A Hidden Life

by Adele Geras

  ‘She hold me, she kiss my hair and she say I cannot help it. I love him too and he loves me. We are going to be married now. Forgive me. Please forgive me, I cannot help. But you see that I do not forgive because I am broken in the heart. I scream at her. I say go and do not come back and never, never write to me because I don’t want to hear of you anything. So she goes and I am stiff and young and stupid and I do not forgive. I find out from a friend of Louise what happen to her. The friend tells me she goes to North Borneo – it is so far. My father is sad and he also die very soon after this. A big attack of the heart. He also does not write to Louise. Her friend from when we were in school is the one who write to tell her about our father’s funeral, but she does not come. And that is how it was. We do not find one another again.’

  ‘And then,’ Matt said, ‘you read my father’s novel, Blind Moon.’

  ‘I find it by accident. Many years after the war. You see how I collect the books. I think: This is like Louise. It is something like her story, perhaps. So I write. It is a chance, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘I know the parts of the book that made you think that,’ said Lou. ‘You were right to try and get in touch.’ She moved to kneel in front of Mme Franchard and took her hand. ‘It’s such a dreadfully sad story. I’m so sorry. So sorry that you never found your sister again. That you never found your nephew. It’s awful. Awful.’

  ‘But you are here! Both of you – this is good. I am happy now. You will speak to me about John Barrington, please. I am anxious to hear.’

  As her father spoke, Lou lost herself in a kind of trance. The mother in Grandad’s novel was a shadowy character and Lou had decided when she started writing the screenplay to omit any mention of her backstory. She wanted everything here and now and happening in front of the eyes of the audience, focusing their minds on a single storyline with no flashbacks. But, she thought, now that I know some of the story of Grandad’s real mother, I’ll read the novel with new eyes. How closely had John Barrington based the character of Annette on his real mother? Will knowing something of this background make a difference to what I think about the character?

  *

  ‘Tamsin, darling, sit down for a moment, will you?’

  Tamsin paused by the door and looked sulky. She was still in her school uniform. ‘But I want to go up and change, Mummy. Can’t I come down a bit later?’

  Nessa said, ‘No, because Daddy won’t be here later and we want to speak to you about something. We both do.’ She did her best to sound both upbeat and serious and that was harder than it looked. She glanced at Gareth and made a sour face that meant you say something, you bastard. This is all your doing, so bloody well pull your weight.

  ‘Come and sit by me, sweetheart,’ said Gareth from the sofa, holding out an arm, ready to embrace her. She sidled over and sat next to him and he hugged her close. ‘How’s my little Tamsy?’ he said. Nessa felt ill. All this cutesy stuff wasn’t going to cut any ice when he broke the news. This meeting followed negotiations as intricate as those attending a Middle East Peace Summit or something, and one thing they’d decided was that Gareth was the one who was going to do the talking. Nessa enjoyed seeing how uncomfortable he was with this. He took his arm away from around his daughter’s shoulders and stood up and faced her. Yes, that was probably a good idea. It was almost impossible to say something to someone tightly clamped to your right flank.

  ‘Tamsy, have you noticed that I’ve not been at home a lot lately?’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Tamsin. ‘Mummy said you were working extra hard and had to go to your office more.’

  ‘Have you missed me, darling?’

  Nessa sat up straighter and frowned at Gareth. This was below the belt, this appeal to the emotions. Hadn’t they decided to be cool? To keep emotions out of it as much as possible?

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well … Mummy and I wanted to speak to you tonight, because we think you’re a big enough girl to be told what’s happening.’

  ‘What is happening?’ Tamsin was starting to look a little alarmed. Get on with it, for heaven’s sake, Nessa thought. Get it over with.

  ‘Nothing. Well, not nothing. Something is happening. Of course it is …’

  Witter, witter, thought Nessa.

  ‘Ahem – well, this is the thing, darling. I’m not going to be living here any longer.’

  ‘Where will you be living?’ Tamsin wanted to know. ‘And why not, anyway? Are you getting a divorce?’

  ‘Well, yes, we are. How did you guess?’

  ‘Doh!’ Tamsin was scornful. ‘It wasn’t very hard. Lots of people get divorced. I know what it means. Chloe’s mum and dad are divorced and so are Brett’s. And Freddy’s.’

  ‘One thing it doesn’t mean,’ said Gareth, ‘is that we feel any different towards you. We both love you to bits and want you to be happy, and none of this is anything to do with you. It is not your fault that we’ve decided we have to part.’

  Nessa felt herself relaxing a little. At least he’d managed to get that out. But it needed reinforcement, so she added, ‘Dad’s right, Tamsin. Absolutely right. We do both love you and we’re going to do our very, very best to see that you’re happy and agree with any arrangements we make, okay?’

  Tamsin nodded, slowly taking in what this news meant. Gareth sat back down on the sofa and started hugging her again. This had the effect not of cheering her up but of seemingly making her feel worse. Her face began to crumple up in a way that indicated tears weren’t far off. Nessa hurried to offer reassurance.

  ‘There’s no need to be sad, darling, really. We’ll still see lots and lots of Dad. He’ll have you to stay often, won’t you, Gareth.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Gareth. ‘I’m in the process of getting a lovely little house nearer to your school. And you can spend all the time you want with me, promise. You’ll have two bedrooms instead of one – that’s got to be good, right?’

  ‘I wish,’ said Tamsin, ‘we could just stay as we are. Why can’t we?’

  ‘Your father has stopped loving me in the way that he did,’ Nessa put in. Let the child be told the truth. Why did they have to sweeten this particular pill? ‘Sometimes grown-ups can’t help it. They meet someone and fall in love with them. That’s what’s happened. Your father has fallen in love with someone else. Her name is Melanie.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tamsin, absorbing this information and picking at the hem of her school skirt with rather grubby fingers. ‘Is she nice?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll like her,’ Gareth said quickly. He glanced at Nessa as though expecting her to challenge his remark, but she said nothing.

  ‘When can I meet her?’ Tamsin asked, with what appeared to Nessa a rather indecent haste. Already, her daughter seemed to be less upset. She’d taken it on the chin, and they were going to get through this conversation without the tears and wailing that Nessa had been half-expecting. She’d read enough magazines and newspapers to know that the scars from divorce could often run deep and wounds could express themselves in all sorts of ways. Let’s hope I can escape without too much difficulty for Tamsin, she thought.

  I can’t bear to think of her being sad. Surely if Gareth and I are civilized about it, we can avoid too much trauma for Tamsin. Part of her would have enjoyed the cutting-up-your-husband’s-suits scenario, the screaming revenge and virago-like bad behaviour, but if she was honest with herself, she’d never really loved Gareth enough to justify a sudden onset of wild, thwarted passion at this stage.

  ‘We’ll go out for a meal soon, how about that?’ Gareth was beaming now, relieved that the worst was over.

  ‘McDonald’s?’ Tamsin was looking more cheerful already.

  ‘No, somewhere much, much nicer than that,’ he replied, with a big grin on his face. Poor fool. He didn’t realize that in Tamsin’s opinion, McDonald’s was the nicest place in the world. Never mind, he’d soon learn a whole lot of stuff he had no idea about at the moment. Nessa intended to let him have full access. She wondered
what Melanie would think about having her and Gareth’s daughter as part of her new family. She’d certainly have her hands full with a tiny baby. Nessa smiled at the prospect, while at the same time not being able to help feeling somewhat sorry for poor Melanie. She was about to find herself a lot busier than she’d ever been in the office. Gareth would have a full-time job soothing ruffled feathers. What a delightful thought that was!

  *

  Lou sat at the table in her flat with her copy of Blind Moon open in front of her. She’d just finished her supper (a toasted pitta bread with hummus, a tomato and a few olives. One of these days she ought to try some cookery) and taken the dirty plate and knife to the sink in the kitchen. This was the time of day when she felt most alone. This was when she longed for Poppy. Her mother would be bathing her and putting her to bed and singing her songs and holding that small body close and smelling her lovely baby smell and her clean hair. Stop it! Lou told herself. She made herself a cup of coffee and took it back to the table. I have to finish this script first, she thought. It’s what I want to do and it’s good. It’s really good. This realization came to her in one of those flashes of confidence that seemed to arrive in her head from time to time … moments when remembering the words as she’d put them down filled her with a kind of glow. This didn’t happen often. Mostly, she found herself waking up in the night and going over what she’d done that day and then it was as though her heart was plummeting down and down, leaving her awash with low-level misery.

  She turned the pages till she found the passage she was looking for. When she’d first read the novel, she was unsure about this bit. She wondered what Grandad had intended by this – what could you call it? – this interlude. It came just before everything moved from the merely distressing to the truly ghastly, an interval of peace and cool in the prevailing noise and heat. Peter finds he can tell stories to the other boys in the camp. He sees the effect this has; the way he can soothe and comfort and, best of all, provide a way of leaving the confines of the bamboo prison they are all shut up in and move to another place. A better one.

  The stories they liked best were about the sea. There were two girls, he told them, who lived by the sea and Derek and Nigel said, ‘Why do they have to be girls? Couldn’t they be boys?’ And Peter said: ‘No, they can’t be boys because they’re girls in the story. My mother tells it like that and I am too.’ He sat up on his mat, and stared at the bodies of all the children in the hut. Outside in the compound the trees were black and the sky was black too but you could see the shapes of the trees even so. Everyone was quiet. They were quiet listening to him. No one cried while he was speaking.

  Peter said: ‘This story is about two girls who lived by the sea. The sea was dark blue with white foam on the waves and the waves got very high in winter. One day the girls went for a walk by the sea. They climbed over rocks and picked seaweed out of pools and watched crabs scrabbling on the sand, running away from the water. The sisters lived in a small white house with a red roof and blue shutters. Their mother was dead. They were happy, but there was something they didn’t know. They didn’t know their father was a wizard who’d put a spell on them.’

  ‘What spell? What was the spell?’ That’s what they always wanted to know and Peter said, ‘They couldn’t leave this place, this house with the red roof on a cliff above the beach. If they did, they would die.’

  ‘But the house is nice and the beach is nice,’ someone said. ‘Why would they want to leave it?’ Peter had no answer. He had asked his mother once and she’d said, ‘No, you’re right. There’s no good reason to want to leave.’

  Lou imagined Mme Franchard reading this passage. It must be them: Louise and Manon, running on the beach and climbing over the rocks … perhaps their house had a red roof and blue shutters. Next time I’m in Paris I’ll ask. Thinking about Mme Franchard made Lou feel happy. She and Dad had spoken on the way home about this surprising development: a new member of the family – how would they deal with it? Could Mme Franchard come over and visit Milthorpe? Would she want to? They’d decided that Lou ought to go over again soon and she’d hinted that she had a friend she’d like to take with her. Dad didn’t seem to hear that bit … he sometimes didn’t listen as carefully as he should. He sometimes drifted off into his own head and what you said didn’t reach him. But Lou wanted to ask Harry whether he’d come with her. She wondered whether she would have the nerve to invite him and what he would think. Was it too much? She smiled. Maybe I want him to know how much I like him. Of course, he might not come. That was a possibility, but she didn’t want to think about it too hard because that would stop her from enjoying the daydreams she’d started to have every time she did think about it.

  *

  Matt was sitting in his office, thinking about Mme Franchard, when the phone in his pocket vibrated and rang at the same time. He was still a little nervous of his mobile. He’d avoided owning one for years, telling everyone how unnecessary he thought they were; what an infestation on public transport (not that he was on public transport very often), and most of all, how very unhealthy they must be. He could, he told people, envisage horrible waves of blueish radiation beaming into thousands of ears every day, rendering their owners surely a little less themselves with every phone call. No, he wasn’t about to buy one. Never.

  He’d changed his mind when Ray started treating Lou badly. Overnight, the necessity of being constantly available at every hour of the day and night and wherever he was became imperative. He wanted to know that his beloved daughter could get hold of him and summon him to her side. She never had, which Matt put down to her determination and bravery. It never occurred to him that Lou might have felt embarrassed or ashamed to call him to help her. Phyl, who watched her husband going through agonies all through that relationship, used to say, ‘If you’re so worried, you could phone her, you know,’ but he knew he wasn’t very good on the phone – not himself – and so he tried to avoid this as much as possible. Phyl and Lou used to chat for ages, and then she’d hand him the phone and he’d speak to Lou for a few minutes. The mere fact, Matt reflected, that Phyl thought of them as ‘chats’ showed him what a different attitude his wife had to telephone communications. He regarded them as a way of conveying information and making arrangements to meet. They were not a substitute, in his opinion, for conversation.

  For a long time, he’d used his mobile gingerly. He phoned someone. He received calls from some people, those few to whom he’d given his number. That was it. He knew about text messaging – you could hardly avoid knowing about something so ubiquitous – but would no more have dreamed of sending a text than diving off the end of Beachy Head.

  Ellie had changed that. She had taken to texting and to mobiles in general and her handset, fully equipped with what she referred to as ‘all the available whistles and bells’, was an elegant and very expensive silver rectangle with an unnaturally blue screen and a ringtone which drew far too much attention to itself. An electronic version of Handel’s Water Music – why would anyone need that blaring out every few minutes? It would have driven him bananas. His ringtone was as near to that of a normal phone as he could manage. When he first got a text from Ellie, he nearly jumped out of his skin. It happened during a meeting and amid profuse apologies he’d simply turned off the handset, vowing to return to it later.

  There was no one he could ask. Phyl would have shown him how to read and answer his messages in a moment, but he certainly didn’t want her to know Ellie was texting him. Perhaps it was the novelty, but he found this way of sending messages rather erotic: not a thought he could express to his wife. As it was, he was forced to consult the booklet that had come with his phone. It took him some hours but he worked it out in the end. For weeks now, he’d been laboriously tapping out little groups of two and three words but on the train back from Paris, Lou had introduced him to predictive text and that had changed everything. Now he was getting – well, you couldn’t call it speedy – but certainly comfortable.


  Lou had also shown him the vibrate thing – amazing! He opened the handset and read the message. He’d known as soon as he got it that it must be from Ellie because she was the only person who ever texted him. Briefly, he wondered how the mobile phone had altered adulterous habits of men and women. He deleted every message he received the moment he’d answered it, and just the other day, realized he had also to delete his sent messages folder, or someone could look at his phone and read every single word. Not that he was an adulterer and not that he had sent anything incriminating, but still.

  dying 2 hear paris news fone me lunch next week xxx

  Ellie didn’t go in for punctuation and Matt assumed that there was supposed to be a question mark at the end of the message. And that ‘2’ was an affectation. With predictive text it was only a matter of moments to write the whole word. He sighed and tapped in his answer.

  Will phone tomorrow. Matt.

  The triple x at the end of every text Ellie sent thrilled him, though she probably put kisses after every message she wrote. And maybe it was something everyone did. Certainly his messages to Phyl and hers to him always had kisses added. Did they mean anything? Maybe they did and maybe not. He’d ring Ellie back, but could they really keep on having lunches? And what could he tell her about Paris? He’d come back from the trip feeling unsettled. Meeting his great-aunt had revived feelings in him he thought he’d forgotten years ago. It made him feel sad for his father in a way he’d never managed when John Barrington was alive. How hideous of Constance to do that: keep his letters away from him, for God’s sake. He wasn’t quite sure but it was probably against the law. She was tampering with Her Majesty’s Mail. I’ll never forgive her for that, Matt reflected. The more he thought about it, the more unkind an act it seemed to him. My mother was a bitch, he told himself and even thinking such a thing shocked him, but it was true. What she’d done to Lou had started off his process of disillusionment with his mother and this just confirmed that he’d been right.