The Way We Were_ A Novel - Marcia Willett [8]
As she talks, Tiggy remains aware of her own isolation: it separates her from the chattering twins, from Charlie, drinking his milk with an eye fixed unwaveringly on her face, from Julia herself, who is now describing how the cottages had been converted into one big house. She feels quite separate, as if this simple drama of family life, instead of including and comforting her, is serving merely to point up her own aloneness.
Andy looks up at her and smiles his sweet serious smile. ‘Mummy says we can go for a ride in your van.’ he says rather shyly. ‘She says it has a little cooker and we can make our own lunch.’
His small face, expectant yet hesitant, is so rosy, so perfect, that she wants to cover it with kisses.
‘Of course we shall go,’ Tiggy says at once. ‘Though not until the snow has melted. We shall go to the beach and have cheese on toast for lunch. Do you like that? And we shall make tea. Will Charlie like it, d'you think?’
Andy and Liv stare anxiously across the table at Charlie. He's just put down his empty bottle with a great gasp of repletion and is now waving at Tiggy – a rather Episcopalian gesture that involves the use of his whole arm – whilst beaming benevolently upon her, and Tiggy smiles back at him, oddly touched and feeling as if indeed she has been in some way blessed. Her pain recedes a little: optimism regains its tenuous hold.
Julia wipes Charlie's milky chin and drops a kiss on his head.
‘Charlie will love it,’ she says firmly. ‘We all shall. But today we shall have to make do with building a snowman. Go and get dressed and then we'll have some breakfast.’
The twins slide off their chairs and run shrieking up the stairs. Julia begins to collect the mugs and, as she piles them on to the draining board, Tiggy gets up and slips a hand into the crook of her friend's arm.
‘Thanks, Julia,’ she says.
Julia responds to the gesture by pressing her elbow against her side. ‘It's going to be such fun,’ she says.
It is more than a week before the snow clears sufficiently for Julia to be confident about Tiggy driving the camper through the narrow twisting lanes that lead down to the sea.
‘The main roads will be clear,’ she says, ‘but I wouldn't want to chance some of the lanes,’ and Tiggy, remembering how the van had skidded and slid, is quite happy to agree. Very little damage has been done on inspection: a bit of a dent, some scraping of paint, but nothing really to worry about.
‘Tom drove it very hard,’ Tiggy tells Julia, ‘and he'd have thought it all rather fun. His old cousin, the one who brought him up, came and took everything away except the van. Tom and I bought it between us and shared the costs so he said I could keep it.’
It is cold; very cold. Julia blesses Pete for his foresight in stocking up with coke for the Rayburn and logs for the fire, though she longs for central heating in the bedrooms. The twins undress each evening in front of the log fire in the sitting-room and are hurried up the stairs to cuddle under their quilts and extra blankets with hot-water bottles. Charlie is allowed the one small electric radiator. Neither Bella nor the Turk is discouraged from curling up with Julia and Tiggy on the ends of their beds.
‘If it goes on like this,’ says Julia, ‘I shall gel another dog. Of course Aunt Em and Uncle Archie are simply Spartans so I'd never dare complain to them about the cold.’
Tiggy takes to herself the task of dog-walking. She studies Julia's Ordnance Survey maps, as Tom had taught her, and each day she goes a little further into the wild country that lies at the door. The snow isn't deep; the wind scrapes unceasingly across the grasslands and over the granite tors, sweeping the powdery snow into gullies and valleys, leaving on these higher slopes a thin icy covering that creaks and cracks beneath her boots. From her high vantage point she can pick out greyish, sheep-shaped objects straying about