We pass the gibbon enclosure, where the fence throws a crisp black patterning over the grass, an immaculate shadowy stenciling. The girls make monkey faces and pretend to hunt for fleas in each other’s clothes. We’re walking straight into the sun, which is sinking already, red as flame and dazzling. It hurts your eyes to look at it. We pass the tigers, two great animals sprawled in a pool of florid light, their bright coats rippling with their lazy, sleepy breath. We come to the llamas and camels.
“I really love camels,” says Karen. “They’re funny. I love their snooty expressions. You look at all these animals and you’ve got to think God really had some very odd ideas.”
On impulse, I turn to her.
“Karen, d’you believe in reincarnation?”
She grins. “Coming back as a monkey and all that?”
There’s a red glaze on my vision, the afterimage of the sun.
“Well, yes. Or as another person . . .”
“Tell you what,” she says. “I’ve always thought I’d like to come back as a cat. Ideally an indolent pedigree cat with a truly besotted owner. Lots of smoked salmon and lying around by the fire.” She turns to smile at me; then stares, eyes widening, suddenly appalled. “Grace, my God, you’re serious, aren’t you? You mean it.”
“I read this article,” I tell her, “about kids with problems like Sylvie’s. And someone had this theory that they were remembering a past life . . .”
There’s a moment of heavy quiet between us. Her lipsticked mouth is a thin, red gash in her face. She shakes her head a little.
“Grace. This life is the one we’ve got, the only one we’ll get.” She makes an expansive gesture, her arms opening outward as though to take everything in—the animals and grass and trees, our laughing children, the wide, bright arch of the sky. “This is it, Grace. This is it, this is all we’ll get, and we just have to make the best of it.”
Sylvie has a bad day. When I pick her up from the nursery, her face is blank and stretched.
“We had trouble again today,” Mrs. Pace-Barden tells me. She’s stern, a little distant. “This time it wasn’t the water play, just one of the boys who was being rather boisterous. He’d made something with the LEGO that he was pretending to use as a gun. We scolded him, of course, but Sylvie couldn’t cope at all. I’m really very worried, Ms. Reynolds.”
“We had our appointment with Dr. Strickland,” I tell her.
“That’s excellent,” she says. “I just hope he’ll be able to produce some kind of miracle.”
It shocks me, the way she thinks that Sylvie needs a miracle. I murmur something noncommittal. I don’t want to tell her what happened at the clinic.
In the night Sylvie wakes and comes to my room. I’m sunk in sleep, in some yearning dream of Dominic, and the sound of her sobbing tugs at me, hauling me up to the surface of my dream. As I hold her tight against me, I can feel her heart pound.
“It was just a nightmare,” I tell her, as I always do.
I lead her into my bed, leaving the bedside lamp on so the dark won’t frighten her if she wakes again. She presses into me. Her breathing slows.
It’s a very still night, very cold. When I’m certain she’s completely asleep, I go to fetch the duvet and coats from her bed. At the window in the hallway, which doesn’t have a curtain, I can see where frost has scribbled on the pane. I heap the extra bedding on top of her—gently, so I won’t disturb her—and ease myself in beside her. She doesn’t stir. Though she’s so close, I can’t hear the sound of her breathing, but where her arm rests against mine, I feel the tentative pulsing in her wrist, the vibration of it passing into my body.
I lie awake for a long time. I think about the frost out in my garden—about its attention to detail, its white grip on everything, its silver calligraphy on the branches of my mulberry, and how it will crisp the fallen leaves that have gathered in the gutters, and how each blade of grass will be held in a separate steely sheath. I imagine I can hear it—like the faintest metallic whisper in the stillness.
I’m almost asleep again when I’m jolted awake by footsteps in the alley by my window. My pulse quickens. I worry as I always do that someone will break in, but then hear their voices and know it’s just one of the prostitutes and her client. You’d think they’d want to find somewhere more sheltered on a night this cold. There’s a bit of low conversation: a male voice, suddenly loud, distorted, a rushed volley of Catholic expletives, then the quiet talk again and footsteps going away. She’ll be glad it was over so quickly. I hear the high, lonely bark of a fox, rapidly receding as it runs through the wasteland along the backs of the houses, the untended gardens and empty lots. Then that too fades into silence.
Sylvie shifts in her sleep, moving into me so I feel her warmth against me. When she’s sleeping, her face softens; she loses that strained look she has. I stare at her in the light of the lamp, and her scent of musk and lemon wraps around me. I lie there gazing at her, my little stranger. Physically, I have her by heart—all the detail of her face, the sweet, precise curve of her cheekbones—yet in some other, deeper sense, I scarcely know her at all.
We have an important commission at Jonah and the Whale—a funeral, a big one, a flamboyant send-off for a local patriarch who ran a chain of pharmacies and gave a lot to charity. He has died at eighty-five with all his family around.
“That’s a good death,” says Lavinia. “To have spent your life doing something respected and useful and to have lots of children and die in your bed when you’re old. That’s pretty bloody enviable.”
The dead man’s wife is exacting about the detail of everything. Her flowers will be all white, a heap of marguerites.
On the afternoon of the service, Lavinia shuts the shop and we go to watch the cortege. The hearse is a Victorian carriage, jet black and lovingly polished, and there are two black horses with elegant, feathery plumes, and on the coffin in the carriage the marguerites we’ve done. It’s the loveliest contrast—the formality of the horses and carriage, a picture from another time, like something in sepia from a Victorian album, and the flowers, casual, almost wildflowers, like an armful of daisies just picked and flung down there, creamy white like buttermilk. There’s a cold, rough wind that catches at the manes and tails of the horses; their black plumes shake and shiver. The horses are restive, pawing at the pavement. As they move, you can see the ripple of their muscles, the wiry sinews gliding under the skin. Everyone stops. There’s a knot of people gathered on the pavement, mostly mothers and children, and the children love the horses. Everyone is smiling. You feel so blessed, so grateful in that moment on the pavement, everything blown and swirling, the tossing of the horses’ manes, the aliveness of the wind.
13
IT’S SUNDAY. IT’S cold, far too cold to go out for a walk, with a bitter, gritty rain. I make popcorn, and we sit on the floor by the gas fire in the living room, the bowl of popcorn between us. We have cards and glue and scissors and heaps of old Sunday papers I’ve kept, and copies of Heat and OK! Today we will make a collage. I have the television on. It’s a black-and-white film from the thirties, starring Betty Grable with high suede pumps and complicated hair. Neither of us is watching it. This makes me guilty, always—they say it’s bad for children’s language, this constant background chatter—but it makes me feel less lonely, having other voices here.
I flick through a weekend supplement, distracted by the fashion pages, which have dresses made from recycled parachute silk. Lavinia would love them. Sylvie works steadily, nibbling her lip. She has to cut slowly, concentrating and squeezing hard with each cut, because the scissors are rather too big for her hands, and as she cuts, she holds her breath. When I find a picture I think she’d like, I add it to her pile.
An advertisement catches my eye. It shows a man on a wide, rocky shore, and he has the same body type as Dominic, that rather heavy, solid look, and he’s wearing a long green riding raincoat that swirls around him as he walks, exactly the coat that Dominic used to wear. I alw
ays instantly notice things that are like Dominic’s—his signet ring, club tie, the smell of his cigars. Sometimes I’ll turn in the street, reeled in by sudden longing because some passerby is wearing Dominic’s cologne. Now, looking at the photograph, I can smell him, feel his touch. The advertisement is for a firm that sells clothes for outdoor pursuits and sportswear. In the background, there’s an open, empty seascape—white sand, dark rocks, bright sky.
Sylvie notices me staring at the picture. She’s sitting opposite me, and she has to twist her head so she can see the picture properly. Her gaze flicks from the photo to my face and back again to the photo, her eyes widening, brightening; then she flings herself against me. The side of her face and body are hot from the gas fire. She gives me a brief, hot hug. I can feel her heart pound.
“You found it, Grace,” she says. Her smile is like a light switched on.
I don’t understand what I’ve done. I wonder briefly, crazily, if she has some secret knowledge of her father, if somehow, unknown to me, she has found out about him, if she knows this looks like him. She reaches out and touches the page with one finger, in the gentlest stroking movement, like a caress.
“There it is,” she says. “That’s my seaside, isn’t it, Grace?”
“Of course,” I say. “You can put it in your collage.”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
She has a luminous, confident smile, as though something has happened that she has been expecting. She startles me. She’s so sure, so vivid.
I look at the picture more carefully. It’s a clever photograph. The light on the water is clear but somehow tentative. You can tell the weather keeps shifting here, blowing in from the sea. The white beach glimmers in the uncertain sunlight; the sand is flat and silky wet and just recently smoothed by the tide, and the black rocks have a crust of chalky barnacles. It’s shallow a long way out, the tide must sweep in rapidly, and the shadows of clouds are moving across the water, deepening its color to the most lavish cobalt blue. Right at the edge of the picture, there’s a little harbor with fishing boats.
“Yes. It’s beautiful,” I say.
I start to tear out the page.
She reaches over and grabs my arm.
“Be careful, Grace,” she says sharply. Her fingers are fierce on my wrist. “Don’t tear it.”
“Okay. I’ll cut it,” I tell her.
I take the scissors and start to cut. She watches me, holding her breath.
“Be very very careful,” she says.
I hand it to her.
“There. You can stick it down now.”
She shakes her head.
“I want it to go by my bed. Can we stick it by my bed, Grace?”
“Of course,” I say, surprised. “If you want to.”
I find the Blu-Tack, and we stick the picture to the side of her wardrobe so she’ll be able to see it when she’s lying in bed.
Her collage no longer interests her. She sits on the bed with her legs folded under her, gazing at the picture. Her face is flushed and thrilled. She sits there for a long time. All evening she seems happy.
That night, when I’ve tucked her in, I sit by her bed for a while. With only her bedside lamp on, her room seems larger, emptier. Dark thickens in the corners, and under her clothes that are hanging on pegs on the back of the door. Sitting here quietly, I start to see things in these patches and clots of impenetrable shadow—the shapes of spiders or distorted faces. I wish I could manage more furniture, perhaps a desk for Sylvie and a chest of drawers for her clothes. We look as though we’re just squatting, like we haven’t really moved in. If we had a bit more furniture, it might not feel so lonely here.
Sylvie is nearly asleep, her eyelids flickering extravagantly. She yawns, turns over; she has her back to me. My heart is racing, but I try to make my voice quite calm.
“Sylvie, tell me about your picture. Why’s it so special, sweetheart?”
For an instant I think I’ve missed the moment, that she’s asleep already.
But then she turns back to face me.
“That’s my seaside, Grace.” Very matter-of-fact, as though this should be obvious.
“It’s a beautiful place,” I say again.
“Yes,” she says. “I lived there, Grace.”
I sit very still for a long, slow moment. Cold moves over my skin.
“I don’t know about it,” I say.
“Don’t you, Grace?” She seems surprised.
“No. I’ve never been there. You’ll have to tell me. Can you tell me anything? Can you tell me about it?”
“It’s my seaside,” she says again. “I lived there.”
“Tell me where you lived,” I say.
“I lived in a little house,” she says. “A white house.” She turns away from me again, gives a vast yawn. “That’s where I lived. And I had a cave and a dragon.”
It’s the ordinary, the everyday, rushing in again, the world righting itself. I feel a wash of mingled disappointment and relief. It’s something she’s seen in a storybook at nursery school, or a fantasy she’s invented, part of an imagined world.
“Wow. A dragon’s cave,” I say, keeping my voice quite level. “A dragon is fabulous.”
She opens her eyes then. There’s a little vertical crease between her brows. Something in my voice doesn’t please her.
“Grace, I’m not being silly.” She frowns at me. She’s slightly annoyed at not being taken seriously. “I did. I had a dragon.”
“It’s certainly a lovely place,” I say again.
“Yes, Grace,” she says. “That’s where I lived. Before.”
Later, I ring Karen.
“This thing happened with Sylvie,” I say. “And I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Okay. Tell.” Wariness creeps into her voice.
“There was this picture in a magazine. Just a photo, in an advertisement. A scene beside the sea. And it was like she recognized it. Like it was somewhere she knew.”
“Grace, just slow down a bit, okay? What did she say exactly?”
“She said she used to live there.”
“That was it? She said she used to live there?”
“She said, ‘I lived in a little house.’”
She pauses, taking this in. I can hear Mozart playing on her stereo, the poised, elegant music she loves.
“Grace, kids do come out with all sorts of weird stuff, you know that. What else did she say?”
“She said, ‘I lived in a little house.’ And I said, ‘Tell me about it,’ and she said, ‘I had a cave and a dragon’ . . .”
“She said she had a dragon?”
I can hear the smile in her voice.
“I know how it sounds,” I say. “And half the time I think that too, that it was all just fantasy. But she really seemed to know the place.”
“It’s your filter, Grace. It’s since you read that article. Sometimes we hear what we’re looking to hear,” she tells me.
“Yes, I guess so . . . But perhaps I could find out where it is. You know—the place in the picture. Maybe if somebody knew where it was . . .”
“For God’s sake, Grace,” she says. “It doesn’t mean anything, what she’s saying. Kids say the oddest things. Well, don’t they? Lennie used to go on about this new mummy she had. Over and over. ‘I’ve got a new mummy . . .’ Then we realized she meant her babysitter . . .”
“It was strange, though,” I tell her. “Sylvie just seemed so happy.”
There’s a pause, as though this unnerves her.
“You need to get some perspective, Grace,” she says then. There’s a shred of anxiety in her voice. “You don’t want to feed her obsessions. I’m sure that isn’t the way.”
14
BUT THE NEXT Saturday, when we go to Karen’s, I have the picture in my bag.
Leo hasn’t gone sailing today. He has some work to do. He joins us in the kitchen for a slice of Karen’s apple cake. I’m so happy to see him. It’s a gift, it’s what I h
oped for.
Leo comes from the west of Scotland. He has an uncle who lives there still, in a low, rambling house on the coast. It’s miles from anywhere. The mail comes once a week. They visit him there sometimes, and Karen says it’s extraordinary, a place of mists, and seals, and moisture that seeps into everything, and silence that presses down on you so it’s hard to stay awake. It’s magical, but afterward, she’s always so glad to get home again to the clatter and vigor of London.
I take Sylvie’s picture out of my bag. Karen is suddenly still, transfixed, a slice of apple cake poised between her plate and her mouth. I can feel her eyes on me.
“Leo—I wondered—could you look at something for me?” I hold the picture out to him. “D’you know where this place is?”
He takes the picture from me in his ample freckled hand. I feel an urge to say, like Sylvie, Be careful, don’t crumple it.
“I thought it might be in Scotland,” I tell him. “I thought you might know where it was.”
He’s looking at it, mechanically smoothing out the corners with one finger. Karen has put her apple cake down. Her gaze narrows.
“That’s the picture you told me about, isn’t it?” she says.
“Yes.”
Her face is stern.
“Grace, just don’t. Let it go. You’re just making everything worse. For God’s sake, surely you see.”
Leo looks from one to the other of us, curious, amused, aware that something is happening that he doesn’t understand.
“I just wondered if you knew it,” I say. “I mean, d’you think it’s in Scotland?”
He shrugs. “Could be.”
“But it’s not near where you come from? You don’t recognize it?”
“No. But it’s not a lot to go on. It could be Brittany maybe. You could try Brittany. Round Mont-Saint-Michel, perhaps. There’s some fabulous coastline there.”
“Where else do you think?”
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