by Ruth Skrine
Only chance helps me salvage the napkin that is caught between the pages of a book on insects. It marks a picture showing leaf-cutting ants processing in a line, each tiny individual waving its flag. I never got round to teaching the project about the fascinating story of how they create a mulch, with the help of symbiotic bacteria, to feed the grubs in the nest. In a hot country I may have a chance to see them for myself, together with hundreds of other species I have only met in my imagination.
***
Two weeks into the summer term I come home to find a message from Julie on my e-mail. “It’s David, not Daphne. He weighs five pounds and thirteen ounces. Love Julie. PS. We’ve got the new computer. PPS. Daddy says mother and baby are doing well. PPPS. I don’t mind he’s a boy. He’s so sweet.”
The baby had not been expected for at least another two weeks. I can’t imagine a boy. Ever since I watched Briony lying in hospital clutching her stomach and blaming herself, I have thought of it as a girl. I am still glad I made it clear to Jane that she could not have either of the dolls. In these days of gender correctness Briony may want them for her boy. David – not a family name – but none the worse for that. I whiz off an e-mail to say how thrilled I am, determined to fulfil my resolve to be a good aunt.
The next evening Briony rings. ‘I’m home. You’ve heard my news?’
I make the usual congratulatory noises, but can’t help asking if he is all right.
‘He’s fine. He had an AGPAR score of nine.’
‘What’s an AGPAR score?’
‘You must know. It’s the test to see how well the baby is at birth. Oh Meena… all that worry for nothing.’
‘I’ve been thinking of you so much. Shall I come?’
‘You don’t have to, I know how you hate to miss school.’ I smile. She had not been so blind to my feelings after all. ‘Paul is taking two weeks off to look after us, but come for a night if you like. I’m holding him now; every breath he takes seems like a miracle.’
‘Did you have an easy time?’
‘The delivery? I don’t remember much about it. When they gave him to me, the first thing I did was to count his fingers and toes. His nose is wrinkled. Oh, he’s opening his mouth… every bit of him is perfect.’
She sounds a bit manic, but it is only the second day. She will go down with a bump soon, as she did with the others, but Paul will be there.
‘I’ve got some news of my own. The house has been sold.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Don’t you want to know what we got for it?’
‘Not particularly, but I expect you will tell me.’
I had rushed it through for her sake and now she is so taken up with the baby that she isn’t interested. ‘We got the asking price, believe it or not. The Awfuls seemed happy to pay up.’
‘Who?’
‘I call them the Awfuls because they are.’ Does she have any feelings for the future of the house? I want to tell her about the family who will be running up and down our stairs and looking out at our view. I long to share my unexpected sense of loss but the habit of protecting her is too strong.
Before I can think of some bland words, she interrupts my thoughts. ‘He’s waking up.’
I need not have worried; she is so immersed in her baby there is no room for nostalgia in her life. ‘The only thing is, they want to complete in five weeks and term won’t have finished.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I have to leave in five weeks.’
That did get through to her. ‘What will you do?’
‘Susan has said I can stay with her for a while.’
‘Can you bear that?’
Briony knows I have been finding my neighbour a trial, though I have not told her about the affair with Quentin. ‘She has been more bearable recently and she’s quite useful.’
‘You can come here if you like.’ Her invitation sounds mechanical.
‘I have to work out my notice at school. I can’t leave till the end of term.’ Silence greets that information and I wonder if she is still listening. ‘Why David?’
Briony is back with me again. ‘After Paul’s father, and also, having survived so much already, I think he’ll have the courage to face up to any Goliath. He’s awake. Bye.’
Before she hangs up I insist on speaking to Julie. She seems to have forgotten she has other children.
Julie’s description of her new brother is so enthusiastic I wonder if she is competing with her mother. When I ask about her part in the play at the end of term there is a shocked hush, followed by a vague answer. It seems she no longer feels entitled to such interest in herself. I decide to visit as soon as possible, she may need an aunt to take an interest in her now her mother is so wrapped up in the baby.
I put the phone down and wander through the house. The date for completion of the sale is moving steadily nearer and there is still a mountain of sorting out to do. I decide to collect everything that Briony wants in my mother’s room and pack the small things in her chest. I have asked Susan to help me dismantle the beds. They have old-fashioned springs held in a metal frame with projecting knobs that fit into the bed ends. A heavy hammer and at least two pairs of hands are needed to prise the sections apart. In the dining room I am amassing the furniture for the sale, so that we can see how much cleaning will have to be done before the Awfuls move in.
The next Saturday my energy level is higher so I tackle the kitchen cupboards. With difficulty I manage to whittle the saucepans down to three for my future life. Then, for old time’s sake, I add the little one that Granny used for cocoa. If my plans work out they can go into store with just enough furniture for two rooms. I will need no more.
Susan comes in for coffee and I take the opportunity to ask her to help me get the musical box down from the loft. It is so heavy I am terrified I will drop it as I lean down through the trap door. Susan loses her nerve at the last moment and says it is too heavy for her to hold. Without consulting me she runs to the phone and summons Quentin. I am left suspended, balancing the wooden case with its precious contents on a rung of the ladder. By the time he arrives my arms are ready to drop off.
‘Thank you,’ I call down as he takes it from me with ease. Nothing will induce me to go down the steps.
‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’
I say I am doing fine. ‘I have to stay up here and sort out some more of this stuff. Will you see Quentin out as you go, Susan?’ It is the least she can do.
Once the door has closed behind them I go down and stand looking at the box, remembering that it had been my father’s treasure. I blink the sudden tears away and fetch a cloth and some polish. My arms ache but I can’t stop rubbing, as if by removing the dirt I can remove all the suspicions of the past months. As I work, the mahogany takes on a deep lustre. I know I am wasting my time. Far more pressing things wait to be done, but I want to see it in prime condition once more before consigning it to store.
When the job is done I pack the contents of the doll’s house into three shoeboxes. Turning the empty house on its side, I find the bottom is riddled with woodworm. It must be burnt.
The little pipe cleaner boy, still lying on the table by my bed, will be the only memento of childhood destined to accompany me on my journey into the future.
Chapter 21
Dusk is falling as I stand alone in the nursery after a day of sultry heat. I look at the only piece of furniture left in the room, a small bedside table with my grandmother’s prayer book in sole possession on top. I cannot decide what to do with something that was so precious to her, yet fills me with dread. I fix my eyes on the cover, daring the cross to grow and the skull to appear as it had done before. Visions do not arise to order, even though her presence is heavy around me, filling the room with the odour of stale lavender water.
Perhaps it is the heat. I switch on the light and walk to the window, wiping the sweat from my forehead. Heavy clouds have filled the valley. The leaves on the oak tree ha
ng motionless, their colour drained by the yellow tinge that has seeped into the sky. A distant roll of thunder confirms the approaching storm. I throw the window open and lean out to take great gulps of air. After a moment the leaves shiver and a breath of wind brushes my face.
Sheet lightning makes me blink. I lean further out and can see the distant church tower lit by the next flash. There the ancestors lie snug under their headstones. My preoccupation with them has faded in the face of the endless decisions I have had to make about the family possessions. Now, in place of my obsessional quest, I can feel nothing but emptiness. I will never be able to prove my doubts about my father, one way or the other, so there is no point in trawling my mind, or delving into the past in a search for answers.
I raise my face, opening my mouth to catch the first drops of rain on my tongue. The street lamps have come on a few minutes before but now the light is fracturing in the downpour. The rising gale causes the oak tree to creak. I step back as the deluge starts, standing immobile as I watch lines of water blow in and fall onto the prayer book. Then I snatch it up and rub the moisture off against my chest.
Another streak of lightning is followed so quickly by thunder that I have no time to start counting. Normally thunderstorms don’t worry me, but within minutes this one has concentrated its force directly above my head. I struggle towards the window. Before reaching it, another searing flash blinds me. The explosion that follows stuns my ears and jars my whole body. Trying to protect my head with my hands I drop the prayer book. The room goes black.
Has the house been struck? Peering out of the window I see that the streetlights have gone out. A power line must be down. When my eyes recover, the flickering lightning shows me the book on the floor with the pages splayed out beneath the broken spine. A piece of pink blotting paper has escaped and languishes by the side, covered in the spidery ink stains of my grandmother’s writing.
I kneel down to rescue the book from the puddle that is collecting on the floor. Stretching out my fingers, I try to pick it up but my arm won’t move forward. That missal, which was in my grandmother’s hands as she walked to church, sat up in bed in the mornings and cuddled me in the big chair by the fire, is repelling me. If her soul is captured between its pages then I will leave it to disintegrate in the relentless cascade of water.
But surely that is not what I want. I was her little precious, her favourite – I must have loved her.
My arms and legs freeze, bent at an acute angle like a frog that has been turned to stone by a wicked fairy. Slowly I curl forward as a memory, from the earliest days of my childhood, edges its way into my mind.
I had been lying in bed. The new baby was on the other side of the room. Briony had only just been moved from my parents’ room, where she had held the place of honour by their bed, snugly cradled by the ruffle of pink that lined her carrycot; I can feel the smooth silk between my fingers… But now she is close by and I am even more envious of the patchwork quilt my grandmother had stitched to fit my old cot with the wooden bars.
I can hear my new sister snuffling in her sleep. The noise makes me think there is some animal in the room, a rat or even something bigger, a crocodile or a lion that will come and get me. I pull my hands in under the bedclothes for safety.
Someone is standing over me. By the light of my fairy lamp I can see my grandmother’s angular face and the hairs inside her nostrils. The tips of her false teeth show between rigid lips. Piercing eyes watch me, the lids narrowed with suspicion. A strand of hair has come loose and hangs on her collar. Her apron, the green one with frills round the edge, has a brown stain over the pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispers so as not to wake the baby. The words hiss round the room.
I try to cry out, ‘nothing,’ but my voice, and every muscle of my body, are paralysed. She sweeps the blankets back and recoils in horror. My nightie has wrinkled up under my armpits and I am bare and exposed. As I roll away from her, my hands move to cover my face.
Her petticoat rustles. She advances towards me again. ‘You dirty little girl.’ Fingers like claws fasten on my arm. My whole body is wrenched from the bed. I grasp at the sheet to try and save myself but it drags onto the floor behind me. She snatches the trailing bedding out of my hand and spins round so that my feet leave the floor. With a grunt of fury she hurls me away from her. As I fly across the room the little sponge I had been playing with falls on the floor. I land hard against the skirting board.
Her voice is booming now. ‘How dare you do such a disgusting thing?’
I rub my elbow and can feel her standing over me as I cower down with my hands over my head, waiting for a blow. ‘Your little sister has just been christened. She is innocent now, purified of all her sin. If you defile yourself, you will contaminate her. You will go bad inside. Your mother, your darling mother, if she finds out that Satan is doing his evil work through you, she will die of shame. You will have killed her.’
As if to underline the evil that is lodged inside me, Briony begins to cry. My grandmother strides across to lift her up. ‘Now see what you’ve done.’ She leaves the room, letting the door slam behind her.
I sit back on my heels as the image begins to fade. I find I am rubbing that same elbow, the right one, which had gone on hurting for weeks though I had never explained to my mother how I had got such a large bruise. The window is banging against the frame behind me.
Kill her. But I had not killed my mother. It was my father who had died. The rain, which is still pouring in through the window, has soaked through my T-shirt and is making me shiver. The water is dripping into my eyes, blinding me. I fall to my knees to grope for the prayer book again. My fingers squelch into the soggy lump that must be the blotting paper. Sweeping my hands from side to side over the floor I reach further and, in the effort, topple over onto my face. I stay on my front at full stretch, not having the will to move. If I remain here long enough, the rain may cleanse me of my sins, those sins planted in me by my grandmother.
Some time later a distant battering penetrates my senses. I make a fist of my left hand, then the right and manage to raise my head. After a few seconds I get my elbows under my body and struggle back until I am on my knees. With another effort I stand up, staggering as I do so. Groping my way across the darkened room, I pull the window shut, then walk towards the door, only to go back for the prayer book. I can’t leave it there, even if its owner deserves to drown. It is a family relic and has to be preserved.
On the landing I reach automatically for the light switch. Nothing happens. Clutching the banisters with one hand and the book in the other I feel my way down the stairs. The heavy knocking is coming from the door to the flat. It starts again as I creep into the passage, edging my free hand along the wall to make sure I don’t fall down the steps to the glory hole. The oiled bolts move easily and as I open the door a flicker of lightning shows Quentin anxious on the other side.
‘I had to come and see if you were all right,’ he shouts, against the noise of the storm. ‘I couldn’t get through.’
‘Of course not, I drew the bolts.’ I stand looking at him, feeling foolish. ‘You had better come in.’ The wind snatches the door out of my hand but he uses his foot to stop it slamming in his face.
He is carrying a torch and uses it to lead the way back to the kitchen. ‘Where do you keep your matches and candles?’
‘In the drawer by the sink.’
He finds them, but the first match blows out. He picks up his torch again and goes to shut the door that I have left open behind me. The noise of the wind recedes. Then he manages to strike another and light a candle.
‘What have you got there?’
‘It’s a prayer book.’
‘I didn’t know you were religious.’
‘I’m not. It belonged to my grandmother.’ I look down at the object between my fingers, those fingers that had penetrated a forbidden place. ‘It’s ruined.’
‘You’re all wet.’ He eases the book ou
t of my hands. Flipping through the pages he says, ‘You can get the spine mended. The water hasn’t penetrated very far. If we stand it up somewhere warm we may be able to rescue it.’
I don’t care. The book has no interest for me now. I don’t even feel antagonistic towards it. He puts it near the stove, carefully balanced on its end with the pages spread out. I watch his hands as I had once watched them exploring the contents of the doll’s house in the loft. ‘Don’t bother. It’s not important.’
He hesitates, but leaves the book where he has put it. I sink into a chair and motion him to the one opposite. ‘Have you found a place to live yet?’ The question sounds as if I am making polite conversation and I am, though I do need an answer. Behind the sound of the wind whistling in the lift shaft, a door bangs.
‘I went to see a place today. It’s a bit poky but it will do.’
‘It will have to. The rest of the furniture is being collected for the sale in a few days. You should have gone ages ago.’
‘I know you wanted me out earlier but… how’s Briony?’
‘She’s had the baby. A boy. They’re both fine.’ My voice sounds odd, as if it has been flattened by a rolling pin.
We are silent. I can feel him looking at me. The candle lights a frown that crinkles the bridge of his nose. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
In the past I could have told him anything, but now I must protect myself. ‘Oh, it’s just the thunder…’ A huge explosion is followed by the sound of crashing and grating as if the world outside the kitchen is being annihilated.
In unison we cry, ‘my God,’ and, ‘what’s that?’ Leaping to our feet we race upstairs. From the drawing room we look out into the gloom to see the enormous bulk of the oak tree settling across the lawn, shattering the garden wall and smashing the back gate.
‘My tree…’ The words are swept away by the wind. I look up into the space that has opened by the house, seeing a segment of sky that has never been visible before. My eyes are drawn down to the tangle of leaves and branches, still moving with the force of the fall. I feel Quentin’s arms come round me. He presses my face against him, as if he can sense my loss and wants to save me from the sight.