Family Secrets

by Liz Byrski

  ‘I am not,’ Donna says, swigging more vodka. ‘He rubbed up against me, in the hall. And then he felt my arse as I walked off. It’s true, but I don’t care if you don’t believe it.’

  Brooke does believe it, but she can also see now that Donna is totally off her head. ‘Did Danny give you something when we got off the bus?’

  Donna grins. ‘He might have. What if he did? Who wants to know?’

  ‘I do. What’ve you taken?’

  ‘Just half a little pill. Want some, Brookie?’

  ‘No!’ She reaches out to grab the vodka bottle just as Donna whisks it away, and somehow it slips between their hands and smashes onto the kitchen tiles.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Brooke shouts, and thinks she sounds just like her mother.

  ‘Oooh, now look what you’ve done,’ Donna mimics, ‘now look what you’ve done. What’re you going to do, Brookie baby, report me to your dad?’

  ‘Yes, actually, I am,’ Brooke says, and she crosses to the cupboard under the sink and pulls out a bucket.

  ‘See if I care.’

  ‘Why don’t you just piss off, Donna,’ Brooke says. ‘Piss off and take your stupid drugs and that gross silver anorak with you. Go and see your mate Danny Philpot in that grotesque house. I bet you like that, and the big four wheel drive, and the Lexus, and his mum’s Beemer. His dad’s loaded, go and drink his vodka.’

  ‘Loaded is right,’ Donna says, rubbing vodka off her legs with a tissue. ‘It’s a whole lot more fun there than here in a stinky old cottage. Danny’s dad always has stuff in the house, anything you want he’s got it.’ She struts out of the kitchen and picks up her backpack from where she dropped it, just inside the front door.

  ‘The Man in Black goes there too, that’s where he gets his gear. He’s doing Danny’s sister; she’s only just eighteen. Did you know that? Does your mum know that? And by the way, I hate this house. It’s like some old granny’s place, and just as boring as you are. Boring Brooke, that’s what they call you, the cat that walks alone, and you think that’s kinda nice? You’re tragic, Brooke, you really are, a tragic stuck-up cow.’ And she grabs the silver anorak and starts twirling it around her head, slings her backpack over her other shoulder. ‘I’m off – too dreary here, Miss Tragic.’ And she opens the front door and walks off down the path and out of the gate into the street. ‘Tragic!’ she yells from the pavement, and heads off in the direction of the Philpot house, still waving the anorak and chanting over and over again. ‘Tragic, tragic, Brooke is tragic.’

  Brooke stands by the window, forcing herself not to cry, watching until Donna is out of sight. She thinks Donna looks stupid in those gross boots – in fact she always looks a wreck.

  ‘That girl really needs some fashion advice,’ Linda had said some months ago, and at the time Brooke had thought it mean and felt hurt on Donna’s behalf. But she knows it’s true. The other girls laugh at Donna behind her back and criticise her tacky clothes and cheap jewellery, and Donna hasn’t a clue. Brooke can’t remember now, how or why they ever became friends. They don’t have much in common, there are other girls at school that Brooke likes much better and whom she goes out with sometimes. She doesn’t have a BFF and doesn’t want one. One day BFFs are practically in love with each other and a couple of days later they’re slagging each other off. It was Donna who had pursued Brooke and it was okay having her around at first, but that’s all changed since Danny came on the scene.

  Brooke leaves the window, goes into the hall to close the front door and then to the kitchen where she gathers up the broken glass, wraps it in an old newspaper and then mops up the spilled vodka with an old towel. Then she fills the bucket with water and floor cleaner and washes the floor. Back in her own room she throws herself on the bed. She had been longing to move in here and they had spent the whole weekend organising it, and making it feel like home.

  ‘Happy now, Brooke?’ Andrew had asked.

  She’d nodded, her mouth full of takeaway pizza. ‘Very,’ she’d managed, and carried on chewing. ‘I love it here, Dad. I don’t have to go back to the house again, do I?’

  Andrew had wiped his mouth with a paper serviette. ‘You’ll want to go and see Mum, won’t you?’

  ‘Only if he’s not there.’

  ‘Well, he lives there now, so you are going to see him sometimes, Brooke.’

  She shook her head furiously. ‘Why can’t Mum come here? Or I can go to the gallery.’

  ‘But won’t you want to stay with her sometimes?’

  ‘Not if he’s there. I can’t, Dad, honestly I can’t. Please don’t make me. Mum could stay here.’

  Andrew had started to gather up the pizza box and crumpled serviettes.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘your mum’s going up to Singapore shortly. When she comes back we’ll ask her over, cook her a meal and we can sit down together, the three of us, and work out a plan. How does that sound?’

  It had sounded pretty hopeless to Brooke but she could see that he was trying to find a way to sort things out and stay friendly with her mother. ‘Okay, but I’m not going to the house.’

  ‘Wait and see what she’s got to say,’ Andrew had said.

  Lying on her bed now, gazing up at the ceiling and the neat round shapes of the spotlights embedded in it, Brooke feels as though something has been spoiled. From the minute Donna stepped inside it was as though she was chipping away at it and at Brooke’s pleasure in it. A bank of dark cloud passes in front of the remains of the sun, turning the light in her bedroom grey and dusky. Everywhere is completely quiet; it was always quiet at this time of day in the other house, before her parents got home. But this is a different sort of quiet. She reaches for her iPod, whizzes through her playlists, selects one and lies back again, closing her eyes. But the music doesn’t help; tears ooze from the corners of her eyes and trickle down the sides of her face onto her pillow. The clock by her bed says it’s ten to five, and she rolls over onto her side, picks up her phone and dials Andrew’s number at work. The call goes straight to message bank and she waits for the beep.

  ‘It’s me, Dad. Just wondering when you’ll be home. I can make something for tea. Ring me when you get this message.’

  He’d said this morning that he’d be home about seven-thirty, but she feels a desperate need to talk to someone. She stares at the phone debating whether or not to ring her mother, but what can she say? Just ringing for a chat? Tell her about the house? But now that Donna has told her this gross stuff about Zachary, Brooke feels as though she has a flashing light on her that will travel through the phone to her mother. There’s no way she can tell her mum or her dad, but she can’t say nothing either. The weight of it presses down on Brooke as though a great stone is crushing her. All the time she was living in the house with the two of them she was furiously angry with her mum. But now, in this new place, so different from the one where she has lived for as long as she can remember, everything feels strange and lonely.

  Brooke dials her mum’s number. It goes to message bank. She hesitates. ‘Hi, Mum, it’s me. Just ringing to say hello … um … well, the house is great, I think you’ll like it now we’ve got all the stuff in it and everything. My room is mega good. Anyway, ring me and I’ll tell you about it.’

  She hangs up, listening to the huge, unbearable silence before resorting once more to the phone. It’s early morning in England so she hits the speed dial for Connie and waits. It takes ages, ages of international silence. Nothing happens, so she takes the phone away from her ear to redial, but the message on the screen tells her she’s out of credit. She can’t hold back the tears now, and she gets up off the bed and runs out into the kitchen to the phone on the wall, but when she picks up the receiver she finds the line is dead. Getting it connected is still one of the unticked items on the list of things to do. Brooke hangs up the receiver and slides slowly down the wall to sit on the floor. She feels as though everything that matters has been taken away from her. She longs to be little again, to be
the small, special person surrounded by lots of grown-ups; the precious centrepiece of a big family, safe, treasured and loved. But all that has gone, evaporated, starting with her grandfather disappearing into his sickness and taking parts of everyone else along with him. Brooke folds her arms across her knees and rests her head on them and sits there on the quarry tiled floor, cold and still as dusk deepens into darkness, and stays there until she hears the sound of Andrew’s key in the door.

  Twenty

  The weather has changed. Yesterday they strolled in glorious sunshine among the displays at the Chelsea Flower Show and it had seemed that the changing seasons might just as well not exist and that plants from every possible place from the tropics, to the world’s coldest, most hostile climates, were at home there. But it was the English wildflower garden that had most enchanted Connie. Tucked into a corner against a hedge heavy with May blossom, flowers that would normally bloom at different times throughout at least nine months of the year flourished side by side: snowdrops alongside bluebells, wild orchids beside primroses, crocus beside dog roses and violets, narcissus and forget-me-nots, and so many more that Connie could no longer name. Nearby, water tumbled over mossy rocks into a sparkling pool where silvery fish darted beneath the waterlilies. It had seemed impossible that they were in the heart of London.

  Flora had bought sandwiches from the café and they had sat eating them on a bench among the wildflowers. Connie was transported back to the past again, just as she had been in the Enchanted Place, and later on the seafront at Eastbourne, where the white crested waves had crashed onto the stony beach behind her and geraniums, marigolds and pansies bloomed in symmetrical patterns in the manicured beds that divided the street from the promenade. She had not anticipated that the most evocative and moving moments on this trip would come, not from gazing at the house where she once lived, or strolling with Flora in the grounds of the school where their friendship was forged, but simply from nature. From the mown grass to which she woke on her first morning, to the tangles of cow parsley where they had stopped to walk on the South Downs, the purple heather of Ashdown Forest, and the unique, earthy scent of the wallflowers in the beds at the top of The Mall near Buckingham Palace. It is the sights and smells of nature that have transported her into the deepest recesses of memory.

  ‘I’m awash with nostalgic pleasure,’ she had told Flora yesterday as a string quintet in a corner of the wildflower garden played a selection of traditional songs. ‘Right now I could stay here forever.’

  But this morning they woke to overcast skies that soon delivered heavy rain and Connie had made her way by bus to the National Portrait Gallery, while Flora set off in the opposite direction to visit an old friend in Clapham. It’s still raining now as she opens her umbrella, crosses the street from the Gallery and runs up the steps to St Martin’s-in-the-Field where she waits, watching people hurrying across Trafalgar Square, heads down, hands in their pockets or clinging on to umbrellas buffeted by the wind.

  Phillip, hovering on the opposite pavement, waiting for the lights to change, makes a run for it, jumping the stream of water surging along the gutter.

  ‘So sorry, Connie,’ he says, joining her on the steps. ‘Only just made it.’ And together they join the disparate group heading inside for the free concert.

  The pews at the front are full and Connie is about to slip into one near the back when Phillip grasps her elbow and draws her into a small stall at the side.

  ‘We can have this to ourselves,’ he says. ‘Most people don’t seem to like sitting in them but I love it – it feels like a private box at the opera. Sorry I wasn’t able to manage that for you, by the way.’

  ‘The seats were wonderful,’ Connie says. ‘It was such a lovely evening, one I’ll always remember.’

  ‘Me too,’ he says, slipping out of his raincoat as the musicians file in from the side door to take their places. ‘I’ve heard this group here before,’ he whispers. ‘They’re splendid – students all of them – and they usually play with a wonderful young soprano. Look, here she comes.’

  The young woman, dressed like the others in black, takes her place at the centre, facing down the aisle. She looks tense, Connie thinks, remembering the thrill but also the terror of performance and the awkward sense of intimacy and vulnerability when the audience is comparatively close without the separating height and distance of a stage. The singer waits, focused, as the musicians settle into position. Her hands are clasped at her waist, her corn gold hair pulled back into a neat bun at the back of her neck. Despite the nerves there is something serene and somehow timeless about her. Connie stares intently, remembering a day like this, a plain black dress, her own hair piled more elaborately on top of her head, and a sea of faces in front of her. It was a Sunday afternoon concert in Canterbury Cathedral and the senior student who was scheduled to sing solo had developed the flu. Connie relives the anticipation of waiting – the tension in her chest, the effort to relax while remaining poised and alert – as this young woman waits now, for her cue, and the moment when she must become the music.

  The audience is still now, no fidgeting, not a cough or a whisper, while they wait, men in suits, young women on their lunch breaks, hikers with backpacks, elderly Americans in plaid trousers and plastic macs, Japanese tourists, and a couple of street dwellers huddled in a similar nook on the opposite side of the church, escaping the rain. Huge white candles flicker in black iron holders on each side of the musicians, and behind them diffused white light pours through the triple-arched windows above the altar mixing to a softer hue with the golden light from the huge chandeliers suspended from the creamy domes of the ceiling.

  Connie is captivated by the restrained elegance of the church, and the apparent composure of the young soprano. She hasn’t looked at the program but as the first notes of ‘Musetta’s Waltz’ float up from the instruments she gasps, putting her hand over her mouth, waiting for the first familiar words which will follow. She sees the singer’s body change in readiness, the measuring of the breath. And then it happens, her voice floats out, perfect in tone and volume. Confident and with the promise of incredible range, it fills the church with its magic.

  Quando me’n vo’

  Quando me’n vo’ soletta per la via

  Connie’s heart and mind sing with her. Once again she too is the young soprano, full of ambition, high on adrenaline, all fear evaporating as her voice carries her into every corner of that cathedral, just as this singer’s voice fills St Martins on this wet and chilly May day forty years later. She relaxes now, sitting back on the bench, tears running uncontrollably down her cheeks, transported back in time by the beauty of the voice and the music, back to that first solo performance, when her future had stretched ahead of her like a broad path beckoning her on through fields of wildflowers.

  Phillip glances at her with concern. He reaches out and takes her hand in his, squeezes it, and she grips his in return, holding on as though to a lifebelt. And for the next forty-five minutes, through ‘Songs of the Auvergne’, ‘The Jewel Song’ from Faust, ‘The Song to the Moon’, and more, she holds on without letting go, even at the end, when the soprano and the musicians take their bows to rapturous applause, and the audience rises raggedly to its feet, coats are dragged on and bags picked up, and they shuffle softly down the aisles towards the exit, infused with the magic of the music. But still she sits in silence, in remembrance and a strange sort of grief, and Phillip sits with her.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says eventually, brushing some tears away. ‘I needed it to be really over.’ And he nods and takes her arm and suggests that they should make a move, perhaps get something to eat in the crypt café. And as they step outside Connie draws deeply on the damp air, exhausted by her own total absorption in the performance and the emotional toll it has taken on her. The rain has cleared now and Phillip steers her to the circular glass lift that takes them down to the crypt, where he leaves her at a table while he collects bowls of soup, a plate of crusty bread and tw
o glasses of red wine from the counter.

  ‘Food for the soul, I hope,’ he says, unloading the tray. ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Exhausted and a bit wobbly,’ she says.

  ‘I thought you might be reliving something.’

  She tells him about Canterbury Cathedral. ‘I couldn’t believe my luck. I was horribly nervous, it was my first solo public performance.’

  ‘What did you sing?’

  ‘“Musetta’s Waltz”,’ she says, smiling, ‘and “The Song to the Moon”, and then “Danny Boy” and the “Twenty-third Psalm”. It was terrifying and wonderful all at the same time.’

  ‘And you were wonderful?’

  ‘Apparently I was,’ she says, blushing. ‘So I was told. It was pretty amazing.’

  ‘Was your mother there to hear you?’

  ‘No, it was the year after she died. Gerald was there though.’

  Phillip looks up warily from his soup. ‘And he thought you were wonderful?’

  Connie is silent for a moment. She smiles, and then begins to laugh.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Gerald thought it was a pretty good performance, but he felt my voice and interpretation were “somewhat immature” – as if he would have had any idea what he was talking about.’

  Phillip has stopped eating. ‘So how did that feel?’

  ‘Pretty awful. It was the high spot of my life as a music student and everyone had been telling me how well I’d done. He waited ’til we’d left the others to say it. I think now that he didn’t want to say anything in front of people who actually knew what they were talking about. Foolishly I believed him rather than them. It was the turning point. My heart was never in it in quite the same way after that.’

  Phillip shakes his head. ‘I wish I’d known. I might have knocked some sense into him.’

  Connie laughs again. ‘Probably not. You know Gerald – he never entertained the idea that he might be wrong about something. Years later when I told him that I still resented the way he’d talked me out of my career, he said, “But we’ve been happy, haven’t we? You’ve been happy?” And of course he was right – I had.’