The students were granted a long weekend at the beginning of November, a half-term break midway between September and Christmas. They could, if they wished, go home each weekend, but some students had lectures on a Saturday morning, and it was not worthwhile for others who lived a good distance away.
Debbie had not yet spent any weekends away from Leeds. On Saturday mornings she was busy, with the rest of her group, gaining practical experience in the college garden. Her parents understood that she would not be going up to Northumberland until Christmas when they had a fortnight’s break. She had been invited to Aberthwaite for the half-term weekend to stay with Fiona and Simon. It was actually Simon who had invited her. He had told her that Fiona’s depression had not improved, even though they now had someone helping with the children on a permanent basis. Speaking with him on the phone, Debbie thought he sounded tense and worried. He assured her that she would not be adding to Fiona’s problems by staying with them; rather, he hoped that her company would do Fiona a world of good. She had agreed to travel to Aberthwaite on the Thursday afternoon after lectures finished, and return on the Monday ready to start her studies on the Tuesday. There was a service bus from Leeds to the northern dales, so she would not need to trouble Simon to collect her.
By the beginning of November they had been at college for two months, and the four young women had settled down nicely together. Debbie found that she had become the recipient of confidences from her flatmates. Not so much from Fran, who spent most weekends away from Leeds, with her fiancé, Ralph.
Karen, though, had confided in Debbie about the significant person in her life. As Debbie had guessed, it was Charlie, her boss, the owner of the garden centre where she worked. She had also guessed correctly – or almost so – about the complication in the relationship.
‘One problem is that Charlie is quite a lot older than me,’ Karen told her one Saturday evening as they chatted together over their supper drink of hot chocolate; Fran was away for the weekend and Lisa had retired to bed early with a slight cold. ‘Well, p’raps not an awful lot; depends on how you look at it. He’s thirty, twelve years older than me. That’s not really the main problem, though …’
She hesitated, looking at Debbie so anxiously that she had no qualms about asking, ‘What is it, Karen? He’s not married, is he?’
‘Well … he has been married,’ Karen answered. ‘He’s divorced now, and he’s got a three-year-old son. Little Alfie; he’s a real smashing kid. Charlie has to bring him into work sometimes when his mam – Charlie’s mam, I mean – can’t look after him.’
‘So … you’re saying that the little boy isn’t with his own mother?’ asked Debbie. ‘That Charlie has custody of him?’
‘Yes, he’s got custody of him. His wife ran off and left him with Alfie when he was only a year old. A right flibbertigibbet she was, that Daphne! I never could stand her. Anyroad, Charlie had no trouble getting a divorce, and the judge didn’t hesitate about letting him have the kid. His mam looks after Alfie most of the time. She lives nearby, but there’s the odd time she can’t manage it. Then Charlie leaves him with me; he helps me wi’ t’ plants, an’ he has his own little watering can, bless him!’
‘So you and Charlie got friendly then, did you, after the divorce?’ asked Debbie. She was thinking that the girl would be taking a lot on: a divorced man with a young child. All the same, she had come to the conclusion that Karen was a very capable girl.
‘Yeah … we got friendly,’ said Karen, smiling and blushing slightly. ‘He took me out for a posh meal, to say thank you for looking after Alfie. He said he didn’t know what he’d do without me. And … well … we got quite close, if you know what I mean. Nowt wrong; I don’t mean that we’ve done … that. He’s a decent sort of a bloke, is Charlie. But I think I know what he’s got in mind. That’s why he insisted I should do this course, then I’d be qualified to help him to run the place, and then … who knows?’
‘He’s young, isn’t he, to own a garden centre?’ enquired Debbie.
‘His father retired, and Charlie took it over. He’s their only son, you see, and his father’s quite elderly, a lot older than his mother. They bought a little bungalow, not far away, and Charlie lives on the premises with Alfie.’
‘So you’ll be looking forward to seeing him next weekend,’ said Debbie. ‘Will you be staying with him?’
‘Oh no; there’s nowt like that; not yet, like I told you. I’ll be staying with me mam and dad, but Charlie says he’s missed me, and he’s longing to see me again.’
Karen certainly looked starry-eyed; a girl who was very much in love. Or, Debbie wondered, was it just the idea of being in love that made her look like that? ‘Falling in love with love …’ as the words of an old song went.
She, Debbie, was no longer sure that she had been in love. She had imagined that Kevin was the one for her. But she had been only fifteen years old when she first met him. She wondered now, with all the wisdom of her eighteen years, how she could have been such a crazy kid. And now … well … already there were two more young men for whom she was feeling rather mixed emotions.
That first evening in the Red Lion had been a happy time when the girls from the upstairs flat became acquainted with their neighbours from the ground floor. There were three girls and four young men. Not that there had been any idea of pairing off. They all got to know one another, talking about the various courses they would be doing and their future plans.
Debbie and Alistair, who was the oldest and most talkative member of the trio, had discovered that they were both studying landscape gardening and would be attending some of the same lectures. Debbie had felt an immediate attraction to him, but then who wouldn’t? He was the stereotypical ‘tall, dark and handsome’ man with a sparkle in his eye and a roguish grin. She had learnt that his father was a partner in a firm of landscape gardeners and that he would be joining them as a junior partner after he had finished the course. He had already been employed there since he left school, starting from the bottom as a labourer and learning the various skills attached to the work.
Debbie had got to know him better and to like him more as they attended the study groups together. She had been wary of him at first, wondering if he might be too handsome for his own good. He seemed to be friendly with everyone, treating all the girls he met in the same cheerful, light-hearted way. There were, understandably, more men than women on many of the courses. With the men as well, he was the same friendly and good-natured bloke.
Debbie told herself that she must face up to it; Alistair Kenyon was not interested in her as anything more than a fellow student. If he had been he would have made a move before now. Anyway, she shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. She had resumed her friendship – one that had never really got under way – with Graham Challinor. He had sought her out when she had been in Leeds for a couple of weeks. By that time the girls had filled in the card next to their door bell with their names, so that visitors would know which bell to push.
It was just after seven thirty on a Tuesday evening when they heard the sound of the doorbell, an unusual enough occurrence to make Debbie exclaim, ‘Now, whoever can that be?’
They didn’t get many visitors. Fran’s fiancé sometimes called unexpectedly, or, in the morning the postman might ring if he had a parcel to deliver; Debbie’s mum had sent a parcel a couple of times, containing a home-made fruitcake or gingerbread. The lads from downstairs came up now and again, usually if they ran short of something in the kitchen, but they didn’t need to ring the bell; they just ran up the stairs and knocked on the door.
‘We won’t know unless we go and see, will we?’ said Karen. ‘Shall I go? Or do you think it might be your Ralph giving you a surprise, Fran?’
‘No; I only saw him on Sunday,’ replied Fran. ‘Actually, we had a bit of a tiff and we parted on not very good terms. I’d be very surprised if he came to apologize, knowing Ralph.’
‘You don’t sound very upset,’ Karen remarked.
‘I’m not. It’s happened before and it always blows over. We’re too much alike, Ralph and I.’ Fran shrugged. ‘I’m not losing any sleep over it.’
It was the first time she had mentioned the argument. Fran played her cards very close to her chest and, unlike the others, didn’t confide much about her personal life.
‘Well, whoever it is, they’ve been waiting long enough whilst we’re wasting time wondering,’ said Debbie. ‘I’ll go and see …’
The young man on the doorstep was raising his hand to ring again when Debbie opened the door. It took her a moment – only a few seconds, though – to realize who it was, although the possibility of him coming had been on her mind since she arrived in Leeds.
‘Don’t you know me?’ he said, laughing at her surprised face.
‘Of course I do,’ she replied, recognizing the tall, dark-haired young man with the longish nose and strong features: a good-looking fellow in a rugged and rangy sort of way. ‘Graham! How lovely to see you!’
She had not seen him, in fact, since the occasion of the triplets’ christening when the two of them, along with his brother, Greg, had been godparents to the babies. And before that they had met only once, on that momentous weekend when Fiona had given birth, so unexpectedly, to the triplets. It was not surprising, therefore, that he should appear a little different in her eyes: slightly older and with longer hair. He leaned forward, kissing her gently on the cheek.
‘I thought I’d come and look you up – Simon rang to tell me where you were – to see if you’d like to go for a drink and a chat?’
‘I’d love to,’ she replied. ‘Come up and meet the others …’
She had discovered on first meeting him that Graham was not so extrovert as his half-brother, Greg. However, he chatted quite easily with the other three girls. Lisa did not say very much, just smiled pleasantly and answered when a remark was addressed to her. She had come out of her shell quite a lot, however, since embarking on her life away from home, although she was still a little shy of someone new.
Karen was the one with the most to say. ‘Excuse the mess, won’t you, Graham?’ she said, although the room was not really too untidy. Debbie realized that the others had had a bit of a scramble round picking up the debris – unwashed mugs, papers and books and items of clothing – from the floor and straightening the cushions before she had reappeared with Graham. ‘Four women living together; well, you can imagine, can’t you? Although Francesca here tries to keep us in order, don’t you, Fran?’
Graham smiled. ‘Looks OK to me. You should see the state of my place sometimes, and there are only two of us. I’m sharing a flat with a friend I met at uni. We don’t work together – he’s an accountant – but we rub along all right together, and it saves on the expense. We’re only renting, of course, but I shall try to save up and get a place of my own … Now, Debbie; shall we go and catch up with all the news. It’s been nice meeting you all. See you again sometime …’
Debbie had enjoyed herself immensely that evening. She found that the liking and the attraction she had felt for Graham when she first met him was still there. They had walked further along the main road towards Headingley. Graham’s flat was not far away, but he did not invite her there that evening. They found a little pub, one that was not overflowing with students, and talked easily together over his pint of lager and a shandy for Debbie, renewing what had started a couple of years ago as a tentative friendship.
Graham was twenty-one, three years older than Debbie. He was enjoying his work as the junior member of a firm of architects near to the Leeds city centre. They had a significant interest in common, in that Graham’s forte was for house design, and Debbie was discovering that her talent, with regard to landscape gardening, lay more with the designing than the more practical side.
He walked her home that first night, and kissed her gently on the lips as they said goodnight. He had invited her to go with him to a brass band concert that was being held at Leeds Town Hall in two weeks’ time. That, also, had been an enjoyable time for the two of them. Graham had learnt to play the French horn whilst at school, and had played in a band at university. He was now on the lookout for an amateur band that he could join.
They met just once more before Debbie was due to go to Aberthwaite; a visit to the cinema in Leeds to see a re-run of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film they had both enjoyed previously. They ended the evening with a visit to one of the many pubs in the city, then Graham walked her home. She did not invite him up to the flat, neither had he made any move so far to invite her to his place. Once more he kissed her goodnight, a little more ardently this time, and she felt herself responding to him. But it seemed to be a question of so far and no further.
‘Give my regards to Fiona and Simon,’ he said, knowing she would be visiting them the following weekend. ‘I hope Fiona’s feeling better by now; Greg says she’s not been feeling too well. Not surprising, though, with three – no, four – young children. And give little Mark a special hug from me!’
Mark, the youngest by some ten minutes of the two boy triplets, was the one that Graham had held, rather gingerly, at the christening. Debbie, Greg and Graham, though, were officially godparents to all three children.
‘Will do,’ said Debbie. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him once more, very casually, on the cheek. ‘Bye then, Graham,’ she said in a light-hearted way. ‘Thanks for a lovely evening. See you when I come back, maybe?’
‘Yes … sure,’ he replied. ‘Thank you, too, Debbie. I’ve really enjoyed it. Er … next time, perhaps you could come and have a meal with me at my place … if you would like to? I’m getting to be quite an expert at this cooking lark. I think I can promise you rather more than beans on toast.’
‘Thanks; that’ll be great,’ she said, trying not to sound as though it was what she had been waiting for. But it was certainly a move in the right direction.
She was not sure what the state of play was with Graham. Was she ‘going out’ with him – to use the common parlance – or not? She guessed there was no one else of significance in his life; he was not the sort of fellow to have a string of girlfriends. He was obviously the sort of young man who preferred to take things nice and slowly. And there was no harm in that. She had decided all too quickly that she was in love with Kevin, but her possessiveness had only served to annoy him. She would tell Fiona and Simon that she had seen Graham and would pass on his good wishes, without giving any suggestion that they might be ‘a couple’.
All four of the flatmates would be away for the long weekend. Fran would be in Macclesfield, although she had not said whether she would be staying with Ralph or at her own place. She, of all of them, was the most secretive about her personal affairs.
Karen was excited about the thought of going home to Doncaster and seeing Charlie again. She seemed to be very hopeful about the outcome of this weekend. And Lisa had confided to Debbie that she had mixed feelings about going home to Beverley to see her parents again.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said to Debbie, one evening when the two of them were alone in the flat. ‘Of course I’m looking forward to seeing them again. Mum says it seems like ages since she saw me. We’ve never been apart for so long before, and I have missed them both … But not as much as I thought I would,’ she added, with a shy smile.
‘Do you mean because of Neil?’ asked Debbie, smiling at her understandingly.
‘Yes,’ said Lisa softly. ‘I really do like him a lot, Debbie.’ Her pale cheeks turned pink, and her blue eyes glowed with happiness. ‘And I think I’ll have to tell Mum and Dad about him. They know me so well you see, and if I don’t say anything they’ll know I’m hiding something from them. I’m not very good at – what’s the word? – dissembling. I’m afraid I’m an open book, and I know they’ll start quizzing me. “What’s the matter, Lisa? There’s something you’re not telling us, isn’t there?” I can just imagine it …’
‘Do you mean because Neil’s a Catholic?’ asked Debbie. ‘I don’t see that it matters. He does go to church, doesn’t he? And that’s what your parents think is important. It’s more than a lot of young men do. And we’re all … well, we all worship the same God, don’t we, no matter which church we go to?’
Debbie, in fact, had not been to church since coming to Leeds, although she had attended the local church at home, when she had not been working at the garden centre. She still believed in God. How could she not do so when she was continually surrounded by the works of His creation? Each day she learnt more and more, in her studies, about nature and God’s wonderful world, although God, of course, was never mentioned at the college lectures. She didn’t see, though, why there had to be such an issue made about it all. What did it matter which church you attended, or whether you went to one at all?
Lisa was such a good girl. She, of the four of them, was the only one who had kept up the Sunday tradition. She had sought out the nearest Methodist church and had gone there for either the morning or the evening service: not every Sunday but often enough, Debbie imagined, to appease her parents.
‘Try telling my parents that,’ said Lisa, in answer to Debbie’s remark. ‘They worship the Methodist God, and they believe that’s the only one! They tolerate the Church of England, provided it’s not too “high”, and other nonconformist churches. But Roman Catholics – I’m afraid they’re taboo!’
‘Yes … I suppose I see your problem,’ said Debbie, although she didn’t, not really. Simon was a perfect example of a tolerant vicar. She knew he had friends and acquaintances amongst both the Methodist and the Roman Catholic clergy, and was open-minded about the beliefs of others whilst defending the line of churchmanship that he followed.
That first evening, when the girls had gone to the pub with the young men from downstairs, Lisa had met Neil O’Brien. They were both inclined to be shy and not very talkative. That was why, when they did begin talking together, they found they had a lot in common. Thy discovered that they would be attending several of the same lectures on such subjects as greenhouse maintenance, fruit and vegetable growing, and flower and bulb production. Neil, like Lisa, had worked in a market garden and had come on the course to further his knowledge. Their friendship had started slowly; it was not until a few weeks had passed and they knew one another better, that Neil had asked Lisa to go out with him.
It was clear to the other girls, seeing the new sparkle in her eyes and the radiance on her face – she looked so much prettier now – that Lisa was captivated by Neil. Debbie knew that Lisa had confided in her, more than the other two, about her budding relationship with him. Debbie was flattered that it was so, although she was no great expert on affairs of the heart.
‘I’ve never had a boyfriend before,’ Lisa told her. ‘I hardly knew any boys at all. I used to hear the girls at school talking about all the boys they’d been out with. I felt a bit silly because I didn’t have one. My best friend in the sixth form, Lindsay – she’s gone away to training college now – she was just the same as me. She hadn’t been out with any boys either. We used to hear them talking, and we felt they were showing off sometimes about … well, about how far they’d gone; you know what I mean?’ Lisa had gone pink and was almost whispering.
‘Yes, I do know,’ said Debbie, nodding. She laughed. ‘They were just the same at my school; it was a co-ed school, so there might have been some truth in it; I don’t know. I had a boyfriend – I told you about Kevin – but there was nothing like that with him and me. My friend Shirley and me, we thought they were just showing off, trying to go one better than one another.’
She was surprised that Lisa had mentioned the subject. She had wondered whether her new friend might be naive about such matters, but apparently she did know a thing or two.
‘I do know a bit about … sex.’ Lisa spoke the word in a hushed tone. ‘About what goes on and all that. But not from my mother! I think she’d run a mile rather than mention it. She told me about periods and everything, but I could tell she was embarrassed. I just found out the rest for myself; talking about it with Lindsay, and then there were the things that they show on the telly … although my mum turns it off if there’s anything too suggestive.’
‘It seems as though mothers are all the same,’ said Debbie. ‘My mother didn’t tell me much either; although she’s been more outspoken since I met Fiona.’ Debbie had told the girls about her birth mother – her other family – when she had felt she knew them well enough. ‘I know Mum worries about me, though – Vera, I mean; she’s the one I call Mum. I suppose all mothers worry about that. But Fiona told me what happened to her, how I was conceived and how easily it happened; and I shall try to be aware of that. I haven’t – you know – done … that. Some girls seem to think it’s a sign of being grown-up, an achievement, a milestone … you know what I mean, but I’m sure I’d be too scared.’
‘I didn’t even know what it was like to kiss somebody; kiss them properly, I mean, till I met Neil.’ She blushed hotly as she said it. ‘But … well, it’s nice, isn’t it?’
‘Very nice, yes!’ Debbie laughed. Lisa was such a sweet and innocent girl. ‘I’m glad you’re getting on so well with Neil. You two are very well suited.’
Neil O’Brien was the quiet one of the three young men; not tall or handsome, but pleasant-looking with fairish floppy hair and serious grey eyes behind tortoiseshell rimmed glasses that he wore a lot of the time,
‘Yes, we do get on well together,’ agreed Lisa. ‘He doesn’t seem to think it matters about the religious thing. His father’s Irish, as you can tell from the name. The family moved to England ages ago – at the time of the potato famine, I think – and settled near York. They were farming people, and Neil’s dad has carried on the tradition. He has his own market garden near to Malton. Strange, isn’t it? Just like my dad. Neil’s the only son, so he’ll follow his father into the business. His mother wasn’t a Catholic. She “turned”, as they say, when they got married, but from what Neil says, she doesn’t go along with it all. He was brought up as a Catholic because they have to promise they’ll bring the children up that way. So I suppose she’ll understand what it’s like and be more tolerant than my parents … Neil’s invited me to go and meet them sometime; but I’ll have to see how it goes with my mum and dad.’
Lisa loved talking about him. She was never so vociferous as when she was talking about Neil; but it was Debbie she talked with, more than the other two. Debbie hoped that all would go well for her. He was her first boyfriend, but it did seem to be a ‘match made in heaven’, as the saying went. Depending on which heaven, of course. She hoped that all the people concerned would come to realize that there was only one.
‘I think you should pluck up courage to tell your parents about Neil,’ Debbie advised her, just before they were due to go home for the long weekend. ‘You never know; they might be perfectly all right about it. Anyone can see how much happier you are now. You’re quite a different girl from the one you were when you came here. Surely they’ll be pleased that you’ve met a nice young man?’
‘Pigs might fly!’ replied Lisa.