‘I can’t eat this,’ her mother said.
‘No, neither can I.’ Charlie looked helplessly at the two plates, then shoved them in the oven with the third one, just to get them out of sight.
Sean came back, and late into the night Charlie tried not to hear the discussion on the other side of the bedroom wall. She was frightened by this new version of her mother, this person who had shrunk deep into herself and couldn’t be reached. Her mother had always been calm, organized, hardworking – above all, approachable. She had been good at listening to Charlie, talking about problems and uncertainties. Now, Charlie hardly knew how to speak to her.
Perhaps, Charlie thought, when she goes back to work, things will be more normal.
But Kathy had other ideas. A few days later she announced her intention of resigning from her Head of History at Charlie’s school, selling the house and moving out to a village. It was her way of giving Sean a final ultimatum. Move out. Find somewhere else to live. The house was hers, not Sean’s.
Charlie had another attempt at reasoning with her. ‘But Mum! You like your job! Suppose you can’t find another one? It’s stupid to change everything …’
Kathy was in one of her iceberg moods. ‘Changing everything is exactly what I want to do. Call it mid-life crisis if you like. I’m not going back to school. I’ve done it long enough.’
‘But you were so pleased to get that promotion! And you’ve only been Head of Department for two years.’
‘Doesn’t mean I want to do it for ever. I’ve had enough of the National Curriculum and being blamed for everything that’s wrong in the world. And of sulky teenagers. And their tedious parents. And classrooms and bus duties and spending hours each weekend on marking and preparation. There are other ways to spend my life, thank you.’
‘But – what about money?’ Charlie persisted. ‘I mean, at least teaching pays you – what will you do without the money?’
Her mother gave her a scathing look. ‘Do stop going on and on about money, Charlie. It isn’t the most important thing in life, you know.’
‘Perhaps not, but we still need it! What are we going to live on?’
‘I’ve got that money my grandfather left me, from the house sale. Enough to get me started. It gives me the chance, Charlie, and I’m going to take it. Can’t you understand? I need to make a change, and now’s the time. I’m not staying as I am for another twenty years or more, working myself into the ground. If we can’t manage – well, then I can go back to teaching. I’ve got to give it a try.’
Sean found himself a flat in town and moved out – Charlie wasn’t sure she could ever forgive her mother for that – and the For Sale notice went up outside the house. Kathy devoted herself to gardening: digging, replanting, taking cuttings, tending her seedlings. Charlie couldn’t see the point of all this garden improvement if the house was to be sold, but if gardening kept her mother sane, then gardening was what she’d better do.
They were on their own now, Charlie and Mum, and that was the way it was.
‘Charlie!’ her mother yelled up the stairs. ‘What are you doing up there?’
‘Just getting ready,’ Charlie called back.
She tweaked at the black skirt that was a little too tight, and thrust on her shoes; then frowned at herself in the mirror, and clomped downstairs.
‘Here’s your coat,’ her mother said. ‘And take your scarf – it’ll be cold later.’
She was finishing her meal, and Caspar was gulping casserole and mashed potato from a plate on the floor. Charlie giggled. ‘I thought you said dog food? He’ll be expecting this every day.’
‘Just for now. He looked so hungry. Look, about this job.’
Charlie looked at her warily, thinking of the little girl at Nightingales, and Kathy’s stricken face.
‘Check what they’re paying you, won’t you? I mean, that woman Fay seemed nice, but you need to sort these things out. And about the hours. Don’t take on too much, with your exams coming up.’
‘OK.’
‘And – I think it’s a really good opportunity for you. Living in a small place like this – well, there isn’t a lot to choose from. You’ll meet people there. It might be fun.’
‘As long as I don’t pour soup into someone’s lap. Or serve gravy instead of coffee.’
Kathy gave a tight smile. Once, confusing two jugs, Charlie had served gravy with cream and after-dinner mints to Mum, Sean and Anne. She could still remember Sean’s incredulous expression when he was the first to taste it. For weeks afterwards he’d teased Charlie, asking for espresso gravy or one of her Bisto cappuccino specials. But incidents involving Sean weren’t supposed to be mentioned now.
‘Bye, Mum. See you later.’
Charlie pulled on her coat and scarf and let herself out of the back door. She thought: Well, I’ve got a dog and a job in one evening, and Mum doesn’t mind – things are starting to improve. The three lots of homework in her school bag would have to wait.
Part Two
Frühlingsmorgen
Charlie watched the hand of the clock scything away the last sixty seconds of the Maths exam. Mrs Stapleton, the new Head of History, had been standing like a waxwork for the last hour; abruptly coming to life, she strode to the front of the hall.
If Charlie’s mother hadn’t left, she’d have been the one supervising the exam. This off-putting idea made Charlie glad that it was no longer a possibility. At school, her mother had been Ms Steer, known to the pupils, inevitably, as Ms Steerious. She’d always made sure that Charlie was in someone else’s History class, but nonetheless Charlie had had to get used to people making rude or disrespectful remarks about Mum in her hearing; also to the assumption (false) that her mother helped with her History homework. There were certain penalties that came with having a teacher for a parent.
One of the other History teachers, Anne Gladwin, was Mum’s best friend, and that was odd enough. Charlie knew Anne both in her jeans-and-trainers, dog-walking, off-duty guise and in her teacherly role. Anne was on exam duty too; once, looking up from her paper, Charlie had caught her eye and they’d exchanged sympathetic smiles. Invigilating was what teachers hated most, Mum had told her: having to stand there doing absolutely nothing, when they had stacks of work waiting.
‘Put down your pens. The exam is now finished.’ Mrs Stapleton’s voice rang out into the cavernous silence of the hall. ‘Check that you’ve filled in correct details on the front of your script.’
Charlie directed a surreptitious grin at Rowan, across the aisle. That hadn’t been too bad. One more done – three to go, with the weekend in between. What had once seemed an endless treadmill of revision and exams would soon be at an end; it was June, and this year’s summer holiday would be longer than ever before.
Outside, she and Rowan compared notes.
‘How’d you get on?’
‘Not bad. Could you do the one about the vectors?’
‘Sort of. Are you doing anything tomorrow?’ Charlie asked, thinking Rowan might come out for a bike ride.
‘Seeing Russell,’ Rowan said promptly.
‘What, all day?’
‘Most of it.’
‘Oh. Right. See you Monday, then. Or phone if you’re not doing anything on Sunday.’
‘Revising Geography.’ Rowan made a gloomy face.
‘Me too, I suppose. Well, have a nice time with Russell,’ Charlie said, with only the faintest hint of an edge to her voice.
Rowan didn’t notice. The mere mention of Russell’s name, these days, was enough to bring a hypnotised look to her face. Charlie liked Russell, a tall, amiable boy, rather modest in spite of being brilliant at sports, but she couldn’t help feeling resentful that Rowan let him take up so much of her time, with very little left for Charlie. Before Charlie had moved out to Lower Radbourne, she’d lived two streets away from Rowan. The two of them had been constantly in and out of each other’s houses, especially at weekends.
‘Why don’t you ask her a
nd Russell to come over one Sunday?’ Charlie’s mother had suggested, noticing Rowan’s absence. ‘You could take Caspar out, go for a long walk. A picnic.’ It was the sort of thing Mum and Anne Gladwin liked to do.
‘Rowan doesn’t like long walks.’ Anyway, Charlie knew how it would be: Rowan and Russell walking hand-in-hand through fields of poppies and long grass, gazing at each other, while Charlie was left with the dog for company.
Now she and Rowan stood in sunshine outside the main entrance, their eyes adjusting to sudden brightness after the shade of the exam hall.
‘I’m waiting for Russ,’ Rowan explained, as Charlie began to walk on. ‘He had to see Mr Freeland about a tennis match.’
‘Oh,’ Charlie said.
Mr Freeland was Sean. Russell, who was in numerous teams, had a lot to do with Sean, for practices and matches. Football and rugby in winter; tennis, cricket and athletics in summer. Charlie wished Rowan wouldn’t call him Mr Freeland. Before, coming round to Charlie’s house, getting lifts in the car, Rowan had called him Sean. Mr Freeland made him sound like any other teacher.
Rowan took out a small mirror and scanned her face anxiously, smoothing a strand of hair into place.
‘Don’t worry, you haven’t suddenly broken out in chicken-pox blobs or gone cross-eyed. See you, then,’ Charlie said, and went over to her waiting bus. The sixth form had taken their customary places at the back, while the rest of the seats filled up with chattering kids from lower down the school. Charlie went to an empty pair of seats and sat watching Rowan, who had taken out a lipstick and was carefully applying it, regardless of her position in full view of the deputy head’s office. No make-up to be worn by pupils other than sixth form was a rule that hadn’t the faintest chance of being observed; all the same, Charlie, had she bothered to wear make-up at school, wouldn’t have chosen to flout the ruling in quite such an obvious place. Then Russell arrived from the direction of the PE office, quickly making the application of lipstick pointless and breaking another of the deputy’s unwritten rules: No kissing or embracing on the school premises. Charlie and Rowan had a theory that Mrs Fortune (Misfortune, as she was known) made up these rules on the spot, to ban whatever anyone might want to do other than sit, silent and docile, in a lesson. Still, Rowan and Russell were a bit much, virtually re-enacting Romeo and Juliet’s parting scene whenever they were separated for so much as one lesson. This time they’d been apart for a whole two-hour exam.
Angus David, a boy in Charlie’s form, appeared in the bus bay, standing by her window and performing an energetic mime.
‘What?’ she mouthed back.
Angus signalled in more detail, something about catching a bus but going in a different direction now. Charlie had no idea why he should want to tell her this. She looked over her shoulder to see if he was gesturing at someone else.
‘Hey, it’s Aberdeen Angus!’ yelled a cheeky year eight from the front of the coach. Angus, diverted, went into a new mime involving a bull and a matador. Then, as the bus pulled out, he clasped both hands to his forehead, pretending to fall over backwards, then sprinted off in the direction of the Arts building.
Oh, well. Angus was always play-acting. Charlie turned her thoughts to the two days ahead, a Rowanless weekend with nothing particular to look forward to. She was working at Nightingales on Saturday night and Sunday lunchtime, and would most likely end up helping Mum in between bouts of Geography revision. There was always work to be done, now that Mum had a limited range of plants on sale; the signboard on the village green attracted a few customers at weekends. As the exams were nearly over, Charlie wondered if there’d be extra work at Nightingales. With no chance of a holiday this year, she might as well earn some money.
As the coach left the town, having dropped off most of its occupants in the surrounding estates, Charlie looked out at the fields and woods and the hills rising beyond. The countryside was in the full, unbelievable lushness of June, the hedgerows spangled with wild roses and elder blossom. The verges had been mown short by the roadside, but closer to the hedges there was a swathe of flowering grasses, ox-eye daisies and campions. Living in the Back of Beyond, as Mum called it, had its compensations. Later, Charlie thought, she’d take Caspar out, roaming across the disused airfield and down to the stream.
‘Thanks,’ Charlie called to the driver, jumping down outside Lower Radbourne village hall. Two younger pupils and one of the sixth form got off with her and the coach pulled away, taking the last trace of school with it. Exhaust fumes drifted away, leaving only the scent of honeysuckle and mown grass. Charlie breathed deeply. Friday. Weekend.
She walked slowly down the lane to Flightsend. Caspar bounded out to meet her, skittering through Kathy’s reclaimed front garden. When Charlie had taken the brunt of his ecstatic greeting and wiped slobber off her hands and skirt, she found her mother in the lean-to greenhouse, potting up seedlings.
‘Nightingales phoned,’ Kathy said, after making the routine enquiries about the exam. ‘Fay. She wanted to know if you could help out this evening – they’re short-staffed. Can you phone back, she said.’
‘OK. I’m not doing anything else.’
When Charlie came back outside after making the phone call, Kathy told her: ‘I found something today, in the garden. Come and see.’
With all the nursery stuff to tend, more now since the polytunnel had been put up in the yard at the side, Charlie’s mother had done no more to the back garden than pull up weeds. It was a glorious cottagey tangle of foxgloves, poppies, columbines and sprawling old roses, with bees foraging. In one corner was a heap of nettles and brambles, ready for burning. She led Charlie and Caspar down the irregular stone path to the end, where the fence caught the afternoon sun. There was a tall rose bush there, splashed all over with delicate pink flowers that perfumed the air.
‘I was clearing a space underneath to plant a late-flowering clematis to climb through it,’ Kathy explained, ‘when I saw this. Careful, it’s very thorny.’
Charlie stopped, smelling the rich, fragrant earth, and looked where her mother was pointing. It was a plant label, rather an elaborate one – not the usual garden-centre plastic but made of dark metal, with engraved lettering and a bevelled edge. She turned her head sideways to see what it said.
‘Frühlingsmorgen 11th February 1988.’ She read it aloud. ‘Nice name. It means spring morning in German.’ German was one of her subjects.
‘Well, I know that,’ her mother said. ‘It’s a well-known shrub rose. I was wondering why someone had gone to the trouble of getting such a posh label.’
Charlie straightened and looked at the rose. She wasn’t a great fan of roses, apart from the exuberant climbers her mother liked; but this one was beautiful, its starry, open flowers as uncomplicated as the wild roses in the hedgerows.
‘It’s a memorial,’ she decided. ‘A dog’s grave, or maybe a cat. Someone buried their pet here and planted the rose bush in memory.’
‘Caspar, what do you think?’ Kathy asked. Caspar pressed himself against her legs and smiled up at her, wriggling. He wasn’t in the least interested in the rose-bush.
‘He can’t tell,’ Charlie said. ‘No dog-messages coming from beyond the grave.’ Oops! She was doing it again – amazing how often references to deaths, graves and burials came up in conversation when you were trying to avoid them. ‘Must be a cat, then. Cat, Caspar! Can you sense cat?’
‘It wasn’t all that long ago,’ Kathy said. ‘1988. Could have been the people who lived here before us.’
‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out. Unless they come back to check that their rose is still alive.’
Another unfortunate phrase. Still, it was Mum who’d started on about roses, this time.
‘Anyway,’ she went on hastily, ‘it looks great, to me. Totally thriving. You ought to sell Frühlingsmorgens, Mum, and people could come and look at this one to see how they turn out. Any customers today?’
‘One. A hardy geranium enthusiast. She bought
three – macrorrhizum album, psilostemon and pratense asphodeloides. And said she’ll come back when she’s made more space.’
‘Oh, good,’ Charlie said. She usually switched off when Mum started talking in Latin, but at least the dangerous ground had been circumnavigated.
She changed into the slightly smarter black skirt she’d recently bought for waitressing, took three biscuits from the jar – she would eat properly at Nightingales later – and walked round. Now that she was a member of staff, she used the back entrance, not the grander front one. Friday evening was always a busy time, with people arriving for weekend courses.
The back way led through a side gate and across the old herb garden, then into a walled courtyard planted with old roses. There was no one about, only Boots, one of two black-and-white cats. Charlie loved these glimpses of Nightingales without guests and busyness; the house and gardens had a quiet calm that she thought of as belonging to their Victorian origins. In an hour or two people would start to arrive, spilling outside. Charlie preferred Sunday afternoons, when the courses finished and the guests left, taking their cars and their loud voices with them, and Victorian quiet settled over the house again. She liked to imagine the house as it must once have been. All this space for just one family, with no doubt several maids, a nanny for the children, a gardener and a stable of horses. She saw the family having tea on the lawn, the women in white dresses, with parasols to shade their faces; it would be one of those long, hot summers in the years before the First World War. There would be a dog, a large dog like Caspar but more highly bred, lying in the shade under the table. If she’d been here then, she’d have been Charlotte the maid, not Charlie, bringing them tea, or cool drinks with ice from the ice house. Envying them their leisure and elegance, she’d bob a curtsey and go back to the kitchen, where she worked long hours for her board and a pittance. She’d be wearing a black dress that was too itchy and hot in this summer weather, and stockings, and a frilly cap and apron.
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