Family Secrets

by Liz Byrski

Connie had fallen asleep that first night in a strange state of suspension between past and present, acutely aware that she had come home but was also far from home. She woke early to the sound of a mower and, stumbling out of bed, opened the curtains. The scent of freshly cut grass on the damp morning air brought tears to her eyes and transported her back to childhood. The long neglected past that had been smothered by another life elsewhere now flooded back to her. Memories need nurture to keep them rich and fertile, and she saw that hers had become dry and brittle with neglect, fragile as the petals of dead flowers. The scenes the familiar scent stirred up were visceral; her legs felt weak, her chest tight, images spun and swarmed in her head: half-familiar faces, birthday candles and Christmas trees, her hair tightly wound in rags, then later in plastic curlers and later still in pink rollers. Fleeting remembrance of her tears on the first day at school, of cod liver oil and malt, of mittened hands clutching icy milk bottles at playtime, gold stars on an honour board, the discomfort of her first bra, a kiss stolen at dusk under an ancient oak, and of walking beside her mother across the heath towards that enchanted place at the top of the forest. She struggled to breathe through the memories that made her chest tighten with emotion. Beneath the window the mower spluttered to a halt and in the sudden silence, while the gardener perched on a low wall and lit a cigarette, she gulped air again, then slipped away from the window into the bathroom, and let her tears mix soundlessly with the water in the shower, the only witness to this heart stopping interlude of grief and longing.

  There have been other occasions like this since then: in the forest, in The Lanes in Brighton, on the seafront in Eastbourne, driving along roads where she had once skipped cheerfully, and standing with Flora outside the narrow semi on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells which had been her home so long ago. And now they are in London where, back in the sixties, the city was a mere backdrop to the centrality of her own life. How could she have failed to savour it, to learn it in a way that would make it impossible for it to be taken from her? It fills her with regret.

  As she steps off the bus at Marble Arch and walks towards Selfridges she inhales once more that sense of the past, seeing young Connie, full of energy and hope and enthusiasm, determined to be herself, dreaming of stepping out onto the stage at Covent Garden to rapturous applause. Those dreams are so long gone it is almost inconceivable that she could ever have owned them. Right now though, her dream is just to find a dress, something special, for this does seem like a very special occasion.

  It has to be Selfridges, for it was here that she had come to buy her wedding dress. In a fitting room less spacious than the one in the bridal department Connie remembers that day, imagining herself wriggling into a satin dress with lace sleeves, smoothing down the skirt, waiting for the sales assistant to pull up the long zip, before handing her the circlet of white silk roses, embroidered with the same tiny seed pearls that edged the fine muslin veil. It had been a good life, but it was not the life she had dreamed of living. Had she been afraid of ending up single and alone? Connie stares into the mirror; what if she had let Flora talk her out of marrying Gerald? They would have found a flat together and each would have pursued their own dreams. What sort of life would she have had then? And what about Flora? How might her life be different now had Connie not married her brother? But that question she pushes away as she has always done, unable to open herself up to what it might lead to.

  Now in a midnight blue dress of crushed taffeta with a stand-up collar, three-quarter sleeves and a close fitting skirt that finishes at mid-calf, Connie sees the woman she has become: a wife, a mother, a grandmother – such precious things to be, such precious people in her life. To regret it would be to regret the people she loves most. She can only regret that it had to be one or the other, and that it doesn’t feel as though it was a mindful decision she made herself.

  This gorgeous dress is like that other one – destined to be worn only once, for her life in Hobart is unlikely now to provide opportunities to wear it. When Gerald was in Parliament and later in business a formal dress had been a necessity, but the need for one is now long gone.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she says to the sales assistant who has popped her head around the curtain. And she doesn’t mention that after tonight it will probably spend the rest of its life alongside that other dress, in a zipped plastic sheath at the back of a wardrobe on the other side of the world.

  *

  Flora walks slowly down Marchmont Street in the direction of Tonkin’s Books, wondering how it would feel to walk here to work from … well, from somewhere … a bus stop on Euston Road perhaps, or maybe just a few steps up from the Russell Square underground station. Although she had found Phillip’s job offer reassuring, the prospect of actually accepting it seems almost too easy and therefore almost too risky. She’d been raised to think that opportunities that fall into one’s lap must be suspect, one should have to struggle and fight for something that is really worth having. But it would be stupid to ignore the possibility. Despite Bea’s bluntness and apparent eccentricity Flora had liked her – in fact she found those characteristics endearing. And aside from the potential job, if she can catch Bea alone this morning she might also get a chance to talk to her about Gerald.

  Bea is on the phone in the office at the back of the shop when Flora arrives but she waves encouragingly and mouths that she won’t be long, and Flora waves back and wanders around, gazing at the stacks of new titles on the big central table, looking up and around the open gallery on the second floor, and at the various section signs posted in several languages. The shop, she thinks, is really well laid out, the glass frontage capturing the best of the natural light from the street; it’s welcoming and already busy with browsers and tourists. It has the atmosphere of a place where people enjoy what they are doing. Phillip obviously knows his business.

  ‘Gerry and I were among the first of our generation not to be called up for National Service so we went straight to Cambridge and from there I went into publishing,’ he’d told them at dinner. Tonkins, he’d explained, had been in the family for more than a century and at that time belonged to his father and uncle. He had been in his early forties when his uncle had died and he had quit publishing and gone into partnership with his father. Books were in his blood, which was one of the reasons that he and Bea had always got on so well.

  Both she and Connie had liked him more than they had anticipated, and although Connie had said nothing about it Flora had been pretty sure that her friend had been sizing Phillip up, wondering silently how different her life might have been had she married a man like him, someone who loved books and music, who knew his operas inside out, and seemed free of Gerald’s driving and often bullish ambition.

  ‘So sorry, Flora,’ Bea says, suddenly appearing beside her. ‘I got caught up with a supplier. Anyway, it’s lovely to see you. Did you come to look at books or did you want to talk about Phillip’s offer?’

  ‘Both really,’ Flora says. ‘It came out of the blue – I’m not even sure yet whether I want to come back to London, or whether I can afford it. But of course at my age, working with people I like has a lot going for it. And I do have that love of books that you and Phillip have. Gerald never quite got the magic, I’m afraid.’

  Bea smiles. ‘He certainly didn’t have it as a young man,’ she says. ‘Although he always enjoyed books, he didn’t have the same reverence for them as we did. But perhaps he did as he got older?’

  Flora shrugs. ‘I’m not the person to ask about that. It’s so long since I saw him.’

  ‘How sad that you never got over that breach,’ Bea says, straightening a pile of paperbacks. ‘Those kinds of fallings out always seem so pointless in retrospect, but the Gerry I knew would not have found it easy to apologise, not even to take the first faltering step towards it.’

  ‘You must have known him very well,’ Flora says, ‘but to be fair I didn’t feel able to reach out to him either – I sat around nursing my hurt and my injured prid
e until it was too late to do anything about it.’

  ‘You had good reason,’ Bea says briskly. ‘From what you and Connie told us the responsibility lay with him. Anyway, come into the office and I’ll tell you a bit about the shop and the work, and then I’ll take you on a tour.’ She glances at the oversized purple watch on her wrist. ‘Are you short of time? If not we could get a coffee and sandwich later.’

  *

  It’s more than an hour later that they find a table in the only empty corner of the café.

  ‘They make their own bread here,’ Bea says, leaning across the table as though sharing a secret. ‘The sourdough is to die for. Tell me what you’d like and I’ll go and order.’

  As Bea joins the queue at the counter Flora sits back thinking over their earlier conversation. It’s a beautiful shop in a delightful part of London where she wouldn’t be able to afford to live. The rest of the staff are really pleasant, and working with Phillip and Bea would, she thinks, be stimulating and probably fun. They must have one of the best collections of books for miles around.

  ‘Phillip’s good to work for,’ Bea had told her. ‘He gets on well with all the staff; they think he’s a bit weird sometimes, but I guess they think that about me too. You’d get the same sort of freedom as I do in running the shop, and I think you might enjoy it. We’re looking for someone three or four days a week and our week is seven days, so you’d sometimes have to work weekends, although I imagine that, rather like me, when you’re our age and on your own it doesn’t make much difference. It would be great to have you here. You’d have to sort out money and all that with Phillip of course.’

  Outside the café people are hurrying past heading for the station or Brunswick Square Gardens, darting in and out of shops, or stopping to browse the cheap scarves and jewellery on the stall across the street. On the benches in the nearby park, others are reading newspapers, sipping cardboard beakers of coffee, unwrapping sausage rolls and sandwiches, and tossing crumbs to the pigeons. A typical day in London, this is what her life would be, on glorious days like this, or in driving rain, high winds, frost and snow. There is something about the sort of companionship of working in a bookshop that intrigues her, the friendships she might have with Bea and Phillip, the people she might meet. Is this what she wants?

  ‘Sandwiches won’t be long,’ Bea says, returning with their coffee. And she slips into her chair and looks straight at Flora. ‘I hope you’ll think about it and I hope you’ll accept,’ she says, her dark, almost violet eyes boring into Flora. ‘But I imagine you feel like a rest. It sounds glorious over there in Brittany, but I bet it’s a real slog, especially in the summer.’

  ‘It sure is. I’ve enjoyed it, but I know that this is the right time to go. I just have to think carefully about what I want at this time of my life.’

  Bea nods. ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s odd that we never met before,’ Flora says, ‘but Gerald didn’t really introduce me to his friends. He was five years older so I guess a younger sister was a bit of an embarrassment.’

  ‘I never met your parents either,’ Bea says, not looking up. ‘And you were in India for quite a long time, but Gerry talked about you a lot.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, he was so proud of you for going off like that. He thought it took courage, the sort of courage he didn’t have.’

  ‘Proud of me? I thought he was furious with me. He said it was all irresponsible bullshit.’

  ‘Oh, the Maharishi Yogi, yes, he certainly didn’t think much of him, he was convinced that he was a shyster. But Gerry envied what he saw as your capacity for absolute belief, and for having the courage to follow that.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘Yes. He thought you were wrong-headed in what you believed but envied you your ability to believe so passionately and take risks to pursue it.’

  Flora has a strange feeling of the past creeping up on her. ‘How extraordinary,’ she says. ‘I always thought he despised me for it. And, as I found out later, he certainly didn’t believe in my right to live my own sexuality.’ She pours iced water from the carafe Bea brought back to the table along with the coffee. The coldness seems to burn her throat as she swallows. ‘Were you and he … well, did you … ?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bea says, ‘we were lovers, for a long time. We were going to get married. In fact we were about to move in together when Connie’s mother died … and then …’

  ‘Then what?’ Flora urges her. ‘What happened?’

  Bea sighs and puts down her sandwich. ‘Connie happened. But a very different Connie from the one I met the other night. I thought I knew Gerry very well, but now I think perhaps I only knew one version of him. I don’t think he ever told me the truth about Connie. He said that she was madly in love with him, that she depended on him, that he had a duty to look after her as she was so alone.’

  Flora inhaled sharply. ‘It wasn’t quite like that, in fact it was more that he …’

  ‘Was he desperately in love with her?’ Bea cuts in.

  ‘Well, yes, or perhaps he realised that our parents would think she was the perfect wife, and that would have mattered to him. For all his big talk Gerald was always very much under their joint thumbs, always striving for their approval, and very scared of disappointing them.’

  Bea shakes her head. ‘I’ve been a fool,’ she said. ‘When he told me about Connie I believed every word, believed it ever since. And then a couple of nights ago I met Connie, saw what sort of person she was and somehow, even allowing for her to have matured and toughened up, it just didn’t quite make sense.’

  Flora pauses, then takes a deep breath. ‘Connie was never a needy person. She was doing really well at the Guildhall, she had an amazing voice and could have gone on to a successful musical career. When her mother died I was away, but as Connie tells it, Gerald stepped in and took over. He went beyond helping to actually taking control of everything. What you need to know about Connie then is that a few years before her mother died, her father took off with another woman. Disappeared completely from her life. I’ve always thought that Gerald probably capitalised on that loss. She wasn’t needy or pathetic or anything like that, but I think she was seduced by the idea of a man who seemed to represent a promise of security and loving care. Lots of women yearn for that, especially in those days.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Bea says. ‘And he was ruthless in getting rid of me, he dumped me in … well, in horrible circumstances. And you may be right about the perfect wife thing. He had often said that I would need to tone myself down when it came to meeting his parents, that they were very conservative.’

  ‘They sure were. I hated Gerald for turning them against me,’ Flora says, ‘but I know I wouldn’t have fared well with them as I got older. I hid a lot from them, but was never prepared to please them by abandoning what I wanted for myself.’

  Bea sighs. ‘Ah well, who knows what would have happened to Gerald and me if we’d married? Quite probably we’d have torn each other to shreds long ago – two people each determined to have their own way.’

  ‘They said in the shop I’d find you here,’ Phillip says, appearing suddenly by their table. ‘May I join you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Flora says, although she wishes she and Bea had had more time alone to talk. ‘Bea’s been telling me about the shop and the job.’

  The conversation turns to work, bookselling, the rise of ebooks, then the latest literary awards.

  ‘So you’ll think about it then? The job, I mean,’ Phillip asks her later, as the three of them walk back in the direction of the bookshop.

  ‘I will,’ she says. ‘Thanks, Phillip, I really appreciate it.’

  ‘My good luck meeting up with you again,’ he says. ‘Must dash, but come and have a chat when you’ve thought more,’ and he gives her a quick peck on the cheek and heads off in the direction of Tavistock Square.

  ‘Do think about it, Flora,’ Bea says. ‘And whatever you decide let’s meet agai
n before you and Connie leave.’ She turns away and then suddenly back again. ‘There’s something else I should …’ she begins then stops. ‘No – another time. Bye, Flora.’ And she hurries away to be swallowed up in the throng of lunchtime customers in the shop.

  Sixteen

  Brooke inspects the room through the camera function on her phone, searching for the best way to frame the shot. To her it looks amazing from every angle because wherever she points the camera she can visualise her own stuff in place: the bed with her favourite doona cover on it, dressing table over there in the far corner, desk in the opposite corner just under the window that looks out onto the little garden, posters on the walls, shaggy purple rug in the middle. But right now it is just an empty room with white walls, cream carpet and a nice big wardrobe, which all looks pretty ordinary through the camera. Eventually she gives up and takes a picture of the space under the sloping roof, and another of the wall with the window showing the trees outside, and writes a text to go with them.

  Hey Nan – this is my new room. The house is really cool. Only one more week. Love you, Brooke xxx

  The phone makes the whooshing noise that indicates the message is on its way and Brooke slips it back into her pocket. This time next week they’ll be moving in. Her dad had said that he would take time off and move during the week but this time it’s Brooke who’s the cause of the delay. She has exams this week, and as she insists she absolutely has to be there on moving day, they have to wait until Saturday. But it’s happening at last, and after what seems like a whole series of let-downs, just six more days seems bearable. They had lurched from one failure to another. After her disappointment at not moving out on the night that Andrew got home from Perth, and the second disappointment with the townhouse, Brooke’s frustration level had gone right off the scale.

  It’s almost six weeks now since Zachary moved in. He has stopped pretending to be nice to her, and Linda has stopped asking her to be nice to him and promising how lovely it will be if they can all be friends. She has even agreed that Brooke can live with her father as soon as he’s found somewhere suitable.