A Hidden Life

by Adele Geras

  ‘Lovely, thank you.’

  Phyl plugged in the kettle, her back to Ellie, and tried to work out how she felt about her husband’s ex-wife sitting at her kitchen table. She’d invited her – couldn’t not have invited her once she’d phoned and said she was ‘in the area’ – and now here she was. Did they have anything to say to one another? Nessa. They could talk about the impending divorce, Phyl supposed. Poppy had been a distraction for a while, with Ellie exclaiming and making the kind of noises you were supposed to make when you met a small child, but Phyl could tell from Ellie’s body language that she was less than comfortable with such an unpredictable and possibly destructive creature as a baby. She shrank away even while she was hugging the child, and that amused Phyl. She’d seen the same sort of physical recoil at the surgery in people who weren’t entirely happy about being near animals. Poppy was now on the other side of the room, happily engaged in some elaborate game with two dolls, a spoon and a couple of empty yoghurt pots and her mutterings and gurglings interspersed with the odd word here and there were a comfort to Phyl.

  ‘You’ve missed Matt, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘He’s in Paris today.’

  ‘Paris! Goodness,’ said Ellie. ‘What on earth is he doing there?’

  ‘He and Lou went for the day to see someone – well, it’s a long story really. But we found a letter last weekend. From a Frenchwoman who claimed to be John Barrington’s aunt.’

  ‘Really? How thrilling! Are we about to have revelations? I’ve always thought there was a mystery about John. He was far too quiet, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s not something I’ve given much thought to, if I’m honest. He was Matt’s dad and didn’t say much to me, not really, but I never worried about it, or thought he was hiding anything. I just assumed he was a silent sort of man.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, I always,’ Ellie leaned forward confidingly, ‘had the impression that there were lots and lots of things he could have told us if he’d wanted to.’

  ‘Maybe he put them into his books. Lou says Blind Moon is very good.’

  Ellie wrinkled her nose. ‘I did read it once, ages ago when Matt and I first met. You know how it is – you try to immerse yourself in everything to do with the beloved, don’t you? If you’re in love with a chess player, say, you learn all about the game and maybe start playing it yourself, even though it’s not your thing at all. That’s what I’ve found. Well, I thought that reading his father’s books would somehow get me closer to Matt.’ She laughed. ‘How wrong I was!’

  Phyl said nothing. She didn’t like the way Ellie called Matt her ‘beloved’. Of course, she’d say she was clearly referring to a time that was past, but still, it made her feel … feel what? Disconcerted, you could call it. Not pleased. Ellie talked on and on. It wasn’t easy to stop her once she got into her stride.

  ‘I can’t remember all that much about Blind Moon between you and me. Not my kind of thing either. This boy, in a country I couldn’t get a handle on somehow. North Borneo? Well, I knew that was the Far East and I also know they suffered dreadfully there during the war and in those Japanese camps, like the one in Empire of the Sun, but honestly, the adventures and thoughts of an eight-year-old boy … I think there’s something a bit weird asking adults to read a book which is written from the point of view of a child.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be very powerful,’ Phyl murmured. ‘Very moving. Sad.’

  ‘Well, yes, exactly. It was, but really, why would you want to read a book that made you feel miserable? Mad, I call it.’

  ‘It ends hopefully, I’m told. The child – the boy gets to go to England with his mother’s friend. She adopts him.’

  ‘Whatever John did,’ Ellie leaned forward confidingly, ‘it wasn’t a huge success, was it? Constance always said that the books didn’t make a penny piece.’

  ‘Money’s not the only measure of success,’ she said.

  ‘No, but it’s one of them.’

  ‘Well,’ Phyl said, ‘John clearly felt he had to write them. I expect it gave him an interest. Something to take him out of himself.’ She searched for a way to change the subject. She didn’t know much about literature – certainly not enough to be able to discuss it with Ellie. She was also not about to give her the satisfaction of agreeing, but she, too, had found Blind Moon not exactly to her taste, and hadn’t finished it. That was one reason why she’d been so upset when Constance had left Lou the copyrights as her part of the inheritance. It seemed to Phyl like something that wasn’t really worth having, though she never said so. Ellie had changed tack. She was back to Paris.

  ‘So tell me – this Frenchwoman – what is she claiming? Is she for real?’

  ‘Matt’ll find out, I suppose. She claims to be the sister of John’s real mother.’

  ‘Thrilling! I’ll make sure to get Matt to tell me what she said.’

  So, a phone call to Matt would follow shortly. Phyl wondered how abruptly she could move on to something else. Nothing ventured. She took a deep breath and said, ‘How’s Nessa? That was a bit unexpected, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well …’ Ellie took a sip of tea, refuelling, Phyl thought, for another stream of words. She was wearing a pale blue cashmere cardigan over a cream blouse that had to be silk. Her shoes looked as though they’d never done anything as vulgar as stepping on an actual floor. Her make-up was immaculate and as for her nails … Phyl’s own hands with their plain, square-cut nails hadn’t changed much since she was a schoolgirl, except for the fact that now the odd brown spot had appeared on the skin, and they were sorely in need of what Ellie would doubtless call ‘pampering’. She moved them to her lap where they were out of sight, safely under the table. Briefly she wished she’d changed after Ellie’s phone call this morning, but Poppy had been demanding her breakfast and then there was a nappy to change and she’d had to make a choice: scones, home-baked and fresh out of the oven, or half an hour spent trying to beautify herself. The scones were wonderful and she was never going to come anywhere near Ellie’s style so Phyl now reckoned she’d made the right decision. She tuned into what Ellie was saying. Nessa was still the topic, so she can’t have missed too much.

  ‘Of course it’s hard to begin with, but she’ll get used to it. And I’m sure it won’t be long before she marries again, don’t you think? They’ll share custody. Just between you and me, I think she’ll resent every moment Gareth has with Tamsin. You know how besotted with the child she is. I was quite surprised, to tell you the truth, that Nessa turned out to be so maternal.’

  Phyl said, ‘Well, we’re not all the same, are we?’ when what she really wanted to say was no wonder you were surprised. She doesn’t take after you in that, anyway.

  Ellie laughed. ‘I’m a fine one to talk, though, aren’t I? Not a maternal bone in my body, so she’s quite different in that respect.’

  ‘And she’s got the firm, of course. To keep her busy, I mean and take her mind off her problems.’

  ‘And to make money, I hope. Gareth will pay maintenance for Tamsin but it’s very fortunate that Constance left Nessa the money she did. Although,’ she went on, ‘as you’ve no doubt discovered, it’s not nearly as much as one thought it might be. Most of the wealth is that house and Justin is sitting firmly on that.’

  ‘You could sell some of your jewellery,’ Phyl said innocently. ‘If you wanted to help Nessa financially.’

  ‘No need for that, I’m happy to say. Though I might get rid of some of the less stylish pieces and pay off a little of my mortgage. You must come and see the flat, Phyl. You and Matt. It’s what they call bijou, which basically means small as you know, but it’s quite enough for me, now that I’m on my own.’

  ‘One bedroom?’ Phyl asked.

  ‘No, two. One doesn’t want to be entirely unable to put someone up for the night.’

  ‘And there’s Tamsin, of course, isn’t there?’ Phyl couldn’t help it. The temptation to say something that would take the wind out of Ellie’s sails a little was overwhelming
. As she’d been speaking, Phyl found herself growing more and more irritated. It was a bit of a cheek, she thought, Ellie moaning about poor old Nessa’s financial difficulties, which appeared to be entirely imaginary, when she must have known that Lou was struggling along on next to nothing. Perhaps she thinks that we help her. Well, we do of course, but Lou very often won’t let herself be helped. Phyl knew that her daughter needed to be independent but still she wondered about very basic things like whether she ate enough. She’d never economize on Poppy’s food, but it was more than likely that Lou herself sometimes went without. When it came to a choice between going to the movies or having a meal, the movies won every time. And every time she did go out, she had to pay a babysitter and would never accept any money for that. And here was Ellie, nattering on about bloody Nessa. She said, quietly, ‘How lovely for you that your granddaughter can stay over now! I used to love sleeping at my granny’s house.’

  Bingo! You could see that this idea filled Ellie with dread. She’d gone quite white and had to gather herself together before she answered: ‘Yes, well, I’m often away, of course.’ She stood up. ‘Must dash, Phyl. Thanks so much for the divine scones – you must give me the recipe sometime.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Phyl said. Poppy had crawled under the kitchen table and was now holding out her arms and saying, ‘Up! Up!’

  They made their way to the front door and Phyl caught a whiff of Ellie’s perfume as she kissed her goodbye. Once the car had gone off down the drive, she turned to Poppy and said, ‘Why d’you think people say that, Poppy? You must give me the recipe sometime. Ellie’s as likely to bake scones as I am to dance with the Royal Ballet. It’s bobbins.’

  ‘Bobobobobob!’ Poppy cried and Phyl laughed. She put the baby into her high chair and gave her half a scone to eat or crumble into the tray as she saw fit. Then she began to gather up the toys scattered over the kitchen floor. It suddenly occurred to her to wonder why Ellie had really phoned here. She couldn’t simply have wanted to upset me, could she? By rubbing in how successful Nessa was? Well, maybe she could, but it was more likely that she’d wanted to speak to Matt. All that stuff about not having seen me since the funeral was simply Ellie thinking on her feet. I needn’t have invited her when she rang, Phyl thought, but that would have seemed very inhospitable and as though I didn’t want to see her. She sighed. That would have been mostly true. There was something about Ellie that made Phyl feel churned up, less than relaxed, not herself, and she was relieved to be alone with her granddaughter.

  ‘Why,’ she said, addressing herself to Poppy, who was exploring her scone with impressive thoroughness, ‘didn’t I think to ask her what she wanted from him? She’ll have to ring him again now, won’t she?’

  Poppy gurgled and muttered something through a mouth full of crumbs. Phyl laughed. ‘You’re the best kind of person to have a chat with. You answer in your own way and you listen, and you don’t say a single thing I disagree with. Perfect.’

  ‘Puff …’ Poppy said. ‘Puff.’

  ‘You’ll get it right soon, chicken,’ Phyl smiled. ‘Puff’s fine for now.’

  *

  They did the paperwork first. Mme Franchard instructed Matt on the mysteries of how to find her sister’s birth certificate, directing him to the right pile of paper and making him burrow in it until the document came to light. Lou wasn’t a bit surprised to find that her methodical father had brought with him Grandad’s birth certificate, which had miraculously survived the war and all the upheavals he’d gone through during his childhood. The names tallied. The dates of birth tallied. Mother’s name: Louise Martin née Franchard. Father’s name: William Martin. How long had it taken Grandad to get used to being called Barrington? Millions of women got used to their husband’s name but did they ever lose sight of the name they’d been born with? Lou made a note to ask Phyl about it. She certainly had no intention of changing her own name when she got married. If I get married, she corrected herself.

  Mme Franchard took her time getting started because, before she did, a space had to be cleared for them to sit on. The sofa had been literally buried under drifts of books and papers and Mme Franchard oversaw its excavation with great aplomb.

  ‘You put that please here – and those papers down on the floor …’ None of this was quickly done, but eventually, there was enough faded red velvet to accommodate Lou and her father, even though they did have to sit very close together.

  When Mme Franchard was satisfied that they were both settled and comfortable, she reached down to a bag that looked like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag: black leather, with a brass clasp at the top. Was it a Gladstone bag? Lou made a mental note to herself to look it up on Google. Mme Franchard hauled the bag on to her lap and opened it. Inside, more paper … Sometimes, Lou thought, you really do feel as though you’ve fallen into some surreal movie. David Lynch’s Eraserhead came to mind, and Orson Welles’ The Trial. So much paper wasn’t natural. There would have been something distinctly spooky about it were it not for the matter-of-fact manner and very reasonable-sounding voice of the old woman, apologizing for her bad English.

  ‘I speak good English once,’ she said. It was like listening to an old machine cranking into life. ‘But you forget, if you do not use. Like a metal thing. You grow – how do you say – rusting.’

  ‘Rusty,’ Matt spoke gently.

  ‘C’est ça. Rusty. I am rusty for the English. But it is good to tell a story I want to tell since very many years. I look for your father for many years.’

  Lou said, ‘My grandmother – John Barrington’s wife – never showed him the letters. She hid them from him. I found this one by accident. It’s the only one I found. Did you write more than one letter?’

  ‘I write many, many letters.’ Mme Franchard shrugged her shoulders and Lou almost giggled because it was such a stereotypical French gesture. Constance must have destroyed all the others – what a bloody nerve! ‘N’importe. You are here now, and this is luck. I am unhappy not to see my nephew but you are his son’ (she leaned forward and patted Matt on the knee) ‘and your daughter is like my sister and this is good for me.’

  She thrust her face into the opening of the bag, looking for something, turning over the papers inside it and moving things – documents, letters, who knew what they all were – from the depths to the surface. At last she found what she’d been searching for, a flat, black leather wallet, about the size of an A5 envelope. She took a sheet of paper out of it which had been folded and unfolded so often that the creases were practically worn through. The whole thing nearly fell to pieces as she opened it.

  ‘This is the only letter from my sister I have. She writes from North Borneo. The date is in 1942 just before she go in the camp with her son. She is waiting too for another child.’

  Matt took the letter and Lou peered over to read it as well. The paper was thinned by age and the ink was so faded that she could barely make out the words, but of course the message was written in French.

  ‘I tell you what she say,’ Mme Franchard said. ‘I know this by heart, you understand. She say: everything is hard because they go to the camp soon. She tells that she is sad that many years have gone and she is not writing to me. She say she will write to me now very much and tell me all her thinkings. All her feeling. She say she is sad for what she does to me. She say her son is a beautiful boy and she wish I could see him and he could see me. She wish to visit our father’s grave.’

  Mme Franchard sighed and wiped her eyes with her hankie. ‘I can still cry. It should not have been so. My father, he does not forgive. Never. And I, I too do not forgive. I am angry for so many years. But I miss her very much. In the end, I write and write to her but she does not answer.’

  Lou noticed that her father was sitting up straighter. He wanted to interrupt and was waiting for a chance to say something. As soon as there was a tiny gap in the story, he spoke, slowly, to make sure Mme Franchard took in what he was saying.

  ‘Madame, there are things I don’
t quite understand. Would you mind starting at the very beginning? Why were your father and your sister estranged? And you and your sister, too. I mean, not speaking to one another?’

  ‘Ah! It is because of me. We live in the house in Brittany then. The big house – before we move to the smaller house close to Penmarc’h. My father is a good shopkeeper. Épicier – grocer. A very nice shop in the town. We are prosperous. My mother is dead since we are children. He pays an Englishman to teach us, me and my sister. He wishes us to speak good English and this he can afford. My sister is older than me. I have a passion for our tutor. He is handsome. Tall, and with dark hair and brown eyes so deep – c’est un prince, en effet. I tell Louise, but I do not tell any other person. Even William – that is his name, William Martin – does not know this. I love him but I do not speak of it. Louise is more pretty than me. Also a little older. And she is charming and speaks with smiles and I find it hard to speak anything then. I am shy then.’

  Mme Franchard was silent for a long moment and let her head fall forward on to her chest. Talking so much must have been an effort for someone in such a frail condition. The only sound in hthe room now was the breathing of the still-sleeping cat and the ticking of a clock on the wall. Lou gave her father a questioning look, wondering whether they ought to say something.

  ‘I am not stopping,’ Mme Franchard said, lifting her head again. ‘My father finds Louise and William in the bed together and throws him out of the house. Louise cry and cry and say she loves him and my father say to her, no, you do not stay in this house like my daughter if you see him, and Louise, she is stubborn and she goes. Pouf! Just so – she packs her valise and runs from the house. I beg her, do not go. Stay. I am torn in two – how does she do this to me when she has known since a long time how I love William? I ask her, I say: You know I love him. How do you go to the bed with him when you know my heart will break?’

  The clock ticked and ticked. Lou could imagine it: the sisters, facing one another, weeping – was Louise weeping too or just Manon? Where had this scene taken place? In one of the bedrooms? Outside, in a garden? Perhaps, as it was Brittany, they’d gone out for a walk and were on a cliff … Lou caught herself short. What was she doing? This wasn’t a film script she was writing, it was true. It had happened to this woman, who was still, even after more than sixty years, suffering because of it.