Lacey's House

by Joanne Graham

  She frowns and becomes confused, surely it was winter that morning, when her breath clouded from her lips and a chill was in the air. She stares at the dry, dusty ground and fights the urge to run as fast as she can so that she is home quicker and doesn’t have to walk on the strange surface that changes in an instant. She keeps her steps measured and even, more afraid of the man at her side than the rapidly changing season.

  One step, two steps, three steps. She counts them in her head as she watches her feet. She has done this so often that she knows exactly where she is. She knows when to turn, she knows when to bend beneath a low branch. She reaches for the gate and holds it open for him before walking up the path slightly ahead of him, and she does the same with the front door. She sees the grass growing between cracks in the path.

  Inside when the door is safely closed behind them she finally lifts her head and looks around, seeing that she is alone. The house is silent. Catching sight of herself in the mirror she gasps and her hand flutters to her chest. She turns from her reflection and looks around at the empty room hearing nothing but the sound of her own startled breath. She puts her face in her palms and starts to cry, huge racking sobs that force through the silence as she remembers that she is old now, and her father is long dead.

  Chapter 27 ~ Rachel

  By the time Lacey knocked on the door on Saturday I was already in a flap about the food and Jane had calmly taken over in the kitchen. One side of her mouth curved up in a wry smile, which alternated with a look of bafflement at my ignorance.

  “Honest to God, how can anyone be so crap?”

  “I studied art not cooking, remember! You don’t moan too much when you get a nice little commission.”

  She smiled at me over the smooth table surface and handed me a bundle of cutlery. “Here you go, take some of your artistic talent and make the table look pretty. I’m sure even you can manage that one.”

  I huffed in mock anger and stuck my tongue out, “I don’t know why I invited you,” I said sulkily and she laughed.

  “You didn’t, I invited myself!”

  The previous night had passed too quickly as we sat into the early hours. We talked over a bottle of wine about work, which for most people would be off limits on a Friday night, but not in Jane’s case. She was passionate about what she did, her love of art matched only by her genuine interest in people and it showed in every syllable that she uttered. I wasn’t immune to her excitement and as we talked I could feel the lethargy of the previous weeks evaporating into excitement at the thought of picking up my brushes and getting started.

  She told me about her latest discovery, a sixteen year old boy that she had met at an art exhibition. Taylor, she explained, did the most amazing abstract art. As a child he had been diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin. What he found hard was that he could only really let himself go and paint the way he did if he stopped taking his medication. He fought a daily battle and felt that in the end he was always disappointing someone, whether it was himself, his teachers or his exhausted and desperate parents.

  Jane thought it was this angst that gave him his edge; it seethed across the canvas. She wanted to nurture him, to give him the platform he deserved to show his work. But she worried that by doing so she would be encouraging the internal battle within him. By the time we headed up the stairs to bed, slightly tipsy and a little unsteady, Jane was no closer to making a decision about Taylor and I had been no help whatsoever.

  As Jane filled mismatched cocktail glasses with pre-shredded lettuce I went to answer the door. Lacey had obviously made an effort to tone down her usual dress sense. Instead of the normal riot of clashing colours, she had opted for only one, though in several different shades. Her dark purple skirt skimmed the ground, the hall light reflecting from the tiny mirrors sewn into the material. She wore a pale lilac tunic that reached over her generous hips and was tied in at the waist by a purple scarf. Her hair was held back by a glittery lilac headband. A fortune-teller in a carnival tent. The only thing missing was gold hoop earrings and a crystal ball. She looked amazing and I told her so.

  “Thank you,” she muttered, her voice barely there. She seemed ill at ease, a little unsure. She glanced nervously over my shoulder and I placed a hand gently on her arm, leading her through into the kitchen.

  “Jane, this is Lacey.”

  From where Jane was bent over, peering intently into the oven, she stood and turned in one graceful, fluid motion. Her eyes briefly scanned Lacey from head to toes before her face lifted into a huge smile. “You look fabulous!” She took the distance between them in three short strides and wrapped her arms around Lacey’s shoulders, kissing her on both cheeks, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  I saw the faint blush spread across Lacey’s face and after a second, her own arms, held stiff at her sides came up and she lightly returned the hug. Jane looked genuinely delighted at the image before her and as she lowered her arms and stepped back, still smiling, I picked up a bottle of wine from the ice bucket on the table and offered to pour.

  Over the starter, Jane once more returned to the dilemma of Taylor, this time directing her comments at Lacey and asking her opinion.

  “What does the boy want to do?”

  “He wants to paint,” Jane replied, “he’s a typical artist in that he only seems to feel alive when he is working. I think that for him painting is an escape from his difficulties, even when it is his difficulties that he is painting.”

  “Then let him paint. If it is where his heart lies then he absolutely has to go for it. He can spend a lifetime thinking what if and what would that achieve? If he stops his medication and it all goes horribly wrong then he has lost nothing but a few months of difficulty. But if he doesn’t stop his medication and he doesn’t paint, he could spend the rest of his life unhappy. In the end it’s nobody’s choice but his.”

  Jane slid her thumbnail between her lips and bit down on it lightly, something she always did when she was deep in thought. “You’re right, of course. Maybe I should try harder to see it from his point of view instead of getting all maternal and protective. I just don’t want to be responsible for making life difficult for him.”

  “It sounds to me like his life is already difficult but that’s not down to you, it’s his disorder that causes that. And maybe it won’t be as a bad as you think, the result could end up being the best thing that’s ever happened to him. You can live a life without risk, lovey, but it seems to be that you risk not living at all if you do that.”

  I could see on Jane’s face how delighted she was with Lacey, it showed in the warmth of her eyes when she looked at the older woman. “That’s wise advice, thank you.”

  Lacey’s eyes moved to her wine glass and her hand followed, lightly holding the stem as she pulled it towards her mouth and took a noisy gulp. “It’s not wisdom, I just think it’s better to have regrets about a wrong decision than to live a lifetime wondering what could have been.”

  “You sound like you’re talking from experience there?” I said.

  “Oh yes, I am. Maybe when you get to my age you just have more time to think about the things you could have done differently, too many opportunities to ask yourself what if.”

  I knew what she meant, the what if game was one that I played with myself more often than was healthy. Jane pushed her chair back and began to clear away the empty dishes to make space for the main course. The conversation paused as she began to dish up, but it was a pleasant silence without awkwardness or discomfort.

  I refilled the three glasses and Lacey smiled at me from her seat as Jane brought the salad bowl to the table, along with a serving dish full of vegetables and potatoes. When we all had our plates in front of us we began to help ourselves.

  “So,” Jane began, “Rachel tells me you have a son.”

  Lacey’s eyes softened and she smiled, “Yes I do, his name is Charlie.” She looked like any proud mother talking about her child. It made me wonder again about my conversation
with Martha in the churchyard. Was it simply that she was mistaken about this, that she didn’t know Lacey well enough? It didn’t seem very likely in a village this small but it wasn’t unheard of for people to keep big secrets. Who knew what went on behind closed doors?

  “And your husband, is he still with you?”

  Shadows leapt into her eyes and I was fascinated watching the play of emotions across her face. It was open and easy to read, as though she had never learnt the art of hiding how she felt, or had never been bothered to try. Her shoulders sagged a little as though a sudden weight had pushed them downwards and the mood in the room lost some of its lightness. “I never married.”

  “You didn’t marry Charlie’s father? That must have been incredibly difficult for you, things being what they were.”

  Lacey was silent for a while after Jane spoke. She seemed to be looking inwards, and I could sense that Jane’s reluctance to interrupt her matched my own. After a time Lacey’s eyes focused again in the present and she looked self conscious to find two pairs of eyes on her. She gave us both a tentative smile. “I’m sorry, I’ve never actually talked about this before, not to anyone. It was such a huge secret you see and nobody has ever been interested enough to ask before, I suppose. After all this time I’m not even sure if it’s a story I could tell.”

  “Well I’d like to hear it if you can.” I smiled encouragingly at her, hoping that she would talk to us. For some reason I felt a strange sense of responsibility for the sadness of her words, for the lonely picture she had painted of herself. Across the table from me I saw Jane smile in reassurance as well.

  Lacey was silent again as we looked at her sat between us. She gave a slight shrug and nodded. “Alright then. I’m sorry if it’s a little boring for you both, like I said it’s a bit of a long story.”

  Chapter 28 ~ Lacey

  She remembers. Looking back she can see a thread pulled tight and leading into before. This story... this story is different, tantalising, compelling. Because this story she remembers with clarity. It is an anchored ship in a sea whipped by storms and for her it has held her safe. Warmed and comforted her when the tempest rages and she cannot remember where she stands.

  These memories are linear, formulaic. They stand apart, separate from the others, they are proud, strong. There is a start, a middle and an end like all good stories. But it is not a good end, not for her. It is a tragedy this tale, a tragic end that tears her heart from her body.

  All these years later, when everything else has faded and gone, it is that tragedy that reminds her how to feel. It tells her that she loved once, that she was loved. She wonders if she can tell this story and do it justice without it ripping into her. Without her feeling those emotions expand outwards beyond her until they envelop the two faces that watch her with calm expectation; until they are all swept away.

  But even as she thinks this, even as she thinks that her life is mist surrounding the island of this one collection of memories, she knows that she will try. She knows that she will share it. After all this time she wants someone else, someone other than her to know that once she was loved, that once someone looked at her as if she were the only other person in the world. And so she begins.

  She had named her son after his father, Charlie senior, and she had known from the very first moment she laid eyes on the man that she would love him. Perhaps she had known even before that. She remembered overhearing a conversation between her parents about him, about how he had come down from Exeter to stay on his uncle’s farm and work, because his heart was too weak for him to go and fight in the war. As soon as her mother said his name it was like a bell ringing in her head, ever so faint but definitely there. At the time she hadn’t paid it any attention, barely even noticed it. But afterwards, after that first moment she looked upon him, she remembered it and just knew he was for her.

  She couldn’t say what it was about him, even now. She would wonder about it, try to think what it could have been. He wasn’t good looking, not in any conventional sense. He was tall, a little pale and thin, with big hands that looked like they had outgrown the rest of him somewhere along the way. His face was long and slightly lopsided and his hair was crazy, no matter how short it was cut there was always a little tuft that stood up at the back.

  But to her there was something special about him. He had the deepest blue eyes she had ever seen, with laughter lines at the corners even though he was only young. Those lines had made him look as though he never stopped smiling. He was warm and gentle and all the girls seemed to love him a little.

  He had been a flirt. He loved making all the girls blush and she had hated it. From the moment she fell for him, that first time they met, she found it so hard to see him reduce the local girls to giggles. Years later, when he existed nowhere but in her memory she would understand it more. There were so few men around then, only the old and the sick, the young boys not yet grown into themselves. It was no wonder that all the girls loved him. He had brought a little sunshine into all of their lives. He seemed so worldly-wise compared to the country girls even though he had lived only a few miles away, his self-awareness appealed to her, she found him interesting, exotic.

  She was set apart from the others because of her father and what he did for a living. She had been a pretty thing back then. Her hair, when it was down, was thick and dark, hanging just above her slender waist. When all the other girls started copying the city styles and having their hair cut off to their shoulders and curled into rolls, she had left hers alone. And she never wore make-up, her father would never have allowed it. He said that make-up made women look like painted dolls or whores.

  The only time Charlie ever seemed to be serious was when he spoke to her, and she had taken that as a great insult. He never seemed to turn on the charm if she was there, which was rarely. His tone became more serious, and he looked at her respectfully because she was the Doctor’s daughter. She could never be seen as one of his pretty girls. She desperately wanted him to notice her the way she had noticed him, but he seemed indifferent to her and that hurt.

  He had been turning on the charm for Rosemary Westcott one day when Lacey had raised her eyes and seen them. He still had that dopey smile on his face when she had walked up with the apples she’d just been picking. He turned towards her and the smile just slipped away, it cut her to the bone that she wasn’t even worthy of a smile. She felt the threat of tears behind her eyes and thought that she could either cry or lose her temper. Before she had given it much thought she raised her hand and slapped him, good and hard right across his cheek. Rosemary had looked at her in shock as Lacey turned and walked away, her eyes on the ground with tears spilling over.

  Later, Charlie would tell her that when she slapped him he knew for sure that one day he would marry her. He would explain that the only reason he never flirted with her was because she was the one who mattered. He felt awkward around her because she was something precious, too precious to make light of.

  Her father hated him. Thinking that he was a good for nothing layabout and that he should be fighting like all the other young men, despite his weak heart. She found it difficult to understand how a doctor could judge him so harshly for something he couldn’t help, but then her father was often cruel and thoughtless. He wouldn’t have cared that Charlie felt a failure because he wasn’t out there fighting with all his friends. He didn’t care that the young man worked so hard on the farm, as if he were trying to make up for his weaknesses by helping the village as much as he could.

  Her father thought him a coward, but to her there was nothing cowardly about him, in her eyes he was brave and strong-minded, even though his body let him down. She knew that if he could have lied his way into battle, he would have, but her father wouldn’t see it and always spoke down to him, greeting him with barely a nod and a frown of disapproval.

  They had both known that he would never give them his blessing. Charlie would never be good enough for the Doctor’s daughter. And so they met in secr
et, barely acknowledging each other in the street when they passed so no-one knew how they felt. She found it tortuous seeing him talking to other girls and feeling unable to go up to them and say “Leave him alone, he’s mine!”

  She saw the looks they gave her, she knew that they all thought her a little odd because she barely looked at him. She shrugged off their stares because Charlie loved her and one day they would know it, one day she would marry him and their opinion of her wouldn’t matter anymore.

  Her father had always been protective, possessive even, but in those days when she wasn’t doing household chores or going with him on his visits, she was out in the fields and hedgerows collecting food. She would go gathering berries, nuts, even dandelion leaves and roots, fresh eggs from their hens. The outbreak of war had given her a strange kind of freedom that she was unused to, she could go out without a chaperone as long as she did as she was told and came home with a full basket. It made it easier for her on the days she met Charlie.

  They would meet at the top end of the field, near the stream. The branches hid them from sight and few people went there anyway, even then. They would sit by the water and hold hands, sometimes talking nonstop, sometimes not talking at all. It was simply enough to be together away from prying eyes. He told her all about his life in Exeter, where he lived with his mother who was still struggling to get over losing his father so young to a heart attack.

  She felt a real shiver of terror when he told her that. She knew Charlie’s heart was bad too; would she lose him the same way? She couldn’t imagine her world without him in it. He had given her a taste of what it was to be loved, to be heard. He had filled a space that had left her not quite so cold, not quite so alone. How would she ever cope if that void came back now?