The Wildflowers

by Harriet Evans

  Cord nodded, trying to block out what he was saying, but she found she couldn’t. All she could hear were the words of the diary in Mads’s quietly intense, heart-piercing little voice.

  Just for one day, one day, I would like to know a feeling where you are totally, utterly happy with nothing else but happiness in your heart, no worries about anything else. Just once, just one day.

  She squeezed her aching eyes shut, and then forced herself to listen. ‘It is this that I can’t believe, Cordelia. That you haven’t looked into this and thought about it, when it could help you so much.’

  ‘Thought about what?’

  ‘Agh. You don’t even listen to me. Thought about having the operation again. The success rate is optimal. Yes, even for you.’

  ‘What operation?’

  ‘My dear,’ said Professor Mazzi. ‘You are a severe trial to me. The operation on your vocal cords.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She shook her head. ‘You are kind. There’s no point, though, is there?’

  ‘I have gone so far as to make the telephone call, and to speak to that man Khan, at Imperial College Trust. He assures me it would be worth your coming to see him.’

  ‘What? No – oh.’ Cord pressed her hands to her now-burning cheeks. ‘Dear Professor Mazzi, I wish you hadn’t. It’s very sweet of you but—’

  ‘Dr Khan remembers you and he has looked into the operation. He says it would be easy to correct. He thinks you would suffer a slight adjustment to the range – you would be a mezzo, not a soprano – but I have always longed to see you as Cherubino, cara mia. Anyway, I say to you that Dr Khan is hopeful.’

  ‘Mr Khan,’ said Cord, after a few moments. ‘He’s a surgeon. It’s Mr Khan.’

  Professor Mazzi raised his eyes to heaven, pointing a finger upwards. ‘I do not know why I try to help you, Cordelia. You are a bull-china young woman.’

  She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Young woman indeed. Thank you, Professor.’

  He reached along the bench, took her hand. ‘Do you understand me? He thinks he can help you get your voice back again. If you want it, that is.’ His grasp tightened gently; his own voice softened. ‘That is the question, isn’t it, Cordelia? Do you want it back? Do you actually want to sing again?’

  Cord walked home through Regent’s Park. It was gloriously hot, more like late summer than autumn. She turned into the rose garden. Funny, talking about Hamish again; this was where she and Hamish often used to have lunch when he came to see her in a break from his rehearsals. Oh, it looked fine on a day like this, with the last roses still blowsy and full, the scent of fallen petals on the ground, the trees still rustling and heavy with leaves. Hamish would pick roses for her. The open ones, lemon-yellow at the centre, blushing pink at the petal’s edges. ‘We’re helping them flower,’ he’d say. ‘We have to pick them so they flower again.’

  The vast cream houses lining the inner circle glowed in the afternoon sun. She remembered that one of Daddy’s friends, an ancient old actor whom they’d been to visit once for tea, had lived in one – which one exactly she couldn’t be sure. She supposed it showed her age if nothing else for it would have been in the days when actual Londoners still lived in Regent’s Park, not absent billionaires or sheikhs or both. What was his name? He’d adored Daddy, who had played his son, Hamlet, and he Claudius and the Ghost. Every night he’d walk across the battlements humming very softly the theme to ‘Hitler Has Only Got One Ball’ – Daddy had loved this story, bringing his knees up and guffawing with laughter when he told it. His laughter was childish, infectious; it was at the centre of her earliest memories, the sound of Daddy laughing.

  ‘I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end.’

  Inside the park she peered past the ticket office of the Open Air Theatre. It had been one of her and Ben’s first theatre trips as children, when they’d seen Olivia as Titania, and Daddy as Bottom. She’d had to hold Ben’s hand all the way through – he got so scared of things. And the memory of Daddy, at the curtain call, pulling Olivia and Guy forwards with him as the cast held hands, peering into the audience, spotting the children at the back of the stalls waving furiously at him, throwing his arms wide and calling out, ‘Hello, darlings! Did you like it?’ in front of the whole theatre, and Cord pulling Ben to his feet with her, the pair of them clapping even louder, Ben so happy now, hands cupped around his mouth as they both called back to him.

  ‘Yes! Yes, Daddy!’ The other theatregoers, turning to stare at them, smiling as they all shuffled out: ‘His children. Isn’t that lovely? Weren’t they well-behaved? What a lucky man.’

  In the broad sunlight Cord blinked back tears, yet still the light feeling continued. She had not thought of her father with affection for so many years now, this man for whom she had formerly felt only pure and total adoration and more than that, understanding. Simpatico, Professor Mazzi used to call it. She walked through the rest of the park, past the children playing football, past the croaks and roars from the zoo. He’d taken them there too, on Ben’s birthdays, when Mumma was away, and he’d impersonated all the animals. Even the stick insects . . .

  ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you love, remember.’

  Do you actually want to sing again?

  Suddenly, Cord crossed the road and, instead of turning off for home, walked up Primrose Hill. She sat right at the top of the park and looked out over the city, her arms resting on her knees. She was shaking. Without asking herself why, she turned out of the park and began to make for Ben’s house. I might as well do it now, she said. While I think I can. After all, someone asked me about my voice today and I told them the truth, I didn’t run away.

  Ben’s road had been bohemian and even rather down-at-heel when he’d bought it after their move to London: book publishers, actors, academics who had lived there for years. Now it was grand, box hedges everywhere, gleaming black Jeeps in each driveway, and very still. No children playing in the street, curtains drawn: no signs of any inhabitants at all.

  Cord knocked on her brother’s bright red front door. Her hands were shaking. Please be in. Please don’t be in.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, when Iris answered.

  Iris held on to the door with long slim fingers, her pale face flushed in the afternoon sun. She stared at her aunt. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I had a thing near you so I thought I’d pop by.’ Cord shook her head. Pop by, as if she were one of their multimillionaire neighbours wanting a teabag.

  ‘So you’ve changed your mind,’ said Iris, her tone neutral.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Cord, simply. ‘Look, can I come in?’

  Iris turned around without speaking and walked down the corridor. Cord followed her inside.

  She wouldn’t have recognised the place. It was extremely grand – of course, it should be, she had to keep reminding herself of this. Ben was a big shot, married to a – was she a set designer, his wife? He certainly wouldn’t have kept the eighties album posters, the frameless frames stuffed with photographs of days gone by, the sixties art nouveau posters of concerts and albums of which Mads had been so fond. Now it was all tasteful muted colours, expensive prints on the wall. Cord remembered that Lauren was a set dresser. The house looked like a set.

  Cord plunged her hands into her pockets, wondering if it was a mistake to have come. She paused at a flight of small steps.

  ‘Let’s go into the kitchen,’ said Iris, gesturing. ‘Oh, look, there’s Emily.’

  Her sister had appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She stared at Cord. ‘Hello?’ she said.

  ‘This,’ said Iris, ‘this is Auntie Cord.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Emily, who was all pre-Raphaelite curls in contrast with Iris’s geometric black-and-white-ness, was still for a moment. ‘Sorry. Hello.’ She turned to her sister and stuck out her jaw, an infinitesimally small gesture of anger, but Cord saw it, and that made up her mind.


  ‘Maybe I should go,’ she said. ‘I only came by to see – to see . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I’ll fix up a time again—’

  ‘You were right, Iris,’ said Emily, and she turned back to Cord. ‘So you’re off because now you’re here you can’t quite hack it? Wow.’ She pushed her curtain of golden-red hair over her shoulder; hair so like Althea’s Cord wanted to smile.

  ‘I only mean it was a mistake to turn up like this, I should have rung . . .’ Cord shook her head, cornered, overwhelmed.

  ‘Emily, be quiet,’ said Iris, and she put out a slim hand. ‘Please stay, just for a quick cuppa. It’s great that you’ve come, Auntie Cord.’

  Could she just say it now?

  You don’t understand. I’m not your aunt.

  Cord rubbed her forehead. ‘OK.’

  The twins looked at each other; she saw how alike they were, despite their differences. I’m the only one alive who knows the truth, she thought. I have to do this for them.

  She followed them into the kitchen where Emily sat down at the breakfast bar, hands cupped under her chin while Iris put on the kettle and fussed in the fridge, taking out food and offering it to Cord, who shook her head every time.

  ‘Just a cup of tea, please.’ She sat down on a bar stool next to Emily. ‘So. What do you want to know, in particular? How can I help you? If that doesn’t sound too formal . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Oh, I don’t know what’s for the best. Tell me what you want to know.’

  They looked at each other and she saw how young they still were in the darting, awkward glances they exchanged. After a moment Iris, obviously the one who spoke for them both, said, ‘Can we start with how our mum died, please.’

  Her voice had the tiniest crack in it. Cord’s stomach lurched. It was too warm in the perfect glass box of a kitchen. Could she tell them that they’d inadvertently given her their mother’s diary and that had the truth in it? No. Never.

  ‘There’s a reason you haven’t seen much of me, you see—’ she began, and stopped, her throat so dry something seemed to be scraping at the back of it. She swallowed and started again, her voice low, eyes cast down on to the table. ‘I killed her. You can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure I did.’

  I killed her – it sounded so melodramatic, there in the pristine interior of the sunny room. But Emily shivered, and looked at her sister, biting her lip. Her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Iris demanded. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I told her the truth,’ said Cord. ‘What I thought was the truth.’

  ‘But wh-what is the truth?’ Emily leaned forwards.

  ‘I’m not even sure, any more,’ said Cord. She swallowed and looked at them both, both so young, so like their mother, whom she had loved more than anyone else for so much of her life.

  Oh, Mads. Why did you go and do what you did? Why did you break us all apart?

  Her heart swelled with love for them, for these beings in front of her who were her flesh and blood, no matter what happened, and somehow, it was done, it was over, the isolation. She could no more walk away from them now than she could forget the diary. But she could still ruin their lives, if she accidentally let slip the truth.

  Cord put her hands out towards them.

  ‘Look, I’ll tell you what I know about your mum and dad. I always wanted to push people who loved me away, I’ve never learned how to let them in. I don’t know why. My dad, probably. But, girls, I promise you something, you have to understand this most of all: they were mad about each other. They were so happy, before it all fell apart. They really were.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  1986

  Cord had booked the tiny Italian restaurant on a narrow lane off Brewer Street: it was a recommendation of Professor Mazzi’s. After the arthritic waiter had cleared the coffee cups – all four of them self-consciously drinking espresso and saying how much they liked it – he brought four thimble-sized glasses filled with a cloudy yellow liquid to the table. Only Hamish knew what it was.

  ‘It’s limoncello,’ he said, giving a thumbs-up to the restaurant owner, who stood behind the swing doors in the kitchen, watching for their reaction with almost comic anxiety. ‘Thank you! Oh, it’s delicious.’ He smiled at Cord; they had a joke that he liked old-lady drinks: sherry, crème de menthe. ‘I first had this in Naples when I was filming a swords-and-sandals epic. I had one line, Sire, the phalanx won’t hold. I got the giggles each time I had to say it and eventually the line got cut. I was devastated. But there was a lovely restaurant in a tiny piazza near our hotel and the owner’s wife was Scottish. Cheers.’ He raised his glass, as the others laughed.

  ‘Stop!’ Cord put her hand to his mouth. ‘Don’t drink. We should make a toast. Happy birthday, Mads.’

  Mads shrank back into her chair, as the others pushed their glasses together. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, tipping her head forward so her hair covered her face. ‘I hate birthdays.’

  But Ben tucked her hair behind her ear and kissed the ear, gently. ‘Come out of there, Mads.’ He put his arm round her. ‘We should make a toast—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cord. She reached over and took her friend’s hand. ‘Happy birthday, darling Mads.’

  As they clinked their glasses together, the operatic aria playing in the background swelled to a climax, and they all smiled at each other, and drank. It’s so easy, the four of us together, Cord found herself thinking, and the back of her neck prickled, and her head ached.

  ‘Is that you, Cord?’ said Ben, gesturing towards the record player. ‘She sounds pretty upset about something.’

  ‘She’s about to throw herself off a building,’ said Cord. ‘Her lover’s been shot.’

  ‘Fuss fuss fuss,’ said Hamish. ‘She shouldn’t have got together with an artist. They’re the worst kind of boyfriend.’

  ‘Actors are better, then. OK.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very reliable. Steady income. Normal-sized ego. My advice to anyone seeking a life partner is – go with an actor.’

  Cord laughed, squeezed his thigh. He took her hand, held it tightly in his.

  ‘The three of you, and Tony and Althea, with your strange occupations,’ said Mads. ‘I’d like to point out I’m the only one who has an actual job.’

  ‘You got a job?’ said Cord. ‘Where? That’s wonderful.’

  ‘Yes!’ Mads grinned. ‘At Rolls-Royce. I start next month after we’re back from Australia.’

  ‘You’re going to Australia?’ Cord said, not sure if she’d misheard.

  ‘Yep. We’re going to visit Aunt Jules. She wants to meet Ben.’ Ben nodded, Mads nodded in sync and Cord thought how alike they seemed these days. Their blonde hair the same colour, their eyes – his blue, hers a deep dark grey – with similar expression, the jawlines both set, determined, the mouth quick to smile. ‘Going to Melbourne, Sydney, the Gold Coast and then home. Four weeks. I can’t wait.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Ben.

  ‘Are you going to stay in Bristol?’ Hamish asked.

  She nodded. ‘Ben wanted to move to London, but I said not yet. He’s got these two productions lined up in Bristol and a film job, haven’t you?’

  ‘Where?’ demanded Cord. ‘That’s wonderful.’

  Ben said, ‘It’s just doing a bit of second AD work. It’s a comedy, they’re filming at Pinewood. Friend of Simon’s. You know, Cord, Simon Chalmers, Mumma and Daddy’s old mucker.’ He hesitated, about to say something. ‘Who knows. But it should be good experience. And it pays, which is something.’

  ‘Simon Chalmers is a terrific director,’ said Hamish. ‘I saw his production of that Shaffer play last year. Great stuff. You are funny, you Wildflowers, you know everyone.’

  There was a slight pause, and then Cord said, ‘Shall we get the bill?’

  ‘We could go for a drink somewhere, have a look round Soho,’ said Ben, hopefully. ‘We’re staying at Mumma and Daddy’s tonight – the later we get back the better.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ said Mads,
as Hamish asked curiously, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, there’s always some drama on with them, you know,’ said Ben, casually. ‘Daddy’ll have been drinking, Mumma won’t like the new script they’ve sent over for On the Edge, they’ll pretend everything’s fine in front of us . . .’ He trailed off and looked across the gingham tablecloth at his sister, who smiled.

  ‘Where were you thinking of going?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know. What about that pub Daddy took us to before the matinee of Cinderella? We walked past it on the way here. It looked pretty much the same, funnily enough.’

  Cord nodded. ‘Great idea. Although this time, please don’t be sick with nerves in the loo.’

  Ben laughed. ‘I won’t. Actually—’ He looked at Mads, who nodded. ‘Can we just say something, before we go? We really do want to toast something, toast it properly. We wanted to tell the two of you before we tell the parents.’ He moved closer to Mads.

  ‘We’re engaged,’ she said, and leaned back, as if dodging a blow.

  Hamish stood up, hands clapped to his face. ‘Madeleine! Benedict! This is wonderful news.’ He stepped around the tiny table, knocking against another diner. ‘Sorry. Apologies.’ He put his hand on the shoulder of the lady he’d hit; she smiled up at him, her eyelashes actually fluttering. ‘Give me a hug. I’m delighted.’ He embraced Ben, enfolding Mads in with him. ‘Wonderful!’

  Cord sat still, watching him, keeping a smile on her face. Ben disentangled himself from Hamish’s embrace, patting him on the back. He stood on the other side of the table from his sister.

  ‘Are you pleased, Cordy?’ he said. Mads, still in Hamish’s arms, looked back at her, her eyes darting from brother to sister.

  Cord blinked. ‘Of course,’ she said. She stood up, stumbling slightly. ‘Of course I bloody am.’

  She came around to their side of the table and hugged Mads, feeling her thin frame, the silky sheet of hair on her own cheek, the smell of her, almonds.