“What?” I asked, confused not only by the unfamiliar English but by the description of Mother’s illness. “What is that?”
He sighed. “Her kidneys are failing. There is no way to make this easy for you, Eleanor, but now it’s merely a question of time. She is dying.”
M. Castres had been translating this information to Grandmère and she came over and put her arms around me. “Courage,” she said.
I was in a daze. “My father?”
“I haven’t seen him, but I believe your doctor has. He is…distressed at being confined.”
I nodded. Poor Dada.
Mr Franklin cleared his throat. “I visited your mother in hospital three days ago and took instructions from her. I have been granted power of attorney over all her affairs and that includes you and your father. It is up to me now and I am taking you back with me. You can live with us until…well, for as long as you want to. It is for the best, Eleanor.”
It took me only ten minutes to pack and strip the bed and I was soon back in the kitchen with my pigskin case.
Lisette clung to me, pasting little kisses on my cheeks and stroking my hair. “Listen to me,” I said to her. “Remember what I said about us being sisters and that we’d always be close. Well it’s true. Wherever I am I’ll be thinking of you and you’ll be thinking of me. I know you’ll be good and help Grandmère in the kitchen and in the garden and I know that you’ll work hard at school and make me proud of you. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “But why can’t you stay?”
“Because I have to go and look after my mother and father. They need me now.”
“Oh, Eleanor.” She snuggled her head into my neck, “I do love you.”
“And I love you too,” I said, pulling her gently away. “You are my delicious discovery and will always be.”
I said goodbye to Grandmère in the yard. M. Castres had already gone, having kissed my hand again and wished me luck. Mr Franklin was standing impatiently beside his Wolseley and watched me as I dropped my case onto the cobbles and put my arms around Grandmère.
“Did he do it?” I whispered. “It makes no difference, but I have to know.”
“No,” she whispered back. “He didn’t.” She paused, then whispered again. “But I found her dead that afternoon and I put her in the river. Étienne knew nothing of that.”
I gasped, holding onto her and trying to take in this new information. “You put her in the river? How? Where was she?”
Grandmère had one eye on Mr Franklin. “On the far bank, in the undergrowth,” she murmured. “I dragged her as far as I could and rolled her in. I thought she would be carried downstream.” Her voice choked and I could feel the despair in her body and wanted to hug her tighter but Lisette was pulling on Grandmère’s apron, desperate to get her attention.
“What are you saying Grandmère, I can’t hear you. Are you telling Eleanor not to go? Please, oh, please, tell her.”
Mr Franklin’s anxious voice in the background disturbed the moment. “Eleanor,” he called. “We must hurry.”
I drew back from them, then, my dearest Grandmère and Lisette and glancing over my shoulder to the waiting man, nodded. Through the haze of tears which brimmed my eyes I looked away to the vineyard and to the grape barn and then down to the river and the bridge. I could see Étienne and I fishing, he strong and laughing and me girlish and so unsure of myself. Then, as my eyes travelled to the bank, I remembered the delirious passion which would live with me for the rest of my life.
“Don’t worry, my dear, it will be alright and this is not the end,” Grandmère said, smiling at me through a face which was awash with tears. “You know you have been the saving of this family, sweet girl. Remember that and know that I love you as a daughter.”
“Thank you, I love you,” was all I could say, for my own unchecked tears were rolling down my cheeks as I turned to go. The last sight I had of that enchanted place was from the back window of Mr Franklin’s car. Grandmère and Lisette stood hand in hand on the cobbled yard as the sun went down behind the vineyard.
Chapter 25
I stared at the window of the small side room. Rain was beating heavily against the glass causing rivulets of water to run down and splash into small puddles on the grimy frame. I was sitting on a wooden chair and beside me, in the hospital bed, my mother was dying. She was unconscious and had been for the last twelve hours. The ward sister had told me hours ago that she wouldn’t wake up again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, carefully picking up a used kidney dish from the bed table and holding it well away from her starched apron, “but we don’t think your mother will live through the night. Quite honestly I’m amazed she’s lasted this long. She must have been a very strong willed person.” There was little compassion in the sister’s voice but I didn’t resent it. She was doing her job to the best of her ability. Mother was clean and as far as I knew, kept comfortable.
“Yes,” I said. “She was…is” And had proved it because it was now eight o’clock in the morning and she was still alive.
They had let me stay at the hospital all night and now one of the nurses had put a cup of tea on the bedside locker for me. “Would you like a piece of toast?” she asked and smiled kindly. “There’s plenty on the trolley.”
I shook my head. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry. But thanks for the tea.”
Mother’s breathing was hoarse and becoming sporadic and I shifted my gaze from the window to her. I was mesmerized by watching her chest go up and down. Sometimes it didn’t move and then suddenly, with gulping sound, she would breathe again. How long will it go on, I wondered? How long will she keep up the fight?
It had only been a week since I’d come home and I’d been at the hospital every day watching while her illness gradually overwhelmed her. My first visit was on the day I’d come home and I could scarcely believe my eyes when the nurse pointed her out to me.
It was the evening after I’d been torn away from Riverain and I was still shaky and confused. If someone asked me something I would answer in French and then have to catch myself and repeat it in faltering English.
“Goodness,” said Suzy, when I stood, newly arrived, in the kitchen at the Franklin’s house. She was giving me one of her long up and down looks. “You have changed. Apart from the tan, you look, well…so grown up. The girls in school are going to be fascinated, what with the story of what happened in France and the length of time you’ve been there. Why, it must be nearly three months.”
“Is it?” I asked vaguely. I hadn’t realised but I looked at the calendar on the lemon painted wall of the Franklin’s modern kitchen and saw that it was the last day of September. “Yes, it must be.” I felt quite incapable of keeping the conversation going and even Suzy seemed uncomfortable. Her normal bright chatter kept pausing and she looked to her parents for help.
“We were so sorry to hear about your mother’s illness,” said Phyllis Franklin. “It must have been dreadful for you.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “Thank you for saying that. I have to go and see her. Now.” It was four o’clock in the afternoon and despite the long journey I was anxious to get to the hospital.
“Go after tea,” said Mrs Franklin, “they won’t let you in anyway until visiting hours, half past six, I think, so you might as well have a rest until then. Settle into your room first.”
The Franklins stood in a semi circle gazing at me and suddenly I was frantic to get out of their sight. I needed to be alone, to think and to remember.
“Yes, thank you. It’s very kind of you to put me up. It won’t be for long but I am grateful,” I turned and hurried out, knowing that tears were welling up and I was anxious not to let them be seen. As I climbed the stairs I could hear Mr Franklin talking in a low voice and I knew what he would be telling them. That he’d brought home a girl who was a suspect in a murder case and added to that…Suzy would be told to leave the room while he told Phyllis privately what he’d learned and what h
e’d seen.
“Hello, Mother.” I had to say it twice on that first day before she turned her head to look at me. She was propped up against several pillows, her face yellow against the hospital white and her hair, once so fizzingly red seemed faded and greying.
For a moment, I didn’t think she recognised me then with an effort she gave a small difficult smile.
“Hello,” I said again, and bent to give her an awkward kiss on her cheek. “I’m back.” I couldn’t say home because my home was far away. My home was a white house nestled between rolling fields with red soil and a vineyard.
She didn’t speak and I said, “I’m sorry you’re ill.”
That brought a response. “It’s nonsense,” she whispered. “People are making too much fuss.” Then, “have you seen your father?”
“Not yet,” I shook my head.
“Poor Eddy.” Her eyes closed then and I sat beside her, wondering what to do until the bell rang for the end of the visiting hour.
I went the next day to see my father. He was in the Mental Hospital which was a couple of miles out of town and required another bus journey. I found him in a large, cold day room with several other patients who were wandering about vacantly or sitting on chairs muttering and rocking. He was standing by the window, his face pressed against the reinforced glass.
“Dada?” I said, coming to stand beside him. I didn’t touch him because I knew he didn’t like to be touched but he did look at me properly and small light came into his eye. He was unshaven and in pyjamas with a thin dressing gown hanging off his shoulders. He was shivering and, looking down, I could see that his feet were bare.
I went over to the orderly who was leaning against the doorway. “I’m Eleanor Gill,” I said. “That man,” I pointed to the window where Dada stood, “is my father. He has no shoes on and he’s cold. Where’s his room?”
The orderly jerked his head down the corridor. “In the male ward down there. I don’t know which bed is his,” he said casually. “Just take any pair of shoes that you think might fit him.”
I was angry and nervous at the same time, wishing desperately that I had someone to help me but just then a door opened in that corridor and a uniformed nurse came out. “Are you in charge?” I asked and I could hear the fury in my voice. This was a different me.
It took five minutes for the nurse to locate Dada’s locker and open it. She took out his shoes and socks and got him a blanket which she draped over his shoulders. “They forget,” she said, apologetically but with a whine in her voice, “to dress themselves properly. And we can’t be everywhere.”
I encouraged Dada to sit on a chair beside the window and I sat with him. When a tea trolley was pushed into the room I got up and fetched him a cup and watched while he drank it and eagerly ate the bread and butter which I’d folded into the saucer. He was hungry too.
“I’ve been in France,” I said, “but now I’m home and I’ll come to see you every day until…” I couldn’t finish that sentence because I didn’t know what was going to happen but I thought he should know about Mother. “Mother is very ill, in the hospital,” I said, making sure that he was meeting my eye and listening to me. “We can’t go home yet but I’ll get us there as soon as possible.”
It was as I was leaving that awful room that my father spoke to me for the first time I could remember.
“La belle France,” he whispered and I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me.
“Yes, Dada, yes,” I grinned. “La belle France.”
My mother died at ten o’clock in the morning, a week after I’d returned from France, having defiantly lived several hours longer than expected. Phyllis Franklin, with unexpected kindness came to sit with me for the last hour and afterwards organised the undertaker and helped me sign the necessary forms. “They’ll have be countersigned by her legal guardian,” said the Sister, speaking to Mrs Franklin. “You know she isn’t old enough.”
“My husband will be in later. He has been appointed Eleanor’s legal guardian.”
“What?” I said, quite shocked.
“Your mother arranged it a couple of weeks ago,” Mrs Franklin put an arm around my shoulders. Her perfume seemed suddenly overwhelming and I sat down heavily on the chair in Sister’s office. I felt sick.
Mother was buried on a raw October day in the same grave as her parents. Not many people attended the service at the village church, just Dada who was allowed out for the afternoon, and me, Mr and Mrs Franklin and few of the local farmers. Afterwards in the churchyard, Jed Winstanley shook hands with me and tipped his cap to Dada. “Nice to see you, Eleanor, and you too, Captain Gill. Don’t worry about the sheep, Graham and me are seeing to them.”
“Thank you,” I said and would have asked him who was looking after the house and the dog but Mr Franklin interrupted. “I need a few moments with Mr Winstanley, if you don’t mind, Eleanor. Take your father to the car and wait for me.”
I was furious and beside me Dada made a curious noise, something between a cough and a growl. I don’t think Mr Franklin noticed it but I did and so did Jed who looked at my father in surprise.
After another couple of days I went back to school. My exam results had been excellent and I was now in the sixth form with most of my friends. Suzy’s had been poor but she was there too and what’s more, deputy Head Girl.
It was strange, being back in my school skirt and blouse, sitting at a desk with school books laid out in front of me. I felt out of touch and out of place as though this was a part of my life which I should have left behind but had been dragged back into. Before class started the girls wanted to hear about what Suzy called ‘my adventures’ but I just shrugged and hurried to my desk. I didn’t want to share my precious memories; they were still being hugged to my heart. Besides, what could I say that anyone would understand?
I sat idly through Maths and English automatically taking notes but hardly taking anything in. The last lesson before lunch was French and gathering up our books and cardigans we trooped into the French room.
Looking round I noticed that most of the posters which had previously adorned the walls had gone and I was glad. Reminders would be too painful.
“Good morning, girls,” said Miss Baxter. “And a special welcome back to Eleanor Gill.” She smiled at me, her eyes behind her rimless spectacles twinkling and her hands, as usual, making their fluttery bird like movements. “Now, before we start, I have some posters to put up. They will give flavour to our lessons this term.” My heart sank.
While Miss Baxter and two of the girls taped the new posters to the wall I stared out of the window. Grandmère will be in the dairy now getting the cheeses ready for the market, I thought and Lisette will be in school. Has she carried on with her reading? And Étienne? I could hardly bear to think about him. Was he still in the police cell? Or had they moved him to the goal at Fontevraud? My heart lurched and I felt dizzy. In the distance I could hear Miss Baxter’s voice and I looked round, still confused.
“I think you’ll like this one, Eleanor,” she was saying and I looked the poster. A vineyard in the Loire district was the title and the picture showed rolling green countryside surrounding a white farmhouse and on a rising hill beyond, neat rows of vines ripening in the sun.
For a moment I stared at it then I got up and walked out of the class room. That was my last day in school.
It wasn’t difficult to kidnap Dada from the Asylum. “I’m taking him for a walk in the grounds,” I said to the orderly and he nodded and took a surreptitious drag on his cigarette. Since the first day when I’d made a fuss about Dada not being properly dressed the nurses had made sure that his clothes were in his open locker every day and he now looked as he’d always done, grey slacks, tweed jacket and neat brown tie.
I had a shopping bag with me and when a nurse came into the ward where Dada slept I lied. “I’ve brought clean clothes for my father. I’ll take the dirty ones home to wash.”
“Fine,” she said and when she l
eft I gathered all his belongings and put them in the bag.
“Come on,” I said to him as we walked down the main drive to the big gates. “We’re getting out of here. Let’s look as if we’ve just been visiting.”
I thought he chuckled and he straightened up and walked with a military gate so that the porter at the entrance box almost saluted as we went past.
I’d worked out our departure from town a few days ahead, planning at night while I lay in the comfortable guest room of the Franklin’s house. Most nights I revisited Riverain, going over every inch of the house and land in my head and yearning for the people I’d left behind. I knew in my heart that that phase of my life was over but I couldn’t let it go. I didn’t want to. But there must have been something of my mother about me because after a while I began to realise that the constant yearning was a useless activity and I would have to learn to live with how my life was. But not here, at the Franklin’s house, my head told me. Definitely not here.
Mr Franklin had told me that in Mother’s will the farm had been left to me. The house, the land and the stock. “It’s not a great fortune,” he said, “but if you sell it, there’ll be enough to put you through university and a bit over. Your mother was quite insistent about that.”
“Was she?” I was amazed. I had always thought she despised universities. I could hear her saying, “Huh! A ridiculous waste of money!”
“What about Dada?”
Mr Franklin paused. “Your father has his army pension which is paid into the bank. He also has a small annuity, which has matured but hasn’t been touched.” I gazed uncomprehendingly at him. He could have been speaking double Dutch, I didn’t know what an annuity was, then. He cleared his throat and continued, “when you reach your eighteenth birthday, all that your mother left will become yours and you will take over responsibility for your father and his monies. Until then, it’s up to me. I will make the decisions for you.”
When I Was Young Page 28