Hold My Hand

by Serena Mackesy

  “I dunno,” says Tina. “He just doesn't seem to have much luck keeping staff up there.”

  “So I hear.”

  “So what,” asks Tina, “brought you down here, anyway?”

  Bridget looks at her, calculates. Am I ready to be telling everyone my business? Is it wise? From what I've seen of this village, nobody gets to keep a secret for long.

  “Oh, you know,” she says. “I split up with my husband. Money was tight. And I looked around and wondered what on earth I was doing, bringing a kid up in the city. I made sense.”

  “You bet,” says Tina, with all the complacence of the inveterate country-dweller. “So what did your ex think, then? You going such a long way away?”

  “He – ” he rang me up and threatened to get me. “– I haven't the faintest idea,” she finishes. “He wasn't exactly Mr Regular, you know what I mean?”

  “Deadbeat Dads,” says Tina. Seems satisfied by the answer, assumes she knows the whole story. “You should get the CSA onto him.”

  Yeah. That would be a good idea. Get them to give him my address and all, while I'm at it. Mind you, from my experience of them, when I was desperate to get some help, get some child support to stop us being made homeless from the flat where my husband thought he still had right of entry, the best way of making sure no-one ever finds out where you are would be to contact the CSA and give them all your details, in triplicate, in writing. That would make damn sure no-one ever got in touch with you again. Kieran didn't pay a penny, from the day he left to the day she and Yasmin did, and all the CSA could say was that they'd lost her file and would get back to her.

  “Her Dad was the same.” Tina gestures at Chloe. “Went to St Austell looking for a job three years ago and we haven't seen hide nor hair of him since.”

  “Good God.” Bridget is shocked. “Did you report him missing?”

  “Course not,” says Tina. “Just 'cause we haven't seen him doesn't mean we don't know where he is. Anyway, Justine Strang saw him at Darky Day in Padstow a couple of months later with his hands down some fat bird's blouse. Complexion like a boiled potato and an arse like a ro-ro ferry, she said. Good luck to her, I say. He was never much good for anything anyway. He'll probably have spawned another one by now and moved on to Newquay.”

  Bridget looks at her speculatively. Her face has one of those defiant expressions on it: the I'm-okayness of someone who probably isn't, but has to make the best of it. A bit like me, she thinks. A bit like most of the world, I sometimes think.

  “I'm sorry,” she tells her.

  “Not your fault. Anyway, at least the lease was in my name, thank God, so we didn't end up homeless as well. And when Mark's girlfriend did the same thing, he moved in here, so at least we've been able to pool our resources a bit. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing, eh?”

  They drink. Think.

  “I don't suppose it was exactly what either of us was thinking about,” says Tina. “When I'm 27 I'll still be living with my brother. At least I was able to save him from going back to Mum and Dad's, anyway.”

  “Where are they today?”

  “Cinema. Bodmin. Said they'd get out of our hair so we could have a proper girls’ afternoon.”

  She feels a tiny lurch of disappointment. Realises that a tiny bit of her has been hoping that he'd turn up. So tiny she has barely registered it. The last thing she needs right now is a man; not after the last one. What she needs first is a life. And some understanding of how she managed to make such a bad choice last time.

  “What have they gone to see?”

  “James and the Giant Peach.”

  “It's about a boy,” calls Yasmin, “and a giant peach.”

  “Mmm,” says Bridget. You don't say.

  “Can we go?”

  “We'll see,” she says. God, I'm tired of saying “we'll see”. If this lot turn out to be good tippers, I'll take her. I'll take all of us. We need a treat. And if anyone deserves a good tip, it's me, after this week.

  “So what's it like, then?” Tina changes the subject, “up at Rospetroc? When you haven't got a load of Yuppie wife-swappers to contend with?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it's okay.”

  “Not too cut off for you, then? I wouldn't like to live so far out of the village.”

  “God, it's not that far. Everybody talks about it like it's the North Pole or something.”

  “Yeah,” says Tina. “I suppose in a way everybody thinks of it as being further away than it is. It's ’cause no-one's lived there in so long, I suppose everyone's stopped thinking of it as part of the community.”

  “Oh, right. So when did the Gordhavos move out, then?”

  “The Gordhavos?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bless you, love, the Gordhavos never lived there. That was Blakemore house.”

  “Sorry,” says Bridget. “You have to remember I've only just arrived.”

  “Sorry” says Tina back. “I forget everyone doesn't know everything about Cornwall. Blakemore. Big family they were, once, round here. Name means bleak moor. Very Emily Bronte.”

  “So who are they?”

  “The people who used to –” she laughs at herself, continues. “Mrs Gordhavo was a Blakemore. Teresa Blakemore. Tom's mum. They got it through her.”

  “Oh, right. I though the Gordhavos were –”

  “Yes, they are,” says Tina. “Land still marries land around here, believe me.”

  “So that's why they don't live in the house, then? They've got other houses.”

  “Sort of. Yes, I mean. But also, I don't think they like the place much. It's not brought them a lot of luck, what with one thing and another. She only inherited because her brother did himself in. He'd be living there now, otherwise.”

  “Did himself in?”

  Each of them glances at her daughter. They lower their voices again. Neither wants to be the one who plants ideas in their heads. But nor does Tina want to miss out on the opportunity to share a bit of local gossip.

  “Yes,” she half-whispers. “Ages ago now. Old Mrs B must be dead nearly twenty years, and it was before that he did it. There was some of that mother-died-of-a-broken-heart speculation hereabouts, but I don't think so. More like a loose stair rod and a worn carpet and a skinful of whisky. Hanged himself, he did. Down in that old boathouse. With his own tie, slung round a hook. Horrible sight it was, apparently. Took 'em a few days to find him. I don't think anyone had been in that boathouse since before the war, so it wasn't the first place they looked, exactly. All I know is, he'd turned black by the time they found him.”

  “Lovely,” says Bridget. Checks the girls. They have their backs to her, are riffling through a tub of old beads and sequins. Yasmin seems to have found a kindred spirit on the Princess front, at last. Sparkly things will keep her distracted for hours.

  “What made him do it?”

  “No idea. I don't think anyone cared much. He wasn't popular, I remember that. A bit of a bully. My Mum used to keep us away from him. Made out it was because he had a bit of a temper. But you know what grownups are like. Don’t want to scare you with bogie-man stories. I wonder now, sometimes, now I've got one of my own. if that was what she was really going on about, you know.”

  “You mean…?”

  “Well, it doesn't do to speak ill of the dead, of course, but you know. You can't help wondering.”

  “Well,” says Bridget.

  “I don't think they were a very happy family, living there. Even before he did himself in. Mrs Gordhavo's father disappeared at Tobruk and they kept themselves to themselves in the village, except for paying people to come in when they could get them. The old lady was on of those old-fashioned snobs.”

  “Snobs can be happy.”

  “Well, yes,” says Tina. “Until you get old and no-one comes to keep an eye on you unless you pay them.”

  She smiles as she speaks, with that glee with which people often greet the misfortunes of the high-ups.

  The back door open
s and Jago barrels through it. Stops dead and stares at the visitor. “Allo,” he says.

  “Hello,” says Bridget.

  “You're Yasmin's Mum, aren't you?”

  “The very same.”

  “Cool!” he says.

  “Jago,” says Mark, coming in in his wake, “Take off your boots before you go in the other room. Oh, hello, Bridget. How are you?”

  “Good. Thanks,” says Bridget. He gives her a friendly, lopsided grin, bends down to pull his son's footwear off. “So I hear you had a bit of a do up at yours at New Year,” he says.

  “Oh, don't,” says Bridget.

  “She's just been telling me,” says Tina. “Quite a party.”

  “Bet you've been having fun clearing up.”

  “Well, actually,” says Bridget, “I did get my own back, a bit. In the morning. Couldn't stay awake after eight, so I went down to see what the damage was like.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  He's got a lock of hair got loose, flopped over one eye. She feels a sudden urge to reach out, brush it back. Blinks, gets hold of herself.

  “Well, you can imagine. Broken glass, streamers, great puddles of spilled stuff, ashtrays all over the carpets.”

  “Great.”

  “And half a dozen dead bodies.”

  “No!”

  “Yeah,” says Tina, “you don't have to be so literal. They'd just passed out, dumbo. Drunk.”

  He grins.

  “So you know what I did?”

  “No.”

  “I got the Hoover out. Switched the electricity back on and started cleaning round them where they lay. Made sure I bumped into everything I went past.”

  “Brilliant,” he says.

  “They won't be coming back here in a hurry,” says Bridget.

  “I shouldn't think they will.”

  “Weird people, though. No, I mean, apart from that. You know what I found?”

  “What?”

  Jago, released, runs off into the interior of the house with the girls. Mark comes and sits with them at the table.

  “Well, I went to clear the fireplace up and someone had taken all the ashes and spread them all over the hearthstone, and then they'd written a whole load of swearwords in them. Like, “fuck off” and “Bugger” and –” she lowers her voice “the c- word.”

  “The c- word?” He raises his eyebrows and she suddenly realises that he's amused that she's suddenly turned to self-censorship when it comes to that word when she's said the first two without thought.

  “No, but,” she says. “Don't you think that's weird? I mean, how bored do you have to be to have to do something like that to keep you entertained?”

  “Londoners,” says Mark, as though the word is an explanation in itself. “Oi! Is that my scrumpy you're drinking?”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “It wasn't me,” says Lily. “I didn't bloody do it.”

  “You see?” says Felicity Blakemore. “Defiant. Defiant and a liar.”

  Margaret Peachment holds her counsel. The tickets for Canada are practically burning a hole in her pocket. It'll be someone else's job in a few weeks, she thinks. Anything for a quiet life.

  Behind her, Hugh Blakemore stands with his hands in the pockets of his grey wool shorts. Grins at Lily Rickett like an ape

  “Well, who else is likely to have done it?” asks Mrs Blakemore. “Answer me that.”

  Lily shrugs.

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  His eye catches hers. Hugh raises a triumphal eyebrow, grins again. There is more, the smile says, where that came from. You'll never get away from me.

  Lily touches the burgeoning bruise through her sleeve. “I don't know,” she snarls. “But it wasn't bloody me.”

  The women stare down at the shards on the floor, a poker clutched like a lance in Mrs Blakemore's right hand. Hugh put it there right after he popped his cricket ball into the window seat. Right before he grabbed her by the scruff, raised his voice and called for his mother.

  “It's too much,” she repeats. “I cannot be expected to just – accept… look!”

  She bends down and takes the head of a King Charles spaniel between thumb and forefinger, brandishes it in Mrs Peachment's face. “Staffordshire. Over a hundred years old. Not, I suppose, that one should expect a guttersnipe from the slums to be able to discern such a thing.”

  “Oh dear,” says Margaret Peachment. “And are you sure it can't have been…”

  “Worth five pounds each, some of 'em,” says Felicity, dropping the head back among the broken remains of WG Grace, of Gladstone and Wellington, of Queen Victoria as a young bride and a nameless flower-seller with pink and dimpled cheeks and a skirt full of posies. “But that's beside the point. They're family things. Family.”

  “I do appreciate that,” says Margaret Peachment. “I feel the same about…”

  “Yes, well,” snaps the lady of the Great House, “I'm sure your heirlooms go back several generations.”

  Little spots of pink appear on Mrs Peachment's cheeks. Mrs Blakemore fails to notice. They do, actually, she thinks. Some of my things came down from my great-great-grandmother, not that someone like you would care. That's the trouble with this country. Old families… it will be better once this war is over. Things will be different then.

  “I do sympathise,” she says, in a voice of saccharine. She needs to emanate as much sympathy as she can at this moment without actually giving ground, because it is she who will have to pick up the pieces if this arrangement falls apart. For the time being.

  “You would have thought,” says Mrs Blakemore, “she would be grateful, but oh, no. I feel,” she continues, “as though she's brought the entire bally war into my house with her.”

  Felicity sees a brief flash of the events six months ago, the Channel awash with young men's blood, the brave little fishing boats that never returned, and holds her peace.

  “I'm sure she didn't mean it. You know how children are. Thoughtless…”

  “Yeah, but,” says Lily, “I didn't bloody do it.”

  Felicity snaps round to glare at her. The pinched, defiant glare, the skin that looks dirty however much carbolic you waste on her. I hate her, she thinks suddenly. Hate her. I can't help it. A cuckoo in my nest, taking over, with her dirty mouth, teaching the others her vile vocabulary, no control, no discipline. If Patrick were here, he'd know what to do. Damn this war. Damn Hitler and Chamberlain, scattering slummies through our countryside, taking my husband away.

  “Be quiet,” she orders. “You're in enough trouble already.”

  “Yes, but I didn't bloody do it!”

  Felicity Blakemore loses her temper. Advances on the child, fist clenched, teeth bared. “Get out! Get out! I'll – I'll…”

  “Felicity!” cries Mrs Peachment.

  She catches herself. It doesn't do to show temper in front of the village.

  “Yes, well,” she says, after five ragged breaths. “You can't expect something like this to go unpunished.”

  “Of course not!” says Mrs Peachment. “Naturally not!”

  “She is defiant, Margaret, and it cannot be tolerated.”

  Lily's eyes fill with tears, but no-one notices. Except Hugh. And when he sees it, he grins again. Does the boo-hoo gesture with his clenched fists behind the women’s backs. I was so happy, thinks Lily. I was so stupid. More fool me, to think that anything that good could last.

  “It wasn't me,” she says one more time, hopelessly.

  “I'm too angry at the moment,” says Felicity Blakemore. “I can't cope with it just now.”

  “Yes,” says Mrs Peachment. “Let her stew on what she's done for a bit.”

  “Yes,” agrees Mrs Blakemore. “We'll shut her up and let her think about what she's done.”

  “Good,” says Mrs Peachment. “Good thinking.”

  She is thinking of a bedroom, of course. Thinking about how she would send Julia and Terence to their rooms to await punishment. “You can deal with her
when you've calmed down,” she says encouragingly, then, quickly, to extricate herself before she gets embroiled again: “well, I must dash, Felicity. I have to get down to the Home Farm. Some trouble with the Land Girls, I'm afraid.”

  “Oh, yes,” says Mrs Blakemore, and Mrs Peachment catches the edge to the comment. “Mustn't keep the Land Girls waiting.”

  “No,” she says. “Well, bye bye.”

  “Goodbye, Mrs Peachment,” says Mrs Blakemore, pointedly. “I'll let you let yourself out.”

  It's a slight, and she knows it. Flusters her way out of the room. Finds her hat and her gloves on the hall table and scurries out of the house without putting them on.

  She really is the giddy limit, that woman, she thinks as she walks to her bicycle. Such a snob. I'm so glad I'm getting away from here.

  She has to wheel the bicycle up the track; it's too rutted to get up the speed to make the hill. The heat of the day combines with her embarrassment and turns her face scarlet as she walks.

  I've half a mind, she thinks, to do something to make sure she can't get rid of that girl. She thinks she can tell everyone what to do just because she's lady Muck. And the fumes coming off her, at this time of day. She'll run out of Floris soon and then she won't be able to cover up her habits by drenching herself.

  It would serve her right, it really would.

  And then she smiles.

  Why not? It's not like anyone will be coming after me, she thinks. They're far too busy to go chasing off to British Columbia in search of administrative errors.

  And suddenly, the hill seems far less steep.

  No-one speaks for a minute after she leaves. Lily, tempted to bolt for the door, sees that Hugh has walked across and blocked it off.

  Mrs Blakemore looks down at the floor, stirs the pieces of the figurines with an elegant toe. Takes a breath and looks up.

  “Well,” she says.

  Lily is ready to spring. Feels like a trapped animal. Wants to cry.

  “Hugh, would you mind?” says Mrs Blakemore. “The cupboard.”

  “Yes, Mummy,” says Hugh. Steps across and takes Lily by the arm.

  The cupboard. Nonononono! I'm scared! Shut in! Don't! Don't! My Mum shuts me in, under the stairs… Don't!