43. A lack of courage
A LACK OF COURAGE
What would have happened if she had kissed Samuel that night?
Knowing Samuel, he’d have told her in the gentlest possible way that it wasn’t right.
He was loyal and kind like that. Loyal to Priscilla.
Kind to Ursula. In all the years they were friends, there was never a day when he wasn’t kind to her.
Never a day when he wasn’t loyal to Priscilla either.
‘Ursula.’ She could still hear him saying her name, still feel that same thrill when he said it.
She looked up to the lone figure on the hill, back yet again. Why couldn’t it be Samuel?
That night changed her and Anton. It didn’t matter that nothing had happened.
In his mind it had, and that was enough.
Not enough to set her free though. The clients and partners liked her and that made her a valuable asset.
Anton always said marriage was a partnership.
This development with Samuel just altered the partnership.
A frost crept over their marriage after that night.
She might have been able to recover it if she’d given up the allotment.
God knows he insisted often enough. But how could she give up her sanctuary?
And how could she give up seeing the only man she’d ever truly loved?
Even if he didn’t love her back. She hadn’t realised the full extent of her feelings for Samuel at the time.
Only that she hungered for him with a capacity she never knew she had.
But that hunger was as responsible for the change in her marriage as much as Anton was.
She wanted it. She took power from it. Even so, she still wasn’t brave enough to walk away.
Andi and Don had left for Dilys’s funeral in London.
Ursula had promised to look after things at Am-nawr while they were away.
She’d also agreed to help Esme rescue the vegetable patch.
It wasn’t the most enticing prospect but the alternative was too much time on her hands and that never worked out well.
She was back to measuring her day by her home schedule again.
It was ten-thirty so she’d have already put in a few hours tidying up her plot by now.
Here in Am-nawr, she’d been waiting for ages for Esme to get up and make a start.
Esteban, the Welsh collie with a Spanish name, was keeping her company.
Yet another poor soul who’d been abandoned by Pablo, the fake Spaniard.
This place seemed to be littered with them.
She checked the time again. Enough of this waiting. ‘Sod it. Let’s make a start, Esteban.’
A quick survey of the brassicas was enough to confirm they’d been decimated by caterpillars and needed to come out.
The carrots were in a better state. There weren’t many but they looked edible and ready to harvest. She lifted a couple of potatoes and found them to be in decent shape but the lettuces had all either bolted or had too much slug damage to be of use.
She’d have to dig out some of the weeds before she could see what else was in there.
She began by taking up the cabbages and cauliflowers, hoping to find one or two that could be saved.
The sound of footsteps on the path made her stop and look up. It was Esme, out of bed at last. ‘What are you doing?’ The belligerent sulk that seemed to be a permanent fixture was already set on her face.
Ursula shoved the spade in the ground and left it there. ‘I’m taking these out. They’ve been ruined by caterpillars.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘You see all these holes? That’s where they’ve eaten through it. And this stuff on the leaves, it’s caterpillar excrement.’
‘Excrement? You mean shit.’ Esme snorted. ‘Caterpillars don’t shit.’
‘All animals shit in one way or another, Esme. It’s an essential part of being alive. Are you going to help?’
‘Nah, I don’t think so.’
‘I thought you’d promised Andi.’
‘Yeah well she’s not here, is she? Anyway, Pab said not to bother. He said I can go and live with him in Spain. No point hanging around here. You all hate me.’
That much was probably true. Ursula thought about trying to reassure her it wasn’t the case but she’d probably only end up getting more abuse.
And anyway, she was sick of everyone expecting her to lie down and take any old crap with a placid smile.
‘You know, Esme, people might be nicer to you if were nicer to them.’
Esme’s top lip puckered and curled up. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off back to the hole you crawled out of, you sad old hag. You know nothing about me and the things I have to put up with.’ With that she flew off back inside the house, but not before kicking a stray cabbage in Ursula’s direction.
Esteban dodged it and ran to Ursula with a whimper. She bent down and stroked him. ‘It’s all right, mate. She won’t hurt you. I won’t let her.’
The radiator in the library was cold and with no other visible means of heat in here, Ursula was feeling the chill, despite it being early summer.
She’d put on an extra jumper as well as Anton’s scarf but the gloomy weather had settled in her bones.
She’d made good headway on the vegetable garden yesterday but heavy rain had set in, making it impossible to work on it this morning.
Consequently, she was roaming around the house looking for things to stem her mind’s aimless drifting from one unsettling memory to another.
The library was in the front of the house.
It gave her the opportunity to hide away from Anton, but she’d forgotten there were ghosts in here too.
Everywhere she looked, Pablo was grinning at her from one of his many places in the photo montage.
This room was a shrine to him. She wondered how long it would be before Andi stopped torturing herself with them.
The thought sent her hand to her neck and the scarf, and she reminded herself of that phrase about people and glass houses.
Her eyes landed on a rare picture of Andi with Zak and Jet.
Andi was a good mother. As far as Ursula could tell, anyway.
And actually, Pab had been a decent father too when the kids were young, although her experience in that area was limited.
They’d left London because he’d got into some kind of trouble and not, as her mum had thought, because they were struggling with parenthood.
Ursula never got to the bottom of what that trouble was.
Andi had been sketchy on the details. She’d always assumed it was something illegal, or that he’d got mixed up with the kind of people you needed to get away from in a hurry.
Knowing what she knew now, she considered the possibility that it might have been to do with Esme.
Maybe she was putting two and two together, but Esme was about the right age.
When they came back to Birmingham, Andi and Pab found a house in Perry Barr, on the north of the city, close to Andi’s sister.
Pab started working for her brother-in-law who was a landscape gardener.
It didn’t pay a lot but it allowed him to look after the kids while Andi set up her own business in the flat above Solly’s shop.
It wasn’t long after the move that Pab started tormenting Ursula again. For Andi’s sake, she tried to ignore it but it was as if he could sense the dread coming off her. It was a game to him. A challenge too. She was his prey and every chance he got, he trapped and taunted her.
To everyone else he was the fun-loving, nice guy who didn’t take anything seriously.
Even her mum liked him, despite seeing through him from the off.
‘He’ll do the dirty on her one day, if he hasn’t already.
’ That was her assessment of Pablo, and she was right.
Just how many times he’d done the dirty was anybody’s guess.
It could have been once, twice, or a hundred.
You never knew with a man like him. Naturally, neither of them ever said anything to Andi. Maybe they should have done.
Most surprising of all was that Anton tolerated him.
On the rare family occasions he attended, Pablo was the one he sought out for company.
That might have been where Pablo had picked up the idea of a passion project.
Anton might have planted the seed of this place in his head, because Pab was in awe of their house.
That was probably why Anton enjoyed his company.
Because when it came to his work, her husband was not immune to flattery.
He had an ego the size of a planet in that regard.
In fact, the reason they went to so many events was because they enabled Anton to strut around like a prize cockerel.
Thinking about it, he and Pab were a match made in heaven. They should have married each other.
In the absence of anything else to do, Ursula went up to the sewing room where her dress was waiting to be finished.
Once again the pattern made her think of that gorgeous Italian scarf Solly had given to her mum.
But it was just a trinket compared to the love he’d given her.
Their happiness was a joyous thing to witness and no one deserved it more than her mum.
Ursula didn’t need that kind of love anymore.
She’d lived so long without it, she wasn’t sure she’d recognise it anyway.
A healthy dose of happiness would be enough.
But maybe happiness was another thing that needed to be earned.
In which case, she’d be waiting for a long time before it came her way.
The sewing machine was already set up. The skirt and bodice had been tacked together and ordinarily it wouldn’t have been a difficult job to run it through the machine. But Andi wasn’t here, and that made all the difference.
The cupboard door was open. Her mum’s unfinished christening outfit was at the front of the rail.
So stylish and unique. So very beautiful.
Her mum in a nutshell. It was impossible to put into words just how much Ursula missed her.
She closed the door. There had to be a way of finding something other than this dreary trudge through time.
If only she knew how to find it. She went over to the sewing machine.
She would start small. Another small act of defiance.
Only this time, she was defying the voice inside her.
The rain stopped while she was working on the dress.
It had been another shaky start but she’d managed to produce something passable.
She put the dress on the mannequin and sent a photo of it to Andi.
Clyde rang as she was locking the door. She picked up his call as she went into her bedroom and dropped the key onto the bedside table.
He was outside somewhere, she could hear the sound of traffic in the background.
‘I’m on my way to the allotments to meet some of the committee.
They want to take a proper look at those plots before they decide what to do next.
We got another meeting about it tonight. Thought you’d want to hear.’
‘Thanks. Will you let me know what happens?’
‘Sure.’
Ursula ended the call, her mind on the probable outcome of the committee’s visit.
A creak in the floorboards behind her made her swivel round.
She was half-expecting to see Anton gloating but instead she caught a glimpse of Esme’s back.
She went back out on the landing. Esme had gone.
From the bottom of the stairs, Charlie Big Potatoes let out another loud and desperate miaow that sent her rushing down to him, only to realise he was just looking for food.
By the time she’d finished giving Charlie, Esteban, and the other cats an impromptu lunch and fed herself, a weak sun had broken through the clouds.
She pulled on her outdoor boots and went out to the vegetable garden.
Encouraged by her success in the sewing room, she was set on finishing the digging today.
The rain had loosened up the soil, making it easier to dig.
The weeds were coming up fairly easily but were revealing absolutely nothing underneath except more weeds.
The garden’s only redeeming feature was the potato crop which was healthy and plentiful.
Esteban growled. It was because Esme was on the path. ‘Found any more shit today, Ursula?’
‘Not yet. I’ll be sure to tell you if I do.’
‘Yeah, you do that.’ Esme was laughing to herself as she went back inside.
Ursula wanted to go after her and ask what was so funny but there was a darkness about that young woman that rattled her more than it should.
She despised her cowardice, but it took a lot of courage to walk away from a lifetime of being a certain way and she simply didn’t have it.
Samuel didn’t have that kind of courage either.
The more she got to know him, the more she came to understand that the allotment was his hiding place, just like it was for her.
It wasn’t the same for Clyde. All the different aspects of his life seemed to flow seamlessly into one another.
It wasn’t unusual to see Clyde’s late wife Carmen with him, or his kids and later his grandchildren. Or even a friend from his club.
Samuel had a son and three daughters. And of course, he had Priscilla.
But they seemed to exist on the outer reaches of his life.
He spent all his spare time at the allotment.
Ursula asked him once why that was and he didn’t have an answer for her.
But she’d worked out her own theory from the little he’d told her.
Samuel was afraid of doing things badly.
The fear of being a bad father or a bad husband paralysed him.
So he hid behind the thing he was good at.
Ironically, that made him a bad father and a bad husband.
But it also made him an excellent friend.
Unlike Carmen, Priscilla never came to the allotment. Well, only once and that wasn’t really to see the allotment. Or Samuel. Ursula never told Samuel she loved him. It would have betrayed their friendship which was sacred to her. But Priscilla looked in her eye and saw it. She knew.