by Liz Byrski
Andrew closes his eyes for a moment, thinking of Linda and the shock that awaits her. It would be so easy to ignore it all and leave her to it but he wants to help her. The mess of their marriage hasn’t all been Linda’s fault. ‘Linda’s a good person, really,’ he says now, looking up at Chris. ‘We were just wrong for each other. Not at first, perhaps, but in the last few years, totally wrong. We should never have let it end like this.’
Chris puts his hand on Andrew’s arm. ‘I know, mate. I’m sorry about what’s happened for you guys, but you’ll sort something out for yourselves and for Brooke. Gerald’s illness has stirred everyone up. I’ll be glad to see Connie back – but she really needed this trip. Once she’s home I reckon we’ll all start to get ourselves back together again.’
Twenty-six
‘You should do nothing, Mum,’ Geraldine says. ‘Flora said to leave it to her. She’s the best person to deal with this, she and Connie have known each other for years. And frankly, the state you’re in this morning you can only make it worse. One minute you’re full of sympathy for Connie, and the next you want to punch her. Come on, let’s go out and get some air, a walk is what we need. No point sitting around hoping we’ll hear something,’ and she edges Bea out of the door.
‘I suppose you’re right, but I feel so useless,’ Bea says as they stroll up the street. ‘And perhaps we should be going in the opposite direction rather than towards Russell Square, because if we bump into Connie I probably will punch her. The rudeness, and the selfishness, as though she’s the only one who’s affected by all this.’ She shakes her head. ‘That’s my trip to Australia down the drain. I never wanted to meet her and I was very much on edge about it at the beginning, but she was entirely different from what I’d expected and I really liked her – and I felt that she liked me too.’
‘I’m sure she did, and still does,’ Geraldine says as they turn to walk in the opposite direction, ‘but it was a difficult situation for her.’
‘Well, I know that, it was difficult for all of us, but stomping out like that, and the way she spoke to Flora. But really it’s the way she treated you that pisses me off more than anything. None of this is your fault. It’s just a difficult situation created by Gerald. We’re all stuck in it and we should be helping each other not declaring war. Look at Flora – it was a shock for her too, but she was so thrilled to meet you, wasn’t she? I so wish she wasn’t going.’
They walk on in silence, past the small park, past a rival bookshop, the hotels, the museum, the church, the florist, and all the places that are part of Bea’s sense of Bloomsbury as her natural home. She is so hurt by and angry about Connie’s behaviour that she can’t put it out of her mind. It’s not the spoiled birthday lunch, because that had ended up being wonderful after she’d left; wonderful to sit there with her daughter, with Phil and Flora, and talk about their family, and to see Flora slowly being drawn into that. Bea could see how thrilled she was, how she could barely take her eyes off Geraldine, how much she wanted to get to know her, how she had devoured those photographs. Bea had wanted to tell Flora what Geraldine meant to her; that she’d had no family of her own until her daughter was born. She had grown up in an orphanage remembering little except the small dank room in Hackney where men came to visit her mother, and disappeared with her behind the dusty old velvet curtains and then emerged leaving money on the mantelpiece. She’d been five when her mother went out one day and didn’t come back and a few days later Bea was carted off to the orphanage. She never knew what happened to her mother, didn’t even know her name, or her father’s.
Of course Flora’s background was very different, privileged really, but from what Gerald had told her about their parents there was little love lost in that family. He had been terrified of his father, terrified of falling foul of him, of being cut off from the family, and the inheritance. And recently, when Flora had told them how he had banished her and then told their parents about her so they too cut her out of their lives, it had made complete sense to Bea.
She’d realised long ago that Gerald’s apparent confidence and sense of his own authority was rooted in a fear of his own irrelevance. He had always feared being left alone with no one to act as mirror of that image he needed to create of himself. It had taken her decades to understand that this was why he needed a woman who would support or indulge that, rather than someone like herself who would constantly challenge him or cut him down to size. Banishing Flora and then spilling the beans to their parents was Gerald’s frantic attempt to appear to be doing the right thing, to be an upright man, a responsible husband and father in their eyes. And so he had established himself firmly within the fold, effectively ensuring that the family’s wealth would flow eventually to him. For, as Bea had always known, Gerald’s priority was to maintain the social status which, at Cambridge, had been vital to his sense of his own importance. Being part of a respected and prosperous family held him together and it was essential to his future. And she understands now why he was so careful about keeping her away from his friends and family – whatever he’d promised her at the time, he’d always known that his family would never accept her. While so many of their university friends were rebelling against their parents and families, Gerald was clinging firmly to tradition as his source of strength.
Bea, on the other hand, had grown to adulthood with no family attachments and had succeeded only thanks to the insight of Mary Small, a teacher in the rather rundown East London secondary school who had seen promise in her. As Bea had prepared to be forced out into the workforce at fifteen, Miss Small had encouraged her to stay on, take her GCE exams and then complete sixth form. She was, the teacher thought, university material, and she offered Bea a home with her, to enable her to complete her education. Mary Small fed, housed, clothed and cultivated her, and grew to love her like a daughter, and that love was returned. Mary was the family Bea had never had; she dissipated her sense of aloneness, and showed her the only love she had ever known until then. Mary had died unexpectedly of a heart attack in the sixties, shortly before the death of Connie’s mother. But Gerald had shown none of the empathy or support, nor offered Bea the practical help, that he had lavished on Connie just a few months later. Mary Small didn’t count as ‘family’ in Gerald’s universe, despite the years of care and financial support, and the fact that she had left Bea everything she owned. Bea would have liked to explain to Flora that her sense of aloneness was why she had kept her baby, and used the money that Gerald gave her for an abortion to equip herself for the birth. Is it this, she wonders now, this understanding of what it means to be alone, that gives her such a sense of kinship with Flora?
‘Is it worth me staying up here another night?’ Geraldine asks, linking her arm through Bea’s. ‘Just in case Connie softens a bit and wants to meet? I can ring Robert, he won’t mind.’
Bea shrugs. ‘About the chances of Connie I’ve no idea,’ she says. ‘But I’d love it and I bet Flora would like to see you again, so if you really think Rob will be okay about it then do stay.’
‘I’ll call him while we’re having breakfast,’ Geraldine says. ‘He’ll be fine. He’s nearly as thrilled as I am that I’ve actually got an aunt as well as a mother!’
*
It’s ten to four as Flora walks down Marchmont Street on her way to Russell Square, thinking, as she so often does in this part of London, of Virginia Woolf walking these streets and of Mrs Dalloway who ‘said she would buy the flowers herself’. What an extraordinary individual Woolf was, she thinks, how completely individual, how courageous and how infuriating, and what a terrible snob. She thinks she will start re-reading Woolf. And she feels a joyful sense of liberation that she will now have the leisure to do this, that she can read the books and essays again without the constant interruptions at the hotel, or the anxiety of having to teach them. It’s a very long time since she taught literature to sixth formers, most of whom were waiting out the final torturous months of school and hankering for the wider world. Findin
g ways to hold their interest had made Flora’s passion into a chore that was only occasionally rewarded by a truly bright student who fell in love with Woolf or Henry James, George Eliot or the Brontës. But now I can read them all again, she tells herself, and it seems like luxury.
A clock chimes four as she turns into the square and she can see Connie sitting outside the café, reading a magazine. ‘Shall we meet at four?’ she had texted earlier, and Flora had replied, ‘Fine – usual place?’ So here we are, she thinks now, and heaven knows where we’ll be at the end of this conversation.
‘Have you ordered yet?’ she asks as Connie looks up.
‘A pot of tea for two and scones,’ Connie replies. ‘Okay?’
‘Perfect,’ Flora says, sitting down, anxious now about where to start. There is so much she wants to say, but her pleasure is stifled by the need to protect Connie’s feelings, and in a moment of sudden clarity she realises she resents this. She resents having to measure and moderate her words and opinions in order to accommodate Connie’s sensitivity. All those years of letters and emails, of smiling conversations through the computer screen, have been constrained by the need to watch what she said. She has tried to avoid needling Connie’s divided loyalty or challenging her descriptions and interpretations of things Gerald has done or not done. When she’d left Hobart she had vowed to herself that she would not do anything to come between them, not undermine their marriage or Connie’s view of her husband. They had a life and a family on the other side of the world and so she had become, she can now see, a repository for Connie’s confidences, a good and patient listener, never rocking that boat but increasingly less than honest in delivering her ‘outsider’s’ opinion. Perhaps, despite her good intentions, she has, in this respect, not been a good friend. Face to face she might not have held back, but the technology that allowed them such ease of connection has its own limitations; a code of conduct that Flora had felt was essential to their continuing friendship.
But she is weary of it now. Gerald is dead and she has accommodated Connie’s grief, and her post-mortem construction of him and their marriage, long enough. Underlying that is the nagging voice that always reminds her that Connie was content to let the estrangement continue, never once fighting on Flora’s behalf. Her rudeness and lack of consideration for Bea and Geraldine had shocked Flora; it had a ruthlessness about it, as though she felt no responsibility to consider anyone’s feelings but her own. And later, her refusal to accept or respect Flora’s own stake in this, to acknowledge that she was a part of both sides of the family, had been profoundly hurtful. Her behaviour had been more characteristic of Gerald than the Connie that Flora thought she knew, and it had freed Flora of any latent sense of responsibility for ‘protecting’ Connie from her own opinions. The time for accommodation has passed, she thinks, and truth, hard as it may seem, is top of the menu for this afternoon tea.
‘I’ve made a few decisions,’ Connie says as the waiter appears with the tray of tea and scones.
‘Good; wise ones, I hope,’ Flora says, and Connie looks up sharply, as though surprised that Flora might be implying that she would make an unwise decision.
They wait in silence while the waiter unloads the tray onto the table.
Tension stretches between them like a tightrope that both must negotiate if they are to meet in the middle.
‘I’m not going back to Port d’Esprit with you, Flora. I’m going to go straight home.’ Connie picks up the teapot and begins to pour.
‘I think that’s a very good idea,’ Flora says, relieved to be able to start the conversation on a supportive note.
‘You do?’
‘Yes. I think you need to go home. You had to get away when you did and now you need to go home.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’re not offended by that at least.’
Flora hesitates and then decides not to let this salvo go. ‘Why would I be offended by such a reasonable decision?’
Connie sits back and picks up her cup and saucer, sipping her tea, testing its heat. ‘Well, I think you were offended yesterday by my decision to leave The Ivy.’
‘I thought it was a selfish and hurtful thing to do, and yes, I was offended.’
‘And you obviously don’t care how hurtful the whole thing was to me.’
This is escalating faster than she had anticipated. ‘Look, Connie,’ Flora says, ‘we went through all that yesterday evening. I don’t think we need to pick over the scabs.’
‘Well, I suppose we’re never going to agree about that; anyway, it’s over now, so we’ll just have to put it behind us. I’ve managed to change my flights. I’ll be leaving late on Tuesday.’
Flora nods. ‘Well, I’m sure they’ll all be glad to see you back again.’
‘The school holidays start in a couple of weeks, so Brooke can come and stay.’ She pauses. ‘I guess you’ll head off back to Port d’Esprit and then organise your flight over to Hobart? I hope it won’t take you too long.’
Flora clears her throat. ‘Well, I’ve got some news too, which means it’ll be a while before I can get over for a visit.’ She looks up at Connie. ‘I rang Phillip this morning and told him I’d decided to take the job. He was delighted. I’ll be starting there sometime in June, as soon as I’ve sorted things out with Suzanne and found somewhere to live.’
‘The job? But you said you’d come to Hobart.’
‘And I will,’ Flora says. ‘I’d love to, but it will have to be later in the year, when Phillip and Bea and I have organised when each of us can go away.’
‘But you can’t,’ Connie says, her face white with shock. ‘You said you’d come sooner, come and live with me. You were going to meet up with Denise again. I told you, the house is plenty big enough for both of us, or you and Denise might …’
‘Hang on, Con,’ Flora says, holding up her hands. ‘I said I’d have a holiday in Hobart and think about the future, and I will come for a holiday, but I’ve decided about the future now. I’d certainly like to see Denise but I don’t have any urge to rekindle the relationship with her after all these years, and I never ever said I was going to live there with you.’
‘But it’s your home, you were born there,’ Connie says, a high colour developing now on her cheeks. ‘I thought that’s how it would be. I mean, it’s okay for you to come back now … now that Gerald has gone.’
‘Connie, I was only five years old when we left Hobart, and since then I’ve only spent a rather uncomfortable eighteen months there, more than thirty years ago. England is my home – England and France, a bit of both. I want to spend time with you and to meet the rest of the family, but I could never live there again, not now. Gerald robbed me of that possibility years ago, and I haven’t been waiting for him to die so that I could go back. It’s too late now.’
‘But you said …’
‘I said I would come for a holiday while I made up my mind what to do. Well, I’ve made up my mind now and I’d still like to visit.’
‘You’re staying here because of them,’ Connie says angrily, ‘Bea and her daughter. I suppose you think they’re your family too.’
‘Well, they are. I do want to meet Geraldine’s husband and her children, and they’ve invited me down to Cornwall to do that. But it’s not just that. I need an income and I can earn it here. I’ll enjoy working with Phillip and Bea, I belong here, Connie, just as you belong in Hobart.’
Connie is silent for a moment, shaking her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re being so selfish,’ she says.
Flora can’t resist a slight laugh at this. ‘I’m being selfish, am I? Well, okay, if that’s how you want to see it. But try to understand what this is like for me. For years I’ve had no family, now, suddenly, I have two – yours and Geraldine’s – and I hope to make the most of both of them.’
‘So when will you come?’
‘As I said, I’m not sure yet, probably quite a bit later in the year. Have you decided what you’re going to tell Andrew and Kerry about all this?
’
Connie’s eyes open wide, and she looks at Flora in amazement. ‘I told you yesterday, I won’t be telling them anything at all. It’s nothing to do with them.’
Flora is so shocked that as she opens her mouth to speak she catches her breath and has a spasm of coughing. ‘You have to tell them,’ she says, her eyes still watering from the cough. ‘Geraldine is their half-sister, they have a right to know. They’d want to know.’
‘Never,’ Connie says. ‘They must never know. This is nothing whatsoever to do with my family, Flora.’
Flora sits very still staring at her across the table. This is a side of Connie that she had not seen until yesterday, a side she doesn’t like at all. Is this who she really is now, Flora wonders, this rigid, self-righteous person who wants everything her own way? It’s as though she’s channelling Gerald. How can she have convinced herself that Flora would live there? How can she not see the damage she is about to do? ‘So, effectively, you will do to Geraldine what Gerald did to me – pull up the drawbridge and cut her off from that side of her family?’
‘It’s not the same,’ Connie says.
‘Why not? Explain it to me.’
‘I shouldn’t have to. And, Flora, you are not to tell them either, not in an email nor when you come to visit. Not ever, do you understand?’
Flora stares at Connie, thinking that despite the years of their friendship there is so little that she knows of who she is now.
‘I can’t agree to that,’ she says. ‘I won’t be involved in that sort of deception. Gerald’s behaviour damaged my life, Connie. It isolated me, ruptured our friendship, and cut me off from my family. Have you ever stopped to think how hard it has been for me? And the hardest part was not about Gerald but about you – the fact that you never fought for me. You just gave in and went along with Gerald’s cruelty and selfishness. I have struggled to get past this and forgive you, Connie; it wasn’t easy but I got there in the end. Now you’re asking me to be part of something equally dishonest and selfish, and I won’t. I won’t meet your family while hiding this, so I won’t be heading your way until I can be completely honest and open with Kerry and Andrew about Geraldine and her family.’
