by Rosy Thorton
‘Beth,’ she called towards the stairs, as she stepped back inside the house. ‘Come quick, and see the swallows.’
There was no immediate reply, and Laura mounted the stairs, calling again as she went. ‘Beth?’
‘Hmm?’ Her daughter appeared in the doorway of her bedroom, looking decidedly rumpled. She had been tidy and wide awake at breakfast, but that was two hours ago; the dishevelled curls and blurred features suggested that sleep had since re-exerted its pull. ‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ Laura’s urgency melted. ‘Never mind.’ It was the first day of the holidays, after all, and what were holidays for? The swallows would still be there later.
‘I was just reading on my bed,’ said Beth.
Yeah, right, as she herself would say. Laura grinned. ‘Go back to sleep.’
She was on her way along the landing towards her desk when Willow’s head showed round the spare room door. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing, really.’ But actually … ‘It’s only that there was a swallow, out over the fields just now, when I was outside. It’s the first one I’ve seen this year, that’s all.’
Willow blinked at her, expressionless. ‘Show me.’
There was a sharp morning breeze, and Laura pulled on a fleece this time before they headed out, though Willow did not follow suit. It was a mystery to Laura how one so skinny should not appear to feel the cold. She was young, of course, but so was Beth, and she was always freezing. The sky was ragged with wind-whipped cloud, so that the light brightened and dimmed by turns as if by an electric switch. On the top of the dyke they stood together and stared down over the wheatfield. Laura’s eyes, narrowed against the wind, scanned the ground for any sign of movement, straining until they stung. Nothing.
‘It was here before. I know it was.’
Willow turned towards the lode at their backs. As Laura swung round too, she saw them: not just one this time, but two or three, or six, tracing low zigzags across the furrowed surface of the water. They must be feeding on some kind of insect, invisible to the human eye, freshly hatched, perhaps, in the patchy sunshine.
‘So those are swallows, then?’ Willow stood transfixed, gazing at the darting birds.
Laura nodded. ‘They always arrive back about this time – late March or early April. This year they’re a bit later. It’s maybe been cooler, or the spring a little later after all that ice.’
After a pause, Willow said, ‘They look like stars. The shape, I mean – like stars, or starfish.’
‘I suppose so.’ Laura had never seen them that way before. ‘The wings, and that forked tail.’
‘Shooting stars. Except their shape keeps changing as they turn.’
She spun on her heel and set off along the dyke, away from the house and the drove, leaving Laura to follow, still watching the swallows as she went.
‘They’re all the way along,’ called Willow from up ahead. ‘There must be dozens of them. Hundreds, even. Funny, that they all arrive at once.’
She was right: the lode was alive with movement as far as the eye could see, perhaps all the way to Elswell. How odd that she should not have noticed this before, the sudden mass appearance of the birds after their long months’ absence.
‘I know.’ In front of her, Willow had stopped abruptly. ‘The tree house.’ At once, she was scrambling down the side of the dyke on the garden side and heading for the ladder. Laura, in shoes she hadn’t planned on walking in, went back to the concrete steps to make her way down; the lawn was drier than a month ago but still fat with moisture below the springing surface.
‘Like those huts they have for birdwatching,’ Willow said, as Laura joined her on the planked floor.
‘A hide.’ The word, and the image, pleased her. She sat down cross-legged and leant close to Willow to peer out through the rectangle of window that Simon had meant to glaze but never got round to. Only a strip of water along the far bank of the lode was visible from here with the flow at its current depth, but it was enough for them to glimpse the swallows when they swerved that way.
They watched in silence for some time, before Willow asked, ‘How do you know about them? About the swallows?’
‘My brother taught me. He knew the names of all the birds.’
‘A brother?’
‘Yes. One brother, Mark. But he was much older than me – twelve years older. He left when I was seven. And even when he was there, it wasn’t much like having a brother, most of the time, with such a big gap. It was more like being an only child.’
‘Like Beth.’
‘Like Beth,’ agreed Laura, wondering what defensive impulse led her to add, ‘Simon left when she was just a baby.’ There had been no time even to talk about whether they’d have more. How would life have been different, if they had? Would another child have made things harder for her, out here on her own? Or would it in fact have made things easier, by diluting their relationship, hers and Beth’s? A boy, perhaps, like Tessa’s boys, to kick a ball and wrestle with and not always to be tiptoeing and negotiating and worrying and being judged.
Willow was staring down at the water. ‘He showed you the birds, though. Your brother – he taught you about the birds.’
‘What about you? Any brothers and sisters?’ It must have been the intimacy of the tree house, and the sharing of the swallows, that made her ask the question, reaching out beyond safe ground.
‘It was just us,’ said Willow. ‘Me and Mum.’
Laura waited, and watched the turn of dark wings in the wind, the rare flash of a white belly.
‘She told me lots of things.’ It was Willow’s turn to sound defensive. ‘Wild plants and herbs and their properties. The ones to make you sleep or dream, or stay awake, or fall in love. About the stars, and all that stuff, you know – the zodiac and seeing the future. The earth, and its buried lines and forces. And stories, sometimes: she told amazing stories. But she never showed me a swallow, or a willow tree.’
‘Mum?’ They hadn’t heard Beth’s approach across the soft grass, and so were startled by her voice, sudden and loud at the foot of the ladder. ‘Are you up there?’
Laura felt a stab of guilt, as if somehow she’d betrayed Beth. ‘Oh, hello, love. Come on up.’
Her daughter’s face appeared, and then her shoulders and hips, as she hauled herself up. The space was tight for three, of whom none was exactly a child any more.
‘What are you up to in here?’
‘The swallows are back, that’s all, and it seemed a good place for watching them.’
Heavily, Beth sat down on her heels, her back to the window, barring their view. ‘Oh, yes?’
‘They’re down there, flying over the lode. Catching insects, I think.’ Laura knew she sounded rather too cheery, and very slightly desperate.
Beth stared at her mother. ‘It’s my tree house.’
‘Sweetheart, please don’t – ’
‘It’s mine.’ She turned her gaze on Willow. ‘It’s mine because my dad built it, when Mum was pregnant and I was going to be born. He built it for me.’
‘Beth, I don’t think – ’
‘Shut up!’
The words bounced off the roof and walls like bullets; there was no ducking them in that small space. For a few seconds, Laura was unspeaking, summoning her resources to remonstrate and make peace. Before she could do so, Willow had swung her thin denim legs through the hatch to the ladder, and was gone without a backwards glance.
Laura applied the handbrake, cut the ignition and wondered why she was here. On the passenger seat beside her was a carrier bag from Tesco Express on the main road. She had pulled in on impulse and then stood for long minutes in front of the fresh produce, gazing helplessly at grapes and bright, cellophane-wrapped flowers. Those were the things you brought with you when you visited a person in hospital; those, or chocolates, or a bottle of Lucozade. Get well soon, they said, but it was hardly appropriate in the circumstances. Magazines might do, if she had any notion of which ones. Som
ething ordinary, she reasoned, that’s what I’d want – something normal I could buy if I were in the shop myself. So now here she was, sitting in the car park with a bottle of hand cream and four bananas in a Tesco bag and wondering what on earth she was doing.
She hadn’t told Willow she was coming here, nor Vince, though they would have to know; she’d have to tell them before they heard. Nor had she said anything to Beth, at breakfast, or afterwards as she gathered her things together for her first day back at school. Maybe she hadn’t told anyone for exactly this reason: in case she wanted to change her mind. To chicken out, said a voice in her head. Would that be what it was, though, if she drove away now? Because another voice was whispering that she had no business to be here. She didn’t know this woman and had no real desire to connect with her; she wasn’t even certain that empathy was in her power. What was this need she felt to come and talk to Marianne? More than shameless curiosity, she very much hoped, or worse, some voyeuristic urge, like a Victorian thrill-seeker on a visit to Bedlam. In the end, defensible or not, she knew it came down to this: that if she was afraid of something, she had to look it squarely in the face.
Stanforth House. That was the name she’d heard Willow say, and there it was on the signboard, over to the left of where she was parked: just the name, with no explanatory designation underneath. At ordinary hospitals, all the wards had labels: General Surgical, Orthopaedic, Children’s. Was there no need here, or was it thought not quite polite? Were the sub-categories of mental illness so much more shocking to the sensibilities than genito-urinary medicine, for instance – or oncology?
However, she couldn’t sit here prevaricating in the car all morning. There was a stack of work to do, back in the department. In the end it was that which pushed her into movement: the thought that otherwise she’d wasted her time. She picked up the carrier bag and climbed out of the car.
There was no reply when she tapped on the door she was told was Marianne Tyler’s. Her first instinct was to flee for the car in relief. She had come, she had tried, it wasn’t to be. But that would be cheating, dodging a decision by the fall of the dice. Now that she was here, she needed to pursue this thing to its proper end. Marianne might not be asleep, or ignoring the knock. She might be elsewhere in the building.
First she tried the main television lounge, which formed a kind of central atrium to Stanforth House: a focal point to the ward, with the big, flat-screen television serving in turn as the focal point of the room. She scanned the blank faces, but none of them was Marianne’s. Off the corridor through which she had first entered, she’d noticed a door which had been open on to a sort of kitchen, so she tried that.
‘Hello?’ she called uncertainly from outside the doorway. There was no reply, but she could hear someone moving about inside, the clink of cutlery and the spurt of running water. No sign instructed her to keep out, or warned her that the room was for staff only – though that apparently meant little, since there were few signs anywhere in this strangely inward, self-sufficient world.
Stepping inside, she saw that this was not a kitchen where meals would be prepared, but just a coffee room. A stainless steel counter ran round three of the walls, empty but for two jug kettles the size of buckets and a sprawl of dirty mugs. The fourth wall housed an enormous battered fridge, at which stood the young man whose movements she had heard. He was overweight, pale and puffy, squeezed into a blue nylon football shirt that looked as though it belonged to a much slighter man, and he held in each hand a carton of semi-skimmed milk. Without acknowledging Laura’s presence, he opened the cartons one at a time and sniffed their contents. Then, ‘What d’you think?’ he asked her, thrusting them her way.
Resisting the recoil, she sniffed. Both smelt to her faintly of paraffin. ‘That one,’ she said, pointing at random.
His eyes slid up to focus on her. ‘You new?’
‘Er, no. Actually, I’m looking for someone. Marianne Tyler.’
He nodded, incurious, so that she was not obliged to add her prepared lie: I’m a friend.
He shuffled back to the steel counter and sloshed milk into a mug. ‘Might be outside. The smokers all sit outside.’
‘Ah. And Marianne smokes, does she?’
Before answering, he stirred his drink methodically, three times one way and three times the other. ‘Don’t think so, no.’
Laura forced a smile and strove for patience.
‘Can’t say I’ve seen her with a cig,’ he went on. ‘God knows what she might have smoked when she was outside, of course. But there’s no need in here. They give you enough of their stuff.’
She cleared her throat. ‘Perhaps you could tell me, where do people sit when they go outside?’
‘Patio. Through the double doors from the lounge.’
Across his ample nylon chest was stretched the name Marcus Evans in bold white letters. ‘Thank you, Marcus,’ she said. ‘For your help.’
He stared at her indifferently. ‘I’m Dave.’
The patio consisted of square concrete slabs paving the strip of land immediately beyond the double doors. It was furnished with three wooden benches, planted in a line along the wall of the building, so that the three women who were occupying them gave the impression of spectating, or waiting for something to happen. Two sat together, with a coffee mug between them in service as an ashtray. The third woman sat alone, on the bench furthest from the doors, not smoking. Her face was turned the other way, but for Laura there was no mistaking her.
‘Marianne.’
It felt intrusive to be addressing her with familiarity, but at least it made her turn her head. Besides, it was a bit late now to be worrying about intrusion. The woman stared at her, and Laura noticed that her eyes were the same cool green as her daughter’s; more dull and clouded, perhaps, but that could be the drugs. She saw in them no flicker of recognition, and for a moment resolution faltered. How had she not thought to plan what she should say?
‘Marianne, I hope you don’t mind my coming here. I’m – ’
‘Yes. I know who you are.’
The words were calm: perhaps a little flat, but certainly with none of the high, hysteric edge she remembered from their first encounter, nor the mumbling half-silences of the last.
‘I – I’ve brought you some things.’ She proffered the Tesco bag, feeling its fatuity. ‘I’m afraid it’s nothing much.’
There were no thanks. Marianne took hold of the bag, where Laura had laid it next to her on the bench, and pulled it closer without looking inside. As she stretched out her arm, the sleeve of her jacket pulled back a little way and Laura glimpsed, on the underside of the wrist, a series of marks where the skin was puckered, deep pink and oddly shiny; the healing scars from old cuts, perhaps, or fresher burns. She looked away quickly but if Marianne had seen her notice, she gave no sign of it.
Willow’s mother. It was odd how something already known with the mind could still startle you with a realisation that was wholly new for being physical. Her mother’s arms. What must it be like for Willow to look at them and see the damaged flesh?
Because she must say something, she said, ‘It seems quiet here.’ Banal, perhaps, but there was truth in it, she thought: the unregimented feel of the place, the sense of drift. ‘Do you find it quiet? After London?’
‘Quiet,’ repeated Marianne, and it was neither a confirmation nor a question, but meditative, as if she were assessing the word for weight and dimension. It was a habit of Willow’s, too, a verbal tic they apparently shared.
Uninvited, Laura nevertheless sat down; it must surely be easier than standing up. ‘It’s rather out of the way, though. For getting anywhere, I mean. To the shops, or just out for a coffee.’ She hesitated, aware that she had no idea whether Marianne was allowed off the premises, then blundered on, ‘I suppose there are buses, at least. That’s how Willow gets here, isn’t it, when she comes to see you.’
Her eyes dropped to the expanse of bench between them, to the Tesco bag, and Marianne’
s fingers, which were playing over and over something she held in the palm of her hand. Something metallic, flat and slightly lozenge-shaped, with rounded corners. The movement was rhythmic, perhaps self-soothing, almost mesmeric; Marianne’s eyes had closed. ‘When she comes,’ she repeated. ‘When Willow comes.’
Of course, thought Laura. The drugs. What an idiot she was, to come here and expect … whatever it was she’d been expecting. Explanations, reassurance, to discover anything at all? Of course it was all impossible with Marianne doused and dampened down with medication. There could be no reaching her, even had she wanted to be reached.
Gently, though without much hope, she tried again. ‘Willow, yes. She comes to see you quite often, I believe?’
‘Willow.’ The metal object slipped a little in her palm so that for a moment Laura saw it clearly. It was a cigarette lighter.
‘She lives with me, you know. With us. She’s my lodger. She, um,’ Laura stumbled over the deceptive half-truth, ‘talks about you.’
Finally, the fingers ceased their relentless movement and closed into a fist. Marianne opened her eyes and directed them straight at Laura. A misting seemed to clear.
‘Ninepins,’ she said.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Laura was eager, now, even while a warning tightness clutched her stomach. ‘By the lode – by the water. You came there, remember? You’ve been there twice.’
‘The brick house, up on the bank, with the water down below. The frozen water. Of course I remember. You were there with Willow. And a child – there was a child, a girl.’
‘That was my Beth.’ Laura’s mouth felt dry.
‘I met you, you were kind.’
Laura, who remembered no especial kindness, attempted to smile, but her lips were stiff and refused to stretch. And, anyway, Marianne wasn’t smiling.
‘So you’re the new one. Like that Janey. And the man, Vince.’
‘Oh, I’m not a foster carer or a social worker. I’m just … Willow just rents a room from me.’
But the green eyes had drifted down, and the mist was back, the moment of connection lost. ‘Ninepins,’ Marianne said again, her voice stripped of all inflection.
