‘It’s all right, Bay.’ Her father spoke gently and his eyes found hers in the rear-view mirror. ‘He’s a friend.’
Elena walked slowly past the graves almost lost in a phalanx of brambles and nettles, clutching her arms tight round herself. ‘I’m so glad you came, David.’
‘I had to come,’ he said. He kept his head bowed as he walked, his hands deep inside his pockets. He had aged in the way of knotted rope, his form and purpose hardening and just beginning to fray, the curly hair spun with greys. Looking down, Elena saw clay dug deep around his thumbnail.
‘Can you not stay? James and I would be so happy if you did.’
David shook his head. ‘Claudia and the children are waiting for me in London, we fly back to Rome tomorrow and you know what she’s like about Diana. It caused a small blaze that I flew to be here.’
‘But will you meet my children?’
David was silent and Elena looked away, annoyed that she’d forgotten his refusal to be pulled in any direction but his own. Hearing the click of a lighter, she glanced over and saw the length of a finely rolled joint between his teeth.
‘What are you doing? You can’t smoke that here,’ she said, her voice swinging upwards in alarm.
‘ “Can’t”?’ He looked at her with gentle amusement, but he pinched the lit end and slid the joint neatly into his top pocket, squeezing her arm. ‘All gone.’
‘I’m sorry . . .’ she said after a pause. ‘I don’t mean to be tense.’
‘I know.’ He put an arm round her. ‘I know. You can’t help it.’
She allowed herself to relax against him as they walked. As David spoke, his voice was low.
‘Did she know that she was going?’
Elena nodded, once.
‘Did she fight it?’
Elena walked in silence before she answered. ‘She asked to watch the sun going down. You could see it from her window. She stared at it for quite a while, propped up straight by the nurses, and then she lay down.’ Elena swallowed. ‘She was determined that she was somewhere other than where she was. Would only refer to the nurses as her “girls”.’ David laughed softly.
‘When I asked if she was scared – I know she hated that question, but I so wanted to know – all she said was, “Leaving’s easy, Elena. It’s staying that’s been a bitch.” ’
‘She never trusted being comforted,’ David said.
‘It was never safe enough,’ Elena said.
‘Perhaps,’ he looked down, and then up, holding her eyes. ‘My God, Elena, when I look in your eyes, they’re the same shape as hers and seem to hold something similar. I still don’t understand what it is that flows between you, but whatever it was that dug into your mother went so deep that every new day could only ever run back to the past.’ Elena dropped her gaze and ducked under the dripping branch of a tree, the leaves moving across her face with the cool drag of a water-dipped finger. She closed her eyes, her face raised to the dappled light.
‘When I used to ask her what her childhood was like, it was not because I wanted to understand her, but because I wanted to absorb more of all that surrounded her. I was so in love with the idea of Caresse and that castle.’ David sat down on a bench, not seeming to notice the wet wood, and looked up at Elena. ‘I loved Caresse, she was an ideal, and I couldn’t help but see things from both of their points of view. Diana hated that.’
‘You were meant to pick a side.’
He nodded. ‘I’ve often wondered whether I should have given her the loyalty I knew she craved beneath all that talk. But I don’t know if it would have made any difference.’
Elena was silent.
‘She needed there to be three in the bed, it was an obsession, and though I told her countless times that I didn’t want other women, she wouldn’t believe it. And then she introduced me to Claudia and, well . . .’ He fell silent too, squinting out across the gloom of the graveyard.
‘I remember her hand’ – David took Elena’s in his – ‘tracing a long crack in the wall by the bed and her voice coming towards me like a thread in the dark, telling me a grim love story I wasn’t sure I even believed. All about Paris and her childhood. Her stepfather. About being taken out at night in her nightdress and throwing gold to drunks and setting birds loose. She guarded those memories carefully, but that night she offered them to me like a child showing a grazed knee. She wouldn’t let me touch it. Wouldn’t let me help. She only wanted me to listen. She only ever wanted me to listen.’
‘It’s hard to do that,’ Elena said.
‘Do you think I was a coward to leave her in the way that I did?’ He looked up at her, beseechingly.
‘You were a coward to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘But it was all she would understand, Elena. It had to be final.’
Elena met his gaze. ‘But she was so alone, David. At the end, she was so very alone. If she’d stayed in Ibiza, she would at least have had her friends around her. But she followed you back to London and then ended up here with no one.’
‘She made her own choices, Elena. Compelled by who knows what, she moved her pieces.’
They were both silent for a moment.
‘I need to get back,’ Elena said and, standing, turned to leave.
‘She loved you, Elena.’ He caught her hand.
Elena bent her neck as though trying to pull free of a harness. ‘Perhaps. But I don’t think I ever managed to hollow myself out enough to match her deep self-regard. Though I tried.’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘My God, I tried. I thought it might get easier towards the end. That she might enjoy some of it. Spend time with the children . . .’
David shook his head. ‘Elena, your mother didn’t die from that stroke; she died the first time she walked into a room and none of the men looked up. All she knew was how to seduce, and however good she might have been, sex is not a lasting legacy.’
‘Children are,’ Elena said defiantly. But beneath her words there was the weight of something uncertain in shape, a living thing caught in a tied sack.
‘Oh, Elena.’ He smiled at her sadly. ‘My heart broke when I first saw you and the wound of knowing you cannot heal.’ He pressed her hand to his mouth. ‘You and your sister are strong. Teach your children to be like you. The rest will make itself known in time.’
Alderney, 1994
Elena sat with her back pressed against the anti-artillery wall that protected the long beach, her face raised to the sun. It was a hot morning, the sky hard and blue above the sea. She had set their camp down in the middle of the beach, tucked against the shelter of the long curved wall, and holding the baby carefully in her arms beneath a white muslin, she watched as the children ran down to the water’s edge.
Strange, the way they had grieved.
The news of their grandmother’s death had been accepted as something natural, even welcome. But the passing of the house . . . they had wept as though something was being cut from them. She closed her eyes and remembered the way she had cried when she had realised that Ibiza was gone. A telegram opened in the small kitchen of their flat, Jake on her hip. And yes she had wept, watched by her wide-eyed son. Not for the house, of course, but for the memories stranded there. She took a deep breath and looked down at the baby rooting at her breast. Undoing her shirt in a simple movement, she settled her to feed. She recalled Inés’s hands guiding her own as Elena sat in the hospital bed after giving birth to Jake, her first.
‘Like this.’ And Inés had held the back of the small dark head and brought it firmly against Elena’s breast. ‘Now he knows peace.’ The old woman gazed with satisfaction at the meeting of the two. ‘And he will never love another in the same way.’
‘Do you ever wish that you’d had children?’ Elena had asked, fixing her large eyes on the lined face.
‘No.’ Inés had shaken her head. ‘Because then I would not have been able to have you.’ And with both hands she had brought Elena’s head towards her lips and kissed her forehead, murmu
ring a prayer into her hair.
Diana had also come. ‘You can get someone to do that for you, you know,’ she said as she’d watched Elena struggling. ‘Or use a bottle.’
‘I want to do it myself,’ Elena said.
‘You’ll ruin them.’
‘It’s what they are for, Diana.’
‘That, darling, is something of the chicken or the egg.’
And now too, Elena thought of her grandmother, sitting up in a huge wicker sun chair, body still as slim as a girl’s, her legendary breasts concealed beneath a striped blouse cut arrestingly across her neck.
‘Your body is a temple, darling little Elena. You must get used to people wanting to worship in it . . .’
She felt James sit down next to her and smiled at the familiar sensation of her husband’s arm against her own, waiting a moment before she opened her eyes onto the sun-stretched beach.
‘How was it?’ she asked, examining the curve of his ear as he leaned across her and moved the muslin aside to look at the little face now screwed up against the light.
‘The end,’ he said, squinting down towards the sea. ‘I’ve finished packing up the last of the books.’
‘Thank you.’ She rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Are we going to have to keep them all?’
‘Yes.’ He smiled down at her.
She nodded.
‘Elena, there was something else.’
‘What?’
‘I found some diaries. I think they’re the ones Diana often spoke of. Harry’s.’
‘Where?’ Elena shook her head, confused. ‘I sorted through all her things.’
‘In a package wrapped in rather lovely blue Italian paper, along with a typed manuscript of hers. A sort of botched memoir of her childhood in Paris.’
‘I didn’t know she’d written that.’
‘It seems to have been abandoned halfway through. I tried to read some, but it was hard to make sense of any of it.’
Elena frowned.
‘But the diaries are clear: 1923 to 1930.’
Elena rocked the child gently from side to side.
‘Do you want to read them?’ James asked, after a pause.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded.
‘They could be worth a lot.’
Elena gazed towards where the children were playing at the water’s edge. ‘I don’t want them.’
‘What shall I do with them?’
‘Do whatever you want.’ She turned and their eyes met. ‘I trust you.’
Bay came down into the kitchen to find her father sitting at the kitchen table. Early morning light filled the room. He was writing a note. He had his coat on.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
He stood up. ‘For a walk.’
‘Can I come?’ She put her head on one side.
He looked at her for a long moment. ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Are the boys awake?’ she asked, as he got down her coat and helped her into it.
‘No,’ he said, and craning her neck to look at the zipped up tent in the garden, she felt thrilled.
‘Here.’ He held out her shoes and quickly knelt to do up the buckles.
Then, getting to his feet, he picked up a package from the table, tucked it under his arm and offered her his hand.
They drove in silence up to the steep cliffs at the north end of the island. At the headland a large fort stood watch, its four storeys bulked like a closed fist, and Bay was glad that her father took the path that led away from it, moving instead along a winding path that led towards the cliff’s edge. She and her brothers had explored its dark rooms and stairwells many times, but today, alone with her father, she wanted to keep to the grass and the small white flowers that released a frantic honey smell as they passed.
They gradually approached the edge and Bay felt the wind pull at her coat with sharp tugs. She gripped her father’s hand tighter, hardly daring to look below her at the sea moving insistently against the foot of the cliff, preferring to keep her eyes fastened on the horizon.
Her father let go of her hand and she clutched his leg instead, fearing the fall, watching as he took the package from inside his coat.
‘How far do you think I can throw it?’ he asked.
‘Very far!’ she said, smiling up at him.
‘Do you think I can throw it so far it won’t come back?’ he asked.
‘Yes!’ she cried.
‘Stay there,’ he said. And stepping backwards a few paces, he ran forward and with a wide arc of his arm sent the package spinning through the air in a long curve down towards the sea. The water was too far away to hear the splash.
They both stood and looked, searching the water’s surface for any sign, the only sound the hiss of the sea at the foot of the cliff.
‘For the lobsters,’ her father said, smiling down at her, and taking her hand in his, he led her back the way they had come.
Acknowledgements
For their generosity and inspiration, I would like to thank: Serena Colchester, Charlie Colchester, Lorraine Cavanagh, Sean Cavanagh, Polly Drysdale, Caresse Crosby, Harry Crosby, Marjorie Taylor, Alexander Colchester, Benjamin Colchester, Zachary Colchester, Talitha Colchester, Zoe Colchester, Jonty Colchester, Chloe Fithen, Felicity Rubinstein, Juliet Mahony, Rowan Cope, Gillian Warren, Nicole Bahbout, Ksenia Alexandrova, Emily Wingate, Daniel Dawson, Tish Wrigley, Bruce Parry, Lisa Chan, Geoffrey Wolff, Sybille Bedford and Gregory Corso.
Tamara Colchester has written for film and various publications, including AnOther Magazine. The Heart Is a Burial Ground is her first novel.
First published in Great Britain by Scribner,
an imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2018
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Copyright © Tamara Colchester, 2018
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Table of Contents
Cover
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1: Hotel des Artistes, New York, 1929
Chapter 2: Roccasinibalda, Italy, 1970
Chapter 3: Boston, 1920
Chapter 4: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 5: Boston, 1922
Chapter 6: Alderney, Channel Islands, 1993
Chapter 7: Paris, 1923
Chapter 8: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 9: Paris, 1923
Chapter 10: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 11: Rue de Lille, Paris, 1923
Chapter 12: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 13: Paris, 1924
Chapter 14: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 15: Rue de Lille, 1924
Chapter 16: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 17: Rue de Lille, 1924
Chapter 18: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 19: Rue de Lille, 1924
Chapter 20: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 21: Rue de Lille, 1925
Chapter 22: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 23: Rue de Lille, 1924
Chapter 24: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 25: Rue de Lille, 1925
Chapter 26: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 27: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 28: Rue de Lille, 1925
Chapter 29: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 30: Le Moulin du Soleil, 1926
Chapter 31: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 32: Rue de Lille, 1925
Chapter 33: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 34: Paris, 1925
Chapter 35: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 36: Rue de Lille, 1926
Chapter 37: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 38: Rue de Lille, 1926
Chapter 39: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 40: Switzerland, 1927
Chapter 41: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 42: Switzerland, 1927
Chapter 43: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 44: Switzerland, 1927
Chapter 45: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 46: Switzerland, 1927
Chapter 47: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 48: Switzerland, 1928
Chapter 49: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 50: Switzerland, 1928
Chapter 51: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 52: Rue de Lille, 1928
Chapter 53: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 54: Rue de Lille, 1929
Chapter 55: Roccasinibalda, 1970
Chapter 56: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 57: Paris, 1929
Chapter 58: Alderney, 1993
Chapter 59: Rue de Lille, 1929
Chapter 60: Roccasinibalda, 1970
The Heart Is a Burial Ground Page 26