I poked my head around the ambulance door. “Poor you,” I said to Alice. “Take care.” She managed a weak smile.
Henry came running out of the house with Gloria’s coat on his arm.
“Here, my darling,” he said. “I’ll wait to hear.”
* * *
IT IS TWO DAYS now since Alice was taken in. She is due to come “home,” as Gloria puts it, tomorrow. They have hydrated her, sorted her pain relief, found the drug that works on her nausea. I called in at the hospital with Gloria for a visit this morning. Alice, if not exactly perky, rose to the occasion: a smile, a thank-you for the grapes I brought her. The effort of it tired her, however, and we crept away when she fell asleep midsentence.
In anticipation of her homecoming, a cleaning frenzy is taking place at Pipits.
“So much illness around,” Gloria fusses.
She lives in fear now of Alice catching something, of being responsible for fast-forwarding the end. She is obsessed with Alice lasting long enough to enjoy one last Christmas.
Everyone is at it like wasps to fruit. Mrs. Lemmon has been charged with giving the bathrooms a thorough going-over. Henry has taken on the vacuuming of every bit of soft furnishing, and Gloria is wearing herself out in the kitchen. They are all banned from my room.
“We’ll leave it to you, Betty,” Henry says. “Wouldn’t want to intrude.”
The whole house smells of bleach and of the vegetable broth that Gloria is making to tempt Alice, whose appetite is nonexistent. My sister’s endless optimism is wearing.
They are playing their allotted parts to perfection: Gloria the warmhearted nurse, Henry the ever-patient husband, and Alice the needy, grateful friend. I don’t want to be judged uncaring, so I join their tribe by helping out here and there.
Everything is out of kilter these days. We never know how Alice will be. It’s either the drama of her being carted off to the hospital or long quiet periods of decline. I suspect that it’s the sickly vibe in the house that has affected my own health. My insomnia, always with me to some degree, has worsened lately, so that I’ve taken to walking the house at night in what Mother used to call the wolf hours.
It’s not all bad, though; I get to see the way the moonlight washes the halls, the way even on the darkest night, my eyes adjust to the gloom. I sense the mystery in the shadows, smell the cindery scent of the fire’s embers. Falling into a reverie of the senses, I trail my hand along the sweet curve of the walls, plant a chaste kiss on the oak paneling in the hall, and shiver with the love of it. For an hour or two Pipits is mine alone.
In the soft dark that drifts toward dawn, I stand in front of the painting of the French priest that hangs in the hall, above a small Jacobean chest. My father told Mother that the chest is the oldest piece of furniture in the house, most of the others being Georgian. Like me, he had a talent for spotting the special. I wait for the light to illuminate the priest’s pale face, and the mole-dark bowl of his hat. He has sad eyes, as though he has had enough of life, as though it has disappointed him. I trace my finger across his thin lips and feel his outrage.
“It’s only me,” I assure him in a whisper.
This morning, sleeping late after such a night, I came down to a scattering of boxes strewn around the hall.
“Your mother’s things,” Henry said sheepishly. “Thought we would save you the pain. And it is time, don’t you think?”
No, I don’t think. I start opening the boxes, ignoring Henry’s heavy sighs. It is all there, carelessly jumbled together, Mother’s books, her ornaments, even her perfumes and toiletries. And, around Mrs. Lemmon’s neck, the trailing garland of Mother’s favorite silk scarf, its soft green background spotted with white hydrangeas in full flower. Mrs. Lemmon notes my stare and slips it from her neck and hands it to me. I can smell Mother, the powdery scent of her. I’ve never cared for that old-lady smell, but damn Henry. Damn them all.
“We thought to give it all to charity,” Henry says. “In time for Christmas, you know.”
I ignore him and order Mrs. Lemmon to help me carry the boxes up to my room, while Henry flutters around uselessly.
When Pipits is mine, Mother’s things will be returned to their proper place in her room. I will paint over the horrible mural, replace the wallpaper, and rehang her clothes in her wardrobe. I must resist their changes. Not for Mother’s sake—I wonder these days if I will ever be able to forgive her for her last stab at me—but to keep things as they were, as they must always remain.
“I’m so sorry, Betty,” Henry says, sounding impatient rather than sorry. “I had no idea it would upset you so much.”
No, he has no idea. I wish they would all shut up, evaporate, blow away on the wind like the leaves of the copper beech tree he wants to cut down. I won’t allow it, though. Not on my watch, Henry.
Later, Gloria knocks on my bedroom door.
“Can I come in?” she wheedles.
“If you must.”
“We never meant to hurt you,” she says. “We thought it was for the best. Mother wouldn’t want us to make a shrine of her room, of her possessions. And we need the space for the baby’s things.” She laughs in an effort to lighten the mood. “There’s so much of it, you wouldn’t believe.”
I see through everything Gloria does, know how she thinks it’s her place to placate. My sister the peacemaker.
I don’t laugh with her, don’t even smile. I can see she is uncomfortable, but I stay silent.
“Perhaps it is too soon,” she says. “You tell us when you’re ready to let her things go.”
I stifle the urges that threaten to overwhelm me. I could kill her, strangle her, stab her, stamp the breath out of her. How dare she tell me what Mother would want. It’s not about what Mother would want. It’s about Pipits being looted. Left to my thoughtless sister and her doting husband, there will be nothing left of the Stashes’. Every last bit of us will be swept away.
“It’s a difficult time for us all,” Gloria says. “I do understand, you know?”
She is too foolish to recognize that I’ll never be ready to let go of anything that belongs to Pipits. I am not like my sister. I never let go. But I have already given more of my agenda away than I intended, so I just shrug as though it doesn’t matter.
“Dinner at seven,” she says with the biggest smile. The smile that implies we are back to normal, back to our happy selves.
“Henry has gone to pick up Alice from the hospital,” she chirrups. “I’ll heat up the broth; you never know, Betty. She might be tempted.”
* * *
EIGHT DAYS TO GO until Christmas. Alice was returned to us looking rather better than I expected for someone who is about to withdraw from the world for good. She has a stack of presents to give out, bought and wrapped for her by Gloria. And just in case she should go before she gets the chance to bestow them herself, it is arranged that my sister will do it for her.
There are envelopes with money in them for the postman and the milkman, accompanied by thank-you notes for their service to her over the years. You have to hand it to her, she has found a well of courage from somewhere, and I don’t sense the slightest bit of self-pity.
“Heroes come in all forms,” Henry says. “What a wonderful girl.”
Alice has confided in me that she is giving Gloria the Harry Potter book that Mother left her.
“To pass on to the baby,” she says.
And, for me, there is a tiny thing wrapped in silver paper with a dark maroon bow, my name written in glitter on the gift tag. It is hanging high up on the fake Christmas tree.
A fake tree at Pipits! Hideous! Hideous!
Henry says it’s the eco-friendly way to go. I miss the scent of pine, the sweeping branches of a Norwegian spruce.
I will have to go into town soon to buy Alice something, soap, perhaps, or cologne, nothing meant to last.
Henry is doing well at the May Park fair. People seem to like his vases, and he sold out of the mugs on the first day. Life is
full of surprises.
“It’s wonderful,” he says. “Makes all the hard work worthwhile.”
The owner of Nest, the new design shop in town, has put in a sizable order to be ready by Easter, and an online catalog is going to offer his mugs to their customers. They are coming to photograph them after Christmas.
Flushed with success, Henry says he’ll be able to get a loan now that he can put together a proper business plan. He wants to use the money to fit out the shed as a more professional pottery studio.
“Extend it, say, or knock it down and build a better one,” he says.
He will replace his unreliable secondhand kiln, buy a sturdier painting table. It will mean workmen coming and going, noise and dust, and change, always change. He has already started hacking away at the wisteria that blankets the shed. It gobbles the light, he says.
Are they never going to stop?
* * *
BERT ARRIVES ON CHRISTMAS morning with gifts for everyone.
“You’re our Father Christmas,” Gloria says, and hugs him. I give him a peck on the cheek, the thinnest of smiles. He hardly responds.
We open our family presents before the lunch guests arrive, Gloria’s waifs and strays.
Bert has remembered Alice with a rose-pink pashmina from N. Peal’s in Burlington Arcade. Alice is thrilled with it. She makes little noises of appreciation as she wraps it around her shoulders, stroking and touching it to her cheeks, which are rouged to a similar color. Gloria has helped her with her makeup: blush, a touch of eye shadow, soft pink on her lips. The colors float on her face, giving her the appearance of one of those funfair “Aunt Sally” dolls, doing little to disguise her alarming pallor.
No surprise that Bert’s gifts have hit the spot with everyone. An exquisite fur hat evoking Pasternak’s Lara, for Gloria; a Nespresso machine in readiness for Henry’s new studio, and for me an indigo-blue velvet jacket lined with ivory silk. Bert has always loved giving presents, not to put you in his debt, but just for the joy of it.
Everything is wrapped in chic black-and-white-striped paper, all tied up with scarlet ribbons. There is no doubting his eye, or his generosity. Not for Bert, a tinsel-and-fake-tree Christmas; it is high style all the way for him.
He takes me aside to say we need to talk before he returns to London. He is cool with me, as though to let me know things are not repaired between us. I judge that’s to be our path now, not side by side anymore, the distance between us lengthening until we lose sight of each other. I am not sad about this state of affairs. It is no surprise, after all.
“Things are on the move,” he says mysteriously.
“Things?”
“Not now, Lizzie. We’ll talk tomorrow. Let’s enjoy today as best we can.”
I watch Bert work his charm on my sister and brother-in-law and my former best friend. He helps lay the table, brings a glass of sparkling elderflower to Alice, who cannot face alcohol anymore. He sits next to her on the sofa and takes her hand.
“Here we are,” he says to her. “All together.”
I feel like the animal at the edge of the herd. They would hardly notice if I was picked off by some predator.
I don’t know how to react to Alice’s present to me. It is the most extraordinary, the most unexpected gift I have ever received. It is the key to her house.
“I’m giving it to you now,” she murmurs. “I want you to have somewhere of your own near Pipits.”
Everyone falls silent, waiting for my reaction as I look at the key, dumbfounded. I understand what she is saying. Get out of Pipits and leave it to Gloria and Henry to enjoy. Move over, get out of the way.
I recall the conversation between Henry and Alice that I’d overheard weeks earlier. So it was about me, after all. I am to have Alice’s house so that her dear friends can be rid of me. I am the one who Henry says is never grateful. My absence will add to their happiness. It is Alice’s bequest to them.
“Alice, I can’t accept this,” I say. “It is too much.”
“Not really,” she says practically. “I have to leave it to someone, and I know that you won’t want to be in the way when the baby comes. Anyway, you can’t refuse, it’s in my will, all arranged.”
I manage a smile. “It is too much,” I repeat. “You really shouldn’t have.”
Gloria says she is thrilled for me. How wonderful of Alice, how typically generous. Henry doesn’t catch my eye. Ashamed, I suppose, that he knew about it, that he conspired with Alice to see me off.
Bert hugs Alice. What a generous girl you are, he says to her. He pats me lightly on the shoulder, as though I am something broken, something with sharp edges that will cut him. “Somewhere of your own, in the village you love,” he says.
Willed to her by her father, Alice’s house is a poor thing. It was built in the 1950s when the planning restrictions were less rigid, a typically unambitious structure, with low ceilings, three square bedrooms, and an undistinguished sitting room. A scrubby patch of garden lies at the back of the house sporting a yellowing lawn and a small pond lined with blue plastic, the fish long gone. These days, though, with our village being so near to Bath, I suppose it would sell for a good enough sum.
They all seem so pleased for me, as though I have been given the keys to a palace. Well, it is a generous present, to be sure, but all the same, some primal part of me burns. Have they no understanding? Are they so oblivious to what House means to me, how meager Alice’s gift seems in comparison? It is all just bricks and mortar to them.
We are nine for Christmas lunch. Among the guests is Fiona, the mural girl, who has just emerged from a two-year relationship and would otherwise have been alone. She arrives with a selection of market sweets in a green plastic bag spotted with fat snowmen wearing red scarves.
“How delicious,” Gloria says appreciatively.
Behind mural girl, clutching a bottle of champagne, stands the octogenarian retired member of Parliament from the Old Rectory. He beams at my sister and nods to me, the thin end of his radiant smile fading fast. Long ago he shared the rectory with his wife before he bored her into bolting. I was just a girl then, but I remember the scandal, the village gossip.
He hands the bottle to Henry and kisses Gloria on the cheek.
“Angel girl,” he says. “Where would we be without you?”
Twenty minutes later, a “him and him” couple rings the bell, friends of Henry’s, both potters, wearing matching red Christmas hats with white bobbles. They have brought their dog, Truman, with them, a dalmatian sporting a sparkly bow on his collar. Handsome as dogs go.
“We just love Christmas,” the taller one says. The shorter one nods in agreement.
We drink champagne, and there are little pastries stuffed with soft cheese that Gloria bought ready-made from Waitrose. Everyone agrees that they are delicious. Maybe they are. I don’t indulge.
The turkey is huge, and has produced so much fat, it spills over the top of the pan when they take it out of the oven. Henry rushes to mop the floor with paper towel. It will take a year of washing to remove the greasy ring it has left on the flagstones. There is still a pinkish stain from the dropped summer pudding on the floor nearby. I think of yew berries, of failure.
Halfway through the meal, a deathly pale Alice has to retire to bed. She’ll be fine after a rest of an hour or so, she says. She has had a lovely time, the perfect Christmas. She blows a kiss to the table, an actress acknowledging her audience. As Gloria stands to help her, she puts her arm around Alice, touches the pink pashmina to her own cheek, and says, “Mmm.”
“I know,” Alice says. “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”
* * *
BOXING DAY BRINGS A bitter snap. First a shower of hailstones, big as marbles, and then a bleed of snowflakes that scurry around for a minute or two before disappearing. The threatened snowfall has changed its mind, but toward the east a brouhaha threatens, black clouds spreading a sullen darkness over the village. The storm will be on us before lunch.
All I want to do is snuggle up in my room, drink a little gin, be alone, but Bert, who was up before I woke, wants a walk before he leaves. He seems nervy, on edge about something, a bit detached. I agree to the walk and get my coat. I’m interested in hearing what he meant by “things are on the move.”
“Bring the key to Alice’s house,” he says. “I’d like to see it.”
I slip it into my pocket, although I’d rather not.
He looks out of place walking in our village. His navy cashmere coat is cut too neatly for the country, his red-and-blue-print Liberty scarf, knotted just so, is too bright, too perfect. We favor the colors of the land here: browns and greens, the occasional pop of plaid.
“The thing is,” he begins, and I can tell that he is anxious. There’s a silence, which I break.
“Yes,” I say. “The thing is?”
“Look, this is hard to say, so I’m just going to come out with it. I’m sorry not to have told you before, but I’m letting the gallery go.”
“You’re what?”
“Needs must, Lizzie. I’ve had to rethink the whole business. Things are changing fast, and we’ve been going downhill for some time now. Now, I know that you—”
“What the hell is going on, Bert? How has it come to this without discussing it with me?”
“Well, you haven’t been around lately to see what’s been happening, have you? I was going to discuss it with you at dinner on the night that you bolted. The fact is that we haven’t an option. If we don’t keep up, we’ll go under.”
“All the emails you’ve sent, and you didn’t think to mention things were going badly? You’ve mentioned what we have sold, how well Helen is doing. Nothing about selling the business.”
“You’re not the easiest person to give bad news to,” he says flatly. “In any case, it isn’t about selling up as such, more like a change of direction. And I wanted to talk about it with you face-to-face.”
“And here we are talking, but you seem to have made your mind up already.”
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