The Way We Were_ A Novel - Marcia Willett [6]
The Turk jumps down from the bed and runs to the door, whining to be let out. Dragging her dressing gown around her, Tiggy opens the door and looks out on to the landing. Immediately the voices cease, two heads with butter-blond mops of hair, swivel; two pairs of blue eyes stare at her. Tiggy smiles at the twins, Andrew and Olivia: Andy and Liv. Julia raises a despairing hand.
‘Sorry’ she says. ‘I'm sorry they woke you. I told them you needed to sleep in but of course they're simply dying to see you. Now, you see.’ She addresses the twins. ‘You've woken poor Tiggy.’
‘They didn't wake me. I was already up.’ Tiggy watches the twins crouch down to embrace the Turk and then smiles at Julia. ‘I can hardly believe I made it when I look out at all that moorland covered with snow.’
Julia shudders a little. ‘I was out of my mind,’ she admits. ‘It could have been a disaster. I've promised the twins a ride in the van but not today.’
Another voice, increasing in volume, roars behind a door along the passage.
‘Poor Charlie's feeling left out of things. He'll break the cot to pieces.’ Julia looks hopefully at Tiggy. ‘Could you make some coffee while I get him up? The twins will show you where everything lives.’ She hesitates, looks back over her shoulder. Are you … you know … still OK?’
‘Oh, yes,’ says Tiggy. ‘Very OK.’
‘Good,’ says Julia uncertainly. ‘That's good, then, isn't it?’ She glances at the twins. ‘Off you go, then, and help Tiggy with the coffee. Don't forget to let Bella out.’
The twins set off down the stairs, arguing as to which of them should let Bella and the Turk into the garden, and Tiggy follows more slowly. She understands the reason for Julia's uncertainty but there is no question in her own mind and instinctively she spreads one hand over the place where Tom's baby is hidden, still clinging on, despite the terrors of yesterday She could easily imagine the conversation Julia and Pete might have had: Julia defensive, wheedling Pete into a sympathetic frame of mind, and Pete slightly impatient, his paternal instinct roused, planning how to sort it all out.
‘It's all very well, darling, but how will the poor old love cope with a baby and no father? They should have been getting married instead of swanning round the Continent in that camper van all last summer,’ Pete might have said.
‘But they were always going to get married, Pete. It's just so typically Tom and Tiggy isn't it? They live in their own little world. Well, they did … Oh God, poor Tom.’
‘But honestly, Julia, how is she going to manage?’
‘Well, we've agreed she can come here to begin with and then, when the baby's born, she'll go back to teaching …’
As she follows the twins downstairs Tiggy wonders if Pete would have seen the flaw here: the headmistress in her own little school had picked up on it at once. Mrs Armstrong had remained unmoved by the undignified and disastrous combination of shock at Tom's death and morning sickness that had forced Tiggy's confession in the first place, or by the protestation that she and Tom had planned to marry at Easter. The rules were clear, she'd said: Tiggy, as an unmarried mother, was no longer a good example to her small charges and she must leave. Tiggy knows that these rules will hold just as firmly once the baby is born.
‘I can't give the baby up,’ she cried to Julia on the telephone that evening – and Julia's generous response filled her with