by Bryony Doran
When she came home from school the next day the whole set had gone, and in their place was a polka dot set. Each cup and saucer a different colour: pink, blue, maroon, bottle green, yellow and lilac.
She huddles against the cold and wishes she were at home in bed in her dingy room that never gets the sun. Some days she sees the sun bouncing off the brick wall at the end of the yard. She wants to reach out and touch it, and drag it back into her room. It seems so unfair that there are some places that never see the sunlight.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
4b, Crow Edge Flats,
Sheffield
Dear Mother,
I don’t know what to say to you anymore. I’m sorry I treated you so badly when you came round to visit, but thank you for being honest with me about you and Uncle Jack. For years that image has echoed in my head. Sometimes I wondered if I had imagined it. I went to visit father’s grave yesterday. I know this may sound silly but he has a marvellous view. From up there you can see for miles, right over the moors and onto the other side of the valley where the landscape is woven with the ancient pattern of small fields.
Do you ever visit the grave? Why did we decide only to put his name and date of birth on the head stone and not mention me and you? Are we to be added later? I hope so. I would like to lie there and listen to the crows in the trees.
Love,
Your confused son,
Edward
PS. Yes I would like the willow pattern crockery please.
He puts the letter in the envelope and licks the edge before sealing it.
She had given him the photo. How strange her having a photo of them in her bag. He would never have imagined it. He picks it up from the table and walks over to the window where the light is better. He smoothes his hand over his father’s face remembering that day, way back then, when his mother had taken the picture. Even then he was carrying the burden of his mother’s secret. He looks closely; yes, his back had already begun to contort. It was as if the secret he couldn’t divulge to anyone had grown and solidified itself on his back.
Later, when he started university, he remembered, with shame, how his father had begun to irritate him. He’d thought that this man who is so proud of me is not even my father. This man who is satisfied with so little, is never hungry for knowledge; so unlike myself. It had never entered his head that his quickness of mind, even his curiosity, could have been inherited from his mother. He thinks of Uncle Jack and remembers him as a man with a dark presence, a man who walked through life with few words and who spent long days out in the fields, and long nights out shooting rabbits. And his aunt, like a starling, sniping at them all constantly, and the photo on top of the redundant piano of a boy with dark hair like his father’s. And why, Edward laughs to himself, had he never thought of the colour of his hair? It was not dark like Uncle Jack’s; it had tints of ginger like his father’s. How could he have been so stupid, so blind? All these years he had nurtured this thing, growing it inside him, feeding it fresh coals, and now suddenly it was gone.
He shudders with pleasure, suddenly remembering Angela and the touch of her skin. He shuts his eyes. If only he could transport himself back to that moment and live it forever. Is that what his mother had felt? That exquisite feeling of being wrapped in warmth, in ecstasy, and knowing that every year she could go back and tap that feeling, like harvesting sap from a tree.
A sudden thought occurs to him; the shock of his revelation could have killed her. He had been so bound up in his own sense of outrage, he had not given her welfare a second thought. He’d felt all that pent up fury flow from him and now the only feeling he has for her is pity. Why, he is not quite sure. For God’s sake, she ruined his life, and she hadn’t even been sorry for what she’d done. She was sorry he’d seen them, but not for what she’d done.
‘Edward, those few snatched moments were more precious than a lifetime of contentment. I will cherish them always.’
Was she right?
He watches the men further down the hill spraying yellow lines on the road. Down below him a man is making his way up the garden of a terraced house. He is leaning heavily on his stick, pain etched deep in his face, grey hair falling lank against his head. Edward wonders what his name is. He watches the rain coming across the valley. He sits down in his chair and waits to hear it lash against the window. He is in the mood for rain. He sighs, and realises that tomorrow he really must return to work.
He had gone back for one day and the following morning he had waited at the bus stop and, when the bus arrived, a young woman had stood aside to let him get on first. He’d shaken his head and turned away, gone back up the hill to his flat, shaking with fear, with anger at himself. And now tomorrow he would slink back in. Maybe it would be like before; his desk exactly as he had left it. Maybe they didn’t need anyone to do his job. He wishes he had the courage and the money to give it all up so that he could sit here at his window all day, watching the weather and the encroaching seasons.
He can hear Tabitha scratching at the living room door. He opens it an inch or two, teasing her as she curls her paw around the frame; one perfect white paw that he could crush with one movement. He shudders and opens the door further. The cat, oblivious of his thoughts, presses up against his legs. He crosses to the chair and sits down, knowing that she will jump onto his knee and nuzzle into his neck.
‘I don’t deserve you, puss. Fancy telling my mother you weren’t mine and yet here you are.’
The rain has come at last. He closes his eyes and strokes the purring cat. He decides to unseal the envelope; ask his mother if she would like to meet him for lunch.
‘Hey, what a to-do, puss? What a to-do. A cup of coffee and a saucer of milk are in order, don’t you think?’
He begins the ritual of the coffee by breathing in the smell of the freshly ground beans. He is glad that he has not gone to work, glad that he is alive and at home with Tabitha. He watches transfixed as the milk rises up the pan.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Rachel has gone to a lot of trouble in the garden. The soil is rich and black beneath the orange berries that have spilled from the bush above and now lie scattered like children’s sweets. She can hear the phone ringing in the house. It stops when she gets to it and she is glad. It may have been Edward ringing to cancel their lunch tomorrow. If he can’t reach her he will have to turn up, won’t he? She would understand if he had changed his mind. In fact, part of her would be relieved. She is not sure what he wants to say to her. He has been to visit his father’s grave.
Although the border is only half dug, she has had enough of gardening. She had planned to go to the shops on the front tomorrow and buy some new bedding plants, instead of leaving it too late in the season like she normally does, when only the dishevelled ones are left. She peels off her gloves and eases her ankles out of her gardening shoes. Tomorrow she will finish the border.
But in the house she feels empty, restless, isolated from the world. She wishes she had stayed outside. She was all right outside. She goes into the front room. Through the window, the street is empty. She has always relished her isolation, but now she suddenly feels … she shakes her head, Snap out of it, Rachel. But she can’t.
She sheds her coat and makes a cup of tea. The rain hits against the French windows; unusual, the wind must be from the east. She watches as the dark comes in up the garden. She sits down in her chair, lets the cat jump onto her knee and picks up her cup. Her hands are shaking. Clasping the cup tightly with both hands she allows the warmth to seep into them. The cat suddenly lets out a loud yowl. She tries to shove it off her lap, but it digs its claws in. She stands up and it jumps down, complaining loudly. She walks over to the window, Wallflowers. That’s what she should have planted last autumn. If she had, the deep velvet russet of the flowers would soon be dancing outside her window. She presses her face against the cold glass. And then, in summer, her deep red climbing rose would bloom. She turns and looks into the room. In the centre of t
he table is a thin glass vase, supporting a tall blood-red rose, crystalline in death. George had wanted to get an Albertine, a frothy, frivolous pink, but she had held out for the blood red.
All these years Edward had known. How he must have hated her, blamed her for his deformity, and all those same years she had never suspected a thing, thinking it was just Edward being Edward, and all that time he was carrying around so much pain. The thought of it makes her want to retch.
She sits back down in her chair. Come on Rachel, she thinks to herself, make an effort. Go and sort some clothes out for tomorrow. He wants to meet you. Maybe he has forgiven you, but God knows why. If only he hadn’t discovered her secret, how different his life might have been.
Rachel is dressed in her pink candlewick dressing gown, and the slippers with a pom-pom of white fur on the toes. She is sitting in her high back chair; her head resting against the wing, her mouth slightly open. Next to her on the table is a book, open and placed face downwards.
It is quarter to three in the morning. Upstairs, an electric blanket warms the bed. In the bathroom, the bath is squiggled with green liquid soap, so that in the morning the scum will lift easily and leave the enamel gleaming white.
In the spare bedroom Rachel has laid out the outfit she will wear for lunch with Edward. A light brown jersey dress with sleeves that finish at the elbow and a neck that is rounded, slightly scooped. Shaped into the waist, the skirt is slightly flared. On top of the dress, laid in a twist, is a long string of tiger-eye beads and a pair of newly opened chocolate-brown stockings. On the floor is a pair of black-patent court shoes.
In the living-room, the gas fire on a low setting hisses and blows with the wind outside. The cat stretches and yawns, catching its claws in the white sheepskin rug. The wind moves the dark maroon curtains drawn across the French windows. It is black outside. The climbing rose scratches against the glass.
On the side in the kitchen, next to the kettle, stands a cup, a present from the Isle of Wight. Inside is one solitary dry teabag, ready, waiting to be taken upstairs.
The pond is almost completely covered with duckweed. Tiny, perfectly shaped little beads of flat pale green. The russet coloured leaves from the beech tree above float down and, like an embroidered collage, make a pattern with the weed.
Rachel stirs the weed with her fingers and it drifts apart, showing clear, secret water, and the rusty reflection of the tree above. How odd she should remember, after all these years, the boat, and herself wanting the courage to sit in it, to perch on the centre bar and row across the silent pond. And now here she sits in the nose as the ferryman, whom she has paid full in silver, sculls the oars through the water.
Edward waits for his mother for half an hour. He even orders a coffee to fend off the circling waitress. Maybe she is doing to him what he had done to her; getting her revenge.
Half way along Surrey Street, Edward realises that he is not at work today. He stops on the corner feeling hungry and wishing he had been able to bring himself to eat something. He catches the number fifty-six bus, it stops beside the park. There are ducks on the lake. How often, when he was living at home, did he pass along this road?
Edward pushes the red button and waits until the bus has come to a complete standstill before getting up and shuffling down the aisle, ‘Thank you.’
The driver grunts and as soon as Edward has let go of the rail he closes the doors with a hiss and sets off.
Edward steps up onto the pavement and rests on his stick. He can see his mother’s house from here. Still with the red sills and the green door that he remembers his parents arguing about so long ago.
‘You can’t have a green door and red sills. You have to have them matching.’
‘Why?’ his mother had asked.
His father, eventually, as in all their arguments, had given in.
After all these years he’d thought somehow he would find it shabby, yet the house appears well-maintained. Why has he kept away? He smiles to himself. Can he forget so easily?
He knocks on the door. A cat is yowling from the back of the house. He makes his way through the green gate at the side of the house and round to the back. The sun is glistening on the frosted lawn and in through the French windows. The rose hips, stark red, tap against the glass. He presses his face up against the window and shields his eyes to peer in.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Edward looks around his mother’s attic. He is seated on a chair under the skylight. There is nothing else in the room except an old trunk and the chair on which he sits. Even the floorboards are bare.
Angela groans, ‘I can never undo locks.’
‘Pull the key out slightly, and then turn it,’ he advises. The lock springs open in her hand. She places the padlock on the bare floor, puts her fingers to the rim and tugs.
Inside is a wooden tray, separated into small shallow sections, spanning the top of the trunk. In each section are little packages of tissue paper. Edward comes to stand beside her. She hesitates. ‘Go on then,’ he says.
She picks one up and unwraps it. Nestling in the paper is a coral necklace. She gasps in delight, ‘Isn’t it beautiful? Like small twigs of terracotta.’ She holds it to the light. ‘It’s exquisite.’
‘I remember now where I’ve seen that trunk before.’ He pulls the chair over towards her and sits down. ‘It belonged to my uncle. It used to be in the attic at the farmhouse. How on earth did she get it up here?’
Angela opens another package. Each parcel holds a fresh treasure: turquoise, cornelian, jade, and egg-shaped beads of amber, glistening like barley sugar. Edward remembers Rachel wearing some of them, but some he has never seen before. The last package contains a perfectly matched string of river pearls.
‘Where did she get them all from?’ Angela asks, letting the pearls run through her fingers.
‘I haven’t the foggiest idea. See what’s on the next layer.’
She prises out the tray. ‘Nothing, except,’ she leans into the trunk, ‘an old piece of newspaper with strange foreign looking writing.’
Edward stands up and peers into the trunk. ‘It’s Russian. Fancy that, it must have been my maternal grandmother’s trunk. She came from Russia when she was a little girl. I remember my mother telling me.’
The cat yowls loudly up the stairs. ‘You’d think it’d come up, wouldn’t you?’ Edward says.
‘Her pewter pearls aren’t here. I loved them. They were so … her. I remember she was wearing them at Claudette’s funeral.’
The cat’s cries become more plaintive, echoing up through the house. They try to ignore it, but it seems only to get louder, more complaining.
‘Do me a favour will you?’ He stands up, ‘Go and put that bloody thing out.’
‘Aren’t you afraid it will wander off?’
‘To be quite honest, I don’t care. I just can’t stand that noise any longer.’
The corner of the bed is folded down. The pillows are plumped and ready, waiting for Rachel. Edward sits down on the edge of the bed and is surprised to find it warm. He pulls back the covers and places his hand on the bottom sheet.
‘The electric blanket has been on all this time. She must have put it on the night she died.’
Angela comes over to the bed and, like Edward, places her hand on the bottom sheet. ‘How wonderful, it’s as if it’s been waiting for you.’
He says nothing, feeling suddenly overcome. While they have been in the attic it has grown dark outside. The heavy damask curtains are still open. Angela tugs at them and they slide together easily, the curtain rings jangling against the brass rod.
‘There, that’s better.’ She sits down on the bottom corner of the bed.
Edward prises himself up and opens the middle drawer of the dressing table. He takes out a drawstring pouch made of crimson velvet, ‘I want you to have these,’ he says, sitting down on the bed next to her. He places them in her lap. She picks up the pouch and gently presses it between her hands. ‘What is it?’
‘Open it and see.’
With her index fingers she draws open the top of the pouch and, turning it upside down, empties its contents onto her lap. She gasps, and picks up the pewter pearls. The first thing she does is put them up to her cheek. Edward sees how the light catches them, dappling her skin.
‘They’re so beautiful.’
‘I want you to have them.’
‘They must be worth loads, I can’t accept them.’
‘Mother has left me everything. Thank you, Mother,’ he looks upwards, ‘I might even be able to give up my job, so please accept them.’
‘But why, Edward? Why are you giving them to me?’
He wants to tell her that he has dreamed of placing them around her neck, of bending and kissing the blue vein running down to the softness of her breasts.
‘I want to thank you for your kindness over this last week, and for coming to the funeral with me,’ his voice cracks. ‘I’m not sure I would have got through it without you.’
She had been the first person he had thought of. He’d leafed through his notebook for her number. He’d heard her voice. That was almost enough, just to hear her voice.
‘What are you going to do with the house?’ Angela holds the pearls cupped in her hands.
‘I honestly don’t know.’ Edward is silent for a moment, trying to contain his emotions. ‘I feel so confused.’ He pauses, trying to gather strength, ‘As you know, mother and I had rather a fractious relationship.’ He thinks back to the last time he had seen his mother alive, sitting at his kitchen table. He covers his face with his hands. A tear trickles out from between his fingers and down his arm, disappearing into his jacket cuff.
He feels her hand on his shoulder. ‘Please don’t cry, Edward. You’ll set me off. Shall I make us a cup of tea?’