Come Away With Me

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.

He shivers. The shadows in the room creep nearer, encroach from all sides. He can’t turn and face them because he doesn’t know from where the most danger comes.

He leaves the room, goes into the sitting room and sits in his battered leather armchair. He loves this house. This marvellous, lived-in Victorian house with its high ceilings and huge casement windows. He loves everything about his life except returning to this nasty little war he is unsure he still believes in. He has to cull these feelings; kill them with one blow before they take hold. He has younger, less experienced soldiers under him, nineteen-year-old boys who rely on him. It’s the life he’s chosen. He has no right to maverick thoughts, dread or self-pity.

Impatient with himself, he gets up to pour himself a brandy. He’ll sit and listen to the silent house move and breathe and creak around him. He’ll absorb into himself from the shadows of night the hub of Jenny’s busy days. The constant coming and going and chatter and giggles; the sound of the phone or doorbell; the noise of his daughter’s small footsteps on the polished floor; the touch of Jenny’s hand as she passes him clutching rolls of coloured material, turning back to smile at him, her face alive with love. All these things are the routine of her days when he’s away; her enclosed, safe, female world.

Marriage has made everything harder. There’s so much more to lose, risks become calculated, less instinctive. It’s hard not to grow softer, to lose your edge. He swallows the brandy quickly. Stop thinking.

He falls asleep in the armchair and dreams again. Dreams he’s getting off a plane in Northern Ireland, or Bosnia, or Iraq. It’s pouring with rain and his heart is heavy with the loss of something…

There’s something he should remember but it dances out of reach, just beyond memory. All he can feel is the icy night rain coming in on a wind that chills him to the bone.

He turns to look at the young soldiers following him off the plane. They shimmer in the heat blasts of the plane warming up behind them. They have a dreamlike quality as they float towards him and he realises with sudden clarity that time as he knows it does not exist. These soldiers, he himself, are shimmering in some timeless zone. They are the soldiers of yesterday and the soldiers of tomorrow. They are smiling, flirting with adventure, dancing with death. They do not understand it will never end, these brutal little wars against an unseen enemy. There they stride with their eager, innocent smiles and their new, squeaky boots and heavy packs, and he wants to shout them a warning. We’ll never win. It will just go on and on and on.

Yet, as he moves towards them he sees his own younger face among them, determined and alight with challenge. They move, laughing, through him as he stands facing them on the tarmac and he realises that they cannot see him for he is not there. He does not exist. His time has been and gone.

With relief he wakes. It is morning. He is in England. Sunlight shines across the polished floor. He laughs with relief. Where should he take Jenny and Rosie on this precious last full day of his leave?

FIVE

It was February and the neglected garden was full snowdrops and purple and yellow crocuses. Winter jasmine blossomed in a wave against the fence. Before I left to catch the train I went downstairs and gathered little bunches of snowdrops and dotted them about the rooms as if to leave a shadow of myself in the house. They looked like delicate ballet dancers bunched in white clumps against the stained-glass window on the landing, but they would all be faded and brown by the time I got back.

I was putting off the moment of leaving the house. I did not want to shut the front door behind me and find myself on the outside in the crisp cold air. I felt an irrational dread that something might happen to those left in the house or the high-ceilinged rooms would vaporise behind me.

I sat in Tom’s leather armchair and let the sound of the girls’ voices and laughter on the cutting-room floor above me filter down. I listened to Flo’s deep, soft voice on the telephone. I thought guiltily of how much Danielle had taken on these past few weeks and how it should be a small thing for me to make good the appointments she had set-up for me in Birmingham.

I heard the taxi outside and I got out of the chair and went downstairs. I gathered my bags from the hall and called up to Flo that I was leaving. She came down the attic stairs and stood on the first-floor landing looking down at me. I swallowed the urge to drop my bags and rush back up the stairs and admit that I had changed my mind and Birmingham was the last place on earth I wanted to go on my own.

Something must have shown in my face because Flo started to come down the last flight of stairs to me. ‘It’s not too late, lovey. Why don’t you give Birmingham a miss? Wait until Danielle gets back. A week is not going to make a great deal of difference. I can reschedule your appointments. Danielle will understand.’

I shook my head and lied, ‘I’m OK, honestly. I must go today, Flo. Danielle has set up these meetings and I don’t want to let her down, it wouldn’t be fair.’

Flo sighed and kissed my cheek. ‘All right, Jen. I’ll ring you tonight.’

I walked down the steps and into the waiting taxi. I waved and Flo watched me out of sight.

The traffic was horrendous and I had left myself short of time. As I hurried along the platform for the Birmingham train a figure ahead of me reminded me of someone. It was the small movement of her head as she walked, the straight back. I had a bewildering lurch of déjà vu; a sliver of memory just beyond reach.

I climbed into an almost empty first class carriage and found a seat. The silence was wonderful. I could do some paperwork.

All of a sudden it came to me who the woman walking ahead of me had reminded me of from behind: Ruth Freidman, my best friend at school. We had been inseparable as children. She had practically lived at our house in St Ives. She was one of those girls who was good at everything. She needed to be because she had older parents who were cold and critical of everything she did, and very strict. She was never allowed to take friends home and there had been a myriad rules she must not break. It had made her different, made her stand out from the rest of us.

Bea had instinctively scooped her up into our large noisy family, and away from home, when she was with us, Ruth seemed to blossom. She had been fun and clever. I had loved her very much, but I knew, even as a child, that once she left home she would never return. She was loyal. She never really spoke about her awful parents; she just seemed to accept how they were.

The train gathered speed into the suburbs. I had not thought of Ruth for years and it was strange that a glimpse of a woman’s head could trigger memories that flooded back, sweet and painful. I remembered her saying, ‘I’m never going to get married, Jen. Do you know that my parents have lived in Cornwall all their lives and they’ve never been anywhere? They have no curiosity about anything or anyone. It’s incredible. I’m going to fly, free as a bird…’

I wondered if she did fly free. Inexplicably, a few months later, as we were both about to sit our A levels, her father, a bank manager, accepted a posting to Toronto and the family packed up in extraordinary haste and in weeks they were gone. Vanished. Leaving us all with open mouths.

It had made no sense to pull Ruth out of school just before important exams. It was weird, especially as her parents were always so pushy and expectant about Ruth’s academic progress. Bea, anxious that something was wrong, had gone round to see Ruth’s parents. She offered to have Ruth to live with us until after her A levels, but her parents had been coldly determined that Ruth was to go with them and take her exams later at the International School in Toronto.

The strangest thing of all was Ruth’s odd, robot-like compliance. She put up no fight to stay at all. When I begged and pleaded with her to remain with us, she eventually became angry. It was the only time she turned on me and told me to mind my own bloody business.

What stung me cruelly was that she left her life and me firmly behind her without as much as a backward glance. She never wrote to me once. We had been inseparable and yet I could be instantly discarded for her new life. Ruth had made a mistake with the box number and all my letters were returned. It took years for the hurt and sense of loss to leave me.

I looked out of the window at the battered little gardens of terraced houses. What did Ruth do with her life? What had happened to her? She had always been a little mysterious and prone to mood swings. It was not surprising with the parents she had, but I wondered, when she left without a backward glance, if I had really known her at all.

I stared at my shadowy reflection in the window. Odd how memory could be jogged by such a frail thing as a woman’s back.

Someone hovered near my seat, and then threw their coat on to the rack above me. I hastily fanned out my newspaper. There were plenty of seats elsewhere. I looked up, annoyed, into the smiling face of an elegant blonde woman.

‘Jenny Brown! I thought it must be you. No one else could wear outrageous clothes as you do and look absolutely stunning, and your hair is exactly the same. It had to be you!’

I stared up at her, startled. Ruth Freidman stood before me. I don’t think I would have recognised her immediately, but her voice and laugh had not changed.

‘Ruth! Oh my God. I followed the back of your head walking to the train. I just thought it was someone who reminded me of you from the back.’

I was prattling and our eyes met and we both laughed as she sat down opposite me.

‘You walked past the carriage window, Jenny. I only caught a glimpse but I was suddenly so sure it must be you and it is.’

Amazed, we stared at each other, fourteen years on, examined the lines and shadows that made up our adult faces. Her tall, athletic body was still slim and effortlessly graceful, but now she had style, was immaculately groomed. Long gone were the thin plaits. Her face was carefully made up, her hair beautifully blonde and expensively cut.

How do I look to her? I wondered, bemoaning, as always, my own small compact body and dark unruly hair that I still couldn’t control. I wasn’t wearing any make-up and I was sure I had aged more than she had.

I said suddenly, surprising myself, perhaps because it had been on my mind a moment ago, ‘You just vanished, Ruth. You just disappeared off the face of the earth. You never wrote to me. We never heard from you again. It was as if you had died.’

A flicker of something crossed Ruth’s face, then she shrugged in a movement I remembered. ‘I…just thought it was best. Look, here comes the coffee, wonderful.’

We fiddled with our small cartons of milk.

‘What are you doing on a train to Birmingham, Jenny? Did you get to art college? If I remember rightly you wanted masses of children, like Bea?’

She laughed, taking in my wedding ring. I said, feeling sick and playing for time, ‘Which question do I answer first? I’m on a train to Birmingham because I’m working. Yes, I went to Central St Martin’s.’

‘Did you get your scholarship?’

‘Yes. I was lucky.’

‘Lucky? I don’t think so! You were incredibly talented. So what are you doing now?’

Ruth’s terrier-like persistence had not changed. ‘I have a partnership with a French designer, Danielle Sabot. We teamed together for the Royal Society of Arts Bursary Scheme and won. Because of that show, one of the London stores asked us to do some designs for them and it all sort of took off from there. Now we design for various companies here, and in France and Italy. Usually, Danielle does Birmingham. She’s a better businesswoman than me, but when she’s abroad it’s my job.’

‘You always were modest. I knew you’d be successful, Jenny. Well done you.’

‘So, what about you, Ruth?’ I said quickly. ‘What did you do in Toronto? When did you come back to England?’

‘Hey, not me yet!’ Ruth said, equally quickly. ‘What about the rest of your life? It can’t be all work.’

I looked out of the window as if I could escape. Outside, Lego houses flashed by back to back: tiny gardens, pin-board people going about their days, keeping to their own territories; life rolling inexorably on.

I thought I’d kept my face expressionless but something must have shown because Ruth tentatively put out her hand and touched mine. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny. It’s none of my business, is it?’

I stared at the slim hand lying near my own. The hand moved and gently placed itself over mine on the table. Grief shifted inside me. I stared out at the fields. Dark, wet earth being ploughed, seagulls wheeling behind the tractor. I said, for a lie was easier, like telling someone else’s story, ‘My husband was killed in a road accident.’ My voice sounded as if it were coming down a long echoing tunnel.

Easier to say it fast, like that. Ruth would not remember or connect those awful headlines and photographs with me.

Her fingers curled round mine and held them. Her voice was shocked. ’Oh, Jenny. Oh, God. I’m so, so sorry. When? How long ago?’

‘In August.’

‘Only six months ago. I was in Israel. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry, please forgive me and my insistent prying.’

The small fluttering movement of Ruth’s hands on mine triggered a warmth inside me that I thought had gone for good. ‘Tell me about your life, Ruth. Tell me about you. How long were you in Canada? When did you come home?’

Ruth searched my face anxiously, wanting to offer me comfort, but seeing my expression she let go of my fingers and leant back in her seat. She closed her eyes for a second. ‘I never went to Canada.’ Her face was closing, just as mine had done a moment ago.

I stared at her stupidly. ‘What on earth do you mean, you didn’t go?’

Ruth didn’t answer.

‘You gave us a forwarding address, even if it was the wrong box number. Your father had a job in Toronto, didn’t he?’

Ruth looked up and her face was bleak and expressionless, reminding me of the child she had been. There was bitterness in her voice clear to hear. ‘I mean my parents went. I didn’t. I was sent to live with an aunt on Arran. I did my A levels by post. I never got to any university.’

I stared at her. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘They wanted to be rid of me.’

I looked at her, shocked. ‘What do you mean?’

Ruth smiled grimly. ‘As you know, my parents had an absolute terror of scandal and were obsessed by what people thought of them. Do you remember that last Christmas before I left?’

I nodded. ‘I was in hospital having my appendix out.’

‘Yes. Well, I lied to my parents and said that we were both going to a party together. I went on my own and I got drunk and missed my lift home. I was eventually taken home by someone else’s father, still far from sober. Unfortunately, he happened to be a clerk in my father’s bank.’

She paused and took a deep breath. In her house drink was the devil’s brew. ‘My father went into a blind fury when he saw me. He told me, before I even had time to sober up, that he and my mother were not my biological parents. That I had been adopted. It was funny, really. My mother stood in front of me muttering darkly, Blood will out. Blood will out, like a demented Lady Macbeth.’

I stared at her, horrified.

‘A few weeks later my father took a job he previously had no intention of taking and I was deported as fast as humanly possible to the outer regions.’

‘I can’t believe this. I was your best friend. Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because my father was paranoid and my mother hysterical about anyone knowing what they were going to do. I begged to stay and do my A levels with you. I knew Bea had come round. My father was very threatening and I was scared of him.’

‘You should have run away and come and told us everything. Bea and James could have stopped them sending you away. You should have confided in me.’

Ruth leant towards me. ‘It’s hard to explain now, but the stuffing went out of me. My parents waited seventeen years to tell me that they were not my real parents. They went on and on about how they had saved me from a terrible background. I felt defeated by them, and utterly wicked and valueless.’

‘They really were dreadful people,’ I said angrily. ‘I should have realised you were in deep trouble, I must have been blind.’

‘I hid my feelings from everyone. I think I was in shock. I didn’t want Bea—any of you—to know I was adopted. It seemed suddenly shameful. Later, of course, I was very relieved I did not have the same blood as them.’ She met my eyes. ‘Truly, I was afraid that you would all think less of me. I needed to remember a place and people where I was loved, your house. I needed that to take away with me.’

I closed my eyes and shivered at the random cruelty of life. ‘You should have trusted us, known us better. All you had to do was pack your bag and walk across to our house.’

I paused. It did not explain why she had never written. Had she believed she deserved to lose us?

Ruth studied the backs of her hands. ‘I’ve had no contact with my parents for fourteen years. They shipped me out to that Scottish island and they never wrote or got in touch with me again. I haven’t heard from them since the day they put me on the ferry at Glasgow and turned their backs. I lived with them for seventeen years and for them I simply ceased to exist. As far as I know they are still in Canada. Anyway…’

‘They were wicked, cruel people.’

Ruth put her chin in her hand and smiled at me. ‘How I loved your warm, chaotic family. How I envied you. I don’t think I would have survived childhood without your family. I always felt included. It was fun. I could be a child in your house. I always thought of my house as somewhere time stood still; a place with the slow, heavy ticking of a clock that marked the endlessness of my childhood.’

I stared at her. I had taken my childhood completely for granted. ’It’s unforgivable that your parents could just abandon you. What happened to you? How did you manage?’

‘I managed because of the wonderful aunt on Arran who took me in. She was amazing. Do you know, Jenny, I had more love and support in my years with her than I had in all my childhood with my parents.’

‘Could you study on Arran, then?’

‘For a while, by correspondence. Then I commuted to the mainland to study. Eventually, I had to leave the island to work and my aunt came with me. I got a job in a big department store in Glasgow, found I was good at selling, became a buyer, got ambitious, did a business degree and began to run my own departments. I also lecture on business management on a freelance basis at conventions. A few years ago I moved from Glasgow and joined the Fayad group in Birmingham.’ She laughed and threw her arms wide. ’That’s my story!’

I smiled at her. ‘Ruth, you’re amazing.’

‘No, but my aunt was. She was like your mother. Like Bea. She gave me a sense of self-worth and motivated me to succeed, despite everything. She died a few years ago and I still miss her.’

We were both silent. I looked at Ruth’s hand. ‘You’re married?’

‘Yes. He’s a good and lovely man, very kind…’

Kind is a giveaway line. Kind is a word you use instead of love.

As if reading my thoughts, Ruth said, ‘Sometimes I suspect my parents might have been right. I’m not always a nice person. I’m driven. I don’t make enough time for the people I should cherish.’ She fiddled with her wedding ring. ‘Do you have children?’

I shook my head and dug my nails hard into one hand under the table.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ Ruth said suddenly. ‘Here I am, prattling on about my life when it’s nothing compared with what you’re going through at the moment, Jenny.’

‘It helps to talk of other things. Do you have children?’

Her whole face lit up. ‘Yes. Just one. His name is Adam.’

The sun shone on the dirty train window in a thin ray touching our heads. It turned Ruth’s hair gold and reminded me of our schooldays long gone, hiding in a corner of the common room trying to avoid games in the bitterly cold winds that blew straight in from the sea and swept over the playing fields freezing us solid. Light from the coloured panes used to slant down on to the window seat where we crouched, ears straining for a nun’s footsteps coming our way.

‘Oh!’ Ruth jumped up suddenly. ‘I get off at the next stop to meet Adam on his way home from school. We both change trains here. We don’t often coincide, so it’s nice. We live out in the suburbs.’

She was tearing off a used envelope and writing down her address and telephone number. ‘My surname is now Hallam. Call me tomorrow, Jenny. Come and see us or I’ll meet you somewhere central. I can probably give you some contacts too. Which hotel are you staying in?’

I told her and gave her my card as she gathered her things together. ‘You shouldn’t be alone in a strange city, you should have company.’ She touched my face lightly. ‘It’s so good to see you again. You never make friends in the same way as when you’re very young, when you grow up together, do you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you do.’

I put out my hand and Ruth clasped it. We didn’t say goodbye. It felt too final. As she moved away down the carriage I felt a loss at her leaving. I didn’t want the numbness of months to wear off, I needed its protection. Her tall figure moved out of the carriage and I turned to the window as the train slowed and stopped.

A lone boy was standing on the platform amid a sea of saris scanning the opening doors of the carriages. He turned my way. My heart seemed to stop beating, so familiar, so beloved were his features and the way he casually flicked his hair away from his eyes. The way he held his head, slightly to the side. The way he moved, darting forward suddenly to Ruth emerging on to the platform, his face lighting up.

‘Tom! Tom!’ I cried out his name in shock and people turned and stared. The train started to shunt, move slowly forward in slow motion through glass. I saw Ruth run and hug the boy to her. She turned to catch a glimpse of me and waved wildly.

I pressed my face to the window to keep them in sight for as long as possible. Then they were gone, behind me. The train carried me onwards alone, towards Birmingham. I got up from my seat and stumbled into the corridor. My breath came in sharp, painful bursts.

Tom. A lament started deep inside me. I felt the tears streaming down my face. Seeing that familiar face was like glimpsing my love again. I cried out in anguish. I did not understand. I did not understand.

I looked down and saw I still held the envelope with Ruth’s address and telephone number on it. I screwed it up violently and threw it away from me down the corridor. I wanted to scream, and I moved quickly into the lavatory.

After a while someone knocked and asked anxiously if I was all right. With a great effort of will I tried to pull myself together. I ran cold water over my face, pulled a comb through my hair, managed to put on some lipstick. My hands shook. I stared at my wild, pale reflection in the mirror. Was I going mad? Did something of Tom live on, but not with me? With Ruth?