Yesterday's Sun (24 page)

“Tell me truthfully,” Tom asked as they closed the front door. “Are you having doubts about our relationship? Is that what you meant about not being here tomorrow? Because if you are, I won’t give up without a fight. I love you, Holly, and if my being away is causing a rift between us, then I’ll stop. I don’t want to lose you.”

“I know you don’t,” replied Holly with a truth that Tom couldn’t begin to understand, not yet, hopefully not ever. “I just think we spend too much time looking to the future, looking at what’s missing, instead of appreciating what we have now. I don’t want you to ever look back and think, Hey, I was happy then and I didn’t even know it. I had my wife, I had my dreams, and it was enough.”

Tom looked at her with an intensity that made Holly feel uneasy, as if he were looking deep into her soul and was about to uncover the secrets she was keeping from him. He seemed to be struggling to find the words, so he simply wrapped her in his arms and held on tightly. “Right now, Holly, you’re right. This is enough. This is more than enough.”

10

M
ove your hand a little bit. Ooh, that’s good. Now just a little bit more,” Holly said with growing excitement. “No, no, not that much. Now move to the left a bit. Slowly does it, nearly there. That’s it; that’s it. Don’t move!”

“I’m getting tired,” groaned Tom.

“Stop complaining. We’ve only just started.”

“This wasn’t exactly how I imagined spending my time at home. Seminaked, yes. Experimenting with lots of positions, yes. Standing in the middle of your studio, holding a plastic doll? Not exactly part of my plan.”

“We’ve already wasted a whole weekend in bed,” Holly reminded him.

“Wasted?”

Holly grinned and acknowledged every aching muscle in her satiated body. “OK, not wasted. Trouble is, I may be able to take time off from the tea shop while you’re home but I can’t afford to fall behind schedule with Mrs. Bronson’s commission. I love you and adore you and, if nothing else, this only gives me more time to stare at your gorgeous if not slightly undernourished body.”

Holly had practically completed the base. A dark, nebulous spiral had emerged from the large stone block and, unlike the scaled version, this one had the finer detail. There were eerie suggestions of figures that made up its curves, depicting the generations that came before, the foundations from the past that supported the future.

The upper section was going to be more of a challenge and Holly wanted to work up some additional sketches before she started constructing the wire skeletons that would support the mother and child figures that were to be molded from clay. She had persuaded Tom to strip down to his waist and drape a dust sheet around himself, holding a baby doll in his arms. Tom wasn’t exactly the figure of the mother she had in mind, but he was certainly less of the man she had waved good-bye to.

“Well, if you’d seen what it was like, you’d have come back half-starved, too. It wasn’t that we weren’t well catered for; we were. But I couldn’t switch off what was happening around me; none of us could,” Tom had told her.

When he had set off to Haiti he had been a highly polished, slick anchorman in the making with his cropped hair and shiny suit, but his transformation had shocked Holly. He’d appeared on-screen reporting in Haiti and each time Holly saw him, he looked just a little bit less polished, a little less slick. In some ways, Holly had been glad to see him reverting back to his old disheveled self, but he had gone beyond disheveled and acquired a look that was gaunt, tortured even. It was more than evident that the changes weren’t only physical.

“Well, you’re home now. I know you’re not going to be able to forget what you’ve seen, but you can’t fix it, not everything, not on your own. You are making a difference, Tom. It’s a demanding job but it’s the job you always dreamed of, and who knows where it will lead?”

“Straight back to the studio, that’s where. It’s only a secondment, remember. What difference will I be able to make then?”

“You’ll make a difference,” Holly said, in a weak attempt to reassure him. “Now stop moving and keep your arm straight.”

“I know I shouldn’t complain. It’ll be worth it in the end. I can’t wait to be a dad,” he said with growing excitement as he cradled the plastic doll in his arms.

“We’ll see,” whispered Holly, desperately trying to focus on her sketch and not resurrect the drunken argument that had been so narrowly avoided at the disastrous Sunday lunch.

“What’s happened, Holly? Last time I was home you were so keen to start a family. Now every time I raise the subject, you’re freezing me out again.” Tom had kept to his pose, so he wasn’t looking at her, but still he sensed the sadness that was threatening to overwhelm her.

“What if we can’t have children?”

“Of course we’ll be able to have children. Just look at this baby-making physique.” Tom flexed nonexistent muscles in a rather scrawny arm as if to prove the point.

“Would our relationship survive if we couldn’t?” Holly’s voice echoed across the studio. The photos hanging around the room swayed mournfully in an invisible breeze, their hopeful smiles mocking her. She wished she knew with absolute certainty the answer to the one question that was still haunting her. Would the moondial ever show her that she could be a mother and survive to watch them grow? Holly visualized rain trickling down a windowpane. Each raindrop represented an unborn child and, in her mind’s eye, each one trickled toward the same path. Would there be no way to avoid paying her dues to the moondial for the rest of her life?

Tom finally broke from his pose and looked over to her. “We’d survive anything, Hol. I promise. But it’s not going to come to that. As long as it’s still what you want. You do still want kids, don’t you?”

“I do. You wouldn’t believe how much I do now, but …” stumbled Holly just as the door to the studio swung open, bringing with it a blast of cold air.

“Whoops, am I interrupting?” Billy was standing at the studio door, covering his eyes from the sight he’d just seen.

“It’s all right Billy. You can look,” Holly said, casually wiping the corners of her eyes in case either of them noticed her newly formed tears.

“I hope he isn’t naked underneath that sheet,” warned Billy.

“It could be worse. He could be standing there without the sheet!” Holly laughed as Billy pulled a face of disgust.

“Hey, I take exception to that,” complained Tom, who was now trying to flex his muscles and hold on to the doll at the same time.

Holly and Billy stood staring at Tom’s less-than-manly stance. “I think you should pick your models a little more carefully next time,” suggested Billy.

“I thought us men were supposed to stick together,” replied Tom indignantly.

Holly had a feeling this childish banter could go on all morning. “Listen, boys, I’ve got work to do. Billy, you’re distracting my model. What is it we can help you with?”

“I was only dropping by to say hello,” Billy answered sheepishly.

“So what’s that rolled up under your arm?” Holly demanded.

“This? Oh, just a little plan for a job I’m doing. It’s nothing much.”

“Hand it over.” Holly had assumed the tone of a parent chastising her child and the irony didn’t escape her.

Billy looked beseechingly at Tom, but Tom was looking equally uncomfortable.

“It’s the plan for the garden, isn’t it?” Holly asked when neither man made a move.

“Might be. Then again it might not,” muttered Billy, again looking to Tom for help.

“I’ve just remembered, I need to phone the studio,” Tom said, letting the sheet slip to the ground and tossing the poor baby doll onto the workbench some ten feet away.

Wearing nothing but boxer shorts, he headed for the door. Billy tried to follow suit, but Holly grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Holly said. “You’ve lost me my model and you’re just going to have to take his place.”

“Me?” stammered Billy.

“Sorry, Bill,” Tom said, taking the plan from him and disappearing out the door.

“Didn’t you know I was always after your body?” Holly told Billy with a mischievous wink.

Two weeks together was all they had, and for that brief time Holly tried hard not to think about the future. Life was all about living in the present. Tom’s next trip was to be his last assignment; he was going to South America to film a piece on the lives of young children who made their living scavenging on landfill sites. The subject matter promised to be as harrowing as he’d encountered in Haiti, and Holly worried how this new assignment would affect Tom. She wondered if he would be in any fit state to deal with the news she would have to break to him when he returned. Part of her was looking for more excuses to put off her confession, but she knew that one day soon she was going to have to tell him about the moondial.

It had taken the full fortnight to get Tom looking like his old self, but the hollow anxiety etched around his beautiful green eyes had gradually filled out after copious amounts of rest, relaxation, and home cooking, even Holly’s burnt offerings.

“I’m glad your hair’s growing back.” Holly was watching Tom run his fingers through his damp, freshly washed hair. It was the early hours of the morning and the taxi was already on its way to pick him up. Holly lay back on the bed watching him pack up the last few things that had actually made it out of his suitcase.

“You do realize that the studio is going to make me get it cut again as soon as I get back from South America,” warned Tom. “While we were in Haiti, they tried to bribe the crew into cutting it while I was asleep.”

“So why didn’t they?”

“I put in a higher bid. You’ll spot a rather large payment at the duty-free shop on our credit card bill.”

“Well, I hope the crew will be looking after you on this trip, too.”

“They will. We’ll look after each other. Don’t you worry.”

Tom sat down on the bed to put his socks on, and Holly crawled up behind him and wrapped her arms around him.

“But I do worry,” Holly said, kissing the top of Tom’s head.

Tom pulled Holly around so that she was sitting on his knee. “I’m going to miss you.”

“You’ll be back soon enough. It’s not forever.” As Holly wrapped her arms around his neck and felt her heart beating against his chest, she could also feel it ache. She reminded herself that the decision she was about to make was as much for him as it was for both of them and she tried desperately not to think of the one thing, the one person that made that decision so heartbreaking.

“We could just stay here,” Tom suggested, pulling Holly onto the bed and kissing her slowly and sensuously.

“Don’t,” moaned Holly. “I’ll never let you go if you say that.”

“I love you, Hol.”

“I love you, too,” Holly croaked, holding back the tears.

“The taxi will be here soon but, oh, how I wish we had more time,” Tom said, peeling himself from her and reluctantly getting up off the bed.

“We will have more time. One day soon we’ll have the rest of our lives to spend together,” promised Holly, squeezing her eyes shut against the vision of Libby’s beautiful green eyes staring back at her.

She lay where Tom had left her, watching him in silence as he quickly dressed and finished off his packing. A solemn knock on the door announced the arrival of the taxi. Tom leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

“By the way …” Tom said, kissing Holly gently on the lips.

“What?” she asked, looking up into his green eyes.

“Your breath stinks.” Tom smiled his beautiful, mischievous smile.

“Well, you’ve got a bogie hanging from your nose,” countered Holly.

“And with those loving words of endearment, I’ll leave you in peace. Go back to sleep.”

Holly wrapped her arms around Tom and held on to him tightly. There was another knock at the door, firmer this time, but Tom didn’t pull away. It was Holly who had to let him go.

The all-too-familiar sense of loneliness settled around her even before she heard the front door slam and the taxi pull away.

Holly had made little to no progress on Mrs. Bronson’s sculpture while Tom had been at home but she couldn’t just blame her husband. She knew she had been deliberately prevaricating. The figure of the baby she was about to create would be based on Libby’s image, not Mrs. Bronson’s son, whose photographs were now lost at the back of a drawer somewhere. She was torn between wanting to create an image of Libby and the fear of seeing her daughter’s beautiful, trusting face looking back at her. But Libby wasn’t the only reason she was procrastinating. Holly had been uneasy about the concept of the sculpture long before her embryonic maternal instincts had been crushed by the moondial and its rules. She couldn’t start work in earnest until her belief in the design was firmly established. She needed a second opinion.

“I just don’t know what it is that’s missing,” Holly said, staring at the sculpture. She had been constructing the figure of the mother and child from chicken wire and steel poles drilled into the marble base, and it was a true reflection of the scaled-down version Mrs. Bronson had signed off on.

“The base is absolutely beautiful.” Jocelyn was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Holly at the far end of the studio, as far back from the sculpture as they could get. The biting October wind outside was making the withered branches of nearby trees scratch forlornly at the windows.