by Adele Geras
‘Where do you want to live, Granny?’ Dee was asking. ‘I’ll type it in for you if you tell me how to spell it. And then we have to put in how much you want to pay for it.’
‘Goodness,’ said Eva, slightly taken aback by the knowledge her young granddaughter seemed to have. She could also see that this looking around at properties might easily become addictive. What was to stop you putting in Mayfair and three million pounds in the right boxes and gawping at properties you couldn’t possibly afford? Nothing, really, except the pointlessness of the exercise. Today, however, she had a reason to be looking at the site. A proper reason.
‘Dee! Come along,’ Megan called from the kitchen. ‘Time for your tea. What are you doing?’
‘Helping Granny with the computer,’ Dee called back. ‘But I’m coming in a second.’ She turned to Eva. ‘I’ll come back after if you like.’
‘No, darling, that’s all right. I can manage now, I’m sure. In any case I’ve nearly finished.’
Dee ran off. Eva peered at the screen. Tentatively she typed the postcode she’d memorized into the little box. She added a sum of money that she thought might be about right and clicked. A display showing houses of every kind filled the screen. Damn. She should have put ‘flat’ into the mix, somewhere along the way. She sighed. I’ll ask Megan, she thought. She liked being helped by Dee, who took such pride in being grown-up about technical matters, but Megan knew what she was looking for. She would have to do something called ‘refining your search’.
The lettering of the Google page (designed, she thought, to appeal to children, with its bright primary colours and its friendly-looking typeface) appeared on the screen again as she closed the Rightmove site. I’m all by myself, she thought. I can try. If anything goes wrong, I’ll just close down and go back later, with Megan. Very tentatively, she typed in a name: Lissa Dovedale. The screen filled with references to Lissa. Well, it wasn’t surprising. At the very top of the page was Wikipedia, and Eva felt huge relief. One of the first things she’d ever done on a computer was go to her own entry. And here was one for Lissa.
A famous model in the sixties, Lissa Dovedale’s name defined the London fashion world at that time. Together with Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy, her androgynous, leggy look and her long, red, pre-Raphaelite-style hair made her an icon of her day. She is particularly associated with the designer Eva Conway, whose characteristically elegant and understated but exotic designs she wore to perfection.
Eva smiled, remembering how in this very house, when it was nothing more than a shell, with a few broken old desks standing on dusty, cracked floorboards and cobwebs hanging in swags from the light fittings and the banisters, Lissa had posed in the grey and mauve and oyster chiffon of the Ghost collection, looking beautiful and as though she were about to fade into the woodwork, like a ghost herself. Very pale lips. Very dark eyes and that hair, the curls like ribbons of copper unscrolling over Lissa’s bony shoulders.
In 1970, she retired from the fashion world to marry property billionaire, Herman Abernathy, after a much-publicized romance. Her husband, who was more than twenty years her senior, died in 1990. Even though she has stayed away from the limelight, Lissa Dovedale is prominent in the USA as a sponsor of several important arts foundations, all over the world.
In the seventies, Eva reflected, we didn’t know the meaning of ‘much-publicized’. A few articles in the paper and that was it, more or less. She imagined what would have gone on today. Twitter and Facebook and the hacking of phones by the papers … they’d have had a wonderful time dissecting the story of Lissa and Herman, who was short and not particularly good-looking and moreover, thoroughly married. People drew their own conclusions at the time and would have done so even more now. Lissa was represented as a gold-digger and a homewrecker and today she’d have been torn limb from limb. As it was, she went to America and wasn’t heard of again till Abernathy died, leaving her a very rich woman indeed, but also (and this came as a surprise to many people) bereft at the loss of a husband she loved more deeply than anyone could have imagined. We love, Eva thought, the most unlikely people and for the most ridiculous of reasons but if your story doesn’t fit a template laid down in fiction and the media, then it was not always to be believed. Me and Antoine Bragonard, she thought. Not many people had understood that, either, and now with the benefit of hindsight, Eva wasn’t altogether sure she could make sense of it herself. I ought to have tried, she thought. I ought to have explained it much earlier and better to Rowena, then our whole relationship might have been different.
Suddenly, she felt exhausted. Enough for one day, she thought. I know as much as I need to know. She closed the laptop, got up from the desk and went to sit on the sofa. The velvet and satin cushions were piled up behind her. She leaned against them and took the letter out of her cardigan pocket.
The house was quiet. Dee and Bridie must have finished eating and gone upstairs with Megan. Rowena wasn’t due home for some time and Conor was busy getting ready for his conference. Why shouldn’t I phone now? What’s stopping me? Nothing, Eva decided. I’m just going to do it. I’m going to pick up the phone as though forty years and more haven’t gone by since we met, and speak to Lissa. She left her nest of soft cushions and went back to the desk, where she picked up the receiver and began to key in the numbers.
*
‘What do you reckon?’ Tom said. He and Megan were sitting in the school hall, watching a Nativity Play rehearsal. The teacher in charge, Mrs Plumtree, was marshalling the ranks of angels, shepherds, kings and Mary and Joseph in a final tableau.
‘That’s right. Tall ones at the back, please. Melissa, come to the front at once. Dee, you’ll be on Mary’s right and I want someone about Dee’s height … that’s right, you, James … on Joseph’s left.’
Megan said, ‘I’m just glad I don’t have to organize it, that’s all. I don’t envy Mrs P. Nor you, come to that.’
‘I love it. I have to make a real effort to teach the kids something that isn’t to do with the play. We’ve got our words to learn now.’
‘Makes it easier that they don’t also have to learn tunes.’
‘That was my idea!’ Tom beamed and Megan couldn’t help smiling. ‘Clever or what?’
‘Not bad.’ Tom had made up new words for the children, but he’d used existing carol tunes which made the process simpler for everyone. ‘I know your updated version of “Angels From the Realms of Glory” by heart.’
‘Megan?’
‘Yes?’
We were whispering. I kind of knew what was coming before he spoke.
‘What’re you doing tonight? Can you come over … I’ll cook for you again?’
I knew what that meant. It was clearly going to be our language, our code for having sex. And I wanted to. Did I want to? We had been together once only … was it going to be different this time? Better? Worse? Did I want this thing between me and Tom to become a relationship? I had to find out, one way or another. I said, ‘Fine. Only this time I’ll drive over to you. I’ll be the one who doesn’t have wine, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I wish you could stay over.’
‘Better not,’ I said. ‘The girls …’ I added.
‘Sure. Of course,’ he said. ‘Maybe we could go away for a weekend sometime.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that.
*
‘Whatever are you doing, Ma? I saw the dining-room light on and wondered who could possibly be in here at this time of night.’
‘Not so late, is it? Only about nine o’clock. I’m starting on Dee’s angel wings.’ Eva smiled at her daughter. The table was covered with a thick blanket on which she’d spread a couple of yards of stiff white gauzy fabric.
‘Do you mind working so hard for a child’s costume?’ Rowena came to sit at the table, taking the chair opposite Eva.
‘Not hard at all. It’s fun. It gives me something to do and something to think about which isn’t just … I enjoy it
. I’m not doing feathers. Angels always have feathers, don’t they? I’m going to do something different.’
‘Well, it’ll be lovely, I’m sure, Ma. Only I came to talk about something else. I’m sorry to bring it up like this, but we should discuss the flats you’ve seen so far. Are you quite sure they’re all awful?’
‘Quite sure.’ A thought occurred to Eva. ‘Has Megan been talking to you?’
‘She has, actually, but this is nothing to do with Megan. I’m anxious for you to find somewhere you’ll be happy to move to.’
Megan has spoken to Rowena, Eva thought. She said, ‘So. Tell me what she said. Go on. I want to know what the two of you have been saying.’
‘Only that you’re very unhappy about leaving Salix House. She said you were quite miserable about it.’
Eva laughed. ‘Well, that surely can’t be news to you, can it? I haven’t disguised my feelings, Rowena. ‘
‘But you know we’ve got to go, don’t you? It’s going to be quite impossible to keep this place up.’
Eva bent her head to the fabric spread out in front of her and concentrated on drawing thin lines on it with a fine felt-tipped pen. Rowena had used the same tone in her voice ever since she was a tiny child as soon as she sensed a disagreement in the offing. Eva sighed. My fault, this relationship, she thought. From the very first day I knew I was pregnant, I wasn’t entirely happy about it. The rest, everything that’s happened between me and Rowena, probably follows from that.
1970
Eva had tried to avoid thinking about the sickness, the swollen breasts, the heavy legs for weeks. I can’t be pregnant, she kept on telling herself, but the nights when she and Antoine made love were so infrequent that she could remember clearly when the last one was, nearly two months ago. Eva had almost decided to tell him the news, was casting about for how to do it, when he said, ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’, and Eva nearly dropped the casserole she was bringing to the table. She’d spent half the afternoon making a chicken chasseur and didn’t answer the question immediately, but asked one of her own.
‘Spuds?’ She held the serving-spoon as though it were a conductor’s baton.
‘Don’t pretend you didn’t hear, Eva. I asked you a question. Are you pregnant?’
‘I’m giving you some spuds. And some green beans.’
‘I don’t care what you give me. I’m taking your evasion as a “yes”. You’re pregnant, Eva. When did you find out?’
She forced herself to eat a mouthful of food before she answered. ‘I’ve known for a bit. I was going to tell you. Honestly. How did you know? Am I fat yet?’
They stared at one another across the table. Eva put her cutlery down on the plate. Antoine hadn’t even picked his up.
‘How did you know? ‘
‘You’ve been sick in the mornings. I’ve heard you. And you’ve been looking pale and tired.’
‘Really? Pale and tired?’ Eva sighed. She closed her eyes. At first, when ghastly nausea woke her every day and she’d spent ages every morning hunched over the lavatory bowl, she’d tried to explain it away, but in the end, she could no longer go on lying to herself. She’d missed two periods. You didn’t have to be a doctor to work out what was happening. She’d forgotten to put in her Dutch cap (was it forgetting? Did I want to get pregnant? Deep down?) and now she was expecting a child. She didn’t even think of the thing, whatever it was that was making her feel so horrible, as a baby. She couldn’t, not yet. Whatever her unconscious was doing, in her real life a baby was the last thing she could bring herself to imagine.
‘I was going to tell you, Antoine. Truly I was. I told myself I’d confess next time we …’ She meant: next time he came to her bed. She didn’t know in advance when this would happen. He’d sometimes take it into his head to sleep in her room, and Eva spent the time between one occasion and the next in a state of longing. Every few weeks, Antoine would find himself aroused by something she’d said or done and then they made love and for a brief time, Eva was able to pretend that all was well between them. She told herself on these occasions that yes, he loved her as much or almost as much as she loved him. She’d learned how to gather her desires into a moment of blissful release that she knew would have to last her until whenever it was he turned to her again.
Now she said, ‘We’d better eat, or it’ll get cold.’
Antoine smiled at her. ‘Let’s get married, then. I don’t want my child not to have a father.’
‘It’s got a father,’ Eva said, ‘whether we get married or not.’
‘You know what I mean. A proper, married father. A traditional dad.’
That proves it, Eva told herself. He wants to marry me. He loves me. He does.
*
On the day that they’d come back from the hospital to the house with their baby daughter, Antoine had driven and Eva sat in the back of the car with Rowena in a portable carrycot. As they got out of the car and walked up the steps and into Salix House, Eva tasted in her mouth, felt in her speeded-up heartbeat, a sense of utter panic and horror. She handed the carrycot to Antoine as soon as they were inside. She could just see Rowena’s little face peeping out of a hood formed from the folds of a pink, cotton blanket. Her eyes were closed. Tight shut. Her mouth was like a small pink bud. Eva felt cold terror grip her heart.
‘I’m going to the loo,’ she muttered and ran upstairs, Antoine shouting after her: ‘Is something wrong? Eva?’
She couldn’t answer. She didn’t answer for two days. She locked herself into the bathroom and refused to come out. This, she thought as she sat on the edge of the bath, is almost the worst thing I ever did in my life. It’s the second worst thing.
During those two days, trays were left outside the door and Eva would wait till she knew whoever had brought them had gone back downstairs to open the door and get them. From time to time, Antoine came and pleaded through the keyhole but Eva didn’t want to hear what he said. She could feel herself spiralling down to a mental collapse and that was part of the reason she came out in the end. What everyone thought, what Eva encouraged them to think, was that she’d recovered and accepted that she had to look after her own child, however hard she found the task. That was half true, but it wasn’t the only reason she’d unlocked the bathroom door. Part of it was seeing Angelika, not being able to hide from her. Eva had tried to cover the mirror but it was huge and attached to one wall and because she was still weak and sore from the birth she hadn’t had the strength to rig up an arrangement that would cover the glass completely. Her sister was almost always there whenever she looked up and in the end Eva couldn’t bear it. She’d come out.
No one suggested that she’d hidden because she didn’t love little Rowena, but that was what was tearing her apart while she sat on a pile of towels on the floor. The received wisdom was: mothers who love their children properly love them at once. Immediately. Completely. And because she hadn’t done that, Eva felt herself to be inadequate, lacking in some feeling others had access to and she didn’t. But I do love her, she thought, staring down at the tiled floor. That thought, those feelings, didn’t seem to help much.
While Eva was locked away, Antoine found Phyllis and from then on she hadn’t ever been completely alone with her own daughter. She’d never had to manage anything by herself. Eva’s ‘crisis’, as it was called, was a one-off and the doctors put it down to post-natal depression. Day succeeded day and Rowena grew up and Eva went on loving her but she never felt close, never felt that the two of them enjoyed the kind of relationship a mother and daughter were meant to have.
Eva went back to work as soon as she possibly could. Her whole life depended on it. Other people also looked to her for their livelihoods, and she didn’t feel it was right to let them down. Mainly, though, she was working to save her sanity.
Antoine was, as usual, at the bottom of her unhappiness. She began to notice, shortly after Rowena was born, that he stayed away from the house at night, more and more often. Sometimes the phone wo
uld ring when he was at home and if Eva picked it up, what she heard was silence on the end of the line. This happened too often for it to be a wrong number each time. Then there was chat, overheard at work. She’d catch the tail end of someone’s sneaky giggle and hear phrases like ‘typical Bragonard’. She asked the model who’d said that what it meant, directly to her face. The poor girl blushed and muttered something about being ‘You know, French’, but she was lying and Eva knew it. It was obvious what the problem was. Antoine had found someone else. Another woman. That must be it. Because I’m so fat after the birth. Because I work so hard and because I’m so ratty. He doesn’t love me any more. Eva made up her mind to ask him about it, to his face. Whatever else he was, Antoine was not a liar. If she wanted to know the truth, she knew that she could. For a long time, she hesitated. The weeks and the months passed. Sometimes Eva thought that they could go on for ever in this state but that was nonsense. She had to find out. One night, after a particularly delicious supper, when they were sitting together in the study with the lamps lit and the curtains drawn, Eva said, ‘Antoine, I have to ask you a question.’