by Polly Crosby
Dad’s bawling roar brought me back to the damp bathroom and the cold metal of the bath against my back. I picked up Picnic again and turned the pages, searching for the person I was now in the paintings before me. I stopped briefly on the shadowy woman. She was on her knees by the lake in this book, as if she had fallen, her hands still over her face. I wondered if she was meant to be me. I turned the page quickly.
There was no summer potion in this lake story, no skinny dipping or staring at naked breasts. No Stacey whatsoever. The place between my legs trembled at the memory of her.
Downstairs, Dad continued to remonstrate noisily with the air. I got up, pins and needles in my feet, and stood in front of the mirror. I so rarely looked at my reflection nowadays that I hardly recognised the girl that looked back at me. There was something of my mother in my pinched face, and something of my father in my bushy eyebrows. I could even sense something Monty-like in my eyes, a sort of wistful, almond-shaped slant, and for a second I thought I saw another set of eyelids slide across my pupils. I blinked, and they had gone.
I remembered when I was small, and had just met Stacey, I had tried to conjure her to me. I screwed up my eyes and counted to ten, trying to summon her into the mirror.
‘Romilly?’ Dad’s voice, cheerful now, drifted up the stairs to me.
I opened my eyes. My dull reflection looked back at me, brow furrowed, as if it were trying to work out what I was doing.
‘Girls?’ His voice was more insistent now, shouting almost. ‘Some help?’
Girls? His memory was so poor at the moment. He had forgotten again that Stacey no longer came around. I frowned at myself in the mirror. It felt like he was deliberately rubbing it in, taunting me for my loneliness. I left the bathroom, shutting the door on my reflection and stomped angrily downstairs, ready to give him a piece of my mind.
Halfway down I stopped. ‘Where on earth did you find that?’ I asked, staring at the apparition in the hallway, a sort of bushy Christmas tree with Dad’s arms and legs sprouting from it.
‘Ah, Lidiya, it was in the churchyard. They won’t miss it. I’ll put it back.’
‘Lidiya?’ I said, stopping on the last step.
‘Who? Grab the end, Roe, go on, there’s a good girl, it’s not too earthy.’
I took hold of the rooty base, looking at Dad warily, and together we heaved the tree into the snug, where Dad righted it and stood back to admire its gently shaking branches.
‘It’s for the new book.’
‘What book?’
‘The next treasure hunt book. The grand finale. It’s a Christmas book.’
‘But it’s September.’
‘Yes, and the book will be out in a month, time waits for no man.’
‘You’ve already finished it?’ I had known he was working on something, he had been spending so much time in his shed, despite the rot that had set in around its base. It was a relief to know: the treasure hunters that I had encountered over the summer had been desperate for any hint of when the next book was due, but as always, Dad had kept me in the dark.
‘Keep up, Romilly, goodness me. The publishers have asked for a painting to auction off for charity, but I’ll be damned if I give them an original from the book. I thought I’d make a copy: a little extra something to keep my richest treasure hunters happy. Imagine what they’ll pay for an original Kemp!’
I sat down on the sofa, trying to digest all that he had told me. The final book was already finished, the last piece of the puzzle, and the last ever Romilly story. I had had no idea.
‘When will we get the proof?’ I said.
‘They sent it a while back. It’s lying around here somewhere.’ He looked around the snug as if expecting to see it propped up by his feet.
‘They’ve already printed it? Why didn’t you show it to me?’ Dad had always given me the proof as soon as it was delivered so that I would have the chance to pore over it before anyone else did.
‘Stop whining, Romilly, and grab some decos, there’s work to be done.’
I got up grumpily and reached for the old cardboard box. Not even the sight of the glittering decorations filled me with cheer.
Christmas carols boomed out of the little room as we sweated in the stifling heat of the crackling fire, lifting our treasured decorations out and hanging them carefully on the tree. There were lopsided snowmen made out of cotton wool, and hand-painted angels, both of my own and my dad’s making. His were made of thin pieces of tin, and so intricately painted they seemed almost real. Mine were made from little cones of paper. They had round, red-cheeked faces and yellow wool for hair. I was embarrassed to remember how pleased I had been when I made them, and I crumpled one up and threw it on the fire when Dad wasn’t looking.
As the box became emptier and the tree more laden with glittering memories, I began to get that feeling of restive waiting that only comes on the nights before Christmas.
At the bottom of the box, on a soft bed of pine needles and the shimmering dust of baubles long since broken, lay one of my favourite decorations: a little gilt bird cage. Perched inside was a tiny bird, covered in fragments of real feathers. When you twisted the base of the cage, the bird’s minute beak opened and began to sing ‘The Holly and the Ivy’. I hung the cage on a prominent bough halfway up the tree and wound it up, sitting down on the sofa, humming to its tinny tune.
‘Why does the fire have to be lit?’ I asked, peeling off my jumper and wiping damp hair out of my eyes.
‘It has to be authentic,’ Dad said, a manic glint in his eye as he reached up and placed the star on top of the tree.
‘Hey! That’s my job!’ I had been looking forward to doing it for the first time without the need of a chair or a pair of grown-up arms to lift me. I looked at the star as it wobbled. It wasn’t even on straight. Dad just sighed huffily, leaning over to stoke the fire.
He set up his easel and blockaded himself in the snug with the whisky decanter and his paints, perfecting the shine of the tinsel and the glow of the embers with quick flicks of his brush. Christmas carols were replaced by cheesy Christmas pop as he worked, eventually overtaken by overtures of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. The house smelt faintly of pine and linseed oil, and I thought idly of last year’s crackers and if there might be some left over to pull.
We spent our evening in the snug, taking secret delight in its Christmas camouflage. The fire crackled away merrily, and Dad sat back in his chair with a sigh of pleasure, gazing at the Christmas tree. I noticed a bead of sweat running down his forehead. I watched it trickle into a crease above his eyebrow, and somewhere at the back of my mind I knew that what we were doing in this room was not normal; not right.
‘When’s lunch?’ Dad said, taking a sip of his port and smacking his lips together.
‘About five hours ago,’ I said.
‘How odd, I don’t remember. Did we have Brussels sprouts? Pigs in blankets?’
I eyed him warily. ‘No, we had jam sandwiches and a packet of crisps.’
‘What a terrible Christmas dinner.’
‘Well, it’s not really Christmas, is it, Dad? It’s September.’
He was looking down at his hands, his huge eyebrows furrowed so that I couldn’t see his eyes. ‘But I wanted presents,’ he said quietly.
He picked up a fallen plastic decoration and dangled it in front of Monty, who immediately pricked his ears up and batted at it. Dad twitched it some more, chuckling gruffly, and then with sudden enthusiasm he launched it into the fire. Monty charged after it. I shot off the sofa, grabbing the cat just in time. The decoration hit the flames and collapsed immediately like a dying star, melting into a puddle on the grate.
‘Dad! What on earth were you doing?’ I stroked Monty furiously, checking his ears and whiskers in case he was singed.
‘I was just playing,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think.’
I finally found the proof copy of Romilly’s Christmas the next day, wedged under a leg of the coffee table in the drawing room. I t
urned the pages slowly, mesmerised by the glow of the paintings within.
Perhaps it was just because I was getting older, but this book felt significantly different to the rest: the colours were richer, like paintings from the golden age of the Dutch masters. There was a depth to the artwork that I hadn’t noticed in the previous books, as if something was hiding in the shadows just out of sight, some hidden meaning I couldn’t quite penetrate. Each picture was lit with a warm, treacly light, like diffused candlelight, or the dim flicker of an open fire.
My heart leapt when I first saw the little silhouette of me running across the top of each page, for, finally, Dad had got it right. In this book I was chasing the animals, not the other way round. At first it was rabbits and frogs, but further on in the book the animals got bigger, and I was tearing after tigers and frightening off rhinos, until, on the last page, a wily old crocodile scuttled away from me as I charged towards him.
This new book was special in many ways. It was a winter book, and although every page felt warm and Christmassy, Dad had painted a small window into every scene, reminding us that outside, the bleak, snow-filled skies loomed on the horizon.
There was a sadness to the pictures. One page showed the kitchen, our little table covered in the trappings of a Christmas dinner. On first look it was wonderfully festive, but as I looked closer, I saw that the Christmas pudding, instead of being lit by a halo of blue brandy, was smoking as if it had been left to go out. The crackers had been pulled and the hats lay torn on the table. The turkey had been stripped of meat, its skeleton lying upended on a plate, and the cranberry sauce had been spilt, leaking red across the table. This was a Christmas meal where an argument had ensued. It was the Mary Celeste of feasts, the players having left a moment before, never to return.
The more I looked, the more I felt as if the pages were loaded with symbolism. Vases of flowers were arranged with random objects – a skull here, a dead pheasant there – like Victorian still life paintings, the light playing over them thick and caramelised. It felt like Braër House of a hundred years ago. And always, on every page, there was a jug of dusky pink roses, their petals turning, changing, beginning their descent into decay. There was a finality about every picture, a reminder that life does not carry on forever, that there always must be an ending.
The shadowy woman was on the final page. This was the only painting not set inside Braër. It depicted Monty and me laughing and grinning as we made a snowman in the frosty garden. But even here the snow was beginning to melt. There were dark pools of slush on the edges of the picture, ice dripping from the end of the snowman’s nose.
I didn’t see the shadowy woman at first. She was lying on the ground, half-hidden by the silhouettes of old logs and creeping brambles, but once I had found her, my eyes locked onto her, unable to stop looking. Her hands were over her face still, and she looked so desolate and sad. Something about her pose brought to mind a memory. I got up and found the other books, looking at her in each of them. The memory began to crystallise, and quickly I found some of Dad’s tracing paper and a pencil.
I set to work, tracing each version of her onto a separate sheet, starting with the first book, where she was standing upright, and working through to the last, where she lay, her hands over her face. I stapled the pages together and lifted the edges with my thumb, letting them fall back slowly. I did it again and again, faster and faster, watching as she began to move under my hand, flickering into life at my touch. She stood serenely, her long hair flowing, then she raised her hands to her face, and her knees crumpled until finally she lay, defeated on the ground.
Again and again I flicked through the little book I had created, and again and again she put her hands to her face and collapsed to the ground. I could almost hear the sob emanating from her, the long, guttural cry of despair, and I knew I had heard it before.
It was the keening cry of my mother, the awful wail as she sank to the floor, her hands to her face, while I looked on, helpless, locked in the pantry.
When Dad had finished the painting in the snug, I helped pack it all away, feeling again the strangeness of a Christmas that had never been. The melted decoration clung to the grate, and I prised it off with a knife without saying anything.
Dad was humming ‘Good King Wenceslas’ cheerfully.
‘It’s Mum, isn’t it?’ I said, scraping at the grate with the knife.
‘What is?’
‘The shadowy woman in your books.’ Dad stopped trying to untie the star and looked at me. ‘She’s sad about something, isn’t she?’ I said. ‘She’s crying.’
‘How did you work it out?’ he said.
‘When she locked me in the pantry, the first time she came back, I watched her through the keyhole. She fell to her knees and cried, just like in your pictures. And when she came for my birthday tea a few weeks ago, she put her hands to her face as if she couldn’t cope with what was going on. It’s something she does, isn’t it? You’ve seen her do it too.’
Dad sat down on the sofa, narrowly missing a bauble.
‘Why is she so sad?’ I said.
‘Some people are born to be sad,’ he said, ‘and sometimes things happen to make them even sadder.’ He picked the bauble up and held it in his hand, looking at his reflection in its shiny surface.
‘What happened?’ I said.
Dad breathed a deep sigh. ‘You’ll understand one day, I promise,’ he said.
‘You always say that,’ I said crossly, ‘I want to understand now.’
Dad had taken some more baubles off the tree. He was putting them in a line on the rug by his feet.
I watched him, waiting for his reply. Behind me, the fire crackled, hissing into the quiet room.
‘Dad,’ I said angrily.
‘Help me, Romilly, I can’t seem to count them.’ He was staring at the baubles, his eyebrows furrowed.
‘Why do you need to count them?’
‘I… I don’t know.’ He began hurriedly collecting them up, his huge fists manhandling them so fiercely I thought their delicate glass might dissolve into powder in his hands.
‘Here, Dad, let me.’ I crouched down to help.
‘No!’ His voice was loud. Far too loud for the little room, and it pushed me to the floor with its force. Dad was looming over me, looking at the baubles in his hands as if they were something alien. I stood up warily.
‘It’s my job,’ he said quietly, ‘it’s always been my job.’ Then he looked up and saw me standing there and his face changed. A look of fear came over his eyes and he mouthed something, like an exhalation of breath.
‘Ff…’ he said, ‘fff…’
And then his skin seemed to warp and change as if poison gas was siphoning over his features, and he shouted, ‘Get out. Get out!’ Throwing the words at me like grenades, their force pushing me back into the door. I scrabbled for the doorknob behind me. He was twisting around now, like a trapped giant. He took a step forward and his huge body knocked the tree over. It crashed down in the tiny room, the remaining decorations smashing to the ground.
A lone red bauble rolled towards me, and I ducked and grabbed it, before turning and pulling the door open and running.
Out of the snug, along the hallway, down through the garden and the meadow and into the mobiles. Forgetting they were dangerous. Forgetting about past accidents. Forgetting. Forgetting. Forgetting.
Dad found me hours later, sitting under the inky sky, the bauble cradled in my palm.
‘Come,’ he said, offering a hand, ‘we need to talk.’
We sat in the snug, the tree still upended between us. Dad was Dad again, but a paler version. A cowed, fragile Dad, shrunken with shame.
‘There’s no easy way to say this, Romilly, so I’m just going to come out with it: your old Dad’s not well.’ I looked at him. He looked scared, as if he’d never spoken the words out loud before.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have an illness called dementia. It’s affecting my memory, m
y…’ He shook his head, trailing off. His voice was infused with sadness. Where was my great bear, I thought, in this broken being before me? The edges of my heart began to curl inside my chest.
‘Is it serious?’
He nodded.
‘Will you get better?’ I asked, dreading the answer. He lifted his eyes to meet mine and shook his head.
‘No,’ I said, standing up abruptly. Dad grabbed my hand, his huge fingers desperately stroking my own small ones as if this small gesture could make everything all right. My whole body trembled, the room a blur of colour as tears coated my eyes.
‘I’ve… I’ve known about it for a few years,’ he said, speaking faster now, as if now he had started, he couldn’t stop until he had said it all, ‘but it’s never really impacted on our lives… never really been important, until now.’
The outpouring stopped abruptly. I stood over him, looking down at this man, my father. He watched me silently, his pale face a moon, orbiting me in the hot room. I could feel the cloying scent of terpene and pine resin coating the back of my throat. I felt sick. I turned to the fallen fir tree and plucked a pine needle from its branches, unable to look at Dad.
‘It may not get any worse for a long time,’ he said. ‘And there’ll be good days among the bad, I promise. Whatever happens, I’m still here. I’m still me, inside.’
The sound of his hand thudding against his chest made me glance up. He was covering his heart with his huge fist. The gesture made him look like he was clutching at his heart, as if it too had started to fail.
‘Will you die?’ I whispered. I could hear his inhalation of breath. I forced myself to keep looking at him.
Dad opened his mouth to speak, but only a quiet moan came from his throat. He lifted his arms to me and I ran to him, melting into him, enveloped by his warm grown-up smell, ignoring the sour tang clinging to his skin that I had never noticed before.