Come Away With Me

by Sara MacDonald

  Ruth tried to smile but Flo saw she felt hurt and isolated. She said gently, ‘Until this weekend you seemed to be very much enjoying your life with us. Danielle and I love having you on board. You have been a breath of fresh air. You are doing the most marvellous job for us.’

  Ruth’s face lit up. ‘Am I?’

  ‘You know very well you are.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave, Flo. I know everything you say is probably true. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I was upsetting everyone.’

  ‘You have absolutely nothing to apologise for. Angst and guilt go with being a mother, I’m told. Now, are you going to cheer up and start enjoying life again?’

  ‘Yes. I understand. Shape up or ship out!’

  Flo laughed. ‘My dear Ruth, I don’t think I was quite as blunt as that!’

  Adam was sleeping but I couldn’t sleep. I walked barefoot around the house listening to the birds down on the estuary and watching the shape of the huge fir tree in the dark. The house breathed around me. The wind blew the branches across the skyline and the thin wavering shadows crossed the window, moved over the floor in gusts like invisible footsteps.

  I could not get Ruth’s words or her face as she uttered them out of my head. Disturbed, I kept pushing them away, not wanting to explore the truth that lay subterranean and complex between us.

  I thought of Adam, his small, eager face so like Tom’s. I thought of the pleasure he gave me within the close circle of this house we shared.

  My guilt lay in the ease with which it had all so seamlessly come about. I did not think I had been calculating, but I knew my empathy with Adam had made me understand, deep down, that this was always what he wanted. Now, I felt blessed each day because he was with me. I thought everything had worked out for everyone.

  How very convenient, a little voice inside me muttered. I curled, chilled, into the chair. Something else had occurred to me as the days passed. Had Ruth’s rage and bitterness been solely about Adam, or did it go deeper, back to our childhood?

  When she spent all those hours at our house, year after year as she grew up, did she secretly, subconsciously, harbour feelings of rage and bitterness at the life she had been given, the parents she had? Did she long for Bea and James to be hers? Did she long to be me?

  I looked out into the dark. Did I mind her living in the house Tom and I had shared? Suddenly I felt deeply lonely for adult company.

  The phone rang, making me jump and I grabbed it before it woke Adam. I thought it would be Flo or Danielle, but it was Ruth. Her words came out in a hot rush. I wondered if she’d had a drink before she rang me. ’I wanted to apologise, Jenny. I have a lot to thank you for. I’m jealous Adam is so settled with you and jealous that you get on like a house on fire. There, I’ve admitted the nasty side of me I hardly knew I had. I remembered today how jealous I used to be of you over boys.’

  ‘But Ruth, you were the one with the long blonde hair and legs to your armpits!’

  ‘Maybe, but it was you the boys went for, you and your crazy clothes. You were always giggling and bubbly and fun. I was too serious.’

  ‘We had each other. We never paired off or fell out over boys, did we?’

  As I said it I thought, But we would have fought to the death over Tom.

  ‘No,’ Ruth said. ‘We never did. I’m off to France tomorrow with Danielle, but I wanted to ring you before I left.’

  ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘Give my love to Adam in the morning. ‘Night, Jenny.’

  ‘’Night, Ruth.’ I climbed into bed. I knew what that phone call must have cost her and she had an absolute right to be jealous.

  SIXTY-ONE

  ‘Jenny, come and see what I’ve found,’ Adam called, his voice muffled. I went out of the back door and saw him on his stomach, his feet protruding from the undergrowth. He manoeuvred himself out backwards holding a plaque, his hair covered in small yellow leaves. ‘I was wondering if the hedgehog was in there,’ he said. We had been leaving bread and milk out for a hedgehog that amused us by slurping it up noisily every night. Adam brushed the earth off a small earthenware plaque with a dirty hand and stood up. I went to look. Together we read:

  Prayer of Socrates, O beloved and all ye other gods of this place grant to me that I be made beautiful in my soul within, and that all external possessions be in harmony with my inner man. May I consider the wise man rich and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or enjoy.

  ‘Cool. Is it very old, do you think?’

  ‘I guess it’s probably Victorian. What a find.’

  Nelly must have been an interesting old woman because we kept finding odd little bits and pieces of treasure in her garden. I got the impression that she had placed objects she liked to look at in the garden and then they got overgrown.

  ‘I’ll go and wash it.’ Adam was as pleased as if he had returned from an archaeological dig.

  ‘Treat it gently. I’m not sure it was meant to stay outside.’

  Adam cleaned it up in soapy water and we propped it up on the wide window ledge in front of the sink where we could see it every day.

  Out of the kitchen window I suddenly saw the sky. ‘Adam, just look at that weather coming in.’

  We went into the sitting room where we could see that the sky was like a livid bruise hanging low over the water, making the day suddenly dark, shutting us into the small house. I shivered. ‘Let’s light a fire.’ It was a Sunday and we had been shrouded in low mist and cloud all week.

  ‘I’ll get some logs.’ Adam dashed outside to the pile in the corner behind the back door.

  It took a while to get the fire going, then I switched on the small table lamps. I felt like drawing the curtains and shutting out the day, but it was a bit early. ‘I’m going to get out those photographs of Rosie. It’s time I made that collage for the passage outside our rooms, time that I had them out of their boxes and up on the walls. Will you help me?’ I asked Adam.

  ‘Of course I will.’ Adam turned from the fire, one cheek red from the flames.

  I went and got a large piece of white cardboard and laid it on the floor. ‘We’ll sift through the photos and place them on here. We’ll try various combinations first before we use paper glue. I bought some glass the other day. We’ll make our own frame, thin, I think, like bamboo. Or maybe we could raise the middle section, a square plinth for contrast and paint the surround white to bring out the photographs. Let’s experiment.’

  ‘Are we just going to use the black-and-white photos?’

  ‘Yes. The sharpness of black and white will look good. This wouldn’t work with colour, it would just look tacky. Let’s find a striking central photograph and we’ll work a side each and see what it looks like. The whole thing has to have balance.’

  Adam looked at me nervously. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before. I might spoil it.’

  ‘No, you won’t. We’ll be juggling photos for hours. It’ll take us ages to be satisfied. We’ll probably have to go away and come back to it.’

  I went to put on some music. The fire had caught and the room was suddenly warm and full of light. I smiled at Adam. ‘What shall I put on? You choose.’

  Adam thought for a moment. ‘Norah Jones or maybe Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.’

  I stared at him. ‘Both those CDs were Tom’s. The Mahler was one of Tom’s favourite pieces.’

  Adam sat up, his eyes bright. ‘Was it? Cool. It is melancholy, but it sort of gets inside you and you go on hearing it in your head for ages afterwards.’

  ‘Tom used to play it over and over before he had to go away again. It always reminds me of his leaves ending. I love it, but maybe we’ll play Norah first.’

  ‘Sure,’ Adam said. He looked down at the photographs of my laughing child. ‘Doing this is going to make you sad again.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s easier than it was, Adam. I want to do it. I want to see Rosie’s smiling face in this house. She was such a happy little thing, always l
aughing.’

  Adam smiled down at the photo in his hand. ‘She looks like she giggled a lot. She’s really like you. I used to wish I had a brother or sister. Peter wanted children. He and Mum used to argue sometimes. Mum didn’t want any more. I think it was hard having me so young and she didn’t want to be tied down again. I think that’s why Peter went and got a girlfriend in Israel.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, interested. ‘I didn’t know all that.’

  We lay on our stomachs in front of the fire and began to sort through the piles of black-and-white photographs. Occasionally Adam hummed a lyric under his breath and I wanted to hug him for the companionship and sense of peace he gave me. What a shame that sweet young voice would break soon and his eager innocence fly with it.

  We picked for our central photograph a picture of Tom holding Rosie above his head. Rosie was reaching down with plump little arms to catch his nose. They were both screaming with laughter.

  We looked down at the photo for a long time. Tom and Rosie seemed so vibrant and alive. I could almost believe they might be in the next room. How difficult death was to accept with every part of you. How hard not to be imbued with a terrible sense of futility and disbelief.

  The fire crackled behind us and Norah Jones whispered, Come away with me…in the night. Come away with me and we’ll kiss on a mountain top…in a field of blue…on a cloudy day. Come away, come away with me. I heard Tom’s voice in my ear and the smell of coffee, and Rosie laughing.

  I swallowed. ‘Come on, darling boy, help me make something beautiful and memorable.’

  For two hours we turned and sorted and manoeuvred the photos into a symmetry and order and form so that the joyful captured moments of Rosie’s short life and the people who had been part of it told their own special story.

  The wind was so strong that it bent the trees and prevented Jenny and Adam from hearing Bea opening the gate and coming up the drive with a cake she had made for Adam. The sitting room was alight in the dark afternoon and Bea looked in at the two figures lying close together in front of the flickering fire, surrounded by a sea of photographs. Their bodies were almost touching and it was the natural ease with which they lay side by side that made Bea marvel in a not entirely comfortable way. She remembered how Tom and Jenny had sprawled on the floor together playing board games or cards. It felt like watching a replay of something disturbing but without being able to say precisely why.

  Before she knocked and went inside, Bea wondered if her misgivings about the innocuous scene caught at her because nothing was deemed entirely innocent in the world any more.

  Both Adam and Jenny looked up, startled, as she came into the room. They had been so immersed in what they were doing that Bea felt she had interrupted their peaceful afternoon.

  ‘Mum! You gave me a shock.’ Jenny got up dizzily, as if she had been sleeping.

  ‘I’ve brought you and Adam a cake. It was such a foul afternoon I thought you might need cheering up.’

  ‘How dear of you. I’ll put the kettle on.’ Jenny followed Bea’s eyes. ‘What do you think? It’s not finished yet.’

  Bea looked down at her dead granddaughter and the pain was unendurable for a minute. She sat down abruptly. ‘I never knew you had so many photographs. What an enchanting collage you’re both making. It’s like being surprised by joy. Our wonderful, happy little Rosie…’

  Jenny went over to Bea and they held each other silently. Adam slid out of the room into the kitchen. After a second he thought about putting the kettle on. Bea and Jenny joined him a minute later.

  Bea smiled at him. ‘I hope you’re hungry, Adam. I’m experimenting on you. This is my try-out death-by-chocolate cake. I need your opinion on it.’

  Adam grinned. ‘I’ve never eaten so many cakes in my life until I came to Cornwall.’

  Jenny laughed. ‘I might tell you I did not have this many cakes in my childhood, they were strictly rationed. It is only since Bea became a granny that her cake repertoire has expanded. Darling, could you get another couple of logs, the fire’s getting low.’

  As they sat in front of the fire Bea said to them both, ‘I’m very impressed by your will-power, but don’t you two both miss television, especially in weather like this?’

  Jenny turned to Adam. ‘Speak first. Be honest.’

  ‘If it was here, I suppose I would be tempted to turn it on for the things I used to watch. But I definitely get more work and music practice done in the week. I’ve never thought I wish we had a television, not once.’

  ‘Good,’ Jenny said. ‘I don’t miss it, Bea. None of us was a great watcher in London. Because I was always sewing, I preferred the radio. I enjoyed watching films with Tom. Men always watch more, I think.’

  As Bea was driving home she thought about the function of television and how it dominated and distracted a household. How it brought the world and other lives into a house. If it was a mixed blessing, it did at least provide contrast, politics and debate. Without its intrusion into their daily lives it was possible that Jenny and Adam were evolving into an isolated, safe and reclusive world devoid of normal, real, humdrum social interactions. Once they shut their front door, closing themselves in and everyone else out, they seemed wrapped together in the world they were effortlessly making for themselves. It did not seem quite right and it could not last. Bea, describing the scene to James, found it difficult to voice her rather formless anxiety.

  James said slowly, ‘If Jenny were Adam’s natural mother and they were as close, enjoyed being together so much, we would say it was unhealthy and the boy should mix with other boys more. We’d tell Jenny to let him go; that they both needed to lead more separate lives. But, Jenny is not Adam’s real mother; the circumstances that have drawn them together are not normal, but they are very powerful. The complexities of Jenny bringing up Tom and Ruth’s son is disturbing.’

  ‘Is that why you take Adam off regularly and try to get him and Harry together at weekends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bea held out her hands to her own fire in a house that settled around her like a familiar cloak and closed her eyes. James was good at seamlessly translating her amorphous feelings into something both coherent and soothing.

  ‘They were making an extraordinary montage out of hundreds of photographs of Rosie. It was beautifully done from the heart like a patchwork quilt of memories celebrating Rosie’s short life. It wasn’t a lament, James. It was a miraculous thing of joy. That’s what they were doing when I arrived.’

  SIXTY-TWO

  I had the most wonderful dream. Tom, Rosie and I were walking in a park. Rosie was running ahead of us in small red Wellington boots, scattering brown crunchy sycamore leaves. She was laughing as she stamped her small feet and Tom, pushing her empty pushchair, ran after her kicking the deep piles of leaves into the air. As we ran our breath made small clouds in the cold air and I thought, Oh, God, I had a dream that they were dead, Rosie and Tom.

  Then I woke in a strange house with the rain lashing the windows and streaming down the outside walls, and the sound of the gutters overflowing, and I lay motionless, knowing that running together among autumn leaves was the dream and this, now, here was the reality.

  I got out of bed, pulled on socks and an ancient cardigan over my pyjamas and went into the sitting room. The fire was dead but the room smelt of pungent apple logs, reminding me of Christmas and childhood and feeling safe.

  I switched on a small lamp, and crouched on the floor and gazed down at my lost family. They gazed back, caught in moments of happiness, of being. I thought, I can never take a single moment of my life for granted ever again. Tragedy hovers, ready to strike. It seemed to me in the still room that it was not a case of if it ever strikes, but when.

  Tomorrow I would mount the picture and mould a frame, and put it up in the passage that Adam and I passed a hundred times a day, and they would be part of my life again—never lost.

  I sat in a chair and watched the sky lighten over the water. The curlews wa
rbled and the house creaked round me, and Adam slept with his door half open as he always did, and I felt his presence in the house, a warm, sweet nearness that kept hopelessness at bay. It was time to tell Adam about the day Tom died. It was time that he knew, because it was a fragment of a story he wanted and needed to be part of. Then we must put it behind us, the memory of violent death. I must put up the living reminders we made yesterday to celebrate the lives Rosie and Tom lived beside me. I made tea and crawled back to bed.

  As I did so Adam appeared at the door rumpled with sleep. ‘Are you OK, Jenny?’ he whispered.

  I nodded. He stood quite still in the doorway, shivering, hopeful at five in the morning.

  I lifted the duvet. ‘Get in,’ I whispered back. In one quick movement he was under the covers and we both slipped back into sleep, comforted and warmed. The night before Tom and Rosie died there had been a storm like this. When we woke I would tell Adam about the morning after the storm, the day Tom died.

  SIXTY-THREE

  I wake early and get out of bed carefully so that I don’t disturb the still sleeping Rosie and Tom. We want to take Rosie on her first trip to the zoo and I don’t want her to be tired. I go into the kitchen, switch on the kettle and climb up to the empty workroom to check the workload for the day. I don’t want any crisis to hold up my last day with Tom. I leave notes for Flo and general instructions for the girls.

  Danielle and I are lucky. All the women who work for us are enthusiastic and dedicated, and I try to banish my guilt at taking a whole day off during a busy week. This time tomorrow Tom will have his kit packed and will be roaming the flat restlessly. He will already have gone in spirit.

  After the storm last night, the day is strangely still, the streets below washed clean, everything quiet, as if still sleeping. I go to the window, open it and lean out to breathe in the smell of rain. Great wet patches lie dark on the houses opposite and there are leaves and branches strewn across the road and pavement below. Poor little damaged town trees. I feel unaccountably happy and stretch like a cat at the thought of the day ahead.