Sara MacDonald - Come Away With Me

I stand watching them. Rosie feels my presence first. She turns and cries ‘Mamma!’ and squeals for joy.

Tom laughs. ‘You’ve absconded, how lovely.’

As we throw bread together, Tom says, ‘Life here with you and Rosie makes me wonder why on earth I am not a civilian, you know.’

‘You!’ I laugh at the thought. ‘Oh yes! I can just imagine you catching the tube in the rush hour every morning in a suit.’

‘Well, it will come to that, I expect, even if I stay in the army. I will get a paunch and have a desk job with the MOD…’

Rosie, tired of throwing bread, climbs back into her pushchair and watches the ducks diving. She shakes with laughter at their waggling tails and claps her hands together.

Tom bends to kiss her. ‘What a happy little soul you are, Rosie Holland.’

We turn and walk slowly back to the gates arm in arm. A damp little wind brings the pungent scent of wet earth again. It is only August, but I am suddenly reminded of autumn and the end of summer, and I shiver.

Tom pulls me towards him. ‘Sometimes, on peaceful family Sundays like this, I wonder what the hell I am doing with my life, Jen. Chasing what?’

I am amused and cynical because I know him so well. ‘Family Sundays on a regular basis would bore you absolutely rigid. You’d prowl around like a leopard, driving us all mad.’

Tom grins down at me. ‘Talking about predatory, it’s been a great leave with Danielle in Paris.’

I sigh. ‘That’s unkind and she’s home tomorrow. I wish you’d try to get on better. You both have to challenge each other all the time. It’s become a habit.’

When we get in Flo has done everything and I feel guilty. I wish she wouldn’t do so much for us.

‘I would have set the table…’

‘Here we go.’ Tom is pouring generous gins.

‘My dear girl, every Sunday we have the same conversation. It’s not a chore. I love cooking Sunday lunch.’

‘Did Danielle ring?’

‘Yes. She’s sold everything except those long linen dresses; too long for Parisians, apparently.’

‘Damn. She was right then. I’ll have to try them up north. Did she sound OK?’

‘She sounded as if she was in the middle of a party,’ Flo says diplomatically.

‘That makes a change then.’ Tom lifts Rosie into her high chair.

Annoyed, I defend Danielle. ‘She has no family. There’s only Flo and me. Don’t you see? We are smug marrieds to her and when you get pompous you just reinforce her prejudices. You make her worse. Please don’t judge her.’

Tom immediately apologises. ‘Sorry, Jen. You’re right. I catch myself doing it. It’s just that she seems to get more promiscuous the older she gets. I do think the way she behaves is irresponsible. I know she has her own flat and what she does with her life is up to her, but I don’t have to like it.’

Flo turns from the oven. ‘Danielle does have sudden bouts of promiscuity, Tom, and I have talked to her about it because I worry about her safety too. You have to realise it is all about low self-esteem. I know nothing about her childhood, but something happened there. Try to be kind, darling.’

I fill Rosie’s little bowl with food and hand it to him. He places it in front of her and cuts it into tiny pieces.

‘Now I feel like a pig. Danielle’s such a head-tossing sultry beauty that it’s difficult to believe she’s promiscuous because she lacks self-worth and not because she just likes sex.’

Rosie lifts her spoon and bangs it in the gravy.

‘No!’ we all say together and Rosie, stunned to hear an almost unknown word, stops, plastic spoon in mid air.

That afternoon we leave Rosie with Flo and go to a gallery opening and then ice skating. After a Chinese meal that Tom insists on, we stumble home.

Tom has drunk too much. ‘I’m going to be dry for a long time, darling.’

‘Good thing too,’ I mutter, heaving him up the steps and getting the key in the door with difficulty. We stumble up the stairs and Tom wants to go in to see Rosie.

‘Don’t wake her, Tom. I’d like her to sleep in her own bed tonight.’

He watches her for a long time. He seems suddenly sober. ‘You don’t realise how much you’ll change when you have a child. The thought of anything happening to Rosie is…unthinkable. I feel so protective of you both. I don’t take either of you for granted, ever. When I’m somewhere grim, I think of you and know you’re both somewhere warm and safe. My mainstay. Without you, I couldn’t do the job I do without becoming bleak and hardened.’

We wrap our arms round each other and watch our child sleep. I want to weep because in forty-eight hours he will have flown away again, and the house will be quieter and emptier, and I will have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach until he phones or a letter arrives without a postmark and I know he is safe somewhere and I can begin to count the days until he comes home again.

February 2006

When Bea got in from shopping the house was empty and she found a note from James on the kitchen table.

Darling, Flo rang from the London house. She is worried about Jenny who seems to have gone missing. Apparently, Jenny met Ruth Freidman again after all this time. Bizarre. Ruth is now on holiday in Cornwall and I have gone down to that creek house at St Minyon to see if they are both there. Try not to worry. I’m sure Jenny must be making her way home. J. x

Bea’s mouth went dry. She picked up the phone immediately and rang Flo. An Asian girl answered. Both Florence and Danielle were with a VIP client at the moment. Could she take a message?

‘Would you just say that Jenny’s mother rang? If Flo could get in touch as soon as she can, I’d be grateful.’

‘Of course. I will tell her.’

Bea went out into the garden still holding the phone. There was a cold east wind and the sea below her glinted fierce and navy-blue. She paced up and down the terrace among the wilted pot plants, a knot growing in her stomach with a chill premonition of disaster.

She turned and looked back at the house and the drive curling round to the gate. Ruth. Bea remembered clearly a thin child with fair plaits rounding the corner of the house, her small pale face anxiously searching for Jenny.

Ruth walking up the hill from Downalong each Sunday, desperate for an escape from home and a welcome here.

Bea looked up at the attic window on the right of the house, which had been Jenny’s bedroom. She could almost hear the giggles emanating out into the garden with the sound of the seagulls. Jenny and Ruth. Ruth and Jenny. The two of them had raced about together for all those years of childhood like odd little twins and then whoosh, Ruth was gone, and how Jenny had grieved.

Bea went inside again and into James’s study. She saw that his medical bag was missing.

August 2005

Tom wakes with a start. His heart is thumping loudly in the silent house as if he’s had a nightmare. If he has, he can’t remember it. He turns on his back, sure there is something, some small niggling warning he should recapture from sleep, but he can’t conjure it up.

He gets out of bed and pulls on his bathrobe. He goes to the uncurtained window and looks out. It’s almost dawn and he watches the pink tinge grow behind the rooftops. He turns back to the bed and looks at Jenny sleeping. He feels such an overpowering sense of love and fear flood through him that he catches his breath.

He moves out of the room and across the landing, flinging the shadows away, swearing at these moods that always come on the last days of his leave. Rosie is curled like a dormouse in her cot, the same wiry hair as her mother, the same way of sleeping, a small clone. He smiles and tucks in her arms, carefully pulls up the covers over her plump little body. Rosie. Flesh of his flesh.