Heaven's On Hold Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

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  Contents

  Sarah Harrison

  For Patrick

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Heaven's On Hold

  Sarah Harrison is the bestselling author of more than twenty-five books. She is best known for her adult fiction, which has included commercial blockbusters such as The Flowers of the Field and A Flower That’s Free (both now re-released, along with the third part of the trilogy, The Wildflower Path). She has also written children’s books and the successful writer’s guide How to Write a Blockbuster, as well as numerous short stories and articles.

  Sarah is an experienced speaker and broadcaster, who has taught creative writing both here in the UK and on residential courses in Italy. She has been a judge for literary and public-speaking competitions, and is also an entertainer – her three-woman cabaret group, Pulsatillas!, has an enthusiastic and ever-growing following.

  For Patrick

  Chapter One

  It was drizzling when David left work, and the unmanned roadworks outside Border and Cheffins, with their muddy waterlogged troughs, bell tents and precarious boardwalks were reminiscent of the trenches of the Somme.

  He’d omitted to bring any sort of coat with him that morning, so by the time he’d negotiated the planks and walked the few hundred yards to the car park he was obliged to use while the pipe laying was in progress, he was distinctly damp. The fact that the Volvo had acquired a parking ticket was grimly in keeping with everything else. It had been a distressing week and the bloody ticket – he ripped it off the windscreen and stuffed it in his pocket as another warlike metaphor sprang to mind – put the tin hat on it. The commuters of King’s Newton were to parking what German holidaymakers were to sunbeds, and even if his own office hours had been less pleasantly civilised he would have refused to compete. Though strictly speaking the Volvo was not in a marked bay, neither was it causing the slightest inconvenience or obstruction to anyone else, and he had paid the full daily rate.

  A woman unlocking her own car nearby made a sympathetic noise.

  ‘Bad luck.’

  He shook his head, embarrassed by his scowl. ‘It’s the complete lack of any discretionary judgment, you know?’

  ‘Jobsworths.’

  ‘Exactly. Well,’ he tried for a debonair grin which probably manifested itself as a gargoyle’s grimace, ‘they can whistle for it.’

  ‘Power to your elbow,’ said the woman.

  It was only three o’clock and muggy in spite of the rain: the inside of the car was stifling. He shrugged off his jacket and slung it on the back seat. The parking ticket, the sullen weather, not to mention the attrition of the week gone by and the challenge of the days to come, conspired to make him thoroughly out of sorts. He wondered if, after years of taking his health for granted, his blood pressure might be high.

  It was therefore not unexpected, though no less infuriating, when he forgot he was not going straight home, and took the wrong turning at the lights on the edge of town. This would have been easily remedied had it not been for yet more roadworks – they seemed to be using the holiday season to tear King’s Newton apart – which ensured he was stuck in a single-lane diversion for the best part of half a mile, before being politely returned to his original, wrong, route.

  Fuming, David decided to cut his losses, and rather than retrace his tracks make for the God-awful dual carriageway which encircled the town. At his usual time the ringroad would have been out of the question, a log-jam of crawling cars, but in the middle of the afternoon he considered that speed would compensate for the slightly greater distance involved.

  The traffic was moving freely and he congratulated himself on his decision as he accelerated briskly down the slip road and moved into the middle lane. The knots in his shoulders, and his brain, loosened a little and he turned on the radio. There was one of those pleasant talk-for-talk’s-sake discussions going on, ostensibly about the role of teachers ‘in society’ (as though there were any other place for them to have a role). The voice of one of the women reminded him of Annet’s – husky, with that thing she did of sounding both drawling and incisive. It was one of the first things that had attracted him to her, the voice she used when she pointed out that her name rhymed with ‘dammit’. His wife was a bit of a verbal dominatrix: he liked to think of her wiping out wimps at meetings with a couple of well-chosen, smokily-delivered put-downs.

  These more spirited thoughts prompted him to pull into the outside lane. He must have been doing nearly ninety, but in no time some idiot in a performance car zoomed up from nowhere, practically nudging the tailgate before falling back, and then repeating the process, as though the Volvo were a tiresome obstacle in his path.

  David put up with it for a bit, maintaining his speed and trying not to look at his tormentor in the rear-view mirror. After all, he was already breaking the law and there was no reason on earth why he should compound the misdemeanour by going any faster. But the car – it was white, with sit-up-and-beg headlamps and a rear spoiler – surged again, hovered menacingly and fell back with a poor grace to let him get out of the way. Which in the end of course he did, telling himself it was the mature thing to do. He didn’t hurry, but signalled and pulled over in as measured a way as was commensurate with a dangerous lunatic breathing down his neck.

  He forebore to give the driver anything more than a pointed look, and was shocked to discover that it was a woman. Her impassive profile shooting past was as painfully humiliating as a kick in the groin. It was with the greatest possible difficulty that he restrained himself from pulling out and giving her a taste of her own medicine. Only Annet’s voice in his head prevented him. ‘Testy …!’ she’d jeer in these circumstances: ‘Testy!’, implying that the word had its roots in ‘testosterone’.

  His mood swooping to a new low he remained where he was, in the middle lane. That was it of course: he was irredeemably middle-of-the-road. And middle-aged, middle-class, middlemanagement– men didn’t come more middling than him. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be subject to a kind of living death by mediocrity. The voice of the woman on the radio, he now considered, didn’t sound a bit like Annet’s but was the usual circumlocutory, mid-Atlantic psychobabble. He switched it off.

  Glum drizzle continued to smear the windscreen. The sign for his turn off loomed up, the left-forking arm like that of an admonitory policeman: This way for a major upheaval.

  He was a few minutes late, and in keeping with the theme of the day was unable to find a parking space. Mindful of the ticket crunched up in his pocket he circled the lot a couple of times, but the thought of Annet pacing the floor and fretting finally prompted him to park on the end of a row. Someone else had done the same thing
just in front, and he told himself he was doing both of them a favour, making it look as though the rows actually extended to this point. The law of averages stated that he was unlikely to be nicked twice in one day.

  In the foyer he debated whether to buy Annet a small present by way of apology, but decided against because it would only have to be carried straight back down again and she would almost certainly regard it as a waste of money. In the lift on the way up he realised he was sweating – why were these places always so airless?

  On the second floor he followed the helpful painted footprints along the short route which must surely now be engraved on his heart. Expecting to walk straight in, he gave his wrist a nasty jolt trying to push open the swing doors which were in some way jammed. Rubbing his arm and blushing with embarrassment it took him a second or two to realise that a slightly hectoring disembodied voice was addressing him.

  ‘Who are you visiting?’ He glanced around, trying to locate the source of the voice. It wasn’t something he’d encountered before, but then he’d normally been here in regulation hours.

  The voice repeated itself with ponderous patience. ‘Who are you visiting please? Gentleman at the door – who are you for? Hello?’

  He peered through the glass at the top of the door. At the desk in the central bay halfway along the corridor there were a couple of nurses, and a couple more standing around: none gave any indication that she was the owner of the voice, which now sounded again, with a distinct rasp of irritation.

  ‘Who are you for please?’

  David had tracked it down now to a small strip of louvred metal to the left of the door, towards which he now stooped slightly and spoke into.

  ‘David Keating. I’ve come to collect my wife.’

  ‘Just the one of you?’

  Absurd as the question was he still found himself glancing briefly over his shoulder. A harsh buzz in his ear prompted him to push the door, which this time opened. As he passed, the nurse behind the desk said: ‘I hope you’re going to take both of them with you, Mr Keating.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You said you were going to collect your wife, but we’d appreciate it if you could take that daughter of yours too.’

  ‘Oh … yes!’ Their laughter had been friendly, his was a little nervous. ‘Yes, don’t worry, I plan to.’

  ‘They’re all ready for you.’

  The antiseptic air of the ward could not altogether mask the feral, hormonal odour that so disturbed him. Like the proceedings he’d been obliged to witness in the labour room, the smell was a little too primitive for his taste: he shrank from it, and rather regretted not having brought some more flowers, like a plague nosegay, to waft it away.

  It was a relief, as he came round the curtain that had been drawn across by her neighbour, to catch the spicey tang of Annet’s Nina Ricci scent.

  Her greeting however was characteristically terse. ‘At last, what kept you?’

  ‘Sorry, stupid lapse of concentration. I took the turn for home by mistake and then got dragged all round the houses by those palsied roadworks. My life’s been plagued by pipes and sewage systems all week.’

  ‘Mine too,’ she said drily.

  Annet rose from the chair by the locker where she’d been sitting. She wore the clothes he had been instructed to bring in yesterday, and was immaculately made up. Her handbag and case were on the ground at her feet. The baby – thankfully asleep – was neatly strapped into her carrier car-seat thing on the bed.

  David and Annet kissed, on the mouth but politely. David was keenly aware of the new dimension to their relationship: parenthood. Dutifully he bent over his daughter and touched her cheek with his finger. To his alarm she convulsed, and her tiny hands jerked upwards.

  ‘My God, have I—?’

  ‘Just made her jump, I think.’ They both looked down, frowning anxiously, but the baby already looked as if she’d never moved.

  ‘Come on then,’ said Annet. ‘Let’s get out of here, I’m stir-crazy.’ She picked up her bag and glanced at David. ‘ I’m not supposed to carry darl, can you manage the case and her?’

  ‘Easily.’

  The baby, he noticed as they walked down the ward, was much lighter than his wife’s suitcase. The nurses at the desk smiled at their approach, though he thought he detected something knowing in the smiles. Annet said, very much en passant:

  ‘I won’t pretend I’m not glad to be going, but thanks for everything.’

  They assured her it had been an absolute pleasure and the two younger ones advanced to admire the baby.

  ‘Aah … she’s lovely.’ The girl looked up at David. ‘Have you got a name for her yet?’

  ‘We haven’t actually.’

  ‘So she’s Fred for the time being, is she?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Bye bye Fred …’ They stroked and patted the baby unselfconsciously while Annet waited, one hand on the door. David felt large and wooden, like a telegraph pole around which a couple of finches fluttered and cheeped. He feared he could never begin to match the unforced affection which these two relative strangers showed to his daughter.

  ‘Come on then,’ said Annet, opening the door. ‘Out into the big bad world.’

  He edged awkwardly through with his twin burdens. ‘Wide.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s wolves that are big and bad. The world’s big and wide.’

  She moved past him to the lift. ‘ I know what I mean.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the youngest nurse again, ‘it’s lovely to see an older couple like that with a first baby. The dad’s really sweet, isn’t he?’

  The older staff nurse leaned across the desk. ‘More than sweet, girls – gorgeous.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ The two younger ones giggled at this sign of weakness in a wrinkly. ‘Do you really?’

  ‘He’s a bit mature for you two I grant, but he looks like the film star Gregory Peck.’

  They looked at each other, then at her. ‘Who?’

  To his relief, there was no retribution exacted for this, his second parking infringement of the day, but the new dispensation made itself felt at once. The babyseat apparently had to go in the front, and Annet sat in the back, leaning forward anxiously (and dangerously, David considered) to keep it under observation.

  ‘You should put a seat belt on.’

  ‘In a minute. I have to gaze obsessively, it’s my job.’

  He moved off with extreme caution. ‘Will she always have to travel in the front?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so. Of course not. But at the moment it’s safer for her to be facing towards the back, so if she was actually in the back we wouldn’t be able to see her.’

  ‘I see.’

  Annet prodded his shoulder. ‘Not miffed, are you darl?’

  ‘Not in the least, just wondering.’ He put up his hand to touch hers, but she’d leaned back and was clicking her belt in place. Glancing in the mirror he was shocked at the unguarded tiredness of her expression. ‘ How are you? Are you OK?’

  She pulled a what-sort-of-question’s-that? face. ‘Nothing Mother Nature won’t take care of in time, I’m sure.’

  ‘How was last night?’

  ‘Eventful.’

  ‘Poor darling. At least now you’re home I’ll be able to help.’

  ‘I’m feeding, remember.’

  When she mentioned it, he did remember, but now that Annet was no longer pregnant it was hard to get his mind round the idea of his wife’s fit, overworked body providing nourishment for another. Would she, he wondered, even be able to sit still for long enough?

  ‘Well – even if it’s just moral support,’ he added.

  ‘I’m sure we can think of something,’ she replied. ‘And anyway I’m going to have to get her on to a bottle fairly soon so that she can be handed over to the admirable Lara.’

  David thought about this. Where the nanny question was concerned he detected in himself a quite irrational ambivalence. It had h
ad to be addressed of course, it was the only way, their combined incomes could well afford it, and it would keep Annet sane. But the unreconstructed traditionalist in him still resisted the idea. It was not that he wanted Annet to be chained to the pushchair and the washing machine, far from it, but that he could not quite resign himself to the handing over of their first (and, Annet was resolved, their only) child to a relative stranger, no matter how admirable. He glanced down at the tiny form in the car-seat and realised how stupidly selfish these reservations were, considering how little he knew – or even at this stage felt – about his own daughter.

  The journey home took longer than usual because he was exercising such care. As they came into Newton Bury and obeyed the injunction to ‘Drive slowly through the village’, he noticed that Annet’s head had fallen sideways and she was asleep, but by the time they reached Gardener’s Lane she’d woken and collected herself and he made no comment.

  There was a bay tree by the gate of Bay Court which Annet deemed only one-up from a monkey-puzzle, but which they’d kept because of the house. He turned into the horseshoe-shaped drive and parked next to the door. After undoing his own safety belt, he tried to release the baby from her seat harness, but he was all thumbs and the flat clasp remained intransigent. Annet, already out of the car, opened the passenger door and took over. She simply dove in, with no greater expertise than him but with a great deal more force, and bent the thing to her will. David banished as unworthy the notion that this served as a metaphor for their entire relationship. He fetched Annet’s bag from the back seat and held out his hand for the car-seat.

  ‘Here, let me.’

  At the front door, while he found the key, he put down the bag but thought it might seem disrespectful to do the same with the baby.

  ‘After you.’

  Annet went in and straight through to the back of the house to open the windows and the garden doors: she hated stuffiness. He was glad he’d arranged for Karen to come yesterday, so everything was clean and tidy. Bay Court was as close to the house of his dreams as their combined incomes would allow, an ample, solid, bourgeois Edwardian residence, the only one of its kind in the village – a city villa gone walkabout. The very bricks and mortar, the rooftiles, the cornices and light bosses, the picture rails, the fireplaces and window frames, promised comfort and security, and inspired in David the same sense of confidence which he was sure the builder had had in creating them, before the old world ended in 1914.