Winter Solstice (61 page)

“Think about myself all the time! That is the most unkind thing to say. This is the first time in years, since Miles walked out and left me, that I’ve thought about myself… At least Randall appreciates me. I have at last got someone in my life who appreciates me….”

Carrie stopped trying to be nice.

“Oh, don’t talk such a load of codswallop.”

“I’m not going to listen….” Nicola’s voice soared in righteous indignation, and Carrie relented.

“Nicola. Look. Sorry. This is getting us nowhere. I’ve got your number in Florida. I’ll try and work something out, and I’ll ring back.”

“Tell Lucy to ring me.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that in the foreseeable future. But try not to get in too much of a state. And I will try to work something out.”

Finally, grudgingly, “All right,” said Nicola.

“And have a good Christmas.”

But Nicola, as always, missed the irony. She said, “Same to you,” and rang off.

What Carrie wanted, above all, was for it to be yesterday, and none of this to have happened. To be in the empty, deserted woollen mill, alone with Sam Howard; walking through the chill and echoing sheds, following his tall figure, up stairways, across catwalks. She wanted to be back in the Duke’s Arms, with the hot fire, the warming drink, the two old men, and the murmur of the barman’s television. And no person to think about but herself and the man who sat across the table from her, talking about their tenuous and highly uncertain future.

But this was now, and everything was changed. She ran a hand through her hair, straightened her shoulders, turned, and opened the sitting-room door. Beyond it, they were all still there, in the same chairs, the same positions, as though nothing untoward could possibly have taken place. They had been joined, she saw, by Rory, who, finished with his chef’s duties down in the kitchen, had come upstairs to find out what was happening, and why nobody had appeared to partake of the informal and makeshift meal. He sat now, opposite his mother, cross-legged on the hearth rug with a glass of lager in his hand.

They were all talking peacefully amongst themselves, but when Carrie appeared, conversation drifted away, and heads were turned as she came through the door, as though her appearance was either long overdue or unexpected.

She said, “Here I am,” which was banal, and closed the door behind her.

“Sorry to keep you all waiting.”

Elfrida said, “Darling, what’s been going on? So many telephone calls. Rory said Lucy’s mother had phoned from Florida. Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“No. Nothing wrong.” Which was true but utterly untrue all at the same time.

“Just everything. Another family crisis, but it’s my family, so please don’t be too concerned.”

“Carrie. It sounds dire. Tell us.”

Carrie said, “I don’t know where to start,” and Sam, who had been sitting at the far end of the room, got up from his chair and came over to her side. He said, “Would you like a drink?”

She shook her head, wondering if she appeared either deathly pale or flushed with unbearable exertion. He reached for a chair and drew it forward, next to Elfrida. Carrie sat down with a grateful thump, and felt Elfrida take her hand.

“Darling Carrie, tell us.”

So she did.

“Nicola’s just been on the telephone. Lucy’s mother,” she enlarged for the benefit of the Kennedys, who could not possibly know who Nicola was.

“My sister. She went out to Florida to stay with this man called Randall Fischer. And this morning they got married. It was the first we’d heard of it. She rang to speak to Lucy, and told her then. Lucy hung up on her, in mid-flow, as it were, and is now in tears in her bedroom, swearing black and blue that she never liked Randall Fischer and she will never go to live in America. Then my mother came on the telephone to tell me the news. Nicola apparently has postponed her flight home, and is determined to have a honeymoon with Randall before she finally comes back to London. My mother is in hysterics about this, because she wants to stay in Bournemouth until the end of the month, and refuses to return just so that she can be with Lucy. Then Nicola got back on the phone again, to tell me that Lucy had hung up on her, and the upshot of that was that we had the usual sisterly difference of opinion, and only just stopped short of a flaming row.”

Elfrida said, “I can’t bear it,” which, Carrie decided, was the understatement of the year.

She went on.

“So the crisis is immediate and also long-term. Immediate, because there is nobody in London to take care of Lucy and get her to school. Except, of course, dogs body me. And of course, if necessary, I’ll do it, and stay in my mother’s flat until either she or Nicola gets back to London. But the long-term problem is a different kettle of fish altogether. The longterm problem is Lucy’s future. Nicola’s married an American, and quite naturally, will make her home out there. I think she relishes the prospect. Lucy, on the other hand, never wanted to go to America with her, even for a holiday. She doesn’t particularly like Randall, and to be truthful, I don’t think she’s all that fond of her mother.”

They had all listened attentively and with growing concern, but now, as Carrie fell silent, nobody said anything.

Then Tabitha spoke.

“Oh, dear” she said, which was inadequate, but sympathetic.

“She doesn’t have to go and live in America,” Elfrida ventured hopefully.

“How about going to her school as a boarder?”

“It’s a day school, Elfrida. And there are still holidays.”

“Your mother … ?”

“You know as well as I do, Ma would never cope on her own. Wouldn’t even try.”

“Perhaps Lucy’s father…”

“No way. Number-two wife would never consider it.”

“But…”

“This is all ridiculous….” A new voice broke into the argument, or the discussion, or whatever it could be called. Rory Kennedy. In some surprise, Carrie turned her head to look at him, and saw that he had got to his feet, was no longer sitting comfortably on the hearth rug but stood before them all, his back to the fire, and his blue eyes blazing with indignation. Taken entirely by surprise, nobody interrupted him or stopped him speaking.

“… It’s ridiculous. You’re all talking in circles, taking it for granted that Lucy will go back to London, just as though nothing had happened. But she can’t go. She’s miserable enough there, she told me so, and what’s happened just now only makes everything more impossible for her. She has few friends, she has no proper home, and she’s never felt loved. What has made her really happy has been staying here, with Elfrida and Oscar. In Creagan. She told me she’d never been so happy as she is here. She never wanted to go back to London in the first place. So don’t send her back. Keep her here. She can stay with Elfrida and Oscar. Mum and Dad will be around, and Clodagh, and she’s made friends with our friends. Then she can go to day school in Creagan. Dad can fix that with Mr. Mcintosh. He’ll squeeze her in somehow. He’ll find a place for her. That is what I believe you should all do. I think if you let her go back to London, without any sort of plan for the future, it would be criminal. Unhappy teenagers do terrible stupid things. We all know that. Lucy belongs to you all far more than she belongs with her mother. So this is where she should be. I think you have a moral obligation to do the right thing for her. Which is to keep her here, in Creagan.”

He stopped, red-cheeked from the warmth of the fire and the passion of his feeling. For a moment an astounded silence filled the room, as all the adults stared at Rory in speechless but respectful astonishment. Rory, perhaps feeling that he had gone too far, looked a bit sheepish, gave the hearth rug a kick, and apologized.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.” Silence again. Then Peter Kennedy gently shifted Tabitha’s weight from his knees and got to his feet, to stand beside his son.

“You didn’t speak out of turn,” he told him, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“I think you are right. Well said, Rory.”

Lucy lay and stared at the sloping ceiling of her bedroom, exhausted by weeping and beginning to feel remorseful about the way she had behaved to Carrie. She was not in the habit of having tantrums, and was not quite sure about her next move. Nothing was going to be all right again until she told Carrie she was sorry, was hugged, and forgiven, but she could not bring herself to get out of bed, comb her hair, wash her face, and go downstairs to face everybody. The Kennedys were all still here, and staying for supper, but that only made everything worse.

She felt headachy, drained, and yet tremendously hungry. She thought about the satisfaction of slamming down the telephone on her mother’s voice, all the way from the United States, telling Lucy that she was now married to Randall Fischer, that Lucy had a new father, that they were all going to be happy ever after living in well-heeled style, and with the blissful warmth of Gulf Stream, Florida. Listening to her mother burbling on, lyrical with excitement and as insensitive to others’ feelings as she had always been, had all at once become too much, and Lucy, unable to listen to one more word, had simply put the receiver back on the telephone.

Now, alone and desolate, she told herself that she had been a coward. She should, then and there, while they were still speaking, have unleashed upon her mother the full force of her indignation and shock. She should have let her know, at once, that she was terrified at the very thought of being uprooted, forced to move to a foreign country and accept the fact that her entire existence was about to be turned upside down.

But now it was too late.

She longed to be older. To be eighteen, and so an adult, with the weight of British law behind her. At eighteen, she could refuse to budge; could stay where she felt familiar and secure; make a life and a future for herself. But being fourteen was a hopeless age. Too old to be uncomplainingly shunted around, like a brown paper parcel. And too young for independence. Things before had been bad enough. Now, they had become-or were about to become-impossible.

Above her bed, her head, was the skylight. Beyond the glass, the darkness was rendered opaque by the reflected glow of the street lights below. But she could see a star, and imagined the skylight slowly opening to a gust of freezing, sea-smelling air, and herself being drawn, as though by some irresistible force, out of her bed, up, flying through the open hatchway, seeing the planet drop away beneath her, the stars grow larger every second…. Like a rocket, she would head for the moon, and there would never be any coming back.

A sound. A step on the stair. Carrie. Perhaps it was Carrie. If it was Carrie, Lucy was very much afraid that, without wishing to, she was about to start bawling again, and hated the feeling that she seemed to have lost control of her own emotions.

A tap on the door. She lay with her cheek on the sodden pillow, and said nothing. The door opened.

“Lucy?”

It wasn’t Carrie. It was Oscar. And Lucy was tremendously embarrassed that he should find her thus, all rumpled r and fusty and untidy and tear-stained. Why had he come up? Why had they let him come to fetch her? Surely Carrie could have returned to her, or Elfrida?

She said nothing.

He said, “Do you mind?” And then, when she still did not reply, he crossed the floor, leaving the door behind him ajar, and came to sit on the edge of her bed. His weight was strangely comforting, pulling the duvet tight around her body, and she shifted her position to make more space for him. She drew a long, shuddering breath, and said, “No, I don’t mind.”

He said, “How are you feeling?” As though he were a kindly doctor, and she had been ill for a long time.

She said, “Awful.”

“Carrie told us what happened.”

“I was horrible to her.”

“She didn’t tell us that. Just that you were upset. And who can wonder, having that bit of news sprung on you over the telephone? I always dislike being given news over the telephone. Somehow, one feels so impotent and removed, simply because one can’t see the other person’s face.”

Lucy said, “It wouldn’t be so bad if I really liked him. Randall, I mean.”

“Perhaps you would get to like him.”

“No. I don’t think so.” She looked at Oscar, saw the hooded eyes that always made him seem a bit sad, the gentle expression on his face, and thought that you liked people instantly, just as she had always liked Oscar. And that all the time in the world would never render her as close to Randall Fischer as she had instantly felt with Oscar.

She said, “I was so horrid to Carrie.” Her eyes filled again with tears, but it didn’t matter now, and it was important to tell him.

“I shouted at her and told her to go away, and she was being so sweet. I feel dreadful about her.”

She sniffed lustily, and felt her mouth trembling like a baby’s; but Oscar only reached into the breast pocket of his lovely velvet jacket and produced a much-laundered linen handkerchief which smelt of Bay Rum. He gave it to her, and she took it gratefully and blew her nose.

After that she felt a bit better. She said, “I don’t usually shout at people.”

“I know you don’t. And the wicked thing is, that when we’re really upset, we always take it out on the people who are closest and whom we love the most.”

“Do we?” She was amazed to be told mis.

“Always.”

“I can’t imagine you ever shouting at anybody.”

He smiled, his rare, warm smile that always seemed to change his whole demeanour. He said, “You’d be surprised.”

“It was just that… I feel so awful, because I suppose I should be pleased. But it was …”

“I know. A shock.”

“… If it was someone I really knew, who lived in England, then it wouldn’t be quite so bad. But I don’t want to have to go and live in America and go to school there and everything. London’s not much, but at least I know where I am. I can’t stay with Gran because she always makes a fuss about everything, and wants to do her own thing, go out and see her friends, and have bridge parties. When she has bridge parties, she doesn’t even like me going into the room to say hello. And she hates it when Emma comes because she says we make so much noise. I couldn’t be with her, Oscar.”