by Susan Sallis
Jannie turned and put her arms around her brother. ‘Oh, Ned, will you be all right?’
‘Idiots, the pair of you. Can’t wait to have the place to myself. I’ll tidy up so that we won’t be able to find a thing when we reassemble at Easter. Then I’ll batten down the hatches, switch everything off and take the Heathrow train with narry a worry in my haid!’ He slid into an execrable Scottish accent and the girls laughed obediently. The urgency that had goaded each one of them into action was not so obvious now as it had been, but they all knew that it was still there.
They were still searching for something.
Ten
GUSSIE HAD FORGOTTEN so much about southern France, and the overnight train from Paris did nothing to reawaken any memories. Nice station on a January morning – barely eight o’clock – could have been anywhere in Western Europe; the sea that bordered the famous Cote d’Azur was far from blue; gunmetal grey suited it well. She changed trains here for a single coach ‘stopper’, storing her case on its wheels beneath a shelf holding a wicker basket of furious-looking hens and hoisting her backpack to the front before settling herself on a double seat away from the sea. The changeover after a long sleepless night had made her feel cold and slightly sick. She sat very still, eyes closed, until the train jolted into life. Then she opened them wide and fixed her gaze on the outside world while she stretched her whole face. It was a lesson taught by her mother when she suffered from car sickness on the long journey to see Grandma Briscoe in Bristol. How odd that she should recall it now when she was on her way to see Zannah.
She shivered and tried to concentrate on what was outside. Off-white hotels, palm trees. The resort was coming to life at eight o’clock on this grey January morning; there were even joggers. She cupped her hand to the window and peered ahead and then behind, and thought glumly that the quickly shifting glimpses of the town could have been of any tourist resort – Bournemouth, Brighton, Torquay … She hadn’t slept, her head ached, and the coffee and croissant on the express train from Paris seemed a long time ago. She wished she had not come. Andrew Bellamy had long gone from St Ives and Ned was not leaving for California for another two weeks and intended to stay on a day-to-day basis only. But according to Uncle Rory, Andrew was returning for the sale of Trewyn House. She sat back and clutched her backpack to her. She felt as if she might be disintegrating.
A woman came swaying down the open carriage carrying a bulging shopping bag. She collapsed next to Gussie and turned smilingly to apologize for the bag, which was encroaching on to both their laps. Gussie caught a phrase here and there and gathered that the woman was visiting her daughter in Monaco and had brought her some provisions from their grocery shop. Somehow Gussie managed to smile back and said she was English. The woman immediately translated her own words.
‘We run an old-fashioned – um – how you say épicerie …?’
‘Grocery shop?’ Gussie supplied.
‘Grocery shop. Solange will tell me she can get everything within a few metres of her apartment. But this is not so.’ Gussie then heard about Solange and her ineffectual husband, who could not keep a job and seemed incapable of cooking a meal for his wife so that when she came in from work she had to bring provisions and cook them or, worse still, buy ready-cooked food. Gussie was reminded of her eight-year-old self when Zannah first left. She had thought she was looking after her father very well. How ‘ineffectual’ she must have been. And how marvellous when Kate and Ned had moved in. How absolutely marvellous.
The woman said, ‘You have come from Paris on the express and you are tired. I will be silent.’
Gussie smiled her thanks. ‘If I sleep will you wake me at Eze-sur-Mer?’
‘Ah, oui. Certainly. Now close your eyes.’
Gussie never knew whether she slept or not. She was conscious of the train slowing down and the woman’s voice in her ear, then she was gathering up her things and making for the end of the carriage. The woman was hanging out of the window to wave to her and Gussie stood still, waving back, breathing in proper memories at last as the little train swayed on to Monaco.
It was the scent. To smell oranges in midwinter was absurd, yet that was what she was smelling as she half closed her eyes and took a long breath. Oranges and something else. Lavender? Roses?
Behind her the sea – still not azure but no longer gunmetal grey – was already picking up sparks from the pale sunshine. She opened her eyes wide to take in the perception of colour. She remembered doing this as a child, unconsciously burning impressions into her head. Then when she was fifteen she had learned how to do it consciously. A friend of Zannah’s had collected her from St Ives and taken the Plymouth ferry to Brittany, then driven down. It had been summer and the colours were vibrant. She had stored each one and was able to see them whenever she wished. They were not so vibrant now but there were flowers – here, there – everywhere. Cornwall prided itself on its early flowers but this was different. Enormous poppies were appearing, waving from a sheltering bush. Daffodils and tulips were blooming together, side by side. The glossy green and white of a camellia guarded the station gate. She noticed the bus was waiting for passengers; she was the only one. She trundled her case towards it.
Zannah had suggested coming to meet her in the car but Gussie had turned down the offer. She said she wanted to be able to take in the countryside from the local bus, and Zannah had agreed after very little persuasion. It was a long drive and would have meant her leaving ‘GI’, as she referred to her house at six in the morning. ‘I know what you mean about absorbing the local atmosphere, darling.’ Her voice had the same lilt it had had when she had complained about her husband’s complete lack of interest in social occasions. ‘And I want us to be able to talk properly when we get together. I’m such a hopeless driver I can’t talk and drive at the same time!’
Gussie clambered on to the bus with help from the driver, found a seat and settled into it thankfully. They waited another half an hour for the next ‘stopper’ to arrive but there were still no other passengers and at last the bus roared into noisy life and they pulled away. Gussie did not mind the delay. It gave her time to gather up the pieces of herself that had seemed to be discarded on the long train journey here. She half closed her eyes and tried to absorb the shapes around the colours as if it were the next landscape project. Soak it up. Understand it.
When the bus jolted into life, she closed her eyes completely. It was two hours along the Middle Corniche until they reached the ancient farmhouse Zannah had called ‘Glorious Isolation’ – or latterly, GI. There was time to sleep again.
She dreamed of Jannie, beautiful Jannie, volatile Jannie. Jannie in love and suddenly centred. There she was as a very small girl, trudging up the hill to the railway station at Truro. And there she was again, walking down Fifth Avenue, suddenly sure of herself. Centred. Not quite the right word somehow … Gussie deliberately surfaced, still searching for a word that would describe the change in her sister. As she opened her eyes it came to her. Anchored. Jannie was anchored. It had started to happen in New York and continued at her school practice. Gussie frowned slightly; she hoped it was not too much to do with falling so blindly in love. She forced herself to smile at her trite thought and closed her eyes again, determined not to transfer her own ghastly experience to Jannie.
Andrew Bellamy would be at Trewyn House soon, bidding for the Scaife drawings that Rory had bought because conventional Rosemary hated them so much. What a strange relationship that marriage must have been. Gussie moved her head on to her backpack and settled more comfortably. Rory and Rosemary. She remembered a playground rhyme from twenty-five years ago. ‘Change the name and not the letter, change for the worse and not the better.’
She woke when the bus jolted to a stop.
‘Nous arrivons.’ The driver shuffled out of his seat and took the handle of her case. She was still his only passenger. They were opposite what looked like lich-gates, very solid, a roofed archway above, but no coffin rest that she
could see.
She joined the driver. ‘Is this the local church?’
He did not understand but saw her total confusion. He said laboriously, ‘The gates. The gates … glorious.’
Her eyes widened incredulously. ‘The … the gates of glory?’
He shook his head, losing patience. ‘You ask for Glorious Isolation.’
Gussie let her breath go in a puff of realization. ‘Of course! I am so sorry.’ She remembered it now; for goodness’ sake, she had swung on those gates even though she’d been fifteen! She scrabbled in her backpack and tipped the driver far too generously, and he opened one of the gates wide and held it while she trundled her case past him. She smiled and said in farewell, ‘Merci … you have opened wide the gates of glory!’ She laughed, then stopped abruptly and wondered whether she was going mad. Was that what trauma really meant? Disintegration?
The wide path going upward in a gentle curve to the left was finished in loose gravel, which made wheeling her case hard work. It was sunk between banks starred with primroses and topped with a variety of trees. Silver birch already sprouting young green leaves vied with aspens quivering spasmodically in a slight breeze. Between the banks and the trees the driveway was like a tunnel and there was no view at all. Almost immediately she managed to get a stone in her shoe and with some relief she sat on the left bank, which gave her a sight of the road and the sound of the bus roaring onwards. No. She wasn’t going to go mad; not yet, anyway. She took off her shoe and shook it vigorously and told herself the fresh air would soon rejuvenate her. She felt nauseous. And she still wanted to weep. She could almost hear Kate’s voice saying, ‘Come on, best foot forward. Sooner you get this next bit over, the better.’ That’s what she needed: Kate’s sheer practicality. If she was going to stay at Zion Cottage and keep her father’s reputation going, that’s what she must do. Become Kate.
She got up, pulled the case towards her and discovered that the rickety wheels slotted into the small drainage gutter between gravel and bank so that it moved far more easily. And so did she. The gentle bend became steeper and she plodded around it and then stopped again. Perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead the trees stopped and the drive opened out into what looked like a car park. Beyond that was a very green apron of lawn and there was the farmhouse, apparently growing out of the ground, crowning the hill.
She stopped, delighted. The sun was shining directly on to it, lighting each small window brilliantly. It was immediately familiar, though much tidier than she remembered. The outhouses had been made into separate cottages, the field leading down to the woods was transformed into manicured lawn, the car park was home to a tractor, a four-wheel drive and several mopeds.
Gussie stopped again and leaned on her case to admire what Mark had always called her mother’s ‘retreat’. Both this and Glorious Isolation were absurd names because Zannah attracted visitors like flies. No doubt the cottages were full of them at this moment. She had seen its potential immediately the agent drove her up the muddy drive because although she loved having people with her she was certainly no hostess. The outhouses were her first project; the drive was her second – after her first visitor’s car had to be extracted from the mud by a crane.
Remembering, Gussie suddenly felt she understood her mother at last. It was so easy to see; staring her in the face. Zannah had wanted to get away from her daughter. Twenty-four-hour responsibility for a child was too much for her. It had been ridiculous to think that she might be inveigled into becoming some kind of carer for Uncle Rory. Zannah was not – definitely not – a carer. Gussie joggled her backpack into position and started walking again. She wondered which of the cottages would be hers.
As she emerged from the trees and on to the enormous parking space, there came a scream from the house, a door was flung wide and an unmistakable voice yelled, ‘Gus! My darling girl! You’re here and I’m still making your bed and choosing what books you’re going to read.’ Zannah’s equally unmistakable figure shot from the doorway like a bullet and hurtled down the long apron of manicured grass.
Gussie had wondered how she would greet her mother after a nine-year gap. She had agreed to visit for her twenty-first birthday and when she arrived, there had been a full-scale party taking place that evening; in fact it had already begun and Gussie could not even take a nap before changing into the skin-tight dress her mother had bought for her. ‘You’ve got a good figure, Gussie. Show it!’
Now there was no time to plan a conventional peck on both cheeks, or even decide whether to stall her with an outstretched hand and a good shake. Zannah hurled herself over the gravel and almost took the two of them to the ground as she flung her arms around Gussie, gripped the backpack and rocked them all together while she sobbed, ‘My God. I thought you wouldn’t come. Rory said – you can’t take any notice of that old idiot – but he said you’d come, and then he said you were in America! I wanted to see you so much, darling! So very much! I didn’t know what to do. Mark gone – dreadful – dreadful. I thought I would fall to bits.’
She withdrew slightly. Her face was already streaked with tears, her dark eyes tragically enormous. Gussie had to believe she was sincere. Hadn’t she herself thought she was disintegrating?
‘Darling, I loved him – he was such a little bugger – I wanted him to get longer legs but apparently it all depends on the centre of gravity and he’d have had to put on about three stone. But he couldn’t dance, you see, and that was when I started … Oh, never mind all that, Gus. You know I loved him. I’ve never stopped loving him. It didn’t matter to me that he was so bloody short and couldn’t dance. He was the sexiest man I’ve ever met. We danced in the sea, you know. We loved doing that. Oh, Gussie …’
By this time she was clutching Gussie’s arms and gradually slipping down towards the grass. Gussie held her up somehow.
‘Come on, Zannah. Let’s go into the house. People will wonder what on earth is the matter.’
‘People? Oh, you mean the gîtes. Darling, I cancelled all the bookings when you said you were coming over. I don’t want other people coming between you and me – that’s what’s happened all these years. We have to bond now, sweetie.’
She stopped speaking and drew a long shuddering breath. Then said, ‘Rory said I had to be positive and I know he meant I had to remember all the good old times. But those times make me cry so I am trying to think that Mark and Kate have just stepped aside so that there is no one between you and me. I want you to stay with me always, Gus. I need you and you need me.’
Gussie drew back, disengaged one side of her backpack and bent down to remove another piece of gravel from her shoe. She had forgotten her mother’s intensity and was shocked by it. She wanted to run. Run back to the family her father had made. She remembered him saying, ‘Zannah pours a cup of tea as if it were the last act she will do on this earth and must be made into something splendid.’ He had spoken with mock despair because he loved her for it.
Gussie felt a tug at her shoulder. Her mother pulled the backpack free and hoisted it around her own neck. She said in a perfectly normal voice, ‘Come on, sweetie. You must be absolutely whacked. I’ve got tea and orange juice and the toaster awaits!’ She held out her free arm and cried, ‘Marchons, marchons!’ She was laughing. Gussie felt her trembling spirits rise. She stood up and took the handle of the case in one hand, Zannah’s arm in the other and they trudged up the apron of greensward and into the house.
Much later she deliberately reminded herself of how marvellous the following weeks had been. She extracted it and looked at it carefully and saw the gradual renewal of their relationship as it had been when she was an eight-year-old and her mother had been beautiful and funny as well as unreliable and outrageous. She was still all those things, but the last two did not matter any longer, probably because Gussie herself was almost thirty-one and understood why her father had loved Zannah though he did not trust her; but, more importantly, why he had loved and trusted Kate.
The first two da
ys they spent in the house. Icy winds blew from the top of the Alps and froze most of the early flowers. It froze Gussie, too. She must have got a bug from the lovely woman with the provisions from the épicerie because she started to shiver on her first night and by the next morning her temperature was high and her bones ached horribly. Zannah leaped to the occasion, kept her in bed, made a fire in the little grate in her room and brought up dainty meals. When she had taken away the tea things, she reappeared in some kind of medical uniform holding a copy of What Katy Did.
‘Story time, darling! This is what mummies do and this one didn’t do!’ She laughed as she put more wood on the fire and then came to the bed to plump up Gussie’s pillows. ‘That’s right, sweetie, rest your head on this lavender pillow. Just sip this. It’s my favourite – sleeping pills dissolved in vodka. I want you to go to sleep halfway through a chapter. And wake up – better!’
Gussie was full of doubt. Sleeping pills in vodka? Zannah in a nurse’s uniform – why had she got that so near to hand? But the sheer luxury of being looked after was too much, and Gus sipped and felt her aching muscles relax. She let Zannah brush her hair and replait it loosely, comfortably. And then she listened to the story of the little American girl who had lost her mother and tried to take her place for the rest of the family. She remembered now that on the few occasions when Zannah had decided to become a caring mother, she had always read extracts from What Katy Did.
The next afternoon Zannah let her come downstairs and sit by the enormous open grate. The chaise longue was pulled sideways on to it so that Gussie had a view over the trees to the sloping vineyards beyond. Zannah told her about renting them to a neighbouring farmer so that she could concentrate on her work.
‘Actually, darling, I was terribly lucky there. I don’t know how good I am really. I just get into my darling daddy’s shoes and do what he would do. Big canvases – you must see my studio some time – plenty of scaffolding. I can still run the length of the staging with a paste brush in one hand and a bucket of paint in the other.’ She chuckled. ‘I am not an artist with a palette, Gus! Nor a smock!’
