It was only after reading the caption that I looked at the photograph again, more closely, and noticed Mr Brecht, standing beyond the open window, on the terrace. He was breathtakingly handsome, dressed in casual trousers and an open-necked shirt, leaning in a rather louche and completely adorable way against the base of a reclining stone hart, a cigarette between the fingers of his free hand.
I gazed at him for a while, touched his face with my fingertips, and read on.
The article gave a brief list of Anne’s musical accomplishments. Her last public performance had been in St Petersburg, eight weeks before Ellen was born. Anne was only twenty-one at the time but the article quoted several sources proclaiming her to be an important, prodigious talent – her rendition of Liebeslied by Fritz Kreisler being regarded as the definitive version of the work, and so forth. And, the writer gushed, the birth of Ellen Louisa is the icing on the cake of happiness for Anne and for her charming husband, Pieter, who has been her musical teacher and mentor since she was twelve years old.
I didn’t read any further because a door slammed in the hallway and I heard Ellen’s footsteps running up the stairs. Mr Brecht came into the room where I was sitting and Mrs Todd followed behind. She poured a glass of whisky and passed it to him. He took it and drank. Neither of them had noticed me.
‘How was she today?’ Mrs Todd asked. Her hands were folded in front of her and her eyes were downcast.
‘Hopeless,’ Mr Brecht said. ‘She was deliberately sabotaging the piece. She won’t listen to me, she won’t do what I tell her, she won’t try. I don’t know what to do with her, Mrs Todd. I am at my wits’ end.’
He put his hands on the back of Mrs Brecht’s chair and dropped his head between his arms.
I cleared my throat. Mr Brecht straightened up and pushed back his hair.
‘Hello, Hanchen,’ he said, with a tired smile. I smiled back, hoping he would understand the exquisite depth of my sympathy.
‘Go upstairs and talk to Ellen,’ Mrs Todd said to me. ‘Dinner will be ready in half an hour.’
I nodded, laid the magazine down on the arm of the chair, and made my escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ON THE WAY back to my parents’ house, I stopped at the Smuggler’s Rest, a small roadside pub, charming in its decrepitude. I didn’t make a habit of going to pubs on my own, but I needed a drink after seeing the woman on the cliff top. Either my mind was playing its terrible games again or Ellen really had returned from the dead. Or, and this was a thought that had been forming in my mind over the past few days, perhaps she had never died. Perhaps everything I had been told, everything I had believed, was wrong.
Maybe there had been some conspiracy and Ellen Brecht was still alive and was trying to reach out to me.
I did not know what to think, what to believe.
What I did know was that I could not let my mother see me as I was. I had to calm myself. Alcohol, I reasoned, might do the trick. Also, it would be reassuring to sit in the pub’s messy little beer garden amongst the lacy cow parsley and the tiny brown pollinating moths while the sun was going down, with people around me talking and relaxing as if everything was all right in the world.
The last time I had been in that particular pub was when I was eighteen. I used to go there with Ricky, my first boyfriend. I still remembered what we did in the car park. As I walked into the gloom of the bar, I looked across the garden, to the place where Ricky used to park his car all those years ago, and in spite of everything, I wrapped my arms about myself, and I smiled.
Only a handful of people were inside the bar, which was poky and dark and smelled of dishwasher steam. I ordered a pint of cider and the barman was filling the glass when I realized I had no money with me. This was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I felt like a child denied the one thing I really wanted. Everything was going wrong and it always seemed to come back to Ellen. She was always at the root of my unhappiness. Embarrassed, I apologized to the barman and turned to go when a slight, grizzled man stepped in front of me, pulled off the woollen beanie he was wearing, peered into my face and said, ‘It’s little Hannah Brown, isn’t it?’
I took the tissue he was holding out to me and used it to wipe away my tears.
‘Yes,’ I said, and stepped to the left to move past him, but he moved with me.
‘You don’t remember me, do you? It’s Bill – Bill Haworth. Your brother, Jago, used to work on my boat.’
‘Oh yes, Bill! How nice to see you.’ I tried to squeeze past, but he took my arm.
‘I’ll get your drink,’ he said. ‘You look like you could use it. Go and find a seat outside where we can talk. I’ll be with you in a moment.’
‘It’s kind of you, Bill, but—’
‘Go on,’ he said.
I wound my way around the bar to the garden, found a free bench, sat down and picked apart a beer mat until Bill arrived with my cider and a second pint for him. He put the glasses on the wooden table slats and sat on the opposite side of the bench, which rocked and creaked, all its joints going out of kilter. I put my feet square on the ground to balance it.
‘All right then,’ said Bill. ‘Now you’ve got your drink, you can tell me what you’re doing here and what it is that’s upset you.’
I held the glass in my hands and drank several gulps. The cider was sweet and cold and delicious.
‘I’m down visiting my parents for the weekend,’ I said. ‘And nothing’s wrong. I just …’ I looked into my drink and watched the bubbles climbing the inside of the glass. It was too complicated to explain, even to Bill, who knew some of it already. ‘It’s difficult being back,’ I said. ‘I feel like a stranger, as if I don’t belong here any more and at the same time it’s as if I never went away.’
‘My opinion,’ said Bill slowly, ‘for what it’s worth, which ain’t much, is that when a person goes back to a place they left, they also goes back to the age they was when they left it.’
I thought about that for a moment. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly how I feel.’
Bill looked pleased. He took a long drink. I watched his throat move as he swallowed. Then he solemnly put the glass back on the bench.
‘You heard from that brother of yours lately?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘No. I haven’t spoken to Jago since Dad’s heart attack.’
‘That was years back.’
‘I know.’
‘Why don’t you talk to each other? You used to be thick as thieves, you two.’
‘We just don’t. We don’t have any reason to talk.’
Bill snorted. ‘That’s the daftest thing I ever heard. You’re living on opposite sides of the world, living different lives, you must have plenty to say to one another.’
I nodded, hoping he would change tack if I agreed with him. I brushed a ladybird from my forearm.
‘He’s all right though, is he – Jago?’ Bill asked.
‘He’s doing fine. He’s got a good job.’
‘And a good woman to go with it?’
‘No,’ I told Bill. ‘He can’t seem to find the right person.’
I looked down again. Somebody had folded a crisp packet very small and stuffed it between the slats in the bench.
‘Jago’s one of the good ’uns,’ said Bill. ‘He’s one of the best. Any one of us would’ve helped him. Whatever trouble it was he was running from – women, money, whatever – we’d have seen him right if the daft sod, excuse my language, hadn’t buggered off like he did.’
He drank again, licked his lips and put the almost-empty glass down. He had a tattoo of his grandchildren’s names on his forearm. Shoni and Jude.
‘You couldn’t have done anything to stop Jago leaving,’ I said. ‘Nobody could.’
‘Ah well,’ Bill said. He tapped a cigarette out of a packet and rolled it along the table. ‘Next time you speak to him, tell him I asked after him.’
‘I will.’
‘And tell him to get his arse back here. Tel
l him there’s still work for him. Tell him …’
I waited.
‘Tell the bugger that we still miss him.’
Bill stood up then, put the cigarette behind his ear, picked up his empty glass, patted me on the shoulder, and went back inside the pub.
I pulled the sleeves of my cardigan tighter around me and gazed out into the distance, across the flat bogland where a summer mist was forming, wreathing itself around the great satellite dishes of Goonhilly.
I closed my eyes for a moment. When I shut them, I could see the figure on the clifftop clearly silhouetted against the sun’s glare. It was Ellen. Always Ellen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I WENT UPSTAIRS to find Ellen, as Mrs Todd had told me to; she was in her bedroom, sullenly collecting her towel, shampoo, conditioner. She went into the bathroom, and I followed. She locked the door and turned on the hot tap as far as it would go. I waited for her to speak. I couldn’t help but notice that Anne Brecht’s toothbrush was still in its mug, the flannel embroidered with her initials still folded on the windowledge; the mat she used to prevent her from slipping in the bath was still there too, along with her cosmetics, her lotions and creams and oils.
‘He’s a bastard,’ Ellen said without looking at me. ‘He’s a fucking evil lying bastard.’
I was used to this kind of outburst. I folded down the lavatory lid and sat on it, my hands clasped between my knees, while Ellen took off her clothes and dropped them on the floor. I could smell the warm, private scent of her skin, her armpits, her sweat as she undressed. She continued to rant, half-sobbing.
‘What happened exactly?’ I asked.
‘I said some things to him.’
‘You swore?’
Ellen shrugged. I sighed. If she didn’t want to make her father angry, why did she behave like this?
‘It was his fault!’ she said. ‘I had to swear to shut him up. He said some horrible things.’
‘What things?’
‘He said Mama didn’t love us, that she was a liar, that she was seeing other men behind his back right up until the day she died. He said …’ Ellen paused and looked at me ‘… that she was a whore.’
I gasped. I could not imagine Mr Brecht saying such a horrible word, and especially not about his wife. He had worshipped the ground Anne walked on and the air she breathed. This had to be another of Ellen’s lies, or at the very least an exaggeration.
‘Why would he say that?’
‘I think he’s mad. Do you know, Hannah, sometimes when I’ve been playing the piano, he’s called me “Anne”. He’s spoken to me as if I were her. He’s—Oh, I don’t want to tell you! But I have to remind him. I have to say: “Papa, it’s me, Ellen!” And even then, sometimes, it takes a while for him to recognize me. That’s not normal, is it? That would freak anyone out.’
She picked up her clothes and stuffed them into the tall linen basket in the corner of the room. I bit a fingernail nervously. I wasn’t sure how much of this to believe, or how to react.
‘Perhaps he needs more time to get over losing your mother,’ I suggested.
Ellen snorted. ‘He needs a lobotomy,’ she said. She was a little calmer now. This was almost a joke.
She wrapped a green towel around herself, leaned over and tested the water with her hand, half-disappearing in a mist of apple-scented steam. She topped the bath up from the cold tap, water gushing like a geyser.
‘Don’t look,’ she said. I turned my head slightly to the left and lowered my eyes, but still I watched beneath my lashes as Ellen wriggled out of her pants, dropped the towel, stepped into the big, old-fashioned bathtub and sank beneath the water. Her hair stuck to the back of the bath. She held her hands up in front of her, stretching and clenching her fingers, trying to ease the soreness in her joints. The skin on her face and shoulders gradually pinkened. Then she closed her eyes and slid under the water and most of her disappeared Her knees stuck up, glistening wet. I wanted to do something to help Ellen. I knelt at the side of the bath, poured shampoo into the palm of my hand, and when she resurfaced, I reached over and washed her hair. Ellen didn’t protest. She kept her eyes closed while my fingers explored the shape of her head, wiped suds from the curve of her little ears, worked the shampoo through the skein of wet hair. I tried to wipe away a mark on her neck, but it wouldn’t wash off and I realized it was a bruise.
‘What happened to your neck?’
‘Papa did it.’
‘Oh Ellen, don’t say things like that.’
‘He did,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t think he means to hurt me – at least, I don’t think it’s me he wants to hurt. I think it’s Mama.’
Now I knew she was lying. Mr Brecht was moody, he was passionate, but I knew he would never, ever put his hands around anyone’s neck, least of all Ellen’s, and never Anne’s. I remembered the absolute love in his voice when he said he would never let anything, or anyone, hurt his wife or daughter.
Downstairs, one end of the long cherrywood table in the dining room had been laid for three people, with silver cutlery, candles in candlesticks, linen serviettes. A record played on the hi-fi in the corner. The record was slightly warped; I could tell by the way the light reflected from its rim as it spun on the turntable. It was a crackly live recording of Anne Brecht in performance. At the end of each movement the applause coming through the speakers was rapturous.
Outside the rain was still falling and the sky was dark. It was late and I hadn’t eaten in hours. I was hungry.
I sat opposite Ellen. Her father came into the room. He ground out his cigarette in the cut-glass ashtray on the sideboard, and came towards me. He smelled of Gitanes and vetiver and glamour.
‘You’re looking very beautiful tonight, Hannah,’ he said. He put his hand on my shoulder, and gave a little squeeze. The feeling travelled all the way through my body. I held my hands tight together in my lap and smiled up at him as elegantly and as eloquently as I could.
He pulled up a chair and sat beside Ellen, unfolded his napkin and spread it over his knees.
‘Are you talking to me yet, Ellen?’ he asked.
‘If I don’t have to, I’d rather not,’ she said. I winced at her rudeness. Mr Brecht took a deep breath.
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, that we ended up fighting, but you bring it on yourself,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be angry with you, but you make me angry. You don’t listen to me. You remind me of your mother and how she didn’t listen to me, and I can’t deal with that right now.’
‘That’s your excuse, is it?’ Ellen asked.
‘Oh, Ellen,’ Mr Brecht said. ‘We have a guest. Let’s at least be civil in front of Hannah.’
He opened the wine bottle on the table, and half-filled three glasses. I took a sip. We never had wine at home. I liked the sensation of holding the glass in my hand. I liked the way the light shone through the wine. I enjoyed feeling so grown-up. While we sat there, formally, like three people in a painting, Mrs Todd came in with a tray – three bowls of steaming pea and dumpling soup, three small, home-made bread rolls and butter scooped into curls on a small dish. She served the soup and we ate in silence, listening to the music. After that, there was meat in an oniony sauce with herb-roast potatoes and tiny fresh vegetables. It was delicious. Mr Brecht wasn’t eating much, but drinking wine, topping up his own glass. When the bottle was empty, Mrs Todd brought another. Ellen picked at her food, moving it around the plate. She did not touch her wine.
After the main course was finished, she asked her father if the two of us could be excused.
‘Just a moment,’ Mr Brecht said, and he came around the table and took something out of his pocket. It was the little gold chain with the treble clef charm that Ellen’s mother used to wear round her neck. Ellen sat still as a statue while Mr Brecht fastened it around her neck. Then he leaned over and kissed the top of his daughter’s head.
‘I’m being hard on you for your own good, Schatzi,’ he said. ‘It is because I love you. If I did
not love you so very much, I would not get so angry. You understand, don’t you?’
Ellen nodded.
‘Good girl,’ said Mr Brecht.
He was standing behind her. He couldn’t see her face. Only I, sitting opposite, saw the anger in her eyes. It scared me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I WALKED IN the gloaming from the pub back to Cross Hands Lane. Mum and Dad were already in bed. They’d left a ham sandwich covered in clingfilm on a plate for my supper. I made some tea, ate the sandwich, watched a little television, then went upstairs and slept like a baby in the single bed on which I’d slept through my childhood and my teenage years. I had forgotten, until I slipped between the clean sheets, how soft the mattress was, how familiar and comforting. All that was missing was Trixie. She’d died at home, under my bed, while I was in Chile. Dad had wrapped her in a blanket and dug a hole in the garden to bury her.
I had found it easy to grieve for Trixie. The tears had come unforced, the pain in my heart was genuine and oddly comforting. I remembered the dog’s big, ugly face, her timidity, her predisposition to drool, her bloodshot, trusting eyes, and I ached with love. I missed her, pure and simple. But it had been so difficult to grieve for Ellen. I had not cried when I read the letter that told me Ellen had died; I had not cried when I returned to Trethene years after that. I had done my best not to think about Ellen, or her death, at all. Deep in my heart, I did not accept that she was gone. I never articulated my feelings, but I convinced myself that ‘dying’ at a tragically young age was simply another way for Ellen to put herself in the limelight.
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