by Isabel Wolff
‘Oh, Jenni,’ Honor breathed again.
‘She helped me pick up our towels and our beach things. She said that we were going to need them the next day because it was going to be hot again. Then we walked up the lane to the hotel.
‘The manager showed us into a corner of the lounge, where there was a TV and a box of games for the children. Jane chatted away to me, telling me that my mum would soon be back. The manager brought me something to eat but I didn’t want it. Jane and I watched television, though it might as well have been a blank screen. Then she got out some board games and we played Snakes and Ladders; after that we played Snap! We played it over and over again. Then, sometime in the early hours, my mother returned.
‘I’d fallen asleep on a sofa and Jane had put a blanket over me. I remember hearing my mother’s voice, then opening my eyes and seeing her, and feeling so relieved. Mum was back, and everything was going to be okay, and Ted would be fine, and we could carry on with the holiday and I didn’t even mind Clive being there, because he’d been nice, running to call the ambulance like that. It was even going to be sunny again the next day. Then, in a low, flat voice that I barely recognised, Mum thanked Jane for looking after me, and we walked up to Penlee. On the way there I asked my Mum how Ted was, but she didn’t answer. I asked her if he was still in the hospital, and she said yes. As we went into the house I asked her how long he was going to be there because I really wanted to see him. It was then that my mother sat me on her lap and told me that Ted had died.’
‘I wish I’d … known,’ Honor said again, later that evening. We sat in the kitchen, hardly talking. The window was open, and we could hear the sigh of the sea. ‘I hate to think of you carrying something so huge, for so long, all by yourself. It must have made you feel … lonely.’
‘I did feel lonely,’ I responded quietly. ‘But whenever I think about that day, which I do nearly all the time, I think about the boy and girl who were making the tunnel. Perhaps it’s because that was the last “normal” conversation I had with anyone before Ted died. Or perhaps it’s simply because they were there – but I associate them with it profoundly.’
‘It must have been so hard for you just to walk on the beach today, let alone to go out on the rocks. It must have been difficult, just coming here, to Polvarth.’
‘It was. When I realised where the job was I could have said no, and I was going to say no; then, somehow, I found myself saying yes. A part of me has wanted to come here again, because it’s haunted me all these years.’
Honor looked at me, still stunned by what she’d learned. ‘And you’ve never told anyone?’
‘Not a soul. You must be wondering what else you don’t know about me,’ I added bleakly. ‘But there isn’t anything.’
She pushed away her plate. ‘I’m just so sad about it, Jen. But I still don’t understand why you couldn’t tell your close friends; and I can’t fathom why you’ve never told Rick. How could you want to share the rest of your life with him, yet not tell him something so important about yourself?’
‘I did want to tell Rick. Of course I did.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’
‘I …’ I couldn’t bring myself to tell Honor the truth. ‘I was just … waiting for the right time, but it never seemed to come. And the longer I left it, the harder it got. But this is why he’s never met my mother, because if we went there, he’d see all the photos of the brother he didn’t know I’d had.’
‘I’ve only met your mother once,’ Honor said. ‘At our graduation. I remember thinking that she looked sad, but I assumed it was because you and she aren’t close – I’d always known that. I also thought it might be because of what had happened to your dad. But it was something even worse – poor woman.’ She exhaled. ‘So … was it a head injury?’
I nodded. ‘What they call a “catastrophic” head injury. They carried out emergency surgery but he died in the night.’
‘So is that why you left Goring?’
‘Yes. My mother couldn’t bear the house any more without Ted; she couldn’t bear going up to the school to collect me, but having to go home without him. It upset her to see the children in his class and she couldn’t cope with the sympathy of their parents, or of the local shopkeepers. Goring was such a small place that everyone knew what had happened – they already knew what had happened to my father.’
‘Did you want to go? Leave your schoolfriends?’
‘Probably not; but I guess I was too traumatised to protest, so I went along with what my mother wanted, which was to escape. She only ever went back there to visit the cemetery.’ I thought of Ted’s small headstone in the children’s corner of the churchyard. It was carved with his name and dates, a rosebud and the inscription, Sleep, my Darling.
‘Why did she move to Southampton? Did she know people there?’
‘She didn’t know a soul – which was the whole point. It was a large city in which she felt she could be anonymous. She found a job, in the accounts department of a big printing firm, and enrolled me in a local school.’
‘Didn’t you tell any of your new friends what had happened?’
‘Absolutely not. I kept myself to myself. And if anyone asked me whether I had any siblings, I’d just say “no”, which wasn’t a lie.’
‘But wasn’t exactly the truth.’
‘I didn’t see why I had to tell the truth. These people were strangers. What did it have to do with them?’
‘But, Jenni, I’m not a stranger; neither is Nina – or Rick. So why you felt you couldn’t tell even us, I don’t know.’
I looked at my hands, unable to tell her. ‘It was just too sad to talk about. I was struggling with it, as I still do to this day. And by the time I’d met you and Nina I’d buried it so deep inside that it had almost … fossilised.’ I lifted my eyes to the sea. ‘But now I’m here, and it’s cracked open, and I’m tormented by it all over again.’
‘Tormented?’ Honor echoed softly. ‘But what happened was a tragedy, Jen. It was just one of those terribly sad things – a small boy, an overexcited dog. It was an accident,’ she went on. ‘It was no one’s fault.’
I stood up, went to the window, and pulled down the blind against the night.
The following morning I went up to the farm. As I walked down the track I saw Henry and Beth in the yard. We chatted briefly, but their friendly smiles were tinged with sympathy and I saw at once that they knew my story. It would have been natural for Klara to have told them about our encounter with Jane. The thought made me feel naked, exposed.
I went up the stairs to the flat. As Klara opened the door I sensed that she was looking at me in a different way, as though now unsure how to treat me.
‘Jenni.’ She smiled at me solicitously. ‘Come in. You’ll have some coffee and cake?’
‘Coffee, please, but no cake, thanks. I’m not hungry.’
This time Klara didn’t press it on me. ‘It was lovely to meet Honor,’ she said as she brought the tray over. ‘What’s she doing today?’
‘She’s walking to the lighthouse at St Anthony Head. I’m going to pick her up at half one, and then we’ll have a pub lunch somewhere. So …’ I got out the recorder. ‘I’ve transcribed what we did yesterday morning; the hellish journey to Tjideng …’ I quickly changed the batteries. ‘I found it hard, listening to it again.’
Klara smiled grimly. ‘The experience has remained seared on my mind all these years; and you can be sure that having been through that, I never complained about any train journey that I ever went on.’
I nodded. ‘I wondered if we could talk about what happened when you got there. I know from my research that Tjideng was one of the worst camps.’
‘Yes, because of Sonei. He was … a devil.’
‘So, Klara, it’s now October 1944, and you’ve just settled in to your third camp, Tjideng. The war is almost over by now, though you didn’t know that at the time. Can you tell me what you remember about your first few days and weeks there?’
Klara didn’t respond. She sat staring at her lap. For a moment I thought that she was too upset at the prospect of having to talk about Tjideng. She’d told me that there were some experiences that would be too difficult for her to describe, let alone discuss. Perhaps we’d come to those now. She’d spoken of so many harrowing incidents that I didn’t dare imagine what these ones might be. I was just thinking that we’d have to find some way to skirt round them when Klara looked up. ‘So I was right,’ she said softly.
Realising that we were not going to be talking about Java, I reached forward and turned off the tape recorder. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You were.’
‘I knew I recognised you. From the moment I saw you. Of course you’ve changed – you were just a child – but I was certain that we’d met.’
‘I really didn’t remember you, until yesterday – I must have blocked it out.’ How odd, I thought, that my mind had obscured some memories, while preserving others with crystal clarity. ‘Then seeing you with Jane brought it all back. You were at the hotel.’
Klara nodded. ‘I spent most of last night thinking about what happened that day. I remember it quite clearly. I was in the farmhouse and had heard the siren. Then Henry came back and told me what had happened; he’d been walking back from Trennick and had seen the ambulance. Later, Jane phoned me. In a low voice, she told me that she was at the hotel, looking after a young girl while her mother was at the hospital with the little boy who’d fallen on the rocks.’
‘Then you came and sat with us.’
‘Yes. I thought I’d keep Jane company in a sensitive situation. It was late by then and I imagined you’d be asleep; but you were playing Snap. I remember thinking how brave you were being.’
‘I wasn’t brave at all, Klara – far from it! But I remember you coming into the room and chatting with Jane and me as though everything was perfectly normal. We all played cards, and after a while you left. Then, at last, my mother returned.’ My throat ached. ‘And then …’ The albums, the carved box, and the coffee cups had blurred. I fumbled in my bag for a tissue, then pressed it to my eyes.
I heard Klara sigh. ‘It was just so sad, Jenni.’
I was silent.
‘I’ve never forgotten it,’ she said. ‘I think everyone in this small community felt the tragedy of it for a very long time. There’ve been a few close calls on the beach; five years ago two boys made a tunnel that collapsed on them; they were dug out just in time. But there’s only been one death and from time to time people here do mention it.’ A silence enveloped us. I could hear the hum of the fridge. ‘Now I understand why you were so vague about when it was that you came here.’
‘I didn’t want you to know.’
‘I’ve been thinking too about you saying that you don’t have any siblings.’
‘I don’t – not for a long time now.’
‘The thing is that I had been thinking about it, for the book. So I would have mentioned it to you when we got to that part of my life.’
‘I knew that, and I was dreading it. I don’t know how I would have reacted; I think I’d just have kept quiet and pretended that it had nothing to do with me.’
‘But if it’s still so painful, that you couldn’t bring yourself to say who you were, or what your connection with Polvarth is, then why come back at all?’
‘I’ve been trying to work that out.’ I clutched the tissue. ‘When Vincent phoned me about doing your memoirs I was immediately excited by your story and I felt very drawn to it. But just as I’d accepted the commission, he told me where you lived.’
‘That must have given you a shock.’
‘It was like a physical blow; the thought of not only coming here again, but having to stay here, was agony. So I tried to get out of it. And I was making these increasingly desperate excuses when I suddenly heard myself telling Vincent that I would do it. I don’t even know why.’
‘Perhaps you wanted to – what’s the expression? Lay a ghost?’
I laughed grimly. ‘I did. And I thought I could, just by being here, but I can’t. I feel Ted’s presence. I feel haunted by him.’
‘Haunted?’
‘I hear him saying my name; he always called me “Evie” because when he was little he couldn’t say Genevieve. Now his voice is always in my head.’
Klara lowered her cup. ‘That’s how I feel about Peter. So you do understand that.’
‘Oh, I do! Except that I probably feel worse than you do, Klara.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Because what happened to Ted was my fault.’
‘But …’ Klara’s voice was sharp, suddenly. ‘It was an accident, Jenni. He fell.’
‘Yes – he was startled by a dog and lost his footing.’
‘So … how could that have been your fault? If anything it would have been the fault of the people who owned the dog. It shouldn’t have been off its lead if it wasn’t safe with children.’
‘I think it was just trying to play. But Ted was terrified of dogs. He was screaming, and perhaps that made the dog more excited; I’ll never know. I only know that I didn’t look after him.’
‘Was it your job to look after him?’
‘Yes. I was four years older.’
‘You were only a child yourself. You were what? Eight?’
‘I was nine – nine and a half,’ I added. The extra six months seemed to matter. ‘But my mother had told me to hold Ted’s hand, and I didn’t, not because I was “only” a child myself, but because I was angry with him.’
‘Angry?’
‘We’d argued over the net. Then he’d grabbed it and we’d lost a crab that I’d just caught and I was furious. Then I saw that the tide was coming up and said we had to go back. But I was still angry – not just about the crab, of course; I was angry with my mother for bringing her horrible new boyfriend on the holiday. I hated him being there with us, on the beach, and in the house, and in my mother’s bedroom; it was embarrassing, ruining everything, and I’d been looking forward to the holiday so much. So I took my anger out on Ted, and I walked away.’
‘Did you know where he was?’
‘I knew that he was following me.’
‘How did you know?’
I felt a wave of shame. ‘Because I could hear him crying. He was calling my name, begging me to wait. But I pretended not to hear, and then his voice became fainter and fainter as I got further and further away.’
‘What did you think would happen to him?’
‘I must have thought that he’d just follow me and get back on his own. I knew it wouldn’t be nice for him, but I thought he’d manage. But when I eventually turned round, there was this dog on the rocks, barking at him, snapping at him. Then it suddenly leapt up,
and Ted fell …’
‘I understand so much about you now, Jenni,’ Klara murmured. ‘I understand why you’ve seemed so … guarded; as though you somehow feared exposure.’ It was true. This was why I always felt safer in the shadows. Invisible. ‘And is this why you don’t want children?’
I didn’t answer for a moment. ‘I don’t trust myself to have them. I was angry, so I abandoned my little brother. What if I were to do that again, with my own child? What if I didn’t take enough care, through incompetence – or worse, was negligent, as I was then? Because if I’d simply done as my mother asked, which was only what I should have done, then Ted would probably still be alive. I could have driven that dog off, or at least stopped Ted from falling, because I would have been holding his hand. But I didn’t hold his hand, and he died.’ I swallowed. ‘And after that my mother never held …’ My voice trailed away.
‘Your mother never held your hand?’ Klara suggested gently.
I nodded. ‘She said I was too old, but I knew that wasn’t the reason. She was punishing me for not holding Ted’s that day.’
‘She blamed you for what happened?’
‘She’s always blamed me – which is why we’re not close.’
‘But you were a little girl. Didn’t she help yo
u? Console you? You must have been traumatised.’
‘I was; of course I was. But she thought only of her own grief. She asked me how I could have walked away from Ted, on a beach. She asked me again and again – what had I been thinking of? Why had I done it? She kept on asking – I thought she’d never stop.’ I exhaled, blowing out my breath. ‘So, finally, I told her the truth. But I soon wished that I hadn’t. She just stared at me, shocked. Then she said the fact that I’d done it on purpose made it so much worse – impossible to forgive.’
Impossible to forgive …
The words had echoed in my head for twenty-five years.
‘Where was she when it happened?’
‘At the top of the beach, with her boyfriend.’
‘So she was distracted.’
‘I think she was so glad to be with a man again after all her unhappiness that she focused on him instead of her children. She was very young – twenty-eight; six years younger than I am now.’
‘Young or not, she was the mother. Didn’t she blame herself for what happened to Ted?’
‘No. Or at least she didn’t seem to.’
‘But parents are responsible for their children, and you were only nine.’
I shrugged. ‘Old enough to have done the right thing.’
‘But you said that the tide was coming in; shouldn’t she at least have been aware of that?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘And she knew that your brother was scared of dogs. Why should you take all the responsibility for what happened?’
‘Why shouldn’t I, when I walked away?’ I drew the tissue under my eyes. ‘Ted would be thirty now. I think of him every day and wonder what he’d look like, and what job he’d be doing and how often we’d see each other. Then I think of him standing on the rocks, in his red trunks. And it’s as though he’s still there, waiting for me to go back and help him.’ I clutched the tissue. ‘And how I wish, wish, wish that I had!’