The Daughters of Foxcote Manor

by Eve Chase

  “You’ve got to wash your hair?” There’s no bitterness in his voice. But some of his bounce has gone.

  Oh, no. Does her hair look dirty? She flattens her cowlick with the palm of her hand. “It’s not that, just . . .” She stops. Just what? The world won’t end! The children will survive without her. Marge won’t actually pickle Don in a jar—more’s the pity. Even Hera’s unlikely to try to burn the place down twice in one week. As her resistance to Robbie’s invitation inverts, like a current changing course, she feels an unexpected recklessness, a novel thrill, and her body starts to hum. What’s the worst that could happen? “Yes, please.”

  35

  Hera

  The moment Big Rita’s gone, Foxcote Manor feels unstable, like a tent without pegs in a gathering storm. From the drawing-room window, I watch her legs swing up into Robbie’s muddy truck. She looks happy, more like she used to, and is wearing her pink cardigan, which she never wears. It makes her look too pretty, less like a nanny. My fingertips tingle, like when you know something bad is about to happen. Just not exactly what.

  I mooch around, trying to murder the minutes until Big Rita returns. Don lies on the sofa and blows cigarette smoke over Baby Forest, who is lying on a cushion, gnawing on her fist, waiting for Big Rita. I manage to pocket his lighter, a metal one, Zippo, a satisfying prize. He doesn’t notice.

  Mother reads her book, her bare leg on a footstool, her toenails newly painted red. Teddy lies across the rug on his tummy and drops a net bag of swirly blue marbles from one hand to the other, making a gritty glass-crunching sound.

  “Feels sort of funny without Rita, doesn’t it?” Mother observes, looking up from her book. It’s a romance, with a woman in a bodice on the cover, the sort of book my aunt Edie calls “kindling.”

  “Sort of liberating.” Don tosses her a Look. Clearly, a “nap” is imminent.

  “She’ll be back soon, won’t she?” Teddy has his worried face on, and I feel for him.

  “I don’t know, Teddy.” Don stubs out his cigarette. “Could be Rita’s lucky night. She might roll back at dawn. Wearing nothing but oak leaves,” he adds, grinning, like he might be picturing it.

  Mother smiles, licks a finger, and turns a page. “Well, I won’t complain if she does. She deserves a bit of fun.” She looks up again and says firmly to Don, “Robbie’s terribly nice.”

  “Since when did women go for nice?” Don yawns, rubbing his fingers through his stubble.

  Mother’s lips purse slightly. She doesn’t look up from her book.

  I don’t want Big Rita to fall for Robbie and lose interest in us, but I think she could do with a nice thing happening to her. These last few days I keep catching her staring into space. And I’m pretty sure she was crying as she cooked lunch yesterday. She said it was the onions. But she was chopping celery.

  Don lumbers up and wanders over to the drinks trolley. He picks up bottles, reads the labels, and puts them down again with a chink. He shoots Mother another coded look.

  On cue: “Hera, darling, could you look after Teddy and the baby for half an hour?” Mother doesn’t say the word nap. She doesn’t have to. She springs up from her chair. “Marge made a mushroom soup. You can heat that up for supper. Give the baby a bottle. You’re so good at it.”

  “Okay.” I suddenly know I’ll always remember my mother in her sky-blue dress and the baby cooing on the sofa, her dark eyes searching for Big Rita. The sound of glass marbles colliding in Teddy’s hands. Don muttering, “Where did I put that lighter?” as he moves to follow Mother out of the room.

  “But you said you’d take me shooting!” Teddy propels himself forward on the rug and grabs Don’s tanned ankle.

  Don shakes him off, as if he were an annoying puppy. “Later, okay?”

  In the kitchen, I warm up Marge’s soup on the hot plate while Teddy sits next to the baby in the trug and sings “This Little Piggy” and tugs at her toes. The soup tastes like how fungi smell, dank and earthy, the fat pale mushroom stalks bobbing about like bones. Neither of us can eat it, so we fill up on piles of cold apple crumble, swimming in a moat of cream. Teddy lets the baby suck cream off his little finger while I warm her bottle, flicking the milk on my wrist to check its temperature, like Big Rita does. But I’m not Big Rita. And the baby knows it, twisting on my lap, glancing from side to side so the teat keeps popping out, refusing to settle. We decide she may be happier in the drawing room. She isn’t.

  For no reason, Teddy explodes into tears. The baby is so surprised by this outburst she stops whimpering and fidgeting and starts to feed, which is good.

  “What’s up with you?” I rock the baby like a dolly as she drains the bottle, dribbling milk over the sofa.

  “I have worries, Hera.” He struggles to get out the words.

  I reach across and rub his shoulder with my spare hand. “Big Rita will be back soon.”

  “I miss Daddy.” He sniffs, wiping his nose on his arm.

  “Daddy?” I can’t let myself miss Daddy. There would be too many complicated feelings. Like when you mix bright colors and end up with that sludgy brown.

  Teddy nods snottily. “I’ve tried to pretend Don’s Daddy. But he’s not.”

  “No, he really, really isn’t,” I say, making the baby start. I lower my voice again. “You’ll see Daddy soon, Teddy. Big Rita spoke to him.”

  And this is the problem. Daddy doesn’t know about the baby yet. I’ve started to dread the moment he finds out. What if he takes one of his “moral stances” and makes us hand in the baby immediately, as if she were a purse found on the pavement? What if he doesn’t want her? Back in London, neighbors like the Pickerings will be waiting, peering over the fence, muttering about golf and dinner parties and who’s got the best gardener. How will a foundling fit? I simply can’t work out how we get from this point to that. I’m not sure Mother can, either.

  Teddy starts to sob again, harder this time.

  “Oh, Teddy. Take the baby. She’ll cheer you up. Whoa . . . support her neck. Yes, that’s it.” Teddy holds her warily. “Smell the top of her head. It’ll make you feel better. It just will. Promise.”

  He sniffs it and lets her worm her finger into his ear.

  “Smells like yogurt.” He sniffs again. “And Big Rita.”

  “There you go. And you feel a bit better?”

  “Sort of.” And I can tell he doesn’t, that he’s just trying to please me. I’m not even sure he loves the baby as much as he did. His forehead goes ribbed, serious, like a little old man’s. “There’s something else, Hera,” he whispers.

  Inside my head, a whirring, like a mosquito you can hear but can’t see. “What?”

  “I heard Don say to Mummy . . .”—his bottom lip puckers—“‘Let’s run away together, Jeannie.’ That’s what he said.”

  “Well then, he’s a twerp, isn’t he? Mother would never do that.” I hug him and the baby. Not wanting to let go. Ever. “She’d never leave you, Teddy.” But would she leave me? What if she doesn’t want to be a mother at all anymore, but someone else, like Aunt Edie? The thought is like a hole opening up in the floor.

  Under my arm, Teddy’s shoulders start to heave. I hate seeing him this upset. Desperately try to think like Big Rita. What would she do? “Wait there, Teddy. Don’t move.”

  Carrying down the terrarium from my bedroom, I’m unable to lift my hands and stopper my ears from the piggy grunts sliding out from under Mother’s bedroom door. I carefully rest it on the living-room rug. “Ta-da!”

  Teddy’s eyes bug. He plops the baby on the sofa, like a toy he’s tiring of, and kneels down beside the glass case, now sparkling again after the fire, with only a tiny bit of soot in the hinges. He peers into it, his eyes widening, a smile spreading. The baby gurgles happily.

  “Playing doll’s houses, Teddy?” Don makes us jump. He stands in the doorway, looking like he’s run ten miles,
his hair sprouting out at odd angles on his head, two red dots on his cheekbones. The baby kicks on the sofa.

  Teddy edges away from the terrarium, pretending he’s not interested. “I was waiting for you. To go shooting. Boys’ stuff.”

  Don walks over to the drinks trolley and pours himself a whiskey, knocking it back in one. “Better.”

  Above us, I can hear the sound of Mother’s bath taps running.

  Teddy jumps up. “I’ll go and get ready. Long trousers?”

  Don raises his glass. “Learning fast.”

  I shut the door so Teddy can’t hear and turn to face him, my arms crossed. “You’re trying to get Mother to leave us! Teddy told me.”

  “You, Hera, are a riot.” He doesn’t even deny it.

  “You can’t tell her what to do!”

  “I assure you no one tells your mother what to do. Apart from that bully your father.”

  “We were happy before you came here.” My voice quakes. “Us and the baby.”

  He glances irritably at Baby Forest on the sofa—she’s grumbling and scratching at her cheeks. He looks back at me and his eyes are glinting dangerously, blue as Teddy’s marbles, just as hard. “If you were all so happy, why did you lie to your mother, Hera? Hide things from her? Do you want to tell me what you did with my letter?”

  My mouth opens and shuts. So Mother was awake that night as I sat beside her bed in the dark, whispering confidences. The world tips. She must hate me.

  He steps closer. “And how have you, her fiery disappointment of a daughter, made your mother happy exactly, Hera? Tell me.” He raises his hand.

  I know he’s going to hit me, like he hit Mother. But I refuse to flinch. I ball my fists at my sides, bare my teeth, snarl, ready to fight back. But to my surprise, he strokes my cheek instead, which is so much worse. “Hera, I’ll let you in on a secret.” He brushes a hank of my growing-out fringe from my face. “It was your mother who suggested us running away. Not me.”

  The kick is a reflex. I get him in the shin. Then again between the legs, in the balls. He roars and grabs his crotch. “You fat little—”

  He barrels toward me with his arms outstretched, like he’s trying to catch a chicken in a yard. But I take refuge behind an armchair. He charges again. I leap behind another. He’s big and slow and clumsy. “Call yourself a hunter?” I tease. The baby gurgles on the sofa, like she’s laughing too.

  It happens in slow motion. One second Don’s panting, hands on his knees, the next he’s swinging at the defenseless target with the full force of his right foot, and all I can hear is the sound of my own voice screaming, “No!”

  36

  Sylvie

  I’d really like to know what happened next, that’s all,” Annie says sleepily, as if we’re debating whether to stream the next Netflix episode. “Like who died in the woods that day. And why.”

  “Me too.” I yawn. My jaw pops. The motorway whips past. My eyes are tired, the lights starting to smear. I’m craving the lovely brain blot of an enormous glass of cold white wine. London glows in the distance. Almost home.

  “But I guess it was a long time ago.” She sighs, with a note of resignation.

  “Very,” I say firmly, not wanting the forest’s secrets to linger in Annie’s pregnant body, like microscopic fungal spores. I want to nourish her with good things, happy thoughts. So I don’t tell her that a part of me is still walking down Hawkswell’s cobbled damp streets—and the past feels very close indeed. Or that I can smell the forest faintly, every time I move, as if it’s caught in the spirals of my hair, the layers of my skin. Leaf mold. Soil. Resin. Or maybe it’s just that the gutsy little girl who used to climb trees is still in me somewhere, despite me spending a lifetime smothering her in sequins, jumpsuits, and Paris-red lipstick. You can’t get much farther from a forest than backstage at a fashion show, I realize with a small smile.

  “Will you go back, Mum?” Annie asks suddenly. “To the forest?”

  The direct question takes me by surprise. “Well, we’ve got the recording for Granny now,” I say, not quite answering. I know I will go back. I have to go back. But alone.

  I can’t get the woman out of my head. Marge. Something was off about her. “She’s the spit . . .” she’d said about Annie, and this thought is much more unsettling to me than a corpse in the woods forty-odd years ago.

  Whenever I accidentally switch on FaceTime or take a selfie without wearing sunglasses, it’s always a shock, the brutal objective evidence of myself, the older face imprinted on mine, waiting in line for me to look like her. It’s not just that, like most of my fortysomething friends, I balk at any evidence that I’m not thirty-three. (I feel thirty-three!) It’s also the strangers emerging as the years stream past. Generations of unknown women going back through time. The history under my skin. And Annie’s, clearly.

  One particular afternoon at middle school. On my knee, a plaster that was so much paler and pinker than my skin, like all plasters were back then. The grainy scoop of the red plastic school chair. And the dreaded approach of the teacher, the one who’d asked the class to draw their family tree. Worse, she leaned over my shoulder, with staff-room coffee breath, and asked who I looked most like. In front of everyone. For a moment my tongue was stuck. There was a roar in my head. And I felt hot and ashamed, like I should confess to something, although I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. So I said simply, “I look like me.” And I stored the incident—and the teacher’s question—away, unexamined. I never mentioned it to Mum.

  But now I kick myself for not asking more questions when I could, rather than hiding behind Mum’s reluctance to talk about a difficult period in her life and my fear of being hurt, a rejection so fundamental it felt like it might eat me from within if I gave it too much air time. Our mutual evasion was conspiratorial and extremely effective, I think, as the motorway lane starts to slow, clogging at London’s approach.

  “Listening to woodland sounds will be nicer than all those hospital machines beeping anyway,” Annie says. Her voice sounds weary. I glance across. She’s leaning her head against the window, crushing her thick red hair—whose hair?—against the glass.

  I feel a snag of anxiety. Maybe today’s been too much. Was it irresponsible of me to bring her? In my efforts to support Annie and be more open, have I gone too far? The questions roil in my head. “Sleep. Been a long day.”

  Annie’s eyes close instantly, and her breathing changes. She looks so young. And I recall how I loved her with such searing intensity when she was asleep as a small child, that fleeting stretch of peace when I could notice the love, let it wrap around me. And I notice it now, just the same.

  A minute later, my phone rings. The caller’s mobile number lights up on my dashboard. Not one I recognize. Not the hospital: I live in dread of their bad-news calls. Spam? I won’t answer it. Then it occurs to me it could be Jake. He did ask for my number—I couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to give it to him. Something like that.

  I glance at Annie, trying to judge her level of unconsciousness. No, bad idea. She’d be appalled. I won’t answer it. The man thinks I’m a basket case anyway. “Hello?”

  “It’s me. Helen. I’ve got a proposition.”

  * * *

  I stand outside Helen’s Chelsea mews house, rallying the courage to press the dashboard of an intercom. Yesterday’s epic drive cranks in my upper vertebrae as I peer up. It’s a doll’s house, smallish—compared to nearby mansions, anyway—but perfectly formed with Georgian windows, the sills painted black, the blinds all shut. Three security cameras swivel and blink at me with red eyes. I glance at my watch self-consciously, feeling observed. Yes, if we’ve got the timing right, Elliot should be arriving at my flat at any moment.

  “I’m going to send him round in a taxi to your apartment for ten,” Helen instructed, the reason for the call in the car. “Perhaps we could sit it out together
at mine and discuss future responsibilities.” This wasn’t a question.

  Annie was resistant. “He’ll just try to persuade me not to keep the baby, Mum,” she’d said, crossing her arms across her swollen breasts. I told her to give him a chance. “He’s had it already,” she snapped, tougher than I’ve ever been. How many chances did I give Steve? So many. Too many.

  “It’s me, Sylvie.” The door opens slowly and Helen’s taut face appears in the gap. Then a small smile. A chain rattles, pulled back. As I step over the threshold, the door slams heavily behind me and the security locks crunch back into position. “Wow,” I say, peering around goofily. TARDIS-like, the petite exterior gives way to a soaring pitched-glass roof. “Gorgeous house.”

  Right thing to say: she looks pleased, and her smile widens, revealing her white teeth. “An old artist’s studio. Lucian Freud used to . . .” she enthuses, then checks herself, possibly remembering Val’s rather more modest apartment. “Well, I like it.” She eyes my strappy silver sandals approvingly. (I’ve made an effort.) “You’ll have a gin and tonic.” Again, not a question.

  I’d had her down as living in a featureless taupe and chrome interior, bland and expensive, like a posh hotel. This is more interesting. She likes modern art. Enormous high-energy abstracts splashed with red paint, like blood. I wonder if this is what necessitates the high security: panic alarms; CCTV cameras aimed at the glass roof, as if a James Bond baddie might swing down on a rope at any moment.

  Although it’s still impossible to imagine Helen slobbing out in front of a box set in pj’s, she’s clearly more relaxed in her own home, wearing a black jumpsuit and kitten heels. On a large velvet ottoman, promisingly, I spot an open bar of dark chocolate. Two squares missing from it. (Who stops at two squares?) I think, I’ll text Mum about that later, then catch myself. It’s just the sort of detail she loves. We’d get a multi-text rally out of it.