First Friends (20 page)

‘Well, Mark would obviously have to make some contribution anyway. They're his children too and he can certainly afford to. Oh, look, there they are!' They all waved as Charlotte and Oliver appeared round the lane at the other end of the village. ‘I see Charlotte's got both satchels as usual. That boy!'

‘Just like his mama,' laughed Kate, as Saul set off at a run to greet his siblings. ‘He has that same knack of making one feel that it's an honour to do things for him.'

‘Darling! How sweet of you to say so. Hello, my poppets!'

‘Good heavens! What's all this?' The General had appeared at his gate. ‘Looks like the Eighth Army arriving. Let's hope that the provisions can cope with this invasion.' He stood back to let them file in, returning his daughter's peck and giving Kate a brief hug. ‘Lovely to see you back, my darling.'

He made no mention of her sudden return—having been primed by Cass—and she smiled at him gratefully.

‘I did suggest that we should warn you.'

‘Nonsense, nonsense. Always welcome.' They followed the others up the path. ‘It's quite extraordinary how Mrs Hampton seems to pop over when school's finished. Incredible coincidence! I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she's in my kitchen even now. I get my tea very much earlier these days. Good afternoon, Mrs Hampton. Now this is very nice. We've got the hungry hordes visiting us, I hope there's an old crust to give them.'

‘Old crust!' exclaimed Mrs Hampton, bustling out. ‘An' a chocolate cake just out the oven. In you come, my lovers. Well now, what's this?' Charlotte had already dropped Oliver's satchel and was rooting in her own. ‘Well now! That's a right pretty li'l box. An' you made it all yourself? I never! For me? Well now, I don't know what to say. And me sayin' only last night to Mr ‘ Ampton: “If only I ‘ad a li'l old box to put my special things in.” I reckon a little bird must've whispered in your ear. ‘Tis lovely. I'll put it 'ere, safe, where I can see it while I gets the tea.'

‘Blue Peter,' sighed Cass, as the adults headed for the drawing room. ‘That programme has a great deal to answer for. The things you can make out of two egg boxes and a bog roll simply have to be seen to believed!'

The twins were delighted that Kate had returned to Devon and the summer holidays got under way in high spirits. The moor was a huge
playground right on the doorstep and Kate knew the places least likely to be discovered by the grockles. The twins had entered a war-like phase and Kate, after some thought, felt that it was best to let them get it out of their systems. Wearing cotton camouflage boiler suits and green plastic helmets, they raced up and down the granite tors firing toy machine guns and emitting loud explosive noises. With Megs stretched in the shade of some overhanging rock, Kate sat in a sheltered corner with a picnic and her book although, all too often, her eye was drawn away from the printed page to the scene laid out before her: the green bracken, waist high, the shimmer of heat over the short-cropped turf that was starred with tiny gold and white flowers. Sheep moved slowly, barely distinguishable from the grey boulders, and a cluster of grazing ponies would, for no apparent reason, set off at a gallop, hooves clattering over the scree. Skylarks mounted up and up against the infinite blue, singing and singing until, suddenly, they shut their wings and dropped silently back to the heather.

The twins would appear, flinging themselves down at her feet and demanding sustenance and, after lunch, they would pack the detritus into the car and take Megs for a walk across the springy turf and down to a stream where she could drink the cold, peaty water. And so back to the car and home along the white ribbon of road to the cottage.

Sometimes they would drive to the coast: Bigbury was the favourite with its golden stretches of sands and its warm rock pools. The twins would plunge in and out of the long rolling waves and, when the tide was right down, they would walk out to Burgh Island and climb the cliffs to stare out over the sea. On these occasions Megs was left at home and after she had put the twins to bed, Kate would stroll up to Huckworthy Common, Megs quartering the ground ahead for interesting smells, letting the silence of evening envelope her and watching for the first faint twinkling of a far-off star.

She felt as if she were suspended, poised between the past and the future. If her life up until this point had been a waste, at least it had, until now, had a point. There had been the on-going hope that the shore job, time together, would miraculously put things right, fuse the
relationship. Now she knew that it was all over, but what next? She had no intention of living in limbo. The marriage was finished, no more life could be breathed into its corpse and she wanted to bury it, put it aside and start on whatever future she might have. She simply didn't know how it was to be done. Divorce was the obvious and accepted way but on what grounds? The whole idea of it filled her with distress.

She'd had a letter from Mark telling her that he was spending his leave sailing with a friend who wanted help to take a boat over to France. He confirmed the date of the Commissioning and said he would let her have the details at a later date. It hung over Kate like the sword of Damocles. If only she could be free of it all.

They went down to see her father who was selling the house in St Just and moving to Wiltshire to live with James and Sarah. Kate was worried for him. Her sister-in-law was a rather managing person, although James had always been his favourite child.

‘I'm so lonely, you see, with Penny away at school so much,' he told Kate, ‘and she spends most of the holidays with Sarah, anyway. Life seems so utterly pointless. At least 1 shall be useful and little Lizzie is a sweet child. I see Elizabeth in her so much. It'll be OK. Penny and I will have a little annexe of our own.'

He gave Kate a few possessions that her mother had wanted her to have and presented each of the twins with a little memento to remember her by. Telling him to come to stay whenever he wanted to, Kate hugged him goodbye.

She drove sadly home. She didn't feel too badly that the house would be sold for they had only moved to St Just at the beginning of Kate's life at boarding school. It was, nevertheless, the end of an era. It made her mother truly dead. There was nowhere now for Kate to go where her mother had loved and worked and had her being. Her possessions were split up; her presence dissipated.

She drove out of Plymouth and through Roborough. As they climbed up to the open moor, a harvest moon—the colour of rich egg yolk—swung above the horizon. The moor lay silent and mysterious
beneath it, the mist rising and spreading out over the low ground. Kate felt an upsurge of longing for some spiritual experience that would enclose her in serenity and certainty and lift her above the nagging anxieties of daily life. Ignoring various disturbances from the back of the car, she tried to concentrate on a kind of communing, of prayer. A verse of psalm slid into her mind: ‘Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! who has set Thy glory above the heavens.' Wonderful! How did it go on? Something about out of the mouths of babes and sucklings?

‘Mum.'

But what came after that? Ah, yes: ‘When I consider Thy Heavens, the moon and stars which Thou hast ordained.'

‘Mum.'

And what a moon! ‘What is man that Thou art mindful of him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and has crowned him with glory and honour.'

‘Mum!'

‘What is it, Guy?'

‘Megs is being sick. And it's all gone down inside Giles' gumboot!'

T
HE TWINS
'
TENTH BIRTHDAY
fell two days before term started and Cass gave a party for them at the Rectory. Mrs Hampton, who now went two mornings a week to help Cass out, was in her element: jellies were made, cakes baked, sandwiches cut.

‘But not too much, Hammy,' said Cass, who was packing the twins' presents. ‘Remember we shall be having the barbecue in the evening.'

Mrs Hampton pursed her lips.

‘It will be fun, Hammy.' Charlotte, who was wrapped in a huge apron, perfectly understood Mrs Hampton's silent disapproval. ‘Daddy's got all the things ready and we're going to have beefburgers and sausages. And we're going to wait ‘til it's dark.'

‘You'll need a good tea first,' said Mrs Hampton firmly. ‘ ‘Tisn't a birthday without there's a proper birthday tea.'

‘Quite right,' said Tom, who had just come in. He winked at Cass. ‘I can't wait. The barbecue's just a bit of fun. It's the tea that counts. I hope you're making plenty.' He stuck his finger into Charlotte's mixing bowl and licked it. ‘Mmmmm!'

‘Daddy!' cried Charlotte. With her lips primmed but her eyes sparkling, she looked at Mrs Hampton.

‘Worse than the children,' announced that worthy. ‘You'll find that, my lover, when you grow up. Men aren't nothin' but trouble.'

‘Not Giles, though,' murmured Charlotte, painstakingly placing spoonfuls of mixture into little paper cups.

Mrs Hampton sucked in her breath and shook her head. ‘All on 'em,' she pronounced. ‘Never known one different.'

‘Nor Grandfather.'

‘The General's a wunnerful man, I'll give ‘ee that.' ‘Nor Daddy.'

‘All on 'em!'

T
HE
C
OMMISSIONING TOOK PLACE
two weeks after the twins went back to school.

‘ . . . and make sure you are here by mid-day,' Mark had written. ‘There is absolutely no point in your coming the night before. I shall be far too busy to have time for you and I can't find anywhere for you to stay. I have been able to book a cabin for you for the night of the Commissioning. Make sure you arrive on time and . . . '

It was the General who insisted that she should drive up on the previous afternoon and put up at an hotel on the way.

‘You'll be quite exhausted otherwise,' he told her. ‘You'll have to get away at about five in the morning and, if I know anything about that sort of military set-up, it will be a long and tiring day.'

‘It'll be hell,' agreed Kate. ‘It starts at mid-day and goes on until about two the following morning. First of all there'll be a big buffet lunch with all the Wardroom and their wives and families, not to mention the Personage.'

‘The Personage?'

‘Usually Royalty. Someone who's been selected from a host of applicants to chuck the bottle of champagne at the submarine. Well, after lunch, we go over to the dockyard and stand in the pouring rain or a force eight gale while the sailors fall in for the service. Then the Padre does his little bit and we all sing “Eternal Father, strong to save,” while the dockyard workers look on making ribald remarks. Then the Personage wishes the boat bon voyage and chucks the bottle and looks a fearful idiot when the wretched thing won't smash!'

‘What a delightful word picture you paint,' murmured the General.

‘Well then,' said Kate, warming to her theme, ‘there's a cocktail party on the boat so that all the people who have helped with the refit can come and get stoned out of their minds and have to be carried up the gangplank afterwards. By this time, your head is bursting and your feet are killing you but it simply isn't done to be seen sitting down at a cocktail party, even if you've got varicose veins and gangrene is setting in. After all, the shock might kill FOSM!'

‘FOSM?'

‘Flag Officer Submarines. Everyone talks in capitals, General. You should know that. So then it's far too late to find anything as civilised as a cup of tea—steward's off duty, kitchen's shut—so you go back to change for the Ship's Company's Dance and that's hell on wheels. It's held in some draughty hall or other somewhere near the dockyard and all the sailors have enough to drink to tell the officers what they think of them—all discreetly forgotten the next day—and their wives sit in little huddles glaring at the officers' wives. If we go and talk to them they think we're patronising and if we don't they say we're snobs. And all to the background of your local dance band “Sid Biggins and the Astronauts” with the floor awash with beer.'

‘It does sound rather grim,' admitted the General.

‘Grim?' Kate snorted. ‘If that's the best you can do then all I can say is you have a very poor command of the English language!'

Kate arrived at Chatham in a state of terror. The thought of confronting Mark, not to mention the Wardroom and all their wives, was
totally unnerving. He was waiting for her in full uniform on the steps and looked forbidding.

‘You're late,' he said, as she got out of the car.

She stared at him. ‘You said mid-day. It's not quite ten to. I have just driven all the way from Devon.'

She walked past him towards the Wardroom. The usual hubbub of clinking glasses and voices greeted her. Inside the door, she hesitated for a moment, trying to pick out a face she knew. A small dark woman detached herself from the crowd and came towards her.

‘You must be Kate,' she said. ‘I'm Janet Anderson.'

‘Oh, hello.' Kate remembered the Engineer Officer, a rather pleasant Scot.

On a nuclear submarine, the Senior Engineer Officer, like the Captain, has to be a Commander and Kate knew that she, as Mark was only a Lieutenant Commander, must be properly submissive.

‘How clever of you to know me,' she said, taking a glass from a steward who was circulating with a tray of drinks.

‘Well, you were the only wife not here. Mark says that you're always late.'

Kate looked at her quickly and in some surprise. The note of censure was unmistakable.

‘I had a long way to come . . .' she began but Janet put a hand on her arm.

‘Just a word. I'm sure you'll take it in the right spirit. It was rather noted that you couldn't be bothered to come to the Ladies' Night last night. It was a very special occasion, you know, and Mark is the First Lieutenant. He did his best. He explained that you hate socialising. But there are times, my dear, when we have to put our husbands first.' She patted Kate's arm. ‘A word to the wise,' she said. ‘Must circulate.'