by Julia Green
‘And that’s not the worst thing. Not by a million miles. All these years and years and you’ve never had the guts to tell me the truth about my mother. Never talked about her or told me why she went or where she is now. You never even told me her real name.’
Dad steps back. It makes me want to hit him.
‘You could have told me that, don’t you think? One little thing about her NAME. Francesca DAVIDSON! Hah!’ I spit the words out, hurl them like stones. ‘Can you imagine what it’s like, to suddenly find that out, when you are sixteen? No. Because you’re too much of a coward. Because you never think about anyone except yourself.’
‘That’s not true –’ Dad starts to defend himself, but his phone rings at the same moment.
I can’t believe what he does next. He actually pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks to see who it is! And then he answers it. The final insult.
‘Cassy? What’s up?’ He turns away from me to talk to her.
That’s how it’s always going to be. Clear as anything, I see how it will be from now on. Cassy first. Cassy-and-baby first.
I start running.
Dad calls after me. ‘Emily? Wait a moment. We will talk about it . . . just let me sort this out and then –’
‘Piss off, Dad.’
I skid in the mud, fumble my way under the willow trees, climb through the barbed-wire fence into the copse where Mattie went after the rabbits. My jacket gets snagged on the wire and I have to unhook it, before I can start running again, pushing through the wet branches and brambles and undergrowth, my face wet and my eyes smarting.
A huge bird rears up from a dead branch and flaps away noisily over the treetops. I keep running and crying and stumbling, my jeans sopping and my boots muddy and disgusting, until I’m out of breath and shaking, my heart thumping so loud it makes my ears ring.
I finally stop, and listen. Silence closes in. No traffic sounds, or birds even. Just a faint dripping sound of rain on leaves. No sound of Dad crashing after me through the undergrowth. No chance, then, of carrying on shouting and hurting him and getting it all out of me, letting go of all those horrible thoughts and feelings, saying all the cooped-up words at last.
Instead, he’s obviously gone back to talk to Cassy about the house. Even the house is more important than me.
I lean back against the wet bark of an oak tree. My feet slip in the dead leaves at the base of the trunk and I let myself slide, down to earth, till I’m actually sitting on the wet ground, my back against the tree. I hug my knees.
I’m just another wet thing in the wet wood, almost the same colour, now, with all the mud and the rain and the bits of twig and dead stuff caught on my jacket and in my hair.
The rain turns to a fine drizzle. It drips through the tree on to my head and shoulders. I don’t move. The rain finally stops, although every time the wind moves the branches a fine spray spatters down. Still I crouch there.
Nearby, a bird starts to sing. I can actually see its throat quivering as it opens its beak. Other birds join in. It’s like the wood comes alive again. Some creature rustles through the dead leaves under the bramble thicket. A woodpecker hammers the trunk of a tree some way off. Now the rain has stopped I can hear the rush of the river as it tumbles over the weir further down the valley.
Another time. A different wood. Kat and me, playing under an oak tree while Dad is – where? I can’t remember. Just the waiting for him to come back, and a sort of worry in my belly: he’s been too long. Kat peels the bark off a stick. I watch a line of ants march single file across the corner of the blanket, holding their tiny burden of crumbs above their heads. A column of flies rise and fall in flight together. A background hum of insect life. The smell of peaty earth: leaf mould. I take a stick and drill it down into the sweet rich earth, down through the layers of rotting leaves, one autumn over another, down to the soil dark as coffee grounds.
That’s what memory is like: layers, one overlapping another, and compacting down the way old leaves slowly crumble and turn to a rich peaty soil, nourishing the new things that will grow. It’s why it’s important, remembering things. It’s why it matters, when the memories aren’t there, and no one fill in the gaps for you.
A twig snaps. I’m suddenly alert, watchful. A swishing sound: feet moving through wet grass. I stay as still as I can, hunched against my tree, arms round my knees, blending into the life of the woods.
A fox? A person?
I let my breath out slowly.
I see Dad before he sees me. He looks tired, and old, his face somehow not yet ready, not expecting to be seen.
‘Dad?’
He stops; he looks baffled for the second before he sees me, camouflaged against the tree. He comes over. ‘Found a dry spot?’ he says.
‘Not really. It’s OK.’
He hunkers down beside me. We don’t speak.
I’m not angry, now I see Dad. I’m just glad he’s here. That he did come to find me, after all.
‘Did we live near some woods a bit like these, once?’ I say. ‘Did Kat and I play there?’
‘A long, long time ago. Fancy you remembering that. You were very little,’ Dad says.
‘I’m not sure what I remember,’ I say, ‘and what I’ve been told. Kat used to tell me things.’
Dad thinks for a while. ‘Sometimes we went for walks at the weekends. We pushed you in the buggy as far as the bridge, then I carried you on my shoulders, up into the woods. You and Kat played on the rug, and I picked blackberries, or just walked a bit further.’ He looks at me. ‘It was after your mother left.’
His words hang there between us. All the pain and sadness in that little word: left.
Is he going to talk about her at last? I sit very still, not wanting to disturb this moment, waiting and hoping.
Dad clears his throat. He starts talking again. ‘Everything was a struggle. I was beside myself. Two small daughters and a full-time job and not a clue why she’d gone, how she could do such a thing. The selfishness of it was breathtaking.’ He picks at a twig. He doesn’t notice the thorns, the beads of blood oozing along a fine tear in the skin on his hand.
‘I know we messed up, Francesca and I. But I did the best I could, then and ever since, Em. And you and Kat have come through it all just fine. Better than fine. Francesca said you’d be better off without her, and perhaps she was right, after all. You and Kat stopped talking about her pretty soon, at least. Stopped asking for her.’
For a moment I glimpse us: little Emily and not-much-bigger Katharine. Waking in the night, calling for our mummy in the darkness. And she doesn’t come, however much we call. Dad, tears wet on his cheeks, holding us, one arm around each, and the night light making a yellow moon on the bedroom wall.
Is it a real memory? Or a picture I make for myself, out of the dark?
Dad keeps talking. ‘Your mother fell for someone. She said he made her complete, in a way I never had, never could. That with him she could be the woman she really was. The woman and the artist. He was an artist too, of course. But he didn’t have children. Children didn’t fit in with his scheme of things.’
Dad looks at me. ‘I’ve kept my mouth shut about your mother all these years because I promised myself I wouldn’t dump all my bitterness and anger about her on to you and Kat. Because she is still your mother, in name at least.’
‘Not even in name,’ I say. ‘We don’t even share the same name.’
Dad sighs. ‘Davidson was simply her name before we married, and she didn’t see why she should change it. Lots of women feel like that. I didn’t mind. It didn’t seem important.’
‘But you should have told me,’ I say. ‘You should have said something.’
Dad sits up a bit straighter. ‘It’s cold here. Are you ready to go back?’
I can’t bear to stop now. All the things I want to know . . .
‘What did she look like?’ I say. ‘Tell me about her.’
He thinks for a bit. ‘A little like Kat, a lot like y
ou. Dark, and pretty.’
I don’t think of me as being pretty. I don’t want to be. It makes people like you for the wrong reasons. I want people to like me because I’m me, not because of what I look like. In any case, everyone says Kat is the pretty one.
Dad stands up and brushes the leaves off his coat. ‘Come on, Em. Time to head back. Cassy’s already overdone it today. We need to take care of her a bit more, with the baby and everything.’ His voice changes, not sad, now, but confident, assertive. The usual Dad. ‘She means the world to me, Em. You have got to understand that. When Cassy came along, she turned things back to good. I was scared I might lose everything. Lose you and Kat. She made life seem possible again. She did a great job helping bring you two up. And I don’t want to start upsetting her now, raking up the past, talking about Francesca.’
So. That’s it, then? Dad’s closing down. Our little window of intimacy has shut again.
‘You go. I’ll come back later,’ I say.
‘You’ll have to make your own way back, then,’ Dad says.
I watch him going back under the trees. His footsteps get fainter. He doesn’t look back once.
7
Emily Woodman c/o Moat House
I pick up the envelope from the caravan table and stare at the unfamiliar handwriting on the front. Who would write to me at Moat House? And instantly I know, and my heart’s hammering against my ribs and I snatch the envelope up and go to lie on the top bunk to open it, where no one can see.
Inside is a postcard with an aerial view of the Island of Portland, and a cross marked in blue biro on a cliff on one side. I turn it over.
It’s good here – hard work though . . . The course is brilliant and I’ve met some amazing people . . . I’ve learned how to do lettering and different techniques for cutting and carving stone by hand. There is a prison on the island and it’s all a bit grey and cold but interesting. The actual quarry is extraordinary . . . It makes me think about your idea of photography as a kind of drawing with light. When the sun shines, the stone is like a block of light and cutting it with the chisel, you make lines of darkness and shadow. (Poetic enough for you?) I am sorry we fell out. Still don’t really get it. Sorry I went off without telling you. Hope you are OK. Missing you. Love Seb
I read it over and over. I pick out the words I want to hear. Sorry. Missing you. Love.
I tuck the card between the pages of the blue and gold notebook, to keep it safe.
I find my school pencil case, take out my ink pen, rummage through my stack of photographs to find one to send back like a postcard. I choose one of the little Christmas tree. I phone Avril to get Auntie Ruby’s address.
Thanks for your card. Really glad you like your course. Missing you too. Sorry about how I was. Lots more to tell you. See you soon. Em xxx
I take a deep breath. Perhaps there’s a way Seb and I can work things out, after all. I let myself begin to hope.
8
To: emilywoodman2
From: katkin
Hello Em! How are you? I’ve got a bad cold and too much work! Missed all my lectures this week. Don’t tell Dad. Got to bed at 3 a.m. last night cos we went to an awesome new club. Have u and Seb made up? Forget about looking for F. I mean it. We don’t need her messing everything up now.
Lots of love K xx
I’m about to email Kat back when Cassy stumbles through the door and dumps a cardboard box on the table in the caravan.
‘Should you be carrying that?’ I say.
‘Probably not! Don’t tell Rob. It’s something I wanted to do for you. I went to the storage place. Found it eventually.’
‘What is it?’
‘Come and take a look.’ Cassy’s grinning wildly.
I untie the string and lift the flaps of the box. Inside, I find two albums and a stack of loose photographs. ‘For my project?’ I ask Cassy, confused.
She shakes her head. ‘It might fill some of the gaps. I don’t really know what’s in there, but they’re from when you were a baby. They might help . . . with memories and stuff. From when you were little. Your dad told me you were asking.’
She leaves me there while she puts the kettle on and starts making tea. She curls up on the sofa with her pregnancy book, and leaves me to get on with it by myself.
The photos are a mix: Kat and me, Cassy and Dad. School photos, boring studio-type photos of us in school uniform. Holiday snaps; sandy beaches, Kat and me playing, a very young-looking Cassy doing cartwheels along the sand, and Kat and me trying to copy her, all of us grinning at the camera. I don’t remember that holiday though. It’s like looking at someone else’s life. There are lots of photos of houses: places we’ve lived over the years, places we’ve stayed for holidays. One I stare at for ages, because the garden looks so familiar: the square lawn, and the tree in the middle, and the vegetable garden behind, with rows of currant bushes. It’s the garden from the memory, Kat reading to me.
The albums I don’t remember seeing before. There have always been a few framed photos of us as babies, stuck up round the houses we’ve lived in, but these are proper albums like hard-backed books. I pick up the blue one, study the handwriting along the label on the spine: the fine looping letters. It’s a grown-up version of the writing in our story book: Francesca’s hand, shaping the letters for Katharine Jane. 7 July.
I glance at Cassy. She’s immersed in her book. I turn over the first page of the album. Two photographs fill the page. The first is black and white. It shows a newborn baby lying in a basket, a shaft of sunlight catching her hand. The light picks out fine details: the texture of the quilt, the weave of the basket, the soft baby skin. In the second picture, in colour this time, the same baby – Kat – is being held over someone’s shoulder, so Kat’s little round face is peeping at the camera, her eyes blue and wide open. The shoulder belongs to a woman in a turquoise short-sleeved dress. You can see the back of her head: long, dark hair in a loose plait.
I start to feel dizzy.
I make myself turn over the page.
There she is again. Wavy dark hair, loose in this photo, falling forward as she bends her head down, feeding the baby. She’s looking down at the baby – at Kat – rather than at the camera. On the opposite page she’s looking straight at whoever is taking the picture, smiling, as if they are in mid-conversation.
I stare at her for a long time.
She smiles back, her mouth half open in speech.
It’s the strangest thing. I’m looking at Francesca, and I don’t feel a rush of recognition, or any feeling other than intense curiosity. As if she’s a puzzle I’m trying to unravel, a secret code I need to decipher.
It gets easier, turning the pages. There aren’t that many of Francesca, and gradually I work out that it must be her who’s taking the photographs. They’re very good: not your average snapshots like most of the loose photos in the box from later on, but taken with a proper quality camera, single lens reflex, by someone who understands about light, and composition, and then has developed them herself.
My mother the photographer.
I pick up the second album. On the cream spine the label says, Emily Anna. 21 June.
There are fewer photos in this album. There’s one of me in the same basket, the same pale blue quilt with white rabbits, as Kat. Me propped up against cushions, in a chair. One family one, taken perhaps on a timer, because Kat, Dad and Francesca have the sort of rigid smile you might have if you’ve had to wait a while for the shutter. Dad’s holding me. I’m wrapped in a lacy shawl. Kat, a toddler, sits on Francesca’s lap, one hand against the side of Francesca’s mouth as if she’s trying to stop her speaking.
I study all the pictures of Francesca, trying to find some clue about what she’s feeling, but I can’t tell.
‘All right?’ Cassy says from the sofa. ‘Found anything?’
‘Some of me as a baby. And lots of Kat.’
‘And Francesca?’
‘Yes.’
‘Want to show me?’
‘If you like.’
I wonder guiltily what Dad would say. But Cassy seems completely fine about it. Maybe Dad’s wrong about her. Maybe, after all, it’s just Dad who gets upset about Francesca, not Cassy.
‘She’s very attractive,’ Cassy says. We peer into Francesca’s face, both of us. ‘No wonder that bloke fell in love with her.’
‘What was his name? Do you know?’
‘He was French, I think. Pierre? Something like that. It made your dad so angry that even all these years later he can hardly speak about it. As you may have noticed. It almost destroyed him.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I’ve no idea. She never wrote or phoned or anything, as far as I know. I couldn’t understand it. How she could just vanish out of her children’s lives. Such a selfish thing to do!’
‘She must have had her reasons,’ I say, starting to pile the photos and albums back into the box. Suddenly I don’t want to hear Cassy’s opinions of my mother.
I put all the photos back except one. I slip it into my pocket for now; later I’ll put it in the notebook. It’s one I didn’t show Cassy, of an older Francesca in a blue sleeveless dress, in front of a house. A big stone house with a woodpile along one wall, and a balcony under an upstairs window. She’s holding a grey tabby cat in her arms, and she’s looking directly at the camera, her face relaxed and open. The light is strong sunlight, but with long shadows, as if it’s late afternoon, somewhere hot.
It’s another piece of the puzzle.
She must have sent that afterwards, later. And for some reason, Dad kept it safe.
Cassy and I hide the box in my room with all the other stuff under Kat’s bunk.
‘I’ll smuggle it back to the store sometime when your dad’s not around,’ Cassy says. ‘He doesn’t need to know.’
‘Why would he mind? They’re only photos,’ I say.
Cassy sighs heavily. ‘They are memories, aren’t they? They stir things up. It’s complicated. He was badly hurt. You know that, Em.’
‘But it’s my past too, and I need to know.’