A Heartbeat Away

He was sitting on the side of the bed in his boxer shorts, his long dark curly hair all tousled and his eyes bleary with sleep, or the lack of it. His swarthy skin seemed even darker with the stubble of a beard. I hopped uncomfortably from foot to foot for a moment, then he held out his hand and I saw the twinkle in his bright blue eyes.

“Happy Christmas, princess,” he said.

My mom was lying very still with her back to me, a long shape beneath the blue-and-white bedspread. When I tried to go and look at her, my dad laughed and grabbed my arm.

“Now, what is this you’re wearing?” he asked, peering at my new blue jodhpurs.

I squirmed with delight, twirling to show them off with such pride that I thought I might explode.

“Your precious Mrs. Brown, I suppose,” he remarked.

I stopped and stared at him. “My mom got them for me,” I told him.

He laughed. “Your mom couldn’t even go and buy a loaf of bread.”

“Mrs. Brown says she just needs to rest.”

I felt troubled by the expression on his handsome face. The dad I remembered was my hero; he made me laugh and bought me presents. When he was there, murmured an inner voice, and a distant memory of him shouting at my mom leaped, unwanted, into my mind.

“Well, we won’t need to bother the wonderful Browns again, will we?” he said. “Now that your dad is home.”

All those weeks I had longed for him to return. All those times I had blamed my poor mom for chasing him away. And now he was here and he wasn’t what I remembered. The world closed in around me and I saw Homewood Farm slipping away.

“Will you come for Christmas lunch with us?” I asked in a wobbly voice, guessing at his answer. He grinned again and held out his arms.

“I think we’ll all just stay here,” he announced. “I’m sure your mom will be able to find something nice for us to eat.”

“My mom’s not very well,” I told him. He turned to eye the motionless form beneath the bedspread.

“Oh, I think she’ll pull herself together now that I’m here.”

For the first time in my life I withdrew from my father’s embrace and walked slowly back down the stairs thinking of the big warm living room at Homewood Farm and the huge turkey I had seen Mrs. Brown preparing the other day. But it would be all right when she found out, I decided. Mr. Brown would be sure to come and get us. Except, I didn’t have any presents for Mr. and Mrs. Brown. I raced into the living room to retrieve the shiny red paper with the Christmas trees from where it lay crumpled in the hearth…but what to give them?

My eyes flicked desperately around the room, before finally alighting on the bowl of fruit. With great deliberation I chose the brightest orange and the most perfect apple to wrap up in the Christmas-tree paper and place beneath the tree. For Daniel I would draw a picture of Chocolate. With a new flood of happiness, I went off to get my pencils.

The knock on the door sounded at a quarter to one. I knew that was the time because I had asked my dad on a dozen occasions when half past twelve was—aware that when we didn’t turn up at Homewood, someone would look for us. The someone was Daniel. When I opened the door, he grinned and stepped straight inside.

“My mom says you’re late,” he told me in a breathless voice. “We’ve got presents for you and I got a bike from Santa. Come see. It’s just outside.”

I followed him out into the crisp air, feeling glad about the presents I had so carefully wrapped that morning and recalling the picture of Chocolate with pride.

“Isn’t it ace?” he cried.

I nodded, gazing appreciatively at the shiny red bicycle.

“So are you ready?” he asked eagerly.

I stared at the ground.

“Tell your mother that Mick McTavish says thank you very much for looking after his family and finding them somewhere to live, but we won’t be needing your help anymore now that he is home.”

My dad was standing behind us in the open doorway, his arms folded across his chest and a satisfied smile on his face. When Daniel gaped at him, he laughed.

“Don’t worry, lad. I’m not going to bite you,” he said. “Now, run off home and deliver my message.”

Daniel gazed at me and I could see my own disappointment mirrored in his deep brown eyes.

“But what about the presents?” he whispered for my ears only.

“Can’t I just go for a little while,” I begged my dad. His face clamped up.

“Not today, Lucy,” he told me.

I wanted to scream at him, but all I did was watch the big fat tears dripping onto my shoes as Daniel rode off down the lane, back toward Homewood Farm and presents and Christmas lunch.

CHAPTER 6

For six months my dad stayed with us, and for six months I watched my mom turn herself inside out. Or that was how it appeared to me. Before he’d returned home, she was vague and distracted, content to dwell in her own private world for hours at a time, but now she seemed in torment, dragging all her feelings and emotions down deep somewhere inside herself where none of us could go. Sometimes I would look at her, sitting in her chair with that strange, distant expression in her faded gray eyes, and wonder if perhaps one day she would retreat so far inside herself that she would turn completely inside out and be lost to us forever.

At the time I could never have put my feelings into words. I just knew things and they frightened me. But I couldn’t tell my dad because he wouldn’t have listened, and anyway, he didn’t appear to notice. Sometimes he laughed at her and called her names, and sometimes he yelled, especially if ever she came out of herself for long enough to comment on the pile of bills that lay unpaid on the bureau, or the fact that his hand constantly dipped into the blue pot on the shelf. The one where Mrs. Brown always put the allowance that she collected for my mom on Fridays.

We didn’t see Mrs. Brown that Christmas Day. I thought she would surely be by, and I sat for hours in the window, watching out for her blue car and imagining the scene at Homewood.

The presents I had wrapped remained beneath the tree. I kept glancing at my lovely blue jodhpurs and longing for the presents that awaited me, but as the hours ticked by and the afternoon shadows lengthened in the lane outside our cottage, I slowly realized that no one was going to stop that day. Something inside me tightened. What if the Browns never stopped by again?

I looked across at my dad, sitting in the chair beside the fire. He was happily drinking his way through a second bottle of red wine and his eyes were half-closed as he stared at the flashing TV screen, while my mom just gazed vacantly into the fire, lost in a world I could not enter. Tomorrow, I decided, I would go and see Daniel whether my dad liked it or not.

I slipped out of the house next morning before anyone was awake. It wasn’t very difficult because my mom never got up early anyway, and through the wall I could hear my dad snoring so loudly that nothing could have disturbed him.

Last night I had lain in the dark, listening to him cursing in an angry voice. When the thumping noises started again and I heard my mom cry, I just pulled the covers over my head and snuggled down into the darkness, thinking of Daniel and Chocolate and Homewood Farm.

As soon as the early-morning light filtered through my window, I struggled into my jodhpurs, filled with determination, and crept along the landing to peek into my mom’s room. My dad was slumped beneath the bedclothes, his whole shape heaving with each rumbling snore that filled the room. I hardly dared to sneak past him to peep at my mother, but I made myself because I knew that Mrs. Brown would ask me how she was.

I tiptoed around the end of the bed to check on my mom. Her face was crumpled in sleep, all lined and gray, with a strange dark mark down one cheek, a purple mark—like the one I got on my side when I fell from Chocolate. Something fluttered inside my stomach, then gurgled up into my throat, and I ran from the room on wooden legs, down the stairs and out into the lane. And I kept on running until I saw the gray roofs of Homewood against the frosty hills.

I walked along the side of the big stone house and in through the small gate that led into the back garden, where Daniel and I spent so many happy hours. The gentle, rhythmic thud of the milking machine filled the crisp air. I heard a cow bellow, impatient to be milked, and a warm glow spread through me. I felt that I was home.

The delicious aroma of bacon wafted from the kitchen as I approached the back door. I crept inside to hide behind Mr. Brown’s tall chair and peered out at Mrs. Brown, who was standing at the oven. She spoke to me without turning around.

“Are you hungry, Lucy?” she asked, as if expecting me.

When I emerged from my hiding place, nodding soundlessly, she beckoned me over and laid another place at the table.

“Mr. Brown and Daniel will be in shortly,” she said. “They’ll be so pleased to see you. Daniel has a new puppy. It came on Christmas Day and he’s been dying to show it to you.”

I picked up the thick bacon sandwich she’d placed in front of me and started to talk with my mouth full, but she didn’t tell me off.

“Is it a Labrador, like Timmy Brocklebank’s puppy?”

She looked around from the stove with a smile, lifting her hand to push a stray lock of fair hair back up into the knot on the top of her head.

“How did you know?”

“Because Daniel loves Labradors,” I told her. “And Father Christmas would know that, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes, I suppose he would,” she agreed with a thoughtful expression on her smooth plump face.

I took another large bite of my sandwich. “Father Christmas knows everything, doesn’t he?”

“I expect so,” she replied.

“Then why didn’t he remember to visit my house last night?” I asked with a troubled frown.

Mrs. Brown put down the spatula she was using to turn the bacon and crossed the kitchen to crouch beside me, so close that I could smell the scent of violets mingling with the aroma of bacon. I pulled in a big breath and looked up into her misty brown eyes.

“Oh, Lucy,” she cried. “He didn’t forget you. It was just…”

She hesitated and I held my breath.

“It was just that he left your presents here, instead.”

For the rest of my life, I will remember the happiness that flooded me in that moment. Father Christmas hadn’t forgotten me after all. He just thought I was at Homewood.

“Come on, then,” said Mrs. Brown, “let’s go and find them.”

As we walked together along the hallway, she took my hand in hers.

“Does your mother know that you are here?” she asked.

I shook my head slowly, looking down at my shoes.

“They’re still asleep,” I told her, chewing on my sandwich with the pure delight that only true hunger brings.

A gust of cold air whooshed through from the kitchen as we went into the living room and I heard the back door bang.

“Shut that door, Daniel,” called Mrs. Brown. “And then come and see who’s here.”

We waited for a moment until he raced in from outside. His cheeks were bright pink from the sharp winter’s air and his warm brown eyes glowed with delight.

“I knew you’d be over,” he said simply, pointing to the bundle of yellow fur that followed him. “This is Fudge.”

“I hope you cleaned him up before you brought him in,” grumbled Mrs. Brown, but her eyes were smiling.

For a moment even my presents were forgotten as I gazed in wonder at the golden Labrador pup. The pup studied me with Daniel’s eyes, and when I pressed my face against his soft baby coat, his warm pink tongue curled across my cheek.

“Why,” I gasped, “he looks just like you.”

“That’s what my mom says,” laughed Daniel.

I loved my presents. A riding hat from Mr. and Mrs. Brown to go with the jodhpurs, and a book from Daniel called Learn to Ride. But no gift could ever be as wonderful as Fudge. Daniel knew how I felt without being told and he smiled at me.

“You can share him if you like,” he said. “Fudge can be our dog.”

“Our dog,” I repeated over and over again. “Our dog.”

After breakfast, when Mrs. Brown told me that my mother would be very worried and I really should go home, all my happiness faded. I ran to hide behind the big square kitchen table, but she gently escorted me out by my arm, stroking my thick dark wavy hair off my tear-stained face.

“Now, you know that you have to go, don’t you, Lucy?” she said, kissing me softly on the cheek.

I nodded, watching solemnly as she took her long beige coat from the peg by the door. As she fastened the buttons, Mr. Brown came in. His red hair was all wild, as if he’d forgotten to comb it that morning, and his overalls smelled of cows and silage. I thought he looked nice.

“Go and say goodbye to Daniel and Fudge,” said Mrs. Brown, ushering me toward them as she turned to talk to her husband.

“And remember that you can play with Fudge and Daniel anytime, so no sadness from you,” added Mr. Brown with one of the broad grins that seemed to fill up his whole face. Daniel smiled like that, too.

When the blue car stopped outside our house, my dad burst through the front door even before we had time to get out. His face was heated with anger, but his voice was icy-cold.

“Now then, Mrs. Brown,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “What is all this? Are you trying to steal my Lucy away?”

He stood squarely in front of us, his arms across his chest. I was pleased to see that he was wearing clean clothes and had shaved off the stubble of a beard that made him resemble a Gypsy. He looked nice, my dad, when he was all done up. Not the Mr. Brown kind of nice that had nothing to do with appearance at all, but handsome and charming like the men on TV.

Mrs. Brown was almost as tall as he when she stood very straight, and stared him in the eye without flinching. “Mr. McTavish,” she said in a fierce voice. “I cared for your wife and child when you abandoned them, so do not take that tone with me.”

His face darkened and I felt my insides shrivel.

“Well, for that I’ll say thank-you, Edna Brown, but as your services are no longer required, I suggest that you get yourself off home and leave my daughter to me.”

I felt so proud of Mrs. Brown, standing up to my dad like that. I wished with all my heart that my mom was watching, so that she, too, could learn to be strong and brave. And in that moment I made a promise to myself. Whatever happened in my life, I would never cower from it like my poor sad mom. I would never give in and turn inside myself, as she had.

“Your wife was released from the nursing home into my care,” Mrs. Brown went on. “She needs peace, no worries and plenty of rest, or else she’ll be back in there in no time at all.”

My dad’s swarthy skin turned a dull red.

“Well, she has me now. Doesn’t she, Mrs. Brown?” he retorted.

For just the slightest second, I saw Mrs. Brown’s glance waver. She placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it tight.

“Well, you damn well make sure that you look after them both,” she told him in a frosty voice. “Or else you’ll have me to answer to.”

My dad took hold of my hand then and pulled me toward him, and we watched as she walked back toward her car, head held high.

“Nosy old bag,” he murmured as she climbed into her car and started the engine. I thought she was just going to drive away, but she regarded us for a moment, then wound down her window and leaned out.

“Bye, Lucy,” she called, with a gentle smile for me. But as she turned her gaze onto my dad, her eyes went all glittery and hard.

“You can tell Mary that I’ll be along on Friday as usual to collect her allowance for her, so I’ll see her then.”

My dad’s mouth was set in a grim line and his blue eyes blazed with anger as he yanked at my arm and dragged me easily behind him into the house, despite the fact that I kept my legs stiff and straight. The front door slammed so hard behind us that I thought it might fall off its hinges.

I went back to school in the first week of January, and life gradually settled into an uneasy routine. Every Friday Mrs. Brown would stop by to visit my mom, then go to collect her money from the post office before picking Daniel and me up at school. She always brought Fudge with her, and we would play with him in the back of the car while she drove to the supermarket to buy our groceries.

My dad was never there when we got home on Fridays. I suppose he didn’t want to see Mrs. Brown. He knew he couldn’t stop her coming, so he just stayed away. And that was probably a good thing. If not for her going to the supermarket for us on Fridays, there would never have been any food to eat in our house at all.

As soon we carried all the bags into the kitchen, Mrs. Brown would put on the kettle to make a pot of tea to share with my mom. Sometimes my mom would help her, when she was having one of her “better days,” but usually she just sat in the living room and waited. I often wondered how Mrs. Brown could be so patient with her, but when I asked her about it one day, she told me that my mom was ill and I had to be patient, too. It made sense to me, and I did try, but it was hard.

Mrs. Brown always stayed for at least an hour, and Daniel and I used to go outside and throw a ball for Fudge. He never tired of running for that ball, and when we went back into the house, he’d be so exhausted he’d flop on the floor, his tongue hanging out, until it was time to go home.

One Friday in spring, when golden daffodils were blooming everywhere and the birds sang sweet songs of promise from way up in the budding treetops, we burst into the house with our grocery bags to find my mom sobbing by the unlit fire. She was on her knees with a letter in her hand and her eyes were red-rimmed.

I looked at the envelope she had discarded in the hearth and realized that it was exactly the same as all the others that had arrived lately—the ones that my dad always burned. He would run down the stairs while my mom was still in bed, pick up the mail from where it lay on the mat and throw most of the letters, unopened, into the fire.

“Damn bills,” he would curse as yellow flames licked away at the officially typed writing. Then he would grab his coat from the peg by the door and march out of the house, banging the door behind him. Sometimes after one of those outbursts he would stay away all day and all night, and sometimes he would come home in the early hours of the morning, singing and shouting his way down the street. Whatever he did, it always made my mom cry, and now that she knew about the letters, I was afraid of what she might do

I looked at her crumpled gray face, all blurry with tears, and repeated my vow—the one that I had made to myself on the day Mrs. Brown had brought me home.

Daniel and I stood open-mouthed as Mrs. Brown untangled the letter from her trembling fingers. She read it through with a grave frown on her face, and for an instant I thought she, too, was going to cry. Then her mouth set into a thin straight line and she folded the crisp white paper several times before placing it deliberately on the tabletop.

“Now, come on, Mary,” she said. “Crying isn’t going to help, is it?”

My mom moaned.

“I think I’ll just end it all, Edna,” she sobbed.

Mrs. Brown tut-tutted and glanced at Daniel and me.

“Why don’t you go outside and play with Fudge, children,” she told us firmly. But I held on to Daniel’s hand and made him wait with me outside the door. It was my mom and I wanted to see what was going to happen.

“Let’s look through the rest of this mail,” suggested Mrs. Brown in her best matter-of-fact tone of voice, “and then I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.”

Why was it that grown-ups always thought drinking tea would help?

Daniel and I stayed close to the door, straining our ears, but all we heard was the crackle of paper as Mrs. Brown sorted through the letters. When her firm voice cut through the silence again, it made us both jump.

“Have you read this one, Mary?”

My mom didn’t reply, and she asked her again with a tinge of impatience.

“Have you read it? It’s from your sister. I didn’t know you had a sister.”

I didn’t know that my mom had a sister, either, and when I nudged Daniel and shrugged, he pulled a face at me and I started to giggle.

“Outside now, children,” ordered Mrs. Brown. We sucked in our breaths and stayed very quiet until Fudge went racing past us into the living room; then Mrs. Brown came and found us and sent us out into the garden.

I didn’t feel like playing because all I could think about was that letter. What if it made my mom ill again? What would my dad do when he got home? What if we lost our house the way we had before?

Daniel and I sat on the wall in the warm spring sunshine as Fudge ran up and down by himself. We didn’t really need to talk, because Daniel always knew what I was thinking. After a while he jumped down and looked at me with the bright expression on his sunny face that told me he was about to have a good idea.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go inside and ask them what’s happening? Just because we’re kids doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be told things.”

Daniel always knew what to do. He was so confident and brave—and he was right, too. After all, I mean, if the letter was going to change my life, then I really ought to know about it.

Together we marched into the house, accompanied by Fudge, who tore around us in dizzy circles, eager to play. I wished that I were a dog, with nothing on my mind but food and fun.

My mom had stopped crying and she was gazing up at Mrs. Brown with a surprised expression on her thin face.

“But I haven’t heard from Violet in years,” she cried.

Mrs. Brown shrugged. “Well, it seems that you are about to see her again, whether you want to or not,” she remarked. “She sounds like a very strong lady, your sister.”

My mom seemed more lucid in that moment than she had in weeks, as if the letter from this Violet had brought her out of herself again. She sat up quite tall and two spots of color appeared on her pale cheeks as she started to talk.

“She had a row with my father years ago, when I was still quite small. That was when…” She hesitated for a moment, biting her bottom lip so that it went all red. “When my mother died. She left home then, and not long after that, we got a letter to say that she had joined the army. I haven’t heard from her since.”

She glanced down then, as if remembering, but when Mrs. Brown put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, she started to talk again in a quick voice.

“Funny, really, that she joined the army, because my father had been in the forces. She was so like him, perhaps that’s why they never got on. I only wish I could have been more like her, strong-willed and sure of herself—opinionated, I suppose some people might say. At first after she left, I used to think about her a lot, but she never ever contacted us, and eventually I just stopped thinking about her. When our father died, I did try to find her—I left a forwarding address at the barracks where she was based. But she never got in touch. I know why, of course…”

She paused and I thought that the rush of information must have worn her out, for it struck me that she had said more in the past five minutes than in the previous five weeks. I took hold of Daniel’s hand and held my breath, willing my mother to go on. As the seconds ticked by, Mrs. Brown glanced around and saw us. She stared at us for a moment with a sad expression on her soft face, but she didn’t send us away. Perhaps she thought I should know the things that my mom was saying, about an auntie I never knew I had.

And at last my mother began to talk again.

“I know why she never came back,” she went on. “It was because Violet blamed my father for my mother’s death. He was so hard on her and she was a quiet nervous person.”

She looked straight at me and there was a different kind of pain in her gray eyes now, a deep sorrow that brought an ache into my heart and made her appear alive again.