To Love and Be Loved(54)
That, and they shared an understanding. Their relationship was fun, frivolous and sometimes he spoke casually of a love she could not return, jesting in wine-filled moments: ‘I could fall hard for you, Merry.’
‘Don’t you dare do that!’ she’d answer with directness. ‘Save your love and all about you that is fabulous – save it for someone who is not broken and disillusioned, Miguel. Don’t waste it on a lost cause like me.’
His expression was crestfallen but, reaching for her hand, he rallied. ‘I’ll save it because I think you might change your mind. Who knows what’s around the corner? Or how you might feel in six weeks? Six months?’
‘None of us, I guess.’
Not that she ever gave him reason to think they should plan too far ahead. How would that even be possible when she lived her life one day at a time?
This weekend she was venturing home for the first time since leaving. Home. The thought of it was enough to make her stomach flip and her muscles clench. All at once she felt excited, nervous, happy and scared. How she longed to plant her feet on Cornish soil, but at the same time she felt the rise of sick nerves at what it might be like to return to the place of her humiliation. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t wary of seeing Ruby, who was the reason for returning, as this was the weekend when her sister would waltz up the aisle to marry Jarvis Cardy.
Merrin was pleased that her sister had found happiness and delighted that it was with Jarvis who, as close to her parents as he had become, was already practically part of the family. It made sense to her. His kind and patient manner was the perfect complement to Ruby’s fiery nature. Concentrating on her sister’s marriage to such a smashing man kept her from submitting to the threat of nausea at the prospect of returning to St Michael’s Church.
Miguel’s arm was lying across her neck, clamping her to the mattress. She lay still, not wanting to disturb him, knowing he had come to bed late, his body heavy and his sigh weary. She understood the bone-aching fatigue that a busy day left you with, but at the same time she felt the pressing need to use the bathroom.
Her alarm sounded.
‘Nooooo!’ Miguel moved his arm and placed the pillow over his head.
‘Go back to sleep,’ she cooed, kissing his shoulder, as he rolled on to his side. ‘I’m on an early.’ She left the bed carefully, trying to cause him the least amount of disturbance, and hit the shower. Her uniform, laundered in-house, lay under plastic wrap and hung on the back of the bathroom door. The sight of it brought back a memory of when she was no more than eleven. It had stuck in her mind as it was the first time she heard the name Loretta, cast into the room from her dad’s mouth in a torrent of anger. Mrs Mortimer had presented his wife with a uniform of starched cotton pinafore and a hat with a frill, which Heather had placed on the table, as if quite indifferent to them. Her dad, however, had raged at the mere sight of them.
‘There’s no way a wife of mine is wearing a get-up like that, and not for the likes of her! You can tell her to stick her job and her uniform where the sun don’t shine!’ he had yelled, and abandoned his supper of chicken pie and mashed potato, hitting the table with the flat of his palm so hard it caused the plate to jump. Thick gravy had spilled from the plate and run across the table on to the floor like a savoury, golden river. She and Ruby had been too shocked to move, staring at the little trickle and listening to the pleasing sound it made as it hit the wooden floor. ‘Where does she think she lives? Buckingham bloody Palace? She grew up in a caravan at the back of the bog! I won’t ’ave it!’
Her mum had calmly held her ground and turned her attention to her sewing. ‘I couldn’t care less what I wear. I’ll stick a turnip on my head if she likes. We need the money, Ben.’
This reminder of the fact that his fisherman’s wages alone weren’t enough to cover their living expenses did not help the cause. Her dad had grabbed the offending items and marched from the house. Merrin had no idea where they ended up, but suspected they were heaved into the fish-gut bin with a few choice words to send them on their way.
It was odd for her to think that Loretta, a woman who liked the finer things in life, had, according to local lore, spent a childhood without anything fine in it. Ben had always rather enjoyed telling the tale of how the woman with all the airs and graces had grown up living in a caravan, without running hot water and with only a shared compost toilet, at the back of Mellor Waters with her parents and siblings. Rumour had it that Guthrie Mortimer used to ride his horse in the area and took a fancy to the young Loretta, who, twenty-five years his junior, had been swimming in the lake one day. And according to those same rumours, she wasn’t the kind of girl who owned a swimsuit. It was interesting to Merrin that seeing the Mortimers out and about, you would be pardoned for thinking it was Mrs Mortimer, with her shoulders draped in fur and her favoured pillbox hat sporting two curled pheasant tail feathers, who had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth and a biscuit fortune in the bank. And old Guthrie – the affable drunk who, before he spied young Loretta, had apparently spent a decade roaming the high seas on a yacht – who had grown up in a damp field.
Merrin felt a little sick at the thought of the woman, who even after all this time and without any contact, still had the power to make her feel anxious. They were on her mind, and no wonder when she was about to return to where a Mortimer might be within touching distance. The thought made her shiver. She had, of course, been sorry to hear about the passing of Guthrie, but mourned him little, as he had passed away at the same time as her beloved Granny Ellen.