The Anniversary

by Hilary Boyd

  When she told Eric about the baby a week later, in a phone call spanning the entire globe, he’d been furious, uncomprehending. He reminded her that this was his baby too. But he hadn’t been angry for long.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ he’d asked. ‘I can come home.’

  But Eve had heard the dragging reluctance in his voice. She’d quickly assured him she was managing just fine. Which was true, until the blood.

  Arthur had finished his ‘peas’, as he called Rice Krispies, and was loudly slurping the milk straight from the bowl, much of it cascading down his chin.

  ‘Bibi’s coming today,’ she said, her voice artificially cheerful.

  Arthur grinned, banging his bowl down and clapping his hands. ‘Bibi coming!’ he shouted.

  Eve had expected a dutiful grandmother rather than a devoted one, and had warned Eric before the birth, ‘Mum won’t be much help.’ In fact, Eve had been – and still was – almost jealous to see the tenderness on Stella’s face when she looked at Arthur, to witness the hours she would sit patiently playing with her grandson, the way she would ask after Arthur before finding out how Eve was when she called. There was no stored consciousness of her behaving that way with Eve, not ever.

  The landline rang and Eve automatically glanced at the clock. Eric was four hours behind them in Antarctica: it was too early for him. He’d called the day before yesterday, anyway. He tried to ring at midday on Wednesdays and Sundays, planned so they wouldn’t miss each other – the signal was too erratic for Skype. But as the weeks went on, he didn’t always remember and neither did she. Their talks were becoming stilted, constrained by the different lives they were leading – him, hunkered down with his fellow scientists in darkness and sub-zero temperatures; her, looking after Arthur and basking in the summer sun – the big lie about the progress of her pregnancy making her edit every word she uttered.

  Probably someone trying to persuade me to claim back PPI I never had in the first place, she decided, not bothering to get up and answer it. But a minute later her mobile rang.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘How’s it going, sweetheart? How’s the boy?’

  Before his recent retirement, her father had always sounded rushed when he rang; it felt to Eve as if it were more duty than pleasure. But these days he liked to settle in for a good natter.

  ‘I’m OK … you know, surviving.’

  ‘Can’t be easy, all on your own. Listen, we’re down tonight. I thought we might pop over tomorrow, bring some lunch?’

  ‘Yeah … you haven’t forgotten Mum’s coming today?’

  There was silence at the other end of the phone. ‘Oops.’ She heard him take a deep breath. ‘Better get used to it, though, eh? If she’s going to be around for a while.’

  ‘Will Lisa want to come?’

  ‘Of course! I’m hardly going to leave her alone in the cottage, am I?’

  He sounded as if the idea were absurd, which it was, obviously, since Lisa was his new wife. But Eve longed to have her father and mother to herself, together for the first time since she could remember, aside from the terse handovers of her childhood.

  Then, Stella would keep her father firmly on the doorstep while Eve got her things together, as if he were a Jehovah’s Witness or someone equally unwelcome. And Jack’s open invitations to her mother to have lunch or supper as a family, or even just a cup of tea at the Sunday-night pick-up, were always bluntly refused. It had proved the stumbling block every time she and Eric talked about getting married. The thought of her hostile parents snarling at each other over her wedding vows was something of a deal-breaker. Although, according to her Grandma Patsy, it hadn’t always been like that between them.

  ‘OK, but Lisa and Mum have never met and you know what Mum’s like.’

  Her father laughed. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. There’s absolutely no animosity between me and Mum any more.’

  ‘Really, Dad? How do you know? You haven’t spoken to her since I was about fifteen, and you were hardly mates then.’

  As soon as Eve was old enough to make her own decisions, she had chosen to see her parents separately and avoid the unbearable tension that existed between them. Even when Arthur was born, she’d made sure the visits to see their first grandchild were staggered. Bringing them together again was a risk, Eve was well aware.

  ‘I have spoken to her, occasionally …’

  Eve could tell from his tone how that had gone.

  ‘Well, I’m telling you right now, there’ll be no sniping over the lunch table. I’ve got enough stress in my life at the moment. I’d even rather you talked about Brexit.’

  She heard her father laugh. He was a passionate European, spoke two of its languages and claimed a lifelong love affair with France. But he had always hated the Union – never wanting to join the Common Market, even back in the seventies – and had battled hard to turn his mostly Remain friends during the referendum – despite his cajoling monologues invariably falling on deaf ears.

  ‘I’ll behave, promise.’

  His words were not reassuring. Because Jack Holt, Eve knew, was capable of powering through tricky situations, deliberately ignoring the tension around him in his quest for an answer. It was what had made him such a good political journalist. Where anyone else might baulk and step back, Jack carried on regardless.

  Eve admired this trait, knowing herself incapable of such self-assurance. But it wasn’t going to be much help if her mother and stepmother kicked off. Or her mother and father. Or, indeed, her stepmother and father – because it was not unknown for Lisa and her dad to bicker about what he was eating, for example, or how much he was drinking.

  ‘How’s Lisa?’ she asked, because she felt she had to. She hadn’t exactly bonded with her stepmother.

  ‘She’s OK,’ Jack sounded doubtful. ‘I think she works too hard. She has to be up in the middle of the night, practically, to do the breakfast show.’

  Eve couldn’t bring herself to say anything sympathetic, so she murmured, ‘Hmm,’ in the hope he would see it as such, and changed the subject, making arrangements for Saturday.

  Whatever she thought of Lisa, Eve knew she just had to suck it up, because her father seemed to love her. And she didn’t begrudge him his happiness, he’d been pretty much alone for a long time. She also didn’t want to lose the bond she had latterly forged with her dad.

  Eve had been in awe of Jack, as a child. He was a charismatic figure, who made their time together a whirlwind of activity and fun, but with whom she never felt totally at ease. It was only since Eve had grown up and become independent that she and her father had started to get to know each other properly.

  He had pitched up unannounced one Saturday at the pub on the river where she worked. ‘What are you doing here, Dad?’ she’d asked, amazed to see him. Since she’d reached eighteen the previous year and the access visits had stopped, they rarely met up. ‘Thought you might fancy a Chinese after your shift?’ he’d replied. Then he sat quietly with a half of Peroni and waited for her. Over the meal, they talked and talked. It was the first of many such Saturdays, and they’d gradually begun to relax with each other, forming a bond that had been missing in Eve’s childhood. She was not going to throw away all that effort over Lisa.

  3

  Stella hated Kent with a passion. Unfair as it was to tar a whole county with a prejudice not of its making, as soon as she turned onto the A21 and saw the familiar wooded landscape, small fields and sunken lanes of the High Weald, Stella would feel her gut clench and a miasma rise up through her body like a living thing. The landscape literally made her want to be sick, even after all these years – although she had very good reasons for feeling this way.

  She had been dismayed when Eve told her Eric had landed a fantastic job in a research facility on the outskirts of Ashford and that they were looking for houses within a thirty-minute drive. She’d prayed they would go east or south, north, anywhere but west towards the Weald. But the single-kiln oast house had spoke
n straight to Eric and Eve’s heart, despite the work that needed doing on the ramshackle building, despite them not really being able to afford it, and despite the huge amount of repair the beautiful, mature garden would require. Stella had said nothing.

  Now she was lost, wandering the Kent lanes, too churned up by painful memories to concentrate on the various landmarks. It was boiling hot and she hadn’t brought a bottle of water, hadn’t eaten lunch and the car needed petrol. This was only her third visit since her daughter moved to the country six months before. The beginning of the year had been dogged by a severe bout of shingles, which had knocked Stella sideways for weeks. But she’d thought she knew the route well enough not to bother with the satnav, which she now had to drag from the glove compartment, plug in and fix to the knob on the dashboard of the old Mercedes.

  She partially blamed Iain for her mood. He’d really unnerved her this morning. Sitting at the counter in his narrow kitchen, his rough, square gardener’s hand poised over the plunger of the cafetière, he had suddenly fixed his gaze on her intently.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Stell,’ he’d said.

  Puzzled, she’d asked, ‘How do you mean? Careful about what?’

  He’d hesitated, before replying, ‘There’s just something … A sort of turmoil …’

  Stella waited. Iain would do this: have a sort of psychic moment. She put it down to his spiritual training and usually took his pronouncements with a pinch of salt. He’d joined a Sannyasin community in Sedona when he was in his twenties, followed the controversial guru, Osho, as he toured the ashrams of India – after Osho had been deported for suspected fraud in the US, that is – then moved on to spend time with Buddhist monks in a Japanese monastery in Osaka, where he learned a lot of his landscaping skills. He finally saw some sort of light and realized he needed to come home. But he claimed to be able to ‘see’ things.

  When he didn’t speak, she asked, finding herself unaccountably nervous, ‘Is this about Eve?’

  He considered her question, then shook his head. ‘No … About you.’

  Stella had felt a shiver go down her spine then. ‘You’re frightening me.’

  Iain had blinked, smiled. ‘Sorry. Don’t know where that came from. I think it’s change I’m seeing.’ He paused. ‘But change isn’t necessarily a bad thing.’

  Stella had not wanted to ask any more. She was anxious enough herself, without being wound up by vague predictions of something sinister in the woodshed. But his words haunted her, and when she went home to pack, she had felt almost panicky at the thought of leaving the security of her flat.

  Her case was ready in the hall, the fridge emptied, the rubbish taken to the bins and the TV unplugged. She’d known she had one more thing to do before she left. Going to the chest of drawers in the bedroom, she pulled out the seven-inch-wide rectangular bamboo box. It was wrapped loosely in Jonny’s pale-blue cellular blanket – he always rubbed the blanket’s soft satin trim against his nose when he went to sleep. She’d carried it over to the bed and sat down, cradling the ashes of her dead son between her hands, feeling the small, rough striations in the tan wood beneath her fingers where the old box had begun to warp. Closing her eyes, she had taken some deep breaths, waiting till she felt the familiar connection that always soothed her soul.

  For a mad moment she wondered if she might take the box with her to Eve’s – she was going to be away for so long. But the thought of moving it, perhaps dropping it, damaging it in some way – or even her daughter finding it and asking awkward questions – decided her. So she carefully wrapped it up in the blue blanket again and laid it at the back of the drawer, where it had resided for over a quarter of a century. She’d quickly wiped away the tears that sprang to her eyes as she did so, almost angry with herself for giving in to them in the first place.

  ‘Bibi, Bibi!’ Arthur rushed at her as she got out of the car, his little face alight with joy, his bare feet skimming over the gravel on the drive in a way no adult’s could as he flung himself into her arms. She swung him up and buried her face in his hot little neck, kissing him, squeezing him tight. It touched her to the core that he was so happy to see her.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she called to her daughter, Arthur heavy in her arms. Eve hovered on the edge of the grass, also barefoot, dressed in a worn white cotton sundress, her pale skin freckled on her forearms, a delicate blue tattoo snaking down the right side of her neck, along the top of her shoulder and curving on to her upper arm. It was a thin column made up of Chinese characters, which had some philosophical significance Eve had explained when she’d first had it done, aged seventeen. But Stella hadn’t been listening back then. She remembered being horrified at what she saw as a shocking disfigurement – still red-raw and painful at the time – of her young daughter’s body. They’d had a distressing row – one of many, mostly about Eve’s relentless desire, as Stella saw it, to needle her mother. But Stella had got used to the tattoo over the years and now rather liked it, although she had never said as much to Eve.

  Now, she thought her daughter looked beautiful, majestic, with her glorious hair burnished by the sun, her tall figure gently rounded by pregnancy. Always full of a restless energy in the past – taking in her stride the long, physically demanding hours at the children’s charity – Eve looked settled and seemed to have taken to the slower pace of the country and motherhood.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Eve hugged her with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

  Stella found, in spite of her misgivings about her stay, that she was glad too. Eve’s welcoming embrace dispelled the lurking panic to some degree. And the air was so fresh, the garden quiet. She took a deep breath. It was a relief to be out of the stifling city.

  ‘I got lost again … Idiotic,’ she said, as they went inside and through to the cool kitchen. Part of the room had been built into the circular kiln-tower of the oast house – where the hops for the beer had been dried over a charcoal fire in the past – the rest extended into the adjoining rectangular area, where the kitchen table sat and from which glass doors opened on to a stone terrace and wide lawn. The terracotta kitchen tiles – old and stained in places, the cement holding them together crumbly and darkened by age – were dotted, like an assault course, with various of Arthur’s toys. The place needed a major update, but the structure was good, the room spacious and light. A lick of paint and some new kitchen cupboards – the current ones were eighties varnished pine – should do for now.

  Eve raised her eyebrows. ‘No satnav?’

  ‘I thought I knew the way by now.’

  Accepting the cup of tea Eve made, Stella sat down at the wooden table.

  ‘Cake?’ Eve reached for a faded green-and-gold-striped tin beside the sink. ‘I made it myself. I need to bake at the moment … Some stupid pregnancy thing, I suppose.’

  ‘I’d absolutely love some.’ Stella usually tried to avoid sugar – except wine, of course – her spreading stomach a reminder that her days of eating what she wanted and getting away with it were long gone now that she’d reached middle age. But the cake looked so delicious and she was starving. She’d only had one bite of toast at breakfast, before Iain changed the mood and took away her appetite, and no lunch at all. She was in need of a major comfort hit. ‘How’s the baby?’ she asked, glancing at the swell of her daughter’s stomach.

  ‘OK. Nothing much to report.’

  ‘No spotting? No cramps?’

  Eve shook her head. ‘Touch wood. My next check-up isn’t for three weeks now, so they can’t be that worried.’

  ‘But you’re worried,’ Stella said.

  Her daughter nodded slowly, then her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Oh, Evie, I’m sure it’ll be all right.’ Stella reached for her hand, hating herself for giving empty assurances; the success of Eve’s pregnancy wasn’t in her gift. But her daughter’s face looked so vulnerable, she couldn’t help herself. ‘Now I’m here, you can rest properly. I’ll do all the he
avy stuff in the house, look after Arthur.’ Both women turned to gaze at the little boy, who had a melted chocolate finger spread around his mouth as he sat in his chair at the end of the table, blissfully sucking on the now-naked biscuit.

  Later that evening, with Arthur finally in bed – having endlessly played up for his grandmother’s benefit – Stella and Eve were sitting in the evening sun on the paved terrace outside the kitchen, a fat beeswax candle on the round wrought-iron table between them. Stella had a glass of Chianti from a bottle she’d pulled from the rack at home as she raced out of the door, Eve was drinking an alcohol-free beer. An early wasp was busy on the table edge with a piece of macaroni cheese left over from Arthur’s supper.

  Eve, avoiding Stella’s eye and looking down the garden, said, ‘Dad and Lisa are coming over tomorrow.’

  Stella’s breath caught in her throat. Jack. They had been apart for half her adult lifetime, and it was a decade at least since they had last met. But the thought of seeing him was oddly painful … And she knew why, of course. His presence alone would bring back the heartbreaking memories. Especially at this time of year. Midsummer was always so difficult for her, and, she imagined, for Jack, too.

  ‘Mum?’

  Eve was watching her, a slight frown on her face.