Till We Meet Again (20 page)

‘He wasn’t a drunk,’ she said. ‘But he was a waster and a mean-minded bully. I suppose his problem was that he felt inadequate, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been real go-getters. I imagine too he was spoiled rotten as a child.

‘Anna has every right to drink herself to death if she thinks that is great fun, and sober people are boring,’ she said forcefully. ‘But she has no right to bring you and the children down with her. The worst thing about people like Anna, and my father, is that they have such huge egos. By pandering to them, letting them do what they want to do, you are stroking that ego and making them feel even more powerful.’

‘She isn’t egotistical,’ he insisted. ‘She can’t help it.’

‘Rot,’ Beth said heatedly. ‘That’s just a cop-out from dealing with it on her part. “Poor little me, I can’t help swigging away at a bottle and then crashing out and forgetting to feed my kids!” If you start to believe that, Steven, she’ll never sober up! If my mother had left home with us kids when we were small, we’d have been no worse off financially than we were at home. We wouldn’t have had to witness the ugliness. We could have had a home where there was peace and laughter.’

She paused for a moment, not sure whether or not she was wise to continue. But she decided to do so anyway. ‘I grew to hate my father, Steven. Hate him so much I’d have cheerfully killed him given the right opportunity. Polly and Sophie will grow to hate Anna if you let it go on. And worse still, they might very well become alcoholics themselves, or find themselves another one to marry or live with. That’s what children of alcoholics do.’

Suddenly Steven began to cry. Beth looked at him in horror from across the coffee table. His face crumpled as the tears ran down his cheeks. It was a pitiful sight. She was aware she’d been very blunt, but she hadn’t thought for one moment she’d said anything awful enough to make him break down.

‘I’m so sorry, Steven,’ she said in alarm and went round the coffee table to sit next to him. ‘I should have kept my opinions to myself.’

In her need to comfort him, she put her arms around him and drew his face down on to her shoulder, smoothing his hair, the way she used to with her mother when her father went for her. She had never repeated it with anyone else since, and she was surprised she could.

‘Look, don’t take my word for it,’ she said. ‘Go to an expert, talk to them and get them to tell you what to do.’

‘It isn’t what you said,’ he sniffed. ‘I think it’s only the release of talking about it. I hide it every day, I even tell the girls Mummy’s ill. I never guessed you’d had a blighted childhood either. It was so brave of you to share it with me.’

‘We’re a fine pair,’ she said, and tried to laugh, but her eyes were prickling with tears too. ‘I’ve never told anyone that stuff before.’

She let go of Steven and went out into the kitchen to get some brandy for them both. ‘I think we need something for the shock,’ she said as she brought two glasses back in.

He had dried his eyes now and seemed almost composed again. ‘You are a curious, fascinating woman,’ he said, swirling the brandy round in its glass. ‘I would have laid bets that a flood wouldn’t faze you, and I certainly didn’t expect you’d be the sort to give a shoulder to cry on.’

‘Both were abnormal behaviour for me,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s been a funny sort of day all round.’

She went on to tell him what Susan had said that annoyed her that morning. ‘All that stuff about skinny-dipping in the river,’ she said. ‘She seemed so girlish and giggly about it. I think she wanted to prove to me that she had been desirable.’ She stopped short, aware she wasn’t making much sense. ‘I didn’t think it was appropriate to go on about that kind of thing,’ she added lamely.

‘She is a little odd at times,’ Steven agreed. ‘Take the gun! If that was all my father left me, I think I’d have thrown it in the river, I certainly wouldn’t have kept it all that time with a small child in the house. And why take it to Wales? It wouldn’t be my idea of a keepsake.’

‘She never told me that she could shoot, I mean when we were kids,’ Beth said. ‘Most children would, don’t you think? It would be something to boast about.’

‘Maybe her father told her to keep it a secret,’ Steven suggested. ‘It is a bit of a strange thing to teach a girl.’

‘I think we could do with talking to all the men in her life,’ Beth said. ‘It might throw a different light on her. She can be very elusive at times.’

They had a second brandy, and then a third, and all at once Beth realized that she was talking to Steven as she’d never been able to talk to a man before. They discussed cases they’d been involved with before, told each other funny stories from the courts, and discussed the guilt they both felt when someone they were positive was guilty, went free. Steven was as fascinated as she was as to why one person from a family could become a criminal, while the rest, with an identical upbringing, were sober and upright citizens. Or why, in a whole family of villains, one would go straight.

‘Look at my family,’ Beth said. ‘All three of us have turned out to be successful and well adjusted, despite our father.’ She paused to grin at Steven. ‘Well, Robert and Serena are well adjusted anyway, with much nicer natures than me.’

‘But you were the youngest, and you probably saw the worst of your father,’ he suggested. ‘You realized very early on how weak your mother was, and were determined to be different.’

‘Different was what I always felt,’ she said grimly. ‘I asked Serena once if she felt that way too, but she said she didn’t. At school I was always on the outside looking in. Not bullied or laughed at exactly, just apart. I just didn’t seem to have whatever quality is needed to make one acceptable.’

‘I wasn’t really one of the in crowd either,’ he said with a smile. ‘I was labelled a swot, and as I was no great shakes at sport, I just kind of stuck with what I knew best. But I was happy at university, were you?’

‘Well, I didn’t feel quite so weird.’ Beth smiled. ‘Mostly because there were plenty of girls much odder than me around.’

She poured them both another drink. ‘I kind of reinvented myself for university anyway,’ she went on. ‘I dressed in a mysterious manner, big black hats, long coats, long scarves trailing behind me. Once I’d struck that pose it was easy to act out the part. One of my flatmates used to call me Greta Garbo.’ She giggled.

‘That’s kind of how I saw you when you first joined the firm,’ Steven admitted. ‘Aloof, beautiful, but with a heart like a glacier. How did you see me?’

Beth was touched that he’d thought her beautiful, so she couldn’t be entirely honest and admit she thought he was a nonentity.

‘Kind of like a boy scout, I think,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘A bit too helpful, too earnest. You improved on closer inspection.’

‘Anna says I am ingratiating,’ he said dolefully. ‘I’m not, am I?’

‘No, you aren’t,’ she said firmly, despite having thought that about him in the past. ‘It sounds to me as if Anna is just nasty to justify her own behaviour.’

‘Most of the women I’ve known have been a bit nasty,’ he said with a cheeky grin.

‘You know why?’ she asked. ‘It’s because you are too nice. Some women, including me I expect, see that as something to crush.’

‘So what sort of men do you go for?’ he asked.

‘None,’ she replied. ‘Not any more. It’s too bloody hurtful.’ As the words came out of her mouth, Beth realized she was getting drunk. Sober, she would never make statements like that which gave away so much about herself.

He took her hand in his and squeezed it. Just that, no platitudes or asking for an explanation. ‘So we’re both walking wounded,’ he said after a few moments’ silence. ‘And we spend our days defending more people like us.’

Beth had never thought of herself as being anything like the people she defended, but all at once she saw it was so, and for no reason she could explain she began to cry again.

What is it, Beth?’ Steven asked, and his arms went round her. ‘Try and tell me.’

‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’ She sobbed against his shoulder.

He put one hand under her chin and lifted her face up to his, looking down at her with tenderness. ‘I’ve seen a change in you since Susan turned up in your life again. So why don’t you start by telling me how it was between you two?’

Chapter eleven

‘We met on the bank of the river at Stratford-upon-Avon,’ Beth said. ‘Both ten, both alone, and I suppose, with hindsight, she was as desperate for company as I was. But at that time I thought I was unique in being lonely and anxious. To me, Suzie looked as if she hadn’t a care in the world.’

She went back then, explaining how she was in Stratford staying with her aunt because her father had beaten her mother up. But as she went on to describe her first meeting with Susan, she found herself slipping back, recalling things she thought she’d forgotten.

It was very hot, and she was roasting even though she was only wearing the shorts and blouse Aunt Rose had bought her that morning. It had been embarrassing because she had said neither of her two dresses was fit to be seen out in, yet it was wonderful to be given clothes which weren’t passed down, and that really fitted her.

Overall, Beth was glad she had called Aunt Rose and told her that Father had hurt Mother. Mother was still cross with her about it, but Beth felt she was secretly glad to be having a holiday with her sister.

Her aunt and uncle’s house was only a small terraced one, but it was a dream house to Beth, bright, clean and very comfortable. Mother had been put in the guest room, which was very pink, frilly and flouncy, similar to the way Aunt Rose dressed. Beth was in the cosy box-room. Yet the best thing about the house was that it was so close to the town centre. You only had to walk a few yards down the street, turn the corner and there you were right by the shops. Beth hardly ever went beyond Battle at home, and there wasn’t much in the way of shops there. Stratford-upon-Avon had all kinds. Amazing toy and gift shops, smart coffee bars, you could buy anything from a quarter of sweets to a fur coat. Most of the people visiting here, however – and there were so many of them – seemed more interested in taking photographs of everything, from the old Tudor buildings to the flower displays, than buying stuff. But then Aunt Rose had said all these hundreds of people only came to see William Shakespeare’s birthplace. Beth had only ever heard that name, she had no idea what the man had done that made him so fascinating. She hadn’t liked to ask either, for fear of looking stupid.

They had arrived on Saturday evening after a very long and boring drive. On Sunday they’d stayed in all day because all the grown-ups were tired. Beth had been really worried they’d remain the way they were yesterday, with Mother crying and Aunt Rose flapping around making cups of tea and muttering things like ‘I saw this coming years ago, but you wouldn’t listen to me.’

But today Uncle Eddie had gone back to work. He fitted out caravans, and Aunt Rose said he was a craftsman, in a tone that sounded as if she meant Mother should have found someone like him. As soon as they’d got back from the morning’s shopping trip, Aunt Rose had said Beth could go out and explore and leave the grown-ups to have a real chat. As her aunt gave her half a crown and told her to buy herself a bun or something for lunch, Beth got the idea she was expected to stay out till tea-time.

It was thrilling at first, so many shops to look in, so many people to watch. A great many of them were foreigners and she made a game of guessing where they came from. But it got a bit lonely after a while, and it was too hot for walking around, so she’d come down by the river to watch the pleasure boats, and that’s when she saw the girl sitting under a tree.

She was wearing one of those smocked-front dresses, with puffed sleeves and a sash tied at the back, that Beth had always longed for. It was pink with mauve flowers and the smocking was mauve too. Highly polished blue sandals, snowy-white ankle socks and shiny bobbed hair completed Beth’s idea of a kid who had everything, and she thought she was probably waiting for her mother to finish her shopping.

Girls at home who looked the way this one did always ignored Beth, so it took all her courage to get up the nerve to speak to her. But to her astonishment, the girl seemed to want to make a new friend as much as she did. She said her name was Suzie Wright, that she lived in Luddington, a nearby village, and she was waiting for her father to finish work to go home with him.

Beth had never found anyone before so easy to talk to. Suzie didn’t put on any airs and graces, not about her clothes, or anything. She said she was pretty dumb compared with the other girls in her class, but she didn’t seem dumb to Beth because they’d read all the same books. In fact, she even knew that Battle was where the Battle of Hastings took place, and explained that William Shakespeare was England’s greatest playwright.

Yet the thing which Beth liked most of all about Suzie was that she didn’t seem to see Beth as some kind of freak because she was so tall and thin. The thrill of being told she looked lovely in shorts, that her curly hair was beautiful and that she had colouring like Snow White carried her home that afternoon on a cloud. She prayed that Aunt Rose would let her borrow her bike the following day and that she’d be allowed to go off and meet Suzie. She thought she’d just curl up and die if they refused.

Beth picked up a lot about her mother that holiday that she hadn’t realized before. She was as much of a snob as Father. Aunt Rose said when they were arguing that Alice had only married Montague because she thought he had pots of money and lived in a grand house. Rose said she suffered from something called ‘delusions of grandeur’ and all she was getting now was her come-uppance for marrying a man she didn’t love just so she could have position. Rose said that if she had any guts at all, Alice would take Beth and leave him, but she added that she knew she wouldn’t do that because she was just as bad as Montague and wouldn’t work for a living.

Mother had insisted that none of it was true, yet the first thing she asked Beth about Suzie was what school she went to. Of course Beth didn’t know, but Aunt Rose seemed to, and she was really sarcastic. She said, ‘You needn’t worry that your daughter’s mixing with riff-raff here, I know of that family. The girl goes to The Croft, a private school. Mr Wright is the manager of a big insurance company and his house is one of the biggest in Luddington.’

After that information had been digested, Beth was free to meet Suzie every afternoon. Maybe Mother thought she always played in the Wrights’ garden, but then she never actually asked. She was only too happy to be free to read or go out with her sister.

In fact, Beth only went inside Suzie’s house twice in the whole month. Mostly Suzie was already waiting at the gate with her bike when Beth came along, and she seemed eager to get right away. Likewise, Beth only took Suzie to Aunt Rose’s a few times, and always whisked her out again quickly, using the excuse that the shops or the park were more interesting.

‘Looking back, from an adult standpoint,’ Beth said to Steven, after she’d told him about how she met Susan and the impact she’d had on her, ‘we were both hiding our family secrets. I didn’t want Susan to know we were really poor, or that my father was a pompous wife-beater. She didn’t want me to see that her granny was barmy. There was something more, too. We both felt inadequate in different ways. Suzie saw me as fearless, clever, always with a new idea up my sleeve for something exciting we could do. She wanted to be like that too. I wanted to be like her, sweet, feminine and genuinely classy, with the happiest family and the loveliest house in the world.’

‘When did you start to wise up about each other?’ Steven asked.

‘I don’t think we ever did, or perhaps our simplistic views of each other were actually very close to how we really were then,’ Beth sighed and looked at Steven helplessly. ‘But when you only see someone for a month in the summer, it’s a bit like a holiday romance, isn’t it? You don’t get to see the ugly or boring bits. We did learn some things about each other, we both admitted we hadn’t got any other real friends. She told me her granny was a trial, I told her my father was a bully. But as these things were never witnessed, neither of us could know how bad it was. I suppose, too, when we were together we wanted to forget that for eleven months of the year our lives were pretty miserable.’

‘But you kept in touch with letters for those other eleven months?’

‘Oh yes, a letter about every two or three weeks. But you must know how kids write to each other? Just sort of statements about what you’ve done, what books you’ve read. I expect when Susan wrote to Copper Beeches she imagined it was quite grand. You see, I used to mention the stables or the long drive in conversation. She didn’t know about the broken windows, the holes in the roof or the mice all over the kitchen.

‘Likewise, I only ever imagined her granny sitting knitting in her rocking-chair, with Susan’s mother in a clean apron, making cakes. I certainly didn’t visualize shitty sheets, or the old girl wandering around the house yelling her head off.’

‘So you went up to Stratford for how many summers?’ Steven asked.

‘Five. After the first one I was put on the train alone. Mother stayed home with Father. But the summer we were going to be sixteen, Father wouldn’t let me go.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was mean-spirited. He didn’t want me to have any fun,’ Beth said vehemently. ‘You see, Susan wrote after her granny died early that year, and invited me to stay at her house. We hoped that we might get to go dancing again – we’d been once the previous year – and chat up some boys.’ She paused and half smiled.

‘The year before, we’d spent most of the holiday looking for boys, we’d hang around in coffee bars, pretending to be French, you know, all that silly stuff teenage girls do. We reckoned that as we’d both be sixteen by August, with our exams over, we’d be adults.’

Beth could see herself reading that letter of invitation from Suzie. It was April, and she was sitting up in her bedroom, reading and re-reading it, her heart thumping with excitement.

The rain was so heavy she could hear water pinging in the tin bath left out on the landing under the leak in the roof. It was freezing in her bedroom, and she’d got the eiderdown around her. But just thinking about Stratford and Suzie made her feel warmer. She got herself a pencil and paper and huddling back under the eiderdown, worked out how much money she would have by August if she saved every penny of her paper-round money.

She only got £1 5s a week, and for that she had to cycle over ten miles every day, starting at half past six in the morning, regardless of whether it was raining or snowing. But she had to do it. When she was fourteen her father had told her he had no intention of paying out for anything for her any more, not even clothes or pocket money. He said it was time she earned her own money.

That was rich coming from him, as the most pocket money she ever got from him was the odd shilling on the rare occasions he was in a good mood. As for clothes, they were Serena’s hand-me-downs, and mostly so old-fashioned she’d die rather than be seen wearing them in public. It was Serena who gave her mother money for her school uniform and shoes too.

Beth didn’t mind doing the paper round in the spring and summer. Having some money of her own to buy a few new clothes and not feel ashamed if she bumped into anyone from school at the weekend made up for getting up at half past six. But in the winter it was awful. She had to set out while it was still dark, and some of the lanes she had to ride up were thick with mud. She got chapped cheeks, hands and legs from the cold and wet, and there was no such thing in their house as a hot bath before she went off to school. She had to try to wash the mud off her legs with cold water, then change into her uniform, wolf down her breakfast and cycle off to Battle again, still stiff with the cold.

Yet with spring on its way, and the promise of August in Stratford, it would soon be all right again, and maybe in September she could get a Saturday job in a shop instead. Turning back to her sums, she thought she could save at least £15 by August, enough to buy a really trendy dress and some shoes to go dancing.

The cold in her bedroom made her go downstairs again a little later for she had some homework to do. There was no sign of her mother, and Beth assumed she’d gone into the village, so she spread her books out on the kitchen table, as near to the stove as she could get, and began working.

Ever since she’d seen the Wrights’ kitchen in Luddington, the one at home made her feel terribly ashamed. It was clean – her mother scrubbed at it constantly – but it was so old and scruffy that cleaning didn’t make it look any better. Many of the quarry tiles on the floor were broken, some missing altogether, the paint on the cupboards was dingy and chipped. Nothing shone the way she remembered it did in the Wrights’ kitchen, everything looked as worn out as her mother. The gloom didn’t help either. Two of the window-panes were broken and covered over with cardboard. The only thing that made it bearable was that it was warm from the stove.

Her father came in a few minutes later. ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked brusquely. ‘I haven’t had my morning coffee.’

‘I’ll get it for you,’ she said, getting up from the table, but wishing she dared ask why he couldn’t get it himself. She had been told by her mother that as a young man her father had looked just like Robert did now, tall and very handsome, with wide shoulders and thick black hair. But there was nothing admirable about Monty’s appearance any more. He was very overweight, with flesh hanging around his jowls like a bloodhound’s and a huge stomach. His hair was thin, grey and lank, he had food stains down the front of his cardigan, and the collar of his shirt was none too clean either. But the thing Beth hated most of all about him was his eyes. They were brown, speckled with green, and very cold. For all his inactivity, they darted round every room, studied every face, searching for something to complain about. If he had ever had any good qualities, Beth thought that he had lost them all now, and it showed.

Beth had asked Serena if she knew why he was such a pig. Serena said she thought it was all tied up with him failing to match up to his ancestors, and being overindulged as a child. She claimed that like most bullies he was really a coward, afraid to go out and get a proper job in case he failed, and as long as he was still getting just enough rent from the remaining few tenants he had, he could still pretend he was Lord of the Manor.