“So it would seem.” Lucy’s father sat down and swiftly drained his tea. “Okay, well, I’ll be off, then.” He stood up, moved toward the door, then looked back at his daughter. “Luce—I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ll pop in for a coffee or something?”
“Absolutely.” She wished she were going with him now, throwing her arm round his thin shoulders, bringing some noise and life back into the cottage. Suddenly she really didn’t want to be alone with Gran. “Let us know if you hear from Florence, won’t you?” she asked. “Tell her we all hope she’s okay.”
“Yes,” said Martha. “Do let us know. . . .” She reached out her hand as her son passed by, and he bent down so she could kiss his cheek, and then she whispered into his hair, “Oh, Bill, my love. I’m sorry. It’s bad at the moment.”
He hugged her, squeezing his eyes shut. “It’s all right, Ma.”
She clutched his wrist and stared up at him. “Bill.”
“Ma?”
Her green eyes were clouded. She wasn’t focusing on him but on something behind his head. “It’s beginning. It’s here. I can’t shake it. I keep putting it away and it keeps coming back.” She turned away. “No. No.”
“Ma, it’s fine,” Bill said calmly. He put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s good.”
“I don’t think you understand.”
“Of course I do.” Bill bent down to look his mother straight in the eyes. “You’re in denial, Ma. It’s normal.”
“I’m not,” Martha said, very softly. “I just . . . I hate him sometimes.”
He crouched in front of her as though she were a young child, and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Look, Ma—can I give you some advice?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t force it. Any of it. Stop trying to control it.”
She looked straight at him. “I want to stop it all,” she said. “I want to be able to put it away.”
“But you can’t, Ma. Okay?”
Lucy watched in agony. “Ma,” Bill said softly, “he’s gone. He’s not coming back.”
To Lucy’s horror, her grandmother’s face buckled, her mouth slumping into a slack hole, her jaw thrust out. “He said he would. Just for a while. He lied to me.” Her voice shook. “I wish I’d known. I’d have helped him, I’d have made him feel better—”
“No.” Bill’s voice was steely. “Ma, I knew, and I couldn’t help him and I’m a doctor. There is absolutely nothing you could have done. Please, please believe me. He lasted a lot longer than I thought he would. He’d been so ill for so long, you have to understand. He lived to see Luke, didn’t he? And Cat again. He had the exhibition coming up. He’d have wanted us to be proud of it, to celebrate it. And he knew you were okay, and that you’d be okay. You have to remember all of this.” He put his hand on his mother’s cheek and she nodded, the rictus smile of her face ghastly. “Yes? Do you believe me?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know.”
They walked to the hall and stood on the threshold, the three of them glancing at each other, until Martha broke the silence. “Well, good-bye,” she said, and turned and went into the study, shutting the door behind her.
“Are you okay on your own?” Lucy said as they walked down the drive together. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come back with you?”
The rain had stopped, and heavy drops fell through the newly green trees onto their heads. “Absolutely not, but thank you,” her father said, brushing the glistening blobs away from his jacket with precise fingers. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yes, Dad,” she said. She wished she could ask him what came next, what they should all do—but his bowed shoulders and heavy, sad eyes told her he couldn’t help. “You should be more like that, you know.”
“More like what?”
“More direct. Action-taking, Dad—you’re really good at it.”
He gave a helpless laugh. “I’m afraid I’m not, Lucy.”
“Yes, you are, you just think you’re not. She needs you to tell her the truth.”
He laughed. “I’ve never really understood the truth. Proves my point, all of this.” He hugged her. “Good-bye, Luce. You’re so grown-up lately. I barely recognize you.”
She stared curiously into his face. “Dad, I’m still the same.”
“Nothing’s the same, Lucy,” he said. “The sooner Ma gets used to that idea, the better.”
• • •
Walking back up the drive, Lucy stared up at the house. The wooden gables were gray in the dusk and moss coated the window casements. Weeds had sprung up on the gravel driveway. As if confirming the gloom of Lucy’s mood, it started to rain again, heavy, like mist. She rubbed her eyes. It was as though the house was disappearing in front of her, and she wished she could click on the carousel and move the image, replace it with . . . her tenth birthday party, when the house became a pirate ship and Cat gave her her old Benetton T-shirt. Or the time Florence was so enraged by some critic’s interpretation of her reading of some old painting that she threw the book through the study window out onto the lawn, hitting Dad on the head, and Southpaw, Cat, and Lucy laughed so much that lemonade came out of Cat’s nose. Or the time she kissed her French exchange student, Xavier, in the woods full of wild garlic, the taste of his salty, plump lips, the smell of garlic and fresh earth. Any memory but this one, the present day.
Opening the study door carefully, she found Martha sitting behind Southpaw’s desk and, as ever, the sight jarred. She was holding an itemized phone bill, and on the side was a scribbled drawing of Wilbur, scampering along the margin.
Lucy let out an “Oh!” at the sight. She’d avoided Wilbur as much as possible, because to look at him made her cry. But now, as she watched, Martha ripped the paper in two, slowly, one end to the other, all the time her eyes fixed on her granddaughter.
“Don’t do that,” Lucy said furiously.
“You don’t understand,” Martha said. “I drew that one. It’s my Wilbur. I can’t ever draw him again. Now he’s gone, Wilbur’s gone too.”
Lucy slammed her hand on the desk. “Wilbur’s not yours to draw. What are you talking about? What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Martha looked up in shock, her green eyes wary. “What’s wrong with me? Nothing. You’re all wrong, not me.” She laughed. “God, I really am going mad, aren’t I?”
“Gran, what is it we’re all wrong about?” Lucy asked, folding her arms.
“This idea of us all, in this place.” Her grandmother tore the paper up into smaller and smaller pieces. “It was all a lie. I thought I’d make it better by telling everyone about Daisy, and I didn’t.”
“No,” Lucy said suddenly. “It’s not true. We were strong enough. We are.”
Martha gave her an almost sweet smile. “Oh, Lucy, no, we weren’t. Look around you.”
“That’s you, that’s you thinking like that because everything seems so grim and sad, and I can understand why,” Lucy began, twisting her fingers together. “No one’s happy all the time. I’m not Pollyanna. I know everything wasn’t perfect, but, Gran, it wasn’t a lie. We were happy. I used to love coming here more than anything else. I loved growing up here, being with Cat . . . being your granddaughter.” She swallowed. “Seeing you and Southpaw all the time, and making coffee and reading books with Florence and all of that. It happened, Gran, it’s not made-up.”
Her grandmother shook her head. “Wake up, Lucy. It’s not a fairy story. Name me one person who’s still standing after this and—oh, I can’t do this. Go away. Leave me alone, for God’s sake.”
Lucy put her hands on her hips. She was trembling. “No. I won’t.”
Suddenly Martha shouted at her, her voice hoarse with anger.
“Go away.” She pointed at the door. “God, Lucy, you have no idea. You’ve never woken up wondering if this is the day you’ll be
kicked to death by your father, like Southpaw, or been put on a train, sent away from your family for four years, like I was, so that by the time you go back to them you’re so different no one knows you anymore. You float around saying you want to write and saying you love it here and how wonderful this family thing is and—you’re wrong.” Her voice softened. “I know you idealize it here, I can see you must because of the divorce and your parents, but—but you’re wrong.”
Lucy willed herself not to cry. She nodded. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry,” Martha began, but Lucy backed away, out into the hall, away from her.
She ran upstairs to her old room and shut the door. It was above the sitting room, and the other side of the L shape from Gran and Southpaw’s room, so often Cat would creep in here late at night and get into bed with Lucy, so they could chat and laugh until the golden moon shone high like midnight sun through the thin floral curtains. The tall twin single beds were covered in the same worn, woolly coverlets, like shrouds. This was the room where Lucy had had her first period; it was where she’d written her first short story, “The Girl Who Ate the Moon.” Where she’d painted her hair with nail varnish and had to cut it off into a disastrous side fringe. She’d shown Cat her breasts and vice versa; though there was three and a half years between them, Lucy blossomed early, Cat late. The long window with its wooden casement was lined with her favorite books from childhood: The Bell Family, Lanterns Across the Snow, The Box of Delights. The Christmas after her parents split up, she had spent the whole holiday here, lying on her bed, reading. No one bothered her, tried to make her “join in.” She felt sorry for families who were always having to join in. You just did your own thing here, and sometimes that involved everyone, sometimes just you. Martha made her Scotch eggs, just for her, and she and Cat went into Bath on the bus by themselves and watched The Fellowship of the Ring. And then there was that Christmas when . . .
Lucy stared out of the window at nothing, clutching her notebook, wondering about Martha, about Florence, about all of them. Then she sat on the bed and crossed her legs. It was very quiet; the only sound was the ticking of the old clock in the hall. She took out a pen from the bedside table and, calmly and clearly, she began to write.
YOU SAY WE weren’t a happy family, Gran. But I remember the Christmas I was nine. Our car broke down on the way to Winterfold, on the A road just outside Bristol, and Mum stormed off and went into a pub, and we called Southpaw and he came and picked us up, only Mum was kind of pissed by then, so she wouldn’t leave the pub, and she and Dad stayed there drinking and I went back with Southpaw, snuggled up in the back of the car in the big car blanket (the orange one Joan Talbot knitted with the patch of purple in the middle because of her bad eyes).
I remember really clearly how great it was to leave them both in that pub. Because, you know, it wasn’t a terrible secret that their marriage was disintegrating. It was obvious to me. I worked it out much earlier than they did. I just wanted them to work out they weren’t right together. Just wanted them to get on with it and stop trying to pretend we were a happy family. We really weren’t—you forget, Gran, I’ve lived in an unhappy family before; it’s obvious. And it’s awful being the only child in between these two people who are lying to you because they think it’s for the best.
So I think of that Christmas a lot because, really, it was the first time I realized that children are often right, but no one listens to them. Southpaw whistled all the way as he drove us home, incredibly slowly, because the roads were slippery with that two-day-old packed-down ice, and by the time we got nearer to Winterfold it was dark, we thought because it was night, but in fact it was because snow was coming. We sang “Jingle Bells” and “Blue Christmas” and “Let It Snow” from Southpaw’s Rat Pack tape in the car, and Southpaw did his Dean Martin impression, which was absolutely, as ever, terrible, and we wished you were in the car singing too, because you always knew all the words, and you loved singing. It’s funny. You love singing, so does Dad, so does Southpaw. And Florence. You all sing, all the time.
You heard the car drawing up as we arrived, and you were standing in the doorway, and I remember this Christmas best of all because of that moment. You had your Christmas apron on, the one covered with berries, and you’d covered the door with holly and ivy, glossy green leaves that shone in the porch light. And it had started to snow by then, like someone had unzipped the clouds, and it was just pouring out like feathers from a pillow. We jumped out and ran toward you, and I can still smell it as we came close, that delicious, woody, piney smell, wood smoke, spice, Christmas trees, earth, snow, cold, all mixed up together as I hugged you.
And you said, “I’m so glad the travelers have returned.” Returned, like we were supposed to be here.
That day the snow fell, and we watched out of the window as it settled freshly over the valley like a drift of white on the gray trees. When it was dark, Mum and Dad appeared, and you always knew how to make Mum more cheerful. You gave her some chamomile tea and asked about her patients and we had your gingerbread, and we decorated the Christmas tree. Cat and I were in charge of the decoration scheme, only you and Southpaw kept moving things around and putting strange things on the tree when we weren’t looking, and we all got hysterical with laughter. Like the packet of tissues, or one of Cat’s socks, or your reading glasses, or whatever. That night, Cat and I worked out a play to “She’s Electric” by Oasis, which was so stupid we knew we couldn’t show it to anyone. Cat said she wouldn’t do plays anymore, which was fair enough, but I was pretty upset about it, until we watched Romancing the Stone on the new TV and video player until about 3 in the morning. I loved Romancing the Stone, because Kathleen Turner’s a writer, and really square, until all these wonderful adventures happen to her and her hair gets better, as does her blusher and the cut of her silk shirts.
The next day it was Christmas Eve, and the snow was inches thick. We made a snowman using one of the buckets we’d got on holiday in Dorset for his head, so he had a strangely machinelike yet sandy appearance. Our faces were red and our knees and hands were soaking with melted snow. We turned him into a proper robot. An old plug for his mouth, some fuses for his eyes, a wire coat hanger as a kind of metallic carapace indicator, and rusting tiny seedling pots on his hands, all to make him look as mechanical as possible. He was five feet tall! As tall as I was then.
We got the Christmas cake ready to eat, and I made Welsh rarebit with Flo (who always, always burns toast, even to this day) and you filled the old brown teapot to the top, as by then not only had Florence arrived but also Gilbert Prundy had popped in to fetch the extra heater from the shed. (I remember him really well, the old vicar with his embroidered waistcoats, and his signet ring with the weird masonic symbol on it. We were convinced it opened the door to another dimension like in an Indiana Jones film.) In the kitchen, you dropped a plate, one of the willow-pattern blue platters, shattered it to bits, and as we swept it up together you said, “Easy come, easy go,” and shrugged, and I thought then, That’s the way I want to live. It struck me then, That’s a different way to see the world. I was always a worrier, always concerned about something in the back of my mind. And you made me see then that everything was perfect as it was, in that moment. Because we were happy there, sweeping up the pieces, you singing Dean Martin songs, and Southpaw joining in from his study. So that’s what I remember, when I try to think about all of us. That Christmas. And it’s not the beautiful house or the lovely table arrangements or the food you’d probably spent days preparing. It was all of us, the fact that we were together. Singing. Southpaw’s voice, warbling and terrible. Like Dad’s is now, Flo’s too. Isn’t it funny that she sounds just like them, Gran? Cat’s voice, very low. Your voice is beautiful. It used to remind me of a clarinet. We always sing, and I think that’s so funny.
I am crying as I write this now. I can still see the sandy robot snowman. The fire, and the tree, and the warmth of all of us together. The s
ense of breathing out and letting everything go, because we were safe, together, with the door closed and the windows shut against the rest of the world. It is always there, even though he’s gone. It won’t go away.
Martha
THEY STOOD AT the bottom of the stairs, facing each other. Martha’s hands shook as she read the thin piece of paper. After a few minutes she put it down on the hall table, and went into the sitting room, not looking at Lucy. She stood by the French windows, gazing out over the lawn, the sky above. She felt her breath, coming, going, in out, in out, shoulder blades rising and falling. She was here.
It was very quiet. She knew she had to say something.
“I don’t remember it like that,” she said eventually.
“Right,” said Lucy. “How do you remember it, then? Because, Gran, I was happy. It’s not some fantasy in my mind. I knew my parents weren’t getting on. I knew so many things in the world were terrible. But when I came here, I was happy.”
Martha looked at her granddaughter. Lucy’s heart-shaped face was flushed pink. “I remember it being . . . I suppose I remember . . .” She stopped. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. I remember Daisy, wishing Daisy was there. For all of us, but for Cat most of all.”
“She was never there, though—how could Cat miss her?” Lucy scratched at her neck, up which a rich red blush was creeping. “We didn’t like it when she was there—it was tense, and a bit strange. You’d all be on tenterhooks. And her breath always smelled.”
Martha flinched in surprise. “What?”
Lucy blinked, mortified. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Her breath smelled?”
“Yes. Like she’d eaten . . . something rotten. I hated it. Didn’t like hugging her and all that.”
“Did Cat think that too?”
Lucy nodded slowly, not meeting her eye. “Oh . . . yes, Gran. She wished she’d go away. It wasn’t nice when she was there.”
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