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‘Mm.’ She looked up at me, and her smile provoked an immediate decision. We were on the same wavelength.
‘We can drive somewhere,’ I said, as nonchalantly as possible. The moors would be a perfect location.
Thirty
Ihadn’t done anything like that in a long time. It probably showed, given how it had started. The silly adolescent spell of kissing on the back seat of his car in a remote lane somewhere on top of the moors had rejuvenated us. It was merely the prelude, the warm-up, because as the outside temperature started to drop, my body had warmed. I had no doubts that Joseph, given his roving hands, felt the same way. He quickly drove us back to the campsite.
I forgot about the conversation in the abbey. The way I had acted, all pathetically nervous and coy. The original issue that had brought us together, my mistaking him for Medici, then accusing him of stalking me, seemed irrelevant and overblown. The whole mystery of why we were together had lost its fascination because we had gone that one step further.
Many steps further.
Thankfully, the airbed was durable. And thank God, we managed to keep quiet when it mattered. And heavens, it was a relief that he found me attractive after that sticky hot day, because I’d had no time to return to my lodgings to freshen up. And blessed Jesus, they might shun computers and mobiles, but my unorthodox hosts had a landline and I had their number, so I called them, and told them I was visiting a friend, then hung up before they could ask awkward questions or overhear Joseph’s suggestive whispers in my ear.
As for my feelings for Joseph, I had crashed through some invisible barrier and discovered an important thing about myself that I hadn’t known. I had the capacity to love somebody without reproach.
He had apologised between energetic spells for the cramped conditions. The sleeping bag, unzipped and spread out like a duvet, barely covered us. It didn’t matter, the muggy night trapped the lingering heat inside the tent. We added body warmth to it, and only in the middle of the night was I sufficiently cold to snuggle under his arm and spoon myself around his still form.
Then, in the darkness, he began to speak, without any prompting from me. And I listened, and immediately I felt guilty for having provoked him into thinking this unmasking was necessary. I had bartered my problems, and he had offered me back memories that were costly and more life changing than the things that troubled me.
?
I woke early and extracted myself from his loose embrace. He purred softly, still deeply asleep. The necessities of life forced me to dress in yesterday’s limp clothes and hurry over to the amenities block. Relieved of the discomfort, I returned and crept back into the tent. My phone lay next to my camera bag. I hadn’t switched it on since the call to the B&B. To my surprise it had a strong signal, and there were messages, an abundance of them, all sent in the last couple of hours and from Mum. The last text told me all I needed to know.
Hospice called. She’s slipping away fast. Please come and say goodbye. I really need you. Richard can’t get back.
Beryl was Mum’s best friend. She wasn’t a blood relative; Beryl was Granny Izzy’s step-sister, the offspring of another marriage, and younger than my late grandmother. But Mum didn’t care to distinguish the ‘step’ part of sisterhood, which had been dropped years ago.
I cradled the phone to my chest and thought of poor Mum. Having lost her own mother to a long illness, now she had suffered the same fate a second time with somebody who had acted in a similar capacity. Beryl was fifteen years older than Mum and consequently had been a substitute mother when Granny Izzy’s mind truly failed.
I hadn’t the same affinity for my surrogate great-aunt as my mother. In the last few years I had spent little time with Beryl, who had opinions on everything, and in my teen years I had not taken well to being told what to do – what teenager ever did? Having parents blow hot and cold over your decisions was tolerable, but a busybody aunt who claimed to fill the shoes of your beloved granny had not won me over. However, regardless of the strain between us, she had been part of my life far more than my own grandmother.
Joseph stirred. Soon he would wake and want to know why I had tears in my eyes, and why I would have to go home. From what he had told me in the middle of the night his family had been ripped apart, destroyed by one awful event, and the relationship with his father was held together by a single thin thread of loyalty. The callous way his mother had abandoned him as a small child only added to the hurt. He hadn’t wept, or showed much emotion, other than bitterness and disgust at the fallout. Hounded was a word he used, but without explaining exactly what that meant.
‘You were a child,’ I had whispered in the darkness. ‘Traumatised.’ The enormity of what he had told me wouldn’t sink in. I simply didn’t want to imagine the grief of the other family involved, the bereaved mother’s anger and the waste of such a young life.
‘I failed to stop them. I told the police everything that had happened. My brothers blamed each other, but in doing so they kind of exonerated me.’ It was the only point at which Joseph’s voice had come close to breaking apart.
‘Were you fostered afterwards?’
‘Briefly, for a few weeks, but they couldn’t find a reason to keep me there. I came home but… never did in my mind. Dad was supervised for a long time by social workers. It might have helped if things weren’t already fucked up. Art was my escape. Dad eventually realised that; it’s the only thing… the only means of escape I have left to me. The open spaces, you see, are what I crave. But from the ground up. I can’t bear the fear, the idea of falling.’
Or failing?
What had nearly broken me was when he had rested his head on my breast, snuggling in for comfort and I had stroked his hair and wooed him to sleep like a dedicated wife.
Now, with birds chirping merrily, I was about to leave him at a crucial moment, and it would probably appear to him that I was running away. With the temperature inside the confined tent rapidly rising, he opened his drowsy eyes. They quickly sharpened when he saw I was dressed and holding my phone.
‘What?’ he asked, sitting bolt upright.
‘I have to go.’
The lines on his forehead relaxed a fraction. ‘I’ll take you back to the bed and breakfast, of course, then—’
‘No, I mean I have to go home, to Coalville. Just for a day or two, probably.’ I dropped the phone inside the bag. ‘Mum wants me. Auntie Beryl is in a hospice and, well, it’s not good news. I should go and hold Mum’s hand.’
He adopted a sympathetic expression and nodded gravely. ‘I see. Then let’s get you to the B&B and you can head off.’ He threw off the sleeping bag and reached for his jeans.
‘I’m sorry—’
