‘It is a gift, you’re right. I put it down to compassion, an open mind and heart, and a firm belief in the triumph of the human spirit.’
I wanted to ask her how one went about acquiring those things when the phone rang. She got up awkwardly from the chair and limped across to it. She mumbled something into it, then moved it away from her ear and turned to me: ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take this in the drawing-room.’ She hobbled off.
Chloe had speculated as to the shape of the rooms of the windmill. ‘Round, I expect,’ she had said. But the kitchen was a perfect rectangle. It lay, like most of the rooms, in an extension built on to the west-facing side of the mill. There were plenty of straight walls for the old oak cupboards and the large dresser stacked with blue-and-white china plates and jugs, and Staffordshire figurines. As I sat there, sipping my tea and waiting for Lydia Garland to return, the back door opened and a middle-aged man with a shock of dark hair speckled with grey stepped inside, carrying a basket of onions. He seemed startled by my presence. ‘Who are you?’ he asked as he bent down to remove his black gumboots.
I got up from my chair. ‘Esther Fisher. I’m the journalist who’s come to interview Mrs Garland.’
‘Oh,’ he said, standing the boots carefully on a newspaper that lay spread out on the floor next to the doormat, before placing the basket with onions by the sink.
‘She’s on the phone,’ I said. The man – I assumed he was the gardener – didn’t reply but made his way across the kitchen to the table with the teapot and, grabbing a mug from the dresser, poured himself some. ‘Her toe,’ I said, making conversation, still not knowing who I was speaking with. ‘It looks painful.’
The man looked down into his mug of tea. ‘Got a kick like a mule, that woman,’ he muttered.
‘Kick?’
‘Like a mule.’ He drained his mug and got up just as Lydia Garland returned, two red setters criss-crossing in front of her. ‘You haven’t met my beautiful girls.’ She sank down on to her chair, patting her knee, beckoning the dogs towards her. ‘This is Gretel.’ She pointed to the smaller of the dogs. ‘And this is Heidi.’
I bent down and patted the nearest one, Gretel, admiring her glossy coat. ‘But I have met…’ Here I paused. Whom exactly had I met? I looked around for the man, but he seemed to have disappeared. His gumboots on the newspaper by the door had gone too. ‘The man who brought the onions in.’
‘You’ve met my husband.’ She looked surprised at the thought.
‘Dark,’ I said. ‘Average height…’
‘Of course it was Bob. I was just surprised to hear he’d come in. He has his office in the old grain store at the back and he normally doesn’t set foot inside the house before five. He’s my tower of strength,’ she added briskly as she sat back down by the stove.
‘Would you say you were a disciplined person?’ I asked. ‘Your productivity is legendary.’
‘I believe implicitly in discipline, discipline and application. As George Bernard Shaw was fond of saying, “Genius is the ability to apply the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair.”’ Lydia Garland’s shrewd grey-blue eyes twinkled. Then they turned steely. ‘I write every day from eight to one in the morning and that includes weekends, then I break for a light lunch, some soup and bread and cheese, usually, then it’s back to the desk for another three hours’ work. I stick to my schedule religiously, come what may.’
‘And you never get blocked? The inspiration is always there?’
‘Inspiration is just another term for hard work. If you work on it’ll be there.’ She gesticulated in the air above her head. ‘All around you, yours for the taking. If you sit around waiting for it to appear out of nowhere, it never will. At least that’s my experience and that of most professional writers I know.’
‘I read somewhere that you eschew the use of computers, preferring to do all your writing in longhand using a fountain pen. Is this still true?’
‘I find that there is a flow, a connection if you like…’ She was interrupted by a crash from somewhere in the house followed by a man’s voice, cursing. After a brief pause Lydia Garland went on in her even, calm voice, telling me about her working day and her writing foibles. ‘I can’t have my morning coffee in anything but a white mug.’
I asked her where she got the ideas for her stories from. She gesticulated into the warm, scented air of the kitchen. ‘From nothing and from everything.’
I coaxed her into being more precise. ‘Ordinary life is my inspiration and the little people my heroes,’ she said. ‘Didn’t Chekhov say that the writer’s art is to find a miracle in a blade of grass? Well, that’s just how I see it. Find the extraordinary in the very ordinariness around us. The Arctic explorer is all very well, but give me the pensioner struggling to keep warm during an English winter any time.’
The door to the kitchen opened and the two dogs unfurled from their places on either side of their mistress’s feet and made as if to get up. But when they saw it was her husband they remained seated. Now he was limping too and it was easy to see why, as his left foot appeared to be stuck in a large earthenware pot. What was it with the Garlands and feet? Bob didn’t speak as he shuffled past us and out of the back door, but he gave his wife a reproachful glance.
‘The number of writers, or would-be writers, who fall by the wayside are legion and often it’s not because of a lack of talent but of application. You need staying power.’
I left an hour later with a notebook full of harmless answers to my harmless questions; I’d been given my chance and I’d blown it. On my way to the car I passed Bob Garland sitting on a garden chair, looking out at the fields, his foot still stuck in the pot. ‘Traps,’ I heard him say as I passed. ‘She sets traps.’
I stopped and walked up to him. ‘Who sets traps? Your wife? Are you talking about your wife?’
A look of cunning spread across his round face. ‘That’s for me to know and for you to find out.’ He winked.
I tried again. ‘You said she has a kick like a mule. Does your wife kick you?’
‘I’m tired. You’ve talked to her, you’ve got your interview, don’t bother me, there’s a good girl.’
A window opened upstairs. ‘Bob!’ It was Lydia. ‘Bob, I need you inside please.’
Bob Garland got out of the chair and hobbled off in the direction of the house. Then he stopped for a second and turned back towards me. ‘Normally we keep begonias in it.’
Did I follow it up? Did I try to find out if Bob Garland’s words were the ramblings of some jealous nobody or the truth? Like hell I did. Was Bob Garland really a battered husband? Well, if he was, I wasn’t going to tell anyone. I didn’t dare because now every act was followed in my mind by a pack of hounds of disaster. I simply lacked the courage to risk unleashing them. Instead, I wrote a ‘portrait’ which wouldn’t have disgraced a chocolate box. Chloe phoned to say she’d take it because it was about Lydia Garland, but that otherwise it was a saccharine piece of inane rubbish. I agreed with her. ‘Take some time off,’ she told me. ‘Get your head together before you do your reputation more harm.’
‘I’m about to buy a house. I need my income.’
‘Well,’ Chloe snapped. ‘You should have thought of that before you developed a conscience like a bloody trip-wire.’
‘It’s not a matter of conscience really,’ I said.
‘Well, whatever it is, you can’t afford it.’ Chloe rang off.
Lotten had something to tell Linus. ‘So, Linus, I would appreciate it if you came back from the office at a decent time for once.’ She put away the breakfast cereal. ‘Oh, and Ivar is staying with Nils tonight.’
He arrived home just after six o’clock to find Lotten at the door, waiting. He could see straight away that she was fit to burst with things to say and he prepared to make his escape. ‘I’ll just have a wash and change,’ he said quickly, darting past her through the hall.
‘I’ve got supper on,’ she called after him. ‘I cou
ldn’t be bothered to cook so I got some pasta from the deli.’
‘Fine,’ he called back. ‘I like pasta.’ He took his time washing his face and hands, and changing from his chinos and tweed jacket into jeans and a sweater. Lotten was calling from the kitchen, ‘Come on, will you. You know pasta can’t wait.’
‘So you’ve had a busy day?’ Linus said, sitting down at the kitchen table.
‘Not more than usual.’
‘Oh, right, I just thought because you hadn’t had time to cook.’
Lotten slammed her fork down on the plate. ‘It’s always the same with you, Linus, isn’t it? You just have to make one of your little snide, superior remarks. You just have to find something to pick me up on.’
Linus blinked. As usual he must have missed something, that vital something that would make sense of what his wife was saying, the magic key to unlock her mind and make him understand.
‘I didn’t cook tonight because I didn’t feel like cooking; there, will that do?’ Lotten picked up her fork again and stabbed a piece of ravioli with such violence that Linus winced; he knew she wished that was a bit of him she was piercing with her fork.
‘I wasn’t criticising,’ he tried to explain. ‘I was just making conversation. You said you hadn’t had time to cook so I assumed you had been even more busy than usual, that’s all.’
‘That’s another thing I can’t stand. You have absolutely nothing to say to me, which is why you keep coming up with these meaningless remarks. I presume you did better with that little tart.’ Lotten’s voice rose to a higher pitch. ‘You betrayed me, you know that? You utterly betrayed me, and Ivar. No wonder it took me so long to cotton on to what you were up to with that… that slut, you’d been in love with your bloody work for so long anyway. Have you ever stopped to consider what I want out of life?’
Reeling from this sudden attack, Linus could not decide whether to ask Lotten not to refer to Katya as a tart, when she continued, ‘You’re a stranger in our midst, do you know that. You’re a stranger in everybody’s midst. One thinks one’s seeing Linus, oh yes. You seem to be there all right, but actually, you’re back home on planet Zog.’
‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ she said suddenly, waving her fork at him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Linus said. ‘I had no idea I have been making you so unhappy. Of course I know you were miserable over my… me having been with Katya that time, but everything else? Things aren’t perfect between us, but I thought…’
‘You thought? Well, that makes a change. But it’s too little too late. Quite frankly I don’t want to go on. I feel as if trying to make this one-sided relationship work is draining me of energy that I should use to make something of my life. I want us to separate. Linus, Linus do you hear me?’
Slowly it sank in that his marriage was at an end and for a wild moment, as he looked across at Lotten seated in her place at the kitchen table, the same place she had sat for the past eight years, he was filled with exhilaration. Before him the world stretched out as if seen through a wide-focus lens and life seemed full of possibilities. Then he remembered Ivar and suddenly all he felt was panic. ‘I want Ivar to stay with me,’ he blurted out.
Lotten looked at him, eyes narrowed, then she laughed. ‘That’s all you’ve got to say? Well, dream on.’
All that night as he lay, uncomfortably furled on the study sofa, that laugh rang in his ears and each note spelt out his powerlessness.
Bertil was taking Linus out to lunch. ‘Talk to the boy,’ Olivia had told her husband. ‘Tell him we’re there for him.’ So at twelve forty-five precisely he rose from his corner table, left far side, to greet his son. ‘Make an effort, Bertil, dear,’ his wife’s voice rang in his ears.
‘Linus, good to see you. And perfectly on time too.’ He really was making an effort.
Linus looked mildly surprised. ‘I usually am, aren’t I?’ He sat down in the chair opposite his father.
‘I heard you sleep in the office,’ Bertil said once they’d ordered, smoked herring and mash with beer and schnapps. ‘But I thought you said that Lotten had left you.’
‘Apparently’ – Linus sighed – ‘Lotten leaving was a euphemism for Linus being kicked out.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Linus, why are you so wet? Did it never occur to you to refuse to go?’ Bertil winced at the sound of his own voice, irritable, impatient, just the way he had been determined not to sound, just the way he always ended up sounding when speaking to his only child.
Linus looked up at his father, but he didn’t look hurt, just vague. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘I suppose it hasn’t. I can’t stand being where I’m not wanted,’ he explained.
‘What has that got to do with anything? I really don’t understand you sometimes, Linus. It’s your home and your son lives there. You’re not the one who wants to end the marriage. Why should you leave?’
‘Because Lotten asked me to,’ Linus explained, nodding a thanks to the waiter who had just placed the food in front of them on the red-and-white checked cloth. To him it had seemed obvious; if you are not wanted you leave.
‘You can stay with us, of course, until you’ve sorted yourself out.’ Bertil too nodded a passing thanks to the tall young waiter.
‘It’s all right,’ Linus said. ‘Sten has offered me a bed for the rest of the week and I think there’s a good chance that I’ll get this sub-let just around the corner from here. It’ll be good to be so close to the office.’
That afternoon, Linus remained at his table, his head in his hands, thinking. He was not much inclined to self-analysis, in fact, he was not much inclined to any kind of emotional analysis. Lotten was, which was why she always won the argument. Right now, though, he felt like blaming Bertil. Of course he could try and blame his mother for dying and leaving him with the cold bastard, but he loved her, the memory of her, too much. He remembered in childhood a feeling of being permanently in the way, present only on sufferance, never quite at ease. In his mind’s eye he came and went in his father’s study as if it had a revolving door. ‘Yes, Linus’ – sigh – ‘what is it now? I really am very busy. Haven’t you got any homework? You run along and leave me to it, there’s a good chap.’ It had got better after Olivia married his father, but the fear of being where he wasn’t wanted had never really left him.
Back at the office the air, full air-conditioning, automatic temperature control, was humming with excitement. Jonas was the first to tell Linus. ‘Take a look at this.’ He shoved a fax in front of him. ‘That English guy, Stuart Lloyd, is building an opera house and he’s invited a handful of firms all across Europe to submit designs.’ Linus took the paper and sat down with it at his desk.
‘Huge budget.’ He looked up at Jonas who nodded back. ‘Innovation, modern design, new thinking… whoa, is this guy for real or the ideal client as dreamed up by a panel of architects?’
Jonas grinned at him. ‘I know. Sounds too good to be true.’
‘I have to go over to see the site,’ Linus said. ‘We’d better have a meeting this afternoon, go through the thing in detail. I tell you.’ He smiled up at Jonas, a small, faraway smile. ‘This project is ours.’
I bought the little house and had the outside painted eggshell-blue. In the end, though, I had to share it with Posy McKenzie because I couldn’t afford the mortgage on my own. Posy needed a friend; she had just gone through her third divorce. We had known each other for ever, but we had never been especially close friends, not until we met again at Arabella’s last year. Then we had discovered that at thirty-three, shared memories were as potent a recipe for friendship as shared interests ever were. I think that at school my problem with Posy was that she reminded me of my mother and one Audrey is enough for most people. Posy was kind of dippy and arty, the way Audrey used to be, before she took to her bed and became quite sensible. Posy was the kind of girl who, when all those years ago I had told her the story of being forced to wear that awful fluffy dress and be the Good Tooth Fairy, had sighed and said she wou
ld have loved to wear a pink-and-white frock with rosebuds on. Posy had not been a beauty back then. Now she was. In fact, she was so beautiful that she could cross a dual carriageway in rush-hour, confident in the knowledge that every last car would screech to a halt at the sight of her. Being so beautiful meant that no one who met her tried to figure out whether she was clever, or funny, or learned, or kind, or anything else that mattered with most people who didn’t have huge dark-green eyes the shape of almonds, long, thick dark hair and a dew-kissed complexion. In fact, Posy was very smart in her dippy kind of way and one of the kindest people I knew. She dressed in floaty lace that she picked up from market stalls and second-hand shops, and she was given to saying things like, ‘I was born in the wrong age, at heart I’m an Edwardian.’ To give her a fairer perspective on the thing I tried to point out the little matter of the First World War. ‘That’, I said, ‘is after all where most Edwardians of a certain age ended up. And then there was the Spanish flu. Have you any idea how many millions were killed by the Spanish flu?’ But Posy seemed to think she could have been the kind of Edwardian who skipped all of that. Posy made a living from making jewellery, rather badly. When she had told me, a few weeks ago, that she was getting divorced from Philip, her third husband, I had asked her if she might ever consider sleeping with someone without marrying them. It just seemed simpler. She answered that she was an Edwardian at heart. Well, I knew that.
The day Posy moved in, a week after me, she arrived late, way after the small removal van bringing her belongings. She drifted inside with that serene Mona Lisa smile of hers, not in the least concerned with her possessions. The first thing she did was go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and ended up getting the tassels of her shawl caught in the waste-disposal unit. It happened so fast; she arrived, drifted into the kitchen, carrying a carpet bag, her skirts trailing on the stone floor, moved over to the sink to fill the kettle and there all of a sudden she was, or nearly wasn’t as it happens, being gobbled up by the waste-disposal unit. I arrived to switch it off, just in time; she was already bent double over the sink with the shawl tightening round her neck.
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