‘All right, all right, so my mother wasn’t the first one to say it. Cut her some slack here; she died young. She didn’t have time to branch out into something more original.’
‘Have some of this.’ Andrew handed her the pot of yoghurt. ‘It’s full of good bacteria. Apparently those are just the chaps your stomach needs after a night like we’ve just had.’ He adjusted the pillows so that she could sit up more comfortably and she smiled at him for saying we – a night like we’ve just had – when it was clear that there had been no we about it. He had been perfectly sober while she had been throwing up all over the basin. ‘I’m sorry you had to see me puke,’ she said. ‘It’s not a nice end to an evening for anyone; watching. Doing it is kind of fun …’
Andrew, his head tilted to one side, looked at her as if she was a newborn child, precious and delicate and his to care for, not a tall strong 29-year-old with a hangover. He put his hand out and stroked a tendril of damp hair from her forehead. ‘You’re very beautiful,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘Beautiful? Right now?’
‘Hmm.’
‘I think I have some cleaning to do.’ Grace threw off the duvet.
‘You stay where you are. It’s all done.’
‘You shouldn’t have. I believe in two things: world peace and cleaning up one’s own puke.’
Andrew smiled at her with that tender look. Tears came to her eyes as she thought of all the times there had been no one around to gaze at her that way.
‘I like looking after you, Grace,’ Andrew said. He gave a little laugh. ‘You seem so capable, tough even. Much more so than the women I usually fall for.’
‘And now you’ve seen that I’m just like any other sweet old-fashioned little thing after all; passing out after my fifteenth double vodka martini.’
‘The others usually stopped after two, but all right.’
‘What’s your mother like?’
‘My mother?’ He looked a bit surprised at the sudden change of topic. ‘Robina, well, she’s, you know, my mother.’
‘Wow. That’s the kind of intimate detail most men don’t divulge until at least six months into a relationship. And, no, I don’t know. And what about your father? I suppose he’s just your father?’
‘Sort of. But they’re really nice. You’ll like them. And they’ll adore you.’
‘Why? Why should they adore me? I’m not at all an adorable person.’
‘Do you always get so combative when you’re hungover?’
‘I don’t know. I usually wake up on my own. Do they love each other?’
He looked as if he had never given the matter any thought until that moment. ‘Yes, yes, I think they do.’
‘How did they meet?’
‘I thought you were feeling sick.’
‘I am. I need something to take my mind off how sick.’
‘OK, my mother was up at Oxford visiting her elder brother. Apparently my father, who was at the same college as my uncle, had a bit of a reputation for being rather pompous; so, anyway, after this party my uncle and some of his chums decided to play a prank on my father so they went outside and substituted his bicycle with one looking quite like it but much smaller. They reckoned that as it was dark and …’
‘I used to love hearing about how my parents met,’ Grace said, and next thing she was fast asleep, the half-eaten pot of yoghurt still in her hand.
‘This is a man who deserves the best,’ she said to Angelica that evening over the phone.
‘No man deserves that.’
‘You’re bitter.’
‘You will be too. You’re just a slow learner.’
‘He wants me to meet his family. They’re all down in Devon. Apparently they’re very close.’
Robina Abbot wore her hair piled up on top of her head. A magpie’s nest, Grace thought, with shiny pins and Chinese-lacquer painted skewers weaved through the mass of steel-grey. She met Grace at the front door of the white-painted Victorian house high at the top of the steepest hill in a town of hills, her arms wide open ready for an embrace. Grace looked left, then right, and finally, after a quick glance over her shoulder, realised the embrace was aimed at her and stepped forward feeling awkward and gratified both at once. Strong arms and soft bosoms beneath a loose-knit jumper, and a quick decisive, ‘My dear!’ She was ushered inside the hall that smelt of cooking and wet fur, Robina calling all the while for what Grace thought was the cat but turned out to be Andrew’s father. ‘Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, where are you?’ Robina trilled. ‘I know you are there somewhere.’
Timothy Abbot appeared from the back with a fast forward-leaning walk, his hand outstretched way in advance as if he did not want to take any chances. ‘Grace,’ he said, finally shaking her hand up and down. ‘Grace.’
Next Grace was introduced to Kate, Andrew’s younger sister. No one seemed entirely sure whether or not to expect Leonora, the sister who liked marrows and lived in London. ‘It depends on Archie,’ Robina said. ‘He’s a dear boy. We love him to bits but he works too hard.’
They had drinks, sherry, in the drawing room that was just the right side of shabby and had a deep bay with tall sash windows looking out across velvet-green hills. Lunch was in the large kitchen. Grace sat opposite Kate. It was as if every feature that suited Andrew so well had been rearranged in his sister by some malevolent goblin. On Kate, the golden curls had turned into ginger frizz and the family chin had gone from firm to jutting. Whereas Andrew’s high-bridged Roman nose was in proportion with the rest of his face, Kate’s features seemed to have been assembled around hers. And yet, and yet, her smile was about the sweetest Grace had ever seen. When Kate realised she was being studied, she blushed a deep pink that went badly with her ginger hair.
‘I’m sorry, I was staring. Habit of work,’ Grace said. ‘You see, I just love faces, so I stare; no excuse, I know. You do have a wonderful smile. Smiles are a real challenge to photographers, much tougher to catch than people think. Or you catch one but it’s in full flight or clamped into place and nothing like the sweet thing you glimpsed only moments before you pointed your camera.’
‘Kate has the kind of face artists love,’ Robina said.
‘Mother!’
‘Be glad you have a mother to embarrass you,’ Grace said and, when Kate looked even more unhappy, obviously aware of Grace’s orphaned state, she added, ‘because you can’t always rely on strangers to do it.’
Janet, a friend of Robina’s and a neighbour, arrived, apologising for being late and muttering about a sick kitten. She was introduced to Grace.
‘I always have Sunday lunch with dear Robina and Timothy,’ Janet said, accompanying her words with such a belligerent look that Grace was about to say that a) there were several spare chairs around the table, and b) she, Grace, did not eat all that much. In the event she said neither but just smiled and nodded.
‘We’re so excited to finally meet Grace,’ Robina said.
Andrew searched for and found Grace’s hand under the table and gave it a little squeeze. Their eyes met and they smiled at each other. The autumn sunshine coming through the windows hung on the steam from the pudding boiling on the stove, giving the room and everyone in it a hazy dreamy appearance, the kind Grace had to work hard to achieve in her photographs.
Timothy had a puzzle for them. Grace, who found life quite confusing enough without further complicating it with made-up puzzles, sat back and sipped her red wine while the others tried to outwit each other and be the first to find the solution.
‘Kate,’ Robina said. ‘What do you think? You’re usually so quick.’
‘I’m not. You know I’m not. I never get Dad’s bloody puzzles.’
‘Don’t swear, dear,’ Robina said, but she was waving at the glass-fronted back door where another visitor had just turned up. Neil was a lecturer in economics at the college where Timothy was bursar. Neil was about Timothy’s age and as tall, but his head, which narrowed at the crown, was bald and shiny, as if it had received
a good buffing with Mr Sheen. He shook Grace by the hand and nodded at the others. Kate got to her feet and brought out an extra plate and cutlery. Grace admired the way Robina served lunch so effortlessly. She had roasted a couple of chickens and made a huge bowl of salad. Once everyone was seated she just carved the birds in the tin and piled all the meat on a dish which was passed round the table. There were two homemade loaves of bread as well, and a dish with butter. Everyone helped themselves and when Neil joined them he sat down and did the same. Mrs Shield, on the other hand, was a stickler for proper serving, with everything planned and arranged. The conversation grew louder but Grace, with the sun of an Indian summer on her back and a glass of wine in her hand, could still distinguish the buzzing of a late bee. She felt sleepy and that meant she was comfortable. ‘Grace usually brings her own pin-cushion,’ Mrs Shield always said, but not today she hadn’t, not today in the woozy, hazy, noisy calm of the Abbots’ kitchen.
Robina Abbot did not have a profession as such unless you counted sainthood. She was, it appeared, a one-woman bastion in a local community perilously close to being diluted into Everytown, its dairy and butcher’s shops, its greengrocer’s and small independent bookshop making way for estate agents’ offices and handy branches of the big supermarkets; its old people dying off, its young people sloping off to the cities making room for rootless newcomers escaping from those same big cities and bringing most of the big-city ills with them like a persistent odour. Without Robina there would be no choir for the church, not a note sung, not so much as a B sharp on Sundays and highdays. There would be no Evergreen club and no Living Crafts fair, no carol singing at Christmas and God only knows how many more old people in Africa would be without spectacles. No, as far as Grace could tell by the end of lunch, no one got born, baptised, married or buried without Robina giving a helping hand.
Just as the sticky toffee pudding was being served on bright pottery plates, each different from the other, each made by Robina herself and fired in her own kiln at the bottom of the garden, there was a commotion as the dogs, all three of them, all rescued from shelters, rushed to greet yet another arrival. It was Leonora, the sister in London. She appeared in a flurry of shawls and lace and everything impractical for train travel, and a bundle that turned out to be a baby, Rory, in her arms. Robina got to her feet and disappeared into the back porch, returning a moment later wheeling a large old-fashioned pram. She took Rory, covering him in kisses before putting him down. Grace turned her attention on Leonora. She was magnificent. Her hair was as curly and golden as her brother’s but hers was long, reaching almost to her narrow waist. Her eyes, close-set like her mother’s, had an intense look that seemed to take in everything around her and want most of it. But when it came to eating Leonora just toyed with the plate of bread and salad offered to her and refused even to contemplate the sticky pudding. Neil was complaining about the year’s new intake at college when she spoke straight out, cutting through as if no one in the room was talking right then, as if everyone was waiting just for her to begin. ‘None of you have any idea what it’s like for me.’
Grace thought Leonora must have a habit of saying things like that because no one took much notice. Robina dolloped some more pudding on Neil’s plate. She had such a soft voice, Robina, almost a little too soft to be heard without the listener straining. She looked at her eldest daughter across the table. ‘You do tend to dramatise, dear. Only last week you were like a lovesick teenager.’
‘You only see what you want to see. I know you all think he’s Mr Perfect in our Mr Perfect world but he’s not like that.’
‘C’mon you love him really.’ Andrew got up, walked round to his sister and planted a little kiss on top of her curls before filling her glass. He turned to Grace. ‘Archie and Leonora are just made for each other, we all know that.’ Rory, in his pram, let out a howl.
‘Who’s for coffee and who’s for tea?’ Robina asked. ‘You all go into the sitting room and I’ll clear up here. No, Grace, I mean it, I like doing it. You just go and relax. That’s what you’re here for.’
The others had gone for a walk. The sofa was soft. Old down-filled seat cushions plumped up and sunk down upon, plumped up and sunk down upon. Grace was dozing, her head on Andrew’s shoulder, when Robina came in wheeling a trolley with mugs and both a tea and a coffee pot.
‘Milk?’
‘Please.’ Grace nodded.
‘Sugar?’
‘Grace likes honey.’ Andrew got to his feet. ‘I’ll get some.’
‘There’s no need,’ Grace assured him, eager not to seem fussy, but he was already halfway to the kitchen.
‘No, of course you shall have some honey if that’s what you like,’ Robina said, sitting down next to Grace and turning towards her. ‘Now, I want to know everything about you. I can see Andrew is smitten.’ She took Grace’s hands in hers. ‘I want us to be really good friends, you and I.’ Her peppercorn eyes went from alert to concerned and she gave Grace’s rough-skinned hands a little squeeze with her own soft ones. ‘Andrew told us your mother died when you were just a little girl.’
Grace nodded. ‘But I got Mrs Shield, my stepmother, soon afterwards and she did her very best.’
‘Still, it’s hardly the same. And then your father died.’
‘He had a heart attack.’
‘Oh dear. How dreadful.’
‘It was. Personally, I think he was exhausted from trying to reconcile the man he was with the man his wives wanted him to be.’ But Grace was beginning to feel faintly ashamed, as if she had been careless somehow in losing so many relatives.
Robina pulled her hands away. ‘Oh my dear, I’ve upset you. I’m too direct.’
Andrew had come back into the room. ‘Grace doesn’t like being pitied,’ he said. He had decanted the honey into a tiny glass bowl and Grace smiled up at him, trying to remember when a man had last decanted anything for her.
‘No, no, your mother is being kind. Compassion I like. I would have been really pissed off if, through the years, I hadn’t had any. It’s just sometimes I feel as if I’m defined by what I’ve lost rather than what I have or who I am. I like to think I’m appreciated for myself, not only my uncanny ability to have people die on me.’
There was a pause, then Robina said, ‘Quite right too.’
Andrew smiled fondly and said, ‘Oh Grace.’ She liked the way he said that; it made her sound troublesome but cute. It made a nice change; she did not usually appear cute. ‘You were doing so well,’ he went on. ‘A whole sentence about your feelings with no crap joke in sight and then you go and spoil it all. Stop fighting for a moment. Allow people in.’ He leant over the sofa back and kissed her cheek, his lips close to hers, and she turned towards him, forgetting all about Robina until there was a clatter of china followed by, ‘Go and find the others, would you darling, and tell them coffee’s ready. And I promise; no more pity.’ Andrew gave them both an indulgent smile and did what he was told. His mother looked at his disappearing back. ‘He’s such a dear boy,’ she said. ‘A little weak sometimes, but then that’s all down to a soft heart.’
‘Weak? He doesn’t seem weak to me.’ Grace was surprised at how insulted she felt on his behalf. A little smile played at the corners of Robina’s wide unmade mouth. ‘You like him, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Good. He needs someone like you.’
Grace was so surprised to hear this that she forgot to pursue the point about Andrew being weak. ‘In my experience mothers often think I’m exactly what their sons don’t need. I’m not sure why. Maybe they sense that I’m bad at nurturing. And I have to say that they are right about that.’
The knowing smile was back. ‘Well if you are, it’s because you haven’t been taught. I suspect you haven’t had much nurturing yourself.’
Grace knew that was not true, she had been a loved child. But she thought of what Andrew had said, and she decided to let it go. She felt calm, happy in the moment, like a cat being s
troked just the right way – not too soft, not too hard and right along the fur – so she allowed the misconception, the seed of a lie, to drift right on past. She had worn it like a cape – her strength, her independence, her reliance on no one but herself. Now she was tired and longing to take it off and stand there, lighter, smaller, weaker and rather more herself. ‘It wasn’t so bad,’ she said.
‘You’re a brave girl, I can tell,’ Robina said.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Grace mumbled. She felt ashamed of how good she felt in the warm light of all this interest and approval. ‘Do you mind if I pour myself another cup of tea?’
‘And you’re a photographer. Such an interesting line of work. And flexible too.’
Grace straightened up, alert suddenly, smiling as if her dearest friend had just walked into the room. ‘It’s what I do.’
They were joined by the others. Grace took some pictures of them all and Andrew insisted on taking some of her, perching on the armrest of the sofa next to Kate, laughing with Robina, puzzling over Timothy’s quiz.
Afterwards, when she was back home alone in her flat, she could not stop staring at those photographs, at the way she looked in them. Was that her, that girl with the rounded face where she was used to seeing sharp angles? Was that her, the woman with the placid smile? From where had she sprung, this younger, happier, relaxed self, the self that she always hoped to find in the mirror but never did? Most astonishingly of all, she appeared to belong.
‘I just love his family,’ Grace told Angelica. They were drinking tea sitting in the window seat by the open window. Grace was smoking.
‘Do you never feel the need for fresh air?’ Angelica complained. ‘And what about him? Forget his family, do you love him?’
Questions, always questions. Grace had questioned to death a great many relationships in the past ten years. She knew too that once there had been a love to which she knew all the answers, but she did not expect ever to find that kind again.
Shooting Butterflies Page 11
