‘I can’t guarantee that he’ll wish to speak to you, but yes, hearing the other side of an argument does tend to help one form an opinion.’
Not when you’re in my profession, I thought. For a journalist, the other side of the story was like the bad fairy at the christening; it buggered things up. ‘I’ll make an appointment,’ I said, so meekly that Audrey shot me a motherly look of concern. Help me out here, someone, I thought, as I fought off the old doubts with everything at my disposal: rusty old bits of arguments, chunks of therapy speak, sharp and painful memories. ‘Of course one needs to hear both sides. But sometimes, in order to get things done and in deference to the cause of justice, you have to trust your instincts and go with the bigger picture and to hell with the nuances.’
‘I think you’ll find that that’s how all the great injustices of this world came about, people ignoring the nuances in favour of the bigger picture,’ Linus said.
‘But surely’, Audrey said, ‘Esther’s old things on the farm are the nuances and your opera house is the bigger picture? So you seem to be arguing each other’s points.’ Linus and I looked at each other and I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Now don’t tell me your head hurts,’ Audrey warned. She turned to Linus. ‘That’s what she used to say when she was a little girl and you argued with her. “My head hurts.”’
Now I saw the point of motherhood. It gave you a unique ability to humiliate under the cloak of sentimentality: And this is little Johnny when he was three and didn’t know better than to stand naked in a sandpit and twist his willie round his finger as if it were a rubber band. Oh and look; there’s our Daisy on her fourth birthday; you wouldn’t think she’d be able to fit a whole finger into that tiny little button nose, now would you?
‘I would get this funny buzzing sound in my head when my father was having a go at me, as if my brain was hosting a party for a swarm of bees,’ Linus said. A brief look of mutual understanding passed between us.
‘More cheese, anyone?’ Audrey offered.
Soon after that Linus stood up to leave. As I sat back down in the boudoir chair by Audrey’s bed I felt his absence even more strongly than I had felt his presence.
Audrey sank back against her pillows with a contented little sigh. ‘I think that went very well, don’t you?’
I looked at her, appalled. It was just this attitude of hers – this ‘I’m not just looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses, I’m strangling it with a rose-coloured ribbon’ – that I felt was to blame for my desperate need for clear-cut answers. ‘And’, she continued, ‘who would have thought that podgy little Linus would grow up to be such a handsome man?’
I hauled a cigarette from my pocket and lit it. ‘If you like that tall, blond, chiselled type, yes I suppose you could call him handsome. I myself prefer the more earthy look.’
‘You’ve taken up smoking again,’ Audrey said. ‘Why?’
I exhaled a perfect circle of smoke (an old skill remembered). ‘I’ve fallen victim to the incessant advertising by unscrupulous tobacco companies. And it’s something to do with my hands when I feel like strangling you.’
Audrey gazed at me fondly. ‘You always were rather gullible behind that cynical façade.’ This was news to me. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I’m not surprised to hear you say Linus isn’t your type. You seem to have a preference for men with the kind of looks and personality that fail to engage your feelings too deeply.’
I stared at her. What was it with this motherly insight all of a sudden? ‘I have to prepare for tomorrow,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’m going down to see the Wilsons again.’ I stubbed out my cigarette on a saucer.
‘You mean after I got the two of you together for lunch and we all had such a lovely time you’re still intent on carrying on this silly vendetta?’ Audrey was outraged; I knew from the way she gripped the cream silk counterpane so hard that her plump knuckles whitened.
‘It was very kind of you to have me for lunch,’ I said, ‘and I don’t wish to be ungrateful, but I have to do what I think is right, in spite of having had a nice lunch. It’s called principles…’ My mother sighed, impatient with the very concept. ‘I don’t do these things just to sell newspapers, you know. Obviously I need to get my career going, but I do believe in right and wrong.’ I paused for a moment. ‘What else is there?’
I hadn’t expected an answer, but I got one. ‘Everything,’ Audrey said. ‘Everything between heaven and earth. Linus has a passion, can’t you see that? He wants to create something lasting, something of beauty. What do you want?’
‘In this instance, justice. However beautiful the proposed building, it does not justify evicting those two old people. Stuart Lloyd’s vision doesn’t and nor does Linus’s passion. Rookery Cottage is Dora and George Wilson’s home and they don’t wish to leave.’
‘And that’s all there is to it as far as you’re concerned?’
‘Yes.’ I picked up my tote bag. ‘That’s all there is to it.’ I stopped in the doorway and turned round. ‘Passion without justice is a dangerous thing.’
‘And so is blind justice.’
‘And what do you know, stuck in your bed for the last couple of years?’
‘It’s not where you go but what you see when you’re there that matters,’ my mother said. That was it, I’d had enough. What did Audrey think she was playing at, carrying on like some cut-price oracle?
‘Shall I tell Linus you’re reconsidering your next article?’ she called after me.
‘No,’ I barked. Looking back I could see her reach for the telephone. ‘And you can say the same to Olivia.’ I was out of there.
Fifteen
The entrance to utterly village hall smelt of lavatory disinfectant, the kind you get in a little icy-looking white block and hang on the inside of the rim. As I paid my fifty-pence entrance fee I searched the rows of stalls for Dora and George. There they were, right at the back of the hall, just below the podium. I waded through the scrum of punters, muttering apologies as the tote bag on my shoulder knocked into arms and backs. There did not seem to be a lot of buying going on among the Spanish fans and old patchwork quilts, the old-fashioned dolls, the china coffee cups and the Wedgwood blue vases, but there was a thinly veiled air of excitement generated by legions of Antiques Roadshow viewers hunting for a bargain. Their excitement didn’t seem to be shared by the vendors who stood or sat behind their stalls. One man was engrossed in a science fiction paperback, while chewing his way through a packet of biscuits on his lap. A woman seated on a low stool was munching a huge sandwich, oblivious, it seemed, to the would-be buyer asking for a music box to be wound up for her to hear. Only when the customer, a middle-aged woman with permed ginger hair, had given up and wandered off to the next stall did she look up, sigh, and return to her chewing and staring into nothing. Dora and George were not eating, but they each had their hands clasped round cups of strong milky tea. George looked up and nodded briefly in my direction. Dora smiled a big, gummy smile.
‘You’ve got some nice stuff.’ I put my finger out and touched the base of a brass paraffin lamp crowned by a cranberry-coloured glass shade. ‘My grandmother had one very like this,’ I said, smiling back, aware with a sudden rush of pride of my own even white teeth.
‘And these are lovely.’ I pointed to a little group of carved wooden animals: a duck, a hedgehog, a fox and cub. ‘I used to carve, but I was nowhere near as good as this person. Where do you get them from?’ I looked up at George.
‘What was it you wanted, then?’ was his only reply.
‘George was pleased with the job you did in the paper,’ Dora said hastily. ‘We’ve had ever so many calls and letters from people wanting to help. I’ve saved them all so that you could do something with them. Maybe print some of them.’
George stood with his back slightly turned, paying no attention to his sister and me, but when a man came up to ask the price of a wooden tea caddy, he didn’t seem to hear him either. I gave Dora a little nudge. ‘
Customer.’
Dora waddled across and the man repeated his question. I took some shots of the stall and of George looking into the distance. A photographer had been down already taking pictures of the Wilsons At Home, but this kind of picture was always worth having. ‘I’m after a kind of “Day in the Life of” thing for the Saturday supplement. I’ll just follow you around as you go about your business here at the hall and at home.’
We were back at Rookery Cottage and I looked around the musty-smelling hall where damp made the kind of pattern on the tobacco-yellow walls that people paid a fortune to reproduce. ‘I think Terra Nova Enterprises would be willing to add a substantial sum to the money already offered by the council,’ I said as I followed them into the kitchen. ‘You could get a…’
George sat down at the table. ‘You’re saying we should accept charity?’ His voice was harsh with outrage. ‘A hundred years and more there’s been Wilsons at Rookery Cottage and we’ve never taken charity from no one. Everything we’ve got we’ve worked for and earned.’ His hands were shaking and his old-man’s eyes filled with tears.
‘I’m sorry.’ I hung my head. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
Dora waddled across to the stove and put the huge kettle on the hotplate. ‘This is where our roots are.’ She gesticulated out across the fields. ‘Other than during the war when I had to go and work in the munitions, that view has been the first thing I’ve seen every morning of my life, and the last thing as I draw the curtains at night. This is our place. Why should we be made to leave?’
I sighed and shook my head. I’d always felt that the reason ‘For the common good’ was less persuasive when you directed it to the sacrificial victim on his way to the altar.
I had left my car outside the village hall a mile or so away. The weather had had a sudden April mood-swing and turned warm, and I was glad of the walk. I breathed in the clean country air and listened to the birds twittering away like the guests in a TV talk show. I was meant to feel a pang of regret for returning to the city, but in fact I couldn’t wait to be back in London. I lit a cigarette and inhaled. In the city you had the results of hundreds of years of human endeavour at your fingertips: opera, ballet, theatre, cinemas, restaurants, museums, all-night shopping and ready-made food. In the country progress was represented by tractors and combine harvesters and satellite dishes on the thatched roofs. It was seen in the turkey farms along the road to my right, huts like prison-camp blocks, spreading a rancid smell and a ghostly silence. Whoever heard of a quiet turkey? Whoever heard of two hundred quiet turkeys? Well, I had now. Further on, I passed a small farmhouse to my left and gazed idly into the garden as I went. A rusty old Rover stood parked in the overgrown driveway. A young man was sitting on a seat in the garden. He was busy, bent low over some work. Craning my neck I saw that he was carving. Was this the creator of the little wooden animals on the Wilsons’ stall? ‘Afternoon,’ I called out. The young man looked up, still frowning with concentration, then his round face split in a grin. ‘Nice day for it,’ he called back before bending over his carving once more. I would have liked to have gone over to look closer at his work, but it was getting late and I had an article to write.
Two days after the latest of my articles appeared Stuart Lloyd announced that he was putting the construction of the People’s Glyndebourne on hold. Chloe offered me a permanent position back at the Chronicle. I looked up Pyrrhic victory in my dictionary. It said, a victory in which the victor’s losses are as great as those of the defeated.
‘Pyrrhic, schmyrrhic,’ Posy said. ‘What are you supposed to have lost?’ She was getting ready to go out for a job interview with a large PR company, looking like a pre-Raphaelite who had been told by her mother to smarten up.
‘D’you know,’ I said, nodding in the direction of her short black skirt, ‘I think this is the first time I’ve seen your legs since school.’
‘What have you lost?’ Posy insisted. ‘You’re getting your old job back and it looks as if the Wilsons are going to be allowed to stay on at Rookery Cottage.’ She pushed a black beret down on her thick dark hair.
I handed her the briefcase. ‘Where did you get that from?’ I asked.
‘Oxfam.’
‘Ah.’ I scuffed the toe of my heavy black shoe against the carpet. ‘It’s my old insecurities rearing their wobbly little heads,’ I explained. ‘And you know how it is when you’re in the heat of battle? You’re all fired up by the cause. Then the battle is done and there’s calm and in that calm the sound of doubting voices can be heard. And I kind of liked Linus. He was passionate about this thing. The opera house, this People’s Glyndebourne, it wasn’t a bad idea, they just went about it the wrong way. Audrey is furious with me. What with her best friend being his stepmother and all that.’
‘Since when did you care what Audrey thought?’
I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. Then I looked up at her with a smile. ‘Winning is always scary. I know I did the right thing. We all know that there are times when the rights of the individual have to be sacrificed for progress, for the good of the community, but the day we just accept it as a matter of course, with a shrug and a “That’s life”, that’s when we, as a society, are in danger of losing our humanity.’
‘You’re a bit pompous for a journalist,’ Posy said.
‘Certainly,’ I agreed.
Audrey announced that she was going on a trip.
‘They don’t take beds on aeroplanes,’ I said. ‘Not unless you go in the hold.’
Audrey frowned at me and reached out for a chocolate doughnut. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Ah, you’re going by train.’
‘I said, don’t be silly. I’ll get up, of course.’
‘You’re getting up?’
‘That’s what I said. Why do you look so surprised?’
‘Oh, no reason. Well, all right then, it hasn’t escaped my notice that you’ve barely left your bed in the last couple of years. Anyway, where are you thinking of going?’
‘To Sweden to visit Olivia’s island. It’s ages since I’ve been. And you’re coming with me.’ She bit into the doughnut.
‘You must be joking.’
‘I never joke.’ This was true.
But I said, ‘Why should I want to go there? I’ve just scuppered darling Linus’s dream project.’
‘That’s precisely why we’re going. Olivia is my oldest and dearest friend. She’s the sister I never had. Neither of us can stand the bad blood that has developed between the families over this opera house business. You and I are going across to mend fences. And you could do with a holiday. I know you don’t start work again full-time until September.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a dreadful idea. Linus did what he thought was right. So did I. We were both doing our jobs, that’s that. Either they accept that or they don’t. I can’t see that forcing myself on them at this stage is at all a good idea. But you go, you like it there, just leave me out of it.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ my mother said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe letting them get to know you better isn’t such a good idea.’
Sixteen
The phone rang just as I was about to get into bed. ‘Esther, this is Olivia.’
‘Hi, Olivia,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid your mother has had an accident. She’s in hospital.’
Audrey, unused to walking, had slipped on a wet paving stone in the Stendals’ garden and, as well as suffering a broken hip, had severe concussion. She was comfortable, but as Olivia said, at her age and at her weight you couldn’t be sure. ‘I think you should come over. She could be in hospital for some time. She can’t be moved, flying right now is out of the question. And although I don’t want to worry you unnecessarily, as I said, at her age you never know.’ There was a pause. ‘She’s frightened.’
‘You don’t think Audrey did this deliberately, do you?’ I wished I hadn’t said that, but it just slipped out.
‘I’ll pretend you never said that, E
sther.’
‘Thank you,’ I said meekly. ‘I’ll book my ticket first thing tomorrow morning and ring you back. Oh, and Olivia…’
‘Yes, Esther.’
‘She will be all right, won’t she?’
‘I don’t know, but the doctors are hopeful. The hospital is a good one and she’s getting the best possible care.’
‘And what about Linus?’
‘What about him?’
‘Won’t he mind? First I’m instrumental to his project being put on hold, maybe indefinitely, then I appear on his island.’
‘Linus will understand that you’ll have to be with your mother. He’s always been fond of Audrey.’ It was a continuing surprise to hear that other people liked one’s mother.
I couldn’t sleep that night. When I closed my eyes it wasn’t sleep that came, but images of Audrey, frightened in a narrow hospital bed and dressed in an insulting white gown, split at the back, instead of one of her voluminous silk négligés, as rich and colourful as any butterfly’s evening dress. Like so many women before me, I had been so busy running from my mother that I hadn’t noticed when I had turned a corner and was heading right back.
Posy gave me one of her shawls as a goodbye present. ‘It gets chilly out there,’ she said.
‘It gets chilly here,’ I argued. ‘But you’ve never given me a shawl before.’
‘Ah, but you’re going away, thank God.’
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘No, but it’s true. I love you, but you’ve been an absolute pain lately. It’ll be bliss to have the house to myself for a while. Of course I’m desperately sorry it’s in these circumstances and all that, but I’m looking on the bright side.’
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