Mary didn’t seem to mind him, so he stood there with his plate, looking at her. The blazing heart. And was struck – he felt a physical jolt – by understanding. The blazing heart. That’s how his own chest felt, sometimes, when he looked at Abby. Full, bursting, ablaze. He lifted his gaze to her eyes. Did her heart hurt her? Her eyes were hurt. Yes, he thought, and felt the plate, empty now, slip from his hand to the floor. Unsurprised, he watched as it splintered into bright shards like Mary’s tears.
Kieran saved me, Cress said. They were sitting in a café Laura didn’t recognise, in a street that might have been familiar, beneath its new façade of glass and decking and steel, if she wanted it to be. But familiarity was something she was still not sure she needed, even as this old woman with eggshell eyes pulled her back to the past.
They had been there for fifteen minutes and Laura had barely said a word. She was already tired and restless when she’d walked into St Barnabas; the relentless heat and interrupted sleep had sucked out her optimism. She’d stopped briefly to look at some furniture at the shop door, then wandered down an aisle of cheap crockery and glass, thinking of her mother’s plates and cups. Turning into the second aisle she looked up to see, just metres away, an elderly woman with neat silver-grey hair pinned back behind her ears. She was wearing a straight linen dress belted at the waist, a gold bracelet. Lipstick. Her hands were busy with a shelf of cups; Laura’s overall impression was of tidiness, order. Laura stopped without knowing why. The woman turned from the shelf she was sorting. Her eyes flashed surprise first, or confusion; she pursed her lips briefly over possible sounds. Impossibly, Laura thought she heard her own name. She moved towards the old woman and was unsure, then, where her own voice came from. Hello, she heard herself say. I’m Laura. I’m looking for your grandson.
Cress was quiet, her lips still pressed together, even as they walked to the café, as they settled opposite each other at a square wooden table. When Laura began to explain the bequest, Cress had frowned. Then she finally spoke. For Kieran, she said slowly, inclining her neat grey head. She spoke very clearly, precisely. Into this tangled space walked a waitress with a black apron slung low on her hips. Coffee? the girl asked. Tea?
Orange pekoe, said Cress. And began to talk about being saved. I really do think he kept me alive. The waitress still hovered. Laura asked for espresso, watched the waitress tuck her order pad into a pocket in the front of her apron and walk away. Arriving when he did, just after Ed died.
She looked up. My husband, Cress said. Laura nodded. He was fifty-five. Simply stopped breathing in mid-sentence. That’s what they said, the people at the mill. They said he looked like he was thinking hard, trying to find words. Then he fell. As if he’d been tipped from his chair.
The old woman’s eyes were steady, but in her voice there was still surprise. Laura followed Cress’s gaze and watched a figure topple through air, the unfinished sentence suspended over a desk, over a chair.
As you can imagine, Cress went on, looking at Laura levelly, it was a very bad time. And the church was no comfort. Well, apart from the singing. She smiled. We had the whole choir at the funeral. The Requiem Canticles, beautiful – everyone said. I felt like I’d left my body myself.
Through the low background murmurs of the café Laura heard the old woman speak and thought, momentarily and madly, that Cress too might be singing. The tone, the pauses, the rhythm. The beautiful enunciation. Yes, Laura said, yes, but felt hollow, thinking of the short service she had planned for Angela, the absence of ceremony.
Their tea and coffee arrived in a clatter of pots and cups and spoons. Cress watched the girl as she retreated. Waited until she was almost out of sight before turning her head to say: And I think I’d like some scones. The girl stopped, glanced around, but Cress had turned back to the table and was organising her tea.
Laura looked up at the girl blankly, and shrugged. Two serves, she said.
The rest of it, the church – Cress shrugged too, playing with sugar. Nothing. Gone. But then – she withdrew her hands, they disappeared into her lap – I thought it was something temporary. People go in and out of faith, I’ve watched them. I think I just felt a bit negligent, a bit stupid really, as if I’d misplaced something valuable. Put it down somewhere and then couldn’t find it again.
One hand reappeared. She poured tea. I still went through all the motions. I’d walk outside at night and look at the sky. I’d ask why. He was too young, I’d say. It’s too early. Stirred, tapped the spoon softly on the side of the cup. She half smiled, tasted it, then held the cup with the fingers of both hands. Too early! She looked into Laura’s eyes. As if there was a grander plan. As if it was anything more than bad luck.
Laura drained her cup. The coffee wasn’t strong enough or hot enough. She felt her chance, pushed away the cup and opened her mouth to speak. As she did the waitress materialised with a tray and filled the table with scones, butter and jam. Ah, Cress breathed, lowering her cup. She reached for the plate. I miss scones. The only cake Kieran will eat is date loaf.
Kieran stood for a moment, his empty hands tingling, surveying the scattered pieces of china. He was thinking of waves slapping against rocks, the explosion of water; there were elbows and stars and triangles of china all around the room. He hurried to get the dustpan, dragged the brush in wide arcs across the wooden floor. Some of the pieces it retrieved were tiny, chips and slivers that would reveal him if Cress found them with her feet. He redoubled his efforts, pushing the brush beneath her chair, around the dresser, under the bed. Where his insistent sweep dislodged something solid, pulling it partly out with the brush. He peered more closely beneath the drapes of the bed covers.
Between the movements of tea pouring and drinking, Cress watched Laura’s face. Her belly had been bubbling with nervousness since they sat down; she felt she was perched on the edge of something and might fall. Her fingers, she realised, were twisted around the handle of the teapot too firmly, there was a dull ache in her joints. She took a breath, collected herself. What will be will be, she found herself thinking. So she listened, or pretended to. She could often learn more from a person’s face, she had found, than from anything they had to tell her.
So in the silences, she kept watching. She was searching for the things that had survived, whatever was there, innate, from when Laura was a child. Her memory had its own snapshot of the girl: in this she had the luminous but unforgiving demeanour of youth. She’d been a couple of years above Shelley at the local school, Cress recalled. This was before the town exploded, a time when faces might still be known. This face, anyway: Cress had always known this face. What Cress remembered was tallness, an angular body still finding its shape. And bright, restless eyes too often soured with resentment, eyes that regarded the world around her and found it wanting: her school, her town, her own slow and dreary movement towards adulthood, and freedom.
Now she watched Laura toy with her espresso – espresso – and tried to see that girl. Perhaps it was something about her mouth. The creases at its corners. They might have been dimples when she was young – now they creased even when she grimaced. She was a serious woman, Cress thought, serious even about herself. She remembered the teenager passing her on the street, the furious eyes. Well, lots of teenagers looked like that. It passed. With Laura, the fury had dissolved to a wry watchfulness, as if she too was anticipating a blow. Was ready for it.
But then, Cress reminded herself, Laura had just lost her mother. Had become, at whatever age she was – fifty-two, fifty-three? – an orphan. Did it matter to her? She remembered the death of her own parents, the unexpected shock of the abyss that opened suddenly between her and her own death, now that they were gone. Mortality stared straight at her, with no one left in between.
Now the younger woman was looking at her intently. Cress, she said, and Cress found herself surprised by gentleness, tell me about Kieran. Why do you think he saved y
ou? Laura held a butter knife in her right hand. Cress noticed the small bulge of muscle beneath the short sleeves of her T-shirt.
She picked up the flat half of her scone. Not nearly as interesting as the top, all crisp and uneven. She sighed. He did what God couldn’t, she said, then looked up. Born a week after Ed died. Imagine those two days on the calendar, year after year. She scooped up butter, lots of it, then jam. Red. Kieran has some kind of syndrome, something obscure. She spread the jam to the edges of the scone, leaving no gaps. But we didn’t know that until later. For a while there was just a sense that he was different somehow, that he wasn’t quite with us. He took ages to respond to things, voices, light. She bit into the scone and chewed slowly, looking over Laura’s shoulder.
But despite the butter, the sweetness of jam, the scone was dry in Cress’s mouth. She struggled to swallow. Too many thoughts, there were always too many thoughts. She swigged tea to wash it all away. After all the tests I had this dead feeling, she said. It was as if I was expecting it, as if I was waiting for the next blow to fall. I don’t know why. For a while it felt like punishment, another cross to bear. It took me a while to realise it wasn’t that at all. That he was a gift. To me, almost more than to his parents.
Kieran sat on the floor with the parcel of white cotton, the gathered shards of china beside him forgotten. His hands were on the oblong shape, his fingers flared, divining its contents. Already, of course, there were things he knew it wasn’t: hard things, like books or plates or glass. It wasn’t a box. Not unless it was a miniature, hidden beneath the layers of fabric he was sure he could feel through the sheet. Within seconds he had convinced himself it was treasure, folded over and over in disguise, just waiting for his hands. A secret treasure. And this was the other thing he knew: that it was contraband. One more piece for Cress’s hoard, for sure.
He didn’t wait to open it. But he was careful, noting the way the sheet was tucked, memorising the creases. Finally, when the dress was revealed and he held it at arm’s length before him, he was disappointed. A dress. An old one. He shook it, making sure it was just a dress, that it hid nothing else, no secret pockets or compartments. It didn’t look like treasure at all.
Laura looked at Cress across the scattering of crumbs on the table, the smears of jam in a dish. The old woman looked directly back at her. She appeared to be waiting for something, expecting some response. Her eyes glittered briefly; then she shrugged. Laura said: And he lives with you? Not with his parents.
He loves it here, Cress said evenly. It suits us both. And Shelley comes down a lot.
Suddenly the old woman leaned forward in her chair. Laura was startled, thought of a hungry bird, its beak jutting sharply. Laura, Cress said, narrowing her eyes again. Laura. Have you come here to talk about Angela?
The words dropped to the table between them, echoed back at Laura from the empty cups, the tea leaves in the strainer. About Angela, yes. And Kieran. She’s left him a painting – she stopped. She had never, she realised, got further in her own thoughts than this. I left this place a long time ago, Cress. Angela and I didn’t really know each other well. She stopped again, tilting on the edge of saying more, of saying too much. Now I’m trying to find out as much as I can. To find someone who might have known her better than me.
He knelt and slowly re-folded the dress, his hands deliberate, trying not to fumble. This happened once, in a momentary panic about fingerprints, and the dress slumped and fell over his knees. He leaned down close to the fabric, and then away, making sure, remembering he had washed his hands before making his sandwich. Then, as he rearranged the folds of the bodice, his fingers drifted over the beads, the tiny pearls.
He let them linger there, his fingertips reading the texture, now smooth, now hard, now oddly pliant. In the soft light through Cress’s window, the tiny shapes seemed alive, like oysters. Oysters and pearls, he thought, blinking at them. The jewels of the sea. This gladdened him. Perhaps it could be treasure after all.
I’d never heard your grandson’s name before the lawyer told me. Laura was playing with her empty cup, twisting it around, interrogating its sides as if it might tell her what she wanted to know. I don’t know anything about him. Where he lives, how old he is. But he’s the only person she’s left a painting to. In the Will. So – she looked up and shrugged.
Cress was staring at her now. Laura wondered if she had said too much. She wanted suddenly to be away from this woman’s gaze, away from her strange silences and mad eyes and inexplicably guilty hands.
Kieran and Angela were friends, Cress said at last, slowly. Unusual friends. Several seconds ticked over. Cress seemed to cast her net for the right reply. Finally, Unusual in their connection, she said. She was over seventy, to start with. He’s forty years younger. She stopped, frowned. But they seemed to meet as equals. That’s how it was for Kieran anyway, that’s how he talked about her.
Laura watched Cress hesitate. You have to know, Cress went on, that Angela chose Kieran. Not the other way round. She encouraged the friendship. Then stopped, questioning the truth of it. Well, that’s what I thought. But truly, I don’t suppose I know. How do we ever know these things? I’m still looking for ways to explain it.
After he’d replaced the parcel, removed the broken china, wrapped and buried it at the bottom of the wheelie bin, Kieran remembered the episode of ‘Whiz Kids’, still on pause on the video machine. He sat down and pushed the play button, but the relentless excitement of the host – which he could usually tolerate – grated against the quiet he’d carried with him out of Cress’s room. He gave it one more minute, long enough to hear someone spell hygiene with the ‘i’ and the ‘e’ round the wrong way, and ejected the tape.
Back in the kitchen, he took an apple from the fruit bowl, rubbed it thoughtfully against his trouser leg. Then walked outside, where the sun – bright, surprising – obscured and obliterated it all: the noises and surprises, even the glint of treasure. It coated him in happiness. He set off down the hill towards town, feeling loose in his skin. Don’t sit under the apple tree, he sang, kicking stones, with anyone else but me, anyone else but me, anyone else but me.
Cress sat toying with the uneaten part of her scone. It had all turned out to be much more complicated than she intended. She looked carefully at Laura’s face, watching for accusation. But Laura’s eyes were unbetrayed. Cress took a deep breath. She would have to tell her baldly, then, about Kieran. But she would have preferred questions. Questions that would lead her. She felt the weight of all the wrong ways there were to tell this story.
She wondered how to start. Beginnings were important, she knew, they had to be right. She watched a dry leaf flip across the brick floor of the café. Remembered Kieran’s face on the mornings after Angela’s. The weary elation. The sureness. Her own shock and wariness when she realised where he was going, who he was visiting.
Then she let the words tumble out. Partly in frustration at her inadequacy, partly because, in the struggle to explain, she was surprised by a new thought, one she didn’t want to speak. Angela, she saw suddenly, hadn’t just chosen Kieran, she had annexed him. His thoughts, his dreams. The word went around and around her head silently, while she spoke others out loud to Laura, explaining the night-time friendship, the smells Kieran brought home – oil paint and coffee, turpentine – and the music. He’d even seemed to look different, sometimes for days, his range of expressions altered. He seemed to expand, she heard herself say.
But the notion of annexation was still there, and she ran her hand over her head as if to pat the idea down, to keep it there. She wanted to think about it, the way it implied that Kieran was a territory, a possession, and Angela some superior power. Annexation, appropriation. Then it hit her.
Adoption.
Kieran walked down towards the fruit shop. Today there were pumpkins, big yellow halves mooning at him from the sidewalk bins. The sigh
t cheered him. Cress had a pumpkin patch, an unruly thicket of vines and leaves that splayed out beyond the garden. Bold, she called it. Kieran loved it when she did, imagining the vine as a naughty child as it escaped the fence and made for the scrub beyond the clothes line. Sometimes, in the garden, he watched the plate-shaped leaves wilt in the midday sun, and monitored the tiny marbles bulging into fruit. Now he stood across the road from the shop, staring absently. Beside the pumpkins there were oranges in mounds. Open boxes of carrots. Today is a yellow day, he thought.
This was the corner where Abby always left him. Where she drew the line, assuming he wouldn’t follow, that what he knew about her stopped there. Some afternoons they’d wander down here to the shops, and he’d convince her to walk the whole block before she left. They’d walk up past the drapery, the offices, the snack bar and back again. Just to extend the moment. To push time out. She knew he did this, though, and he knew she knew. As soon as they’d done the loop she’d pull away, proving her separateness. He didn’t mind. They were separate. They were like an egg, he thought now, the yellow and the white. The thought pleased him. He liked eggs.
He was thinking egg-shaped thoughts when he caught sight of her, sitting on the ground at the edge of the park. She was brushing her fingers over the grass, staring intently. He sauntered up, crouched down beside her without saying a thing. Now he could see she occasionally plucked a stalk and examined it before casting it aside. His gaze moved between her face and her fingers. Finally she said: We’re looking for four-leafed clover.
He understood immediately and joyfully that ‘we’ was both of them, Abby and Kieran. Dropped to his knees and stared at the ground. Had to think for a moment, remembering. Four-leafed clover. Him and his mother looking, years ago. It’s good luck, his mother had said. But to Kieran’s eyes they all had four leaves. He knew he had to look very hard.
The China Garden Page 9