Then I had a call from Julia. She had yet to learn that I had married Robin. In fact the last time I had talked to her about him it had been to confide that things weren’t so good between us, and that I wondered if we were ever going to recover from the disaster. When we began to build our bridges and eventually planned our wedding, I don’t know why I didn’t call her straight away, to give her the good news. I had told her we were going on holiday, of course, but nothing more. I think I just hadn’t wanted to break the spell, or maybe I was afraid of tempting providence. And now, before I had a chance to confide in her she began to speak.
‘Rose, I’ve got something I must tell you...’
‘Snap!’ I said.
‘Rose, please,’ she said. She sounded very serious, I suppose. But I was on a high, the first one in a long time, and I wasn’t interested in a word she had to say until I had imparted my news.
‘Shut up, Julia, and listen,’ I instructed imperiously. ‘Robin and I are married. We did the deed in Barbados.’ There was a long silence. ‘Well, aren’t you going to congratulate me?’
‘Congratulations,’ said Julia flatly.
‘Don’t sound so bloody enthusiastic,’ I grumbled.
I thought that I detected a sigh down the line.
‘Darling, if you’re happy then I’m happy, you must know that by now,’ said Julia. ‘And God knows you deserve some happiness.’
‘We all do, Julia,’ I said sombrely. ‘And I’m going to grasp it now, I really am. Robin and I just have to somehow overcome our guilt and our grief, we have to, and get on with our lives.’
They were heavy words, but there was a new lightness in my heart. Had been since the wedding.
‘Oh Julia, I do love him so,’ I blurted out. ‘I’m sure we can be happy together again, in spite of everything, I’m sure of it.’
‘I hope so, Rose,’ replied Julia.
‘No doubt about it,’ I responded.
Again Julia didn’t say anything. It was not like her to go in for long telephone silences. Normally she gossiped for England, even the disaster had not changed that.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ I asked eventually.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘A bit tired, that’s all. Overworked and underpaid, you know.’
‘I do — but you don’t,’ I said. ‘Underpaid is not the way I would describe your job exactly.’
She managed a wry laugh.
‘So come on, let’s have it,’ I encouraged. ‘What is it you want to tell me, then?’
‘Oh, nothing, darling,’ she replied. ‘Your news has completely overshadowed it.’
‘Tell me anyway,’ I commanded.
‘Rose, to be truthful, I can’t even remember what I was going to say,’ she told me. And, rather curiously, I didn’t think she was being truthful at all. But I was quite untroubled. I had married my Robin at last. I was quite sure that he loved me every bit as much as I loved him. Nothing else mattered.
During the next month our lives seemed to improve daily. I really did begin to believe in the future. There even seemed to be a chance at last of rebuilding my shattered relationship with my sister Clem. It was my niece’s ninth birthday at the end of November, and I decided to take a risk and call around unannounced with a present and a card.
Young Ruth seemed, on the surface at least, to be exactly the same as she had been before the disaster which claimed her little brother’s life. She greeted me with a big hug and a kiss the way she always had, even though it was the first time I had seen her since that terrible day. Clem, who had for so long refused even to speak to me, at least let me in through the door.
The old warmth was sorely missing, but for the first time I felt this might not always be so.
I told her about my marriage, and, while she did not offer congratulations, neither did she display any particularly adverse reaction. We talked about our mother for a bit, who had predictably displayed wonderful powers of recovery and taken off to New Zealand to stay with a cousin neither of us had ever heard of before. We even managed a weak half-joke about how long the cousin would be able to stand it.
When I left I spontaneously reached out and touched Clem’s hand. Very briefly her fingers tightened around mine, then she withdrew.
‘Maybe you’ll let me visit again?’ I enquired tentatively.
She did not reply directly. ‘Just do not ask me to ever see Robin again, that’s all,’ she said.
I winced. My mother had said much the same thing to me when she had phoned briefly to say goodbye before leaving on her big trip. It had been almost funny coming from mother when you considered the way she had once been all over Robin just because of who he was. Certainly there was little my mother could ever say which would really upset me. With Clem it was different. I was deeply hurt.
‘Clem, Robin will never get over the guilt he feels,’ I told her. ‘But there is no logical reason for him to bear any guilt, you must believe that. Robin lost his brother and so many friends...’
She looked at me with deep sorrow in her eyes. ‘I don’t know what I believe, to be honest, Rose,’ she said.
I left her then, my heart heavy, but I was no longer without hope. Certainly I felt able at last to deal with some of the legacies of Abri. Maybe I was finally healing. And there was no doubt that marrying Robin had been a major part of the healing process. Since the wedding we had become very close again, perhaps almost as close as we had been before the disaster. I had realised a long time ago, or I would never have agreed to marry him the first time around, that there was much more than sex, sensational as it was, to Robin and I. In between our more passionate moments we were actually quite cosy together. During that really quite idyllic month at home after our exotic wedding we would spend evening after evening alone in the Clifton house, cuddled up on the sofa like a couple of lovesick kids, watching TV or listening to music. Somehow or other we had got some peace back into our lives, if nothing else.
Maude’s affliction was a major sadness, but Roger insisted on taking her home to Exmoor where he looked after her, almost single-handedly, with great devotion. There seemed little hope of much improvement and I suspected that this wonderfully independent woman would probably have preferred the stroke to have killed her rather than leave her in this condition. Robin and I visited at least once a week, and one Saturday immediately after we had got back home to Bristol he broke down in tears in my arms, so upset was he at seeing his mother the way she was. It was the first time he had shown how he felt about Maude, the first time he had cried, in front of me, anyway, since the disaster, and I was so relieved that he was able to display his emotions again and to allow me to share his distress and give him what comfort I could.
Apart from that there was no doubting our happiness together. The Abri Island disaster would always be a great shadow over our lives. We could never conquer the grim memories, but we began, I suppose, to learn to live with them.
Robin continued to make casual remarks about ‘our children’ and I continued to show no signs of becoming pregnant. However I told myself that considering the three months of enforced celibacy I had endured after the disaster that was not surprising. I could not really be expected to fall at the first opportunity at my age, and Robin was so sure that it would happen sooner or later that I determined that I really would not worry about it.