by Ali Mercer
Sixteen
Leona lives in the bottom half of a narrow Georgian house with long sash windows, tucked away behind Kettlebridge town hall on a road that leads down to the church on the riverfront. The neighbouring properties are a whistle-stop tour of different eras in the town’s mostly quiet history; Leona’s place is squeezed between a 1960s block of flats and a medieval cottage with a low, sunken doorway.
Why has Rachel come here when the expectation is that, sooner or later, she will open up about all the things she doesn’t want to talk about? And what will they think of her when she does?
Yet here she is.
There’s a brief delay before Leona answers the door. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she says. ‘Viv’s a bit upset.’
‘Oh… why?’
‘You’ll see.’
Leona leads her through a narrow hallway to a sitting room at the back of the ground floor, overlooking a small courtyard garden. There are bright rag rugs on polished wooden floorboards, knick-knacks and art prints, a lamp with a tasselled shade. The pinboard with the pictures of Leona and Viv’s children is propped up by the fireplace and Viv is next to it, sitting on a pink sofa covered with a batik throw. She’s wearing a neck brace, and it is immediately obvious that she has been crying.
Rachel is so taken aback that for a moment she has no idea how to respond. Viv had seemed so composed last time. Yet here she is with her eyelashes stuck together and beaded with mascara-blackened tears.
Viv dabs at her eyes with a tissue. ‘Rachel, dear. How nice to see you again. So glad you could make it. You’ll forgive me if I don’t get up – I’m not very mobile at the moment. Don’t mind me carrying on like an old fool, I’ll pull myself together in a minute.’
Rachel perches on a big, round, orange 1960s armchair, while Leona settles at a respectful distance on the sofa.
‘Nothing really terrible has happened,’ Viv says. ‘It’s just that I’ve got myself into rather a muddle with my car, it’s a write-off and they’ve told me I should give up driving. It’s not all bad, though. At least Aidan’s out of hospital now… that’s my son… He had a ruptured appendix, he must have been in agony and the people at the home had no idea till he started getting really quite poorly. He’s not very good at expressing himself, you see, which can be very dangerous, believe me. He has what they call special needs these days. Learning difficulties. He’s always been that way. He’s supposed to have a mental age of eight, but that’s silly really, there’s no comparison. An eight-year-old wouldn’t behave the way Aidan behaves when he’s upset. A two-year-old might, but a two-year-old wouldn’t be as big and strong as Aidan is.’
‘What happened to you?’ Rachel asks. ‘Do you have whiplash?’
‘Well, yes, but the car was in a worse state. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll learn to do without it, and at least I didn’t hurt anybody else. I just need to figure out the bus routes to Aidan’s home. It can’t be beyond the wit of woman to get to Tring by public transport. Or I’ll get a taxi, same as I did to come here tonight.’
‘Can’t you get somebody to take you?’ Leona asks. ‘I could ask my liftshare group. Or maybe one of your church friends would drive you there?’
‘Oh, no. I wouldn’t like to put anybody to any trouble.’ Viv hesitates. ‘I don’t want people seeing Aidan,’ she says finally. ‘It’s not because I’m ashamed of him. It’s because I don’t want to have to dislike them for the way they react to him.’
‘What about your children?’ Leona suggests.
‘Oh, it’s much too far, and they’re busy,’ Viv says, and it occurs to Rachel that Viv perhaps doesn’t want them seeing Aidan either. ‘Elaine is a few hours north of here, and Louise is on the south coast and that’s hours away, too. Opposite sides of the country, of course. They don’t seem to want to stay close to each other any more than they want to stay close to me.’ She sighs. ‘My fault, most likely. Still, they seem to be happy enough.’
‘I don’t often wish I had a car,’ Leona says. ‘But I’m sorry I can’t take you.’
Rachel supposes this is her cue to come up with some kind of excuse, or to remain silent until somebody changes the subject. She’s under no obligation to offer, and even if she did, Viv would probably refuse. They are near strangers, after all.
The words rise to the surface like a bubble from something breathing underwater.
‘I’ll take you,’ she says.
Then, to make it easier for Viv to accept: ‘Tring’s not far. It’s near Aylesbury, isn’t it? Easy. It’d be no trouble.’
Viv pauses, considering, eyes almost closed, as if in prayer. Rachel sees how hard it is for her to accept help, and how used she is to coping with things by herself.
Rachel says, ‘Would Sunday be OK? You’d be doing me a favour, actually – give me something to do. Something other than work, that is.’ She glances at Leona. ‘You see, I live for my time at Fun-to-Learn.’
‘Things can’t be that bad,’ Leona mutters.
Viv opens her eyes and smiles.
‘That would be very kind of you,’ she says to Rachel. ‘Let’s sort out the details later, shall we? We shouldn’t just sit here talking about my problems. How are you two?’
Rachel shrugs and pulls a face, and Leona says, ‘I have news.’
‘Good news, I hope?’ Viv says.
By way of reply, Leona reaches for an A4 envelope lying next to a tray of dips and flatbreads on the coffee table, and extracts a piece of paper and holds it up.
It’s a colour copy of a photo of a child: a demure little girl in an immaculate white party dress, her hair in plaits with ribbons at the end, wary and hopeful at the same time.
‘This is Bluebell,’ Leona says, and her expression is both rueful and fiercely proud.
She gets up and goes over to the pinboard, takes down Bluebell’s baby photo and pins up the girl in its place. The change of picture changes the mood of the room; Aidan the toddler is fuzzy and nostalgic, a small figure lost somewhere in the past, but Bluebell is self-conscious and immediately present, looking out at them as if poised to hold her own in conversation, or, equally, to keep her thoughts to herself.
‘The adoptive mother got in touch,’ Leona says. ‘A little bit after Bluebell’s birthday, but better late than never. They’ve moved to the south of France – her husband’s working on a big engineering project there. It’s strange to think of Bluebell growing up so far away. But anyway, she said Bluebell’s been asking about me. A lot. She wanted a photo. Of me. Of course it took me forever to decide which one to send.’
‘Does she want to meet?’ Viv asks.
‘I don’t think so. Not yet. It hasn’t been mentioned. And I haven’t asked,’ Leona says. ‘It’d be a big step. Even bigger now that they’re living abroad. I mean, I suppose it’s not that far, but it seems different. And Bluebell’s still very young. Her adoptive parents will want to be sure that she’s ready. But, maybe one day…’
‘Are you ready?’ Viv asks.
Leona shrugs. ‘Are any of us ever ready? With things like that, the really big things, I think you can only know after the event. If you’re lucky. But, you know… it starts me off daydreaming. What it’d be like to hold her. After all this time. Maybe to become part of her life, in some small way. Not a big part. Maybe like some kind of auntie. To be told when she’s getting married even if I don’t get an invite to the wedding. Maybe even to get to visit her after she’s had a child of her own. To hold her baby.’
And Rachel sees for the first time that to lose a child is to lose the promise of grandchildren, too. Not something she had ever considered. Would a future Becca want her mother to be part of her life if it moved in that direction? Or would she not trust her enough? Would it fall to Rachel to send birthday and Christmas presents in exchange for the occasional photo, and maybe a few awkward, well-intentioned visits – to be the grandparent Becca’s child or children didn’t really know, without them really knowing why?
Viv is looking at
Leona with a strange mix of tenderness and sadness.
‘That’s lovely, Leona,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being hopeful. Hope is what makes it possible for us to keep going. It’s much more useful than despair.’ She sighs. ‘Having grandchildren is a wonderful thing. Not that I see mine as often as I would like. I get to Norfolk maybe twice a year. It’s an awful drive. Much too tiring for Elaine to do all on her own. I suppose I’ll have to figure out how to do it by train now.’
Presumably Aidan would never have children. This loss strikes Rachel as keenly as if it were her own. Then Viv turns to her and says, ‘Did you bring along a picture of Becca?’
Rachel attempts to take a deep breath, and is surprised to find that her throat feels small and tight.
‘I did,’ she says.
She rummages in her bag for her copy of Kramer vs. Kramer; she had slipped the photocopy in there to keep it flat. It’s the one Mitch had taken of her with Becca when they first went to see Rose Cottage; she’d taken it with her the night she left. She’d blown it up on the copier at work and cropped it so that she’s visible only as a hand holding Becca’s. There but not there.
The memory it conjures up is so vivid and sweet, and yet it seems so remote that it could almost be a glimpse of some other woman and her daughter, a snap from some other life.
Becca had gone with her so trustingly then… but she certainly doesn’t trust her now. Sophie the counsellor had said that it would take time, that the ability of human relationships to repair themselves was as astonishing as the ability of the human body to heal. But not all wounds got better. And maybe Becca is right to be unsure.
The noticeboard seems suddenly far away, and difficult to reach; she’s acutely conscious of every movement. She knows that they’re all watching her and waiting, and it doesn’t make it any easier that they know how she feels.
There are a couple of spare pins stuck in the baize, and she uses them to mount the picture of Becca in the space under Aidan in his wellies, and next to Bluebell. To Rachel’s surprise, Becca doesn’t look out of place. It’s as if her picture has always been missing.
Her hands are steady. This is surprising, too.
‘I haven’t got many pictures of Becca,’ she says. ‘But I love this one. It was taken the day we first came to see our house in Kettlebridge. It was a beautiful summer day, and we were all excited at the prospect of moving somewhere new.’ She stops short of saying that Mitch took the picture. Her voice is already shaky.
Viv says, ‘What a precious memory. It’s a very loving picture. You must be so proud of her. And I’m sure she’s proud of you, too.’
‘Hardly. I’m a wreck,’ Rachel says. ‘Most days I feel about a million years old.’
Was it tactless to say that to someone so much older? But Viv doesn’t take offence. ‘Well, you might feel like that, but you certainly don’t look it,’ she says.
‘Yeah, well, it’s amazing what a bit of make-up can do.’
‘Oh, you don’t need all that stuff. You’re a very attractive young woman. I know the magazines are all for telling you that you need the latest foundation and so on, but we all know that’s just so they can keep on making their money, don’t we? Soap and a little pot of Vaseline is as good as any of that nonsense, and a bit of lipstick if you want to be cheerful.’
‘Some January sun and a toy boy wouldn’t hurt either,’ Leona murmurs.
‘I’d rather have someone to sort out my garden than a toy boy,’ Viv says. ‘At my advanced stage in life, one really can’t be bothered with all that palaver.’
Rachel turns away from the noticeboard and sits down again. There is a strange but not unpleasant sensation in her chest, as if her heart is opening up and expanding, suffusing her with warmth.
Seventeen
The home where Aidan is cared for turns out to be a friendly-looking mock Tudor building set back from the main road and surrounded by gardens. Viv suggests that Rachel wait in the reception area, but once she has made herself known to the staff and logged her registration number, Rachel opts to return to the privacy of her car.
What must it be like for Viv, only being able to see her son with a member of staff somewhere not far off? Rachel has asked whether Viv ever takes Aidan out of the home, and Viv changed the subject, which Rachel took to mean that she doesn’t, for reasons that she would prefer not to disclose.
Rachel has come equipped with a flask of coffee and a Sunday paper. As she reads it is quiet around her, although at one point she looks up and sees a small party heading off into the grounds with a selection of gardening tools. At the head of the group is a large man with an unusual, tip-toeing gait; at the back is a stooped, elderly woman who stops every couple of paces to sniff the air and mutter something, and is encouraged to move on by a woman in a red windbreaker over pink overalls that surely must be the home’s staff uniform.
Rachel wonders if Aidan likes to go out and work outside. She remembers what Viv had said about wanting someone who could help her out in the garden; if he wasn’t here, maybe that could have been Aidan… Surely it would be a comfort for Viv to think of him digging the earth and tending seedlings, or perhaps, if that requires more focus than he is capable of, just feeling the breeze and sunlight on his face. Better than being cooped up inside with the central heating turned up and the TV on loud, making little sense of it, waiting for the next thing to happen.
When a little more than an hour has passed Viv emerges and gets into the car. She looks much better than at their last meeting; the neck collar has gone and she’s dressed in bright colours – a teal raincoat, knee-length deep-green leather boots. On the drive over she had been resolutely light-spirited, girlish even, as if on her way to a party.
She says, ‘Aidan told me it was time for me to go. He’s watching us, so could you give him a little wave, if you don’t mind? Look, that’s him at the window, top right.’
There is indeed someone standing at the window, waving as vigorously as if his life depends on it. A man, taller than Viv, fair-haired, a little tubby, dressed in a sky-blue T-shirt. Rachel reciprocates.
‘He doesn’t like it if I stay too long,’ Viv explains, waving, too. ‘It’s not that he doesn’t love me, or even that he wants to see me go. It’s just that this is the pattern. He doesn’t like it if the pattern changes. All relationships are like that, to some extent, don’t you think? You find a way of doing things, and you get comfortable. That’s why he always wears the same blue T-shirt every time I come to see him. It’s his favourite. He’s got a stock of them, so we don’t have to worry about it getting lost in the wash.’
If he can’t cope with a different T-shirt, how’s he going to cope when, one day in the distant future, you can’t come to see him any more?
This must have occurred to Viv, too. Maybe she tries not to think about it. When you’re up against the inevitable, what else can you do?
Rachel reaches the turning onto the main road; Viv looks back to catch a final glimpse of the home before they leave it behind. Then she rummages in her handbag for a packet of tissues and discreetly wipes her eyes.
‘I’ve found the only way I can cope with things is not to dwell on them too much,’ she says. ‘I just try and take everything as it comes. But the car accident, you know… that was a shock. And I have this back pain that comes and goes. Nothing too terrible, but I can’t help feeling that it’s a warning sign.’ She sighs. ‘I hate not being able to do things.’
‘But you can do what you need to do, can’t you?’ Rachel says. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with having a little bit of help.’
‘Well, I don’t really like needing help. And I’m sure you’re the same. Though being young and healthy as you are, you’ve got plenty of time before you need to worry about turning into an old crock like me. Last thing I ever wanted was to become someone who’s a burden on others. Do you have any elderly relatives to worry about, Rachel? I know a lot of women of your age do.’
‘My fat
her passed away years ago, and my mother died last spring. My father-in-law isn’t with us any more either, and my mother-in-law has married again and seems to have found a new lease of life. She and her other half are fit as fleas and spend all their time on cruises. Anyway, I’m absolutely the last person they’d want to accept any help from. Mitch’s mother always disapproved of me, and now I imagine she feels completely vindicated. She’s always been down on Mitch – that’s my husband – as well. He’s an artist, and she’s never quite forgiven him for not becoming a lawyer. His brother went into the family business, and he’s definitely the favourite son.’
‘Art must be a hard way to make a living,’ Viv observes. ‘So, this Mitch… you’re still married?’
‘For now. Probably not indefinitely. But, you know… We only separated in the autumn. I don’t think either of us are in a rush to make it to the final curtain.’
‘Well, divorce is a nasty business. My daughter, Elaine, had a dreadful time when she was going through it. Expensive, too. I hope you’ve seen a decent lawyer. I know a good chap in Kettlebridge, if you’d like his details.’
‘Oh… it’s very kind of you, Viv, but I think things are settled, for now. I got a redundancy payment last year that paid off a big chunk of the mortgage, and we’ve agreed that Mitch and Becca will stay in the house until she’s twenty-one. That’s very important to me, that she shouldn’t lose her home. The school’s given us a bursary to help with the school fees, and I’m sending Mitch a bit of maintenance – not much, the rent on the dump I live in is extortionate, but hopefully by and by I’ll get a better job. Not that I’m saying anything against Fun-to-Learn, but that’s just a temporary thing – I’m doing maternity leave cover. Sooner or later I’ll have to move on to something else.’
