by Jane Healey
‘I’ll get the glasses,’ Alex says, and I watch him go.
‘Alex thinks I’m pissed at him.’
‘How come?’ Stuart gets a penknife from his pocket and hinges open the corkscrew. He’s so boyish, Stuart, so the same as he was as a teenager. Puckish, earnest, sly, with that core of gentle sadness that had a line of girls at his door in halls, never laughing off every hint of vulnerability like other young men could. I’ve missed him.
‘Oh, I don’t know. He scheduled someone to look round the house and I didn’t know they were coming.’
‘Wow, that does sound bad,’ Stuart teases sarcastically. ‘I’d be on the gin and tonic too.’
‘Yeah, I know, even our arguments are thrilling here in Middle England,’ I sigh. ‘How did you know what I’m drinking?’
‘Your dad used to use that glass for his G&Ts too.’
‘I don’t remember that.’ I tap my nails on the crystal.
We head to the patio, and the twins spill out of the door with ice lollies that will no doubt ruin their appetite for dinner.
‘You ask him,’ Alex is saying to Michael, with a nod towards Stuart.
Michael puts his hands behind his back and looks at Stuart sceptically. ‘Have you ever used a gun?’ he asks him.
‘Alex,’ I reprimand.
‘No, it’s fine,’ Stuart says. ‘No, Michael, I’ve never used a gun.’
Michael sighs disappointedly and joins his sister.
I remember seeing Stuart’s pictures of the atrocities in Bosnia in a weekend magazine once, with a hollow-cheeked photo of him, his eyes smudges of black, at the end looking a world away from the carefree boy he had been. He had always wanted to be a lawyer but sometime after university, in those busy couple of years when Alex and I were finding jobs in London, getting married and then getting pregnant much earlier than I had ever planned, Stuart drifted away from us, and then left the country completely and stopped answering letters or calls. The first I’d seen of him since had been at my father’s funeral, which he had heard about from an old university friend, and then Alex and I had gone for lunch with him a few weeks later and he’d mentioned he was looking for somewhere to stay in the summer.
‘Actually, that’s a lie,’ Stuart tells us. ‘I’ve never shot one, but sometimes when you meet with rebel leaders they like to show their guns off, want you to pose with them. If they had asked me to fire it at a target, a painted one, I would have probably agreed. We’d do anything for access, to get that one photograph.’
‘And now you’re here in boring Kent,’ Alex says, clasping his shoulder. ‘No shootouts and rebel leaders here. You’ll have to make do with us this summer.’
‘How does it feel to be back?’ I ask. After he left for university I don’t think he ever came back to the hamlet, and his father had left the area himself a few years afterwards following a heart attack.
‘It’s strange, strange but good.’ Stuart sets his pack of cigarettes and lighter on the table and stretches out his arms. ‘This old farmhouse,’ he adds, his eyes cutting to me.
‘What’s that?’ Alex asks.
‘Don’t you remember at the beginning of uni when Ruth used to tell people that she grew up in a farmhouse, as if she lived in a two-room cottage with a dirt floor and a pigsty?’
‘I remember you teasing her about it. I think it was before I met you both.’
‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ I protest but know he was right, feeling the second-hand wash of embarrassment. It was the era of counterculture and my home, my upbringing here with a distant father and a housekeeper, felt so strangely Victorian that I was ashamed of it. Stuart had introduced himself as the groundskeeper’s son of ‘Ruth’s estate’ a few times at parties that he, a cool second-year, took me to in my first term at university reading literature, and I hated it – although this being Cambridge, no one batted an eye at the idea of someone having an estate. I had followed in my father’s footsteps at Cambridge, not that he seemed to be all that proud of me – for that or anything else – and I’m pretty sure he had used his connections to put in a good word for Stuart too.
‘It is a gorgeous house though,’ Stuart says, looking back at it, ‘I always loved the colour of the bricks against the ivy.’
The ivy that is crumbling the mortar, I think, brushing a wasp from my shoulder. And the roof shale that is leaking and needs to be fixed before the autumn – but with what money? – the dodgy plumbing, the Aga that eats up so much oil, the damp in the basement leaching upwards, the peeling wallpaper, the patch of black mould I found yesterday in the utility room, the ancient wiring that keeps blowing out the fuses. Alex won’t listen when I ask him what we should do, tell him we can’t afford this house and the upkeep it will need, alongside paying for the twins to go to the local private school because of the terrible Ofsted reports for the state primary; to him all that matters is that it’s ours, mortgage-free after the negative equity disaster of our flat in London.
‘It’s not quite grand enough for my project though, you’re right,’ Stuart continues.
‘What is it again?’ Alex asks.
‘It’s called “English Ruins”. I take photos of English stately homes and their owners in their pearls and hunting jackets in their finest rooms, the ones with family portraits in gilded frames and antique tables topped by chinless busts and oriental clocks. And then I take photos of the staff behind the scenes in the poky backrooms and crumbling attics, but with the same large-format camera, the same composition and light. It’s a comment on class and decay, on the edifice of old Britannia crumbling.’ His fingers make the shape of rain in the air.
‘And the owners let you?’
‘I’m upfront with them – maybe not about the mission statement, but they know what I’m taking pictures of. I think they think people will feel sorry for them, like they’re posing for an article in the Mail to drum up sympathy and funds for their houses. It’s a far more bucolic assignment than some of my previous projects.’
‘You know, I always thought you were going to be a lawyer.’
‘Plans change,’ he shrugs, ‘and I’m not sure we really know what’s good for us as young people, teenagers, do we?’
As a teenager I wanted to stay in that river forever, I wanted to never leave. To stay in a watery world of fantasy and sisterhood.
A shout from Iza has me gladly leaving the conversation and its invitation to ruminate more over the past. As I walk through the thick grass towards the filled-in pond where Iza has hidden herself between the blue hydrangea and the purple buddleia, my neck feels hot, as if Stuart might be watching me, Stuart who was staying with his father that summer of ’73 too, who knows at least some of what happened then. But when I glance at him, his head is tilted back and he is studying the house instead.
Chapter Five
The only places in the house that you can see the annexe from are the drawing room and the tiny glass room next to it that her mother said was called the flower room. It is only large enough for three people to stand inside shoulder to shoulder and has a tiny bench and a shelf, and it sits between two sets of narrow double glass doors with the original curving handles, one set leading to the overgrown former vegetable patch with the dairy courtyard beyond.
That rainy afternoon, as Maeve sits on the antique tufted armchair in the drawing room, its fabric worn to a roughness like horse hide, she studies the flower room from a distance. Was it for flowers to be grown in? Or for flowers to be arranged, their stalks snipped and lower leaves discarded in a heap before the neat vase of blooms was carried into the rest of the house? Did some servant work there, between its narrow glass doors, sweating on hot days, feeling like a beetle pinned under glass? Or was it the daughter of the house who tended to her plants there, breathing in the hot smell of vegetation, imagining herself striding through some jungle landscape, free from the watchful eye of her mother in the room next door? Would she touch the petals of a miniature rose and sigh at their velvety softness,
feeling her ribcage ache at the press of her corset like the grip of a large pair of firm hands?
Maeve opens her eyes, watches water overflowing from the gutter pour down the outer doors of the flower room, a river of it occluding the green outside and the roof of the dairy beyond.
The drawing room is still full of her grandfather’s things. She drifts from table to shelf to chair, studying them, rubbing her fingertips through dust and old wax. She remembers little about her grandfather, and what she does might only come from photographs. They – she and her parents – used to make trips here when Maeve was little, but never overnight, even though, she thinks now, there would have been so many empty rooms waiting for them. There are photos in their family album of Maeve on the front lawn holding her grandfather’s hand, in the kitchen stirring cake batter in a bowl next to her mother, and here in the drawing room, sitting on her grandfather’s lap behind his desk.
Perhaps she can recall cigar smoke, a deep voice, thinning grey hair. Or perhaps not, she thinks as she runs a hand along his desk, and then crouches before one of the dark wood cabinets to either side of the fireplace. She searches through a stack of dusty yellowing folders and boxes, empty photo frames whose loose glass is still sharp, antiques wrapped in crinkled old newspaper – tarnished candleholders and napkin rings, an ivory wine screw, two small glass bottles. There’s a watch in a case lined with velvet, the leather of its strap stiff when she tries to put it around her own thin wrist. She imagines Stuart wearing it, imagines fastening it around his arm for him, feeling the bend and snap of the tendons underneath his skin.
Tanned skin, older skin, feels different to the touch. She remembers a doctor who examined her once, his meaty hands like a boxer, the scrape of a callus on his knuckle against her belly making the hairs on her body stand on end. Sorry, my hands are cold, he had apologized, but she could tell by his glance that he knew just why she’d shivered, even with the nurse there and a chaperone. No one had ever touched her inappropriately, but sometimes now she wished they had. A sick wish, and a sick thing to be doing, trawling through her grandfather’s belongings looking for secrets. But it’s raining, her father is at work, her mother busy with the twins, and Stuart is out taking photographs of other people somewhere else. She’s bored, but she knows that word covers up a tremulous well of other feelings.
There’s a photo right at the back of the cupboard, jammed behind the shelf. Two photos, she corrects, peeling them apart and bringing them out into the light. On one of them, yellowed by time, teenagers sit in the grass, squinting at the sun, laughing. It’s mostly girls, in short dresses and earth colours, seventies fashions, with hair lying lank on their shoulders. She searches for her mother in their faces but it’s hard because they’re all bleached by time. There are three boys too, their hair long and legs bared by short shorts or encased in tight flares.
Is that Stuart? she thinks, leaning closer, pressing down on the photo as if it might make the image clearer. The boy has dark hair and a familiar smile, and is resting back on his elbows, ankles crossed over one another. He isn’t holding hands with any of the girls, nor leaning cosily on their shoulder, and she is relieved.
The second photo doesn’t contain any people. The river, the caption on the back says, in handwriting that might be a younger version of her mother’s. Which river? Maeve ponders, fingers tracing the silver glimmer of its surface. Is there one nearby? In the woods, maybe? She hasn’t ventured in there yet.
In the other cupboard under a stack of old law journals she finds a shoebox with her name written on it. She glances to the open door and then pulls the box out.
Her parents don’t really talk about her grandfather; there were no pictures of him displayed at any of their London flats, nor cards from him for the children’s birthdays and Christmas. Grandparents are supposed to do that, to send gifts, Maeve remembers telling her mother, serious in the way only an aggrieved child can be, and how Ruth had said she was sorry that she couldn’t give Maeve a better grandfather. Her mother and he were not close, she has gathered over the years, and she never heard her cry when he died, but then her mother seems to pride herself on her strength, on never saying she is tired, fed up, that she’s had enough, on always staying on her feet.
Lifting the lid of the box, Maeve finds a fistful of cards, named again in her grandfather’s old-fashioned scrawl, and two wrapped presents, their paper faded and dull.
The thundering noise of the twins set free from their cartoons and running through the house, followed by the call of her mother, has Maeve shoving her finds back inside the cupboard, brushing her clothes of dust and sitting back on the tufted chair.
She closes her eyes as two sets of footsteps hurry inside the room.
‘Don’t run around in there, you’ll knock something over,’ her mother says from the hallway.
Maeve hears noisy breathing next to her, the inscrutable whisper of twin to twin. ‘What are you doing?’ Iza asks.
‘Sleeping,’ Maeve replies.
‘Don’t lie, you’re pretending,’ Michael says. ‘You’re smiling.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes,’ Iza says, and Maeve opens her eyes with a gasp, making them jump and laugh.
She wriggles her hands in their sides so they giggle and squirm away from her.
Once they’re gone, she takes the cards upstairs, hiding them under her top in case she’s seen.
The contents of the envelopes – birthday cards for her tenth to sixteenth birthdays and a couple of Christmas cards – are mundane and don’t reveal any secrets beyond the one that makes her eyes hurt: that her grandfather had written her letters, that he had thought of her. To my granddaughter Maeve, he writes in the last, I hope you have a wonderful birthday. I’m sorry that I can’t join you for cake, I hope you will forgive me. I can’t believe how old you are now, I remember when I could hold you in the crook of my arm.
Why did he never send these to her? Did he just forget? Why did he and her parents fall out? She doesn’t know who to blame for their estrangement but she wants to blame someone, because now she feels like she’s missed out on knowing him, on being loved by him, and it’s too late because he’s dead.
Later, the rain has stopped and the sun is steaming it from the earth and from the leaves, drying the grass beneath Maeve’s feet as she sits on the bench in the far corner of the garden next to the lavender bush, wanting to escape from the house and her twisting sadness. Branches of one of the apple trees outside the garden droop over the top of the crumbling brick and fuchsia is bright at her side, its petals reminding her of the dress of the flower fairy in one of her favourite childhood books. If she slits her eyes open she can see the whorl of the iron of the gate, and is thus perfectly positioned to see Stuart come into view half an hour after she first sat down, pausing with his hand on the gate as he looks at her.
‘Enjoying the sun?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’ She holds her hand above her eyes like it’s him who is too bright to look at as he walks closer. ‘How was your trip?’
‘Bit boring,’ he says with a shrug.
He’s standing in front of her now, throwing his shadow over her. ‘How was your day?’
‘Bit boring,’ she shrugs and he laughs. She wants to tell him about what she found, but doesn’t know how to explain why silly childhood birthday cards made her feel so upset.
‘Can I tell you a secret?’ he says, sitting next to her on the bench, setting his camera bag carefully down at his feet.
‘Of course.’
‘I’d rather be working on my other project, not taking photos of boring rich people and their fancy houses.’
‘What project?’
He has the keys to the annexe in his fist still, is wearing his usual belt and leather shoes, sunglasses hooked on the neck of his faded shirt, plain watch on his wrist and a braided leather bracelet beside it. His wallet is peeking out of his pocket, and she sees the shape of his silver lighter in the other, assumes he has a pack of cigare
ttes in his back pocket as well. Maeve is wearing only a sundress. She likes the contrast between them, likes that he has so much stuff.
He leans forward, rests his arms on his legs. ‘I have this idea to remake old paintings in modern settings, in photograph form. Like those postcards I gave you. Paintings that reference myths or cultural icons. I want to try and translate them into the modern world.’ He squints and looks up at her. ‘Does that sound stupid?’
‘No, I think it sounds amazing.’
He smiles. ‘I’m glad you approve.’
Will he ask to take her photo? Surely he will, she thinks. He told her she looked like Ophelia, he gave her those postcards. But maybe he has proper models in mind, willowy creatures without scars or round cheeks. Maybe he’s just being nice to her, friendly like an adult to the daughter of his friend. Maybe she’s an idiot.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
‘I’m fine.’
He studies her like he doesn’t believe her. ‘Are you still in pain?’ He looks pained himself, as though it hurts him to think of her suffering, as though it’s unimaginable, and she loves him for it.
‘No. I mean, there was some pain but it was mostly exhaustion, you know. Bone-weary tiredness.’
‘I’ve never been seriously ill. I have scars, I’ve been injured, but not sick, touch wood. And some of those injuries were my own fault. Like the time I bruised my coccyx and broke my wrist.’
‘What do you mean?’
He looks down and she notices the fan of his dark eyelashes.
‘Oh, I was doing something stupid as usual. I was on assignment in Sarajevo during the siege,’ he says with a scrub of his fist through his hair, ‘and I was just trying to observe the horror, you know, the devastation of it all. Neighbour becoming enemy, death arriving at the corner where your children used to play, dodging marksmen as you walked to the shops. I still have these dreams—’
He makes a sound in his throat and she touches his arm. She wants to be the one to comfort him, she wants to reach him wherever he’s gone.
