by Jane Johnson
I skip through the album. Fishermen on a quay mending nets, making crab pots, splicing ropes. Women in stained aprons; barefoot children. A young woman sits primly in a chair with a basket of roses on her lap. I am struck by something familiar about her eyes, which are narrowed, almost hostile. I pull at the photograph slightly and it comes away from the page. On the back in pencil it reads, Mary’s wedding day June 7th, 1955. Her bridegroom, with his long face and lantern jaw, his hair slicked back with Brylcreem, looks uncomfortable in a suit.
I am juggling the loose pictures at the back of the album when one falls out onto the floor. It shows a girl staring straight into the camera with an expression of outrage, her well-muscled arms folded. Turning this over I find it labelled Olivia betrayed. 1946. With a shock, I recognize it as a study for the portrait downstairs. So this is what my cousin looked like when she was young. She is striking, handsome rather than pretty, with a strong face and large, capable hands, her shoulders thrown back, chin jutting.
I shiver. Betrayed. I wonder what the betrayal was, and who the perpetrator.
There are photos from foreign trips – Venice, Paris, a city with narrow alleyways full of stray cats and tumbling flowers. It looks Mediterranean – Greece maybe, or Corsica. Robed people shopping in a market. Sand dunes covered in striated patterns, sinuous and endlessly replicating towards a distant horizon, stark contrasts in the light – another study, maybe, for an abstract painting. Olivia herself in that desert, in a sort of flowered turban drawn up over her nose so that only her eyes are visible – but I know those eyes now. She is leaning towards the camera, her eyes full of laughter, as if she is trying to retrieve the camera from whoever is taking the shot. There is one of a man in a burnous and turban, looking profoundly out into the landscape with a fierce profile, the lines on his face as much a part of the desert landscape as the patterns in the dunes.
The last pages of the album are empty as if she never got around to sticking anything more in. I now apply myself to the gilded cardboard box, taking note of how the ribbon is tied so I can do it up again in the same way. The act of pulling the bow apart feels much more transgressive than the opening of the photo album. The tied ribbons signals intimacy, the barring of strangers. Even as the ribbon falls slack, I hesitate.
Then the lid comes off.
*
‘Rebecca?’ There is a knock at the bedroom door. My head shoots up. I stagger to my feet, my hips stiff from inaction. ‘Coming!’ I shout, panicked. ‘Hang on.’
This is meant as a warning, to buy myself time to put on some clothes, but it doesn’t work. Reda sticks his head around the door, takes in my near-naked state and looks quickly away. I grab the nearest thing to hand – the old paisley eiderdown – and haul it around me.
‘Sorry, I did not mean to disturb you, but there was no sign that you’d been up – no coffee cup in the kitchen – so I was worried about you. And I need to ask you something.’
Oh no, here it comes. I grasp the nettle. ‘Reda, is it about the cheque I gave you?’
‘Ah.’ He looks embarrassed. ‘Not that, in fact, though Mo was going to mention it to you later.’
And yet they have still turned up and, judging by the state of Reda – cement dust and paint all over him – have been working away for some time. ‘I’m afraid Cousin Olivia’s finances are not in a good state,’ I confess. ‘It’s not her fault – she thought there was more in her account than there is. But I went to the bank, and made an arrangement: if you present the cheque next week they promise it will clear. The problem is, I don’t know how I’m going to pay you the rest.’ I almost choke on those last words.
There is a long beat of silence, then he says gently, ‘Is it really that bad?’
I nod, feeling tears well up. Reading Olivia’s letters from my mother – so many of them, going back years; intimate letters, about her fears about her marriage, the discovery of my father’s affairs, the final confrontation and divorce, and then his death; answers to letters in which Olivia must have admitted to fears about her bouts of awful weakness and sickness – has made me rather emotional.
Reda comes into the room and, rather than loom over me, perches his tall frame in the little armchair. He gazes at the ewer, which is almost full of rainwater. ‘That answers the question I came to ask. After the downpour last night I wondered if the roof would leak. We had better deal with that quickly.’
‘But, the money?’
‘You will find the money,’ he says confidently.
‘I don’t know how.’ Everything seems so hopeless. I am infused with my mother’s despair, with her loneliness and fears.
‘In our country we say, “God will find a way.”’
How nice, I think, to have such faith. My confidence in the world has been sorely tried. ‘I can’t have you working without being paid. It would make me feel terribly guilty.’
He considers this quietly. ‘Let us at least make the house weatherproof,’ he says at last, ‘and then we will give you time to think about what happens next. We have a job in St Buryan we can get on with in the meantime.’
I nod mutely and Reda gets up and goes back downstairs, closing the door quietly behind him.
*
Mo and Reda work all day on the roof, replacing tiles, repointing cracks in the chimneys. At last, Reda finds me while I am scrubbing the carpet in Gabriel’s room while the parrot looks on sardonically. On seeing the builder he perks up, hops from one perch to another and lets out a great squawk. ‘Ba-lack! Ba-lack! Zamal!’
Reda splutters with laughter and for a long while cannot speak. At last he wipes his eyes and looks at me. ‘It seems you have a North African parrot.’
‘What?’
‘That was Darija he was speaking, our local dialect of Arabic.’
‘What did he say?’
‘“Get out of the way”, and then something very impolite.’
‘I want to know!’
He repeats the word. ‘Zamal. It’s a strong insult where we come from, how you would say, “paedophile”. “Paedo”. Someone who does bad things to children, yes? Sorry. I think that’s the best translation, pardon me.’
As if on cue, Gabriel chuckles and repeats the word over and over with obvious glee, bobbing his head up and down. And then punctuates the brief silence that follows this little display with a vast oral fart.
‘Oh my God, he’s a monster!’ I cry, mortified, but Mo has now turned up at the door, and together the brothers roar with laughter.
‘Wait till I tell Amina,’ Mo says.
Amina is his wife. She runs a little deli in Penzance. They have two children, a boy and a girl, and Mo became a British citizen last year, a fact of which he is inordinately proud. He carries in his wallet a photo of himself signing the citizenship register in front of a portrait of the Queen and brings it out at the least excuse. Reda’s status is rather more hazy. He holds a French passport, but I think there may be a wife back in North Africa. Or maybe she is here and he just doesn’t mention her. Actually, I have no idea of his immigration or marital status. I haven’t liked to ask: it seems too personal. And as a result I have never mentioned Eddie either.
When they have gone, I think about calling Eddie. I really should, I know, but I haven’t felt the desire to do so, which is odd. While I was ill I thought Eddie was all that was tethering me to the world of the living, that I would die if he left me. It would be useful to discuss the situation I find myself in now, for if there’s one thing Eddie’s good at it’s money, but I feel a reluctance to do so. I don’t want to share Chynalls and Olivia with anyone else. Something will turn up, I tell myself, remembering Reda’s words, and my mind shies away from these insoluble difficulties.
I go back to the noisome task of cleaning the parlour carpet, using bucket after bucket of soapy water and an ancient scrubbing brush, until the whole place smells of wet sheep and coal tar soap, which is only marginally better than the stink of parrot poo.
Then someone raps on t
he window.
It is Rosie. Seeing her unleashes a riot of feelings in me – anger, confusion, trepidation. I stalk to the front door and stand there, barring her way. She won’t know yet, I think, that the standing order has been cancelled. She stares at my crossed arms and I realize I still have the rubber gloves on. All the better to strangle her with.
‘Yes?’ I say. ‘Do you need something?’
‘Got a phone call,’ she says, looking affronted. ‘From the hospital.’
All the steel goes out of me. ‘Oh no.’ I step back and let her in.
She heads straight to the kitchen and puts the kettle on the range as if she’s the one at home and I’m the visitor.
‘Is she… Is Olivia…?’
‘She had a stroke, poor old dear.’
I sit down heavily on one of the chairs. ‘Oh no,’ I repeat. Rosie, meanwhile, potters about the kitchen, opening and shutting cupboards and drawers as if looking for something.
‘Hasn’t gone yet, though. Tough old bird.’ She sounds resentful.
A little of the crushing dread lifts. ‘What did they say?’
‘A stroke in the night. She’s on oxygen, though I told them she doesn’t want all that, but apparently my word doesn’t count for anything. They aren’t sure she’ll pull through so you might want to go and say goodbye.’
I stand up, move the kettle off the hot plate and take her by the arm. ‘I’ll go right now,’ I say. ‘No time for tea.’
‘Suit yourself. I would come with you, but Jem’s a bit under the weather,’ she says spitefully, throwing the tea strainer into the sink. ‘I can drop you at the station if you want.’
‘It’s fine, I have a car,’ I tell her and watch her eyebrows lift.
I pull the door closed after us and turn the solid new key in the new lever lock. I see her looking at it, but neither of us says anything and in that moment we both take stock of a changed situation. Rosie’s hand goes to her neck, and her face goes tight. Then she turns and trundles off down the path like a malevolent Mrs Tiggywinkle, while I take the path up through the woods to the garage outside which the hire car is parked.
*
The nurses on Phoenix Ward greet me brightly. ‘She’s out of ICU, we’re very pleased with her. She’s still on oxygen, but she’s breathing for herself. It appears to have been a stroke, and there is some paralysis, but she’s a tough one. Don’t get your hopes up too high though, she’s not out of the woods yet.’
I hurry towards the cubicle they indicate. They’ve drawn the curtains around her and she appears to be asleep. Machines tick and blip; tubes run from them to her arm; an oxygen tube lies across her face, little prongs slipped inside her nostrils. I sit on the edge of the bed and take her frail hand in mine. ‘Olivia?’
Her papery eyelids flutter. I squeeze her fingers. ‘It’s me, Rebecca. Geneviève’s daughter. Rosie told me that you—’
The eyes flicker open and pin me. So dark, almost black. The eyes in the photograph, and in the portrait downstairs. Her fingers grip mine. She looks over my shoulder and her mouth moves but no sound comes out.
‘It’s OK, Mrs Sparrow’s not with me,’ I say gently, and her grip relents. ‘How do you feel? The nurses are very pleased with your progress.’
‘Tough as old boots,’ she says.
She’s still in there, I think. ‘You are! What did you say to me? “The women of our family have lots of gumption.”’
She gives me a lopsided grin that almost breaks my heart.
‘Oh, Olivia, you have to pull through this. Promise me you will. There’s so much I want to ask you. So much I want to share. You didn’t tell me you were an artist. I’m an artist, too. Or I was…’
It’s hard to read an expression when only half a face moves. ‘Locket,’ she says.
‘Your locket?’ She just won’t let it go. I must try again to find it.
‘Lock. It.’ She separates the syllables with great effort. ‘The cellar.’ Her fingers on mine are vicelike. ‘Brick it up.’
It feels cruel to press my advantage, but I must. ‘Olivia, I found a bone. A human bone. Down in the tunnel that leads out of the cellar. Can you tell me anything about it?’
She looks away from me, very deliberately closes her eyes, and then, with more effort, her mouth. I sit there waiting, waiting, willing her to say, ‘Oh, that. It is nothing.’ But she remains silent and at last a nurse comes to make her observations. ‘Don’t tire her out,’ she admonishes as she removes the blood pressure cuff. ‘Eh, Mrs Kitto?’
Olivia does not even respond to this provocation.
When the nurse goes, the old woman draws a ragged breath. ‘I never…’
‘What?’ I grip her hand, feel her fluttery pulse beat beneath my fingers. Her eyes are open but she is looking off into empty air.
‘Olivia?’ Her hand is slack in mine.
I stay like this for a time, watching her as she stares into space, as if she is sleeping with her eyes open, but when I make as if to leave her grip tightens again and her gaze comes back to me.
‘Rebecca…’ The black eyes bore into me. ‘I never told him.’
‘Told who what?’
‘Close it up. Promise.’ She clutches me with such ferocity that her knuckles are white.
‘I promise, but you must tell me, Olivia: whose bones are down there?’
She turns her face to the wall. For the rest of the half hour I spend with her, this is how she stays. She does not utter another word.
*
I visit Olivia every day. She’s still not speaking. The nurses are worried. I take photographs of Gabriel and of the house to encourage her recovery. I play her a recording of Gabriel saying, ‘Bugger off’ and ‘Messy moose key’ and ‘Bal-lack’. This, at least, makes her smile. I tell her how much I love her paintings. She looks wistful, but she still won’t talk to me.
‘Rosie has said she’ll visit,’ I say at last, seeking a reaction.
The black eyes open wide. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No.’ Her pale lips firm into a straight line. ‘I’m not sorry about any of it,’ she says. And she goes back to sleep.
*
It feels strangely empty in the house without Mo and Reda there. I keep hearing noises. Half the time it’s Gabriel, whose repertoire is impressive. I sit in the parlour with him most evenings with the TV on in the background. Every so often he will whistle or chuckle or say something I can’t quite catch and I will smile and say something nonsensical in return. We’re like an old married couple, taking comfort in each other’s company but with nothing of any great importance to say to one another. The rest of the time, I don’t know. Old houses make odd noises and the acoustics in Chynalls have changed since the downstairs rooms have been remodelled. At times I am sure someone has been smoking downstairs. I catch the scent of an acrid, strong tobacco, and sometimes a sniff of spice, as if someone has been cooking something exotic in the kitchen. The house is full of secrets, and sometimes they come out and whisper together in the night.
I lie in bed, on the edge of tumbling over into sleep, and I’m sure I hear voices below, or out in the garden. Half a dozen times I have got out and gone to have a look but there is never anybody there.
I feel the weight of the knowledge of the excavated finger bone weigh down upon me and imagine its owner stalking through the empty rooms and corridors in search of the missing piece in its skeleton.
Superstitiously, I keep the marble rolling pin from the kitchen under the bed.
13
I PULL DOWN THE ATTIC LADDER AND CLIMB UP INTO the musty darkness. The builders have told me there’s quite a lot of stuff up here, though most of it doesn’t appear to have been damaged by the roof leak.
Tapping the torch app on my phone, I scan the cavernous space. There are cardboard boxes up here, an old treadle sewing machine, some bulging bin bags that Mo and Reda have moved to the side. I check the contents desultorily and find exactly what you’d expect – old clothes, curtains, books, board games and ji
gsaw puzzles; a set of Pictorial Knowledge encyclopaedias, an old Bakelite phone – pre-war, with a circular dial and a heavy handset, its frayed brown cable wound around and around its base unit. Briefly, I wonder if it will still work if plugged into a phone socket. Of course it won’t, Becky.
At the far end of the attic, up against the eaves, is a large rectangular object shrouded by a sheet, and cobwebs. I make my way gingerly from joist to joist and twitch a corner of the sheet off to reveal what looks to be a piece of hardboard. I turn it around, then sit back on my heels, hardly able to breathe.
The shrouded objects are a nightmare to get through the ladder-hatch, and I wonder why Olivia went to so much effort to hide them up here. It would surely have been a lot easier to have left them in one of the spare rooms. Or burned them, but I am fervently glad she did not. In the light on the landing I examine them with my heart in my mouth. Here, unframed, on stretched canvas, is an exquisite painting of the sea gate, with blowsy roses twining over its curved bar, just like the black-and-white photo I found in the album. The colours are muted, the last gasp of summer, the paint on the gate sun-faded, the grass at its feet sere as straw; behind it the sea is a wistful grey. Petals have fallen from the overblown roses and lie like old confetti, browning at the edges. It is, I think, one of the loveliest and most melancholy paintings I have ever seen, a testament to times past, times lost. I put it to one side and turn my attention to the second canvas – and burst into shocked laughter.
