by Sonia Tilson
“It’s only once a year,” Carol said, seeing Gillian’s expression as she surveyed the fairy cakes, the Rice Krispie squares, and the bowls of varicoloured Jell-O and of Smarties spread on the table. “Do you want to come and see the cake I made for her?”
“No,” Gillian said. “I’ll wait for the grand entrance.”
Carol pressed her lips tight together and tucked a stray wisp of ultra-blonde hair into her chignon. She kept her eyes down and went back into the kitchen. Gillian knew her daughter-in-law felt rebuffed, but it was not right, all this fuss and celebration over a six-year-old. Where was the child anyway? Instead of running to greet her as she used to, she had disappeared upstairs when Gillian arrived. Getting all primped up, Gillian supposed. Twenty little guests would be arriving in half an hour or so, all of them no doubt similarly over-privileged.
Incomprehensibly close to tears, Gillian watched from the shadows, as her granddaughter came down the stairs to greet the first arrivals. A little slip of a thing in an opalescent dress and silver ballet shoes, her exuberant ash-blonde hair held back by a glittering tiara, Alice received her guests like the princess she no doubt felt herself to be. The hallway was quickly filling up with other princesses, all set to party.
Later, unavoidably in the thick of it, Gillian endured the non-stop screaming and kaleidoscopic activity as best she could until, after the games, the absurd meal, the blowing out of candles on the Disneyland cake and the screeching of “Happy Birthday to you!”, the time came for the opening of the gifts.
Against a background of comments from visiting mothers on how much the child took after her, Gillian watched her granddaughter opening presents. Alice seemed delighted with them all, and thanked each giver graciously, as she had been taught, until she opened the last of her gifts, a handsome, lavishly-illustrated storybook from her best friend, Tiffany; the same book, Gillian saw with concern, as the one Alice had already received that morning from her Aunt Kelly, Carol’s sister. Gillian saw her granddaughter look up from the opened package, her eyes clouding over with uncertainty and her smile of anticipatory delight wavering into a grimace of distress at not knowing what to say.
The awkward moment was soon over, and Alice was her laughing, chattering self again, but Gillian had left the party. She stood rigid, staring blankly at the dark panelling in the hallway of Bryn’s house. Through the window of those distressed green eyes she had seen another six-year-old. In a stained, draggle-hemmed kilt and grubby yellow jersey, her hair cropped short for fear of nits from school, that child was crouched behind bales of straw in the dirt of an old barn, praying in vain to be made invisible.
Standing in the hallway, Gillian began to tremble, her heart pounding. She had never seen her childhood self that way before, always having unconsciously judged herself as an unwilling, but nonetheless responsible and guilty partner in the shameful goings-on. But she had been Alice’s age, for Christ’s sake! Just a little child! The long-simmering anger, now directed exclusively at Angus and on her own behalf, rather than on Gladys’s, boiled up and overflowed. Leaning her head against the banisters, she hung onto them until the shaking stopped.
Pleading a headache, she left the festivities. Bryn followed her to the door, offering to take her home.
“Don’t you worry about me,” she said. “You just enjoy the party.” She heard, appalled, her mother’s voice.
She went straight home to phone the travel agent, talk to Simon, and prepare for a second return journey to Wales.
Bryn drove her to the airport, leaning forward from time to time to peer sideways into her face, unable to understand why she was going back so soon. “What happened at Alice’s party, Mom?” he said as they drew up, as she had requested, at Departures. “You haven’t been the same since you came back from Wales last summer, but I’m sure something at the party upset you even more. Was it something we did?”
“Of course not, darling. You never upset me. It was all about me and my unresolved problems.” She turned to face him. “I’m truly sorry about the way I’ve been acting this winter, Bryn. Tell Alice I love her to bits, would you? And please explain to Carol that I was very upset at the party by a memory of something that happened to me at Alice’s age. We’ll talk more about it when I come back. Now, just let me off here would you, love? I’ll be back soon.”
He handed over her carry-on bag, a frown of concern still on his handsome face. “What about Dora? Shall we take her? And shall we meet you off the plane?”
“Simon’s going to move back in. He’ll meet me when I get back.” She saw his face light up at that news, and kissing him goodbye, thought how like Tom he was becoming. “Don’t worry, Bryn,” she said, “It’s just that there’s something I have to do in Wales. There’s a place I need to see.”
W
“’Ere we are then.” The bus driver turned around in his seat with a grin as Gillian made her way up the empty bus to the exit. “Croesffordd! The great metrolops! Knows somebody ’ere, does you, luv?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not now.” Gillian looked back from the pavement at his round, smiling face, fighting an urge to get back on the bus.
Don’t go! Don’t leave me!
“Oh. Well that explains it then, dunnit?” He waved a freckled hand. “I’ll be back at four o’clock sharp. Orrite? Cheers!” The bus rumbled away from the crossroads, past the row of stone cottages, on the final leg of its journey from Swansea to Brecon.
Shivering in the sharp breeze, she buttoned up her Aquascutum raincoat against the threat of an April shower and clutched her handbag. Standing on the corner where the bus had left her, she looked around at the tiny village she had first seen fifty years before. Down the road facing her was the little stone school where everything had been taught in Welsh. On the opposite corner, the chapel, Ebenezer, looked just as grey and grim as the first time she saw it. She turned to check if, by any chance, the square jars of sweets with their amber barley-sugar twists, brown and white striped humbugs and multicoloured ‘boilings’ still stood in the shop window behind her, but saw only a pale ghostly shape glooming back at her from the papered glass.
Thumbs tightly clenched, chin tucked in, she set off up the steep, narrow road between high, rough hedges, until she came to the turnoff for Maenordy. A cuckoo started up in the distance as she set foot after foot on the winding drive. She pressed on over stunted dandelions pushing through the gravel and past straggling rhododendrons until she rounded a bend and the house appeared.
She stood still, unsure. That was not how she remembered it. This was a dingy, off-white building, the slates on its roof uneven and broken, an attic window cracked. Brambles arched among the roses, the lawn around the bed high with the skeletons of last summer’s weeds. On the other side of the house, however, the barn was strangely untouched by time, the
monkey puzzle tree still standing beside it. Hand over mouth, she backed away, but stopped. She had not come this far, just to slink back home. Angus would surely not be here now, and this was where her search must begin.
She forced her heavy feet to approach and climb the stone steps up to the oak door, and her cold, stiff fingers to lift the brass fox-head knocker which fell with a heavy clunk, triggering loud barks. When the door opened, it seemed for a moment that Dinah, the beloved Springer spaniel of her memory, rushed out, waggling her whole body in ecstasy at her return.
“Daisy, behave!” A fresh-faced, dark-haired young woman in jeans and red sweatshirt smiled at Gillian. “Can I help you?”
Gillian cleared her dry throat. Her voice came out high and tight. “If it’s not inconvenient, I wondered if it would be possible for me to look around the house and grounds, and maybe ask a few questions.” She tried to smile. “I was, um, evacuated here with my brother when I was six years old, during the war, when Dr. and Mrs. Macpherson lived here.”
“Oh they still do,” the young woman said breezily. “Come in
, and I’ll tell them you’re here. What name will I give?”
“Tell them I’m Gillian Davies.” Twiddling and tugging the hair behind her ear, she watched the young woman cross the gloomy hall to the inner rooms. They still do? Even allowing for a child’s perspective, they had been middle-aged fifty years ago. They must be around a hundred years old by now. She had not reckoned on meeting them again. She had not reckoned on meeting anyone from that time right away; just on seeing the place, being there again, and beginning her hunt for Angus. Trembling, she bent to stroke the silky brown and white head, so familiar and comforting, of Dinah’s descendent.
The young woman was back. “Dr. Macpherson says please to come in.” She led Gillian through the mouldy-smelling stone passage, to the back of the house, and into the kitchen.
Smiling at her, seated at the same scrubbed, battered white-pine table, set on the same slate flagstones she remembered, were two people: a faded, elderly woman, draped in a beige, hand-knitted cardigan, her wispy, grey-blonde hair piled on top of her head; and a tall, rusty-haired man who could indeed have been the Dr. Macpherson she remembered, except that he looked to be in his late sixties, if that. He stood up to greet her, reaching out large, long-fingered hands.
“Gillian!” He clasped her cold hand in both of his. “What an incredible surprise! How lovely to see you again! Come and sit down. Have a cup of tea.” He pulled out a chair and patted a quilted cushion of blue and yellow squares onto which she sank.
“I’d know you anywhere,” she heard Angus say, as if from far away. “Same hair. Same eyes. Still the same old Gillian, eh? Let me introduce my wife, Janet, and,” he indicated the young woman, “my daughter-in-law, Rhiannon.”
They were all still smiling away as Gillian felt herself fading. Part of her seemed to have floated up to the far corner of the ceiling, watching and listening, while the rest of her sat at the table with those people. Angus was asking where she lived now, if she were married and had any children, and if she worked. The part of her on the ceiling observed that she seemed to be answering sensibly enough, saying that she lived in Ottawa, had one son, taught high school English, and so on. She heard Angus explain that that he had succeeded his father as the only doctor in the district, and that his son, Ian, a solicitor, was living with them at Maenordy with Rhiannon and their little daughter.
With their little daughter? Here, in this house? Gillian pulled herself together “Did you say your granddaughter lives here with you?”
“Yes, Sally. She’s asleep just now. She’s almost three years old. A real little beauty, just like her mother,” he said, with a twinkle at Rhiannon, who rolled her eyes. “How about you? Any grandchildren?”
Gillian looked away, her stomach contracting. “Just the one. A girl. Six years old.” She was damned if she’d tell him any more about Alice.
“Six years old, eh?” Angus’s small brown eyes brightened. “I hope she takes after you. What’s her name?”
“No. She does not take after me. Not in any way. She’s plump, and dark, and her name,” she looked straight at him, “is Gladys.”
“Gladys, eh?” He chuckled. “There used to be a Gladys here in the village in your time. D’you remember? Lovely little girl!” He pushed his mug over to Rhiannon for a refill.
Gillian put her hand down on the dog’s shoulder, the weight of its warm body against her leg grounding her. “I remember Gladys,” she said.
Flapping and cawing, a flock of rooks, caught up in some corvidian drama, descended onto a dead tree near the window. Rhiannon hurried over to shut out the din.
“So you were here for a year, Gillian?” Janet said timidly into the silence that followed. “Was it very hard for you to be away from home for so long?” Her face was kind and full of soft little wrinkles.
“Of course it wasn’t,” Angus snapped. “She had the time of her life.”
Janet subsided, biting her lip, but Rhiannon, topping up the Brown Betty teapot from the kettle on the red Aga range, asked over her shoulder, “And how did you find Mrs. Macpherson senior?” She raised an eyebrow. “Was she ever so strict with you?”
“Oh, Mother had her old-school ways, but she had a heart of gold,” Angus said. “She looked after them wonderfully.”
Heart of gold! Gillian sat up straight, feeling her cheeks burn with anger. “She was more than strict,” she heard herself say. “She neglected us, and she beat us.”
Rhiannon gave a startled snort, and Janet shot a frightened glance at Angus.
Exhilarated by this access of courage, Gillian took the offensive further. “And that’s not all,” she said, staring straight at Angus, a pulse thumping in her throat.
Narrowing his eyes, he looked hard at her for a moment from under his beetling eyebrows before producing the crooked smile she remembered so well. “I tell you what.” He shot out his arm and looked at his watch. “It’s not even noon, and I’m not due at the surgery until one-thirty. Why don’t you and I pop over to the Hare and Hounds in Brecon, Gillian, and have a spot of lunch? We can have a good chat about old times, eh?” He took hold of her elbow and steered her out of the kitchen in seconds as Janet and Rhiannon sat open-mouthed over their unfinished cups of tea.
Gillian studied the cracks and stains on the wall of the house until, with a throaty purr, a forest-green vintage sports car crunched out of the darkness of the barn onto the gravel, dazzling in a sudden gleam of sunshine.
“How d’you like her?” Angus put down the hood and jauntily opened the passenger door, slinging her handbag into the minimal back seat. “It’s a Jaguar E-Type. You won’t see too many of these around I can tell you. Cost me a fortune!” As they roared off, Gillian turned in her soft leather seat to look back at the dilapidated house. The seven-mile drive to Brecon on a narrow, winding, hilly road took five terrifying minutes.
Judging by the clatter of crockery and the sound of conversation and laughter, the Hare and Hounds was already almost full. Angus must be gambling, rightly perhaps, that she was too well brought-up to make a scene in public, the presence of so many strangers sure to inhibit her from even raising the subject, let alone forcing a confrontation.
He spoke to the landlord who grinned, looked Gillian up and down, and slapped Angus on the back before leading them through a barrage of waves, greetings, and handshakes for the doctor, to a table for two in a far corner of the low-ceilinged, dark-timbered dining room.
A beaming teenaged waiter, an immaculate napkin over his arm, appeared as soon as they sat down. Angus ordered a whisky on the rocks and a lamb curry for himself, insisting on a schooner of sherry for Gillian whose churning stomach wanted nothing to eat or drink. In the silence that followed, he smiled complacently across the table at her until, as she reached shakily for her water glass, he placed his huge hand firmly over hers, red hairs still thick across his wrist. Her mind lurched away, again attempting flight, but she held steady this time, concentrating on the weave of the linen tablecloth.
“Let me say again, Gillian, how delighted I am to see you.” He raised his glass. “I’ve often wondered how you and your brother were doing. You were such lovely children!”
A hairbrush thwacks Tommy’s bare bottom; a hand around her ankle drags her back.
She wrenched her hand free. “And I’ve often wondered, Angus, how, between you and your mother, Tommy and I survived that year.”
“You can leave my mother out of this!” He glared at her. “It was very good of her to take you in.” He looked away, his face softening, the boy in him suddenly visible. “I cared for her at home until she died, you know. Ten years ago that was. She lived to be ninety-four, Gillian; marvellous to the end. “He blew his nose. “She was a wonderful woman!”
If you say so. Gillian rubbed her hand, momentarily disconcerted by this alternate view of Mrs. Macpherson. Could she, just a child after all, have somehow got the whole thing wrong?
“Thank you, Gareth,” Angus gave a nod as the waiter put down their drinks. “How’s that young sister of yours?” He smacked his lips after taking a gulp.
The waiter’s round, spotty face lit up. “Megan’s fine, thank you, sir. She’s been a bit off form lately, but she seems okay again now. Thank you very much.” He retreated to take a stand nearby.
“Nice boy,” Angus patted his lips with the large white napkin. “Oldest of six. Know the family.” He put his head on one side with a smile, and reality returned to Gillian in a rush.
“We had a lot of fun together, didn’t we, Gillian?” he said, “D’you remember? Exploring the woods and fields, riding the bike, and so forth.”
And so forth?
Thought he could brazen it out, did he?
Railroad her into treating this as a pleasant social occasion?
That she had learned nothing in fifty years?
Folding her arms, she stared at him for a good five seconds while he kept up his smiling front. “Angus,” she said in a loud, clear voice, “I was six years old. How dare you talk to me about fun! Shall I remind you what your idea of fun consisted of?”
He jerked back, frowning and shaking his head almost imperceptibly while making little shushing movements with his hands. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as his eyes darted about the room, and she realized that there and then, in that tavern, surrounded by his friends and acquaintances, she could finish him. A couple of middle-aged women immediately in her line of vision were already staring with open curiosity, while at least two more tables were easily within earshot. The waiter remained at his post behind Angus.
Angus rallied, took another swallow, and wiped his face with the napkin. “Oh, come on now, Gillian.” He bared his teeth in a conspiratorial smile, keeping his voice low. “There’s no need to carry on as if I ruined your life. Actually, you seem to have done rather well for yourself. I mean, look at you.” He held out a hand. “Elegant, healthy, obviously well off; married, I gather, and with a family and a profession to boot. What more could you ask, eh?” He sat back, still smiling.