‘It’s a while since they’ve seen each other.’
‘But they’re sisters. I thought sisters get on well.’
Until now, Maggie would have argued that her mother and aunts did get on well. But perhaps she had been wrong. ‘It takes a few days for everyone to get used to each other again. It’s probably always like this. It’s just I’ve never noticed it before.’
‘You’ve been having these reunions every year?’
‘Twice a year.’
‘Twice a year? For how many years?’
‘All my life,’ Maggie said.
He gave a low whistle. ‘And you’re surprised about tensions? Hasn’t anyone ever said they didn’t want to join in? That they couldn’t make it?’
Only her, Maggie realised. But look what had happened when she did that anyway. ‘There’s been some discussion now and again,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘But we’re here now. All because of you, I hope you realise.’
‘Oh, I do, believe me. Not everyone’s happy about it, though.’
‘They’re not?’
‘I heard Eliza telling Clementine that they needn’t have come because – actually, I’ve just realised I can’t tell you what I heard. It’s far too flattering about me.’
‘You have to tell me now.’
‘All right, but I’m just reporting what I heard. Eliza told Clementine that in her opinion Leo had brought them all here under false pretences, because it was obvious you and I were made for each other and that I was, let me think how she put it, that’s right, “a real catch”.’
‘No!’
Gabriel nodded. ‘It gets better. Then she said, “Maggie’s nuts about him, that’s obvious. Far more than she ever was about Angus.”’
Maggie went bright red. ‘She didn’t.’
‘She did. And Clementine agreed. And then they both went on to say mean things about Angus, which I also found interesting, though not quite as interesting as it was when they were talking about me.’
‘You’re making this up.’ She was extremely embarrassed.
‘I’m not, I promise you. Congratulations, Maggie. I thought I was doing a great acting job as your loving fiancé, but you’re obviously streets ahead of me.’
‘My acting job?’ She recovered quickly. ‘Oh, yes. Thanks. You’re doing brilliantly too. Except for that line about you getting clumsy when I’m around.’
‘But it’s true. My hands start to shake and my heart beats faster when I see you.’
‘That’s jet lag.’
They both heard the crunch of gravel behind them and smelt cigarette smoke. Miranda, coming towards them. Gabriel spoke louder. ‘Please, Maggie, take pity on a working man and leave me in peace this afternoon.’
Miranda reached them, leaned against the wall and raised an eyebrow. ‘My word, Maggie, he is a silver-tongued devil, isn’t he?’
‘Silver hair, silver tongue,’ Gabriel said.
‘It’s natural, that hair of yours, is it?’
‘One hundred per cent,’ Gabriel said.
‘I hope so. I’d hate to think it was fake.’ She waited just a beat before smiling at them both. ‘Ready when you are, Mr Scorsese.’
Maggie was back up in her room, about to start reading again, when Leo came in to say he’d just had a call from the detective. He’d completed his report.
‘And?’
Leo lowered his voice. ‘I couldn’t ask him for details. The girls were all around me. I asked him to courier it to me. By the fastest method possible.’
‘But is it her?’
‘He’s ninety per cent sure. He’s got a recent photo, extra details, her home address. But he said the final decision will be mine. Ours, at least.’
That gave Maggie the extra impetus to keep reading Tessa’s diaries. She was halfway through. Maggie had read about Tessa’s years in London as a young woman, before she met Leo. In the one she was reading now, Tessa and Leo were married, Juliet was a three-year-old and Miranda a toddler.
Maggie read ten more pages, then put the blue notebook down. She felt strange. Downstairs, Gabriel was filming memories and anecdotes about a much-loved wife and mother. Here, upstairs, Maggie was reading her actual words. Two perspectives on the same person. But which was the true one?
Maggie couldn’t fully make up her mind yet, with four diaries still to be read, but there was no getting away from the impression she’d formed of her grandmother so far.
Tessa was horrible.
Mean-spirited. Spoilt. Bitchy. Catty. Cruel. Manipulative. Conceited. Vain. Impatient.
As she’d read Tessa’s words, Maggie had tried hard to stay balanced about it. She hadn’t trusted her own reaction at first. Of course Tessa would seem self-centred. They were her diaries, after all. They had to be all about her. But the more she read, the harder it was to form any other opinion. Tessa was cruel about her friends, calling them dowdy and boring. She was much more interested in her own good looks. There were pages devoted to descriptions of the clothes she’d worn and the compliments she’d received.
Maggie was glad Leo had already told her that Tessa had first gone out with his brother Bill. She would have been shocked to read about it, otherwise. Even so, it had hurt Maggie to read Tessa’s thoughts about Leo, to hear him being dismissed and to be compared unfavourably to Bill: The puppy dog followed us around all day again today.
It had got worse. Reading on, she’d learned that Tessa had only started going out with Leo as a way of making Bill jealous. That for a time she had been seeing both of them. Even when she had decided to stay with Leo, she had been dismissive of him. She was more interested in being spoilt by Leo than returning his love for her.
Maggie had hoped her grandmother would change when she became a mother. Perhaps that would have softened her, turned her into the woman Leo idolised. In the beginning, it did. There was a lovely account of her feelings during her first pregnancy. Detailed descriptions of Juliet and, less than two years later, Miranda as babies.
It didn’t last, though. Two hours’ reading and three years of entries later, Tessa’s tone was now constantly petulant, her complaints loud. She was feeling housebound with her young daughters. She was bored with housework too, though as far as Maggie could make out, it was Leo who did it all. He came home from his job at the forestry nursery at lunchtime, made dinner and did the washing. Not that Tessa put it like that.
Leo had the hide to ask me if I would be able to make dinner this week. It’s easy for him, he can come and go as he pleases – he’s not home all day with the babies.
Miranda won’t stop crying. My neighbour told me to try some whiskey in her milk. It worked a treat, for me as well as her!
I’m pregnant again! With Eliza, Maggie realised. The other girls on my street are so jealous.
As the family grew, one thing didn’t change. Leo’s brother Bill was a constant visitor to the house.
Bill made a move on me today.
Maggie held her breath.
I told him to keep his hands to himself. If he thinks he can march in here and have whatever he wants from me he can think again. Even if he was much better in bed than Leo. The funny thing is I think Bill is actually jealous of Leo and me, so I get to have the last laugh after all! Wish I could make one Faraday man out of the two of them, though. That would be the perfect man.
Maggie tried to imagine Leo reading this. It would kill him.
Tessa must have had some redeeming feature. Maggie was trying hard to find it. Her sense of humour, perhaps. Despite herself, Maggie had laughed out loud several times. Tessa’s turn of phrase reminded her of someone. Miranda, she realised. That same wickedness and cutting humour. But deep down, Miranda was kind. Maggie knew that. She had been at the receiving end of Miranda’s kindness many times over the years. She couldn’t see any evidence of kindness in Tessa.
‘Maggie? Are you still alive up here?’ Miranda appeared in the doorway. ‘You’ve been too quiet. It makes me nervous. What’s that
you’re reading? We haven’t seen you for hours.’
‘Anna Karenina,’ Maggie lied. She’d just had time to push the diaries under her mattress. She’d taken the Tolstoy off the shelves downstairs, deliberately choosing the thickest book she could find.
‘Can I get you a little afternoon pick-me-up? My fingers are itching to open a bottle of wine and no one else will join me.’
‘Not yet, thanks.’
Her next visitor was Gabriel. He appeared at the doorway, on his way back from his bedroom, holding a windcheater. The bright morning had turned cold and the house chilly, despite the sunshine filtering through the windows. Maggie had wrapped the coloured quilt from her bed around her feet and pulled her chair into a ray of sunlight, like a dozing cat.
‘Are you receiving visitors?’ he asked. ‘Tucked up here on your own.’
‘Like mad Mrs Rochester in the attic?’
‘I didn’t like to say.’
‘How’s the filming going?’
‘Miranda’s right. I may enter it in the Sundance festival yet. I’m playing with different titles at the moment.’
‘Inside the Asylum?’
‘Catchy. I was thinking more along the lines of Leo and His Daughters. Or Truths, Tensions and Lies.’
‘Who’s telling lies?’
‘Well, you, me and Leo for starters. But we’re not the only ones.’
‘My mother and my aunts are too?’
‘To different degrees.’
‘About what?’
‘It depends on the questions they’re being asked.’
‘But what makes you think they’re lying?’
‘Their body language, for starters. And it’s all too positive.’ He went over to the window and stood beside it, just a metre or so from her. ‘I’m sorry to sound so cynical, Maggie, but the way they’re talking, their early life was like a cross between The Sound of Music and The King and I. All laughs, never a cross word spoken, nothing but fun and games with their mother before she died. Was it actually like that?’
Just a day before, Maggie would have said yes. She would have defended Clementine and her aunts, said that of course their stories were true. Tessa had been the most wonderful, warm, fun, loving mother possible. But did she believe that now? How could she, when she had spent hours reading how impatient Tessa could be, how bored she was sometimes, how dismissive she was, not just of her life as a mother, but of her husband too. They must all have felt that from her, surely? Had they all blocked out those bad times somehow? Or not noticed what was going on around them when they were children? Maggie was very confused.
‘Perhaps it was that good,’ she said, still needing to stand up for her family. ‘Just because they’re talking about happy memories doesn’t mean they’re lying. It’s not as if you have a lie detector attached to the camera, is it?’
‘I don’t need one. People lie all the time. I learned how to watch for it when I was in Washington. Being a cameraman’s like being a waiter. People forget you’re there. I’d hear the politicians chat in between takes, the whispers to their advisors, and then watch them change when the camera was rolling. I’d see it all through the lens.’
‘I can imagine politicians lying. But why would my mother and aunts do it now?’
‘Perhaps for the same reason they all came across the world at a moment’s notice. To please your grandfather.’
Maggie hesitated. Was that it? Was that why they were all being so positive about Tessa? For Leo’s sake? Even if it was true, she wasn’t comfortable hearing it from Gabriel. ‘He’s an old man. They love him. I thought you liked him too.’
‘I do like him. I like him a lot. He’s great company. But I’m glad he doesn’t have a hold over me.’
‘I think you’re being very rude.’
Gabriel stayed calm. ‘Maggie, you must see it.’
‘See what?’
‘All the tensions there are about Leo and his traditions. The tensions between your mother and your aunts. I asked each of them to tell me about themselves. I thought it would be a good way of relaxing them, but none of them told the truth. It was all “I couldn’t be happier. I have the perfect life and Leo has been the perfect father and Tessa was a wonderful mother”, and yet their body language said something else.’
‘Perhaps they’re nervous in front of a camera.’
‘They’re nervous in front of each other, if you ask me.’
‘Did you ask the others to leave the room?’
‘I suggested it, but they wouldn’t. Everyone wanted to see what everyone else was saying.’
‘And you thought that’s when they were lying?’
He nodded. ‘To Leo and to each other. All morning.’
Not just all morning. And not just to Leo and each other. They’d been lying to her about Sadie all these years, hadn’t they? They’d all known that Sadie hadn’t run away to become a hippy. They had all known the circumstances of her disappearing. Yet none of them had ever told her the truth. If they could lie about that, what else could they lie about? Not just to each other, but to her?
Gabriel was now looking out of the window, out across the bay. It gave her an opportunity to study him. As upset as she was, she couldn’t be angry with him for making these comments about her family. He’d been invited to Donegal to observe them, after all. She’d willingly told him all about her upbringing, about her mother and each of her aunts. But his comments, on top of all she had read in the diaries, had left her unsettled. He had got close to the heart of her family in a very short space of time. She imagined how Angus would have reacted to any of the events of the past few days. Badly, on every count. He’d never had any time for her family. Gabriel was different. He was curious. More than that. It was as if he actually cared.
He turned back and caught her staring at him. ‘Penny for your thoughts?’
‘I was thinking about you, actually. About what a good family therapist you’d make if you ever decided to give up the windows and the dogs.’
‘Are you being sarcastic?’
‘No, I’m serious. You’re doing a very thorough job with my family.’
He smiled down at her. ‘It’s easy with someone else’s. Wait until you meet my extended family. You’ll get your revenge on me, I promise.’
They were interrupted before Maggie had time to respond to his casual suggestion that she would meet the rest of his family.
‘Okay, you two lovebirds.’ It was Juliet. ‘Cocktail hour. Miranda’s insisting.’
‘Thanks, Juliet,’ Maggie said. ‘We’ll be right down.’ She waited until she heard her aunt reach the creaking floorboard at the end of the hall. ‘You might be right about some things, but not all of them. I know for a fact that Juliet is truly happy. She and her husband have a great life. They’re really successful, they travel all the time —’
‘I think you’re wrong about that.’
‘You do?’
He nodded. ‘If you ask me, Juliet is the unhappiest of all.’
Maggie tried to see her family through Gabriel’s eyes that night. At first glance, it seemed like their usual Faraday July Christmas. Juliet had obviously been preparing for it since she arrived. The dining room looked beautiful, lit only by candles. There was carol music playing, the open fire gently glowed. The blinds were pulled down for added atmosphere.
The table was decorated with red flowers, silver tinsel and garlands of fake ivy. They had an abbreviated present ceremony around the small Christmas tree, with half of Maggie’s presents unfortunately en route to other destinations. Maggie gave Gabriel a bottle of fine Irish whiskey, bought hurriedly at the airport. Leo gave him the same thing. He accepted both with a smile, before giving one straight back to Leo.
Leo made a production, as usual, of unwrapping each of his presents, immediately putting on anything wearable – a tie from Eliza, a scarf from Juliet, a leather belt from Clementine. He splashed on the aftershave Miranda gave him. He exclaimed over the selection of chocolates Maggie
had sent from New York.
As they took their seats at the table, he opened a bottle of expensive French champagne, another July Christmas tradition. They pulled crackers, wore the paper hats, told each other the predictable jokes. Miranda related one of her funny work stories, but she didn’t have the captive audience she might have liked. Leo was laughing, but he was the only one. Juliet was occupied with her dinner preparations, carrying dishes in from the kitchen, declining all offers of help. Clementine appeared to be listening to Miranda, but Maggie knew from her expression that she was miles away, in Antarctica probably. Eliza wasn’t even smiling, just looking at Miranda in a blank-faced way. Gabriel was filming again. Leo had asked him to take just a few minutes of footage of all of them at dinner.
Apart from the gift-giving and joke-telling, there were plenty of other rituals throughout the evening to keep everyone busy. Leo had insisted on them over the years. The toast to Tessa. The toast to Sadie. Maggie caught Leo’s eye as they made it. She knew what he was thinking. Perhaps the next time they made that toast, Sadie herself would be there.
Juliet’s food was wonderful, as always. The long table was covered in an array of colourful, perfectly cooked Thai dishes: light curry puffs, tangy beef salads and spicy curries, the rich scents of fresh coriander, garlic, lime and chilli filling the room. As they passed the food around, Leo entertained them all with quirky facts about Thailand. Another tradition of their multicultural feasts.
The final ritual before the dessert of mango and coconut sticky rice was served was the round-table wishes, each member of the family expressing a wish for something to happen in the forthcoming year. Maggie had the sudden feeling that they were all like actors, playing roles, reciting lines that had long lost any meaning.
Who was playing what role, though? Maggie watched and listened. Miranda, still the wisecracking, sharp-tongued, sarcastic one. On the surface she was the most independent. Juliet – always on the move, cooking, serving or clearing away. Perhaps she hated doing it, but she never let anyone help her. Maggie had long ago given up trying. Eliza was as reserved as usual, keeping herself to herself. She was no different here – speaking when spoken to, talking in general terms about her work, but never in any detail. And Clementine? Maggie looked across the table at her mother. She was talking to Leo, animated as she explained what her new study would be in Antarctica, basking in Leo’s interest and pride. Maggie had always felt confident that there were two great loves in Clementine’s life: Maggie herself and Clementine’s work. But had Clementine ever wanted more? A different life? One that she hadn’t been able to have because Maggie had arrived?
Those Faraday Girls Page 44
