‘Oh, Mumma.’ Cord closed her eyes, and for a second felt the soft touch of her mother’s slim white hands cupping the back of her head, the scent of her perfume, lilac and rose, the glint of her red-gold hair, and sadness pierced her heart. ‘Poor Mumma.’
‘She’s OK, actually. Strange though it may sound. She loves that home. And they can take care of her until the end. I think she’s been – well, like you say, she’s been dying for years, and now she’s been shown her way out it’s almost a relief. Oh, Cord – I’m so sorry to—’ The voice broke off for a moment. ‘I didn’t want to speak to you again like this, Cordy.’
Cord placed a cool hand on her spinning head. She didn’t know what to say.
‘The thing is, she wants to see you. She says she’s got something for you. And – well, the Bosky. It’s about the Bosky.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s – it’s yours, after she’s gone. Daddy left it to you.’
‘Me?’ Cord put one hand against the wall to steady herself. ‘The – the Bosky?’
Oh, saying it, saying the name of it, the pleasure of the sounds on her tongue, when she never said it, never said phrases like ‘When we’re at the Bosky’, or ‘Last summer at the Bosky’, the chart she used to keep counting down the days, the smell of the place – she remembered it still, pine and lavender, warm dry wood and sea salt . . .
‘They’ve valued it today, so you can decide what to do when she . . .’ Ben trailed off. ‘But she just wants to see you, Cord. Wants to explain some things to you.’
‘What things?’
‘I don’t know.’ For the first time she could hear the exasperation in his voice. ‘She says you have to come and see her, just once, so she can explain. I can handle the sale later on, if you don’t want the house.’
‘It’s not fair, you should have a share—’ she began.
‘You know I don’t care about any of that,’ he said, furiously. ‘Just come down. Come tomorrow. The girls will be there. Your nieces. You haven’t seen them for ten years.’ His voice was hollow. ‘Good God. Cordy, come and meet Lauren – she’s my wife and you’ve never laid eyes on each other. Come and see Mumma one last time. You have to.’
‘No.’
‘How can you—’
But she interrupted him. ‘I can’t, Ben.’ She tried to sound calm. ‘Don’t. I really can’t.’
‘Can’t because you’re working or something, or can’t because you won’t?’
‘Both. Neither.’ She gave a sound between a laugh and a sob.
‘I used to know you better than anyone, anyone in the whole world, and now I – I don’t understand you at all, Cord.’ The bewilderment in his tone broke her heart. The lying, the huge, dreadful web of lies spun by her over the years to hide the truth from him. ‘I went there today, after the estate agents. There’s nothing in the house at all except those photos all over the walls. There’s one of you and Mumma and Mads after she gave her the new clothes, that first summer with her . . .’ Cordelia closed her eyes, twisting herself against the cold stone like a cornered animal, her stomach stabbing with pain. ‘All these memories . . . The place is in a dreadful state and still . . .’ He trailed off. ‘Oh, honestly. I just bloody want to see you, that’s all.’
She swallowed, holding on to the dusty lectern stowed in the corner of the crowded vestry. With huge effort she said, ‘I’m not coming down, Ben. Call me – call me when she’s dead.’
He began to say something, something about Daddy, but Cord cut him off. She stood staring at the phone then, with shaking hands, turned it off.
She knew where he’d have been standing. At the entrance to the beach behind the house where the dark pine trees reared up like a wall, near the field with the horses, darling Claudie with the soft grey muzzle she used to love to stroke. Hedgerows which, now, right now, would be thick with the tight early blackberries of autumn, sharp as ice water, sweet as a kiss. At the top of the lane there was a telephone box and a beach shop, selling plastic balls, shrimping nets, ice lollies. Her first expedition alone had been, at eight, to go and buy some iced buns from the beach shop. The crunch of sand on the stone floor, the smell of cake and tannic tea and suntan lotion. Trotting back along the uneven path, the relief when the gate of the Bosky appeared, her father’s pride in her. ‘Little Cord. You are marvellous, my brave girl. All by yourself.’
Cordelia had not cried when she lost her father, or her best friend. She had not cried when she had ended it with Hamish nor later, when she realised what she had lost by giving him up. She had not cried when she woke up after the operation on her throat to find it had failed or after any of the dreams that haunted her sleeping hours, taunting her with a life she might have had.
But she cried now, pressing her hands to her cheeks, mouth wide open, like a child.
She knew she had to get back to the safety of her flat, to be alone again. As soon as she could manage it, she plucked up her bag and velvet dress with shaking hands and, dashing out into the quiet street, ran away from the church, not caring who saw her.
She was glad of the emptiness of the overground train that carried her back to West Hampstead. She could see her reflection in the darkened, grimy carriage window opposite: pale face, swollen eyes . . . a ghost, that’s what she was, a ghost of another, entirely different, person. When she got home, she shut the door on the outside world, and sank to the ground, hands covering her face.
Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimney sweepers, come to dust . . .
She knew she would not sleep, not now she had looked back, down into the darkness again. Yet through that airless night as she lay with the duvet thrown off the bed, hot and restless, arms spread wide, eyes fixed unseeingly at the ceiling, Cord could only remember the good times. They had been the Wildflowers, and they had been so blissfully, gloriously happy – hadn’t they? Before she – and it was her, the fault was all hers – had deliberately dismantled it all. Bit by bit. A family’s happiness. Her family.
Chapter One
Summer 1975
It was very strange that no one could agree when, and how, Madeleine Fletcher first came into their lives. Afterwards, in late autumn when the Bosky and Worth Bay seemed to be nothing but a golden memory, they could recall every little detail of the summer. But at first, it was always too painful to think about. They were emotional children; or at least, Cordelia was, her brother following in her lead. They could not mention the Bosky to one another without tears starting in their eyes, lips wobbling tragically: the wood pigeons lazily cooing in the trees, or the feeling of the fabric of the window-seat cushion worn so fine it felt like silk, or the cool sand behind the beach huts: dirty grey, mixed with pieces of bark from the pines, the brambles along the narrow path that led to the sea. The smell of the place, the sounds of the water, the huge skies above them. Silly games that Daddy or Cord invented: ‘Follow My Flapjack’, ‘Waves’ and the current favourite, ‘Flowers and Stones’, where you dashed into the huge patch of wild flowers beside the house with a blindfold on and picked up as many stones and flowers as you could in ten seconds. Points were added for different colours, and deducted for shells. Ben always won, though he was often sick with the excitement of it afterwards, and sometimes strayed into the brambles, scratching himself terribly.
Back in Twickenham, when the autumn rain fell in grey rods over the old house by the river, gradually giving way to winter, the children would comfort themselves, parcelling the holidays up into days, or events, cross-referencing memories to keep them clear. ‘We went to the ice-cream shop together seven times.’ ‘Mrs Gage made us boiled eggs for tea four times.’ ‘I won Flowers and Stones ten times in a row.’ ‘We had fifteen different people to stay.’ ‘Daddy came down for twenty days.’
Even Althea, who swore she heartily disliked the place, could remember the colour of the kite that crashed into the porch and got entangled with the tassels on the cushion that summer of 1972. She remembered too the new kaftan tunic from
Biba she had bought in 1973 the week before her annual exile to Worth Bay, Bertie’s voice as he stretched out his lanky frame languorously on the porch and gave his pitch-perfect impersonation of Mrs Gage, who ‘did’ for them, until she got hiccups with laughing. And Althea could perfectly recall the sad little girl next door whose face, small and dreadfully pale, had begun to appear that summer of 1975 as she and the children were having tea every evening. But she couldn’t remember exactly when she had first noticed her. Perhaps even the year before.
Benedick and Cordelia knew it all – the price of sweets in the beach shop, the times of the bus taking them into Swanage, the first lunch they had at the Bosky, laid out and left for them by Mrs Gage (cold chicken salad, tomatoes, crusty bread, cherries and clotted cream), the trouble with Mrs Gage’s toes and the tide times printed in the little blue book, instantly pored over upon arrival each year. But they disagreed bitterly on when they first saw Madeleine. Ben didn’t remember her at all, but Ben was in a dream world most of the time. Cord said she remembered Mads from long ago, that she’d played with her before, but when they asked, she couldn’t ever remember where or when.
The truth was that the year Mads came into their lives was the summer everything began to change, when they all looked back on it. In the end, it was Tony who first properly met Madeleine, and that was when he almost killed her.
They always left for the Bosky first thing. If Tony was in a play, he insisted the bags be packed and lined up in the hall before he left for the theatre in the late afternoon so the car could be loaded at dawn and they’d be there for breakfast. This added to the staged sense of drama around their departure. Ben and Cord barely slept the night before: they’d be too excited. At five-thirty they’d be lifted into the car in their night things by Tony and would doze all the way, occasionally being woken by their own sagging heads. They would then gaze out of the window at the deep blue of the early August sky, the still, heavy trees just starting to turn a crisp dark green, the golden dawn bathing the roads out of London in warm light: nostalgic before they’d even got there. And it was always chilly, Cord’s bare legs cold on the leather seats in the car, and they’d shiver, and moan, and go back to sleep, but all of them were always awake by the time they passed Wareham and drove the final few miles down the winding country road set high up against the looming chalk barrow that rose and fell away over towards the coast (and where Daddy had once told them in exasperation during a fraught teatime that a witch lived who would come for them if they didn’t eat their liver and onion).
The first one to see the sea picked what they’d have for breakfast. Cord always won. She was eagle-eyed. ‘There. There! The tide’s out.’ And she noticed every little change each year. Cord was born watchful, as her Aunt Isla used to say.
The soft crunch of the car on the sandy lane, that turn of the old key in the flimsy lock, the sound of children’s feet, thundering up the stairs and along the worn parquet flooring that sagged and dipped throughout the top floor, the windows that swelled shut in the spring rain and often had to be wrenched open with a little extra force if no one had been there for a while. That beautiful first smell of salt water beneath them, the distant call of gulls and of the sea, drawing back and then crashing over the sands: these were sensations all so dear, and familiar, forgotten every year and then there again, as though kept in a box that couldn’t be opened until August.
‘Shall we do the call?’ Cordelia said to Ben, pausing in their running through the house and examining everything carefully for any alteration. She stood rattling the French doors that opened on to the porch. ‘We have to do it ourselves, since Daddy’s not here.’
Her arms full of freshly ironed linen for the airing cupboard, Althea watched them from the hallway.
‘Don’t pull the door like that, darling. Try the key.’
‘I have, it’s broken—’ Cord tugged viciously at the door frame. ‘Ugh.’
‘I said, don’t, Cordy! Listen to me!’
‘Mumma. Please don’t be mean and horrible like we’re back in London, not exactly right at the beginning of the holiday,’ said Cord, urgently. ‘Please.’
Help me. Althea turned away towards the airing cupboard, gritting her teeth. The previous year she had returned to the stage for the first time since having the children, as a young mother of two in a daring new play at the Royal Court. She had been required to do very little other than stand there and watch while her husband threw chairs around and complained about the state of the world. The description of her character had been: ‘Vicki, Harry’s wife, sweet-faced, patient, nurturing, a typical young-mother type.’ (Of course, as her sister Isla had grimly pointed out, the play had been written by ‘a typical Angry Young Man type’.)
Every day, Althea would get up, promise herself she wouldn’t shout at the children or be irritated by them, and every day by five-thirty when she had to leave for the theatre she would once again feel awful about making one of them cry for not allowing an extra biscuit, or refusing to turn on the television, or some such. Once at the theatre, she’d don Vicki’s simple smock, brush blusher on to her cheeks and simper sweetly at Harry for two hours whilst hugging the two angelically behaved children who played her offspring and then a car provided by the theatre would take her home and the whole business would start again the following day. A cereal bowl thrown against the dresser at breakfast, a poem pinned to her bedroom door entitled, ‘Why is Ar Mother Never Hear?’. She was neither patient nor nurturing, and her darling children were not angelic. By the end of it, she felt she might be going slightly mad.
And now a month on her own with them. Bloody Tony. He should be running through the house with the children, flinging open the doors and playing hide-and-seek. Every year, on arrival, he’d stand on the porch and call over the bay, his beautiful voice ringing out, Cord and Ben wriggling with excitement next to him. He should be here having this marvellous time with them that he was always telling her was so vital to family life, instead of . . . instead of getting up to God knew what in London. She loved the children to distraction, but they were so loud. Asking questions all the time. Wanting to play games when she wanted to sit on the porch and read a Georgette Heyer. Or chat to whatever guest was down . . .
Althea squared her shoulders and opened the cupboard door, inhaling the calm smell of fresh linen and lavender. Well, with Tony away, she’d damn well invite whom she wanted this year. If he was in London, she’d ask Bertie – he hated Bertie. And Simon – yes. She nodded. This was the year Simon ought to come. If she handled it well, it could all be arranged for the best. Rather hastily shoving the sheets into the airing cupboard, she brushed down her skirts as she always did when she was nervous or flustered, then turned back to the children.
‘I don’t want to do it without Daddy,’ Cord was saying.
‘Go on, darling,’ she said. ‘Daddy’ll want you to.’
‘You do it with me.’
‘Gosh, no,’ said Althea, in horror.
Ben pushed the door open for his sister and they stepped out on to the wooden porch, shaded in the late-morning sun. Althea watched them, Ben’s thick golden hair that stuck out in clumps, his small square shoulders in striped towelling T-shirt, the tiny mole on the back of his neck. He held his little sister’s hand tightly, though she led the way, as she always did, and she turned back to her mother with a small smile, her heart-shaped face lit up, her halo of messy dark hair a web of black through which sunshine flooded.
‘Come on, Mumma,’ she said.
The cool breeze and the sounds of the bay soothed Althea after the long drive. It would be all right, here without him. Damn him. She swallowed, as Cordelia put both hands on her chest and bellowed, ‘HOW NOW, SPIRIT! WHITHER WANDER YOU?’
She nudged Ben, who said, more timidly, ‘Rejoice, you men of Ang– Ang—’
‘Anjeeers,’ Cord interrupted him. ‘Anjeers, it’s a place in France, Ben. ‘REJOICE, YOU MEN OF ANJEERS, RING YOUR BELLS,’ she hollered, and Ben shuff
led to the side, watching her half in exasperation, half in resignation. ‘What else does Daddy say to start the holiday?’
‘Look, but where he comes and—’ Ben began, but Cord interrupted him again.
‘LOOK, BUT WHERE HE COMES—’
‘Cordelia! That’s far, far too loud.’
‘LOOK, BUT WHERE HE COMES,’ Cordelia began again, totally ignoring Althea, her voice ringing out over the bay, and Ben joined in. ‘AND YOU SHALL SEE / THE TRIPLE PILLAR OF THE WORLD TRANSFORMED INTO A TRUMPET’S FOOL.’
They stepped back, and looked at each other, satisfied.
‘Was that right?’ Cord asked their mother.
‘Wonderful. It’s strumpet, by the way, not trumpet.’
‘What’s a strumpet?’
‘Ask Daddy. Now, come into the kitchen, you two, that’s enough noise. Cordelia, can you—’ Her daughter blinked furiously. ‘Cord, sorry. What’s wrong?’
Cord pointed at the wall. ‘Look, the picture of the boats has gone. What’s that? A painting? Who is it? Who changed it?’
Althea, heaving a box of food on to the kitchen counter, paused. ‘Don’t know. Oh, it’s Daddy’s aunt. The one whose house it was.’
‘Where’s the picture of the boats?’ Cord demanded.
‘I don’t know. Maybe Daddy moved it when he was down in May.’
‘I hate it when things change,’ said Cordelia, furiously. ‘He shouldn’t come down without us.’
‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘You two, honestly. Go and wash your hands and then we’ll have some breakfast. Ben, you saw the sea first, so you pick. Scrambled eggs or fried?’
‘Scrambled, please – but oh dear, Daddy always makes the scrambled eggs – who’ll do it now?’ said Ben, looking worried.
‘I think I can scramble some eggs, Benedick.’
‘Don’t call me BeneDICK. I hate it. And sorry, no, you can’t, Mumma. Sorry.’ Althea laughed. ‘Well, you can’t. You can’t cook anything.’
The Wildflowers Page 3