by Rachel Rhys
Eve is waiting for the things her mother is saying to slot into place, into a shape she can identify, but they refuse to. Instead she finds herself staring at a woman who looks like her mother and wears her mother’s clothes, but who Eve no longer recognizes.
‘I used to come home and tell Hen about him. How he’d looked that day, if he’d done something different to his hair or smiled at me when we passed on the steps outside. As I say, as sisters we weren’t particularly close, but she knew how I felt. Then finally it happened. He invited me to see a concert with him. And then a week later, to have tea. I was so happy. I hadn’t believed it was possible to be that happy. I truly thought he was my reward, finally, for everything I’d been through. Losing Mother, then Father. Then having to give up school to earn money.’
Eve’s mother is standing there on the jetty and looking at Eve with her eyes wide and a smile on her face, as if she cannot feel the rain that has begun to fall in fat drops.
‘So what happened?’
‘I invited him home. That’s what happened. Stupid, stupid me. And Hen came down the stairs wearing her sky blue dress that showed off her tiny waist, and I saw Francis’s face when he looked at her that first time and I knew. I just knew.’
‘He fell in love with her?’
‘Yes.’ The word sours in her mother’s mouth. ‘And she with him. He came to see me a few weeks later. They had not meant it to happen, he said. You can’t help who you fall in love with. Do you know what else he told me? At least we had only been out together twice so feelings hadn’t had a chance to develop.’
For the second time that day, rain is running in rivulets down the hard shell of her mother’s hair but she seems hardly to notice. Now she has started talking, there is to be no shutting her up.
‘Hen pleaded for my forgiveness. “You can’t argue with love,” she told me. But you know, Eve, love is like any other raw material. You bend it and mould it until it does what you want.’
‘And then?’
‘And then’ – her mother shrugs, almost dislodging the cardigan from her shoulders – ‘they married quickly. Well, Hen and I couldn’t exactly go on sharing a house. They moved to London. Then came the war. And do you know what? God help me, I hoped that he wouldn’t come home. Or if he came home, I hoped he’d be one of those dribbling vegetables you saw back then being wheeled through the streets, moaning and gibbering. But no, he came back whole. Perfectly intact. When all those hundreds of thousands of others didn’t.’
‘And you?’
‘I got on with my life. Married the first man who was nice to me. Your father. I was lucky. Men were in short supply after the Great War. He had an injury. But there were many in a worse state.’
‘And did you see her again? Henrietta?’
‘Once.’ Her mother puts up a hand to wipe the rainwater from her face, and waits impatiently for a new burst of thunder to pass.
‘She came to see me. They both did. She was eight months pregnant, plump as a ripe fig. They wanted my blessing, I think. Wanted everything to be perfect. I couldn’t bear to look at her. Told her not to come back. Not ever.’
Happiness explodes in Eve like a firework.
‘A cousin,’ she breathes. ‘I have a cousin.’
Now her mother stares at her as if only just seeing her properly for the first time. And suddenly, she laughs.
‘Do you really not see?’ she asks. ‘Are you so wilfully blind? The injury your father sustained in the war meant we could never have children of our own. They were your parents. Hen and Francis.’
In the pause that follows, there comes shouting from up at the house behind her.
Clifford’s voice. Querulous. ‘Eve? Mary? Come in now. It’s filthy weather and we must get ready to go.’
Eve’s mother starts, looks up at the sky as if just registering the rain, and Eve panics, convinced that there is something about being here in this elemental weather that has opened the floodgates of her mother’s secrets, as if the lightning that splits open the sky has found a corresponding crack in the locked safe of her mother’s memories, and that if they go back indoors to sit in those straight-backed chairs and take tea in china cups until it’s time to go, it will seal itself up again, with all those answers still inside.
A figure appears on the jetty. At first Eve thinks it is Clifford again and her heart sags in her chest, but no, the shoulders are too broad, the frame too tall. Noel Lester.
‘Eve? What the hell is happening here?’
Eve ignores him.
‘Where are they?’ she asks, stepping in front of Noel so she forms a barrier between him and her mother. ‘Where are Henrietta and Francis? Where are my parents?’
She trips over the final word, and behind her she hears Noel exclaim in surprise, but she doesn’t turn around.
Her mother shrugs again, and clutches her cardigan tightly at her neck so it doesn’t fall off.
‘Francis died, after all. And the shock of it sent Henrietta quite mad. She was talking nonsense, apparently, leaving the child – you – alone while she walked the streets searching for her dead husband. Two policemen turned up one day on the doorstep to ask if I would sign the committal papers, and then they took her to Holke Hall asylum. As far as I know she is there still. Then they asked if we would take you in. It was that or the orphanage. Of course, I said yes. I am not a monster.’
Eve feels as if it is all falling away – the jetty, the house, Noel. All of it. She remembers the photograph of her as a baby. So that was Henrietta holding her, not her mother? Everything she thought she knew about herself was a lie.
‘But why did Francis die? I don’t understand. You said he came home from the war perfectly intact. Those were your words. “Perfectly intact.”’
Her mother puts a hand to her head, where the rain has finally penetrated even her tightly set hair.
‘I think we should go in,’ she says suddenly. Eve closes her eyes, sensing the door closing on the answers she still seeks.
‘For pity’s sake, answer. Can you not see what you are doing to her?’
Noel has moved forward so he is standing next to Eve. Not touching, but so close she can feel the heat coming off his bare skin where his shirtsleeves are rolled up.
‘All these years you’ve kept this from her. Did you not think she had the right to know?’
‘That her real father was dead and her real mother is an imbecile? A madwoman? No, Mr Lester. It was best she didn’t know. I did it for her sake.’
‘Well, for her sake tell her the whole truth now, if you have any kind of humanity.’
‘Don’t you dare pass judgement on me. Or tell me what to do.’
‘So just tell her. And then we’ll all go inside and you can get on your train and go back to your life.’
The rain is falling more or less solidly and now a loud burst of thunder directly overhead causes Eve to cry out. Noel’s hand finds hers, fingers closing around her own, squeezing them tightly.
The intimate gesture has an immediate effect on Eve’s mother, who narrows her eyes as she asks, ‘Tell her what?’
‘Tell her how her father died. Women don’t get sent mad for no reason. Especially when there are small children to think of.’
Eve’s mother comes closer, closing the gap between them, her eyes still fixed on the point where their hands meet. Eve tries to shake her hand free, but Noel’s grip is too strong.
‘You want to know how he died?’ she asks. Close enough now that Eve sees, with embarrassment, how the rain has soaked through the part of her blouse not covered by the cardigan so that her bra shows through. ‘I’ll tell you how he died, shall I?’ Her mother’s eyes glitter. ‘He was murdered. In front of his wife. In front of his baby.’
And now a cold dread is rising inside Eve, and this has been a mistake. She wants it to be ten minutes ago. Wants not to know what she now knows, not to hear what she is about to hear. But her mother has not finished.
‘They were out for an ea
rly morning stroll all together, being the perfect family that they were. You were a terrible sleeper, Eve. Always awake by five in the morning, wanting to be up and about. So there they were, walking through St James’s Park. This perfect young family. And coming also through the park on their way home from an all-night regimental reunion were two former army officers, drunk on spirits and life and the memory of victory. One of them had brought a pistol to the reunion that he’d taken from a German prisoner during the war. As a memento, he said afterwards in that kangaroo court martial. A drunk man, a loaded gun. You can imagine the rest.’
Noel loosens his hold on Eve’s hand.
‘Who was it?’ he asks. ‘This drunk man.’
And she hears it. That catch in his voice that tells her he knows. He knows already, even before Eve’s mother closes down her face, so there can be no tell-tale hint of triumph.
‘I’m afraid it was your father. Guy Lester. He shot Francis Garvey’s face clean off.’
Guy, night of 28 April 1948
THERE HAVE BEEN two Guy Lesters.
One is the Guy Lester who went out that night to the regimental reunion, two weeks before his thirtieth birthday. Struggling to adapt to civilian routine, with a wife and two children and an office job that felt like being slowly strangled, I was determined to make the most of this chance to let off steam, to wring the last drop of youth out of life.
I remember going downstairs and pausing halfway down, remembering the Beholla pistol I’d taken from a German prisoner and smuggled back home as a souvenir. Madeleine insisted it stay hidden away in a box on the top of my wardrobe, so that Noel and Duncan couldn’t get hold of it, even though they were barely walking, let alone climbing. This seemed like a chance, finally, to get it out of its box, show it off to the only fellows who’d appreciate it. I turned around and went back upstairs.
It was the worst decision I ever made.
This first Guy Lester went to the club. Drank, sang, laughed, showed off the Beholla. Was young and vigorous and, just for this one night, carefree. Staggered out at 5 a.m. with Owen, who’d been at my side in the trenches, witnessed with me the things we could not talk about with anyone else. The dawn was just breaking, I remember, the sky still ribboned with pink. We climbed over the fence into St James’s Park. I think we had some idea we would find deckchairs there, set out in the grass where we could sleep off the worst of it.
We approached a point where our path crossed with another running perpendicular to it. Owen went on ahead, to urinate behind a bush. I could see clearly where he was standing off to the left, his burgundy tie vivid through the foliage.
Wouldn’t it be funny, I thought in my drink-heightened state, to fire the pistol into the right-hand side of the bush? I imagined the leaves rustling, how Owen would jump in surprise, pissing all over himself. I didn’t even know if the pistol would fire after all this time. I knew there were bullets in there, but it was so long since it had been used.
I took out the pistol as I approached the crossing. I remember I was shaking with suppressed laughter as I raised it up. Pulled the trigger. And as I did so, that’s when they appeared. Out of nowhere.
If only there hadn’t been a tree on the near corner, screening off that other path.
If only the child hadn’t just fallen asleep, finally, so that the parents were deliberately trying not to make a sound as they wheeled her home.
If only they’d been a split second earlier or later.
This is when the second Guy Lester takes over. My shaking hand still raised, holding the gun. My head refusing to believe what my eyes were telling it.
Fragments of memory.
Him, Francis, on the ground, a red, pulpy, pulsing mass where the left side of his face should be. Her, Henrietta, leaning over him, blood everywhere and other stuff in her hair, on her lovely face, on her clothes, on the baby who is wide awake now, screaming.
Owen rushing, ashen-faced, from behind the bush. ‘What have you done, man?’ Vomiting on to the grass in long yellow strings.
After it happened, I wanted to be punished. Craved it, even, despite Madeleine’s anguished refrain: Think of the boys. When the court martial, carried out behind closed doors, decided there was no criminal negligence case to be answered I wanted to protest, to tell them they were wrong. And when instead I was found guilty of possessing a gun without a firearm certificate, I welcomed the three-month custodial sentence. Wished only for it to be longer, the fine greater.
Even now, decades later, lying awake in the night after my second visit to Holke Hall, I try to rewind time. To take back the minutes, one by one, to make it not have happened. In the endless early hours I bargain with what I have. With my home in France and my own life, such as it is. In my blackest moments, Lord forgive me, I have even bargained with my own children’s lives. Offering everything up in return for it to have turned out differently. For it never to have happened at all.
29
11 June 1948
‘I STILL DON’T understand why Guy left it so late to make amends,’ Duncan says. ‘If he felt so damned guilty.’
The revelations about his father seem to have had a peculiar effect on Duncan, dislodging the affectations and the posturing, leaving him uncertain and vulnerable, his face puffy and floury.
‘He didn’t,’ says Eve’s mother, who is sitting on an upright chair in the sitting room, patting at her wet hair with a tea towel, her expression set, as if this too is something that must be endured. ‘He insisted on paying monthly support for Eve while she was growing up.’
Eve, leaning against the back wall where she has been since she and Noel and her mother came crashing in from outside, feels as if she has turned suddenly to stone. What monthly support? She remembers all those times she asked for a new book or a pair of shoes so that she wouldn’t have to wear her hated school shoes all the time and was told no, because money didn’t grow on trees. She hadn’t gone hungry, not like so many others, but there had never been money left over for fun.
‘I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that,’ her mother tells her now. ‘I didn’t spend it. I didn’t touch it. Blood money. I kept it in a separate account. For when I judged you were mature enough to manage your own affairs.’
‘And I suppose you’re still waiting for that day to arrive?’
Eve cannot keep the bitterness from her voice. To her surprise, her mother’s face twists with hurt.
‘Don’t be silly, Eve. As soon as you told me you were getting married, I made arrangements to hand over the money. And very glad I was to be rid of it too. You think I liked knowing that man’s money was sitting in a bank account with my name on it? Nasty, tainted money. He got away with murder, you know, no matter what that court martial decided.’
This last is said in a garbled rush. Not looking at any of the Lesters. But wanting to leave them in no doubt, even so, as to her thoughts on the matter. On the man.
‘So where is it then, this blood money?’ Eve asks. ‘Since you clearly didn’t give it to me.’
Next to her, Clifford clears his throat, but Eve is focused on her mother’s face, at the cheeks sucked inwards with surprise.
‘Well, I gave it to your husband, of course. What use would you have for such a sum?’
‘Clifford? But that can’t be true.’ She turns to Clifford, shock turning her voice shrill. ‘Tell her she’s mistaken.’
Clifford runs his fingers over his moustache, refusing to meet her eye.
‘There was an amount that your mother kindly entrusted to me, and which I naturally invested in the business. Which, after all, provides very nicely for you, my dear. Mrs Jenkins twice a week. Luxuries like that don’t come cheap.’
Eve frowns, unable to absorb what she is hearing.
‘But the business is struggling. Can’t we be honest about it for once? Surely you can’t have put a quarter of a century’s worth of funds into a failing company without even telling me?’
‘It is not struggling, Eve.
I don’t know where you’ve got such a notion from.’ Clifford bristles. ‘I did not think it was something you needed to be bothered with. Of course, I had no idea about the origin of the money. Your mother told me only that it was a fund set up by an anonymous benefactor – I assumed a wealthy relative, perhaps a family black sheep. I decided it was probably for the best not to trouble you with it, but to invest it prudently on your behalf, which is what I have done. When you’ve had a chance to digest today’s shocks you’ll find I have acted at all times in your best interests, Eve. I have nothing to reproach myself with.’
Nothing to reproach himself with? The secrets he has kept from her, the myriad different ways he has found to shut her out of his world – the world it transpires he has funded with her money.
She feels again that prickling in her chest she knows to be a precursor to her old blind childhood rage, but this time she does not head it off, doesn’t try to press it down deep inside her where it will grow denser, more compacted.
‘Perhaps we should allow the three of you to talk in private,’ says Bernard, half rising from the sofa and looking around at the Lesters and Sully, before falling back when they fail to follow suit.
‘How could you?’ Eve turns to face Clifford squarely, giving him no option but to look at her. ‘Dictating every step of our lives – where we go, what we eat, how we live. Sealing me up in that mausoleum of a house, rationing everything, as if we hadn’t had enough rationing to last a lifetime. And all the time it was my own money you were meting out to me, bit by grudging bit.’
Clifford draws himself upright.
‘I never had you down as such a money-grabber, Eve.’
Noel, who has been sitting on the chaise longue next to his brother, gets to his feet.
‘Just hold on a minute—’ he starts.
