That Part Was True

by Deborah McKinlay

  “All too big for you, monkey,” the mother said, riffling through the piles that Geraldine and Eve had made. “Cute, though.” She grinned at them. “But I’ve got two in school already,” she said. “I’ve done my dash.”

  Eve smiled at her. She had fine crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and her hair was escaping from a plastic clip at the back. She wore jeans and a navy rain jacket that had seen better days. She steered the stroller, weighed down at the handles with shopping, around the racks of clothes and piles of books and bric-a-brac and eventually came back to the counter with a child’s T-shirt and two books, one a children’s book in the shape of a clock and the other a fat paperback. It was one of Jack’s.

  “My boyfriend likes these,” the young woman said.

  In the stroller the little girl had fallen asleep. The sipping cup was abandoned in her lap, and her head rested against the metal stroller frame. Leaning and picking up the cup, tucking it into one of her unwieldy canvas bags, her mother asked, “Are they any good?”

  “Yes,” Eve said. “They’re very good.”

  Outside it had begun to drizzle and the woman tugged the stroller’s sunshade forward roughly. Then she pulled her own hood up over her head and frowned. Her skin, in the shade of the deep color, looked pallid, like overused sheets.

  Jackson Cooper, Eve thought, lives a five-hour flight from here in another universe.

  Eve stayed the whole day at the shop and locked up for Geraldine, who sang in a choir on Thursdays and was glad to get away early.

  “Gives me time for some baked beans before I go,” she joked.

  Eve was happy to make up for her lack of attendance, but she also wanted to prove something to herself. Wanted to prove that she could cope. That she could be out of the house and cope. That was really why she’d come.

  The shop was quiet for the last half hour and she had enjoyed Geraldine’s company, but Eve felt weary, nevertheless, on the drive home. The thought of the wedding and its attendant responsibilities was beginning to keep her awake at night. The trip to Hadley Hall had been such a spectacular failure, and she knew there’d be worse to come. She drove evenly at the regular pace dictated by the ribbon of evening traffic, but in her chest a small, nervous, erratic beating started, like the flap of wet washing on a windy day.

  Gwen was waiting when she let herself in at the kitchen door.

  “I never like going back to an empty house,” she said when Eve remonstrated with her for staying so late. It was well past six. “I’ve made a chicken pie. Pastry’s not as good as yours, but it’s warm. Sit down,” she said. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Eve, feeling, despite her short absence, as though she’d been away forever, replied, “No, don’t, Gwen. There’s some Chablis in the larder. I’ll open that. Will you have a glass with me?”

  Gwen looked surprised at this, and Eve was aware that it was a departure from form, but she suddenly didn’t care.

  “Please, Gwen, just a small glass. I know you’ve got to get home.”

  Gwen, responding perhaps to the depth of feeling in Eve’s voice, agreed. She went to fetch the wine.

  “No, really, let me,” Eve insisted. “Sit in the conservatory. It’s nice in there in the evenings.”

  Gwen, though, waiting while Eve opened the bottle, set out two glasses on a small lacquered tray.

  “Oh heavens,” Eve said, seeing it. “Don’t let me carry that, I’ll drop it.” Then she began to cry.

  Eve had wept rarely in her life, and the tears that she had shed had escaped her, flowed rather than burst forth. Once, soon after Simon had left, she had wandered, sleepless, into Izzy’s nursery and sat next to the crib on a button-back nursing chair, watching her own sleeping baby in the dark without touching her, and cried a small river. But she had done so silently and with no force. In fact, when the nanny had come upon her, starting at the white nightgowned figure, and said, “May I help you, Mrs. Petworth,” Eve had been collected enough to reply, “Thank you, no, Kate. I just looked in for a moment.” And Kate, switching on a low light, had gone about her work without any sense of the depths of pain that the room still housed.

  But now Eve cried wretchedly, as if her soul were being wrenched from her. And Gwen, decent, kind, motherly woman that she was, put one reassuring hand on her arm and let her. Then, when Eve had stilled a little, she led her quietly to the conservatory.

  Gwen sat Eve in a wicker chair and handed her a glass and then she sat, too, opposite her. For a moment they sipped their wine in silence, and then Gwen said, “Well, that was a long time coming.”

  Eve looked at her questioningly, depleted. She put her wine down, and her hand drifted against the glass-topped table beside her.

  “About twenty years, I reckon,” Gwen went on.

  Eve felt something, not crisp, but distant come to her lips, some statement of denial, some comment that would reestablish the employee-employer relationship between them. She began to pull herself up, but then she let go and withered again, back into her chair, and closed her eyes. A fresh, solitary tear skimmed her cheek. When she did speak, her voice was still broken. “Gwen, I’m such a mess. My life is such a mess.”

  “Uh-huh,” Gwen said.

  And Eve, at once aware of the airy, pitch-ceilinged conservatory and the immaculate garden beyond, said, “Oh, I know…,” rushing with embarrassment. “I know I’m terribly privileged.”

  Gwen held up her hand. “You’re lonely,” she said firmly. “You spent years at the beck and call of that cow of a mother of yours. I’m sorry, but we’re speaking frankly and the woman was a cow, the way she treated you. And now, now that you’re finally shot of her, you’re letting that daughter of yours run you ragged. What you need are friends of your own. Not more plants, not more recipe books. Friends, flesh-and-blood people who appreciate you. You’re one of the smartest, nicest, kindest people I’ve ever met, and you’re sitting out here all alone night after night wasting your life.”

  Outside the sky was beginning to turn milky with twilight. Gwen pressed on, “What’s more, you’re an extremely good-looking woman, with a wonderful figure. You could find yourself some nice man.”

  Eve began, gently, to cry again, but she found, despite that, that she could still speak. “The thing is, Gwen, I can’t…even if I did have friends…I can’t go anywhere, I have these…attacks.”

  Gwen nodded. “Like that day at the lavender,” she said calmly.

  “Like the day at the lavender.”

  On the day before her mother’s funeral, Eve had decided to make lavender scones, because Izzy was due, and because she needed something to do. Something she could do without thinking. She had been feeling low. Not specifically because of the loss of her mother—Eve was not a hypocrite—but in that loss, so many other losses had made themselves felt. In the hours after Virginia died, a great amorphous ache had beset her.

  And then there’d been the funeral to deal with, a wake at the house to cook for. The life of a party girl and serial marrier tends not to gather much moss in the way of long-lasting friendships, but there was still Virginia’s doctor, Geraldine, a neighbor of Eve’s, and an old boyfriend of Virginia’s—whose name was unfamiliar to Eve, but who had seen the announcement in The Telegraph and telephoned—and also Dodo, Virginia’s old pal from her champagne days, to mourn alongside her family.

  Dodo had said she would stay at The George, although Eve had extended a cordial enough invitation to her to sleep at the house. “No,” she’d insisted. “I like my own space.” It was the first thing Dodo had ever said that Eve had felt she could relate to.

  But then, as she leaned in to cut the first of the twiggy lavender stems, wearing a white apron over her dress and cardigan, it had occurred to her that if this fellow, the old boyfriend—Ted? Ned?— had seen the newspaper announcement, then other friends of Virginia’s might have seen it, too. Perhaps a lot of people would turn up the next day after all, people she didn’t know, from London.

  Ev
e had imagined then a crowd of smart, ageless women with unwavering tans and well-insured jewelry arriving with their self-confident husbands. Husbands who would grill her with those sorts of questions that self-confident husbands always feel compelled to grill people with: “So, what do you do with yourself out here all day, Eve?” “Manage the garden all on your own, do you?” It didn’t matter that they would instantly forget her responses; she would still have to come up with some. It was an appalling thought. And then the women would begin comparing her to her mother. “You wouldn’t think she was Virginia’s daughter, would you?”

  She’d felt all of a sudden as if she might faint, and had stood up straight and then lowered her head again to shake it off. But the dizziness had continued and with it had come a tightness at the base of her throat. She’d sat on the gravel, still morning-damp, with the scissors on her lap, hoping to recover. But she hadn’t. Her heart had gone on crashing at her ribs as if it might explode. The early morning sky, flat and pale, had seemed to sink down and envelop her.

  Eve had, at that moment, thought she was dying. Thought she would have no life without her mother after all. No life in which to enjoy her house, to read in bed if she chose to, to wear her hair loose without attracting negative comment. Gwen, coming upon her there, trembling and ashen, had feared the worst, too. But later, at the doctor’s surgery in Sudbury, Eve’s symptoms had been attributed to exhaustion. This diagnosis was confirmed the following week when extensive tests from the local hospital certified that she was in perfect health.

  “Still going on, is it?” Gwen said now.

  “Yes.”

  “I had wondered.”

  “This week, with Izzy and Ollie. It was ghastly. I can’t go on this way, Gwen. I just can’t.”

  “No,” Gwen said. “No. You can’t.”

  The truth was that Izzy was as nervous about seeing her father as her mother was. She had seen him twice in seventeen years, and if she had spent any significant time with him before that, she couldn’t remember it. While she waited nervously for him in the lobby of the very grand hotel in central London where he’d suggested they have lunch, she was suddenly struck with the fear that she would not recognize him.

  “Izzy,” a voice said at her back.

  She turned and there he was. Exactly the same. Extremely handsome and beautifully dressed. Grayer, but exactly the same.

  “I’m so sorry if I’ve kept you,” he said, glancing at his watch.

  “No. I was very early,” she said.

  He smiled.

  “I thought we’d have a drink before we went to our table…if you’d like to.” He suddenly seemed unsure, too, and that relaxed her somewhat.

  “Of course, yes. Why not?”

  “This way then.” He stood back to let her pass. They walked through an arched doorway and went into a large high-ceilinged room where prettily covered chaise lounges and gilt-edged chairs clustered around piecrust tables. “A champagne cocktail, my dear?” he asked, regaining his charm and composure as they sat.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “So,” he said, settling, adjusting his jacket. “Tell me about this chap. Does he deserve you?”

  Izzy’s first response was nervous, girlish. She wanted to impress him with Ollie. But then she caught herself. Who was this man to question her choices? He had deserted her as a child and barely made any attempt to contact her since. Cards at Christmas and birthdays attached to exorbitant, meaningless gifts. No, she would not have it.

  “We’re very happy,” she replied. Her drink arrived, and she lifted it and sipped it with tight lips.

  “Good,” Simon said, appraising her. She was good-looking, he thought, but lacked her mother’s prettiness. Eve had that soft look, like a watercolor. Izzy was all angles. Like her grandmother.

  “My condolences on the loss of your grandmother, Izzy,” he said steadily.

  Izzy did not loosen any at this. “Thank you,” she replied and put her glass down.

  “And your mother,” Simon went on. “How is she?”

  Izzy caught his eyes; there was a sincerity in his tone. “She’s…she’s fine,” she said, feeling a novel loyalty to Eve. Not wanting to say too much about her to this man, this stranger.

  Her father’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “I’m so glad you called, Izzy,” he said, leaning toward her slightly as if he might take her hand.

  Izzy, though, was still feeling defensive. “Well, it wasn’t as if you would have called me,” she said.

  Simon Petworth looked stung. But he caught himself.

  “No…no, you’re right. I would not have called you. But that does not mean I didn’t want to hear from you, wasn’t happy to hear from you. It will sound trite, I know, but I have thought about you a great deal over the years.”

  Izzy was shocked by how much she wanted this to be true. She tried to counter her weakness by bristling.

  “It does sound trite, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes…yes. Anyway, let’s see about some food, and then we can discuss this wedding. I realize I have let you down in many ways, Izzy, but I assure you I will do my best to make sure you have the wedding of your dreams.” He raised an elegant hand and momentarily an ornately uniformed waiter brought their menus.

  Izzy relaxed slightly when she opened hers. Food was familiar territory.

  The waiter, who had greeted her father by name, said, “We have carpaccio today, madam. And also lobster bisque. Or if something lighter appeals, perhaps a little consommé.”

  A lively discussion ensued before she settled on quail eggs and veal.

  “Very good, madam,” the waiter said, as if it had been a delight to serve her. And then he turned to her father to take his order for broad bean salad and Dover sole before the sommelier was summoned. By the time the wine was settled, it was time to go to their table.

  When they were seated in the opulent dining room, Simon looked at his daughter fondly and said, “I see your mother has raised you with her love of food. Do you cook as well as she does?”

  “I don’t cook,” she said. And then, suddenly fed up with all this parent business, with both of them, she said, “And it was Gin-gin who raised me. My mother always kept herself out of the picture. Not so far out of the picture as you, granted, but out of it nonetheless.”

  Simon Petworth looked at this striking girl who was his blood and his features stilled. “Your mother is a fine woman, Izzy. There is not an atom in her that isn’t decent, and unless she has changed very much, I doubt that she has ever done anything deliberately unkind to you or anyone else.”

  Izzy was taken aback. He had spoken to her sternly. He had sounded like…a father.

  “Well, no,” she said, pausing as her quail eggs were laid in front of her with some ceremony. After the white wine was poured, she said, “No, not unkind, I just, well, she didn’t seem terribly interested in me. Not like Gin-gin was.”

  “Gin-gin,” Simon answered with obvious control, “was your grandmother, and I understand that you had a great deal of affection for her.”

  Izzy was about to respond to this, but his expression warned her off.

  “But you were alone in that. No one else could abide the woman. If she was good to you, I am glad—it may absolve her somewhat in death—but she was never good to your mother. In fact, it is to my great shame that I allowed her to treat your mother the way she did and that I abandoned your mother to that. I feel as badly about that now as I do about abandoning you. Virginia Lowell was a calculating, ruthless bully, and she treated her daughter like a slave. I suspect Eve simply let her mother take over your upbringing because she was too terrified to do anything else.”

  He ended his speech then, and began to eat methodically. The charged air hung between them.

  It was Izzy who spoke first.

  “I would like to have my reception at Hadley Hall,” she said.

  “Very good,” Simon said. “Yes, that will be fine. Simply make any arrangements
you choose and have the paperwork sent to me. Whatever you want will be fine.”

  Izzy was feeling disturbed. She was not used to feeling disturbed and she didn’t like it. Perhaps her face signaled her bewilderment.

  “I’m sorry, Izzy,” her father said. “I do understand you cared for your grandmother.”

  “Loved my grandmother,” Izzy corrected.

  “Yes, loved your grandmother. But you are a young woman now, perhaps you’ll have children of your own before too long. Try to be compassionate to your mother. We all owe her that.”

  Izzy lowered her fork slowly and stared at the man who had made this statement.

  “If you cared for her so much, why did you abandon her for that…” She stopped herself from using her grandmother’s description.

  Simon lowered his silverware, too, and returned his daughter’s gaze. “I have no excuses. Reasons maybe, I was young and arrogant, and rather without guidance. I lost my own parents in my teens, as I’m sure you know.”

  Izzy did know this. She acknowledged the fact with a brief nod as the table was being cleared of their first course.

  “I regret…well, I cannot say I regret everything, because if I had not done what I did, I would not have my sons and I cannot say I regret them.”

  There was another silence then, only slightly masked by the arrival of their main courses, the surgical table-side filleting of the sole, and the pouring of more wine. Simon realized that the mention of his sons had been inappropriate, cruel even, and Izzy was stunned by how much the comment had pained her. It was one thing that he had denied her any fathering, but this denial was all the more brutal when combined with the reminder that he had not inflicted it on his children from his second and third marriages. Boys, perhaps he was only interested in boys, she thought.

  Simon spoke once the waiting staff had left the table. Izzy was staring vaguely at her plate and did not lift her utensils, so neither did he.