Diana took it from him gingerly. ‘Hold on.’ He grabbed a half-lemon, its face shrouded in muslin, and squeezed, causing the pearlescent flesh to shudder slightly.
‘Eleven oysters for your eleventh year. An important number, Rat. One and One comprise the gateway of duality. Sun and Moon. Good and Bad. Man and Woman. Nothing will ever be whole again.’ He handed her an oyster.
‘Down it goes.’
Eyes wide, Diana tipped her head back and swallowed.
Alderney, 1993
The wind blew softly, lifting the short strands of Bay’s hair, the same length now as her mother’s. It was a sweet, warm wind and she closed her eyes, letting it wash over the curve of her exposed belly where she lay beneath the fig tree. She was like a curtain now, being blown backward and forward, no beginning, middle or end. The tree above her liked it too, she could hear its leaves saying so. Could she hear it in the grass? No, that was too small a sound. It seemed to come from somewhere she’d already been, this wind, or was taking her back to herself – the place she wanted most. She heard a window open but did not move. She was hidden in the grass beneath the wide rough green leaves, her feet lying either side of the tree’s dry grey elephant trunk. This wind was her friend and she smiled at the waving leaves, agreeing entirely.
‘Bay!’ She heard the call as if it were from yesterday. ‘Bay!’ It was her father.
She sat up, squinting.
The men must have come to get her grandmother.
She wasn’t even sick, Bay thought with disdain, as she did up her dress and stuffed her feet into her red jelly shoes. She was just being a big baby.
Wrapped in a tawny blanket and secured in a chair, Diana began her descent. Wearing short-sleeved white shirts, the outline of their vests just visible, the men’s arms strained as they bore the weight of the seated body down the stairs towards the open door.
Standing with her two boys tucked against her sides, Elena reached out a hand to her mother as she went by, but Diana stared ahead like a seated statue of Sekhmet, her eyes fixed on something only she could see.
‘I don’t want skin,’ Bay said to her father later that night, remembering the blackened hairs of a previous meal. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Bay, please stop saying no and try to start saying yes.’ Her father’s voice was hard and he pulled the plate away and slammed it down on the counter. Bay lowered her head until her chin met her neck, her chest rising and falling.
‘You must try, Bay,’ her mother said, taking the plate and carefully cutting the meat away from the fat. When she placed it back in front of Bay, the burnt skin was gone. ‘We have to eat, my love. We must try and eat.’ And Bay saw her mother smile at her father.
‘Has Grandma gone for ever?’ Jake asked.
‘She won’t come back here, no.’
‘Can I have her room?’ Tom asked.
‘We’re not going to be here much longer,’ Elena said, glancing at James. ‘Summer’s almost over.’
‘This has been a very difficult time for Mummy.’ Their father spoke in an official voice and the boys nodded, sitting up a little straighter. ‘A difficult time for all of us.’
Bay nodded with feeling.
‘And, unfortunately, tomorrow Anita’s coming for lunch,’ James said.
‘Why?’ the children chorused. Anita had been married to their grandfather, a man who only existed to them in a small framed photo that their mother kept on her desk. Every time she came, their mother became sad and quiet.
‘Anita wears skin-coloured tights even on the beach,’ Bay said.
‘Why are all the old women we know so horrible?’ asked Jake.
‘I hate them,’ said Tom with feeling.
‘My mother’s not horrible,’ said James. ‘You all love your other grandmother.’
Elena concentrated on helping Bay load food onto her fork.
‘And on the bright side, in a few days your Aunty Leo’s going to come,’ James continued.
‘Why?’ asked three voices, this time looking at their mother. ‘She never comes.’
‘Because she’s going to help me sort out your grandmother’s things,’ Elena said, wiping her mouth and taking a large drink of water.
‘Will she wear her costume?’ Bay asked.
‘It’s called a habit, Bay.’
‘Did Aunty Leo not want to see Diana? Is that why she waited until she had left?’ asked Jake, looking at his mother.
‘I’m . . . not sure,’ Elena said, flustered.
‘Aunty Leo doesn’t like Grandma,’ Tom said authoritatively.
‘What makes you think that?’ Elena asked in a careful voice.
‘Because she said so. She said that when you’re a grown-up you can choose if you want to see your parents.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ Elena said quietly.
‘Why do you choose to see Grandma when she makes you sad?’ Jake asked.
‘Well . . .’ Elena glanced at James. ‘You must remember that your grandmother didn’t have an easy time of it. She had a very painful childhood. Very . . . lonely.’ She shook the air between her hands as though sifting the words so that they would emerge somehow finer.
‘So was yours,’ Jake said defensively.
‘Yes.’ Elena nodded reluctantly, putting her head on one side and smoothing a crease in the tablecloth. ‘But everyone’s pain is different. And your grandmother’s childhood was particularly hard.’
Bay frowned down at her untouched plate and then across at her brothers.
‘What was hard?’ Tom asked bravely. Breathless, Bay waited.
‘Your grandmother had to . . . she . . . was . . .’ Their mother’s words were full of holes through which the children could see nothing and the boys looked at their mother with matching frowns.
‘That maniac Harry Crosby didn’t help, for a start,’ their father broke in, cutting his meat enthusiastically.
The children’s eyes swept towards their father.
Elena widened her eyes. ‘James,’ she said.
He glanced at the children and then back at Elena. ‘Sorry.’
‘Who was Harry Crosby?’ Jake asked.
Bay nodded, she knew. Her father had told her once while they were looking at the books on her grandmother’s shelves. He had taken one down and showed her the black sun on its spine. A man that had flown too close to the sun . . . Her frown deepened as she tripped over the story . . . No, that wasn’t right.
‘He was married to your great-grandmother,’ James said, putting his head back, controlling his words now.
‘Why was he a maniac?’ Tom asked, turning back to his mother.
‘He was . . . selfish.’ She stared at the table and then up at her son. ‘Sometimes men can be very, very selfish.’
Bay looked at her brothers and father, and then, taking her mother’s hand in hers, pressed it to her cheek, trying to comfort them both.
Rue de Lille, 1929
The small black box above her door buzzed and buzzed. Diana stood, staring up at it. Four times. A moment later the door opened and the maid came in. ‘You’re wanted upstairs,’ she said with a jerk of her head.
‘Who’s there?’ Diana asked.
‘Only them,’ she said.
‘What time are they leaving?’
‘Seven o’clock.’
‘What are they eating?’
‘Banana meringue.’
Diana nodded and went to her mirror. She tried to arrange her hair in a twist, securing it with pins. She turned and saw Hélène watching her. ‘Must you stare like that? Haven’t you a job to do?’
‘Ah, here you are.’
Diana took her seat in the purple-painted dining room.
Harry kept his eyes on the letter he was reading. Her mother stroked Narcisse’s throat and smiled vaguely at Diana.
‘Your hair looks pretty like that. Were you attempting a chignon?’
Diana narrowed her eyes slightly.
‘I’ve realised that death isn�
��t for graveyards.’ Harry spoke without looking up from his letter. ‘All those screams, covered in soil.’ Diana watched him take some wine into his mouth and swallow it down. ‘Cremation is clean. No worms, nor white bloated rats. Better to burn.’
‘I don’t feel like either of those today,’ Caresse said. ‘When the jasmine blooms like this all I want to do is bathe and wear white dresses.’
From far downstairs the sound of the telephone became audible.
A maid entered the room and went to Harry, murmuring something in his ear.
He looked at the clock. ‘Tell her, in an hour.’
The girl nodded, and Caresse went on stroking the dog’s throat.
The same maid re-entered the room with a huge tray loaded with a mountain of meringue, its tips burned brown, little rounds of banana running in rings round its edge. She set it down on the table and the three of them looked at it dubiously.
From the end of the table a gold lighter flew through the air and, making contact, destroyed the mountain so that it lay collapsed in an avalanche across the centre of the table.
‘Banana bombe,’ Caresse laughed, reaching out with her spoon. ‘Eat it up, Diana, it will still taste delicious.’
Diana leaned forward, elbows on the table, and dipped a spoon in the mess.
‘You look more and more like your mother, Rat.’ Harry sat back and looked at them both.
‘The Wretched Rat.’ Caresse, amused, leaned back in her chair and licked her spoon. ‘It’s not a very nice name. Don’t you mind it?’
‘No,’ Diana said, looking steadily at her mother, also licking the burnt sugar and cream from her spoon. ‘Names are important.’
Roccasinibalda, 1970
The only noise in Caresse’s room was the eager scratch of a pen making its way across paper.
‘Now the next.’ Caresse held her hand out to Roberto, who was standing at a discreet distance from the bed, his linen-suited body turned slightly towards the window. He picked up the last of the pile of papers and brought them over, before lifting the inked pages with the gentle care of a midwife and placing them on a table to dry.
With her breath coming short, Caresse’s finger moved over the lawyer’s typewritten words with difficulty, a faltering progress as though she were trying to decipher the strange symbols of a forgotten language.
‘This bit here . . . does that mean that it will all be secure?’
Roberto hurried across and hunched over the small figure in the bed, following her finger and nodding.
‘Sì, sì, that’s right.’
‘I so want it to go on, Roberto.’ She gazed up at him through her thick tortoiseshell glasses, her arm resting along the length of his.
‘Of course, signora. Principessa.’
She smiled at that, enjoying the joke, the best possible kind, one that recalled a choice with a happy outcome.
‘Is it fair to do it this way, Roberto?’
He took in her eyes, eager with hope, and the soft hands talking anxiously to one another, and nodded.
‘She’ll be very angry not to get it all, you know.’
Roberto spread his hands. ‘Disappointment can be an important part of growing up.’
‘I told her about selling the archive to Illinois.’
He crossed his arms and inclined his head, listening.
‘I don’t know why I told her everything had gone already. It was a lie and it’s been making me feel restless ever since.’
‘It doesn’t really concern Diana. It’s your property to do with as you wish. Did you make the changes you wanted to for the publishers?’ he asked smoothly.
‘You mean the edits?’
‘Sì, of course, edit. I forget the word.’
‘Yes, I did. There was hardly anything to do. He wrote so beautifully. Such power. It was very hard reading some of it. Not something a wife undertakes easily.’
‘It is a testament to your passion for his work.’
‘Not just for his. For all good work. It must be brought into the light, shared with as many people as possible. Diana said she thought they should remain private. She was the same about the funny letters they exchanged while she was at school. He wrote to everybody, but I fear she mistook his affection . . .’
‘She speaks of him with great love.’
‘Love? Perhaps. Though she hardly knew him, Roberto. She was a child in the nursery and he loathed the domestic. But I suppose,’ she said, staring out of the window, ‘that it all looked rather different from her point of view. Things are so much bigger when we are children, and continue to grow ever more unwieldy as we become adult. Sometimes we need a parent’s take to put things in perspective.’
‘Of course.’
‘Diana can be so morbid, left to her own devices.’
‘She can be very dark, yes.’
‘Well, darkness is good, Roberto. Darkness is light’s counterpart. You can’t have one without the other, or things get all out of whack. It’s why I’m grateful for all the pain of my life. I feel it’s scoured me out to make space for even more joy.’
Roberto murmured a tide of ‘Sì, sì, sì’ as he prepared the next papers.
‘And there’s still plenty of sun in Diana. It’s just her dogged determination to hang on to the past that’s dangerous. She’s wedded to yesterday and seems unable to understand that there are no answers there.’
‘Yes, what’s in the past is in the past.’ Roberto nodded, looking rather relieved. Caresse glanced at him. She’d never pressed Roberto about Diana. They’d obviously made love at some point, but what Diana had done to make him quite so unable to articulate, Caresse could only imagine. Well, there were some things that could remain a mystery.
‘And what shall I do about the university board’s invitation to open the new wing of the library?’ Roberto asked.
‘When is it?’
‘Early next year.’
‘Tell them yes.’
Roberto hesitated. ‘You are sure?’
‘I said yes, Roberto.’
‘And Dalí has written that he will not leave Spain again without Gala, but she has retreated to Púbol and so is, at present, out of reach.’
‘Very well, I will go and see him there.’
‘Of . . . course.’ He glanced at her. ‘I will write today. And now, the last . . .’
He picked up the final piece of paper and placed it on the table that bridged her covered legs.
She glanced at it and read her own dictated words, moving her aching wrists in small circles. Really, the body was very weak. It was the pen that was powerful. She pressed the fat nib into the paper and made a mark. More than the body, more than the sword, it was the pen that would decide the future when one was buried and the other ploughing the earth. Yes, this is the real holy trinity, she thought: ink, hand and pen. And with a glance at the painting of Diana that hung on her wall, she fixed her will with a simple scrawl.
Alderney, 1993
Elena looked over the neatly laid table, and brushed some crumbs from around her plate before her stepmother could see.
‘Elena, I asked you a question.’
Elena stopped as though caught. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘It’s pardon, Elena.’
‘Our grandma says pardon is what housemaids say,’ Tom said, staring at her.
Elena and James gave each other the ghost of a smile. ‘Tom,’ James said warningly. Watching her step-grandmother, Bay lowered her head beneath the table and held out a forkful of food to the little dog that sat next to her chair.
‘Where is she staying?’ Anita asked.
‘She’s at St Malo’s.’ Elena picked up her fork. ‘It overlooks the sea, with that little chapel set beside it. I thought it might be nice for her to hear the sound of the bell in the morning.’
‘I’m sure the bells will be a great comfort.’
‘If nothing else they might remind her of last orders.’ James smiled at Anita, who stared back at him blankly.
&
nbsp; ‘Diana in a home.’ She pressed her napkin to her mouth. ‘I never thought I’d see the day.’
‘Well, she was getting so confused that it seemed . . .’
‘Getting? I think that’s something of an understatement. Diana’s been losing the plot since I met her.’
‘She’s not mad,’ Tom explained. ‘She just can’t stop remembering.’ Anita glanced at the boys as though noticing them for the first time.
‘That’s right, Tom.’ Elena smiled at her blond-haired son. ‘She’s got a bit stuck.’
‘It can be very tiring at the end,’ Anita said, lowering her voice dramatically. ‘I’ve always thought it’s when relationships are really put to the test.’
‘We’re very grateful to you for looking after Anthony in the way you did,’ Elena said, trying to make it sound as if it were the first time she’d said it.
‘Someone had to,’ Anita said. ‘Thank heavens it wasn’t Diana. Can you imagine!’ Anita tried to get the small dog’s attention with a flutter of her fingers but she remained by Bay’s chair, transfixed.
‘Well, since she’s not here to speak for herself, I think it’s probably better we don’t,’ James said.
Anita glanced at him as though this comment confirmed a long-held suspicion. ‘I’ll go and see her tomorrow on my way to the airport. I have to take the dog to the vet anyway and it’s nearby. Bay, do not feed her from your plate!’
Bay stopped, hand in mid-air.
‘Come here,’ she called the dog with little kissing noises. ‘Don’t eat that, it will make you ill.’ She lifted the bony dog onto her lap and placed her arms on either side of it.
‘How is your garden, Anita?’ Elena asked, placing a consoling hand on Bay’s arm.
‘My roses were particularly good this year. Pruned them all back to nothing. Most successful.’
A silence fell over the table, and the children glanced at their parents, waiting for them to speak.
‘I could never have put your father in a home.’ Anita spoke into the silence. ‘He would have loathed it. It was a lot of work looking after him, of course, doing it all on my own, but I’m glad I was able to give him that, right up to the end.’
The Heart Is a Burial Ground Page 20