by Sara Crowe
‘I thought it might be, so I went to fetch this,’ said Aunt Coral, settling on my bed in her cosy. She was holding the bottle of wine from the cellar that she had laid down for my 18th.
‘But I’m not eighteen till January,’ I said.
‘I know, but I think it will help.’
She pulled a corkscrew out of her pocket like an alcoholic.
‘It’s a Bordeaux, so we need to let it breathe,’ she said, studying the seventeen-year-old bottle. Although a great connoisseur, she is not above buying a wine because she likes the picture on the label. She gently blew off the dust.
‘I had the telegram about your birth and the next day I chose this. It’s a Château Lafite. The finest. For good luck, long life, and bless—’
She stopped to examine the vineyard closer, and something came off in her hand. It was a damp clump of paper, on top of which you could still see the handwritten letters ‘S’ and ‘U’.
I recognised mum’s writing immediately. I’m not certain if Aunt Coral did too, but I think she took her cue from my face. I remember so clearly the way the ‘E’ would have been had it not been washed away. It would have been up very close to the ‘U’, as if it did not want to be parted from it; it was mum’s trademark way of writing my name.
There was no more script to follow, no point of familiar reference. My teeth chattered, though it wasn’t cold, and Aunt Coral was white as snow. I hadn’t looked in the cellar because Mum was afraid of spiders. She must have really wanted to be certain to hide it away from my Dad.
‘I thought we’d never find it. I stopped believing,’ I said.
‘I don’t feel ready,’ she said. Her voice was fragile but it was as if her hands belonged to a strongman. She opened out the note steadily in preparation for reading. But how could anyone ever be ready for such a thing as this? If we’d been in a film, we would have had special clothes on; we would have been in a solicitor’s, with professionals on hand in case one of us couldn’t cope. But instead we were in an attic, in ordinary lamplight and dust, with no one but each other. It wasn’t enough. We couldn’t have been any closer, yet Aunt C was far away, and at the end of the awful hunt, we were each on our own.
The sound of footsteps down the passage released us into action.
‘OK,’ I said. It was as good a word as any.
My darling Sue,
There is not a word or a number that can ever express how much I love you. I’m so sorry for what I have done. And I hope that if you are reading this on your birthday it means that you are with Aunt Coral. She is the best of aunts and sisters, and I know she will take care of you.
I was so lucky to have had you, had the joy of you all your years. The fact that I can’t bear my sadness is my weakness, not yours.
I’ve left you a bundle of things in a locker at Titford Station. The key is under the floorboard in my bedroom, and the locker is 402. This is just between you and me, please keep it private. I am sorry to be so secretive, but I do think it’s for the best.
I wonder if you’d ask Coral to put a little plaque up for me in the garden? Maybe out next to my mother’s? It’s somewhere I always liked to be.
I’m so sorry I left without saying goodbye, but you know I couldn’t have managed it.
Forgive me my darling, please forgive me.
I love you so very much,
Mum XXXXXX
Sometimes it feels as though every silver lining has a cloud. The answer I’ve been searching for ever since Mum died is finally there on paper, dotted with Aunt C’s tears and made a mash of by the drips in the cellar, but it isn’t the answer I want. It is the dawn of many more questions.
There are some things she said I feel I understand, and some that I really don’t. I understand what she means by not being able to bear her own sadness, that must be about Dad and Ivana I’m sure. But why would she go to all the trouble of hiding things in a locker? And why did she feel the need to be secretive, and why did she think it was for the best? She didn’t have anything to hide, or anything to be ashamed of that I know of. Perhaps feeling that Dad didn’t care about her drove her to hide her precious things.
Although in a way it is a grisly relief, to be sure that she really meant to do this. That it wasn’t an accidental cry for help, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. And maybe Aunt Coral is right. Maybe finding out she wasn’t who she thought she was did hurt her. She was such a sensitive person, it must have been such a shock. And she didn’t even have Dad’s companionable shoulder to cry on when she found out, because of Ivana. These thoughts are unbearable and to survive I must stop.
Aunt C checked on me about ten times before I persuaded her to go to bed. She knows that sometimes all one can do is stand by on the same roadside. I know how she’ll get through it; she’s pretty classy at comforting herself. She’ll go down and rummage in her papers, keep her radio on and get an extra quilt.
But I just want to be alone, I feel hollow, as though I have no blood, bones or veins inside me. I can only tell you that finding that note actually physically hurts.
I have put it in my sock drawer, where I can catch a glimpse of her lovely writing. To have put it in my treasure box would have felt like excluding her, shutting her away from the light, and under my pillow was too painful, and under my bed too dark. But the sock drawer is sometimes open, sometimes closed. It is very much part of my actions, and my actions are still alive. I cling to these little things like odd bits of ship wreck drifting about in an open sea.
We must carry on, we mustn’t collapse; I’ve learnt this very strongly. And if we do stop carrying on for a while, life carries on without us. And so when the sun rises, if it does, I will face the second day of the Chivalry workshop, with the best courage I can.
Even at such grave moments as this, my mind tries to balance itself with the practical. How am I going to get the key from under the floorboard in Dad’s room? He barely leaves the house when they’re there; they prefer to stay home, loving. And what could there be in the locker that is so dire and dreadful? I think there will be little sleep for me tonight.
Sunday
At about 9am, the tired sky let through a single shaft of light, which looked briefly like a followspot falling through my skylight. It woke me and I went to look out over Egham in the brand new day. But the beam was gone in a nanasecond and the clouds reformed their cover.
Loudolle has such a strong nose for unrest that she sniffed out my upset’s region, like an emotional sommelier who wanted to add some depth to it.
‘Have you got an admirer?’ she asked at breakfast, eyeing my gift of Sunday chocolates. Tornegus had brought them for me, but even they had failed to lift my mood.
‘Nice for you to have someone to take to a party – or a wedding?’
I don’t know how she knew – maybe Aunt Coral had said something – but I am constantly staggered at the extremes of Loudolle’s cruelty. My Mum is dead, it is no joke. I wonder how she would feel if, one night, after sitting up writing letters to herself, Delia committed suicide, and under a year later Ralph and some awful woman got married before Delia’s shoes had gone cold. But, as much as I hate her, I hope that she never has to know that pain, which is something I would not wish even on the devil himself.
‘It’s an admirer more than you’ve got,’ I said in reply. ‘You can’t even pull the Admiral. And it’s downhill from here on as far as your looks go, Loudolle. Then what will you have left?’
‘I think you should show me some more respect or I’m going to tell Icarus about you and his eye.’
I should’ve said ‘Tell him, then, I don’t care’, but the thought of working beside Icarus, with him knowing I bedded his eye, was just over-whelming. Though what on earth does it matter in the light of finding Mum’s note? I must have terrible pride for his dumb eye to affect me that much.
By eleven o’clock the gentlemen were forced indoors by the rain. The sky, which had been bulging with hot air, finally burst, and t
he roof, the gutters and the buddleia did not do well in the deluge. The rain was so heavy it sounded like waves crashing against a piano. I imagined when it finally stopped and the sun came out, it would be accompanied by a Caribbean steel band.
Prior to putting out buckets in which to catch all the water, Aunt Coral had arranged for Loudolle to do our hair in the drawing room before the finale banquet. It wasn’t possible to say no, because Aunt Coral wanted to wave an olive branch at Delia for being rude to her daughter. And once it became a decision, she got carried away and set up the drawing room as a salon, with nail wear and lady materials. She placed the hot seat in front of the window, so that the reluctant customer could view the downpour whilst having their hair done. Before my turn, I tried to ease my countless tensions by replying to my father’s invitation.
Dear Mr Bowl,
Your affair with Ivana Schwartz was the cause of the turmoil and distress which killed my mother and it will not surprise you to hear that I will not be attending your wedding.
You drove her to despair, you dance on her grave, and you are an offence to her memory.
S.
He no longer deserves anything from me: compassion, empathy, not even the three letters of my name. How can he marry so soon after losing her? Let alone marry the biggest moron in the whole of Scandinavia? It is an abomination. I hope that my absence at the wedding will speak much louder than words.
‘Sue,’ said Aunt Coral, leaving the hot seat. ‘Your turn.’
Aunt Coral and Delia were now both pouffed to the nines, with Aunt Coral’s hair a vengeful purple. I went into Loudolle’s chair like she was my executioner, and she went to work on me in a frenzy, while behind us the ladies applied creams.
‘Mmm, your hair is gorgeous,’ she said, but I could tell what she was thinking. Mmm, nice hair. Let me glue it and maul it for you and make you look twice your age and five times as depressed.
And my thoughts replied: Thank you, whore of deceit, but I’d have been happier without a birds nest.
She drew blood from my scalp with a deep scrape of her comb. ‘Sorry,’ she said, before whispering, ‘I’ll need to buy a new one …’
Then she backcombed my hair savagely, and wedged it out at the sides like giant wings. I did not dare to try and flatten it, I was too afraid of the consequences.
The total ransom from Loudolle’s various demands now wratches up to a £50 tariff, and as I was sitting there I realised a new problem: I don’t care so much if Icarus knows about the eye, I’ve had months to come to terms with it, but I do care if he knows I’ve been paying for him not to know. But at least Loudolle is going back in a week, so I will be able to catch up fiscally after she returns to Alpen to learn how to arrange cakes, or whatever she does when she is there. But oh, how dishonest is nature to package such a rotten fruit in such a pretty casing! It is one of the most deceitful habits of all creation.
Icarus was such a dream, and they can be difficult to let go of, every bit as difficult as trying to let go of my Mum. But that is what I need to do – let them go. Mum to her Heavenly home and Icarus to his Earthly one. But I know now that it doesn’t happen in a nanasecond, but little by little over time, with no short cuts, and this is a natural consequence of being alive – unless you are a recluse and live your life without the consequences of knowing anybody.
I wonder if I fell so badly for Icarus because I was starving for love. If I hadn’t been so starving, I probably wouldn’t have even looked at him. It was the starvation that needed attention. I needed to find other food.
But in the meantime I still felt an urgency to prevent him from knowing how starving I’d been, so I found myself in the dreadful position of having to ask Aunt Coral for a loan. We sat woman-to-woman in the drawing room, she in lavender hell and me with my bleeding stumps, and it all came out. I had no choice but to confide in her, it was the only way to survive.
‘She’s a nasty piece of work,’ said Aunt Coral, before salvaging. ‘But never mind, I think it is an enviably romantic thing, to yearn over the young man’s eye, and nothing to be ashamed of. It means that you are capable of deep love and passion, and that is a gift and a wonder. I’ll ask the Admiral if he can lend me £50 and then you can pay me back once you’ve saved up. But I’d tell Icarus about it soon, and then she won’t have anything over you. And there’ll be plenty of other Icaruses. They just don’t know you’re on the loose yet.’
She made it sound like there were hundreds of others just waiting to be informed I was free, and that when they were, all hell would break loose and I would be inundated with appointments.
‘That’s impossible,’ I said.
‘Nothing’s impossible,’ said Aunt C. ‘They gave medals to pigeons for bravery in the war you know.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No I’m not – the Dickin Medal goes to animals that have been brave, and during the last war it went to pigeons who had been spies. I always remember that when I think that something’s impossible,’ she said. Having come through the war, Aunt Coral’s got different perspectives.
Then she added, before leaving in search of Mrs Bunion: ‘If you think too much about Icarus you will miss the rest of life going on round you. Try and think about something else, and I promise it will get easier.’
She was like a gentle tide that stroked my eroded shore. That is one of the joys of talking with someone who has lived for a long time – you know that they will have done much more embarrassing things than you, and got over them, and lived long enough not to be embarrassed about them any more.
Loudolle’s plan to execute my hair worked well, for at the Banquet Tornegus looked unsettled and kept staring at it, trying to see past my wings. He wasn’t the dream like Icarus, but I knew I must try and be kind.
‘Thank you for the chocolates,’ I said, with a wink to keep him guessing.
Nigel from the Herald read us his review with our starters, which is to be four stars in this week’s issue! The excitement levels were high. Delia said she was going to explore the concept of a fashion show, with Georgette, Print and Taffeta to model. And Aunt Coral was considering therapy EHGs, for there was money to be made in despair, and the Admirals were in talks over romance, which they hope to take into consultancy.
So, contrary to preconceptions, it looked as though quite a lot could be achieved by two old ladies, three Admirals, one cleaner, one waitress-cum-author and an Egham mansion with sixteen bedrooms and rotten timbers. The fact that we made a loss on the fiscal side was small beans compared to the possibilities.
Unfortunately the day did not end at that high point.
‘Did you take the fifty pounds from my bag?’ said Aunt Coral a while later, over the coffee and petty fours.
‘No!’ I said. ‘Of course not! I wouldn’t. I didn’t. Of course not!’
‘Well, it’s gone,’ she said. She left it hanging there and it was urgent to convince her, so we went into the conservatory to discuss the matter further.
‘Please believe me, I would never go into your handbag, I know that your handbag’s your cave.’
‘Yes, of course – of course you wouldn’t. I’m going to call a meeting.’
The Green Place residents were quickly gathered in the conservatory and Aunt Coral did not beat around the bush before stating her business.
‘We have a magpie in our midst,’ she said. ‘I am missing fifty pounds from my wallet.’
An invisible camera rolled around the room, zooming in on the three Admirals, Delia, Mrs Bunion, myself, and Loudolle. Nobody spoke for several seconds, and then the menace began.
‘I saw Sue go into your bag, Aunt Coral,’ said Loudolle.
‘It’s not true!’ I said. ‘She’s lying, she’s always lying.’
‘Please leave us,’ said Aunt Coral, and the others left the room, exploding with opinions.
‘I got you that money from the Admiral, Sue, I was going to give it to you, you had no need to take it. Tell me the truth, and I won’
t judge you.’
‘But I didn’t take it, Aunt Coral; you’ve got to believe me.’
‘I’ll be in my room. I need to think.’
She tottered out with her head at an angle, for she was in deep contemplation. I wanted to run after her and wrap myself round her legs to prevent her from going, to prevent her from thinking badly of me, to make her know for sure. Instead I sank into the chair by the window and watched the rain pour like a million angry needles from a black and tarry sky.
This is Loudolle’s finest achievement to date, driving a wedgie between me and Aunt Coral.
But what no one has suggested is, what if it was the tramp?
Brackencliffe
After Van Day had departed, and idle dancing was done for the day, Pretafer learnt of the maidens’ escape, and ceased to be in good hu mour. She was so full of vengeance and spite, that she fell ill with the fever, and she lay bedriddled with a pox on her skin, and the Spinster fell on her knees in the chapel to pray for the Missie’s pitted face.
But just when they thought they had lost her, Pretafer Gibbon rallied. Yet when her cure was achieved, her face was so scarred by blisters that she needs must wear a box on her head to prevent her from a-fearing the children.
Bemeantimes, Cara was fast becoming the most beautiful girl in the land. She had tarried with loyal Fiona and Keeper in the Pasture of Sage and Parsley and they fashioned a humble dwelling in a rickety shepherd’s hut under the sky. And here they passed their days at the hearth, in peace, if in a little hunger.
‘Whyfore will you not let me look in the locket?’ said Fiona. ‘Whofore is inside it? ’Tis some handsome cousin, some Master at Arms?’
‘’Tis my Mother,’ said Cara, ‘lest I forget her image.’
Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 3