A Hidden Life

by Adele Geras

  Mme Franchard was frail. He’d spoken to Lou about the possibility of having her to stay, taking her to see Milthorpe House, and so forth, but in truth he didn’t think that would ever be possible. She appeared to be soldered to the chair she sat on and you felt that if you moved her, she would dissolve into grey dust. Her mind was sharp enough, but he’d noticed how close to her eyes she’d held the letter and Solange had told him that she ate ‘not enough to fill a tooth’. Matt had wanted to ask what the financial situation was, and whether perhaps he might contribute something towards his ancient new relative’s upkeep, but didn’t feel it would be tactful on a first visit. Lou said she was going to go over to Paris again soon, but he’d have to see Mme Franchard as well. There might be ways in which he could make her life easier and he felt a duty to try and do that, at least.

  His father hadn’t been a great one for family. Whenever Matt had asked him about it as a child, John had deflected the questions, retreating into his ‘I’m a writer and can’t be disturbed’ persona, which now Matt suspected he put on like a cloak of invisibility whenever he wanted to avoid a subject. And I’m not much better, he told himself. He’d been surprised to see how shaken he was by the discovery of a great-aunt he’d never known about. Part of him was intrigued, amazed – and irritated that this new relation couldn’t tell him anything about John’s mother to add to what he already knew, apart from filling in her background as a girl in France. For the most part, however, he was worried. Now that Mme Franchard was part of his family willy-nilly, he couldn’t help feeling responsible. I’ll have to go back, he thought. I could take Phyl for a weekend break, if it weren’t for Poppy. Passing across the back of his mind like a shadow yet again was an image of himself and Ellie walking along the banks of the Seine and he tried hard to concentrate on Phyl. Me and Phyl walking along the banks of the Seine. Matt sighed. Why didn’t his wife fit into the romantic cliché as well as Ellie did? Because I’ve not had a chance, he told himself, to get close to Phyl since Poppy arrived. Of course it was important for Lou to do this thing, whatever it was, that she was engaged in. He had a good idea of what it might be, because ever since her early childhood she’d been scribbling away in notebooks. She was no doubt writing a novel, and from everything he remembered about his father, this was a long and difficult process. What if she took a year over it? Two years? He squared his shoulders and decided to discuss the matter with Phyl that evening.

  He glanced at his watch. It was nearly lunchtime. He’d go out soon and get something at the pub down the road. And I’ll phone Ellie from the call box there and tell her about Mme Franchard. What must it be like for her, spending almost the whole of her adult life first separated from her sister and then only guessing at what must have happened to her? He’d often wondered what it would be like to have a sibling. Quite unbidden, he had a flash of memory – a day he’d forgotten came back to him in detail. They’d gone out together, Matt and his father, on a fishing trip. Neither of us liked fishing, he thought now, so why did we do it? He had no idea. Maybe it was a way of getting out of the house. In any case, there they were, sitting on the river bank in the sun. I had a hat, he recalled. A blue cotton hat and blue and white shorts which I hated wearing because I thought they looked girlish. How old was I? Six? Maybe seven – it was hard to remember. But he did recall most of the conversation. He’d asked his father, ‘Why haven’t I got any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘Some people just don’t. You’re an only child. That’s not a bad thing to be.’

  ‘Isn’t it? It’s a bit lonely, though. We could play together all the time, if I had a brother.’

  ‘I haven’t got any brothers or sisters either.’

  The silence that fell then lasted for what seemed to Matt like a very long time. Then his father sighed and said, ‘Well, I used to have a sister, but she died. Remember? I told you about it. We were all in a prisoner-of-war camp. During the war.’

  Even at that age, Matt had heard of the war. He knew how horrible it must be to have a dead sister, but he was still quite sorry that he had never had a sister. He thought his father wasn’t going to say anything else about it but then he spoke again.

  ‘Everyone said it couldn’t be helped, my sister dying, but I felt … well, I did feel it was my fault, a bit, that she died.’

  ‘Why? Why was it your fault?’

  ‘It’s complicated. You don’t need to understand, really, and I don’t think I could explain. I just felt – sometimes I thought I ought to have died instead of her. That’s what happens sometimes when you’re very sad. It changes what you feel about things.’

  Thinking about that day, Matt wondered how much of what he was remembering was how it was, and how much he was inventing things that might have been said – no, it was reasonably accurate. He remembered feeling sorry for his father, sorry about the dead sister. He’d never asked him about it again, not from lack of curiosity but because he sensed that John Barrington was more comfortable not discussing it. He hadn’t thought about that day for years, but when he was younger – probably before he met Ellie – the memory of it came to him from time to time, which was why he could see it all so clearly now. He wondered, briefly, what his father had meant. Probably he was experiencing a kind of survivor’s guilt, which he knew was common: the feeling that you had no right to be alive when someone you loved very much was lying dead.

  *

  ‘These are beautiful,’ Nessa said, touching one of the handmade silk flowers that lay in one of the lined drawers of what looked like the kind of filing cabinet you saw in the offices of architects: lots of wide, flat compartments, about twenty of them. She and Mickey had travelled down to Dorset together to visit someone called Clarrie Armitage (must be short for Clarissa, Nessa thought, or possibly Clarice) whose handiwork Mickey had spotted in a back number of Country Life at the dentist’s. Clarrie turned out to be a middle-aged lady of the sort who’d always call herself that: lady, not woman. She lived in a small, semi-detached cottage in a pretty village. She wore her iron-grey hair in a bun, and her rather peasanty skirt in burgundy wool had flowers embroidered all round the hem in bright shades of purple and pale pink. A fisherman’s smock-type top in pink cord didn’t do much for her bust, which was just that bit too big for it. A V-neck would be so much better, Nessa reflected, as Clarrie led them into her studio where flowers at every stage of their creation lay on an enormous table which almost filled the entire room. The filing cabinet took up most of one wall and they’d been looking at its contents for the last hour. Clarrie might not know what was what in the flattering tops department, but her flowers were miraculously beautiful, every petal perfect, exact, and yet somehow not quite like the natural flower … lifted into the realm of art by some tiny detail: a whisper of glitter here, an edging of velvet there. The colours, too, were natural shades, slightly enhanced or modified, and because these flowers were made of silk, there was no limit to the palette Clarrie could use – and did. A black rose, silk trimmed with velvet, caught Nessa’s eye. We can charge a fortune for something like that, she thought, and there’d be women flocking to buy it. In fact, Nessa was convinced that the more expensive a thing was, the more everyone would want to own it.

  While Clarrie was in the kitchen making them a cup of tea, Nessa and Mickey discussed in whispers the possibility of stocking the flowers. They were nothing like the rest of the Paper Roses stock but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  ‘She’s the only one making them,’ said Mickey. ‘We can’t carry more than a very limited stock.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Even if we have very few – especially if we have very few – they’ll just fly out of the catalogue. Wait and see. We emphasize the handiwork. Maybe even a picture of Clarrie, making them. Exclusive. No two flowers exactly alike. You know the sort of thing.’

  ‘How much can we charge?’

  ‘Clarrie’s price is £20 per flower. That’s peanuts. I’d have thought £40 was reasonable.’ Nessa frowned. ‘Even £50
is possible. Maybe we can persuade her to be exclusive to us, not to sell these flowers anywhere else. What do you think? D’you reckon she’d agree?’

  ‘She might. How many can she sell in a year? If we guarantee to take as many as she makes, and give her a better price for them than she’s getting by going round craft fairs, then why should she refuse?’

  Nessa sat down at the table. ‘She might not like the pressure that supplying us will put on her. She might not be able to fulfil orders.’

  ‘We’ve got to emphasize, then, that there’s no pressure at all. She can please herself, make as many or as few as she wants to, and we’ll sell them. She’ll clean up. We’re going to give her a lot more per flower than she’d get anywhere else.’

  Nessa was already foreseeing a problem. ‘What if she gets fed up? Stops making them? Gets arthritis in the fingers …’

  ‘Then we’ll have to stop selling them. That’s the point about them. They aren’t going to be on sale for ever. Clarrie isn’t young. If we have a picture of her, anyone who wants to buy will get that message, subliminally.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ Nessa said, ‘that I believe in subliminal. I like upfront and loud and clear. D’you think she’ll agree?’

  ‘We’ll ask her. I do think they’re stunning.’ Mickey picked up the black rose and held it against Nessa’s face, her fingers just touching the skin. ‘You look beautiful,’ she said. ‘I’m going to buy this for you as a present – a cheering-you-up present. Clarrie will be pleased.’

  At that moment, their hostess came into the room, carrying a tray laden with tea things. Mickey went to take it from her, and Clarrie carefully moved the flowers she’d been displaying to one side to clear a space.

  ‘Clarrie,’ Nessa said, ‘we want to make you an offer.’

  *

  ‘Getting a deal like that gives me a real kick,’ Mickey said, as she drove through the village. The sun was setting. The sky was streaked with apricot and mauve, and puffy clouds were arranged along the horizon in a pleasingly symmetrical way. ‘I feel like celebrating. Do you feel like celebrating?’

  ‘How? We’re on our way back. Gareth’s mother’s got Tamsin, but I do have stuff to do tomorrow in the office. Helmut’s phoning in the morning.’

  ‘Helmut is a business associate. If he finds we’re out, he’ll try later. He’ll think we’re out on a work-related thing, which we are in a way.’

  ‘What d’you want to do? Have a nice meal somewhere?’

  Mickey’s smile, Nessa thought, altered her rather sharp features and made her look almost pretty. Because of her boyish, slim figure, and her short, very fair hair, pretty wasn’t exactly how Nessa would have described her, but now the light from the sunset streaming in through the car windows made an aureole of radiance around her head. ‘You look like an angel,’ Nessa said aloud and blushed. That had been the thought in her mind and she’d spoken without thinking.

  ‘Let’s spend the night in a gorgeous hotel,’ Mickey said. ‘We could do with a treat. You could do with a treat.’

  Nessa imagined it: a delicious dinner. A long bath. A soft bed and nothing anywhere to remind her of her home, or her silly bloody fool of a husband, or her greedy brother, or the rest of her family. She would even forget about her beloved Tamsin for a while. It could be just her. Her and Mickey.

  ‘We haven’t got any spare clothes – no toothbrush even.’

  ‘We can buy some toothbrushes. Sleep naked.’

  Nessa didn’t say a word. Thinking about sleeping naked in a hotel with no one knowing exactly where she was made her feel a little giddy.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Let’s go for it. What if there’s no nice hotel anywhere near here?’

  ‘Oh, there is. I looked it up when I knew we were coming down this way.’

  ‘You,’ Nessa laughed, ‘are a sneaky devil.’

  ‘I was an angel a moment ago.’

  ‘You’re both.’ Nessa was aware of a weird sensation, like something being flipped over under her ribcage.

  *

  ‘You’re being quite unfair. Unreasonable,’ Phyl said, then aware that she’d spoken far more sharply than she’d intended, she added, ‘I know it’s hard for you, Matt. I realize that, but don’t you think we owe it to Lou to make life easy for her? You found out in Paris that she was writing something, and when I spoke to her the other day, I did ask her whether she wanted Poppy back. And of course there are many, many ways in which she does, but on the other hand, it’s much easier for her to work at whatever this thing is without Poppy to worry about.’

  ‘It’s her bloody job to worry about Poppy. It’s not ours, Phyl.’

  ‘I know, but still.’ She went on picking up the toys from the carpet and putting them into the box she’d moved into the lounge to make life easier.

  ‘Come here, Phyl,’ he said, suddenly speaking in a quite different tone of voice. ‘I want to talk to you. Seriously.’

  ‘Gosh.’ She went to sit beside him on the sofa. ‘That sounds a bit ominous.’

  ‘No. Not really. Only, well – I don’t know how to say this, Phyl. We’ve never – I mean, we talk about everything else under the sun but we don’t talk about these things, do we? We never have …’

  ‘What things?’ She had a good idea what he was referring to. Was he really going to … ?

  ‘Sex,’ he said, after a slight pause. ‘We haven’t – I mean, it’s been several weeks since we …’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m so sorry, darling Matt. It’s … it’s not that I don’t want to, you know that.’

  ‘I do know that but it’s hard for me. I feel … I feel unloved.’

  ‘You’re not unloved. How can you say that? I love you more than anything.’ Phyl felt as though a stone were dropping through her body. How peculiar! Her heart sank. That was exactly right. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right of course. We have made love a lot less often since Poppy’s been here, but how can I just tell Lou she must have her back?’

  ‘I’ll do it if you like – and I’ve got an excuse. We’re going to Paris. Wouldn’t you like to go to Paris? I’ll need to see Mme Franchard again reasonably soon. We didn’t have time to discuss the things we ought to have done. I want to make sure she’s all right … her financial position, for instance. I want to do my bit. It’s not often you find a long-lost relative. You want to meet her, don’t you?’

  Phyl nodded. It would be marvellous to go to Paris. And Matt was right – they couldn’t go on like this, with every night interrupted by the baby. It was tiring. She knew that her own energy levels during the day were lower than usual because her sleep had been disturbed.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You tell her. And then I’ll speak after you …’

  ‘Should I do it now?’

  ‘No point putting it off, I suppose.’

  As Matt dialled the number, she couldn’t help feeling sad. It didn’t matter how many arguments her husband put forward, or that it might be better for Poppy to be reunited with her mother. She, Phyl, would be bereft. She would miss the constant company, the gurgling smiles and (she’d never have admitted this to anyone), most of all, she would miss those precious minutes during the night, when Poppy was sleepy and warm and lay against her shoulder as she took her out of the cot to give her a drink and change her nappy. She’d miss singing the bedtime songs in a darkened room, and watching her granddaughter as she fell asleep at last, clutching her favourite cuddly polar bear. In return, she and Matt would make love much more often. Well, that would be nice, but Phyl had to admit to herself that the thought didn’t thrill her as much as it ought to have done and she immediately felt guilty. Then there was the morning smile, like a beam of warmth and light, with which Poppy greeted her every day – she wouldn’t have that any longer either. And worst of all, she wouldn’t be able to watch the child growing and changing. At this age, babies changed almost overnight. By the time she saw Poppy again, she’d be a different child. She tuned in to what Matt was saying to Lou.


  ‘Not that we’re not devoted to Poppy, darling. You know we are, but – yes, of course. Of course – you must both come down every possible weekend you can. I’ll let you know when Mum and I are off to Paris.’ He paused, and listened for a while to what Lou was saying. She seemed to be talking for a very long time with Matt hanging on to the receiver and nodding from time to time. Then he said, ‘All right. That’s perfect. Come down on Friday. We’ll expect you at about six, is that right? Fine, fine. Give me a ring when you leave Victoria and I’ll come and pick you up at the station. Yes … yes, thanks, darling. I knew you’d understand.’

  Phyl waved a hand at him, and pointed at the phone and then at herself. He said, ‘Hang on a mo, darling. Your mum wants a word. Yes, yes, I will. Goodnight, sweetheart.’

  He gave the receiver to Phyl, then got off the sofa and left the room.

  ‘Hello, Lou darling. Your dad’s just leaving the room … hang on.’

  ‘God, Mum, I’m so, so sorry. Has it been ghastly for you?’ Lou sounded very far away and Phyl hoped the mobile connection didn’t suddenly go wonky, as it sometimes did.

  ‘Ghastly? No, of course not. The very opposite, honestly. I’ll miss her like mad, you know I will. It’s your father. It’s not that he doesn’t love Poppy, he really does, but he needs things round the house to be calm and peaceful and he says, well, he says he doesn’t see as much of me as he’d like to. He says I’m always taken up with Poppy.’ Phyl laughed. ‘He’s right really. I am taken up with her. Also, he tells me he’s going to take me to Paris to meet Mme Franchard. That’ll be nice.’

  ‘I want to go and see her again as well. I’ll go one weekend when you’re free to look after Poppy again. You could come and stay here while I’m there. I could go for the day, but it would be nice to have a weekend and do something touristy. I could take a friend, or something.’