by Imogen Clark
Sebastian was still looking at the bed.
‘The stroke was the beginning of the end,’ he said. ‘Until then I thought Mum would go on for ever and die peacefully in her sleep when she was a hundred and ten. She was always so active. I never imagined anything slowing her down.’
Anna nodded, not quite trusting her voice not to break if she spoke. Sebastian continued.
‘I mean, it’s so brutal. To be left virtually immobile and with next to no speech. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her. If I get like that, Ans, you have to promise to have me shot. Or take me to Switzerland or something because I’m telling you now, there will be no way that I’ll want to continue living.’
‘There was a woman at Oak’s Reach who said much the same to me,’ said Anna quietly. ‘But I don’t think I agree. At least she stayed in her own home until almost the end and she knew what was going on around her. Her mind stayed pretty sharp. And she had us.’
Anna paused and her eyes were drawn again to the bed. She pulled her gaze away.
‘Right!’ she said decisively. ‘If there’s anything in here worth keeping then it’ll be in the sideboard, so we’re going to have to shift that table out of the way so that we can open it.’
Taking one end each, they managed to manoeuvre the mahogany table far enough away from the sideboard to open the drawers and cupboard doors, but the space was tiny and they had to squat down in the gap with the two pieces of furniture towering over them.
Anna opened a cupboard, twisting her arm so that it didn’t bang on the table behind her. Inside was stacked the best china, which was only ever used on Christmas Day and even then with extreme caution. Carefully she removed a soup bowl from the top and turned it over to look at it.
‘It’s Wedgwood, this service, but I’ve no use for it. I almost never entertain. I wonder if Miriam might want it? I suppose you have all the plates you need.’
Sebastian half-smiled. ‘I think Tessa had it covered. I sometimes think we could eat our dinners for an entire month without ever having to do any washing-up.’ Sebastian stopped.
‘You’re doing so well, Seb,’ Anna said gently, reaching out to touch him lightly on the shoulder. ‘I’m so very proud of you.’ Sebastian bit his lip and nodded but he didn’t meet her gaze. ‘We’ll leave the Wedgwood here and ask Miriam about it. I wonder if I ought to make a list?’
She delved further into the cupboard and found various glass sundae bowls, all with a fine patina of dirt. There were some tarnished silver cruets and a little silver mustard pot with a blue glass insert and a tiny wooden spoon.
‘I used to love that spoon when I was little,’ said Sebastian. ‘I even tried to whittle one myself once. It was rubbish.’ He laughed at the memory and Anna was pleased to see his customary cheerful exterior restored, even if it was merely a veneer. ‘This drawer is just the best cutlery, you know, that stuff with the bone handles. And this one, if I remember correctly’ – he opened the drawer with a flourish – ‘is full of . . . yup. Napkins.’
‘How do you think Clare looked?’ asked Anna, reaching in the back of the cupboard and pulling out some Pyrex serving tureens. ‘Just now, I mean,’ she added, though no clarification was needed.
‘Not bad at all,’ said Sebastian. ‘Surprisingly well, in fact. I thought she’d been going through a bad patch but I certainly didn’t see any sign of it.’
Anna had probably asked the wrong sibling. She was pretty sure that Miriam would have seen Clare as she had done, down at heel, doing her best to keep up appearances but with a distinct undertone of neglect.
‘And she’s sober,’ added Sebastian. ‘I was a bit worried that she wouldn’t be. I know it’s first thing in the morning but that doesn’t really mean anything, does it?’
‘Yes. I agree, so that has to be a good thing. Do you think that we ought to offer her the house again, just to stay in until it sells?’
Sebastian thought for a moment and then slowly shook his head.
‘No. She was so angry last time I’m not sure we should risk it again. I don’t really understand it. You’d think that she’d jump at the chance. A place to stay, fully furnished and rent-free.’
‘And full of painful memories and with the heavy disapproval of her family to cope with?’ added Anna. ‘I can see why she wouldn’t want to be here. I’m not sure I would if I were in her shoes. And I suppose if we are looking to sell, it’d be better if the place was empty. The last thing we’d need is the estate agent showing people round and discovering Clare on a bender.’
Sebastian smiled weakly.
‘I asked her to come and stay with us, you know, before Tess died,’ he said. ‘It was a bit of a hard sell to Tessa but the boys were up for Auntie Clare to come to visit and we’ve got a spare room. But she turned me down outright. Just said thanks for the offer but she was perfectly all right the way things were. I’d quite like to have her around now. Anything is better than the silence. Daren’t ask her, though. I don’t think I could bear her to reject me again.’
Anna felt a little wounded at learning that he had asked Clare to stay. She’d always thought there was something special between her and Sebastian. They were the little ones, she the reputed favourite and Sebastian the baby of the family. They had always stuck together but maybe Sebastian felt differently. Maybe he saw all his sisters as equals. ‘Perhaps you should ask her again,’ said Anna, even though she hated the idea of Clare hurting Sebastian any more.
‘Maybe. I feel so guilty. I keep thinking that I’ll wake up one day to a phone call from Miriam telling me that she’s been found face down in a ditch somewhere. Or worse.’
‘All we can do is be there for her if she needs us. Just ask her. Is it still tablecloths in that big drawer at the bottom?’ she added, moving back on to less emotionally charged ground.
‘Looks like it. Do you think I need to take them all out so I can tell Miriam that the will isn’t in there?’
‘Probably or she’ll only make you look again. Oh, look!’ Anna pulled her hand out from the back of the cupboard. She was holding a tiny china lady in a blue crinoline skirt. ‘How I loved this when I was small. It used to be on the mantelpiece in the lounge.
Sebastian gave the ornament a cursory look.
‘Is that the one that Clare broke by throwing it at Miriam? Before my time, that was.’
‘Yes. Look. You can still see where Dad glued her little arm back on.’ There was a clear dark line encircling the arm, the yellowing glue visible in lumps. ‘He didn’t do a great job, did he? I wonder if the others would mind if I took it?’
‘I doubt it. It’s not like anyone’s missed it in the decade or so that it’s been stuck in that sideboard!’ laughed Sebastian. ‘I wouldn’t claim it as your valuable item, though.’ He winked at her and in that moment looked just like the boy that he once had been.
‘Well, it’s worth the world to me,’ said Anna, and she put the lady gently on top of the sideboard.
‘I’m not sure there’s much else in here. Shall we move on to the kitchen?’
‘Yes. I could do with getting out of here anyway. That bed . . . It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.’
Anna stood up, her knees creaking slightly, and negotiated her way out of the space between the table and the sideboard.
‘I think the table’s worth a bob or two,’ she said. ‘We should perhaps get a valuer round before the house clearance people come. Just in case,’ she added.
‘If there is no will,’ said Sebastian, ‘how will it work? Will we just divide everything by four?’
Anna felt a flush creep across her cheeks. She ignored it and Sebastian didn’t seem to notice.
‘I suppose so. We’ll sell it all and then split the proceeds. I think it’ll take a while, though. It’ll have to go through the solicitors and everything. We can’t just sort it out ourselves.’
‘I’m sure we could,’ said Sebastian. ‘I mean, who’d know?’
‘I don’t know. It mig
ht make selling the house more difficult or something. Let’s just hope we find it.’
Anna could feel her cheeks burning and turned away so that Sebastian wouldn’t see. Obviously they’d never find the will, what with it being hidden at her house and all. Still, she had to behave as if she was just as much in the dark as the rest of them so that nobody became suspicious. If it weren’t so awful having to lie, she thought, all this subterfuge might be quite good fun.
They left the dining room, Sebastian closing the door behind them, but not before Anna took one last look at the stark white bed.
IV
The kitchen looked far more as Anna remembered it. The scrubbed-pine table stood in the centre, waiting to be set for tea, and her mother’s selection of aprons hung on a hook by the back door where they had always been. It too had the damp, sad smell of the rest of the house.
‘I’ll be glad when we get out of here,’ she said. ‘It’s so depressing.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Sebastian. ‘Once it’s sold we’ll have no way of connecting with the memories. It’ll be like a part of our childhood will have been lost for ever.’
He ran his hand over the dints in the scullery door frame, where their father had chipped lines to record their height.
‘And that’s not depressing?!’ Anna laughed.
She opened a couple of kitchen cupboards but the contents were sparse. More crockery, some glasses that had come free with petrol and never seemed to break, a tin of Bird’s custard powder, a box of Cup-a-Soup.
‘Mum never really moved into the twenty-first century, did she?’ Anna said.
‘Well, you know what they say. Once a Cup-a-Soup drinker . . .’
‘I’m glad you’re with me. It was awful when I was here by myself.’
Anna stopped, frozen to the spot. Had she given herself away?
‘When were you here by yourself?’ asked Sebastian without looking up from the drawer that he was riffling through.
‘Oh, a while back. Mum wanted me to find something for her. Some underwear or something.’
Sebastian seemed to accept this and didn’t question her further. Relief washed over her. She definitely wasn’t cut out to be a spy.
Upstairs, they could hear the low hum of voices.
‘I wonder if those two are having any more luck?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it. I can’t think that there is anything here of any value. Whatever there was disappeared years ago.’
Sebastian looked up quickly and Anna met his gaze defiantly.
‘Well, it did. There’s no getting away from it. Most of the stuff that Mum and Dad had that was worth anything has gone down Clare’s throat at some point over the last thirty years.’
Sebastian didn’t reply. Had she gone too far? Probably.
‘Is there anything you’d particularly like?’ she asked him, because it was obvious that he wasn’t going to join her in a slagging-Clare-off session. ‘From the house, I mean. Sentimental stuff?’
‘Not that I can think of. I’ve got Dad’s dress watch and his shirt studs. I would like something of Mum’s but there’s nothing that springs to mind. She did say I could have her engagement ring. Do you remember that? She was worried that it would cause a row between the three of you. I assume it’s still kicking around somewhere. She wouldn’t have sold it, would she?’
‘You’d better ask Miriam. I think she has the stuff that came back from the home after . . . There’ll be her wedding ring too, although it was worn so thin that I’m surprised it hadn’t snapped.’
The steady trudge of footsteps could be heard coming down the creaking stairs.
‘Stand by your beds,’ said Sebastian and winked at Anna. For a moment he looked just like their father. She grinned back. Some things, like her bond with her brother, would never change.
Clare came in first and Anna could see Sebastian eyeing up the holed shoes and dirty clothes that had failed to make an impression on him when she’d first arrived. Clare seemed to notice his lingering gaze and stared at him as if challenging him to comment. Of course he didn’t.
‘Any luck?’ asked Anna.
‘With what?’ asked Clare. ‘No will. No valuables. Bit of a waste of time all round.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Miriam. ‘There’s that lovely little watercolour in the back bedroom – the one of the Alps – and there’s some cut glass. A couple of perfume bottles that I think were Granny’s and a crystal vase which is quite nice. I’d quite like the watercolour if no one else has their eye on it.’
‘That’s fine by me,’ said Sebastian. ‘I was just saying, Miriam. What happened to Mum’s rings?’
‘I’ve got them at home, and her watch. I think that’s Cartier. I’m not sure.’
Sebastian paused, nodding slightly before he said, ‘It’s just that Mum always said that she’d like the engagement ring to come to me. Do you remember?’
‘No,’ said Clare, an upward inflection in her voice suggesting that she thought this to be unlikely. Anna’s heart sank. Poor Sebastian. Why could Clare not just have remembered that or at least pretended that she had? What difference would it make to her whether Sebastian had the ring or not?
‘Well, she did.’ Sebastian pressed on bravely. ‘I remember quite distinctly. She said I should have it because she couldn’t split it between us all and she couldn’t choose between the three of you.’
‘I don’t remember any such thing,’ said Clare, her hands on her hips. ‘Why would she want you to have it? It’s not like you can wear it or anything.’
‘I’m just saying what I remember. I don’t want a fight. If no one else remembers, then we can just forget it.’
‘It is the kind of thing that Mum would have said,’ said Miriam. ‘If we could only find a will she would surely have put this sort of stuff in there. It’s not so important for the house and whatever we get for the furniture. We can just split that four ways. But actual bequests. She might have left something for my girls.’
‘Oh, they’re all circling now,’ said Clare, rolling her eyes and jutting her hip to one side just like she had done as a teenager. ‘The vultures. No doubt Sebastian will want a share for his boys as well.’
‘That’s not fair, Clare,’ said Sebastian. ‘I only mentioned the ring because Anna asked me if there was anything in particular that I’d like. It really doesn’t matter.’
‘I don’t think you’re being very kind, Clare,’ said Miriam. ‘And you’ve got River, anyway. Don’t you want him to get something too?’
‘Not especially. He barely ever saw Mum. He couldn’t even be bothered to turn up to the funeral. And anyway, he keeps telling me how well he’s doing on his own without me so I see no need to share my share, whatever that turns out to be, with him.’
There was a silence whilst Clare’s words sank in. Clare, seeming to realise that she had stepped over some line of appropriate behaviour, looked at her feet, appeared to see the hole in her shoe and then looked up again defiantly.
‘Let’s not row about it,’ said Anna before Miriam had the chance to cut in. ‘Not here. This is hard enough without us all falling out. We’ll keep looking for the will and if it turns out that there isn’t one, we can decide what to do then. In the meantime, we need to take anything that we don’t want to go to the house clearance people so that we can get the rest of it valued. There’s the best china through there, Miriam, if you fancy it.’
‘I notice you don’t ask me if I’d like the china,’ spat Clare.
‘You don’t have anywhere to put it,’ Miriam spat back. Anna threw her a silencing look.
‘Just because I don’t have a mortgage on a nice little suburban semi like you, sis, doesn’t mean that I should miss out on the divvying-up.’
‘Miriam does have a point,’ said Sebastian. ‘What would you do with a set of Wedgwood china? If Miriam likes it and can give it a home then I can’t see why she shouldn’t have it.’
‘She should leave it to get valued wi
th everything else,’ said Clare, ‘and then she can knock the cost of it off her share.’
‘Oh, now you’re being ridiculous,’ said Miriam. ‘I would like the china. It’s lovely but I don’t want it if it’s going to cause all this bother.’
‘Is there anything that you want, Clare?’ asked Anna. ‘There’s the bone-handled cutlery and there’s some nice damask table linen that’s barely used.’
Clare looked at Anna, the disgust barely concealed. ‘Damask table linen? For God’s sake. What the fuck am I going to do with damask bloody table linen. I haven’t even got a table.’
‘I was just saying, trying to even things out a bit. If you don’t want it then that’s fine but you don’t have to be so aggressive about it.’
‘Here we go! Nothing changes. First chance you get, you lot gang up on me. It’s always the bloody same. I can see you sneering. Notice the hole in my shoes, did we, Sebastian? Makes you feel uncomfortable, does it, to see someone with no cash?’
‘Don’t start all that, Clare,’ said Miriam. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to have worn those shoes on purpose to win the sympathy vote. You’re working. I know for a fact that you have shoes without holes. I’ve seen them. You managed to dress the part for the funeral, after all.’
‘Oh, get down from your high horse. Who are you to come across all superior? You’ve always been the same, thinking that you’re better than the rest of us, but you’re not that fantastic. A teacher? What is it they say? If you can’t do, teach?’
‘Stop it! Both of you,’ said Anna as she tried to stop the situation spiralling out of their control. ‘This is getting us nowhere. We’ll get the house and contents valued and then we can take it from there. It’s not like we can get our hands on anything now anyway. It’ll take months going through probate. The whole point of coming today was to see what there was of sentimental value . . .’