‘Actually,’ Amelia said, ‘there is something.’
Gerald turned on the doorstep. ‘Yes?’
‘I could do with a good solicitor.’
‘Very funny.’ Gerald’s mouth turned up at the corners in something that could pass for a smile, Amelia thought, if one wasn’t very fussy.
She went round the house to the lawn where Selma was asleep in the soft-cushioned chair under the apple tree. Quietly she sat down on the dry grass, leaning back against the tree trunk. The evening sun spread a golden tint through the air and, by the shrubbery, rabbits were appearing, cautiously at first, then as nothing moved they got braver, grazing on the uncut grass.
God! I love this garden, she thought, then she buried her face in the crook of her arm. Until Gerald’s visit she had found it impossible to extinguish completely a belief in her power over him. Now he pranced before her closed eyes like a pied piper, taking her life with him; home, garden, her hopes of children. She lifted her head and in front of her, hedging the terrace, were the beds of Bourbon roses she had planted when they first moved in. Souvenir De La Malmaison, Honorine de Brabant, Mme Isaac Pereire, Louise Odier: now all those richly scented, extravagantly painted granddames would give their autumn encore to Clarissa.
Amelia flinched as she felt a hand on her shoulder.
‘Are you all right, darling? You’re looking a bit peaky.’ Selma was peering down at her, concerned.
Selma, with Amelia’s Indian shawl draped round her shoulders and her hair brushed smooth, looked so much like her old pre-Cherryfield self that Amelia was aching to tell her all about Gerald and Clarissa. For years she had come to her grandmother with her problems, confided in her and no-one else, and Selma had listened, plucking out the troubles as if they were thorns, advised and made better.
Oh no, Amelia thought, straightened up against the warm tree trunk. Don’t even try it now. It’s a mirage, this familiar Selma, tempting your words towards her into nothing.
‘Come on, darling something’s up, I can tell.’
She’ll look at me, Amelia thought, and she’ll tell me none of it would have happened if I’d stopped sucking my thumb or she’ll ask me to go to fetch her game of ludo. But Selma’s gaze was on her, steady and alert.
‘It’s Gerald, he’s left me. I still love him and this place,’ she gesticulated out at the garden. ‘Now I’ll have to leave here too, start again somewhere else.’ It wasn’t until she was halfway through the sentence that she realized how that might sound to Selma, whose only option was Cherryfield.
‘I am sorry darling, this, this … what did you say his name was?’
‘Gerald.’
‘Gerald, yes of course. I don’t know why, but I keep on thinking his name is Henry. I’m sorry you and he aren’t friends any more.’ She put her hand out to Amelia who took it, keeping it still. ‘I know it’s not much comfort now, but you’ll find someone else. You forget about him and concentrate on finding yourself a nice place to live; your own home is the most important thing.’
Amelia looked up at her with tears in her eyes. If her grandmother had leapt from the deck-chair and torn a rubber mask from her face revealing her old self, wise, serene, and beautiful, she could not have surprised Amelia any more than she had just done by speaking perfect sense. With a deep sigh of contentment Amelia edged closer to her.
‘Anyway,’ Selma pursed her lips. ‘It really was very naughty of him to leave so early when you’d gone through all that trouble.’
Chapter Twelve
‘I Felt Rather Hurt,’ Amelia said and, as she said it, she wondered why she always seemed to oscillate between understatement and exaggeration without ever settling comfortably in between.
‘Yes?’ Rosalind, sitting at the kitchen table, stopped gazing adoringly at Ronald and looked instead, in a waiting way, at Amelia.
‘Oh sorry.’ Amelia started again. ‘It was him saying I was vague and drifting. It was so unfair. I mean I might not be a constantly focused mapper-out of every detail of my life, but I did have plans. Not very fashionable plans maybe. I admit that articles in Cosmopolitan about young women attempting to emulate Maria in The Sound of Music are rare …’
Rosalind looked faintly surprised. ‘I didn’t know you sang.’
‘… better her in fact; I was going to have all the children myself.’ She looked up from her coffee mug at Rosalind. ‘Sang? No I don’t.’ She frowned. ‘It was the big happy warm family bit I was after. I dreamt of being an inspirational mother. Jam making, huge teas, animals and homework jumbled up all over the kitchen, picnics in the garden. I even thought of turning Aunt Edith’s sitting-room curtains into children’s clothes.’
Rosalind leant across the table saying in a quiet concerned voice, ‘Are you very short of cash?’
It was Amelia’s turn to look surprised. ‘No, not really. I mean I’ve still got most of the money from the flat invested and the freelancing brings in quite a bit. Of course I lived rent free, there was no mortgage. The deal was that I should look after everything here, grow our own vegetables, keep the hens, all that. He would support us with his painting.’ With what she felt was unusual clear-sightedness she said, ‘It was a kind of reversed trendiness, it made him feel original, a bit of a rebel. There I’d be, floating around in long frocks, the very model of a good old-fashioned artist’s muse.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I suppose that, to him, I was just a phase, like his painting, but he was my whole life.’
‘But isn’t this Clarissa woman a clerk at his office?’ Rosalind asked. ‘I mean she’s a career girl.’
Amelia sighed. ‘I know. I think giving people what they want is a very dangerous thing.’ She bent down and stroked Ronald’s satin cheek. He jumbled up his features and produced a beaming smile.
‘So what are you going to do? Are you moving back to London?’
‘I really don’t know. I can’t think yet. And London is so …’ She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘Well, so big.’
Rosalind picked Ronald up from his rug on the floor and stood up. Draped across his mother’s shoulder he looked sideways at Amelia, attempting another smile, his large head bobbing like a peony on a weak stem.
‘Well, come for coffee next week anyway,’ Rosalind said. ‘That’ll be something planned. I have to dash, Ronnie needs his bottle and a rest.’
‘I better start Grandma’s lunch too,’ Amelia said seeing Rosalind and Ronnie out. ‘She’s having a nap but she’s always ravenous when she wakes up.’
Flushed from the heat of the stove, Amelia flung open the kitchen windows to let in a breeze. She stayed for a moment, enjoying the air on her face and the sound of the housemartins nesting under the eaves.
‘Lentils?’ Selma, already seated at the table, said in an affronted voice. ‘Lentils in June?’
Reluctantly, Amelia turned round. ‘I’m sorry, but I felt you needed the protein, and I couldn’t think of anything else to make; for soup I mean. I do wish those teeth would hurry up and come. I bet Sister Morris is being deliberately slow in sending them.’ She sat down opposite Selma and smiled encouragingly as she put the spoon into her own bowl. ‘Mmmm,’ she said, ‘I make quite a good lentil soup.’
‘If you say so, darling,’ Selma said, both eyebrows raised. She lifted the spoon to her mouth, snatching at it as her shaking hand kept pulling it away from her lips. Splashing it back down into the bowl she said, ‘You know, I haven’t been for a swim for ages. I’m sure that’s why I’m feeling so stiff.’
Amelia swallowed a mouthful of soup, wondering how to respond. ‘Rosalind’s parents have a pool,’ she said finally. ‘They live just outside the village.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t mind us having a dip.’
Rosalind’s mother was delighted for Amelia and her grandmother to use the pool. ‘She even offered you the loan of a costume,’ Amelia told Selma as they waited for a taxi. Luckily, she thought, Mrs Rowlands was a large woman.
The pool was separated from the main gar
den by a crumbling brick wall covered in clematis and pink roses. The walking-frame did not move well on crazy-paving, but slowly Amelia managed to get Selma across to the small gate that was kept locked in case of visiting grandchildren. Mrs Rowlands arrived, all smiles and easy chatter, clutching a monstrous bathing-costume in shocking pink. Amelia took Selma in to the changing hut.
‘Here,’ she pulled out a plastic freezer bag and a rubber-band from her bag. ‘For your foot.’
The water was warm and Selma lay on her back, holding the stair-rail with one hand, letting the water carry her weight. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling. Amelia swam up and down the widths of the pool, careful not to take her eyes off Selma for long. ‘Lovely water, doesn’t make my eyes sting or anything,’ she called up to Mrs Rowlands who sat knitting in a candy-striped deck-chair.
‘It’s because we use hardly any chlorine, thanks to the dye,’ Mrs Rowlands called back.
Amelia swam to the edge and heaved herself up on her elbows. ‘The dye?’
‘We won’t pour in masses of chemicals, Ambrose can’t stand it, so we’ve got this completely harmless dye you see. If any of the grandchildren do a wee, the water turns bright purple all around them. They don’t do it again I can tell you.’ Mrs Rowlands laughed uproariously.
‘Excuse me.’ Amelia dropped back into the pool and swam over to Selma. ‘I’m getting cold, shall we get up?’
Selma, still floating on her back, her hand on the rail, opened her eyes. ‘You get out darling. I’m not in the least bit cold.’ And she closed her eyes and continued to float pleasurably on the sweet clear water.
‘What about your toe?’ Amelia tried again.
This time Selma opened just one eye, it looked displeased. ‘My toe is fine.’
Amelia swam around in little fretful circles, her neck craned, watching for any signs of bright purple dye. It isn’t fair, she thought, it just isn’t fair. She stopped and trod water.
‘It’s getting pretty late. I asked the taxi to pick us up at half past three, it’s ten minutes past now.’
From the poolside, Mrs Rowlands gave a little wave. ‘There’s no need for you to feel you have to keep us company,’ Amelia called. ‘I’m sure you’re terribly busy.’
‘Never too busy for you Amelia. We haven’t seen enough of you since little Ronnie was born. Rosalind never seems to have time for anyone else any more.’ Mrs Rowlands finished a row and put the knitting down. ‘Ronnie is much too young to swim, of course, we don’t hold with this water-baby thing you know. Ambrose thinks it’s terribly unhygienic.’ She had come up to the edge of the pool, and now she stood looking down at Amelia, a dimply smile on her large moon face. ‘I said to him, “They don’t understand shame at two months.”’
Amelia grabbed Selma under both arms. ‘I’m getting you out now,’ she hissed, hauling her up on to the first step. A whirling snake of purple dye uncoiled in the water round Selma’s knees. As she looked up, Amelia’s eyes met Mrs Rowland’s across the width of the pool. Pushing her dripping hair from her forehead, she smiled nervously. ‘Well well, time to get out.’
‘I’m sure you’re right Amelia.’ Mrs Rowlands didn’t smile back as she picked up her knitting from the chair. ‘Don’t put the cover back on please. There are things …’ Here she paused, looking pointedly at Selma’s plump and crumpled figure on the steps and at the whirl of purple fading to pale pink at its outer edge. ‘Things we have to do.’ And she turned and hurried back up towards the house with outraged little steps that seemed to tap out against the paving, ‘Wait till Ambrose sees, wait till Ambrose sees.’
* * *
When Amelia came in with a mug of hot milk to Selma’s room later that night, she found her already asleep, flat on her back, snoring. Amelia stood looking down at her, a reluctant mother gazing at her monstrous child. Then she turned and walked down to her desk in the sitting-room alcove. Half an hour later she switched off the light and went to bed; it was as she had always suspected, suffering did not necessarily make you a better poet.
Two sets of square white sheets and pillow-cases from Selma’s double bed flapped on the washing-line, adding to Amelia’s sensation of being a Lilliputian nanny landed with a Brobdingnagian baby. As she added a pair of panelled knickers to the line, the telephone rang. It was Dagmar again, wanting to know how Selma was.
‘All right,’ Amelia said, listening for the slamming and clanking that would herald Selma’s appearance. ‘No real problems,’ she added.
‘And you?’ Dagmar sounded concerned.
Amelia wanted to tell Dagmar about Gerald, but she knew that the instant she did, she would regret it. Confiding in Dagmar was as comforting as putting your head in a lion’s mouth; she would tear at your problem, worry it and gnaw it, leaving you with the chewed over remains. Then again on other days, bloated with her own worries, she would have no energy left for Amelia at all.
‘We’re all fine,’ Amelia said mechanically.
‘That’s good. Amelia, you won’t believe this but I’ve met this wonderful man. He’s a visiting professor of North American literature, about my age, divorced. Oh darling, I really think something may come of this.’
‘That’s lovely,’ Amelia said and meant it.
‘You must make the effort to come over to Exeter to meet him, when you bring Mummy back.’ There was a pause. ‘When is she coming back?’
Amelia leapt backwards to avoid the passage door being smashed in her face by Selma’s sudden entrance. Selma found the push-open doors of the Old Rectory very helpful as she could shove them open with the legs of the walking-frame whilst steadying herself against the door-frame.
‘Here’s Grandma now,’ Amelia said pointedly. ‘Do you want a word?’ She handed the phone to Selma. As she left the room she heard her say, ‘I’m very well, thank you, apart from this wretched toe playing up. I haven’t been able to play tennis once. I had a lovely swim though. No, not this morning, last week I think,’ she said guessing wildly.
Last week, Amelia thought as she wandered back into the garden, was when I still believed I could have a future here. Gerald used to accuse her of being negative. She knew that was not true. She was in fact as rosy-edged, as reality-bashing an optimist ever to protect her most precious visions of heaven under a cloak of pessimism. Too much happiness had always made her feel insecure though, like a trapeze artist reaching the highest platform, the one nearest the ceiling of the circus tent. Too much happiness might tempt God, the God who felt that Job needed to be taught a lesson.
Nothing to be frightened of now, she thought, and looking heavenwards through the garnet-red leaves of the copper beech she called, ‘You didn’t surprise me, you know that God!’ Then she continued to peg out the washing.
On her way back to the house she stopped at the vegetable garden and pulled out a large weed from the soil in one satisfactory movement, leaving no roots behind. Why do I bother? she sighed. I should hire a plane to fly over the garden showering it with Weedol.
Back inside, there was a smell of burning. She ran through the passage and into the kitchen. A saucepan stood on the ceramic hob, boiling dry as spirals of stinking smoke rose from the black puddles on the side of the hot-plate. Amelia grabbed the saucepan handle only to pull her hand away, swearing. She grabbed an oven cloth and removed the pan before putting her burnt palm under running cold water.
‘What a dreadful smell.’ Selma’s walking-frame bashed into the kitchen door, causing her to stop abruptly, doubling over the top of the frame. Recovering her balance she added helpfully, ‘Something burning I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘I think you left a saucepan of milk on the stove,’ Amelia said, shoving her irritation to the pit of her stomach where it was left to fester. ‘I’m going in to town for some shopping, do you want to come? We have to take the bus I’m afraid, but I’ll book a taxi for coming back.’
Selma got through the main doors of the supermarket, but got stuck in the trolley turnstile. A small queue of sh
oppers formed behind whilst Amelia unwedged her. They manoeuvred themselves through the crowded aisles, Selma catching ankles with the legs of the frame and Amelia smiling nervously as apologies rolled off her tongue like sweets off a conveyor belt. Near to tears, she looked enviously at the young mothers whose babies fitted so conveniently into the trolley-seats. Then she looked at Selma who stood gazing expectantly at her, a packet of smoked kippers in her hand. All those years, she thought as she gently removed the package from Selma’s grip and replaced them in the chill cabinet, dreaming of children and family life and this is what I got. It was as if God had read her heart’s desire, but through a mirror, and given her Selma.
‘Let’s carry on shall we.’ She smiled encouragingly whilst before her eyes was a vision of her grandmother stuffed into the child-seat of the trolley, her cone-shaped legs sticking out through the gap in the bars.
Wandering round the shelves like a robot programmed at random, Amelia picked a packet of peas here, some butter there, lentils, tins of tuna. It was probably silly to expect something as easy as a child to love and nurture, she thought. History after all was full of women whose youth had been spent in tandem with age and decline. She returned a leaking Mr Muscle bottle to the shelf, then thinking it anti-social to leave it for the next shopper, she promptly removed it again, giving it to a passing supervisor.
‘All right?’ she asked Selma who looked small and tired from the halting progress through an hostile environment.
I will campaign for especially designed old people’s trolleys in every supermarket, she thought, demand large plastic-covered chairs in every restaurant. Why not old people’s crèches at the workplace? Why not, why bloody not? All those mothers had chosen to have babies, or at least acquired them through a careless act of pleasure. But Amelia had not sat down one day, misty-eyed, saying, ‘What about it darling, shall we have our own, our very own shaking, muddled, incontinent human remnant?’ Nor was Selma the product of a moment of abandoned pleasure, well not Amelia’s anyhow.
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