The Healing Stream (31 page)

‘The Stop Press of the early edition says the plane burst into flames – only two people were pulled free. One isn’t named, the other is the international author Giles Lampton. They were both taken to the local hospital, which is only a couple of miles from the airport. My dear, I am so sorry. But thank God they pulled him free before the machine burst into flames. Get your coat; I’ll drive you while Naomi sees to Millie.’

‘I know the way. I’ll take myself.’ How could she speak so calmly when she felt as though she were made of cotton wool and her mouth full of sawdust? ‘I’ve seen the hospital lots of times; I know the way, Julian.’ She mustn’t panic, she must sound calm. ‘He was bound to have been taken in the ambulance; they’d have to check him over. But you said he was pulled free. If he rings, tell him I’m coming to collect him. I’ll get my coat.’ She forgot to thank Naomi for looking after Millie, just as she even forgot to say goodnight to the child.

Although she knew the road well, that night the journey seemed interminably long. But finally she arrived and was directed to the second floor. There she found a nurse and was taken straight to the doctor in charge. Listening to what he told her, she seemed to feel all life and hope drain from her. No, Giles hadn’t been burnt, but his injuries were extensive. That much she could understand. But although she could converse in Spanish naturally and easily in her everyday life, she had never encountered the words he used when he described Giles’ injuries. The elderly doctor was a kindly man; he hated to see that look of hope die in this pretty young girl’s eyes. For even though she couldn’t understand the detail, she knew
lesiones internas
could mean only one thing: Giles was injured internally. The gravity of the doctor’s voice and the way he shook his head told her what she was frightened to consider.

‘May I see him? He’ll want me with him.’

‘He may not be aware enough to recognize you. He has been in the operating theatre and, although he has come round from the anaesthetic, he is barely awake.’

‘Please.’ She could trust her voice to say no more.

The doctor took her along the corridor to a room that was no more than a cubicle where Giles was propped on pillows, his eyes half closed. His arm was plastered, his shoulder strapped and his chest bare except for bandages. A cradle held the bed covers away from his body.

The doctor looked at him sorrowfully. Such a lovely young wife to leave behind. There were times when he would have preferred any calling but his own. Turning, he left them, closing the door behind him.

‘Giles, darling Giles. Can you hear me?’ She leant forward and laid her mouth gently on his. Still he gazed unseeingly into space. ‘We’ll soon be home again, Finca el Almendros . . . home. Hold my hand, oh, but you feel so cold. Darling Giles, please hear me, please God make him hear me. Make him know I’m here.’ Her fingers caressed his, trying to warm him as again she bent forward so that her face was in front of his. His eyes were open, so surely he could see her.

Where his mind was she couldn’t know, whether he recognized that she was there or whether he felt he was dreaming.

‘Tes . . .’ Hardly even a whisper but she sent up a prayer of thankfulness. ‘Tessa, my sweet Tessa . . . home . . . loved you . . . always . . .’

Dreaming or aware, either way a sentence was beyond him. But what he whispered wiped away the misery of their time apart.

‘Yes darling, as soon as you are well enough we’ll go home. We have the rest of our lives. Giles, Giles, hear me, Giles, stay with me, you’re all there is . . . love you so much . . .’ Talking through the tears she couldn’t hold back she laid her face on the pillow close against his.

‘Tess . . .’ Then, his voice suddenly stronger, he said her name again and, raising her head so that she could see his face, she realized that he was smiling. ‘Te . . .’ But his strength ebbed as suddenly as it had come. Something was different. She was gripped by fear. Touching his mouth with hers there was no response; and worse, she could feel no breath. Help, she must get help. Frantically she opened the door and looked along the corridor just at the same moment as a nurse appeared, hurrying towards them.

Tessa tried to believe it couldn’t be happening; he must have lost his slim hold on consciousness. But in her heart she knew. She watched the nurse feel for his pulse; she saw the expression on her face and even felt sympathy for her that she had to be the one to take away the last strand of hope. Listening to the stark sentence, Tessa nodded.

‘Please,’ she begged, ‘let me just be with him – just one minute more.’ Consciously she bit hard on the corners of her mouth and held her chin high. She seemed to be standing on the edge of a black abyss. If she lost control even for a minute she was frightened she would tip over the edge and be lost. She must be strong. Yet did it matter? What did anything matter?

That was the moment when she remembered the drive home from Deremouth Hospital after Richard’s death. Hang on to that, remember Naomi’s impenetrable calm.

The nurse went out of the room, pulling the door up behind her. Moving to the bed, Tessa sat on the edge and, just as she had before, rested her head on the pillow rubbing her face against his. If only just once more he could say those words that had taken away all the pain of their separation, ‘loved you . . . always . . . sweet Tessa’. And that was all she was to have of him; for the rest of her days that had to be enough to give her courage to face a life without him. But he hadn’t gone away because he was tired of her; he had gone because he cared about her future more than he cared about himself.

The nurse was back in the room and a second later the kindly elderly doctor and another younger man followed her. ‘If you go along to the waiting room, I’ll come and speak to you when the doctors have done,’ the nurse said quietly.

‘Go?’ Go and leave him. She heard the door close behind her and walked down the long corridor to a small waiting room. It wasn’t visiting time, so she was thankful no one would be there. But she was wrong. There was one man and he stood up as she appeared in the doorway.

‘Julian?’ The sight of him confused her. She had expected to face whatever had to be faced alone. Instead, as her face crumpled she felt herself taken into his strong embrace. ‘He was coming home. Nothing now.’ Her courage had deserted her. With Julian there she felt weak and helpless.

‘I know, my dear.’

‘Told you I was all right, I knew the way. You shouldn’t have bothered,’ she gulped.

‘I’m a stubborn old fool, I dare say, but I wanted to find out for myself how things were. When they told me, I waited. We’ll leave your car here tonight; I shall drive you home.’

She didn’t argue, and later she didn’t remember much of the rest of the evening. There were things to see to at the hospital, but Julian took control. She was like a wind-up toy with a broken spring.

Millie’s sixth birthday was on a Saturday and she was having a party. Maria was in her element. The birthday cake was thick with chocolate and bedecked with six candles, there were bunches of balloons hanging from the ceiling and, for the occasion, her brother-in-law had been engaged to come with his concertina to make music so that the children could play the games Tessa had taught her: Musical Chairs, Pass the Parcel, Oranges and Lemons, games played at children’s parties in every town and village of England. It was a celebration of the fact that although Millie appeared as Spanish as anyone in her class at school, she had roots in the country of her parents.

While the games were going on in the house, overseen by Maria who was as noisy and excited as any of the children, the grown ups were outside in the sunshine. It was early March but the sun was warm and the sky cloudless.

‘The loveliest time of year here,’ Naomi said, passing her cup for a refill. ‘Blue sky above and a sea of blossom wherever you look. Garden flowers are beautiful, but there is something wonderful about blossom, almonds, olives, oranges, lemons or, back at home, apples, plums, all the things we grew up with. The trees are so full of promise.’

‘This year there have been no big winds to blow the flowers from the trees,’ Timus said. ‘There will be many nuts. Now we are here together, my Deirdre and I have some news for you. You tell it, Deirdre.’

‘I bet you’ve all guessed it after an introduction like that. I’m preggie. You’re going to have another grandchild by the beginning of October, Dad.’

‘Wonderful.’ Julian gazed at her with pride. ‘Does that mean you will be looking for a house by yourselves?’ That was his one concern, for how would she manage?

‘Heavens, no,’ Deirdre said, laughing at the thought. ‘At home they’re thrilled to bits. You’ve no idea how great it is; extra babies just make it even better somehow.’

No one mentioned her disability. Even though it was at the front of Julian and Naomi’s minds, clearly it didn’t cast a shadow for either Timus or his happy wife, who was leaning from her chair to pass a rubber dog back into the playpen where fourteen-month-old Nina was standing by the rail ready to throw it out again.

Tessa and Naomi let their glances meet briefly. Thankfulness for the way Deirdre’s life had changed was part of it. Certainly at that moment their thoughts were moving on the same line as they remembered those few intimate minutes by the mountain stream. How far Deirdre had come since the days of her resentment and angry misery; the Pooh stick of her life had broken free and gone tumbling on downstream. Looking at Tessa, Naomi wondered whether hers had been washed on its way. Since Giles died they had never talked as they had on the morning by the stream. Tessa worked hard. She gave every impression of finding contentment and satisfaction in her work with the almond trees; certainly she seemed to have an inner happiness which had been missing while Giles was in America. But she was young; she had years of living ahead of her. Would she find love again? Not the same love as the first time . . . and here Naomi’s own thoughts strayed into the past and the undying love she and Richard shared.

Tessa’s memory, too, was on that morning when they had thrown their twigs from the bridge and watched them flow downstream. That had been the morning she and Giles had talked on the telephone, the morning when her world had come alive again. So where was her twig of life now? Work had had to be her salvation. She had found a sense of peace that stemmed from more than pleasure in her growing success. He had never stopped loving her . . . he had been coming home to her. That year and a half when they had been separated had been joyless and hopeless. Now, even though she would never see him again, that love was always with her; whatever life threw at her, nothing could change that. What was it Naomi had said about memories never fading, and love becoming more deeply part of you? She’d remembered that morning so often over the last year; it had helped her through the anguish of grief and set her on the path to living the years ahead. There was nothing macabre in her keeping his study just as he left it. For her it wasn’t a shrine; it was a place to escape to when she was alone downstairs and Millie was asleep. Sitting at the typewriter she could almost feel his hands on her shoulders. When he was in America, in her misery she used to sit there, imagining him standing behind her in just the same way. Then there had been no comfort in the image she created. But now she knew the truth, nothing could take from her the love he had for her; it was like a warm blanket protecting her from the cold winds of life. Rejoice! She smiled at the thought. Rejoice sounded like merrymaking – like the noise of the children singing with Maria’s brother-in-law and his concertina. But for her it encompassed something far deeper: it encompassed the joy that he had given back to her when he told her the truth about his going away; it encompassed memories of everything they had shared.