The Way We Were_ A Novel - Marcia Willett [2]
Tom: she sees him clearly in her mind's eye as he would have been now. Lighting the little gas stove, filling the kettle, the tall strong length of him leaning at the van's door with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, whistling beneath his breath. How he loved travelling: making plans through the short winter term for the long summer holidays, with maps spread over the floor of his small flat on the university campus, showing her the roads they would take and discussing the places where they'd camp.
‘Why did you decide to teach?’ she asked him.
He took a few moments to answer, running his long brown fingers through his short dark hair, his light grey eyes thoughtful. ‘Probably because I'd spent all my life in institutions,’ he answered. ‘It seemed the natural thing to do. What about you?’
‘I love small children,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it's because we never had families of our own. Not proper ones, anyway. We surround ourselves with other people, the more the merrier.’
‘But not always,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I need to be alone or, at least, away from the crowds. That's why I like climbing.’
Tiggy shivers as she bundles the Turk back into the van. The Dandie Dinmont's large dark eyes gaze at her with bright intelligence and Tiggy buries her head suddenly against the wiry coat, longing for Tom and wondering if she'll have this sharp pain in her heart for the rest of her life. The initial disabling numbness, which at first had affected her whole body, has dwindled gradually into a hard central core of anguish. How does such grief work and who can she ask? For years after her mother died, she felt slightly at a disadvantage with children of her own age. They knew things she didn't, hinted at behaviour she couldn't understand; sometimes, when she asked an outright question, they'd scream with embarrassed laughter. Slowly she pieced together her experiences into a mosaic she could make sense of: for instance, her father's unexplained absences and her mother's tears, resulting in bitter words and long silences, began to make a pattern. Much later, remembering how she wakened to hear his footsteps crossing the landing to the au pair's bedroom, another shape in the picture fell into place. Some of the girls were told to go; they protested, drenched in tears, begging to stay and talking of promises of marriage; some were angry, shouting threats, whilst others looked frightened and ran away without giving notice. She never understood why – and some of them she missed terribly – but her father banished them all with a shrug and a shake of the head that said simply that women behaved inexplicably: it was nothing to worry about. It was a relief to reach an age where no more au pairs were needed. After all, she was away at school now for most of the year and at her grandmother's home in Herefordshire for a great deal of the holidays.
Then, one night he came to her room, a glass of whisky in his hand, swaying a little as he watched her from the doorway as she sat brushing her hair.
‘You've grown, haven't you?’ he said. ‘Little Tegan. Come and give your old pa a kiss.’
The ensuing scene was undignified and confusing: eventually he withdrew, liberally splashed by his whisky and cursing beneath his breath. She decided to think no more about it, putting it down to his being lonely and drinking too much. On the second occasion he gave her some wine at dinner and this time the struggle was grimly determined and frightening. The third time he struck her hard, knocking her to the floor, but she scrambled away from him in time to lock herself in her bathroom before he could catch her. She stayed there all night and, in the morning when he went to the gallery, she packed some things into a suitcase and telephoned Julia, her dearest, closest friend.
‘Of course you must come,’ she said at once. ‘You don't want to spend the holidays alone in a flat in London. Hang on a sec.’ And, as Julia consulted with her mother, Tiggy was able to hear the usual cheerful, reassuring sounds of Julia's family life in rural Hampshire,