My Former Heart

by Cressida Connolly

  ‘It’s been over thirty years, you see,’ he said.

  ‘That is a long time,’ Ruth agreed. She felt very tired.

  ‘My wife inherited a small family estate, more of a farm really, over in Northamptonshire,’ Peregrine went on. ‘She goes every week to meet the tenants, talk over repairs and so on, that sort of thing. Then she has a night in London, a theatre usually. Occasional ballet or concert. Her sister lives near the park. There’s a nephew she’s very fond of. She dines with one of them.’

  ‘The Mondays and Thursdays,’ said Ruth. It was not a question.

  ‘Yes,’ said Peregrine. ‘The cook gets those evenings off, because Chris likes to make dinner. Liked to. As I’m sure you know.’

  ‘I’d better ring my father, I suppose,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Yes, of course. Don’t let me keep you,’ said Peregrine. ‘It suits Celia, you see, to have the cook on Saturdays and Sundays, when she’s at home.’

  ‘No, of course,’ said Ruth, not knowing how else to reply. ‘Please don’t feel you must rush off. Do stay for a bit.’

  They stood, not speaking.

  Then he said, ‘When I let the dog out, last thing at night, I generally step out into the garden too, have a sniff of air. From our lawn one can see the electric lights up here. The shape of the hills gets lost, sometimes, in the darkness, so that one can’t say where the hills end and the sky begins. It’s only from the twinkling that one can tell where the town is. Every night I look up in the direction of Malvern and I think: One of those lights is Chris’s.’ He bowed his head. ‘Well.’

  A few days after the funeral it came to Ruth that there was nothing more she could do for Christopher. The days between his death and the service had been so full: choosing hymns, checking the order of service, taking calls from old friends who’d seen the notice in the paper, making sandwiches and cakes for people to have back at the house afterwards. All of this felt as if it was in service of Christopher. Now Ruth found herself wandering about the rooms, picking up things of her uncle’s, then putting them down. By his bed was the book he had been reading: The Badger by Ernest Neal. She opened the book at the page which was marked with an unwritten-on picture postcard of Gloucester Cathedral, and read: ‘It is probably true to say that a badger in the course of its rootings will eat most insects it finds which are of reasonable size … Caterpillars are not despised, and I once found the perfect skin of a hawk-moth larva in some droppings in September.’

  It made Ruth happy to imagine her uncle reading these words. She held the pages up to her nose. The book had a faintly musty smell, like a damp church porch. It was comforting.

  There was the question of Christopher’s things. Ruth understood, now, why he had never had the heart to clear his mother’s dressing table or wardrobe, or anyway had never finished the job. The sight of his spectacles, or his dressing gown, engendered a physical ache just below her ribs. Ruth remembered this sensation from the days when her daughters were small and they had gone back to their father’s house, leaving some little belonging behind – a crumpled nightdress, a cardigan – in the new quietness of the house. There was such a sadness to these things, at once so full of the personality of their wearer – even carrying a trace of their smell, or the imprint of their body – and yet, at the same time, so empty. The maleness of her uncle’s belongings, though, seemed designed to resist sentiment. His shaving brush, the brown leather stud box on his chest of drawers, his small collection of rather mothy ties, seemed almost taunting in their modest utility.

  In the drawer of his bedside table she found four photographs. All but one were in black and white. There was a picture of herself as a child, around the first year she’d come to stay in Malvern, during the war. She was holding what looked like a cabbage and smiling crookedly, as though the sun was directly in her eyes. It surprised her that she had no recollection of the picture being taken. There must have been some shared joke about the cabbage: had it been grown in the garden or won perhaps at some fête? She couldn’t remember. Ruth looked next at a picture of Christopher, leaning back on his elbows, legs outstretched on a picnic rug, apparently laughing. Beside him, but sitting upright, was a slender man in pale clothes, a straw hat shading his eyes so that it was difficult to read his expression, although from his mouth it looked as if he, too, was laughing. Ruth turned the picture over and saw that Christopher had written on the back, in pencil: ‘Self with P, August ’48’. Ruth wondered who the invisible third person, the one taking the picture, had been.

  The only colour photograph among the pictures she recognised at once as Peregrine, standing beneath a lintel of carved stone, perhaps the door of a cathedral, a pale mackintosh folded over one arm. There was nothing written on the back, so she could not tell the place or date. The last picture was tiny, perhaps two inches square, with serrated edges. It was a picture of a dog. Ruth turned it over and at once recognised her grandmother’s handwriting. ‘Meggie in Cornwall’. This photograph made Ruth feel overwhelmed with sadness for her uncle, for the lost world of his and her father’s boyhood, with its childish adventures and pets and days at the seaside. He had never mentioned a boyhood dog. But then there were so many things he had not told her. And many things she had never thought to ask until now.

  Peregrine had come to the funeral, sitting by himself near the back of the church. Ruth, seeing how the church was filling up, left her place in the front pew to make sure the vergers had enough orders of service to hand out. Catching sight of Peregrine, she had gone over to him.

  ‘Would you like to come and sit with us?’ she whispered.

  ‘Thank you, but I think I’m better off back here,’ he said.

  After the service he had slipped away, not coming back to the house. Ruth was sorry not to have had the chance to see him again. She handed plates of sandwiches round, while Ilse filled empty glasses with more sherry. There were quite a few people she had never met, former colleagues of her uncle’s, she supposed. The old people seemed to be enjoying themselves, as Iris had predicted. Funerals are the cocktail parties of the over seventies, she had told Ruth that morning.

  ‘You’ll never get rid of them. Once they get a glass of Madeira in them they’ll be here all night.’

  ‘Mummy, honestly. It’ll be sherry anyway.’

  ‘Same difference. Don’t give them too much to eat, for God’s sake, or we’ll never see the back of them. Provincial types never know when to go.’

  An animated lady in tweed was talking to the vicar. She wore a brooch made out of what looked like a pheasant’s foot, and the kind of stockings, like uncooked pastry, that Ruth had not seen for years. Were they called lisle stockings? She would have to ask Iris later. The woman engaged Ruth in conversation.

  ‘You’ll remember, dear, the King of Abyssinia’s daughters? I was just telling the vicar here about them,’ she said.

  Ruth laughed. ‘It’s true, they were here, during the war. I wonder what happened to them.’

  ‘How odd,’ said the vicar. ‘When you first mentioned them, I thought you must have been referring to some kind of butterfly.’

  ‘Heavens, no! They were girls. African girls.’

  ‘What on earth were they doing here? Did you ever discover?’ Ruth asked the woman.

  ‘I’ve simply no idea! I believe their father, Highly Mutassi or whatever he was called, left them here. Can’t think where he went. Back to Abyssinia presumably. They must have found it fearfully cold.’

  ‘Selassie,’ the vicar interjected. ‘The Emperor Haile Selassie. Of Ethiopia.’

  ‘That’s the one!’ The woman beamed. ‘Very good-looking fellow as a matter of fact.’

  ‘I wish I’d known them. I could have made friends with them.’ Ruth smiled apologetically as she moved away.

  Iris stayed on for the night, after the others had gone. Ruth generally saw her mother in London, during one of Iris’s visits to the city, or else she went to stay at her house. It was novel, waking up here at home, to know that Ir
is was under this roof. Ilse went to bed early, having washed up all the glasses and plates and put the remnants of fruit cake into a tin.

  ‘Did you know, I mean, did it ever occur to you, that Uncle Christopher … well, you know. That he wasn’t terribly interested in women?’ Ruth asked Iris, when the two were installed by the fire in the study.

  ‘Lord, yes! Of course,’ her mother retorted.

  ‘But how? He wasn’t flamboyant, or anything. I mean, he loved cricket.’

  ‘Well, darling, anyone can love cricket, even a bugger. Though God knows why. Deadly game.’

  ‘Mummy, honestly!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s not a very nice thing to call him.’

  ‘All right. Queer then. I think he knew I knew. We never actually talked about it. But I always got on with Chris. Better than with Edward, in a way. I think being queer meant that he wasn’t so tied down to convention as your father always was.’

  Neither of them spoke for a time.

  ‘Did Daddy know?’

  ‘He never said, in my day. Shouldn’t think so. I rather doubt any of the Brownings took it in. You have to remember, it was illegal. He could have gone to prison.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever knew that. I knew people disapproved, but …’ said Ruth.

  ‘Oh yes. Right up until Wolfenden. ’Sixty-six, I think it was. Or ’67. People were sent to jail,’ Iris said.

  ‘Gosh. That’s awful.’

  ‘Ghastly. It was all right in London, I mean, where no one could have cared less who people slept with. But somewhere like here, where everyone pries … The most marked characteristic of the provincial English is that they disapprove of everything.’ Iris gave a little shudder, as if Malvern were distasteful to her.

  ‘You live in the country though,’ said Ruth.

  ‘The North is different,’ said Iris. ‘What are those lines, from Tennyson?

  ‘Bright and fierce and fickle is the South,

  And dark and true and tender is the North, In the North

  long since my nest is made.

  ‘I may not have got that quite right. Anyway, that’s how I feel.’

  Ruth wished her mother could stay on, but Iris said she had to go the next day: she had plans to lunch with Jamie in London before going back. After seeing her onto the platform, Ruth glanced back at Iris. Her mother stood looking straight ahead, her handbag balanced on her case beside her. At this little distance Ruth saw, suddenly, that her mother was old. Iris’s hair was fine and dull and her bouclé wool coat, though evidently well made, sagged slightly at the hem from years of use. Her thick sand-coloured tights wrinkled at her ankles. To the other passengers waiting at the station, to people who didn’t know her, she would just look like any other old lady, spindly and unre-markable. This apprehension made Ruth dither by the taxis outside. She half wanted to go back and embrace her mother, as if to shield her. But they had already said their goodbyes and Iris didn’t go in for lingering embraces. It would be awkward to go back. Iris might think something was wrong.

  Ruth walked up the hill to the post office. In her bag was a little brown-paper parcel containing Christopher’s leather stud box, worn pale at the hinge. His initials, C.B., were only barely discernible on the lid. She had taken out all the bits and pieces: a safety pin, some collar studs, a foreign coin, two small mother-of-pearl buttons. Her uncle’s gold cuff links she had wrapped in a clean tissue and tucked back into the box. After some hesitation, she put the foreign coin in, too. This she had done the night before, once Iris had gone up to bed. She had taken a sheet of writing paper and written ‘Dear Peregrine’ at the top. Her pen hovered over the blank page for minute after minute, but no words came. In the end she had scrunched the paper into a ball and thrown it into the embers of the fire in the study grate. She had not enclosed a note, only addressed it to him, without giving a return address. He would know.

  A few days later, Edward telephoned and invited her to lunch.

  ‘Come early, can you, darling? We need to have a bit of a talk. To do with the house and so on. About twelve?’

  Ruth had already decided that she was going to ask her father to let her stay on in the house until next spring. She knew that Edward had never been entirely happy that she had settled in Malvern with his brother. To him, it had always seemed a funny sort of a life for a young person. Although of course she was no longer young. Now she needed time to go through all the things she and Ilse and Christopher had accumulated – old toys and bikes and books of Emily and Isobel’s, too – and to decide what they should do, where they might go. Ilse’s mother had talked of selling the small farm where her daughter grew up. Her sister – Ilse’s aunt – was living in a new apartment block in Bad Segeberg. Germany was a possibility.

  Her stepmother came to the door and took her coat.

  ‘It’s only cauliflower cheese. Will you mind?’ Helen looked flustered. ‘Come through, Daddy’s in the morning room.’

  Ruth could feel herself tremble, slightly, with resolve. She felt as she had when, as a little girl, she had asked her father for an increase in her pocket money. It was odd to think how many decades had gone by since, without her ever asking him for anything. Six months, she thought. Surely he’ll give me six months.

  Chapter 12

  The man was not a handsome man; as for the dog, it was probably the ugliest dog Isobel had ever seen. Hardly anyone – in fact, no one – had ever brought a dog into the gallery, at least not since she had worked here. Down towards Park Lane she sometimes saw slightly continental-looking elderly people in smart old-fashioned overcoats, buttoned to their chins, with rickety dogs. These dogs did not pull eagerly as the expanse of the park came into view, nor strain to sniff where other dogs had been. They were polite and greying and their leads hung slack at their owners’ side, like ribbons. But at this Piccadilly end of Mayfair dogs of any kind were a rarity.

  Isobel wondered what combination of breeds in this dog’s ancestry could have created the animal in the gallery. She knew about breeds, because she and Emily had made a detailed study of The Observer’s Book of Dogs throughout their childhood. Sometimes they had just flicked through the little book, silently; at other times they had played a game of matching breeds with the people they knew. Daddy was the Otterhound with the kind, rather sad face, and Mummy was the Egyptian Sheepdog, bright-eyed and eager-looking, but always slightly worried, like the dog in the picture, in case she wasn’t doing things right. Ilse was the Wheaten Terrier and Granny Iris, of course, was the Saluki, and so was Digby. All Daddy’s side of the family were spaniels or setters, of one sort or another, except their step- mother, Valerie, who was a bit pinched and disapproving, like the Sealyham. They couldn’t match the funniest-looking dogs with anyone, so they called each other their names.

  ‘You’re the Affenpinscher!’ Isobel teased Emily.

  ‘Well, you’re the Griffon! No, the Dandie Dinmont!’

  Their favourite dog in the whole book was the Puli because it looked exactly like a string mop and you never, ever, saw one in real life. The fact that its name began with a P added to their enthusiasm, because the dogs were described in alphabetical order, so it took dedication to reach the Puli. They always studied every entry, for every breed, Isobel often reading aloud while her sister sucked her thumb in mute concentration; to gloss over a page never occurred to either of them and to have turned straight to their favourite, skipping the rest, would have been heresy. When they grew up, the girls agreed, they would have two Puli dogs each. They even had names for them.

  Isobel guessed that the dog in the gallery was descended from some sort of bull terrier, probably a Staffordshire, to judge by the implacable broadness of the shoulders and the closeness and colouring of the coat, with perhaps some border terrier to explain the otter-like shape of its jaw and the suggestion of tufted dark brows above its eyes. Its coat was the colour of ginger nuts, flecked with black then overlaid with irregular white splodges, as if someone had been deco
rating a ceiling while this dog reclined below, and the brush had dripped paint onto its back. Its tail had been docked, but badly, so that a long stump remained, clumsily wagging whenever it looked in the direction of its master. It had warty lumps on either cheek and above each eye, from which grew irregular clumps of coarse whiskers. The eyes had the bulge as well as the mystery of a seal’s. The dog’s expression spoke of boredom, reproach and patience, sorely tried but bravely borne. The surprisingly dainty little nails – some dark, some pink – clicked on the gallery’s glossy stone floor.

  It was love at first sight.

  ‘If there’s anything I can help you with, a price list, artist information …’ said Isobel. The man glanced at her as if mildly surprised to be spoken to at all.

  ‘I like your dog,’ she added. Now the man peered at her as through fog, narrowing his eyes, but still made no reply.

  Grumpy sod, thought Isobel. She turned back to her electric typewriter: ‘… since the early 1950s, the artist has lived for most of the year in Crete, where the vivid light has continued to exert its influence on his …’ Grumpy fat bastard, she thought, glancing in the man’s direction as she typed. The man had thin lips and thin, straight hair which grew a couple of inches over his collar, but everything else about him was plump, even his hands. He moved very slowly among the pictures, standing with his arms limp at his sides. He appeared to be sighing heavily: he did not seem to be enjoying himself much. She guessed that he had come into the gallery simply to kill a little time. Perhaps he was on his way to meet someone and found he was early. Or perhaps he was just walking his dog. She supposed that he didn’t like the pictures; maybe he didn’t like art at all, but it was probably easier to take a dog into a gallery than into any other kind of shop, at least around here. She carried on copying out the notes for the gallery’s next exhibition: ‘… palette and the rugged shapes of rock and mountain on his forms. Water, and especially the movement and course of water, has become a presence in the more recent work, whether the white-fringed cascade of a waterfall or the slower trajectory of a stream, running through …’