Seven For a Secret (20 page)

The weather changed over the next few days, for which Suzy sent grateful thanks to God. It was colder, cloudy and with rain skittering down in ten-minute bursts. Tamsin's plans for camping on the island had become very complicated, and Suzy was beginning to panic at the scale of the adventure. All she had wanted was to play Swallows and Amazons but without the sails – rowing about in her little boat between the island and the railway bridge, having picnics and laughing at the boozy holiday-makers trying to deal with their hire-cruisers. Then the real fun would be putting up Tam's tent, cooking supper over a fire (sausages, it had to be sausages) and sleeping out beside the duck nests and the roosting swans. There didn't seem to be anything in the plans that would worry even the most protective parent, and she didn't expect any opposition from her own mother.

Tamsin, however, was using the escapade for a chance to practise a major piece of deception. ‘I'm going to tell Shane that we're going,' she told Suzy excitedly up in the tree house, ‘and then he'll come. I'll get him to bring a friend for you,' she added with terrifying kindness.

‘What will we do with them, though? Will they stay all night? Where will they sleep?'

‘We can take a tent each,' Tamsin said, as if it was quite obvious as a solution.

‘Oh I see, we'll sleep in one and they can have the others,' Suzy said and then immediately wished she hadn't, for, judging by the look of complete scorn on Tamsin's face, she had admitted a shameful amount of naïveté. Surely they weren't going to sleep with boys? Not at their age? Her class weren't even scheduled for the lesson in putting the condom on the plastic willy till after next Christmas.

‘Tamsin, you're only just thirteen!' Suzy protested, horrified. ‘We can't!'

‘Oh we won't
do
anything, it'll just be a giggle, and for practice for when we're older. You could call it a dry run.' She giggled into her hand as if she'd made a dirty joke.

Suzy wasn't sure if she had or not and so resorted to trying to look superior. ‘Suppose the parents find out?'

‘Oh we'll tell them the boys just turned up, nothing to do with us.' Tamsin put on a big-eyed innocent look, as if she was practising that in advance as well.

‘And how would you explain us taking a tent
each
?' Get out of that, Suzy thought, as Tamsin frowned and pondered carefully, inspecting her hair for split ends to help her concentration. A few slow moments passed and Suzy began to hope Tamsin would abandon the whole crazy plan. If she didn't, she'd just have to tell her she wasn't coming and that was the end of it, she didn't care how shaming it would be. No way did she want to spend a spooky night on the island with Shane and his terrifying huge mates. They'd drink lager and fling themselves about and make belchy noises to impress each other, like they did to annoy the mothers by the swings on the rec. She wished quite suddenly she'd joined the Sea Scouts instead, then she could do all this fun stuff on the river without having to try to get Tamsin to remember she was still a child. She could have been doing proper sailing, or gig-racing, or going to a proper camp with songs and games. One day, not too far ahead, Suzy predicted, Tamsin would be the star of the village bus shelter, her reputation scrawled up in letters even bigger than the ones about Lisa Gibson.

‘I know!' Tamsin dropped the hank of hair and scattered picked-off ends down on to the orchard grass. ‘I've got it, we'll get Simon to come too. Then Mum will think the tent is his. You wouldn't mind about sharing with him, would you?' Tamsin asked with a knowing grin, adding with insulting truth, ‘And you'd be quite safe, after all it's your sister he fancies, isn't it? Everyone knows that.'

Suzy peered down from the treehouse and out across the orchard to the back of the house. The film crew had organized the whole façade to be covered in scaffolding, from which was being draped huge black cloths. Kate was there, talking to Brian but looking around her all the time as if Brian was really the last person she wanted to be with, but couldn't find anyone else who was better. At least Simon wasn't with her, not just at that moment. Probably, she thought, he was lurking behind a tree gazing at her from a safe distance. Somehow it didn't even cross Suzy's mind that Kate's darting eyes were searching for
him
.

Uncle Edward was clearly deteriorating. Heather drove her mother to the clinic and sat with her in his room, listening to the old man's uneven breathing as he dozed. Sometimes it seemed to stop, and Heather would hold her breath too, and wait. Then he would sigh suddenly through the silence and his shallow breath would resume. She was unbearably moved by, of all things, his hair, which a diligent nurse had carefully combed flat across his beige head. The hair, what there was of it, went the wrong way – Edward's parting was on the left, not the right – and Heather thought he looked as if he had been arranged for his coffin by an unobservant but well-meaning undertaker.

Delia seemed to take comfortable satisfaction from his steady downhill progress. ‘I thought he was looking quite a lot worse today,' she told Heather as they sat at the bar overlooking the river in the Black Swan in Friarsford, ordering a ploughman's lunch along with ham and chips for Suzy and Kate who were joining them.

‘Did you?' Heather commented. ‘I honestly couldn't see any difference. He just looks as if he's already dead to me.'

Delia sipped her lager, made a face about the bubbles and stared around the bar. Like most old English pubs, it had decor more suited to winter, with its low beams, smoky yellow walls, treacly paintwork and cosy, scarlet-patterned carpet. Its brass knick-knacks, baskets of pine cones and vast log fire really only came into their own in the ever-lengthening Christmas season. In August the fireplace was neglected and dusty, as if no-one quite knew how to fill the space suitably, and the only real concession to summer was a vase of spiky and rigid gladioli perched awkwardly on the bar. In good weather, customers were expected to be outside, admiring the scenery. Today the lighting was gloomy to match the weather outside, and a few aged locals sulked in corners because the saloon bar was full of burly film crew bitching about the professional shortcomings of absent colleagues. Heather listened in and felt glad, as she so often did, that she was self-employed, with no office in-fighting or petty corporate jealousies to join in with.

‘Of course he could go on like that for weeks,' Delia was saying about Edward.

Heather almost choked on her white wine at the thought that her mother might still be a house guest well into the autumn. Weeks more of tiptoeing round, pretending she wasn't conscious of being observed. Weeks more of Iain, sod him, living just yards away, ever likely to run into Delia at a village cricket match, the church fête or at a drinks party. The pub door opened and Kate and Suzy dashed in, accompanied by a cold damp blast of air and . . . Iain. Heather looked across at him in sudden panic, and he smiled at her over the top of Kate's wind-blown hair before heading tactfully for the other bar. He had a smile like a pirate, she thought, all badness behind the glamour. Suzy was pushing her way towards them, her freckled nose wrinkling from being on a level with too many armpits. Kate, Heather noticed, had disappeared, then she caught a quick glimpse of her, the mirror over the fireplace picking up her and Iain, heads close together in the other bar. Iain was still doing his pirate-smile, and Kate was talking fast at him. Then she saw him laugh, put his finger to his lips in a ‘ssh' gesture, and gently push the girl back towards the saloon. He's been telling her, Heather assumed angrily. He's told her what our stupid secret is, and he's told her to keep it secret too.

‘Here she is,' Delia announced as Kate slid on to the bench next to her grandmother. ‘You nearly missed your lunch,' she admonished as the barman arrived with his overloaded tray.

‘No I didn't. I
never
miss food,' Kate replied with a broad smile.

She looked suspiciously flushed and excited, Heather noticed. ‘You look happy. What have you been doing this morning?' she asked in an innocently conversational way. Through the mirror she could see Iain sitting alone at the other bar, reading a newspaper and sipping Scotch and soda.

‘Trying to break into films. That man staying at Margot's says he thinks he can get me into a crowd scene really soon. Isn't that
brilliant
?'

She was bursting with it, Heather could see. There was clearly nothing else at all in her head but the possibility of fame. She felt faint with relief, and relaxed enough to start eating her lunch.

‘Working as an extra, you mean?' Delia was asking.

Kate put on a grand look. ‘We call it “Support Artist”, not “extra”,' she explained.

‘Oh “we” is it?' Suzy chipped in with envious mockery. ‘D'you think they could find room for me and Tamsin?'

‘Not a chance. The scene is supposed to be a cocktail party. There definitely wouldn't be any children.'

‘Not unless they're hiding under the piano,' Suzy commented. ‘I keep seeing films on TV where kids are hiding under the piano while grown-ups do things.'

‘What sort of things?' Delia asked.

Suzy started a slow blush which told Heather and Kate exactly what sort of things.

‘Oh those sort!' Delia snapped. ‘You shouldn't be watching those sort of films,' she added, looking sharply at Heather.

‘Mother, she's nearly fourteen, for heaven's sake.'

‘All the more reason,' Delia stated obtusely, concentrating on her cheese and pickle.

In the mirror, Iain was wolfing down a sandwich. How easy it should be, Heather suddenly thought, simply to say to them all, ‘Hey look in the other bar, there's a bloke I married,' as if he was no more significant than a chap who'd once done a pretty good job of rethatching the house. A bit late now.

While Delia rested that afternoon, Heather put on her fleecy-lined Musto jacket and her gardening boots, and took Jasper for a walk across the recreation ground to the woods and up the steep hill beyond. She had lettuces to thin out and there was a sudden ripe glut of tomatoes that needed picking from the greenhouse, but she wanted to get out and breathe the sharp, wilder air close to the big trees. Rain drops trickled on to the path from the overhanging chestnut trees, bringing with them a tangy scent which reminded her of bath oil. The sun was beginning to break through the oozing clouds, and the air was becoming steamy as the soaking ground blotted up its warmth.

‘Hallo! Heather!' Julia Merriman, accompanied by her black labradors strode across the damp grass to meet Heather as she started climbing the hill.

‘Hi Julia! How are the camellias settling in?'

‘Perfectly well, they've each got a few new pale leaves already,' she said.

Heather smiled, satisfied that she'd got it right, though it would have been a pretty poor gardener who hadn't. Julia was bustling along with her dogs like a woman with an over-full diary, but Heather remembered how she had seemed, on her own premises, sadly under-occupied. Perhaps her own mother felt like that, filling the long days in Putney. Here at least Delia felt needed, even if it was only to tend a dying man and to scurry around getting cross about the state of Heather's kitchen.

‘You could under-plant the camellias with tiny white cyclamen for the autumn,' she suggested to Julia, ‘and then maybe sow something hardy and annual for when they've finished flowering, like mignonette or Virginia stocks.'

‘Something to smell good you mean?' Julia mulled over the suggestions. ‘Yes, that would be lovely, right by the kitchen.'

‘Mix in night-scented stock seeds when you plant the others, then you'll get evening perfume wafting through into the house,' Heather told her.

Julia smiled broadly. ‘Do you know, I haven't grown things from seed since I was a child? Mustard and cress and broad beans on blotting paper up the sides of jars. Charles used to do a few lettuces, which he then hid under cloches away from the dogs, but I've always been a plant buyer, not a seed sower.' Heather felt pleased: Julia was looking quite excitedly inspired. ‘We've still got an old propagator in the greenhouse,' she said, ‘I could use that.'

The two women trudged to the top of the hill and turned to look back at the view. ‘I never get tired of all this,' Julia said, gazing out over the village, the gentle curve of the river and across to the wide grassy flood meadows towards the hills beyond. ‘Charles and I used to come up here on Sundays, before Evensong, in summer, with Fiona in her pushchair. I wonder if she ever thinks of this view, over there in Brisbane?'

‘Probably,' Heather reassured her. ‘It's probably one of those memories that gives her the odd twinge about missing England.' Julia had a lonely, faraway look. Heather crossed her fingers that Kate or Suzy wouldn't choose to live half a world away from her and Tom. It seemed to be what all men did, enchanting daughters far away from their homes. Her own mother must have felt, all those years ago, that Iain's ancestral castle was almost as far from Staines as Australia – in those days it took as long to get there by train as it now would for Julia to fly to visit her daughter. ‘Do you still go to Evensong? I'm sure my mother would like to join you while she's here.'

‘No, actually I go to Family Communion,' Julia confessed as if it was a wicked secret. ‘They do proper hymns, Ancient and Modern and all that, but in addition, there's a lot of jollity and coffee and a biscuit afterwards and a chance to chat. I like that. Sometimes I make gingerbread men.'

‘I'll tell my mother, then. She's fond of gingerbread,' Heather said, laughing.

Julia looked serious. ‘I don't know what she's used to, churchwise,' she said warningly, ‘but there's a certain amount of, well, chumminess. Signs of peace and all-join-in and such.'