Forgive Me

by Lesley Pearse

  It was funny how she kept recalling similar remarks her mother had made. Had she been trying to tell her that the marriage wasn’t a happy one?

  Yet Eva felt Andrew was being honest when he insisted he’d tried to make Flora tell her the truth for years. He said he had been afraid that if she ever asked for her birth certificate, she would see her mother’s maiden name Foyle was on it, and a gap left where her father’s name should have been. He said Flora had always promised she would tell Eva the truth at an appropriate time.

  ‘Each time you reached a milestone – your sixteenth birthday, then your eighteenth – I insisted she told you,’ he said. ‘But she always said, “Not now. I’ll know when the time is right.” But I was always afraid that you would need your birth certificate at some stage. Do you remember just before Christmas when you said you’d like money for your twenty-first, rather than a party, because you wanted to go to Thailand with a friend at work? Well, that made Flora panic; she thought you’d need a visa, and for that you have to produce a birth certificate.’

  Eva did remember talking about wanting to go to Thailand. She also remembered that her mother got very uptight about it. She even said it was selfish to go away with a friend rather than have a nice family party they could all enjoy.

  ‘You aren’t trying to say that was the reason she killed herself?’ she asked him incredulously.

  He was looking at her accusingly. ‘Well, I think it certainly played its part,’ he said. ‘She was terrified of how you would react.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you take over and tell me yourself?’ she snapped at him. ‘And don’t you dare say that it was because you were afraid to, because you didn’t have any problem spitting it out the minute she was dead!’

  ‘Oh grow up, Eva,’ he said scornfully. ‘You know the truth now, so deal with it.’

  That cold dismissive response was like a knife through her heart. She was certain that any other man who had brought up a child as his own from babyhood would have reassured her that he’d always loved her, even if she wasn’t his biological daughter. But she didn’t have the words to say how deeply wounded she felt, and she was also certain that even if she did, it wouldn’t make any difference to him.

  ‘I suppose you don’t want me in the house any more then?’ she said in an attempt to get him to say he still had some feelings for her.

  ‘I certainly think it would be best if you moved out after the funeral,’ he replied, turning away from her as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘After all, you do have a place to go to now.’

  Since that night she’d stopped calling him Dad. The word stuck in her throat.

  It had been very tempting to leave the house immediately. She had a little money saved – enough to stay in a bed and breakfast for a few weeks – but she didn’t go, because of Ben and Sophie. They were bewildered and hurting, and right now they needed her.

  A few days ago Andrew had gone out to dinner with a colleague straight from work. Eva made spaghetti Bolognese for Ben, Sophie and herself, and Sophie began talking about the dressing-up clothes they used to keep in one of the rooms in the attic.

  ‘I used to think it was magic that there was always something different and new in there,’ she said. ‘Remember, Eva, when we found the two princesses’ dresses?’

  Eva did remember; she was about eleven, and Sophie eight. They had gone up to the attic to play and the two dresses were hanging up – one gold to fit Sophie, and a midnight-blue one for her. Eva knew Mum had made them because she’d seen her come back from the market with the satin, and Mum had put her finger to her lips when Eva asked what it was for. But she hadn’t seen the finished dresses before. And they were marvellous, each with a train and an Alice band headdress decorated with jewels to go with them. There was a purple cloak for Ben too.

  ‘She was so good at making us surprises,’ Ben said wistfully. ‘We played in those outfits so much. Remember the play you wrote for us, Eva? You made us rehearse it nearly every day before we put it on for Mum and Dad.’

  Eva laughed. ‘The two princesses were competing for the hand in marriage of the prince. Sophie and I had to do all kinds of tasks to show how accomplished we were.’

  Ben laughed then. ‘And I had to do quick changes to be your servant and test your skills. All I really wanted to do was strut around in the cloak being the prince.’

  ‘Mum clapped so hard when we finally performed it for her and Dad,’ Sophie said with a thoughtful smile. ‘She was the best actress, she made out she had no idea what we’d been doing up in the attic for weeks.’

  ‘We used to have a lot of fun playing together,’ Ben said wistfully. ‘She once said to me, “Stick close to your sisters as you grow older, Ben. You three will need each other when I’m gone.” Do you think she knew then that she wasn’t going to grow old with us?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Eva said, seeing that Ben’s lower lip was trembling with emotion. ‘I think she only meant that she wished she’d had brothers and sisters to share things with.’

  ‘But she wasn’t always fun and happy,’ Sophie reminded them. ‘What about that time we tried to make plaster rabbits with that rubber mould? She flew right off the handle, and all we’d done was spill a bit of plaster in the kitchen.’

  ‘And that time you collected flower petals to make perfume.’ Ben grinned at Sophie. ‘I thought she was going to kill you.’

  ‘Well, to be fair, you had made a mess in the kitchen with the plaster. And you did pick off all the flower heads in the garden, Sophie. Anyone would get mad about that,’ Eva pointed out.

  ‘She was a bit irrational sometimes, though,’ Ben admitted. ‘Remember her throwing that dish of lasagne at the wall because Dad said he was bored with it? I could’ve understood it if she’d done it while he was there watching her, but she waited until he’d gone out.’

  ‘She was afraid to throw it in front of him,’ Sophie said. ‘He’d have gone mental.’

  Sophie’s incisive remark surprised Eva. She’d always thought her younger sister wasn’t aware that her father had a nasty side. But she wasn’t going to agree with her, as Sophie was quite likely to tell tales later. She thought she’d better change the subject.

  ‘Getting back to what Ben said earlier about Mum wanting us to stay close. We will, won’t we?’

  ‘Of course,’ both Sophie and Ben agreed.

  Eva smiled at them. If they felt like that, perhaps there was even hope that Andrew had only reacted the way he had because of his grief and that in time he’d come round too.

  But there was no evidence of it yet. He wasn’t drinking as much now, and he hadn’t been nasty to her again, but an atmosphere hung around the house, heavy with unspoken recriminations on both their parts.

  She wanted to talk about it all to clear the air. She thought of offering him this studio she knew nothing about, to convince him she was not guilty of any kind of conspiracy with her mother. But he avoided being alone with her, and she felt he was just waiting for the funeral to be over so that he could tell her to go.

  That was what made her confide in Olive. She didn’t want to – it was bad enough that Olive knew her mother had taken her own life – but she had to tell someone. It was all whirling around in her mind till it reached the point where she felt she might go mad with it. As it was, it turned out to be the best thing she could have done. Olive explained about wills and what ‘probate’ meant properly. She said it might be months before it was all settled and the property came to her, so the best thing was to move out right after the funeral, and at that point to go and speak to the solicitor.

  Eva had decided that was what she must do, but she couldn’t help wondering how Sophie and Ben would cope when she left. They had never done anything around the house; she doubted they even knew how to work the washing machine. In the last couple of weeks she had tried to get them to help her out, because she was doing all the cooking, shopping, washing and tidying up. But although Ben tried, Sophie refused point blan
k, and Andrew took the view it was women’s work. Eva was afraid everything would fall apart without her there.

  ‘That isn’t for you to worry about,’ she told herself as she went to have a shower. Ben would be going to university in the autumn anyway, and it might make Sophie less self-centred if she didn’t have someone looking after her all the time.

  It rained remorselessly all day. When they got back to the house after the funeral, Ben directed the parking on the drive, Sophie took umbrellas and coats, and Eva offered drinks.

  ‘Your children do you great credit, Andrew,’ Eva heard a large woman in a very theatrical black hat remark. ‘I wouldn’t have blamed them if they’d retreated upstairs. It must be awful for them.’

  Eva wished she could go and hide. Most of the people who had come back to the house were strangers to her; there were only a handful of family friends and neighbours. She wondered who all the strangers were, and how they knew about the funeral, as Andrew hadn’t said he’d contacted people.

  The clergyman was a stranger too, and though Eva knew he’d called at the house to talk to Andrew about Flora, it was all too obvious that he didn’t know her personally and that he was uncomfortable holding a religious service for a suicide.

  Sophie cried constantly before, during and after the service, and both Andrew and Ben kept wiping their eyes. But Eva remained dry-eyed because the hymns, prayers and words about her mother didn’t seem to have anything to do with her. The clergyman did mention that she had been very artistic, but that didn’t cover how at Christmas Flora would transform the whole house into fairyland with beautiful handmade decorations. She could do amazing arrangements with a few twigs and leaves and whatever flowers she could find in the garden. When she made any of them birthday cakes they were always something fantastic: monsters for Ben when he was little, and Cinderella’s coach for Sophie. Eva remembered she had once had a Little Red Riding Hood cake on her birthday, with a forest of marzipan trees, Grandma’s cottage in the middle and the wicked wolf spying on Red Riding Hood.

  Eva recalled how Mum used to get the three of them to dance with her to old rock ’n’ roll records, the wonderful picnics she used to make, and how every birthday she painted them a card. And it always reflected what they were currently interested in, from whales to dinosaurs.

  Even when Eva had gone out into the garden earlier in the morning in the rain to pick a bunch of spring flowers, she didn’t feel the expected surge of emotion. Mum had loved the garden; in good weather she would be pottering out there all day, and it was beautiful in every season because of her care. Eva had thought she could make a lovely flower arrangement for the top of the coffin. But although she’d found the right shallow container and put oasis in it, the way Mum always did when she made table decorations, when she began to put the flowers in, it looked like something a six-year-old had put together. She did cry then, because she felt she was letting her mother down. She left it in the kitchen; she didn’t want Andrew thinking she couldn’t even get that right.

  The only thing that made her want to cry during the service was when she suddenly realized she hadn’t really known her mother. She had always believed that she had; she knew what made Flora laugh or cry, her favourite music, television programmes and types of food. She had even been very good at picking out clothes her mother would love. But now that seemed so very superficial – the way icing on a cake gave you no indication as to what lay beneath it.

  It was impossible to imagine her mother’s curvy small body was inside the pale wood coffin. Flora had often joked that when she died she wanted her body to be put in a boat, surrounded by flowers and then floated down a river like the Lady of Shalott. Eva knew the famous painting by Waterhouse, and the model even looked like Flora with her long red wavy hair and very pale skin.

  She didn’t think she ever wanted to see that picture again.

  As they came out of the chapel at the crematorium, there was a far larger group of people waiting rather impatiently to go in for the next funeral. That was a further reminder that Flora was only special to her children and husband. Eva supposed the other group, who had lost a loved one through illness or an accident, wouldn’t hold out much sympathy for a suicide.

  Everyone walked very slowly past the part of the Garden of Remembrance where the undertaker had put the flowers. That too seemed pointless – a waste of money, as they were destined to die by the next day. Eva gathered up the cards with the flowers because she thought they should all read the kind messages. But the rain had made the ink run and most were illegible.

  Back at the house, two friends of Rose, the cleaning lady, had put out all the food Eva had bought the day before, and made pots of tea. Eva busied herself taking round a large plate of canapés, but she watched Andrew talking to the guests, a large glass of whiskey in his hand. He had forced a smile at the compliment about his children. She heard him telling Sophie that the lady owned an antique shop in Montpellier, and that Flora was always popping in there and buying things when they first moved here.

  It was that comment which made Eva suddenly aware she might be able to find out more about her mother from some of these people.

  Taking courage into both hands, Eva made her way towards the oddest couple in the room because she was certain they had never been friends with Andrew.

  The man was tall and thin with lank hair straggling over his collar and John Lennon glasses. He looked like he’d borrowed his dark suit; it didn’t fit him anywhere. The woman he was with had coal-black dyed hair, bright green eye shadow and a too short and too tight navy-blue dress for someone plump and past fifty. But it was plain to see she had been a beauty: her green eyes were lovely and her cheekbones sharp, and she had an air about her of someone well used to being admired.

  ‘Hello, I thought I’d introduce myself and ask where you fit into Mum’s past,’ Eva said, holding out her hand to shake theirs. ‘I don’t think we’ve met before.’

  ‘We’ve met you, Eva,’ the woman said with a warm smile. ‘We often minded you as a baby. I’m Lauren Calder and this is Jack Willow. We were at art college in London with Flora. We shared a house together as students.’

  Jack stepped forward and, instead of taking her proffered hand, he kissed both her cheeks, his hands resting on her shoulders. ‘We are both so sorry about your mum, Eva. It must have been a terrible shock to you all.’

  The genuine sorrow and sympathy in his voice was soothing. ‘It was,’ Eva agreed. ‘It’s very difficult to get your head around such a thing. It’s also made me realize that Mum hid a great deal from me. I know nothing about her past, not even about her student days.’

  She noticed the way the couple looked at one another. It was the kind of look that said they weren’t sure if they should be the ones to divulge anything.

  ‘I’m not looking for a complete biography,’ Eva added quickly. ‘Just a few little stories. There’re so many people here that I don’t know. Did Andrew call you all about Mum?’

  ‘He called me,’ Lauren said. ‘I think I’m the only one of our student group that Flora kept in touch with. Even that wasn’t much, just a few words on a card at Christmas really. I rang around the other people, and we all came today because Flora had a special place in our hearts.’

  ‘That’s a nice thing to say,’ Eva said. ‘But why?’

  ‘For many reasons; because she was such fun, so very talented, and because she gave us so much encouragement when she became successful.’

  Eva was puzzled at that. ‘Successful?’

  ‘Surely you know your mother was a very good artist?’ Jack sounded surprised that she didn’t appear to know. ‘She was selling her work when the rest of us were just dreaming about it.’

  ‘She was?’

  ‘My goodness, she really did keep you in the dark,’ Lauren said with a nervous giggle. ‘I know she gave up painting, and I never understood why, but I didn’t imagine she wouldn’t tell her kids about those days.’

  ‘I was surprised to se
e only one of her paintings here,’ Jack said. He pointed to the Cornish beach scene on the wall. ‘That’s a very early one. I remember her working on it, she said it was a beach near to where she grew up. Are there any more in other rooms?’

  ‘No. That’s the only one,’ Eva said, looking round at the picture. It had been hanging there in the alcove by the chimney for as long as she could remember – just sea, beach and rocks, nothing in it that had ever made her ask questions about it. But looking at it now, as if for the first time, she could see that it really was a very good painting. The light, clouds and the texture of the rocks were so realistic it could almost have been a photograph.

  ‘She would paint birthday cards in watercolours for friends and for us, but she never used oils or did any big pictures. But if she was so good, why did she give it up?’ she asked.

  Lauren reached out and took Eva’s hand in hers. ‘Maybe it was because when she had you three children, she didn’t feel the need to paint any more.’

  Eva nodded. ‘I can understand her not keeping it up when we were small, but it seems strange she didn’t start again once we were all at school. She never worked, you know, and it wasn’t as if she was that house-proud.’

  Jack smiled. ‘She used to be the untidiest person I knew,’ he said. ‘She always claimed she was born to be waited on.’

  ‘She said that to me once too.’ Eva smiled back at him. ‘I think she only kept the house perfect because Andrew insisted that she must. She didn’t do it when he was away –’ She stopped short, suddenly aware she shouldn’t tell people such things.

  Lauren took her hand again, perhaps guessing what had cut her short. ‘It’s OK, Eva, you can talk about it, especially to us. I bet the last couple of weeks have been a very lonely time for you? My mother died when I was just a bit older than you. I felt so confused, angry, sad, every kind of emotion, and I had no one I could talk it over with. How’s your dad been? He was very curt on the phone, I didn’t dare ask him anything more.’