‘No one tells me I look like my father, or even how weird it is I don’t look like him.’ She breathed in the cat’s warmth.
Do I look like him? Mr Furry puddled the duvet.
The idea she may resemble Teilo suddenly seemed more important than anything. I miss him.It makes no sense but I do, even though I never knew him. Lili has her memories and treasures. She has the school reports Mamgu kept and the certificates he got for swimming. I haven’t got anything.
When Lili had shown Cadi these scraps of the past, she said he’d wanted her to throw them away. ‘I’m glad I didn’t. He wasn’t academic – sport was Teilo’s thing. He was a brilliant swimmer. It’s where you get it from.’
Before Cadi could ask more, Lili put away her anecdotal, incomplete stories and changed the subject, as if her memories didn’t matter, not even to herself.
What, Cadi wondered, would her father have wanted her to know about him?
The past remained censored. Her eyes closed and she drifted into a dream in which three great birds shape-shifted between bird and human. One looked like a man, the other – a little girl. And one looked like Cadi. They flew in formation, looping and dancing up into a clear sky, into the trees and away on the wind.
Forty-nine
The days became heavy.
Instead of cooling things down, when it rained the air turned oppressive. Flowers swelled to an overblown extravagance as if they might explode. Hollyhocks soared like giants and the blue of delphiniums threatened temporary blindness. At night, the scent of jasmine made the women at Tŷ Aderyn light-headed.
In Violet’s house, dishes fell from shelves and radios switched themselves on. At night, lights flickered and candles refused to stay alight.
From her bedroom window, Cadi looked out over Lili’s garden. Washed in rainlight, the grass turned blue, and on it a circle appeared: sprigs of meadowsweet, a scattering of yellow broom petals and pale green oak leaves.
She blinked and the blue grass and the flowers disappeared. So much for magic.
In Cadi’s imagination, Dora was her little sister: a four year-old child who never grew up. She saw herself taking her sister’s hand, walking through the garden. This is Lili’s garden, she would say, and explain the different plants and trees, the significance of the layout. They wouldn’t go into Violet’s garden; it was too dark and strange.
The palm of her hand prickled as if a small hand touched hers; she could see an upturned face, hanging on her every word.
Her mother’s words came back to her: Coward… he was a coward… Andthe photograph with a cut-out face.
Climbing into bed she tried to read. Jane Eyre’s voice skittered across the page. “Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own…”
She stopped reading before she cried, placed a feather between the pages and went to sleep.
In the morning the bed and floors were strewn with oak leaves, feathers and tiny flowers as if the outside had moved indoors. Turning over she went back to sleep and when she woke again, save for a single feather caught in her hair, the rest had gone.
Cerys left Cadi alone as long as she could bear.
‘You can’t still be depressed,’ she said. ‘And if you are, you need me.’
Cadi agreed.
No one would ever suggest Cadi Hopkins and Cerys Conti were like sisters. Cerys had an air of self-assurance. While Cadi bent over her lessons, Cerys yawned, stared out of the schoolroom window as if everything was too much for her. You could imagine her floating downriver through opal mists, under a stone bridge, the voice of Lancelot declaring her to be lovely of face. It was how she liked to imagine herself.
‘Lili,’ Cadi said, ‘is the most ridiculous person I know.’
‘Compared to what? She’s a legend.’
If Cadi couldn’t get Cerys on side, she thought she might cry. The two girls sprawled under the cherry tree, eating ice lollies. Two collared doves flapped back and forth between the trees and the cottage roof.
‘I don’t think even normal families talk to each other about the things that really matter.’ Cerys eyed Cadi over her glasses. ‘Look at me. I’m the most misunderstood girl in the history of the world. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover I was a changeling.’
Cerys craved peace and quiet. Her older sisters, she insisted, treated her like a slave. Grandparents and random cousins trailed in and out of her house making privacy as rare as hen’s teeth. ‘I’d swap with you in a flash.’
‘You’re welcome. Lili and my mother are impossible. I can’t stand being in the same room with them.’
‘Your house is an oasis. If I weren’t me, I’d have to be you.’
‘Why? I’m an orphan.’
‘You mother’s still alive. You aren’t an orphan.’
Cadi wrinkled her nose. ‘She may as well be dead.’
She wondered about Violet’s mother, alive somewhere in Canada, or so Lili said. She imagined turning up on Madeleine’s doorstep, announcing, “I am your granddaughter. Help me uncover the truth.”
Madeleine probably didn’t know she existed. If a person went to the trouble of emigrating in order to live her own life, she was unlikely to care about an unknown granddaughter.
If there was a device for measuring secrets, Cadi thought,this family would break it.
According to Lili, mystery surrounded Violet’s mother. All Teilo had said was that soon after he met Violet, Madeleine ran off with a man no one knew anything about.
Cadi reminded Cerys of this, hoping for sympathy.
‘Hmm, maybe.’ Cerys thought for a moment. ‘A metaphorical orphan.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘That’s borderline tragic and rather fabulous.’ She would happily exchange poetic misfortune for too much information. ‘And strictly speaking, it’s two cottages, which makes it even more romantic and slightly spooky.’ Her eyes widened. ‘What if your witchy ancestors drift through the walls, mad-haired and frenzied, scaring the hell out of each other?’
‘And what if you put a sock in your over-active imagination?’ Cadi poked her lolly stick into the ground. ‘I keep thinking one of them will let something slip.’ She rolled onto her back. ‘I’ve got quite sneaky – listening at keyholes, that sort of thing. Not that is does much good. Lili and Violet either argue or circle one another telling lies. It’s so boring.’
‘Still, it’s no reason not to go on listening.’
‘Exactly.’ Cadi reached for a bag of crisps. ‘And I don’t believe my father was a coward. She’s wrong, I know she is.’ She snapped open the packet.
‘It might not be about right or wrong. What if it’s just too hard for Violet to talk about?’
‘There’s a secret, Cerys. She’s hiding things from me, they both are. Sometimes, I think the whole bloody village has been lying to me.’
‘If we had a pound for every nosy parker, we’d be millionaires.’
‘All I want is to know what happened when my dad died. ’ She paused. ‘What if there was an inquest?’
Cerys nodded. ‘Good thinking. There might have been. You could look it up on the internet.’ Cerys reached for one of Cadi’s crisps. ‘I bet you can Google it. My dad would know. He loves anything to do with murder and death. And if your father died in mysterious circumstances, it would have been in the papers.’
‘It wasn’t mysterious. I told you, he crashed his car. It was an accident.’
‘Yes, but do they know what caused it? Was another car involved? Was there ice on the road?’
‘It was summer, so I doubt it. It was something to do with the brakes.’ Cadi flapped away a bee. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
Cadi followed the verger, her fingers firmly crossed behind her back. ‘Sorry Mr Lewis, I hope you don’t think I’m being rude, only we’re doing this project at school and I was wondering if you knew anything about inquests?’
The verger, recalling Cadi from the churchyard, became flustered again, anxious not to overstep any invisible boundaries.
‘A project, you
say.’ He coughed and looked uncomfortable.
‘I need to know some things, for school and everything.’ Her fingers were crossed so tight her knuckles hurt. She willed him not to ask any more questions. And Mr Lewis, at heart something of a show-off, couldn’t resist.
‘Well, now then, let me see. Mostly it’s a formality. If it’s an unusual or unexplained death then, yes, there’s an inquest and a coroner’s report.’
‘Can anyone go to an inquest?’
‘Oh yes, although usually people don’t. Not if it doesn’t concern them.’
‘They can read the reports though?’
‘Oh yes, yes. It’s all in the public domain and often in the newspapers too.’
‘Really? You mean it gets written about like ordinary news?’
The verger nodded. ‘Yes, particularly if it’s an important death, or a scandalous one!’ He was getting into his stride now and Cadi nodded, trying to conceal her excitement. ‘It’s all there, in accordance with the principle of open justice. If the press attend then it’s up to them, naturally. If it’s deemed in the public interest, they print it.’
‘Hi, it’s me.’
‘Good call on the project thing.’ Cerys said when Cadi explained.
‘I didn’t lie, not really. I just didn’t mention the real one’s about Skomer Island.’
‘Right then, shall we ask my dad?’
‘Do you mind if we don’t? No offence, Cerys – I’d rather look myself.’
‘None taken, sweet thing. Do you want to borrow my laptop?’
‘I’ll borrow Lili’s while she’s at work.’
‘Cool. Talk soon.’
Fifty
Three o’clock on a Welsh morning: Violet lay wakeful for what might have been hours.
With Dora’s death came an inconsistency of time. A day might pass and seem like an hour or a hundred years. She would fall asleep and wake up surprised not to find briars twisted in her hair.
On the day of the funeral it had rained. Water spilled out of the sky and by noon, when they laid the tiny coffin in the ground, pools of it had collected between the gravestones. The birds fell silent and unless they were amongst the few invited, people stayed at home.
Violet knew there was an expectation she would get over it, after a while things would become easier. It was what she herself had always understood. When someone you love died, the first weeks were the worst. A funeral was meant to bring some sort of respite, get you through the initial nightmare by forcing you to deal with practical things. Grief finally gave way to acceptance until you began to live again.
There had been nothing temporary about Violet’s grief. Sleeping pills were useless and she refused counselling. The last thing she wanted was a new perspective.
‘I don’t want anyone’s pity,’ she had said to Lili.
‘People don’t know what else to do.’
‘Why do they have to do anything?’
As the loss became part of who she was, people left her alone. Rejecting comfort, she allowed the silences to gather around her. Other than a flash of curls or half-imagined laughter, Violet’s memory closed as surely as a slammed door. Violet’s memories were her business.
Only a hint of light from the bedside lamp lit the pages.
Violet sat on the floor, the album in her hands. Knowing she wouldn’t sleep and with the urgent need to open this door on the past, she turned the first page.
Listen…
She looked over her shoulder. No one was there. Even so, Violet felt as if she had been caught cheating. She set the album to one side.
At the bottom of the box, she reached under the torn lining and pulled out a studio portrait of a woman, poised and distant, her pale complexion enhanced by ash-blonde hair swept into a chignon. It was the only picture of her mother Violet owned. There were no pictures of her father and she couldn’t remember ever seeing one. She glanced up at her bed where the note from Madeleine’s friend lay crumpled under her pillow.
No.
Before Madeleine left, she had appeared one night in the doorway of Violet’s bedroom. She’d been out with the man on his way to Canada and was a little tipsy.
‘I suppose you wish you had someone else for a mother.’
Violet turned from the dressing table, carried on brushing her hair. She wasn’t a liar but knew it was sometimes sensible to bend the truth. Her mother might change her mind, or stay away for a short time and come back.
Don’t go…
It’s always wise to leave a space for hope. Violet said nothing. The brush hovered against her hair; she pulled it down, a long careful stroke, feeling it like she imaged her mother’s hand would feel.
The moment never came again. The one time she might have told her mother she loved her, how as a little girl she had thought her so perfect she wanted to be her; she said nothing and lost the one chance she might ever have. Violet made sure her mother would never find her. When she came to the village, it was an act of defiance. Marriage to Teilo gave her security and anonymity.
Look at me, mother dear? I can be happy too.
Closing the album, she placed it back in the box. Resurrecting old grief would get her nowhere. Sliding the box under the bed, she tried to recall the girl she had been: the hopeful one who had wanted to believe in love. Goosebumps rose on her skin. She left the room and ran a bath and as the water crashed into the tub, held her hands over her ears until it was full. Undressing, she left her clothes where they fell.
Soothed by the heat, Violet lay back in the water, her hands lily pad floating. Dipping deeper, she tilted her head until only her face showed above the surface. Her hair spread like pallid weeds across her breasts.
On the night after her baby died, Violet dreamed of the sea, huge and as dark as black blood. It heaved in front of her and the small bodies of countless children tossed in the swell. On the shore, sand as rough and sharp as broken glass cut her feet. As she reached for the children, the screaming ocean engulfed them, the violence of its voice mocking her cries.
Her tears fell through the open window, echoed down the garden and out into the lanes. There were people in the village who said they started awake and the sound of Violet’s grief chilled them to the bone.
Violet woke drenched in sweat and tears and never cried again.
The water moved in time to her breathing. The dark stone of her heart thudded, cutting off feeling, stifling kindness.
God, how I hate this house. It wasn’t her home. Her real home lay in a dark chamber of her heart. And because it was an accommodating place, it held more weed-wrapped, soot-black sorrow than you could fit into the hills behind the house. It amazed Violet how much dark matter she could crush inside her heart.
Somewhere in the house she heard a creak. This house is oldand getting older by the second. Like me.
The bathwater cooled. Violet shivered. Heaving herself out, she reached for a towel, wrapped it tight as a shroud, holding herself together.
Heartbeat by heartbeat the seconds passed. Time moved too fast now, taking her away from her memories. Did you know what was happening? Did you cry out? Did your eyes stay open, wide and round as blue pennies, because your life had barely begun and there were a million moments you hadn’t lived?
Violet closed her eyes so tight they hurt. She saw silver fish nudge her baby’s tiny body, weed wind through her hair, tangling in the curls like a deadly ribbon. Holding her breath and with the towel held taut, she willed the image away and listened.
All she heard was the echo of her stony heartbeat, and the water as it ran down the plughole.
Fifty-one
In August, the end of any day was long.
Lili began to see shadows where shadows ought not to be. On the brick path near the cherry tree she sensed a ghost – one with purpose.
Picking her way through the garden she stopped to re-stake a fallen delphinium, finger the petals on a windblown rose. The meadowsweet stood so tall now it had become a forest.
Hungry for her supper, she picked some peas. As she shelled them, scrubbed and chopped potatoes, Lili the storyteller made up one about herself. This is where I live. In this cottage with a view so sweet I shall never tire of it. This is the food I grow; this was my mother’s knife. The sky darkened to the colour of a bruise. It will rain tonight and I shan’t mind.
Transferring the potatoes to the steamer she heard a blackbird – the twilight messenger – on the other side of the front door. Tugging against the stiffness, she opened it. The bird flew up and on the step Lili saw a basket of alstremeria, and tucked between the pale pink flowers, a slip of paper.
You didn’t say
you had no time for flowers.
P
Lili picked up the basket, her heart thudding, imagined Pomona as she had first seen her in her garden, framed by the white house.
When she asked me about the lilac, I already liked her.There was a telephone number scribbled on the note. So it can be my choice.
Down the lane leading to the village, Lili imagined a silver spider’s web winding toward a big white house where a woman with green eyes waited.
Choosing her favourite jug, pale grey and with a band of blue around the rim, Lili arranged the flowers. She placed them in the centre of the table, stroked the petals and smiled.
She brought me flowers. Lili stepped outside the back door.
A dash of expectation blew across the garden. The trees turned blue and something brushed her arm. It might have been a cobweb, or a lost moth.
Or a ghost.
She closed her eyes and told herself it didn’t matter.
The ghost’s wings are growing stronger, her claws lengthening.
With what remains of her human self, she dreams she drinks her mother’s tears and they make her heart beat faster, and when she wakes, her sister stands by the lake with a book in her hand.
Are you here?
Her sister’s head drops to the book and the ghost dreams the story she reads is about her.
I am lost and you do not see me.
Her unclosed eyes, amber and azure by turn, search for the other side of the sky and under her flesh, her wings grow bigger and stronger.
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