Mum loved the fig tree. She loved the shelter it gave my father in his studio as he painted – keeping the outside cool, even as the glass roof let the light in. Now the tree has overgrown and when you look up at the glass roof it is dark, covered by a canopy of fig leaves. You might climb up there as the fruit falls, Juliet, clear it from the glass. And again in October. Take care not to fall.
When he burned the painting, the heat of the fire shattered the glass roof. Part of the tree was burned, too. When I was little Mum had the glass ceiling replaced, a clean, unblinking round eye on the sky above. The doll’s house was put in there for me to play with. And it was as though the fire never happened.
As you grow old, one’s childhood draws near again. Events of seventy, eighty years ago, which seemed obscure and long abandoned in the past, are now to me crystal clear. I cannot stop thinking about them.
Cut the dead sunflower heads off. Store them in the shed and you will be glad of them come Christmas. I will later explain why. In the meantime, relax into autumn. ‘My favourite time of year’ some nitwits will claim. They are idiots. Everything starts to fall apart in autumn. Be on your guard, Ju. Be ready.
September 2014
‘Mummy . . .’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘I had an accident again.’
‘OK, OK.’ Juliet had thought she was awake already, but as she swung out of the sagging divan bed, her bare feet hitting the smooth floorboards, her head began to spin, her heavy eyes peering at the little figure in the doorway, and she realised she’d been fast asleep.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s OK, darling,’ said Juliet softly, opening the bedroom door. ‘Let’s get you changed – oh.’
‘I changed myself.’ Isla was in a shabby sundress, green with tiny white flowers. It was far too small for her and, in places, stained a dark rust colour. ‘I found this in a chest.’
‘That’s OK.’ Juliet smoothed her hand across her daughter’s face, blinking in the dim light from the hall lamp. Out of the empty bedroom window next door to hers, the full moon shone like sunshine. She looked back at her alarm clock. It was 2 a.m. ‘We’ll find you something to wear.’
‘All my pee-jays are in the wash.’
‘Well, something else. You can’t wear that. It’s too tight – Isla? Come back, darling.’
Juliet followed her daughter upstairs to the Birdsnest, where the girls had chosen to sleep. Only Sandy was on her floor, next door to her in the room in which she had slept as a child, with the window seat carved with squirrels and foxes and the carved hinge which lifted up and where Sandy kept his toys now, just as she had done.
The Birdsnest had been the nursery, but Grandi had put a plasterboard partition up, dividing it into two still-large rooms. Isla’s half overlooked the Wilderness, the Dovecote and the lane. Juliet thought Isla was too little to sleep up there. She wanted her next to her, in case she woke in the night. But Isla wouldn’t sleep in that room. She said it gave her a bad feeling. She said she wanted to be with Bea.
Juliet went into the bathroom, as quietly as she could, and fetched a towel and a bucket of warm water, praying as ever that the banging pipes didn’t wake Sandy. She hunted through the linen cupboard, and went back up to Isla’s room. Isla had taken the duvet cover and the sheet off by herself, and was sitting by the window, her feet tucked underneath her. ‘I washed the pee off me,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t find a sheet.’
‘There aren’t any,’ said Juliet. ‘They’re in the wash. Sorry darling, I should have done it a bit more quickly. Getting ready for school tomorrow and everything . . . Come here, and give me a hug. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I don’t want to go back to sleep.’
‘You’re bound to be nervous, first day of school, and all that, sweetheart. But you need to get some sleep.’ Isla shrugged. Juliet went over to her, and just as she reached the window, Isla darted out of her way.
‘I’m fine thanks, Mum. I’ll sleep on the mattress.’
‘You can’t, darling. Come and sleep with me.’ Juliet stripped the sodden sheet, balling it up, and began scrubbing at the mattress with the wet towel.
‘No thanks,’ said Isla, swiftly.
‘Booooo,’ said Juliet, with a theatrical downturned mouth, doing the blubbery baby voice that used to make Isla and Sandy shout with laughter. ‘Waaahh!’
‘I don’t want to have a bed with you.’ Isla stared at her mother, her huge grey eyes shining in the dark. ‘’Cause I hate you. I hate you more than anything in the whole world.’
‘Oh Isla. Look I know – oh darling. Come here—’
‘Bea’s right. You don’t ever listen to me, Mum.’ Slowly, deliberately, Isla picked up the beloved Moomin mug she had been given for her last birthday. She held it out, her mouth downturned almost comically, only it wasn’t funny. ‘You pretend everything’s OK, and it’s –’ And Isla opened her fingers and the cup fell to the ground, smashing into three. ‘NOT.’
‘I can mend this, it’s fine,’ said Juliet, bending down to pick up the pieces, fingers clumsy with fatigue. ‘Listen. I know you’re upset about leaving your old school, but you can’t throw things, Isla—’
‘Shut up, Mum,’ Isla shouted, so loudly Juliet jumped. Juliet looked at her. Her chest was rising and falling under the too-tight dress, her moon-face a picture of misery. She picked up a photo Juliet had put in her room, of the five of them at London Zoo the previous summer and threw it across the room, her bottom lip wobbling as it hit the corner shelves with a sickening crack. ‘I’ll keep throwing things if you d-don’t go away,’ she said. ‘I will, Mum. I will. You should have got some more sheets when you went to see Daddy without me. If you don’t have a new sheet then can you just go, please, and leave me alone. I hate you, I k-keep telling you.’
She was crying now, fat tears rolling freely down her small face. Juliet put her hands up. She moved towards Isla again, spreading her arms wide as though trying to catch a stray chicken. She grabbed her daughter who squirmed, hitting Juliet, scratching her, her mouth open in outrage, a high-pitched, wailing whine coming from her. Juliet pulled her close and whispered in her ear. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I know you’re cross I didn’t take you last week. But Daddy’s coming to see you soon.’ Isla’s sobs increased, and she shuddered in Juliet’s arms. ‘There wasn’t room in the van, and I had to bring back lots of our stuff. He’s coming in two weeks. Didn’t I say so?’
‘Y-yes,’ sobbed Isla, her body rigid. She was not hugging Juliet back. ‘But you said I could g-g-g-go home! I miss him! I want to s-s-see D-d-daddy. And Yasmin and Slavkaaaaa. I d-d-don’t like it here. Why can’t I just go for one night, Mum?’ She kneeled up. ‘Just one night. Mum? Please? Pleeease.’
Juliet stared out of the small dormer window to the fields outside, the newly harvested stubble glowing silver in the moonlight. She closed her eyes.
‘Daddy needs to sort the house out.’
Isla’s shoulders heaved and she said suddenly sharply, ‘Why is he sorting the house out? Is he selling it too?’
‘I – no, darling.’
‘I’ll be very good. I’ll just sleep in a small corner of my room if he needs it for other things. I’ll be very quiet.’
She was looser in Juliet’s arms now, sucking her thumb and twirling her hair around. She looked exhausted. ‘It’s your first day tomorrow,’ Juliet said, trying to draw her a little closer. ‘Why don’t we call Daddy afterwards and tell him how it’s gone. And we can work out what biscuits you’re going to make to give him when you see him. He loved those chocolate chip and raisin ones you baked for his birthday, didn’t he?’
Isla nodded. She gave a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Y-yes. OK.’
‘What’s a treat you want tomorrow after your first day of school? Ice cream? A magazine?’
Isla said, ‘It’s all right, Mum.’ She turned from her, pushed Juliet gently away. A movement in the doorway made Juliet jump and she looked up, to see
Bea, in her Kate Bush T-shirt, her hair ruffled.
‘You all right, Iley?’
‘My Bea,’ said Isla, pleased, and she padded over to her.
Bea patted her head, affectionately, and rubbed her eyes. ‘I like your dress. Do you want to come and sleep with me?’
Isla said, in a small voice, ‘Yes, please, Bea.’
‘That’s a great idea,’ said Juliet. ‘If you don’t mind, Bea . . .’
But as though their mother had not spoken, the two girls had already left and gone into Bea’s room. Juliet watched them go, then gathered the wet towel, dirty sheet, and broken mug all in her arms. She glanced into Bea’s cluttered room, piled high with old dressing-up clothes pulled from abandoned trunks, along with the dusty green and orange Penguins Bea had discovered and was devouring, and the curious odds and ends she’d found around the house: a blue and white miniature china cat, a silver egg cup, a teal velvet hat with an egret’s feather sewn on to it. Bea was a collector, Juliet had realised, an old soul who liked old things. Who had used them? When?
Bea was bending over her little sister, tucking her up before climbing into bed herself. In her weary resignation there was something grown-up that Juliet found almost unbearable. She cleared her throat. Both daughters looked up warily at her.
‘Goodnight, my darlings.’ As she went downstairs she heard Isla saying:
‘I can’t sleep, Bea.’
Bea’s soft voice seemed to float after Juliet, following her back downstairs. ‘Yes you can. Do what I do . . . Imagine you’re back on the Heath. Walking up to Parliament Hill. When we flew that kite with Dad after Sandy’s birthday, remember? Imagine you’re on that path. Going higher and higher. Trace the steps. Every bit of it. Close your eyes. You can see the bushes, and the playground on the right, and the path . . . keep walking, that’s right . . .’
She could hear her soft voice, reverberating through the empty house, as Juliet retreated.
Back in bed a few minutes later she crawled under the sheets, praying she would drop off soon: since her return from London the previous week Juliet hadn’t really slept. After a while there was silence from upstairs, and quiet through the house; but Juliet lay there, stiff, heart thudding, janglingly alert. Her jaw ached from clenching it too tight. Every night since she’d gone back to London the previous week. At five she climbed out of the creaking bed, and went silently downstairs.
Sunlight was spreading across the treetops behind the house, pearl and coral. Juliet pulled on her wellington boots, and opened the kitchen door. The dawn chorus encircled her, lifting her up. She went to the abandoned potting shed and, after several attempts, with a huge groan managed to yank open the stuck door. Reaching past what seemed to be hundreds of spiders, Juliet took out the rusting shears. Without knowing why she knew this, she rattled an almost empty tin of linseed and put some on the stiff blades. She took a wobbling spade too and went out into the garden, stopping first at the overgrown borders and pathways of the Wilderness. She hacked away at the brambles, the ivy, the knots of rambling roses, bindweed and honeysuckle. By six-thirty she was exhausted, but underneath the cover she could see plants beneath. Strangled lavender and red-and-white flowers she thought might be a kind of salvia. Salvia? Was that even a word for plants? She wondered if Grandi had written to her about it. If not, she’d look it up.
This I can control, she thought, dubiously, leaning on her spade, flushed, sweaty, already bone-tired but feeling slightly less miserable, she thought, than if she had stayed in bed chewing her nails. She thought of Ev, and wondered where he was right now. If he was looking out over a garden like this, too. If he missed this place. If he ever thought of her. How she could do with his help now.
Chapter Fourteen
When Juliet had suddenly decided to take the children that July day, cancelling the removal van the following week, she had had to leave most of their possessions in London. She’d packed a fair bit, everything she could fit in the car, but throughout the wet summer and the beginnings of that golden autumn she realised having the rest of the children’s books and toys would help make the place seem more homely. Especially since come Wednesday, 10th September, they were all starting somewhere: Bea at Walbrook Girls’ School, Isla at Godstow Primary School, Sandy at nursery.
So she had returned to London for the day, leaving the children with Mrs Beadle. In order to bring back as many of the children’s possessions as possible, Juliet had even hired a large van from Godstow’s sole industrial area (a three metre by four metre concreted strip behind the bakery, next to some bins).
It was eleven o’clock when she arrived back at Dulcie Street. The moment her key clicked the lock and she opened the front door she could tell something had changed. The house smelled different. It had a different air to it.
Moving slowly down the hall Juliet frowned as she saw a pair of children’s shoes. She didn’t recognise them. Up the stairs, photographs had been taken down, leaving marks on the wall. On the door of Bea’s room, a childish hand had scrawled directly on to the paint in felt tip:
THIS IS MY ROOM NOW SO KEEP OUT
Juliet rubbed her eyes – she really thought she might be dreaming. A thought occurred to her: Matt had redecorated, for the kids’ next visit. He’d bought them new shoes! Then she went into Isla’s room.
Her own children’s things were piled into open bin bags in the corner. Drawers of their clothes had been, she saw as she peered in, simply upended into the bags, unfolded. Their toys were jumbled together into huge zip-up canvas bags, Lego and Duplo and Playmobil mixed into one along with piles of Ladybird books, pens and pencils, paper, paints and fancy-dress costumes, as though burglars had simply tipped everything off the shelves into them. One arm of Bea’s spare pair of glasses had been snapped off and thrown in with toiletries from the bathroom. The small pile of the children’s old babygros and first clothes she had kept, not sure what to do with (things like a ridiculously small pair of shoes and a pretty pintucked top from Matt’s mother in Italy) was balled tightly into a plastic bag. She could feel the rage of the person doing it.
In Sandy’s room was a brand-new IKEA bed, draped with Sleeping Beauty-style curtains hanging from the ceiling, and a chest of drawers from the landing filled with another boy’s clothes. Sandy’s toys were herded into the corner, his old baby blanket which Juliet’s parents had sent from France thrown over them, as if to hide them from the new occupant’s sight.
This, then, was how Juliet discovered Tess and her children had moved out of her husband’s house and in with Matt.
‘You said you were coming Thursday.’ Matt stood clutching the door frame. He had come back from work after Juliet called him, anger and disbelief rendering her almost speechless.
Juliet thrust her phone towards him, still shaking. ‘Wednesday. I’ve got the texts in front of me. Look. Look. So – if I’d come tomorrow all this stuff wouldn’t have been here?’
‘I was going to call you tonight. Explain. Yeah, I would have made some of it look a bit . . . better.’ He was flustered for once, following her from room to room, watching her as she rifled through the bin liners. ‘She needed to get them settled ASAP.’
‘She? I assume you’re talking about Tess, your mistress? The one you’ve been shagging for eight months. Or is it longer than that? I’m not quite sure of the actual timeframe of it all,’ Juliet said, tying up a bin bag. ‘I can see she had time to order a new IKEA bed to replace my child’s bed. Or perhaps you did, but it seems unlikely, since you haven’t had time to come and actually see your own children.’
Matt had gone to visit his mother in Italy and when he’d come back in late August kept saying it ‘wasn’t the right time for them to come to London’.
‘You know it’s Tess. Don’t be childish.’
‘Well, please thank her for doing all this packing. She’s saved me hours. Although it’s strange it doesn’t bother you she’s treated your own children’s possessions like rubbish.’ They were in their old bedroom
. ‘I don’t care about my stuff. But it’s—’ She searched for the word, bin bag in hand. ‘It is so bizarre. It’s nasty.’
‘Her kids needed to feel at home,’ Matt said. ‘Robert threw her out on the street when he found out.’
‘My kids though, Matt. Your kids.’
‘You fucked off. You don’t get to tell me what to do.’
Juliet realised that, since she’d moved away, she had acquired a muscle memory, some hunching of the shoulders when she thought of Matt, of what she had done by moving away, which told her she was at fault. And it wasn’t like that at all. She shook herself a little. She moved back into Isla’s room, holding a tiny woollen hat Bea had worn home from the hospital. Outside on the landing the cheap carpet was worn thin and the string underneath showed through, from years of all of them standing outside Isla’s room and the bathroom, chattering, yelling, cajoling . . .
She said, wearily, ‘You were having an affair.’
‘Listen!’ He leaned forward, laughing. ‘Whether I was or wasn’t is immaterial. You took my kids away without telling me. You are screwed.’
‘God,’ said Juliet, and she pushed away the tip of her ponytail which she had been chewing, and actually laughed. She faced him, her eyes glittering. ‘Matt. Do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘You’re a total, fucking idiot.’ She saw his face, incredulity spreading across it, like water on blotting paper. ‘I’m so sick of you. You’re a second-rate person. You always were. And wow! It is so nice not having to put up with you making me feel crap about myself. All the damn time.’ She picked up one of the bin bags. ‘Come down for the last weekend in September and stay at the house, otherwise I’m telling them what you’ve done.’ She smiled, not caring if this turned him into an enemy and she turned, picking up two bin bags, and went downstairs.
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 17