Holding On by Marcia Willett Page A

beneath the oak beam, he picked up his glass and swallowed back some beer, waiting for his patience to return.
    â€˜You could learn to drive,’ he said reasonably. ‘The car is there, standing in the garage for weeks on end while I’m away. I know you’re nervous because it’s a sports car but it’s only a Sprite, for God’s sake, not a Lamborghini. I’ve offered to teach you myself but you’ve always refused.’
    Maria picked up a small sharp knife and, lifting the saucepan lid, prodded at the new potatoes boiling with the freshly picked mint, which grew with other herbs at the edge of the minute vegetable patch, where sweet peas, and runner beans with bright scarlet flowers climbed together on the tall bamboo sticks.
    â€˜Daddy always says that there’s no quicker road to divorce than a husband teaching his wife to drive,’ she said.
    Hal bit back the retort that, at this rate, they wouldn’t be needing driving lessons to achieve that end, knowing that Maria would take even such a lightly uttered observance to heart and probably burst into tears.
    â€˜He might be right,’ he said, ‘but you have to admit it’s silly going on like this. Anyway, Caroline would have run you about. She’d have fetched you from the train and taken you anywhere you’d wanted to go. She’d have enjoyed it, too. It would have been a bit of a variety for her. She loves a challenge.’
    â€˜Perhaps she should have been a naval wife then,’ said Maria sulkily, lifting the saucepan and carrying it to the sink. ‘Plenty of challenges there.’
    Hal was silent, wondering how other men coped with this kind of problem. It was clear that Maria resented it every time he went to sea – but what had she expected? The other worrying thing was that she’d made hardly any friends during the last two years, apart from one or two of his fellow officers’ wives. Then there was all the fuss about Fliss being pregnant . . . Hal strove to be fair. It was hard that Maria had been unable to conceive, that his brief spells at home had been the wrong time of the month or she had been too tense.
    â€˜Look,’ he said gently, ‘let’s not make this a big deal. We can use the married quarter as a base to find somewhere else to live and we’ll organise driving lessons for you. I’ll probably have more shore time when I join Falmouth . I’m sorry that we haven’t managed to get you pregnant but don’t begrudge Fliss her baby. Poor old Fliss. If you think you’ve had a hard time think how she must be feeling about going out to Hong Kong. Of course, she puts a brave face on it but it must be a bit unnerving, being pregnant as well.’
    Nothing could have been more calculated to make her angry. As she put the potatoes into the dish with some butter, Maria was seized with a furious envy of Fliss.
    â€˜She hasn’t done too badly,’ she said bitterly. ‘She’s had Miles with her for the last two years in that lovely house in Dartmouth and she’s been within half an hour of her old home. Hardly a great hardship, would you say? You’ve no idea how difficult it is to move into a completely strange area, not knowing anyone, miles from your family, and have your husband go off to sea for months on end. It’s OK for you, surrounded by all your friends, in a world of your own.’
    â€˜So you’ve said many times before,’ said Hal quietly. ‘I did suggest that you might feel happier if you lived on a married patch with other wives of your own age, just until you got used to things. It was you who insisted that you wanted to bury yourself in a little village, miles from the base and with no transport.’
    â€˜They were beastly houses,’ she cried. ‘And I didn’t want to go to boring Tupperware parties or have the other wives in and out all day long, thank you very much. I’m not