Time to Say Goodbye (38 page)

‘I will, if I have time,’ the woman promised. She looked up at the sky and the racing clouds. ‘I’ve – I’ve arranged to meet someone here, but I forgot about bus times, so I’ve got a couple of hours to kill. Will it be all right, if it starts to rain again, for me to take shelter in the pub? I looked through the window and though the kitchen’s a bit of a mess I couldn’t see any sign that the rain was getting in.’

Tommy chuckled. ‘Feel free,’ he said generously. ‘Or you could go up to our cottage, have a mardle with my ma. Come to that, you might go up to the farm. Mr and Mrs Pilgrim would likely offer you dinner.’

‘If I have time,’ the woman temporised. She told herself that she had given up all hope that any of her old friends would come, yet she could not bear to think that she might be away from the Linnet at the crucial moment if they did. She glanced at her wristwatch. If she stayed here until three o’clock . . . but she realised it would be an act of kindness to visit the old lady who had been good to her in the past, so she asked Jacky’s son – she could not think of him as Mr Wellbeloved – to keep an eye out for any strangers and to direct them to his mother’s cottage. ‘I wrote to the others reminding them that our twentieth anniversary was today and asking them to meet me here,’ she explained. So if you see anyone . . .’

Tommy Wellbeloved agreed to do as she asked, and she set off, calling over her shoulder as she did so: ‘This will be a trip down memory lane indeed!’

An hour later she kissed Mrs Jacky’s soft, wrinkled cheek and set off to return to the Canary and Linnet, reaching it just as Tommy dumped his last bucket of weeds on the huge pile of rubbish to which he meant to set fire as soon as it had dried sufficiently and announced that he was off for his dinner. ‘No one hin’t gone by,’ he told her. ‘That don’t look like rain, them clouds is too high, but I’ve cleaned up the kitchen so’s you can have somewhere dry to sit if your pals turn up.’ He eyed her consideringly. ‘Mr Pilgrim, he let me off mornings to clear up here, but afternoons I work on the farm, so I shan’t be seein’ you again, but that’s nice to have met you and I reckon you’ve give my old ma somethin’ to think about for many a long day. If you do take shelter in the kitchen of the Linnet make sure you lock the back door when you leave. You know where the key is kept?’

The young woman nodded, not sorry to wave him off; when they came –
if
they came – they would want no one else at their reunion. She glanced at her wristwatch again, already resigned to disappointment. They would not come, but she would keep faith regardless. As she pushed open the creaking back door and entered the kitchen she was suddenly reminded of the poem which every schoolchild learns:

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor.

But only a host of phantom listeners dwelt in the lone house then, and I’m a listener, the young woman told herself, aware that she was straining her ears to catch the longed-for sound of an approaching footstep, perhaps a voice, a whistle, anything in fact which would indicate that the letters she had penned with such care, such high hopes, would bring at least one of the recipients. Sighing, she picked out the chair which had once been Auntie’s and sank into it, and thought gratefully that Auntie had always known a thing or two; even lacking its cushioned seat, this was easily the most comfortable chair in the room.

She closed her eyes and went over in her mind, for the hundredth time, how she had tried to reach the people she wanted. She had always sent Christmas cards to them all, had received cards in return, yet until now it had simply never occurred to her to suggest a meeting. Having thought of it, however, she had been all eagerness, assembling her addresses and sending off what began as a suggestion and ended as an invitation, dispatching the letters carefully: Debby’s first, because she and her husband now lived in France; the others a couple of weeks later. She had included Jill in Auntie’s letter, still too ashamed of what she had done to write directly. In fact, if Jill simply did not come to the pub she knew it would serve her right, though it was Jill she most longed to see. She glanced around the kitchen, so different yet so familiar, and reminded herself of Jill’s sweet nature, of her generosity; surely she would come, if only to say that despite the long silence they might still be friends?

She moved Auntie’s chair until she got a clear view through the window. What a fool she had been to provide herself with nothing to read! Old Mrs Jacky had offered her some elderly magazines, but she had refused, though with heartfelt thanks. She had told Mrs Jacky that when the others arrived they meant to go to the pub in the village for chicken and chips, but now, alone in what had once been the bustling heart of the Canary and Linnet, she regretted her refusal. To be sure, she had glanced at the magazines whilst they chatted and seen they were dog-eared and at least three years old, but they would have helped to pass the time.

Closing her eyes, she let memories wash over her once more. She thought about the letters, winging their way to the recipients, dropping through letterboxes, being opened, being read, aloud or in guilty silence . . .

Chapter Thirteen

DEBBY AWOKE, AS
she so often did, when the sun rose high enough to send a beam through the uncurtained window of their bedroom. Very carefully, so as not to wake Stan, she turned so that she could look into his sleeping face. Once it had been a very beautiful face, and when he lay as he was lying now, so that she could only see his right, uninjured side, he was beautiful still. His blue eyes were fringed with almost girlishly long dark lashes and he had a firm mouth and a cleft chin. His fair hair curled crisply and he wore it long to disguise at least some of the scars, though Debby knew that after so long he hardly ever thought about his looks.

However, there had been a time when his scars had very nearly ruined her life, because when they met again in the late ’forties he had been convinced that no one could possibly love him, far less want to marry him. And Debby, telling him over and over that she had fallen in love with him when she was just a child, and would continue to love him whatever anyone might think, had had to behave in a thoroughly unladylike manner to persuade him that she meant every word she uttered.

‘There will never be anyone else but you for me, Stan Mielcza . . . I mean Stanislaw Micza . . .’ she had said. ‘Oh, God, how can I make you believe that I want to marry you more than anything else on earth when I can’t even get your bloody name right? Look, if you won’t marry me then I’ll just move in and live with you . . . it isn’t what a nice girl would do, but I’m desperate!’

Debby had taken Stan to meet her grandfather, and the conversation had taken place in the garden of the little house on the Wirral, Stan in his best blues – at that time he was still in the air force – and suddenly he was grinning, grabbing her, lifting her up, kissing her chin, her cheek, her mouth . . . and then he had stood her down and, with his hands on her shoulders, tilted his head as though considering.

‘Your grandfather thinks we should marry, you think we should marry . . . who am I to argue?’ he said in his almost unaccented English. ‘But I refuse to saddle you with a name you can’t even begin to pronounce. If your grandfather has no objection I shall become . . . oh, Mr Smith, or Mr Jones . . . even Mr Nobody, if you like. And then as soon as it’s legal we’ll marry and you can start bossing me about and helping me to find the sort of work I’d most like.’

‘Oh, Stan, I don’t deserve you,’ Debby had said, standing on tiptoe to kiss that strong cleft chin. ‘Any name you like, you said; what about us both becoming Viner? I’m sure nothing could please my grandfather more, because when we have children they’ll carry on the name . . . but only if you don’t dislike it, of course,’ she finished hurriedly.

So Stanislaw Mielczarek became Stanley Viner, and though at first he could only find jobs he disliked, and honestly believed when he failed at an interview that it was the fault of his terrible scars, Debby knew he was wrong. ‘What you would really like is a place of your own, something similar to your father’s farm in Poland. Well, my darling, that isn’t possible yet, not in Poland at any rate. The Russians have changed boundaries, given away land . . . but one of these days, if you can just find something you like and we can afford . . .’

He had grinned down at her, but behind his smile, she knew, was a deal of buried frustration. He hated having to rely on her salary as a medical secretary – they had met again after the war when he had come into her hospital for physiotherapy on a badly broken ankle – though he never said so. After they were married they moved in with old Mr Viner and Stan tried hard to find work which suited him, without success.

Then Grandfather Viner had died, leaving everything he possessed to Stan and Debby: his nice little house on the Wirral and a number of shares which, his solicitor told them, they could sell for a good sum. At the same time a friend had pointed out to Debby that a gîte in France had come on the market at a ridiculously low price. ‘No one’s even made an offer,’ the other girl had said disgustedly, for she worked for an estate agent specialising in French properties. ‘I remember you telling me once that your feller had been brought up on a farm in the country. Why don’t you take a couple of days off and go and have a shufti? Even if it’s out of the question, you could make your trip into a little holiday; at least you’d get away from this damned awful climate for a bit.’

That had been ten years ago, and they had taken Debby’s friend’s advice and set off for the Continent the very next week. Stan had taken one look at the crumbling house and weed-ridden pastures of La Petite Chaumière and put in an offer which was immediately accepted, though they had agonised over it once it was too late to retract. Then they had moved in, labouring from dawn till dusk, and had never regretted it. It was the most propitious decision of our lives, Debby mused now, staring out through the open window as the leaves of the olives in the groves behind their vineyard showed green-grey one moment and silver the next as the breeze caught them, and maybe no couple ever has perfect happiness, but we’ve got the next best thing: a beautiful home in glorious country, the help and friendship of the neighbours and a steadily increasing bank balance.

Now, she could look back and laugh at the fears which had almost made her decide they could not possibly make a living in a strange country. In fact, even after they had moved in, she had suffered from qualms. But very soon she had begun to see the change in Stan. His delight in the land, and the expertise which he had picked up not only from books but also from their neighbours, had helped to convince her that the move had been the right one. And now, ten years on, their wild gamble had paid off. By sitting up and staring out of the window she could see the vineyard, the leaves beginning to turn scarlet and gold. Beyond the vines were the olive groves, where the sheep liked to foregather in the cool of the early morning, and though she could not pick out much detail from here she could see, in her mind’s eye, the woolly bodies, spangled with dew, already beginning to steam gently as the sun reached them. And beyond the olive groves reared the foothills, climbing to the distant mountains, misty blue with distance like a stage set, their snow caps in winter promising cool streams and green grass when the plain below them sweltered in the heat.

Sighing, Debby slipped out of bed and went over to the washstand; she would leave the room quietly so as not to wake Stan, because today was the day when she was to start her journey into the past. It sounded romantic, put like that, and she remembered how she had felt when she had picked up the cream-coloured envelope from the polished wooden boards of the tiny hall and recognised the neat, slightly slanting handwriting.

Immediately, her heart had begun an uneven thump. She, Imogen, Rita and the others exchanged Christmas cards but had long stopped writing letters as such. Looking back over the years which had elapsed since they had been everything to one another she tried to remember why they had drifted apart. In her case, of course, it had been the move to another country. La Petite Chaumière had been in a terrible state, the gîte a wreck, the land untended, but they had thrown themselves into the work with such enthusiasm that, Debby thought now, they had scarcely noticed the years passing. In five years the farmhouse was habitable, and Debby had felt she could stop working on the land for long enough to have a baby. Rachel, now three, was the apple of both their eyes, and Debby knew that now things were easier they would have more children. They had crops in the fields in addition to the vines and olives, and were the proud owners of two great percherons which pulled the plough, carted hay and lent their enormous strength to every other task required of them.

When she first stopped working on the land Debby had ridden her bicycle daily into town. She had taken a job in a café, where her command of languages proved useful as visitors began to arrive, and when Rachel was born she accompanied her mother everywhere. She was a happy child, popular with both the café owners and their clients. But that was all in the past; now she and Stan could manage without her wage, because they were producing all they needed. They had pigs, poultry and half a dozen sheep, and were not only keeping their heads above water but beginning to thrive, as was the vineyard, the olive grove and the small but productive orchard beyond.

Yet Debby felt she could tell none of this to Imogen, Rita, or even Jill. Partly, this was due to the fact that to explain why they had fled from England would mean revealing Stan’s inability to find satisfactory work and his sensitivity about his appearance, and this Debby had vowed she would never do. Everyone assumed that Stan was just an ex-member of the Royal Air Force, and that Debby, attracted by the coincidence of their having the same surname, had begun to go around with him, fallen in love, and wed.