The Hand That First Held Mine

by Maggie O'Farrell

  He blinks, once, and Margot and Felix strain forward, ready to catch whatever sounds he’s prepared to send their way. But nothing comes.

  ‘Well,’ Felix says, and he is using Margot’s bright voice – it seems to be catching, ‘I’ll go and do that. You be sure to watch out of the window.’ He heads off into the garden, putting on his boots at the back door, then retreating down the path. Gloria murmurs something about needing a lie-down and disappears into her rooms.

  And so Margot finds herself alone with the boy. The hair gleaming in the sunshine. The small shoulders beneath the shirt, which, she notices, has been patched on the collar. He has the same set jaw as his mother, she sees, the line of her nose, the slight overbite. Margot looks away. She crosses her legs, she picks a bit of lint off her sweater, she fluffs her hair again. When she looks back, the boy is staring straight at her and the dark, frank eyes are so unsettling, so disconcerting she almost jumps.

  ‘Oh.’ She lets out a little laugh and rises from her seat. She has to get away from that gaze, so like his bloody mother’s. To cover herself, she reaches for the plate of sausages. ‘Let’s take these away, shall we?’ She carries them to the kitchen, where she busies herself with scraping the food into the bin and putting the plate in the sink for the char to wash later. Then she thinks of something.

  She walks to the table, where she bends down. ‘Theodore,’ she says, trying to swallow, to suppress the fact that she now knows his middle name is Innes – how dare she? Damn that woman to hell, she catches herself thinking, and feels ashamed, ‘how would you like some ice-cream? Hmm? We’ve got vanilla or—’

  ‘I’m not Theodore,’ he says, quite clearly, and his voice is a surprise. Huskier than she would have thought, lower. He says f instead of th: Feodore.

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No.’ He swings his head from side to side.

  ‘Then who are you?’

  ‘I’m a very sharp pair of scissors.’

  Margot blinks. She thinks about this. She gives the idea very serious consideration but still feels unable to come up with a suitable response. A pair of scissors, did he say? ‘Well,’ she comes out with eventually, ‘well I never.’ She gives a chuckle. ‘Now how about this ice-cream?’

  ‘I don’t like ice-cream.’

  ‘You don’t like ice-cream? Of course you do! All children like ice-cream! ’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  ‘In fact, I don’t.’

  Margot straightens up. She is no good at this. She doesn’t know much about children. She clenches her hands together over her apron. She is not going to cry, she is not, she is not. But she cannot stop herself recalling the feel of that ominous hot slide, down low, in the place that it’s not nice to name, the startling jewel-red of it, and how much there always is, so much of it, an unbelievable amount, more than she would ever have thought her body could contain.

  She walks to the window and looks to the bottom of the garden, where Felix is piling leaves on to a sullenly smouldering bonfire. You’re right, he’d said, on all counts. You’re right. The tears feel hot on her cheeks. They follow the line of her neck and then disappear into the collar of her sweater.

  She sees something passing in the air near her, something low-down, something golden-yellow, and she gives a start. It’s the boy. Unbelievably, she’d forgotten about him for a moment. He’s come to stand next to her at the french windows. She sweeps her palms quickly over her face and smiles down at him. But he is examining the garden.

  ‘Look,’ she tries again, ‘there’s Daddy. He’s got that bonfire going, hasn’t he? Just like he said he would.’ She hears the hollowness of her words. She’ll never be any good at this. Maybe that’s why it keeps happening. She hasn’t got it. She hasn’t got the children thing – gift, aptitude, whatever you want to call it. She sounds like an actress pretending to be a parent.

  ‘Is that my daddy?’ the boy asks.

  ‘Yes, sweetie-pie, of course,’ Margot says, with a bright peal of laughter, brushing away another tear, fluffing up the right side of her head.

  The boy frowns. He puts up his hand and presses his palm to the glass. ‘Is this . . .’ he begins, then stops.

  Margot waits.

  ‘Is this my garden?’ he asks, and he turns to her, touches her hand with his, and she almost gasps.

  ‘Yes, Theodore, it is your garden. You can play in it whenever you want and—’

  ‘I’m not Theodore,’ he says again. Feodore.

  ‘I see,’ Margot says. She crouches, steadying herself on the door, so that she is on a level with him. ‘It is rather a mouthful, isn’t it? I used to know someone named Theodore but everyone called him Ted.’

  ‘Ted,’ the boy repeats, still staring into the garden. ‘Where’s the swing?’

  ‘Do you want a swing? We can get you a swing.’

  ‘The orange one.’

  ‘Of course. An orange one. Whatever you want.’

  And then, without looking at her, he says, ‘Are you my mother?’

  The word has an extraordinary effect on Margot. It seems to fall all the way through her, like a coin in a slot-machine. It seems to unpick the threads of something that has been knotted at the very core of her for a long time now. She looks at this child standing next to her, then she looks over her shoulder. She straightens up, licking her lips, which feel suddenly dry. The room is empty. Rosebuds stand in a china vase, their mouths puckered shut. The clock on the mantelpiece ticks away, oblivious, surrounded by wooden cherubs with lacquered limbs. The porcelain shepherdesses in the alcove bend solicitously towards each other, their tiny ears stoppered with glaze. There is a noise from the kitchen, which could have been something falling from a shelf or two plates shifting position in the sink. Margot looks back at the boy. His face is tipped up towards hers and it is uncertain, troubled, cocked to one side, as if he is straining to hear something. The curtain next to him trembles, a draught knifing in from the garden.

  Margot swallows. She licks her lips again. She takes his hand in hers. ‘Yes,’ she says quickly. ‘I am.’

  Elina hurries down the stairs and opens the front door. Simmy stands on the doorstep under a huge red umbrella.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, ‘how are you?’

  ‘Very pleased to see you,’ she manages to say. ‘That’s how I am.’

  He steps into the hall, shaking his umbrella. Water flies off him and Elina is reminded of a dog emerging from a lake. ‘Filthy day,’ he says. Then he reaches out and pulls her into an embrace.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she mutters, clutching at his elbow. ‘I don’t know . . . I didn’t know what else to . . . I mean, I don’t want to leave him . . . you know . . . on his own . . . I couldn’t just go out and . . .’

  Simmy nods and pats her back soothingly. ‘Of course, of course. I’m more than happy to come. Whenever. I mean it.’

  There is a high-pitched squeal from the sitting room. Elina brushes a tear roughly from her cheek. ‘I’ve just got to—’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Simmy says.

  Jonah is on his playmat on the sitting-room floor. He rolls on to his stomach, then back again. He raises his legs in the air and lets them fall sideways, then wriggles round on to his front. Then on to his back. The process repeats itself. He pants and grunts with concentration.

  ‘Fascinating,’ Simmy murmurs, as he watches him. ‘The effort of it.’

  ‘I know,’ Elina says. ‘He did it all day yesterday and all day today. He’s this close,’ she holds up her finger and thumb, ‘to crawling. But not quite.’

  ‘It’s quite painful to watch,’ Simmy says. ‘You just want to help him.’ He puts his head on one side. ‘It’s rather like the knight’s move, isn’t it? In chess. Sideways then up, sideways then up.’ Then he slaps his hands together and looks at Elina. ‘So, tell me, what’s been going on?’

  Elina sighs again. She sits down. Then she slides to the floor and comes to kneel next to Jo
nah. ‘He won’t get out of bed,’ she says in a low voice. ‘He won’t speak, doesn’t say anything at all. He won’t eat. I can just about get him to drink, but only just. He’s not asleep the whole time but he seems to be sleeping most of the day and most of the night as well. I don’t know what to do, Sim.’ She cannot look up at him so she picks up a toy of Jonah’s, a rattle with a bell, and shakes it. ‘I don’t know whether to call a doctor or . . . or . . . but I don’t know what I’d say.’

  ‘Hmm. And have Felix and—Has Felix been in touch at all?’

  ‘He’s been round. He rings every day. Sometimes twice.’

  ‘And Ted won’t talk to him?’

  Elina shakes her head. ‘She came round too,’ she whispers. ‘That was when Ted . . .’

  ‘Smashed the window?’

  She nods, swallowing hard. ‘It was awful, Sim. I thought he was going to – that he would . . .’

  Simmy shakes his head. ‘Poor Little My,’ he murmurs.

  ‘No, not at all,’ she returns. ‘It’s poor Ted.’

  ‘Well, poor all of you, I suppose.’

  Elina lifts Jonah on to her hip. ‘We should go up,’ she says.

  As they climb the stairs, she turns to Simmy. ‘I won’t be away long,’ she whispers. ‘No more than an hour, I should think. I don’t even know if I’m doing the right thing. But if it’s going to help . . . you know . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ Simmy says. ‘Even just the slightest possibility is worth it.’ He fumbles in his pocket and hands her something. ‘Listen, take this. Take my car.’

  She sees Simmy’s car keys lying in her hand. ‘Sim, it’s fine – I can catch a cab.’

  ‘No. It’s parked outside.’ He curls her fingers around the keys. ‘Take it.’

  She nods and slides them into her pocket. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  They arrive at the landing.

  ‘Ted?’ Elina says. She hesitates at the open door to their bedroom. A trapezoid of light lies on the carpet, a single blue sock at its centre, like an actor in a spotlight.

  ‘Ted?’ she says again.

  He is lying in bed, the duvet draped over his body. He is curled up, facing the wall.

  ‘Ted, Simmy’s here.’

  The hunched shape in the bed does not move.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Elina says. ‘Simmy’s come to see you. Ted? How are you feeling?’ She glances back at Simmy.

  He steps forward. ‘Ted,’ he says, ‘it’s me. Listen, Elina’s popping out so I’ve come to keep you company. I’ve got magazines, I’ve got newspapers, I’ve got snacks, I’ve even got a six-hundred-page novel about convicts up my sleeve, so we’re not going to be bored.’ He lowers his bulk into a chair. ‘Shall we start with the convicts? Or would you prefer a little light reading on the state of the economy?’ Without waiting for an answer, he opens the novel and begins to read aloud, in a sonorous, fake-Australian accent.

  Elina waits a moment longer, then leans over Ted and kisses him. His eyes are closed and the stubble on his face feels sharp against her lips. ‘’Bye,’ she whispers. ‘Won’t be long.’

  The floor in the hall of the house in Myddleton Square is tiled with blue and white octagons. They spread from the door, from the mat, all the way past the stairs, a geometric expanse, a Cubist impression of light on water.

  Several of the tiles near the bottom of the stairs are cracked, in a wavering line. This often makes Margot frown. She has talked about replacing them but has never got around to it. They were repaired, under the auspices of Gloria, in the late sixties, with glue and polish. But these fixings have since worked themselves loose and they rattle slightly if stepped on.

  It was on them – or at least near them – that Innes was standing when he returned home from his internment in Germany and looked up the stairs to see a man in his father’s dressing-gown. The man demanded, ‘Who the hell are you?’ and as Innes stood there on the loose, cracked tiles, he realised his marriage was over, that his life was about to take another unexpected turn.

  It was Innes who damaged the tiles, although none of the current residents of the house know this. On a wet day in the late 1920s, a seven-year-old Innes stole a metal tray from the kitchen and carried it all the way up to the top of the stairs and proceeded to toboggan down, skidding over the carpet, from landing to landing, riding the swells and troughs of the stairs, until he arrived with a resounding crash in the hallway. The impact of the edge of the tray with the Victorian tiles caused a long, snaking crack; Innes hurtled forward to collide with the sharp corner of a coat rack. His screams brought Consuela running from the kitchen, brought his mother down from the drawing room above. There was a lot of blood on the tiles that day, red among the blue and white. He had to have two stitches in his forehead and there would be a small, vertical scar there for the rest of his life.

  The octagonal tiles go past the cloakroom, in which Elina had her recent problems with Jonah, and end at the door to the basement. The steps here are twisting, narrow and dim – one of the bulbs blew last week and Felix, in true Felix fashion, has not yet got around to replacing it or, indeed, even noticing it.

  Down in the kitchen, a tap is dripping, beads of water falling into the porcelain sink with a quiet plic sound. Plic, it says, insistent, steady, plic. The noise is enough to distract the person in the room.

  Gloria has been parked in her wheelchair at the patio doors. A carer from the council comes in every morning to get her up and give her breakfast; after this she wheels her here to ‘get some sun’. Gloria sits with her head bent, her eyes directed towards the bright metal of her chair armrests. She sits in the place where her daughter stood with Theo on a morning a long time ago, watching Felix set alight a bonfire at the bottom of the garden. The carer brushed Gloria’s hair this morning and her scalp still tingles with the sensation of the bristles, and the noise of the tap is confusing her, setting her thoughts off their tracks: she is thinking about a telegram arriving, the boy coming to the door and saying, a telegram for you, missis – PLIC – she is thinking about a teapot her mother gave her, beautiful it was, with gilt around its rim; the gilt wore off, of course, because the daily would insist on washing it with a scourer – PLIC – she is thinking about a day trip they took to Clacton, before he went off to war, the sky looking as though it threatened rain and he said, as he held her hand, what was it, a chiaroscuro sky, she’d had to look it up later—

  Gloria has been down here for a long time on her own. Not that she has much concept of time, these days. But where are the other inhabitants of the house today? The garden is empty. The swing seat sways to and fro vacantly. The surface of the pond holds a section of sky. The trees extend their branches stiffly and at their ends the leaves are crisp and curling.

  A clock upstairs strikes midday; seconds later another answers it, at a higher pitch.

  In the drawing room, Margot is sitting in a chair near the window. She doesn’t know this but it is the chair Ferdinanda used to favour for doing her embroidery: a Georgian nursing chair, armless, with a low seat and dainty, fluted legs. It has since been re-covered, by Gloria, in a rather unbecoming tomato-red velvet. It sits, by chance, very close to the place Ferdinanda used to have it – angled towards the window, towards the light.

  Margot has been crying, on and off, all morning, in different locations about the house. She sits now, surrounded by a litter of tissues, her head leaning on her arm. She is still crying and has assumed the shuddering, swollen-faced aspect of someone worn out by grief.

  Two floors above her, past the bedrooms, and up into the attic, is the noise of someone moving heavy boxes around, shifting furniture. Someone is conducting a search. A crash, a thud, the sound of someone swearing, a pause, then another thud.

  Margot sobs, tweaks another tissue from the box, blows her nose, sobs again, then stops, drawing in a sharp breath. Felix is standing in the doorway. He is holding an ancient, dusty typewriter in his hands.

 
‘Felix,’ Margot says unsteadily, ‘that’s mine.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘It belonged to my father. Mother said so and—’

  ‘It was Lexie’s. I know it was.’

  ‘Yes, but, you see—’

  ‘What about everything else?’ Felix says, in a voice so quiet she has to strain to hear him, and Margot knows that voice. It’s the one he used to employ in interviews with particularly slippery politicians – icily calm, insidiously polite. It’s the voice that said to them, and the nation: I’ve got you and you’re not going to get away. It’s the voice that made him famous, all those years ago.

  And now he’s using it to her. Margot swallows, tears rising in her eyes again. ‘What do you mean?’ she says, trying to rally herself.