After a pause, Elena spoke. ‘She asked to go, actually.’
‘To a home? Diana?’ Anita’s chin sank into her neck in disbelief.
‘She doesn’t even go to the loo,’ Tom volunteered, and Bay glared at him. Anita looked with distaste at the detritus of the children’s meal collected around them and then down at her own neatly piled plate.
‘Why don’t we have coffee out in the garden?’ Elena suggested. ‘It’s turned into a lovely afternoon.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Elena, it’s far too cold. Particularly in your condition.’ She nodded pointedly towards Elena’s womb.
‘Oh . . . yes, you’re probably right. We’ll all stay. Oh, no,’ she caught sight of the children’s faces, ‘you go and I’ll stay. I’ll stay here with Anita.’
They watched in silence as the children ran into the garden and James began clearing the plates into the kitchen. ‘You spoil them,’ Anita said.
‘Oh.’ Elena couldn’t trust herself to say anything more. She took a deep breath. ‘Well, that’s one thing you and Diana agree on.’
Anita raised her eyebrows. ‘Your mother and I got on pretty well. She was intelligent enough to know when to play ball and when to stop.’
‘It’s good to know when to stop.’
‘And why is Bay dressed like a Spanish harlot?’
‘She chooses her own clothes, Anita. I think today’s offering is a reaction against her new haircut.’
‘It’s rather inappropriate, for a child.’
Elena felt herself being washed in that old feeling, a grinding greyness that wanted her on her hands and knees. She closed her eyes and pushed upwards, towards the waves of flickering light.
‘She doesn’t know about all that yet, thank God.’ She fought to keep her voice steady.
‘You used to dress very provocatively as well.’
Elena stood to help clear the table and was glad of the heavy drape of the dress she wore. She did not look at her stepmother.
‘I remember the dress you wore for your mother’s wedding to David. The men could hardly keep their eyes in their heads. He could hardly keep his eyes in his head.’
‘Well, I had the body for it,’ she said in a bored voice that concealed the tremor that had started in her clenched hands. She picked up the water jug, needing to hold something solid, and realised it was a piece made by David. She held its curved glazed weight against her, like some kind of protection.
Anita laughed, once, and gave Elena an appraising glance. ‘Your father always said you were too thin.’
Elena took hold of Anita’s glass and filled it with water from the jug with a deep glugging sound. She placed the jug back down on the table and held the glass out to her stepmother, who took it without thanks.
Elena now picked up one of the children’s plates and felt its underside coated with the grease from the plate beneath. She put it down again and roughly wiped her fingers on a napkin.
‘Have you heard from David recently?’ Anita cast the feathered question lightly, so that it quivered deceptively on the water’s surface.
Elena said nothing for a moment, unwilling to be hooked. ‘No.’ She wiped each finger carefully. ‘David remarried. He lives in South America now.’
‘Nice young wife?’
‘Yes, a very “nice young wife”. They invited us to the wedding but we couldn’t go as I was too pregnant at the time.’
‘He was terribly fond of you, wasn’t he?’
‘He was kind to me,’ Elena said carefully.
‘Well, you were so close in age.’
Elena flinched. ‘Not that close.’ She shook her head.
‘Complicated, that.’ Anita said with a faint smile and wiped the tips of her own fingers on her clean napkin. ‘I think I’m ready to go outside now. We can have the coffee out in the garden.’
She would go in and speak.
Elena stood in front of the walnut-panelled door, and raised her hand as though about to knock.
The hallway of the residential home was quiet.
‘I wouldn’t try and talk to her if I were you, Ele. I’d let it all go.’ Her sister’s husky voice on the telephone came back to her. ‘I don’t know why you’d even want to keep the house. That strange island. All that pain dug into the land. I wouldn’t choose to build my house on that.’
‘But it might be healing, Leonie,’ Elena had replied, a note of hope in her voice. ‘Children playing. A new story . . .’ Her voice faded. Neither spoke, and in the silence of the line between them a shadow had moved, too quick to catch.
‘All those tunnels and bunkers full of urine and broken glass . . .’ Her sister said after a pause. ‘Sitting on the beach, knowing all that’s underneath.’
‘But the children love it. And they don’t know about all that. It’s a gift that they have somewhere to spend their holidays. We couldn’t afford to go away otherwise.’
Her sister said nothing and Elena received the weight of her silence, her shoulders slumping.
‘Ele, I have to go in a moment, evening prayer is starting. But I’d like to say this: I do think it would be better if it was sold. Better for you, I mean. Then you can plant somewhere new. Nothing good is growing there, I really believe that.’
‘It’s not as simple as all that, Leonie. The money’s tied up in the house, it’s kept safe by the trust Ivan built for it. If she sells it now, the money will all be swallowed up by death duties.’
‘So be rid of it.’
‘But it’s all that’s left.’
‘It has to end somewhere.’
‘And what about the children?’
‘Let them move on.’
‘It’s their home.’
‘Is it for them, Elena?’ her sister had asked. ‘Are you sure this is about them?’
Now Elena looked at the closed door in front of her and took a long, deep breath. Setting her face, she pushed open the door.
Her mother was lying back on the pillows asleep.
Forcing herself not to retreat, she put her bag down and pulled up a chair. But the eyes remained closed and, watching the rise and fall of her chest, Elena saw that her mother was in a deep sleep, the eyes moving quickly beneath the folded skin of the lids as though she slept in the guttering shadow of a windblown sail.
Elena remembered making her way across the wooden deck to where her mother was lying asleep in the sun, her tanned body cut by the white of her swimsuit. She’d lain down next to her on the sun-warmed wood, careful not to disturb her, and pressed her face into her hands so that when her father eventually came up onto the deck, stretching his long body as though he’d only just woken up, Elena’s body had disappeared – swallowed back up inside her mother’s clean white costume.
The eyes opened suddenly and they regarded each other in silence.
‘I was asleep.’ Diana squinted at her daughter, and then looked round, confused.
‘You’re in your new room.’
‘I was dreaming,’ she said hollowly and then was silent.
‘You must rest.’
‘My body can rest all it wants. My mind’s been hunting.’
‘Did you get anything?’
‘Almost.’ Her mother smiled, weakly.
‘Is it all right here?’ Elena asked, her eyes moving anxiously over her mother’s body in its single nursing bed.
‘Yes. Though whoever’s in the kitchen should be shot.’
Elena laughed and reached into her bag to take out the books she’d brought. ‘Now, I’ve brought you some of these. You mustn’t worry about the others, I’ve taken care and they are all going to be catalogued and put in boxes.’ Elena motored forward, trying to ignore her feelings of agitation.
‘Too much detail.’ Diana stretched in her bed like a big cat.
Elena looked at her. There was still time.
‘Mum,’ she put down the books and reached her hand out to touch the freckled arm, ‘I want to talk to you about the house.’
Di
ana pulled her arm away as though burned. ‘What about the house?’
‘We need to talk about it while we still have time.’
‘Time? Already carving it all up, are we?’
‘No.’ Elena shook her head ‘No,’ she said more firmly. ‘It matters because it concerns the children.’
‘The children. How very convenient. Well, you’ll have to talk to Ivan about it. He’s in charge of all that.’
‘So you haven’t made any changes?’
‘I’m too tired to discuss it. Talk to Ivan. Though why you care about that house I can’t imagine, it isn’t worth anything.’
‘The children have grown up there. And they associate it with you . . .’
‘That is both an endearing and an awful thought. Let me tell you, Elena, I would not have placed my chips on this little rock if I’d been asked to take a bet about where I’d end up.’
‘The children don’t care about where or what it is . . . it’s their home.’
‘My home.’
‘Think how you loved Le Moulin when you were their age.’
‘I was never their age.’ Diana sat back, putting some space between them. ‘Besides, that was a house worth keeping. Rousseau died there, for God’s sake.’
‘But you won’t benefit from selling the house,’ Elena reminded her. ‘It’s in a trust for the children. A trust that you set up. Remember? Ivan has explained it to you. James has tried to explain it to you.’
‘They’ve explained nothing. The only reason I even came to this godforsaken place and that that trust exists is because Ivan assured me it was the simplest way to avoid tax. It was always going to be sold, Elena. I have to live.’
Elena bit her lip.
‘You’re hardly going to starve, Mum. James and I have told you that we’ll take care of it all. We’ll take care of you.’
‘I don’t trust your husband, Elena.’ Her mother now returned the gesture, placing a hand on her arm. ‘We’ve never had any luck with our men. I have a bad feeling about him. One of my feelings.’ She raised her eyebrows with meaning.
‘What do you mean?’ Elena looked at her mother fearfully.
‘He is a liar, Elena.’
‘No.’ Elena shook her head, staring down at the hand clutching her wrist.
‘All that cheerful boyish innocence. It’s a façade. It’s plain as anything that he plays around. All that charm is a deception.’
‘No.’ She continued shaking her head. ‘It’s not. In fact, that innocence is where I go to meet him.’
‘He’s stolen money from me, Elena, whatever the rest. I’ve been through the accounts. Both he and Ivan.’
‘Money?’ Elena said, pressing her temples against the headache she could feel building behind her eyes.
‘It’s all gone, Elena!’
‘I know that, and I don’t care. I do not care.’
‘He’s taken it. He’s colluded with Ivan.’
Elena shook her head. ‘You’re imagining things. There is nothing to take. And Ivan is your friend.’
‘No, he doesn’t love me, he’s been to see me once in two years and that was only to make me sign something.’ Diana clutched the blankets.
Elena could not meet her mother’s eyes.
‘James is your friend. He’s your son-in—’
‘I have no sons!’ As Diana spoke, her hands moved blindly towards her middle.
‘He loves you. They both love you,’ Elena said, trying to force meaning into the words with the intensity of her speech.
‘Oh wake up, Elena, you don’t get your childhood back, despite being born again.’
Elena looked at the body swaddled in the single bed and said nothing. After a pause, she spoke. ‘So you’re determined to sell it.’
Her mother nodded her head, once.
Elena sat back and folded her hands in her lap. Ask, Elena, she told herself.
‘Before I go, can I . . .?’
‘What?’
‘Can we . . .’
‘Speak, Elena.’
And the question that she’d asked countless times in her mind seemed to take flight. ‘Can I pray with you?’ Elena surprised herself with these words.
‘No.’ Diana turned away. ‘I don’t want all that. I believed in a god once . . .’ she said, ‘and he shot himself.’ There was silence and Elena closed her eyes, the unasked question still hovering above her, beating its wings.
‘Perhaps all girls believe in God when they first meet their fathers,’ she said quietly, and turned back to her mother. Diana did not move. ‘Why have you never asked me?’ she said finally, forcing herself to say it.
‘Asked you what?’ her mother said, shaking her head.
‘About him.’ Elena felt her throat tighten. ‘About . . . him.’
But Diana only shook her head.
‘Sometimes we have to live with things unanswered, Elena. It’s the way life is.’ Diana seemed almost sorry. She closed her eyes and did not speak for a moment. When she did, her voice was low. ‘I don’t blame you for trading in the one I gave you, he was a menace.’
Elena stayed very still.
‘But I don’t want any more fathers, heavenly or otherwise. Now, open those curtains, so I can look at the sun.’
Rue de Lille, 1929
‘Diana?’
‘Yes.’
Diana held the black earpiece to her head and felt the silence stretch over the long trough of the dark sea to New York.
She pictured her mother standing in a hallway, soft fur choking her throat.
‘Are you there, Diana?’
‘Yes.’ Diana’s hands clutched the phone. ‘What’s happened? Mama? What’s happened?’
‘He did it.’
‘What?’
‘He did it.’
‘All alone?’
‘No, not alone.’ Her mother strangled the word and it hung limp between them. ‘With her.’
Roccasinibalda, 1970
‘Diana, it’s time.’ A voice spoke in the dark.
‘Of course.’ She sat up, pressing a hand to the side of her head. ‘What time is it?’
‘It’s four in the afternoon.’
‘Oh. All right.’ She peered into the shuttered darkness. ‘I’m coming.’ The unseen voice closed the door and Diana lay back, watching the thin lines of light shaping the window as she tried to bring herself back to the day. Eventually, she rose and walked quickly to the windows, pushing open the shutters so that she was bathed in the low, yellow light of late afternoon. She turned to her washstand, wet a flannel and pressed the cool square to her face, breathing in the faint scent of neroli. She wanted to be calm for this, as cool and calm as a dark damp room. Like a cellar, she thought. No, not a cellar. She wanted to be like the inside of a cathedral. The pure, marble quiet of that cathedral in Granada. Like a tomb, said the inner voice. Oh stop it, she shook her head. She did not want to be like a tomb.
As she entered the courtyard, half-filled with shadow, she was surprised by the noise and the number of people. It felt as though the entire town was there and from beyond the walls she could hear the beeping of cars. As she pushed through the sweating bodies, people she’d never seen before, she could hear crying. This was absurd, she wasn’t dead yet for God’s sake, she was simply going to hospital.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Diana slammed open the door of Roberto’s study. ‘I’ve just been outside and there are men with cameras camped in a line and the entrance is crowded with fucking hysterical people.’
‘It has fallen entirely out of hand, I quite agree,’ Roberto said, closing the filing cabinet and leaning against it. Diana could see the sweat beading along his tanned brow and the wet patches at the armpits of his pale linen suit. ‘I requested a single photographer, I never imagined so many people would come.’ He glanced at the desk where the blue-wrapped package lay on top of a pile of papers.
‘A photographer? You requested a photographer? My mother is at death’s door and you thought y
ou’d organise a photo shoot?’
‘She agreed. Though she felt better then, admittedly.’
‘Get them all away. This is a bloody circus, it’s undignified.’
‘She’s coming down now, there is no time.’
‘At least clear a path. Get some of your toy boys, lackeys, whatever they are to make way.’ Diana stopped as she turned to leave. ‘Are you packing?’ She looked round the room.
‘Yes.’ Roberto nodded, quickly stuffing the package into an empty desk drawer. No time to leave a note with it as he’d wished. Ah well, she’d find it eventually.
‘I’m accompanying your mother to Rome.’
Diana took in the room more slowly. ‘And then?’
‘Diana, there isn’t time for this, we can talk in the city. Have dinner tonight, if you like. We need to get upstairs.’ He began to usher them from the room.
‘Let go of me,’ she said, wrenching her arm free and going quickly to the dresser where the whisky had been kept.
‘You are upset,’ Roberto said quietly.
‘I’m not upset.’ She shook her head, refusing to look at him.
He went over to her. ‘Come, your mother needs you. Let us go.’ She could see he was softening towards her. That hunger was still there. She took a deep breath, causing her chest to rise up towards him and then fall away again. He glanced down, his expression gentle now, and she felt herself grow calmer.
‘All right,’ she said, and looked down at the floor for a moment. When she looked up she was going to let him take her. But as she swept her gaze confidently upward, she did not find him waiting there but already walking out of the door. She slammed her hand down on his desk and felt chaos begin to move through her.
They waited on separate benches in the dim green hallway of the hospital on Monte Trastevere. A door opened at one end and a slim young doctor, his white coat flapping as he walked, came down the hallway towards them. Both pairs of eyes watched his progress but as he passed it was Diana on whom his gaze lingered briefly. She seemed to remain perfectly still, but beneath her demurely cross-legged demeanour she had shifted position with a subtle arch of her back and she could afford to glance over at Roberto. It was his turn now to refuse to meet her eyes.
The Heart Is a Burial Ground Page 21