“So would I have been. Even knowing that the top part of the Hole’s above high water, I’d still have been scared.”
“And even there you get a bit battered. And deafened! I couldn’t wait to get out, it seemed for ever. I couldn’t tell what time it was, you see, I just had to follow the water down, and you have to be super-cautious feeling your way in the dark. But I was on my way out as fast as I dared when they came and found me.”
Phil turned the shaded light away from her own face, for fear he should see his ordeal reflected there all too plainly, stroked the fuzz of fair hair back from his forehead, and said: “Yes, well, it’s all over now. You just forget it and go to sleep.”
“Yes—all right, I will. I just wanted you to know how it was. I’m sorry I caused everybody so much trouble.” Half asleep and off his guard, he said with shattering simplicity: “I was just so miserable I didn’t know what to do.”
Tim hooked a large right fist to the angle of his son’s jaw, and rolled the fair head gently on the pillow till a shamefaced grin came through.
“Did you say you weren’t a clot? You could have fooled me! Sure you know now where you live?” The drowsy head nodded; the grin had a curious but happy shyness. “And what time the tide comes in? All right, then, you sleep it off. If you want anything we’ll be around.” He rose, rolled Paddy over in the bed, and smacked the slight hummock of his rump under the clothes. “Good-night, son!”
“Good-night, Dad!”
All the years they’d been saying exactly the same words, and they’d never meant so much before!
Phil kissed the spot where the blonde hair grew to a slight point on the smooth forehead, and was following Tim from the room when a small, self-conscious voice behind her said: “Mummy!”
The tone of it tugged her back to him in a hurry. He hadn’t said it without thought, it had a ceremonial solemnity. She stooped over him, and he pushed away the bedclothes suddenly and reached up his arms for her, burrowing his face thankfully into the hollow of her neck.
“Just making sure,” he said in a muffled whisper. “You
“Yes, I am, Patrick Rossall, and don’t you dare forget it.”
She gathered up his clothes when she left the room. The flannels would have to go straight to the cleaners. She sat down on the rug beside Tim, and extracted from the pockets, smiling over them with a ridiculous tenderness because they were small projections of Paddy’s personality, one exceedingly grubby handkerchief, sticky with sea- water, a ball pen down to its last inch, the end chewed, two or three foreign stamps, a used bus ticket, one dilapidated toffee, and a few coins, which she stacked carefully on the arm of Tim’s chair.
“He’s all right, isn’t he?” said Tim, ears pricked for any sound from upstairs.
“Yes, he’s all right.” Her smile was heavy, maternal and assured. “Don’t worry about Paddy. Tim, I’m glad! I’m glad she told him. It’s a once-only. He knows now.”
“He’s a nice kid,” said Tim. He took up the little pile of coins to play with, because they were Paddy’s. “Look, a brand-new halfpenny.” He looked again, and froze. “It isn’t, though! What is it? Phil, look! It isn’t copper. It looks like gold!”
She dropped the crumpled, dirty flannels, and held out her hand curiously for the coin. It lay demurely in her palm, showing a thick-necked female profile, with a curled lock of hair draped over one plump shoulder.
“Tim, it must be a guinea! Or a half-guinea—-but it’s too big, isn’t it? ANNA DEI GRATIA. And VIGO underneath her portrait. What does that mean? There’s a date on the other side, 1703. REG. MAG. BR. FR. et HIB.” She looked up at Tim over her spread palm, open-mouthed. “Tim, where on earth did our Paddy get a Queen Anne guinea?”
CHAPTER VI
SATURDAY MORNING
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PHIL LOOKED IN at Paddy’s door as soon as she was up on Saturday morning. The early sunlight came in softened and dimmed through the drawn curtains, and the boy lay curled comfortably, with cheek and nose burrowed into his pillow, fast asleep. She looked at him with her love like a warm, golden weight in her, and was drawing back silently when a faint movement in the shadows of one corner arrested her.
Simon was sitting in a chintz-covered chair, drawn back where the light could not reach him. He was looking at her by the time she saw him; but she knew very well that until that moment he had been watching Paddy’s sleep. He looked as if he had been there half the night. Maybe he had. He had his own key, and she hadn’t heard him come in.
Only a few days ago she would have stiffened in jealousy and suspicion, willing him away, and stared her orders unmistakably. Now she stood looking at him thoughtfully and calmly, and in her heart she was sorry for him. It was the first time she had ever achieved that. This morning she was sorry for everybody who wasn’t herself or Tim, and hadn’t got a son like Paddy; and sorriest of all for Simon Towne, who had had one and lacked the sense to hang on to him while he had him. She smiled, meeting his tired and illusionless eyes. He got up very quietly, as though she had warned him off, and followed her out of the room and down the stairs.
“I’ll grind the coffee,” he offered, following her into the kitchen. He was handier about the house than Tim, and quieter. She supposed widowers of long experience—nearly fifteen years now—easily might be. She began preparing breakfast. Even the solid blue and white crockery looked new, as if to-day everything began afresh. But not for Simon.
Not because she had the better of him, and knew it, but because he was a figure so much more appealing now that he was shaken and vulnerable and fit for sympathy, she had never liked him so much before. But you couldn’t alter Simon, or teach him anything, just by liking him better. He would have to learn the hard way.
“Have you been to bed?” she asked, slicing bread.
“No. I brought the Land-Rover down with Paddy’s bike aboard, and then fetched the car and went for a long ride. Then I came home and lay down for a bit, and had a bath. I hope I didn’t disturb you when I came in?”
“No, I didn’t hear you. How long have you been guarding Paddy’s sleep?” She didn’t sound either suspicious or resentful; he found that surprising, and for some reason it pricked a spring of resentment in him.
