The Way We Were_ A Novel - Marcia Willett [7]
The narrow staircase opens into a big sitting-room dominated by a granite fireplace that takes up almost the whole of one wall. Tiggy draws back the curtains and looks around the room. It is here, before a blazing fire, that she and Julia spent the evening – just as she had imagined on the journey – talking over the events of the day. The hearth, with its stack of logs at either side, is cold now, the pale ash feathered and heaped around half-blackened logs, but Tiggy guesses that a core of heat remains deep at the heart of it. She crouches beside the hearth, pulling some of the half-burned logs together and, picking up the bellows, blows gently into the ash. It whirls and floats, rather like the snow last evening, but soon a spark blossoms on a charcoal flake, grows and flowers into flame that catches at the fragments of charred wood and soon is burning steadily. Tiggy piles on more wood, sets the guard in place and goes into the kitchen.
Bella, Julia's beautiful brown field spaniel, comes to greet her whilst the Turk follows the twins into the back porch and whines impatiently as they wrestle with bolts and locks. Tiggy goes to help them, opening the door on an unfamiliar world into which both dogs plunge regardless. The three of them stand together, silenced by the glory of the translucent blue-green sky, with its streaming rosy clouds, and by the million tiny points of brilliant light reflecting back from the snow-covered moor. Just briefly Tiggy glimpses once more the ineffable delight she'd experienced earlier; then an icy breeze snakes down from the stony heights of Rough Tor and curls around their ankles, so that the twins shiver and huddle into their dressing gowns.
Tiggy hurries them back into the warm kitchen and gives them mugs of milk. She riddles the Rayburn, fills it with coke and puts the kettle to boil, and by the time Julia appears, with Charlie astride her hip, coffee is ready. He stares in amazement at Tiggy and is seized by a sudden shyness, burying his head in Julia's neck whilst peeping coyly with one eye at Tiggy, though nobody is really convinced by his performance.
‘You remember your godmother perfectly well,’ Julia says firmly, putting him into his high chair and ignoring his tendency to cling. ‘Say hello to Tiggy while I get your milk.’
The twins begin to chant, ‘Hello, Tiggy,’ encouragingly in unison, giggling wildly, and Julia gives Charlie his bottle, seizes her mug and pours some coffee. The dogs come bursting in, their coats caked with snow, and she picks up an old towel and, going down on her knees, begins to rub them dry, laughing at their antics, her thick fair hair falling over her face.
Tiggy, looking at her with huge affection, is surprised by an unexpectedly painful stab of envy. How wonderful to be Julia: pretty, beloved and secure, with three beautiful children and this delightful old house. Suddenly Tiggy sees with a bleak clarity the difference between them: Julia, wise and beautiful, giving generously to her foolish friend. Tiggy feels humiliated and very much alone. Dismayed by this unfamiliar emotion, she speaks quickly in an effort to dispel it.
‘This is an amazing house. What luck that Pete's uncle and aunt have decided to move out.’
‘I can't get over it.’ Julia finishes a game of lug of war with the Turk, hangs the towel in the back porch and comes back to the table. ‘It simply got a bit too much for them to manage though they hated leaving it, Uncle Archie especially. I think Aunt Em is very happy to be in a small cosier house. The point is that Pete and his brother were going to inherit it anyway, so Uncle Archie decided it might as well be now. Luckily, Robert has no desire to live in the middle of Bodmin Moor so we raised a mortgage and bought him out. Pete and I love its irregularity. It was three