Fifteen seconds and it was time for the next one. And then the next.
‘I’m so glad you’re enjoying those,’ said my father. ‘I seemed to remember you liked them.’
Out came the lips, down dropped the jaw, in went another. My father poured himself a second cup; I knew he was concentrating hard on keeping a straight face. If he looked my way we would have burst out laughing, and even if we didn’t our faces would have betrayed something, and we weren’t going to let that happen. Jessie’s silence was weird, but we had no idea what the alternative might be and didn’t want to find out.
In went another. Four left on the table. But there was still the remaining contents of the two bags … I glanced at my watch: three twenty. We had been here just over twenty minutes and were supposed to be staying for an hour. How were we to survive?
My father soldiered on. ‘I hope the food’s OK here. No smell of the traditional boiled cabbage in the hall, so perhaps it is. You look well, I must say.’ He flashed her another of his winning smiles, but he was wasting his time: she was setting out another row of sweets.
‘We stopped at a nice pub for lunch before we got here, didn’t we?’
I remembered that a simple ‘Yes’ was not going to be enough, it was all shoulders to the wheel. ‘It was in that village with the pump.’
‘That’s right!’ He clicked his fingers as if the identification of the village had been troubling him for hours. ‘There was a cattle trough in the square, and an old-fashioned pump, looked in perfect working order. Very nice place, lots of attractive old buildings. Remind me what you had, Floss?’
Gosh, he was even more desperate than I thought. ‘Cheese and cress sandwich and crisps.’
‘I had the ham, egg and chips.’ He laughed. ‘For my sins!’
It was so strange, the two of us having this pretend conversation, exchanging information we already knew, for the benefit of someone who was not just uninterested, but seemed scarcely aware that we were talking at all, or even of our presence. My sudden sense of the ridiculousness made me bold. I slipped back off the high bed and went over to the table, my father watching me.
‘Please may I have one?’
I felt rather than saw his eyebrows go up. Jessie paused with an iced caramel halfway to her mouth. Her outstretched lips, rubbery and seamed like a camel’s, quivered and sank back in disappointment. She lowered the caramel. Her eyelids snapped, once, twice.
‘Floss,’ began my father, ‘we brought these for Jessie, I think …’
But for better or worse I had her attention. She was looking at me. And not just that, she was seeing me. I had never felt so seen. Those pale, deep-set eyes were crawling all over me like flies, taking in every bit of me and not much liking what they saw.
‘Please,’ I croaked, as much to break the silence as anything, ‘could I have a sweet?’
My father didn’t intervene this time; I think he was as disconcerted as I was.
To my enormous relief, Jessie looked away again. The sweet was still between the finger and thumb of her left hand, and now slightly squashed – she had been exerting pressure. She raised it and I waited for the long and elaborate consumption process to begin again. Instead, she held out her hand, with the sweet, to me, but without looking at me – her eyes were now firmly fixed on the sweet as if it might take flight and escape.
I took it with my own finger and thumb, angling them so as not to touch hers. Taking it required a small exercise of strength; she didn’t simply relinquish it, it had to be removed.
‘That’s kind, Jessie,’ said father. ‘How very kind.’
I took the cue. ‘Thank you.’
Now that I had the sweet I didn’t want to eat it. The cracked surface, the warmth from her fingers were repellent. Fortunately she looked away again and I was able to slip it into my pocket. Hopping back up on the bed was difficult because my legs were shaking.
My father began another monologue, this time about his work, the new lines of confectionery that Hopgood’s were ‘bringing on stream’, others that the public had apparently gone off, a complete mystery to the marketing department … He was doing pretty well but I was surprised, when she was such an old friend that he called her ‘Auntie’ and he’d taken the trouble to bring us here, that nothing he said was at all personal. And any questions he asked her were just rhetorical tags, more about filling the silence than anything else. I felt quite proud of myself for requesting, and receiving, the sweet. Slightly frightening though the exchange had been, I recognized it as a moment of real communication, whereas my father was, well, just prattling.
A few minutes (which felt like an hour) later, we were presented with a natural break by the return of the pleasant orderly, coming to see whether we wanted more hot water for the teapot.
‘Oh, no, thanks very much,’ said my father, rising to his feet. ‘Actually, we should be making tracks, we have a way to go.’
‘Where’s that then?’ asked the orderly. ‘Back home?’
‘No, as a matter of fact I’m on a little work trip and Flora’s come along to keep me company.’
‘Ah, that’s nice, keeping your dad in order, are you?’
I knew she didn’t require or need an answer, she was tidying the tray preparatory to taking it away. No-one was going to detain us – not her, and least of all Jessie.
‘… sweeties is it, they look nice, let me just put them there so I can … there we are. Can I ask you to open the door for me, love, thank you … see you next time …’
She went, and we prepared to make our farewells. But as my father stepped round the table to offer a dutiful kiss, Jessie stood up. She did so smoothly, without effort, there was nothing the matter with her joints. One moment she was sitting there, legs akimbo, in front of her line of sweets, the next she was towering over us. She must have been six feet tall. Bravely, my father put his hands on her arms and kissed her impassive cheek – he almost had to reach up. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to attempt any such thing.
‘Goodbye,’ I said, adding, ‘thank you,’ for good measure though I wasn’t sure for what.
In the next few seconds two things happened that I was never going to forget. I can experience them again any time, in a heartbeat.
We were almost at the door when she spoke. Her voice was eerily light and girlish; my scalp and skin prickled at the strangeness of it.
‘The children,’ she said.
Not a question, nor properly a statement. Simply words uttered in space, in a void. And then again, in exactly the same tone: ‘The children …’
Odder still, my father pretended he hadn’t heard, that nothing had happened. He didn’t look round, but opened the door and was out in the corridor, slapping his pockets, affecting to look for the car key. But I looked over my shoulder and saw the expression on Jessie’s face.
For the first time she was completely animated, and her face was alight – brilliant, in fact – with a sly, venomous hostility.
SEVEN
It was a commonplace of childhood in the 1970s that there were areas of knowledge and personal experience that were labelled Adults Only. But gradually I came to see that with us this was not just a routine case of ‘pas devant les enfants’.
The strange touch on my hand on that long-ago summer night was more my secret than theirs. I knew what I’d felt; they hadn’t been there. Long before my odd discovery in the empty bedroom I was aware of an undercurrent of secrecy; covert conversations that petered out or stopped abruptly when I appeared; quick, mouthed whispers and glances that were intended to be over my head or behind my back; a general reticence about the past, almost as if we didn’t have one, as if our tiny family had sprung complete from nowhere, the product of a kind of tripartite parthenogenesis.
Even so, like all children, I accepted this as one of the elements of my childhood – a given, like the distinctive smell of one’s own house which you don’t even notice until you’ve been away, but which then assails you in
a Proustian wave on your return. But after the visit to Jessie I was overcome with curiosity. Here was a strange and unsettling experience for which I felt entitled to an explanation.
My father’s mood was buoyant as we walked to the car – a spring in his step and a hum on his breath – but I saw him take a nip from his leather hip-flask before he got into the driving seat.
Once we were on the road and heading for the motel (no more business calls till we began heading south again tomorrow), I spoke up.
‘She’s not very well, is she?’
‘I did warn you.’ Terry Wogan was on the radio and he didn’t turn the sound down. He didn’t want the conversation to last.
‘How do you know her?’
‘Oh …’ He turned the volume knob. ‘I told you, she’s a sort of honorary auntie.’
I didn’t have one of these, and didn’t understand the usage. ‘How do you mean?’
‘She sort of looked after me when I was young.’
‘A nanny?’
‘Sort of.’
There were a lot of ‘sort ofs’ in this conversation. ‘What was your mother doing?’
‘She wasn’t there much.’ While I thought about this, he added: ‘But I left home when I was quite young, so—’
‘How young?’
‘Eighteen. So that was that really.’
‘Did you like Jessie?’
‘Hard to say, I don’t know … Not much.’
‘But she wasn’t like that – I mean like she is now?’
‘Good lord no!’ He frowned and waved a hand. I didn’t know what to believe; he was in a funny mood. ‘Anyway! Haven’t got a clue if she knew we were there, but duty done eh?’
‘She did say something, just as we were going.’
‘Did she?’ His hand was hovering over Wogan. ‘Don’t think I heard. Goodbye perhaps?’
‘No. She said “the children”.’
‘Did she? Did she really? A ray of light then, maybe she had some idea who I was after all.’
I considered this, and it seemed plausible in the light of what my father had told me. But I continued to truffle for information.
‘Was she nice to you as a child?’
‘Not very.’
‘What did she do?’
‘It was more what she didn’t do. Not much affection. Not much fun, playing, that kind of thing. She didn’t have a clue about kids really, she was in the wrong job.’
‘So when did you last see her?’
‘Oh God, I don’t know, Floss …’ For the first time his voice betrayed a glint of impatience. ‘A year or so? I don’t owe her anything. Rather the opposite. But if I’m in the area I try and pop in.’
‘Has she always been so – you know, so bad?’
‘For ages. Forever. She was starting to be ill when I was still a boy.’
‘You must have been scared.’
His hand was no longer near the radio, but back on the wheel. I sensed memory becoming strong, a presence sitting there with us in the car.
‘I was sometimes, yes. You’ve seen her, she’s a big woman. Strong.’
‘Did she ever hit you?’
He seemed to hesitate. ‘Yes.’
I had provoked the answer, prompted it almost, but now I was shocked.
‘What did your mother say?’
‘She didn’t know.’
This was my grandmother we were talking about, but she was a stranger; I felt no connection to her. Just pity for the boy my father had been, struck by that giant of a woman.
‘Where is your mother now?’ I asked. I still couldn’t say ‘Grandmother’.
‘She’s not around.’
‘She’s dead?’
My father seemed to nod, but we were at a crossroads and he was looking this way and that before pulling out.
‘I don’t have any grandparents, do I?’ I wasn’t being plaintive, but expressing a sort of wonder at my unusual situation.
‘Well, everyone has them, but you didn’t know them. Poor old Floss …’ My father patted my knee. ‘You’ve been short-changed in the family department and no mistake.’
I wasn’t much further forward, but the little ground I had gained encouraged me to ask my next question.
‘What about Zinny?’
‘What about her? Parentage, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah …’ He changed up and accelerated as we hit the motorway. ‘Now you’re asking.’
He seemed to be making a game of it, but I didn’t mind because he’d cheered up. ‘Go on then.’
‘She is the offspring of a unicorn and a white witch.’
This seemed so entirely plausible, and he knew it, that we both laughed at the thought. But for once I didn’t let him get away with the game thing.
‘No, really.’
‘I told you.’ We whooshed into the fast lane past a couple of lorries. ‘No, I’ve no idea. There was a rift, some sort of falling out when she was very young. She’s never talked about them all the time I’ve known her.’
We moved back into the centre lane and hummed along for a while.
‘That’s sad,’ I said.
‘I don’t think she’s particularly sad. She’s a tough one, your mother.’ We overtook a white estate car and returned to our lane. ‘They’re probably dead now. She’s a tad older than me as you know.’
‘How much older?’ I asked, though I had a pretty fair idea.
‘Fifteen years.’
‘Fifteen years?’ I squeaked incredulously.
‘I know. Imagine – she’d have been a glamorous young woman while I was still a schoolboy in short trousers.’
I mumbled ‘Oh’ but it came out more like ‘Yeeuch’.
‘I didn’t know that when I first met her. Not that it would have made any difference if I had. She was fantastically beautiful, as you can imagine.’
I could. Oh, I could. But it made my cheeks burn and the inside of my chest squirm to hear him say it, and I couldn’t answer.
‘Your mama the cradle-snatcher, eh?’ My father glanced at me and chuckled. I sensed he was much more comfortable with this line of conversation. ‘Sorry, Floss.’
All these little titbits of information I kept close and husbanded, poring over them like a witch doctor casting stones. In a small way they helped me recover from the trauma (and I don’t use the word lightly) of Towser’s death and their response to it. Nico and Zinny were officially strange, and different. If they were there more for each other than for me, if I often felt left out, well, there were reasons for that. My father was only half joking when he said Zinny was part unicorn; having them as parents was like owning a couple of strange, quasi-mythical creatures. They could never be what they weren’t, and I could never change them nor be like them.
But law unto themselves though they were, they still had a profound influence on me and the way I lived my life later on, in a way more hands-on parents never could have done. And there was, inevitably, collateral damage.
EIGHT
Gus was a teacher at Holland House, the prep school I worked at when I left Lyme. He taught a whole rake of subjects to the younger boys (heartbreakingly young to be away from home), and took sport as well: football in winter and cricket in summer.
Professionally speaking, my years at the school were my happiest. It was a lovely place. Prep schools often get a bad press (the middle classes banishing their tender young; eccentric and morally dodgy teachers; unfriendly dormitories and horrible food) but apart from the first – in which tradition and geography were important factors – none of that was true in the case of Holland House. Built by a 1930s industrialist, a manufacturer of flash motor car interiors for petrol-heads of that era, it sat in its grounds with an air of ample ease and confidence, and the modern additions of pool and gym were well designed and blended in.
The job of secretary was only marginally better paid than the one at the hotel, and I had no accommodation in the area, but luckily for me the matron, a
pleasant Aussie called Meg Ingles, had a flat in the school with a room which she let to stray young members of staff, and it came free at the right moment. My modest salary was suddenly worth a lot more as I became nearly ‘all found’ – three square meals a day and homely digs for a peppercorn rent.
I had no experience with children but Meg had more than enough for both of us and I surprised myself by taking to it. The boys, like the staff, were a mixed bunch but they were mostly sweet, funny and very often homesick. My secretarial duties weren’t arduous and I found myself helping out in various capacities like mealtimes and games – Mr Fairday the Head told me early on, ‘We’re an all-hands-to-the-pumps outfit here.’ This was how I got to know Gus Farr.
At twenty-one I’d never had a boyfriend. You couldn’t count Conor, the waiter at the Dorset Arms. He was one of those pleasant lazy, easy young men, who won’t make any effort but will take something if it’s handed to them on a plate. I never handed him anything, so we stayed friendly workmates and content to be so.
I wasn’t bothered by this state of affairs (lack of affairs more like), and I certainly didn’t want to get engaged – the very idea gave me shortness of breath. But I recognized that there was something out there which I had yet to experience; something that my parents, for instance, had in spades, the thing which would always leave me on the outside looking in. My curiosity was piqued, I wouldn’t put it any stronger than that.
Gus was a year older than me, an open-faced, simple-hearted, trusting and trustworthy young man who fully expected life to be good. He wasn’t complacent, but sanguine, and that made him good company. He was one of those rare people who one never heard say a bad word about someone else, and that may have been because he brought out the best in people, so from his point of view there was nothing bad to say. Unlike me he had gone to university but dropped out, in order to travel, which I thought pretty dashing. He’d embarked on a sort of extended gap year building orphanages, teaching in Thailand (especially swimming, which apparently the Thais were no good at), trekking in Nepal and boating up the Amazon. You could almost see in Gus’s eyes the same clear, bright light that must have shone in the faces of the early explorers, their boundless optimism and confidence.
Love in a Mist Page 8