First Friends (8 page)

I must get them in and feed them, she thought. Where did I put the nappies? Oh, how wonderful to have a garden. I can't believe my luck!

A tiny doubt assailed her. It occurred to her that Mark would have been happier to be close to the base and to the shops and cinemas of Plymouth. She did not really know his views on the countryside. He had been perfectly happy to walk along the beach at Stokes Bay in the evenings but had showed no enthusiasm for the idea of actually living in the country. Of course, with no transport . . . Kate felt a real anxiety at the realisation that it would not be easy for Mark to get to the base when the boat was in. There were buses from the end of the road, she had checked that, but they weren't too frequent. On the other hand, there were plenty of naval people around and she knew
from experience that they would be only too happy to give him a lift. Kate sighed. She also knew that Mark detested being under any obligation to anyone. He had used an old bike at
Dolphin
rather than accept favours. She would have to organise the lift for him before he returned, pretend that someone had offered and that it would have looked churlish to refuse.

She felt guilty and then her gaze fell on the twins, mesmerised by a friendly robin on the lawn. Her spirits rose again and she felt confident that she would be able to sort something out. Mark had a knack of viewing problems as though they were a direct result of Kate's incompetence or because she asked too much of life—or of him. The familiar look, a sullen stiffening of the features and a slight drooping of the eyelids, was enough to make her heart race. His tongue could be cruel and his temper frightening. She made every effort to sidestep scenes by dealing with problems herself rather than sharing and consulting, assuring herself that it was only whilst he was finding his feet and growing up a bit. It never occurred to her that she was in exactly the same situation—as well as being nearly two years younger—but without a book of naval rules and regulations to fall back on nor an experienced Wardroom all ready to help. Mark had been quick and clever enough to lay several things on the line from the start. No whingeing about his being away was the first thing: he got six weeks' leave a year, anything else was a bonus. No complaining about having to manage alone: the old naval joke ‘if you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined' seemed to sum it up. When he did come back home from sea he would be tired: it was no good expecting long lists of jobs or other problems to be dealt with—that was her department. And Kate, in the first flush of enthusiasm and with no yardstick to consult, had taken his rules to heart as if they had been written on tablets of stone. Now, as she turned away from the window, she was determined that her first task would be to resolve the transport problem. It shouldn't be too difficult. After all, Mark seemed to be home so seldom and they already had a tidy sum saved towards a car . . .

‘Here we are.' The General bustled in carrying three glasses and a
bottle of champagne. ‘Where's that brother of yours? Give him a shout. That's it! Here she comes! Quick! Ready with that glass! There. Now. Here's to you, Kate. Let's hope that your stay here is a very happy one!'

I
T WAS
. U
NLIKE
C
ASS
, Kate was perfectly happy to have a break from Service life and pottered around the bungalow, playing with the twins, working in the garden and pushing Guy and Giles up on the moor in a double pushchair that she found in a second-hand shop in Tavistock.

She did not analyse the sense of relief she experienced when Mark went to sea, the freedom from the strain of his presence. A feeling of holiday pervaded the bungalow and Kate merely congratulated herself on being of a temperament that could endure these separations so contentedly. She attributed a great deal of this to the moor which she was growing to love with a great passion and which the General was encouraging her to know.

On sunny days, he would appear in his car with Mrs Hampton who was only too happy to look after the twins and make up for Kate's somewhat dilatory and slapdash housekeeping whilst the General bore Kate off for trips over the moor and lunches in country pubs.

‘I feel so guilty!' she said to Cass during one of their lengthy telephone calls. ‘He never lets me pay for anything and when we get back Mrs Hampton won't let me pay either. And she's usually cleaned up and then, when they're gone, I come across all sorts of goodies in the larder.'

‘For heaven's sake stop fussing,' said Cass. ‘Daddy's absolutely loving it and he'll see that Hammy's OK, never fear! And she'll be loving it too. She's just the same with Charlotte. She misses her son dreadfully now he's out in Hong Kong so you're doing her a favour. And Daddy loves to have women around him, you know that, 'specially young pretty ones.'

‘Honestly, Cass!'

‘It's true. Try to see that you're doing him a favour.'

Kate tried but found it difficult. She invited him around to supper
when the boat was in so that he could renew his brief acquaintance with Mark. The evening went very well. Mark could be very charming to older people, even if he did often spoil the effect for Kate afterwards by saying things like, ‘Thank God that's over, boring old buffer!' or ‘Daft old bat, what on earth made you ask her?' and she was amazed at his ability to deceive people into thinking that he was a charming, intelligent, young man.

On this occasion, he and the General reviewed several subjects, ranging from the general election that had taken place earlier in the year to the World Cup. The most recent topic on everyone's lips at that time, however, was the Aberfan disaster in which a hundred and sixteen children had lost their lives when the spoil and waste from the coal mines slid down a Welsh hillside and collapsed on to the small mining village in the valley below.

When she heard of the disaster, Kate had sat for a long while on her sofa, a twin in each arm, and had imagined the nightmare agony for the parents of those children who had choked, struggled and suffocated to death in the coal dust. She had sat, staring straight ahead, hugging the twins tightly, seeing their smooth limbs and blonde heads covered and crushed by the inexorable black waste.

‘Won't go into that,' said the General, glancing at Kate. He'd popped in a few days before to find her listening to the news of the rising casualty numbers and shedding tears over the tragedy. ‘Terrible thing! Mustn't upset Kate.'

She smiled at him gratefully and stood up to collect the plates.

‘Oh, Kate always takes the troubles of the world on her shoulders,' she heard Mark say as she went into the kitchen to make coffee. ‘Totally pointless. Got enough of our own problems without worrying about other people's. They never thank you for it.'

Only a few submarines ran out of Devonport and Mark and Kate were in much the same situation as Tom and Cass. The Captain and the First Lieutenant had both bought houses in Alverstoke and neither of their wives had moved down. Since neither of the other officers was married, there was no social life and they knew no one. The boat
spent most of its time at sea and Kate was left with her own little round of children, garden, the General, and, all around her and dominating her world, the moor.

Through the following year she watched it change: the new bracken pushing up through the black, peaty soil in a tightly curled fist, growing to be waist-high in summer, the bright enamel yellow flowers of the gorse coming into bloom. She saw the cloud shadows darken the purple heather that covered the hills as the clouds raced before the wind and she caught her breath when the low late-autumn sun turned the dying bracken to fire.

She loved to see the rain clouds bellying blackly in the west and, when the storm had passed, to see the golden gleams of sunshine that followed behind.

Even when the rain poured relentlessly down, filling the great sponge of the moor to saturation so that dry watercourses became streams and small issues gushed with water, when the overspill thundered over the dam at Burrator and the rivers raced and foamed over the rocks, even then she loved it.

She saw the thorn and the rowan berries ripen and the beech leaves turn and knew that when the time came to leave it would be one of the saddest days of her life.

Kate and Mark went to Cornwall for Christmas and to the Websters' for the New Year.

‘Never again,' said Kate to the General when they were back in Dousland and Mark had gone to sea again. ‘Everyone was as helpful as they could be about transport but it's impossible with two small children. And I was so disappointed to miss Cass and Tom.'

‘It was lovely to have them. Now where's that husband of yours gone this time?'

‘Out to the Med. The boat's spending a week in Gibraltar. He'll be gone about five weeks. Two of the wives are going out when they get to Gib. In fact, the First Lieutenant's wife telephoned me to see if I was too.' She made a face and then laughed. ‘It was a bit embarrassing, actually. At that stage I didn't even know where they were going and she seemed a bit surprised. Mark was cross when I told him. He felt I'd dropped him in it.'

‘And are you going?'

‘No. Mark's not very keen on the idea. He always says these visits are hell. The others seem to enjoy them . . . ' She paused and then shrugged. ‘Oh, well. I'm sure he's right. And anyway, we probably couldn't afford it. The Navy doesn't pay for the wives. Some husbands squeeze them on to their subsistence allowance. They don't live on the boat when they're in harbour, you see. They get a set rate so they can stay at an hotel but if you don't mind a bed and breakfast place, the allowance more or less covers two of you. The Navy doesn't care.
If you choose to live less luxuriously and have your wife with you, it's up to you. The wives can hitch cheap flights out with the RAF but they have to wait for one that fits in and then, Mark says, if the boat's ETA is delayed all sorts of muddles happen. So . . . ' She smiled at the General. ‘Anyway, I bet Gib's not as nice as Devon. Now tell me all about Cass and Tom. And how was Charlotte? Cass sent me some photographs and she looks an absolute sweetie.'

The General drove home thoughtfully. More and more lately he was seeing service life from a different angle, through the eyes of Cass and Kate as they struggled to come to terms with its problems. He longed to help them, to protect them, but he knew that his role could only be a peripheral one. He must not interfere or give advice, all he could do was to be at hand. He was full of admiration for the way they dealt with the crises, the loneliness, the anxieties, and found himself thinking of Caroline, his shy, silly wife who, unable to cope with a husband twice as old as she was, had turned to a boy of her own age and finished up crushed and mangled with him in his little car.

‘He had his arm round her.'

Funny how that still had the power to twist his gut. The policeman had told him that afterwards and he had in that moment imagined quite clearly the two of them, wrapped up in their romantic ideal, fleeing into the night. The boy had been a subaltern and had seen himself, no doubt, as rescuing her from an intolerable marriage with a man old enough to be her father and an insensitive womaniser to boot. And Caroline, her head full of poetry and dreams, had encouraged him, seeing herself as the wronged heroine in one of those endless romances that she was always reading.

The General gave a small exclamation of self-disgust and struck the steering wheel lightly with the flat of his hand. Even now, more than twenty years on, his instinct was to belittle her. The fault had been his. Wrapped up in a brilliant career and then fully occupied by war, he had decided to take a wife at a time when he was established, experienced and absolutely in control of his life. He should have chosen from amongst his own circle, a woman of his own age, a widow—there
were plenty at that stage of the war—or a divorcee. But he hadn't wanted another man's leavings; at least, not as his wife. He wanted a young girl who would give him children and blend willingly and gracefully into his well-established way of life. Caroline had seemed the perfect choice: barely out of the schoolroom, dazzled by the dashing, handsome Colonel who knew so well how to charm and flatter.

She had bored him quite quickly and he had left her to her own devices. There was still so much to be done just after the war and he had neither the time nor the inclination to realise that she was lonely and bewildered. His friends petted and patronised and then ignored her. Whispers of his reputation reached her ears, although since his marriage he had been perfectly correct, and she became even more lacking in confidence. When her baby was born, Nanny was installed and even Caroline's pretty child was gently but inexorably removed from her inexpert care. No wonder then that she should turn to young Hurley who saw her as a damsel in distress, used and humiliated by his wicked Colonel who was not always as tender of his young officers' feelings as he might have been.