First Fruits (19 page)

Honestly, some people.

I kick Hilary under the table. 'Lydia's
gone.'

It takes a good few seconds for the
words to sink in. 'So?' She says at last. She has just noticed that something
is up with Mark, and she's staring at him, pop eyed, never having seen anyone
in his state, not in a café. Or anywhere else for that matter. Hilary has no
idea.

But that's Hilary all over, ready to be
distracted by the least thing. She doesn't understand, does she? Because, what
if Lydia has simply gone home? They'll want to know why, and she will say it's because
of me, making her sit by herself with a couple of old ladies. Because I didn't
include her in the arithmetic.

But Hilary doesn't see any of that. And,
as if things weren't bad enough, she's started talking suddenly. It must be
Mark, still slumped over the table, making her nervous.

'Lydia's the one who was here just now,
a friend of ours. Actually I don't even know that I
would
call her a
friend. I mean she's alright, but she's so odd half the time. Isn't she Kate?
Isn't she odd? Probably about the oddest girl in the whole class.' Then she
stops and giggles suddenly. 'Unless you count Moira, of course.'

Moira. Moira MacMurray. At the mention
of the name, a light goes on in my head. Lydia's not the sort to move, not of
her own accord, not when she's been told to go somewhere and stay there. That's
the thing about Lydia. She does what she is told. So something else must have
made Lydia move. Someone else. And Hilary had mentioned Moira.

Next thing you know, I'm on my feet, and
heading for the door.

And it's a fight. A real struggle. The
cafe seemed to have filled up since we came in. It must have started to rain,
because there were crowds of folk in steaming coats everywhere, standing about,
getting in the way, wanting to know why I needed to push. But finally, I make
it to the outside. And sure enough, far in the distance Lydia and
Moira
are walking away together in the wet.

Back into the café. 'Come on,' I say to
Hilary. 'Get up.' She stares at me. Stays where she is. 'Come
on
.'

But still she doesn't move, not till Owl
Boy mumbles something in her ear. Hilary goes bright red, then stands to let
him out. There's no explaining it, but somehow having Lydia go has given him
permission to do the same.

Now the only problem is Mark. 'Hey,' he
says weakly, 'Hey.' And that's all he can manage. Hardly what you would expect
from the star of the Sixth Form Moot.

Ignore him. We have to go, Hilary and I.
We have to keep together. And anyway, it doesn't matter about him. That thing
that happened just now, he thinks I did it deliberately, letting my hand go
tight, having its effect. As if I would. It was a complete accident. But he
doesn't know that. We can leave him. He'll come again.

No the only thing to slow us down is
Hilary, still fumbling with her duffle coat as the rain hits us. And thanks to
her, it's too late. Now there's no sign of them.

Then Hilary clutches my arm. She's seen
them, Moira and Lydia, standing at a bus-stop about a hundred yards off. I was
right then, Lydia
was
on her way home, ready to tell tales, ready to
ruin everything. But then something else occurs to me. She's waiting on the
wrong
side of the road. She should be on this side. If she were to catch a bus from
where she's standing, it would take her in the very opposite direction.

Unless. Unless Lydia isn't going to her
own house at all; unless she's planning on going home with Moira, to Moira's
house. Suddenly I know exactly what Moira is doing. She's taking Lydia home to
meet her gran.

That's when I start running. Because
what about me? What could I say to explain it, having to go home all by myself?
What would her mother think? And something else. If Lydia actually prefers to
go off with Moira MacMurray -
Moira MacMurray
- then what does that say
about me?

Silly me, I put that all wrong. What I
meant to say was of course; what does it say about her, Lydia?

Just for once, Hilary does the right
thing. The moment we arrive at the bus stop, she goes the other side of Lydia
and catches her by the arm. Lydia who didn't even see us coming, jumps and then
squirms with pain.

I always knew Hilary could be vicious.

Moira stays at the bus-stop as we move
away, yet I can feel her eyes on my back long after we've left her behind. It's
like having a piece of elastic stretching all the way down the street between
us. Stop walking and I might snap right back beside her. Then it would be me
going home with Moira, instead of Lydia. Home to meet her gran.

And what about Lydia? I don't think that
girl has stopped being a problem from the day she was born. Here she is, newly
rescued, and is she grateful? Not a bit of it. Lydia is sulky and silent,
doesn't want to be with us one little bit. And all because the arithmetic
didn't add up.

Which is awkward. We have to back to her
house in a short while. Somehow I've got to get on the right side of her, and
quickly. But how? Then, inspiration. Because away in the distance, lit up in
the rain, shining like a beacon to folk who are lost and troubled, is a
bookshop.

Now I know exactly what to do.

IT’S
almost as crowded here as in the café. People are shoving up against the
shelves, pretending they all need a book, pretending the rain has nothing to do
with it. But even with the crowds, I have no difficulty in putting my hand on
it, the one thing guaranteed to bring Lydia round.

In fact, you might even say the crowds
are a Godsend. They make it easier - although they had thinned out in the space
next to the religious section. Apparently it takes more than rain to drive some
folk closer to God. But there are still enough people around to make what I
have to do an absolute cinch. The only problem really is Hilary. The look on
Hilary's face would give me away better than any store detective.

But here's another Godsend. This time in
the shape of the Horror Section. Hilary catches sight of the severed heads and
crawling hands, and forgets all about me. By the time she's had enough of
amputation and eyeballs, it's more than time to take them both outside again.

'Hey Lydia,' I say. 'Stop a moment.' You
see, she was already about to charge on ahead, still sulky, still thinking she
can take offence. But she can't resist a direct command, and she stops.

'Look,' I say. 'Look what I've just
bought for you.'

It had still been there on the shelves,
thank goodness. Hadn't moved in a twelve month. Well, Dad's audiences aren't
the sort of folk to land up in bookshops as a rule. So here it was, the only
copy I've ever seen outside his study. His face is on the cover, the face
everybody sees, eyes alight with the loving kindness of the Lord. They are directed
straight at Lydia now as she holds the book in her hands. In fact, so far as
she is concerned, it might be his head she is holding, like a bookwormy Salome.

And in a way, she's right. This
is
his head. These are his thoughts, aren't they, gathered up at source and
written down in stone. Well, not stone admittedly. They don't make books out of
stone tablets any more. But, stone or paper, what's difference? His thoughts,
his opinions. His face. Look at
her
face though, and see what I've done
for her. I've given her a little bit of him, all to herself.

'Kate,' she whispers. 'Oh Kate. I never
knew he'd written a book.' She stares down at the cover, but can't seem to take
it in. '
For the Love of God
.' She has to read the title aloud, just to
hear herself sounding the words.

There's another sound beside me, tiny,
hardly worth the mention. It's Hilary sniffing, a sign that she's confused. She
thought she hadn't taken her eyes off me all the time we were in the shop.
She's forgotten about the horror section. Now she's wondering when it was I
bought the book, how I could have done it without her noticing. Hilary just
can't work it out.

TIME
to go home. Lydia sits on the bus hugging the book to her chest, does her best
to ask questions, but somehow can't seem to finish any of her sentences. The
result is that I hardly need take any notice of her after that, even when she
finally manages to squeeze out a single complete string of words. She wants to
know if there's any mention of me.

Which has to be the stupidest question
of all. When her Dad writes his papers on Art and all, does he go mentioning
Lydia on every other page? Of course not. This is about the two of them, him
and God. As she will discover for herself.

Besides, if he mentioned me, he would
have had to mention
her
, the reason I'm here, the person we're not
supposed to talk about. No getting round that one.

I should have realised there would be
problems though. That's the trouble with Lydia, she has no
tact
. She
runs through the front door meaning to carry on up the stairs straight to her
bedroom. But there's her mother, getting in the way, wanting to know the reason
for the hurry.

And like an idiot Lydia shows it to her,
shows her the book, says
Look, look what Kate has bought for me
.

Her mother takes the book, glances at
it, then quickly hands it back to Lydia as if she can hardly bear to touch it.
'How very kind of you, Kate,' she says automatically. But she doesn't mean it.
It's like the chocolates all over again. Only worse.

I'd like to tell her, it's no good
blaming me. If anyone's responsible, it's Lydia, not behaving the way she
should. There wouldn't be any need to have the book in the house if it weren't
for her, if she would only learn to act like other people, and recognise what's
good for her.

AFTER
lunch, Mrs Morris gets embarrassed because there's no sign of Lydia. She's
disappeared, although we all know where she is. She's upstairs on her bed,
turning the pages of his book, drinking it all in, every word of it. Her mother
goes up a couple of times, but there's nothing she can do.

Yet I don't mind, not in the least. In
Lydia's house they have a room that's simply there for watching television.
Television! We don't have TV at home. Dad says it's a distraction, a reason for
not talking. Or listening to him.

The only trouble was, Laura was already
there. She was on the floor, busy with a sort of house she was making for her
dolls with a shoe box and bits of cardboard. It was quite clever really, the
way she had fashioned teeny tiny chairs and tables out of little more than
paper. When I sat down on the sofa behind her, however, she froze, actually
gave a little shiver the way grown-ups do when a goose walks over their grave.
But she didn't turn round, not once. Instead she just carried on, folding and
glueing, trying to pretend I wasn't there. Only now nothing seemed to work any
more. Things she had glued came unstuck. Things she had folded came apart. She
was wasting her time really.

Poor Laura, she may have
It
, but
she hasn't got the foggiest idea of how to make it work. She can't make me go
away, not even in her mind. I can stay here for just as long as I want,
enjoying the peace.

****

LYDIA
looks up when I open the door to her room. Her eyes are full of tears, her
spectacles watery, like miniature aquariums - just the thing for Laura and her
shoebox sitting rooms. 'Oh Kate,' she says. 'Your poor father, having
his
father die like that.'

She must have got to the bit about the
pit-roof falling in, and about Gran being left alone, and about how she never
gave in, how she battled to give her son the best of everything. Gran this,
Gran that, making sure they were never like the ordinary folk.

Forty other men died in the same
disaster. I saw it in a newspaper clipping I found stuck between the pages of another
book nobody ever reads. It doesn't say a thing about them in his book, or what
happened to their families. Then again, why should it? This isn't their story.
You can only tell a tale the way you see it, even I know that.

IN
the middle of dinner Lydia's mother asks again if I want to give Dad a ring. I
shake my head, then explain that Saturday is his busiest night. A fork supper
with the Friends in the City, followed by work on his sermon for the next day.

The result is exactly what you would
want. Lydia's mother stretches right across the table to touch my hand. 'Poor
Kate. Such a
busy
person, your father.'

It's almost comical. Lydia's mother
thinks I'm not getting enough attention. It's so difficult keeping the smile
off my face that in the end I give up, and let her see it - see how brave I can
be.

'I don't mind, Mrs. Morris. He can't
help it. And there's always Gran.'

At the mention of Gran, she frowns and
bites her lip. Well, she's met her, hasn't she. Which means there's nothing she
can say. For the moment, there's a silence as we all consider Gran. Silence
except from Lydia, that is.

'Oh Kate, she's such a wonderful
person.'