The Pull of the Moon Read online

  The upshot of all this was that we had known Trudie scarcely half an hour before she casually suggested ‘hitching a ride’ with us. An alarm bell began to ring in my head, faint but insistent. I blotted it out. There could be no harm in giving this girl a lift (although an affectionate display between Danny and me was a necessary precursor to avoiding any misunderstandings). Yet still the doubt persisted – we did not know her at all, and she did not know us. My cautious mother had drilled me never to accept, still less solicit, lifts with strangers. All the more reason to do it, said a voice in my head. You’re not a kid now, are you?

  Simon offered to buy us all ice creams. He ran the words together – eyescream. It’s a Brummie thing. Trudie loved it. Not that Simon had the accent: he was well spoken enough to be sneered at as ‘posh’, but we always said ‘eyescream’ – it was one of our catch-phrases.

  Danny said he wanted mint chocolate chip as usual and I asked for tutti-frutti. In those pre-Magnum days, when ice cream had barely begun to reach out beyond strawberry and vanilla, tutti-frutti was still a bit exotic.

  ‘Ooh – I love the way you said that,’ Trudie exclaimed. ‘Tutti-frutti – go on, say it again.’

  The joke was clearly on me, and I wasn’t amused by the way she aped my Midland accent. ‘He knows what I want,’ I said, attempting to make light of it with a smile.

  ‘Go on, Katy,’ Danny joined in. ‘Say tutti-frutti for us.’

  ‘Tutti-bloody-frutti,’ I said, affecting my Lady Muck voice. ‘Come on, Si, I’ll help you carry them.’

  Simon and I set off to stumble our way through the soft sand at the top of the beach. Trudie’s barefoot approach was undoubtedly the most practical, and after a few steps I removed my flip-flops and made much better progress.

  We joined the short queue at the ice-cream kiosk.

  ‘Do you really think we ought to give Trudie a lift?’ I asked. ‘We don’t know anything about her. We don’t even know how old she is.’

  Simon could generally be counted on to take a more sensible line than Danny. Danny had a tendency to seize the moment with the confident enthusiasm of one upon whom Dame Fortune invariably smiles. Simon considered briefly before saying: ‘I don’t think she’s as old as she looks – but I’m guessing she’s about eighteen.’

  It was halfway towards being a question, so I pretended to consider this while squinting into the distance, to see what she and Danny were up to. ‘Perhaps we should ask her,’ I suggested.

  ‘Mmm.’ We were on the point of being served and Simon had become distracted by the operation of extracting coins from the pocket of his jeans – no easy task when they were such a tight fit.

  ‘We might get into trouble if she’s only a school kid.’ I affected all the concern of someone not quite out of her own teens. ‘We don’t want to be accused of kidnapping her or something.’

  ‘But she’s coming of her own free will,’ said Simon. ‘It was her idea. A mint choc chip, a rum ’n’ raisin and two tutti-fruttis, please,’ adding for my benefit, ‘I’ll ask her, if it’s bugging you.’

  There was no further opportunity to discuss the matter because as soon as he was handed the first two cones, Simon set off across the beach, leaving me to trudge behind him with the other two ice creams dribbling on to my fingers.

  ‘Yeuch,’ I said, licking my hands. ‘Sticky.’

  ‘Hey, Trudie,’ said Simon, handing her ice cream across. ‘How old are you, by the way?’

  Ah, that wonderful tact and guile for which the young adult male is so famous.

  Trudie’s lips curved into a smile. ‘Old enough,’ she said, dropping a wink which made the others smile.

  Thus the matter was settled. We would give Trudie a lift to Herefordshire. Her final destination sealed over a tutti-frutti ice cream.

  THREE

  I have become quite adept at appearing to give my full attention when I am only half listening. Thus while Marjorie twitters indignantly about someone called George, I ponder the problem of the small white envelope which has been sitting for two days behind my clock, out of sight but never out of mind. George is undoubtedly one of those people I am supposed to know about – a person Marjorie has probably mentioned many times previously, whose role in her life I am assumed to have committed to memory.

  ‘I said to Mary Goldinghey, his minutes bear no relation to what was actually said at the committee meeting – and it’s not the first time either.’

  I make appropriate sounds of disapproval, while trying to recall what committee this can be – not the WI obviously, unless they’ve started taking men. Of course girls can join the Scouts now, so who knows?

  As far as I can recall, Marjorie sits on several committees. In fact half the world seems to spend its life sitting on committees, presumably in order to organize the other half. I am definitely in the other half – not that I need organizing, but because I mistrust committees. Committees rely on discussions in which the most forthright get to air their views, before arriving at a majority decision which binds everyone. Being an outvoted minority has blighted my life.

  I take my shampoo (guaranteed to revitalize coloured hair) into the shower, and this provides a temporary escape from her bleating. The water gushes out, obliterating everything else – Marjorie’s voice, the smell of the chlorine, the piped muzak. Hits from the musicals this morning – session singers belting out ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, for goodness sake. When I put my head right under and close my eyes against the jets, even the harsh strip lighting is blotted out, and with it the reality of my tracery of veins and cellulite. I didn’t have cellulite in 1972. I don’t think anyone else did either. Isn’t it one of those things that’s been invented since? We weren’t so big on things to do with cells back then: cellulite, cell phones, stem cell research were all in the future.

  Marjorie resumes her indignation meeting while I am getting dry. ‘Basically it’s dishonest. If you minute something and it isn’t exactly what was said, well, it’s a downright lie, isn’t it?’

  I banish another sentence beginning Dear Mrs Ivanisovic to the back of my mind before saying out loud, ‘I suppose if it’s a complicated discussion, it’s sometimes possible to make a mistake.’ Always looking to give the benefit of the doubt, that’s me. Always the diplomat. Too busy trying not to offend. That’s how you end up squashed into the back seat of a Ford Anglia with some girl you’ve only known a couple of hours. That’s how it all begins – being too polite to demur. Another person might have said there wasn’t enough room – but good old Katy will just budge up; crush herself into the corner of the oven-like interior, whose back windows don’t open more than half an inch. Air conditioning? Are you kidding me? In 1972?

  Marjorie isn’t having this notion of an accidental misunderstanding. The minutes have been falsified. Her very being is affronted by the episode. I idly wonder what is at stake – a vote of thanks? Someone claiming half a dozen more second-class stamps than was their due? ‘I have never done anything dishonest in my life,’ she says primly. ‘I will not be associated with any sort of dishonesty – nor with people who tell lies.’

  A mad urge comes over me to take her hand and bid her a solemn farewell. If she doesn’t fancy being tainted by association with George and his dodgy minute-taking, then boy would she flip her lid if she knew a bit more about one of the companions with whom she takes her daily dip. I don’t do it, of course. I just toss her my usual ‘See you tomorrow’.

  On the way home I am free to give my uninterrupted attention to the problem of Mrs Ivanisovic. She has known my address since forever – so why not write before? Has something happened to prompt her? The existence of this unknown factor worries me more than anything. Has an old memory resurfaced – a piece of the jigsaw that doesn’t quite fit? And if so, would she be likely to mention it to anyone else? Or could it be something to do with the place itself? Does she know something I don’t? Has someone found something? I don’t always get a paper – I might easily have missed a small
news item. They can do such a lot with so little nowadays. It isn’t just cells that have come on in leaps and bounds – there have been huge advances in forensics, stuff we never dreamed of like DNA: which is cells, now I come to think about it.

  Maybe I should drive out and take a look. I suppose the public footpath still runs right alongside the boundary. If there was any activity I’d be able to spot it. There’s Bettis Wood as well. I don’t want to go back, but maybe I ought to. The thought flares dangerously. I put it aside while I continue to ponder Mrs Ivanisovic’s letter. It’s not a good idea to leave it unanswered for too long. A blank refusal might be disastrous when I don’t know what cards she holds.

  If it was an ordinary problem I could mull it over with friends. Over the years I’ve accumulated some good ones – people who have all sorts of knowledge and life experience, and who between them can advise on anything from income tax to growing geraniums – but this part of my life is a closed book to them and I wouldn’t dream of confiding in my brother, still less my sister.

  My sister is one of those people you start off making allowances for because they’re only six years old and one day wake up to the fact that you’re still doing it when they’re cracking on towards fifty. That’s the way it has always been with me and my sister. She grew up accustomed to evading family responsibilities, so she came to expect automatic exemption from them. Anyway, there is always some pressing thing going on in her life: trouble with a man, or trouble without a man – there was the whole starting-a-new-life-in-Spain thing that failed to materialize, the trauma of her first divorce, the drama of her second . . .

  By a strange trick of the light, my sister’s complete unreliability in any sort of family crisis has never been a source of irritation to anyone but me. My sister’s role was to be the youngest. I was the one upon whom expectations invariably fell, in spite of the fact that, so far as my parents were concerned, I was the scatty, emotionally suspect child, who could not entirely be relied upon – the inherent contradiction seemingly lost on everyone but me.

  But then again maybe there is something useful my family can offer in the present situation after all, because from nowhere in particular I suddenly recall my father and the Garden Shed Protocol. My mother loathed our ramshackle garden shed, so after much procrastination my father promised to replace it – but somehow the plans he made to this end were always mysteriously thwarted. Materials were ordered, his best intentions regularly restated, but somehow the new shed failed to appear. On the weekend eventually named for the commencement of this long-awaited project, he was unaccountably called in to work at the last minute and the job was postponed yet again. I often wondered how he managed to arrange that telephone summons – or maybe the gods really were on his side. The new shed was never built.

  And so it will be with the visit to Mrs Ivanisovic. After breakfast I frame my reply.

  Dear Mrs Ivanisovic,

  It was a nice surprise to hear from you and I trust you are keeping well. I would very much like to come up and visit you, but unfortunately I cannot manage this for a few weeks due to various commitments. I note that you have difficulty hearing on the telephone, so I will drop you a line when my diary is not so full. I look forward to seeing you sometime in the near future.

  Very best wishes,

  Katy Mayfield

  Katy? Well, why not?

  In fact there is very little in my diary which cannot be moved if needs be. I took early retirement eighteen months ago, when my mother died. I am a completely free agent, which means that I can drive out towards Hereford this afternoon, park my car and take a stroll along the footpath which runs from the house down into the woods – assuming I really want to.

  I’ve been kidding myself for years that I can do as I please, but in reality the puppet strings have only been cut in the past eighteen months – until then it had always fallen to me to be on call for my parents. I never developed any real empathy with them – too great a barrier of assumptions and secrets divided us: but I was pliable and trapped by geographical proximity and complex loyalties. Maybe I never outgrew a vague sense of owing my parents a payback for being such a disappointment to them – or maybe I vainly hoped to redeem myself. Not that it mattered either way – ‘their’ Katy was too indelibly drawn to be changed. For my siblings, too, I suspect I am a presence rather than a person – their sister Kate, who is there to pick up family duties, provide a cash loan or lend a sympathetic ear (my sister); or who is an occasional duty to be undertaken, a bit like walking the dog, only far less frequently (my brother).

  One of these periodic family excursions took place last summer, when I visited a motor museum with my brother and his wife, children and grandchildren. I am not particularly fond of these jaunts and I do not imagine my presence enhances the experience for them; but these occasional get-togethers cannot be avoided – like visits to the dentist, one must be stoical and get through it with partially frozen face and brave attempts at a smile whenever someone makes a joke. One thing I did bring away from the visit was an appreciation of how very small the cars of my youth appear to have been.

  There wasn’t a Ford Anglia in the display, but they had other makes and models of a similar vintage, and I marvelled at the rear passenger space – accessed by tipping forward a front seat, then clambering through a gap small enough to challenge a contortionist. People boasted of screwing in the back seats of cars, but God alone knows how such an undertaking would have been accomplished.

  Cars were slower then and had fewer dual carriageways to travel on, which meant that any but a local destination turned into an endless trek. When I was a child a long car journey was planned like a military campaign, the boot loaded with supplies for the road – sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper, flasks of tea, blankets in case of hypothermia, spare Sherpas. With the rashness of youth, Simon, Danny and I had made no such preparations before setting off to the coast, equipped with nothing save what we stood up in and Danny’s guitar. There were no emergency rations and nor had we written out the route in bold capitals, packed a torch to read it by after dark, or given much thought to how long the journey might take. Detailed planning was for parents, not free spirits like us.

  In this careless frame of mind we lingered on the beach into the early evening, with no one bothering to consider where Trudie might be expecting us to take her. When we finally climbed into the car, Simon did wonder aloud how long it would take us to drive back; but as he and Danny couldn’t agree on how long it had taken to get there in the first place, they eventually settled on a mutual notion that the return journey would be quicker than the outward one. I didn’t contribute to the discussion at all. I was tired and sunburnt and every breath I took tasted of overheated vinyl.

  Thanks to a misunderstanding between the driver and the navigator, we got hopelessly lost along a network of minor roads, whose signposts all led to places beginning with double L, none of which we could pronounce and none of which existed according to our rudimentary road atlas. Trudie thought this was hilarious, as did Danny and Simon. I sat silently in my corner, steaming in every sense.

  When we eventually got back on the right road, Danny suggested we pull in at a pub. He spotted that something was wrong as soon as I climbed out of the car.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, momentarily placing a cool hand on my forehead. ‘You’re very warm.’

  ‘I’ve got an awful headache,’ I said.

  ‘Probably had too much sun. You’ve hardly eaten anything all day either. We’ll soon revive you with some beer and sandwiches.’

  The pub only had crisps, but the alcohol went straight to my head so I was soon in a much improved frame of mind, joining in with the laughter which was provoking glares of disapproval from the locals. We were accustomed to the hostility our long hair and beads generated in most males over the age of sixty (had they fought a war, just so that we could hang about in pubs looking like that?) and we only laughed all the louder. We were young and free and the
world belonged to us.

  We had travelled quite a number of miles beyond the pub when I became vaguely aware, from Trudie’s remarks, that she not only hadn’t the slightest idea of where we were, but was equally uncertain about where we were going. Only when she asked with no more than idle curiosity, ‘What’s at Hereford?’ did it dawn on me that we might have a real problem. I had just decided that a direct question about where she wanted to be dropped off was overdue, when the car started to bounce more alarmingly than usual, forcing Simon to pull into the side of the road.

  Trudie and I sat on the dusty grass verge while the lads set about changing the flat tyre. Dusk was descending and the few cars which passed us had their headlights on. Trudie started to hum. Another Cat Stevens number – she was evidently a fan.

  I took my opportunity. ‘Where are you going exactly?’

  The humming stopped. She had been watching the operations with the car jack, but now she turned to face me. It was already too dark to see her expression. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’m going wherever you guys take me. I saw you sitting on the beach and I just knew my fate was bound up with yours. I’m mediumistic, you see. Sometimes I just know things. It’s a gift. I get it from my grandmother.’

  I wasn’t too sure if there was such a word as mediumistic, but even so I got her drift. I’d met them before, these fashionably fey types, with their mysterious gifts and intuitions.

  ‘I can read palms,’ she continued. ‘Here – let me do yours.’ She held out her hand and I complied, resting my upturned hand on her long slim fingers, while my sceptical mind thought it was too dark to see anything, even if there had been anything to see.

  Trudie did not attempt to peer at my lifeline, however. Instead she ran the fingertips of her free hand gently across my palm, looking not at me but at the pale sliver of moon which had just appeared in the sky. A tingle of excitement coursed around the roots of my hair, and the thin steel bangles on my wrist trembled against one another, encircling our hands in a series of barely audible vibrations, like a thousand tiny bells, ringing out a warning from worlds away. When she spoke again it was in a soft rich voice, too low to be audible to the wheel changers.