Cheese straws.
Nothing Alfie had said about the strain of spending time with his family prepared me for what I saw when I walked into the sitting room. The door was ajar and he didn’t hear me come in; his eyes were closed, so he didn’t see me either. He’d collapsed in an armchair between the Christmas tree and a display of family photos, most of which were portraits of him and I had a moment to register the change in his appearance as he sat sprawled in the chair, looking as if he’d survived some gruelling ordeal.
He’d aged about ten years. Alfie looks boyish; when he’s asleep he looks angelic, blessed as he is with unlined skin and long brown eyelashes, at odds with his fair hair. As I regarded him across the sitting room, it seemed as if the bones of his face had worn through his flesh, creating ridges and hollows I’d never noticed before, that I could have sworn didn’t exist. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light. The room was illuminated only by a table lamp, the Christmas tree lights and the glow from the fire. The flames cast moving shadows over Alfie’s frame, which seemed smaller and more frail than I remembered. But was that because I’d just been paying attention - possibly too much - to Marek’s?
I’d just come to the conclusion that the low light must account for Alfie’s transformation, when he opened his eyes, saw me and sat up like a jack-in-the-box, rearranging his features. Then I saw another transformation take place. He passed his hand over his face in a tired gesture, revealing, like a conjuror, quite a different face. The smile dazzled, his eyes creased amiably at the corners and the haggard look vanished. The only tell-tale sign of exhaustion was the way he then ran a hand through his hair, raking it back from his forehead.
I approached with my offering. ‘I’ve brought you some tea. You look like you could use it.’
‘Thanks.’ He took the mug and set it down beside the photographs, where it remained untouched.
‘How was Rae?’
‘Oh, the usual. Maybe a bit worse. It’s hard to tell. She gets emotional. And then she just rambles on.’
‘Is her mind going?’
‘Gone, I think. No, not gone. It’s her memory that’s affected, not her mind. She can remember tales from my childhood in minute detail - and insists on regaling me with them. But she doesn’t really know who I am. Just who I was. She doesn’t care who I am now, it’s what I represent. A key to the past.’
‘Is that what’s so tiring?’
‘Tiring?’
‘When I came in you looked shattered. Is it the trips down memory lane that take it out of you?’
‘Must be. That, and trying to follow her train of thought. And - well, it’s all pretty sad. Pathetic, in fact.’
‘Will she come down for dinner?’
‘I doubt it. She looked tired and confused by the time I left. She sent her apologies for not greeting you and hopes you’ll understand. But she’d like you to go and see her later. After dinner. If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Not at all. I’m dying to meet her.’
‘She takes camomile tea before bed. You could take her tray up to her.’
‘I’d love to.’
‘I’ll come with you if you like.’
‘No, I’ll be fine. We’ll do girl talk.’
He smiled at me gratefully - relieved, I supposed, to be spared another encounter.
I put my mug down and knelt beside the table of photographs to take a closer look. There were pictures of Alfie as a sleeping baby in a pram and as a toddler on a beach, carrying a bucket of sand; there was Alfie up a tree, distant and waving; Alfie dressed as a shepherd in a Nativity play; a formal portrait of Alfie in school uniform, looking vaguely apprehensive, or perhaps just bored. All the photographs were of Alfie as a boy; none pictured him as a teenager or a man. There were silver frames, leather frames, wooden frames - all of them dusty, as if the photos were never disturbed. I couldn’t think who would touch them if Rae rarely emerged from her room and I doubted that dusting was high on Viv’s agenda.
I turned to look at the adult Alfie, who, like his schoolboy self, looked slightly apprehensive, or maybe just bored.
‘You were an adorable child, weren’t you?’
‘Oh, yes. Sickeningly lovely.’
I ignored the heavy sarcasm. ‘It must have been nice growing up feeling you were so loved. So wanted. That you’d been the answer to someone’s prayer.’
‘Stop this, right now, Gwen, or I’ll throw up over that nauseating display of childhood memorabilia. Rae has all those photos because I was her son in absentia. She never actually knew me as a boy! Freddie must have sent her photos, I suppose. I was a fantasy child, her fantasy child. But I assure you, I picked my nose and farted just like any normal boy.’
I picked up the photo I’d decided was my favourite. A golden-haired boy of perhaps eleven or twelve playing cricket, his eyes narrowed against the sun, leaning forward, wielding his bat awkwardly, wearing shin pads that looked far too large. Alfie looked quite the little man, but I couldn’t detect in the boy’s features any trace of the man he would become. I replaced the photo on the table, noticing as I did so that my fingers had left tell-tale prints in the dust on the leather frame.
‘Alfie, why do you suffer so much when you come home?’
His eyes didn’t meet mine. ‘Suffer? This is nothing! Wait till the gang’s all here and things really get going. Remember then that you insisted on coming, Gwen.’
‘I’m having a great time! And I love my attic room. Hattie’s going to show me her quilts tomorrow and we’re going to have a sewing bee.’ Alfie groaned in mock dismay. ‘I’m looking forward to the concert too,’ I added. ‘I hear you’re performing!’
‘It’s unavoidable.’ He spread his hands. ‘Hattie has decreed.’
‘I can’t wait.’
‘Tyler’s good,’ he conceded. ‘And Hattie’s not bad. She plays better than you’d think. When all her scatter-brained energy is focused she can be quite… intense. Expressive even.’
‘Like her sewing.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘She channels her thoughts and feelings into a quilt, doesn’t she? Any object that she makes. Something huge and complex like her hexagons quilt, it’s like a map. A map of her mind. Or a window looking into it… I really liked it. And I really like her.’
‘Thought you would. She likes you too, I can tell. But be on your guard. She’ll cling. The poor girl’s desperate for friends. Always has been.’
‘She seems to get on with Tyler.’
‘Yes, that’s an odd relationship. I used to wonder if they’d been lovers. She seems quite fond of him.’
‘That doesn’t mean they’ve slept together, surely?’
‘No, I just wondered. He’s a weird guy. I could imagine him being Hattie’s type.’
‘Why do you say he’s weird?’
‘Have you met him yet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, don’t you think he’s weird?’
‘I hadn’t really thought about it. But no, he doesn’t strike me as weird. A bit odd, perhaps. But he seems nice enough. He ate one of Hattie’s mince pies,’ I added.
‘He must be sleeping with her, then. No other possible explanation.’
‘Don’t mock. It’s more than either of us managed to do. I was impressed by the gesture. I think Hattie was too.’
‘She would be. Little things mean a lot to her.’
‘They mean a lot to me too. Viv and Hattie are being so kind. Making me feel part of the family. I’m glad I didn’t listen to you and brought presents for everyone.’
‘They wouldn’t have expected anything, you know. Let alone generosity on your scale.’
‘It’s more blessed to give than to receive. Don’t sneer, Alfie! You don’t realise, the downside of having no family is not just that you don’t receive any presents, it’s that you don’t get to give any.’
He looked up, beyond me. I turned to see Hattie and Marek standing in the doorway. ‘Rehearsal time!’ Hattie announced.
‘Alfie, are you going to rehearse with me, or just busk on the night? I’ve been practising like mad, but if you’re going to do anything funny, like pauses, or knowing looks at the audience, I’d like to mark them in my score. Sorry, Gwen, talking over your head like this, but we’re performing tomorrow night and I’d like at least one rehearsal with Alfie.’
‘Yes, of course. That’s fine. I’ll clear off out of your way.’ As I turned to get up from the floor, Marek’s hand was there, offering to help me. I noticed he offered his left hand and I tried to recall which one had been bleeding in the kitchen. Was he left-handed? Or was he protecting his right hand? And why the hell was I asking myself so many questions about this man?…
He said nothing as I grasped his hand and felt him brace himself to take my weight. His dark eyes watched me as I rose, rather more elegantly than I might have done unaided.
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He turned away and walked to the side of the room where he opened a cello case which stood beside a baby grand piano, neither of which I’d registered in the dim light. The fire was dying down now and Alfie got up and chucked another log on. The flames flared up and cast their warm, flickering light on the photographs. My eye was drawn again to the one of Alfie playing cricket. Much as I liked it, there was something odd about it, something unsettling I couldn’t place.
‘Dinner at seven, Gwen,’ Hattie said. ‘Help yourself to a drink in the dining room. That’s next door.’
‘I’ll go and give Vivien a hand in the kitchen.’
‘Oh no, you won’t! Not on your first night. Viv gave strict instructions to that effect. If you’re good, we might let you unload the dishwasher tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Hattie. I’ll look forward to that.’
She grinned at me. ‘Now, off you go, or our performance won’t come as a wonderful surprise to you.’
‘More like a terrible shock,’ said Alfie under his breath, thumbing through a book of sheet music on top of the piano.
‘Practice makes perfect,’ was Hattie’s crisp retort. As brother and sister started to wrangle, I sidled past Marek, now seated by the piano, the cello positioned between his long legs. He struck a piano key, then started to tune. I watched the glow of firelight reflected in the cello’s burnished surface and wondered if the instrument was old and if it was Polish. He must have seen me looking at it and said, ‘It was my grandfather’s. It was given him by a famous Polish musician. He gave it to me when I was smaller than the cello. I grew,’ he added simply.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ I replied. ’Just to look at, it’s beautiful.’
‘And to hold and to touch.’ He stroked the curved body of the cello. ‘The wood speaks of what it’s seen and heard. Then, with the addition of the bow…’ He drew it across a string, making a low, mellifluous sound at almost the same pitch as his voice, ‘It sings.’
He didn’t look up, but seemed absorbed in the tuning of his instrument, then in warming up. For a few moments I stood and watched, fascinated, as his hand moved crab-like up and down the finger-board, then I left them all to it. It wasn’t until I was on the landing, facing Sir Eglamour Slopbucket, seated at his desk, quill pen poised, that I realised what it was that had bothered me about the photo of Alfie.
The boy in the photograph was holding the cricket bat left-handed.
But Alfie was right-handed.
The Truth
Chapter Eight
Gwen
Of course, there had to be a rational explanation. Alfie must be - or at one time must have been - ambidextrous. Or the negative had been printed back-to-front. That seemed the most likely explanation. This thought calmed me a little, until, in my mind’s eye, I saw the rest of the picture and the background against which young Alfie had been photographed. The scoreboard was visible and the numbers hadn’t been reversed.
So the boy in the photograph was left-handed.
But the boy in the other photographs appeared to be right-handed. If memory served me - and I’d studied those photos for several minutes - the toddler carried his plastic bucket in his right hand; the boy in the tree was waving his right hand; the schoolboy actor held a shepherd’s crook in his right hand. But the boy playing cricket was left-handed.
There had to be an explanation.
There had to be.
I sat in my room brooding uselessly. Eventually I decided to go and find someone to talk to. I changed my slippers for shoes, brushed my hair and headed downstairs. As I passed the sitting room I could hear Hattie and Alfie talking - arguing, in fact, their conversation interrupted now and again by snatches of jaunty piano music. My spirits sank further.
I walked on and put my head round the dining room door. I saw a dark room, crammed with mahogany furniture, cut glass and velvet, all of it dusty-looking, as if the room was rarely used. The table was laid for five, with festive red napkins and what looked like homemade Christmas crackers. Hattie’s work, no doubt. Wooden linenfold panelling surrounded an imposing stone fireplace that housed only a two-bar electric fire. Above the mantel was a dreary oil painting, dark with varnish, of a Norfolk landscape, complete with windmill.
There was a movement behind the door and I turned to see Marek in a corner of the room, shutting his cello case. My spirits lifted. He stood the case on its side in a corner, then turned and saw me. He smiled briefly and, indicating the cello, said, ‘I’m leaving it here tonight. It’s not worth taking it home.’
‘How did your rehearsal go?’ I asked, coming into the room.
‘Very well. Hattie has been practising hard. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Is there something non-alcoholic? I can’t drink, it makes me ill.’
He went over to a sideboard and shuffled a few bottles. ‘Orange juice? Tomato? There’s various mixers.’ He lifted the lid of a hideous plastic ice bucket, shaped like a pineapple. ‘And ice.’
‘I’ll have an orange juice, please.’
He made my drink, then poured himself a vodka and tonic. He handed me a glass and raised his.
‘Your good health,’ I said and sipped my juice. There was an awkward silence, so I asked, ‘What do they say in Poland?’
‘Na zdrowie!’’
This brought the conversation to a complete standstill, but Marek appeared unperturbed. Rallying, I asked, ‘Do you speak Polish?’
‘Yes. Though it’s getting a bit rusty as all the old relatives die off. I have less reason to speak it now. Less reason to speak generally.’
I smiled at this odd remark. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I live alone. And I’ve never been much of a talker.’
He demonstrated the fact by allowing the conversation to languish again but I wasn’t prepared to give up yet. I said, ‘Have you always been a gardener?’
‘No… But I’ve always been a listener.’
I was beginning to feel like Alice interviewing Humpty Dumpty. In fact I had the distinct impression that perhaps Marek was interviewing me. I decided to treat it as a panel game - conversational Call my Bluff - and struck out wildly. ‘Did you listen for a living?’
He gave me a quick, shrewd look. ‘Yes.’ Then - reluctantly? - he added, ‘I was a psychiatrist.’
‘Oh…’ I replied. ‘I see.’ But of course I didn’t. I was so astonished, curiosity got the better of good manners. ‘Why did you give it up? If you don’t mind my asking, that is.’
‘I think psychiatry gave up on me.’ There was the brief smile again, which I was beginning to realise wasn’t so much a smile, as a rearrangement of facial muscles.
I couldn’t think of an appropriate response to that, so I steered the conversation in a more general direction. ‘To become a psychiatrist, you have to train as a doctor first, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you felt drawn towards psychiatry?’
‘Yes.’ He studied the contents of his glass, swallowed another mouthful and said, ‘At the time it seemed like a good way to heal people. Relieve their
pain. And I suppose I thought a psychiatrist would have less to do with death and dying.’ He gave a faint but eloquent shrug of his shoulders. ‘I was wrong.’
‘You mean, because people don’t get over their loss? Their grief?’
He shot me another look, of surprise this time. ‘Yes. That’s exactly what I meant. They carry it around with them. Grief. Guilt. Remorse… It becomes part of them. Like a cancerous growth. And it colours everything. I used to wonder if the most humane thing would be to wipe these patients’ memories. Give them a clean slate.’ He turned away and appeared to study the painting over the fireplace. ‘But you can never make a fresh start. Not really. Memory prevents you. Perhaps that’s the only blessing of old age. A failing memory.’
‘Is that why you gave up psychiatry? All the grief?’
He turned back to face me, his dark eyes considering, then they seemed to cloud. ‘I gave up because I no longer felt able to help the people who came to see me. I had a string of letters after my name, but the longer I practised as a psychiatrist, the more I realised how much I didn’t know, would never know. It seemed… presumptuous to try to heal these people when I myself was… was such a mess.’
‘ “Physician heal thyself”, you mean?’
‘I tried. And I failed.’ He finished his drink and replaced the glass on the sideboard. ‘I make a much better gardener than psychiatrist. Death and disease are much easier to handle in the natural world. You have lower expectations.’
‘And I suppose you see the bigger picture. Not the individual.’
‘Yes. And there’s always something or somebody to take the blame. The weather. The nursery that sold you the plant. The pest that destroyed it. The dead and dying can be grubbed up, burned, composted. Forgotten. They don’t sit there as a constant reminder of failure. You can just dig over a bed and make a fresh start. Every spring.’
‘You make it sound wonderfully therapeutic.’
‘I came to gardening via horticultural therapy. It’s a natural anti-depressant. It gives you a stake in the future.’
‘Like children. I always think looking at babies is anti-depressant. Even the ugly ones. It’s hard to look at a baby - any small child - and not smile.’ I suddenly remembered the photographs in the sitting room and despite what I’d just said, I didn’t feel like smiling. Marek had subsided into silence again but I’d got the hang of this limping conversation now. I said, ‘Are you staying for dinner tonight?’
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