I’m so very very sorry to hear about Sandy, Juliet. I’ve sent some food over to your house so you’re not worrying about cooking. Thinking of you constantly. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do. Sam
Hey Ju mum told me about your kid. I’m so sorry. T ake care mate. See you soon Ev x
He’s still sleeping. Sorry for being a bellend. Take your time. M x
Just one more thing – solicitor just phoned. Stupid timing but did you post back the divorce papers? Tess could drop them off with Steve if so. M x
And Juliet found she was laughing though nothing was funny but she couldn’t stop. A seam she couldn’t close. Eventually Frederic pulled over in a lay-by. He patted her knee, as she laughed and laughed, and waited for it to subside. Wordlessly, Juliet showed him the messages.
‘Who’s Sam?’ he said.
‘My new boss.’
‘Ah. This Matt – he really does want un divorce, does he not? Most unfortunate.’
‘It would seem so.’ Juliet was too tired to be angry, or to feel anything.
Frederic steered them past the church and into the driveway. He patted her knee. ‘Come on, let’s go inside.’
She stared up at the house, suddenly terrified. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Frederic, sharply. You must.’ Juliet set her teeth, and nodded.
The house was eerily empty, abandoned shoes in the corridor, Juliet’s jumper dropped where she had discarded it in the hall, cereal bowls on the dining room table. Together, they climbed the stairs. She went into Sandy’s room, looking out over the Wilderness. The Dovecote caught her eye, the door still open from the dreadful events of the previous day.
‘George is wonderful,’ she said, for something to say.
‘He is.’
Juliet was picking up books – Oh No, George!, Alfie Gets in First, Peepo – mechanically dumping them into a bag. She took two pairs of pyjamas out of the old chest of drawers.
‘I thought he was a bit prickly at first. You know? Stupid of me.’
‘I do know. When I was young, my first lover was an older man twenty years older than me.’
‘At home?’
‘Yes, in Dinard. He taught me so much about how to be. How to exist, to be calm, to listen to the voices of others around me. George tells me I do the same for him. I like the idea it has been passed on.’
Bim was on the floor, next to the Duplo – she picked him up, inhaling his soft fur, the scent of Sandy. Then she stopped.
‘I didn’t know you came from Dinard. The same Dinard Mum and Dad moved to?’
‘Yes, of course, since I see them there every year as you know,’ said Frederic, looking out of the window.
‘I just hadn’t put the two together. Did you know them when they started going there on holiday? All those years ago?’ She counted in her head. ‘Thirty – nearly thirty-five years ago I suppose?’
‘I did know them, yes. They helped me very much. They, and Franc.’
‘Franc?’
He bowed his head. ‘Franc Thorbois. My first lover.’
‘Oh, sorry. I see. They knew him too?’
‘Yes, of course they did,’ said Frederic, and he said something under his breath, and Juliet did not follow, was not really listening.
‘I’ll just grab some food,’ she said, and ran downstairs, to the kitchen, where chaos reigned, Honor not being the tidiest of people. The shepherd’s pie was delicious; she shovelled spoonfuls of it into her mouth, suddenly ravenous. She gathered up more food, little packets of raisins, a whole bunch of bananas – Sandy loved bananas, she’d feed them to him, as many as he wanted . . .
Suddenly despair crackled through her, as though she’d been struck by lightning, and she clutched her stomach, indigestion, a stitch convulsing her side. What if . . . what if even now he was waking up, and couldn’t see, couldn’t walk, was paralysed somewhere? One damn second – if I’d only stopped him that third time from climbing the steps. I let my guard down for three seconds or so . . . Her head spun. She clutched hold of the old wooden dresser, and it rattled. And she said to herself: keep on moving, don’t look down. She thought of Grandi, and smiled.
Frederic appeared in the doorway. Juliet swallowed and stood upright. ‘Let’s go very quickly and look at the doll’s house. Make sure the foxes haven’t got in. I don’t know what we’ll do with it, but I should fasten the door properly anyway. Then let’s get back to the hospital.’
She was glad to be going in there for the first time with someone, to get it over with. The afternoon sun shone through the fig leaves above on the scene of devastation on the floor. She was right: some creature, a fox? A mole? Badger? had shuffled the broken pieces around even more, knocked over Bea’s chair, scattering Bea’s homework, her journals and books to the floor.
Juliet crouched down and looked at it all, then rubbed her face. It was colder than outside, the cool smell of must and earth. She stepped to the side, avoiding the house, still on its side, the middle hinge of the great chimney cracked in two.
‘What am I going to do,’ she said, in a small voice. ‘It’s a bit too much, at the moment.’
‘May I say something, now?’ said Frederic. ‘Something that will not please you.’
‘As if – of course.’
‘I have telephoned your parents. They are coming back tonight. They will stay, and help you. Don’t worry about this now.’
‘You phoned Mum and Dad?’ Juliet stood up again, and looked at him, quizzically. ‘They won’t – oh, it’s very kind of you, but they’re no earthly good, Frederic.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, they’re never bloody here, for starters.’
‘They are coming now.’
‘They don’t care about the house, haven’t been here once since I moved back. It’s OK – it really is. But we’re not that close. I just don’t think . . .’ She trailed off.
‘You need them.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Juliet . . .’ He laid his hand on her arm. ‘I think you have lived so long in crisis mode, as they call it, you cannot see when a real crisis is upon you. Your son lies mortally ill, and you are the mother of two other children, living in the middle of nowhere, divorcing a man who is also a child. Forgive me, but it is fine now to ask for help.’
She shook her head, eyes closed, holding herself tightly, and then looked up and smiled at him. ‘You’re very kind. But they don’t like it here – I don’t ask them over because I’m tired of them making excuses, it’s been nearly a year now and . . .’ She ran her hands through her tangled hair, twisting it out of the way, and pushed at the central broken column of the doll’s house with her foot. ‘Sorry. I’m awfully ungrateful—’
Something on the ground caught her eye. She stopped, and crouched down.
‘They want to come,’ said Frederic, lowering himself slowly down on to a chair next to her. ‘And they will help, they’re good at getting on with things, as you know. It is time they came. You know, Juliet – I wasn’t entirely honest earlier, when I was telling you about Franc. You see, your parents—’
But Juliet wasn’t listening. In a strange voice, she said, ‘Frederic – look.’
She had reached into the chimney hinge of the doll’s house. The different floors had smashed apart, and half the roof had cracked off, and the chimney was torn in two, exposing the interior.
‘It’s a hiding place,’ Frederic said, slowly.
The chimney was the width of a clenched fist, maybe less, and there was something inside the broken wooden stack. A rag, rolled into a cylinder. Stuffing, or something. She slid it out of the cracked cylinder.
Something was drumming in her brain. Tapping, trying to get out. ‘It’s a place to keep things.’ Who had told her that? Sitting here, on the floor with her . . . Juliet held the heavy fabric in her hands, weighing it.
It was a length of material about two feet long, rolled up. Her first thought was that it was insulation – and she
smiled, at the idea the doll’s house might have better insulation than the real house.
‘What am I thinking of?’ she said, quietly, and she sat back, jabbing her scraped and bruised arm on a small wooden lamp. She moved the lamp carefully to the side. The material was heavy, fastened with string, and Juliet pulled at the string which was tied in a bow around it, untying it.
‘What is that, Juliet?’
Juliet’s heart was hammering at the base of her throat. ‘I thought it might be something. But it can’t be.’ Clumsily, she clasped the edge of the roll and slowly the canvas unravelled.
Rough, furzy-sparkling paintwork, darkening to green foliage studded with flowers of different colours – a house, the edge of a house . . . Her skin prickled, as she carried on unrolling.
‘My God,’ she heard Frederic say.
Juliet could not speak: she held her breath. The painting rolled away from her and was still, flat on the ground, as though possessed of its own magic.
There it was. The garden, and the fairies. The steps up to the house, glowing gold. The birds on the roof, the open window. Two small figures – ah, the skill of it, the way they were painted by a man who knew them so well! The central figure writing through the windows, the haze of late-afternoon sunshine . . .
She could hear Frederic, breathing heavily. Juliet clutched her chest, as though her heart might stop.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, slowly.
‘The Garden of Lost and Found,’ said Frederic, and he gave a small, low exhalation. ‘Mon dieu.’
‘Why on earth was it here?’ Juliet blinked, looking at the smashed pieces of the ruined house.
‘Someone wanted to hide it,’ said Frederic. He touched her hand gently, and she looked up to find his eyes filled with tears. One dropped on the painting, and he stepped back, hastily. ‘It’s not that big, after all, is it?’ he said. ‘Two feet by three, yes. And it is perfect – as they always said it was. Look at the nightingales.’
‘Look at the light on Eliza’s wings.’
‘And the woman – she’s there, but she’s not there, almost as if she is a ghost.’ He sighed, and turned to her, eyes alight. ‘Good God, Juliet, but who put it here? Who saved it from the flames?’
‘They’re two separate questions, I think. Ned must have bottled it at the last minute,’ said Juliet. She lifted the canvas up, gingerly. ‘I never believed he could do it, you know. As for who put it here . . . Don’t ask me.’ The force of the memory trying to burst out of whatever lost corner it was in was so strong she wanted to scream. But she couldn’t quite get there . . . couldn’t recall why she was sure she’d seen it before . . . ‘The condition is perfect, the colours – oh, Frederic, it’s exquisite. I suppose because it’s been hidden away all these years, it looks better than if it had been on display in a gallery or someone’s home . . .’ She gave a shaky laugh. ‘We should be jumping up and down and screaming for joy, shouldn’t we?’
‘I can do that for you,’ said Frederic, and his voice was grave. ‘Do you know who owned the painting, when it was burned?’
‘I do,’ she said, and her heart welled with joy, just for a second, as she looked at it again, this piece she had dreamed of for so long. The hours she’d spent at Dawnay’s staring at the oil sketch, raking it over for clues as to the original, and this – her exhausted brain was depleted, not really quite able to believe it, any of it. ‘He’d bought it back. From Galveston. For five thousand guineas . . . It bankrupted him. Liddy was furious. But he said at least now it was his to do with as he wished.’
‘And now it is yours,’ said Frederic, very seriously. ‘You realise this is probably the most important piece of British art to be discovered again, well – well, yes, I’d say ever? This is extraordinary. You will be a very rich woman.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Juliet, rocking back on her heels. ‘I really don’t.’
‘Of course, not now. But you will care, depending on what happens at the hospital. You will care very much. And I must ask you another question. Your husband will be entitled to half of this, my dear. Unless – are you divorced yet? At least, have you signed the papers?’
For the first time in twenty-four hours Juliet smiled, genuinely smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I damn well have signed the papers. But it doesn’t matter – oh, none of it matters . . .’ She looked again at the painting, the soft, textured colours hazy in the afternoon light. ‘How funny,’ she said, only half aware she was speaking aloud. ‘As I thought: the shooting star isn’t there.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. A little extra on the sketch: a star falling to earth. It was yours all those years, do you remember?’
‘I do. How strange, he must have left it out . . .’ He touched her arm again, shaking his head in wonder. ‘Really, Juliet. Look at it. I – just look at it.’
And they were silent again, as Juliet hitched the bag with Sandy’s most treasured possessions in it over her shoulder, both of them staring at The Garden of Lost and Found, still slightly unable to quite believe what they were seeing.
Chapter Thirty-Six
June
You never knew your grandfather, Juliet. Michael never knew him either. He died during D-Day and I think of him at this time of year. It was all very convenient, the story one can tell a child. ‘Daddy died a hero.’ He was among the first boats to land and be greeted by the Germans. Strafed with bullets. He was killed immediately, they told me.
Possession is a funny word, for it implies the object is owned and embraced by the possessor, not that she is degraded and abused and humiliated by them. Andrew possessed me and – until he went away to war again – made my life a misery. The result is I couldn’t love my son for years. Perhaps I never did, not in the way I should. Your dear father wasn’t ever really here. He wasn’t of the earth and sky and trees. He was, and still is I expect, rooted in his own little patch of earth, in his case with your mother in their little courtyard in France looking out over the pine trees and the rocky coastline. It is not that far really from where his father was killed.
Andrew is dead, and I have my name back, which I then gave to my son, but the facts can’t be expunged. It is there in the church records, our signatures in black and white. I lived here with Mum so happily all those years and then he came. He invaded us. I let him, that’s the thing. What a fool I was. He always wore boots and he used to put them on the coffee table in Mum’s study. A tiny flaw – I know it is – but as so often with tiny flaws they collect together, all these little things that aren’t right – the way the person speaks to the old idiot in the village who does no one any harm, the way they are with animals, how they thank you for something, where they leave their clothes at night – whirling faster and faster, till they are not tiny but part of a whole, twisting cyclone that drags you off your feet and into the air and dumps you down again, broken and bruised.
I have expunged him from the history of the house. There was no body so he is not buried in the churchyard. He might as well have not existed, poor Andrew, but for the fact that Michael and you come from him only, oh – I choose to believe you don’t. You’re from the house, not from them. Genes, genes, they don’t really matter, do they?
You thought I was angry with you when you became engaged, because I wanted you to marry Ev instead. I did not. I know Ev, better than my own son in many ways. He is a good, kind, sweet child but he would have made you very unhappy. Or perhaps the other way round. I did not want you to marry at all. Not then. Marry in haste, repent at leisure: marriages fail, people change – I did not want you with either of them, but there we have it. Girls are brought up to assume they must be with someone. It’s a great lie, really.
Please come home here after I am gone. Please. I miss you so very much, Juliet. I am too sad to tell you the truth, but you will find it out one day. I am too old to pick up the telephone and call you and I really do dislike your husband most intensely. So here we are. I do not want to live any longer: I
very much hope to die soon and you know, my will is strong. I expect that before too long, I shall go from here and be with Mum again.
‘Build for yourself a house in Jerusalem and live there, and do not go out from there to any place.’ I Kings 2:36
Days took on a monotony, something to be got through rather than enjoyed, and all the time this dragging sense of menace lurking, that Sandy might not, after all, be OK. Matt went back down to London, coming back up every other day or so, and his arrival often precipitated a crisis. He was absolutely brilliant with Sandy, knowing how to cheer him up and make him laugh, but it often meant Sandy got so excited to see him that afterwards he’d go downhill; he would have a temperature, and sob hysterically. Matt would also shout at the doctors – one of them, Dr MacIntosh, was patronising and talked in jargon and quite obviously thought he shouldn’t ever be asked any questions, so Juliet quite liked it when Matt jumped up and down on the spot and yelled at him, ‘You’re not making any sense, man!’ But, otherwise, she wished he’d be a bit calmer, though how could he? How could either of them?
Sandy’s sight in one eye had not come back, and the doctors were not sure it ever would, but he was still so little they could not say for certainty either way at that point. Juliet, being practical and minded to gloominess, tried to accept that it would not; Matt insisted they could ‘do something about it’. His pushing, relentless quest to make things better was infectious: she’d forgotten that about him. He’d ask for them to be moved to the better table at the restaurant, switch paint colours at the last minute, scrap the complicated meal he was cooking and start again if it didn’t go to plan. It was admirable, she could see now. But how exhausting, being that person. And being with that person.
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