The Way We Were_ A Novel - Marcia Willett [27]
This morning, for the first time, the child moves within her: a strange butterfly vibration that first puzzles her and then floods her with amazed joy. She goes into the kitchen where Julia is timing the children's eggs and slips her hand into the crook of her arm.
‘The baby moved,’ she whispers. ‘I felt it.’
Julia turns swiftly, her face glowing with such inexpressible delight that Tiggy is filled with gratitude and love for her; and they stand together, Julia's elbow pressing Tiggy's hand against her side, sharing in this miracle. Then the twins start up with one of their protests from some earlier injustice, ‘Why can't we …?’ ‘Yes, but why can't we … ?’ and the moment passes.
They drive through narrow lanes sheltered by high banks of new-flowering gorse, through small villages, where bright-faced camellias flower behind garden walls, through the village of Tintagel looking out towards the bleak cliffs where the gaunt remains of the medieval fortress stand on its high crag. Even on this sunny day, the ruined castle, with its stout walls and steep stone steps, retains all its aura of mystery and power. Yet Merlin's story cannot hold the twins’ attention for very long and soon they are asking for something to drink and presently they drive out to the church to eat their picnic on Glebe Cliff in the sunshine.
Later, on the cliff, walking ahead of Julia and the children, with the dogs racing to and fro, Tiggy feels again the movement of her baby, and is seized anew with happiness; these flutterings present her with her first true awareness of the living child and her awe outweighs any of the more familiar fearfulness. Today the aquamarine sea leans gently against the cliffs, its taut, silky surface barely rising and falling, as if it breathes quietly mid-tide, waiting. The warm sweet-scented wind, drifting from the west, washes over Tiggy and she gladly lifts her face to it. Once more she is filled with the certainty that Tom is close to her, that nothing separates them, and then Liv comes panting up behind her, seizing her hand, and the spell is broken.
One day in late April the girls have another visitor. They've slept late after a disturbed night, first with Charlie, who is teething – big double teeth breaking through his tender gums, causing him great anguish – and then by Liv who's had a bad dream and needs a great deal of comforting. In the end they all get up to sit around the kitchen table, Julia's eyes streaming with tears as she yawns and yawns, whilst Tiggy makes tea for everyone, including Charlie. He downs his sweet, weak, beakerful with delight and holds the cup out again, his wet-lashed eyes huge with exhaustion, his cheeks red with the hectic flush of teething.
‘When's Daddy coming home?’ Andy asks fretfully – and Tiggy sees Julia's expression, just for one moment as she is caught off guard, and how her mouth turns down exactly like the twins’ when they are unhappy.
‘Soon,’ says Tiggy quickly, leaning between the twins, smoothing Andy's blond mop of hair as she gives him a biscuit. ‘Very soon. Have you got a picture for him to go with Mummy's next letter?’
She dribbles more tea into Charlie's mug, pours in some milk, adds a small quantity of honey and gives it to him whilst the twins scramble to find their colouring books so as to select a picture.
‘I miss him too,’ murmurs Julia, as the twins squabble over the rival merits of their artwork, and Tiggy sees how hard it must be for her with Pete at sea so much. She knows that Julia hates being without him, yet most of the time she is so cheerful and capable that it is easy to forget that she is making a tremendous effort to hide her own particular loneliness and anxiety. Submariners are doing a dangerous job and there has been