by Jenny Colgan
‘And there’s no one else?’ said Rosie. ‘Your ex? Could your parents help?’
‘I haven’t heard from the ex in months,’ snorted Tina. ‘And my parents run a strawberry farm. What do you think?’
‘Oh Tina,’ said Rosie. ‘Oh, I am so sorry.’
Tina shook her head, unable to hide her disappointment. ‘Those stupid bloody cocktail dresses,’ she said bitterly. ‘What was I thinking?’
‘You were thinking, one day I want to wear beautiful dresses to look lovely for my total hunk of a boyfriend,’ said Rosie, trying to be encouraging. It wasn’t Tina’s fault. But she hadn’t had a sniff of other interest. Nothing at all. Except for …
As if reading her thoughts, the little bell rang and the two women turned round, to see Roy Blaine standing there.
He smiled unpleasantly, his ridiculous teeth glinting in the subtle lighting.
‘So,’ he said, seeing them both there, ‘I heard the news.’
‘How did you hear about it?’ said Rosie crossly.
‘His brother’s the bank manager,’ said Tina.
‘No way! Small bloody towns!’ howled Rosie. ‘Is that why he turned down the loan? That’s totally illegal.’
‘No,’ said Tina. ‘They hate each other.’
Roy shrugged.
‘It really was just the computer saying no. Because of my “bad credit history”.’ She dissolved into sobs once more.
‘Well, I,’ said Roy, ‘have a perfect credit history. There’s a reason dentists pay very, very low car insurance.’
‘They’re too stupid to drive?’ asked Rosie.
Roy’s lip curled. ‘I think you have some early-onset gum issues with your upper bicuspid,’ he said. ‘I can see it from here. Doesn’t bode well for the future. You’ll look like one of those horses with the great big long teeth.’
Rosie shut her mouth with a click.
‘Well, you have my offer,’ said Roy. ‘And for the back too. I’m going to add some huge signage, then tarmac the lot for easy parking.’
‘In the garden?’ said Rosie.
‘Well, it’s just weeds in the end,’ said Roy. ‘Anyway, won’t matter to you. You’ll be hotfooting it back to London the second you can. Not a lot of gardening down there, I hear.’
Rosie didn’t quite know what to say to this, so kept quiet.
Roy took one last look around and sneered. ‘Well, anyway, I’m making my offer. Valid till the end of the week. Then I’ll go elsewhere. Had lots of other interest?’
He paused.
‘Thought not. Well, up to you. Spend your whole life buried here then. Doesn’t mean anything to me.’
And he was gone.
‘He’s doing it on purpose,’ said Tina. ‘He didn’t really mean that end-of-the-week stuff. It’s not like he’s going to go anywhere else. Nobody likes him.’
Rosie shrugged. ‘He’s right, though. Apart from you and him, no one else has shown the least bit of interest.’
‘Do you know what sweets Roy Blaine used to eat as a child?’ came the voice crackling over the intercom.
‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘Poison frogs?’
‘None,’ came the tired-sounding voice. ‘None at all.’
Moray had come up trumps with the Land Rover again, thankfully. After squinting at the map, Rosie settled Lilian in carefully, propping her up on cushions, otherwise she was barely large enough to see out of the windscreen. She looked tiny in Moray’s huge car.
In fact, as it turned out, the map was almost unnecessary. Lilian knew everywhere they were going: the home that had once been a cottage hospital where half the babies in town had been born; the old hotel; the army training centre. It felt as if everything now had a different purpose. Every home that once had a heart and a reason for existence had been turned into a holding pen for the elderly; as if the ancient were spreading over the country, swallowing everything in their path like an advancing tidal wave.
‘No wonder Hetty doesn’t want to convert Lipton Hall,’ said Rosie, after their third visit. She had decided to start at the bottom and work up. The first two were absolutely horrible, degrading places that smelled heavily of disinfectant and sadness. In one, a woman with almost no hair sat in the front room by herself, tears coursing down her cheeks, like a child abandoned by her parents. The woman showing them round didn’t even notice. In the second, the rooms they saw were tiny dark cupboards; even though the building was set in the countryside, there were no views from any of them.
‘There are some rooms with views at the front,’ said the stout woman, when she saw them looking doubtfully at the little cells. ‘We give those out on a rotation basis.’
‘You mean,’ said Lilian, ‘as someone dies, you get a bit closer to the front.’
The woman ignored her. ‘We also have children come and sing at Christmas,’ she said. ‘People like that.’
Rosie and Lilian swapped glances. ‘Children hate that,’ whispered Lilian when they were back in the car.
‘I remember,’ said Rosie. ‘All those old fingers wanting to poke at you.’
They both shivered.
‘I wouldn’t put a fox in there,’ observed Lilian after a while.
‘Neither would I,’ said Rosie. ‘Don’t worry.’
But inside, she couldn’t help worrying. This was just about what they could afford if they rented out the cottage and let Tina keep running the shop, which covered its costs and paid for staff and made about five pence more after that. She didn’t see how she could afford anywhere nice enough for Lilian. There wasn’t enough money. There just wasn’t.
The next two homes were similar, and Rosie felt herself beginning to panic. Every time she seemed to be moving on in her life, all the obstacles she thought she’d defeated came popping up again. This ‘little job’ her mother had sent her on had turned out to consume her utterly.
The last place on her list, Honeysuckle House, had had a very bare website. All the others were full of jaunty promises they hadn’t even looked close to being able to fulfil. But as they drove up towards this one, the gardens were tended, and there were even a few people out in the greenhouses – old people, not staff. Rosie snuck a look at her great-aunt, who was affecting not to have noticed them.
A tired but pleasant-faced woman met them at the door.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’
As they walked – slowly, of course – the lady, whose name was Marie, didn’t stop doing other things for a second – checking a light bulb, answering queries from a junior, straightening a painting, smiling at everyone she passed, pulling up a cleaner on her uniform. Rosie recognised the style immediately. It was the style of the most successful hospital matrons, those for whom nothing escaped their gimlet eye. The house, once a barracks, was unfashionably furnished, but its parquet flooring gleamed, and although there was a faint trace of disinfectant, it was almost entirely overpowered by the scent of beeswax, and the bonfire smells coming through the open windows. Lilian was very quiet as the tour continued; the rooms were simple but comfortable, with lots of space for photos and clothes.
‘This is the first place I’ve seen,’ said Lilian, when Rosie asked her what she was thinking, ‘that has the windows open.’
The residents were having lunch. Rosie sniffed.
‘Is that …’
Marie checked the schedule. ‘Coq au vin,’ she said. ‘The residents complain something awful. A lot of them don’t like foreign muck,’ she said, then lowered her voice, ‘but they still clean their plates. Sometimes people like to have things to complain about. And I don’t blame them. But we do try our best.’
She didn’t have to say it. It was obvious. Honeysuckle House was far and away the nicest place they’d seen. And far and away the most expensive. And it was only affordable on Roy Blaine’s money. That was that.
The tour complete, Rosie and Lilian paused by the front door; on the left was a large and pleasant day room, without the enormous blaring televisions they’d s
een elsewhere. Televisions were kept in rooms and used with headphones, Marie had explained carefully, for the comfort of all residents. Here they encouraged reading, talking, a daily crossword competition and board games, although if you wanted to stay in your room and watch television and eat Caramacs, that was also completely fine.
Inside were a small group of residents playing what looked like bridge, as well as, by the window, a woman sitting quietly. Her hair was bright white, and while very thin, the woman still wore it long, curled round the nape of her neck. She was dressed in a pale pink dress with a ruffle on the front, and she sat perfectly still, an abandoned magazine on the table in front of her.
Lilian froze.
Rosie immediately felt for her aunt’s left hand, begging Lilian to speak to her. But Lilian couldn’t hear her; she was many miles and many years away, her vision fixed.
‘Lil!’ shouted Rosie desperately. ‘Lilian!’
Finally Lilian seemed to come back to them. Marie was anxious that she should come and sit down in the office and be checked over by a doctor, but Lilian point-blank refused.
‘Let’s go,’ she said in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘Rosemary. Take me home. Now. Now.’
As they left, negotiating the ramp down the once-imposing steps, Rosie got another shock: leaving their car in their usual order, with her stomping up front and poor Peter trailing behind, were the Isitts. Peter stopped to say hello; Mrs Isitt marched straight past with barely a sniff in their direction.
‘There’s Mrs Isitt,’ said Rosie in surprise.
Lilian looked at her furiously. ‘Well aye,’ she said. ‘It would be.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Rosie.
‘Well, her mum’s in there,’ said Lilian, nodding back towards the house. At the window, the woman sitting there began to move as she saw her daughter.
‘Ida Delia Fontayne. She’s Dorothy Isitt’s mother.’
Tina shut up the shop. Rosie made macaroni cheese, the easiest, most comforting thing she could think of. Lilian had stared out of the window the entire way home and refused to discuss things. Rosie was determined to get it out of her. Macaroni cheese – and some violet creams for dessert – was the only method she knew.
She bent over carefully and lit the fire. Lilian was sitting back in her chair, but her fingers were wavering lightly on the arms, as if they wanted to say something. Rosie snuck glances at her. She looked like she was about to say something any minute, but didn’t know how to begin. Her mouth would open and close. Rosie concentrated on taking the dish out of the oven, then set it down with salad and a large glass of water. She’d have been tempted to take out the gin at this point, but she didn’t want to give away her tactics to Lilian. The only way, she knew, to hear the story was to pretend she didn’t want to.
Finally they were both sitting at the table. Lilian pushed her dinner round the plate and sighed like a grounded teenager. After five minutes of this, Rosie could take it no longer.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Who was that woman?’
Lilian heaved a great sigh. But she did, she realised, want to tell the story. And it was important that Rosie knew. That Rosie didn’t let things go by her like she had. It seemed to her that Rosie was at a crossroads. If Lilian could have had her time again, she wouldn’t have taken the same path. Not by a long chalk.
She sighed again. It was hard, to talk about this. Everyone who knew her – who had known her for a long time – knew the story. They would probably have been surprised to discover she ever thought of it at all; it was so very long ago, and she had been only a girl.
‘Once upon a time,’ she started, ‘there was a boy called Henry. And a girl called. Uhm. Me. And another girl. She was very pretty then. Very.’
‘So were you,’ said Rosie loyally, looking at the portraits of Lilian here and there.
‘Well, I think Henry thought so,’ said Lilian. ‘Although he was the only one.’
The fire blazed as the darkness crept around the tiny cottage and Lilian told Rosie about Henry, and how much she had loved him. And how she didn’t grab her chance while she had it.
‘What happened to him?’ asked Rosie quietly at the end, their tea cold.
Lilian shrugged.
‘Oh, the same thing that happened to all of them. All the good ones.’
Rosie turned the cup round in her hands.
‘It was in Italy,’ said Lilian. ‘They didn’t … there was nothing to send home. His dust is Italian now. Has been for a long time. He was such a boy of the soil, always in the fields …’ She smiled to remember it. ‘Always grubby. He was always a bit mucky. But in a good way, you know. Well, I liked it anyway.’
Rosie blinked several times and reached for her aunt’s hand.
‘Oh,’ said Lilian, ‘I know what you must think. That it was so very long ago. How can I still be thinking about it now? But it doesn’t feel long ago to me. It doesn’t feel long ago at all; it feels like yesterday.’
1944
Everyone heard it, they said, or knew someone who did. Ida Delia’s screams had filled the entire town, closely followed by Dorothy’s. ‘That bastard!’ she was rumoured to have shouted when the telegram arrived. ‘That bastard! How dare he?’
‘What was it like when he died?’ asked Rosie quietly.
Lilian looked at her quizzically, as if trying to sum up the best way for Rosie to take it in.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s like the most final thing you can ever imagine … Think of something ending, something happening that you couldn’t ever change.’
Rosie thought of Gerard and Yolande Harris but somehow that didn’t really bother her. Then she remembered taking her mother to the airport when she left for Australia, and the horrible stone she had felt in the pit of her stomach, even though she was a grown-up and not supposed to mind.
‘OK,’ she said.
‘And take away every possibility, every semblance of doubt that anything could be different.’
Lilian looked at her. ‘Were you thinking of Angie?’
‘You’re spooky,’ said Rosie, trying to smile.
‘Imagine if Angie was never coming back, was never going to call, was never going to find her way back to you. And there was no one you could tell, not really. Your granpa, Gordon, he would just have laughed, he thought I should have got over it years ago. My dad …’
She smiled.
‘I suppose you would say these days that I loved my father very, very much. But you have to remember, he was born in 1896. He was, literally, a Victorian.’
Rosie nodded.
‘And … Henry and I had so little time together.’
‘That probably made it worse,’ said Rosie, thinking of Gerard. ‘Maybe if you’d had a few years washing out his dirty socks, it wouldn’t have been so awful.’
‘Maybe,’ said Lilian. ‘Or maybe we’d have settled into this little house and worked hard and raised our children and we’d have been looking after one another right now. And he would still look as young and handsome to me as he did then. It does happen, you know. Maybe it would have been that.’
They both fell silent for a moment.
‘But after …’ said Rosie.
‘Oh, there was a big fuss,’ said Lilian. ‘Ida Delia was in such a state. I’m sure they’d give it a name now: call it postnatal depression, get her sorted out in a hospital. You were just left to get on with it then. Poor Dorothy.’
‘I can’t believe she was Henry’s daughter,’ said Rosie.
‘There wasn’t much of Henry in her,’ said Lilian. ‘And the raising of her was a mess, a terrible shame. She was beautiful though as a young girl; extraordinary.’
‘Mrs Isitt?’ said Rosie.
‘Ask Hetty,’ said Lilian. ‘She was something else. Peter Isitt had been in the village all his life, of course. He knew what he was getting into and he still couldn’t help himself. Amazing what blonde curly hair will do to a chap.
‘But her mother blamed her and she blamed
her mother and they both blamed Henry for dying and … I’m amazed,’ said Lilian, her eyes watering. ‘I’m truly amazed. I had no idea Ida Delia was still alive. She moved out of the village when Dorothy left home. She was still a young woman, young enough, she must have thought.’
Lilian shook her head.
‘And for you there was never anyone else …’
Lilian gazed into the fire.
‘Well, first off, a lot of men didn’t come home. And the ones that did, they couldn’t stomach village life; they couldn’t believe we’d been here quiet and safe all the time after what they’d been through. Like your granpa. He had it figured out. Life was short, and he was going to make the most of it. So a lot of them never came home, for one reason or another. And there weren’t a lot of men about. And then of course I had to help Dad, and he was getting older.’
She paused.
‘And, you know, it wouldn’t have been fair. I had this big lake of unhappiness inside me. Anyone else would have been second best. It would have been unfair on some poor sod if I’d hurled myself at him.’
‘And did you never regret that?’
Lilian shook her head.
‘I only had one bad year,’ she said, ‘1969. The year of the new divorce act. I couldn’t help thinking … I don’t think they’d have stuck it out, those two. Not in the end. Not with Ida so highly strung and him so … so decent. I reckon she’d have pushed him too far. So. That was hard. Apart from that …’
She gave a half-smile.
‘I haven’t been idle, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘I don’t think I need to know the details,’ said Rosie.