The Partridge and the Pelican

by Rachel Crowther

  The door opened without a sound. In the dark, Olivia could just make out Eve’s shape under the covers. A few strands of her hair were spread across the pillow, trailing over the edge of the bed. For a minute, maybe longer, Olivia stood and watched the gentle movement of the sheets shadowing Eve’s breathing, then slowly, carefully, she shut the door behind her and crossed the room. Eve murmured as she lifted the edge of the sheet. Olivia slipped in beside her, curling around the crescent of Eve’s back, and shut her eyes.

  She could tell, now, that Eve was awake. Eve must have heard the comings and goings, the footsteps on the stairs; she must know that Olivia had been with James. Olivia could feel nothing now about the temptation he had offered or the way she had responded, but she knew she and Eve would never talk about it. After all that had happened, speech was too dangerous, too absolute.

  Eve was warm, her body a simple comfort in the dark. A remedy, Olivia thought, for the tangle in her head. The night made things different, replacing fact and logic with its own truths. She could hear Eve’s breath, and feel the swell and fall of her ribcage against her own. She could smell Eve’s familiar smell, taste the nip of salt in her hair, perhaps even a hint of petrol to squeeze her heart tight with the memory of that afternoon.

  Just now, though, just for the moment, guilt and betrayal and complicity melted away as she and Eve lay pressed together, like twins placed in the same cot to remind them of the womb. They could console each other in a way they would never be able to again, without words and without any assurance for the future. As the first glimmer of dawn seeped into the sky, Olivia was conscious of a paradox circling her tired brain. She felt closer to Eve, in the depths of this strange night, than she had ever felt before, but she knew this was the end for them.

  Chapter 6

  2008

  Sarah Brewster had planned to leave work early on Friday afternoon to miss the worst of the rush hour on the M25. She’d blocked out her last two appointments, but it was always the same, she thought, as she edged along the ring road beside cars full of families heading off for the weekend: something always came up when she was in a hurry. She sighed; and then, although there was no one to observe either gesture, smiled slightly in compensation. Half an hour either way wouldn’t matter to her father, she knew that, and she wouldn’t tell him things had gone awry. She liked to imagine herself in his eyes as a swan, not in beauty but serene competence, her arrival an effortless glissade.

  Her father had just been discharged from hospital after a knee operation. He was used to fending for himself, but Sarah had insisted that convalescence required a daughter’s attention. There was the wedding to talk about, in any case: she’d come prepared to ask her father’s opinion about certain details, and to accept his contribution to the cost of the festivities.

  Guy felt the awkwardness of this more than she did.

  “We can pay for the wedding ourselves,” he’d said, the week before. “We’re hardly impoverished teenagers.”

  “Of course we could,” Sarah had replied, “but he’d like to help us. He’s always expected to.”

  Guy had looked at her with that quizzical expression he had, poised between admiration and bewilderment, then he’d smiled. “The father-of-the-bride.”

  “That’s how he sees it.” Sarah had smiled too, relieved that further explanation wasn’t needed; that they didn’t have to probe the things that weren’t quite as expected. “I am his only daughter.”

  And Guy had two parents still, she might have added, both in perfect health and requiring as little from their son as they must have done when they sent Guy off to boarding school at eight. The Downies’ form of ageing seemed to involve only a gradual desiccation, like the quinces her mother used to lay out on dishes before Christmas. There had been few upheavals in their lives, certainly no deaths. Sarah frowned: funny how things came back to you. The quince tree had gone long ago, felled by the 1987 storms, but she could still remember the smell of the fruit, sickly-sweet and pungent, turning slowly to rot.

  The traffic filtered onto the motorway at last, and Sarah flicked on the radio. Guy had left it tuned to Classic FM, and she recognised the overture to Dido and Aeneas. They’d done it at school, years ago. As she followed the M40 towards London, the sun low enough now to flood the car with light, she listened to the first scene unfolding.

  “Shake the cloud from off your brow, Fate your wishes does allow …”

  Olivia Conafray had been Dido, the big surprise of the production. Everyone had assumed Eve or Julia would get the part, but the director had been right. Who’d have guessed that shy Olivia was capable of such passion?

  “Ah! Belinda, I am press’d with torment not to be confess’d …”

  Sarah had envied Olivia that revelation, although she’d been pleased enough to be in the chorus herself. She’d always been an optimist, she thought, always tried to make the best of things. She liked people to know this about her, to understand that she had a capacity for happiness. She wasn’t a person to be pitied. She was as content at this moment, for example, as any bride-to-be, even if most of her friends had been married ten – or even twenty – years earlier. She had a sense that her life was balanced between two worlds, and there was pleasure to be had, a tantalising sort of extended suspense, from the no man’s land between the two. Journeying time, she thought. She’d always liked travelling; the way long train journeys were an adventure in themselves, sometimes trumping the attractions of the final destination. Perhaps that’s why she’d settled on walking tours as the perfect holiday: more travelling than arrival.

  The clocks didn’t go back for several weeks yet and it was still twilight when Sarah turned up Church Lane and in through the narrow gateway. She felt a familiar lurch, and in its wake a murmur of reassurance, almost instinctive by now. She’d never have imagined that her mother’s absence could be more complicated than her presence; certainly not for so long.

  She glanced in the mirror before she opened the car door, pushing her fringe back off her face for a moment. Her haircut hadn’t altered since she left school: there was the fringe, the same slightly wayward bob, in every photograph. But Sarah had the impression that something had changed recently in her reflection, in the way she saw herself. Perhaps she looked a little younger, although she didn’t deceive herself that she’d pass for eighteen any more. Perhaps there was a bridal glow to her complexion, the kind of transformation you didn’t think would actually happen. She frowned, then wrinkled her nose in self-parody. Perhaps she’d just spent more time looking in mirrors, these last few months.

  Her father opened the front door before she reached it.

  “Hello, Dad.” Sarah hugged him. There was so little of him these days: he wasn’t so much desiccating as folding in on himself. “Up and about, I see.”

  Her father lifted a feathery eyebrow, indicating the walking stick in his right hand. “Under orders from one of your tribe.”

  He always assumed physiotherapists the world over were in league. It was rather sweet, Sarah thought – though he knew perfectly well she’d retrained as an osteopath several years ago.

  “Not my tribe any more,” she said.

  He looked at her quizzically, and she wished she’d suppressed the urge to set him right. He looked fragile, and pleased to see her: what did it matter?

  “Leave all that,” she said, as he started towards the car. “You’re not supposed to lift.”

  “Nice car,” he said, patting the flank of the vintage MG. “How long have you had this one?”

  Her father had resisted any suggestion of moving house in the years after her mother’s death. Sarah understood that his reasons were pragmatic: she could see the attraction of familiar surroundings, familiar neighbours. He’d lived in the same village for forty years, and he couldn’t see the point of starting again somewhere new. It had reached the point where it felt disloyal to raise the matter again, so Sarah had stopped.

  “I only use the rooms I need,” he’d say
, when he caught her opening doors, peering into the shrouded darkness. “Dust off the rest when people visit.”

  The house had accommodated itself to this arrangement; it had a sleepy air, these days. Like a castle in a fairy story, her brother Andrew had said on the phone last time they spoke, hibernating around him. It was all very well for Andrew, three thousand miles away in Canada: when had he last seen the guttering?

  Sarah glanced down the side of the house as she lifted her case out of the boot. Her mother’s garden had been progressively simplified over the last decade, and she noticed that another border had been replaced with lawn since her last visit. Her father had never been much of a gardener; Sarah certainly hadn’t inherited her interest in growing things from him. The familiar yew hedges were still there, though, and the soaring hornbeam where the swing had once hung. Across the front of the house the clematis Arabella was in full bloom, its blue flowers almost fluorescent in the dusk. Sarah plucked a couple of dead heads as she passed and rolled them between her fingers. They’d fascinated her as a child, the dry, papery parcels still unexpectedly flush with sap, transformed, when you crushed them, into something with the consistency of a slug.

  Her father preceded her down the hall, his ponderous convalescent gait and the tap of his stick on the flagstones giving the impression of a ceremonial progress.

  “I’d have liked some of those plants from the bottom bed,” Sarah said. “The ceanothus, or the lacecap hydrangea. I remember that being planted.”

  Her father didn’t turn round. “I thought you shared the garden?” he said. “Don’t they do it for you, the developers or what have you?”

  Sarah knew he couldn’t understand why she’d wanted a brand new flat. A new flat and an old car: the wrong way round, in his view.

  “They could have put in a couple of shrubs,” she said. “There’s lots of space.”

  “Well, maybe we can find something else for you to take back.”

  “No need,” Sarah said. Another mistake. “Don’t get too dependent on the stick, by the way. Two weeks, tops.”

  Her father waved it at her as she started up the stairs. “Don’t fret. I’m under an excellent woman, almost as competent as you.”

  And he was almost as stubborn as her, Sarah reflected, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder to negotiate the bend in the staircase. The thought eased the jolt she’d felt when she saw him in the doorway, the recognition of his frailty.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” she said. “I’ve brought veg from the allotment.”

  “Cup of tea?”

  “Gin, if you’ve got it. I’m dying for a drink.”

  Sarah’s recollection of her childhood had shifted since her mother’s death. Inevitably, she thought; though there was some deliberate effort involved, too. As she climbed to her old room at the top of the house, past a row of black and white photographs of the Sussex countryside, she remembered the walks on the Downs and chilly outings to the seaside when her father had explained the shapes of hills and clouds and rivers, the moulding of the landscape over more years than she could comprehend. Her father had taught geography at the boys’ boarding school in the next town, the counterpart of the girls’ school where Sarah had been a day pupil. He’d worked long hours, leaving her mother to manage the children’s lives during term-time, but Sarah could see herself now at eight or ten, listening to his bedtime stories about volcanoes and earthquakes and glaciers, falling asleep with her globe beside her bed.

  It wasn’t that she’d admired her father particularly, or wanted to be close to him: that prerogative had lain with her mother. She knew her memory was slippery and complicated, but she thought now that she’d understood her father better than her mother, back then. She’d known what mattered to him, recognised that his life was shaped by his interest in the world around him; she’d seen the value of not relying on other people for happiness. Not entirely, anyway. Sarah might have followed in his footsteps, but her mother had sided with her headmistress in favouring what they called ‘hard science’. Together they plotted a career in medicine, and Sarah accepted their lead. But her A levels weren’t good enough for medical school.

  “Too much sport,” her mother had said, more than once, though she’d been pleased enough to come and watch her gawky daughter in action on the games pitch. Sarah had opted for physiotherapy instead. “A good choice for a girl who wants a family,” the headmistress had told Sarah’s parents briskly, when she shook their hands on Speech Day. Sarah had liked the idea of physio – she’d always had a leaning towards the practical – but she knew she’d disappointed her mother.

  After supper her father made camomile tea.

  “Will you have some?” he asked. “It’s wonderful stuff. Helps you sleep.”

  The packet had come from Fortnum’s, Sarah noticed. He must get it sent from London. She started to explain that it was available in supermarkets, probably even his local Londis, but this time she stopped herself. Let him have his pride in his exotic discovery, his need to be competent: if she questioned that, where might it end?

  “Let’s take it through,” she said. “I’ve brought some bits and pieces to show you. Wedding stuff.”

  Sarah caught the whiff of dead air as she opened the door to the sitting room. The furnishings hadn’t changed for decades, and the garish 1970s pattern on the sofas and curtains seemed out of keeping, now, with her father’s quiet existence. Sarah plumped cushions and turned on lamps, dispelling the shadows. At least there wasn’t too much dust, she noticed.

  “Does Mrs Henderson still come?” she asked.

  “Stopped in the summer. I’ve got another girl, though.” Her father settled in an armchair by the empty fireplace with an exhalation of relief.

  “Girl?”

  “Au pair. Nice girl. Lives with the Morrisons. Does a few hours for me on the side.”

  And would be moving on before long, presumably. But Sarah could imagine her father making conversation with a chirpy Croatian; an improvement on stolid Mrs Henderson, perhaps.

  “Keeps me amused,” said her father, as though he’d read her mind.

  Sarah laughed, the characteristic chirrup that had always seemed too frivolous for her, then she took a sheaf of paper out of a folder.

  “I’m making the dress, you know,” she said. “And the cake.”

  Her father’s eyebrow lifted as he looked half at her, half at the piece of paper she handed him. “Have you got anyone to help you?” he asked. “Apart from, I mean …”

  He made a little fuss over tapping the paper flat. What had he been going to say, Sarah wondered? Apart from Guy, whom he assumed to have a limited interest in wedding preparations? Apart from her mother? Her mother hadn’t been mentioned between them since Sarah had announced her engagement. Sarah was grateful, but it occurred to her now that it was an oddity, a difficulty that would have to be faced. There would have to be a conversation, she thought; but not this time. Not yet. If growing up had been more complicated than it looked in their family, the same was true of grieving. It had turned out to be hard to share either the grief or the complications.

  “Have I left anyone out?” she asked, glancing at the guest list in his hand. “I wondered about the Phillipses – are you still in touch?”

  “We needn’t ask them,” her father said. “They won’t expect it.”

  Sarah frowned. “I’ve known the Phillipses since I was tiny,” she said. “I’d like to ask them.”

  Her father smiled, unflustered. “As you wish. I’m sure they’d be delighted. Cyril’s a little doddery these days, but he is eighty-five.”

  “Is he really?”

  Sarah remembered helping Cyril Phillips change a tyre on his Deux Chevaux in the middle of a summer lunch party: he hadn’t laughed at her interest in cars. She still thought of them in their forties, her parents’ friends, frozen at a particular stage, but of course it was her friends who were that age now. Coming home threw out her perspective. Her eyes flicked across to the phot
ographs on the piano: her mother as a young woman, radiant in sixties chic, and the snapshots of her brother’s children, less faded than the rest. Her father followed her gaze, his eyes dwelling for a few moments on the photographs and then returning to his daughter. Sarah had the impression that if they’d been sitting closer he would have taken her hand.

  “You deserve to be happy,” he said.

  Sarah smiled; a smile that concealed, just for a second, a flash of terror.

  “And Guy is a treasure,” he went on, and this time Sarah felt a surge of tears. The awkwardness with which her father said such things made them more touching. The cost was clear to her, the effort that went into selecting the words.

  “Thank you,” she said. “He’s rather like you.”

  She hadn’t known she was going to say this, but as she heard the words it struck her that they were true. Her father had only met Guy twice, not because she’d kept them apart but because it had been, to coin a term, a whirlwind romance: she’d only known Guy for six months herself. But she was sure they’d get on, her father and her fiancé, and the thought pleased her more than she expected.

  Sarah always slept in her old room when she came home. It ought to smell fusty, shut up for months on end, but instead it had preserved a dry, sweet scent that evoked in her mind hot milk and Enid Blyton and the sticky nylon sheets her mother had favoured when she was little. When she was tucked up in this bed, with its pronounced dip and the metal rails at each end, the world shrank to the size of childhood.

  As she folded her clothes and laid them on the pine chest that held the last of her old toys, Sarah could hear her father moving about down below, the creak of the floorboard on the landing that had always alerted the household when anyone was up in the night. Would her children sleep up here one day, she wondered? She didn’t often let herself think about the possibility of children, but here, now, alone, the hope and the doubt caught her off guard. She knew what the prospects were: she’d never been one to wait and see. She knew how many women conceived spontaneously at forty-three and which fertility clinics offered IVF to someone her age; she’d even made preliminary enquiries about adoption. She hadn’t talked to anyone about it, though, neither the probabilities nor what she felt about them. Not her father; not even Guy, just yet. It would take a while, she thought, settling into the familiar mattress and edging her weight away from the broken spring on the left, to throw off the habit of keeping her own counsel.