The Holiday (60 page)

‘What? Are you mad? How could you be thinking of taking my precious little goddaughter to the Himalayas?’

‘He’s not, Theo,’ said Izzy from behind him. ‘He’s winding you up. Shall I have Beth for you? Give your arms a rest. I know she’s only a few weeks old but she gets heavier by the minute.’

Again Theo held on tight. ‘No, I am fine. And I shall not part with her until you have told me when you are coming to stay.’

‘We were going to talk to you about that. Go on, Mark, you ask him, it was your idea.’

Theo detected an air of discomfort in his friend.

‘It’s no big deal,’ Mark said, ‘but we wondered if you would help find us a house to buy. With all the tourists that descend on the village in the summer, it gets so busy, we thought — ’

‘No, Mark,’ corrected Izzy, with a smile,
‘you
thought.’

He scowled and pushed at his hair, which had mercifully recovered from the savage attack on it last year. ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said.
‘I
thought that if we had our own place in Ayios Nikólaos I’d be able to get more work done during the summer months. There’d be fewer distractions.’

A small smile appeared on Theo’s face. Then it widened into a ridiculously huge grin. He lifted Beth so that her little yawning face was inches away from his. ‘You hear that, Beth?’ he said, planting a kiss on the end of her nose. ‘That was your father speaking. Now I know he is everything he was meant to be. A happily married middle-aged man with a beautiful wife and daughter and fast becoming a fat, capitalist pig. Ah, ah, ah, Johnny Two Homes St James! He’ll be renewing his driving licence next just so that he can own a flashy car like your uncle Theo.’

‘If you weren’t holding my child, I’d ram this fist right where I’ve always wanted to shove it!’

‘Oh, admit it, Mark! Admit, just this once, that you have undergone a wonderfully radical shift of perspective on what is important in your life.’

Laughing to herself, Izzy took Beth from Theo and left them to it. She wandered across the lawn to where Max had fixed a rope swing to the branch of an old apple tree for when his son was old enough to play on it. ‘He’s planning ahead with everything,’ Laura had told Izzy on the phone, during one of their long catch-up sessions.

‘I’m just glad he saw sense and didn’t sell the business and become a part-time house-husband or he would have been fussing around with Lord knows what else.’

After testing the swing to see if it would take her weight, Izzy lowered herself on to the wooden seat. She shifted Beth in her arms so that she was comfortable and gazed at her lovingly. ‘You were right,’ she murmured softly. ‘You told me you had everything worked out. You just didn’t tell me how well you’d got it sorted.’

Since Mark had made his extraordinary appearance in her classroom that day last autumn, her life had changed beyond recognition. She had never been so happy, or felt so self-assured. She knew now that the two were inextricably linked, for how else would she have found the nerve to do what she did last September?

Before the headmistress had had a chance to demand an explanation for her appalling behaviour and consequently sack her, Izzy had marched into her office the following morning to carry out a pre-emptive strike. Disappointed not to find the head skulking in her lair, she had caught sight of an offensively insipid calendar of Anne Hathaway-style cottages on the wall. Taking a pen from the head’s mahogany desk tidy, she flipped September over and sketched in a man urinating down the smoking chimney-pot of October’s half-timbered thatched cottage. ‘How’s that for putting your fire out, you horrible old dragon?’ she muttered. Hearing footsteps on the wooden floor outside, she hurriedly turned back the page, replaced the pen in the desk tidy, and greeted the headmistress with a polite smile. ‘I’ve brought you this,’ she said, dropping an envelope on to the desk.

‘It’s my resignation. I’m leaving, as of now, this very minute. Not very professional, I know, but under the circumstances I’m sure you won’t want me to stay.’

Later that morning, and after phoning Laura to tell her what was going on, she locked the door to her flat and set out with Mark on the long drive to her new home. ‘No doubts?’ Mark had asked, when they stopped for petrol and a bite to eat at a Little Chef on the A1. ‘After all, Miss Jordan, this is a little rash for you, very out of character.’

Kissing him, she had said, ‘My only doubt is whether my poor old car will make the journey. Now buckle up and tell me how much further we have to go.’

‘It’s all the way or nothing, Izzy.’

‘Would there be any other way with you?’

And that, she knew, would always be the case. Her life with Mark would never be boring; it would never contain anything as dull as a half-measure. It would always be an exhilarating roller-coaster ride of extremes. When he had fully taken in the fact that she was pregnant, he had swung through every emotion. From euphoria that he was going to be a father, to maudlin concern that she might not have told him. ‘How did you think you were going to manage on your own?’ he had asked, his eyes moist, his voice thick.

‘How any other single mother would manage.’

‘But you would have told me, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she had said firmly. ‘I was always going to tell you. I just didn’t know when or how. I didn’t want you to think I was forcing your hand.’

‘You know your trouble, Izzy, you’re too bloody considerate.’

‘Sweet of you to say.’

They had stayed up all night, discussing what they would do next.

‘I want you to come and live with me,’ he had said. He was adamant. ‘Tell that headmistress to go shove her job where the sun don’t shine, and become a kept woman.’ Her doubtful expression provoked him to add, ‘What scares you most? Standing up to that despotic she-devil, or accepting the position of being my live-in lover?’

‘Oh, definitely the latter.’

‘So what exactly is it that you’re not sure about?’

‘I’d need to know if it was a permanent position. I couldn’t — ’

‘Bloody hell, Izzy! I don’t believe you. Of course it’s permanent.’

‘You never said.’

‘Well, I’m saying it now. And if needs be I’ll get you a ring first thing tomorrow morning to convince you.’

‘Is that a proposal?’

He frowned. ‘Yeah, okay. I could have put it better, but will it do for now?’

‘Why? Will you have something better up your sleeve at a later date?’

Pushing her back on to the bed, he had said, ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’

A month later he proposed ‘properly’ when he took her on a midnight walk on the beach in Robin Hood’s Bay. Despite the cold, it was a beautiful night, with a full moon pinned to the cloudless sky like a sheriff’s badge, its silvery light tiptoeing across the waves behind them. ‘Now, would you say this was romantic enough for you?’ he had asked, getting down on one knee in the damp sand and rummaging through his coat pockets. ‘Damn it, where the hell did I put it? I had it a moment ago.’ He was suddenly a mass of volatile nerves. He cursed some more, then eventually found the ring in his jeans pocket. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Izzy, stop laughing! This is supposed to be one of those perfect moments you’ll never forget.’

She grabbed hold of his collar, pulled him to his feet and kissed his cold lips. ‘Believe me, I’ll never forget it. It’ll stay with me for the rest of my life. I’ll always love you, Mark, but promise you’ll never go mainstream on me. I’m not sure I could handle you being normal. And, by the way, the answer’s yes.’

‘Yes?’

‘Among all that cursing and fumbling I’m assuming there was a proposal of marriage.’

 

The sound of laughter made Izzy look up. Nearer the house Corky was telling Laura’s parents something that had them laughing loudly. To the left of them, Max and Harry were deep in conversation — Harry had recently graduated and much to Francesca’s horror there was talk of him joining her father’s firm. Laura’s horror was that there might be a danger of Ma and Pa Patterson becoming a part of their family. ‘Imagine having to be nice to them on a permanent basis,’ she had told Izzy. A scary prospect indeed.

Sitting in the shade of the house, and showing Francesca how she should be holding her baby brother, was Izzy’s mother. How poignant the sight of Beth and little Max must be for her, Izzy thought sadly. Having given birth to her own child and experienced the bond of motherhood, she couldn’t think how she would cope if Beth was suddenly snatched from her. If five weeks was all she was allowed to have with her child, what desperate depths of depression might she sink to? She held Beth tightly and watched her mother across the garden.

When she had summoned the courage to take Mark home to meet her mother, Prudence had been perfectly vile to him. In that hateful little bungalow with its ghastly memories, her mother had asked Mark why he thought she would be remotely interested in meeting him. ‘After the way you spoke to me on the telephone, you should consider yourself lucky that I’ve let you over the threshold.’

‘I thought you would want to meet the man who was going to marry your daughter,’ he said lightly.

‘Marry? Who said anything about you marrying?’

‘I just did. It’s why we’ve come to see you. We’re planning on getting married in January. We thought you’d want to know.’

Pouring herself another cup of tea, her cold eyes appraising him, she said, ‘A tawdry affair in a dreadful register office, no doubt. You needn’t waste an invitation on me, I shan’t be there.’

Turning to Izzy, he said, ‘Well, I should think that comes as quite a relief to you, Izzy, doesn’t it? At least now we’ll be able to enjoy the day.’

How could he have said that? How could he have been so brazen? But if she had thought Mark had been blunt in what he had said so far, she was well off-beam. His worst was yet to come.

‘Are you going to just sit there and let this monstrously rude man speak to me in that way?’ her mother demanded.

‘Look, Mum, it doesn’t have to be like this between us. Why don’t you — ’

‘Like what precisely? What are you getting at? And why is this tea so weak? How many bags did you put in the pot? I knew I should have done it myself. I never could trust you to do anything right, not even something as simple as making the tea. You know how I prefer it to be — ’

‘Quite honestly, Mrs Jordan,’ interrupted Mark, and in a voice that was sublimely cordial, ‘I don’t give a flying fuck how you prefer your tea. We’ve come here today to tell you we’re getting married and that you’re going to be a grandmother sometime at the beginning of May. Now, that may be of interest to you or it may not. But while Izzy and I go for a walk to rid ourselves of your choking bitterness, why don’t you mull over those details and see what you really think of them. But get this, when we return I expect you to be civil. Is that clear? One foot wrong, and I promise you will never ever see your grandchild. Nod if you understand what I have just said.’

If every staring statue in that room had shattered in the awesome silence that followed as her mother gave an imperceptible nod, Izzy wouldn’t have been surprised. They left her sitting in her chair, speechless, her tea-cup wobbling in its saucer. When they returned an hour later, resigned to driving straight back up to Yorkshire instead of staying the night, as planned, they found Prudence in the kitchen, at the sink, peeling a mound of potatoes and listening to
Sing Something Simple
on the radio.

‘Which would you prefer,’ she asked, as they joined her, ‘roast or mashed potatoes with your chicken? I thought we’d eat at six, I’m not one for eating late. Izzy, you’d better sit down and rest. Too much running around won’t do the baby any good. Are you taking any iron supplements?’

It was extraordinary. Like the ECT treatment she had all those years ago, it was as if the shock of Mark’s words had erased all the earlier unpleasantness from her mother’s mind. She cooked them supper, and while they ate, she enquired politely after Mark’s writing, offered to knit a selection of matinee jackets for the baby, and when it was bedtime, she even allowed them to sleep together.

So had that been the answer, then? Would years of misery have been avoided if only Izzy had had the guts to fire off a round or two of Anglo-Saxon at her mother as Mark had?

She would never know, and maybe it didn’t matter. What they had now between them, as new and fragile as it was, was more important than what might have been. The pink jackets and mittens her mother had made for Beth — and there were plenty of them — might be hopelessly too large for her, but it was a heart-warming and reassuring sign that they were moving in the right direction. The fraught tension that had gone into those horribly distorted squares for the cold and hungry in some faraway African village had been replaced with garments that were beautifully made, if a little old-fashioned. ‘So long as she doesn’t start knitting me a Val Doonican sweater, I don’t care how many things she knits or how grim they are,’ Mark had said, when yet another parcel arrived in the post revealing a further addition to their unborn baby’s wardrobe.

In that same delivery, there had been a letter from Dolly-Babe. Unbeknown to Izzy, when Mark had returned home last summer, he had penned a note to Dolly-Babe thanking her for the flowers she had sent him while he had been in hospital in Corfu. He had also mentioned that drinking wasn’t going to help her forget the past — he had tried it himself. Izzy had no idea how he had had the nerve to write such a letter, or how he had actually worded it, but the response, when it finally came months later, was to thank him for his advice: