Hold My Hand

by Serena Mackesy

  What will I wear? Do I even know how to make conversation any more? When it's not about Yasmin, or work, or why I need an overdraft extension?

  “All right.”

  “Enthusiasm. That's what I like.”

  She laughs. “Sorry. Yes. Can you give me ten minutes? I can't go out like this.”

  “You look great. All you need is a pair of wellies and no-one would know you weren't a local. Tell you what. Why don't I take Yasmin down with me? I wouldn't mind getting cleaned up a bit myself. We can all meet in the pub in forty-five minutes.”

  “If you're sure…”

  “I haven't been sure about anything since Jeffrey Archer went to jail. But it might be fun. You never know 'til you give it a try.”

  “Oh. Ok then.”

  In her room, she is gripped by social terror. Finds herself doing something she hasn't done since her early twenties: throwing all the contents of her drawers onto the floor and riffling through them with despairing hands. I haven't a thing to wear. Really, I don't. The only clothes which are remotely festive predate Yasmin's birth, when she was still a small twelve, still had a flat stomach and breasts that sat high on her chest, and will never stretch their tinselly selves to fit the generous fourteen that motherhood and misery have combined to inflict on her. A couple of tops would go on, but they'd be so tight they'd look impossibly slaggy in a rural pub.

  She picks things up, desolately, looks, rejects. Everything that dates from Kieran is loose, dull-coloured, the sort of clothes that make you take up as little space as possible, the sort of clothes that hide in corners, try not to attract attention. God, the clothes I used to have: the crop-tops and the miniskirts, the things with spangles and the plunging necklines. The shoes that were useless for anyone who wasn't going everywhere by taxi. I used to really think I looked like something. No, I did look like something. I looked like a confident, successful Londoner; like the young person going somewhere I was. I looked like what I was.

  I guess I look like what I am, still. The clothes that post-date Kieran are nothing but practical: jeans and tops that won't show stains, that will wash easily. Clothes bought from charity shops so there was money left over for Yasmin; clothes that say that she doesn't expect to be looked at and doesn't want it.

  How did I not notice? How did I not see what I was doing, going through those racks in the Cancer Research, picking out the things in Fat-Chick Mauve and Ignore-Me Blue? When did I give up? When did I decide it was best if no-one ever saw me? I was living next to Carol all that time, with her Brixton market finery and her brave hair, and yet I never saw the contrast, when we walked past a plate glass window. I saw the contrast with her, of course, but I never noticed the contrast with my former self. How blind did he make me? How blind did I make myself?

  Well, I can wear jeans. I don't have much choice. It's jeans or one of the three pairs of black stretch trousers with the elasticated waists, as close to trackies as you can get without a white stripe down the side. She selects the newest pair, the least stained with the lowest waistband. Hopefully the wear at the knees and the rip halfway up the thigh will look meant, will be interpreted as a fashion statement rather than a product of poverty. In a corner of a drawer, she finds a dark crimson thigh-length tunic in embroidered viscose which Carol gave her one year for her birthday and which still bears its tags. Its v-neck goes low into the yoke, shows some cleavage, the reason she didn't dare wear it at the time. Now she looks at it and sees that Carol chose well. It's a good garment for coaxing one out of low self-esteem; covers myriad body faults and has that essential look of not trying too hard.

  She blesses Carol, wherever she is, and pulls it over her head. No time to iron. She'll wear it crumpled and nobody will think she's bought something specially.

  It's turned seriously cold outside. Frost already coats the hedges and the trees look like marble statuary as she drives down to the village. The pub looks warm and welcoming, orange light filtering through its tiny windows. She shrugs herself further into her old leather coat, scuttles across the car park in her flat suede boots. The left one has a hole in the sole; she can feel the frozen tarmac as she walks.

  They're in the corner, crammed on stools round a tiny copper-covered table. She's expected one of those Hanged Lamb moments when she stepped into the heady fug of beer and shepherd's pie, but, to her surprise, conversation hardly dipped when she showed herself. To the contrary, a couple of people even greeted her as she crossed the naked oak floorboards, as though she'd been a regular for years.

  Mark's changed into a dark green jumper with a white t-shirt underneath. Tina's got on an ankle-length gypsy skirt: very two-seasons-ago, but good for keeping the cold out. They've got a couple with them whom she vaguely recognises from the school gates. They all smile when they see her and open up their huddle, and the man whose name she doesn't know pulls out a stool from where they've been keeping it reserved and gestures toward it. Mark jumps to his feet. “What can I get you?”

  “Oh – don't worry. I'll…”

  “I'm going anyway,” he says, “to get a round in. What would you like?”

  She's not thought. She's so out of practice she's forgotten what women drink in pubs. It was always wine bars in London, anyway: bucket after bucket of overoaked Chardonnay that left you dyspeptic in the morning. But in London there were taxis, and she guesses from the smells coming from the kitchen beyond the bar that the Gastropub revolution hasn't reached this corner of Cornwall.

  “Just a ginger ale, please,” she shows them her car keys. “I'm driving.”

  “Oh come on,” says Tina. “You're doing half a mile on a deserted road. You can have a drink.”

  “I – ” where did all this hesitancy come from? I sound like one of those spinsters you see in 1940s films, all apologetic for their existence. “All right. I'll have a half.”

  “Half of what?”

  “Dunno…”

  “The bitter's good.”

  She nods. “Okay, bitter.” Remembers her manners, adds a thankyou.

  “Cold, isn't it?” says the woman.

  She sits down, begins unwinding her scarf. “Yes.”

  “What's it like at Rospetroc in this sort of weather?”

  “Oh, it's fine in the flat. Lovely and cosy. And he's got a good furnace for the rest of the house, though I don't really run it above stopping-the-pipes-freezing level when we've not got visitors.”

  “Got a lot of those at the moment?”

  “Not since the Christmas rush. Got a honeymoon couple coming in a couple of weeks, as long as Mark's done by then.”

  “Oh, he will be,” says Tina. “He's just patching things up. Though I gather it'll need the full works some time in the future.”

  “I don't doubt it,” she says. “As long as he can keep us going 'til Spring, I'll be eternally grateful.”

  “Carla's fascinated by the place,” says the woman.

  “Oh, right,” says Bridget. “Are you Carla's mum? I'm sorry. I've been terrible at working out who's who.”

  “Yup,” she says, offers a hand. “Penelope Tremayne. Penny. And this is Tony.”

  “Hi, hi.” She shakes his hand.

  “Hi.”

  “Tony's mum used to work up there,” says Tina. “Cleaning.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Tony nods. “Mad old cow, Mrs Blakemore. Bag of spanners, she was. Mum didn't last long, but then again, nobody did. Couldn't deal with the old girl. Paranoid isn't the word for it.”

  “Mmm. I gather she wasn't the best employer.”

  “No. Tight as a gnat's chuff and mean-tempered with it. Pissed most of the time as well. Always accusing people of moving things. And constantly looking over your shoulder as though there was someone standing behind you. Mum's not the superstitious type, but even she said it gave her the willies.”

  “Would me too,” says Tina. “Wasn't there some rumour about her? Or was that just kids larking about?”

  Tony shrugs. “Bit of both, I gu
ess. Don't you remember? We always said there was a kid buried in the garden somewhere? Though I thought that was Hugh, not her. Still.”

  “Oh yeah,” says Tina. “I remember. I'd forgotten about that bit. Spooooooky goings-on in the War or something, wasn't it?”

  “Something to do with refugees,” he says. “I think there was one that disappeared, wasn't there?”

  “Lily,” says Mark, reappearing with five glasses balanced somehow between his hands. “Lily Rickett.”

  Bridget feels a chill. She knows that name. It must be a coincidence.

  “How do you remember that?” asks Tina.

  “Simple genius. And the fact that I remember thinking it was a good name for her, considering. One of those kids from Portsmouth.”

  “Ah,” says Penny, and they all share that look of common understanding. Even Bridget has heard already about the acronym that crops up on West Country medical notes. NFP: Normal For Portsmouth.

  "You don't think she's really buried in the garden, do you?" she asks.

  "Naah," says Tina. "Of course not. Good god, I know there was a war on and everything, but don't you think the powers that be would have noticed, eventually, if they simply lost one of their evacuees? No. She'll have been picked up and moved on somewhere, or gone home, and the waters will have closed over her head, the way they do. It's not like anyone in the village will have actually cared enough to have kept tabs after they kicked her out of the school. No, it's just one of those village rumours you get. Partly spite and partly something to make life more entertaining. D'you remember those hippy artists at the old vicarage when we were growing up, Marco? The Whassnames?"

  "The Linleys?"

  "Mmm." She turns back to address Bridget. "Everyone got a bee in their bonnet that they were satanists. D'you remember? We used to tell each other stories that they were having black masses where they ate babies in the graveyard on full moon, that sort of thing. Poor sods moved on down to St Ives in the end because of all the whispering when they came down the shop. I'm sure they were harmless. Just didn't really fit in, you know? It was like that, really. Old Blakemore had gone gaga and turned into a hermit, and everybody hated Hugh, so they had to find something to hang it on. It wasn't like anyone actually, you know, investigated or reported it to the police or anything. It was just something everyone said about them behind their backs. It's not like they weren't all glad to see the back of her, anyway."

  "God, yes," says Mark. "D'you remember at school? They were still using her name as a shorthand for a really, really bad child. Gave everyone nits and everything.”

  “Oh, that's not fair,” says Tina. “She got a prize once. It's still there, in the ledger. I remember the name now.”

  “Well, whatever. Even if she did have a period of being good, it certainly didn't last. She got expelled for setting fire to the curtains in the main schoolroom. You can still see where the window got warped. I don't really remember what happened after that. It's one of those village things, isn't it? That you get when people are secretive. She disappeared after a while and of course all the kids started making up that she'd been murdered. But of course she wasn't. She'll have gone back to Portsmouth and got killed in an air raid or something.”

  “God, yeah, and they were still going on about it when we were kids. Do you remember? That was why we always used to run away screaming whenever the Blakemores came to the village. Load of little bleeders, weren't we? I feel really sorry for her, now. Kid probably got her mum come and pick her up, didn't she?”

  “Whatever,” says Mark.

  “I prefer the murder theory,” says Penny. “Nothing like a good juicy rumour to keep a village together. What do you think they did? Shot her? Strangled her and dumped her body in the lake?”

  “Yuh, thanks,” says Bridget. “I like that theory, too. Makes me much more comfortable living there.”

  They all laugh, but they change the subject.

  “So what brought you down from London, anyway?” asks Penny.

  Bridget glances at Mark, but his face remains impassive. Tina's, too. She can't tell if he's told her. “Yasmin, really. I suddenly realised that London's a terrible place to bring up a child, if you're not rich.”

  “So you've not got any connection with the area?”

  “No,” she says. “Sorry,” she adds.

  “Good thing, I'd say. Too many people related to each other round here. Half the families around here have webbed toes, as it is. So what do you think? Think you might stay a while?”

  Bridget sips her beer. It is warm, nutty: truly traditional. “You know what?” she replies, “I think I really might.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Carol is walking home from the bus stop with her purchases. Now she's got a salary approaching and a world of overnighters to live on, she feels justified in splurging a bit: expensive night creams to preserve her skin in the dry cabin atmosphere; two pairs of really good formal shoes that will support her arches and leave plenty of room for her feet to expand on long-haul; blissful, glorious makeup; extra-hold hairspray. Non-iron Summer clothes for the Florida run, extra-cheap in the tail end of the sales, warm furry boots for the New York run, though she knows she could probably have got them cheaper at Barneys.

  She feels oddly Christmassy, though the season is well past. Feels as though her life, on hold for such a long time, is finally beginning to move again. She's done her refresher course, learned to spot a terrorist, remembered how to give mouth-to-mouth to a keeling pensioner, and tomorrow she'll be locking the door on the flat, hearing the rumble of the wheels on her pull-along flight bag along the pavement. She'd forgotten that sound: all the promise it held.

  The traffic is so heavy on the Streatham High Road that she nearly doesn't hear her phone, chirruping away in the bottom of her bag. Must remember to enable roaming, she thinks, as she scrabbles into the inner pocket where she keeps it, now I can afford it. It's still ringing when she puts her hand on it, the lights on its keyboard blaring out on the night air. “Hello?”

  “Hi, it's me.”

  “Honey! How funny. You didn't come up on my display.”

  “No. That's why I'm ringing. I've finally got a new phone.”

  “Have you? Great! Well done, girl.”

  “Do you want the number?”

  “I'm walking,” she says, “and I've got my hands full. Can you text me?”

  “Sure. You could get it out of the history, of course.”

  “You know what I'm like with technology,” says Carol.

  “Okay.”

  “So how's it going? Had any more power cuts?”

  “Good. All good. And no, I've got a guy from the village in right now, sorting it all out.”

  “Guy from the village, eh? Single?” says Carol.

  “Oh, you. One-track mind. He's a friend, okay?”

  “Course he is.”

  “No – oh, why do I bother? We're having a raging affair and he wants to have my babies, ok?”

  “That's more like it,” laughs Carol.

  “So how about you? All good?”

  She turns the corner into her road, their old road. She's not paying attention to her surroundings, sucked as she is into that invisible bubble that wraps itself around anyone who is speaking on a phone. Is faintly aware that someone has turned the corner behind her, but doesn't think about it. It's work-turfing-out time, after all. There are millions of people turning into roads all over London right at this moment.

  “All great,” she says. “I've been shopping for my travel kit. I've spent about a million quid.”

  “Cool! And when do you start?”

  “Tomorrow. Isn't it exciting? I fly to Vancouver at just gone noon.”

  “Fantastic! Oh, Carol, I'm so pleased for you! When will you be back?”

  "On and off," says Carol, "not for the best part of a month. Except for the odd half-day turnaround. It's this incredibly complicated rotating shift system. Especially if you're a new one, on probation. Got t
o look keen."

  "So, what? Back and forth to Canada for a month?"

  "No," says Carol. "All over. Four Caribbean layovers I know of, plus LA and Florida. I'm right back in the jet-set, girl, I can tell you, and I'm not going to waste a minute of it."

  "LA? You'll never survive. What about the fags?"

  "I'm giving up," says Carol. "I only do it 'cause I'm bored and miserable. And I'm not going to be bored and miserable any more."

  It's dark and quiet in Branksome Avenue. The big houses that stand back from the pavement show little light from behind their curtains. She's used to it, of course, but she'll be glad to get away, after all these years. To find herself in a nice little one-bed house with a nice little nippy car to get her to the front door.

  “I'm pretty pleased myself,” she replies. “That'll be me, by the side of the pool, with the cocktail, then!”

  “Oh, Carol. You won't forget about little us, one you've started living the high life again, will you?”

  “Course I will, darling. That's the last you'll see of me, now.”

  “Ha bloody ha.”

  “How's my little angel? She behaving?”

  “She's great. We're having a party, Sunday. A load of kids from her school all coming over for cake and hide-and-seek.”

  “Oh, God, it's her birthday,” says Carol. “I forgot! What a cow! I'm so sorry, darling. I promise I'll get her something from the States and send it the minute I get back.”

  “No need. She's going to get plenty of presents this year. I've made sure of it.”

  “Yes, well,” says Carol. “I'm her Auntie, aren't I? She's practically my godchild. I don't want her forgetting about me. Seven years old, eh? Who'd have thought it?”