The Heart Is a Burial Ground

by Tamara Colchester

  Diana could not look at him.

  He set down his tools and pressed her into his embrace. ‘Diana,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t turn away from me, please.’

  Finding her face in the mirror again, her hands gripping the back of his shirt, Diana saw herself in a different light.

  ‘Will your daughters be there?’ he asked huskily, as their faces were about to meet.

  ‘My daughters? Why?’ she asked, her voice hard.

  ‘Because,’ he said in a measured tone, ‘I’d rather there was nobody there but the two of us.’

  She pulled back. ‘Leonie still refuses to write, but I got a letter from Elena this morning. How strange that you should mention her now.’

  ‘Diana, I didn’t want to discuss them, I just wanted to know if they were—’

  ‘She’s found God,’ Diana continued, moving away and sitting on a sheet-covered stool as she unbuttoned her dress. ‘And she’s getting married. I don’t know which is worse.’

  ‘Do you know the man?’

  ‘Yes. I found him. He was hitchhiking. Deeply handsome, but hasn’t got a pot to piss in.’ She gave him an arch smile. ‘All sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Vaguely.’ David smiled, leaning down to tie up a bag of clay. ‘Though, luckily for you, I have a pot. Small blessing that my father died before he pissed the whole lot up the wall.’

  Diana laughed. ‘Ha, echoes indeed. Anyway, Elena shouldn’t get married yet. First marriages are always a disaster. Leonie has only just got out of hers.’ Her dress slipped to the floor. ‘Then again, maybe it’s best to get it over with.’

  ‘Perhaps it will last.’

  Diana shot him a look. ‘Like yours?’

  ‘There was no God in my marriage.’ He laughed, dusting his hands together. ‘Anyone was welcome.’

  ‘Well, this marriage is going to be in a church, where no one is. Especially not me. Still, at least she’s not threatening to become a nun like her sister.’

  ‘Two God-fearing children? What did you do to them, Diana?’ He came up to her and pulled the strap of her slip down. ‘So you weren’t one of those little girls who dreamt about getting married?’

  She shivered, feeling his clay-roughened hand on her collarbone.

  ‘No . . . I never wanted anyone.’ She began loosening his belt.

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ he said, tracing the line of her shoulder.

  ‘It’s true. When my mother divorced, I decided never to get married. Not if you could undo it that easily.’ She slipped her hand inside his trousers.

  ‘But you did,’ he murmured.

  ‘Maxime was persistent,’ she shrugged. ‘And besides, I wanted to get away from . . .’ She moved her body very close to his.

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From all that.’ She took him in her hand as she spoke, but felt something in him retreat. He was loyal to her still. She’d forgotten that.

  Switzerland, 1927

  Diana stood in the hallway, watched by a pale-faced nun who stood with eyes half-closed as the child listened to the voice worming through the black earpiece. The school was empty and quiet, the hallway filled with abundant, early summer light.

  ‘It would have been wonderful, darling, but it’s not to be. You must enjoy a summer in the mountains. All that fresh air and those sweet little goats. It’s much the best place for you.’

  ‘But everyone has gone home.’

  ‘Remember what we said about “home”, Diana . . . You have the whole place to yourself! Make a game of it. I must go now, the train’s going to leave. I’ll see you when I return. Wish me bon voyage!’

  The line went dead.

  Unable to meet the nun’s eyes, Diana stood on tiptoe to replace the receiver and, turning away, went down the sun-striped corridor towards the empty dormitory.

  Alderney, 1993

  Elena walked, her legs moving like two long switches as she made her way along the empty track, the baby slowing her down only a little. The sky was clear and blue with a cold wind pushing against her, so that her dress was blown like a sail against her body.

  James had taken the children to the beach so that she could go out walking alone, and as she thought of them driving to the other side of the island her stomach was a churn of gladness and guilt.

  She’d been pulling on her plimsolls, about to leave, when she’d heard her mother moving about upstairs.

  She waited by the door, listening.

  ‘Elena?’ The voice dragged her up the stairs.

  ‘Where are the beastly brood? They’re being awfully quiet.’ Her mother was propped up against the pillows, the sun streaming across the bed.

  ‘At the beach,’ Elena said breathlessly, sitting down on the mattress edge.

  ‘We’re alone?’

  Elena nodded, pulling herself apart with quick fingers as she tried to decide whether to ask her mother to come and walk with her. ‘They’ll be back for lunch.’

  ‘What are we having?’

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Some peace and quiet.’

  ‘I’ll have the boys bring it up.’

  Diana laughed. ‘I want minestrone. The soup you made yesterday was like gruel. Darling, you mustn’t frown like that, you look a hundred years old.’

  Elena pressed her hands to her eyes and, in the sudden darkness, saw an image of her mother doing the exact same thing. She dropped her hands and breathed, almost to herself, ‘Oh, I’m so tired of you . . .’

  ‘I struggled to sleep when I was pregnant,’ Diana said thoughtfully, seeming not to have heard properly. ‘Are you sure you need another?’

  ‘I’m six months pregnant.’ Elena folded her arms protectively over her stomach.

  ‘I had to get rid of several. Some quite late. It is possible, you know . . .’

  ‘Yes, you’ve told me that before,’ Elena said quietly.

  ‘David never knew about the last one.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve told me that too.’

  ‘A boy.’

  Elena was silent.

  ‘And there was another . . .’

  Elena glanced up uncertainly, unwilling to be drawn in. ‘When?’

  ‘In the war. But he was too small and it was too cold. I thought it was wise of him, really.’ Her voice did not change as she spoke but Elena saw that her mother’s mouth struggled to maintain its smirk.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ she breathed out in a soft collapsing movement.

  Diana was silent. ‘Well, you’re far from blooming,’ she said, after a pause.

  Elena’s chest rose and fell as she stared at her mother.

  ‘What’s that shirt you’re wearing?’ Diana leaned forward and took a cuff between thumb and forefinger. ‘That’s one of your father’s, isn’t it?’ She kept hold of it, looking at Elena.

  ‘They’re the only thing I can fit into at the moment.’ Elena stood, pulling herself free. ‘The silk’s a godsend in this heat,’ she continued. ‘You know what my skin’s like.’

  ‘Thin. Like his.’

  Elena’s eyes met her mother’s. She felt metal enter her gaze and her voice became cold. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘Before you go,’ Diana said, ‘I think you might apologise.’

  ‘For what?’ Elena stared at her, mystified.

  ‘For trying to seduce Ivan last night. I know how hard it can be to feel that one is losing one’s looks, but it was really rather embarrassing. For both me and James.’

  Elena looked at her for a long moment. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she finally said.

  ‘I forgive you, Elena.’ She looked regally out of the window. ‘I forgive you for it all.’

  Her mother’s words came back to her now as she walked and she shook them free from her head, spreading her arms out either side of her as though to catch the wind. She kept her eyes open and her pace up, opening her mouth so that it was washed with the salt that blew in from the sea. But as she made her way down the track, the shape and weight of
her mother’s presence grew. She stared at the sea in the distance, her chest heaving.

  Breathe, Elena. The voice came to her with the wind and she did so, through clenched teeth, and then, keeping her eyes on the water, began to make her way towards it. Her bare legs kept getting snared in the brambles and dried bracken, so similar in feel to the parched ground of Ibiza, and she had to pull herself free with a yank as she finally stumbled onto grass that thinned into sand. Below her were the grey backs of the rocks and, beyond, the sea.

  Her mind whirred onwards to a picture of her mother lying flat on her back on the deck of the boat, her hands lost in somebody’s hair, laughing gently at the conversation around her as the boat moved up and down on the water, going nowhere. ‘Get Elena to do it,’ she’d said. ‘She loves being told what to do.’

  Elena quickly undid the buttons of her shirt and viciously pulled it loose.

  She looked at her outstretched hands.

  Her father’s hands.

  Jump. She dared herself, just as she used to.

  But this time, she paused, her arms resting over the round of her stomach. It already swam. All it knew was water and the sounds that travelled in from other rooms. ‘All right down there?’ she murmured, stroking her tummy back and forth. She looked out and, finding a safe route, made her way carefully across the rocks until she reached one that slanted gently into the water and then, taking a deep breath, gasped as she submerged herself in the cold sacrament of the sea.

  Bay sat on the closed loo, cradling her arm in the sling her mother had made as she watched the water thundering from the bathroom taps. As the water rose, she pulled her legs up to her chest, eyes wide. The terrible pounding noise squeaked to a stop and her mother put out her hand.

  ‘In you get, Bay.’

  Gingerly accepting her mother’s hand in her good one she stepped into the tub and lay down in the warm water, her arms crossed over her chest. She closed her eyes and pictured the beach and the man who had pulled her out of the sea where she was being tossed like a matador on a bull’s horns.

  He had carried her from the sea, salt burning her eyes and nose, pressed hard against him as though she were his baby.

  ‘Arm up.’ Her mother’s voice startled her.

  She looked up. ‘A man held me tight at the beach today.’

  Her mother stopped lathering the soap between her hands.

  ‘He pressed me to his . . .’ Bay looked up at her mother, but something in her face made her stop and she sank below the surface.

  There was a sudden crash from her grandmother’s bedroom and her father’s voice began shouting. ‘Elena! Elena!’

  A low groan came from the floor above.

  Hearing her name, her mother seemed to wake up.

  She plunged her soapy hand into the water and pulled the plug out, her shirt-sleeved arm emerging dripping wet. She stood, suddenly very tall, the front of her shirt plastered against her round stomach, and then, hearing her name again, threw the door open and ran from the room. Feeling a gust of cold air from the hall, Bay pulled her knees up against her chest again. There was a cacophony of footsteps and then her mother’s voice shouting for an ambulance. The groaning continued from the floor above and Bay clutched her wrist to her chest with wide eyes, staring at the ceiling.

  With a sick gurgle, the water began to sink.

  Revealing her knees . . .

  Legs . . .

  Feet.

  She sat naked in the tub.

  Stranded.

  Switzerland, 1927

  ‘And what’s wrong with you this time, mademoiselle?’ The doctor looked at her over his glasses.

  Diana said nothing, staring up at the white wall of the school infirmary.

  ‘Where is the pain located?’

  Diana shrugged.

  ‘Is it here?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Is it here?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘I’m sick all over, Doctor.’ She turned towards him and arched her back.

  ‘Sick all over?’ He sat back. Disbelieving.

  ‘I need an aspirin for it.’

  ‘Diana,’ he chuckled, ‘you’ve become a little too fond of aspirin.’

  ‘Please, Doctor. I’m terribly sick.’ She smiled. ‘No, that tickles. Doctor, that tickles.’

  Alderney, 1993

  ‘So you’re healed, are you?’

  Her grandmother looked at Bay’s arm in its loosely tied bandage.

  ‘No,’ she said with a little quaver in her voice, holding it tenderly. ‘It still hurts.’

  ‘You’re a rotten liar. It’s fine.’

  ‘You’re not ill either,’ Bay whispered fiercely.

  ‘I’ve fractured my hip.’ She glared at the child, then seemed to lose all strength and sat back with her eyes closed. ‘We’re all sick, Bay. It’s the ones who pretend to be well that you should worry about. The ones like your father.’

  Bay stared at the waxy face with growing dislike. Her grandmother looked like a bird that had grown too fat and old for the nest.

  ‘Anyway,’ her grandmother sat forward, her voice hard again. ‘I’m leaving!’

  ‘Well, I’m getting my hair cut,’ Bay said, and they glared at each other.

  ‘I’m not hungry. The smell.’ Her grandmother waved at the tray. ‘Take it away.’

  As soon as the door closed, Diana poured a glass and drank, letting the gin send a charge of good through her body. There was no sound apart from the tick of the clock, her father’s clock, pushing the minutes jerkily forward. Neat time washed nightways by the infernal wooing of that owl in the garden. She should never have let Anthony have her gun. She closed her eyes and the steady tick tick tick sank into the click click click of her mother’s heels as she made her way down the long hallway, Narcisse at her side, hands swirling in the air as she spoke to the nun who glided silently beside her, telling her all about how ghastly America had become (infantilised . . . just infantilised, the whole place is just a great sugary billboard . . .).

  And later in the small mountain tearoom . . .

  Switzerland, 1928

  ‘Look, Diana.’ Her mother opened a grey suede-covered book to the first crimson page, and pointed with a gloved hand.

  ‘Clever, don’t you think? I’m having it engraved on our gravestone as we speak.’ She traced the names with her finger. ‘Harry can’t wait to tell the aunts about it when we go back next month.’

  ‘Why do you always go back when you hate Boston so much?’

  ‘Harry can’t let it alone,’ she sighed. ‘His mother.’ She bit her lip. ‘The umbilicus has not been cut. He still receives some sort of vital nourishment from them all. Besides, I don’t hate Boston. I don’t hate anywhere really, it’s just the boredom that I can’t stand. But like them or not, Harry wants to go, and where Harry goes I go, so off we go together. Besides, it’s always fun to give those old birds a good ruffling. They’re so shockable.’

  ‘And I can’t come? In his letter, Harry said I could.’

  Her mother’s eyes darkened. ‘Don’t tell tales, Diana. You can go in your next holidays, if your father will have you. He’s quite different now, apparently. All dried out. Practically a biscuit, no doubt.’ Seeing Diana, she stopped. ‘He sent Harry and me a very nice letter the other day.’ She looked out towards the mountains in the distance. ‘He just wants me to be happy, Diana. It’s the most important thing, you know: understanding one’s ability to make oneself happy. What else is all this about?’ She waved vaguely at the nearly empty café and the waitress slumped against the counter.

  ‘Harry says we are all sick and death is the only truth.’

  ‘Well, there’s truth in that too.’

  ‘Is he still getting all those telegrams every day?’

  Her mother continued to play with Narcisse’s black silky ears, but her mouth had become unusually tense.

  ‘You know. The ones he asks Henriette to keep in the kitchen.’

  Her
mother looked at her levelly and then pulled off her glove and leaned across the table to take Diana’s chin in her hand. ‘Harry has an unusual heart, Diana,’ she said in a low tone. ‘He likes to fill it with different people. Why he does that is difficult for you to grasp, and I wouldn’t want to burden you with it. But remember this. There is a central chamber to which nobody else has access. Nobody. And that is where I live. Do you understand?’

  Diana nodded, and pulled her chin free.

  As Caresse was gathering herself to leave, she took a letter from her bag and held it across the table. ‘Harry asked me to give this to you.’

  Diana looked at the black-rimmed envelope in her hand. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It’s for you to open.’

  Diana took it, but her mother did not quite let go.

  ‘I’m pleased that you two get along now.’ Diana pulled but her mother still held on. ‘I knew he would come around, in time.’ She let go. ‘You are half me, after all.’

  At nap time

  Dearest Harry,

  I have just finished reading your letter so am answering it right away. I have not forgotten you at all. J’ai REVE of you again last night and in the dream you were mad at me for some reason or another. Perhaps you were still angry at me for beating you in the donkey race?

  Which will be the best address that will get the letters to you the quickest in America? The Hotel des Artistes?

  The doctor here is in love with me and says I am a friponne.

  I hope this letter won’t bore you.

  Goodbye, I love you

  from

  The Wretched Rat

  PS Please send me more aspirin

  PPS JE T’AIME DE TOUT MON COUER

  Roccasinibalda, 1970

  Diana knocked on the door of her mother’s rooms.

  ‘Mama? Are you there?’ Over the noise of the band downstairs she heard what sounded like an answer and pushing open the door saw her mother sprawled in an armchair, her breath coming heavily, so that her silver lamé dress rippled across her body with the effort.