Well in theory we are but we won’t get any actual money until the probate’s granted so please don’t buy anything without checking okay?
Anyway, what did you dream?
Is Marianne still asleep?
Yep
Then shut the door and get back into bed and I’ll tell you all about it
Desire nibbles at my belly. Do I dare? The monitor remains black and still, but what if she’s turned it off again?
Damn it, the monitor’s lit up like a Christmas tree. I think our girl’s awake. Sorry.
FFS :(
I’ll take a rain check. You can tell me all about it later, okay?
If you’re making me wait then I’ll want photographs later
It’s a deal
Glad to hear it
So what are you up to today?
Probate stuff. Picking estate agents to do the valuation. Find someone to look at the furniture. And I need to talk to a jeweller. Get all the rings valued.
God I remember those rings. I don’t know how she moved her hands with those things on, they were like knuckle-dusters.
Bet they’re worth a fortune though.
You are going to sell them, right? Oh come on, you can’t be thinking of keeping them! We could get a great holiday out of it. Sell the lot and we’ll take Marianne to Burning Man.
Maybe. But we can’t sell anything until all the paperwork’s gone through anyway, so don’t book anything, okay?
Good thing I’ve got you to keep me honest, I’d have blown the lot on frivolities already
I know. That’s why you’re the musician and I’m the accountant. Right, got to get on with stuff. Talk to you later. xxxx
“Come here, sweetie.” I hold my arms out to Marianne as she comes into the sitting room, sweet and unfocused with newly shed sleep. Two nights without nightmares or sleepwalking, which given we’re in a strange place is nothing short of miraculous. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Mum.” Marianne comes into my arms obediently. “Can I ask you something?”
“Why do you always ask if it’s okay to ask? Come on, let’s have it.”
“Which war was Lily’s husband killed in?”
“The Second World War.”
“But didn’t that end in nineteen forty-five?”
“You know it did. I thought you spent all last term learning about it.”
“And your dad was fifty-six when he died? Is it all right to ask? I don’t want to upset you.”
“Of course it’s all right. And yes, he was fifty-six.”
Marianne’s holding a notebook. She begins to write out a little sum on the edge of my page.
“So he was fifty-six,” she says. “And that was the year I was born. So if you take fifty-six away…”
A little cold insect picks delicately down my spine. How have I never seen this before?
“That means he must have been born in nineteen forty-eight. I’ve done that right, haven’t I? I checked it three times.”
There’s a mistake somewhere in the workings. There’s a mistake, and I just haven’t seen it yet. But what if there isn’t? I’m an accountant. How have I never done this simplest of calculations before? And what does it mean? Marianne is doodling a little picture of a boat on the corner of the page.
“Maybe I got it wrong and my grandfather died because of the war rather than in it,” I improvise. “From an old injury or something. That happened a lot.”
“Did it?” Marianne’s face is very innocent.
“Yes. All the time.”
“And is that what happened to her sister’s husband as well?”
“I… actually, I think it was his heart or something. People did die younger back then, there were a lot more things you could die of. Look, it’s a lovely day. Why don’t you get dressed and take your breakfast outside?”
“In the garden? Is that allowed?”
“Of course it’s allowed, you daft article.”
“I thought maybe it might belong to Mr Moon downstairs.”
“No, it’s for all of us. Go and get some fresh air.”
“But what if someone asks who I am?”
“Tell them you’re Lily Pascoe’s great-granddaughter.”
“But what if they don’t believe me?”
“Then send them up to me.”
“But what if—”
“No more what ifs.”
“But—”
“No more buts. Go on. Get dressed, make toast, fresh air.”
“And am I allowed to talk to people?”
“What?”
“If they’re nice, I mean.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know, just… use your judgement.” What harm can she come to? Three other homes beside this one. A general tendency towards richness and oldness. James Moon, rude and angry and judgemental, but probably not an actual kidnapper. Surely she wouldn’t talk to him anyway, not after yesterday morning. “Don’t go off with anyone.”
“Of course I won’t go off with anyone!”
“Then off you go.” I flap towards the doorway and turn back to the paperwork that seems to be breeding every time I turn my back. Mr and Mrs Form, who got together at a paperwork dance one night. A moment of passion in the comforting dark of the box file, and now there’s a whole litter of little forms, lining up for me to fill them with meaning and purpose, before I shut them away in envelopes and send them off into the world.
I’ve left the curtains half-drawn in an attempt to disguise the neglect, but I’m conscious of how badly Lily’s house needs a good scrub. Deep cleaning is what it’s called these days, but I prefer Lily’s old phrase, the Easter Clean. Someone needs to open every nook and cranny to the fresh salty air, wipe down each wooden surface with a damp cloth scented with lemon oil, take down the curtains and wash away the dust and damp spots, empty the cupboards and clean into the corners then reline them with fresh brown paper, rinse the windows with vinegar and newspaper, vacuum the carpet back to something reminiscent of its former splendour. I know how to do all these things from watching Lily. My mother is too disorganised to keep a clean house, and my father never had time. The urge to clean is primal. Denying it makes me cross and itchy and irritable, the way I was the week before Marianne’s birth.
As a compromise, I open the window. Today the sky goes on for miles, that high clear blue that comes nowhere else and promises an ocean of perfect summer days. I can’t see Marianne. She must be in the shrubs somewhere.
We are sorry to hear of the death of Mrs Lily Pascoe. Before we can release details of the deceased person’s assets, we need you to provide us with the following information…
My father, who died at fifty-six. The child of Lily’s husband, killed during the war. His age, or his paternity; which is the lie? And who knew about it? Is Marianne truly the first person to work out the discrepancy? If I turn my head just a little I’ll see the photograph of my father as a baby, replete and splendid on a white knitted blanket, but I don’t want to look. I have better things to do.
National Insurance Number. If you do not have this to hand you can write to HMRC and request…
Richard Pascoe the elder was definitely killed in the war. I remember being given the telegram to show at school. There must have been another man in Lily’s life. But how did she get away with it? And since both Lily and her son are gone, does it even matter any more? I’m here to get rid of the past, not to stir up old memories.
Please enclose a copy of the deceased person’s death certificate. Please note this must be an original certified copy. Photocopies cannot be accepted.
Perhaps there’s a simple explanation. Perhaps my father simply lost track of how old he was. Perhaps, as an adult, he chose to lie, pretending to be a few years younger for some harmless reason of his own. I remember his fortieth birthday, the jocular parade of cards and gifts, and among them, Lily’s card: My darling Richard, you cannot possibly be forty, since this means I myself must be forty years older than when you were born.
It stuck in my mind because my mother said that, as usual, Lily was making everything about her, and then refused to be talked out of this position, referring to it every time she passed the mantelpiece but not allowing my father to throw the card away. Perhaps Lily was letting him know that she was a sly colluder in his deception? That must be it. So many of us like to pretend we’re younger than we are.
Except that my father is dead, and the rituals of death strip away all pretence. I remember the warm room, the discreetly placed box of tissues, the registrar’s gentle relentless questioning, while I struggled to hold my mother together well enough to complete the documentation of time, place, cause, the litany of milestones on my father’s too-short journey. If there had been any irregularity in the dates, the scrupulous kind-faced official would have found it. There can’t possibly have been a mistake.
I don’t want to think about this, and I’m sick of the company of Mr and Mrs Form. I throw my pen down and thump across the floor to find my shoes. I can see the vibration of my feet in the quivering of the candlesticks on the dining room table. I hope I’m disturbing Mr Moon downstairs. I want to annoy him as much as he annoyed me. Who does he think he is, judging my relationship with Lily? I stamp down the stairs and hope my shoes are clattering against the stone.
The front door is ajar and the garden smells sweet and herby in the sunshine, but I don’t walk out to greet it. I’m distracted by a faint draught that blows through the hallway, coiling around my legs, inviting me to pay attention to the space behind me.
I don’t know what makes me take the next step on from looking, and pad down the hall towards James Moon’s open door. Maybe it’s the nostalgic scent of Imperial Leather soap, or else the memory of his intrusion of yesterday. Maybe it’s the mutter of maternal instinct, prowling like a bear in a cavern. Maybe it’s just sheer unpleasant nosiness. Why is his door open? Perhaps he has visitors? I peer inside, but can’t see anything. No extra shoes in the hallway. No North Face parka or teenage anorak hanging on the peg beside the heavy camel-coloured wool overcoat.
I should give this up now, before I get into trouble. I should go back upstairs and continue my dogfight with the paperwork, and I should spend the rest of the day hunting down the local estate agents. I should do a lot of things. I take three cautious steps forward over the threshold. Let’s see how James Moon likes it when an unexpected stranger invades his space.
The light has a different quality here. Filtered through greenery, it becomes softer and more diffuse, less about the ocean and more about the garden. The hallway is slightly narrower and the ceiling is lower, just enough to denote a shift in social position. At the time when this house was built, the highest-status rooms were on the first floor. Despite this, James Moon’s apartment seems nice enough. It has the relentless tidiness of a neat person who lives alone in ample space, and it smells very clean. Lily would have approved. I should feel guilty and nervous, but instead I feel pleasantly at home. Perhaps this is because I associate the homes of old people with feelings of well-being and relaxation. Perhaps it’s because the décor of the well-kept sitting room is oddly similar to Lily’s, with a good-quality floral sofa, matching easy chair and heavy velvet curtains looped back from the windows with twisted silk ropes. Or perhaps it’s because Marianne is perched on a little wooden step by the open French windows, dreamy and thoughtful, gazing into the garden with her chin in her hands. She looks so perfectly at home that it takes me a moment to realise she isn’t supposed to be there.
My shock must come out in some sort of alarming noise, because James Moon appears in the kitchen doorway at almost the same moment that Marianne turns around to look at me. Marianne looks surprised and a bit worried, as though I might have come to her with some bad news. James Moon looks angry, as if I’m somehow in the wrong. I decide to deal with him first.
“Hello,” I say, putting on a hard bright smile. “I see you’ve branched out from breaking and entering and gone into kidnapping.” He starts to reply, but I turn my back on him so I don’t have to pay attention and hold out my hand to Marianne. “Come on, Marianne. Time to go.”
To my bewilderment, Marianne refuses to take my hand.
“It’s all right,” she says. “He wasn’t kidnapping me. I was going past his window and I saw him, so I stopped and said hello.” When she looks at him I see a faint smile in the corners of his eyes and mouth. “I said you were working upstairs and we talked a bit, then I said I was thirsty. And he said I could come in and have a glass of lemonade.”
James holds up the tall clear glass of bubbles like a talisman.
Both James and Marianne are talking to me now, which means I can’t understand a word from either of them. I hold up a hand to James and turn to Marianne.
“We were talking about family,” she says. “He was telling me about this photo of Lily.”
By the stool in the window is an occasional table, an ornate piece of nonsense apparently made from gold-painted plaster. From a cluster of family photographs including a plump mop-headed baby, a moody teenage boy and a suntanned young man smiling and leaning on a surfboard, Lily’s strong features send a jolt up my spine. It’s a copy of the photograph she has upstairs.
Did James Moon take this? I imagine there’s something of a lover’s intimacy in the picture, but perhaps this is all my own projection. I wonder where it was taken, and what they did before and afterwards. I’m still looking at it when James Moon’s strong brown liver-spotted hand turns all the photographs face down, slam slam slam slam slam, like the game I used to play with Marianne when she was smaller, where you asked questions and eliminated faces from a board showing all your opponent’s possible choices. Marianne was terrible at it, because she always wanted to know about the people themselves. Does your person like cheese sandwiches? she would ask. Is your person shy? Do they like going to the park? James Moon’s eyes are hot and furious. He looks as if he’s caught me going through his underwear drawer.
“That photo’s none of your business,” he says, ridiculously.
“Why not? Didn’t Lily know you had it?”
His face reddens and he starts a long and complicated rant that I can’t begin to follow. Marianne’s eyes are glued to my face. Probably she’s wondering how severely she’s going to be told off when we leave.
“Didn’t get a word of it,” I say to James cheerfully, when he seems to have run out of steam. “Nice seeing you. If you try luring my daughter in here again I’ll have you put on the sex offender’s register.”
“I said,” he says, very slowly and enunciating with exaggerated care, “I only asked her in here because someone should keep an eye. Since you’re clearly too busy. Should be glad she was safe. Could have been anywhere for all you knew. Career women. You’re all the same. Selfish.”
I pick up the tall glass of lemonade and pour it out onto the carpet. Marianne stares at me in horror.
“I realise you’re very old and very stupid and probably don’t get out much,” I say, even more slowly and clearly, “but I don’t need your advice about how to raise my child, and I don’t care what you think about my career, and I don’t need you to talk like this for me to understand you. Don’t ever do this again. Goodbye.”
This time, Marianne lets me take her hand and push her ahead of me out of the door. James Moon’s eyes bore into the spot between my shoulder blades.
We scurry back up the wide stone staircase, Marianne tense and unhappy, me struggling to know what to say. How can I explain what she’s done in a way that she’ll understand? Doesn’t she know better than this by now? Outside the front door that I utterly refuse to think of as ours, she stops and turns to me.
“Mum, I’m sorry,” she says. “I know you’re cross and I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s not about me being upset. It’s about you being safe. You were supposed to be in the garden, not hanging around a strange man’s house.”
“I was right by the window,” Marianne points
out hesitantly. “And the window was open. I could have got away if I needed to.”
“That’s not the point. You can’t tell if someone’s nice or nasty by looking.”
“It’s just I looked in and saw him and I felt really sorry for him.”
“Why?”
“Because he was crying,” says Marianne.
My breath catches in my throat.
“He wasn’t putting it on or anything,” Marianne continues. “He didn’t even know I was there to start with. And when he saw me looking he got really angry and told me it was rude to stare.”
“But you talked to him anyway?”
“He was only upset because I’d seen him crying,” says Marianne. “I don’t mind people being grumpy when they’re sad. I’m really sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to make you angry.”
I harden my heart. “It’s too late to be sorry now. You shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
“Are you going to take me home to Dad?”
“I haven’t got the time or the money to be ferrying you up and down the bloody country.”
“I’m really sorry.”
I don’t reply.
“I could go by myself? And save up to pay for the ticket?”
“If I can’t trust you on your own in the garden then I certainly can’t trust you on the train,” I tell Marianne with deliberate cruelty. “So it looks like I’m stuck with you until I’m done.”
I expect her to cry, but instead she straightens her shoulders and nods her head, as if this is only what she deserves. How can she be so adult and also so childish? I wish Marianne came with a manual so I could know where to draw the line between giving her freedom and keeping her safe.
The next job on the list is speak to three estate agents and arrange valuations, but being at odds with my daughter leaves me too upset to face it. Instead, I embark on a furious frenzy of cleaning.
First the sitting room, which I attack with Lily’s weary old vacuum cleaner, and a savagery that makes the ornaments shake on the mantelpiece. Marianne, hovering like a scolded dog, looks uneasy – presumably because of the noise – but doesn’t dare say anything. After a few minutes watching her torture herself with anxiety, I give her a damp cloth and set her to wiping dust from frames and photographs and the turned legs and arms of the furniture. She seems happier once she’s got something to do. While she scurries backwards and forwards to rinse out the dust, I finish my assault on the carpet and move onto the hall and bedrooms.
Lily's House Page 5