‘Gosh, they’re certainly very warm. Thank you, darling.’
‘I knew you’d love them.’ Roger smiled. ‘We’ll be snug as two bugs in a rug.’
‘Yes, won’t we?’ Eleanor shucked off the slippers with what she hoped didn’t seem like unseemly haste. Seeing Roger’s face, she said, ‘I’ll just give them a spray with fabric protector… while I think of it.’ She picked them up firmly, trying not to look as if she were removing two large turds, and bustled out towards the kitchen.
‘Good thinking. And you don’t mind about not having jewellery this year, darling?’ Roger called out.
Normally, he gave her a necklace or earrings that she had picked out herself – something quietly elegant and unfussy, something Eleanorish. This year, as well as the perfume and the slippers, he had bought a Joint Membership of the National Trust for them both, the perfect gift to remind a woman of forty-seven that she was getting older and had better set aside any thoughts of wild carousing and instead turn her mind to the exploration of the stately homes and enviable gardens of England. But, after all, they did enjoy visiting National Trust properties, so really, it was a very good choice. And the perfume was lovely. And the slippers were certainly intended as a kind thought.
Perhaps the problem was partly in having an autumn birthday? In October, no one thought to buy you a chiffon scarf or a silky camisole. Everything was woolly or fleecy or snuggly; all presents were, at heart, roundy corners at this time of year, in the run-up to the full-on chunky knitwear-fest of Christmas. It wasn’t that Eleanor really wanted to receive scarlet satin lingerie; she would never have worn anything so obvious, and scarlet would have made her look horribly washed out. It was just that, sometimes, it would be nice to think that the person you lived with, had lived with for twenty-one years of marriage, might still – even for a mad, impulsive moment – think of you that way, as a vibrant, passionate woman. Even if you didn’t see yourself that way, even if you never had. And, when she had first seen the plump tissue parcel, clearly not jewellery, hadn’t she thought for a second or two that it would be something silky – or lacy – or maybe a velvet scarf in burgundy or purple, the colour of ripe plums?
It was highly possible that she might not have heard Roger’s enquiry about whether she minded not having jewellery. The acoustics were often unreliable in this house, so that at times one simply failed to catch what the other person was saying.
She placed the slippers in the hall closet.
‘Oh, and I said I’d pop over to see my father,’ Eleanor said as she came back in. ‘He has a present for me.’
‘Must you go today?’ Roger checked his watch. ‘It is Hannah’s last day before the off.’
‘I won’t be long and she’s not even up yet.’ Eleanor dropped her gaze. ‘And… I believe the conservator is returning Dad’s painting this morning. It’s been reframed, too. I offered to help hang it.’
‘Oh, that bloody painting!’ Roger thunked down his coffee mug. ‘How much did all this faffing about cost? And why has it taken all this time? There was barely a mark on it. If he hadn’t tried to pick the broken glass out, it would have been fine. Honestly, it’s ridiculous – so much fuss over a picture! It’s not even as if it’s especially valuable.’
‘No one’s asking you to pay for it.’ Eleanor picked up her handbag and started fingering through the contents as if she were looking for something in particular. ‘It’s fine.’
‘But I did offer to pay for the stupid thing.’ He stood up then and marched over to the window to glare out into the garden.
‘I know you did. My dad doesn’t mind about the money. Really.’
Roger snorted. ‘Exactly – that’s so bloody typical of Conrad. He’s insisted on paying for it just so he can relish the pleasure of resenting me.’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t resent you at all.’ Eleanor’s voice took on the soothing tone she had used to comfort her children when they were small.
‘It was his own stupid fault in any case. He’s impossibly stubborn. I had it safe. If he’d just let me carry it instead of trying to grab it—’
‘I’m sure he accepts it was an accident.’ Eleanor re-zipped her bag. ‘And, as you say, it’s ages ago… Well…’
‘I really ought to put in some time in the garden.’ Roger half-turned to look at her like a cartoon bloodhound, his face comically freighted with woe. ‘You can hardly see the lawn for all the fallen leaves.’
Eleanor knew he was wondering just how wet it was out there. If the leaves were sodden, there would be no point using his all-time favourite toy, a leaf blower, which he had come back with a few weeks ago after visiting the garden centre unaccompanied. Lately, Eleanor often caught her husband looking up at the mature trees at the far end of their garden as if mentally willing the leaves to fall so that he would have a reason to get out the leaf blower. When he used it, Eleanor retreated to her small studio right at the top of the house, the only place where the noise could barely be heard.
‘It’s all right, you don’t have to come, too.’ She tapped him lightly on the shoulder. ‘I hereby release you from the onerous and perilous undertaking of visiting my father.’
‘It’s just the leaves, you see.’ He faced back to the garden again. ‘You know I don’t mind having to visit him sometimes.’
‘No, I know. You’re very noble to put up with me and my irascible parent.’
2
Conrad
1945
At last, the huge coils of barbed wire have been partly rolled back, allowing access to the longed-for beach, a scant quarter-mile from the big house up on the hill where he lives. There, down at the water’s edge, the boy plays alone. No, not quite alone as his playmates are two dogs, who are watching him intently. The boy, though perhaps only seven or eight years old, is clearly born to command. In his hand, he clutches a short stick. The dogs wait, poised, ready to run. The larger dog, black and white, has a shaggy coat, tail flicking with excitement. The other – smaller, smooth-haired, the colour of sand – has one ear half-cocked.
Sometimes his mother comes too, with his little sister, to stand looking out at the waves. Or Cook walks down with him and sits on a bench, puffing, exhausted from the exertion, as he tears up and down the promenade with the dogs. Occasionally, as today, he is allowed to take them on his own as it’s only a few minutes away, down the hill and cross one road, easy-peasy.
Then he draws his arm back and flicks it forward fast: the stick shoots out along the beach. Both dogs yelp and they’re off – racing down the shoreline. The bigger, longer-legged dog gets there first, but not by much. Triumphant, he lollops back to his master, tilts his head up in offering, with pride.
The boy takes the stick, then reaches down and pats the dog generously. The boy hunkers down now on his haunches, extending a hand to the smaller dog, turns his hand over, palm up, beckoning. He holds out the stick and the dog lifts its head a little. Now the boy stands up but leans in to hold the black-and-white’s collar. He nods at the small dog, then hurls the stick. The dog pauses a moment then hurtles off, practically flying along the beach. The black-and-white barks in protest, tugs against the boy’s restraining grasp… but the boy stays firm. Back comes the victor, trit-trotting the last few steps with head held high. The boy showers him with pats, then suddenly plonks himself down on the sand and draws both dogs close, stroking and hugging and laughing.
Back at home, he rubs the dogs down with an old towel outside the back door, and comes tumbling into the kitchen, ready to beg Cook for homemade cake and lemon barley water, he can’t possibly wait hours and hours till lunchtime because he is starving, literally starving, has never, ever been so starving in his whole, entire life.
‘Cook, Cook, can I have… I mean please, please may I have, dear, lovely Cookie—’
‘Conrad. Not now.’ Her voice is serious, the way it is when she wants him out from under her feet, only not cross, just… strange. Her face is pale as the flour sprinkled on the table,
ready for pastry-making.
‘But can I just—’
‘Oh, my dear, dear child…’ Cookie puts her arms around him and crushes him against her enormous bosom. As ever, she smells of good things, of gravy and pastry and syrup. The cloth of her apron rasps against his cheek and, after a minute, he tries to pull away, but still she clamps him there and so he submits, sinking into this vast pillow of a woman. Eventually, she releases him and he looks up at her. She takes a tea-cloth from the table and rubs at her face. ‘Och, silly old Cookie. And the lunch not even on yet.’
‘They said on the wireless that the War’s nearly over, Cookie – did you hear?’
She nods and sniffs.
‘That means Daddy can come back now. He can put on a suit and go and be important in an office again. Like before.’ Conrad doesn’t remember those days, of course, but he has made his mother tell him about them often enough. He thinks about Daddy a lot, a lot, a lot, and prays for him at bedtime every night. Last time he came home on leave, he brought Conrad a harmonica and Mummy was all smiley again and singing as she went about the house and Daddy promised he’d be home soon for good.
Cook says nothing, but shakes her head and gathers him to her again, then covers the top of his head with floury kisses.
‘My poor, poor boy,’ she says. ‘It’s not fair, it’s just not fair…’
‘What’s not fair?’ Conrad looks up at her dear, wrinkly face, and stretches up to kiss her powdery cheek. ‘Mummy says I shouldn’t complain when things aren’t fair, that you just have to knuckle down and get on with it.’
She takes a big sniff and holds him out at arm’s length now, her eyes all watery like when she’s chopping onions.
‘Now, Conrad, you’re going to have to be a very brave young man,’ she says. ‘Something very, very bad has happened.’
Mummy says now that he is growing up and becoming a fine young man, he must go away to proper school, one of the best in the whole country, she says.
‘But who will look after you and Flora?’ he asks. ‘If I’m not here?’
Mummy does that smile she does now: not a proper smile like she used to, the sort of smile you do when you fall over and scrape your knee and you’re trying to be brave and not cry.
‘Cookie,’ she says. ‘I’m sure Cook will take very good care of us. So you mustn’t worry.’
Conrad shifts from one foot to the other and stuffs his hands in his pockets to fiddle with the length of string he has there, and the mouth organ Daddy gave him the last time he was home on leave. Before. He runs his finger over the smooth metal of it, dabs into the little square windows along its side.
‘Why doesn’t Flora have to go away to school?’ He doesn’t say, It’s not fair, but he is thinking the words so hard that he is sure they must be charging across the gap from his own head to his mother’s and knocking bang-bang-bang so she must definitely hear them.
Mummy explains very slowly, as if he is just a small boy, that Flora is still only little, and a good education is not so important for girls as it is for boys because when she is older she will find a nice husband and will not have to go out and make her own way in the world as he will. And anyway, he will have a wonderful time because the school has lots and lots of space and squillions of other boys just like him and, best of all, a really big library so he’ll have as many books to read as he likes and won’t have to mope about the house saying he’s run out of things to read. Mummy will write to him every single week and Cookie has promised to send him some fudge. If she can get enough sugar.
Conrad will not cry because he is a big boy now. He bites the inside of his lip on the right-hand side and tries to think of something else. You can stop yourself crying that way.
He wants to ask his mother lots of questions, but now the words are all crowded and muddled in his head like the black ants crawling over each other that time he and Henry poked their sticks into that nest: Won’t you miss me? – I’ll miss you! – Who will tuck me in? – Who will kiss me good night? – What if I have a bad dream? – Can I take Squire Teddy? – What if I don’t like it? – Can I come back? – Will you visit me? – What if it’s really and truly horrid, horrid, horrid? – What if no one wants to play with me? – Please, Mummy, don’t make me go – please, Mummy, please…
There are too many words, all at once, trying to clamber and struggle up to the surface. He bites his lip again and pushes them back down.
His mother puts her hands on his shoulders and does the not-proper smile again.
‘Look at you,’ she says. ‘Growing up so fast.’ Her eyes are all shiny, like his glass marbles with the blue bits in. She leans forward and kisses the top of his head. ‘You really are starting to look so like—’ She makes a funny little noise then, as if she is choking on a piece of crusty bread, and she stands up suddenly, clasps him close for a moment, then tells him to run along.
Conrad is in the dining room, listening at the serving-hatch that goes through to the kitchen. There is a narrow gap where the two little doors don’t quite meet, and if you stand right there, you can listen and even peep through but you must be super-duper silent, like a spy. His mother is in the kitchen, talking to Cookie, but her voice is too quiet to decipher. Decipher is his new word this week and he is using it at every opportunity.
Then Cookie says, ‘I don’t think it’s right. He needs his mother. Even more now.’
‘I can’t—’ His mother’s voice, suddenly loud. ‘Don’t. He’s just the spit of him, Martha – don’t you see? It’s just… I can’t… it’s too hard…’
Through the gap, Conrad sees Cookie fold his mother in her huge floury arms and tuck her in close to her the way she does with the big mixing bowl when she is stirring the ingredients for a pudding or a cake.
‘I know, my duck, I know. Have a good cry now.’
He does not understand what his mother said but he will go upstairs later and look in the big dictionary, the one in Father’s study. It doesn’t make sense – you’re not supposed to spit, everyone knows that. He would ask Mummy or Cookie, but then they would know he was listening at the hatch and he’d be told off for eavesdropping. Cookie would say, ‘Them as listens at keyholes never hears no good of themselves.’ But all spies have to eavesdrop otherwise they’d never find out anything and they’d be pretty hopeless as spies, wouldn’t they? Honestly, grown-ups could be awfully daft sometimes.
3
The Woman in the Window Seat
It was a little after 11a.m. when Eleanor arrived at her father’s flat, in an imposing mansion block in Bloomsbury near the British Museum. The door opened wide to admit her, as usual, as if her father were expecting a procession of visitors rather than only his daughter.
‘Ah – Eleanor.’ Conrad nodded, unsmiling, and stood back. He had never been in the habit of saying hello.
‘Daddy.’
Her father’s brows lifted at the rarely used, affectionate ‘Daddy’, but he said nothing, merely bending to proffer his cheek for her to kiss.
‘Happy birthday for Thursday. I hope you received my card? And I have a gift for you.’
‘Thank you. Yes, lovely card. So, how are you?’ Eleanor hung up her coat.
Conrad waved away the enquiry with a dismissive hand. Even now, at seventy-four, he was an imposing, handsome man. He stood six foot two in his socks – not that Conrad would ever pad about just in his socks (or, worse, slippers) while receiving a visitor – good God, whatever next? His posture was that of a considerably younger man, though on occasion Eleanor had spotted him wince when he rose from his chair. His eyes were still fiercely blue, bright and beady, assessing.
‘Come through to the study. Andrew’s just on his way out. He brought back my painting. Very decent of him to deliver it.’
The flat was more than large enough for a person living alone, although the principal bedroom had been made into Conrad’s study, while he slept in the much more modest second bedroom. The study was a gracious, handsome room, with a
high ceiling, the original fireplace, and tall sash windows framed by faded green velvet curtains transferred from the old family house when he’d moved over a year ago. The walls were lined with bookshelves, even in the space above the door. The only gaps were for the windows and above the fireplace, opposite Conrad’s desk, an empty space, waiting. A man stood awkwardly by the fireplace, with his hands in his pockets.
‘Andrew. Have you met my daughter, Eleanor?’
‘Yes, at the Museum once, I think.’ He came forward to shake her hand. ‘How do you do?’ His voice was quiet, unassuming.
‘Yes, of course. How are you?’ He had a rather forgettable face, so Eleanor was not actually sure if she had met him before or not. There was something vague about his features, as if he had been sketched with a very soft pencil.
The painting was still on the floor, leaning against the bookshelves.
‘But this is incredible.’ Eleanor crouched down to see the restored area. ‘I can’t see any damage at all.’
‘It wasn’t too bad, not really – just that abraded area from the broken glass and a couple of blood spots.’ Andrew smiled. ‘It was only tricky because the medium is egg tempera and not all conservators have worked with it, that’s all. I think it’s having a decent frame that’s made the biggest difference really.’
‘Don’t be so modest. Oh, and there’s no glass now! That’s why it’s so different. Is that OK? You can certainly see the painting much more clearly.’
Growing Up for Beginners Page 2
