by Jenny Eclair
So many names in that address book are crossed out now that she finds it depressing. Judging by the number of horizontal ink lines, it’s quite obvious she knows more people who are dead than alive. And that includes her husband – dead, disgraced Hugo, who left her with very little money and very little choice but to run away to France and leave the past behind.
Everything changes, she reminds herself. You don’t have to lick stamps any more, and never mind letters, people barely bother with postcards these days. And then she thinks about the ones she used to send her mother in America and how seldom Peggy replied.
The desk at Claverley Avenue released a particular smell when you opened the lid and inside there were lots of cubbyholes for pens and paper clips and a special space where the cheque book slotted in just so, the special little hole for the bottle of . . . Without warning she is reminded of a terrible deep blue stain on a pale gold carpet and her eyes fill with tears. ‘Don’t cry over spilt ink,’ she mutters under her breath.
These days she has a computer, a laptop that she can carry from room to room, although she normally leaves it on the kitchen table, the lid firmly shut. She will be eighty at the end of the year and technology has for the most part advanced without her.
She can, however, send emails, although she has to prepare herself beforehand; sit down with a cup of peppermint tea and check the handwritten notes at the back of her diary under the heading ‘How to send an email’. Her son bought her the machine, it’s an Apple Mac. ‘That’s the best kind,’ he told her, and she believes him. Lance knows about that sort of thing.
Now, where was she? Oh yes, the envelope. It’s an invitation, that much is obvious. She used to get a lot of those when she was younger, back in the days when people still sent invitations to weddings and christenings and special birthdays and anniversaries. It was one of the reasons why one had a mantelpiece: to display one’s invitations.
It was easier not to go wrong when there were rules, thinks Natasha, remembering a carved oak mantelpiece with a silver candlestick at either end. In the spring she filled those candlesticks with forsythia or daffodils.
It’s spring now in France, which is nice but not the same as in London. The flowers are different and it doesn’t smell the same.
These days Natasha lives on the tiny Île de Ré off the west coast of France, home of the hollyhock and the donkeys in pyjamas. Her house is so small that sometimes she dreams there is another staircase which leads off to a series of rooms she hadn’t known existed. When she wakes up from this dream, she feels as though she is trapped in a cave. There really should be another staircase, how come she has ended up in this poky house on this funny island? Where did all the money go? It seemed to dissolve overnight. Of course her husband Hugo had lied to her for years about their finances and much more besides. Though whether he’d actually been guilty of any real crime had never been proved and at least moving here meant she could escape the shame of all that gossip and speculation.
The envelope is addressed to Natasha Berrington. Why don’t widows return to their maiden names, she wonders. The surname Berrington has little to do with her now; Hugo was so long ago, all that charm and fury reduced to a gravestone in the Brompton Cemetery, a black marble slab engraved with his name, his date of birth and the date of his death. Nothing else had seemed appropriate; she couldn’t exactly ask the stonemason to add ‘loving husband and father, sorely missed’. Natasha laughs and wonders if anyone has ever had the guts to ask for an inscription that reads ‘good riddance’.
She slides a lacquered red fingernail under the flap of the envelope. La Flotte might be a small town, but French women are religious about their looks and Natasha visits a beauty salon once a week. She is lucky, she has enough money for such things – she has seen other women her age who cannot afford the luxury of grooming and they look like peasants.
Mind you, even women with money refuse to bother these days. Every year there is a relentless tide of middle-class British women who flood the island with their loud voices and creased linen smock dresses, yelling commands and desperately looking for some shade, their plump shoulders turning the colour of raspberries.
Natasha has a small vine-covered courtyard at the back of her house, where she dips a fresh croissant into hot chocolate for her breakfast. Has she had breakfast today? The problem with getting forgetful is that one runs the risk of getting fat. Eating two breakfasts would be lethal. She used to be so good at not eating; undoubtedly the cigarettes helped. But she’s given up, nearly – Natasha allows herself a slim menthol cigarette from the packet of ten she keeps by the back door.
She’s seventy-nine – who cares if she gets cancer now? She sits under her vine and studies the embossed card.
A party at Kittiwake to celebrate her son’s fiftieth birthday, a ‘Bacchanalian bash’, no less. She will ignore the instruction about fancy dress, at her age she doesn’t need to bother with that sort of nonsense. It was different when she was younger; she remembers going to a party dressed as a gypsy, her face darkened with gravy browning. That was back in the seventies when one was allowed to . . . what is the phrase? ‘Culturally misappropriate’.
Natasha inhales. Her son Lance is fifty. How odd that a tiny baby should have become a middle-aged man.
She will go, of course she will go. After all, this could be the last chance she has of seeing them all together, her family – what is left of them.
Natasha makes herself remember everyone by name. Her son Lance and his wife Freya, their children, Ludo and Luna, their cousins, Edward and James, and their father . . . Here she draws a blank; she cannot for the life of her remember the name of Bel’s husband. Ah, Bel, the daughter that never truly was her daughter, the thorn that is Bel – argumentative, difficult Bel, the adopted one.
How had that even happened? Not so much as a visit from anyone in authority to make sure they were suitable parents, and both she and Hugo smoked. It would never have been allowed these days.
It was all Benedict’s idea, and for some reason Hugo went along with it. She doesn’t recall having much say in the matter. Before she knew it, the paperwork was rubber-stamped and she was holding the child in her arms. She wishes Benedict could be at Lance’s party, but sadly he can’t – her younger brother is dead. He turned into a fat lothario, riddled with gout – the ‘Podgy Playboy’, as Hugo once called him – and succumbed to a massive heart attack about four years ago. In fact, that was the last time she’d been back in England, for her brother’s funeral. So many people from all walks of life crowded into the church that day. She misses him terribly.
He was at the centre of so much of her life, the only one that knew almost everything. How odd that he is no longer here. Of late Natasha has become acutely conscious that she has outlived not only her husband but both of her brothers. She is the last of the Carmichaels, apart from some cousins, the Norfolk Carmichaels, now decrepit in various nursing homes and sheltered accommodation around Hunstanton.
Natasha shivers. At least she has her independence, she can still clean and cook for herself. At least she doesn’t have to put up with strangers touching her body.
She will go to this party, though she would much rather the festivities weren’t being held at Kittiwake – she has always hated the place, but the simple fact is, she loves Lance more than she loathes Kittiwake. Besides, she feels instinctively it will be the last time she will make this journey.
She will fly direct to Exeter and then take a taxi to Monty’s Cove; extravagant but practical. If she flew to London, she would have to stay with Bel in that grubby house in Clapham and feign an interest in those lumpy boy-men that are supposed to be her grandsons. She visited the place when she was in London for Benedict’s funeral, sleeping in a bedroom that smelt of boy – the younger one was away at university, so she had his bed. Bel had prattled on about clean sheets, but Natasha could still detect a whiff of testosterone on the pillows, and it turned her stomach. Everything about the place made her
feel queasy: the waddling, breathless dog, Bel’s filthy fridge, the husband, whatever his name is, walking around with bare feet. Men’s feet are so disgusting, shudders Natasha, grateful again for the perks of early widowhood.
She decides to email Lance with her plans. She will ask him to book her flights, and she will plot something splendid to wear for the party; possibly white slacks with a fabulous blouse and maybe a hat. People will marvel at ‘how good she is for her age’ and while she is there, she will soak in enough memories of Lance to last her a good long while. She will even learn to use the camera on the iPhone he bought her. And then she will come home.
She doesn’t expect any dramas. All the big dramas are over; now that she’s in her eightieth year, it’s time for some peace and quiet. Nothing can possibly happen that would surprise her any more.
She resolves to email her son before she forgets. Checking her ‘how to’ guide first, she clicks on the requisite icons and begins,
Dear Lance,
Thank you for the invitation. How ageing to have a fifty-year-old son, I shall keep very quiet about it in the village . . .
Natasha pauses. She doesn’t know anyone in the village and despite having moved to the island more than twenty years ago she still only has a smattering of schoolgirl French, anything more complicated than a shopping list and she’s very quickly out of her depth.
In some respects, this has suited her very well. It stops people getting too close and asking personal questions. ‘Je ne comprend pas,’ she shrugs, and eventually they give up.
No one needs to know very much about her. To her acquaintances, she is Madame Berrington, and Madame Natasha to her hairdresser; as for the other ex-pats, she waves, she exchanges village gossip, but she mostly retreats behind the dove-grey painted front door and is grateful to have left her past behind.
I will let you know exactly when I shall need my tickets booked and look forward to spending a wonderful three nights with you.
Natasha’s hand hovers over the keyboard. She learnt to type in Kensington in the fifties. Her mother had paid for her to attend a secretarial course after she finished school. Young ladies were beginning to enter the workplace. Not that she ever worked as a secretary; her brief stint in the world of work was in retail, selling gloves and purses in Blatts’ leather goods shop on Sloane Street. Fortunately, she had got married before anyone realised that she was actually working out of necessity as much as ‘fun’.
Natasha looks down at the liver spots on the backs of her hands. How strange to think that once upon a time she’d been employed principally because they were so beautiful. Her slim fingers, now twisted with arthritis, had once slipped so easily into a size eight glove and looked so elegant holding an expensive ladies’ purse.
In fact, her hands had been so lovely that she’d even earned some money modelling cuticle cream and a certain brand of ladies’ watch.
But Hugo had put a stop to it. ‘Thin end of the wedge,’ he’d said. ‘It’ll start with the hands, next thing you know, they’ll be wanting your legs for suspender belts and no wife of mine is going to be snapped up to the thigh by some Johnny-come-lately photographer.’
This was not long after Antony Armstrong-Jones had married Princess Margaret and, as Hugo said, he wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him – and Hugo would know . . .
Natasha reaches for another cigarette.
I hope Freya and the children are well, please tell them I’m very excited to be seeing you all in August.
With very much love, as ever xx
Mother, Natasha, Mummy, Ma, she can’t decide, so she doesn’t bother, the email address is enough of a giveaway.
Natasha presses the little paper-aeroplane button and then props the invitation safely between her silver candlesticks on the sideboard in her sitting room. She doesn’t have a mantelpiece in the cottage – there are so many things she used to have that she doesn’t have any more: a mantelpiece, a husband, a mother and a father, two brothers, a car, a daily cleaning lady, a television, a garage . . . The list grows longer and longer until she’s too hungry to think any more and she decides she will walk to the local market and buy some ripe tomatoes, big ones, and slice them for her lunch and eat them in her courtyard with plenty of salt and black pepper, and then she will spend the afternoon thinking about what she should give her son to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. What can she buy him, what more does he need?
He has everything. Health, wealth and happiness, he has a beautiful wife and bright-eyed children, he has a career and status and now he has Kittiwake too.
Poor Bel. Natasha wonders how her daughter feels about Lance being named the sole beneficiary of Monty’s Cove in their uncle’s will back in 2014. It wasn’t as if Benedict and Lance had been particularly close, whereas Benedict and Bel . . .
Natasha swallows hard. He had loved her, loved her unconditionally, he had stepped in and fought her corner when no one else did, he had been her port in a storm, her safe place to run. Poor Bel and poor Benedict, it must have been hard on them both. Things might have been different if Lance hadn’t been born . . .
But Lance had been born, and that had changed everything.
25
Baby Lance Is Born
London, 1968
Annabel was nearly five when her mother stopped lifting her out of the bath. Her father appeared in the bathroom one evening, shooed her mother off the wooden stool with the cork lid where Natasha sat in readiness with a towel, and told Annabel she was a big girl now and that she could get in and out of the bath by herself, because she wasn’t a stupid or a lazy girl, was she? And anyway, Daddy didn’t have time for any of this nonsense so she must put on her own pyjamas and go straight to bed without disturbing Mummy, because Mummy needed lots of rest.
So Annabel started getting out of the bath by herself but she couldn’t dry herself properly and her pyjamas got all caught up in the bits where Mummy usually put the nice powder. Annabel couldn’t reach the nice powder and every night her pyjamas were all twisted and damp.
Natasha was resting a lot. Mrs Phelan said it was on ‘Doctor’s orders’, and that Annabel mustn’t do anything ‘silly’ like jump on the bed. Instead she should play quietly and not be a nuisance.
So she practised walking on tiptoes, which she learnt at her ballet class, and she listened at doors and once she crept into the pantry and ate biscuits, lots of them, one after the other, until the tin was empty. Mrs Phelan had shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘To be sure, there’s a great big mouse in the house. I’ve a good mind to put poison on the biscuits.’ So the next time Annabel crept into the pantry, she took a chair so that she could reach the cake tin, and ate cake instead.
One night when she was listening at her parents’ bedroom door she overheard her mother say, ‘Do you think Annabel’s getting a bit fat?’ And her father said, ‘That makes two of you,’ and her mother laughed, at which point Annabel realised that she had accidentally squeezed the cake she was holding in her hand and had to lick the squashed chocolate sponge off her fingers.
A few weeks after Annabel started getting in and out of the bath like a big girl on her own, Hugo decided it was time to tell her about ‘the new arrival’.
‘And while we’re at it, we might as well tell her about . . . you know what,’ he informed Natasha.
‘Darling, is that strictly necessary?’ Natasha queried. ‘Having a baby brother or sister is already quite a lot to take in, without that stuff on top.’
But Hugo insisted and one evening after tea, Annabel stood on the cream hearth rug and heard the carriage clock chime six times as her father told her that some little boys and girls didn’t live with their real mummies and daddies because of ‘circumstances’, but that many of these children were lucky enough to find happy homes, where they were looked after by mummies and daddies who, because they didn’t think they could have a baby of their own, took in someone else’s.
‘Like borrowing?’ she interrupted.
/> Sometimes Annabel went to the library with Mrs Phelan, who borrowed cowboy stories for Mr Phelan and romantic fiction, whatever that was, for herself, and books for Annabel because she was already starting to put letters together and form words, even though Mrs Phelan said her lad couldn’t manage that until he was a big boy of seven, God bless him.
‘Not quite like borrowing,’ replied Mummy. ‘Because you don’t get given back.’
‘Unless you’re very naughty,’ joked Daddy, but he wasn’t smiling when he said it and for a moment she saw herself being slotted back on a wooden shelf, waiting for the next set of parents to ‘borrow her’.
‘So we adopted you when you were a little baby,’ he went on, ‘which means that legally you are our responsibility.’
‘Because you’re very special,’ her mother added, and her eyes were shining.
‘Yes, all of that,’ her father continued. ‘But the thing is, now we’re having our own proper baby and very soon you will have a little brother.’
‘Or sister,’ her mother muttered nervously, her hands fluttering over her stomach as if to reassure herself the miracle Humpty Dumpty lump was still there. Hugo had already been to his mother’s house in Buckinghamshire to get his old train set out of the garage.
After the ‘little chat’, Annabel returned to the nursery and played ‘adopted babies’ with her toys, choosing which one she wanted to take home most, Teddy or Suki the doll. But it wasn’t a very good game because Annabel was a bit confused about the rules of adoption. She had a lot of questions that needed answering, but because she was under strict instructions not to bother her mother, she asked Mrs Phelan instead.
Mrs Phelan felt for the cross around her neck and after a lot of humming and hawing, told her about orphanages and unwanted babies.