Martha tapped her glass. “Luke,” she said, bending down a little, “Joe’s going to take you to the living room. He’s made you a special pie and chips. You can watch Ratatouille while we have lunch.” Luke glanced at Cat, astonished that such a great bounty should befall him. Cat nodded, smiling, and kissed his dark hair as he bustled past her, hurrying to take Joe’s hand.
As Joe’s hand rested on the handle, their eyes met again, and then the sliding doors were closed. Cat could hear Luke chattering to Joe, their feet clattering over the old kitchen tiles. Then there was total silence.
“We will eat shortly,” Martha said, and gestured to a giant rib of beef and bowls of vegetables, resting on the sideboard. She cleared her throat and shook her head, almost smiling. She leaned both hands on the table, shoulders hunched forward as she looked carefully at each of them from under her fringe.
“I have to tell you something, as you know. That’s why I planned this . . . this birthday.” Her mouth twisted. “It’s a special birthday, you see. And it’s time I was honest.”
“No!”
They all jumped, as David’s voice cried out from the other end of the table. “I don’t want you doing this.” A paunch of skin quivered under his chin, his agitated mouth working, chewing his cheeks, his lips. He was gaunt, white. “I’ve changed my mind.”
Martha got up swiftly. She went over to him, squeezing Karen’s shoulder lightly as she passed, and Karen flinched with shock.
“My love,” Martha whispered in her husband’s ear. “You can’t. It’s gone too far.”
David’s voice cracked. “I don’t want you putting yourself in the line of fire. It’s for me to do, not you, Em.”
“No, it is for me to do,” she said quietly. “For me.” She held his hand. “My darlings. All I ever wanted was to give you all a home.” Her gaze swept the table. “The thing is—I failed.”
“That’s rubbish, Ma,” Bill said clearly, and Karen felt her heart clench.
“Is it?” His mother smiled at him. “My sweet boy. You’re the only one who’s still here.” She held up her hand. “I just want you all to understand a bit more. Understand why I did what I did. I’ve been trying for so long to make everything perfect. You know I was evacuated during the war. To a family very much like this. To a house”—she smiled—“a lot like this. And before that I’d lived in Bermondsey with a dad who was never home and a mum who tried to raise us, and I didn’t have shoes, I didn’t have enough to eat, I had lice and rickets and—more wrong with me than right.”
“Martha . . .” David looked up at her. “No, love.”
“And then I met David, and he made everything seem possible.” She watched her husband. “He did. We were from these gray worlds, both of us, and suddenly there was art, and music, and poetry, these things I’d never come across, and my mind worked when I approached them, it worked better than ever. There wasn’t an opera I didn’t know, a poem I couldn’t recite; I lapped it all up, all of it. And when we got married, well, I gave up my idea of being an artist. I’m going to sit down again. I feel rather shaky.”
Martha walked back to her chair, along the length of the room.
“Women weren’t supposed to think we could have both, back then. Do the job we loved, have the family we wanted. And it’s a shame, because I loved doing it.” She lowered herself into her chair and stared blankly at the wintersweet. “I really did. But that was what happened, then. You were all so tiny, and you needed me so much. Especially you, Flo.”
Florence looked down the table at her mother. “Why me?” she said sharply, and Lucy watched her face change, saw something there she’d never seen before. What does she know?
“You were a surprise to me, that’s all,” Martha said. “A lovely surprise. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I promised myself, when I packed away the easel and the hundreds of brushes I’d scrimped and saved for over the years, that I’d make the perfect family instead. I think that’s what everyone wants to do, isn’t it? They want to build a home, to lift up the drawbridge and keep themselves and their children safe at night.”
Karen gave a muffled sob, her fingers pressed against her lips. Lucy closed her eyes, hugging herself.
Martha looked out over the dining room to the garden. Poised, calm. She spoke as though reciting lines from a script. “I think we raised you well. I think we gave you everything, tried to keep you safe, to plant you in the world. But we tried so hard I think we went wrong, somewhere along the way. What seemed like small things grew and—they’ve overtaken us now.” She looked at Florence. “We haven’t been honest with you. All of you.”
She drank from the flute in front of her. They heard her throat working, the liquid fizzing in the glass.
“It begins with Daisy. It ends with her too. I don’t really know how to say it.” She gave a small laugh, twisting her rings round her finger. “Funny, after all these years of planning—”
“Ma,” Bill broke in, and his voice was hoarse. “Where is Daisy?”
Martha and David looked at each other, across their children, across the table.
“She’s here,” Martha said, after a pause. “Daisy’s here.”
There was a silence, heavy and pregnant with meaning.
“What do you mean?” Cat said after a few moments. “She’s—here? Where—where is she?”
Martha looked desperately at her granddaughter. “Darling. I’m so sorry.”
“Where is she?” Cat said again, turning her head.
Martha looked out at the sunny garden. In her clear, calm voice she said, “I buried her there. In the daisy bank. Because we planted it together when she was small, and she did like it there. We buried Wilbur there, too. And that’s where I thought she’d like to be.”
“Buried?” Florence said, her voice shaking, and Bill said, at the same time, “She’s dead? She’s . . . Daisy’s . . .”
“Oh, no.” Lucy heard her own voice. “No, Gran, you didn’t.”
But Martha said, “She killed herself. Here. A few years ago.”
“I don’t believe it,” Karen murmured.
Bill dropped his knife onto his plate. There was a cracking sound.
“She didn’t want anyone to know. She just wanted to disappear back into her life again, you see. Gradually fade and leave you all with the idea she . . . didn’t exist anymore.”
“What?” Florence shook her head. “Ma, you helped her? She did it . . . here?” She clenched and released her hands, resting on the old table, then reached over to take her father’s hand.
But David did not react, just stared into space. A plump tear rolled down his cheek, in a straight, glistening silver line.
Cat didn’t move, couldn’t speak. Her grandmother tried to take her hand, but Cat sat back, hands tightly clasped together. She stared out again into the garden, at the daisy bank.
Martha said, “I repaid all the money. We gave it all back. And more. I have all the records. Daisy—did some good. She wasn’t a . . .” Her smooth, calm face cracked. “She wasn’t a bad person. She tried her best.”
And Martha sank back into her chair again. Her veined hands clutched the tablecloth; she stared at them all, and then, with something like surprise on her face, she started crying.
Martha
August 2008
MARTHA HAD ONLY realized how bad things were when it was too late.
The day after Bill and Karen’s marriage, Daisy said she didn’t feel well. David had gone off in a taxi first thing for his long-awaited knee operation, the first return to normality after the half-romance of the peculiarly rigid wedding day.
“Don’t let her push you around,” he’d said as Martha had helped him into the car. “See you tomorrow. Okay?”
She’d kissed him. “I won’t. She doesn’t do that anymore, David, honestly.”
He’d sighed and sm
iled. “You always let her play you, darling. Don’t do it. Be Martha. Be strong.”
Martha had brought Daisy a cup of tea, up to the old bedroom that had been first hers, then Cat’s, and, since Cat had left first thing that morning, back to Paris and her new life, Daisy’s once more. She had heard their awkward good-bye. “It was good to see you again, Catherine. . . . If you’re ever in India, come and stay with me!” Daisy had said, and Cat, halfway to the car where Florence was waiting to drive her to London, had turned back.
“Oh, gosh.” She took a step forward, and Martha’s stomach lurched. “Really? I’d love to,” Cat had said, her mouth opening into a smile, her eyes shining. “When can I come? Will I stay with you? Will we ride on some elephants?” Daisy looked at her, bemused, incredulous, a lazy half smile playing on her face. Then, flushing with anger, Cat had shaken her head. “I’m joking. You know, that’s a very strange thing to say.” Her face was ugly. “I’m not going to go to India to see you. You must know that by now, surely. That’s all you have to say to me? You don’t once ask me how I am or what my life’s like? Don’t you care?” She shrugged her slim shoulders, as if the simplicity of the question was too painful for an answer. “Doesn’t matter. Good-bye, Daisy.” She looked up at the house, festooned with wisteria like a wedding garland. “Bye, house.” Martha felt then that she was saying good-bye forever, and she was worried about Cat; and then, later, the moment was lost, after everything else, wasn’t lodged in her mind. A rare slip, when she prided herself on always knowing when they needed her.
• • •
“You’re the only person in this family I don’t think I’ve tried to kill,” Daisy said to her mother after Cat had left. She was sitting in bed with the cup of tea. Martha sat down on the bed.
“You do say some silly things,” she said carefully, because Daisy never got hysterical. When she was born, she hadn’t cried. A mewl as she came out, and then—nothing. The cottage hospital thought the baby might be ill, at first. Martha knew she wasn’t, though. Just calm, taking it all in. Her daughter had stared up at Martha, her eyes dark pools like liquid mercury, open from the start, not like Bill. She was always calm on the surface, and you never knew what was coming next or what in particular had triggered it. One summer in Dorset, after she kicked over the sand castle he’d spent hours on the beach making, normally gentle Bill had hit her really hard, smack in the face. Of course, Martha and David had punished him, but not too severely. Daisy had done it deliberately, for no other reason than that he’d been praised by passersby, who’d admired its four towers and handcrafted crenellations, and he had—unusually for Bill—enjoyed basking in the limelight, just this once. After the smack, and Bill’s being sent to bed with no supper, Martha was on edge for the rest of the summer. What would Daisy do to him? Because she knew by now that Daisy wasn’t like Bill, who blustered and cried, or Florence, who became hysterical and clingy. She was different. She was . . . not like the rest of them, and that was all there was to it. She would sit very quietly and then leave, and you never knew what was going on behind those now moss-colored eyes, in that curious head of hers.
At first, they made something of a joke of it. “Daisy? Oh, she’ll either kill us or become Queen,” David used to say. But there were little things, little things Martha noticed about her daughter that started to make sense; and the more they made sense, the more Daisy frightened her. Florence, caught in her bedroom for ten minutes with the wasps’ nest and the door apparently swollen shut with summer heat, and David running the chain saw, so that no one heard Florence’s screams. And Florence’s hysteria, the crazy things she’d said afterward, the lies about Daisy. It wasn’t true! The cuts and bruises on her arms that Florence whined about to Martha, who, wanting Florence to grow up, wanting Daisy not to be bad, told her not to fuss about them. The Girl Guides’ bring-and-buy sale where the money vanished, and then Daisy was expelled from school for smoking pot, four months later. Martha still thought she was the only one who’d connected the two. Because Daisy took her time, she knew it by then. Just before the Christmas after the sand castle incident, Bill slipped on the floor of the bathroom on some Johnson’s baby oil and broke his ankle.
And it was then Martha realized she was too afraid to talk to David about it, in case he confirmed her worst fears. She didn’t know if he felt the same way. Every morning as the Winters sat at the breakfast table eating porridge or toast, Florence singing Latin verbs in the background and swinging her stockinged legs as she told everyone cheerfully what her day at school held, Bill carefully explaining the principle behind the latest Apollo mission by drawing careful sketches on the table for his father, Martha would watch Daisy in the middle of it all, eating carefully, watching, listening, but never betraying what she thought. A black hole in the heart of the family. Afterward, clearing breakfast away, Martha would shake herself and laugh at her own dramatic tendencies. Ridiculous!
Only she had made her daughter, and when she looked at her, as she did that day in August, she knew her heart. She knew Daisy so well, because she’d seen her a few seconds after she was born, when they handed her to Martha, and the same expression was on her face then as it was now, forty-seven years later. Calm, like Martha—everyone said she was like Martha—but something else too. “She’s a cool customer, this one,” the sister had said, looking at Daisy, tightly swaddled in her mother’s arms. “I’ve never seen a baby that didn’t cry before.”
• • •
“What’s wrong, pet?” Martha said to Daisy now. It was nearly lunchtime. She wondered whether Daisy would eat lunch or stay up here.
“I need to talk to you about something,” Daisy said. She fingered the blancmange-colored tassels of the tattered bedspread. “You won’t like it.”
Martha tensed her shoulders, just slightly. “Go on.”
“I’ve not been very happy lately, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Martha said. “What’s up? Something’s up, I can tell.”
Daisy shook her hair out of her face. Dark rings hung below her eyes. “I can’t speak for long.”
“Why?”
She swallowed. “Just can’t.” She put her hand on her mother’s. “Look. I got fired last month. I’m back for good.”
“Fired?” Martha was appalled. “Darling, how come?”
Daisy rubbed her eyes. “Long story. I stole some money. That’s what they said, anyway. That’s what they’ll say if you ask them. But it’s not true. I just borrowed bits from different bits. I’m the only one who knew where everything was. You see? It’s fine.” She pinched the tip of her nose. “But, yeah, it was for drugs. And—well, drugs.”
Martha kept quite still, not knowing how to react. She sensed this was the truth. “Is that all?”
Daisy nodded. “Yep. I’ve screwed up again. It’s a real shame, because it was the one thing I did. In my life. You know.” She sounded almost cheerful. “That’s how it is, I guess. Only got myself to blame. It’s just I wish I could swap myself for someone else sometimes. Just . . . be someone else, sometimes.”
A cloud passed over the window and Daisy looked up at her mother. She’s getting old. Martha realized it then: her daughter was a middle-aged woman. Not a cruel, fascinating, beautiful little girl. She was past the age when anything she did could be put down to youth or inexperience, and it struck Martha like an arrow piercing her heart. She had made her like this. Hadn’t she?
So she said what she’d always said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
“You’re a clever, talented girl,” Martha said. “I’m so proud of you. You’ll find something else, you can—”
“No,” Daisy broke in, her voice harsh for once. “No. Look, I need your help.”
“All right,” said Martha cautiously. It was usually money. Historically it would be a situation with a teacher at school, and once it had been picking her up from a police station in Bristol, wher
e she’d been found wandering the streets after forty-eight hours absent from home. But usually, these days, it was money.
“I’ve been up all night, thinking about it,” Daisy said.
“I’m sure you have, darling. Are you sure you can’t appeal? Go back and find—”
But she was cut off again. “Ma, it’s too late for that. It’s too late. They don’t want me back.”
“Can’t you just try—”
“God, I hoped you’d understand. Listen. I’ll probably be arrested if I go back to India, don’t you realize that?”
“Oh.” Martha closed her eyes briefly. “I see.”
“I just need your help, one more time. I didn’t sleep at all last night, going over it all. Can I have a couple of Southpaw’s pills, the ones in the bathroom cabinet?”
David had been prescribed sleeping pills and painkillers to help with his knee, which had been causing him more and more pain in the run-up to the operation. “No, Daisy,” Martha said firmly. “Absolutely not. I said last time was the final time. They’re too strong.”
“Okay, fine,” Daisy said. She took another sip of tea, then lay back and closed her eyes. Martha’s hand reached out to Daisy’s wrist, and she encircled it with her brown fingers. She was hot to the touch. “I might have a sleep. Thanks, Ma. I won’t want any lunch. Just leave me now.”
She seemed to be almost asleep, even then. Martha went out, shutting the door behind her, and stood on the landing outside her daughter’s room for a moment, listening to the quiet, hoping Daisy would find some peace. She knew she’d found the wedding tough. Martha knew that seeing Cat was hard on Daisy, much as she pretended it wasn’t.
Martha shook her head, swallowing back tears, and, picking up the laundry basket outside Daisy’s room, started folding up towels. She found herself humming a tune from The Mikado under her breath; it had been on the Proms the previous night as they were clearing up after the (modest) wedding breakfast. It had been a strange wedding, she thought; and her mind wandered. Thinking things over, trying to work out what was going on so she could act for the best. Karen’s mother seemed nice—should they invite her down for the weekend in the autumn? Cat’s life in Paris troubled her somehow—did she need to talk to her about it? Florence’s behavior was a little strange, but she seemed happy. Something was on her mind, something nestling there.
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