by Moran, Beth
We tidied up the tea things, washed a sink full of dishes and left. Disaster averted, for now. Maggie was pensive on the drive back home.
“So. It looks like Hannah wasn’t making it up. Or deluded. She married a count and lived in a stately home. There might be some interesting stories in that box. And it beats polishing the silver with her knickers,” I said.
“I know. It’s not that.” She drummed on the car door for a few moments with her fingers. “How long have Nanny and Pop been married?”
“Nanny was twenty-one… Forty-eight years.”
“Do you think that’s too long to get a divorce?”
“Theoretically, you’re never too old… but Nanny and Pop have had a great marriage. Their roots are deeply intertwined,” I said, perhaps too forcefully. “Every relationship goes through blips, difficult times. You only stay together for nearly five decades by learning how to overcome them. I’m sure they’ll get through this, Maggie. I don’t think Nanny and Pop know how to exist without each other. And they take their marriage vows very seriously. Till death do them part… Although if Pop does anything stupid with Ruby that might come sooner than he thinks,” I added, turning onto our road. “Nanny and Pop love each other.”
“They don’t act like it.”
“Maybe not right now.”
I remembered my mother’s words on the subject of love and marriage and divorce as I was growing up: “What’s love got to do with it anyway? Marriage is commitment, and trust, and respect. We made a vow and we meant it. Every decision we make is on the foundation of that vow. Love is the custard on the crumble. Delicious, oozy and yummy. But without it you still have a pudding. Custard on its own? That ain’t going to satisfy you for very long.”
“They’ll work it out.”
If I said it enough, maybe I would manage to convince myself as well as Maggie.
I pulled into the cul-de-sac, watching out for ice on the smaller roads. As the car crunched to a stop, I was still musing about love. Thinking about Fraser, wondering how many other couples ended up staying together out of convenience, habit, for the sake of the children.
What was love anyway? Was it all a myth? A mean joke? An invention to pay for Hollywood moguls’ swimming pools and made-to-measure suits? I knew the love a mother has for her child. The stomach-clenching, heart-exploding, every breath I-would-gladly-die-to-spare-you-pain mother’s love. But romantic, sexy, flowers, empty the bin for you, no eyes for anyone else, ever, when you are nothing but a bag of saggy wrinkles I still choose you love? Really?
Then I saw him. Standing in the shadow of our burnt-out willow tree. Working with a rake to gather the last of the fallen leaves. He was coatless, the sleeves of his dark grey sweater pushed up to reveal the flex of arm muscles as he pulled the rake. Hair, even longer now, flopping over his face.
Oh boy. Love slapped me round the cheeks, whooshed up from the bottom of my belly and ricocheted a million times against the walls of my rib cage.
That was love. It was him. My love was him. Unbowed or dimmed or dulled by the passing of time or the weathering of my heart. I would love that man until death did us part.
Maggie grabbed hold of my arm, popping my love balloon thoughts. “Is that David Carrington? Your David is that David? I can’t believe you never told me you were best friends with a famous person! You have to introduce me. Now. No. Hold on.” She pulled down the sun visor, flipped open the little mirror and frantically tugged at her hair. “Okay, it’ll have to do. Come on, Mum!”
I followed her out of the car, picking my way through the ice to stand beside her on the pavement nearest the willow tree. David had earphones in, but he caught the movement in his peripheral vision, pulling the phones out of his ears before propping the rake up against the tree trunk and smiling his hello.
“Ruth.” He nodded at me. “And this must be the champion egg-chucker. Maggie? Pleased to meet you.”
He stepped forward and shook Maggie’s hand. She blushed and stammered, shuffling from foot to foot.
“Wow.” David stared at her for a few seconds. “You look just like your mum would have done if she’d dwelt in a parallel universe where she was actually cool.”
“Hey! I was cool!”
Maggie and David both looked at me.
“I was so not cool.”
“How are you settling in? Finding plenty of ways to express yourself via food-related hooliganism?” David grinned, and rocked back on his heels, hands in his back pockets.
“Um.” Maggie was genuinely star-struck. I couldn’t blame her.
“I’m joking. Are you at the Minster?”
“Yes.”
“Still Mr Hay?”
She nodded.
“I’ve met him a couple of times. He seems okay. A lot better than the donkey who used to be there. Who’ve you got for biology?”
“Mr Harrigan.”
“Harrigan officially rules. Does he still have that old sweet tub full of maggots on the window-sill?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mum once cut a hole in the plastic at the back with a craft knife. We were watching a film that lesson with the lights off. By the time anyone noticed, they were everywhere. Including trouser pockets, school bags, one girl’s hair…”
Maggie squinted at me.
“I’m not proud of it.” Okay, I felt really proud of it, especially when Jayne Tate found three maggots wiggling about in her bra during a geography test.
Mouth agape, Maggie said, “It’s not that. I just can’t imagine you doing anything that… fun. Or rebellious. Or interesting.”
“Well, I wasn’t always a boring old shrivelled-up play-it-safe non-entity of a person.”
“Weren’t you?”
“I was best friends with David Carrington, BAFTA award-winning film-maker and all round fun guy, remember? I couldn’t have been a complete saddo loser.”
Maggie looked doubtful.
“You should both come round for dinner sometime. I’ve got loads more stories about Ruth Henderson’s childhood exploits. Many of them involving insect larvae and other assorted wildlife. My favourite includes a bag of fermenting peaches, a box of matches and the year seven recorder group.”
Maggie looked at me, wide eyed, begging me to say yes.
“I suppose that would be all right.” Weird, gut-wrenching, jittery, but all right.
“What about Sunday lunch tomorrow? I’ll see what Ana Luisa has planned. But I’m officially home for Christmas now, so if not we can sort something else out.”
“Can I bring my boyfriend?”
“Maggie!”
“No, it’s fine. The more the merrier. Perhaps your mum would like to invite Dr Carl Jackass? Or would you launch the main course at him?”
Maggie, Seth, David, Ana Luisa, me, Carl. Cosy.
“I would.” Maggie beamed, delighted that David thought my date was a jackass. “But she won’t bring him. She’s not going to be dating anyone else either for, like, forever.”
David looked at me. His face was serious, but his eyes crinkled up at the corners.
“That’s a shame,” he said.
“No, it isn’t. Mum dating is totally gross,” Maggie added, kicking the leaves at her feet.
“After my mum died, I used to wish Dad would find some woman to make me birthday cakes and tuck me in at night. But at the same time, the thought of any actual living person being able to fill the crater she’d left behind, trying to come even close to replacing her, made me ill.” He locked eyes with Maggie.
She returned his stare, her eyes welling up. “Parents dying is a heap of manure.”
“It is. But you get used to the smell.”
I think the non-politically correct term for Maggie’s mood over the next twenty-four hours is “hyper”. Many friends in Liverpool were messaged, as were boyfriend, new friends in Southwell and anyone else in cyberspace who happened to be listening. She bounced into my bedroom at around eleven-thirty that night.
“Mum?
Are you asleep?”
“Yes.”
She climbed onto the bed, phone in hand. “David has discovered three new species of plant.”
“In the rainforest?”
“Yes. And one new type of centipede.” She held up her phone for me to see.
“I’m sure that information will be fascinating tomorrow morning.”
“Don’t you want to know what they’re called?”
Ah, the wonders of the information age. Everyone an expert.
“Will they still have the same name in eight hours’ time?” I turned over on my pillow, closed my eyes.
“He called the plants scientificy names, but the centipede is called Luto Puellae.”
My eyes popped open. “What?”
“Luto Puellae. Is that Spanish?”
No. It was Latin. Luto Puellae. Mud girl. In the spirit of a naturalist adventurer and discoverer, David gave most people and things a Latin nickname. Luto Puellae was mine.
Was I insulted he named a centipede after me? That I crossed his mind in the depths of the jungle, a million miles and a million years away?
I pressed that name like a soft, sweet flower into the folds of my heart.
“Can you go to bed now, Maggie?”
“I like David. He’s not what I expected. He’s normal. I mean, not all celebrityish.”
“That’s probably because he never wanted to be a celebrity. He just happens to be brilliant at what he does.”
“Does he have a thing with Ana Luisa?” she asked, still scrolling through insect pictures on her phone.
“I don’t think they’re officially together, but they obviously mean a lot to each other. I wouldn’t be surprised if a thing happens.” My insides crumpled up a little bit.
“Did he ever have a thing with you? I mean he’s, like, dead old and everything but he is still pretty hot. He won bachelor of the year once.”
Define thing…
“No. We were always just friends.”
“Good.” She paused, feigning indifference. “So you’re not going to end up together or anything.”
“Haven’t we had a conversation about this? I’m off the romantic market for the next five thousand years, aren’t I?”
“Yes. But you did go out with a man who smelt your hair at the theatre.”
I sat up, fully awake now. “He did what? You mean Carl?”
She nodded. “He leaned forward and smelt it. About three times. Didn’t you notice?”
“Of course not! If I had, we would have moved seats. Back to the sofa at home!”
“How could you not notice? Anyway, given your cripplingly woeful starting point, I wouldn’t be surprised if you fell for Hot David. But if he’s got something going with Ana Luisa, and is way in your friendship zone, I’ll stop worrying.”
“You have absolutely no need to worry. And please don’t call him Hot David.”
“Okay. Just checking. I’m going to bed now.”
“He smelt my hair?”
“Night, Mum.”
Chapter Eighteen
So lunch was weird: sat around the Big House table surrounded by Ana Luisa’s exuberant Christmas decorations, eating roast beef and trying to ignore the tension. David appeared relaxed – playful even. But Ana Luisa dropped things, knocked over the gravy boat, was flustered and distracted, and a sorrowful sickly grey.
With Maggie and Seth loved up at one end of the table, and Arnold making random comments about ancient Egyptian courtship rituals the other (I didn’t especially want the lovebirds to hear that Tutankhamun got married at nine, although they may have been put off by his wife also being his sister), it made Henderson Sunday lunches seem almost functional. As soon as we had finished the main course I jumped up, following Ana Luisa into the kitchen with a pile of dirty plates.
“Where shall I put these?”
“What? Oh, anywhere. Dump them on the side here. I don’t usually make such a mess cooking dinner.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She began stacking plates into the dishwasher, but her face crumpled up and she had to stop and close her eyes. I reached over and put my hand on her arm.
“Want to talk about it?”
Ana Luisa straightened up. She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with the edge of a tea towel and smoothed her hair. “No, thank you. Not now. Not when we have pudding still to come.” Her smile was tired and trembly. “I am honestly fine.”
“Take five minutes. I know where everything is; I can serve pudding. I’ll tell them you had a ladder in your tights and went to change them. But you can’t go on like this, Ana. You have to tell him how you feel.”
“I am not sure he even sees me, Ruth.” She sighed.
“How can he not see you?” I replied. “That man sees everybody. And you know he cares about you.”
“Maybe. But how can I expect him to love me like a man should love a woman? I have done terrible things, Ruth. The kind of things women in desperate circumstances are sometimes forced to do in order to survive. When he found me, I was not like this. There was a nasty, sticky darkness in me that took a long time, and amazing grace, to wash away. I fear he will always see that ugliness.” Ana paused, took a deep breath. “But I’ve tried. I’ve really tried. And I don’t think I can pretend it is enough any more.” She opened the fridge and took out a lemon tart. “Here. And thank you. You are a good friend, Ruth. I am so blessed you came to live near the Big House again.”
She gave me a quick hug on her way out. I felt the desperation in her squeeze.
“Ana Luisa?”
“Yes?”
“You do actually have a ladder in your tights.”
“I’m glad. I have seen you try to lie before, and you are quite spectacularly bad at it,” she said, the sparkle returning to her eyes.
“Go.”
She went. Ana Luisa had grown up in violence and poverty, hoisted herself out of a life of degradation and despair, and found the courage and the strength to start again in a strange land. She had survived so much, and now a man was proving her undoing. She had to tell him. How could I not hope he loved her back?
Maggie announced she had homework to do and left with Seth as soon as we had finished eating. Arnold disappeared into his study with the same excuse and Ana Luisa went to lie down, leaving David and me to face the detritus of the table-top.
“Can I help you clear up?” I collected the bowls within reaching distance and stacked them in a clumsy pile.
David thought for a moment, then glanced outside at the December sunshine. “How about a walk instead?”
“Hmm, I don’t know. It’s freezing out there today.”
He squinted at me. “Really? Ruth Henderson wimping out on a walk because it’s a bit nippy? You want to come with me to the Antarctic sometime. That’s cold.”
Yes, please!
“Fine.” I tried to hide my smile. “But I’m stopping off to change shoes and get my hat. And you have to tell Ana Luisa I wanted to help clear up but you forced me on a walk instead.”
We turned left at the bottom of the road, towards the open fields. A route we knew well. After a few minutes of casual conversation, David slowed his pace and put his hand on my arm. His voice was gentle.
“I was gutted when I heard about Fraser,” he said, stopping to wait for me to navigate an icy puddle in the centre of the footpath. “It’s not the same, of course, but I understand how it feels to lose someone…” His voice trailed off.
“Thanks, David.” I remembered the thin, serious boy without a mother.
“What was he like?”
“Fraser?” I paused and took a deep breath. “He worked a lot. Had this super-quick brain that needed to be kept occupied. He liked eating out and old westerns and nice cars.” I shrugged. “He tried his best to be a good dad, even working away so much.”
“I’m glad he stuck by you. He must have been a really good bloke.” He grinned. “Even if I did want to hunt him down and punch his light
s out at the time.”
“Excuse me, but wouldn’t you have been better off shaking his hand, all things considered?” The path widened now, and we walked side by side.
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t know how things would turn out then, did I? Chances were high he’d run for the hills.”
“I might be a little bit offended by that comment.”
“Don’t be. It was wishful thinking more than anything. I was young, foolish and heartbroken.”
We walked in silence for a while before I replied. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t show up and cause trouble. Things were tough enough right then.”
He stopped as we reached the end of the field, turning to me as he opened the gate. “Would you mind telling me about it?”
If it had been anyone else, yes, I would have minded. But as we continued our walk, the starlings soaring in the clear sky above, the wood pigeons cooing in the trees, I told him. Not everything, but enough. And by the time we strode back towards the houses, the cars crawling through the frost, the pile of dirty plates and leftovers, for the first time in forever I no longer felt alone.
That evening was the Oak Hill carol service. Excuse me, did I say carol service? Make that crazy family party, with six hundred over-excited guests drunk on Christmas spirit (and possibly, in some cases, a different type of spirit), a carol sing-off between the dads’ ’n’ lads’ choir and the over-sixties lunch club (the overs rocked da house), a pantomime nativity including twenty-five “sheep” from the toddler group pumped full of orange squash, a three-day-old baby with excessive wind and Ellie’s horse in a donkey costume (I didn’t know what a horse dressed up as a donkey looked like either).
I laughed so hard at Martine’s angel costume I snorted. She had an angel throng consisting of twelve bald men, all wearing lashings of glittery blue eye-shadow on one eye, and green on the other. Meat Harris reminded us all what a bully looks like as evil King Herod, and to my secret pride and public embarrassment, my sixty-nine-year-old mother, playing the role of the star in silver chiffon, danced.
She didn’t need a costume. For the first time in five months I saw my mother shine. She glowed, sparkled, shimmered and did whatever else it is that stars were created to do. Dad, sat straight as a rod three rows from the back, couldn’t take his eyes off her. He had forgotten, I think, the woman he was married to. When she moved, it was no longer arms and legs and muscles and joints and steps and spins. It was beauty, grace, life, light and passion. I saw people’s mouths drop open. They clutched their hands to their chest as the emotion swelled. Somehow, my fabulous mother expressed the jubilation and the joy of this incredible story better than any words could have done. As the final chords of music faded away, she stood alone in the spotlight and began to speak: “A light thrives in the depths of darkness. It cannot and will not be quenched.”