Lifetime Burning

by Gillard, Linda

  ‘Flora?’

  ‘Yes. Look, can you ring me back? My phone’s died. I’m in a callbox.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Waterloo. I’m meant to be at a script conference at the National.’

  ‘Is that where you saw her? The theatre?’

  ‘No. On Waterloo Bridge. Well, on the steps. As you go down to the National. I didn’t recognise her and just walked straight past, I was in a hurry. Then I realised and went back, but she was gone. I think she must have recognised me.’

  ‘You’re sure it was Flora?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure, but I think it was. She looked at me, as if she knew me. I just didn’t register. She looked terrible.’

  ‘Never mind. At least she’s alive. We’ll find her now. Colin, I’m coming up to town. Can I stay with you?’

  ‘Dad… Look, I don’t know how to tell you this, but - I don’t think Flora wants to be found…’

  In the year after the accident Rory hadn’t been able to drive nor had he wanted to. He had very little mobility in his wrecked hand, although it gradually improved with physio. He could pick up a tennis ball but nothing smaller. Fine motor control was completely gone. His fingers couldn’t move individually and he used his right hand only as a sort of scoop or claw.

  But it was possible for him to drive - once he’d persuaded himself to get back inside a car, which took many months. Grace made it easier for him by adapting a driving glove, sewing on velcro so that Rory could fasten his index finger and thumb together and encircle the wheel. This meant he could relax his hand periodically and let it just rest on the wheel.

  When he suggested we go to Aldeburgh for the day, on our own, I thought he must have taken leave of his senses. The trip would entail following the same route he’d taken with Ettie a year ago. He would have to revisit the scene of the accident. I assumed he was laying some sort of ghost to rest, so I agreed to go with him.

  It was the end of the summer. I left Hugh and Theo a cold supper in the fridge in case I was late back and I made up a picnic for Rory and me. I assembled shrimp paste sandwiches (with cress), a packet of the biscuits we’d always known as ‘jammy dodgers’ and a bottle of ginger beer. It was meant to be a joke.

  When we got to the junction where the accident happened we had to pull up and wait to turn right, as Rory and Ettie had waited. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Rory broke it suddenly by asking what was for lunch. I told him. He said nothing but after we’d turned onto the main road he pulled the car over into a lay-by and sat with his head in his hands, shaking.

  It would have been the memories.

  All of them…

  I didn’t need to ask.

  1952

  The twins had finished the shrimp paste sandwiches and were now engaged in the Jammy Dodger Contest: the ritual of licking out the red jam from the hole in the middle of the biscuits. Rory found this much easier than Flora and always won. Rory tended not to compete in anything unless he knew he would win.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ Flora whined. ‘Your tongue’s all hard and pointy.’ Rory stuck his tongue out at her as if to demonstrate. ‘Mine won’t do that. It won’t go into the hole. It’s too big and floppy.’

  ‘All gone!’ Rory held his empty biscuit aloft, then tossed the sodden remains to a gull that had taken up a position on a nearby rock, eyeing the children and weighing up the likelihood of scraps. Rory pulled up his jersey and withdrew a box of matches from the pocket of his shorts.

  Flora gasped and pointed in horror. ‘Where did you get those?’

  ‘From the scullery.’

  ‘That’s stealing.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I shall put them back when I’ve finished. It’s not stealing if you put things back.’

  Flora changed tack. ‘We’re not allowed matches.’

  ‘That’s what they said last year. We’re a year older now. Ten-year-olds can have matches,’ Rory said with authority.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Make a fire.’

  ‘There’s nothing to burn.’

  ‘We can burn our rubbish.’ He screwed up the grease-proof paper the sandwiches had been wrapped in and put it inside a brown paper bag. Flora watched as he crushed it, moulding the paper into a ball with his strong brown hands. ‘Right, let’s collect some driftwood.’

  She looked down to the shoreline. ‘The tide’s going out. Everything’ll be wet.’

  ‘We’ll look higher up then.’

  They ran up the shingle slope and started to kick over the piles of seaweed and rubbish, searching for anything that would burn. Rory took off his jersey and used it to collect what they found, tying the sleeves together to make a bundle.

  ‘You look like Dick Whittington,’ Flora said.

  He grinned, his teeth a sudden white flash against his brown skin. ‘A long way from London!’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Don’t know. Hundreds of miles. Ask Uncle Hamish. He’ll know.’

  ‘D’you think we’ll come here every year?’

  ‘We always have.’

  ‘D’you think we’ll come here even when we’re grown up?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Ma and Dad will be dead by then.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘Dad will be. He’s old.’

  Rory pounced on a piece of wood, a branch stripped of its bark by the sea. ‘This’ll burn well.’

  ‘I wonder which of us will die first?’

  ‘You. You’re the oldest.’

  ‘Only forty-five minutes older. Anyway, it isn’t always old people who die. Mrs McNab said Peggy’s baby died in January. Of whooping cough.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll both die at exactly the same moment.’

  ‘That’s not possible!’

  ‘If they dropped a bomb on us, we would.’

  ‘Why would anyone drop bombs on us?’

  Rory shrugged. ‘Another war?’

  ‘Oh.’ Flora knelt down and began to disentangle a branch from a heap of seaweed. ‘If I die first, I shall wait for you in Heaven.’

  ‘What makes you think they’ll let you in?’

  ‘That’s where you go if you’ve been good. And I’m going to be good.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to be bad.’

  ‘You’ll be punished if you are. You’ll go to Hell.’

  ‘Don’t care. It’ll be worth it.’

  ‘Nothing’s worth going to Hell for, Rory. You’ll burn for ever and ever and ever.’

  ‘That’s rubbish.’

  ‘That’s what Mrs McNab said. The Minister told her. And he should know!’

  ‘Nobody knows! Nobody’s ever been and come back have they? Nobody’s ever sent a postcard! Dear Flora, here I am in Hell. Having a lovely time but it’s a bit hot. Missing you. Love from Rory.’

  Flora laughed and fell backwards as she tugged the branch free. Rory offered her his hand and yanked her to her feet. She stared at her brother’s face, close to her own, his nose pink and peeling, his cheeks bronzed with freckles. ‘Would you miss me?’

  Grey eyes stared candidly back into blue. ‘ ’Course I would.’

  Flora’s heart leaped. ‘Shall we live together when we’re grown up? Shall we live here, by the sea? At Tigh na Mara, with the pine marten? For ever and ever and ever?’

  ‘Yes, let’s.’

  ‘And you can have a boat and a piano and I can have a pony and a dog and it will be like the holidays all the time!’ Rory shivered as the breeze stiffened and Flora put an arm round his thin, bare shoulders. ‘But I do wish you would be good, Ror. Then we could both go to Heaven when we die.’

  ‘I’ll try… But I think it’ll be very boring.’ He sighed. ‘And difficult.’

  ‘Well, if you can’t be good, I’ll be bad,’ said Flora cheerfully. ‘And we’ll go to Hell together.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I wouldn’t mind if I was with you. I wouldn’t mind anything if I was with you.’

  1975

  Al
deburgh was small and getting smaller. The sixteenth-century Moot Hall, a half-timbered building filled in with herringbone brickwork, stood originally in the centre of the town. Now it perched improbably on the shore, looking for all the world like an Elizabethan beach hut. The North Sea gnawed at the town’s side, reclaiming its own, tearing constantly at the shingle, churning up mud and sand into a murky soup shunned by all but the most intrepid bathers.

  Rory and Flora sat on the steeply sloping shingle beach, the remains of their picnic spread on a rug. Neither had spoken for a while. Flora gazed torpidly out to sea, watching the waves hurl themselves at the shore. Without looking at Rory she said, ‘I think I’m going to leave Hugh.’

  ‘Good. You should have done it years ago.’

  ‘Theo wants to stay with him.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rory sounded surprised. ‘Well, that’s better for you, isn’t it? Probably better for Theo in the long run. And Hugh. It means you’re a free agent. You can start again.’

  ‘Yes, I can. Or rather, I could if I weren’t still a little in love with Hugh. And completely in love with you.’

  ‘Still?’

  Flora turned to face him as he lay stretched out on the rug, propped up on one elbow, his eyes narrowed against the sunlight. ‘You didn’t really need to ask that, did you? You know. The same way I know how you feel about me.’ She looked away again, out to sea. ‘Although I don’t know if what you feel is love. I’ve never really known… Sometimes I think you don’t actually like me very much, you just want to go to bed with me.’

  He rolled on to his back and lay staring up at the sky. ‘I wonder what we’d feel for each other, Flor, if we stopped being angry?’

  ‘Angry?’

  ‘Yes. Angry with each other. Angry with Grace and Hugh. Angry with God. Do you still manage to believe in Him these days?’

  ‘I don’t know… No, I don’t think so. I think the only way I can believe in God now is by seeing Him as a divine practical joker. One with a particularly sick sense of humour.’

  Rory smiled. ‘Now He sounds like my sort of god… I wish we could stop being angry - at least with each other. Even if it was just for a day. A few hours.’

  ‘I’m not angry with you now.’

  He squinted up at her. ‘Are you sure?’

  Flora thought for a moment. ‘Well, maybe I am in a way. But only angry that you’re you. That I can’t help myself, can’t stop feeling what I feel. But I know that’s not your fault.’

  He stretched out his left hand towards her and ran a finger down the length of her bare arm. She shivered.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No. That’s you.’

  ‘Shall I stop?’

  ‘Yes… No.’

  ‘You look like the Little Mermaid. Sitting on her rock.’

  He circled her bare ankle with his long fingers, gently squeezing the bones, then loosened his grip and slid his curved palm over her calf, up under the skirt of her dress.

  ‘Rory, stop. People will see.’

  ‘Nobody knows who we are! We could be a married couple. Lovers. I could kiss you now and no one would turn a hair. Can I?’ Flora was silent. ‘Please, Flor.’

  She turned and looked down at him lying on his back. The wind lifted his thick fair hair from his forehead, revealing furrows that Flora didn’t remember ever seeing before. She traced them with her fingertips, then bent and placed her mouth on his. As Rory’s lips parted she pulled away, then drawing her knees up to her chest, she hugged them. Watching the waves, she murmured, ‘The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.’

  Rory lay quite still, then said, ‘If I weren’t your brother—’

  ‘Don’t, I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to think about… alternatives.’

  ‘If I weren’t your brother… I’d still be a selfish bastard.’

  She laughed and tossed wind-blown hair out of her eyes. ‘A miserable, selfish bastard.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’d be my miserable, selfish bastard.’

  ‘I am anyway.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  They sat, not touching, not moving for several minutes, then Rory breathed, ‘Flora, I used to come here. Before the accident. I used to meet a woman here. Someone I knew in London.’

  She turned and stared down at him. ‘A mistress?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose you’d call her that.’

  ‘Did Grace know?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You used to meet this woman here? For sex?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In a hotel?’

  ‘No… She has a holiday flat here. She doesn’t use it much. She works in London. It’s empty most of the time.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this? Is this your confession? I didn’t think you did remorse.’

  He didn’t answer immediately, but closed his eyes, then said softly, ‘I still have a key. To the flat. She’s never asked for it back.’

  Flora turned away quickly and looked up at the sky where gulls wheeled and screamed hysterically at the approach of a fishing boat. ‘Is that why you brought me here?’

  Rory sat up. ‘No. I was just going to tell you about it. As a possibility. I didn’t expect… I mean, I just wanted you to think about it, that’s all. And I thought I needed to get you away from the family so that you could think about it.’ Flora lowered her head and rested it on her knees. ‘I know it wouldn’t be real, Flor, but it would be something. And it’s all we’re going to get in this world.’

  ‘Please. Don’t ask me.’

  ‘You’re leaving Hugh anyway. He’d never know. And why should he care? Why should you, after the way he treated you?’

  ‘I thought you and Grace were happy!’

  ‘We’re as happy as we can be, given the circumstances. But… it doesn’t stop the pain. It doesn’t fill the… void.’

  ‘And you think I would?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but given what I’ve lost already, I don’t see why I should have to lose you too. And if you go away I will lose you, won’t I? You’ll make a new start, new friends. Meet other men. Believe me, you’ll get offers, Flor. Plenty of them.’

  ‘Oh, but who could possibly step into your shoes, Rory?’

  He ignored the sarcasm. ‘You’ve loved two men. Maybe you’ll love others.’

  ‘But Grace… She thinks of me as her friend! I couldn’t do that to her!’

  ‘I think you probably could.’ He slid a hand around the back of her neck, gathering up the long, fine hair in his hand, tugging gently downwards until she raised her head. He turned her round to face him and kissed her slowly. Releasing her, he watched the pale, silky hair tumble on to her shoulders, framing her face, suffused now with a mixture of horror, guilt and lust. He turned away and rolled on to his front, pillowing his head on his arms.

  Eventually Flora said, her voice unsteady, ‘How could we possibly meet here? What reason would I have to come?’

  ‘You don’t need a reason. You’re forgetting. If you leave Hugh there’s no one to account to. You could come whenever you wanted. Whenever I could get away. Which wouldn’t be often. And I don’t think it could ever be overnight. Grace would get suspicious.’

  ‘So it would just be for sex. Sex in the afternoons. Tell me - would I get lunch thrown in? Or dinner perhaps? Or would it just be a picnic on the beach? Shrimp paste sandwiches and ginger beer?’

  He groaned. ‘Forget I mentioned it. I just wanted you to know there was… the possibility. Clearly you don’t want me as much as I want you!’

  ‘I don’t think you understand, Rory. You’ve never really understood, have you? I don’t want just a little bit of you - Grace’s leftovers! I want all of you. All of you, all of the time. And if I can’t have that, I—’ Her voice faltered. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you. It’s just too painful! I can’t bear it any more - what you do to my head. To my body. You possess me! But I don’t possess you. And I never w
ill.’

  He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘It doesn’t have to be like that—’

  ‘For me it does. All or nothing. Now and for ever.’

  He shook his head. ‘Never in this world, Flor.’

  ‘No, maybe not. So I’ll wait. As long as it takes…’

  1987

  They sat in silence, side by side on the back doorstep, quite still, staring into the pinewoods.

  Rory sighed. ‘It isn’t coming.’

  ‘Ssh… It will. Be patient.’

  As the light faded gradually, there was a movement in the woods and the pine marten loped down, dodging between the trees. Flora sensed rather than heard Rory’s breath expelled from his body. She laid her hand on his and squeezed it. The marten stopped, hesitating at the edge of the wood, surveying the distance between its cover and the bird-table, then it bounded forward: dark-brown, cream-throated, the size of a cat, but longer. It shinned up the bird-table and grabbed a marmalade sandwich with delicate hand-like paws. It ate casually, looking about, its large eyes expressive, while the twins watched, scarcely breathing. The marten rolled the hard-boiled egg across the bird-table as if in play, then took it gently in its jaws. Slithering to the ground, like liquid poured from a jug, it trotted back into the woods.

  They sat for a long while, not moving, not speaking. Eventually Rory said, ‘Show’s over.’

  She didn’t reply.

  He extracted his hand from Flora’s grasp and said, ‘I have to go back, Flor,’ then stood and went indoors.

  Flora sat staring into the pinewoods as darkness fell.

  Chapter 20

  1976

  It was with great sadness but little surprise that Father Hugh’s flock received the news that he was to resign as their parish priest. If ever a man had been beset by grief and trouble, it was he. It had become impossible for any but the visually or mentally impaired to ignore the fact that Mrs Wentworth had a drink problem. This odd little woman had been a poor support to him even when sober. When she disappeared from the vicarage it was assumed at first that she’d gone to a rehabilitation clinic and would return, refreshed and reformed, to fight the good fight. When Father Hugh informed his flock that Mrs Wentworth had in fact left permanently, that it had been an amicable arrangement and that he was quite happy to bring up their son single-handed, shock waves reverberated around the parish, but these barely registered on the gossip Richter scale compared with the seismic reaction to his announcement that he was giving up the ministry altogether.