Come Away With Me

by Sara MacDonald

  ‘That’s Sarah. Well, she left me that little cottage. I rent it out most of the time. But we always try to go down once or twice a year. Adam is mad about birdwatching.’

  ‘Your parents always disapproved of her, didn’t they?’

  ‘Didn’t they just? She disapproved of them too. I could never understand how she came to be my godmother.’ Ruth stopped buttering toast and came over to me. ‘You know when we met on the train? I’d gone up to London to try to find out about my biological parents. Before they sent me out to Arran my parents handed me my birth certificate. They refused to tell me anything. My real mother’s name is not the same as my godmother’s, but there must have been some link, don’t you think?’

  ‘Couldn’t you find out?’

  ‘Yes, I could, but I don’t want to know any more how different my life might have been. So, you see, Adam is the one person who shares my blood. Thank God I have him.’

  I breathed deeply. ‘It’s a fantastic place to be left a cottage.’

  ‘I’ve kept all her things exactly as they were. It feels like my real home. Perhaps when I stop having a career I’ll retire there.’

  ‘Would Peter enjoy that?’

  Ruth gave me an odd look. ‘My decisions in life can’t always be based on what someone else likes, only what’s right for me, or Adam.’

  I watched her face. It was such an exclusive remark. It separated her and the boy from Peter, as if he were not part of their family. Yet he seemed such a kind man and devoted to them both. Ruth, embarrassed, said abruptly, ‘That came out all wrong. It sounds hard. Oh God, Jenny, I’ve been on my own for so long, it’s not easy sustaining a relationship. Peter wants to start a family. He would love me to give up work and have babies. But I love my job. I’m happy. I’ve done the hard times.’ She met my eyes. ’I’m ambitious. I admit it.’

  ‘Peter is away a lot, so presumably he’s pretty ambitious and involved in his work too?’

  Ruth looked miserable. ‘I think he’s away more than he needs to be because the child issue is unresolved between us.’

  That evening round the supper table I watched Peter and Ruth. They talked in a companionable, friendly way, but they were too polite with each other, too careful. They never touched or exchanged a look. They were not like Tom and I had been together.

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay thinking about Adam and about his life in this house. I thought of him lying in bed below me and I had a sudden urge to watch him sleep. I went down the thick carpeted stairs, tense for any creaks. His room was next to the bathroom and the door was ajar. I held my breath, pushed it open and peered into the room.

  He lay on his back, one hand thrown out. He looked smaller and younger in sleep, vulnerable in his blue-striped pyjamas. He stirred and turned away from me, pulling his legs up with a little grunt.

  I watched the way his hair grew round his face and conviction flared inside me. I turned quickly, pulled the door to and went on down to the kitchen for water from the fridge and a reason to be walking about at night.

  Peter left for the airport before I woke. Ruth and Adam were up early, gathering things together for the long journey to Cornwall. They were going to drive away and leave me here.

  ‘Will you be all right, Jenny? I hate to leave you. You must take care of yourself.’

  ‘Why don’t you come?’ Adam said suddenly. ‘It’ll be company for Mum now Peter can’t come.’

  My throat was dry and I couldn’t answer for longing to go with him.

  ‘Darling,’ Ruth said quickly, ‘Jenny has a busy life and people expecting her in London. But maybe one day, when you go to see your parents we could be in Cornwall at the same time?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said and smiled at Adam. ‘Thank you for asking me. Have a wonderful holiday, both of you.’

  At the door Ruth kissed me carefully.

  ‘Thank you for everything,’ I said. ‘I’ll post the keys through the letter box, shall I?’

  Ruth nodded. ‘I’ll call you.’

  I watched Adam bumping his knapsack down the steps, his hair flopping over his face. He threw his head back and turned and grinned up at me, and the pain lived and breathed inside me.

  ‘’Bye,’ he called. ‘See you again.’

  I watched them until the car turned at the end of the street. I stood on the steps of the house where this boy lived until they disappeared. Then I closed the door.

  TWELVE

  When the car had disappeared round the corner I moved around the empty three-storeyed house. All houses smell different, they gather the essence and scent of people. I looked at the cork noticeboard in the kitchen. Ruth was very organised. All Adam’s activities were carefully pinned up there with her own appointments and Peter’s schedules and flights.

  I moved up the stairs and stood outside Adam’s room like a thief. Then I pushed open the door and went in. The room smelt of boy; of gym shoes and clothes he should have put in the wash. I lifted a football shirt and held it to my face, then folded it carefully and placed it back on the chair. Posters were pinned to the walls: birds and maps and a group photograph of him playing the clarinet in a youth orchestra in Glasgow. I stared at his sweet, concentrated face and Tom stared back at me.

  What is it like to have a child of thirteen? To have a child with a formed and independent mind? I don’t know what that feels like.

  I lay back on Adam’s bed slowly like an old woman afraid that her bones might break and I let my darling into my head; just for a second or I would go mad.

  Rosie. I will never have a conversation with you. I will never know what sort of person you would have grown into. You—with your little busy footsteps on the polished floors and your funny, throaty little chuckle.

  I heard myself moan softly in the empty house. How loud it sounded, like an injured animal.

  There was an added anguish that would not leave me alone; it burnt inside me like a fever, keeping my body hot and dry. A nagging, persistent little doubt rising up, damaging and relentless, and part of me like a steady beat.

  Tom…You took Rosie with you. You had my baby in the car. You were always so careful. Were you careful that day? Or were you late leaving the zoo and worrying about the traffic. Were you careless, Tom? Were you?

  I lay on Adam’s unmade bed and watched the afternoon sun move round and slant across the floor and catch the dust, and I fell into a strange daytime sleep, and the dreams were so vivid that I longed to wake, but when I woke I longed again for oblivion.

  I am running across Porthmeor beach in St Ives and Tom is chasing me. He catches me and we fall laughing on to the sand, rolling over each other, getting covered in wet sticky sand. We are kissing each other over and over again. We are playing truth or dare, and I have rolled over on top of him, tickling him.

  ‘Come on, tell! Tell me the most terrible thing you have ever done?’

  Tom is twisting away from me, trying to get free and laughing. ’Get off me, woman! I’m getting covered in sand.’ He sits up, brushing down his sweater. Then he says, suddenly serious, ‘The worst thing I ever did was get drunk one night at a party and I screwed a girl in a bedroom full of coats. She was very pretty and she had been throwing herself at me all evening, so I thought, Why not? She’s obviously keen and willing. But I had no idea until later that she was only seventeen and still at school. I felt guilty and ashamed about that night for a long time. Even talking about it now makes me cringe.’

  ‘Did you ever see her again?’

  ‘No. I was at university and in Plymouth with the cadets, doing my obligatory scholarship time. We had driven down to Cornwall just for the party. We went back the next morning.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Tall and blonde is all I remember in my drunken haze. OK, goody two shoes, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? Stick your tongue out at the back of a nun? Ow! That hurt.’

  I sat up in the dark and the rage inside me was all-consuming, sucking me dry, making me tremble with
anger. Is Adam Tom’s child? Ruth can’t even remember the boy’s name or face. It can’t be right that Adam is hers. It can’t be.

  As I lay on his bed I knew that I had been guided to Adam. Why otherwise would Ruth and I have met on a train to Birmingham when we’d not met in fourteen years? It was fate. Adam is part of Tom. He is part of my life because of Tom. He is part of me.

  I felt light-headed, as if I were floating, as if I might blow away. Like the night of Tom’s death I felt curiously out of my body, watching myself from the ceiling. I got off the bed carefully and pulled the duvet straight. I switched on the landing light and went dizzily downstairs. I made tea in Ruth’s kitchen.

  Tom seemed abruptly near me in this house that belonged to another family. To people he did not know. As if I had conjured him. I looked around at the shadows beginning to fill the empty house and I willed him to stay close to me.

  Tom, you have a son.

  I walked through to the living room and looked out into the road full of lit houses. The front door of the house opposite was open and light spilled down the dark steps. The family were piling their possessions into a camper van. Up and down the stone steps they ran, laughing and excited, the children in bright clothes like small ladybirds.

  They were placing bicycles on the back of the van. They were going to carry their house away on their back. I watched, fascinated, until they were ready to leave, then I wrote down the number of the hire company written in large letters on the side of the camper van.

  THIRTEEN

  Ruth and Adam beat the traffic and arrived in Truro triumphant. They stopped in the town to have lunch and shop for food, then headed for St Minyon. As they turned off the main street and took the narrow road to the creek, Ruth’s heart soared as it used to when her godmother was alive and she knew that for an afternoon she could be completely happy in her skin.

  Beside her Adam unwound the window and Ruth heard his small sigh of contentment. As soon as the car was unpacked he would be off with his binoculars heading for the other end of the creek. For a few days he could run free and wild, as she and Jenny had done as children.

  The tide was out and the smell of mud and hawthorn filled the air. Ruth backed the car as near to the cottage as she could and they unloaded. Then she parked it neatly facing the water near some upturned rowing boats. Mrs Rowe had been in and opened the windows and made up the beds.

  An ancient Rayburn and night storage heaters stopped the house from getting damp, but Ruth knew she would have to put in central heating soon, holidaymakers now demanded what they were used to at home.

  Adam looked at her hopefully, then at the wave of shopping bags on the kitchen floor.

  Ruth laughed. ‘Off you go!’

  She handed him some chocolate and a bottle of water, and he shot out of the front door singing like a bird.

  From an upstairs window she watched him lift his binoculars to the dense woods on the other side of the creek. Then he lowered them and stood for a moment quite still, looking over the mudflats. Ruth recognised his moment of peace. It brought home to her his carefully guarded misery at a school he had never wanted to go to. She should have listened to Peter. Her work had taken her to a big city and it was a good career move, but it was Adam who was paying the price.

  She moved around the cottage touching things as she always did when she first arrived. She loved her city life but as soon as she got here she felt as if she were home; as if she’d shed a skin and somehow become herself.

  It was also a rare chance to concentrate on Adam. She knew he liked Peter to come, but she loved having him on his own. Of course you do. You think you are making up for all the evenings you are working, all the afternoons you are not there when he comes home from a school he hates.

  She went downstairs and put all the shopping away. She stuck wine in the fridge, made a flask of tea, pulled on another sweater and went out to follow Adam down a path she had walked a million times.

  Jenny and I—carrying rods home-made of bamboo and string—eating jam sandwiches and drinking Coca-Cola—bannedat home. Scary adventures round the lake that leads up to the big house watched by old herons, still as sentinels, who sit in small scrubby trees that surround the water; pretending, when the shadows come, that the wood is haunted and running hell for leather back to the lighted house and godmother Sarah, who has tea and tiny thin pancakes made on a griddle ready for us in a kitchen that is always warm. On the table there is a bright cloth and real butter and honey, and a teapot with a knitted cosy from a jumble sale. Safe…safe.

  She and Jenny always made a mess and Sarah had never minded. Her fingernails were full of paint and sometimes her hair too. She was vague and eccentric, and Ruth had loved her to death.

  In the dusk, if her father had not collected her, tooting his horn from the corner, never coming in or thanking her godmother for having her, Sarah would start up her old Rover and drive Ruth home.

  Sometimes, if Jenny was with her, Bea or James drove up from St Ives to collect them. They always came in to see Sarah. They would sit and drink wine together while Jenny and Ruth watched the ancient television.

  Sarah had a smoky laugh and long, long hair, which she piled up on her head, and sometimes it escaped and then she looked younger as if she weren’t really old at all. When she said goodbye she always held Ruth gently, but very close, as if she were infinitely precious.

  Adam was sitting on a bench with his binoculars trained on the incoming tide. Ruth sat beside him.

  ‘Look, Mum.’ He handed her the glasses excitedly. ‘On that tree…no a bit to your right…Yes there. Have you got it?’

  ‘A woodpecker?’

  ‘A lesser spotted woodpecker. He’s quite rare. Can you hear him?’

  Ruth listened to the sound of a small drill. ‘I can hear him, he’s making enough noise.’

  They sat side by side drinking tea and watching the waders, and listening to the terns and curlews as the afternoon drew in and the water flowed over the mudflats in small waves. There was only the movement of water and the gentle plop of birds’ footfalls in the mud. Ruth thought of Jenny and hoped she wasn’t too lonely in their empty house.

  ‘What’s for supper?’ Adam asked and Ruth heard his stomach rumbling.

  ‘Fish and chips, or scrambled eggs and bacon.’ Adam always chose fish and chips.

  ‘Fish and chips!’

  They walked home as the last rays of a watery sun caught the incoming tide. People would start to exercise their dogs at the end of the day and the fishermen would arrive in their waders, but for now they had the whole world to themselves.

  FOURTEEN

  On our first date Tom turns up at the house with the biggest bunch of flowers I have ever seen. It’s eight o’clock and I’m not ready. It has been the most terrible day. Our most experienced cutter has gone sick and Danielle and I are behind with our accounts, again, and we are terrified of incurring a penalty. Danielle is upstairs fighting figures while I try to finish cutting a complicated pattern.

  I had it all planned for a quick getaway. My clothes are laid out on the bed and an expensive soak is waiting on the edge of my bath. I wanted to feel calm and fragrant when I saw Tom again but when I throw open the door to him I am frazzled and almost tearful.

  He grins at me, buckling under the weight of foliage in his arms. ’Hi, Jenny.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m late, I’m not ready. Come in.’

  I am mortified. I look a complete mess.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m early…’ He leans forward and kisses me on the cheek round his acre of garden. ‘These are for you.’ He hands me the flowers. The smell of them fills the hall, dwarfs me and hides me from his sight. I suddenly want to giggle.

  ‘Heavens, you disappeared.’ He takes them back, laughing, and we fill the sink. Suddenly I feel better.

  ‘I’m not sure if I have enough vases…’ I regale him with the saga of my awful day. I get wine out of the fridge and pour two huge gla
sses.

  ‘Sorry about your hellish day.’

  He raises his drink to me and we clink glasses and I am so pleased this man is standing in my kitchen that I reach up and kiss him on the side of his mouth. ‘Thank you so much for my ginormous, wonderful bunch of flowers.’

  ‘I didn’t know what you like so I got a mixture of everything in the shop.’

  ‘So I see.’ We stare at each other, delighted. ‘Look, I’ve got to go back down to the basement to tidy up. I’ll be five minutes.’

  ‘May I come down and see where you work?’

  He follows me down the stairs and as I tidy and lock up he mooches around in an interested fashion looking at the noticeboard and at designs pinned on plastic models, and the table where I’ve been cutting out.

  ‘We’re a bit cramped, as you can see. We’re going to have to look for bigger premises eventually, but it’s hard in London. We need to be fairly central for people to get to us.’

  ‘Fairly central means expensive.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Do you always work this late?’

  I laugh. ‘This is early, Tom! Danielle and I are selfemployed.’

  We go back upstairs and an exhausted-looking Danielle is in the kitchen pouring herself a glass of wine.

  ‘I can hear a cork go three storeys up. Hello, Tom.’ She holds up her glass to him. ‘Jenny, you are not changed. Go at once…’

  ‘Look,’ Tom says, turning to me. ‘You’ve both obviously had a pig of a day, why don’t I order a takeaway for three and you and I can go out for a meal tomorrow, or another night, when you aren’t exhausted?’

  Relief floods through me. I have to get up early in the morning. ’Are you sure?’

  ‘I refuse to play strawberry,’ Danielle says primly.

  Tom and I scream with laughter.

  Danielle smiles. ‘What? What did I say?’