by Alice Jolly
Sex was always there, through the laughter and the tears. And even at the times when she hated Rufus with a black passion, she had still lain awake at night, waiting for him to come back from the theatre, her body hot with longing while her mind was filled with contempt for him. Of course, it was sex as a substitute for love, as a substitute for intimacy, but she had valued it all the same. The sex – the whole extreme, brutal performance of it – made them like two people who have committed a crime together. It created a bond between them that went far beyond mere love.
And this is your daughter? the girl asks.
Yes, Lara. Yes, there – and somewhere in the back row here. Yes, she was at Frencham Heights, you know. You’ve heard of it? One of the best schools in the country. Won a scholarship and now she’s very successful in the interior design world. Or she was but she’s taking a break.
Mollie doesn’t say that she’d thought it stupid of Lara to give up the job. After all, there are still bills to be paid. Plenty of bills given all the fancy renovation which has gone on in that flat. When Lara had first taken the job, eighteen years ago, Mollie had been set against it but surely this isn’t the moment to give it up?
I do hope he will be home soon, the girl says.
Mollie looks up into the girl’s face and wonders what friendship she had with Jay. Girlfriend? Mollie hopes she was. Jay didn’t mention her but he’d have been shy.
In the kitchen Mollie puts the kettle on and pulls the armchair forward. The table is littered with envelopes for the MPs’ letters but now Mollie pushes them aside. Washing is hastily moved from a chair and urine-soaked newspaper picked up from the floor, stuffed into the bin.
Let me, the girl says.
No. No. No need.
The girl has seen the cake on the table and the cards. Your birthday?
Well, it was last week. Or at least one of my birthdays, Mollie says.
One of them?
Oh yes. I have two. Don’t you? Everyone should.
Quite right, the girl says. I think I’ll decide on another for myself.
Brightening up now, Mollie thinks, and cuts the cake. A bit old but it’ll taste all right.
Usually Rufus is here and we go over to Eastbourne. You know the Grand Hotel? Rufus has a Daimler Dart – vintage – from the sixties and we drive over in that.
Mollie remembers all the times they’ve been to the Grand, rolling along the coast road in the Daimler. Palm trees in the ballroom, and a proper band, long windows looking out over the seafront. She and Rufus glide over the parquet floor with perfect timing, twisting and turning against each other. People turn to watch because you don’t often see people dance like that now. Give it another day or two, she decides. If Rufus isn’t home by then, she’ll go and get him. What other choice does she have? She might have gone to fetch him sooner except the car is so unreliable.
Mollie hands the girl a cup of tea, tips a cat from a chair, bats another from the hearth. Oh they do smell. Mollie makes a mental note to give the kitchen a good airing tomorrow if the sun comes out.
Leave the baby with your mum, did you?
No, no. He was— I mean...
What’s his name?
Laurie.
Oh what a lovely name, Mollie says. Laurie. Lovely. Like Lawrence of Arabia or Laurie Lee. A gentlemanly-type name, but soft as well. Very romantic. Still cold are you, love? I’ll get the fire going a bit. Still a few sparks left.
Mollie looks over at Jemmy, sipping her tea. Got a bit of colour in her cheeks now. But her eyes glow too brightly, and there is some aura about her, almost as though she’s ringed by a circle of red. You wouldn’t want to touch her, she might burn you.
Some men don’t adapt well to babies, Mollie says. Makes them jealous.
No, Jemmy says, sitting forward in her chair. Sorry. No. I didn’t explain properly. I felt a bit awkward because of the pushchair and everything. But Laurie is—
Mollie feels something shift in the air. Of course, she thinks, I should have known. But still she feels the loss inside her. She had almost held that baby in her arms. She’d wanted to wash the babygrows and buy some wooden bricks and one of those baby walkers.
Oh love, she says. I’m so sorry. Poor little mite. Born into God’s arms, was he?
Jemmy nods.
Oh I am sorry, Mollie says.
Yes. It was. The girl breaks off and stares into the distance, her eyes wide and brimming. That explains it, Mollie thinks. She would like to go and give the girl a hug but she isn’t that kind of girl. She’s private, rigid and fighting all on her own.
Tell me, Mollie says. Was he beautiful?
Yes, Jemmy says. Yes. Very beautiful. Smaller than the other babies but all quite perfect and complete. Tiny hands and feet, each nail perfectly formed. Thin and his head perfectly round like a globe. And his eyes tight shut just as though he was sleeping. She wipes at her eyes with her sleeve. As she does so the material of her shirt folds back at the wrist and Mollie sees a fine skein of silver marking the flesh.
Thank you very much for asking. You’re the only person who’s ever asked.
Oh it’s a bugger, Mollie says. An absolute bugger. But what can you do? Milk, love? You comfy there? Didn’t live even for a few hours then? Shove that chair up a bit closer to the fire.
I’m expecting another baby now, the girl says. But I can’t.
No, you can’t feel any confidence, Mollie says. Of course you can’t. But it’ll work out right this time. You’ll see.
I’ve got some photographs, Jemmy says. If you’d like to see?
Mollie knows she mustn’t back out now. Yes, love, of course I’d like to see. She searches for her glasses, finds them on the back of the sink, takes the album of photographs. Might do better without her glasses. It’s a pocket-sized album with a cardboard cover decorated with pictures of daisies. Mollie opens it, considering what the right reaction might be, calculating the response that’s needed. But then she’s ambushed by the images, blurred and crooked but you can see baby Laurie there, in a little plastic cradle, with the sheets, patterned with tiny blue cars, pulled right up to his chin. His perfectly sculpted head poking up above the sheet, his eyes closed. Just like every other baby except a flower lies beside his head.
Could just pick him up and hold him against you, couldn’t you? Mollie’s voice creaks, as she turns the pages. The photos are all similar, some taken from a slightly different angle, some clearer than others. In one she can see the rubber boots which the man taking the photographs must have been wearing in the morgue. At the back of the album are photographs of a churchyard and a grave. The church is in the countryside, surrounded by a hedge, with a lych gate and low hanging yews. The tiny grave is decorated with a teddy bear and a glass vase full of field daisies.
Thank you, she says. Thank you. They’re lovely. Breaks your heart, doesn’t it? Mollie turns away. I’ll find a cosy for this pot and we’ll be able to have another in a few minutes. You know, I lost four myself. We had Lara, my daughter, that’s Jay’s mother, when I was twenty-eight. I lost them early, not like Laurie. But all the same.
I’m sorry, Jemmy says.
Well, yes, but they were miscarriages. Although – it isn’t just the flesh and blood that goes, is it? It’s the dreams and the hopes, a whole idea about the future. At least I’d one that stayed alive, but I still think of the others. Planted a tree for one. And one buried in a beautiful meadow, a shady spot under some trees, on the banks of a river.
You know, early or late – there aren’t any easy ways to lose a baby.
You’re right, love. Put them in the hospital rubbish – that’s what they do. Which is no way to treat a human being, is it? Even a human being two inches long deserves better than that.
Yes. At least we got a grave. And it does help, to know where he is.
Mollie goes to pour more tea. Her hands are numb, and cold has taken hold of every inch of her body. I love your coat, she says. With those flowers on it.
Yes, the girl says. It’s Laurie’s coat. I made it to remind me of him.
Ah yes, Mollie thinks. Everything does come back to that.
How did you learn to sew like that?
That’s what I do, the girl says. Textiles. I mean, that’s what I’m going to do.
I used to be good with the sewing machine, Mollie says. And, in fact, I’d been going to get it out because I fancy some new curtains. The cats have scratched the bottom to rags. You probably know where to get some good material?
Yes, the girl says. Yes. Of course I’ll find you some.
That’s better, Mollie thinks. Find her something to do. Don’t let her sink into all that grief. The girl starts to talk about fabrics and she brightens a little. But still she isn’t really here. Although intently present she also looks as though she’s listening for something else, some sound that might come from far in the distance.
I was going to set up a textile business, the girl says. But then Laurie died.
North Laine? Would that be a good place for material?
The thing is, the girl says, about Laurie. I know he’s quite close. I feel him with me. Sometimes I hear him crying but sometimes he’s peaceful, nestling just beside me. I know people think it’s mad, but he hasn’t really gone, not completely. I’ve been reading about it. You know that the Spiritualist Church think the dead are all around, just invisible.
Oh really? Mollie says.
Oh yes. I’ve been quite a few times. And when you’re there you can feel the dead – and the influence they have on our lives.
Mollie thinks, Best not to mess with the dead. But who’s to say? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
Of course, I’m always hoping for a message from Laurie. Well, not from him, of course, but just someone telling me he’s all right.
Mollie looks at the girl – her wide staring eyes, her taut thinness, her small hands gripped into tight fists. Tomorrow she must get out the sewing machine, get her started on the curtains, that’ll bring her out of it.
You could come along to the church with me if you like. Anyone can.
Perhaps I should. Maybe someone would know where my birth certificate is.
Mollie cuts herself another slice of cake.
Look, the girl says, you know my photographs. Look. She opens up her bag and pulls out a T-shirt with one of the photographs printed on it.
Lovely, Mollie says.
No. It’s nutty but it’s just – I suppose the question is – how do you make the dead live? The girl stops for a moment, takes a deep breath. Don’t you feel the dead are very close?
A tap drips, a cat scratches at its fleas, music plays from the end of the street. Mollie feels herself suddenly bitterly cold, drained of blood. The silence brings with it a sensation like vertigo. Mollie’s hand grips the arm of her chair.
I don’t really know anyone who is dead, she says, trying to laugh. This girl isn’t what Mollie wants her to be. She’d imagined someone simple and smiling, full of laughter and energy, straightforward and obliging. A girl with a chubby, smiling baby. Someone who would be easy to help, someone full of honest gratitude. But that’s not who this girl is at all. Mollie feels that she’s taken an irreversible step which she will later regret.
But what about your parents? the girl asks. I mean, sorry – but presumably they’re dead.
Oh yes, but I never knew my father. He was killed in the war – at Wormhout, near Dunkirk. And I didn’t keep in touch with my mother. Never got on with her – but I loved my stepfather. They died within a few weeks of each other. He had lung problems, I was told, and she had a heart attack although she was no age.
Even if you didn’t keep in touch, she must have a grave.
Mollie has never thought of Violet, her mother, as having a grave. She knew when Violet died, of course, because that was when she came into money, bought the Guest House. Of course, there must be a grave, in Worcester probably. The dead are all around us, so close that you can nearly touch them.
Mollie thinks of all those letters she sent from London after she left home. Not Known At This Address. Except that Mollie had checked, and Violet and Bertie did still live at that same white house on the hill in Worcester – 48 Langley Crescent. A stately white house, high up on a green hill, above the railway line, the allotments, the red-brick grime of the city. From the top rooms you could see the cathedral, standing on the banks of the Severn, and even the distant Malvern Hills. One of the finest houses in Worcester, her stepfather always said. Turning to look at Jemmy, what Mollie sees is herself. She remembers being that age, wanting everything to be a grand drama, too young to know that most of the dramas turn out to be sordid little accidents.
Didn’t you ever want to know?
The girl asks too many questions.
No, dear. I left when I was fourteen and never went back. And now there’s so much I can’t remember. It used to worry me that I couldn’t remember. But now I can’t even remember what it is that I can’t remember – so I don’t worry at all.
Sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked.
No, dear. No. But it was a long time ago. You know – it was the war.
Mollie thinks, Why are young people nowadays obsessed by the past? All that psychotherapy rubbish about exploring years gone by in order to understand the present. All those stories of the diaries found in the attic, the sepia photograph, the love letter hidden in the back of the photograph frame. Usually there is no mystery, only muddle. Mollie finds that life is too short for all that one needs to forget.
When she tries to picture her mother, she finds only absence. The world around her – the white house on the hill, the railway line and the allotments, laughing Bertie Fawcett with his endless presents, violets on the sloping front lawn – all that is there, but her mother exists only as a woman endlessly departing – in a fur coat, carrying a neat little leather suitcase, smooth as a conker, the clips and the buckle decorated with diamond-like studs. Although she never did carry a suitcase like that. The curtain rises but the stage is empty. A round of applause, expectant waiting, but her mother never emerges. Not every wound heals.
It wasn’t the war – that had been over for almost ten years by the time she left home. And she does think of her mother – often – dressed in furs and silk, smelling of gin and lemon, tottering slightly on her high heels. She only exists welded to Bertie’s side, so that they move awkwardly, like people in an endless three-legged race. Her mother’s face turned into the shadows, offering only a vague backward wave of her hand. At the time, she herself had never questioned. But Ludo had seen.
Come on, she says. Time for bed. It’s been a long day.
She takes the girl upstairs, goes back down again to make her a hot-water bottle. La-la-la-la-la she sings to herself but tears are forming in her eyes. Strangely it isn’t Rufus who she thinks of now, in the silences which fall on the Guest House. Instead it’s the other men. They come in layers, leaving their imprint and a jumbled collection of memories. Aftershave, starched shirts, unshaven chins, the leather seats of cars, hurried meetings in tea shops, the windows stained by rain. First, Ludo. Or was there a man before him? A man who danced with a woman in a crowded sitting room, while she, a tiny child, sat on someone’s knee clapping her hands.
The gramophone starting with a hiss, as the record glides under the needle. Paradise here, paradise close, just around this corner. They dance as she and Rufus sometimes dance, pressed close together. The woman’s hand moves on the man’s back, feeling the muscle tightening as he turns. The place where happiness is for me. The carpet – patterned red and blue – flows under their feet. The sideboard, the bookcase, the mirror over the fireplace, all kaleidoscope into each other. The wall lights, shaped like swans’ necks, blink, the line of silver tankards on the mantelpiece swirls past. The pink rosebuds on the wallpaper are bursting into bloom. Perhaps that was her mother dancing with Stanley Bunton, the father she never knew. Or maybe that mem
ory is a fragment from some film. But Ludo – she can remember every detail. And maybe all the other men were only so many roads back to him.
La-la-la-la-la. She goes back upstairs, hands the hot-water bottle to Jemmy as she lies under the patchwork bedspread, her thin arm bent over the top, her hair spread on the pillow. That daisy-decorated album of photographs lies beside her on the chair. Mollie is frightened for herself and for the girl. She’s too young, too uncompromising, too honest. Mollie knows what happens to girls like her.
24
BEFORE
Lara – Sheffield, June 1975
Lara sits at the kitchen table with her box of crayons and draws a picture of the place where they buried the baby. It wasn’t a real baby, just a plastic box containing some bloody cotton wool and paper towels. The baby was in there somewhere, Mollie said, but only the size of a baked bean. They’d wrapped the box in tissue paper, tied a ribbon round it like a birthday present, then gone on the bus to a place outside Sheffield to bury it. On the bus they’d talked about how they’d walk through the fields, find a meadow, a shady spot under some trees, maybe even a river. But the rain had come, and they didn’t have coats or proper shoes, and so they’d had to make do with a lay-by.
Lara always does a picture when a baby dies and Mollie puts them away in a special box so there’s something to remember. Donny Samuel croons on the radio. How can you ever understand how a young heart feels. How can you ever know? Mollie has got the sewing machine out and she’s about to alter a pair of checked flares for Lara which she bought in a second-hand shop. In her hand, she grips a glass of gin. Earlier in the day, when they were digging the hole in the rain, she’d been tearful but she’s smiling now. She wears dark glasses to hide the bruise but, as she peers down at a copy of The Stage, the glasses travel down her nose.
Oh-la-la. Auditioning for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the Bristol Hippodrome, she says. That’ll be good money. If Rufus doesn’t get Iago then I’m going for that – and he’ll just have to get whatever he can.