First Fruits (26 page)

Then the phone rings. Yet it's not even
eight o'clock. Too early, surely. The music stops, and this time it doesn't
start up again. Something has happened.

Dad is frowning as he steps into the
kitchen. He comes to the table and lowers himself heavily into his chair. When
Gran brings him his plate, he shakes his head and sighs. Then he signals for me
to come and stand next to him.

'Eeeh, Katie love. But it's a funny old
world.'

Katie
. When has he ever called me
Katie? He changes other people's names all the time, makes them longer, shorter
- alters them till they could hardly say they were the same names any more,
were names
he
has given them instead. Yet never mine, not before today.

'Katie, oh Katie, people never learn, do
they? Thinking they know best, thinking they can go their own sweet way.
Thinking
that what they say goes
. But they forget, don't they. They forget there's
Someone else in charge. And then they wonder what's gone wrong.'

Is this meant for me? It can't be. It
can't be me he's talking about. I know Who is in charge. All the lessons he's
taught me I've learned by heart. Besides, he called me
Katie
. It's not
me that's done something wrong. Not today.

Why don't I feel relieved then?

Suddenly he turns to Gran and says, 'Put
the kettle on, mother. I feel the need of tea. Hot sweet tea.'

Like people have when they're in shock.
Except of course, Dad is not in shock. Nothing surprises him or catches him off
guard. Unless you count Moira, just that once by the car. But he turned that
around too, didn't he. Now he can't wait for her to come.

He waits until the tea is in the cup in
front of him, sugared and stirred for him by Gran. Sighs again, and lifts his
eyes to the ceiling.

'Lydia,' he says slowly, 'Will be coming
to stay after all.'

He'll be happy with the look on my face.
Not even a shred of surprise. It shows I trusted him, that I always knew the
right thing would happen in the end, despite everything, despite her, Lydia's
mother. Somehow he'd make it come about.

But what about the hotel? The swimming
pool and the fancy food? What about all the plans?
How did he do it?

Wait and he'll tell me. He's telling me
now.

'Lydia's mother has had an accident. I'm
afraid it's serious. It happened as she was peeling potatoes.'

He stops, takes a slow sip of his tea.
Peeling
potatoes
. The phrase lingers, incomprehensible, proof that God works in
mysterious ways.

'Katie, love, it's a reminder. We live
by the grace of God, doing even the simplest things. Yesterday Mrs. Morris was
peeling potatoes, that's all. Making you ask, where is the danger in that? How
can peeling potatoes in the evening bring a woman to the brink of destruction
in the morning?'

His voice is rising. Suddenly we could
be in church and hundreds of people listening. But it's me he's talking to.

'I'll tell you how, Katie love. The knife
she was using slipped, slipped from her hand and cut into her finger. One
little cut, that's all it was. But in that sliver of torn flesh, in the ooze of
blood, greater forces than she could have conceived were hard at work. Tonight
that woman is in hospital, fighting, I say
fighting
for her life with
septicaemia...'

There's an interruption - Gran banging
the table with a spoon and scowling. He'd forgotten the extent of her
ignorance.

'That's blood poisoning to you, mother.'

But it's me he's watching now. To see
how I am taking this. It explains the change of name. He's being extra
specially gentle. Extra specially testing. 'Katie,' he says, softly. 'It's a
proper case of touch and go...'

Oh, he knows, doesn't he? He knows I was
never in his drawer in search of chocolates. He knows the value of the horse.
He knows why it was precious. And he never said. Gluttony, he was pleased to
call it. But he knew all along it was something worse. Now he wants to see what
I will do. He wants to hear what I will say. Everything about him is gentle and
questioning. And no-one would ever guess. This is the greatest test of my life.

Whose daughter am I?

It takes a moment. Some things will
always take a moment. One moment to find the right words, another to find the
right face. But it all comes in the end. So he can know whose daughter I am.

'Poor thing' I say. 'I
do
hope
she'll be alright.'

Dad smiles at me. There's an ocean of
understanding between us.

Gran folds her arms, snaps: 'I'm not
having young children here though. I don't want the responsibility.'

Who would have believed it? Gran is the
only one to remember Laura. Or so I thought. As it happens, however, Dad hasn't
forgotten either.

'The younger sister is off to some aunt,
that's what the father told me just now. But he thought Lydia would prefer to
come here.

The father
. Lydia's dad,
thinking that's what Lydia wanted, letting Lydia down, because he never learnt
to read his child. Laura is off to Aunty Jane. But Lydia, Lydia is coming here.

And there's nothing
she
can do
about it, her mother.

Something seems to have happened to my
insides suddenly. Gran's cooking maybe, all that extra salt scratching away
beneath the skin. Luckily I've done so well up to now that no-one stops me or
asks the reason why. I can tell them I'm not feeling well and they believe me.
I can run upstairs and close the door behind me.

First though, I have to check, just in
case. Miracles do happen. One happened just now, didn't it? When I was least
expecting it, the world swung back into place. But there's been no further miracle.
I feel under the pillow and of course, there's nothing there.

So there's nothing for it but to lie
down, try to hold onto the pain in my stomach, keep it one place, in an attempt
to stop it spreading.

A proper case of touch and go, he said.
And no knowing what will happen. Not even if you have
It
.

NEXT
morning there's a yellowish tinge to Lydia's skin. She tells Hilary that she
spent the night in the house alone because Laura had already gone to Aunt
Jane's and her father was at the hospital. She says to Hilary that she didn't
sleep, not even for a short while. She says the house was cold because she
didn't know how to work the heating. She says that she has no news.

Lydia tells all this to Hilary. For some
reason she doesn't seem to want to speak to me. Or look at me, even.

Later, in history, the tears start to
slide out from under her glasses. Mrs. Chatto sees them and the whole lesson
grinds to a halt. Lydia looks up to find the entire class is staring at her.
But what does she do? Something only I seem able to notice. Lydia leans just
that little bit closer into Moira, as if this is the one place of shelter she
can find. But Mrs. Chatto doesn't see this. She's sweeping an eye over the
class, looking for someone to take charge.

'Kate, take Lydia outside and look after
her.'

Well it was only natural. She has seen
the two of us together, on the pavement, in and out of Greek. She assumes I'm
her friend. It would never occur to her to ask Moira, not in a hundred years.

Outside
in the garden Lydia is still unwilling
to look at me; she stands with her face pressed up against the wall of the
domestic science block, shoulders shaking with muffled sobs. Mrs. Chatto had
told us to go up to the medical room, but it smells of germolene and sick there
and personally I can't stand it. There are two of us to think of after all. So
here we are, in the fresh air - where nobody can hear us. You see, there are a
few questions I want to ask - about the peeling of the potatoes for instance.

The trouble is, it doesn't seem to
matter how long I stand here, as quiet and sympathetic as she could wish, the
minutes pass and still Lydia won't say a word.

So what would
you
do? Especially
when you remember that it is clear as daylight that it's herself she's sorry
for. She might have spared a thought for her mother instead, lying in a
hospital bed, knowing it's all out of her control, and that Lydia is coming to
stay after all. A case of touch and go.

'Oh stop blubbing. Pull yourself
together.'

I didn't mean to snap, not exactly. It
just happened. That said, the whole world has been handling her with kid gloves
today so she could hardly complain when one person accidentally loses patience.
And it just shows, how you can be too soft on some people, because the second
the words are out of my mouth, she stops crying. It must have been the shock.
But it does the trick. For not only does it stop her crying, but it gets her
talking.

'But it's my fault, you see, all my
fault. She wouldn't be in hospital if weren't for me.'

I thought she was going to carry on, but
she stops there. And of course, you know why. She's waiting for me to say the
obvious. Something on the lines of
how could she think such a thing and
everybody knows it was an accident
.

But I don't. I don't say any such thing.
Because it happens all the time, discovering you're the one to blame. That's
what I've been learning all these years; that there are any number of invisible
lines between cause and effect, running and spreading like spider's web till
you see that every mortal thing is connected, till you discover that you're the
one responsible for everything, the one who's always to blame.

After that, though, it's only a short
step; till you realise that if you're responsible for everything, then it must
also mean you're able to control everything. And it's a revelation, something
never to be forgotten.

But Lydia is never going to understand
all that. She hasn't got it in her. Just now it's interesting to see exactly
what the connection could be here, between Lydia crying outside the domestic science
block and her mother lying in hospital and no-one knowing if she'll ever come
out alive. Why is Lydia to blame? So I wait, and I listen as Lydia tells me.

'You told me to ask her, remember? Ask
one last time for her to let me come. So I did, I asked when she was making
supper and there were only the two of us in the kitchen. But she wouldn't
listen to me, she just carried on peeling the potatoes as if they were the only
things that mattered. She just smiled and say she had made up her mind, and we
were going to have a lovely time at the hotel, just the four of us, and...'

But someone has to interrupt here, point
out the obvious. 'I thought you
wanted
to go to the hotel.'

For a moment Lydia stares at me, as if
I'm stupid or worse. 'Of
course
I wanted to go to the hotel.' She states
this as if it's old history, as if anyone could understand. 'But
you
said to ask her one more time. That's all I was going to do. Then, next time I
saw
him
, I could have told him that I tried, that I did what you said,
that I really made an effort.'

Things are becoming clearer. Lydia is
definitely beginning to make sense. She had been doing her best to have it all
ways. A case of having her cake and eating it.

'So what happened?' I ask the question,
but really it's hardly necessary, is becoming less necessary by the second.
It's almost as if I can see it all for myself. Lydia standing beside her mother
at the sink, and Mrs. Morris peeling away, smiling, perfectly happy because she
knows, no matter how Lydia rants and raves, she's keeping her daughter safe.
Lydia's not going anywhere.

'She shouldn't have smiled, Kate.'
Lydia's voice, scarcely more than a half decent whisper to begin with, starts
to shake. 'She shouldn't have looked so smug, as if she had everything under
control. If she hadn't smiled like that, I wouldn't told her I hated her. And I
wouldn't have said I wished I was like you, with no mother to ruin everything,
and that I wished she would go away so there was only Dad and me....'

...And that's when the knife slipped and
Lydia's mother would have cut her finger. And can you wonder, faced with a
daughter who says she hates her, and doesn't understand that all she's doing is
loving her, and keeping her safe?

Imagine the effect it would have, the
shock. The words would have thrown her off guard, at the very second she sliced
through her skin. She'd have been like a city with its defences down, just for
those few moments, just long enough for the germs to flood in and do their
work. I can see it all. I might as well have been there myself, one of the
germs, standing aside and watching it happen.

Lydia has gone quiet. She wants me to
say something, tell her she's wrong. But what is there to say? We both know.
She's perfectly right. None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for
her.

Although, there is one thing I could
have mentioned to make her feel better. That is, it was me that told her to ask
just one last time. But then again, why should that change anything? I wasn't
to know, was I?