The Way We Were_ A Novel - Marcia Willett [67]
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By the time she arrived in Chapel Street that evening, Caroline and Zack were already partying. The barbecue was smouldering satisfactorily, and chairs and several tables were set out ready for supper under the pergola at the bottom of the garden. Caroline led Liv down the garden (‘Thank goodness the path set in time to be walked on!’) and Zack, who was sitting with his feet propped on a chair, put down his glass and got up to give his sister a hug.
‘It's thirsty work getting all this ready’ he said, grinning.
‘Sure it is,’ said Liv. ‘Yes, please. Red for me. So this is the great new construction work, is it?’
Caroline watched them affectionately as they inspected the path and Zack explained his plans; she was looking forward to her party and to meeting up with old naval friends. Zack seemed to have recovered from his mood of self-doubt and was in good form.
‘After all,’ she'd said to him, remembering what Liv had told her, ‘both Tom and Tiggy were teachers, weren't they? I know that Tom taught at university level, but even so they must both have been good with young people. I know from my own experience that you really have to love kids to want to spend most of your life with them. I think that says something important about Tiggy and Tom.’
She'd seen that he'd been encouraged by her observation; taking it on board, thinking about it. Ever since, he'd been in high spirits; getting on with unpacking the last of the tea-chests, which she'd begun to find so tiring. He'd rearranged the smallest bedroom, pushing the divan against a wall so that there was room for the cot and the nursing chair, and was planning to make a shelf on which she could change the baby comfortably. There was already a chest of drawers in situ. They were both superstitious about buying too much in advance, though she knew that Zack wanted to do as much as he could before he went back to sea so that she wouldn't be left totally unprepared if the baby were to arrive early.
Sitting in the dapple of the pergola, Caroline tried to imagine life with a baby: it was impossible. In less than three months their lives, hers and Zack's, would be turned upside down and nothing would ever be the same again.
‘Rather you than me,’ Liv had said. ‘I'm beginning to think that I'm not mother material. I'm a natural aunt. All the fun and none of the responsibility.’
Watching her with Zack, laughing and pretending to cuff his ear, Caroline didn't believe it for a minute. They came back towards her and she was seized with love for Zack; he looked so sexy and strong that she had to restrain herself from getting up and going to put her arms round him.
The doorbell's peal echoed across the garden. Zack said, ‘Here we go,’ and went up the garden and into the house to greet the first of the guests.
1976
It is hot; very hot. It's been weeks now since there has been any rain and the ground is dry and parched. At the end of July the submarine sails and, with Pete gone, the household resumes a more languid routine. They are glad of the cool, slate-floored rooms, and of the shade of the tall rhododendron bushes that encircle the lawn. Even the tent is too stuffy for comfort. Occasionally great bruise-coloured clouds hang on the horizon, and thunder growls and complains in the distance, but no rain falls.
Walking is no longer a pleasure. The open moorland offers no shade and the dogs pant along unwillingly; even on the cliffs the sluggish breeze is hot, bringing no refreshment, and the sea dazzles blindingly beneath the relentless sun. Sheep lie in the shadow of the dry-stone walls and wild ponies crowd beneath sparse thorn trees whose leaves brown and wither in the scorching air.
The children are fretful. Tiggy drives them to Daymer Bay and Trebarwith Strand, and to Truro. They go to Liskeard, where she and Julia buy wrap-around skirts in Indian cotton and cheesecloth shirts in the market, and to Rock where they swim in the warm sea and, afterwards, eat their picnic with damp towels draped tent-like