable answer. Where was the harm? She had got away with it for all these years. What good would it do to shy away from the truth now? All that business at Christmas with Lucia, falling off the steps, the way she’d had a flashback, or whatever it was – it was all in her head. And Meg’s silly idea, the idea she wouldn’t let go of… it was all nonsense, wishful thinking. She was the only one to blame. Nobody else. This she knew. Meg was wrong, quite wrong.
‘I killed her,’ said Tina.
Twenty-two
July 1967
Lucia looked from her mother, to Pamela, to William, on whom she lingered, staring at him in hot disdain. She was aghast. This situation was typical, absolutely typical, of her younger brother’s hapless state of being. He didn’t think. But now he would have to think. Pamela looked back at Lucia in a brazen fashion, which Lucia didn’t like. She didn’t like anything about Pamela, who was pretty, not quite sixteen and pregnant with William’s baby.
Ever since that business with Clive Stubbins and her bitter disappointment, Lucia had kept herself away from men, cloistered from the world, convincing herself and her parents that she was “needed” at Lane’s End House. She had cast herself in the role of her mother’s helpmate, her keeper, and nothing had swayed her from it. She refused to get a job. She barely left the house. Her father supported her financially and it had become a habit, a way of life, and nobody spoke any more about Lucia finding employment, or standing on her own two feet, or being a layabout.
William refused to look at his sister, and she took that as a sign of submission. What a little coward he was. Mum had nothing to say, just sighing and shaking her head. It was almost as though she couldn’t take it in, this news, that quite apart from anything else, she was going to be a grandmother at long last. Mum had longed for grandchildren for years. But now she seemed not to hear the news, not to grasp it. ‘I don’t know what your father is going to say,’ was all she could contribute. Tom was at work and the teenaged couple had decided that this was the best time to broach the subject with William’s mother and sister.
‘You will have to get married, as soon as you’re able to,’ said Lucia.
‘It’s too late for that,’ said Pamela. ‘Look at me. I’m showing too much already. The earliest we can marry is the end of August anyway. By then I’ll be enormous. I’m not going to look fat in my wedding photographs.’
‘Photographs?’
‘A wedding’s a wedding isn’t it?’ said Pamela.
‘Not always,’ said Lucia, looking to her mother for support and receiving none. ‘Look, if you won’t agree to marry in August you’ll have to go away, Pamela, and have the baby and when you come back nobody will be any the wiser.’
‘They might wonder about the baby I bring back with me!’ Pamela glared at Lucia.
William frowned, as if perplexed by a crossword puzzle, and looked at the floor. Mum retreated from the arena atmosphere of the dining room and crept into the kitchen to make tea. The three young people sat on in silence, Pamela and William on the high-backed sofa, holding hands. Lucia couldn’t look at them. She trembled, but managed to control it by tapping her delicate fingers on the table. She felt something rise up in her, something desperate and crawling. Mum brought the tea through. In silence, she poured out four cups and handed them around. She did not produce any biscuits.
‘So you intend “keeping” the baby then?’ said Lucia, once everybody had taken their first polite sips of tea. She thought she saw Pamela waver.
‘Yes,’ said Pamela, looking at William for support. He refused to meet her gaze.
‘Bigger fool you, Pamela Rose,’ said Lucia. ‘You know, I presume, what that will mean for you?’
‘I should think so,’ said Pamela, and she glared again at Lucia. ‘You seem to be the ringleader,’ she added.
‘I’m just trying to help,’ said Lucia. Now she had to fight tears. She swallowed, cleared her throat, held her cup up to her face. Something was upon her, something cold and creeping, not to be acknowledged.
‘We don’t need your help,’ said Pamela.
‘So what’s your plan?’ said Lucia.
‘Bill? Tell her the plan, please.’
William looked nervously at his sister and his mother.
‘Tell her, Bill,’ urged Pamela.
‘We’re going to have the baby,’ muttered William, looking at Mum. ‘Then once Pamela is recovered and all thin and that, we’re going to get married.’
‘Ha!’ said Lucia. ‘How very modern.’ She put down her tea cup, the threatened tears now under control. Bitterness was always preferable to sadness.
‘What’s it got to do with you anyway?’ said Pamela. ‘We can manage our own affairs. You should look to yourself sometimes.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Nothing,’ said Pamela. ‘Just leave us alone. We are old enough to take care of ourselves.’
‘Old enough? You can’t even get married yet. It’s… it’s indecent as well as… as well as illegal. And where exactly do you propose living with this new baby? And who is going to pay for everything?’ Pamela and William glanced at each other. Their silence suggested they had not fully thought through the finer points of their plan. Pamela appeared to pull at a thread on her pretty green and blue frock. She frowned. She poked William.
‘I’ve got a job now,’ said William, ‘and I’ll pay.’
‘And we’ll stay at my mum’s house until we can get one of our own,’ said Pamela.
‘And is your mother in agreement?’ asked Lucia, guessing the answer and revelling in her moment of superiority. Pamela Rose’s mother was a snob. She was well known for it, and she was going to have a fit when she got wind of her daughter’s fall from grace. And who would blame her for being furious and fearful? Her fifteen-year-old daughter, expecting a child by the young and hapless brother of Ambrose Thornton? That alone would surely be enough to worry any mother.
At least Ambrose was gone; nobody knew where. Lucia had been right in her suspicions that he was a criminal and he had been convicted of theft two years ago. He had been jailed for a few weeks, that was all, but had never come home after his release. They had “lost touch” with him. The Thornton family were mildly disgraced, for it had been public knowledge, and the story had made the local newspaper. Many of Mum’s friends had stopped calling. She no longer attended the Women’s Institute meetings in the village. She now pined for two of her sons, and it showed in her drawn, pale face; in her lack of interest in anything. ‘Well?’ said Lucia.
Pamela and
William again glanced at each other, uneasy, fidgety. Lucia smirked.
‘Mum and Dad don’t… they don’t know yet,’ conceded Pamela, her teenaged bravado failing her at last. She burst into tears. Mum got up to console her. This was too much. Lucia left the room.
The plans were made. It was far too late to “see to” the pregnancy, as Mum said. One afternoon she confided in Lucia that she was secretly glad. This was going to be her first grandchild. It was starting to sink in and she was beginning to feel excited about it, despite everything. Whenever it was spoken of, Lucia looked away, pretending to have something in her eye, or she left the room, or felt the need to shovel coal onto the fire. Her memories were not only awake again, they were loud and crashing around, knocking into her mind’s furniture, spilling things, refusing to be still or silenced. The drabness and darkness of the corridor in that London house; the ultra-bright light of the “consulting” room. The smell of… what? Antiseptic? A smell she would not forget. The clinical equipment, the cold metal instrument between her legs, inside her, the warm water (she thought it was water), the soft words as the French woman tried to explain what she was doing, the grey ceiling she had stared at throughout. Simone’s smart pale-blue skirt and jacket, Simone rising anxiously from the chair with the dull patchwork cushion when Lucia hobbled back up the cellar stairs; the indent on the cushion where Simone had been sitting, waiting…
Lucia helped to arrange a hasty wedding for her brother and his girlfriend for the earliest possible date, which was during the first week in September. William and Pamela were late August-borns. They were still children, as Mum lamented. But still, too much was being arranged for them, over their heads, without their consent. Pamela’s mother, as Lucia had foreseen, was heartbroken and disgusted, and fearful of her daughter’s by now unavoidable connection with the Thornton family. Nevertheless, Mrs Rose concurred with Lucia’s arrangements, and indeed joined her in making them. It clearly pained Mrs Rose to have dealings with any of the Thorntons, but Lucia availed herself, and behaved like a willing and capable ally. The avoidance of scandal was uppermost in both their minds. Marriage for the young couple was the only answer. Pamela was adamant that she would not give up her baby, despite the pleadings of her mother, her father, and Lucia. The girl would not give in, and her parents were not evil, so a dress was hastily bought and altered, the paperwork was completed, and the wedding took place on a sunny, warm Tuesday afternoon. Mr Rose and Tom were witnesses. They were polite, and there were no photographs, as Lucia had predicted. There was no reception to speak of, just tea and sandwiches at the Rose household. The young couple were packed off on the train for their “honeymoon” (paid for by both fathers) somewhere in the north, and they returned a fortnight later. Pamela ballooned during their time away and tongues inevitably wagged on their return. But Pamela and her parents held their heads high, for the young couple, whatever their sins before, were now a married and therefore respectable couple, and the gossip was short-lived.
A Life Between Us Page 12
