Coming Home (42 page)

The pigeons made her think of Nancherrow, and the best was knowing that she was going back, to stay for the whole of the Easter holidays; and she was going not because Loveday had pleaded with her parents, but because Diana and Colonel Carey-Lewis had asked her, had liked her, had wanted her to return. She would go back to the pink bedroom that Diana had promised would always be hers, where the window looked down onto the courtyard and the doves, and where her Chinese box awaited her. And she would wear Athena's clothes and become, once more, that other person.

But the strange thing was that she felt like that other person even now, because everything, already, was different. In the stilled streets, with not another child to be seen, her solitude changed the look and the feel of everything. Familiar buildings presented themselves in an entirely new light, as though she had never been in the town before, exploring some foreign city for the first time. It was like having a third eye, for perceiving light and shade and stone and shape; an unexpected alley, the stealth of a darting black cat. In shop windows, she saw herself trudging by, dressed in the bottle-green tweed coat and horrible hat that proclaimed her as a St Ursula's child. But within, she was that real person, that sleek and adult being who wore cashmere jerseys and would one day emerge, like a butterfly escaping its chrysalis.

She turned down Chapel Street, by the antique shops and The Mitre Hotel, and the carpet shop. Outside this stood rolls of Axminster and patterned linoleum, and the man who sold second-hand junk was sitting in an armchair by his doorway smoking a pipe and waiting for custom which, today, was clearly not going to arrive. As Judith went by, he took his pipe out of his mouth, gave her a crack of his head and said ‘Hullo’, and she would have stopped to talk had she not given her promise to Miss Catto.

At the end of Chapel Street a cobbled ramp led down to the harbour. The oily tide was in, and the fishing boats moved gently, as though breathing, their masts on a level with the road. There was a strong smell of fish and salt and sea-wrack, and on the docks men were working, baiting lines for the night's catch.

For a bit she watched them. She thought about Aunt Louise, and tried to feel genuinely grateful, though sad, but was incapable of feeling anything very much. She thought about being rich. No, not rich. Mr Baines had eschewed that vulgar word. Very wealthy, he had said. I am very wealthy. If I wanted I could probably buy…that fishing boat. But she didn't want a boat any more than she wanted a horse. So, what did she want, above all else? Roots, perhaps. A home and a family and a place to go to that was forever. Belonging. Not just staying with the Carey-Lewises, or Aunt Biddy, or Miss Catto, or even the cheerful Warren family. But all the money in the world couldn't buy roots, and she knew
that
if she knew nothing else, so she cast about for other mad extravagances. A car. When she was old enough, she could buy a car. Or a house. A house was a new and beguiling fantasy. Not Windyridge, which she had never much liked anyway, but a granite barn, or a stone cottage with a palm tree in the garden. It would face the sea and have an outside staircase, and there would be geraniums all the way up the steps. Geraniums in earthenware pots. And cats. And a dog or two. And inside there would be a stove like Mr Willis's, and she would cook things.

But that was in the future. What for
now
? She was going to be able to buy a gramophone, but surely there were other heart's desires to be fulfilled. In the end, she decided that perhaps she would have her hair cut, in a page-boy bob like Ginger Rogers's. And buy green knee-socks to wear at school instead of stuffy brown lisle stockings. Some time, she would go to Medways and buy the socks for herself. With her own money.

She left the harbour and the boats and walked on, along the edge of the sea, past the outdoor swimming pool, and onto the Promenade. Here were shelters where people could sit out of the wind and feed crusts to the ravenous gulls, and on the far side of the road, hotels, white as wedding cakes, stared, with blank windows, out to sea. She leaned on the ornate iron railings and gazed down at the stony beach and the silvery mill-pond ocean. Tiny waves ran up onto the shingle, and broke, and were sucked away again, dragging a rattle of pebbles behind them. It was rather a dull beach, not nearly as spectacular as Penmarron, nor as beautiful as the cove at Nancherrow, but the sea was constant and changeless, like the very best, most reliable, sort of friend. It made her feel strong enough to try to sort out some of the momentous confusion of the day.

The right to be yourself, an entity, a person.
That was Miss Catto, with her M.A. (Cantab) and her self-sufficiency and her fierce independence. Perhaps she would become like Miss Catto, do brilliantly at University, achieve a first or even an honours degree, and become a Headmistress. But she didn't really want to be a Headmistress. Any more than she wanted to be a wife.

If you marry, you need never be beholden to your husband.
That was Mr Baines who, presumably, knew all about such matters. But marriage, with its complications, wasn't something that, at the moment, Judith felt like contemplating. She was pretty certain that it involved things that went on in a double bed, and the memory of Billy Fawcett's groping hands (although set into brisk perspective by Miss Catto herself) was still vivid enough to put her off the thought of any sort of physical contact with men. Of course, if you married, it would obviously be a very special man, but even so, none of it, veiled in her own total incomprehension, presented the smallest likelihood of pleasure.

Perhaps she would never get married, but that wasn't an immediate problem, and so not much point in bothering over it. For a bit it was simply going to have to be a case of taking one thing at a time. Easter holidays at Nancherrow, and then back to school. School for four years, and after that, with a bit of luck, a voyage to Singapore. The family once more, Mummy and Dad and Jess, and the lovely blazing sunshine of the East, and the smells of the streets and the scents of the night, and the dark velvet skies, like jewel boxes filled with diamond stars. After Singapore, perhaps England again. Oxford or Cambridge. A bicycle in The High, or punting on the Backs. Her imagination ran out of images. She found herself yawning.

She was weary. Tired of being a grown-up, with all a grown-up's decisions and dilemmas. She wanted Loveday. To giggle and whisper with, and to concoct plans for their time together at Nancherrow. As well, she was hungry, so that it was quite a relief to hear, from behind her, from the top of the town, the bank clock strike the hour of four. Time to start back if she was to get any tea. Bread and butter, jam if they were lucky, and heavy cake. Tea with Loveday suddenly seemed very appealing. She turned her back on the sea, crossed the road, and set out at a brisk trot on the long walk back to school.

Diana Carey-Lewis hated, above all things, writing letters. Even scribbling a postcard to thank for a dinner-party or a weekend was a task that she habitually put off for as long as possible, and almost all of her day-to-day business was conducted on that admirable invention, the telephone. But Edgar was insisting that she simply had to write to Judith's mother, Molly Dunbar.

‘Why do I have to write to her?’

‘Because you have to offer your condolences on the death of Mrs Forrester, and because it is only thoughtful and polite to reassure her that we shall take care of her daughter.’

‘I'm sure she needs no reassurance from me. Miss Catto will have made all the right noises, in her usual estimable fashion.’

‘That is not the point, Diana my darling. You must write
yourself
. I am sure Mrs Dunbar will be expecting some sort of contact, and it's up to you to start the ball rolling.’

‘Why can't I ring her up?’

‘In Singapore? Because you can't.’

‘I could send her a cable.’ She thought about this, and then began to giggle. ‘How about,

Faint not, nor fear;

Your child is here,

Being fed on sweets

and ginger beer…?’

But Edgar was not amused. ‘Don't be facetious, Diana.’

‘Why can't
you
write? You know I hate writing letters.’

‘Because
you
have to do it. Do it this morning, and get it over with and be sure to be tactful and gentle and sympathetic.’

And so here she was, martyred, sitting at her desk and summoning the energy to get on with the tedious task. Reluctantly she reached for a sheet of her thick, blue-embossed writing-paper, took up her wide-nibbed fountain pen, and started in. Once begun, and with a growing sensation of virtue, she proceeded to cover sheet after sheet of paper with her enormous and almost illegible scrawl. There was, after all, no point in doing things by halves.

Nancherrow,

Rosemullion,

Cornwall. Friday 10th April.

Dear Mrs Dunbar,

I was so dreadfully sorry to read in the paper about the death of your sister-in-law, Mrs Forrester. I did not know her personally, but can perfectly comprehend your shock and sadness when the news reached you. It is difficult for me to write of such matters when we have never been formally introduced, but please know that I and my husband both send you and Mr Dunbar our deepest sympathy in your tragic loss.

We have, however, met. Just the once, when we were buying school uniforms for our offspring in Medways in Penzance. I remember the occasion well, and hope that you do not feel that this letter comes from a total stranger.

I have invited Judith to come and spend the Easter holidays with us. We have already had her to stay for a weekend and she was a charming guest and a perfect companion for my own naughty Loveday. Our house is large, with many guest bedrooms, and Judith already has made herself at home in my pretty pink room, and this will now be hers, for as long as she wants. Edgar, my husband, is arranging for all her possessions to be conveyed from Windyridge to here. One of the men will go over in a farm lorry, and I am sure Mrs Forrester's maids, who are still living there, will help to pack up all Judith's clothes and other bits and pieces.

I promise you that she will be loved and cared for. But not possessed. I know she has relations in Plymouth and grandparents in Devon, whom she will probably wish to visit. As well, an old school friend in Porthkerris, and Miss Catto, I know, would be happy to take her home to Oxford at any time. But it is good for Judith to feel that she has some sort of security, and Edgar and I will do our best to see that she gets this.

Please don't imagine that her being here is going to cause extra trouble or work. We have plenty of staff and Mary Millyway, who was Loveday's nanny, is still with us. She keeps an eye on the girls, and sees to their well-being, and if I am in London, which I frequently am, then my darling Mary Millyway is a great deal more responsible than silly I could ever be.

If I am in London, which I frequently am…
Diana's concentration wandered. She laid down her pen and leaned back in her chair, and gazed from the window at the misty April garden, the drifts of daffodils, the fresh young green of the trees, the hazy sea. Right now, with the Easter holidays almost upon her, was not the time to escape, but she had not been to London for too long, and all at once, like a drug, she craved simply to take off.