She dashed into the hallway, then off somewhere upstairs. Feet pattered overhead a few minutes later, then another scream as Juliet tried to hide herself somewhere. Stella smiled. It should be a house full of noise. She had done her best, all these years, to fill it with conversation – old Cambridge friends, villagers, evacuees, children and grandchildren of painters, family . . .
Searching for her stray tea mug, Stella wandered through to the dining room and out of the french windows back on to the terrace. Distracted, she began to deadhead the last remaining husks of lavender, rolling the heads between her fingers for the last scent. Liddy had always made bags of lavender each year, around this time. She must start it now, soon –
‘Madam?’
A figure stood in front of her. She noticed idly that he had no shadow, for it was almost midday and the sun was high. He was tall, with a shock of white hair. Stella stared at him, blinking in the light.
‘Yes? How can I help you?’
‘Are you Stella – I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t know your surname.’
Stella drew herself up. ‘I’m Stella Horner.’
‘Oh. I see.’ He took a step back. ‘Well, Stella Horner. Good morning.’
‘How can I help you?’ she repeated, in what she hoped was a polite tone.
Heat shimmered around her; he stepped closer, and something about him, some instinct made the hairs on her neck prickle. He lifted up his panama hat, and she peered into a pair of dark-blue eyes, shining as though through tears.
‘Here I am,’ he said, and she didn’t understand what he meant.
‘I’m – I am John. John Horner. I am your brother, my dear.’
Stella felt cold in the white-hot sun. She moved towards the porch, and put her hand on the stone chair Dalbeattie had carved for the weary traveller. Though the light was bright everything was strangely dark.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Politeness asserted itself. ‘Forgive me, how can you be my brother?’
‘It must be a shock, I know.’
‘But your grave – I was there this morning.’ She felt that curious lightheadedness she used to feel with Michael – as though she might just float away, into nothingness. ‘You’re dead.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘I know you’re dead.’
‘But I am not.’ He took the hat off, now, blotting his forehead carefully with a neatly pressed linen square. She could see the wattle of skin under his chin, the purple shadows around his eyes. ‘I – I deserted. I ran away from the war, you see.’
‘Yes.’ But she didn’t see.
She offered him the old stone chair and he sank into it, gratefully, kneading the fine straw of the panama between his bent fingers, eyes fixed on the distance.
‘We’d fallen back towards the village. There was a great explosion – a shell, it took out the school, we’d been using it as cover. Four boys . . . thrown into the air . . . I heard someone shouting, “Horner’s gone! We’ve lost him!” It’s funny, I didn’t think about it then. I’ve thought about it since. I didn’t think at all. I simply ran. I ran away.’ He looked up at her, and blinked in the sunlight. ‘I’ve never said any of that before. I let the lie stand. I came back once, to see Dad – only . . . I – It’s a very long story, as you might imagine, my dear, but now—’
He moved towards the door. ‘Hang on,’ she said, suddenly, not knowing why she said it, only that he wasn’t coming into the house. ‘How on earth do I know you’re John Horner?’
‘How do you know?’ He turned around, away from the threshold. ‘There’s a bird, above the door, eating berries. A nightingale. ‘Thy heart is warm when home th’art drawn.’” His voice was slow, and accented. ‘There’s four nightingale finials on the roof, and one of ’em has a chipped wing. Eliza threw a roof tile up there. It hit. She was my sister. She died of diphtheria. There were stars on the ceiling of the nursery, the Birdsnest, painted to look like the night sky. Hannah’s sister had a puppy . . . He never had a name, they drowned him afterwards . . .’ He stared at her again. ‘So, Frederic wrote to me about you, but I still don’t quite believe it. You’re really Stella.’
‘Frederic?’ The name swam at her through time and space. ‘Who – oh, the young man who’s taken over the antiques shop? You know him?’
‘I recommended he come here. I know him of old; he is from the town where I live, in France, in –’ His shoulders were slumped; he really didn’t look well. Stella wished she could bring herself to sit down next to him, take him in her arms, hold his hand . . . But somehow she couldn’t. ‘It was he who let me know you were still here, that my mother had had another child.’ He closed his eyes, the lids fluttering slowly in the bright sun. ‘That is you, is it not?’
‘Yes!’ she said, almost angrily, and he said, gently:
‘Really? It is you?’
She had long ago learned to shut out that which she didn’t want to hear. There had been times before – you see – and she had closed her mind to it all. To bad things. Andrew, and Mum dying, and things she overheard. People talked. You kept on going. That’s what you did. So Stella said in what she hoped was a tone of forgiveness:
‘I don’t know why you’d ask me that. Let us go on. You – you must want to see the place – it’s so long, such a shocking time – but it’s still standing as you see—’ She felt she was falling, kaleidoscopic half-sentences of welcome and repulsion snagging in her mind. ‘Is that why you are here?’
If she expected him to feel reproof he showed no sign of it. ‘You must understand, I want nothing from you but I do want to lay the past to rest. Or to know I tried,’ he said with a small, sad smile. ‘I am old, and not well, and I have realised I had to return, one more time. I always thought I’d do it after the second war was over. But then in about 1950 I heard Mama had died, from two gossiping art critics who’d come on a motoring holiday to Dinard. They were sitting in the square, talking about my family . . . about the painting . . .’ He looked up at her, sharply. Appraisingly. ‘You know about the painting, of course?’
‘Of course – how could I not?’
Mama. He called her Mama. Stella had often heard Mum speak of John. How he was her true companion for all those years, the child who was most like her. How he never wanted to marry anyone but her, his mother. How kind, beloved, funny, handsome he had been. Her face would light up. This was him, he was here.
And Stella knew some dreadful chasm had opened up now, one that could never be closed. The vanished years that she had grown up reliving with Mum over and over again in retelling were not past, they were here. She had always thought of their past as a completed circle, flat newspaper print, like the circles she used to cut out of the centre of Mum’s old Times with the rusting twine scissors. It had been set as fact and now someone had cut it up into pieces again. And she had always been so sure of herself, over every little thing.
John stood up, slowly, one hand on the seat.
‘Frederic is coming to fetch me in half an hour or so. I would so very much like to see the old place again . . . I will not stay.’ He took her hand, as though he might, just, understand what this cost her, and stared into her eyes. ‘My . . . my sister. After all these years. Goodness . . .’
What could she do?
Wordlessly, she let him cross over the threshold of the house, and watched his face as he stared around him, at the light from the light well above the stairs, at the old coat rack. He gripped the squirrel newel post as if clinging on to it for dear life, then stared into its face. ‘Hello, old friend,’ he said. She could hear the droning tones of the television commentary from the sitting room. Once, her son called out to ask if she was all right.
‘Just with a friend,’ she called back.
A friend. He was well-dressed, a pressed fresh pink-and-white checked shirt, blue corduroy trousers, a light jacket whose breast pocket he kept patting. He was tall, but he stooped: with pain, she guessed. His white hair framed his tanned face, his blue eyes, bluer than any she’d seen. Once, only once did h
e let his emotion at the enormity of the homecoming escape him. They stood in Stella’s own bedroom doorway, he leaning against the frame. She gestured him in, and was impatient when he did not go ahead; some chivalric notion, she assumed.
But he shook his head, and turned back, facing away.
‘She died in here,’ he said. ‘She died, and Mama held her. I was watching, behind this door.’
And he wouldn’t say any more, but turned, and leaned against the wall outside, and patted his heart. She worried then – he was so pale.
They sat together in the dining room, after she fetched him some elderflower cordial, the sound of hymns intercut with the droning monotone of the wedding service reverberating through the otherwise quiet house. Stella didn’t know what to say. She could not feel warmth towards him and she realised something in her must be wrong that she could not. A note hummed in her head.
‘It’s funny,’ he said again. ‘You – you were born when?’
She wished he wouldn’t stare at her so much. There was a drawing of Mum on the stairs, Stella knew she looked like her. She didn’t know why he’d try and cast aspersions on her, her role there, unless for some nefarious purpose. But he’s alive, and their child, and the house . . . he might want the house, or half of it . . .
Thoughts, jostling, jabbing in her head, and she felt seasick. She cleared her throat.
‘I was born in 1918. The year my father died.’
There was a long silence, and into it, John said:
‘But he is not your father, my dear. You know that.’
He said it so quietly she took a moment to understand him.
‘I think you are mistaken,’ she said. The edges of the room were black. ‘I must go and watch the rest of the wedding, my granddaughter—’
‘He can’t be your father,’ he said. ‘You have brown eyes.’
‘Very observant of you,’ she said, and a breeze came from nowhere, slamming the front door shut with a huge bang. She jumped, and yet he did not. ‘I have brown eyes, what of it?’
‘But my mother had blue eyes, you see. The bluest eyes there were. And my father too, grey, really, stormy dark grey. You can’t be their child. Perhaps one of them is your parent, but not both.’ He said it slowly, patiently.
‘That’s rubbish.’
‘It is scientific fact.’
‘How dare you—’
John shook his head, sadly. ‘I should not have said it. But you should have welcomed me.’
Stella felt something pop in her head. A light, little pouf! sound. She stood up, blinking. ‘Get out.’
‘What?’
She raised her hand and saw it was shaking, violently. ‘I don’t want you in the house any more.’
There was a heavy silence. ‘Who are you?’ he said, softly. ‘This house was a place to welcome people. A refuge. You ask me to leave? Really? Did you – did you know my mother at all?’
Who are you? ‘Get out!’ she said, her voice slightly louder. ‘D-don’t come here – d-d-d-don’t ever come here again! Asking questions about Mum – about me . . . me . . . I’m their daughter!’
She blocked out the wave of sounds, of chatter, coming towards her, one exchange overheard at a London tea party, two women on a verandah, she inside playing with dolls, once at the vicarage after mulled wine for Advent Sunday, once, a young woman, strolling through the Royal Academy and pausing in front of her own father’s painting A Meeting, as two old, old men talked in loud, pompous tones behind her. And once in a letter she had found soon after Mum’s death that Stella had folded up into tiny pieces and hidden at the back of the bookshelf – folded it away as though that would make it another lost thing here.
She was so thin, a living skeleton. I heard she fooled them all. What could Liddy do?
They say she just appeared out of nowhere. A magic baby. Like she’d bought her from some place. It didn’t make sense . . . still don’t . . .
Died of a broken heart they said. Yes, I know. He was crossing back to meet her.
Dearest Liddy . . . will you call her Stella?
Loud cheering came from the room across the hall and they both turned around.
‘What is that?’ he said, wryly, almost amused.
‘And as the young couple make their way back down the aisle, the West Door of the cathedral is flung open and we can hear the roar of the crowd outside . . .’
‘Grandi! Come! Come on!!!!’ Juliet, hair flying about her face, breathless, appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh. Hello,’ she said, blankly. ‘Grandi, come and watch it!’
She saw John Horner stare at this little girl, saw him start, take in her features. He smiled, and patted the pocket over his heart again. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m John, who are you?’
‘This is Juliet,’ said Stella. ‘My granddaughter.’ She passed a hand over her forehead and called low and quiet, under her breath: ‘Please could you leave, leave now? I don’t want you here.’ She saw the confusion on her granddaughter’s small face.
‘Juliet,’ said John, turning to her. ‘Do you have a doll’s house? Is it in the Dovecote?’
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I do. Do you know it?’
‘I used to play with it when I was a child. I have something to go in the house that belongs to you. I have brought it back. Would you show me where the house is?’
Juliet plunged her hands into the pockets of her pinafore. ‘Course,’ she said. ‘But you have to be very careful with it. It’s very old.’
‘Of course I will.’ His eyes met Stella’s. ‘I am sorry. Sorry for it all. Goodbye, Stella,’ he said, but she shook her head.
‘I wish you would just go,’ she said. ‘I want you to go.’
‘My dear – the past is not under our control. I am so sorry—’
‘I want you to go!’ Stella shouted, her voice cracking on the final word. Her son and his wife were standing inside, drinking their tea. She saw them, watching her with alarm, as the old man and the young girl walked down the drive towards the Dovecote, and a wave of pain and terror swept over her. Everything was gone, changed, ruined. Stella went into the study again, still watching them. The french windows were open, the garden at the height of its beauty. She went over to the bookshelves, to the furthest corner, and took out a worn, beautiful old hardback book – The Arabian Nights – and reached into the space where it had been, flat against the old grain of the wood. With clumsy, angry fingers she fumbled to unfold the hard wedge of paper in her hand. But when she did, she saw again how very fragile the paper was.
Dearest Liddy
Thank you for your letter. I have booked passage on the ‘Valiant’ next week. I will come to meet my daughter, and to bury my beloved. I cannot say more. But your kindness after these many years of silence overwhelms me.
When I made your house with Ned, I painted the gold stars on the ceiling of the nursery. Are they still there? I used to have a mobile of stars as a child, hanging from the ceiling – I remember it most particularly. I liked to lie on my back and watch the stars. I thought your children would like it too. Does my daughter sleep in that room? Will you call her Stella as her mother wished? I should like to think of her lying there looking at that ceiling. For her mother was a star, shining brightly, brighter than any other to me. She lied to me – she did what she thought was best – how on earth could she have believed it? How could I have failed to see it – oh Liddy – we two are left now and my heart is so heavy . . .
Dearest Liddy, thank you – I shall see you soon and this child, the miracle of all – oh my Mary, how she must have suffered, and how much she gave us.
I think only of you and the babe. I will be with you as soon as I may God speed.
Once more: in chestnuts and chicken,
LD
Tears fell from her eyes on to the thin, much-folded paper, dropping between the creases which had opened up into welts, on to the leather and gold-tooled blotter below, where Mum had sat that day Papa had painted her . . . Stella gripped
the desk, as bells rang out. The wedding was over now, bells ringing on the television and then in real life, from the church behind her. A great, bellowing peal, loud, too loud.
As she looked out of the window Stella saw the old man walk up the drive. Her son and wife were waiting there for him. Let them talk to him, she thought, her mind already unspooling. Let them discover him themselves. They don’t know how Mum worked to save the place on her own, clearing the chimney, blocking out the draughts, sealing up the cracks herself, mending the curtains, the cushions, polishing the woodwork. They don’t know what it was like here, woman’s work, always woman’s work, the upkeep of a house.
The sketch of The Garden of Lost and Found stood, as it always did, on the easel in the corner of the study, where Mum had set it long ago after Ned died. Stella picked up the paintbrush and gold paint from Juliet’s paint set which she had bought her that summer for her arrival, and went over to the canvas. She hesitated – would she dare? She knew if she did she would be committing a sin. She could go out now to this man, apologise, invite him back in. She could undo the past, could look the truth squarely in the face, live freely. Sell the house, sell it and move away. Her hands hovered, over the canvas . . .
Then swiftly Stella added the falling star, golden sparks cascading to the ground. She stood back, and looked at the two children, and the new addition. ‘That’s me,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m in the painting. I’m there now, too.’
But then her frown darkened: it was only the sketch, after all.
She did not see that outside, in the Wilderness, Juliet and Ev played hide and seek, darting in and out of the tangled garden, sunshine flickering on their young bodies, like the shadow of birds’ wings passing overhead.
When she had finished the letter from her great-grandmother to her great-grandfather, Juliet was still for a moment, and then she touched the metallic-edged black-ink markings with her fingertips. Feeling the words that had been written almost a hundred years ago, crossing an ocean. Everything had changed, and nothing, really. We keep on keeping on.
As the evening chorus sang in the trees behind her, she looked out through the french windows and down over the garden, studded with jewel-like coral, royal purple, peacock-blue, palest, gentlest pink. She was at the centre. She was the woman in the painting now. She saw the same view Liddy had seen that golden afternoon so long ago.
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 48
