‘Mrs Shield maintains there’s a lot to learn from laundry lists ever since poor Marjory found a pair of champagne-coloured French knickers itemised amongst her husband’s shirts. Still, have you tried talking to Louisa about it? Maybe she wouldn’t mind as much as you think. Most of what you would write about – the work that mattered – is from long ago anyway. I fear Arthur’s one of those people of whom you say when you see their obituary, not “What! He’s died!” but rather “Goodness, I didn’t know he was still alive.”’
‘Well, it’s time for a revival,’ Noah said, pouring the water. ‘Always take the pot to the kettle not the kettle to the pot, that’s the secret of a good cup of tea.’
‘Everybody knows that.’ Grace got up and fetched the honey from the shelf above the cooker.
‘As I said, try, talking to her.’
He smiled at her. ‘Of course. Which is why you should admire me even more for my moral scruples about selling Granny down the river …’ He stopped and looked at her. ‘What’s the matter? I’m not serious, you know. The money would be great but …’
‘It’s OK. You just reminded me of why I stopped taking pictures.’
‘Actually, I wanted to ask if you might make an exception.’
‘No.’
‘I had this idea to document this place – the house, the gardens – in still photos, before it’s sold and goodness knows what is done to it. Stately homes aside, not many houses have remained in the same family for close to a hundred years. My great-grandparents moved here in 1903 and very little has changed since. My great-grandmother Lydia installed one of the first central-heating systems in the county, and it’s still working,’ he mock-shivered, ‘in parts. I can still ring for the servants from any room in the house – no one will come, of course, so that has changed – but look at the light sockets, this kitchen, the bathrooms … it would be a great social documentary. Look at the wallpaper … on second thoughts, best not to.’
‘No.’
‘I can’t afford to pay, which is why you would be perfect.’
‘No.’
‘So why should I help you look for your artist?’
‘Because if you don’t I’ll beat you up. I always could.’
‘I wasn’t a black belt back then.’
‘I’ve got a shotgun.’
‘OK. Go talk to Granny. She’s upstairs.’
‘Do you ever talk to her? I mean, really talk to her?’
‘I say good morning and ask her if she’s slept well. She says yes or no, and then we discuss what we will have for lunch before we turn our minds to the latest plot development in Neighbours. She watches both the lunchtime and the teatime instalments. That’s about the level of intimacy we achieve, my granny and I; the imaginary goings-on of imaginary families. It’s not just that she’s old. I never found her easy to talk to. I don’t see what Arthur and she ever had in common. Then again, I know how it can work; one moment you’re with this fun-loving, tender, forgiving and giving creature who seems to share all your interests and enthusiasms; the next, you wake up with some gimlet-eyed sergeant major with a biological clock and an unhealthy preoccupation with giving dinner parties.’
Grace gave him an amused look. ‘I think we’ve left the subject of your grandparents here. Anyway, it’s not our fault; women are just too adaptable for their own good sometimes. We’ve had to be to survive. A woman falls in love, heedless, headless; she wants a soulmate, poor sod. There aren’t many of those so she makes one up. She wears his tastes and opinions so she can tell herself and the world, “Look how alike we are, how much we have in common.” Then real life sets in; it’s back into the old gear: roll-up-the-sleeves-and-get-on-with-it time. Women start off romantic and end up realistic. Men start off romantic and end up wondering what the hell happened. One of those things, I’m afraid. I think men see only what they want to see. Usually that’s their reflection in the eyes of an adoring woman.’
Noah had been raking his fingers through his hair as he stared at the piles of papers and notebooks in front of him. ‘You’re like a troll with your hair standing on end and that wild look in your eyes,’ Grace told him. ‘A nice troll, but a troll nevertheless.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, his mind on other things. ‘You see, I don’t know. That’s the point; she’s my grandmother and I don’t know her. She’s just always been there, like the wallpaper.’
‘It can’t have been easy for her. When the sun is up you don’t see much of the moon.’
‘Well, she’s been looking forward to your visit. She was quite animated this morning.’
‘Most living things respond well to attention. I can’t see why your grandmother should be any different.’
Noah frowned. ‘You make her sound like a pot plant.’
Louisa
I Never Grew Fond of my mother-in-law, but sometimes I remember things she said and I find myself agreeing. ‘Always keep something back that they’ll want; that’s how not to be lonely in old age,’ she said to me when she was as old as I am now.
Grace Shield wants answers. She was here not long ago; yesterday she tells me now. ‘I’m being a bore,’ she says, ‘but I just thought I’d ask again if you might have remembered something … about Forbes.’ And she waits, her hands folded, good-girl fashion, in her lap. Large hands just like mine. Like most young people she has no patience. ‘He produces a painting as fine as the one I’ve got and that’s it; nothing more. No one’s heard of him. There’s no record of him anywhere. No mention, not even an A.L. Forbes Appreciation Society on a small island outpost off Newfoundland. It doesn’t make sense. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes.’
I want to tell her to give me time. Everything takes longer when you are old. It seems unfair, as time is what you have so little of. I know what she wants from me, but I have tried for so long not to remember; and now, when nature is on my side, she wants to rake it up again. In any case, I need answers too. ‘How did you get your painting? Where did it come from? Do you know who owned it last?’
‘It was bought for me in an antique shop, actually. By someone I loved a great deal. He died before he could give it to me but eventually it reached me, two years after his death, on my birthday, although the person who sent it to me didn’t know that.’
‘Do you know the shop?’ I ask.
She shakes her head. ‘He said it was in Chelsea although his geography was pretty shaky. As soon as I get back to London I’ll go there, ask around.’
We sit in silence for a while. Long-buried feelings stir and flutter. I’ve been cold for so long.
Then Grace says, ‘Did you see the Sunday papers?’
I tell her I prefer the television. ‘There’s a man I quite like. He used to be funny. Cold over England.’
‘There was a piece about me. A very stupid piece. Then there was another one yesterday. This time they had asked my exmotherin-law about me. Talk about not giving someone a chance.’
‘If my mother-in-law had been asked to sum me up,’ I say, ‘I believe she would have done it in one word: disappointing.’
Seventy years ago, years that have vanished like small change. There she is, Lydia, tiny in her vast bed, ‘Louisa, remember that now you are someone.’ Impossible, I thought when I first saw her, that she could be Arthur’s mother, he who has the height and strength of a Viking. But I have come to learn that what she lacks in stature she makes up for in resolve, so I imagine that she simply willed her frail body to produce the big bouncing baby boy who had grown up to be my husband. She had used her nine months well, getting the most out of the time. She hated waste, even the waste of breath. ‘I shall call you Louisa,’ she said when we first met. ‘I can’t be bothered with fancy double-barrelled names.’
And now I am to remember that I am someone. It is a new thought. Nuisance. Anyone. Nobody: all of these I was suited to; but someone. There are people who draw attention towards themselves as effortlessly as a window draws daylight. Such people have the right to c
onsider themselves someone. But I was like a glass of water on a hot afternoon; worthy of notice only by my absence.
But maybe it has all changed since I met Arthur. He spotted me in a room full of people and did not leave my side that evening. And the strangest thing, or as strange at least as this wondrous man giving me all his attention, was that suddenly I became visible; people who had walked past me in corridors and lecture halls or at parties now found me worthy of notice.
I knew people who could make others laugh three times or more during a conversation and I had always thought what a fine thing it would be to have that gift, the gift of being able to make someone’s face crumple up in merriment, sending lines from the corners of the eyes to the cheekbones like rays of sunshine, to make them throw their heads back in helpless laughter. I told Arthur and he took my hands and looked at me so intently that my cheeks coloured as if I had been sitting too close to the fire. ‘You are my funny serious girl,’ he told me. ‘Don’t try to be like everyone else. Always just be yourself.’ He grinned and, big bearded man that he was, he looked like a boy. ‘Anyway, I make enough good jokes for two, don’t you think, my most perfect, my most solemnly delightful young friend?’ Then he laughed and all around us people turned and looked and saw me.
And here I am, Mrs Arthur Blackstaff: someone.
‘Don’t slouch, girl. You’re tall; you can’t pretend otherwise. Whole county’s turning up just to meet you. Make the best of yourself. No need to look like a startled rabbit.’
It was too early yet for me to decide whether my mother-in-law was plain mean, or just bluff with a kind heart underneath. It was the same with the house: Northbourne House, my home now. This evening as I descend the wide oak staircase I find it benevolent. I feel welcomed by the mulled-wine papered walls, embraced by the oak panelling, drawn to the many leaded windows. Other times, when the light comes in bright from the south and west, I shiver in the warmth and feel, great tall woman that I am, afloat in unfriendly seas. Maybe it’s the house that can’t make its mind up about me. What had previous brides done to pacify it? A sacrifice perhaps; a son and heir to all these contradictions, all this light and dark.
Arthur is calling me. The guests have started to arrive. I suspect that, however much Arthur is admired for his success, his charm and handsome looks, and my mother-in-law is feared for the sharpness of her tongue, most of our guests have come tonight because word has got round that the bride is unaccountably plain!
Arthur tells me he has an eye for hidden treasure.
I have uncommonly good hearing. I hear them; the county matrons with their floury cheeks and braying voices. Try as they might, it’s not in their nature to speak in anything less than these loud assured tones. It was bred into them, the confidence of knowing they were born to the best seats in the house of life.
‘But who is she?’
‘One of those bluestockings. Apparently he found her in some dusty lecture hall at Cambridge. Both parents dead. Quite a scandal. I expect she’s one of these clever gals.’
‘What a refreshing change.’ The speaker has a soft voice with an edge of laughter and I want to see to whom it belongs. Until now the guests had not seen me standing there, just outside of their circle, so when I appear amongst them their faces are too comical; I might have materialised through the sturdy walls, stepped out from the wallpaper like a ghost. I am introduced and I watch the women arrange their lips into tight little smiles, all but she with the soft voice and the kind words. She is much younger than the rest, shorter than I – but then most women are – with dark brown hair cut squarely at the chin and a straight fringe cut short across her wide forehead. Her eyes are brown, almost black. She puts her hand out to shake mine. ‘I’m Viola Glastonbury.’ I smile at her and take her hand.
We are joined by my mother-in-law. ‘So you gals have met? I’m pleased. Viola is the kind of friend I want for you, Louisa. Viola paints. Sweet little pictures.’
But now I’m looking towards the windows where Jane Dale is standing, her gaze fixed on my husband’s tall figure some distance away. ‘A treasure. Good family. Bad luck. Straitened circumstances,’ my mother-in-law explained to me when I first arrived. ‘Great help to Arthur. I want you to be kind to her.’
My husband is undressing before me and I do not take my eyes off him. ‘You were a great success, my dear,’ he says.
I cannot stop smiling; not so long ago he was my dream and now here he is, flesh and blood, naked before me, his chest and legs covered in soft golden hair, his penis rising from the tangle of darker curls just for me. ‘I did meet someone I liked.’
‘Later,’ he says, taking me in his arms. ‘Later.’
Noah Glanced up as Grace returned to the kitchen where he was working through a stack of letters. ‘You took your time. What have you been doing up there?’
Grace paused by his chair, her index finger on her chin. ‘Now, let’s see; what could we have been doing? Flown a kite? Played Cluedo; hide and seek, perhaps? All those, of course, but mostly I’ve been having what is known amongst us women as a conversation.’
‘You always were facetious. So did she remember your Forbes?’
Grace shook her head. ‘No.’
‘I told you. And I don’t mean because she’s senile. I suppose she’s getting that way, but I bet you it would have been the same had you asked her ten years ago. She probably never met the guy, or if she did she paid no attention.’
Grace lit a cigarette and blew smoke from her nostrils like a languid dragon. ‘Why are you so mean about her?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I know I’ve never really given her a chance. A bad conscience does it for me every time. It was always about Grandpa. It sounds so shallow, I know, but he was fun.’
‘Maybe she’ll perk up now he’s gone.’
‘And why are you so down on him?’
‘Maybe it’s a girl thing.’
‘No one forced Louisa to be the way she is, you know.’
Grace got to her feet. ‘I should be off to be a good stepdaughter. Thanks for everything.’ As she gave him a quick kiss on the top of his fair head, Noah glanced up. ‘Are you all right seeing yourself out?’
‘Sure.’
Outside, the sun was settling into comfortable late afternoon. The strong wind from the north had died to a soft breeze and she stopped for a moment to draw in the scent from the tobacco plants. In the upstairs window she could just glimpse the old lady, straight-backed in her chair. As she walked back to Northbourne Gardens, she thought of the adoration the young newlywed Louisa had shown towards her husband. Godlike: was that the word she had used? Grace smiled to herself. It was the secret of a happy marriage, an adoring wife. No wonder Grace’s marriage had ended almost before it had begun.
Nell Gordon: Baby heartbreak ended the marriage idyll.
‘Oh, I would advise anyone to try marriage,’ Grace said. ‘It usually starts so well.’
Angelica, seven months’ pregnant was down for an advent weekend visit. Tom, her husband, was skiing.
Grace reached for a lollipop. ‘Guess what? I’m pregnant too, twelve weeks.’ Angelica moved as close as she could with her big stomach and gave her friend a hug. She had tears in her eyes.
Grace hugged her back. She grinned and waved the lollipop in the air. ‘See how good I am, how responsible, how very virtuous. I don’t smoke, I hardly drink and as for fornication I’m told it’s positively beneficial.’
‘I’m glad you’re happy,’ Angelica said.
A week later Grace lost the baby. Andrew was disappointed but he coped better than she had expected.
Angelica drove down that weekend, barely able to fit behind the steering wheel. ‘I feel like an affront,’ she said, embracing Grace, and Grace felt the tiny foot of her friend’s baby against her own empty stomach.
Grace freed herself gently. ‘Don’t be silly.’
Later, as they finished lunch in the kitchen, she asked, ‘Angelica, how does he cope so w
ell?’
‘By being a bloke,’ Angelica said.
‘I expect he feels it as much as I do but just doesn’t know how to express it.’
‘That’s no reason. You’re not usually a master of emotional displays yourself, but it’s pretty easy to see that you’re not feeling too good right now.’
Grace did not reply directly. Instead she said, ‘He’s my rock.’
‘Stone wall, more like,’ said Angelica.
Everyone agreed it was sad, of course it was, but that it was probably for the best: nature’s way of telling her there was something wrong with the baby; that it was not meant to be. All Grace knew was that there was another empty space in the world where a child of hers should have grown and thrived, another should-have-been birthday that she alone would acknowledge. She fervently hoped there was such a thing as reincarnation and that her incomplete babies had been able to return to base to be told, with a smile and a slap on the back, ‘Better luck next time.’
Angelica asked her to be godmother to little Michael. At the springtime christening in London, Grace looked at Angelica standing by the font in her cream skirt and coat, the infant in her arms. You never know the measure of your decency, she thought, until your best friend has what you want most in the world. ‘I’m so glad for you,’ she whispered inaudibly. She kept saying it over and over in her mind: I’m so glad for you.
Grace lost the next baby too, at sixteen weeks this time. She had been for a walk, and had sat down for a while beneath the weeping willow at the bottom of the garden. She watched the sun set behind the hill, telling the baby what a sunset looked like, and dawn too. ‘Aurora; if you’re a girl I’d like to call you Aurora, but I probably won’t in the end because I’ll be afraid of seeming pretentious, and having people think you are the child of some second cousin of an earl or a half-forgotten pop star.’
Shooting Butterflies Page 14
