Trio - [45]

‘You aren’t sure, are you, Mum? I could talk to them about commuting.’

‘Don’t be silly. You must go. It’s what you’ve been waiting for, working for. There’s a regular coach, or the train. You can come back for the weekend whenever you like. I’m so proud of you, Pamela.’

‘I said I’d meet up with the girls later. Make a night of it.’

She nodded. ‘Put the water heater on, you’ll want to wash your hair, won’t you? Do you want tea?’

‘We’ll be getting fish and chips later. But I’ll get a butty now. Do you want one?’

‘I’ll do it.’ She folded the paper up. She would save it for later, when she was alone. There’d be a lot more of that now Pamela was moving. Time she got used to it. She would not be maudlin, she admonished herself. Not like those parents who clung to their children and wouldn’t let them go. Peter’s mother had been a bit like that. Stiff with her when they were courting and downright cold about her grand-daughter; anyone getting close to Peter was seen as a threat and earned her disapproval. Times past, she thought.

She busied herself with slicing bread and warming the teapot. Determined to deny the fearful flurry of questions about the future beating inside her, the panicky refrain, Now what will become of me?

Pamela

Learning to sail had been like coming home. The bank had sent management on a team-building weekend to the outward bound centre in Snowdonia. Pamela was the only woman and there had been plenty of innuendo among her friends about how much fun she might have with a dozen footloose men.

But it was sailing she fell in love with. There was something about the challenge of using the wind to travel the water and the undeniable kick she got from discovering she had real aptitude that reinforced the simple elation that she felt with the water flowing beneath her, the breeze in her hair and the smell of brine.

Towards the end of the course she’d asked Felix, the instructor, about any other opportunities. ‘You’ve got the bug!’ He grinned.

She nodded.

There are sessions here but you can’t compare it to the open sea. That’s real sailing.’

‘And how do you do that?’

‘Well, the wife, Marge, and I, we have a sloop, thirty-five footer, six berth, moored over in Holyhead. You could crew with us sometime.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. We aim to be going out Whit week. There’s always room for a friend or two. This’ll be our tenth summer.’

‘What will I need?’

He laughed and promised to help her with a list. She spent her next day off acquiring a sleeping bag and a good-quality waterproof jacket as well as woollen socks and leggings, hat and gloves and a small rucksack. She drove down to Holyhead straight from a strategy meeting in Manchester. It took an hour longer than she had anticipated, the route congested with lorries heading for the ferry to Dublin.

Marge was a small energetic woman with wrinkled, tanned skin, small black eyes like currants and a ripe Welsh accent. She cursed in Welsh and teased Felix mercilessly as a lazy bastard. A friend of theirs, Tom, a reserved man, made up the foursome. Pamela was never so happy. The daylight hours were full of work, handling the boat in the fine salt-spray, learning to tack and jib, to gauge the changes in the conditions and to navigate the seas. The constant song of the ocean in her ears and the ever-changing light filling her vision. The evenings, when they put into some small town or harbour, consisted of huge amounts of food, numerous bottles of wine and rowdy card games interspersed with rambling conversations and stories of other trips.

Well before midnight, Pamela would roll into her narrow bunk and fall asleep, lulled by the gentle rocking of the craft and the water lapping at her dreams.

The boat became her second home, apart from the winter months when the weather was too fierce. Marge and Felix became her firm friends. The following summer she crewed part-way for a tour of the Greek Islands. There were plenty of opportunities for casual encounters and though the boat was too small for secrets Marge and Felix were easy-going and, beyond the odd wink, didn’t tease her about her conquests – at least not until the man in question had gone.

She loved the travelling too, and hungered for new sights, for foreign landscapes and food and climate. Those places that they couldn’t reach by boat she visited in the winter – holidayed in Bali and Nepal, California and Zimbabwe. She worked hard and played harder. She and Lilian would take a short break every year, usually somewhere in Europe. Lilian joked that unlike her daughter she certainly hadn’t got her sea legs as she spent all but the very calmest of crossings hanging over the toilet.

Joan

They met at the theatre. Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead. But you could say it was the house that brought them together. When Joan had first bought the place, investing her money from her run of songwriting success, she had acted sensibly. She had a vigorous and costly survey done which revealed a staggering list of essential repairs. On the basis of that she had beaten the sellers down and been able to pay for the work to be done. The house had been re-roofed, fully insulated and rewired. She had a new central heating system put in and an efficient boiler. The mortgage had been a huge responsibility but she had rented rooms out to actors appearing at the Stephen Joseph Theatre for the season. She soon acquired a reputation for offering upmarket digs, albeit at proportionally higher rates, and as soon as the season’s entertainments were confirmed those actors with the leading parts and the higher incomes who didn't have allegiances to landladies elsewhere would ring and book their stay.