Dad was worried about me spending too much money, but he saw that the walls needed to come down and relaxed when he realised none of them was load-bearing. In fact, the house had been built like a child’s Lego toy. One large room had been partitioned into four tiny rooms with flimsy wallpapered walls that looked substantial but were not.
Roger pulled them down in a week and threw them into a skip. He laid a basic pine wooden floor for me, then Dad and I set about painting the inside with strong Italian powder paints I mixed in a bucket. I was left with an open-plan living and kitchen area, two small bedrooms and a bathroom, which we made lighter by knocking it into the loo next door.
I gave up trying to stop Bea and James helping me, they seemed to enjoy it and I got a kick out of surprising them with my mix of colours and showing them how they could work together. In a few weeks the place was unrecognisable. I took photographs of each stage of the refurbishment to show the Australians.
I was grateful to be so busy, and so exhausted by the time I fell into bed that I slept. I cherished this time with Bea and James. We were such a large family that it was rare to have them to myself.
The weather could not have been more perfect. It was a baking hot June and July, and we spent days working on the cottage. Dad barbecued in the evening and we drank icy white wine in the garden full of birdsong. Mum snoozed under a Philadelphia tree and Dad went off for a spot of fishing.
Before we sent the photographs we had taken to the Australians, Dad suggested that I got in an estate agent to value the house again. I had watched how the sun moved round and the light changed. I had painted peach walls that changed to terracotta towards the kitchen at the far end. At the back, where the branches of the trees practically touched the windows, I had a leafy green against an arch of rusty Tuscan red. With the pale pine floorboards and bigger windows it all worked, and I was quietly thrilled because I knew I could live here.
The estate agent’s mouth fell open when he saw it. He thought I had added at least £50,000 to its value. Dad thought I should offer to buy it and so did the estate agent. We worked out what I had spent, then we put in what Dad considered a fair offer. Tom had taken out life insurance, and Dad thought I should invest the money wisely and that the house would be a good investment.
I had my answer from Maggie’s Australian mother almost straight away. She jumped at it as if she couldn’t believe her luck.
‘Was it mean not showing her what we’ve done to the house?’ I asked Dad. ‘She sold it to us on the memory of how it was.’
Dad and Mum raised their eyes to the ceiling.
‘Oh Jen! They could have spent money on doing the house up if they’d wanted to. What’s the difference between this transaction and you buying the place in an awful state and then doing it up?’
I saw that, of course. It was just that making obvious changes, looking at things in a certain way, knowing instinctively how to cut certain fabrics or what colours and textures of materials would work together came easily. I felt that erroneously, I had made a quick buck. I had liked Maggie and Dean.
Dad laughed and shook his head. ‘I’ll never make a businesswoman of you.’
He wouldn’t. I knew I was occasionally taken advantage of. It had driven Tom and Danielle wild sometimes. I also knew where I got it from: my parents. They would give the shirts off their backs and often had. My father could only be businesslike for his children.
When I was alone at the house, I would sit on the step in my paint-splattered shorts in the sun and listen to the curlews out on the estuary. I felt like someone else. The height of summer slid slowly by. As I worked, I felt Tom was with me. I thought of the London house we had all worked on together so long ago and I tried to see my improvements here with Tom’s perfectionist eye. I sent postcards to Adam and Ruth, and they sent tired, busy city postcards back.
Now the house was nearly finished I began to put off the moment of moving in and moving on. I could not admit to anyone that I was afraid of being alone all of a sudden. I sometimes shook with the thought of going to bed and waking to an empty building. I had never been alone in a house in my life.
I was afraid of the small ghost of my child filling the spaces with her presence, pulling me back into that heavy blanket of darkness. I was afraid of my body, which ached for Tom, and of his voice, which would come to me, catching me unawares in quiet moments.
I had ached for so long to be alone with the two people I had lost and now I was afraid of it. I saw that somehow, in my skewered imagination, I had Adam here with me. I knew from Flo and Danielle that Adam and Ruth had been up to London looking at schools for him.
Danielle said Ruth was being given a hard time working out her notice in Birmingham and a harder time selling her house. I thought of Adam finishing his last term at school. I worried about him. Change is so hard when you are his age.
Both London and Birmingham seemed impossibly faraway to me. I had spoken to Adam on the phone only once. He sounded tired.
One morning a postcard arrived of black-necked gulls. It said,
Dear Jenny,
I hope you are well. I will see you very soon. Mum and I are coming down to Cornwall soon and we will come over to see you if that is OK. Please keep your fingers crossed for me (it’s a secret). I have e-mailed Harry to tell him that I’m coming too.
Lots of love,
Adam.
FORTY-SIX
When I tell Flo about Tom’s offer to come in with us to buy the house, she thinks it is a brilliant and sensible idea, especially if we are going to get married. I can tell she is delighted. She agrees with Tom and we say nothing to Danielle until she has exhausted every option with every bank.
Even I know that no bank or mortgage company will sanction the amount we need to borrow. If they did we would be saddled with a crippling amount to pay back with no room for mistakes or a bad business year.
Flo puts her house on the market. She will be able to contribute far more than Danielle and I can scrape together. It is only when I find Danielle in despair that I tentatively put to her the idea of Tom coming in with us. Her reaction is totally negative. She insists on viewing it as a business venture and would rather borrow from the bank.
However, her godmother’s health deteriorates and it is only after a bleak surveyor’s report and the realisation that we are in danger of losing the house that Danielle begins to waver. Flo’s lovely house in Chiswick sells quickly, so does Tom’s flat. Between them, financially, she and Tom make the reality of buying the house outright, possible. Then Danielle voices her concern about Tom putting in the greatest investment which she thinks will make the rest of us vulnerable.
From the moment I told her I was going to marry Tom I began to realise that Danielle had developed a problem with him. She doesn’t want him in our lives and I wonder what he could have done to alienate her because he is working so hard to make sure the legal side is tied up in our favour.
Without Tom, the house would have remained a dream only. Danielle knows this. Because of Tom, we are going to have prestigious business premises and a huge leap in credibility. When I ask her what her problem is she says, ‘Divorce is messy enough for two. If things go wrong the four of us will be involved.’
It is the first time I see Flo lose her temper. She sends me out of the room and I go off into town to see a friend, miserable. It all feels suddenly like a pack of cards; none of it is going to work if we cannot live together in trust and harmony. I am glad Tom is away on a course. It’s wounding when someone doesn’t seem to like the person you love.
When I get back, Danielle is in bed with a migraine.
Flo tells me that they’ve had a long talk. Danielle is frightened of losing me; losing the business; of things changing between us. Of Tom spoiling our working relationship and friendship. ‘Basically,’ Flo says, ‘she resents Tom’s intrusion into our little female enclave. She is a mass of insecurities. I’ve told her you and Tom are an item and she will have to get used to it,
whether we buy the house or not. I don’t think she knows herself whether she is jealous of you and Tom being wildly in love or jealous of Tom taking you away from her or the business.’
‘This way’, I say, ‘Tom does not take me away from anyone or anything.’
‘I pointed that out,’ Flo says drily.
I have never fallen out with Danielle and the following evening we go out together and talk. She apologises. She says she has never liked change and just wishes the two of us could have done it all on our own. She tells me she has always been scared of big commitments and tying herself to anyone or anything. Of course she doesn’t have anything against Tom; or all of us living in the same house. She wants me to be happy. She wants us all to be happy. As we totter home in the dark, arm in arm, we vow never to argue again.
Six months later it is ours. The four of us walk round the empty house quailing. Without the heavy French furniture the extent of the work is frighteningly apparent, as the surveyor’s report had warned. We commission an architect for the structural changes and a builder we trust.
In a year, Tom is in Oman for six months and in spite of still living with builder’s dust and chaos on the ground floor, in spite of all we still have to do, none of us can remember living anywhere else. In two years the house swallows and nurtures us seamlessly. We all have our place, separately and together. It has worked. It has really worked. Tom returns from Sierra Leone. In two years and three months I am pregnant and Tom starts to decorate the small room next to our bedroom. I do not know who is more excited, me, Tom, Flo or Danielle. This baby is going to be spoilt.
FORTY-SEVEN
I moved into the house with its odd sticks of furniture that week. I made sure I was cheerful in front of Bea and James. I was moving on, but it was not as easy as I thought. I knew I had to find a reason for getting up in the morning. I knew that I could still sink like a stone. Bea and I launched ourselves into bookshops and I bought a huge amount of fiction as well as art books, pencils and plain paper.
I watched myself eagerly buying, but I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t use any of them for a while. It was like a strange game I was playing with myself.
Bea was sneakily wise, though: she drove me into Truro and we bought rolls of pale muslin in primrose and cream with tiny flowers for curtains. As I bunched the delicate material in my fingers I felt an instinctive stirring of pleasure in the thought of making it up.
On my first day in my new home a huge bunch of flowers arrived. They were from Paolo Antonio. Danielle must have told him. I was touched that he remembered I loved white lilies, despite their poignant connotations.
Bea wanted to stay the first night with me, but I knew I had to do this alone. Dad brought champagne and Bea lovely great prawns and French bread and salad, and we toasted the house and the future. I fell into bed in a blissful champagne stupor and woke to sun streaming over my bed, and it was all right. It was more than all right.
Ruth and Adam arrived on Saturday morning, surprising me. I was shocked at how thin Ruth was.
‘We couldn’t ring you, but Bea and James told us you were here,’ she said as we touched cheeks.
‘The phone’s coming next week. Are you OK, Ruth? You’ve lost a lot of weight.’
She smiled. ‘I’m fine. Life’s just a bit relentless at the moment. The Fayad group are working me into the ground to pay me back for giving in my notice. The Birmingham house is not selling, and Adam and I are frantically busy packing our possessions into crates.’
I turned to Adam. I was so pleased to see him that tears came to my eyes. He came and hugged me fiercely and I realised that in just a matter of weeks he had grown taller than I was.
I put on the coffee and they walked around my tiny domain exclaiming.
‘Wow!’ Adam kept shouting. ‘Wicked!’
‘It’s lovely,’ Ruth said. ‘It’s amazing, Jenny. You still have your flair for putting things together. You make me feel totally unimaginative.’
‘Pff!’ I said, imitating Danielle. ‘I’ve heard about some of the business ideas you’ve put to Flo and Danielle. They’re thrilled that you’re so organised and thinking ahead.’
I turned and saw that Adam was bursting to tell me something. I grinned at him. ‘OK, give! What’s this secret you mentioned in your postcard?’
He laughed. ‘Guess what, Jenny? Last week I went to Truro School to try for a music scholarship. I had to play two instruments, piano and clarinet, and take a written exam which was quite hard. Yesterday, I went back to take the entrance exam. That’s why I told you to keep your fingers crossed, but I probably won’t know how I did for ages.’
I stared at him, speechless, then sat down abruptly and turned to Ruth.
Her face was devoid of expression. ‘Adam wanted to come to Truro School as a boarder and I agreed to him trying for a scholarship as long as he looked at London schools with an open mind. I would much rather he were in London with me but at least I have the cottage down here and I can drive down regularly to see him, if he does win a place.’
I heard James outside and Adam rushed out to tell him his news.
‘It’s important that Adam is happy and settled,’ Ruth added, looking miserable.
‘What happens if he doesn’t win a scholarship?’
She shrugged and smiled. ‘A scholarship, with my income, will only be worth twenty-five per cent of the school fees. Adam doesn’t realise. I will have to use the money from the house sale. I’ve had huge problems with Adam. If I hadn’t agreed to him trying for a scholarship he would have gone off the rails. I didn’t have a choice. There is little hope he will agree to even a private school in London. He’s made up his mind he wants to be in Cornwall and go to school with Harry.’ As Dad and Adam came up the path she added quickly, ‘I think Adam has a good chance of winning a place. He’s worked ferociously. His form master has been wonderful and has given him a great deal of extra tuition, and he’s also had extra music coaching. He’s practised assiduously every day for hours.’ Suddenly the tears were streaming down her face.
I jumped up as James got to the door. ‘Dad, could you and Adam go on home to lunch? Ruth and I will catch you up.’
Dad took in Ruth’s crumpled figure, nodded, turned round and said heartily to Adam, ‘Girl talk! Let’s go and find Bea and tell her your news.’
I went to Ruth and tentatively put my hand on her arm. She was very stiff and she couldn’t stop crying. ‘You’re tired,’ I said. ‘You’re very, very tired, Ruth.’
She nodded. ‘Sorry. This is so bloody unlike me. Or it used to be.’
‘Why have you been battling with Adam alone? Why didn’t you ring us?’
‘It’s my problem, Jenny.’
I went and got my tissues. ‘Why don’t you lie on my bed and sleep for a couple of hours as you’re so exhausted?’
‘Could I?’
I smiled. ‘Of course you can. Go on, get under the covers,
I’m going to make you some soup; it’s my staple diet.’
She went into my bedroom and when I went in later with a tray of soup she was lying on top of the bed in her slim jeans, grey with fatigue.
‘When you’ve had this,’ I said, ‘sleep as long as you can.’
‘I’ll try, but only if you leave me to vegetate and go and have lunch with your parents and Adam. Please. I’ll sleep if I’m alone. It will be bliss.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘You’ve got your mobile?’
‘Go.’ She smiled. ‘Stop fussing.’
‘My turn to fuss.’
I ran down the path to my car. It was as if a shadow had passed over me and I was in the light again.
FORTY-EIGHT
Peter flew into Birmingham to sign the contract for the imminent sale of the house and to organise the removal of the rest of his things. It had at last sold to a widow who wanted to buy it for cash, but needed early completion. Neither Ruth nor Peter wanted to lose the sale.
He looked guiltily at the stripped walls devo
id of pictures and the packing crates in every room. He was met by a pale, exhausted Ruth and an overwrought Adam, and he went straight to his old study to use the phone. Half an hour later he came into the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry, Ruth, I’m not taking any argument. I’ve booked us all into a spa hotel on the Helford. I have a week’s sailing down there with a friend. Adam and I will go off all day and you can spend a whole peaceful week doing absolutely nothing.’
Ruth, surprised, opened her mouth to protest.
‘Think of it as a thank you. You’ve had the hassle of putting the house on the market and all the packing up. I should have flown home and helped you and I’m feeling guilty as hell about it. It would also be great to spend some time with Adam. He needs to unwind as well.’
Oh God, it would be bliss. She needed a break before she started work in London. Adam was thrilled by the idea but anxious about the letter that should come any day from Truro School sealing his fate. Ruth rang the bursar, and gave him her mobile number and the name of the hotel.
Her phone rang one afternoon as she lay by the swimming pool facing the sea. Listening to the voice at the other end congratulating Adam, she felt a burst of undiluted pride that took her by surprise. She heard herself laughing out loud. Adam deserved this, he really did. He had worked so hard and the odds had been stacked against him. She went and ordered champagne.
When Adam and Peter got back, sunburnt and salty, the first thing Adam asked was: ‘Did anyone ring, Mum?’
Ruth signalled to the waiter and stretched. ‘Did anyone ring? Um…Oh, yes. You’, she said casually, ‘have just won the Daniel Hammett Music Scholarship outright against stiff competition!’
Come Away With Me Page 20
