Hold My Hand (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

“It was hilarious. Couldn't have happened to nicer people.”

“So what did you do?” Tina Teagle puts her tea mug back on the kitchen table, sits back and looks at her.

“Well,” says Bridget, “We were in bed already. And obviously our lights were out, too, because we
were
in bed. So we just stayed there.”

“And?”

“They came and banged on the door. Downstairs one first, and then he came and rattled at the one on the upstairs corridor.”

“Lucky you'd locked them.”

“Too right. Imagine having a load of –” she lowers her voice so Yasmin and Chloe can't hear her “– coke-fuelled superannuated models wandering in and shagging wherever they fetched up. It was difficult enough keeping madam distracted while they were outside, without them coming in and doing it in her bedroom. As it is, I'm going to have my work cut out with the laundry this week.”

Tina pulls a face. “Ewww.”

“I swear,” says Bridget, “They've been doing key parties down there.”

“Ewww,” says Tina again. “Do people still do that?”

“Apparently so. In the more expensive parts of North London.”

“Which keys go first, do you think?”

“Not the Ferraris, that's for sure,” says Bridget. “Or maybe it's only me that's noticed that Ferrari drivers always wear ponytails to make up for what's missing on top.”

“Baseball caps,” says Tina.

“Lettered bomber jackets.”

“Eww,” says Tina again. “When did you say they go, again?”

“Day after tomorrow. Although half of them have gone already. That's how come I know about the laundry. It's going to take me a week to clear up properly once they're finally gone.”

Tina hisses in through her teeth. “Happy New Year,” she says.

“Cheers,” says Bridget, and raises her glass. “Fortunately there's no-one else booked in to come for a bit so at least I've got time to do it in.”

They're drinking cider. In the middle of the afternoon. Bridget feels louche and liberated, even though she's keeping an eye on her intake for her driving licence's sake. In London, if she drank before Yasmin was in bed – not that it was something she could afford to do much of – she spent so much time worrying about Social Services she could never enjoy doing it. Here, with rain pouring down from the gutter outside and her daughter engrossed in a game of Snakes and Ladders (Snakes and Ladders! When did a London child last play something which didn't have explosions in it?), she just feels – warm.

“Nice cider,” she says.

“Scrumpy, actually.”

“Scrumpy.”

“Mark makes it.”

“That's a useful skill.”

“Nicked the apples from your garden, matter of fact. From that old orchard beyond the pond.”

Bridget laughs. “Bet that'd make Tom Gordhavo happy.”

“I daresay he won't have noticed. Nobody goes in there, as far as I know, and he avoids the place like the plague if he can help it.”

“Well, he's welcome to do it again next year,” says Bridget. “As long as I get a cut of the product.”

“I'll tell him,” says Tina. “So you're planning on being here next year, then, are you?”

“Don't see why not.”

“Good for you.”

“Why would you think I wouldn't be?”

“I dunno,” says Tina. “He just doesn't seem to have much luck keeping staff up there.”

“So I hear.”

“So what,” asks Tina, “brought you down here, anyway?”

Bridget looks at her, calculates. Am I ready to be telling everyone my business? Is it wise? From what I've seen of this village, nobody gets to keep a secret for long.

“Oh, you know,” she says. “I split up with my husband. Money was tight. And I looked around and wondered what on earth I was doing, bringing a kid up in the city. I made sense.”

“You bet,” says Tina, with all the complacence of the inveterate country-dweller. “So what did your ex think, then? You going such a long way away?”

“He – ” he rang me up and threatened to get me. “– I haven't the faintest idea,” she finishes. “He wasn't exactly Mr Regular, you know what I mean?”

“Deadbeat Dads,” says Tina. Seems satisfied by the answer, assumes she knows the whole story. “You should get the CSA onto him.”

Yeah. That would be a good idea. Get them to give him my address and all, while I'm at it. Mind you, from my experience of them, when I was desperate to get some help, get some child support to stop us being made homeless from the flat where my husband thought he still had right of entry, the best way of making sure no-one ever finds out where you are would be to contact the CSA and give them all your details, in triplicate, in writing. That would make damn sure no-one ever got in touch with you again. Kieran didn't pay a penny, from the day he left to the day she and Yasmin did, and all the CSA could say was that they'd lost her file and would get back to her.

“Her Dad was the same.” Tina gestures at Chloe. “Went to St Austell looking for a job three years ago and we haven't seen hide nor hair of him since.”

“Good God.” Bridget is shocked. “Did you report him missing?”

“Course not,” says Tina. “Just 'cause we haven't seen him doesn't mean we don't know where he is. Anyway, Justine Strang saw him at Darky Day in Padstow a couple of months later with his hands down some fat bird's blouse. Complexion like a boiled potato and an arse like a ro-ro ferry, she said. Good luck to her, I say. He was never much good for anything anyway. He'll probably have spawned another one by now and moved on to Newquay.”

Bridget looks at her speculatively. Her face has one of those defiant expressions on it: the I'm-okayness of someone who probably isn't, but has to make the best of it. A bit like me, she thinks. A bit like most of the world, I sometimes think.

“I'm sorry,” she tells her.

“Not your fault. Anyway, at least the lease was in my name, thank God, so we didn't end up homeless as well. And when Mark's girlfriend did the same thing, he moved in here, so at least we've been able to pool our resources a bit. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing, eh?”

They drink. Think.

“I don't suppose it was exactly what either of us was thinking about,” says Tina. “When I'm 27 I'll still be living with my brother. At least I was able to save him from going back to Mum and Dad's, anyway.”

“Where are they today?”

 “Cinema. Bodmin. Said they'd get out of our hair so we could have a proper girls’ afternoon.”

She feels a tiny lurch of disappointment. Realises that a tiny bit of her has been hoping that he'd turn up. So tiny she has barely registered it. The last thing she needs right now is a man; not after the last one. What she needs first is a life. And some understanding of how she managed to make such a bad choice last time.

“What have they gone to see?”

“
James and the Giant Peach
.”

“It's about a boy,” calls Yasmin, “and a giant peach.”

“Mmm,” says Bridget. You don't say.

“Can we go?”

“We'll see,” she says. God, I'm tired of saying “we'll see”. If this lot turn out to be good tippers, I'll take her. I'll take all of us. We need a treat. And if anyone deserves a good tip, it's me, after this week.

“So what's it like, then?” Tina changes the subject, “up at Rospetroc? When you haven't got a load of Yuppie wife-swappers to contend with?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it's okay.”

“Not too cut off for you, then? I wouldn't like to live so far out of the village.”

“God, it's not that far. Everybody talks about it like it's the North Pole or something.”

“Yeah,” says Tina. “I suppose in a way everybody thinks of it as being further away than it is. It's ’cause no-one's lived there in so long, I suppose everyone's stopped thinking of it as part of the community.”

“Oh, right. So when did the Gordhavos move out, then?”

“The Gordhavos?”

“Yes.”

“Bless you, love, the Gordhavos never lived there. That was Blakemore house.”

“Sorry,” says Bridget. “You have to remember I've only just arrived.”

“Sorry” says Tina back. “I forget everyone doesn't know everything about Cornwall. Blakemore. Big family they were, once, round here. Name means bleak moor. Very Emily Bronte.”

“So who are they?”

“The people who used to –” she laughs at herself, continues. “Mrs Gordhavo was a Blakemore. Teresa Blakemore. Tom's mum. They got it through her.”

“Oh, right. I though the Gordhavos were –”

“Yes, they are,” says Tina. “Land still marries land around here, believe me.”

“So that's why they don't live in the house, then? They've got other houses.”

“Sort of. Yes, I mean. But also, I don't think they like the place much. It's not brought them a lot of luck, what with one thing and another. She only inherited because her brother did himself in. He'd be living there now, otherwise.”

“Did himself in?”

Each of them glances at her daughter. They lower their voices again. Neither wants to be the one who plants ideas in their heads. But nor does Tina want to miss out on the opportunity to share a bit of local gossip.

“Yes,” she half-whispers. “Ages ago now. Old Mrs B must be dead nearly twenty years, and it was before that he did it. There was some of that mother-died-of-a-broken-heart speculation hereabouts, but I don't think so. More like a loose stair rod and a worn carpet and a skinful of whisky. Hanged himself, he did. Down in that old boathouse. With his own tie, slung round a hook. Horrible sight it was, apparently. Took 'em a few days to find him. I don't think anyone had been in that boathouse since before the war, so it wasn't the first place they looked, exactly. All I know is, he'd turned black by the time they found him.”

“Lovely,” says Bridget. Checks the girls. They have their backs to her, are riffling through a tub of old beads and sequins. Yasmin seems to have found a kindred spirit on the Princess front, at last. Sparkly things will keep her distracted for hours.

“What made him do it?”

“No idea. I don't think anyone cared much. He wasn't popular, I remember that. A bit of a bully. My Mum used to keep us away from him. Made out it was because he had a bit of a temper. But you know what grownups are like. Don’t want to scare you with bogie-man stories. I wonder now, sometimes, now I've got one of my own. if that was what she was really going on about, you know.”

“You mean…?”

“Well, it doesn't do to speak ill of the dead, of course, but you know. You can't help wondering.”

“Well,” says Bridget.

“I don't think they were a very happy family, living there. Even before he did himself in. Mrs Gordhavo's father disappeared at Tobruk and they kept themselves to themselves in the village, except for paying people to come in when they could get them. The old lady was on of those old-fashioned snobs.”

“Snobs can be happy.”

“Well, yes,” says Tina. “Until you get old and no-one comes to keep an eye on you unless you pay them.”