The Daughters of Foxcote Manor

by Eve Chase

  I open Annie’s bedroom door. The light from the canal is wavering on the walls. The room is aglitter. “Sweet, isn’t it?”

  She stands in the doorway, her hands steepled over her nose. I wait for her to say something. She simply points to the windowsill, where the terrarium basks in the sunlight.

  “Oh, Annie loves that.”

  “It’s one of mine. I . . . I have a company. A small terrarium company.”

  The hairs on my arms prickle. “Someone gave it to my mum. She’s in hospital . . .” I stop, seeing the expression on her face.

  “Good Lord. That . . . that.” She points at the forest mobile over the cot, slowly spinning in the breeze from the open window. “Where did you get that?”

  “Oh, it’s very old. My father made it.”

  “Your father?” she splutters.

  “He was a carpenter.” Pride swells my voice. “A very good one.”

  At this news Helen appears to short-circuit, her mouth opening and closing, her eyes bugging. “Who was he?” She clicks her fingers. “Name. Name!”

  “Robbie Rigby. His stuff’s quite collectible now. Have you heard of him?”

  49

  Hera, Now

  I hear myself make a small ugly gasp. Sweat glues my silk shirt to my spine. It’s like riding a nuclear menopausal flush. I lower myself to Annie’s bed, covering my mouth with my hand, trying to soothe myself with the familiar chemical smell of new gel nails. I must contain the feelings. The panic. Breathe, Helen, breathe.

  I can’t make sense of it.

  Hanging over the cot is the wooden tree mobile that’s turned in my dreams for forty-odd years. Beside the window is the terrarium I had made especially by my company’s finest craftswoman a few weeks ago.

  “Your mother in hospital.” My voice comes out as a croak. “What’s her name?”

  “Rita.” She hesitates. “Rita Murphy.” I glance at the tree mobile again, shaking my head, unable to take it in. Sylvie adds, “She kept her maiden name.”

  “Big Rita,” I whisper, the words sweet and as rare as cheesecake in my mouth. So she did marry Robbie. And she had a family of her own. Feeling a mix of joy and childish envy, I stare at Sylvie, searching for likeness. Although much darker, she looks a bit like Robbie, with those high cheekbones and glinting forester eyes. But Big Rita? No. She certainly didn’t get the legs. But then, there’s not much of Mother in me.

  “It wasn’t you who left the terrarium at the hospital for Mum, was it?” Sylvie asks with a nervous laugh.

  “I wanted to replace what my family destroyed.”

  “Your family?” Sylvie steps away from me. Her eyes flash black gypsy gold. She crosses her arms over her chest.

  “Your mother was my nanny. When I was a girl.” As I say the words, I fight a frightening surge of emotion. It suddenly feels like the protective rind over my heart might split like a dry heel. “Sorry. May I have a glass of water?”

  Sylvie doesn’t answer. She doesn’t offer me water, either. Her eyes are narrowing to sickles. A question is moving behind them.

  “The accident was in the newspaper. The cliff fall.” I talk into the awkward silence, feeling the need to explain myself. “After all this time. There she . . .”—my voice cracks phlegmatically—“was.”

  Sylvie’s hands, dexterous makeup artist’s hands, flex and fist at her sides. Her face has drained of color, and all that’s left is a powdery frost of highlighter on her cheeks.

  “I called the hospital, the one mentioned in the paper. Learned she’d been transferred to a specialist unit in London.” I wince, recalling how I intimidated the young assistant on the desk into giving me the information. “Is she out now? Better?”

  “Not yet.” Sylvie’s lower lip convulses minutely. She’s staring at me with a discomforting intensity.

  “I had no idea she was your mother. Didn’t even know your mother was ill. Elliot doesn’t tell me anything! Nothing! I have to read him like a rune stone. We’re not close . . .” My voice fissures again. I disguise it with a cough. My eyes sting, as if I’m slicing shallots. I blink the tears back. I never cry. I can’t cry. “Your mother . . . gosh, your mother, she was . . . an inspiration. A complete inspiration. For my company. Everything. They were for her. Shattered things mended. Broken glass recycled, blown again . . .”

  “I know who you are.”

  Something inside me jerks. I reach for the scars behind my ears, the seam between Hera and Helen. She doesn’t know. She can’t. “I . . . I beg your pardon?”

  “The girl from the old newspaper my mother kept.” Her voice deepens with a dawning certainty. “The Harrington girl.”

  No, no. Not her. I lift my chin, arrange my face into Helen, and try to smile. “I think you must be mistaken,” I say weakly, and both of us know she’s not.

  “Your eyes.” Sylvie squints, like she’s looking right through me. “Just the same.”

  I’m about to protest, deny it all, but outside the window, a man starts strumming a guitar. And for a reason I cannot fathom, I find I can’t lie to the sound of that guitar, the notes vibrating with summer and hope. Or to Sylvie.

  “I’m right, aren’t I? Helen?”

  I bow my head. The exposure is raw and painful, like skin peeled back.

  “Shit, Helen.” Sylvie sits down on the bed and drops her head into her hands. She looks up at me, dragging at her cheeks with her fingers. “Does Elliot know Annie’s granny once worked for your family? The connection?” Her voice is faint.

  I shake my head. “Elliot wouldn’t even know Rita’s name.” My foot starts to tap involuntarily, slacks tightening over my skinny thigh. “I’ve never told him . . .” I stop. “Something terrible happened to my family once. A long time ago. We were pariahs. Our world fell apart. I . . . I changed my name, you see. Married. Built a new life.”

  She’s frowning at me. “But why didn’t Elliot mention your terrarium business to Annie? If he had, she’d have said something when she saw that one over there.”

  “I guess he didn’t want to talk about me.” I lower my gaze, humiliated. Screwed-up woman, she’s no doubt thinking. Not close to her son. Liar. Pretender. Bad mother. But when I look up again, Sylvie’s eyes are soft, like she understands. “Helen,” she says, “there’s something about me you should know.”

  50

  Rita, October 1972

  A half-chewed Farley’s Rusk pulps in Sylvie’s clutched fist as she sleeps behind the stripy windbreak. Rita removes it, flicks away the sand bugs, and covers her little girl carefully with a pink blanket, one she hand-knit on summer evenings. Today is one of those glorious late-autumn days, unseasonably warm. But the breeze is cool, hinting at the winter months, the stews, roaring fires, and hunkering down to come.

  Rita picks her shoreline finds out of a red bucket, her hands working quickly, deftly, and spreads them in an arc, like a deck of cards. “There,” she says, glancing up at Robbie with a smile, and feeling that immediate catch, weakening, whatever it is, that still happens low in her belly every time she locks gazes with her husband.

  Robbie is lying on his side, resting his head on his hand, his expression receptive and quiet. His hair has grown longer since their wedding in May—Hackney register office, a short white Miss Selfridge dress, a model friend as a witness, drinks in the pub afterward, bliss—and is sun-bleached from his daily sea swims, as far out as the fishing boats, cove to cove, like a native. There’s a wallet-shaped faded square on the front pocket of his jeans, their house keys bulging in the other. Behind him, the sun is gold as Devon butter, and starting to sink.

  “If I had some string, I’d tie labels to each item, like you did my leaves,” she adds teasingly, feeling a beat of pleasure just looking at him. “For reference. Lest you forget.”

  His smile spreads slowly. He has a self-taught, encyclopedic brain and never forgets anything. Slightl
y annoyingly, he can already identify all the different seaweed that washes up on their little local beach—gutweed, red rag, egg wrack, oyster thief, dead man’s rope . . . He says he’s well on the way to becoming an arenophile. (“A what?” “A sand lover.”) She hopes so. His cottage has sold now, and the forest is a place to which they daren’t return.

  They moved to Devon from London last month. Although a bit of her misses the city—Robbie does not—she’s glad to be out of their poky rental apartment, and Sylvie can breathe fresh air, not the fumes from the number 30 bus.

  Every morning she wakes to the gulls’ cries and a novel set of feelings: she’s on holiday; she’s come home. Not just the abstract idea of home, like she had before, that confused mash of yearning and other people’s houses. But home as a simple place of belonging.

  They have big plans. Self-sufficiency. Veg. Fruit. Chickens. And a carpentry studio, which he’s started to build in their generous garden, the woodworking equipment under a tarpaulin for now. The house itself is tiny and tongue-and-grooved, like a ship’s cabin—she can stretch out her arms in Sylvie’s nursery and touch the opposing wonky walls—but it’s all they can afford. And it’s about as far from the forest as they could get without falling into the ocean.

  Home is wherever they are together, Robbie says. His adaptability amazes Rita. And yet she’s aware of the sacrifice he’s made. Sometimes she’ll find him on the beach, a silvered lump of driftwood in his hands, his fingertips running over it, as if communing, absorbing its long journey from seedling to sea.

  “Urchin.” She points to each shell in turn. “Artemis. Razor clam. You don’t want to step on that. Common whelk. Periwinkle. You can eat those. Needs a good squirt of lemon, though.” He nods, listening carefully. But in typical Robbie fashion, he doesn’t say anything, lets her jabber on. “Oh, and this is actually a seabird bill. Probably an oystercatcher. See the shape? To hammer open mollusks . . . Don’t you dare ask me for the Latin name!”

  He laughs and reaches toward her, holding her face in his hands, rough palms light on her cheeks. They often end up like this, just staring at each other, grinning stupidly. But today is different. Today there is something else hovering. Unresolved. She can see it in his eyes, a cloud, a question mark.

  Sylvie, ever attuned to moments of parental intimacy, wakes and strains to pull herself up and totter off. A feisty and inquisitive infant, she’s drawn to the sea, always making a break for it. They have to watch her like hawks.

  “Come here, you.” Robbie brushes the sand from Sylvie’s pudgy feet, then lies back, wheeling her above his head so she giggles, her delight growing frenzied.

  Rita watches them, smiling. But something nags. She tries to identify the feeling, the vague sense of misplacement. But it slips away. She just knows it’s made worse by perfect family moments like this. The wispy beach grass waving in the wind. The dark jewel of the sea. The sheer excess of loveliness.

  Robbie shoots her a sidelong glance. Sylvie tugs his nose, wanting his attention, Daddy’s girl. “You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you? What we talked about last night.”

  Rita nods and lowers her eyes.

  Robbie lies down, Sylvie on his chest. She paddles her feet and snatches fistfuls of sand, throws it. “It’s a risk, Rita. Even attempting to . . . I mean, Walter . . .” He stops. His face darkens. Walter’s name is never spoken without a hard swallow afterward.

  Rita doesn’t want to push their luck, either. They’ve got so much. She didn’t think it was possible to feel this happy. “Yes, mad idea.”

  Sylvie lurches forward and grabs the periwinkle shell, turning it in her fingers. When she tries to taste it, Rita takes it from her mouth and shakes her head. But she doesn’t remove it. This is Sylvie’s world, hers to explore. Robbie is adamant about that. He even sits Sylvie on an alarmingly high apple-tree branch in the garden, holding her carefully, but letting her enjoy the sensation, her legs kicking free. Rita’s glad the lady at the adoption agency never got to see that.

  “Rita.” Robbie nudges her bare foot with his own. “We can’t rescue everyone.”

  “I know, I know.” She hinges down beside him, stretching out her long brown legs, and stares up. The sky is huge, the clouds feathered, like the flesh of a freshly cooked fish. This is enough, she tells herself. Just this.

  Then Robbie says quietly, “But we could try.”

  51

  Sylvie

  Is it really you?” Helen touches my face as if I were a dead child come to life. I stiffen. “Good Lord,” she rasps. “Baby Forest.”

  I stare, fascinated, shocked, as tears slide freely down her cheeks, cutting tramlines through her foundation. Helen is dissolving in front of my eyes. The distance between us is closing.

  Outside the window, Jake’s guitar, the sound of a different world. Keep playing, I think. Please keep playing.

  “You had eyes like a blackbird.” She looks radiant, as if the real Helen has broken through the Botox. It’s the first time I’ve seen her truly smile. “Ant bites all over you. Red raw cheeks.”

  Mum never told me that. Or that I was called Baby Forest.

  “I mixed your milk powder with water from the stream.”

  “You did?” It’s like seeing a line drawing emerge on a page. Tears bulb between my lower lashes.

  “Thankfully, you refused to touch it.”

  I feel weirdly proud of my baby self.

  “I wanted you all to myself.” She sniffs, ugly crying, not caring. “So did Mother . . .”

  Jeannie. With the flawless skin and dark curls in the newspaper photo. Jeannie pregnant, outside a stucco house, smiling, a little boy tugging her skirt. And I suddenly long to meet her.

  “But you only had eyes for Big Rita,” Helen continues, her polished demeanor rupturing. She snorts back the tears. She wipes them on her shirtsleeve. “Your gaze followed her around the room. If you were crying, she’d swoop down and pick you up and soothe you, like a nanny, yes, yes, but also like she was born to do it.”

  My heart throbs. It feels like a door to the past is being pushed open, inch by inch. Behind it I see a young Rita, vertical and full of life. A woman born to graze ceilings and stars. A natural mother. The contrast with how she is now, horizontal, on a hospital bed, slays me.

  “You two . . . Gosh. It was like you recognized something in each other. I . . . can’t explain.”

  I miss Mum so intensely then it hurts.

  “Never in a million years . . .” She digs in her pocket for a tissue. “You say you have a sister too?” Her face clouds. “All my life I’ve longed for a sister. You were mine for a short while.” She brightens again. “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Caroline,” I say, and finally lose it. “Can I borrow your tissue?”

  “Let me.” She dabs my eyes. I can smell mint on her breath. Possibly gin. She pulls back and stares at me intensely, a question forming. “What were you told about it all, Sylvie? Growing up.”

  Something inside me twists. “I didn’t want to know,” I say.

  A gleam in those pale whippet eyes. “Well, do you now? Could you stomach it?”

  I think of the little girl I was in the apple tree, all the bits of me I’ve suppressed. Steve’s saying, “Don’t go there, Sylvie. Remember, that’s not who you are.” And I hear Jake’s guitar, louder now, more insistent, beating across the still green canal. One strum. Two. “I want to know everything.”

  * * *

  The British Museum flashes past the taxi window, a déjà vu stream of columns and stone and amulet-blue sky. A few minutes later, the taxi swerves into Great Portland Street. “We’re here.” Helen can’t hide the anxiety in her voice—like a plucked untuned violin string—and it makes mine worse.

  We’re buzzed into a tall building, grand, frayed at the edges. She still won’t tell me where we’re going or why. All I know is that s
he made a furtive call before we left. “Trust me,” she says.

  I don’t, not quite. But for the first time in years, I’m beginning to trust myself to be able to deal with the truth, not to be sunk by it.

  There’s a lift, small, metal, like a shark cage. Helen won’t set foot in it—“I’d rather scale the drainpipes”—so we pant up five flights of stairs. The apartment door isn’t locked—someone’s expecting us. My heart starts to knock in my chest. I hesitate. My feet are weighted like stones. Helen beckons me in and closes the door behind us with a high-security metallic crunch. It’s dark in here. Stale. The walls are stamped with sad exotic trophies, the head of an antelope, a huge rhino. There’s a moth-eaten tiger skin on the floor. It feels like an old gentlemen’s club, the kind that excludes women, leathery, stuffed with hunted dead things.

  “We’ve got company,” I say, gauche with nerves, gesturing around at the taxidermy.

  “Ugh. Don’s horrible stuff. Daddy won’t be parted from it,” she says. It takes a moment for me to connect. The newspaper stories, hidden for so long by Mum, are starting to flesh. I’m about to find out the answers, the bits she scissored away. My heart beats faster.

  Glass eyes follow us as we cross the lobby and go into a smaller, darker room, scratchily overheated, furnished with polished antiques and dimly lit with green-shaded lamps. It’s the kind of room children instinctively misbehave in. Again, Helen shuts the door behind us. I feel a prick of claustrophobia. Two eyes—bromide blue, Helen’s eyes, Elliot’s eyes—stare out of the gloom.

  A thin, rather sickly-looking elderly man sits upright in a battered leather chair. He’s wearing a jaunty spotted navy bow tie at a lopsided angle, as if he’s hurriedly tied it on for the occasion. And he’s still recognizable as the fraught man in the newspaper, dashing out of the court.