by Anne Berry
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it.’ I shrink back from the door reclaiming my snug in the bosom of Brightmore, and lean on the kitchen work surface. My gaze idles over the dishes piled in the sink as I say, ‘Do you really think you deserve a share of her money though?’
‘A third. Your cousin Rachel and I got a third each,’ he interjects, gobbling like a turkey. He sounds defensive, even annoyed. Perhaps he expected to get more, to bank the lot. Then, under his breath, ‘There would have been a small fortune, if it wasn’t for that interfering damn busybody Whatmore. He was a fraudster taking advantage of Aunt Harriet like that. It was despicable.’
Like attracts like, I muse dryly. But I let pass this reference to my mother’s ill-advised decision to sell her pretty house, to purchase an ugly bungalow on the Pembroke Dock road. ‘Wasn’t she my mother?’ I query delicately. My inflexion implies sincere confusion, as if I really am undecided. After all, biologically there was no bridge adjoining us. I was not blood of her blood, flesh of her flesh – thank God! I spare a charitable thought for my poor cousin Rachel whose silver spoon was filled with the gall of fertility problems. Ultimately, however materially well off she became, motherhood was denied her.
I worshipped Rachel when I was little. She was kind to me, and pretty, and there were notable occasions when she broke from the herd to gallop to my aid. But then a day came when the ease with which I produced offspring fostered a resentment in her that soured our relationship. Rachel, like my adoptive mother, had problems down below, problems talked of in hushed whispers. She was unable to carry to term, having a succession of miscarriages. The longest she went was her first pregnancy, nearly six months. The tiny alien scrap, a boy, skin raw as a skinned rabbit’s and wizened as an old man, dwindled through three days before expiring. I visited Rachel in hospital. Eerily, she didn’t weep. There were no marks of her vacuous fathomless sorrow. Though what I did fasten on was a disturbing opacity in the irises of her chalk-green eyes, as if overnight they had changed colour. I would eventually come to recognise this as the lustreless matted shade of madness. After that, as the years went by, we drifted apart: cards at Christmas, birthdays, the occasional stilted phone call.
Incredibly, Cousin Frank is still whistling through his bad teeth, justifying his slice of inheritance. It was no surprise to me, this three-way split. My mother told me of the division in advance. But once in a vanilla spring sun it rankled with me, so I cut in icily. ‘I was the adopted daughter.’ He doesn’t answer that, but I note how his eyelids fall and his disparaging gaze travels at the mention of adoption. I go on, undeterred. ‘When your mother, Aunty Enid, died, I don’t recall her leaving me a penny.’ I can feel the heat coming to my cheeks, my militant feet tapping in a war dance. ‘You and Rachel own your homes. I don’t.’ Again he is sullenly tight-lipped. ‘This cottage comes with Henry’s job. When he retires, we will effectively be homeless. We will have to buy somewhere with our modest savings.’
His small, slug-grey eyes crinkle at the corners and he shrugs. ‘You have to respect the wishes of the dead,’ he says, gorging himself on humble pie. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, ‘Oh, I’ve brought along a few documents you should have.’ He takes the envelope from under his arm and holds it out to me. He blots out the light, his shadow lying like a corpse on the kitchen floor. The features of his face blur, so that I can only detect the buff glow of his leaning-tombstone teeth.
‘I suppose I must be satisfied with that then.’ I reach for the envelope. Merlin backs a pace and growls. He has gained weight in his declining years. But, bless him, there is a wolf in that roly-poly pudding yet. I can hear distant steps on the cobbles and the murmur of the lawn mowers far off. I conjure the scent of freshly cut grass, inhale it deep down, let it purge me of my past.
‘The photographs you asked for, they’re in here. Including the one you mentioned. I tracked it down.’ Frank waits as if for a round of applause, and I recall our telephone conversation of a month or so ago. He asked me if there were any of my mother’s possessions I had my eye on. I was about to say, no, that there was nothing, no keepsakes I coveted, when I remembered the photograph. It is hard to explain what it means to me, so I shall merely say that I had a yearning for it.
‘There’s a photograph taken in August 1950. I was two and half. I’m on a donkey at the seaside. Not a real one, a stuffed donkey. Life size,’ I reported. He gave a bemused grunt.
I’m alone in the picture. My adoptive parents aren’t there. Perhaps they’re supervising me. I don’t know. But I’m not posing, not smiling at anyone, not trying to be anything other than what I am. A tiny girl in a white dress, sitting proudly astride a donkey on a seaside promenade. I suddenly felt hot tears coming, and sensations crowding in on me. Rows of deckchairs and the backs of people’s hatted heads, the flat of a calm sea, the slap of sunlight, the salty dead smell, the cries of gulls. And me sitting alone on a furry donkey, in command, gripping the reins. The sea breeze was blowing back my hair. I leaned forwards and stroked the big floppy ears. They were like soft toys nestling in my small hands. The donkey had a funny face. The forelock of its fluffy black mane fringed bulging eyes, cartoon eyes, white with big inky pupils. Its mouth was open in a broad toothy grin. I imagined it whinnying. ‘Giddy up, giddy up,’ I chivvied it on, kicking its flanks and jiggling my bottom on the leather saddle. I was absurdly, momentously happy. The emotion was so foreign that I wouldn’t have been able to name it, although I have no trouble identifying it today. Now I can say, ah yes, that was happiness, and this … well, this is sadness. And this? This is sorrow. And this is regret. And this is despair.
‘Yes, I’d like that photograph if you can find it,’ I said.
‘Oh. Well, I’m sure I’ll be able to dig it out. Anything else?’
‘No, no, thank you.’
‘There’s a ring you know, an engagement ring. Your mother’s engagement ring. A diamond set in gold, no less.’
‘Is there?’
‘You must have seen it a million times.’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘I’ve had it valued. It’s worth two thousand pounds. Shall I send it to you?’
‘If you like.’
If Frank was expecting me to grovel he was sorely disappointed. He kept his word though and posted it to me. Actually it was rather grubby and scratched. I hocked it round the local jewellers, but no one would give me two thousand pounds for it, or even one thousand. In the end, grudgingly, one chap gave me three hundred and fifty. I bought a colour television. Henry was thrilled. Now we can watch wildlife programmes together.
But the donkey photograph was priceless to me. And today I will have it in my possession. Frank continues, still seemingly reluctant to hand over my legacy. ‘There are some other things, documents I thought you might want to have. Probably sensible not to open it until I’ve gone.’ Is that the Cheshire cat or my cousin, face divided with a hideous grin? I step forwards and my hand closes on the envelope. I hear it crackle temptingly. But he still refuses to relinquish it, so that we have an extraordinary tug of war on my doorstep.
‘Lucilla, what’s in here … well, you may find it difficult to accept. Try to remember it was complicated for them too.’
I want to say, oh just give it to me and bugger off. But I wait, suddenly feeling a frisson of fear. You see, I grew up in a conspiracy of silence. He takes a breath, as if he wants to say something more. Then, clearing his throat, he seems to change his mind, at last letting go. He makes a move to peck me on the cheek. I lean backwards and Merlin bares his teeth. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ is all he says, ducking through the doorway and skulking out into the sunlight.
I take the envelope upstairs to my bedroom and sit on the end of our bed. I turn it slowly around and around in my hands, staring into my dressing-table mirror. In it a middle-aged woman, Lucilla Ryan, slim, with fine strawberry-blonde hair, an oval face, pale skin, delicate features, and guarded watery turquoise eyes, gazes back at me. She wears a pastel-blue
cotton sweater. And there is a silk scarf patterned with tropical parrots tied at her throat. The loose knot is pinned with a brooch fashioned from a peacock feather, silver-framed under glass. This woman is suddenly a stranger. I don’t recognise her at all. I don’t know how long I sit here. I’ve fallen into one of those odd pockets where the treadmill of time seems to grind to a standstill.
‘Well, Cousin Frank has gone,’ Henry says. I look round and there he is, a reassuring comforting presence, as he has been throughout my bleakest days.
‘Did I behave?’ My tone is querulous. But my apprehension is reserved entirely for my husband and his pacifistic nature.
‘Well, you passed,’ he grants generously, coming to sit beside me on our bedside, the envelope sandwiched between us.
‘A merit?’ I push, biting my lip and leaning away from him, the better to assess his verdict.
He pauses and gives his shaggy-haired head a little shake. ‘Barely scraped through,’ comes his judgement. Another pause, then with his trademark frankness he adds, ‘You owe it to creative marking if I’m perfectly truthful.’
‘Oh!’ I sigh and then we both giggle. Merlin joins us, panting from the exertion of the stairs, and collapses at our feet, nosing our shoes experimentally. It seems Henry’s have the finest bouquet, and he rests his head on the worn leather of his loafers with a wine connoisseur’s appreciative wheeze. We both stare down at the envelope. Only Henry can absorb the emotions that are storming through me. He scrunches his lips together. The oddest expression but well known to me, as if his mouth, trimmed with beard and moustache, is frowning deeply, cognitively.
‘It isn’t sealed,’ he observes at last.
‘Mmm … so I see.’
‘Are you going to …’ His gruff voice breaks and he gulps a breath, then speaks again with more control. ‘Fortes fortuna adiuvat,’ Henry pronounces levelly. My husband is a gardener of philosophy, as opposed to a doctor. Learning the Latin names for plants was the branch that led to the trunk of Latin proverbs. And his ability to memorise them, reams of them, and supply them when symptoms of life require such sagacity is legendary.
‘Translation?’ I ask with trepidation.
‘Fortune favours the brave,’ my husband intones sonorously. Then he spoils it and grins.
Now I am smiling in spite of myself. Merlin shifts his head to Henry’s other foot. Through the window, out of the corner of my eye, I see the sun-kissed leaves all atremble. Spurred on by the ancient wisdom of Greece and Rome, I draw a breath and fish inside the envelope. I take out the photographs first, shuffle them through my hands. There aren’t very many of them, not when you consider that this is a lifetime’s worth. And, weirdly, none after I am about four and a half. As if, like Peter Pan, I didn’t grow up. They are all black and white. One. Aerial shot. I am lying in a pram with cuddly toy. The toy is an animal of indeterminate breed, the possible progeny of a lamb and a bear. The label says three months. ‘It’s an odd-looking beast.’ I glance quickly up at Henry but he is sober-faced, agreeing. ‘I mean the toy … not the baby. Not me,’ I say.
‘Oh no, not you. You’re beautiful,’ he whispers. I give him the snapshot and move on.
In the second I am a baby in my mother’s arms. I look solid, round-faced and plump-cheeked. I am certainly not being deprived of food. What of her?
‘She looks old, far too old to be the mother of that baby,’ I mumble. Henry nods. And that’s another curious detail. ‘Do you see the way she’s holding me?’ She is tipping me forwards, and craning her neck as if to examine me. She appears to be screwing up her eyes behind her glasses and squinting at me. Her expression is … doubtful. ‘What do you think is going through her mind?’ I ask and answer myself before Henry can, my voice tiny. ‘Is this really it? A baby? Nothing more to it?’ She was always a big woman, not fat but almost masculine in her build, domineering in her stance. In the photograph, she wears a patterned dress and a wool coat that has fallen open. We do not interlock. We might be images in separate photographs. ‘It says four months,’ I say, handing it to Henry.
In the third photograph, labelled five months, I am recumbent on a rug spread over grass. ‘My eyes are half open. As though … as though I’m dazed,’ I reflect. Henry looks perturbed and takes the photo from me before I drop it. In the next, six months, Mother is sitting on a bench, an arm strapping me in position on her lap. She wears a dark dress with a light collar. There is a little girl in a fussy smock, face shaded by the brim of a white bonnet beside us. ‘That’s my cousin Rachel,’ I identify, tapping the figure with a forefinger.
‘I guessed as much,’ says Henry, taking a closer look as I give it to him.
‘One year.’ I am peeping out from under a sun hat, holding a beach ball and staring in wonder at it. ‘It’s as if I’m carrying the world in my arms.’ I stand legs apart on a pebble beach. I keep hold of this one as I sift through the remainder. ‘Two years old.’
‘A nautical pose! You don’t look very happy,’ Henry remarks in perturbation, as though he would like to extract me from the photograph.
‘No! Mother and I in a boat.’ Instantly a wave of nausea grips me. ‘I’m not a good sailor even now.’
‘I know you’re not.’ Henry rubs my shoulder. He is such a kind man. There is a shortage of kindness in life, a dearth of it. But somehow Henry got the lion’s portion, which is liberally distributed throughout his character.
‘I look very distressed, don’t I?’ Henry nods. No argument from him. He knows my expressions. ‘My mother has on her long-suffering face.’ I sigh in remembrance.
I sift through the rest more quickly. Mother, looking less of a mother and more of a grandmother, bending down to drag me through shallow water. The sea? A lake? Me, sitting at the edge of a sandpit surveying a sandcastle I have built. Then an image of me by myself, and one of me with my mother in a park, both dated 1950 on the back. ‘I think these two must have been taken together. Look.’ Henry obliges, our shoulders nudging each other. ‘I’m wearing the same dress in each.’ I have a side parting in my shoulder-length hair. ‘It must be summer because all the trees are in full leaf.’
‘August I’d guess,’ Henry contributes with confidence, on safe ground with his expertise in all things that sprout from the earth. ‘Mmm … yes, early August. I’d put money on it.’
Mother wears a short-sleeved dress, belted at the waist. Her face is a long and angular, presided over by a large nose. Lines may be detected on her brow, despite the distance between us and the photographer. What strikes me about this mini album is that I am not saying ‘cheese’. ‘My lips look as if they’ve been sewn together,’ I remark recalling the frustration of stopped-up feelings. My eyes are haunted.
On to the next. I flip it over and read the date. ‘Easter 1952. I would have been four.’ I am in a dark coat and dark beret, clutching a doll. And I do mean clutching, with those same pensive eyes, anxious what-happens-next eyes. ‘And here’s one of me with my father.’ A business suit, hair clipped close, large glasses with chunky frames. He is swinging me between his legs. ‘I’m giggling.’ My note is one of wonder. ‘Proof that I could do it, that I could giggle if I had reason to.’ Finally, the last photograph. ‘Oh, Henry, it’s the picture I wanted. Me and the donkey. The donkey and me. I was in bliss on that donkey. I can remember those ears, those flippy-floppy ears. How soft they were.’
Henry clears his throat importantly. ‘If I might make an observation.’ Our eyes lock for a moment as I attempt to gauge what he is going to say. ‘You have a jolly good seat on a horse.’ We share a smile. Then I rummage once more in the envelope, lift out a letter and start to digest its significance. Seconds later and I am sobbing, Henry gathering me into his arms, Merlin displaced, up and whining fretfully.
Chapter 3
Bethan, 1943
IF I’M HONEST when the war came it was sort of a relief. I was eleven years old. And really what I do remember most was a kind of charge of concentrated energy. It was as though electr
icity was running through my veins and not blood. It meant change, see, something different. There was lots of talk before it happened, know-it-alls saying this and that. Grave faces, raised voices. I can remember Dad losing his temper and thumping his fist down on more than one occasion. Didn’t really understand why at the time, but I do now. I was too young to take it all in, see.
Brice was in a flurry, too. You could see it in his eyes. They sparkled like the starry heavens on a clear night. He had gorgeous eyes my big brother, the fern green of the Preseli Mountains. And he was always so patient. Bethan, cariad, he would say, stop running about like a rat on a mound of grain. Round and round you go making yourself dizzy, getting nowhere fast. Sometimes he used to catch me up in his arms. And that was so nice. Though I was getting too big for those swinging hugs by the time he left. All that quiet, that inner calm drained out of him when the buzz of war began. He was seventeen at the time. The thought of leaving off books to help on the farm, well, it felt like freedom to me. Just the way joining up felt to him, I s’ppose. To hear him chatter you’d have thought he was going to win single-handed, shoot the German army dead all by himself, that it would be over in a month or so. Like I said, neither of us really knew what lay ahead.
Our dad frowned even more than usual. He said the country needed our farm to feed it, more now than ever before. I thought he was crazy when he spoke like that. Our little farm feeding all of Wales? It made me smile, and brought to mind of the story of Jesus feeding a few loaves and fishes to all those hundreds who’d come to listen to him preach. He managed it with a miracle. I realised soon enough that we’d need a miracle, as well, if we weren’t to expire with exhaustion. Our mam realised what it meant though, what was happening to us. She cried most every day.
‘Mam, why are you so sad?’ I asked her. ‘Everyone’s saying we’ll win and teach those beastly Germans a lesson.’ I won’t forget what she replied.