The Peacock Summer

by Hannah Richell

  She fixes him with a serious stare. ‘You’d like me to be more like you?’

  ‘I had my reasons for leaving.’

  Maggie can feel the frustration building inside her. ‘Even if that were true, don’t you feel any sense of responsibility now, to help her, to protect the home she is so attached to?’

  ‘There’s a wonderful freedom to be found in letting go of the things from your past that weigh you down.’

  Maggie feels her anger surging. It’s so Albie, she thinks, to see it that way. To suggest she seek pleasure over responsibility, convenience over hard work. He sounds like a bad self-help book and Maggie can’t help wondering, is she on his list of ‘things’ that weigh him down? She can’t bring herself to ask, too afraid of his answer. All she knows is that if he had been here, if he had been a better father, a more present son, then perhaps they wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Or at least she wouldn’t feel as though she were bearing the brunt of the worry on her own. She glances across at Will, noticing he has moved even further away, giving them the space to talk.

  It’s a confusing legacy, her need for her father: her love for him – versus the constant sense of having been abandoned or let down. Never really knowing when he might show up, but certainly knowing he’d never there for her, for all those important firsts a daughter might experience: her first triumphant bike ride, wobbling down the gravel drive on two wheels; her first day at boarding school, sitting on the end of a narrow bed gazing out of the window at a retreating car; her sixteenth birthday; her school exam results; her first hangover; her first broken heart. While her mother had never been an option – always an absent ghost, an idea that she couldn’t really miss for never having known her – Albie was different. Albie was somehow more real, moving tantalisingly in and out of her life, raising her hopes then dashing them time and again with his unpredictable departures. It’s hard to know which is worse.

  No. There is only one person who has remained a constant in her life. Lillian. She’s been there for her in all the moments – big and small – that she’s ever needed someone. There, most importantly, when she hit crisis point last year. No judgement, just careful advice and comfort.

  How can she explain to this impossible man that it is Lillian who has made her feel like she has one place in the world that she can call home? This woman, who is not even her blood relation, but a grandmother through marriage, has been more family to her – more like a parent – than any other person in her life. How can she explain this to a man who has spent his life running from Cloudesley, only ever returning when it offers some benefit to him: money, shelter, a place to dump his child? How can she explain this to a man who has been absent for most of her life? Is there even any point trying after all these years, if he still can’t see that Lillian is her family – her home?

  ‘I have to do this,’ she says after a moment, swallowing back all her anger and her arguments, knowing that at sixty-eight, her father is never going to change. ‘For Lillian. I owe it to her.’

  Albie shrugs. ‘Well I think you’re wrong. I think Lillian would want you to go and live your life.’

  Go and live her life. How easy he makes it sound when she doesn’t even know what shape her life is anymore. Her once-promising career has stalled in the most awful creative block. Her life with Gus has fallen over. She certainly can’t spend her days backpacking around the world, avoiding real life and responsibility. Maggie shakes her head in frustration. ‘Let me ask you the same question then.’ He turns his head to look at her blankly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m here catching up with my darling daughter.’ He stretches his arms wide. ‘Enjoying this beautiful sunshine. Living in the moment.’

  Maggie sighs and slumps back upon the grass. She closes her eyes and tries to stem her irritation.

  Albie seems to think for a moment, and then lets out a long sigh. ‘Look, Maggie, I know I’ve been a terrible father – and hardly the ideal son to Lillian. But I’ll make you a promise. I won’t leave you alone with this. Not when I can see how much you care about Lillian and the old house. I’ll stay, until you don’t need me anymore.’

  Maggie turns her head to eye Albie with suspicion. ‘It might take months.’

  Albie shrugs.

  ‘And it’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘I know, but I think I owe you this. I’d like to stay and help . . . if that’s what you want?’

  Maggie lets out a sharp laugh. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more.’

  Albie smiles. ‘Good.’

  She eyes him. ‘We have to shake on it, though. No more broken promises.’

  He nods and reaches out his hand. She takes it firmly in her own and shakes.

  ‘No more broken promises,’ agrees Albie. ‘Here,’ he adds, plunging his hand deep into his trouser pocket and pulling out a small, smooth, heart-shaped stone, grey-purple in colour. ‘A token of my intention. I found it in the woods. Something beautiful – for you.’

  Maggie takes the stone and holds it up against the sky. She runs her finger over its smooth, warm surface. ‘Thank you.’ Silence falls over them again.

  ‘So are you going to tell me what’s going on between you two?’ Albie asks, after a while, jerking his head in the direction of Will.

  ‘Between me and Will? There’s absolutely nothing going on between us. I don’t think he can bear to be within twenty paces of me, look.’ She nods across to where Will unloads a wheelbarrow of mulch into the herbaceous border.

  ‘You wouldn’t be the first person in the world to make a mistake in love. And I’m sure you won’t be the last. Better to leave, than to settle down with the wrong man.’

  ‘Like Mum?’

  Albie winces.

  ‘I went to see her, you know.’

  ‘Amanda?’

  Maggie nods.

  Albie looks at her with obvious interest. ‘How was that?’

  ‘Disappointing.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Maggie shrugs. ‘It helped to clarify some things. It helped me to close that door once and for all. But I’m still ashamed of how I handled things with Gus. I was a coward. I ran away, and I hurt a lot of people in the process.’

  ‘Did you hurt anyone intentionally?’

  Maggie shakes her head. ‘Of course not. I was trying to do the right thing, admittedly in a very roundabout way.’

  Albie nods. ‘Have you considered that perhaps you did do the right thing? Perhaps you did the bravest thing you could do at the time, by choosing to leave. Sometimes running away is the answer because you know the people you are leaving behind will be better off without you.’ He is studying her intently and Maggie realises that they aren’t talking about Gus anymore. Albie is trying to offer some kind of convoluted, half-arsed explanation for his absence over the years.

  ‘When your mother ran out on us . . . left me holding the baby . . . I tried my best but I was a terrible father. It was far better that I brought you here and that Lillian brought you up and gave you a life of love and stability. She was exactly what you needed . . . and in a funny way, I think you might have been what she needed, too.’

  How convenient, she thinks. Of course he would spin it that way. ‘I’m very grateful to Lillian. But I still wish you hadn’t left. I was lonely,’ she says.

  ‘I understand, believe me. But I wouldn’t have left you here if I hadn’t thought it the safest place for you. I didn’t have the kind of life that could,’ he pauses, as if trying to find the right word, ‘accommodate a child. I had some issues that I needed to address. Drink. Drugs.’ He picks at the grass at his side. ‘I didn’t want you to have the same kind of childhood I had, but I knew things had changed at Cloudesley. Things were more . . . stable. You must believe me that I wouldn’t have left you if I didn’t feel that this was the very best place for you.’

  Safe. Stable. They seem like such strange words for Albie to us
e. ‘I suppose we all have our reasons for the painful things we do to others, don’t we?’ she says carefully.

  Albie looks off to the horizon, where the beech trees rustle in the woods beyond the meadow. ‘Indeed we do.’ He glances at her sideways. ‘And none of us ever has the full picture or the whole truth, even if we think we do.’

  Maggie sighs. ‘I just wish I hadn’t had to lose my two closest friends in the process.’

  ‘Will can’t hate you that much.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘He’s here, isn’t he? You know, I’d always assumed if you were going to marry anyone it would have been the older brother.’ He jerks his head to where Will stands loading a wheelbarrow. ‘But then,’ he throws his hands up, ‘what would I know?’

  Maggie swallows, feeling a dull ache beneath her ribs. ‘Right,’ she says, ‘what would you know? A: you were hardly ever here and . . . B: you’re not exactly a roaring success in the romance department yourself, are you?’

  Albie grins at her. ‘Touché!’ he says and then, before she has even realised what he is doing, he has tugged on the hose lying nearby and dragged the sprinkler towards them, directing its spray over her, showering her with ice-cold water. Maggie shrieks and leaps up, running for the house, laughing all the way up to the terrace with the shock.

  Upstairs in her bedroom, she stands in her underwear towelling her hair dry, trying to put what Albie has said out of her mind. I’d always assumed if you were going to marry anyone it would have been the older brother.

  Lying out in the garden, she had felt a piece of her heart crack wide open at her father’s words, for how could he – her absent, errant father – have ever glimpsed the truth of her feelings when they had been so jumbled and confused in Maggie’s own heart?

  Will and Gus. Gus and Will. There had never been any question of anything romantic between either of them until one summer, when the three of them had been lying sprawled on a picnic blanket under the old damson tree after a late summer barbecue at the Mortimers’. Gus had drunk too much cider and fallen asleep while she and Will had lain there a while longer beneath the tree, watching the sun moving through the twisted branches laden with purple fruit.

  ‘Don’t you ever wonder where she is?’ Will had asked her, his voice soft and low. ‘Aren’t you curious about her?’

  He hadn’t had to spell out who he had been referring to. Maggie had shrugged, her eyes fixed on the shimmering leaves overhead. ‘Why should I? She left us. I have Lillian now. She’s all I need.’

  ‘Your grandmother is pretty amazing,’ agreed Will. ‘But I don’t buy that for a second. You must think about her.’

  Maggie had shrugged. ‘So what if I do? I can’t make her come back. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.’

  ‘But what if your mum came to find you . . . what if she tracked you down? Wouldn’t you want to get to know her?’

  Maggie had shaken her head vehemently. ‘She made her choice. The way I see it, she gave up any right to know about my life the day she left us.’

  Will had looked at her appraisingly. ‘I think you might be one of the strongest people I know.’

  Maggie shrugged. ‘Lillian has always taught me to think of it as her loss.’

  ‘Yes,’ Will had said, turning to look at her, reaching for the hand lying at her side and squeezing it tightly in his own, ‘Lillian’s right. It is your mum’s loss.’

  She had turned to face him then and Will had reached out and stroked the curve of her face. Maggie had leaned in a little closer, staring into his achingly familiar blue eyes, holding her breath, wondering if she was imagining the sudden stillness between them. Will’s face had moved a little closer and just as she had found herself silently willing him, with all of her being, to kiss her, Gus had stirred beside them.

  ‘Sun’s gone in,’ he’d murmured. ‘We should go inside.’

  The spell had been broken. They’d picked themselves up, dusted off the grass clinging to their clothes, and retreated to the kitchen where the echoes of their shared moment had vanished with the familiarity of old routines. Will had returned to London that evening and a year later, it had been Gus who had kissed her at the village fireworks display. It was Gus she had fallen into a relationship with – a relationship that had felt familiar, comfortable and easy – and whenever she had seen Will after that, he had seemed cooler, somehow more distant, until Maggie had been convinced she’d imagined the strange moment of connection beneath the damson tree; that perhaps it had been nothing but an instance of naive, hormonal longing on her part.

  And perhaps Gus would have been enough for her – perhaps she could have been content with their laid-back, matey relationship and the chance he had offered her to be a proper part of his warm, wonderful family – if it hadn’t been for the letter.

  She had found it in Charles’s desk, the night she’d left Gus in London and returned to Cloudesley, shaken from the results of the pregnancy test. Jittery, terrified and hell-bent on destruction, she had gone to her grandfather’s study, seeking forgotten cigarettes or brandy, something to calm her nerves. And there, at the back of a drawer, not the box of cigarettes she’d been hoping for, but a folded piece of paper caught on the runners, preventing her from closing the drawer. She’d reached right in and hooked it out, and when she’d folded it flat on the surface of the desk, she’d been surprised to see a scrawl of words written in Lillian’s distinctive, spidery handwriting.

  Maggie goes across to her own dressing table and rummages through a jewellery box, pulling the sheet of paper from beneath a tangle of necklaces and bangles. She knows it almost off by heart now, but she reads the words anyway.

  My dearest heart,

  I once told you that the spark between us was so powerful it could steal the oxygen from the air around us. Today, you leave Cloudesley and that is exactly how I feel, as though you take with you the very air I need to breathe. You have shown me what it is to love and be loved – what it means to be seen and understood. It is a torture I can hardly bear to be apart from you, but from breath to breath, heartbeat to heartbeat, know that there will be no other while my love for you burns bright.

  I am forever yours.

  Lillian

  Maggie holds the letter in her hand as she moves across to the bedroom window and watches Will in the distance, dragging the sprinkler across the lawn to water a new patch of brown grass. He adjusts the hose then stands and watches the spray, water droplets forming falling rainbows in the sunlight. Will watches the water. Maggie watches Will. After a long while, he reaches out and catches some of the spray from the sprinkler in his cupped hands, throwing it on his face and hair, shaking off the excess, before repeating the act. Then, drenched, he peels off his T-shirt and tucks it into the waistband of his shorts before he lifts the wheelbarrow at his side and pushes it towards the walled garden.

  There will be no other while my love for you burns bright.

  Maggie sighs and turns away from the window.

  Chapter 23

  Albie sits perched on the end of her bed, a leather-bound book balanced carefully in his small hands as he reads to Lillian in a boyish, singsong voice. ‘“I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside, and on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this cir – cir . . .”’

  Albie stumbles over the word then corrects himself, ‘“. . . circumstance: but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite dim, as if filled with smoke; and, while looking to the right hand and left, to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I became further aware of a strong smell of burning.”’

  The words from Jane Eyre drift over her. She isn’t really listening to the story. It is one of her favourite books and Albie has visited her daily since Charles’s brutal attack to read to her, stumbling over some of the harder words, but resolutely reading on, as if by this one act of devotion he might single-handedly heal her.

  It is a sweet torture to
look upon his face as he reads to her, this boy she loves. This boy she would give anything for, to protect and nurture. But in choosing Albie and in promising her devotion, she hadn’t known what she might be giving up. How could she have known? She had never expected someone like Jack to unbalance her life, to test everything she thought she knew and understood.

  On her dressing table she can just make out the small square of paper propped among her perfume bottles – a pencil sketch of a jug of sweet peas with ‘Get well soon’ written in Jack’s cursive handwriting in one corner. It had been pushed under her door one night – their only communication in ten days. Her attention slides to the clock on the mantelpiece. Eleven. As if sensing her shift in focus, Albie stops reading and looks up from the book. ‘You look a little better.’

  ‘I do?’

  He nods. ‘Much brighter.’

  Lillian smiles. ‘Thank you for reading to me. You should go outside and play now. It looks like a lovely day.’

  ‘But I want to stay with you.’

  Lillian shakes her head. ‘Go and explore. Find me something beautiful?’

  Albie smiles and places the book on the footstool at the end of Lillian’s bed, kisses her carefully on the cheek, then leaves the room. Lillian waits for him to shut the door before sliding out of bed and moving over to the dressing table. Albie is right. She does look less wan, and she can walk now, without doubling over. When she inspects her body beneath her nightdress, however, she can see that it’s a different story. The large bruises on her ribs have bloomed the full rainbow spectrum but are still there, a sickly blue-green colour, yellowing at the edges like dying flowers. Still, they can be concealed beneath clothing and she knows her strength is returning; she has healed enough for what she knows she has to do.

  She slips down the shadowed corridor and descends the back staircase, sliding unseen past the open door to the kitchen. As she steps through the back door into the service courtyard, she walks straight into Bentham, coming the other way, holding a large, dusty trunk in his arms. ‘Oh, gosh,’ she says, putting a hand to her beating heart. ‘You startled me.’