by Maria Hoey
Violet-May shrugged. “He didn’t tell me, he didn’t tell anyone, not until it was done and dusted. I’ve no idea why he’d want to, but it makes no difference to me, I won’t be living here. I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for ... if it wasn’t for Robbie.”
I had a feeling she had been about to say something else but she turned from me and went and stood at one of the windows, her back to me.
“And Rosemary-June,” I said, “how does she feel about being back here?”
“You’d have to ask her,” said Violet-May. “Nobody has ever been able to guess what Rosemary-June thinks about anything, and I doubt they ever will.”
“I gather she’s been through a difficult time,” I said. “Her husband and your mother. I was very sorry to hear about your mother. Robbie said it was very sudden. I know how that feels – my own mother died very unexpectedly in her sleep.”
“Mummy died in her sleep too,” said Violet-May. “Poor Mummy. Oh well.”
That strange response silenced me. I sat down on the stool in front of the dressing table and waited for her to turn around.
After a moment she said, “Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being watched?”
I was completely unprepared for the question and unsure how to answer it. Eventually I said, “Being watched? Do you mean like God or something? Isn’t that all part of being brought up Catholic? Long after you think you’ve shaken off the shackles, there He is still watching.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Violet-May. “I meant somebody literally watching you.”
“Why would they be?” I said quietly.
Violet-May turned and looked me straight in the eye. “I have no idea,” she said. “So you don’t believe in God then, Kay?”
“I don’t know what I believe.” I also had no idea where she was going with all of this. Was she deliberately trying to make me feel uncomfortable, unwelcome?
“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” said Violet-May. “I don’t know why, but somehow I would have expected that these things would be simpler for you.”
“Why would you think that?” I said, feeling slightly insulted.
Violet-May turned back to the window.
“If there is a God,” she said, “it raises the question of why he would have created people. But then again I think he’d have had to, don’t you? Otherwise, without us, without our small lives to meddle in, how would he know he was God?”
I hesitated for a moment before saying, “Is anything wrong, Violet-May?”
“Wrong? Oh, I suppose Robbie told you about the divorce.”
“He just mentioned it in passing, not the details. I was sorry to hear about it but that’s not what I meant, I –”
“Don’t be sorry,” Violet-May interrupted. “I didn’t like being married. I don’t mean to Calvin in particular – I don’t think I’d like being married to anyone. It’s like being the queen instead of the princess and I have only ever really wanted to be the princess. Even as a child.” She turned suddenly and gave me a wry smile, then she went and sat down on the edge of the enormous bed. “But you probably remember that, don’t you, Kay? No, I always wanted to be the princess because, even then, I somehow knew instinctively that once you became the queen all the fun was over. I mean all the best fairy tales end at the point where the princess marries the prince and there’s a very good reason for that. No, marriage is going from being the princess to being the queen and that isn’t so much fun at all.”
“You two look very serious – what are you talking about?”
I turned. Rosemary was standing in the doorway.
“Kay was just asking about Mummy,” said Violet-May, “and my boring marital problems and all that dreary stuff. Where’s Oliver?”
“He’s downstairs with Robbie and Caroline.”
“OK. In that case why don’t you take over now, Rosemary, and show Kay her where her writing room is? I have things to do.” She yawned ostentatiously then got up and left, leaving me with a suspicion that she considered me one of those dreary problems she found so boring.
My writing room, as Violet-May called it, was the attic at the very top of the house. I had never been any further than the second landing before and, as I followed Rosemary up the stairs, I was suddenly reminded of the day I had stood there ear-wigging while Robbie and his friends listened to Queen. It struck me as somewhat remarkable that this house, where, when you added it all up, I had spent very little time, should be capable of triggering so many and such vivid memories.
It was a small but cosy room with a beautiful vaulted ceiling ribbed with thick dark wooden beams. There was a single sash window, oak floorboards polished and buffed to a high sheen, and a large faded but still very beautiful rug in hues of blue and yellow. I looked about me with pleasure at the carved love seat and the satinwood rocker and best of all the antique writing desk which had been placed so that it faced the window with its wonderful view over the meadow behind the house. There was also a comfortable-looking swivel chair in black leather for me to sit in as I wrote, an angled reading lamp and even a printer with a stack of paper still in its red-and-white wrapper stacked high next to it. It seemed to me that everything had been supplied for my comfort and convenience and I knew it was Robbie I had to thank for this.
I turned to Rosemary. “This is wonderful,” I said. “I’ve never been up in this room before.”
I looked at her uncomfortably, realising that I had inadvertently referred back to when I was there as a child, a time I imagined she would much prefer to forget.
But Rosemary had dropped down into the rocking chair and, looking completely unperturbed, was gently rocking herself to and fro. “Mummy used to keep it locked back then. This is the room where that maid or whatever she was did herself in.”
“Oh,” I said, my eyes going to the window. “Of course. She must have been so lonely and unhappy to do that.”
“I suppose so,” said Rosemary and then, as though by a process of thought association, she said. “Do you think that Violet-May is alright?”
The suddenness of the question threw me. “Violet-May, yes, I think so. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, it’s just that thinking about the day that Mummy died always upsets her. None of us will ever forget it.”
“No, of course not,” I said.
I was thinking that nobody could ever forget the day their mother died and a wave of sadness crept over me, when Rosemary suddenly stood up, picked up a small silver box from a side-table and examined it. Then, turning, she surveyed me with an odd look on her face. She looked down at the box, opened the hinged lid and shut it again.
“Yes, well, it was upsetting for everyone,” she said, “but I think for Violet-May especially. But of course she’ll have told you about what happened with Oliver.”
I shook my head. “What happened to Oliver?”
“Didn’t Violet-May tell you about it?” said Rosemary. “Or Robbie? I was sure one of them would have. Oliver almost drowned that day.”
She said it in what I thought was a curiously flat tone of voice, as though she were telling me that we had run out of milk or that it was starting to rain, but all the time her eyes were fixed firmly on mine. It had the effect of giving me the impression of some powerful emotion only barely contained.
“My God,” I said. “What happened?”
“Well, nobody really knows for sure but somehow Oliver managed to get out of the house and into the garden. This was at our house, mine and Justin’s, and there was a pond at the back of the house, an ornamental pond, not very deep as it happens but deep enough to ... Anyway, Oliver was playing with his yellow ball. It must have rolled into the pond and he went in after it or he slipped or ... well, it doesn’t bear thinking about and so I try not to. But, anyway, I saw him from the window, actually in the water I mean, and so I screamed and screamed and I rushed downstairs like a crazy thing.”
I was experiencing a sick sensation in the pit of my stomac
h which had come into being while I listened to how a baby had come close to losing his life by drowning.
“By the time I got to him, Violet-May was already there. She’d heard me screaming and had gone running too and got him out. And by some miracle he was fine – he must have only just hit the water when I looked out. But you know ...” her voice trailed off into silence.
“What was Violet-May doing there?” I said abruptly.
“What was she doing at our house? Well, she was staying there at the time actually. It was after Justin died and Violet-May had decided I needed looking after. So Mummy was there – and Grace too.”
“Grace was there? You mean the same Grace who’s here now?”
“Yes, the same Grace,” said Rosemary. “Why are you surprised?”
“Oh, it was just that with her working for Robbie now, I assumed that Grace came from round here.”
“Perhaps – actually I believe she did,” said Rosemary. “But she worked for Justin before she worked for Robbie, so I suppose she must have lived in London then. But don’t ask me, it was Mummy and Violet-May who found her and talked Justin into hiring her, nothing to do with me. She was supposed to be helping to look after Caroline and Oliver.” She laughed and I thought I detected a bitter ring to the sound. “And then Mummy died that very same day, that night to be really accurate. She’d come to stay with me too. A nightmare, the whole thing was, a complete and absolute nightmare.”
“Yes, I can only imagine,” I said. “But at least your mother died peacefully.”
I was flailing around for platitudes and I knew I was.
“Is that what Violet-May told you, that Mummy died peacefully?” Rosemary’s question sliced through my thoughts and I looked at her in surprise.
“I thought so. Yes, I’m almost sure that’s what she said – that your mother died in her sleep. Was that not what happened?”
“Well yes, I suppose technically that is true,” said Rosemary. “Mummy did die in her sleep but I wouldn’t exactly say she was peaceful that night, not for that whole afternoon she wasn’t. She took some sort of turn in the afternoon – actually it was me who found her and she was barely able to breathe. You see nobody had checked on her because of what had happened with Oliver, but she must have got out of bed, because when I found her she was slumped in her chair beside the window. She looked so awful that it frightened me and she was very agitated – it was hard to know what about exactly because she was having trouble breathing. Then Violet-May came into the room and Mummy got even more agitated. In the end we had to get the doctor back to look at her. He’d been out to the house to check Oliver over in case there had been any damage to his lungs or whatever, which luckily there wasn’t.”
“What did the doctor say about your mother?” I said.
“He said she’d taken a little turn and he gave her a sedative and she did sleep then. Only she never woke up again.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Yes, poor Mummy, it was all so sudden. Even the doctor was surprised because in spite of her weak heart he hadn’t expected her to go so soon.”
“And did you find out what had upset her? Had she seen what had happened to Oliver?”
“We’re not sure,” said Rosemary. “That was what everybody assumed, but I’ve always thought it had something to do with Violet-May.”
“Why do you think that?” I said sharply.
“Because Violet-May’s name was the last thing that Mummy said before she slipped off to sleep.”
“Just her name, nothing more?”
“Her name and Oliver’s name too,” said Rosemary. “She said them over and over again: Violet-May, Oliver – Violet-May, Oliver – just like that, almost as though she were trying to tell us something. Or that was how it seemed to me at the time but Violet-May thought that Mummy must just have wanted to see Oliver. But I don’t think that was it. But really so much happened that day, it isn’t easy to remember it all.”
“I’m sorry I reminded you of it,” I said. “I had no business to.”
“Oh, but it is your business, Kay,” said Rosemary, smiling. “After all, isn’t that why you’re here?”
“How do you mean?” I said, feeling a little confused by the tone of her voice which seemed at variance with the serenity of her smile.
“Only that you’re here in this house because you’re an old friend, Kay,” said Rosemary. “I mean, isn’t that why Robbie asked you to stay with us? And as an old friend you have every right to ask about anything you wish, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” I said, still a little uncertainly. “Was Robbie there when all this happened?”
“Robbie? No, he came the following day when we, well, you know, when we found Mummy.” Rosemary leaned her head back again and closed her eyes. “It was a difficult time for all of us, but at least Violet-May had the comfort of knowing that her name was on Mummy’s tongue at the very end: Violet-May and Alexander.”
She means Oliver, I thought. Oliver not Alexander.
But Rosemary’s eyes were still closed, so I did not point out her mistake.
“Violet-May and Oliver,” said Rosemary, her voice still dreamy. “They were both on Mummy’s mind at the last. I suppose it was because she loved them best. I imagine people think about the people they love best at the very end, don’t you, Kay?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure your mother loved you and Robbie and Caroline just as much.” I said it to comfort Rosemary but my mind was elsewhere. The truth was that hearing Rosemary’s youngest brother’s name spoken aloud after so many years had given me a small but sharp and sudden shock.
After leading me back downstairs to my bedroom, Rosemary left me alone with the suggestion that I might like to rest until it was time to prepare for dinner. She glided away then, leaving me feeling like some character in a grand period-piece drama and wondering if I should begin hunting out my best blouse and cameo brooch. While I stood there looking about me, I heard my mother’s mocking tone sound in my ears: Prepare for dinner indeed!
As it transpired, we did eat in the big dining room but thankfully nobody had changed their clothes. The meal was simple enough too, a beautifully cooked fish dish with steamed baby potatoes, minted peas and salad, all of which it appeared Robbie had cooked himself. As we sat down at the long table I had a flashback to the day of Violet-May’s birthday concert, all of us sitting down to eat jelly and cake off fine china plates. Today there was fresh fruit salad and cream for dessert and afterwards we all sat in the drawing room again.
I soon excused myself and went upstairs to my new study to begin work on my book. Because the time for excuses was over and, after all, the book was part of the reason I was here.
I had been working for some time when there was a gentle tap on my door and Robbie said my name.
“Come in!” I called, swivelling round in my chair, but he merely put his head around the door.
“I don’t want to disturb you,” he said. “I just want to make sure that you’re comfortable up here, that you have all you need.”
“Please come in,” I said with a smile. “You’re not disturbing me.”
He came in then and flung himself down in the rocking chair. “So you think you’ll be able to work here then?” he said.
“Are you kidding me?” I said, looking about me. “It’s perfect. Everything is perfect. The room, the chair, the view. There’s nothing more I could possibly want.”
Robbie smiled and got up again and came around behind my desk. I swivelled in my chair to keep him in my sights and watched as he began to fiddle with the catch on the sash window. “It can get a bit stuffy in here when the sun shines,” he said. “This window opens but it’s stiff so you have to pull it up quite firmly.”
“I’m sure I’ll manage it,” I said.
He turned and smiled at me, “Right, good. But don’t hesitate to say if there’s anything that needs fixing, anything more you need, or want
for that matter.”
“There’s nothing,” I said.
“Good.”
Robbie folded his arms then and said he should probably go and leave me to get on with my work, but he showed no sign of doing so. I was more than happy to have him stay but I had a sense that there was something on his mind and, while I was wondering what it was, he turned back to the window and stood there with his back to me.
“So how did you find the girls?” he said.
“They both seem well,” I said. “They both look well anyway, Violet-May in particular – she’s unbelievably glamorous.”
“And Rosemary?”
“Well, I thought she looked a bit ...” I hesitated.
“Ragged around the edges?” offered Robbie and he cast a swift look at me over his shoulder.
“I was going to say, tired,” I said. “But that’s only to be expected with two small children to look after, not to mention all she’s been through.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Robbie. “Did you get a chance to talk to either of them alone?”
“Yes, I talked to each of them alone.”
